Have ordered Wifework....slightly concerned about the after effects

[TheProvincialLady]

I hadn't encountered Wifework before lurking on the feminist boards, but it sounds so interesting that I have just ordered it from Amazon and I'm really looking forward to reading it. But at the same time a little concerned about what I will actually DO with the enhanced knowledge that I am a Wife.

I willingly gave up work when I had the DC. We both discussed this and it was what I had always thought would be the best thing for the children. 5 years later, we have two children and I work a few hours a week (and really enjoy it). But I am now basically responsible for all the housework, all of the time. And getting the children ready. My husband does help, but he is not responsible and I'm not sure how this happened. It affects my choice of job but not his, the hours I work but not his, etc. Before children I still did more housework - partly because our standards are somewhat different - but also because he was raised to do nothing in the way of housework and has an underlying belief that it gets done anyway.

Anyway, a slight resentment of all this has been bubbling under the surface for some years now I suppose, and now it is all about to come to a head when I read Wifework. As the children get older I want to work more hours outside the home and so DH and I will be more equal in that respect, and I can foresee a battle over the housework and the children. So how can I approach this in a constructive way?

I posted this on the feminist board because I value your opinions and would be interested in any theoretical stuff as well as practical advice. Thanks.

I want to read the book but sometimes I think what is the point.

I conditioned myself very early on to not being someone that would do loads of housework. I distinctly remember a relative asking me and not my brother to "go on and make me a cup of tea love" and it became a running joke in my house that I did not know how to make tea. I refused to do home economics too. I look back and I think I was quite punchy the way I refused to do the class.

So by the age of 13 my ideas were formed on housework. I would do it if I was paid too, and I would help out at home but I would not be defined by it and I would expect an equal relationship with any partner I had regarding housework.

I work FT but when I did have a brief bit of time off after a baby my DH did everything domestically and he worked FT (I had a pretty scary labour).

Throughout my pregnancy I worked FT too but was very sick and tired, but felt I could not take time off work and my dear dear DH did everything, without ever complaining. I worked out I did not iron any garment of my own for a period of 2 years, in fact I still never iron anything. In fact I have never ironed anything for him ever. He cooked nearly every meal and did pretty much everything.

Now we are at the stage where we do share some Housework but he still does by far the most of it. Our reasoning on this is that I have to commute for my role - he does not have to travel as far. If I did housework after working long hours then I would miss out on precious time with my baby so Monday to Friday if I get time when I am not working it is spent doing fun stuff with my baby.

I do not think my DH is resentful because I'm a fun person to be around and doing housework was never something I signed up for as taking the main role with it. It just is not what I am about. I have worked as a cleaner and I know how much hard work it is too and so I appreciate it when he does it.

Having the time where I have done no house work whatsoever really made me realise how much housework there is to do.

My lovely DH is a wonderful father and husband.

I would also say that apart from a period of illness and the general madness of trying to cope with work and a baby I have always felt so blessed. I saw a grandmother who struggled to bring up a very large Catholic family as a single parent and it made me appreciate that my life was not going to be like that. I also appreciate that so many people discount the little bits of housework that are still housework. So much of my grandmothers life was just expected, I mean her children are fantastic and they valued and loved her dearly and she did a wonderful job - but I often wonder - how did she do it, why was this not captured / understood documented like her husbands war service was, part of this was because she worked in the home but some of it was because her role was not truly valued by society.

Sounds like you've got it cracked.

You're in such a tiny minority though that I think there is a point in reading it anyway. I've never been overweight and have never been on a diet but I still found Fat is a Feminist Issue a valuable read because so many of the women around me have a problematic relationship to food.

LRD - yes I bought the pink one too and am now regretting it as most of my reading time is on the bus. Also I want DP to read it and I can't see him taking it on the train. I might order him another copy with a less embarrassing cover. Oh crap I'm organising him again aren't I?

just put a cover on it. did you never have to line your books at school?

i couldn't sit in a public place with a pink book with 'wifework' written on it. not a chance

mine has just arrived - it's an ex-library copy by the look of it, and very orange. I will be crashing the bookclub thread as soon as I've got through it...

Isn't the unrecognised work better described as the never-ending, relentless responsibility? When I was married, my husband was quite a nice chap - didn't beat me, steady worker and so forth. He even did stuff around the house. As soon as our child arrived, and I stopped paid employment, everything changed. It wasn't the washing up and bedmaking I grew to resent. It was that I was the one permanently on duty. Responsible for everyone's emotional, physical and psychological wellbeing. Responsible for managing the finances - not easy when your partner is a financial illiterate. Responsible for all HIS family ties, his GP appointments, his socks, his bloody LIFE.

