I really enjoyed reading this article, “When Mom and Dad Share It All” from the New York Times (and really, you must go read it if you haven’t already) but I finished it feeling sad, not only did many of the couples struggle to achieve true equality in their relationships, despite incredible efforts, but I realised so did we. All our energies are amounting to nothing more than a gentle nudging at the perimeters of equality. We might be splitting the more obvious tasks of domestic labour between us – he cooks and washes up and I do the laundry and take out the rubbish - but as much as becoming parents has placed an increased urgency on achieving equality, it has also simultaneously exacerbated existing gender disparities in our relationship. In spite of my partner’s enormous enthusiasm for fatherhood and his strong desire to do things differently to his own father, the parenting tasks have fallen overwhelmingly into my lap. You see, my partner is the sort of very capable father who is somehow still incapable of properly packing his daughter’s kindergarten bag.
He is pretty good in comparison to other men when it comes to attempts toward parenting equality, but as the article notes, this is not a comparison approximating equality. Worse still it may have given him a certain degree of complacency, a smugness even. No matter the argument we’re having he can always point to his cooking and washing up and in his mind that seems to balance the books. The multitude of tasks I complete as I am completing other tasks, as I am tending to our child, as I am doing things for myself, as I am at work even, are largely invisible to him.
A few years ago we participated in the national census survey and as I was placing our responses (his had only been completed after I reminded him to do it) into the envelope for collection I saw his response to the question about ‘unpaid household work’ (ie. housework). He had estimated his weekly hours of housework to be equal to mine. What a crock. Breaking several laws I’m sure and unbeknown to him I rubbed out his answer that morning and doctored it to reflect a truer picture of our happy house. Because honey, so not equal yet!
I’m working on convincing the men of the world that childcare and housework can happen at the same time.
So not equal yet. But then, I’m not the one who gets up at 5am with the little tacker.
That’s too funny – did you tell him? Or ask him about his answer?
I don’t know if men will ever see their roles as equal to ours?..I don’t know any men who naturally take up chores and feel the same weight of responsibility (family responsibility) that women do. Except maybe single dads – they really ‘get it’ once there’s no wife to do everything for them.
It is sad and frustrating.
While there is no clear way there yet, I feel like a critical element of obtaining equality is a lowering of expectations about what the house and family will look like when we get there. Don’t want to cook? Don’t cook. People will eat, thanks to the ever available peanut butter and jelly. (Or whatever it is you eat down there in lieu of.) Don’t want to clean? Don’t. Eventually, someone will do the dishes. Or the laundry. Or clean out the poor cat’s litter box. In my own case, when I stopped worrying about the standards I had adopted from my own mom-does-everything childhood, things got easier.
Every once in a while my husband will trot out the argument of “Well, look at all the stuff I do compared to most other guys – you shouldn’t expect me to do more than that!” Yes, dear, you do more than most guys (he cooks, washes dishes and does the grocery shopping), but that still doesn’t mean you approach the amount of work that I do. Besides, I wouldn’t have married a guy who didn’t participate in the working of the family, so it’s a null argument to start with.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who feels sad that she hasn’t managed to achieve the equality ideal. It sounds so perfectly reasonable, and logical, and fair, and yet it is so hard to make work, especially once kids come into the picture.
For me one of the questions is, who judges the ‘properness’ of the packing of the kindergarten bag? One can substitute, the nappy change, bathing, reading. The transfer of tasks requires the transfer of judgement and power also. Think in reverse, a woman washing the family’s (read husband’s pride and joy) car. It is a lesson that I keep on learning every day.
I have found it very helpful to go away every now and then, and leave him to all of it…. except that until recently, when I went away, I would arrange for my mother to come and help him with the children. When he went away, I just did it all. BTW, this was when we were both in paid employment, ‘tho I was nominally in a 90% job.
Two things that make it easier for men to claim equality: 1) the point of reference of comparison. Men (and often women) look to other men and men’s own fathers rather than within the household when thinking about fairness; 2) the symbolic components of housework. A small amount of housework from a man = a lot from a woman because the man is doing something he doesn’t *have* to do; it’s a gift and it’s churlish not to be grateful for a gift.
