Arguing with your partner, and other feminist work
April 12, 2010 by blue milk
- I don’t usually talk about arguments with my partner here, partly because of his privacy and partly because it seems kind of passive aggressive to tell the Internet about it. But returning to work after our second baby I would be lying if I didn’t say a major part of this process has been negotiating with my partner about what needs doing and who needs to do it.
- I have had two important breakthroughs. Let’s skip the whole idea that one of those breakthroughs might have been achieving true equality as feminist parents with our work and family life. I don’t want to disappoint. Frankly, if becoming a parent (at least in a heterosexual way) isn’t an experience in compromising your feminist principles and seeing just how far you can bend over backwards to accommodate the patriarchy then I don’t know what else it might be.
- So, my first breakthrough comes with the caveat that I have historically spent a lot of time getting angry in my personal relationships with sometimes little result to show for it. Thus it was an important breakthrough (which possibly came from reading so many parenting books) to realise that my partner has certain ways of coping with stress, particularly the kind of stress involved in juggling this whole ‘two children in two different places on three different days of the week while two parents go to their separate workplaces’ thing. His way is to be completely disengaged from the process until he is up to his ears in it whereupon he gets very tense with me and threatens to withdraw his involvement (such as it is) if any of it looks so badly disorganised as to be likely to fail (and things can easily appear disorganised when you haven’t bothered to engage with any of the organising). This, naturally infuriates me. I am the one getting everything organised, thinking of absolutely everything, panicking about how to get it all to work by myself, and on top of that I have to deal with someone’s tantrum because they are only just now realising how time-pressed all this stuff is..
- I used to get incredibly angry and then because he was also angry we would have this horrible stressed-out argument, but now I say to him “I know this is how you cope with this stuff, and it is very annoying to me that you do this, but I am not going to get into an argument with you because at least you are now engaged with this problem and so we can both work like crap to see if we can pull off this big nightmare of a schedule and it if falls apart then we can have a big argument about it, but right now I am not going to waste the time and energy”. Then miraculously it seems to turn out ok. The patriarchy, it doth like to see you bend way, way over backwards to placate it; and let me tell you, I bend.
- The other day this problem came up in another of its variations. I rang him at work frantic with worry about how some of the arrangements for Cormac’s care were actually going to work. It goes without saying that my partner had been pretty much disengaged from this little crisis too. He told me to stop worrying about it and that he was really busy, ya know, so could I wrap this freaking-out thing up and let him get on with work. I tried to point out the seriousness of my concerns, that it isn’t just the baby I was worried about but also making the arrangement work for the carer, too. Again I felt myself getting furious, but this time I said “I know you need some time to think about this stuff before you engage with it, so consider yourself warned. I will need to talk about this tonight because I am going out of my head with worry about it. Just so you know and we can be on the same page tonight, start thinking!”. It worked.
- I am five years into this working mother thing, and I am still shocked about how unfair the work-family split is – all the work of getting it to happen, getting it to work, and keeping it running smoothly is done by mothers. It seems ridiculous – two people working, two people are parents – the organisational workload should be shared, but that isn’t how it happens. I am torn between fighting to get some equality and conserving my energy to deal with making what actually happens work for me, and especially for the children (who are like the carrot to the donkey for women).
- Last night something (almost) wonderful happened. Cormac woke up twice and had trouble getting back to sleep. It took me almost an hour the first time to get him to sleep and I had been at it for well over an hour the second time around when I had a break-through – fuck this, I am back at work, and this night-parenting stuff is long overdue for sharing. My partner had had a late night getting things ready for the week, but then so had I. So I woke him up and gave him the baby and he finished the job of getting Cormac to sleep. I didn’t fall asleep in that time but I rested.. and I smiled to myself.
- Other observations of the return to work? I am so broke at the moment that I am feeling a whole lot less sympathetic about my returning to work angst. With the wolves at the door this is not the time to wonder whether I really want a job building doors.
- I am also disappointed to discover that I am broke. Not so long ago I was being quite self-congratulatory about managing this period of maternity leave without acquiring credit card debt, as happened last time. (We split and share costs but manage our money separately). Turns out I just hadn’t paid a lot of recent bills, we can officially be in debt any time I want to go ahead and pay those bills.
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Posted in arguments with your partner, bill, fatherhood, feminism, feminist motherhood, maternity leave, motherhood, motherhood sux, work and family (im)balance | 88 Comments
blue milk 
Have you been living my life? Our financial situation is quite different (we are now self-employed, and I basically had no real maternity leave with the second two kids – no stark difference between “working” and “not working”), but the rest of it could be our house and our organisational “structure”.
We have one added curiosity. Once or twice a year, each of us travels for work for up to 2 weeks. When I’m away, he manages all of the logistics, and deals with the failures in doing so. Somehow it’s not beyond him when I’m 10 hours on a plane away.
But then of course, if I’m not around, any failures are accepted by the world at large as him doing his best in trying circumstances. If I’m at home, any failures are clearly my fault, regardless of actual responsibility.
This is what scares me. I have this vision of going back to work (slightly different situation in that Wolfman will be a stay at home dad rather than working dad) and still having to manage everything. And manage that managing. And work. And feed overnight. And deal with the emotional work. I look at how things are now and know that it isn’t entirely likely but then I remember that Wolfman still hasn’t had his wisdom teeth pulled and the referral is probably out of date and does he think he can just go do that with a baby in tow? Then there’s the budget and it’s a fucking scary thing to contemplate on my own but his blase ‘she’ll be right’ gets louder and louder the more I worry.
So I sympathise. And empathise. And worry.
It’s the bending that I get angry about too.
There’s a great song lyric, an Ani DiFranco song, which says ‘What doesn’t bend breaks.’ And I always think of that… that sometimes there’s a greater strength in bending. Because we’re supple and flexible and strong enough to bend when we need to and then to spring right back, taller than before.
The anger? Sometimes I reckon I have energy for it and sometimes I just don’t… and I’m telling myself that’s okay too. Energies are finite, and time is too short to waste on being angry all the time (which would be easy for me.) Gotta claim that joy too.
It’s my birthday on Wednesday. My husband is taking me out to dinner at a restaurant I chose after checking the menu to ensure it had vegetarian options for me. I emailed him the addresss and phone number of the restaurant, which he booked after numerous reminders. I also did the most vital thing: I arranged the babysitter.
Sometimes, I really wish I didn’t have to do so much for myself.
Oh my gosh, Claire – I was just going to comment along the same lines. My birthday a couple of week ago. I told husband if he really wanted to do something for me then send the kids to my mum’s for the night so we could go out/watch a movie or just relax.
His reply:
“Ok. You call her and organise it.”
Singing my song…
Claire–my husband bought me tickets for my birthday to see David Gray on a Wednesday night last month. And I had to arrange the babysitting myself too. WTF?
BM–Oh, I feel your pain. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I lollygagged in bed each work morning and got *only* myself dressed and fed until it was time to move the hoard to the car for school dropoffs, etc. Leave the boys unfed, dressed in PJs and without lunches made. See what happens. Ah, but that’s passive agressive, isn’t it? (Oh, and then I’ll ask what’s for dinner when we get home and sit on the couch with a glass of wine to watch the nightly news.)
I think this resonates with a lot of us – I know it does with me. It’s very hard to address, because my husband does do a lot with and for the kids. When I bring it up, he quickly gets defensive and/or feels unappreciated.
I know that if I’d write a post like this one (and I surely could have when my kids were the age of yours, several years ago) he would be furious. And yet we need to talk about all of this taken-for-granted mommy-work if we don’t want it to be quite so taken-for-granted in the future.
If I ask him to do something specific (like sleep in last Friday, when I was sick as a dog), he’ll usually do it graciously. But the point is, the default is that I have to *ask*. In theory, he believes in equality as much as I do. Sometimes that makes discussions about splitting responsibilities even harder, as he feels his basic sense of justice is being called into question.
