why are some women content to do all the housework?

[honeydew]

I meet lots of mums in my local area who, like me, are stay at home mums with very young children but are prepared to do absolutely everything for their partners and DH's! They slave away cooking, cleaning and washing at home with no help and at the weekends, they still don't expect
their partners to do anything! I have friends who never get a proper break from their children, even if it's only for a couple of hours. Their DH's leave them to it 24/7. Is it just me who has found that old style patriarchy is alive and well in society once a woman gives up work to raise her brood? My DH does help me with baby DS, he also puts my older daughter to bed and washes up after I've cooked each night, so we work as a team. So many women I speak to say that their DH's are not 'hands on' parents and do virtually all the chores and baby changing/feeding. Oviously, if one partner is working during the week they can't do that much, but some men don't want to contribute at all it would seem! Are they just lazy or simply 'expect' women to fulfill that role?

TWO i agree with cods in one day

joined thread rather late but can't help adding my two pennyworht, this subject gets me so riled, fgs ...if you have chosen to be a SAHM then that is your "job" and that entails running the home and allit entails...all this talk of looking after the children is a fulltime job ...i do agree small children take a lot of time/energy/resources etc but ask our mothers and grandmothers , they managed and without all hte labour saving devices we have. If you have the luxury of staying at home then that is the choice you made and then to moan is pretty rich, if you go out to work you are expected to do all that is in your job description without moaning it is too much so what exactly is the difference if being a "homemaker" is your chosen job...sure I will get loads of abuse but that is how i feel. when i was off on mat leave with my children i never expected my DH to do any house stuff after he had been at work all day. I did expect him to read bedtime stories etc because that is nice time for him and the children , completely different to expecting him to come home and start the housework. stop moaning all you housewifes - it is the job you chose!

I think the fact that you're not prepared to put your money where your mouth is BAWC, reveals your prejudices about SAHMS. If you are not prepared to pay taxes so that someone can be a SAHP, but you are prepared to pay them so that they can work in the cash economy, then you are making a value judgement about the value of their contribution to society.

You still haven't addressed the reality of working life and school life - the fact that in order to function as one is supposed to, one would have to get a job with working hours between 9 ish and 2.30ish with a short commute, so that you can fit in all the after school clubs, homework etc. And the other thing you are missing, is that people who aren't always working and rushing around after children, have time to be creative, develop ideas for local communities and volunteer. It is a disgrace, but some of this country's most essential services are run by volunteers. Visiting services for the elderly, drivers for the disabled, reading assistance for children, mentoring for ASBO youths, magistrates - the list goes on and on. Without these volunteers, the country would collapse. Really it would. And that pool of volunteers is getting smaller and smaller, because of the current orthodoxy that paid work is the only thing of any value.

I basically agree with you mummydoc. I do believe that plenty of people who are in employed work also moan about their lot. I think it is part of our general dissatisfaction with life.
My Dp and I have the same system re housework as you. We share certain tasks with the children. He has never changed a nappy or given the children a bath. He always reads all of them a bedtime story and we spend time with them together at the weekend.
He pays the bills, fixes stuff around the home, deals with those sorts of probs and deals with all the finances. He does a brilliant job, far better than I could and it means I never have to stress about that. I think people should do the jobs that they are best at. There is no point in both people doing the same job within the house and carrying around the same burdens. Split the load.
If a dp works to bring in the money to support a family he should not be expected to then pitch in with the house work or cook unless he wants to. I think the shared job, when both parents are at home, should be the children not the house work.
I am saying what many have said already, I know.

Aha Mummydoc - I didn't know there was a universal SAHM Job Description. I'll have to get my hands on that and learn exactly what my job entails. Thanks for enlightening me.

"when i was off on mat leave with my children i never expected my DH to do any house stuff after he had been at work all day."

And now that you are back at work, does your DH do 50% of the houseowork and childcare?

At least we (sometimes) have a choice.

I live in Kazakhstan (former Soviet Union), where women have a rough deal: work full time, expected to do ALL the housework and childcare and have a lot of pressure to look ultra feminine and wear high heels and perfect make up etc. It is really Stepford Wives!

No time to read all of this thread unfortunately. I´m a SAHM with SEVEN, yes SEVEN years of university studies with no option of working due to my current circumstances and probably NO chance of finding work appropriate to my experience if I was able to work.

