the domestic glass ceiling and flat place crises

[anotheranon]

Man, when I come back, I come back with a vengeance! This will be snipped for brevity so I won't swamp y'alls friends' pages.

During the week I've run into multiple posts referencing this article about feminism and domesticity, and various strategies for women to assure they don't end up doing all of the housework (assuming the hetero marriage/long term cohabiting model). I include the link for completion's sake but I'm more interested in the "on the ground" experiences of some of the bloggers.

BitchPHD advocates vigilance to the point of aggressive sarcasm if need be, while Amanda at Pandagon decided arguing is not worth the angst and does the housework herself. Better yet, Majikthise points out that housekeeping standards are unrealistic, and should be allowed to slide.

I think all of these arguments have some merit, depending on the people and situations involved. I also see that on the subject of housework, there's no real way to win, there are just degrees of losing - all this stuff still has to get done, by someone, and hiring housekeeping services (which we did do in the past) are only a stop gap - things still have to get done in between times.

I gave my own situation some thought. When D. and I are both working it's a fairly equitable situation, divided up by ability and inclination. Me: everyday cooking, laundry, some of the bathroom, scoop cat litters, grocery shopping, create "to do" list for D. D.: most other cat maintenance (feeding/litter change/kitty oat planting), wash dishes, dusting, toilets, event/holiday/long cooking, computer maintenance (in a dual-techie household, this qualifies as housework). Both of us: vaccuuming/mopping as needed (though he's better at it), the "hairball rule" (whoever sees it first cleans it up). Whoever cooks does not do dishes. If it's exclusively one person's mess, the other isn't responsible.

However, D. is not currently working and I've heard it from more than one quarter that he should be doing ALL of this. I was lucky - D. was raised by a feminist mama in a a household where men/women didn't view dishes or vacuuming as women's work, but more as general "things that have to get done", and he's never balked when I've asked him to do things. But I was myself hesitant to ask him to help out until fairly recently (the past 2 years or so).

Part of it is upbringing; my parents had a very traditional "gender split" of housework, my mom doing all the inside stuff and dad doing yard work (except popping popcorn and grilling, which were a "man things" in my family). Even when she was working and he was at home, she didn't let him do any housework because he "didn't do it right". Because of this, it simply didn't occur to me that I could ask for help.

Another part of it is my control freak-streak: I want certain things done MY way (especially the laundry), and messiness tends to bother me before it D. notices it - I figure if I'm the irritated party, I should be the one to take care of it.

The other part of it is that I tend towards clutter, and a lot of the "stacks" around the house (fabric, books, art supplies) are exclusively mine. Not only can he not clean up my fabric stash to my satisfaction, to demand it would be terrifically unfair.

Occasionally one or the other of us has a "flat place crisis" (meaning, the clutter has covered every flat surface so there's nowhere to put anything down) and go on a cleaning marathon. Our F.P.C.s don't always coincide and D.s are always harsher than mine (launch him on a room in the morning, you'll have a room fit to appear "Architectural Digest" by afternoon) but it gets the job done.

For reasons of sanity I'm trying not to stress over housework as much as I used to, unless we have company. I want the bathrooms and kitchen clean enough so I'm not afraid to use them, but I'm terrible about letting the stacks pile up.

I'd be interested to hear how other couples/households divide up housework. I'm especially curious to hear from same-sex couples, who are less likely to deal with "men's work/women's work" issues.

Comments

[las.livejournal.com]

Well, my hubby was raised in a blue-collar Catholic family, but he does most of our housework. Namely, he does the really crappy bits, like litterboxes.

He writes full-time and has a part-time outside job; I have a full-time outside job and write part-time. The housework largely gets delegated to him because he's home far more than I am.

When I do housework, it's usually to reorganize things, or when he's sick etc.

If we ever have a kid, he's likely to end up doing quite a lot there, too, because he has significant experience with infant care and babysitting (courtesy of his younger relatives) and my only knowledge of babies comes from books.

[las.livejournal.com]

Also, I take care of the computers, and usually put furniture together etc. because I'm better at that kind of stuff. The only "man things" he's called upon to do are mow the lawn, kill bugs and open big jars. =)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Bugs - when we have them - are divided between D. and the cats, depending on how safe it is to let the cats have at it :P I do not do spiders, that's one way in which I'm terribly girly :/

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

It sounds like your way makes sense for y'all. I'm also guessing you're more willing to relinquish control than I am!

D. and I will never have to face the question of kids - frankly the whole new series of considerations that would toss into the mix are one of the many reasons I've never wanted children.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Paula and I had a fairly traditional division of labor when we were younger, with me working to earn the money, cutting the grass, shoveling snow, etc... and her doing the household stuff. Occassionally I'd do household stuff too, but that was an exceptional thing.

As she's gotten older and in poorer health, I've been doing more and more of the household stuff. I do essentially all of the laundry now, and all of the sweeping and vacuuming. Sometimes I cook, and I always put away the pots and pans and dishes after the dishwasher's done with them.

