This is something that never ceases to bother me. Why are women expected to cook, clean, raise the children, have a job, and not complain about all the extra labor? Why do so many men simply feel entitled to more free time and a clean house to boot? Strangely, I noticed (especially while in college and passing through the dorms) that women had cleaner and neater rooms and that men did not. Was this because boys growing up were dependent upon their mothers for cleaning up, and therefor didn't have the drive to keep neat while on their own? I know many men in my life simply don't SEE the mess; it's like it doesn't exist. It bothers me to no end. Is this simply a lack of paying attention, a lack of caring, or a difference in upbringing between male and female children?

It's not just housework - once you have kids the assumption is that women will do every damn thing that needs doing. This isn't my personal experience; my spouse and I are real partners in housekeeping and child-rearing, but I see the expectation from the school system and others that it's mothers who will pick up the slack and volunteer to do the shitty jobs.
Recently, my daughter's school sent out a request for volunteers to work in the kitchen for the school's breakfast program. The note was addressed to 'mothers.' Let's not even consider the issue that some children might not have a mother at home, why the hell wouldn't you ask for help from all the parents. If you're really stuck for volunteers, why are you excluding potentially 50% of your prospective volunteers? When I called the school to complain, the response I got was: "Well, mothers are more likely to be at home, not working, and so they're more available."

At home? NOT WORKING?! Holy crap! What is this? 1955!?

This is something that never ceases to bother me. Why are women expected to cook, clean, raise the children, have a job, and not complain about all the extra labor? Why do so many men simply feel entitled to more free time and a clean house to boot? Strangely, I noticed (especially while in college and passing through the dorms) that women had cleaner and neater rooms and that men did not. Was this because boys growing up were dependent upon their mothers for cleaning up, and therefor didn't have the drive to keep neat while on their own? I know many men in my life simply don't SEE the mess; it's like it doesn't exist. It bothers me to no end. Is this simply a lack of paying attention, a lack of caring, or a difference in upbringing between male and female children?

Sorry, I got off on a tangent about my daughter's stupid school and I forgot to mention what I was thinking when I read Samhita's comment:

"I understand this article is assuming, hetero, middle class, married couples that have money for the mortgage."

There's another assumption that you've missed out on. Parenthood is written with the assumption that the readers is a woman. Now, last time I checked, parenthood is not synonymous with hetero, middle-class, married or female.

My dad tried to help my mom around the house when they first married, but she was very passive-aggressive about cleaning because HER mother was a neat freak and she felt like if SHE didn't do the cleaning, she was less of a wife or something. My dad would clean and she would come back later and furtively re-clean the same area because she wanted it done "her way." Every time my dad cleaned she would feel like he was judging how she kept house, even though it was her house too. Eventually my dad stopped cleaning around the house because he found that it was easier to only help when she specifically asked him to, rather than deal with her passive-aggressive mommy issues. Both he and my brother are much tidier than the women in our family.

My point-- sometimes there's more going on than women realize. The number one thing that women should do is talk to their spouse. My mom doesn't even realize she does this, and EVERYONE else does. If you're open with your husband and accepting of his point you might learn that there is something more going on tied up with keeping house. After all, women can be victims of society too.

Um, my husband have had an on-going dialogue about this subject for the last decade. He tries really hard, but I'm still often faced with him just not seeing that some things need to be done.

Mind you, I'm not a neat-freak and he's home more than I am. I'm not going to waste time wondering how his not cleaning is my fault. It isn't.

"Mind you, I'm not a neat-freak and he's home more than I am. I'm not going to waste time wondering how his not cleaning is my fault. It isn't."
This is exactly the point. Women get ragged on for being somehow more obsessed with cleaning than men. I see nothing wrong with wanting to have clean dishes to eat off of and a toilet that isn't stained. My male roommate works from home twice a week and comes home early, yet I'm the one who cooks and has to put the dishes in the dish washer. If I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done. That doesn't make it the fault of the woman because the man isn't doing the work. It's amazing that while the article says we don't have to sign up to be maids we should pretty much assume that we have to be supervisors. Wrong.

sgzax-- If your comment was in reply to mine (I can't tell sometimes, sorry, ignore this if it wasn't) it's not about wondering, it's about talking. As you have been talking to him, clearly, what I say does not apply to you personally.

