Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Housework
In my attempt to understand get inside the head of a character I'm working on, I've been reading The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom. (It's a companion to The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, which gave me a headache when I read it last year; the editors of the two anthologies are married.) Unfortunately, the book hasn't helped me understand my twentysomething male character--but it has made me think about other topics. Today, I'd like to discuss housework.
Both anthologies detail the domestic squabbles that center around housework, which usually becomes a major issue after children are born. According to the women writers, their husbands are incompetent, and need constant reminders and supervision to handle household tasks. According to the men, their wives nag them and have ridiculously high (and often unspoken) standards.
Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that I'm no stranger to arguments about housework. Based on what I've talked about with friends and read on my Babycenter birth board, it's very common for couples to have to renegotiate domestic tasks once children come along. And let me just say for the record that I think arguing is preferable to settling for unfair arrangements.
Back in college, both Tom and I were sloppy. He was sloppier--it was often hard to see the floor of his dorm room--but I was hardly a neatnik. Our first years of marriage, we were both so busy with our jobs that housework was usually relegated to bursts of cleaning on weekends; dishes piled up for days.
But once Ben was born, things changed. For one thing, I was home with the baby all day, and it would drive me crazy if the trash needed to go out or the sink was so full of dishes you couldn't even fill a teakettle. For another, since I wasn't working (at least not 9 to 5) I felt like I had less power--which made me keep score about who was doing how much housework, and what was fair. As you marriage veterans out there know, nothing leads to arguments more quickly than scorekeeping.
While we've reached a balance now--which involves both of us working really hard--it did involve some heated discussions. Which is why this book made me wonder--do women (and I'm speaking generally here) have higher housework standards than men? If so, why?
In general, I think women do have higher standards. I know when I dress Ben, I want to choose clothes that are clean and also matching. When I clean the living room, I want to deal with the clutter on the bookshelves as well as the crumbs on the floor.
But my standards were different when I was in college. On one hand, I think it's because I spend much of my time in the house--I don't spend my days dashing between classes and the library and the student union building. But I also think it's because I expect to be judged based on my housework and child care. I'm afraid that if Ben is inappropriately dressed, or if the living-room is knee-deep in toys, people will think, Slacker Mom.
I feel the most anxiety about hosting a play group or a book club in our new house--about inviting outsiders in. Will people pity our small house with its dirty windowsills? Will they scoff at our stainless steel restaurant sink (which we keep meaning to replace) and inwardly tsk-tsk at our mismatched furniture? If they do, will they blame me for the fact that we don't live in a showroom? It's when I imagine other people's judgment that I'm most likely to become the stereotypical nagging wife. Somehow, in the past several years, I've come to expect that people will see my house as a manifestation of who I am, and that it will be found lacking. Now that I write that, it doesn't sound terribly feminist. (It doesn't help that I've been submerged in Dickens lately, and that he has the highest regard for women who are cheerful and efficient housekeepers.)
So I'm asking my readers: Do you think women have higher housework standards than men? Are women more likely to be judged as housewives, even when both parents are splitting responsibility for domestic duties?
posted by Tess | 12:14 PM
8 Comments:
Heck, yes. I think, unfortunately, women are still held to higher standards for housework than men by a wide variety of visitors...parents, other relatives, play dates, etc., even if there is dual responsibility for the housework. My friends who are parents tend to be more understanding and recognize that DH and I are both more committed to spending time with our son than to having a spotless house. But I sometimes dread grandparent visits...wondering if this is the day they'll decide to call CPS because I haven't kept the house clean enough for their grandson.
A couple of other random points:
1) Sometimes it really is a matter of perception...For years, DH and I disagreed on housework because he literally didn't see the mess or what jobs needed to be done.
2) The "Honey-Do" list was what helped me and DH get past the housekeeping arguments. Giving him clear, well-defined tasks and options initiated his "paradigm shift." :)
I think most women have higher housework standards. But, I also think that men need to be told what to do. If we didn't tell them then they wouldn't do it. There are very few things that my DH will do on his own. Men may call it nagging, but I think that is because by the time we ask for help we are fed up with them for overlooking things and sound irritated about it.
