I believe there’s a great deal of truth to this but I have to stress my observation is not about standards of cleanliness or whether things get done. It is about HOW things get done. I like things being clean.
Not two days ago I was criticized for the way I was washing the dishes. It’s not that I was not making them clean; it’s that I like to apply the soap by putting some into the pot or whatever I’m washing and then pouring hot water into it, thius supplying myself with soapy water to wash things. My wife opined, in a judgmental fashion, that this was wrong; soap should be applied to the sponge directly. There is no extant evidence that the dishes aren’t being adequately cleaned, I have to point out; that has never been a problem. It’s just that her way was right because it was, and mine was wrong because it wasn’t her way. Stuff like that strikes ME as being positively weird; I don’t know why one would care about such a thing or expend the energy to criticize another person for something like that.
And again, I think this is minor league stuff. What I see other couples going through is Hiroshima by comparison.
Telling a guy that he must do a better job at cleaning house than he thinks is necessary so as to please his mother-in-law might not necessarily be the best way to maintain a healthy marriage.
I think the rationale behind the “whoever cares more” rule is that it’s unfair or unreasonable to insist that things be done in a particular way or to a certain standard but to be unwilling to put forth the effort to actually do them that way yourself.
After all, if you lived alone, it would be silly to complain about things not being done properly. The reason they aren’t done is because you didn’t do them, which presumably means you didn’t think the reward of having them done was worth the effort of doing them.
Of course, it complicates things when two (or more) people live together, even moreso when there are children involved. The “whoever cares more” rule makes sense as a rule of thumb, but not as the rule. There are other good rules of thumb too, such as “Whoever makes a mess should be the one to clean up the mess,” another one that would be mostly automatic if you lived alone.
A woman with whom I had a serious relationship was upset because I let the bathroom fixtures and floor air-dry after I cleaned them, rather than dry them with towels. Long story short, she ended up institutionalized.
At one point I lived alone in a house with two full bathrooms. A few times women would use the bathroom and comment on what a great housekeeper I was. I’d explain that the bathroom they had just peed in was the guest bathroom, which I never used, only cleaned. The other bathroom was the one I always used and hardly ever cleaned.
A few were curious and checked out the other bathroom. Heh. :eek:
Again though, that’s a mutually agreed upon arrangement. Obviously many couples agree on a primary caregiver. The question is what happens when there is a dispute.
Yes, but the keystone of the decision was “he can take a break, there is no way in Hell she will so much as take less hours”. She cares more about her career even though she’s already at the highest point she’ll ever reach. To him, jobs were what she did; to her, it’s what she is. The agreement was reached upon based on who cared more about the kids always having a parent home when they got there from school than about job, and who did not. Agreements don’t just happen, in general - and when my sister in law is involved, oy vey*.
All I can say is that it’s all about class identity. When your mom teaches you how to do stuff, there’s a lot of “this is how we do this. Other people may have different standards, but these are ours” subtext. Being a lazy housekeeper–taking things that feel like short cuts–just seems screamingly wrong to a lot of people, especially women.
You know, someone might describe me like that, and it would really really piss me off. Yes, I kept my career and my husband quit his when our son was born. It wasn’t that I loved my job more and he loved our son more; that’s preposterous. It’s that I loved my job more than he loved his job, and so it made sense for me to keep going. It’s not that I didn’t care if they had a loving parent around; I cared every bit as much as he did.
I mean, if your brother died, would your sister-in-law sell the kids to the gypsies so she could keep her job?
No, but she would expect her mother to become the primary caretaker.
And I never said that she doesn’t love the kids; I said she cares about keeping her career more than he did about keeping his. She was not and is not willing to do anything that will reduce her standing at work, so long as there is any other option available at all.
My tone was uncalled for and I apologize. I’ll clarify that I was speaking of averages, and those numbers can inform us as to what’s probably true in a particular situation. As you said, it’s not certainty, but I didn’t aim to imply certainty.
Yes, but his story doesn’t seem like a shortcut. It was just a different way of getting suds in the dish. As he said, the cleanliness of the dishes was not the issue, just the way the cleaning was done.
I guessed at it. If you think you have a better understanding of it, I’d love to hear it.
You talk of a penalty falling on people. What penalty is this? What is being held over their head? The Evil Eye?
The penalty seems to be mainly the disapproval of the mother and mother-in-law (and perhaps other women). So, there is a tendency for women to care a lot about doing household chores to a “I was taught this way” standard and in a “I was taught this way” manner because they’re afraid other women will disapprove of them. Those same women will likely become the same mothers and mothers-in-law who will exert the very same pressure on the next generation of women.
And if many men don’t want to indulge that particular self-perpetuating intergenerational neuroticism, they’re doing wrong? They should join in and reinforce that dynamic?
You talk of a conditioning lingering. The way to get rid of noxious conditioning is not to indulge it. The more you feed it to quiet it, the more you end up with situations like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ea5jKFGgUw
Well, who gets to decide what proper housekeeping is? Bit arbitrary isn’t it? She thinks it’s about pleasing others, you think it’s just about keeping away the cockroaches, but who gets to decide?