Reader, I fled. I stuck it for three years and I cracked. I have never lived with a man again since. Some of us were not cut out for the kind of marriage the system used to foist upon us, and it appears plain that the system hasn't changed much over the years.

Cartimandua. I hear you. I'm a single mum and I love not feeling the weight of someone else's expectations that it is your responsibility alone. I have always resisted that responsibility and insisted on 50-50 which has caused some problems in some of my relationships. One DP actually quoted a survey that claimed women LIKED doing housework as a way to guilt me and one told me that he only cooked for "special occasions" (thus ensuring the adulation of my friends!).

I try to teach my ds to do his fair share in the hope my future DIL will benefit and DS will enjoy happy relationship as I do think it's a huge issue. But as for me, I'm staying single!

i certainly get the responsbility thing! I work FT and we have a cleaner. I don't do a lot of housework and tasks round the house are pretty evenly shared. But I AM reponsible for the smooth running of the family life. Dh wouldn't have a clue about school dinner money, home banking, dd's activities and play dates etc. But I am a bit of control freak so overall I don't really mind being 'in charge".

What really, really pisses me off is DH's total freedom, whether that is to travel to NY for 2 weeks for work, to jet to Frankfurt at a moments notice, or just to go the pub straight after work without having to think about anything at all - knowing that I am there to keep it all going. I travel occasionally and go the pub after work occasionally, but when i do this, there have to be 'arrangements' made! This is the main argument in our house.

And of course his response it "But darling, when we talked about me taking this job, you knew about the travel, and agreed to support me" And that is true - not the pub bit though.......He is supposed to let me know when he is going but rarely does. I know where he is because he does a FB check in from the local hostelry. This constitutes 'letting me know".

I am just making the effort to go out more!

I am off for nice Italian food with Belgo tonight. I am leaving him with Man Utd and dd. She will have been fed, and I normally I would ensure there is something simple to cook for dh and the lodger.....tonight, dinner is in the freezer I think....

'Dh wouldn't have a clue about school dinner money, home banking, dd's activities and play dates etc. But I am a bit of control freak so overall I don't really mind being 'in charge".'

In my experience this is fairly commen. One partner has difficulty letting the other have autonomy. Why not let him take more responsibility?
you may be surprised.

My ex found it very difficult to 'allow' me to do the food shopping without her.
If you take charge the other person is going to defer to you.

The threads I find hilarious are, my DH can't use the washing machine or can't cook, utter rubbish either he won't or he's not allowed.

This is called 'gatekeeping' in the book. It's a way for women to carve out a territory that is theirs. Maushart sees it as a consequence, not a cause of the problem and adds: The problem with the whole concept of gatekeeping is that it frames women's emotional responses as aberrant, problematic and - beneath the psychological gloss - just plain selfish. At its crudest, it is merely another example of what Paula Caplan calls 'mother blame'. ('He wants to help, but she just won't let him !') ... [it identifies] the strength of women's identity as parents as 'the problem' rather than the relative weakness of men's.

Also, it's tough to hand over responsibility when you know that it's you who will be judged on it regardless.

Plenty, I agree that the "gatekeeping" is a consequence rather than a cause. It's like thinking - if this is gonna be my designated role then I'm gonna make it worthwhile and important. And rolling your eyes at your DH's "incompetence" is really a way of coping with the fact that it is you that has been left with the responsibility whether you like it or not. It may well reinforce the problem but it isn't the cause.

About gatekeeping, I can see how that can be a consequences in many cases. (I haven't read the book yet). However I am sure in some cases the control freakery is the cause.
I recognise that I am a bit of a control freak over the food shopping and when DCs were little I would rather go round the supermarket with 2 under 2 than leave it to DH. He's not incompetent, he does it fines, after all it's not that difficult! However there are loads of ridiculous little things that wind me up, like when he buys a brand instead of supermarket own, when those few extra pence occasionally are not going to bankrupt us.

Truckulentre, do you know why your ex found it so hard to 'allow' you to do the shopping?

'Truckulentre, do you know why your ex found it so hard to 'allow' you to do the shopping?'

I believe it was about control, I wouldn't do it properly. The same with the washing and hanging it out.

Since I've not lived with a partner my time spent doing housework I'd say has dropped by about 75%.

Living with someone with higher standards is very difficult. When she has visited she did comment my house (in her eyes) is always untidy.

Growing up, the mum was the boss in both our houses, her mum is very, very tidy , my mum not so much. I think that has influenced the way we are.

I found the bits in that book about higher standards very interesting. Especially the bit where she points out that, while as a society we've pretty much decided there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' way to do stuff like filling a petrol tank or driving a car, we still pretend there are shades of grey with something as simple as housework.

