Why do Women assume the responsibility for cleaning?

[KarenLilacJames]

It seems to me that the majority of women in heterosexual relationships assume the responsibility for cleaning and washing. This has certainly been the case in my relationships. I have just come across this national survey, completing it made me realise how bad it is for me anyway. Have a look and find out #howdirtyisyourpartner

[Message edited by MNHQ because it is spammy spam but we thought the discussion was interesting so don't want to delete the thread]

Because cleaning is still very much viewed as women's work.

Advertising perpetuates this.

I love as a way of demonstrating that.

And because having children also reinforces it. Even in relationships where domestic chores are split fairly evenly, once a child comes along and the mother is on ML, she naturally picks up more of the slack simply because she's there. Over time, this becomes much more unequal and entrenched, often with no one really noticing.

Patriarchal programming has convinced women that they need to have a much higher standard of cleanliness in their environment than is actually healthy. It's clever; women have been forced to become hypersensitive to mess, so that even if they try to just let a man wallow in his own bio-hazard area they eventually fold and start obsessively cleaning.

Men haven't received the same brain-washing, so literally don't care. All the conflicts over men 'pulling their weight' around the house would end overnight if women realised that, actually, the weight is the illusion of archaic patriarchal oppression.

Does that mean that men who have similar standards have succumbed to patriarchal brainwashing aimed at women?

That kind of makes sense I suppose if you think about the standards of cleanliness/order used in the armed forces, for example, which are very much male domains, cleanliness/order is clearly a way of enforcing compliance and hierarchy.

Some individuals can simply be naturally neat, even pathologically so, but as a group women suffer far more from what amounts to a societally imposed pathology.

And an excellent point about the armed forces. Military studies show that the focus on order/cleanliness is a deliberate method to reinforce the soldier-identity in new recruits. This links to your idea of how child-care increases the female focus on cleaning - it reinforces the socially confining mother-identity.

I don't think this way at all, but I ended up living it.

I didn't know ex had the trad 'housework/cooking is woman's work' attitude until I moved in with him, after we'd been together for two years. He literally refused to do anything. It was a shock. We hadn't discussed it beforehand as we'd both assumed the other must naturally feel the same way as we did. It was a never ending source of friction and dispute and was one of the main factors in our splitting up. I hated everything about that attitude, and we had plenty of arguments. So while I did it, to a certain extent, I didn't accept it.

Now got a Mr OCD who loves cleaning and does the majority of it in our flat , and we share the shopping/cooking.

Loads of reasons, superficial and more deep-rooted that all beginning with 'generally'

Women notice more and care more
Women are more likely to be SAHPs
Women are less likely to have 'important' hobbies that take up their leisure time
Women are socialised to be 'homemakers'
Women are socialised to put others' comfort and needs first
Men don't see it as important (when single)
Men see it as women's work
Women see it as women's work
Boys are not encouraged as much as girls to be tidy or model housework play.
Boys are expected to be messy

And loads and loads more I can't think of just now.

I think a lot of it is because women go on maternity leave and often stay at home for a few years to raise children, and as a result they have to do more around the house because they're there more.

But it depends on how people are raised and how they've lived as young adults. DP was raised by his dad and he never had that "mother" figure so he saw his dad do everything, and now he's perfectly capable and willing to do housework.

However I think a lot of women have higher standards of cleanliness. While DP is happy to do housework, he doesn't see the need for me to do what I do. He's more of a "well, if you can't see it, it's not dirty/messy" whereas I clean and tidy to PREVENT mess. I see it as doing housework little and often to avoid having to do huge blitzes, whereas he would rather leave it a while and do a massive 2-3 hour clean.

because men don't see dirt. True fact

My DH has a higher untidy threshold than me, but will happily stick to the kitchen floor and give not one toss.

and what neofaust said!

Of course men see dirt.

Some just choose to pretend they don't to avoid taking responsibility for it.

If its dirty - clean it.
If its out - put it away

Not exactly splitting the atom is it?

I would be furious if my husband expected me to take the lions share just because I have a vagina.

Does a penis get caught tangled up in the hoover cable?
Does a penis not effectively wrap around the iron handle therefore a vagina must take over?
Does a penis struggle to hold a duster and spray polish at the same time?

Thank fuck vaginas can do all of the above eh?

See, that's the problem - you think men pretend not to see it when, honestly, they don't care. It's not dirt to them.

By trying to make men tidy things to a '(patriarchally imposed) female' standard, it's an attempt to make both genders abide by a completely illusory requirement that was designed to oppress just one of them. It's like insisting that men wear high heels instead of allowing people of both genders to wear flats (or high heels if that's how the mood strikes them).

