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?

But Kittywits - what exactly am I supposed to be envious and resentful about?

Money - got loads of it thanks
Being at home - tried it, would rather eat my own eyeballs than do it again.
Husband - not in million years thanks
Vaccous lifestyle + gym bunnie - don't think so!
Why can't you get it - I am perfectly happy for you to do what you like with your life and actually very happy for you that you enjoy it.

What is really irrititating me, is that you are assuming that anyone else would trade places with you and would like to live your life - no matter how much people say they wouldn't. By persisting to do so, you are devaluing the choices they have made!

And no I don't think there is any virtue in grinding yourself into the ground, but you know what - most of the people who you are looking down your nose at, don't have a choice as to whether to employ hired help! And you presuming that you are somehow better than them (because they would trade with you in a flash) is frnkly sneering and patronising and it is really starting to get me really annoyed.

FWIW I'll save my admiration for those who do soldier on in the toughest of circumstances - not for some spoilt madam who can't see further than the end of her own beautifully tended garden!

OMG how can being 'kept' give you freedom? One reason why I went back to work after my children is because I don't like the idea of spending someone else's money. I feel independent because I have my own bank account and pay my own salary into it. As for needing to be 'protected' I suppose I do feel protected by my dp in the sense that he cares for me and the children and helps me if I need help (which like Fairymum's dp includes giving me a break from the kids and changing nappies). Do you know what I hope he feels cared for by me too. And if anyone ever threatened me or the kids physically I have absolutely no doubt that DP could and would come to my aid and protect me in that sense too. DP is much physically stronger and fitter than me. But this doesn't mean he can't do house-work and doesn't mean I can't go out to work. If anything ever happened to DP it wouldn't be this kind of 'protection' I would miss (financial and physical) it would be his love, his role as a parent and the time we spend together including making decisions together and having fun (he and I and he and I and the kids).

Unless I too am v confused about Mr Kittywits/ Kittywits earlier post (and Kittywits is in fact a transvestite) I take it that Mr KW is the one with the long flowing hair. Just interested (not expressing an opiinion one way or the other) but how can a man with long flowing hair who attracts admiring attention from other men feel that doing a bit of house-work is emasculating.

Cant type much.
personally would also rather eat my ears than live like that. Life is so much more......

I keep reading your name as nother-quools

I think I'm working out KW's pov on men + housework + emasculinasation (that word must be made up). KW am I right that you see any man who does housework or some kinds of child-care (like nappies) as being put-upon or hen pecked because they are being forced to do this kind of work by their (probably bossy, nagging and slightly masculine wife in your view)??

I think it's important for you to realize that some men choose to do house-work (not because they love it though there must be some who do but because it's something that needs doing or to help their dw or whatever) and choose to look after their kids (nappies and all). As I said, I have never that I can remember, had to ask dp to do house-work let alone persuade him. He just does it. THe same way that I might go to work or drive to work or open a bank account for our children or whatever.

As for my sister, as I have already said we don't automatically replicate our parents roles and life-style when we get older but we are influenced by them. My sister's reaction was and is highly complex (not really a subject for this thread) and has caused a lot of conflict and unease for herself and her family. She has had to learn and develop her life-style for herself which she has not found easy because it was entirely new to her. Although if you asked her whether she was happy with her life I'm sure she would say yes, she spends a lot of time feeling isolated and tired (though her kids are at school and she has help 5 days a week). She lives in another country in a v different kind of circle from mine (where many women have help etc etc) so unless she were my sister I would not come into contact with her or I imagine many like her including you.

The fact that when you ask your son if he will change his own child's nappies when he's older and he says soemthing along the lines of maybe I will, maybe I won't let's see what times and conventions are like in another x years simply confirms my earlier points. I would hope (although am perfectly prepared to accept that this may not be the case) that if any other 8 year old boy was asked whether he would change his own child's nappies he would answer 'yes, why the hell wouldn't I. If I make the decision to have a child I should be prepared to look after it and i would want to do that.' This is what would happen in blackandwhitecat's dream world anyway.

