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 think there's been a great deal of indoctrination towards women about housework, there's a good article by Germaine Greer about it.

Fortunately for me I don't get judged on how clean my house is, but I think I would on things to do with children, school uniforms etc. So uniforms are always spotless.

Yes, I think it's a really big issue how women get pushed into thinking a certain way, there is still a lot of subtle pressure.

i meant that it is considered a private place, honoured as such. the law has been very reluctant to legislate over dv and marital rape for example. traditionally in this culture we have had the belief that the home is the one place that is none of anyone else's business.

whereas driving has long been legislated, taxed etc.

i wasn't saying there was any logic to it.

I think it's the same with Christmas and Sunday dinners.

I used to cook a roast every Sunday, they're a doddle.
But, they take hours of my time, 20 minutes all eaten, so I stopped cooking them.

The same with the perfect Christmas, months of preparation and then all over.

Oh, I follow you now, sorry.

That might be part of it - and following on, the idea that important things happen in public and out of the home, maybe?

I just find it mystifying that so often, people say there is just no right and wrong to housework. To an extent, that is true. Obviously. But equally obviously, it is not a complex mental challenge to work out what is a finished job and what's not, what is clean enough and what is too dirty. The fact it varies from couple to couple really should be a minor issue. I think it suits some people to make out that it's massively complex and subjective simply so they have excuses - whether that's the excuse to be hyper-clean an insist only you can arbitrate what's ok, or whether it's the excuse not to do the work.

less important/not important in this instance than private and free v social and governed.

'a man's home is his castle' springs to mind - the law and the world shouldn't enter, it is one's private country.

maybe it was more agreed upon in the 60's because it was seen as a woman's profession in a sense - a job and all of her success and failure was within it. whereas now it isn't the case for many women and whilst there is still pressure and judgement it's not like it was. so the it's personal, there are shades of grey etc could actually be seen as a liberation of the nazi like dictates on the right way to clean your sink and starch your shirts.

True, they could be seen as liberation, but I don't think they are. Just because you get rid of one bad social system, doesn't mean you have replaced it with something that isn't also bad.

I think you're probably right about the profession thing though, with women in the past.

well something can be both an outcome of liberation and then picked up by those that would be oppressed to be used against the people who won it iyswim.

Yes, I do see, and I do agree.

I'm not saying I don't think we have it better - we do. I know.

It's weird this thing about your comfort level in the house. I stayed at my aunties recently and positively cringed when I went in the bathroom, and noted that there were no plans to feed dd and I of an evening. So I had to sort something. When she stayed with me, in my much cleaner and better provisioned house she commented that I had too many things in my kitchen and she couldn't live like that.....

IMO there's a difference between measuring your standards against some other person you don't live with, and agreeing on things as a couple. If you live with someone, you probably can't just agree happily that one person loves a pigsty and the other loves bleaching their worktops. You need to be compatible or to work at it. If you've decided it's worth working at, then there needs to be compromise, not some magic solution or pretense that itll all sort itself out.

if you live with each other - or if you are going to live with each other bar outright neurotic cleaning or utter filth you have to find ways to compromise and live with each others quirks. i say going to live with each other because really it should be one of the considerations before - as in can you actually live together? do you live compatibly? or is there a way you can compromise so that each is happy and themselves but not making the other unhappy?

if people are utterly incompatible domestically then that's probably a good reason not to move in together i'd have thought.

someone who desperately needs a clean bathroom to the point of squeaking should probably say they'll take care of the bathroom for example. someone who needs clutter and chaos around them and can't adapt from that because it's the only way they can work for example probably needs a room allocated to them that can be like that at the agreement that the rest of the house will be kept functionally tidy. there should be discussions before living together.

if one person is all my way or nothing with no room for compromise you'd be best not to move in with them unless you have a massively obliging nature and don't care either way. if someone has the expectation that yes it will be clean and lovely but that's because you'll be doing it - don't move in with them etc.

the thing is most people are saying it comes up worse after having children but i suspect it must be already there to a degree and the issues unexplored and for those it isn't then it needs to be discussed again before having children.

i do think that people need to avoid things just happening by being conscious that this stuff does matter - the home is important, how we live is important, the work that goes on there is real work and doesn't get done by fairies and is important etc. it does take individuals to sort this one out. i do think if less and less men who didn't see the home as important or the work done there as anything to do with them found themselves unable to get someone to live with them, or marry them or have their children then that's a good incentive for change.

i know it sounds like i'm saying it's all down to women but i don't think it's that - i think it's that people as a whole need to acknowledge this stuff and take it seriously when choosing whether to set up home together.

and you know what this is another issue of expected coupledom and finding a romantic partner to live with being the be all and end all. it makes people make choices and put up with things that they shouldn't. if the aim is to live with someone rather than the core aim being to live happily with domestic peace then the latter gets sacrificed. after all relationships in reality don't have to involve living with each other in a small domestic unit to be valid and many would perhaps be better served by not doing this. there's so much stress in it.

'i do think if less and less men who didn't see the home as important or the work done there as anything to do with them found themselves unable to get someone to live with them, or marry them or have their children then that's a good incentive for change.'

I'm not sure this would happen. I think more men would live on their own or find someone more compatible.