I feel all of this too. For the time being my going back to work is only part time, which we are lucky to be able to manage. However, this does mean that domestic stuff basically remains all mine in exchange.
At the moment we are stressing with the following arrangements: have sold our house so are moving out. Have not bought new house so are moving to MIL’s (actually very nice, will be a little holiday for me) which is 30 mins drive from our locale and where we are house-hunting. So, also house-hunting. Also returning to part-time work on 1 June so hiring a nanny. But nanny needs to work in our (intended) neighbourhood so if we don’t find a house by 1 June will be coming back to rent!
Plus, 8 month baby still waking once a night and toddler constantly asking for cuddles. (remember, still packing up too). Partner not capable of giving me cuddles and emotional support and I’m also not keen on complaining about him to friends or my mum so need to find a counselor. No time to do this plus, where to find counselor, here or near MIL’s house?
My main gripe at the mo is that the children’s emotional needs are my job, on top of the practical stuff that gets divided up, but there’s no credit or offset for that. And it’s very draining, especially without a full night’s sleep!
Tamara
By the way, thanks for listening to my rant, a little off topic I know.
Blue Milk, I understand your reluctance to post about marital arguments but I SOOO needed to read this post tonight, and here it was. My husband and I have a lovely marriage but no children yet (no longer preventing, though). Even so, he does the exact same thing that yours does with stress–tends to bury his head in the freaking Sahara so that I then have to spend precisely eighty-six years locating it before we can move on and, um, take care of the actual problem at hand.
We’re currently visiting another country for a few months and before leaving home, I visited the various offices to clarify paying bills in our absence (we live in a small town with no online bill pay for water, trash, etc.). When he found out I’d taken the time, he said, “Forget all that, why are you wasting your time? You need to get packed!” Very condescending. So I shrugged and complied. BENT, in other words. And now that bills are due? He’s freaking out–“Sweetheart, you gotta call the water people, the trash and sewer people, why didn’t we think of this before we left?” Ahem. Are you bleeping kidding with me??? ARGGGHHH. Like you, I decided to try something different this time. Told him, hey, you said not to worry about it, so I’m not gonna. You’re welcome to call them and all that; I tried to take care of this before but you wouldn’t let me.
My partner goes to sleep when he’s stressed out. I cry.
Things certainly got easier when I worked that out, but “easier” doesn’t mean “fairer”.
What an eye-opener of a post. I honestly thought this particular unfairness was due to the fact that my partner has depression. And I’d get so angry about the way he refuses to deal with the stress of domestic matters because it seemed like such ridiculous, hypocritical, absolutely-not-feminist “bending” on my part too.
Are you telling me there is no end in sight to this crazy lack of equality in shouldering the burden of day-to-day?
On a more positive note I am nodding my head at your acceptance of the fact that you deal with things differently and give him notice of the need to think about something. That sometimes works for me too.
Who set up this ridiculous system where you fall in love with someone and then you’re actually expected to work together based on that premise?
My wife bought me ‘The Post Baby Conversation’. It’s meant to be about both people rekindling, etc, but has a strong focus on a general view among women- a view that generally sounds pretty well evidenced- that men need to do more.
What I found actually pleased me, because although I wouldn’t claim to do 50% (and being married to a former school dux workaholic who hates sitting still, I’d need a lobe transplant to have any chance of such), I clearly do more than most of the blokes in there, and when Beloved reads some of their accounts I think it will do me no harm!
But also, reading the accounts of women with essentially the same complaint (man needs to do more), you uncover greatly differing levels, and attitudes to life, money etc that also play a role. For example, I know this isn’t you BM, but many of the women are complaining about long hours worked by high earning partners, without adding the suggestion that they’d be happy with those partners changing jobs.
Also widely varying, and clearly part of the problem, is the concept (almost entirely socially constructed) of what ‘has to be done’. Does a hot dinner need to be cooked (by someone) every night? Will it really kill the kids to eat some nicer packet items now and then, or re-wear an outerwear item that is essentially clean? Is there a law of science that says bedsheets or bathroom floors must be washed on a particular roster, say weekly?
Some of the complainants listed expectations of themselves (and thus in this context their partners) that were extraordinary, aspirations to some sort of Women’s Weekly centrefold perfection – a clear prescription for an endless war against domestic bliss.
And no I’m DEFINITELY not defending the guys the author interviewed who insist on their saturday mornings reading the paper, or playing golf, or various other indulgences, or who have never seriously pitched in. I find a considerable portion of my gender difficult to understand in that respect, not the least simply in the fact that I want to be part of putting the kids back to sleep, changing nappies, preparing their food etc because I think that’s special and in about 10 years when they don’t want to talk to their uncool dad I know I’ll look back on this time as incredibly special.
So in conclusion, many men DO need a massive shake up. The above book is not a bad start there, for giving them some perspective (and being from 3rd parties, slightly easier on your own relationship). It certainly made me rethink, and in places try harder.
Perhaps also we should consider whether the particular tasks, their order, their frequency etc, can be cut back, tapered, rationalised to make some breathing space at home. The once a week task list for laundry etc was drawn up at a time women worked full time at home to get it all done. Or people with the money employed ‘help’. Two working people’s ‘after work’ time does not add up to 1 person’s full time home effort. Many of us (Beloved and I certainly) have little or no family support, no-one to take a load of laundry now and then, help with groceries, or even babysit once in a blue moon.
We need to cut ourselves some slack. Not suggesting this applies to you BM, it’s just an unbundled group of incoherent observations…
A.
The patriarchy is strong and insidious. I have one 10 month old, we both work full time (but flexible relatively well-paying software type jobs) and I am pregnant due in July. I struggled with this a lot while on maternity leave (barely 8 weeks unpaid – which I paid for out of my personal savings) One thing I found was that for me breastfeeding was absolutely incompatible with feeling any sort of equality – the absolute happiest parenting decision I made was to stop at 6 weeks – but I hated hated hated it and it just felt like torture and sacrifice. There were some pretty tense fights too where I tried to explain how much more I was doing and got massive defensiveness. It slowly got better and we worked out explicit tradeoffs of nights/weekends “on-duty” When I got pregnant again I basically laid the smack down that I did not have the energy esp in the first trimester to be working full time and get up w/ the baby at night so that became his responsibility every night at least nominally. Fortunately P is an excellent sleeper and has been reliably sleeping through the night for 3 months or so. I have extremely low cleaning standards so I am happy to basically let that go to extreme lengths – pay for housecleaners but not so much actually find/arrange for them. He has found all of the child care arrangements and cooks virtually all the dinners. Some day to day planning stuff still doesn’t get done if I don’t do it (clean bottles for daycare, enough weather appropriate clothing, baby getting reliable amounts of solid foods) but overall not too bad. I hope baby #2 does not throw too much of a wrench into our tenuous balance. I think it is vital to talk about these issues and be mindful of how much of the work we take on without questioning why this is our responsibility – if that makes sense.
I gave myself permission to hire a cleaner once a week (after I got a promotion that meant I earned more per hour than she charged, just). This has made a huge difference to my sanity and our marriage. Once a week I come home to a clean house and it is wonderful. Also, I’ve noticed that when he’s travelling the house is generally tidier than when he is home. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s a grot, or if I expect him to be doing tidying that he isn’t doing. We certainly have different ideas of what is clean/tidy.
There are certain domestic chores that my husband either doesn’t do, does very infrequently or does so badly as to require a do-over. It can drive me up a wall. It’s things like, for example, the odd occasion I ask him to hang up some wet laundry. I’ve taken on the responsibility of laundry for the most part but if I ask for help he gladly does it. However, he doesn’t shake out the clothes or turn them right side out before hanging them up, he just chucks them on the airer haphazardly. Do they get dry? Yes, mostly. But they’re hella wrinkled as a result and so I have two options — wear (and dress our kids in) exceedingly wrinkled clothing or iron it all, which just creates more work for me. I don’t iron if I can at all help it. In fact, my iron is still in its original packaging.
