Let's talk about cognitive dissonance ...

[colditz]

My relationship with my children's father broke up because he lied about money and hit me, and I finally, after many years of misery, refused to tolerate it. But why did I tolerate it for as long as I did when I was miserable?

I believed that children need their parents to stay together and that I would not cope alone. The facts were that children do not need one parent to be abusing the other, and that my life would have been easier without him merrily fucking it up.

The stress caused by the gap between my own personal beliefs and the reality of my situation was causing an uncomfortable feeling, often described as cognitive dissonance.

Is this the reason that people who consider themselves fair minded nevertheless perpetuate an unfair system? Intelligent women who do all the housework and childcare 'because he goes to work' must see the difference between theirs and their husband's exhaustion levels - why do they accept it, and decide that 'going out to work is really hard' when they surely must remeber the time when they went out to work and had no home responsibilities as being a darned sight easier than the life they live now?

I think it's bcause cognitive dissonance is a very uncomfortable state of being, and if you cannot change your situation, you must change your way of thinking to bring it in line with your situation or suffer the misery of inner conflict.

Which brings me to the rejection of feminism.

Why do so many women reject feminism when it would clearly improve their lot to be treated fairly?

Is it because they cannot easily become fairly treated individuals, not without huge conflict and arguments in their home and at work, so they decide, unconsciously, to believe that they are already treated fairly? And therefore feminism is defunct in their minds.

Intersting.

Fantastic post, OP. It hits the nail on the head. Not sure where we go with it, though. Perhaps I will show the post to my DH. I almost feel like I am called Karen.

Are there some men out there who don't behave this way?

what really irks me on housework is not the imbalance per se (it is not unreasonable SAH parent with scholl age children is going to end up doing more housework) but the endless reports on MN of husbands who don't even have the courtesy to perform their own personal services

• cleaning the toilet/bathroom after use
• putting own dirty clothes into basket
• putting own dirty dishes into dishwasher

etc etc.

this is beyond balance-in-sharing-the-chores and into the realms of having a personal servant.

I don't understand why so many women accept that role. Women are not born to clean up their husbands poo.

because

They either accept it or argue about it.

If he won't change after arguing, they have to live with it or leave.

then, if they leave, they have to live as a single parent.

And, as a single parent, I can catagorically state that the world treats you like shit if you have the temerity to leave a man.

So is it better to be treated like shit in your own home, where you can roll your eyes and pretend nobody else has noticed?

or is it better to be treated like shit by roughly 25% of British society - even more so than women in general?

Very timely thread for me. I have a daughter who is slowly but surely 'bending' her view of what is right and normal within a relationship in order to accomodate her partner's increasingly unreasonable behaviour. It's a slow drip-drip-drip of behaviour and I am aghast that she can't see it and at a loss of how to discuss it without running the risk of pushing her away.

Anyway - cognative dissonance is what has been lurking in the back of my mind.

BTW LOVE 'testicles are some sort of brain injury'. My semi-domesticated but steadily improving husband will be hearing that one shortly.

well, interesting thoughts..

what constitutes fair division of labour is up for each couple to decide - the fact that women who work full time and have partners who also work FT still do more housework than their OHs doe show that the OP is in general at least correct that women are being conned into pulling over their weight.

men such as my Dad still deep down believe housework is womens work - that attitude has not dissapeared in one generation of feminism.

My Dh does not believe housework is necessarily my work, but sometimes acts as though it is (so he has his own cognitive dissonance going on)

the extreme result of cognitive dissonance is schizophrenia...

but i think maybe given time, and mothers raising sons to do housework too must eventually level the playing field?

colditz yes, well, there is that.

Very insightful thread Colditz.

I have always struggled to understand why some/many women accept the lion's share of household tasks. And I mean, ft working women here.

My dh wouldn't dream of treating anyone like that. He was raised by a strong working single Mum. We both loathe the housework but muck in together and have equal leisure time. I am on mat leave at the mo and still this is the case.

My Mum had periods at home but never did much housework as when she was at home she was busy parenting us. I remember the immortal line "No man ever left a woman for not doing the housework". I guess my Dad is a goog guy because I have never heard him moan about housework.

My brothers probably do 50/50 in their relationships too.

I wonder if it is all down to the example we were set as children. Interesting.

