The Politics of Housework
Last edited Sat May 12, 2012, 07:02 PM - Edit history (1)
A classic essay.
Enjoy!
The Politics of Housework
by Pat Mainardi of Redstockings
Liberated women-very different from Women's Liberation! The first signals all kinds of goodies, to warm the hearts (not to mention other parts) of the most radical men. The other signals-HOUSEWORK. The first brings sex without marriage, sex before marriage, cozy housekeeping arrangements ("I'm living with this chick"
and the self-content of knowing that you're not the kind of man who wants a doormat instead of a woman. That will come later. After all, who wants that old commodity anymore, the Standard American Housewife, all husband, home and kids? The New Commodity; the Liberated Woman, has sex a lot and has a Career, preferably something that can be fitted in with the household chores-like dancing, pottery, or painting.
On the other hand is Women's Liberation-and housework. What? You say this is all trivial? Wonderful! That's what I thought. It seemed perfectly reasonable. We both had careers, both had to work a couple of days a week to earn enough to live on, so why shouldn't we share the housework? So I suggested it to my mate and he agreed-most men are too hip to turn you down flat. You're right, he said. It's only fair. Then an interesting thing happened. I can only explain it by stating that we women have been brainwashed more than even we can imagine, Probably too many years of seeing television women in ecstasy over their shiny waxed floors or breaking down over their dirty shirt collars. Men have no such conditioning. They recognize the essential fact of housework right from the very beginning. Which is that it stinks.
Here's my list of dirty chores: buying groceries, carting them home and putting them away; cooking meals and washing dishes and pots; doing the laundry digging out the place when things get out of control; washing floors. The list could go on but the sheer necessities are bad enough. All of us have to do these things, or get someone else to do them for us. The longer my husband contemplated these chores, the more repulsed he became, and so proceeded the change from the normally sweet, considerate Dr. Jekyll into the crafty Mr. Hyde who would stop at nothing to avoid the horrors of-housework. As he felt himself backed into a comer laden with dirty dishes, brooms, mops and reeking garbage, his front teeth grew longer and pointier, his fingernails haggled and his eyes grew wild. Housework trivial? Not on your life! Just try to share the burden.
So ensued a dialogue that's been going on for several years. Here are some of the high points: "I don't mind sharing the housework, but I don't do it very well. We should each do the things we're best at." MEANING: Unfortunately I'm no good at things like washing dishes or cooking. What I do best is a little light carpentry, changing light bulbs, moving furniture (how often do you move furniture?). ALSO MEANING: Historically the lower classes (black men and us) have had hundreds of years experience doing menial jobs. It would be a waste of manpower to train someone else to do them now. ALSO MEANING: I don't like the dull, stupid, boring jobs, so you should do them.
http://uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/polhousework.html
(much more at link)
= new reply since forum marked as read
I gotta say, when I was married (which I was for 20 years), my husband was better at cleaning than I, and he did it more often. As in, I never cleaned much of anything when we were living in the same house. I did my own laundry and cleaned the occasional bathroom. We shared taking care of the animals. He did everything else most of the time.
But then... I cut an acre of grass with a push mower every week. 
When I was alone again, the full horror of doing housework alone smacked me down, hard.
Such a basic thing. So fundamental to daily life.
Yet even in the most forward countries, women's-rights-wise (the Nordic countries), still, women do more than their fair share.
It's getting better though. In those countries it does at least come closer to approaching an equal division of labor. 
Last edited Sat May 12, 2012, 10:36 PM - Edit history (1)
I want you all to know one thing about me.......
I make the very best sandwiches. Not even a trained chef could ever come close to my sandwich making ability.
Guess who didn't want to make their own sandwich? lol
The way my mom managed it was, my dad used to complain about the kitchen and dining room not getting cleaned up fast enough after dinner. Mess makes him anxious.
One day my mom just gave him her LOOK, and said that she would clean up when she was damn well ready, and if it was important to him to be done faster, he could bloody well do it himself.
Dad got the message. From that day on, mom made dinner, dad cleaned up after dinner.
After my mom started working when I was 18, dad did a lot more around the house. After he retired and she was still working, he did most everything around the house.
It doesn't seem that hard to me to find a balance that works depending on the responsibilities each partner also has outside the home.
I am still really surprised to hear that apparently a lot of men are resistant to equitable division of house chores.
Sweet that your son tried to give you a mothers day surprise.