I’ve shown him how to give the clothes a shake and how to hang them to minimise wrinkles but he just gets annoyed that I’m trying to direct him and make him do it ‘my way’, the underlying tone being that it’s not really his job and so I should just be grateful he’s done it at all, even if done badly. And it’s that kind of thing that makes me feel like he so does not GET IT when it comes to understanding how this household is run and how many little things are required to make it do so relatively seamlessly.
That said, I’ve realised that it’s not the end of the world if our clothes are wrinkled and have just forced myself to stop getting too het up about it. But should I have to, when it takes such a simple action to prevent it in the first place? It’s that kind of thing that makes me think he really does consider laundry ‘woman’s work’ and that I should be kissing his arse for deigning to ‘help’ at all. Coming from an otherwise equality-minded partner, it does put me in an unpretty patriarchy-hating place.
There was a brief period where my partner thought I could just ask if I wanted him to help more. But now he knows that talk of “help” is banned. Taking responsibility for this stuff isn’t inherently my responsibility, and if it gets left to me I turn into his mother. So he’s got an incentive.
We decided to approach it like housemates. We had a meeting, we set an agenda so we could both think stuff through before hand, and then we wrote a list of all the stuff that needs to happen and we negotiated how often. We wrote down roughly how long those jobs take.
Sometimes he’s got a lot of work to do, sometimes I’m too busy to keep track of everything I’m supposed to do, but generally it’s ok. We let go of a lot and have very low standards. Neither of us feels too oppressed by it all this way.
And very early on we established a winning system: one person arranges the date, the other arranges the babysitting, then the next time we swap. It prevents turning up at the date night seething.
I think my partner must have read this post today because he’s just making chocolate pudding… to follow the dinner he cooked, after looking after the sick kid all day. I should probably get off my arse and tidy up before I go out to bookclub.
you’re just boasting now… !
Thank you for this honest post. My partner and I have been considering having a child in the nearish future, and I have been both excited and filled with trepidation.
The major concern that has been plaguing me has come up in your post: that my partner may not (probably won’t) see eye to eye with me about equality in the chores and child-rearing, despite us both working. Currently childless, already I feel the squeeze of inequality in our general household – I often confront my partner about doing even a third of his share. I don’t think that he consciously means to leave everything to me, he is just genuinely lax about getting things done until the last minute…but it is unnerving how he seems content to let me do most of the work.
I don’t see that having a child with my partner is possible, without huge compromises on my part. And then what sort of mother and role-model would I be? It sounds as though you are getting closer to a workable situation, but I just don’t know how mothers do it. How can this ever be resolved?
I think we are leading parallel lives.
I also want to thank you for posting this. I have a lot of unspoken anger about my husband’s tendency to do half-jobs: do the laundry, but let it hang around in damp piles; clean the terrace but leave the furniture lying around in the garden. If I criticise then I’m ungrateful.
I recently interviewed one of Germany’s top women scientists about how to keep women in science and one of her tips for young female scientists was: find a partner who will do 50% of the work.
It’s a simple notion, but radical when you try to put it into action. I will condition my daughters to this way of thinking before they leave home!
As Germaine Greer recently said, the revolution is only just beginning.
Quoting because this, in particular, resonates strongly with me –
“The patriarchy, it doth like to see you bend way, way over backwards to placate it; and let me tell you, I bend.”
@Charlotteotter: I’ve heard that quote too, from a number of women, but here’s the rub –
you can think you’ve found a partner who picks up his share of the work, and that is the way things work for a number of years, but when the kids come along things change and the “roughly equal” partnership you had before disappears before your very eyes.
Thank you for posting this Bluemilk.
Oh, yes.
I’m pregnant with my third, but my first with my husband. I’ve been through the crapola twice already with my ex, and it’s a good part of what killed that relationship. I KNOW what’s coming.
Ignorance is bliss, and I think husband is willfully ignorant regarding what is headed our way. He insists he will not behave like my ex, but he already does, in ways. (You know, gets home before me and the kids, makes himself a sandwich and eats it standing at the counter, never thinking to start supper because hey, there are three more hungry people who will be arriving home in 15 minutes, and then isn’t hungry for supper, and expects that we’ll wait until he is…) This baby is really for him. I mean, yes, I’m happy, but I also already have two older kids, and had established financial stability, slender waist line, all that good stuff …
but… I’ll be losing wages. He’s freaking out and stressed about how that will interfere with his finances. It hasn’t occurred to him that some things need to be purchased, and no, a crib, a stroller, diapers, those are not optional purchases equivalent to a new dress or shoes, and no, it shouldn’t be my expense alone. Then he tells me, “just tell me how much $ you need.” Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. It’s not just the cash.
He *thinks* he will share equally, but I think the problem is for him, “sharing” the workload is me telling him what I need him to do, and him doing it. For me, sharing is about both of us taking the initiative and doing what needs to be done. If I have to tell him to do something, usually I may as well just do it myself.
There is a chapter in Naomi Wolf’s book (Mis)Conceptions — think of the book and of her what you will — that really strongly spoke to me. She discusses the post-birth partner arrangements, and how women find themselves rationalizing in order to consider something inherently un-equitable to be good enough, fair enough. It’s heart breaking — or at least, it was to me. This constant bending, as you say.
So yes, I’m there, dreading it, emotional and somewhat crazy on the inside, with a husband who has no clue and just can’t fathom what to expect, and even if he could, sees things too simplisticly to understand how scary it is for me. For him, he sees himself as fair and good, and willing, and that’s enough, and he thinks it should be enough for me, too. (Doesn’t help that he had a very old-school upbringing.)
(When I asked him if he had any inkling of what was going to happen during the birth, he said something very close to “well, you’re going to have pain, and I’ll hold your hand, and the midwife is going to come, and you’ll lie down and open your legs and the baby will come out.” That’s really not the shortened version. It’s what he said. There *are* several books on birth in plain sight in the living room. They’ve been there for months. He hasn’t opened even one of them.)
My partner’s way of dealing with any organisational issue is the same as yours, BM: ignore and then withdraw. I call it his veto power and I haaaate it. I do the running and then he gives my proposal the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Not always, but there’s that tendency.
Patriarchy loves more than the backwards bending: it is also a fan of the 180 degree turn and the backtracking and the dodging the bullet (and the patting one’s head while rubbing one’s stomach).
You are right: arguing about these things is feminist work, and more thankless than most work.
One of my reasons for not sending my son to daycare is related to all this: I know that if my son was sick, I would be the one to miss work to collect him/care for him. Hence care is split between grandparents and a nanny (all organised by me, of course).
When it was time for our daughter’s birthday party and we had only briefly discussed it, my partner said “let me know what I can do to help with the party”. I spluttered and then he got defensive and said “or we can discuss it another time”. So of course, I had to explain my expectation that we would actually plan it together! It went fine after that. But I did still run it pretty much.
More trivially than many of your examples (which I experience regularly) but not mentioned yet is the one where if I go out on my own someone always asks, is [partner] babysitting? I always reply, no, he is parenting since he is the Dad after all! Why is that not obvious????
Hehe, my mum says that about my brother all the time and I’m like, err, they are his kids, how can he possibly be babysitting?!
I’m married, no kids, but this post really resonates – somehow, all of MrLaurie’s tasks are classed as “Helping”. WTF?? He lived alone for four years before we lived together, and while his loo always needed more of a scrub than he gave it, he managed fine.
And yet, the moment we got married and started living togther, somehow, ALL the planning, purchasing and cooking of food is my responsiblity. ALL of the arranging of household issues – emailing the landlord about issues with the heater for example, and buying new lightglobes when they blow, is my job. And since we married, he has cleaned the toilet exactly once (in 18 months) – and even then he asked “er… do I use this ‘Duck’ thing?” WTF?? What did he use previously?! No matter what brand, loo cleaner tends to look pretty much the same!!
He does do most of the laundry… but like Noble Savage’s partner, does not seem to believe in the firm shake. And when it came to stains on his workshirts, expressed a helplessness at how to handle which persisted even after I purchased and demonstrated how to use napisan!! Gah!!