Overall, I think this is a good article. Many married women I know complain about the disparity in doing chores, but they either don't ask for help, or don't like the way their husbands do it so they just do it themselves. I understand why some women think they "shouldn't have to ask", but the fact is that many men were raised in households (and surrounded by media) where women do the housework. This causes a lot of men to not see the need for their help, so they have to be asked.

Example: My husband had a male roommate who refused to do any cleaning. Dishes were left to mold in the sink! When my husband asked him why he wouldn't clean the roommate said, "My mother always cleans." My husband said, "Your mother is in a different state!"

I think parents just need to keep working against this expectation that women do the housework. Kids can be taught it's important to clean and take care of their homes. Lead by example and it will happen.

Side note: I am so tired of how EVERY ad for cleaning products shows a woman using it. Ugh!

I do the laundry and clean the place up on Saturdays after my long run (I'm training for the half-marathon)since I'm the only adult home. Of course, I grew up in an environment where everyone shared household chores and Dad did most of the cooking. I developed my cleaning skills in the Marine Corps, so detail gets tended to. It's funny because my wife (also a former Marine) and I see all the shit our housemates/my in-laws miss or don't consider cleaning. My grandmother was a neat freak, so some of that got instilled in me. Funny thing is, her family is Latino and still, after nearly ten years, isn't used to the idea of a man doing housework. Nonetheless, I'm the one that holds the least stressful job and who only works five days a week.

I don't see what the big deal is. I did the Saturday morning cleanup thing when I was a teenager, too. I've never really had a hang-up about it. I think men that do need to grow up and realize that every resident of a household has a certain amount of responsibility for its maintenance/cleanliness, and, I'll tell you what, buddy, if you're wife is working and you're not, guess whose shoulders the responsibility falls squarely on. I'll be damned if I'm going to sit on my ass and do nothing every Saturday while everyone else is at work.

"every resident of a household has a certain amount of responsibility for its maintenance/cleanliness"

That's it exactly. Perhaps some of these men who don't think it should be their job to clean need to have that pointed out to them. It's not a woman vs. man thing, it's a responsible, courteous adult thing.

As a guy, my experience is that when I start keeping score, it's when my wife hasn't been doing as much as I have around the house, and the same is true in reverse.

But we're not normally score-keepers.

I've lived with people who were, though, and it was stressful for all of us. I had one (male) roommate who would obsessively document every time he picked up a spoon I'd left out, but ignore things like my having to drag the fridge out where I could clean it with a hose because he unplugged it without emptying it one Christmas break.

So my take on the article is just that if you're an obsessive scorekeeper about housekeeping, try letting go.

My mom and my stepdad seem to share the housework so evenly that it nearly boggles my mind. Someday before I get married I'll ask my mom how she managed that. Maybe she's just really good at delegating work, maybe it's because my stepdad is a neat freak, but most likely I think it's because they've beth lived in the real world long enough to know that housework is not a gendered thing; it's a basic part of daily life.

I grew up in a house where chores were evenly divided amongst family members. But, usually my cleaning wasn't up my mother's standards so she usually ended up redoing my work.

I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it; my husband knew that when we got married. So, he does the traditional "cleaning" (vacuuming, mopping, ironing, etc.) and I stick with the dishwasher, laundry, and paying the bills. We both sharing cooking duty, based on who gets home first in the evening (usually him).

Many woman have a big desire to be seen as a Good Wife and the signals we get throughout our lives seem to tell us that clean house = good woman.

I get the feeling from a few of my family members that that don't consider me a very good wife because my husband does most of the housework and the house is rarely ever spic-and-span. I just don't care what they think.

"So the insight that distinguished the more radical, post-Friedan cohort of feminists was that when we talk about housework, we are really talking, yet again, about power. Housework was not degrading because it was manual labor, as Friedan thought, but because it was embedded in degrading relationships and inevitably served to reinforce them. To make a mess that another person will have to deal with -- the dropped socks, the toothpaste sprayed on the bathroom mirror, the dirty dishes left from a late-night snack -- is to exert domination in one of its more silent and intimate forms. One person's arrogance -- or indifference, or hurry -- becomes another person's occasion for toil. And when the person who is cleaned up after is consistently male, while the person who cleans up is consistently female, you have a formula for reproducing male domination from one generation to the next."

- Barbara Ehrenreich

This woman I know apparently believes that women do more housework because women have vaginas, which need to be cleaned more often than penises. She was serious.