I think people need to realize that housework isn't very important and are being conned to spend so long doing it.

A good article by Germaine Greer.

www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C01%5C27%5Cstory_27-1-2010_pg3_4

Truck - that's very telling though, isn't it? You're saying the alternative is men living alone or (second choice I note) finding someone 'more compatible'.

Ie., if you have children as a couple and you are the less-houseworky partner, you expect you'll end up alone?!

I do think this seems very sad but may well be a common view. I admit, having had friends' children underfoot, I know perfectly well I am still hugely unprepared for what becomes essential when you have crawling babies. I forget there are non-negotiable bits of tidying up and cleaning.

Truckulentre (I'm assuming you are a man?) - I don't think you would be judged to the same extent as a woman - or at least not in the same way. IME If a woman drops off her DC and they look a bit grubby and unkempt, there'll be muttered comments of 'dirty cow' and the like. If a man drops them off in a similar state - especially if it's known he's a LP, the comments will be along the lines of 'aw bless, he's doing his best, it must be hard,' perhaps followed by an offer of help.

While there are undoubtedly shades of grey and housework can become a thoroughly neurotic activity, I have in the past been called a 'control freak' for wanting the washing up done before I have to go in the kitchen and cook, for wanting dinner cooked before 9pm on a school night, for wanting the washing taken out of the machine before it goes smelly and for objecting when my partner picked up a pile of clean folded washing from a chair and chucked it on the floor so he could sit down (none of these examples are from my current relationship, I should add.)

I think that in the same way that money isn't important until you don't have any, housework isn't important until it's not done.

I like the Greer article but I don't think she's saying the work isn't important, ortherwise it wouldn't matter that ... The 23 percent of men who will consent to cook when they have a woman in the house do so on special occasions with great song and dance, leaving the clearing up to be done by her ... I think she's saying that we are being wound up into a state of neurotic frenzy about it by the media, and she's spot on!

While women continue to be judged on this stuff in ways that men never are, deciding that housework is not important and being able to get away with that attitude remains a male priviledge.

'I think that in the same way that money isn't important until you don't have any, housework isn't important until it's not done.'

Exactly.

If you live alone, you have the wonderful opportunity to do the housework however you choose - if that means blitzing it once a month, so be it. You only have to clean up after yourself, and that is pretty easy because you know what you got messy. It's not IMO depressing in the same way. When I have lived alone, the amount of time I spent cleaning up was tiny. Mainly because if you know you'll end up clearing up after yourself, you are more likely to get a plate for the sandwitch instead of eating it all over the sofa. You don't generate mess in the expectation someone else will clear it up.

bit of an aside but crawling children really aren't that hard lrd - sure you have to hoover and keep knives out of the way but you don't have to disinfect the world. not saying that as to do with this thread - just reassuring you really that i'm sure you would manage.

you think more men would live alone truck? quite possibly, i'm sure more women would too. the difference is women can have children on their own pretty much and men can't, they need female cooperation. you don't think that would be an incentive?

i've seen men change dramatically when they hit their late thirties and realise they can't have children and everyone else around them has done or is doing. their bachelor lives and lifestyles can become very unappealing and they can get quite busy about attracting and keeping a decent mate.

saf - whether that says something about the cleanliness of my house or the PFBness of my mates I couldn't possibly say! All I know is, when they're over I notice how much I have to tidy and clean.

(It's not a tip, honest!)

I may be wrong here, but I always used to think dads who didn't live with their children must be sad about it and it was a situation no-one liked. I really thought that. But the more I hear from men in that situation, the more it seems they actually like this part-time parenting. Living alone and seeing the children occasionally is ok. It seems strange to me but there was a long thread recently where the dad was pretty clear on this. I wonder how much that has to do with the idea that men would actually be quite happy to move out and live alone, so long as they had part-time children?

I'm really hoping I'm wrong here and if loads of happy dads pile in and yell at me I will be pleased, because to be honest it is shaking my faith in humanity and I'd ratehr be wrong.

my friend was always dead willing to swap roles with her ex - as in she'd be the one who had the fun every other weekend bit and only had to pay a pittance in child support and he could do the every day screeching up and down the motorway to get back in time for nurseries and paying out the equivalent of a second mortgage in childcare etc. she'd do the swanning around living her own life for 12 days out of 14 and enjoying disposable income and time and pick her son up and have lots of cuddles and fun for the other 2.

funnily enough he wasn't that keen but it always shut him up when out of petulance and harassment he'd threaten to take her to court over ridiculous things.

i can just imagine her standing up in court and offering him residency

The non-resident dads I know would all have the children full-time.

I only know one mother who has seriously wanted to be the non-resident parent, the father was always the main carer.

the obvious point to mention that again the judgements and stigma are not even for men and women on that issue.

truck - that's reassuring to hear.

and it's safe and easy to believe you'd have your kids full time in a heartbeat if you know it's never going to happen. cynical i know.

but i'm guessing more men than care to admit it are suited quite well by weekend parenting and more women than would care to admit it could quite fancy it themselves. but the option isn't there for women in the same way - a woman who chooses not to live with her children faces a hell of a lot of stigma and judgement and a lot of internal guilt/shame etc because of her conditioning.