Men who don't/won't do housework - is anyone to blame?

[Thurlow]

I'm hoping I can explain this clearly!

We all know there are threads beyond count about men who don't pull their weight on the housework front, or who expect their wife/partner to do it all for them, almost regardless of whether or not the woman is working or a SAHP.

Sometimes on these threads posters say "you shouldn't let him get away with it" and similar comments which often gets called out as victim blaming which, really, it is in that specific situation. But it did get me thinking.

Surely there has to be a reason why so many men don't feel as if housework and household admin and even childcare is their responsibility and that it is still absolutely fine, in 2015 Britain, to expect the woman in the house to do it all. Is someone at heart to blame for it? (Apologies for the use of the word 'blame' as I suspect this is a lot stronger than I mean, but I can't think of quite the right word).

Is it the parents who raised the boy in the 1970s, 1980s, even 1990s who is responsible because they somehow taught him, deliberately or subconsciously, that women do all the work?

Is it, very occasionally, a woman's fault for not putting their foot down early enough in a relationship? But then surely there has to be a reason why they feel they can't do that - is it their parents who are responsible for raising them to feel they can't put their foot down? Is it back to the parents who maybe taught (again, deliberately or subconsciously) a girl she had to do everything, or taught a boy that he could ride roughshod over a woman's complaints and continue to insist she did everything?

Or is it just such an ingrained societal response that teaches girls as they grow up to do housework and not be confrontational, and boys that they don't need to do as much?

I don't quite like the last thought - so many men now do do their equal share of housework, cooking and parenting that simply saying "because society" or "because patriarchy" seems far too simplistic.

I hope I've managed to phrase that well. I definitely don't want to suggest in anyway that it is simple the woman's fault and she ought to put her foot down. But it makes me curious (and frustrates me a lot) that there still seems to be this ingrained inequality that both many men continue with, and many women feel they have to come to somewhere like MN and ask if they are U to expect their OH to do more around the house.

I'm with MaudlinNamechange, why do you think social conditioning is not enough, Thurlow?

I think social conditioning along with the structures set up in society, and the hierarchy that is social construct of gender leads to the male entitlement we are ultimately talking about here. Those messages are reinforced from several angles and therefore become very powerful. Not sure how much more there could be?

DH is 43 and is from a working class background, his parents both worked and his DM ran the home, DF did 'dad' jobs. He does a lot more housework than me, and without complaining or suggesting he should 'help'. He just does it. We don't have children together so the 9 month thing doesn't count in our case. He's just always been tidy and thoughtful.

My XH however, he changed after our wedding

This thread is so timely for me, and I've enjoyed reading the responses so far.

I completely agree that mat leave can have this unintended consquence - I was talking to friends here in the US who are all used to going back to work after 6 weeks () who seem to have a much more equal division of housework with their partners, because six weeks isn't long enough to have a significant shift of behaviours and expectations, whereas 6-12 months is. I'm not advocating we cut back the statutory mat leave entitlement, BTW, but it's worth considering how it affects a relationship in various ways, including underlining that a woman's place is in the home, bringing up baby and mopping the floor.

I was also pondering this morning how DH and I "do" housework in very different ways: I seem to do the daily, drudge stuff (such as washing up), he does the occasional stuff (such as scrubbing the draining board). Of course, both need doing but it would good from time to time to have it acknowledged that the reason I haven't scrubbed the draining board is because I've been too busy washing up...

And yy to being the one to sort doctors, dentists, opticians etc etc - every single time. Because it's something that has to be done, so if DH says he'll do it but doesn't, I have to step in and fix it, don't I? More than that, it's about the mental list keeping that it requires - as with cooking. It's not that it's difficult per se to phone the dentists, or cook the spag bol, it's the fact that it takes up mental bandwidth to remember to do it, when it needs doing and getting all the bits and pieces needed for it.

Totally, i'm (unusually) working over lunchtime tomorrow so DH is collecting kids from school. I know he hasn't thought about what they'll eat for lunch when they get in, I know we don't have any food in, I feel I should deal with this, tell him there is no food, or go and buy some. It just wouldn't cross his mind until they get home STARVING tomorrow and then realise there is nothing. See I've done all this thinking about it and I'm not even going to be here, that is brain space I could be using for something else!!

I don't know if it does change after children. I mean obviously, having children means there is a fuck ton more to do and in many ways, everything changes. but I doubt that the majority of childless couples actually have an equal division - just going on my experience.

When you are young and fit and childless, and have access to a hoover and a washing machine and a dishwasher, it doesn't seem that hard to do most of it, as a woman. And I even suspect that there is an element of "romance" involved here - the excitement of setting up home with your man, everything is new and fresh and exciting, it seems funny and sweet to fold up the boxer shorts like a real live adult woman. I think some of my friends thought that anyway. Women with fledgling kick-ass careers who didn't think they had anything to prove saw no harm in making their little love nest nice.