My saying has always been, "There are only two things that are actually women's work: childbirth and breastfeeding--and you can use a bottle for breastfeeding. Everything else is just work that needs to be shared. My ex-husband was raised by a mom who believed in the traditional gender stereotypes. I asked my ex to wash dishes. He did a bad job. I asked him to rewash. He admitted that when his mom would ask him to do housework, he would do it bad on purpose, because she would just redo them and never ask him to do them again, figuring boys just couldn't do it right. A friend of mine used the trick of putting the worst washed dishes at her husband's place for him to eat off of. He never did a bad job again.

I experienced the opposite of this when I was growing up - my dad not only was the only one who worked outside the home, but he did most of the work around the house as well - laundry, taking out the garbage, the bulk of the cleaning. My mom cooked 4 nights out of the week - the other nights my dad cooked or we ordered out, and the only chores I consistently remember my mother doing were ironing and laundry. It was pretty awful to watch - I ended up feeling resentful toward my mom for doing that to my dad. Exploitation of one's partner is disgusting regardless of gender (but of course this usually happens to women) - I learned firsthand.

I'm freaked out by your friend, Girlriots, but I'll bite... how often did she think penises needed to be cleaned? Less than every day?

Too much cleaning throws the female system off. It doesn't do anything to guys that I know of, so in fact your friend had it exactly wrong. I hope you set her straight.

Oh sorry, my bad - the only chores my mom did were ironing and DISHES, not laundry.

"Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them? So still, today, the majority of house cleaning is done by women and mostly women of color."

If I understood the sentence structure: According to Barbara Ehrenreich at least, women of color are over-represented in house-cleaning, but they aren't the majority.

Solving the problem - I work basically 9am-7pm six days a week and my ex-gf worked a physically exhausting job.

We decided that the way to solve the housecleaning problem was to hire outside help for cleaning because were were simply too busy / physically unable to properly do all of the cleaning. I would say that decision definitely improved our lives. We decided that we'd rather spend the free time we have together rather than doing chores.

It does have social trade-offs however. On the one hand, housecleaners (and daycare) provides a mechanism for dual-income couples to both pursue careers. On the other hand, it creates a system where where the woman as homemaker is perpetuated, just one degree removed from the biological mother. I don't think the general service is a problem, but rather the gender balance in that service. On the other hand, on a practical basis, it provides people with a very flexible source of income to work-part time.

I

I just want to say, I'm glad Feministing picked up on this article. I always get sucked into reading these relationship-advice things for some reason, and stumbled across this one this weekend. This advice for women from a purported expert to not nag your delicate menfolk lest you drive them away seems to get tossed into every relationship-advice article somewhere. Nagging is bad, no doubt, but encouraging women to repress their frustration, suck it up, and take one (two, three, four) for the team will inevitably lead to these women exploding with rage at their spouses, sooner or later.

Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them?

Another thing that's interesting is that it's almost always the woman in the middle-class couple who is responsible for finding and hiring those other women. Even when the responsibility for cleaning doesn't mean cleaning, but instead means finding a working-class woman, usually of color, to do it for you, it's considered a woman's job.

I am so glad I have a feminist husband and no such problems!

I'm a stay-at-home mom with twins at the moment. Not out of choice but because our crazy government (in Germany) doesn't support working women (zero childcare!). But that's another story...

The housework here is done 50/50. I don't see why I should do more just because I stay at home?! I have enough work with my kids and I am not a free cleaning lady.

Also, I hate to cook. So my husband cooks dinner every night when he comes home from work :-)

The advice I was given by my boyfriend's mom was to start early because the sooner you start the more likely the routine of sharing housework will continue. Although I don't know how sound the advice is because my boyfriend is messy because she often picked up after him.

Hiring a cleaner may *usually* involve dumping your work on a woman, and often a woman of color, but this is no more invariable than who does the housework in the first place.

My daughter's best friend's mother is a cleaning woman. She is white. And when I called a maid service out to help me deal with a house covered with sawdust after lead abatement contractors had come in and ruined the place and not cleaned up, the team that came out to look over the situation consisted of two black women, one white woman, and a black man. When I decided that the price for the service was more than I could afford and I'd have to do it myself, it was the man who offered to do the job off the clock, under the table, for half price. (I still couldn't afford it.) But my point is that while cleaning men are rarer than cleaning women, they do exist, probably in roughly the same proportion as men who do their fair share of housework. And cleaning people are more likely to be poor than they are to be nonwhite -- even here in Baltimore with a majority black population, you can find white cleaning people, and in areas of the country where there *is* no significant nonwhite population, the cleaning people would be overwhelmingly white. It's not a race issue, it's a class issue (it's just that in most areas of the country nonwhites occupy a disproportionate share of the working class.)