My husband sees dirt and he cleans it.

Explain that Neo?

I'm female. I see dirt. I don't want it to be dirty but I don't want to do the necessary cleaning to make it not dirty. For a while not wanting to do cleaning wins. Eventually wanting it clean wins.

Surely that's the same for most people just with different tolerance levels.

There are of course people who like to clean.

I am female.

I do not see dirt or anything that needs doing. Nor do my DCs either at this stage. DH does see dirt.

I could live all my life in a student dorm.

Like I said above, individuals of both genders can have a natural tendency to neatness - but as a class, women are programmed to obsess over it. Am I wrong?

It's not that male entitlement has absolved men from cleaning - it's that they never received the obligation in the first place. It was unnaturally imposed as a component of submissive female identity.

In the same way that women need to liberate themselves from the need to match the airbrushed, constructed images of women in magazines, they need to liberate their homes in the same manner. No more rigid sterile rooms that try to match the Ikea catalogue, no more hissing at the children when they knock the 'perfect' table set out of alignment. Suddenly your partners balled up socks aren't a show of disrepect, but of relaxation, comfort and homeliness.

Was the thread started to plug a cleaning company?

At any rate, I love Dahlen's video.

"Like I said above, individuals of both genders can have a natural tendency to neatness - but as a class, women are programmed to obsess over it. Am I wrong?"

In my case yes, cleaning is not something I obsess over.

I also do not "hiss" at my child.

"It's not that male entitlement has absolved men from cleaning - it's that they never received the obligation in the first place"

But he has always cleaned up?
Like a normal person.

I do it because I have a higher level of cleanliness than dp. He cleans, and has offered to do the laundry, but he doesn't do things the way I like them done, and I care more than he does, so I do them.

Simple.

I see dirt/mess. And have to clear it when I see it.

I have no idea whether DH sees dirt/mess or not, but if he does, he doesn't clear it.

When we met and got married we were both students.

We agreed, house is cleaned once per week on Saturday, split the cooking 50/50

We chose which bits we wanted to clean, eg I did kitchen, he did bathroom, and so on. That way I got up, did my cleaning and he got up and did his. As long is it was done by sat pm we had a deal.

Now I am SAHP, and I do the cleaning, but as I take on more part time work, dh is taking on more cleaning, at the moment, I organise it - I will say upstairs needs hoovering for example, but as the balance to 50/50 work returns, so will the balance to 50/50 jobs.

Dh has never expected me to do his cleaning, he is very aware that if the loo id dirty, then he should clean it and not 'wait for me to do it' he has never seen it as 'my' job.

I think my brothers are the same,

Maybe it is how we bring up men, so my question is, what are we modelling to our sons?

DH does all the housework, although I do sometimes do the cats tray and I do all the ironing. But he dusts, hoovers, takes out the bins, cleans the surfaces, etc etc. I don't even know what cleaning he does or what needs doing. I have also lived with other men in the past and they inevitably did all the housework. Why? Because I tolerate a lot of dirt before it bothers me. I also hate cleaning and prefer to be doing almost anything else. When I lived without a man I had a cleaner!

Men can clean and will clean. Whoever cares more about having a clean house will clean. Whoever doesn't much care will do less, and will only clean due to guilt about their partner doing everything. And being messy isn't unhealthy - I believe it builds up the immune system.

I've definitely fallen into this trap with my current partner, I really try and fight the feeling that it's a female job but it seems to be in my subconscious. I have started just dividing up jobs and telling him what's his, but that still means me taking responsibility for it in a way.

He definitely feels like he 'should' be taking traditional masculine roles like paying for everything when we're out/paying the bills etc.

I think it's really interesting given that my mum was in no way a housewife, and is a very strong woman, though I suppose my family was still patriarchal.

I am not particularly clean, but I am very tidy. So you might be able to write your name in the dust on my shelves from time to time (less so now we have a family rota) but stuff is not left strewn about and everything is in its place. This comes from many years living in cramped conditions and moving a lot, where the only solution to not feeling in a constant state of chaos or breaking your neck by falling over something was to put it away.

I am not anal about cleaning or tidiness, however. IF you leave a book/gadget lying around, I won't tidy it away or moan about it. But I will not tolerate being expected to pick up after another person, as in doing the washing up they created and left on the side for days, finding and washing their dirty clothes for them. I do find that disrespectful.

Am I the only person seeing this as advertising?!

They can advertise all they like Glitter

Unless its free I cant afford it!