And yet men didn't feel the need to do that.

Do you not think that social conditioning is enough, or powerful enough? It is incredibly powerful. And changes in this area have started incredibly recently.

I don't quite know - I appreciate I am struggling here to explain myself. I'm not naive, I understand how influential social conditioning is. I suppose I do struggle to see from my life experiences how so many men have picked up the idea that they don't have to do much at all.

Are you suggesting that women, or some women, work to maintain the status quo? Surely some do, but of course we are all socially conditioned too.

Maybe it comes down to something to do with this. How do so many women accept the status quo? In so many relationships? I'm in no way denying there are many controlling or abusive relationships where nothing is remotely straightforward. But I do know of many women who have careers and essentially good relationships with their OHs but somehow still just put up with having to do the bulk of the housework. They complain about it to other women, or make jokes about how useless their OHs are but... I don't know, why do they just accept it?

Are you trying to say "they say they can't help it but they can't be that useless; aren't they all just a bit selfish?"? Well - maybe

Is it selfishness, or is it knowing they can get away with it? Aren't most of us guilty of this? I can get away without cooking much because DP enjoys it and cooks much better than I do. I'm not above admitting I go with this as I don't like cooking, so I'm not complaining at all that someone else serves me dinner every night. Is that what men who don't do housework are doing too?

For me, a lot of comments on here seem to embrace the concept of male vs female brains. As if women are better are doing this stuff, or see it more; as if men don't see it. As if there's something genetic about it. Which must clearly be ridiculous.

Like, the excitement of setting up home with your man, everything is new and fresh and exciting, it seems funny and sweet to fold up the boxer shorts like a real live adult woman. Really? Do so many women still think this way?

I don't Thurlow. I am pretty sure I have never folded a man's boxer shorts
I don't really enjoy sharing my home with a man either. On a part time basis it's nice but all the time??? I think I'm a born spinster. Thank God.

Thurlow: "How do so many women accept the status quo? In so many relationships? [...]why do they just accept it?"

I wrote a post about this upthread about this at 12.20.

Men don't know, or want to know, that they are doing it. I wrote out a lot of example man beliefs, but I think the core ones are these:

1 - a man with substance, status, and a place in the world has a woman looking after him in the home.
2 - I am a nice guy: fair, honest, loving. I treat the people close to me well.

If you actually get into this with your man, if you attack no1 you are attacking the thing that makes him feel like a secure human with a place and an identity. He can't afford to lose it.
If you attack no 2 (by way of no. 1) you're attacking the same stuff, the same core who-I-am-and-why-I-respect-myself stuff.

They won't put up with it. The vast majority of men just won't let you in there, that stuff is Not Up For Grabs.

So is the question: why do women have relationships with men on this basis?

Does anyone want to posit any female core beliefs?

""Like, the excitement of setting up home with your man, everything is new and fresh and exciting, it seems funny and sweet to fold up the boxer shorts like a real live adult woman. Really? Do so many women still think this way?"

I don't know. I am probably talking like maybe 20 years ago. I left home in the 80s - the very very end of the 80s - and me and my peers were brought up to take care of men. I don't know about younger women but I do see glimpses of it, I think.

I think the core ones are these: 1 - a man with substance, status, and a place in the world has a woman looking after him in the home. 2 - I am a nice guy: fair, honest, loving. I treat the people close to me well.

Is it a generational thing, an age thing? I (and so my peers) are in our mid-thirties. Number 1 does not ring true for any of my male friends and family of our age.

The men I know who are more useless at home are probably minorly useless compared to some men of other generations (I certainly know how useless my own dad was until recently) - they still cook, they do childcare, their partners still work, they do housework, they are not sitting there expecting everything to be done for them. So they aren't doing as much as the woman, but they aren't thinking that a man of status has a woman at home doing everything for them.

I didn't say "doing everything". I said "looking after him in the home". They are prepared - some of them - to dip in. but they see this as part of adulthood. Part of achieving a nice comfortable life.

I don't think younger men think this less.

It's deeply subconscious. And it has generational inflections. but that is what it is.

Medical appointments - dh books all the children's appointments. We used to share this task however one incident changed this.

I called the GP surgery at 8:45 and was told very abruptly that my baby may require an appointment but I should ring at 8:30. This was in a tone which made it clear I should know better.

Dh rang at 9:15 said he needed an appointment for his baby and received a phone appointment that day!

So he has to ring every time now - after this thread I wonder if she felt it was important because dads rarely ring.

maudlin I do think many men think like that. And get VERY angry if their belief that they do "a lot" is challenged.

When friends jokingly moan about their man's ineptitude, in a mixed group, I often challenge it, and often get angry looks - just for a second - from men in the group. And women sometimes look unimpressed too, and say they "feel sorry for" my H! (Who IMO does more than 98% of men, but still much less than me, although he doesn't see it).

