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Housework

Anna de Logardiere

17:52 / 11.08.08

I've been doing a lot of housework recently and have been paying more attention to domestic literature, the weekend paper kind of stuff. The more I read on the subject the more I think that I live in a very equal household, the chores are divided between us. I was wondering if people here commonly feel that they do more or less, whether they think there's a gender chore divide in their home or if they find it surprising that the general perception is that women do more housework? Do you think you're biased about housework? Are there some jobs you won't do (I don't iron)?

17:57 / 11.08.08

I'm not a slob by any means, but my wife feels the need to clean much more than I do. She'll usually start and either ask for help, or I'll feel guilty and start helping. It's pretty 50-50, though.

Mysterious Transfer Student

19:09 / 11.08.08

During my long-term relationship with my ex I was an assiduous if not very competent - I don't know if the expression is going to pass muster in this thread, but what the hey - househusband, handling pretty much any and all domestic chores. This stemmed from a long period early on our relationship when I was out of work and she was still doing the two jobs she'd been at since before we first met, and represented a strategy for justifying my presence that persisted long after her situation improved dramatically. Prior to this time she'd been extremely energetically houseproud, but I think she let me continue on not wishing to let my sense of worthlessness in the relationship get the better of me. In addition, I don't mind coming clean that this was pretty much a sexless and loveless relationship that endured for years after one of us should have summoned up the guts to end it. So you can guess that my talent for passive-aggressiveness was in full display during this long period. After it ended, she told me that I had made her feel like a plant, to be fed and watered.

I live on my own now and I'm adjusting to the sense that what I have to do in my home, I have to do for myself - not to justify my existence or as a misplaced form of nurturing that has more to do with maintaining stasis and control than anything positive. At the same time I like to imagine, when I give the matter any thought, that I'm working to create and maintain a place that I'd be happy to invite anyone into, and not to go the stereotypical way of single urban males of turning a home into an ineffably claggy bodily function support base. I like the anti-entropic feel of cleaning and tidying, and testing new cleaning products and methods. So housework can also be a form of self-entertainment, I suppose.

Anna, sorry if I've hijacked your thread so early in its life, but these are matters that have preyed upon my mind for a good while now and I've thinking Convo might be a good place to give them some air... please feel free to ignore or unpick.

19:51 / 11.08.08

Transfer, you make me feel like I've just opened the Ark of the Covenant. In a good way. Food for thought. Funny that this thread should pop up the day before my family get back from their hols as I had to spend about an hour tidying and cleaning this house. It was, suprisingly, not completely unenjoyable.

Anna de Logardiere

20:14 / 11.08.08

Since I regard cleaning as a therapeutic and enjoyable activity I have no problem with the turn this thread is taking. In fact I expected it to take that turn. I don't think it is far fetched to say that often when we clean our living environments we're also clearing room in our heads to think.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

21:32 / 11.08.08

Ach. I am by no means an untidy person, but at the same time, I will clean in small increments during the week instead of spending a lazy afternoon getting it done in one fell swoop. My mom is one of those anal-rententive constant cleaners and I'm sure in her own way she feels shamed that my sister and I didn't inherit that from her.

01:15 / 12.08.08

My spouse and I have equally vile personal habits, but in different realms. This makes equivalence in housework difficult to determine. Currently, I work more outside the house, so I do less in. (This is including gardening and reshingling, which are kind of housework and kind of something else.) I like the feeling of having a tidy house, but with three dogs (1 puppy), three cats (one elderly and only occasionally continent), a teenager and two children younger than 6, tidiness is so fucking transitory that tidying hardly feels worth it. Until it becomes an absolute necessity.

But we do OK.

Not in the Face

09:55 / 12.08.08

Mrs Face has much higher standards in tidyness than I do so is often the one to prompt a cleaning session but we do split the work fairly equally I think. I don't polish as the fiddly nature of moving stuff around pisses me off no end but tend to hoover as I don't mind lugging the machine around.

Anna de Logardiere

10:34 / 12.08.08

Mr de Logardiere does most of the hoovering, he is asthmatic so it's the one type of dirt he notices before I do. In contrast I can't let things go unwashed for long periods of time, dishes, sinks, clothes, floors, you name it I wash it.

I am actually extremely tidy, this became apparent when I lived on my own and I didn't realise quite how much everyone else was messing up my life before then (I mean this only literally). The realisation that I have always been surrounded by people who are messier and dirtier than me was very cheering because I had always assumed that I was also very messy and dirty. It also dawned on me during this time that unless you constantly clean dirt and mess accumulate simply because you're passive so, being tidy-clean, I really have a lot of sympathy for Kali-mother types. I'm not one though, I actively don't let myself clean sometimes.