My experience is that the thing men fail at is the mental tally of what needs to be done. I can get my husband to do almost anything if I specifically outline to him exactly what I want him to do, but if I come home late from running errands after bringing him home from work early (he can't drive), I will not find the house cleaned or the dinner on the table. *Maybe* I will find that he has spontaneously begun a construction or handyman project, but while sometimes these are very helpful, other times they are massively disruptive to the house and his failure to prep and clean the area before starting the work leads to me having to do three times as much cleaning work. He cooks if I ask him to and we have the fresh vegetables in house he likes to cook with, but he never asks me to go get vegetables because he wants to cook -- he just assumes I'll do it unless I ask him. Most men I know who live with women do not choose to keep the chores list in their head, to spontaneously do cleaning chores, or to have any knowledge of how to manage daily affairs except maybe the financial ones -- my husband keeps asking me to make him an appointment with a doctor, even though he has the exact same tools I do to find a new doctor and make an appointment.

I just never understood the belief about houework being women's work...it's a chore..yeah some people are neater than others and my one friend says cleaning is relaxing for her...but she still makes her fiancee split the housework.
I think my husband and I have a good balance. I probably do more housework but I also only work part-time and i'll get bored or stuff will start to bug me sooner than it will him.

My good friends sister is in a pretty abusive relationship right now where in she is expected to do all the housework. all he'll do is mow the lawn. It's gotten to the point where if the dogs (his, which he refuses to crate) crap on the floor and he gets home first he'll leave it until she gets home because that's her job....If that was my husband he'd find that shit in his shoes the next morning...but that's jsut me

I was incredibly annoyed by the overall tone of this article. Did anyone else notice that the husband in the first example is described admiringly as working "full-time plus with a long commute" and then "switches to full-energy dad mode" at home, while the wife's work is described in objective terms (freelancer, four kids, homeschooler, my mind reels just thinking about what her day must be like) just before she is accused of "angrily scrawling lists"? Where are the positive adjectives for this woman? Where is "full-energy mom mode" acknowledged?

And you gotta love the example "conversation" where the man opens with "Whoa, are you having your period?" and the follow-on advice blames the woman for not making her grievances more palatable to him by "sandwiching" them between compliments to his chili. Oh. My. Goddess.

What really pisses me off about these kind of articles is that they blame the victim (sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly) more often than not. Man's not doing housework? According to this article, it's because the woman is micromanaging, or not being complimentary enough. Failing that, her standards are too high and she should just relax. This is not "advice," it is adding a guilt trip to the already heavy burden of the one doing all the damn work.

I think it is telling that I have never seen a business article that says, "Your coworker isn't doing their job? It's probably your fault! Try complimenting their minimal efforts more. Don't micromanage them, even if they screw things up. And consider just letting the work go, or maybe hiring someone else to do it if the company can afford it. Less fights that way." Puhleeze.

I have mixed feelings on this article. Yes, the assumptions about the sexual divsion of labor are insulting.

However, I'm not sure the underlying relationship advice is all that bad. Nagging doesn't work. Respectful discussion does. Everyone feels better if they get compliments and positive reinforcement. I thank my son and tell him "good job" when he does something around the house. I talk to the people I supervise respectfully, give positive feedback as well as critiques. Why shouldn't I do the same for my husband? (Assuming he does the same for me.)

It is good advice, Kat. I just hate that the article assumes that if the problem persists it must be because the dialogue has broken down and one of the partners (not saying which) is a horrible nag. The problem might be persisting because one of the partners is lazy. I wish the article would take a moment to say (to whichever partner it is), "Seriously assess your contribution to the household? Have you taken things for granted? Should you be doing more?"

That would be helpful advice too.

Here's my problem with the whole "asking the husband to help" concept.

If you ask for help carrying a large box, you are saying, "This is the box that is my responsibility to carry, however, because I can't do it alone, I'm asking you to pitch in and help."

