To ask why women are expected to do everything?

[HolyGuacamole28]

I read a depressing article in the Economist today ‘How Motherhood affects careers’ and it stated how more and more women are not progressing as they should after having children. And SAHP is on the rise as more people opt out of a system doomed to failure. I just don’t understand how mothers are physically supposed to work full time in a career/senior role (I do), manage a household (I have a 4 year old, 2 year old and a husband, also FT) that includes washing, cleaning, cooking etc and do activities with the kids, keep fit and see friends. Is this what society expects? Who is supposed to do the household role if both adults work full time? And why do we need two incomes just to survive? (COL is so painful re mortgages, childcare, energy, food). Rant over, just can’t see how society has evolved, it’s just put more on our shoulders. I’m personally at breaking point.

I havent read all the thread, but most people are commenting on men not pulling their weight (rightly so - they now expect women to take over half of 'their' traditional role of bringing in the bread, but are generally shockingly reluctant to do more of a token attempt at taking on 50% of 'her' workload)

However there is a much wider social issue - and that was down to changes in how mortgage affordability was calculated in order to 'free up' alot more buying power and help a rise in house prices. Previously ONLY the man's income was taken into account when applying for mortgages, because even if a woman worked, it was viewed best not to count her earnings because if she had children, she would stay at home and look after them, and that would make it difficult to pay. Plus the multipler for wages-mortgage was lower.

T be honest, up until relatively recently in the grand scheme of things, most people didnt own their homes - rents were longterm and controlled by fair rents, and it just wasnt considered that home ownership was for the general population - plus post war there was a massive social housing building project - My grandparents bought their first home - when they were about 50 years old, in the early 60's, and that was considered pretty unusual.

When my parents bought it was only ever my father's income that was used to but a home, and prices were much much cheaper, because the multipliers were low, and wages were low. But once property started to be viewed as both aspirational, and a way for banks to make more money, and as an investment for buyers rather than simply a home, those multipliers started to increase.

In the late 80s, just before the FIRST property crash (when I bought and subsequently lost the only house Ive ever owned) they were beginning to use a second income - so I believe it was 4 x partners income, plus 1 x my income

Later they combined incomes for the multipliers - this allowed house prices to increase further

When both incomes became involved it meant both people needed to continue working - it made no allowance for someone taking time out to look after kids, and so the trap was lain

Its a viscious circle isn't it? It typically 'makes sense' for a woman to take on the primary domestic role while the man concentrates on his career, because he earns more. He will continue to earn more because his career is being facilitated. His female colleague will struggle to advance at his rate in part because her career is not being facilitated by another adult who ensures she need concentrate only on that career. So she in turn may end up earning less than her own male partner.
Meanwhile in the home we role model a lifestyle to our daughters and sons that teaches them a man's job is to work, a woman's to care for everyone, and no matter what we tell them to the contrary, their lived experience in their formative years runs very deep, so the cycle/circle continues. The only way to break it is for both men and women to take on equal responsibility for paid work and domestic work. But on an individual family level, due to the pay gap, that's often impractical.

I think it's far to easy to blame women. You're all saying it's because women haven't trained their sons. It's not, it's because of what women saw their fathers do, setting expectations for their own futures.

My DSs are fully housetrained but their girlfriends have very low expectations of them and they slot easily into what's expected of them (as we all do).

@HolyGuacamole28 My MIL was a SAHP, well she was actually helping run the local liberal party and do charity work and she had a FT housekeeper. DH then went to Cambridge and lived in halls completely looked after for years as he also did a PhD there, so he had done sweet FA when I met him.

When we started living together he made some assumptions, they were all incorrect. But I remember going in to work and women saying oh men are just like that. I laughed in his face when he expected me to write all the Christmas cards. I didn’t accept it from day one but I’m guessing some women would.

So sad to see so many women on here blaming women for "allowing this to happen " and blaming boys mothers for not raising boys right

So patriarchy is a problem for women caused BY women? The internalised misogyny here is depressing

it’s about suggesting ways for them to avoid being in these situations by making better choices.

A guy I was dating told me he was traditional “ in some ways” . It turned out he believed housework & childcare was women's work but working outside of the home was for both men and women. I could see he was going to be a horrible life partner so I ditched him immediately. Why are women in this day and age - even before marriage and kids - accepting this nonsense?

Yes the root of the issue is men /patriarchy and both men and women don’t “train” their sons/grandsons/nephews adequately . I’ve also seen both female and male teachers excuse inconsiderate and lazy behaviour by young boys with “boys will be boys”.

However, as individuals we need to be smart and not enable it. I get sometimes it’s hard as a man may change after kids and marriage and it’s definitely not easy to just leave, but it’s the ones who accept and enable it from the outset and then complain later who confuse me.

