The Chore Wars Continued (Husband Vs Wife Edition)
Continuing with the war theme, check out the latest round of men don’t do their domestic share from The Nation:
What’s irked me is the continued assumption that this is a women’s issue. The problem isn’t that women are trying to do too much, it’s that men aren’t doing nearly enough…
Dismissing socialization and gender roles as piddling compared to this amorphous idea of “maternal imperative” is part of the reason progress is stalled for family-friendly policies. I don’t believe we must ignore how much we love our kids and want to be with them in order to effectively fight for better parenting policies—but the assumption that women want to be mothers above all other callings in their life directly impacts the way we talk and work on these issues….
This isn’t about wanting “it all,” it’s about wanting fairness and justice—something that’s only possible if we radically change the gendered expectations of parenting. Anything less will keep us talking in circles.
First a point about terms: what is “choice feminism”? For most casual feminists, “choice feminism” is the idea that feminist accomplishments gave us the opportunity to choose our own lives whether it be domestic or professional. This is real feminism. (See here and here for examples of such discussions.)
Intellectual feminists, however, hate choice feminism, and the above quote illustrates why. They want pure equality where men and women do the same amount and types of work. Therefore, they cannot accept any notion of “la difference.”
Feminists only use the language of choice when they want us to feel empowered for the choices they would have us make. See Cherie Blair who thinks it “dangerous” that stay-at-home-moms “married rich and retired.”
So what about the men? First, articles like The Daddy Wars fuel wifely assumptions of husbandly incompetence. “Why can’t you do something right?!” barbs are common and are relationship poison. Second, the evidence is rather murky that husbands are slackers. A Time magazine piece from last fall challenged the notion that husbands do less work than wives. It is an interesting read, so do read the whole thing if you subscribe, but this caught my eye:
But what we weren’t seeing was that there was a mounting body of evidence that women were not, in fact, workhorse wives picking up their husbands’ slack, that there are several variables in the dual-earner equations… So does that mean that my sense of injustice and that of so many other women have all be a result of an accounting error? Thankfully, it’s not quite so simple.
Thankfully? The gist of the article is that men have been slandered for decades, yet the author is “thankful” her sense of injustice was not entirely misplaced? Either men have been wrongly accused and reduced to annoying sperm donors or the evidence shows that men are still sometime slackers. Neither bothers her as much as the horror that she might have been mistaken.
And feminists wonder how they get a reputation for bashing men.
See Leslie’s previous blogs on the gender and family wars
My husband works his ass off. I am so sick and tired of the authoritarian feminists trying to tell us how to live our lives and demeaning the man I love. Yes, good men do exist. Let us pursue our own vision of happiness. Just let us be. They are bullies. For heck’s sake, wake up. Women are not victims. More women graduate from college than men. Single women earn more than single men (this only changes when women have children and CHOOSE to give up careers for motherhood, YES maternal desire is real). Men die younger. The whole friggin universe revolves around women. What more do they want? Stop the bullying.
Amen!! My husband works 12 hours six days a week.
I also work, and I’m going to nursing school, but I’ll be damned if I make him try to do housework after his grueling days. Did I mention he’s a welder/fitter?
If I’m sick, or really in a bind, he comes through. He has always helped, he has been a superb father with three great kids to his credit.
These people need to shut up and learn how to love.
What’s your point in repeating all of this crap?
My point? mainly I wanted to point out the often hidden difference in how casual feminists and intellectual feminists view choice feminism.
This comment is based on some of the links that this article led me to. When I announced my first pregnancy at my job one of my female coworkers asked if I was keeping “it”. In one of the articles I just read, the women claimed that “no women is an island”, that when we choose to stay home our choice does effect other women. Why then do they not see how their choice to have an abortion effects other women? This is just a hypothesis, but if somebody crunched the numbers, I would not be suprised if childless women earn more than men at any age. Just a thought. I was basically forced to leave my job because of the demands of motherhood (it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, just the reality of competing demands and internal desires), but surely the are you keeping “it” coworker is still chugging away putting in the long hours, not having to balance work with children. I am not making this point because she does not have the right to that choice, just to show that when groupthink gets the best of everyone and they start lumping everyone with two XX chromosomes and a vagina into the same calculation, they are really trying to compare apples to oranges and peaches and grapefruits (Elizabeth Wertzel is definately a grapefruit), and none of it really adds up to any kind of truth.
Most American-born men are very hands-on fathers. I know why I married one.
Although in most cases a mother’s job is probably harder than a father’s day job, I don’t see a point in keeping score. If mom and dad have some together time and time away from family, they are probably doing fine.
