Jay, guest posting at Feministe, just cross-posted something she wrote on her home blog, Two Women Blogging, back in 2007. It was good then, it’s good now. It begins (emphasis hers)...
“Aren’t you lucky! He helps around the house!”
Yup. He helps. Because picking up his laundry, cooking his meals, paying his bills, and raising his child is by rights my job. Of course, my laundry and bills and meals are my job, too. Along with the playdates and the grocery shopping and scheduling babysitters. But he helps! Wow!
“You must have trained him well”.
That’s it. Exactly. I held a chocolate chip cookie in front of his nose, and every time he washed a dish or put away a T-shirt I gave him the cookie, patted him on the head and said “good husband! Good boy!” until he wagged his, um, tail.
It gets better from there so go ahead and read the whole thing.
And here’s the tricky bit. For all the years I’ve been a stay-at-home dad, and for all the years I’ve heard people say similar things to my partner, I’ve never heard a man say them.
In fact in all these years I think the only man who wasn’t also a stay-at-home dad who’s really said anything about it that’s registered was my father who told me his biggest regret was that he didn’t have more time to spend with us when my siblings and I were little… that the courses for he and my mom had seemed foreordained… that I might never know how lucky I was. But I digress…
I don’t think there’s anything laudable about men never commenting on my “helping around the house.” Surveys suggest men either think they’re doing their part by bringing home the bacon, or else they think they’re contributing something closer to 50% of domestic tasks… even though the actual figures are closer to 25-33%.
But boy have I heard those “you’re so lucky” remarks from other women. And those “you must have trained him well.”
I don’t even think there’s anything particularly ominous about that either. Women, even professional women, even women who themselves have never done a day of housework but instead hire out housecleaners and nannies, perceive other women as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere. Even when their partners don’t hold them responsible for it other women do.
The point being that patriarchy is a co-ed affair. The point being that the establishment of privilege is too. The point being that it’s not enough to fighting stereotypes of women.
Jay concluded her post with
If [her partner] Sam were writing this, he’d rant about the people who think he’s “babysitting” when he takes care of his own child. He’d tell you that men who can’t be left alone with their infants should be ashamed of their incompetence. He’d repeat the story about our first post-adoption visit with the social worker, the one who asked him what parts of parenting he didn’t participate in. He always says that at first he didn’t even understand the question, and then he got angry at the suggestion that he wouldn’t be a full part of parenting our child. And he’s sincere about all of it. He accepts housework as part of his responsibility, just like it’s part of mine, and he loves to cook as much as he enjoys building fences. He’d also point out the flip side of this assumption – that he’s somehow less a man because he “helps”.
But all of that serious talk might make male privilege visible. It might make women actually think that they don’t have to do all the housework, that their male partners could participate and the world wouldn’t come to an end. And we can’t have that. No making the patriarchy uncomfortable; wouldn’t be prudent. Besides, I have to go set the table now. Sam made dinner, and emptied the dishwasher, and fed the dogs while I was writing this. And he went to the grocery store this afternoon so I could stay home and watch the baseball game. I am lucky; he’s kind and generous and he’s a damn good cook. But don’t tell me he’s helping.
It’s not just women who are “lucky” to have partners like Sam who’ll share the burden. First of all, it’s hard to even call it a burden when it’s shared — then it’s not about being a woman or being a man, it’s just about being alive in a world with entropy in it. Second, though, is that, as my father, said Sam’s lucky. I’m lucky. We get to do what we are good at, instead of what fairy tales say we’re supposed to be. Same with our partners.
The trick is that, sure, a lot of men don’t get that. But a lot of women, even women who ought to know better, don’t get it either.
That’s part of the work too.
“Women, even professional
Submitted by Lily (not verified) on Wed, 2010-08-04 13:03.“Women, even professional women, even women who themselves have never done a day of housework but instead hire out house cleaners and nannies, perceive other women as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere.”
I think this is the case for some women, but for /most/ women I think the issue is more that all of have had that experience of the guy that is certain he’s contributing equally and isn’t. And won’t be told that he isn’t. It’s not so much an assumption that women are ultimately responsible for the household, it’s an assumption that all men must be forced (or trained) to take any responsibility at all.
Which is certainly the case for any guy who feels that earning money is where the buck stops for them, but obviously not true of everyone. Even when you do get these guys to take responsibility, they often (in my experience) won’t take responsibility for allotting tasks or doing things without being prompted which leaves the responsibility solely back in the woman’s lap.
It is a vicious circle though – anytime a man contributes less than 50% and a woman has to call him on it, we immediately get slotted into the ‘nagging wife’ stereotype. The existence of that stereotype really leads you to doubt your conviction on the matter sometimes, and obviously just further encourages some guys to believe you are being unreasonable (because that’s just what women do).
