Men not pulling their weight at home

[Judy1234]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2008/03/09/st_housewives.xml

Why do these women tolerate it? How do the inequities start out?

Here, here, Quattro!

"I think it's easy to get people to pull their weight if they are fairminded". Agree.

But there are one hell of a lot of people who are not fairminded IMHO.

Exactly, Quattro. The best way for our sons to expect to do housework is for them to learn it from their dads.

I tell DD that laundry is man's work.

And she thinks fixing cars is woman's work. Was very disappointed when the AA man showed up to fix DH's car.

See your point in a way quattro, but anna8888s comment about alot of people not being fairminded is straight to the point. In an ideal world everybody would be fairminded but we don't have that kind of world!!! In in my house my dh is obviously not fairminded!! I certainly don't feel like kicking him out and going through all that again and putting the kids through all that, thats for sure. Having said that my ds is fantastic, so houseproud and is going to make someone a really good husband. He relates to women so well, which has not been his fathers influence at all! So i don't think you can generalise about kids picking up habits of their fathers/mothers etc.,
Also, i do not give in without a fight! I am always trying to get him to do stuff i certainly don't just roll over and do it without saying anything!

Q - what would you do to change things?

There's only so many hours in the day and also so many rows you can stand! Sometimes things just creep up on you and before you know it your doing having it all!

Agree with blossomsmine, what do you do, kick them out? Sometimes it's tempting as I was a lone parent with dc1 for a good many years, and sometimes it does just seem simpler, albeit I lived in a MUCH smaller house, well flat , but living space aside a lot of things did seem simpler...seems a bit unfair on the kids tho, just because I'm fed up to the back teeth of being a domestic slave goddess I leave them fatherless!

I live in fear of a bit of research I saw that seemed to show that unmarried WOMEN live longer than married women but MARRIED men live longer than unmarried men . Wonder why?

That research you are talking about bb99, has just got to be true!!
I think it is easy to say, oh i wouldn't put up with that blah blah blah....but try and think about what you would actually do in the same situation....would be rather selfish kicking him out (as bb99 says) just cos of the running of the house!!!
No solution to this i suppose

Didn't read thru and missed the bit about oppression of women - yes to a point we are complicit, but I expect ALL children to pull their weight around the home, despite gender differences. And I hope that this will negate any affect what they see may have...

The perception thing is interesting - read in a daddy book that the issue is often that women judge the amount of input a man has compared to herself (so of course, the man won't often have an equal share, or conversely appear to do very little ) BUT the men judge their input by comparing themselves to their fathers...so if daddy didn't do much, even if they do very little it feels to them that they've achieved a MONUMENTAL amount of help for their partners.

Unfortunately FIL did bugger all hands on housework and child care, although he did provide a very good salary for the family and run the financial side of things, something OH is still working on

Maybe sage advice for the next generation of women - look at what FILs did when shopping for OHs!

The issue of the extent to which women (or any less powerful group in society) are complicit in their own oppression is a very vexed one.

If it were as simple as saying "I won't put up with doing all the shit anymore and want you to share it and me to get a better deal in life" to someone else, and that someone (because he/she is fairminded) listened and agreed without a fight, there wouldn't be oppressed groups. But there are, plenty of them.

Personally I think women, individually and as a group, have to educate men into doing more chores and errands and childcare - for their own good and that of future generations. And educating men into doing something they don't particularly want to do is very, very hard work IMO. The only really good argument is that men will be happier in their marriages because their women will no longer feel exploited and unhappy about that.

"This is a hobby horse of mine - women becoming complicit in their own oppression and visiting it on the next generation too."

Same for me. If 20 years I could ensure I wasn't subject to unfairness at home then I don't see why women 20 years on can't too. Some women like me and some others on the thread just would not have stood for it for one week never mind a lifetime and that's what you estatblish at the start. When he expects you to cook you make it be taken in turns or he asks you to wash his shirt and you hand him a bag of your own laundry.

Of course if you don't mind doing more than the man at home then that's kind of fine too and the longer you leave it the harder it is to effect change. And some women are desperate for a man they'll put up with any kind of sexist man alive just to have one or his high earnings make up for the unfairness imposed on you at home etc

What their fathers did is good. My father wielded a hoover and there was fairness at home in the 1960s. My ex husband's mother made sure all three boys knew how to do washing, cooking etc.