BAWC, it is rubbish that SAHMs are unhappy or unfulfilled to a greater extent than working women (who if I remember from MY long working days were very fast to complain about wanting to escape the workplace and find smg more interesting to do instead etc.

Re housework etc. I am careful to make sure anything not done in the daytime is split between us in the evening. There is no other way. I´m not available for work 24/7 when DH does a 40 hour week. More fool women who let this happen to them...

We both work fulltime. We have a cleaner once a week, but apart from that we share the housework pretty equally and our children have tasks to do too. I am quite suprised about this discussion. Unless you live in a castle, how hard is it to keep your house a bit clean and tidy? Just do a bit every day.

BS - can relate to yr frustration and for my penny's worth have 6 yrs to yr 7 at uni But tbh SAHM-dom just doesn't fulfil me, I almost wish it did. I don't think it's possible to generalise on this, depends so much on mother's personality and the support network around her.

To be fair, I think that while my traditional grandmothers were doing the laundry and cooking and dusting, my traditional grandfathers came home from work to tend the allotment, polish shoes, white wash, carry out general fixing, and deal with the paperwork. There is nothing wrong with division of labour, but there is more work involved in the running of the household and caring for children than can be done 9-5.30 Monday-Friday (unless ofcourse you lock the children in a cupboard). To those of you who think SAHM's should do all the housework and childcare can they trade off some of it if they also mow the lawn, deal with bills, fix the car and unblock the sink?

Oh I do groan when people say it's not difficult to clean a house.

For some people, it is not difficult to clean a house. For others, it is a nightmare task. It's a bit like people who can't understand why some people are always late. Some people are ultra organised and always on time, other people are pathologically late for everything. I find it almost impossible to keep my house clean and tidy and I only work for money 16 hours a week. I spend most of my free time trying to keep my house under control. Others work 60 hours a week and find that 15 minutes a day is perfectly sufficient to get their homes looking like they're awaiting the photographer from the Ideal Home magazine to arrive because they're in such perfect order. That might have something to do with us all being different, perhaps.

CLEANING the house doesn't actually take all that long. However, KEEPING IT TIDY seems to take all my sodding time, because neither dh nor ds ever put anything away once they have got it out. I am constantly tidying up piles of things left randomly about the house. And also often get asked to find things, because I am the only person who notices where anything has been left.

I really cannot understand why dh is apparently unable to put his shoes back on the shoe rack but leaves them about 30cm away from it. But there is no point keeping asking him to do it, he just thinks I'm nagging, and it really doesn't matter to him if there are shoes all around the house, he's just not a tidy person.However, I am the sort of person who can't relax if the place is untidy, so I end up tidying it.

That's so true caligula. No matter how hard I try I seem to have an explosion of mess around me. My step mum though, leaves my kitchen TIDIER after having cooked a huge christmas diiner, than it was before she started abd that's all before the damm food's on the table. I live in awe and wonderment.

I think people weather sahms or wohms allow themselves to get a bit too stressed about these things though. Of course you have to try to be a bit organised, but I also think you have to be relaxed about things. My Dh also leaves socks around the place. I think all men do. But so what? Nothing to worry about unless he has very stinky feet I suppose.....

And I would rather die than live in Anthea Turner's house. That would really freak me out!

On the three days when I am at work the house does stay clean and tidy. On the days when I am at home with DS the house is sometimes clean and tidy, sometimes as though just burgled. I can easily spend an hour or two just cleaning up the mess that we have made during the day. (I reckon half an hour cooking with DS creates 1 hour of cleaning with DS). If you are at home with young children you can't just do an hour's cleaning in the morning and expect the house to stay that way. Also, while it may be easy to quickly whip a hoover out if you are at home alone, factor in a few children and you are having to contend with children not liking the hoover, children playing with flex, children unplugging hoover, children fighting over who gets to use the hoover and thats before you have tried to move furniture/hoover the fiddly bits. As mentioned by others I think it is reasonable for a SAHM to do a similar amount of cleaning that a nanny or nursery worker would do, e.g. cooking and cleaning up of food served during the day, tidying up toys, light cleaning of living areas plus shopping and bunging a few things in the washing machine. I certainly don't understand why a SAHM or D should have to work 24/7 while their salary earning partner gets a weekend.

Obviously its different if children are at school for a reasonable chunk of time, but I think the OP was more referring to people who have young children.