My main strategy has been to employ a cleaner to handle the bathroom/kitchen/mopping floor issues, although this feels very indulgent (how sad that two adults cannot coordinate enough to sort out only their own mess!), but on the other hand, I consider it an investment in our marriage and my mental health. I’m also learning to just deal with mildly crumpled clothes!
The other thing that irritates me is that apparently marriage means that I am now our social and family coordinator – for his family, as well as mine. How did that happen all of a sudden?!
Wow, sorry for the rant. It appears I have more issues there than I thought I did… hmm.
Um, yeah, let me add my voice to the chorus. Already, in our discussions of adoption, it’s clear who is thinking about it more. I might have to do kate’s list idea. It will take some serious fighting and a little emotional manipulation to do it, but I’m not above that. I consider it equal to the emotional manipulation of, say, him deciding that he has very important emails that can’t wait 20 minutes while I am vaccuuming and he is SUPPOSED to be cleaning as well.
Also, I have found with my spouse at least that he really does verbally believe in equality. So, with really hard tasks that I know he does not think are hard, I negotiate “comparable” activities. For instance, he thought cleaning the shower was nothing but hated dusting (his allergies are far worse than mine and the dust here accumulates really quickly) so after slaving through the shower cleaning a bunch of times, I finally “traded” dusting for that. He cleaned the shower twice before deciding that it was a lot harder than what he had thought and that we should take turns doing it.
I like the leaving-town-for-a-while-and-letting-them-deal tactic. Am not a mum (or dad) and won’t ever be, but looks like it’s kinda hard to stand back and let the dad’s fail, which is what I think they need. Probably for more than 2 weeks though. A few months at least I think (i.e. need to let them at least deal with a few majorish crises).
So to summarise the very solid issues emerging out of the comment thread:
* unequal split in responsibility for all things in the domestic sphere
* unequal expectations in the domestic sphere (eg. Men ‘helping out’ with the housework or ‘babysitting’ their own children).
* the double shift for working-outside-the-home mothers
* the energy required for sustaining anger/resisting versus ‘giving in’
* the hidden extras (the organising behind the scenes, the emotional tending to children = unequal responsibility and invisible work)
* the inequality inherent in having to tell someone what needs doing rather than both parties being responsible for seeing what needs doing
* how these aspects effect negotiating positions
* failing at equality/feminism (and the defensiveness that arises in both partners when this is raised)
* women holding on to expertise in the domestic sphere (he could never do it properly = as well as me = therefore I will just have to do it all myself).(Ed note: bearing in mind that people think a father dropping a child off to school with unbrushed hair and mis-matched clothes is kind of goofy-cute, but a mother doing it is clearly losing the plot – or as my own mother would describe, “a slovenly woman, very slovenly”).
* also the age-old negotiation tactic of don’t do something well so you never get asked to do it again
* mismatch in expectations by women around men who do more in the domestic sphere and men who are very ambitious in the work sphere – and the way to have a serious career of one’s own is to choose a man who will do 50% of the domestic work.
* working-outside-the-home mothers solving the problem by outsourcing elements of domestic labour (ie. The middle class solution).
* kate should run marriage counselling seminars, and I would attend
* * the veto power (love that term) – where one partner (guess which) gets to ignore and then withdraw from household organising work, as they have an opt-out clause and you don’t.
I must confess to laughing out loud to many of your comments, and I hope that doesn’t offend you all. This was mostly because I couldn’t believe the familiarity of it all, but also because your turn of phrase was really very good.
Ha!
I got quite sad and angry about it all when I first became a mother, and then my mother said I’d be happier if I gave in to it and acknowledged that men were just hopeless, and then I got completely bloody furious. The social expectation that I will do all of this stuff first, before I do the things I need for myself, is soul destroying. We muddled through it, we have the advantage of the Bloke working for himself and having more control of his working hours and so on than many men (there are significant disadvantages too, but for us it’s worth it) and the Bloke found his own solutions to some stuff.
As much as I like my kid to look tidy and well-dressed, some days it’s a choice of him or me. Given that I don’t squirm at hair brushing I choose me. If the other mothers are calling me slovenly they are polite enough to do it behind my back and I’m ok with that. I suspect many people’s expectations of neatness move with gender: my son gets away with being much scruffier than your daughter, because boys can’t be expected to sit still through tedious daily grooming.
So much I want to write here, as a long-time lurker on your blog. But in the end, this is all I will say:
I. Hear. You.
Yay for de-lurking.
I have to add that my ex, now that he has been a single dad for 6 years now (with a couple of longish girlfriends in there who inevitably started playing mother, which he took full advantage of). It took him about 2 years to really get on track with parenting, organizing, managing a household. Oh, he’s still got problems! But I have to say that he has learned. If he had been carrying as much responsibility for the kids when we were together as he has learned to do now, we might have managed. Two years, I tell you. … a week doesn’t do it, a month doesn’t do it. Because they know you’re coming back. But a divorce (lol!)….
I love this blog. Your honestly is truly refreshing.
I really feel like there is a great social opportunity with the government discussion of paid parental leave.
Imagine if each parent was expected (encouraged? forced?) to take a period of 3-6 months to be primary care giver of their children in the first year. Biology would likely result in the birth mother taking the initial time (especially if breastfeeding).
But if all parents were expected to take on the roll a few things would happen:
– It would stop being unique for a father to be a primary care giver
– It would stop business’s from necessarily thinking that birth won’t affect male parents in the workforce (discriminated against equally?)
– It would encourage a natural parent (or socialised from birth as I believe the case for a lot of women) to let go
– It would encourage a non natural parent (or socialised from birth as I believe a lot of men, and increasingly women) to step up
Of course there is still the high probability that the second shift and emotional/organisational responsibility will fall to one party (often the mother) but change will happen and the default mother-carer/father-worker will hopefully shift.
Fascinating post and comments. I’m a recent fan of your blog, and a big fan. I’m step-father of a four year old (who from birth has had no involvement at all from natural father), and father of a three month old baby girl.
There’s so much that could be written in response, but to suffice to say that males don’t come off looking particularly good in respect to most of the responses. And I’m not by any means going to defend my gender, I think often we collectively need a big kick up the behind and ought to take a good look at ourselves.
I will, however, make two generalisations about us males that I think hold a fair degree of truth.
The first is that the male of the species is generally not good at critical self-evaluation. We are never really conditioned or accustomed to re-thinking who we are, what our role ought to be, and how we ought to relate to our partners and indeed families. For myself it took a period of extreme sickness when my partner was pregnant to really come to grips with the respective demands, and indeed unreasonable demands, placed on women. For months I looked after my sick pregnant partner (who literally could not dress herself due to a shocking case of hypermesis gravidarum that ended in hospitalisation), and my step-son singlehandedly. I’d always fancied myself as a proper contributor, but what an eye-opener!
The other generalisation is that a lot of males really are, at best, ambivalent to the whole project of child-rearing. In reality, it tends not to be the male that drives the introduction of children into a relationship. With such ambivalence as a starting point, it’s not really surprising that the woman feels let down by such a man once children come. I don’t agree with the attitude, but I think a lot of men are just not focused on the new needs of a new family the way women are.
For me, when baby did come along after a nightmare pregnancy, I was already used to doing almost everything; I basically do everything except breast feed and it’s allowed by partner to rest and recover from giving birth and our parenting is a quite effective team effort.
Sorry for the long comment, but thanks again for your post which ought to be read by a lot more men!
Fantastic consciousness raising session, BM.
Really sad to see so many women feeling the same way, and I would tentatively count myself among them. I’ve got a joint post about something similar lined up for my blog, but I’m waiting until my partner has time to spend on it…
Oh man. I just came back for a second and time and read all of these thinking YES! (I don’t want to talk to mum or friends about how useless the man I married is, that just makes me feel stink) YES! (why can’t he flick out the clothes? WHY?!) YES! (is it cos of his depression? Am I even allowed to criticise someone who is depressed?) and YES! to everything you summarised. It made me cry a little that everyone has these same problems, but also made me feel slightly less useless.