Fairymum I agree with every one of your posts.

kittywits, sorry not to have read all of this, but did you actually ask your 8 year old ds about changing nappies and did he reply along the 'maybe I will and maybe I won't' lines that B&WC has just said? Were you ok with that answer. I would fully expect my boys to say 'yuck no' but also, when pressed to say, 'well, if is was MY baby, that's different' and if there was any shillyshallying I would let them know in no uncertain terms what I thougth of that!

I am watching this thread so I am around quite a lot, even if I don't post all the time. I will watch out for your replies to my answers (thanks!)

B&WC I have to admit I do ask my dh to do housework but then he also asks me - we do trade offs with each other. Neither of us are very houseproud when it comes down to actually doing the work ( though dh likes to think he is houseproud but it's mostly in his head) In reality, we would both prefer to do other things

tigermoth: just had one of those really annoying things happen when you write a long and considered answer and then it disappears. I had said that dp and I have talked alot about down sizing. Neither of us would see it as a failure. We are both for making our lives as stress free as poss. We have more space than we can use or need. We can't sell at the mo because of local planning wrangle the outcome of which will affect the price of our property, so we have to wait.
btw I do really appreciate the way you speak to me. I'm getting to the point now where I shall just ignore those who are rudE
When we bought the house it was all that was suitable at the time.
Before we had kids Dh was keen that I stayed at home full time with the children .
Neither of us wanted the children to be looked after by anyone else.
If I worked we would have to pay so much in child care that it wouldn't be worth it. When the youngest has started school full time we'll take another look at the situation, but that's in a good few years yet.

bawc. My son's answer shows his thinking brain. He is a boy who has always thought deeply.

No I never said that. infact if you read what I said I said it didn't

martianbishop!
does your dh have a brother?!!

BAWC MY DP HAS NEVER SAID HE FINDS HOUSEWORK EMASULATING. HE HAS NECER SAID THAT. PLEASE READ THE POSTS

No but you have KW. So, I'll rephrase the question. How is it that you find a man who does house-work effeminate and unattractive but a man with long flowing hair who gets admiring looks from other men not? Again, I'm not judging at all just interested. Am finding it just increasingly difficult to understand what you consider to be masculine and feminine (which isn't a criticism just saying I'm confused).

Tigermoth, on housework. Absolutely the same for me and dp that we would prefer to do other things. Don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. If you came to my house you wouldn't see a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves scenario with the whole family bepinnied, waving our dusters and whistling while we work. What you might see on any given evening is me making dinner and putting it on table then dp putting dishes in dish-washer and later drying them and putting them away. Or the other way around. I might put wash on and Dp might hang up clothes from washing machine with dd1's help. Or other way around. That's about it. We don't do much house-work on a week-day evening, slightly more at wkend. I do shopping on Internet weekly but dp might pick up bread and milk if we run out. Whoever is at home first cooks usually. We take it in turns to get up in the morning with kids, give them breakfast and get them ready(they're early risers usually at about 6 am), we both bath kids but swap which one we put to bed each night.

Mr. Kittywits here:

The point of my post at 10.24 this morning was to challenge YOUR perceptions of who I am and the way we live our lives. So many people are coming on this thread and making wild assumptions about us despite the fact that we have gone into so much detail in earlier posts.

Hopefully I've managed to break one assmption with this morning's post, that I'm a macho Grant Mitchell type.

I'm going now to read my children bed-time stories, get their milks and tuck them up for the night with a kiss.

Tigermoth, in answer to your qu about KW's son's response to the qu on nappychanging:

'I asked him if he thought he would change a nappy, etc, etc, etc, and he said to me that he could possibly say now because that would be in at leat 10 years time and he had no idea how he would feel about things then.'

Kitty perceived this as 'Quite an outstandingly mature response from a child with such an old fashioned an limiting role model.'

More confused than ever. KW and Mr KW which one of you has the long-flowing hair and the chest which receives lots of attention? If either?