Female core beliefs? Speaking for myself and perhaps my observations of my DM and other close family and friends:

"To show love I need to 'look after' people"
"I should be able to do all this"
"This is my job"
"If I nag him DP will be angry/leave me. everyone will think I'm to blame"

"Of course you aren't, Bas. That would involve you having to examine your own behaviour, which would never do "

No. It would mean wasting time and energy on someone whose arguments are just not sophisticated or interesting enough to spend time and energy on.

"If a life partner's behaviour is upsetting you, you have to call it out, and they have to change. If they don't respect you enough to change, you are with the wrong person."

I'm not sure who you are addressing this to. But I think it's not a very sophisticated argument and as I'm not talking to an interesting, intelligent teenager of whom I'm fond, I'm not interested in engaging with it.

Dozer- I agree with yours - especially I think this one is really important

"I should be able to do all this"

We're told all the time that women's work is easy, and trivial. For me, as a WOHM, it has been a real struggle for me to acknowledge the physical limits of my time and energy. I really have internalised this idea that there just isn't too much to do - how can there be?

Also:

It isn't cool to make heavy weather of this. No one likes a nag. It's more gracious and elegant to get on with it than to be pettily demanding reciprocity.

I agree that domestic work is often dismissed as trivial, I remember being told I was shallow when I cited the unequal division of domestic labour as my main reason for no longer being prepared to co habit.

[Shock] shining! Like you were supposed to just accept it as "not a big deal".

maudlin I WOH and feel like that too. Plus, at work I feel like I mustn't reveal my domestic responsibilities very often and must seem totally available for and committed to work.

The "nag" thing is so very sexist and hard to address.

If more men took up the opportunity to share parental leave then perhaps things would begin to change.
My DH and I shared leave almost equally (I had 7 months, he did the two weeks at the start then 5 months after I went back to work) and now both work 4 days a week so as to have one day each with DS. I can never get used to how remarkable so many people find this. I constantly get asked variations on the same questions:

• Didn't I mind going back to work "early" (well, yes, but I thought the family as a whole benefitted from it)
• How did he get his employer to agree to him working part time? (Is that really so odd? Millions of women do it.)

And general surprise/bemusement at the idea that he might want to do all this. By assuming that a) women will do all the childcare and b) men won't want to or be able to do it, we are perpetuating this division of roles when it comes to raising children, and most of us seem to agree that this then leads to inequalities in division of other work in the home.

I just posted then went to facebook and this came up on my newsfeed:
www.parent.co/the-free-time-my-husband-doesnt-realize-he-has/

It is about how when you are looking after babies every moment of your day involves them. I remember when my DS was very small, on the rare occasions when he would be put down asleep in a cot during the day, I would rank the things I wanted/needed to do and do the most important first in case he woke up within minutes. So go to the toilet, have a drink, wash some bottles, eat something, put a wash on... This is something it would be difficult to understand if you had not spent long periods of time alone with the baby. I suspect many men never look after their small babies alone for more than a couple of hours, and therefore don't need to worry about laundry/washing up/having a shower as those things can wait until they are no longer responsible for the child.

The problem I have is that DH will perpetually do 'half a job'. Such as: making dinner, but festooning the kitchen with crap, including the floor, walls, etc. Or vacuuming and not emptying it after, so when I next use it, I have to do it twice. Washing up means the kitchen is awash with water and soap. Yet if I complain, I am ungrateful :(

Nobody middle class cleans their own house in his country.

My dad came and stayed with us after DS came home from hospital to look after me (DH working crazy hours, DS prem and demanding, dad newly retired). He commented that he had never realised how much hard work a little baby can be, despite there being three of us - he had just never been in the house for the relentless drag of feed, nappy, sleep, feed, nappy, sleep over many weeks (even though in many ways he was an enlightened dad for his generation)

I have a question. Do both men and women (as classes obvs nawalt, namalt etc), have comparable drives that align to have children?

Although I have desperately always wanted to be a Father to the point where I'm happy to be a sahd, a lot of my male peers who are passing through there 30's still answer along the lines maybe they'd like kids someday, but it is quite a different story for female friends.

Now I don't know how much of this is biological or societal, and I would be interested to learn which, but is it at all possible that many women weigh up the opportunity cost of starting at square one with a new man and end up hoping their man steps up when kids arrive?

This is only anecdotal, I have of course met women who have never wavered on not wanting kids, but they seem to be outliers.

I think women are more aware that they have a limited window of opportunity, which gives them a different imperative.

I've also seen a domino effect in my various social circles whereby once one man has proposed, or one man becomes a father, others follow in quick succession - almost as if they are waiting for some indication that it was "OK" to go for it. Anecdote, not data though