I had a friend in uni halls who would cook regularly for all the men in our social circle that were international students as they missed their “mums cooking” but they’d never reciprocate. These men started expecting it from all of us girls and we were all like um no! 😣

A friend of mine complained her mum never babysits for all her children at the same time to give her a night off from the kids, but why does her unemployed partner not take all the kids one night and let her go out with friends ? She stopped complaining to me about her mum once I suggested that.

Yes women are victims are misogyny but yes many of us use it against other women.
Why are you holding female relatives and friends to a higher standard than your male partner?

I’ve had women I barely know trauma dump on me because their partners don’t offer emotional support. It’s like because their misogynistic selfish partners didn’t see them as fully rounded humans with needs, they didn’t see other women like that either.

They would push back and be resentful once I made it clear I wasn’t their 24/7 therapist all the while not holding their actual husband /father of their child to account for not being there for them.

This discussion has been going on in households and as an academic area since I can remember & overall there has been very little shift to sharing household tasks more equally - many women still end up with drudgery daily tasks that take lots of time as well as managing family appointments etc whereas men favour the weekly or occasional tasks: stereotypically bins and DIY. Things seem to polarise most once children are in the mix when women may cut their hours of paid work (and pension entitlement) to take on more unpaid household tasks…

Absolutely, every which way the blame is placed firmly on women. Weighing us down further....

If my husband was useless he is to be blamed for that

I would be blamed for staying and treating him like a child and then complaining how I do everything, and then keep on staying

This is interesting. I'm single and ex DH was competent and did a lot round the house.

We have 2 sons yet I do most domestic stuff for them. I don't know why I do this. I feel guilty when I ask them to do a job even though they both will happily do it.

Hmm. I think I feel like it's my responsibility and I don't know why.

So who do you think is going to make boys and men behave better and shoulder their fair share of chores then?? It's up to us to make it happen because no one else will. It's not as if there's going to be a new law making it a criminal offence for men not to empty the dishwasher is it? WE are the ones who can make things change. We've wanted to be empowered, so let's do it!

Motherhood does affect careers even if you have a DH who pulls equal weight at home.

It's very difficult to find a job where you can easily get time off to take your DC to routine appointments or watch every school event, cover sickness (DCs or childminders), strike days/last-minute cancellations of after school club, etc. Even if your DH covers these equally women still bear the brunt of being considered less reliable/committed because society still expects women in the main to be doing this.

The trouble is that most people have jobs rather than high-flying careers. They may well be jobs they love and which really matter to society but in terms of monetary value, few jobs equate to more than the cost of full-time childcare and that's assuming you can get care to cover the hours you work (shift workers can be screwed). As women have more legal rights to time off for maternity and many will be breastfeeding and want to spend time with their baby, it's usually women who take the back seat once a child arrives. That's where it starts. Without men also going through gestation, labour and breastfeeding, I can't see that changing any time soon no matter how much they also want to stay home with the baby. And if one person is home more than the other and not bringing in any money, the balance normally tips to doing more housework and so it starts.

I went back to work 6 weeks after having my DTs. It was the right choice for me but as a society we massively undervalue the role of the SAHP and family facilitator. And if no one does these roles you have to either accept a drop in living standards, a lack of free time or you have to outsource it. The point is that someone HAS to do it, so the question isn't IMO so much about who does it but how as a society we can change things so that the work traditionally done by women becomes better valued and carries higher status.

Do you think that an element of capitalism / human nature is that we always want "more" and now women are picking that up (maybe even driving it)?

I always remember an episode of "Back in Time for Dinner" (that prog where they lived and ate like average families throughout the last century) where they said that when domestic appliances became the norm and house work easier, people stopped having sardines on toast for dinner and started hosing dinner parties. As technology progresses instead of only doing a wash once a week now everything is spotless 24/7 and this becomes the norm. So we've filled any spare time with higher standards of family life.

If I compare my life to my DMs I do sooooo much more - in terms of kids / activities / hobbies / house always looks good / dinner homecooked etc etc. I work nearly full time and have 2 kids - mum was a SAHM and had 1. Similar finances. This is the norm for my generation as it was for hers. Expectations now are so high. Out of my friends this is driven much more by the women than the men. Maybe we're socialised into this? Dunno.

I'd love to get off this merry go round as I'm shattered (just had a cry because I'm trying to work while supervising pancake making which went to shit) but it's the norm now for all my kids friends and no one wants to feel like their disadvantaging their kids. So it goes on.

I believe that in order to achieve ‘equality’ with men we have sign ourselves up to be superwomen. Doing what men do professionally and then also doing the ‘housewife’ roll. It makes me laugh when you see all the advice for women in the 50/60/70s regarding making sure the house is clean and calm for your husband when he returns from work, have a warm drink ready and then his dinner. I mean we have never had that, we don’t have husbands that provide that support function from a busy day at work.