BAWC What makes a man masculine is such a .... tricky thing to describe. It's an aura, a presence. You see them and you feel it . Now I know that I have never felt that way about a man who has become feminised, men I know who go round being "new men " and being at the beck and call of their womenfolk. Whilst the women folk think they they are all equal. Really it is the men who do just what the women want. Now I don't think that anyone should be at the beck and call of anyone, male or female. It has happened to alot of men though. The process seems to have knocked the stuffing out of them.

I have no chest to receive attention. My children have eaten it up over the years. Dp's hair is longer than mine.

Really, you're confirming that your idea of what makes a man 'masculine' is peculiar to you. I suppose this is true for everyone. After all our sex is biologically determined but gender is learned and we all learn it, understand it and practice it in different ways. But your idea of masculinity is probably fairly atypical. Although you say you think lots of women feel the same way I don't think this is true any more if it ever was.

I don't think any relationship where one partner dominates the other who is submissive is healthy. However, even today where this kind of dynamic operates it is much more typical for the man to be dominant and the woman submissive (compare the number of domestic violence victims who are men against women etc etc for proof of this). The notion of the hen-pecked, pinny wearing husband you refer to is a stereo-type which is as harmful and different from the reality as the image of a big-breasted, dim-witted, blonde wife. Of course, there may well be real examples of both of these 'types' but that doesn't mean you can say that the majority of husbands who help with housework or women who stay at home are like them. The stereotype of the hen-pecked husband however is a very helpful way of maintaining the status quo. If a man is frightened that if he picks up a dishcloth he is somehow losing his power and masculinity then of course he will be less inclined to do it. Obviously if a woman is afraid her man will be perceived as unmanly and she will be perceived as a nagging wife then she will be less inclined to encourage him.

Mr. Kittywits again:

BAWC, I finished the 10.24 post with, "I am of course, Mister Kittywits" and to make it totally unambiguous I also wrote, "Kitty is feeding the baby". I am the one with long black hair; you've made up the bit about my chest receiving lots of attention.

Now I'm not one to say that men who are forced into doing housework etc etc and are unhappy are just getting what they deserved after 1000s of years of male oppression in what remains a patriarchal society. As I have said many times I believe in shared power and responsibility in paid and domestic work and childcare. But again I am surprised and disheartened that a woman should be more concerned about men 'having their stuffing knocked out of them' and 'being at a woman's beck and call' etc etc when clearly many (most?) men are hardly participating in housework or child-care at all and many (most?) women want them to do more. And clearly many men want to have the opportunity to help with housework and childcare themselves.

Again, you would do well to remember that although girls are out-performing boys academically they still are desperately under-represented in Parliament and have only a tiny percentage of the world's wealth etc etc. I feel sorry for anyone who is dominated in ways that they don't enjoy but it is still largely WOMEN and not MEN in these positions.

I couldn't make this up if I tried or wanted to Mr KW

'I still get attention to my chest area which I guess we all find very embarassing. '
.

Being dominated and bullied in your relationship has very little to do with equality. If one person walks around thinking their are equals while the other is deeply unhappy with the situation, then they should talk! I don't see what that has got to do with women's right, equality and "new man" at all. It's just people not getting on isn't it? I do think, that some men do wonder about their role these days though. I don't think it's women's fault at all. I think women are showing increasingly how they can multi-task, have great careers as well caring for tgheir children and getting their housework done. Many men, like my PIL, is so used to having just one thing to cope with and that was his job. Everything else was done for him. If men don't want to be legft behind, they need to show that they can fill different roles too I think!

I also recognize that many men are struggling with their roles at the moment. They have historically defined themselves against women and gained power at women's expense so when it becomes obvious that women are equal and capable of coming out of the home and doing difficult jobs which have been considered male territory it is understandable that many men will feel threatened. Hence why the stereotypes of men doing housework being wimpy and women who want equality being bra-burning nutters in DMs (I have long thought the whole idea of bra burning is a myth BTW does anyone know a woman who really did burn her bra? My mum was a pioneering feminist in the 70s and she doesn't) are so useful to those who feel threatened. There are much fewer jobs which require manual labour and greater numbers of jobs which require communication skills etc etc. And many men are victims of their own success, the pressure to succeed and compete etc. etc long working hours. But let's not forget that men still have more power than women in the public arena and often in the home too.