I actually enjoy grocery shopping and cooking. They don't seem like chores to me, most of the time. They're creative and fun, and the shopping part is my own version of "retail therapy". Whatever I buy will get eaten eventually, and not sit around collecting dust at the back of a closet, anyhow. If I'm broke or don't have the time to shop yet, I make lists.
But the cleaning part, not at all. Except maybe laundry, when I drove a carful to a laundromat. I have enough clothes at this point in my life that I can go without laundry for a month, given that I work at home, especially. Laundry was like grocery shopping: an expedition, with a big result to show for it. These days we have a little laundry washing machine, and I don't know how it works. His choice.
But the cleaning part ... I just don't really care, or even notice until it's beyond the pale. I especially abhor a vacuum. And only once a rug is vacuumed do I notice that it looks different from how it looked for the last month.
The co-vivant is the laundry and dishwashing and vacuuming man. The problem is, these efforts keep us going on a daily and weekly basis, but the filth builds up. I'm the one with the job in the household, so there's no reason we should have dirty bathrooms or piles of bills and assorted junk mail on the dining table. He should be putting in a full day doing all that stuff, if that's what it takes, and of course it doesn't. But he doesn't. He doesn't do it ever. Doesn't wash the tiles behind the stove, doesn't clean around the kitchen taps. Does wash the kitchen floor occasionally; I guess even he has his limits.
Here's the thing, and I don't know whether it's personal to him or could be generalized. I took a shot at couples counselling with my psychologist a few years ago. The co-vivant just behaved as if he had been dragged to the gallows, and sat looking sullen. In fact, afterward, the psychologist asked what was wrong with him as he looked ill. He has that talent. I believe he had a toothache on the day, and he is underweight generally; he worked it up into looking like he was indeed at death's door.
So the psychologist's assessment and advice to me was: you are dealing with an adolescent. Someone who never internalized the whole responsibility thing. You are going to have to rear him. Assign him discrete tasks. Like, not: the house is dirty, clean it. But: the toilet cleaner is in the downstairs bathroom; tomorrow afternoon, the upstairs bathroom needs the floor washed and the toilet cleaned and the shower tiles scrubbed. Then: before you wash the kitchen floor on Friday, please clean the fronts of all the cabinets and the walls behind the counters and stove.
But eventually I would have to get to: please take the glasses and candles and vases and stuff I have jammed into the bookshelves in the living room and wash them, and clean all the shelves and put it all back ... and get all the stuff off the closet floor and clean in there ... and wash the living room walls ...
And the thing is: I don't have the energy. Eventually, I do some of it myself, generally if I decide a room needs painting so it all gets done at the same time (I also do the painting).
If I'd wanted to train a teenaged boy to be responsible for housekeeping, I would have adopted one. And the thing is, it isn't training somebody to do the jobs; it really doesn't take training to clean a kitchen, at least to my standards. It's the taking responsibility that's the issue. In my case, it wouldn't even say that he figures that if he doesn't do it, I will -- because it's pretty obvious by now that that isn't gonna happen.
If I were the one who didn't have a job, I'd expect to be the one doing the housecleaning. For the life of me, I can't figure out why, other than laziness and selfishness, he doesn't expect to be the one doing it. And I mean, we're all lazy and selfish when it comes to doing crap we don't want to do, but sometimes we're all supposed to just overcome that.
I never know whether to put his insouciance and laziness in this regard down to him being a man or just down to him. There's nothing else especially sexist about him, and in fact very much the opposite. Because of things in his childhood that I know a little about, he reacts badly to conflict and won't even respond if he feels attacked, and this makes everything especially difficult. Trying to get to the why of things never works.
But anyhow, I offer my psychologist's advice to anyone who wants to solve the problem and not just take a stand on principle. Don't say "let's divide up the housework" and expect it to happen. Pretend he's your teenaged son, and you're starting from zero. Today, the bathroom. Talking endlessly about it won't help. Stating expectations and working on getting them met, one task and one day at a time, being consistent like you would with a kid, may get you there.
Yes, you'll have to nag and you'll resent having to do it, but the idea is that it will pay off eventually. You're having to counteract a couple of decades of reinforcement of the exact opposite of what you want and are entitled to expect, it just isn't realistic to expect it tomorrow. He is operating from a disability, being raised male in the patriarchy, and you owe it to him and yourself to help him overcome it.
Those wonderful machines do all the work of doing laundry. Kelly has plenty of time to devote to her career thanks to these modern mechanical maids. Every woman should have these machines that do everything for them.
What a bunch of hog wash.