If you ask for help doing the chores around the house you are saying, "These are the chores that are my responsibility to do, however, because there are only 24 hours in a day, I'm asking you to pitch in and help."

The chores are not the wife's responsibility. She does not need to ask the husband to help. The chores are their responsibility, and they both need to just grow up and do their fair share of what they're both responsible for (i.e., the home that they share).

Asking a husband for help with the chores just reinforces the idea that it's not really his responsibility, it's hers. And that's entirely the wrong mindset. I'm not going to sweeten and soften someone up to get them to do what's essentially as much his job as mine. And if he needs that much hand-holding in the simple acts of keeping a house running, then he's not ready to be an adult.

"This sexual division of labor that is instilled in us..."

If part of the division of labor involves one gender setting the standards then a lot of other stuff is going to wind up unresolved.

Yes, there are plenty of other issues from Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent point about the tradition of housework as demeaning to the observation that men's mothers rarely *train* them to just know that all carpets ought to be shampooed four times a year, and Santa Claus knows how many men bring their stupid dorm roommate avoidance antics with them into real relationships.

But no matter how much anyone might wish, the division of labor at home won't really break loose until the division of *standard setting* is also broken free of it's gendered underpinnings.

I might add that that doesn't just mean "women have to give up their standards," though you'll have to do that too. As others have mentioned it means conversation is needed -- not just about who should clean what or how much who does and when, but also what were the expectations one had growing up, what were one's parent's standards (and *grandparent's!*), and also just fundamental conversations like coming to agreement on what it means to say "clean."

All I know for sure, especially after reading Ehrenreich and English's "For Her Own Good, 150 Years of Expert's Advice for Women," is that contemporary standards still reflect those set when the home was the *only* domain permitted of women and "domestic science," (later renamed "Home Economics) the only academic degree available to most women.

figleaf

We women, particularly, get bitter about our husbands' not noticing what needs to be done around the house and start treating them like their IQs are 20 points lower

O NOES POOR MEN SITTING AT HOME NOT CLEANING, we need to stop treating them so terribly. we'll just continue cleaning up their messes and such and quit all the complaining.

I wonder how much of this is partially b/c women may be conditioned to be more neat and organized, and so they notice mess more and are more frustrated by it, as opposed to men who seem to just not notice the dirt and chaos.

My husband gets really annoyed when the kitchen is messy, something I don't notice as much or doesn't bother me as much. However, with the bathrooms it's the opposite. Perhaps children ,boys and girls, need to be made more attentive of how they keep their homes and rooms from a much earlier start, and then they can get into the habits of cleaning up after themselves and taking pride in doing so.

Kimmy sez: "Asking a husband for help with the chores just reinforces the idea that it's not really his responsibility, it's hers."

I would phrase it as "Hey, buddy, why don't you get off your ass and start pulling your weight?" But, most men's egos are just to fragile to handle that kind of thing coming from a woman. That's the real problem. Many of these men that are afraid to get a little bleach on their hands think they are above women.

I try to be a better example than that for my boys, and have been known to give my little brother-in-law a kick in the shins, when necessary, about cleaning up after himself. It's starting to sink in.

Ugh. Like it's our job to talk to men on how to act like adults?

Men aside, but what about the expectations of how things should look. I have a 11 month old and my mother in law is constantly making comments about how my lawn isn't mowed and my plants are dead, that my house isn't clean. She even once told me I couldn't go out because I had a house to clean. WTF. Ok, my house is kind of a mess, so what? I have a kid. I live with 3 other adults, 2 of whom never clean ANYTHING but their own dishes. It's not just my responsibility and if I don't care, why should anyone else. Our guests (mostly 20 somethings who live with their parents) are just happy to have comfortable places to sit. We don't need our house to look like a palace.

I hate the word "nag." It's used exclusively to describe a woman repeatedly asking someone to do something. I wouldn't be "nagging" if that person would get up off his or her ass and do what they were supposed to in the first place.

"I see nothing wrong with wanting to have clean dishes to eat off of and a toilet that isn't stained."

And I see nothing wrong with eating out of the container and not looking into the toilet bowl. :) My guy now cleans toilets, grocery shops, empties the dishwasher, and washes pots and pans. And he cleans the floor when he thinks its getting bad. Because my tolerance for yuck is generally higher than his... I do the tubs, vacuum the non-hard floors, and