Then there is the issue of training. I think that boys, in general, are not INSTRUCTED on the issues of housekeeping when their are little, nor are they expected to help as much as girls. Fathers and mothers reinforce these messages by their behavior. My DH and his brother were never expected to help their mum at all. So it has taken me nine years of cohabitation/marriage to get him to see things more as I see them. Still not perfect, as his need to vacuum rarely coincides with mine, but he makes the beds and picks up his clothes in the morning before going to work, and last night he took the dirty dishrag and laid it nicely over the laundry basket's edge (so it can dry and won't get all mouldy before I do the wash). I still do most of the housework, just by the nature of our split tasks, but I appreciate that sort of nod toward my standards. And it all just started like how I teach my kids - direct instruction, constant supervision, and positive praise for jobs well done :) Hopefully, if we do have boys one day, they'll see their daddy pitching in and get the idea. The girls already see it, which bodes well for their standards in the future.
If anyone wants some good readings on the history of housework, I suggest two books: Ruth Schwartz Cowan's _More Work for Mother_ and Susan Strasser's _Never Done_. Both are great books, but Cowan is particularly concerned with the extremely central issue Tess raises of high standards. Cowan argues that despite labor-saving inventions of the past 150 years, wives/mothers still had to spend more time working in the home, both because husbands/fathers and children were around to help less and because the societal standards for housework went up.
I think Tess is right about outside pressure for a super clean/neat home usually falling harder on women than men. Even couples committed to an equal sharing of household tasks often find it difficult in practice because of this difference.
Personally, I wonder if the solution is more than just educating men to adopt higher standards. Maybe the modern standards are a little too high? In my own daily life, I am somewhere in the middle on the neat vs. messy spectrum, probably slightly towards the neat end. But I think we could all justifiably lower our standards a little bit without sacrificing human comfort or health.
I suppose that is easy to say as a man (unmarried). But I do think that the problem will never be solved as long as we don't tackle the issue of unreasonably high standards expected for household neatness, which seem to weigh most heavily on women in our society. Myself, I actually feel a little sad when I visit a home that is TOO neat, thinking about how much extra time and energy was spent going above and beyond what should be perfectly adequate.
See in our home, it's somewhat reversed, then. Hubby, the ex-marine, is a neatnik. I am content with clean, but not so concerned about clutter...or am concerned, but it's not a priority as much as I'd like.
I confess to getting frustrated oftentimes with three men over 18 in the home and me--that I am still expected to coordinate--if not do--75 to 100% of the work...instead of 25%.
I do think women are judged more on it though. Even when the partners split the work or the wife works full-time and so does he, she is expected to do it all--or considered responsible if someone doesn't do their agreed-upon share.
Hh
Thanks for the input, everyone!
I agree that men and women's perceptions of housework tend to be different. I wonder if that's partially because men haven't been trained to do housework, and partially because they know they won't really be judged based on the state of their house. Or maybe there's some kind of genetic difference???
On one hand, I'm reluctant to assign tasks to my husband--I would go ballistic if he gave me a to-do list--but since there IS a difference of perception, it helps to spell things out as much as possible. At several points, we've made a list of all the household tasks and discussed the best way of dividing them.
CL (can I refer to you by name, or do you want to be anonymous?), I agree with you about homes that are too neat. I've been in houses where there's no sign of children (except a few tasteful portraits); all the kid stuff has been banished to bedrooms and play rooms. I think Ben deserves some living room space as much as Tom and I do.
For the record, Tom mopped all the hardwood floors this weekend, and Ben followed him around with a toy rake and declared that he was mopping too.
Tess (and lovelysalome),
I hate to report that I know my DH was well-trained by his mother growing up. She had him doing all sorts of housework, although I think she always had to tell him when and what to do. So he knows how...it just some effort to get him to realize he needed to do the same in our house.
And I completely agree that there's such a thing as too clean, too sterile. (Not just in terms of germs and immunity, but in terms of environment.) Our house is full of life, and it shows (for good or bad.)
I just wanted to say i would never judge u based on your sink or any of the other things u mentioned. LOL
i like a neat house b/c it makes me feel calm, that's all.
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