PS I am not the same Kat as the other Kat who posted above. That is a little confusing, to say the least.
Yes. F***ing yes. I’m here with my 12 week old and dealing with the reality of a partner has the best possible attitude to the theory of shared parenting. But the reality of shared parenting? Somehow that’s shaping up differently.
While he was home for the first 9 weeks of our little one’s life (an absolute luxury which I will be forever grateful for) the shared parenting sort-of-kind-of happened, or at least it was easy to let it slide when it didn’t. Now that he’s gone back to work the cracks are well and truly showing.
In his eyes, he has begun a brand new job, is gone from 7am-7pm daily and is willing to “lend a hand” when he gets home. Somehow this completely neglects the fact that I’ve started a brand new job (stay-at-home parenting), have gone from doing night shift to night AND day shift (to give him a chance to get on his feet and adjust to the new job), and don’t get a convenient lunch break, or even the drive/bike ride home to tune out.
Suddenly his belief that men should get up to their babies in the middle of the night or that stay-at-home parents work just as hard as out-of-home parents is a little less clear. I completely lost it when he told me in a bewildered tone that he was willing to do whatever he could. Willing? Nobody gave me a manual I’ve been hiding from him. I have to plan, organise, problem solve, adjust and accept responsibility at every step along the way. There is no reason he shouldn’t be figuring out how to do all those things too.
So yes, I too find myself wondering where to draw the line, what battles to fight and which is more trouble; arguing over big-picture shared parenting now or just issuing a tired instruction for short term relief.
For him, he feels that because he does more than the completely disengaged man that’s a lot to be proud of. For me, I can appreciate the loads of washing that get done or the shared responsibility of shopping, but it’s still a long way from equality. At this point I’d rather do 20 loads of washing to have a day off from the mental load it takes to keep the whole mess moving forward.
At my lowest, I feel like a single parent masquerading as a partnered one, but I feel the need to refrain from discussing this honestly with our family and friends in order to not betray our relationship. Which leaves me further isolated. And the ultimate joke? I now feel responsible for the relationship-repairing it takes to discuss these issues and try to resolve them.
just wanted to agree with so much that has been said above, and it has really made me think i need to better sort out the housework arrangements between partner and me before our first baby arrives in the fall. “let me know if you need me to do anything to help” is not really going to cut it, but i probably need to, like many mentioned above, stop caring quite so much about the wrinkles in the clothes!
also. laughed so hard about the last point in the original post. it was like a scene straight out of my life.
hey hey hey…i always thought that only the chinese woman had to deal with all the above mentioned. I have always admired the talk of equality in the western world!!! Hehz…I am “enlighten”.
I cant agree more to what has been posted. It sounded too familiar to what’s taking place at home where I struggled with work, housework chore and a toddler:)
Thank you for the sharing and the great tips in dealing with our partners:) Bravo to all wonderful ladies out there!
Point taken that you maybe shouldn’t be having to do any more to draw these issues to your partner’s attention, however this is the book I referred to above…
http://www.rockpoolpublishing.com.au/books.php?name=the-post-baby-conversation
…and I would really recommend handing it to them and saying ‘I’m not happy, we need to talk, read this as background material’.
It contains a lot of anecdotes not unlike the above, and a lot of unhappiness that for the detached, ‘cruising along’ male could be a real eye opener.
For example, I note one commenter above mentioning control of money issues by the partner in full time employment. The book has a number of anecdotes illustrating how manipulative/demeaning that can be, and making suggestions (namely, parent at home is doing just as important a job, and shouldn’t have to be coming cap in hand to get money).
I really like this book recommendation, thanks.
Welcome!
Hi,
You have definitely hit a raw point here and its great to see the flurry of responses, even if it is painful to read. My kids are now 17 and 13 and it feels like a lot of this stuff is behind us, though not quite.
For the purposes of cleansing, an element of fun, and sharing – if you have the time to read – I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell you my story.
When my kids were little there was a program on radio national that was relevant to the experience of women with kids at home. Anyhow I rang with something in mind to say, but as the call developed – online I might add – the interviewer asked me about my experience. I need to emphasis here that I didn’t ring to talk about home life – but a more objective view – but when I was asked I was even surprised with my response. Amongst the words used I said something like – I never thought it would be like this – and my voice cracked – along the lines that you and others have spoken. After I hung up a couple of other callers rang in and spoke to me – you know you don’t need to do this – and more.
Anyhow, again surprisingly to me it took me a couple of weeks to get over the call, it dragged to the surface feelings that had been buried and I needed somehow to get back ontop (and mind you my hubby – like most of yours is amongst the good ones – I wouldn’t stay if he wasn’t).
About six months later we were away somewhere and hubby was driving in the car by himself, you guess it, they replayed the tape from the segment and naturally he recognised the voice and came in – so you have been talking on the radio about us. He was hurt, offended and absolutely did not understand – the whole thing could have led to us splitting up – we were on different sides of a brick wall and words just couldn’t cut through. We ended up each going to a counsellor (separately – which was great) I took the opportunity to talk almost non stop for an hour and felt much better for it. And then he went – we never really talked about what happened for him while he was there, but this session became a turning point for us. From then on he changed. I would say that he tried more and today he says that he does more than me around the house and with the kids – I’m not sure about that but he certainly does a lot.
The way I see it – we are pioneering new ways of being both mothers, fathers and families – the negotiated family – that relies on communication, respect and cooperation that I think the world hasn’t seen before. There is a need for huge social and cultural changes to support us pioneers but until these come through we need to go on – doing our daily thing. Our kids will be better for all this, they are learning heaps – so all I can say is – more power to you – remembering that we are doing something really important for ourselves and for our kids while promoting a truely civil society.
It can feel like daily grind – but it is really early shattering!
cheers, Joannie
PS: I meant to say – earth shattering. J
OK. I’m a guy.
And I think the men largely described in the posts above are shits of the highest order. Sitting back while the mother of your child(ren) struggles is unforgivable. However…
Here’s my challenge to the women who posted above:
What exactly, of your partner’s behaviour, __really__ surprised you. Srsly !
It seems to me that the common theme was that the mothers considered that their partners would automagikally get onboard with the whole child-rearing thing.
And that they (the male partners) would alter their personal modus operandi such that they would take on an equitable share of the child-rearing responsibilities.
I’ll go a step further: Why were you attracted to your partner in the first place – was it their inherent childrearing capability, or was it their sense of fun ?
I’d say the latter, and this is the thing: Good fun is not the same as Responsible Partner. Not even remotely. Face it, the fun men in your life are primarily out for fun first, and responsibility a very remote second.
And I’ll go one further: the journey to motherhood necesitates hormonal changes such that child-rearing support issues are of primary importance tp her. This is often known as “Nesting”.
However, for a guy, nothing in particular has changed. The wife/partner/girlfriend has different priorities, but for HIM, it’s all BAU (business as usual).
And this is where I think the majority of posters in this thread risked a non-happy outcome.
Some (many?) relationships enable men to be lazy because that is what the man wants, and because that is the path of least resistence for his partner . And when those same relationships bring a newborn into life, the woman wishes that the man would actually step up. However, he has established a history of laziness, so why would he ?
Expecting the above man to have insight into the situation is akin to expecting him to mind-read.
Must be said: I’m not that guy. I have always helped out, right from the beginning. When I get home from work, I say to my wife: “What can I do to help”, and then I do what she asks. Every day.
Thing is most of the women commenting here would identify as feminist and a good many of them would have partners who see themselves as feminist and they would have argued that their relationships seemed pretty equal before they had children together – both earning salaried, both making financial decisions, both cleaning the house, both cooking and doing washing etc. So the shock of reverting to such traditional, sexist and unequal patterns after the joint decision to have children is pretty profound.