Just marking my place on the thread because I am skim-reading it at work and want to come back to it later.

Fascinating and thought-provoking. Need the headspace to give it the attention it deserves.

It does seem to explain why people defend their own shitty situation. Why else would they do it?

And I think many people have experienced this.

It is easier to ignore facts than to accept them and carry on.

Many women can be heard to say "Well, if I don't do it, nobody will"

Not many women will say "He clearly doesn't love me as much as he says he does, he treats me like a skivvy but I put up with it because in this society it is more acceptable to be a mistreated wife than a happy single parent."

here's a spiky, imaginitive French girl standing up the establishment to defend her rights....
.... to wear a burqa

sigh

stubbornhubby - but is she arguing for her own oppression or fighting for her right to freedom from the male gaze?

My parents both did their fair share, although a little gender specific. My father is amazing at anything creative and my mother could shine coal! However my father always did the ironing and so on. My DH's mother thinks DH does alot but I do all the fixing, I am a SAHM to four dcs, I do 80% of the housework. DH usually cooks for him and I and baths the dcs, with or without me.

Last week I was talking to a mother of four, two teens, all boys. She said she couldn't ask her boys to help in the home, because they're boys? wtf?

I can see that this is an absolute bugger. My solutions have been a) Stay single ie never live with a male partner and b) Don't give a toss about housework anyway.
Option B is causing me more stress at the moment as I have sort of realized that I'm not just a slob but have a teeny tiny hoarding syndrome issue, and also, as I never tidy up how can I teach DS to do so?

I'm an example of how you can change your way of thinking.

I have parents who have been together for 50 years, and married for 45 of those. My mother was/is completely subserviant to my dad, despite the fact that she worked as well, and he never so much as washed a tea cup up.

I married fairly young and repeated that pattern - and was horrified to find that, not only did my husband take complete advantage of this, he didn't respect me or appreciate the "sacrifices" I made for him to ensure we had a perfect home to come back to.

Needless to say, that marriage didn't last a long time, and I'm now married to someone who I expect to share the responsibilities associated with children and home and working. He too found it difficult at first, as he was brought up in a house where his mother did nothing and paid help did it all.

Together, we've reached a compromise which ensures that our sons see both their parents, working together, in an equal capacity running the home, both earning money.

They are encouraged, even at the young age of 6 and 4 to put their clothes in the basket not on the floor, put their plates in the dishwasher and help play their part.

It would have been so easy for me to play the martyr yet again, and be resentful and unhappy that I was not "appreciated", yet I've come to realise that you have to respect yourself for other people to respect you too.

For my part, I am bringing up boys who will, by the time they leave home, be able and willing to cook a meal, iron a shirt etc, not expect a woman to do it for them.

It is a great thread. I needed to let go of the feeling that no-one can do anything better than I can - particularly a man, which is just as bad really.

Just as at work you have to delegate the job AND the responsibility to get an effective result, you cannot agree to share chores and then be hanging over someone over the way they pack the dishwasher or don't do the ironing the minute the dryer has finished

Cognitive dissonance A similar idea was espoused by Kazimierz Dąbrowski, a polish psycotherpist who developed a theory of positive disintegration.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration
positivedisintegration.com/

In short, for mental/emotional/creative growth one has to first dismantle previous mental structures and modes of behaving and endure a period of disintegration and disorder before a new level of psychological integration occurs. Dabrowski believed a person's ability to tolerate periods of disintegration was correlated to their innate creativity/giftedness in that more creative types did it more often and could use it productively.

So some people won't change their habitual mode of thinking because they can't - disintegration isn't possible for them, because they won't as the initial phase of the disintegration process is too unpleasant so they retreat back to the original position or because they don't even try - the path of least resistance.

The experience I had at university when I started reading feminist books and began a process of emancipation was a huge disintegration, it really did involve completely changing the way I saw almost everything around me. I went through a period of being very excited by it, then angry and anti-men, then depressed at the staus quo, before reaching a resolution. It took several years and a vast hoovering up of books, articles, information and reflection on my own life and experiences.

It is a big thing to ask of any woman to go through that stripping of illusions and comfortable familiarity and beliefs. You would need a bloody big kick up the ass or wake up call to do it by yourself.

very interesting thread

I am learning lots