The Great Housework Contretemps is founded on a gender difference many women are unwilling to accept: men care considerably less about detailed domestic cleanliness and neatness than do women. It’s a straight-up clash of priorities.
The unhappy wife responds to this clash by assuming that her priorities are unchallengeably the correct ones. This leads to marital disharmony, as the husband isn’t just satisfied with the arrangements; he’s also quite comfortable with his own priorities. Angry words and various forms of nagging and negotiation ensue. It’s seldom pretty.
Of course, she could always test his priorities by giving the housework the same degree of attention he gives it. However, to judge from the way unmarried men tend to keep their digs, this is a chancy course of action. But it sometimes works. Sometimes. When his name is Felix Unger.
Anyway, when all else fails, there’s always Merry Maids or some similar firm.
Early in my marriage, a few months perhaps, I called my college mentor, a happily married mom about 20 years my senior. I was in tears because my husband didn’t do what I thought needed to be done. She calmed me down by explaining something that I quickly realized was spot on. When a husband and wife walk into the house after a day out, the wife cannot typically relax until the basic chores are done. The husband, however, would usually prefer relax for a bit and then get to the chores. So wife starts bustling about and husband sits down to catch the last quarter of the game. He has no intention of not doing anything, but the wife’s building anger when she works while he relaxes can start a fight or a standoff in no time. She told me to not get so angry and see what happened. A few days later, I called a friend who had married earlier than me. I whined to her, too. She told me that the next time I should go cry in the shower, and then spend more time worrying about the kind of wife I was rather than the kind of husband he was. Those two bits of advice are some of the best I have ever gotten.
I’ve had friends use the work-strike method. They end up with messy houses and resentful marriages. I used the worry about your own actions method. My husband is almost a model of domestic industry. A girlfriend nicknamed him Marty Stewart. It was scary as hell when I first let go, but the payoff was huge–and quick. The difference was noticeable in a few weeks.
Even after 34 years these disagreements about chores happen. But I have that pretty well covered. I tell her that I’ll vacuum the upstairs, hand her the keys to the truck and a box of stuff and tell her to go change the brakes. Or pull the mower deck and sharpen the blades. Or go bury the raccoon that was raiding her bird feeders. Or trim the wild rose out of the hedge she wanted. Or till her garden. Then I grab that vacuum, spend 10 minutes in air conditioning and wait for my chores to get done by her. They never do. And I still vacuum the upstairs. But, when I want to go fishing or flying or hunting or to my man cave she knows damn well to stay away from me.
Rinse, repeat.
It’s called women’s work for a reason. A women’s greatest joy is to serve. There is no limit to the wisdom of the patriarchy.
Many european men AGREE to sit when they pee so that things are
Cleaner
They say it’s more sanitary
Even many men defend that
I find the whole idea sickening
You must think the entire essence of being a man revolves around being able to stand up to urinate. Oh, the convenience. “The world is a man’s urinal.”
Just establish your division of labor clearly, early on if possible, and try to remain flexible and forgiving. This is not brain surgery. We live in an apartment, so there’s no yard work involved. He does the laundry and the vacuuming, and I do the food-shopping, cooking, dishwashing, and cleaning the bathroom. He hates Talking Heads and the Velvet Underground; I respond by hating Journey and Kansas. 24 years and counting, thank you G-d.
“Choice Feminism”? Really? Come on, you have got to be yanking my chain.
Women have 2/3 of the power triangle and definite control on the other third in 90% of all decisions made as a family. The only place that the man has control is in an emergency. This is because the man likes it that way.
If it weren’t for women, men would still be running around the jungle naked eating bananas and having fun. No keeping up with the Jones family, No need for some wacked out fat chick hollerin culture, No need to dress up or sideways for that matter, No wars because we wouldn’t be harped into taking what she wants from some other dude just so we can get lucky (and you know what I mean by lucky because sometimes it is easier to win the powerball lotto two weeks in a row than get a “afternoon snack”.
Women chose who would be the male population. It is a choice that continues to bite Feminists in the arse. Normal women don’t see the issue as anything more than those that can’t compete whining and using the power of govt to gain them a seat at the table.
My wonderful wife that we affectionately call “The Warden” has been with me since our 19th and 20th year of life. She is amazingly resilient, hardworking, creative, sexy and understanding. Wasn’t always a lot of fun but we are not quitters and marriage vows mean something to both of us. 27 years in October and I, even knowing now what I did not know then, would do it all over again.
I feel pity for those women who get stuck in the quagmire of feminism and shut out all reality. Because they will never know what it means and feels like to have a family that appreciates and loves them for who they are instead of what they do outside of the family.