And yeah, if you still think of doing your share of the rearing of your own children as “helping out” then you still have a way to go.
Nope. I was attracted to my partner because he was fun AND responsible. Because he makes me smile a lot AND I knew I could count on him to not totally slack off on any of the daily work that needs to be done. And because we are both feminists, even though we are both flawed in how we act that out.
That doesn’t mean he can totally escape the sexism in his upbringing and the world at large; that DOES mean that I respect his abilities to try to overcome that upbringing by expecting him to take care of his share of the work. And though his privilege may make him defensive sometimes, he actually APPRECIATES that I fight him on these things, because he DOES want us to be equals and knows that my position as the woman in the relationship means that I usually get more crap for it.
Did you know that he always tells me that I don’t have to do everything? That he feels guilty when I’m doing housework and he’s not, which we’ve both concluded is the best way to keep things as equal as possible, because it is his own values and impulses that are pushing him to work alongside me? That every time I talk about how I feel like the world judges me on the basis of how clean our home is, he does everything he can to make me NOT feel like that because he thinks I shouldn’t have to?
I’m sorry that you apparently think so poorly of yourself and your fellow men that you think men can’t both be fun AND responsible. Because that’s what grown-ups do, and I am sure every woman on this thread respects her partner as a grown-up.
I’m not that guy. I have always helped out, right from the beginning. When I get home from work, I say to my wife: “What can I do to help”, and then I do what she asks.
You might have noticed that precisely this attitude, that helping out is what makes you “not that guy” is almost exactly what most women here are complaining about. Running a house and raising kids is a joint management role, not a manager and an assistant. From your own description you sound pretty much like many of the blokes described here – they do more than most, but we’re looking for a sharing of the responsibility, not just the chores.
That’s quite a conclusion to draw from very little data.
I’m interested by what you mean by “share the responsibility”. Does this mean all decisions are by committee (i.e. both partners) ? Or do you mean that you want the male partner to automatically know what needs to be done and what the priorities are, and then set about doing them at the right time and in the right order ?
There are problems with both approaches. Being a committee means you both have to be across all issues, and what happens if there is no consensus ? Also, this implies the right to re-litigate if one partner makes an executive decision (perhaps for practical reasons, such as an approaching deadline) that the other disagrees with.
I don’t know how much spare time you have, but we just do not have the time to manage our whanau like this.
The other approach expects the male partner to basically be a mind-reader. Good luck with that 😉
In a situation where one partner gets home earlier than the other, it is simply more efficient for the partner who arrives home later to touch base before taking initiative. While I _could_ simply start taking responsibility when I get home, it is actually better to ask how I can help my wife, then help her, _then_ get on with whatever else needs to be done.
If both partners arrive home around the same time, then I agree that both need to step up and take responsibility, without one being the default leader.
Same goes with the mornings, assuming both get up at the same time. I never ask my wife what she needs help with in the mornings, we both just get on with it.
Look, you’re interested in achieving equality in your relationship so good for you and frankly while I am not in the business of giving out cookies that interest still puts you a long way ahead of a great many number of men.. and you’re right about it being impossible to unpack anybody’s complex intimate relationship with their partner from a couple of paragraphs in a comment they made on a blog… but word to the wise, don’t try and do the same thing to women who have commented here that you are complaining about being done to you.. their relationships and problem-solving skills probably go far beyond “the fun men in your life are primarily out for fun first, and responsibility a very remote second”.
The “what do you want me to help with” approach expects the woman to be the mind-reader. For instance, my husband expects me to tell him when we need to clean, which requires me to try to read his mind as to when he actually feels like cleaning or has time to do it.
Same goes with the mornings, assuming both get up at the same time. I never ask my wife what she needs help with in the mornings, we both just get on with it.
As long as the different things you both do are as equitable as possible, why is this a problem? Why is this not the model for when you get home, too? You might have legitimate reasons for it, but these are the kinds of questions that feminists (like blue milk and the rest of us) ask.
Why is this not the model for when you get home, too? You might have legitimate reasons for it, but these are the kinds of questions that feminists (like blue milk and the rest of us) ask.
As I explained, if one partner is home first, then they have the up-to-date info on the state of what needs to be done. The second-home home partner will be more efficient if they check in with the first, as opposed to making a decision about current priorities without reference to current exigencies. It’s not about who is in charge, its about efficiently operating as a team.
or instance, my husband expects me to tell him when we need to clean, which requires me to try to read his mind as to when he actually feels like cleaning or has time to do it.
This is exactly the problem I have been talking about. He want’s you to take responsibility for his agency, which is basically a cop-out of responsibility.
Instead, I think it would be better if he got his act together and, assuming he can’t figure out what needs to be done, he should come and ask you.
I suppose my point is that men who are unable take responsibility in the manner which is popular in this thread fall into two camps: those that really want to help and those that don’t. If they really don’t want to help, then I dunno, maybe counselling will help.
If the do want to help, then if they start by asking what needs to be done, then I expect that they will eventually figure out that patterns to your domestic chores, and (hopefully) figure out things like: a basket of wet laundry needs to be put out on the line, a line of dry laundy needs to be brought in before dusk.
More importantly, the lessen they could learn is: if you have spare time, use it wisely.
I notice that when men are continually busy with domestic duties themselves, they are more able to discern the effort their partners have been putting in all along…
“Or do you mean that you want the male partner to automatically know what needs to be done and what the priorities are, and then set about doing them at the right time and in the right order ?”
This one.
Because managing a household is not an inherently female thing to do, and each person has the ability of doing those things that need to be done and prioritising the tasks. If your priorities are different then so be it: have a committee, decide what each of you will do and be done with it. It’s not that hard is it? It’s not mind reading – it’s common sense and having clear conversations.
You obviously have a method that works, great for you! I’m sure you also keep an open dialogue with your wife about the division of labour and how comfortable she is with the arrangements.
Hey, Blue Milk – thanks 🙂 I sent this post to my boyfriend J, who’ll be moving in with me and my (male) housemate tomorrow!
J is very optimistic. I’m… not so much. Mainly because I’ve been living with the housemate already for 9 months, and even though he was feminist before I met him, and even though we’d talked before moving in together about what we expected, that somehow didn’t translate into him actually doing the cleaning.
I mean, he talks a lot about it, and if you need someone to do the washing up or empty the bins, he’s there, but as for mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms or hanging the washing properly….
Anyway. With three of us, things are going to get interesting, because it’ll get disgusting that much quicker!
This whole thread has been fantastic, too. It’s good to know you’re not alone.
Oh, and Mikaere Curtis:
Yes. I DO expect “the male partner” – and, indeed, the male housemate! – to automatically know what needs to be done. This is so far from rocket science it might as well be a dissertation on slow-moving novels.
If the laundry basket is full, do some laundry. If there is no clean cutlery, do the washing up. If the shower is covered in shampoo residue, clean the bloody shower.
My womb doesn’t give me magical x-ray vision to see what’s dirty. Just like their bollocks don’t give them some kind of visual dirt-filter. And I can’t quite believe I needed to write that!
hat’s quite a conclusion to draw from very little data.
I’m interested by what you mean by “share the responsibility”.
We’re seeing a red flag in the shape of the H-word – Help. I’ve had this discussion with my partner over the years. His share of the housework will slip back and back until we have to have “the talk”, which I dread. It’s at that point that I always used to get the H-word: Okay, okay, I’ll help you more.
Upon which I have to explain the concept that others have already explained above: Don’t see the chores as my preserve which you “help” with, see them as belonging to both of us.
Just an addition: If it’s farming, or car mechanics, men don’t have any problem with the “see what needs doing and do it or make a mental note to schedule it during the week” part. The idea that housework is an arcane body of knowledge known only to women is a twee concept which has served men well over the years but now we’re, you know, onto it.
Rachel, this worked for me when I was flatting: Compile a list of regular housework tasks, and weight them by time/effort/ickyness, so you group them into big, medium and small tasks.
