So is Christmas women's work then?

[Katisha]

Following on from my thread here in which in would appear that left to their own deives most, (not all), men would hardly bother with Christmas at all, I would be interested to know why this is.

Is it because women do it all for them? Is it because only women want all the traditional food, decorations, visiting, card sending and frenzy of present buying?

Are women propping up some ridiculous commercial christmas industry and men are right to despise/ignore it?

Or what?

sm, do you really not see a problem with letting an old lady you're fond of, go without a present at christmas, knowing that you will be the one who is blamed for her lack of present, not your DH, because the old lady in question, and everyone else around her and you, sees it as your role to ensure that she gets her present?

It's all very well saying "this is not my problem" - but the point Sixpercent is making, is that if everyone else around you sees it as your problem, then it does become your problem - because you, not your DH, are going to be the one who suffers the condemnation and opprobrium of nto having fulfilled your role. It doesn't matter if you refuse to accept it as your role, you will still suffer the consequences of not doing it the same as someone who does accept it as her role. Do you really not "get" that?

And er, there's a direct interrelation between the "big stuff" like the glass ceiling and seemingly trivial stuff like gender role expectations. The personal is political.

And this "women's work" stuff does involve other people - so fits into your category of "more complicated compromise" anyway.

negotiation and priorisation to ensure task gets done.more than 1 adult available to do so.the exaggerated emotional reasoning you are trying to apply doesnt have to be so

calm, negotiation and allocation of taks,not just assumption its womans work. adults talking and sharing responsibility

But don'y you think the small stuff and the big stuff might be related, SM?

I think if people pretend the small stuff either doesn't exist, or doesn't matter, that undermines their objections to the big stuff.

You only have to think of something like clothing, to see the potential for small issues to become serious. Think of this:

There's a certain pressure society puts on women to dress in an 'attractive' way. Now, this probably seems small and unimportant to you, just like the Christmas work pressures.

However, lots of us probably know at least one women who's been told to dress more attractively for work, who's been invited into a meeting purely to be decorative, or who feels they have to wear high heels or not be taken seriously.

That's how something apparently trivial, that you'd think we could all choose to ignore, can become institutionalized and can be really important in real life.

I'd be hesitant to assume this thread doesn't have similarly wide implications.

I think if its a relative on your husbands side then its his responsibility to buy presents. My husband usually gets them for his side but on occasion he has not got anything for some people. For many years he never got his relatives any Christmas presents (his mum, dad, grandma, nan etc) and it would never even of crossd my mind that it would be my responsibility to get them something as if he didnt bother then thats up to him.

I have never felt its anything to do with me though as its not my responsibility.

HerB, I spent 10 minutes typing and missed the posts where you said the same thing better in one sentence!

applying your example hb,id let people know that this year the dh will be buying much loved auntie her preessie.i wouldnt wholly acquiesce to task and resent it. if expectation was that is female respsonsibility to chose auntie task, id cordially and gently email or call around letting family know this year the dh would be picking

low level acquiesce to tasks like this is really compounding the sterotype of its womens work.only womens work if you make it so

Exactly I agree SM. This thread is making me think maybe I am a bit of a bitch cause none of this would even cross my mind and yeah if he dodnt get it they would go without gifts, and have on occasions in the past. Maybe I am just harsh lol.

scottish, I didn't explain that example very well.

In the thread I referred to, the OP knew her DH hadn't bought his relative a present. So, as she saw it, her choice was either to let the elderly lady go without (and that lady would be confused and perhaps unable to understand quite why she didn't get a present), or to buy something herself.

The point is, society is currently set up on the assumption that all sorts of thankless and menial tasks automatically fall to women. It's true with seemingly 'trivial' things like Christmas, but it's also true of, say, nursing the elderly and bringing up children. It's all very well to say that you'd happily ignore an old lady at Christmastime, but there's no social safety-net for her, so in practice it will require you to be quite hard-hearted to do so. Instead of simply ignoring this imposed responsibility, it would be much better if we could try to change society so that the elderly lady didn't feel confused and upset, and the women didn't feel it was their responsibility.

This shouldn't be rocket science, I'm sure we can do it!

If we accept that society as a whole need to change - and not just the big, showy areas like workplaces - then we must accept that little things like this need to change too.

no dont paraphrase erroneously lrd,said id get the other capeable adult to undertake the task.that isnt willful ignoring at all.is bit delegetion or reminder that other adult can complete the task.

" id cordially and gently email or call around letting family know this year the dh would be picking"

Fair enough, that's a good solution - partly.

