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.

[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.

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.

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