Women bring home the bacon - and then cook it

[Wuldric]

A recent study has shown that 40 percent of women are now the main earners in their households.

Which is great and frankly a far higher percentage than I would have guessed.

However the downside is that women are still doing 70 percent of the household chores.

So there's more inequality in the home than in the workplace!

I can't link to the study from my source (the Sunday Times) as it is subscription-only.

How do we address the inequality in the.home? How do we address the remaining inequality at work?

The article mentions having parental leave rather than maternity leave as being key.

Thoughts

scallopsrgreat, no, I definitely was not saying that feminists were blaming women. It was a more general discussion on attitudes common on MN. I would very much welcome a feminist discussion of the issue. And I completely agree with you that a feminist perspective illuminates the role of the social expectations and cultural baggage, and this would help not to make women out as some kind of superhuman creatures who should always have the strength to single-handedly defeat patriarchy in their own home or happily waltz off into singledom.

peteypiranha, and how do you get to be equal partners? That's the question.

Marry someone who loves you, respects you and just always wants to make you happy.

peteypiranha, with all due respect, do you really believe that I and millions of other women across the UK did not think of that?

I find it hard coping with differing expectations of housework.

My husband does pull his weight and doesn't think I should do more housework than he does. He works hard, does a lot of the shit I hate (laundry and the dishes being my main ones) and does 50% at least of the childcare.

However, he doesn't think the floor needs vacuuming until something dusty gets spilt on it, doesn't realise you have to change the bed linen every few days, thinks I'm a nutter for washing the towels so often. He always does the dishes but doesn't think you should disinfect and wipe all the kitchen surfaces (including under and around coffee pots and things) every night as well. So I end up going in and redoing some of it almost against my will. He has taken to doing all the laundry and gets a bit upset when he comes back and finds I've washed the skirting boards and tidied up the living room instead of relaxing or playing with the offspring like he'd hoped. Again, he likes a table stacked up with books and magazines and I like a clear surface. He seems to think I'm being uptight and I do confess I tell him off for being so messy, which is not really on, either- we both work hard.

Yes, I am the anal one and it's not a happy position to be in. I think he thinks I'm over the top but I promise I'm not cleaning windowsills with toothbrushes, just doing the minimum as I see it.

What should I do? Get arsey with him for being more relaxed? No. Do less housework? Possibly- but the idea of things living in the carpet plays on my mind. Just end up doing more and try to see it as a personal need, and not resent it? Trouble is, while I'm arsing around with the hoover, he is the one tending to the offspring, so it's not as though it gives him more leisure time.

Does anyone else have this problem?

I don't know Falcon, TBH, that sounds excessive to me - I think once a week is ample for bed linen, hoovering I do when the floor feels gritty or there is a visible dry spill, and there's no way I'd disinfect and wipe under things EVERY day, only the parts of the work surface which have been used. To me, that is the minimum and what you describe is quite far beyond that.

But I don't know if that means it's necessarily wrong? I know I (personally) am quite messy/laid back about housework and I just couldn't live with someone who had those kind of standards. DP is tidier than me but his minimum standards are close to my "good" standards so we are quite well balanced. When we live together I have to make far more effort than I would when we live apart but it balances out because he is obviously doing 50%ish too.

I don't know, though, how you compromise if your partner has lower standards than you do, especially if it makes you feel anxious if things aren't done the way you want them to be.

Different standards in the home might be contributing to this issue. DH is fabulous at laundry and cleaning surfaces. But he somehow does not realise that the floor is also a surface that needs to be cleaned. And tidy drawers ... my oh my. DH thinks that if things are in drawers that they are tidy .... NO NO NO. Drawers crammed full of shit are untidy drawers.

Why does he not get this?

Autumnmadness - AGREE, agree, agree. God, these threads get so woman-blamey, it's ridiculous.

A woman can have a male partner who loves her deeply, and wants her to be happy - but his own assumptions and attitudes are so deeply ingrained when it comes to running a household that he simply does not do the same amount of work as her.

we are all to some degree products of the society we were raised in. I sometimes think only counselling and cognitive therapy would be enough to change my dp's behaviour around housework and household organisation. He is well read on feminist theory, and gender imbalance. In theory he is all up for sharing. In practice... I always have to ask him to do what he is supposed to be doing. He is quite squalid so leaving him to it is hard. I once left the washing up to see how long it would take him to do his plates without 'nagging' from me. After 8 days and flies laying eggs in the food dirt, I yelled at him. He was genuinely shocked it had been that long. He'd been busy, you see. Working.

Things just don't make it on to his 'to do' list enough. Yes, they should. No, I shouldn't have to tell him, or do it myself. But there we are. By the way, all of this 'gosh it's so simple, why DO women get themselves in this position' commentary overlooks the reality of how couples get together. I didn't in my post student twenties audition prospective husbands on their housekeeping skills. My own understandin of what running a family household with children and 2 working partners would be like was pretty sketchy back then. And people do have a tendency to put their best foot forwards in the early days of a relationship... I did not know how little my partner would voluntarily do around the house after more than ten years together. He probably didn't expect me to put on 2 stone either.

I do what I can, but undoing decades of social and familial conditioning that tells a man he is doing enough just by earning money is asking a lot of one woman.

Themaltesefalcon personally I thino you have very high standards, and would very much struggle to meet yours.

Social and family conditioning nowadays says men should be a lot more than working, as the majority of women work. I dont know any man that actually believes he should do nothing, but a lot that slate their women behind their backs for actually doing it all.

An example of this would be my dh recently bought a hoover, and it came up in conversation with the lads at work. Dh said it was worth getting as was really powerful, and made a difference. One of them said he was going to get it. The other man said I have never hoovered in my life, get her to do it what does she do all day? Sit on her ass? Dh said no she works. The other guy said I dont care you will never ever see me doing that kind of thing.