To me that is one of the big issues. Also the bit about how women are judged on their homes and men, less so - which I think becomes a vicious circle.

There are shades of grey with housework aren't there?

I don't iron, my ex likes everything ironed.
My ex liked the house cleaned thoroughly every week. I don't do this.
I can happily use every pot, plate and pan until the dishwasher is full, my ex liked the washing, drying up and everything put away after every meal.

Neither is the right or wrong way, but they're completely different opinions on housework.

Hmm. I sort of see what you mean, but I was commenting more on the different ways we see things, not what we actually do.

If I choose to, I can drive my car until it runs out of petrol, get it towed to the garage and get it filled again. I can drive in first gear all the way down the motorway. Neither of these is in any way a problem. Or, I can drive the wrong way down a one-way street, doing 50 in a 30 zone, and kill someone.

One of the above is really, really, badly wrong. But we would usually admit that the first two are also bad driving. We don't tend to form the same consensuses on housework - we just say there are differences of opinion. I just wondered why.

there are obviously shades of grey. i had a nightmare aunt who would be hoovering under your feet before you'd even finished at the table. my mother to this day still annoys the hell out of my dad because even though they are retired and it can be done any day the whole house has to be cleaned on a saturday morning even if it is spotless and she cleans before going on holiday. she irons everything etc.

neither me or my sister are that clean or tidy. my sister verges on domestic chaos most of the time then has a full on freak out blitz when she's going to hostess something and i go in cycles of enjoying it clean and tidy then letting it slide out of control and being rather messy, then feeling like being tidy again.

so i don't think how your mum did it is the decider. for one thing there will always be those of us who respond to extremes by conforming and trying to live up to them and those that respond by rebelling and avoiding them (and sometimes going to the other extreme).

on a totally irrelevant note i can't abide washing and drying up right after a meal. if i'm entertaining the last thing i want to do or want to have my guests doing is getting up and washing up. i want, and want them, to relax and enjoy. the washing up will be there in the morning when i can do it in peace on my own whilst drinking coffee.

living with someone who had rigid must be done this way, right now etc rules would drive me mad - in fact it did drive me mad as a kid so i wouldn't repeat the experience for all the toffee in the world. if i left my address book by the phone i would be screamed at for making a mess of 'her' house and leaving my mess 'all over the place' etc. anything of mine in the house would be piled on the stairs or dumped outside my bedroom door.

it can be about territorialism and control and it can be taken way too far. and no one ever came to our house so she wasn't worried about judgement. i think maybe housework and food are two key areas that can be controlled as a means of dealing with neurosis - the body and the extended body of the home.

i think because we consider people's homes there private business lrd.

I think it depends on whether the different approaches result in a major amount of extra work for one partner.

So, for example, ironing isn't a problem. Truck doesn't bother and is happy to wear unironed clothes. Didn't cause his XP extra work because although she does iron, she would only be ironing her own clothes.

Pots and pans though could be different. It's not just about a preference for having everything done and put away, but whether or not the pan you need is clean and ready to use next time you want it, or whether you have to get it (and several other things) out of the dishwasher and wash it before getting to cook the evening meal.

the ironing would bother her if she decided she couldn't bear for him to wear unironed clothes and insisted on ironing them and moaning about the extra work.

i think there is a kind of neurosis that people get and obviously women are more susceptible to it quite possibly for the reasons looked at on here - them being the ones judged about the state of the house and for some the home being their only area of control. for some that goes into an extreme kind of neurosis that actually makes the 'house' a horrible place to live for the whole family.

you get those kind of neurotic control freaks in the workplace too obviously when people have been given an area of responsibility and go waaay over the top with it - we used to call it head of paperclip-ism in education.

saf - sorry, that makes no sense to me. If a person's home is their private business, how is it not their business how they choose to drive?

Two of my three car examples are not illegal, and affect no-one but the driver, and the person at the garage who makes money (like cleaning services, maybe). That is not in any way different from 'shades of grey' in housework. The third example is more like making your home into so much of a hazard it damages other people. We can all agree on the extremes.

But how come we don't agree more about housework as with do with (eg) driving?

Btw, I don't disagree there are genuine shades of grey. I just don't think that argument applies as often as it's put forward. Sure, sometimes you can genuinely disagree - I don't give a toss if anything is ironed. But for lots of household jobs there is no consensus and there could easily be. We've not developed them because it is very convenient that we don't. Back when women did all the housework and there was no question of men doing it, there were perceived right and wrong ways to do it. Read any women's magazines before about 1960 and they'll walk you through it all in detail. How come we now assume so much is just 'different standards' or 'opinions'?