Hi Lily, Yeah, I mention
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-08-05 09:29.Hi Lily,
Yeah, I mention the phenomenon of men who think they’re doing enough because I agree it makes up the majority of the disparity: most men think they’re doing half the work but they aren’t. Another issue, though, is that tradition didn’t just assign women the tasks of domesticity, it also made women responsible for setting domestic standards. And while I think Chingona’s right (below) that this may be a generational thing, and Plymouth is surely right that often it’s a personal thing rather than a gendered one, I think it’s really, really critical for both men and women to recognize that not only do men need to deal responsibly with the work of domesticity, we also need to start negotiating authority for the scope of that work as well.
Thanks,
fl
I think Lily’s right that
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Wed, 2010-08-04 19:54.I think Lily’s right that many women respond that way because that has been their own experience – that men regard their contributions to household tasks as “helping.” I am happy to report that among my own cohort (and I think I am almost a generation younger than you), I have almost never heard men’s domestic work referred to that way, and when I have, it’s usually older women doing it. The expectation on both sides, if not always the reality, is that both parties will contribute equally to the maintenance of the home.
Where I continue to see some territorialism from women – and where I have felt it myself – is in child-rearing. When we had our first, my husband was in grad school, and I went back to work very soon after he was born. My husband arranged his classes so he could be home with our son three days a week. We both were pretty happy with the arrangement. While I wished I could have worked a little less, I benefited a lot from getting out of the house, my husband got to spend precious time with his first child, and our son didn’t have to be in full-time daycare at 9 weeks. But when I overheard my husband describe himself as our son’s “primary caregiver” to an acquaintance at a party, I winced and wanted to correct him. It felt like an insult, though the context was that he was talking about how he felt like he really bonded with his son on those days where it was just the two of them and how glad he was to have that opportunity.
Oh, and I’m also happy to
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Wed, 2010-08-04 20:01.Oh, and I’m also happy to report that in this now-4-year-old boy’s vision of his future domestic life, he is married to his childhood sweetheart, they live in the Himalayas, she studies mountain goats, he studies snow leopards, she drops the kids off at daycare and he picks them up. That, or he’ll be a nurse.
My boy pretty much trained ME
Submitted by Plymouth (not verified) on Wed, 2010-08-04 23:40.My boy pretty much trained ME in housework. I mean, I learned the basics from my mom growing up but mostly I didn’t care that much about having a clean neat house (beyond a certain point). My boy is VERY particular about not only having things clean but it HOW they are cleaned. It took a lot of beating into my head to get me to clean the dishes right or the counter or the stove and he still catches me doing it “wrong” sometimes.
He’s much less particular about the bathroom than the kitchen though, so that mostly ends up clean to my standards.
And despite living together for about 2.5 years now we still do our separate laundry because I never bother to separate my colors and wouldn’t fold things neatly enough for his satisfaction. And he would never have the patience to sort out my many different styles of black socks!
I think this comes primarily
Submitted by schnee (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 06:43.I think this comes primarily from women in the way that de Beauvoir showed us in ‘The Second Sex’. Women identify with a false and artificially constructed notion of femininity, part of which is maintenance. Women’s work is that which has to be constantly re-done and since it is so tied up with our identity as women, we guard it, getting mixed messages about how we CAN act and do all the things men can do, but at the same time, the identity part of maintenance is so deeply rooted that we have to hang on to it and to be confused when men take it on. We don’t want to give up the area we have sole control over, but we don’t know it because the conditioning starts at such an early stage in our lives. It is changing, but it’s an evolutionary change, so it will take more than a generation – unless ‘The Second Sex’ becomes compulsory reading at school.
Distribution of housework is
Submitted by Minority Report (not verified) on Fri, 2010-08-06 18:23.Distribution of housework is one of the things my husband and I constantly revisit. It was a source of tension for a long time (the assumption was that I would do most things) until I broke my foot and was in a cast and using crutches for 8 weeks which left all domestic tasks for him to do. I think just how much I / he did stood out to him and since those two months he’s taken on more of the domestic to-dos. Is it equal? No. But it’s better. And it works for us, until it doesn’t anymore and then we’ll look at it again.
Quick little stories – My first month back to work after I got married one of the secretaries stopped me in the hall and asked, “How are you liking rushing home from here to cook dinner every night now?” I just laughed and said, “I don’t do that.” And a year or so ago while at lunch another the group was discussing marriage and household things while having lunch. I mentioned that my husband cooks and does laundry, etc. One of the women was appalled and told me that my husband would probably like to come home, relax and have a nice meal after working all day. To which I countered “After HE works all day? What am I doing then?”.
It amazes me how many people hold on so tightly to those “traditional” roles (and are offended when others don’t do the same).