All right, I will try to be less tight-sphinctered if the consensus is that my standards are a bit high. The world won't cave in. Probably.

That said... Wuldric, YES about the floors and the drawers. Though it annoys me, as a feminist, that I even give a shit, really.

I think the 'different standards' thing is a bit of a red herring.

I think it obscures the reality that a lot of men simply do not do ENOUGH in the home. It isn't that they 'just do it differently'. If I drive the family car around with tyres that aren't up to pressure, never check the water level and need reminding how and when to measure oil each time, then I am not doing car maintenance 'differently' - I'm just not doing it.

When I think about the number of shared households I have lived in, and the female flat mates I have had, I've never had real issues with women and how they do things. Small irritations, sure - and them with me - but they were always fundamentally hygienic. And we were almost always quite able to adjust our various ways of doing things and expectations to be able to share a living space fairly happily. So from this, I will draw the conclusion that it is not my failure to compromise on my extraordinarily high and inflexible standards of household organisation that is causing problems. It is that men in general, including my partner, simply do not participate and pull their weight at household level.

It depends on what level men contribute, of course - I am still laughing at the poster who mentioned that she wasn't moving the half a lime and knife or whatever it was that her partner had left on a kitchen surface. Well.... That's not even 'mess' in my house, we have got much bigger fish to fry.

Re: being annoyed as a feminist that you give a shit about floors and drawers...

It doesn't matter, surely, if you care about floors and drawers because life is easier when you know where to find things - when you aren't tripping over a load of things scattered over the floor - when cleaning the floors sometimes means you aren't trackjng dirt round the house - when using drawers for storing stuff you need and use means they aren't becoming dustbins for mini hoards, and rifling through junk is stealing time you could use doing something more constructive.

I see that as just making sure you have a living environment that works for you, rather than you being overwhelmed by your living environment. I think there IS something feminist in there - particularly in making sure everyone in the household contributes to that.

After all - 'traditional' housework done by women was what ennabled men's lives to run smoothly, wasn't it? I want my life to run smoothly too - I just don't want to be the only one in the house responsible for it.

However, if I feel a pressure to keep things clean and tidy because I think I will be judged on it, as a woman being responsible for the household - then that's the wrong presssure, isn't it. Keeping the utility room tidy, and expecting others to do so too, because then we can all find and use the things we want, is one thing. Keeping it tidy on my own because I feel defensive about comments I've had from other women in the family about mess, directed at me alone (even though they know I am the main earner...) - well, that's not ok.

Just trying to separate all this out because I don't think the message 'feminists don't clean' is a very helpful one.

rainrain - We have labelled storage. Everything is in a labelled drawer by 7pm. The dc arent allowed to leave any toys out after this time. Dd1 is responsible for her own room and knows which drawer everything goes in. Same in our bedroom everything is labelled so when dh washs and hangs out clothes everything must go in its named drawer.

This way anyone can do it, dd1 is 5 and has her room completely tidy every night.

I think scallopsrgreat is utterly correct, and that is the crux of it; that it's a men's problem, and it has to be rectified by men. Not by us.

But the thing is, this solves the problem at a population level; not at an individual household level, and so until there is a sea-change in attitudes, there will be individual women banging their heads against brick walls.

I always try to reassure myself by thinking that no matter how bad things are, we have still come a long way. And there's no reason to think that won't continue, that thinks will keep on improving, albeit slowly, maybe.

a wise mumsnetter once said it;s about bum time. we married stupidly young and effectively grew up together. so for me this is interesting to analyse. we both work full time in the same industry but i live ten mins from work and dh travels extensively. i have more bum time. i cook each evening. unless he is home first. but i do 'project manage' the division of labour. no nagging just organization. my standards are not high. i do not think i am predisposed to housework. he isn't either.

StickEmUp, I somehow seriously doubt that you cannot re-spray the car. I am sure that after a few simple explanations and maybe a couple of blotched attempts you would be able to do just as well as you husband.

Also - does you husband re-spray the car every day? I bet not. But socks and undies need washing pretty much daily. I find that most of traditionally male household jobs are things that do not require daily effort. They are occasional big things. And in the modern world, I find that women shoulder them too. MN is full of women who have full responsibility for paying bills, fixing cars, arranging insurance, supervising builders and so on.

Ok, I tried to think about Autumn's rules of household management. This was inspired by the debate about standards. For me, stuff needs to be:

1. Hygienic. This does not mean sprayed with domestos five times a day, but things like perishable foods must be put in the fridge, surfaces washed after handling chicken, washed dishes not being greasy.

1. Uncluttered. This does not mean spartan minimalism, but do we need small piles of receipts, used tissues, coins and defunct USB sticks on every open surface?

1. Organised. I like a tidy wardrobe so I don't have to spend half an hour looking for a matching pair of socks in the morning. Socks must be matched. Organised house is a user-friendly house.

1. Reasonably clean. I don't mind a bit of fluff on the floor, but we should not be manoeuvring in between puddles of milk and weetabix.

1. Efficient. Life is much easier when said weetabix is cleaned off the floor straight after it lands there. If it is allowed to sit, it turns into cement and takes hours to scrape off. So some stuff just needs to be done like now.

1. Reasonably aesthetically pleasing. No requirement for ikebanas, but streaked knickers on the floor are not acceptable.

That's about it.

peteypiranha, I don't think the problem is that men don't know how to do things. Sorry, but it does not take a PhD to remember which drawer the socks are in. I think the problems, if they are present, are mainly of two kinds: 1) Men don't want to know (often unconsciously), and 2) Men know but don't want to do it (also often unconsciously).

The system helps me as well. Every single thing in this place has a home. Dh and I know the exact location of everything.