But Crunchie, I said that all along - that house-work is part of a SAHM's whose kids are at school's job description - I've got no argument with anything at all you said in your last post.

Whoever has brought up that research again - I have said that if you have a problem with it then take it up with the researchers (I wasn't one of them). I just raised it as an interesting issue and it seems fairly common sense that many long-term SAHMs MAY suffer from over-eating or isolation. There are hazards with any job - with teaching it's stress (I'm not saying that is the case more than any other job and I'm not saying that all teachers suffer from it), with nurses MAYBE it's back problems. PROBABLY people who work from home are also LIKELY to encounter the thing about isolation and over-eating. It's not rocket science and I'm still struggling to see how it's controversial.

I never said that sahms were unhappy or unfulfilled or any of those other things some of you are accusing me of either. I said that I personally would find it unfulfilling and it would make ME unhappy. I've said many times that if you like it that's just fine and dandy and far be it from me to worry about your long-term job prospects, financial security etc etc if you're not worried or you've got it all sorted.

Caligula, I have addressed the school hours issue actually in so far as I've said that a large number of working mothers use after-school care and holiday clubs (as I will too when my kids are older) or grandparents. THe people WHO I KNOW who do that are happy with it. If you are prevented from work because you do not have access to good quality child-care then that's appalling and wrong. All employers should offer family-friendly hours and flexible hours and as I understand it they actually have a duty to at least consider this under the law now. But, yes more needs to be done.

Agree with whoever brought up the Swedish model. In my ideal society fully paid maternity or paternity leave and preferably both for 2-3 years then good quality free child-care coupled with family-friendly employers would exist.

I'm really getting quite pissed off with people frankly making lies up about what I've said and having to stress that I'm talking about MY opinions, issues that concern MANY people etc. Unless people say 'all people are x' isn't it obvious that we know there are exceptions??

but admit it BAWC your views have sparked a storming thread

You may not have actually said you don't approve of SAHM who continue after the kids are at school, but look back at your commenst and the tone of them and you might see that a lot of them suggest that SAHM is less valuable contributon to society than a WOTH (Your comments on taxes for instance, and about yor achievments at work being far more important to society then teaching a child to write it's name)

Can you not see that is why I am others have an issue with your position?

And Caligula, I don't see that SAHMs who are at home cleaning it while their kids are in school are contributing to SOCIETY. Agree with you about voluntary work though (but this is not just done by SAHMs) and I'd gladly pay more in taxes so that the work which is currently done voluntarily e.g. soup runs or whatever is paid.

Being Swedish I can agree with the Swedish/Scandinavian model, however, I estimate that UK is approx. 30 years behind Sweden in the general view on women working outside the home, fathers role in bringing up children and childcare. My mother always says the present-day debate re: working mothers and childcare in the UK reminds her about the debate in Sweden in the 70s!
I think before anything can really progress in the UK, it needs to be said that it's a good thing for both parents to share equally both the financial and the childcare responsibility. The roles of father and mother in the UK is IMO far too polarised. As soon as you suggest it might be good for women to work, to earn, to build up a pension etc you are accused of not valuing SAHMS. It's a minefield as can be seen on this thread. A lot also needs to be done to get rid of the general angst about nurseries and recognise that it can be a good thing for children providing it is good quality care of course.
It's ironic because IME although both parents tend to work in Scandinavia and children tend to be in childcare from 12 months on, they generally spend a lot more time together as a family because the working culture is more geared towards family-life.

Again, Crunchie, I never said anything about my achievements at work except that I PERSONALLY don't feel the same sense of achievement at home as I do at work. When someone asked me about it I explained that I have some achievements at home and others at work and you really can't compare dd2 doing a wee in the potty with a hard-working student getting an A grade in my subject. They're both real, important achievements. Both make ME happy (just me I'm not saying they should do it for anyone else) and neither is better or worse. Just different. I PERSONALLY need both kinds. You might need one or the other or neither.

blackandwhitecat, I agree with you re: achievements. I personally need both kinds too. My achievements at work does not exclude "achievements" at home. I want and need both!

Crunchie, I've been pretty hurt by the response TBH esp since many people have not responded to anything I've actually said or even thought. I think the strength of feeling may reveal more about issues SAHMs are dealing with or not dealing with than anything I have felt, thought or said.

Interesting, Fairymum, why on earth would you want to live here rather than Sweden then?