When we married, I was quite willing to do more. My Irish grandmother had raised me to eschew notions of "women's work" and "men's work." She was really quite the 1st wave feminist, having grown up in a family of girls with only one baby brother. But Paula wanted that division of labor, and I was willing to be flexible.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Not having met/corresponded with Paula, why do you think she wanted the traditional division of labor?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It's what she was familiar with. She's from a pretty traditional East Texas family.

Not a normal situation

[seamstrix.livejournal.com]

I'm not married and I don't live with a significant other, I live with my 85 year old father. One of the big reasons I live with him is that if I didn't, the house would turn into those situations where the Board of Health would come in and condemn the place as a bio hazard. Quite simply- my father doesn't see dirt. It never impinges on his conciousness. I've done tests to see how long it takes him to want something cleaned (like the sheets on his bed- after 8 months I couldn't stand it anymore, they were black with dirt and my father didn't care a bit.) My father's contribution to the cleaning is taking out the garbage (and I had to yell at him one time when I came home and found him sorting thru the contents of the kitchen garbage can on the kitchen counter just in case I had thrown away something that he thought should go in recycling) and cleaning the cat box. He originally also volunteered to wash the dishes, but then I found out that his idea of washing the dishes was to wipe them down with a paper towel and cold water and as long as he didn't see any dirt they were clean. Remember, he doesn't see dirt....and I was wondering why I was having all these violent intestinal issues that I'd never had before....we now have a dishwasher that I am in charge of. I've decided that living with my dad is like living with an 8 year old boy only without the ability to learn new skills. So basically the division of labor is- I do it.

Re: Not a normal situation

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

That's just scary! I've read repeated accounts of guys who don't see clutter until it's out of hand, but extremely few who don't see it when it becomes dangerous! Do you think this is just age, or has your dad always been that way about dirt, or - ?

Re: Not a normal situation

[seamstrix.livejournal.com]

I think my dad's situation is a combination of factors. The first is that he was raised in a pre-feminist world by a mother who was extremely capable and an excellent housekeeper. I don't think it ever occured to my grandmother to get my dad to do anything houseworkwise. Then you factor in his basic oblivious-to-dirt qualities which I believe were always present and then add an entire lifetime of never needing to worry about it (my mom was an excellent housekeeper too)then you add that he's now 85 and has cardio-vascular issues which I wouldn't be surprised involved mini-strokes and you end up with a man for whom cleanliness and basic hygiene are things which just happen for other people. I'm big on multi-causality. I have tried to teach him basic cleaning techniques, but have failed for several reasons. The first is that whole 'don't see dirt' thing- if you don't notice that something needs to be cleaned, you're never gonna clean it. The second reason is that he doesn't learn new things very well anymore. He's good in his rut and gets freaked out if he has to move beyond it in any way. He has very little internal motivation to learn about cleaning so he doesn't retain the information on how to clean.

Here's a fun story- Just after my mom had her stroke and I moved back home to help take care of both mom and dad, we had some relatives come by to visit my mom. My father had covered ALL the horizontal surfaces of the livingroom with papers and junk mail to the point that you couldn't sit anywhere in the livingroom. My father was bringing in folding chairs from the garage to provide seating. He never thought to pick up the papers and junk mail and throw them out. To this day, I periodically have to police the entire house to prevent him from just piling junk everwhere.

Another story- After I had spent several hours cleaning and dusting and vacuuming the livingroom and generally getting it looking pretty good, I told my dad that he should clean his room (which is beyond belief, I'll post a picture if you think your stomach is strong enough)thinking that I had set a good example for him. I no sooner turned my back than he was carrying crap from his room down the stairs into the livingroom because it seemd like a good place for him to put a bunch of junk he didn't know what to do with......Did I mention that I've offered to help him clean his room or even do it myself and he always refuses?

Utne feature on femininity

[(Anonymous)]

On a related note, the current Utne cover feature is on "embracing your feminine side" -- I have mixed reactions to this type of coverage. While I think it's *very* worthwhile to discuss & think about issues we don't normally think about in our daily slog-to-work-and-back routines, I (a) question analyzing things on the basis of gender. Yes, you can generalize about diffs between males & females, but does it really help? And what about the outliers who don't conform to the molds that these generalizations assume? And (b) an unfortunate end result I often see from such gender-based analysis is a criticism of males/females for not being more like the other gender in X, Y, or Z, way, & what we can do to change it. Personally I am very happy w/ the way I am & don't feel a need to apologize for anything I do, nor do I feel that most males I know should be any different from how they are. But maybe it's just the circles I run in.
Long story short, for anyone interested in reading about gender roles etc., pick up the latest Utne, for it's sure to spark some thoughts! :)
-Lydia

Re: Utne feature on femininity

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can generalize about diffs between males & females, but does it really help?

I think it helps when it highlights those stereotypes, and the reasons for them. The definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" don't happen in a void, and I think it's helpful to examine how we got here.

I do think that characterizing housework as "women's work" is a problem because it can put guys off of doing it - when, like I said, it's really all just grunt work that has to get done.