Put up a chart with each task list (in groups) and columns for weeks, with subcolumns per flatmate. Whenever you do a task, add a tally to your personal column for the week.
This means flatmates can do tasks as suits their schedules, and if someone is not pulling their weight, you actually have documentary evidence for it. It won’t stop people being lazy, but it does enable you to point to specifics when confronting their behaviour.
“Yes. I DO expect “the male partner” – and, indeed, the male housemate! – to automatically know what needs to be done. ”
Hmm, I think I had a slightly different view on what that meant. I meant it in terms of knowing what was of priority to you, the female partner. When you have small children, there is almost endless work, so I meant this in terms of what she thinks is important. Him being busy at non-critical work is not as useful as him being busy at critical work.
But, yeah, I agree that if the male partner sees something that needs doing, he should get on and do it, assuming no other higher-priority items.
Your chore-rota is something that I’ve considered, but I rejected it on the grounds that it would be ME that would be the one to instigate and implement it. Which means more work, not less. Also, there’s only two shared rooms in the flat! (Our kitchen/living/dining room is one room; Housemate has a bedroom; me and J have a bedroom; we all share a bathroom and the hall, of course.)
My comment must have seemed as though I’m too young to have experienced living with small children. Actually, although I’m only 22, I’m the eldest of 3 kids, the youngest of whom is turning 9 this summmer. My teenage years were spent in a house with a baby and an older child, so I am aware of the endless work.
But re: “critical” vs. “non-critical” work – I’d still expect him to know the difference! Context is everything – sorting through all the papers on the table, one by one, is brilliant if we need to find a bill, but pretty damn pointless if we need to eat dinner! It doesn’t take much, surely, to think to yourself “is what I am doing helpful at this moment in time?”
[quote]I meant it in terms of knowing what was of priority to you, the female partner. When you have small children, there is almost endless work, so I meant this in terms of what she thinks is important.[/quote]
Not trying to pile on, but surely having the female partner setting the priority list, or deciding unilaterally which are the most important tasks, means the implicit assumption that the woman is the one who should know what needs doing, and decides what should be done?
Surely that is again having the implicit assumption that the housework is her domain, and that the male partner is in a secondary ‘assistant’ role when it comes to management of the house (and/or child)?
I meant that the male partner needs to be cognisant of what his partner thinks are priority items, in a teamwork sense. Not in a “this isn’t my domain” sense.
It’s pretty clear in this thread that the women have strong views about what should be done, and I think greater teamwork would result from clear communication of priorities.
It is entirely possible that some of the men mentioned above *do* think they are stepping up and being responsible, and yet they have a vastly different set of priorities (and conceivably see some of what their partner does as optional, non-essential tasks). In these instances, improved communication would likely improve things.
By that logic, shouldn’t both partners need to be cognisant of what each other thinks are priority items?
If we are talking teamwork we need to presuppose the male partner has priorities for maintaining the house and childcare too.
Yes, it’s semantics, but stating that the male partner needs to know what female partner thinks are priorities STILL implies that the woman is the boss of the house and the man is the helping hand.
You obviously take care and consideration in your arguments but please try to be aware of the language you use because it implies a way of thinking that may not be an accurate representation of what you mean. And you WILL get jumped on about it.
I do have pretty strong ideas about what should be done, but those ideas have been modified by everything from Flylady to Enjo to a cleaner. I would be overjoyed by someone else being involved in defining “what should be done”.
Which is not to say that I won’t put up any objections, but these things are a science – show me the evidence, and I will jump ship faster than the cunningest rat you ever saw.
I’d be surprised if any of the feminist folk that frequent these parts were radically different on this point.
The communication theme, though, is completely valid. The format may not matter, but I suspect that we have all relegated to the mundane “that which does not need to be discussed” to some extent. I think maybe I feel like a failure if I’m STILL discussing washing and vacuuming….
Great post. Thanks.
I don’t think you should expect your husband to know automatically what needs done. How is he to know what you’ve done while he was at work? I cannot count how often my husband has washed dishes that I already cleaned or vacuumed a floor in a room that I have not yet dusted. It’s ridiculous for me to expect him to know where in the housework-to-do-list I am on any given day or to read my mind and know exactly how I want things done. If you have a husband who cares enough to ask you what you need help with when he gets home or to do what you ask, then be grateful and stop your whining.
[…] of Blue Milk, because there’s something very comforting about knowing that other people have these kinds of arguments too, albeit about different problems. And after they’d eaten and cleared the table, I caught up […]
[…] laughed because as it happens that is precisely what they were all talking about. So we chatted about arguments with our partners and then one friend, who is Korean, told us how difficult it is to argue in English with her […]
[…] Thinking about it now I see that the fairness I have managed to create in my own home has in many ways been a product of the extra flexibility I have as a part-time worker*. I can test solutions. I can also withdraw, delay and refuse. I have more time to think, giving me the perspective necessary to problem-solve, though as Bitch PhD points out, the fact that monitoring equality falls to me in the spousal relationship is a sign of my inequality. House-work strikes and the like need both time and alternative options. If you wait until your partner gets around to doing their share of the laundry you may end up with no clothes to wear to work. If you make small children pack their own school lunches it will probably be you fielding the phone calls at work from the kids’ school about the empty lunchboxes. (And there is nothing like children being held to ransom in a stand-off with a partner to make a mother fall back into line). […]
This has been interesting reading for sure. I agree it does feel a bit like we are all in the same boat. Could that possibly have something to do with the fact that men and women are intrinsically different? 🙂 and to follow this point along a bit, that women have great similarities to each other -as do men. Not that it is beneficial to lump all men in one basket, or all women.
I have had two relationships with men where children are involved. These relationships are complicated things and -speaking for myself, I got strung up on many occasions about how differently we see things and ‘logic’ things out. Sometimes I just feel like I am talking to the mentally incapacitated.
That being said, it is really pleasing to see a few men come into this conversation and bravely lend their understanding and suggestions, especially because some here have definitely had a bit of a ‘rant’ against the lack in mens’ responsibility.
This has been a bit learning thread for me, and I will be taking a lot of it and applying it to my own relationship.
Thanks to all…
So I’m sitting here (in Athens, Greece) at the laptop at exactly midnight. The children (5 and 3,5) have been asleep for about an hour (It’s summer, they’re on “holiday”), hubby is slurping on an ice-cream and I have work to do. The professional, income-generating kind. I have seven windows open with articles I should be reading, but I happened upon this blog and post … and decided I could sleep at 3:30 instead of 3 because, well … “Gee whiz, look at that, I’M NOT ALONE AND IT’S NOT JUST A MEDITERRANEAN THING!!”
I work from home, the children go to play school and even though most months I bring in almost double what he does, he (and many in our environment) actually act as though I don’t HAVE a job or a boss (I consider my clients my bosses!) or a workplace. I cut off work at 3:30 when the children come back, do whatever is necessary until he gets in around 5:30 … and then I continue to do most everything (and continue my work after everyone’s asleep). He will have his shower, serve himself a plate of food and then sit on the couch and play with the children laughing (all of them) at how I don’t know the entire Cars story or remember the looker from Rapunzel or know who Bob Pants dude is. Well OF COURSE I don’t, because my neck can’t bend around the kitchen wall and watch TV or solve puzzles at the SAME time I’m folding laundry, cooking, getting things ready for next day or just trying to steal 10 minutes for my shower.