I do wonder if things have slipped a bit from the 70s and 80 jut after the equal pay act, that instead we have a culture of younger girls being brought up to want to marry someone well off and seek a kind of celebrity life rather than wanting to earn their own money and that popular culture now in 2008 is worse than in the 70s and 80s in that girls see - sccess equals barbie doll dresses, fairy tale weddings, housewife status in adult life and a life of service to a man in a way I just don't think girls wanted or sought 20 years ago. I hope I'm wrong.

ok, then WHO is going to start the thread "calling all mothers of sons" and get MNetters to sign up to bring up their boys as able to do housework and not hold antidilluvian views on housework being "a womans job" and "beneath my dignity" (I have heard these from men of a certain generation).
If we all pledge to bring up boys able to do housework then the next generation of MNetters do not have to raise the "division of housework" threads constantly and we can all discuss...something else!

My DH by the way will do what he's told but he never EVER notices when anything needs doing.
And as for my friends DH I swear to God he would step over a corpse in the hallway without even noticing, he is that crap.

Dylan Moran once said "men have a different way of noticing these things, that is, by not noticing them."

Xenia - I understand where all your points are coming from.

I also think that for a lot of young women they see a generation of women above them who are prematurely aged and worn out from working so hard - and think that perhaps the rich husband and option of working a bit less hard in life is a more attractive option .

But the rich husband pays for a cleaner (woman) so we are back to the insidious notion of it being "women's work"
sigh

You see, every woman needs a wife, I once said this to some one at work when he said "oh, you're going home early to pick up your DD?" in a snide way and I said "yes, I don't have a wife to do it for me, are you prepared to lend me yours?" That shut him up.

Cleaners can be men - I have more domestic service from men than from women in my household.

I am not prematurely aged and worn out. I think women who work tend to be better kept overall than housewives at home who get fat and dull (not Anna of course)

I've been reading plenty of threads like this, and agree entirely with Miggsie/Zenia and others, although sympathise with the other posters whose menfolk refuse to accept how little they do, as mine is like this.

So how do we break the cycle. is there any real research on this - and information what makes them appreciate the need to be on top of things, or what factors need to be present.

First of all I think some men are also tidier than their wives and women who say all men don't notice dirt are actually wrong in my experience. A lot of men aren't slobs at all. But I suspect there are more who are than there are women. So taking the ones who are what breaks the cycle? Why did my father inthe 1960s do hoovering and do all the night feeds (bottle feeds) despite working full time? He's a psychatrist so is it a matter of the better educated you are the less likely you will be a sexist lazy slob pig?

Possibly. Or is it that mother would never have stood for anything else? I think he loved her and he would want to help her and a lot of men are like that.

SOme men are too fat - that's one of my theories. They can hardly leave the chair so junk food and beer might be part of the problem. One reason my ex husband and his family are all very thin - we're talking under 10 stone adn 5 foot 10 in places is because they move all the time, tapping fingers, standing, etc etc not slumped on a sofa eating crisps. A lot of these men who say they're tired after work are tired because they eat badly and don't exercise. If he's tired he should go on a jog or something like that and that will give energy for house cleaning when he's back.

Well, I'm not at home all the time anymore Xenia - in fact, I have a full afternoon in a beauty salon for work tomorrow. Best of all worlds

Don't think it's the education - lots of well educated men grew up not understanding what needs to be done to run a house as they were surrounded by cleaners etc (IME) so just thought nothing of leaving stuff around and not sorting themselves out, it always magicked itself away IYSWIM.

The only research I've come across has been about men's and women's perceptions of the domestic split of duties and the reality, which was a rough spin on emancipation.

Also lots of women work full time and then, for whatever reasons, get to come home and still do the lions' share at home...why does this happen?

Is it about tolerance, or how we are raised as women to want to please others?

If you even look at the language that is used with very small children there are gender differences that cast good girl behaviour as being quiet and demure, 'oh, what a lovely good girl...' type thing and boys are spoken to differently 'big, strong boy'.

This does not mean (IMO) that mothers, or fathers are wrecking the next generation (necessarily) but that it's maybe a cultural phenomenon. I still stand by the concept that if there was a clearer expectation on either the division of labour ie splitting it down the middle, or the division of roles, ie one partner brings bacon, other makes home (though I'm yet to discover how to build a house ) we would have a happier culture as it would be so much easier to establish whether you were a successful individual and i think men would be happier too as it must be difficult to keep second guessing about the other half of the species.

In my gradnpa's days of middle age, you were a successful man if you managed to support your family financially, feed them and clothe them adequately and make sure if the local Plod reported that they'd been doing something wicked, you gave them a thick ear and made sure they didn't do it again (Duck for cover - I AM NOT advocating corporal punishment for kids!)

Grandma was successful if she kept the parlour presentable and kept the kids fed and clean and clothed, plus didn't spend all the housekeeping money on gin .

The roles were just clearer, OK there were fewer choices and maybe that was tough, but you could actually get a measure of how successful you were reasonably easily.

I don't think this is the case now. Am I successful as I am currently raising 2 kids who don't (yet?) have asbos?