The family will "know" t6hat this year DH is doing it and then blame you when / if he doesn't. ("Why didn't she remind him? / It's ridiculous expecting him to remember to do it, everyone knows men can't do that")

It is not enough to have individual solutions to problems. You need a society-wide solution - the relatives need to be re-educated as to the reality that it really isn't your job to buy the present, it is his job, he can remember to do it and he's simply choosing not to. You on your own can't solve the problem of the rellies bitchign about what a cow you are and what high maintenance silly notions you have about equality. It needs to be a pincer movement - women refusing to do it and other women explaining why that is a reasonable position. It would help if sexism-deniers such as yourself and snowflake, didn't constantly undermine one flank of the pincer by pretending that we don't need it.

But I think that in some situations you don't have the time, Lenin.

For example, I've cared for a terminally ill relative, purely because I was the woman and it was expected of me. It was not the time to be arguing about sexism - someone I loved was dying. I would much rather direct my energy at challenging the idea that women are automatically responsible for familial bonding (eg. Christmas), at a time when the outcome isn't so important.

If I spend time trying to think about and unpick the issues behind so many women feeling that society pressures them into shouldering all the work over Christmas, maybe I'll get some people to think harder and change their minds.

sm, sorry, I didn't mean to paraphrase you. But if you 'get' someone else to do it, how is it different from you taking responsibility? You're still assuming it's your job to make sure it happens, right?

Yes exactly LRD - we need to spend time unpicking the assumptions and making women aware of them, so that we don't have a crisis every christmas or every time a rellie is ill.

i agree with your point withdraw the input,then only then will the sheer effort be appreciated

and if an ault cannot prioritise or undertake tasks theyt cannot expect their female partner to step up and do it

for as long as some women shoulder all of the so called family and societal expectations they will be left to it.not right not fair,but thats what will happen

CAn't argue with you there.

Would only argue with your simplistic position that it's all women's fault, and only women's fault, that they shoulder all the work.

no,for as long as women shoulder some tasks they will get landed with them.not right not fair.so to an extent a proritisation and parameter of what is individually acceptable

Agree, scottish. It's the prioritization that's important. I think a really big problem for feminism is this pervasive myth that men can't multitask, or men can't plan. Christmas is actually a good example, because it's always going to be a busy time, with a tight time schedule and lots of different things going on. So, each time, society treats it as a crisis with 'solutions' and 'strategies' discussed in the paper.

And I think women are expected to take responsibility for anything that's a 'crisis', because (of course) they have ever-expanding free time and the ability to multitask. It is, historically, a male luxury to be able to concentrate on one thing and define it as overridingly important.

So I agree we need to do a certain amount of saying 'no' at Christmastime, just to prepare the ground. But we also need to think about how this ties in with all the other possible situations where women are expected to be able to drop everything else and concentrate on the crisis situation.

The thing is I maybe am very hardhearted then but even if my husband didnt do something for years I would never bother doing it either. If that meant people going without cards or gifts then not my problem. Its not my side of family so not my area.

I honestly have never got anything and have never felt bad about it as not my blood relatives. (Again the more I write this I realise that maybe I not very nice.

The only reason I am saying it LRD is until this thread I would never have thought it would be my responsibility but now this thread is making me feel a bit guilty. I would of never thought it would be my responsibility or would ever dream that anyone would think it would be before this thread.

I love Christmas and do it my way, food-wise, except where I cater to the tastes of the DCs (so more green beans than brussels sprouts, and tiramisu instead of trifle).

I always bought the santa pressies because exH has a tight streak and would buy any old ridiculous, broken/ out of season/ disappointing rubbish if it was cheap enough (this year it was underpants for everyone from him; neither fitted nor right style and all out of its packaging) and he would sulk for days if the children didn't fall around in amazement when they awoke on Christmas morning and found all the random bits and pieces under the tree.

However, I never once bought anyone on his side of the family a card or present. This was up to him and I have no idea if he ever sent them anything. One of his sisters helpfully made a family event calendar every year and sent one to all the family members, maybe as a hint for me, but I managed to ignore it.

I don't think there's any need for guilt or feeling anyone has neglected a duty to the partner's family here Snowflake -- has the partner taken on any responsibility about sending your side of the family b-day or seasonal greetings? Not that it's a tit for tat thing, but why should it be you?

snow, don't feel guilty for god's sake! You're our shining example!

I should put my cards on the table - DH bought presents for my family this year as I was ill. So I do know he'd be there to do whatever I don't do.

The thing that bothers me is this. I'm sure we could all be hard-hearted about Christmas if we chose. It's a bit more complicated if we think about elderly relative X not getting a present and not understanding why. The fallout if we choose not to engage isn't really awful, in any case. However, if we say that it's silly to feel any social pressure to organize Christmas, then we're opting out, I think. For many people, there is social pressure. In the society, there is social pressure. Sure, we can choose to ignore it. But it is much better to challenge it, surely?