I too have been quite livid the last two years as although we landscaped our future together and wrote the plot for our family, life things suddenly got too much for one partner and so the other (here, here, pick me, pick me!) had to pick up the slack. A major spanner in the works was when I was accepted for a PhD 2 years ago… To save the marriage and the family I opted to give up on my life-long dream because it meant being away 3 times a year for almost a week and me feeling like a right selfish non-mom bitch who was smiling at academia and entrepreneurship rather than cooing with the toddlers in her rightful place. Phew, Divorce Drive exit A deftly missed. Then I started seeing exit B looming a while ago for all the reasons of domestic inequality noted above … I prepared myself, even found a place to move to and then … once again had the Guilt Fairy tapping on my shoulder: “Swallow,” she said. “Water your wine down,” she ranted. “Think of the children and what it cost you, the child of divorced parents,” she warned… And so I too took the bait and decided I would have to accept a lot of this. I mean things really are great when I’m not tense and bitching and accusing. I’ve realised that most parents divorce in the early toddler years or the middle adolescent ones … As one reader commented above, “if he had done this when we were together, we might have made it” (sic). That’s my old-school, Greek father today – getting his own water, cooking pot roast and dusting the TV cabinet. “Dad, talk to your SIL, he’s mucking up in the same way!”
What has me still seething from time to time is how come when someone wants to improve their photography skills they join a forum or take a class, when they want to learn how to dance better, they sign up for lessons, but just suggest, intimate, or even entertain the thought of going for parenting workshops or marriage counseling, backs are pinned to the wall and (usually) the XX carrier looks like a banshee who just met her evil stepmother?!?!!!!
I do believe very strongly in the semantics of it all. I too go red when I hear dads are “baby-sitting” or “helping” in the parenting department. I thought things might be better across the continent or the Atlantic, but it seems, shock, horror and woe to me, it’s in the international social DNA!!
By the way, we’re off on our summer vacation next week, but I have so much work there’s no way I will be able to arrange everything (pack, etc.) so, tomorrow morning, just after his coffee, he will hear how he has to do it all since he’s on leave as of today. In following with my own new-found lowered standards outlook, I really don’t care if he takes too few clothes for the children, forgets the towels or doesn’t remember the sun block. These are all easily remedied, what isn’t is my sanity and our children’s emotional well-being.
Courage and strength to all of us, WE ROCK! 🙂
My partner and I are young, mid-late 20s, and he is the one who is beginning to yearn for children with me. I’ve told him it’s lovely to hear – and maybe in years and years (and years and years), to which he agrees – but that I am terrified of having children. Of course he thought pain of childbirth? messing up my career? toll on my body? etc… He was stunned when I said I am sure it will be the first time in our relationship where I will have to do the ‘woman’s role’ and he will be ‘the man’, and I didn’t think that despite his protests we would be different from allll the other couples this happened to. And that I was terrified of resenting him.
But even now he doesn’t really get what I mean, and it’s only the idea of it…
I am very lucky being brought up in the family that I was. My parents didn’t want us brought up by childminders so my father was a house husband and full time father while my mum held down the teaching career. With difficulties finding reliable work and temping a lot, she never even took maternity leave for her sixth child, having her in the school christmas holidays before starting a new job in the first week in January. If she hadn’t they wouldn’t have offered her the permanent job she has and loves now. My father brought us up on feminist literature and the understanding that their way of doing things is every way as logical as the “normal” way, and that it made as much sense for him and us to take on our mothers name as his (more too because it’s a more interesting name) My only sadness is that it’s set my standards high in that respect. I don’t expect a man to assume he’d take time off or take my name but I expect him not to assume that I’d do it but this seems depressingly hard to find. I become easily exasperated with the men and women around me.
You split & share costs?
Who are you directing the question to..? This discussion is all a bit old so if it is me I can answer you but if it is everyone else here you are unlikely to get a reply.
I’ve only just found this – magnificent post and comment stream. Magnificent!
Bookmarked to re-read every time I need it.
I haven’t read all the comments, but I relate to the post! I’ve just gone back to paid work after 2 years mat leave with kid #3, and oh the sudden realisation that for the first time in my life I’ve had credit card debt was not fun. It’s almost under control now, but. I’ve only just realised how much our expenses really have gone up now, with three kids and two of them in school. Damn.
But what I really wanted to say was that, although I do do the majority of the organising/managing kid stuff in our house (more so after two years at home of course), one of the ways I’ve balanced it is I just say – you take care of X, to my partner. Like, you organise the kids’ dentist appointments, and make sure you can take them. You organise the vaccinations. It helps that we both work part time though (although he’s presently 4 days and I’m 1, so that’s not much help, but soon it will be 3 and 2 or 3 and 3 again – I hope!). But note, I’m still the one telling him to organise them, most of the time.
And, I’m still the one that remembers the friends’ birthdays, makes sure there are presents, thinks about when they have school excursions, etc, but when we have more equally shared care those things have balanced out *more* in the past. Some of them anyway.
I should add that although I “manage” most of the kid stuff in our house, we jointly manage the other stuff (eg I tend to manage the groceries and do most of the cooking, while he generally manages the laundry and does almost all of the washing/hanging/folding – though he does expect me to make sure the clothes i personally want washed are in the wash basket, what’s with that?), and because I work nights a lot *and* I still go to bed earlier than him (I do have to get up to the toddler more often though, and I virtually never sleep in), he also tends to do more of the daily housework than me.
BTW I can’t figure out how to change the link on my wordpress account, but my personal blog is at http://kayoz.typepad.com and I was just blogging about some of this stuff – housework stuff more than parenting stuff, but it all ties in together – today.
[…] Arguing with your partner and other feminist work […]
I was woken at 3am by a vomiting kid (husband slept soundly throughout) and found my way back to this post. It’s comforting and yet depressing that so many women have it similar to me with their feminist, well-intending husbands and partners. I am now working full-time, so am fighting a new battle so avoid/negotiate the second shift. Last night it involved getting home from work, and sanitizing the kitchen (husband and kids are on summer holidays, having a lovely time hanging out together, which I don’t begrudge, but no-one has met a j-cloth yet), sending kids out to the grocery store because the other grown-up had not noticed there was nothing in the house for breakfast (I had called from work and asked if there was anything I needed to pick up on my way home – apparently not), making supper, getting four kids to bed (sleepover kid required fresh bedding) before falling into bed myself and reading my book for 32 seconds. Now I sit here at 5am with the guilty feeling that there are 17 mounds of clean but crumpled laundry that I could be folding so that people have something to wear today.
I also have the guilty feeling that moaning on nice safe feminist sites is passive-aggressive and what I really should be doing is the feminist work of arguing with my partner. It’s better for everyone in the longterm if I do, but so damn exhausting in the short-term. Another job to do on top of the long list of jobs.
One thing is true: I very much love going to work. There the feminist work is different, but less personal, and it is such a relief.
Thanks, BM, for your lovely blog that provides a refuge and food for thought for this feminist in the middle of the night.
[…] how much I like really honest conversations about parenting and long-term relationships and balancing work and family. In fact, I have a whole category on this blog dedicated to parenting meltdowns. Share […]
I enjoyed the post, and I enjoyed the comments too. I recognise this. Me too!
Culturally most tasks are gendered. Cleaning the toilet is “woman”, fixing the broken toilet “male”. Re-negotiating this is hard. And it’s not surprising that our men don’t like being asked to take on responsibilities. But if women are at work, and doing car maintenance as well, feeling responsible for vaccuuming can feel too much.
Perhaps the answer is to do less, even if that means only doing the “female” jobs.
I had a major breakthrough when I stopped saying “It’s our joint responsibility, but he is abdicating it” and started to say “he’s tired, and I’m tired too”. So long as we are both at about the same level of well-being, it doesn’t feel too inequitable to me any more. Yes, that means I do most of the domestic, but it’s still fair.
If one of us was feeling overloaded and the other was well rested, it isn’t fair. But that’s not the case for us – we’re both stretched!
This only works, though, because we have joint finances. We are married, and married for life. And so our futures are together. If your partnership is more tentative, this way of thought might not work for you.
And you’re with this guy, because??? Maybe it’s because you are not really a feminist. I mean, a feminist would never be with someone who was a member of the patriarchy, right? And if you didn’t know he was before, you know it now, so assume you are packing your bags (or he is)?
[…] bluemilk streitet mit ihrem Partner und erreicht immerhin zwei Durchbrüche, auch wenn die wirkliche Gleichberechtigung noch auf sich warten lässt: Arguing with your partner, and other feminist work […]