Instead it’s an absolute stress fest, it’s hard enough when it’s just men/women living together. Add kids in and it just doesn’t work, no one gets any relief. In my view that’s why most marriages fail these days too. Yes I know it’s because we l/they have choice to leave, but even the strongest marriages where no one would ever suspect an affair or for them to split up don’t seem to last these days.

We career women are also having children in our late 30s (which I regret so much now) when we are established in our profession and have more income but this just means we are physically exhausted now too. You then have the added risk of becoming a sandwich generation looking after elderly parents.

It is actual HELL.

We aren't expected to do it all. We are supposed to earn at the same level as our husbands and then have sufficient combined income to hire help if required- like a cleaner. Both partners are expected to participate in chores and childcare equally. My husband and I earn at the same level. We both do picks and drop offs, split the chores and hire a cleaner.

I read once that anthropologists, when studying different cultures, always find a gendered labour divide. So women do some tasks, men others. However, an important corollary is that every culture divides these tasks differently! So there is no set rule as to which tasks will be gendered female and which male.

These cultural norms are largely arbitrary rather than 'biology-driven'. There is no reason men in a given culture can't take on tasks that culture has traditionally defined as feminine, and vice versa.

In short, I disagree with your take!

I've said it before and i'll say it again.

Equality is a society which accommodates women's differences and ensures they are not penalised by them - not one which pretends they don't exist.

So much comes from the fact that women give birth.

Actually, overseas buyers, speculative land purchasing, and inadequate housing supply have pushed house prices up.

Women have always worked by cleaning for others, taking in laundry, and doing piecework at home. Industrialisation forced us into the mills and factories but we have always worked. This has already been discussed here.

I would caution any woman against being completely reliant on her husband for money as that makes it easy for him to control and abuse her.

I'm interested in how this works in practise. Because as tempting as it is to lay the credit for our partners compliance on our own empowered shoulders, (we the strong and assertive who unlike our weaker sisters, insist on and recieve our rights!) We need to remember that a man's willingness to do his share to an acceptable standard, is largely a matter of his personality, and the good ones would behave in the exact same way if they had a passive female partner.

Some cases of domestic inequality are extreme, and in such cases, women will often decide enoughs enough and leave. However, in most, its a lot more nuanced. We're talking about women who love their partner, who think he has a great deal of good qualities, who don't want to uproot their children to become a single parent, but who remain frustrated and restricted by his failure to pull his weight domestically. They raise it. He agrees he will do more. This lasts for a while, then slips, rinse and repeat. So short of LT (not really a) B, to go it alone and do literally everything without even his limited input, how does the strong empowered woman break through the socialisation of his life time to bring about lasting change?

My wife comfortably out-earns me, and has done for a number of years now.
We split household chores fairly equally (but we play to our own strengths, for example I cook most meals).

Not every household is equal, I can't imagine a life where I lob out on the sofa while my wife runs around - it just wouldn't sit right.

Are you a man? Because if so its quite interesting that in your household, despite your partner having the Big Job, domestics are still divided equally, when so many men in your wife's position are absolved on the basis of their higher earner status. Also that you think its worth remarking on that you wouldn't sit back and let her run around. If she financially supports your lifestyle, that should go without saying, just as it goes without saying for the countless women in your position.

The point is that someone HAS to do it, so the question isn't IMO so much about who does it but how as a society we can change things so that the work traditionally done by women becomes better valued and carries higher status.

I think this is so true. I feel sometimes the greater question is how we can prevent caregivers - whether in a private or professional capacity - from losing out economically. It's needs someone doing it and caring job roles are so so poorly paid for the responsibility they carry. As well being able to provide a good standard of care - we both abhor abuse of the vulnerable but do not expect great things of care givers when it is absolutely a skill and takes a high degree of emotional intelligence, problem solving, resilience etc to do it well.

Where did you read that?

I have to say, I think that's bollocks. In general, there's a set rule. There will be a few cultures in which it didn't fully apply.

How do you think a man, for most of our existence on earth, fed an infant? How did a tribe survive, if, for protection and hunting, it relied on the 50% of its members with shorter heights, lesser throwing power and less efficient running biomechanics?

These things apply less today, of course. But the last 50-100 years is a tiny sliver of time, in the greater scheme of things.

Does everyone live in a mansion? Maybe we are slovenly, but housework is definitely not a full time job in our household. We both work full time (between 40-60hrs a week), and can easily fit it in and have the weekends free to go out and about. We do an online shop and have most essentials (cleaning stuff, Cat food, etc) on regular order.

Childcare is slightly different as they are either at nursery or at home the first few years, but once they’re at school I can’t see how running a house takes up so much time?

I don't honestly believe that you will get through to most dinosaurs without actually LTB. Better still, don't get into relationships with them in the first place.

If women just didn't give these sexist men the time off day, then they would have to change. If they choose to put up with them, the inequality is perpetuated.