Am I successful as I have managed to NOT separate after 10 long and loving years?

Am I successful as I organised a fab wedding and honey moon for less than £8,000?

Am I successful cos my DH hasn't had an affair yet?

Am I successful as I have a fulfilling career?

Am I successful as I do mange to not live in a complete pigsty, despite others best efforts?

How am I to judge my own success?

If expectations were a bit clearer I think I would find living a lot easier - as women we are sold the concept of the 'new man' this idealised individual, in touch with his feminine side and able to find his way around a hoover and kitchen, lovingly sharing the domestic duties and financial commitments. This is a bit false for a majority of the population. Maybe if I hadn't been so convinced that men aspired to this concept (lets face it, I would LOVE to have a wife) I wouldn't be as jaded with my current role of strong career minded, bread winning, child caring, house manging, DIYing, gardening and loving wife.

Yes life is good (a lot of the time) but I strongly believe the add men have mis sold me their dream...

I mean MANAGE, not mange!

I don't think that was a fair or very nice world (and my great grand mothers worked by the way and one of my grand mothers - may be yours were richer than mine were).

Clever nice men don't worry over roles - they expect to do their bit with children, want some paternity leave, expect having a new baby means they are up in the night and they are pretty good at cleaning too and chip in as needed. It's just a huge load of neanderthals which luckily I have just never come across - I wouldn't give them the time of day who women ought to avoid or else sort out as soon as they marry. Also I never think part time work is much of a good deal for women which is perhaps consistent with what you say above. If you make over £100k he probably won't expect you to iron his socks. If you earn £5k working part time he might well assume you will do all the housework too.

I totally sympathise with women who have nagged for years and have now settled for a stalemate. I can believe that men like that exist - my father being one of them.

What I do not understand is that if a man is so cavalier about pulling his weight in the house even though he knows his wife is clearly unhappy about it for a long time, how can he allow himself to get away with not doing anything about it?

You can say it is just housework, but it is NOT just housework if it is making the other partner unhappy. Surely he is expected to address her concerns at least halfway?

Tbh, if I had any inkling about this pre-marriage, I would take Xenia's advice and avoid this person. It does not make for a happy balanced life partnership. I am amazed that selfishness in one area of a marriage does not seep into other areas as well.

Nagging isn't good management practice though - it doesn't generally yield good results.

I do think that women often appeal to men emotionally to share housework and chores when they would get better results by taking a more factual and structured approach to the the sharing of domestic responsibilities.

No Xenia, not rich (if only...) - they worked, it was a cause of sorrow and guilt for one Grandad as one granny died aged 50 and he thought she'd been worked to death - not the case of course and she enjoyed her 'little jobs'...and all her children. The men bought home the majority of the bacon tho. Also what's fair - is it fair to do same hours and then go home and do all housekeeping, or more fair to expect to be a kept woman and raise kids/keep home as your career? It's not the right choice for everyone, but then one size rarely fits all.

Personally I think it's too simplistic to label the men 'clever' or 'neanderthal'. Some men would think another man totally stupid, castrated and useless if he DID admit to helping out much. Also I would consider myself incredibly cunning and intelligent if I got my partner to do the lions share . Maybe the expectations of other women, that a woman is stupid, or in some ways a mug if she doesn't get an equal split, is what makes me feel uncomfortable and adds to the frustration.

OK in reality I don't give a monkey's about what other people think - far too old and jaded to care, but it's almost as though there's a big expectation that domestic chores WILL be shared, otherwise your marriage/relationship sucks and you're a big mug!

That's what I mean about the success soliloquy...and mis-sold dreams. I don't believe I am a weak willed individual, or unsuccessful, or that any other women who struggles to make an even split around the home is. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed and could do with a bit more help...but how to get that help without leading to WW3 is what often alludes me (and others I imagine).

OH is very good at different things to me, he is a capable individual and COULD further develop his housework repertoire. He has improved considerable since I had big bad PND , a matter of survival... The factual and structured approach is what I'm grasping for and have tried the dog training approach before, which has been successful, but is quite high input orientated and I find tough when tired ('just cut the c**p and hoover the carpet' moments don't support the system).

Tho I am giving your advice to my DD Xenia - watch the FIL material and make sure he can read the instructions on a range of domestic appliances, and use them...and cook, and treats you like a demi-goddess

Oh, and I was given some excellent advice once when complaining of life's unfairness...

"Who told you life was fair? Let me know and I'll go and slap them for you, for telling you such miserable lies..."

Dog training (carrot/stick stuff, overloading on praise) isn't a good long term strategy IMO. My partner's ex did this to him and he grew very resentful when it finally dawned that her praise was entirely self-interested...