On the issue of standards … yeees, lowering expectations can make it easier but a couple of things strike me with this (and not a reflection on Claire or Emily’s comments and experiences): 1) who gets judged by others when the house is a mess and the kids unwashed?; 2) I remember reading somewhere, many years ago, that a survey found men and women actually held the same standards and agreed on issues such as how often the washing up or toilet cleaning should be done. Trouble is, only one gender does the work to get it there; 3) I’m always a little uncomfortable with the implication that the persistent gendered division of household labour is about women’s demands rather than about men’s failure. Why should a woman drop her standards if she is happy and comfortable with them? Why should she give up something else in her relationship – for me, that’s not a fair outcome. Especially when these standards often contribute to the family’s wellbeing and comfort. I doubt many women are asking to have the floors vacuumed twice a day or to scrub the toilet each morning.
And why do women have to ask?
Good points Kris…and yes – the woman gets judged by a dirty house.
Yes. That thing about relinquishing power in household tasks is a nice theory, but I have a feeling it’s something that’s come up from smartarse mainstream writers who aren’t very knowledgeable about the problem (not you claire, I mean your sources.) The fact of the matter is that it does matter. If I need a couple of decent tops for work I need to know that they’re laundered in such a way that they’re not ruined (and on our income this has a bigger impact, too.) I need to know that people are checking pockets so we don’t walk around looking as if we’ve been in a snowstorm. When he does the dishes, I need the dishes and cutlery and cooking implements to be clean, not encrusted with bits of food (actual situation in our house.)
This kind of thing is also a passive-aggressive tactic to avoid being given the task again. Furthermore, men like my partner have an almost endless talent for not seeing dirt and mess, so if I stop cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen, they’ll get cleaned… never.
The thing about lowering standards is that (in my experience) men are always prepared to lower them further. There are things that I let go, I don’t supervise him parenting, I don’t tell him how to clean, to be asked after all that if perhaps my standards are just too high is insulting. I was asked this last week, and I laughed in the questioners face because one’s partner not doing their jobs in a timely fashion, or not doing them properly, makes it difficult or impossible for me to do my share.
Most men need to learn, even most of the ones who think they do a lot and contribute and are very feminist-friendly, that they should compare their contribuiton to a mother who works full-time, not their male friends, or their own dad.
[...] post from Blue Milk, about women and men Not Yet doing equal amounts of housework, even when both partners are in paid employment. Susoz points out [...]
[...] a hand-made card filled with rather empty promises about helping him with his household chores (little eye-roll) that she’d made at kindergarten, a bought coffee (I make terrible coffee), home-made [...]
The note about packing a kindergarten bag is a good one.
I’m a new father, and I consider myself feminist (insofar as a self-identified male can do that) and so I work and struggle to live up to those ideals. In doing so I’ve noticed something about how all the little things tend to fall to my wife: I’m just not as good at it as she is.
Let me explain more before you dismiss this! I’m not inherently worse at these tasks, but I have less practice. There’s nothing stopping me from getting more skilled at packing a bag, changing a diaper, or cooking dinner after I get home from work. The key is that, unexamined, the perception that she’s better at a task than I am means that I will “defer” to her expertise. That’s something that needs to stop, and I’ve been gradually discovering more of these opportunities.
The hurdle that needs to be cleared is that, while a task that is unfamiliar to me transfers from her to my responsibility, it will be completed to a worse level of quality than it had been before (when she did it). That kindergarten bag will be a bad one for a while. We both need to accept that this period of inexpert results is necessary and good for the long term, and not lose patience and dump it back on her. That is, after all, how I became (and am still becoming) the good cook that I am.
Of course, this is complicated by her devotion to breast feeding, which means that she is the primary caregiver and I’m away from home working. I have to make that much more effort to snatch opportunities to do things (inexpertly) when I am home that she does all day (such as deal with the new consistency of the contents of diapers since he’s been on solids—I must accept that I will make a mess of some of these until I get the hang of it, and stick with it). I have to work against my default assumption that the most skilled person should do a given task, since that dynamic realises into most tasks being hers.
It’s hard to work against privilege, but it’s worthwhile even though I fail. Gradually failing less is the only way. That, and badly-packed bags.