Well, I’m a woman and I mow the lawn, load the dishwasher, build things, do the laundry, grow food for the household, cook, run the power tools, and bring home the bacon. (And cook the damned stuff.) This morning I was up in the attic trying to keep a squirrel out of it. I live alone, and if I didn’t get uppity and do man work, I’d live in a jungle with a tree-rat colony in the eaves.
I, er, don’t remember the last time I cleaned the toilets, though.
I tried to get my boyfriend to do all this stuff, but he says I should get back to chewing leather because then we’ll have nice soft leather and he won’t have to listen to me talk.
In our house, we both do dishes and laundry. I do the majority of the work on floors and bathrooms. We both mow lawns, I do most of the gardening. He changes most lightbulbs. We used to have a housekeeper that would come by twice a week, and have someone mow for us. We probably will again in the future, but for now, we do it ourselves.
If a gender based division of labor works for you, great. I personally wouldn’t live with someone who didn’t pull his fair share of the housework - you’d be out on your bum fast, but hey, you can find someone this works for, good for both of you. Now, maybe if I were a housewife instead of working woman, and he were the breadwinner, it would be equitable, but since being a stay at home wife/mother has never turned my crank, that isn’t a likely scenario.
Meh. I do that which I decide needs doing. Clean a dish, cook a meal, change a diaper, operate a backhoe, solve a quadratic equation, fly a plane, re-start a stopped heart, repair a chainsaw, comfort the dying, clean up vomit, whatever! Done all that and more, and will again.
I don’t think the splitting up of household chores these days has a bit to do with feminism. I think it has to do with how our lifestyles have changed. In many households today, both partners work outside the home, and the division of household chores must reflect that. Now, if someone’s job is to be a homemaker and to raise the children, that’s their job and they should do it (Though even in the case of homemakers, I don’t think they should have to do everything. That’s a pretty tall order and a lot to ask of one person, especially when raising children too.). But when both people are working outside of the home, I think the work should be split accordingly. At least that’s how it works at my house. Most of the time, whoever feels like doing the work does it. Sometimes neither of us feels like it and it doesn’t get done, and sometimes we clean or cook dinner together because we both want to.
I’m not saying there aren’t jobs that just I do or jobs that just my husband does. I don’t like my husband to do laundry, but it’s more a personal preference because he doesn’t fold the clothes to my specifications. Then again, I wouldn’t mow the lawn to his specifications either, so it all evens out.
I think you have to do whatever works for you. In most cases, that’s not going to include the words, “That’s women’s work. I won’t do that.”
If Mr. Neville ever said he wouldn’t do something because “it’s women’s work”, he would be a candidate for posting in the “how accurately can you describe getting hit in the testicles” thread. He wouldn’t get much sympathy from his family, either.
In our household, I load the dishwasher (because I’m better at it than he is) and he puts the dishes away (because he’s better at that than I am). We live in an apartment, so we don’t have any yard care to do, but if we did, I’d have him do it, because I am allergic to lawn grass.
Most other stuff gets done on an as-needed basis by whoever is best able to do it when it needs to get done. Most of the heavy cleaning, though, gets done by the housekeeper who comes in every two weeks. It’s been very well proven that either one of us will let our place go totally to hell if we’re the only ones responsible for cleaning. There are women who don’t notice dirt and mess in much the same way guys supposedly don’t- I’m one of them.
We have a large lawn and I have bad hay fever. I do the bulk of the lawn care in spite of this.
As far as division of labor in my household:
I do the majority of the day-to-day chores, the garbage, dishwashing, emptying, the laundry and the folding. We share on the kid’s baths, but my wife does more, especially on a day I mowed the lawn. She did the bulk of the diapers changes and cleanups. She does almost all the cooking. I make my kids lunches. I got this done to an easy system however. She works close to home and I work 40 miles away. She drops off the kids, picks them up, gets them ready for school, and does the dozens of other little mid-day things that parents do for school age kids.
I do all the home repairs and I am the one that had to get the kids on a bedtime schedule. I let it go way to long but it has worked out. My wife reads to the kids almost every night. I make up and tell them stories on car trips and sometimes for a bedtime story. When we do the massive cleanings, I do more but I think all the dirty diapers she changed vs. the ones I have changed leave me very much on the wrong side of the balance still.
Now how the division of labor occurred: In the case of the diapers, I honestly found excuses to do other things and with Hay Fever I noticed the need less.
As far as Dishes, clothes, and garbage, my wife’s toleration for all three accumulating is much higher. Therefore, I got use to doing them as I already did. When I met my wife, she kept two piles of clothes in her apartment. Clean and dirty, little of it folded. I use to fold my underwear because it saves space and I use to be on an Aircraft Carrier.
Somehow, I was assigned the books and making any business calls and giving RSVPs for birthday parties. I think overall we are fairly balanced in the workload.
As I mentioned I still owe her for the diaper chore. This might balance out by the time the kids are off to college.
I’ll do a dish but it’s usually Drachillix who loads the dishwasher. I’m more likely to wash a floor than he is because he isn’t as finicky about dirty surfaces. He does the carpet cleaner because the machine is almost as big as I am. He does all of the cooking and shopping. I do still consider him a real man-- that or he’s got the greatest disguise ever. And we should all be glad he dresses like a man because he’d be the ugliest drag queen in the history of drag queens if he decided to wear a dress.
I know he doesn’t want a woman who stays in his house all day just doing househouse. He knows doing a dish won’t make his penis fall off.
As a former short order cook and long time bachelor most “womens work” is second nature to me, just another chore. I don’t see any problem with a more traditional setup in your household if that works for you.
tomndebb closed that other thread of Minotaurus’ about women but I wanted to point something out so that people didn’t think he’s pulling all his “facts” out of his butt:
It’s not an anthropolgist but a Professor of Humanities and Media Studies (according to her Wikipedia article) and she apparently wrote
in Sexual Personae. I would say the Humanities is much less credible than anthropological background for that comment. heh.