13:44 / 12.08.08

Housework and gender is an interesting thing. I don't like to generalise too much but it does seem as though women have a lower tolerance to dirt. Whether this is because men often assume someone else will tidy up or what I don't know.

That said when I lived in a mixed flat I endeavoured to ensure that I did my fair share of the housework however it would generally be started my one of my female flatmates upon which I would join in.

Living in an all male flat I try and maintain a clean place, but then again I have been told it's clean "for a bloke's flat" so I may not be attaining a particularly high level. Generally I don't mind mess, but dislike dirt. So pile of magazines on coffee table, fine. Lurking unwashed plates, bad. Bathroom and kitchen get cleaned at least weekly. In the rest of the place dust-bunnies are allowed to build up before I get around to hoovering. As for things like dusting the ceiling or hoovering under the sofa it's lucky if they're done once in a blue moon.

Having been a chambermaid (or whatever the male equivalent is - housekeeper?) for a hotel I know the best way to keep things really clean is a daily routine and dedication but to be honest I can't really be bothered keeping that up in my own home.

Of course I know some blokes who are very houseproud and some women who are absolute slovens so.

Anna de Logardiere

14:23 / 12.08.08

I honestly don't know if that's true or not, my experience of cleanliness is so removed from most of the people I've lived with that I can't link it to gender at all. Certainly growing up my mother was the tidier/cleaner parent but I've always believed that to be a quirk of personality. In a lot of families parents divide duties up so that the woman is at home more and inevitably spends more time on housework, this certainly sets up an expectation that women are cleaner/notice dirt more than men but is that a fundamental truth? I'd be interested in how many people here who perceive women as tidier/cleaner were brought up in that type of environment and how many don't believe this is an essential fact of life?

15:33 / 12.08.08

For what it's worth I was bought up in a home where the duties were very much divided by traditional gender roles (Dad at work, Mum at home). That being said I think any divide is down to cultural conditioning, but I reckon it still exists at this time for a lot of people. I also try to avoid falling into the stereotype by dividing household chores in a fair and equitable manner, altered for circumstances as appropriate.

16:08 / 12.08.08

In a lot of families parents divide duties up so that the woman is at home more and inevitably spends more time on housework

I think it's worth noting that there's a lot more to the unequal division of household labour than this. Where both members of a couple work or are both at home, housework still falls overwhelmingly on women, and it's rare for men to do the majority. I can probably find academic citations if anyone wants them, but I'd be surprised if anyone was surprised at this.

16:31 / 12.08.08

Ah - in fact I've found some slides from a lecture which cite ISSP (here, I assume) as a source. Looking at the chart the figures (2002, for heterosexual couples) look about:

If women are unemployed, they're the primary houseworker about 85% of the time; in just over 10% the share is equal, and in less than 5% men do most of the work.
If they're in part-time work, the figures are more or less identical; in fact, men are slightly less likely to take on the primary burden of domestic labour.
If women are in full-time employment, they're still the primary houseworker 70% of the time; it's equal just over 20% of the time, and done mostly by men just under 10%.

16:36 / 12.08.08

Mr Tel will attest to the fact he is undoubtedly tidier than I am. I breed clutter - papers, magazines, books, clippings saved for later, book reviews etc, that all seem to manifest themselves either around my end of the settee or in decorative splendour in my side of the bedroom. Whilst he acknowledges the fact that I'd be somewhat wroth if he so much as moves them an inch, I do have a certain amount of sympathy for him as he does all of the hoovering. Despicable job (though as I'm very small I put this down to the fact my dyson is nearly the same size as me and gives me vibration white finger every time I hoover the stairs).

The flip side is toilet / bathroom duty - absolutely my job, as is washing clothes, changing beds, washing curtains, cleaning ovens and all of the gardening. I've also noticed that since I became a student and work three days a week instead of five he likes (but doesn't expect) me to clean the house on my study days and have his tea on the table when he gets home....and having the time, I enjoy playing 1950's housewife.

I share an afflicition with Grant, though mine is a very elderly and doubly incontinent dog, which has taught me to master a VAX and to vow never, ever to have cream carpets in my hall again. And I believe my love of clutter (please don't equate this with a love of dirt, dirt is bad) stems from my obsessive compulsive mother frenetically cleaning everything, everyday, all day long.

Anna de Logardiere

17:34 / 12.08.08

Where both members of a couple work or are both at home, housework still falls overwhelmingly on women

You've just quoted me a statistic that I don't question but why do you think that happens and how does that make you feel about the majority of women and men who live in the UK? Can you envisage yourself in that type of relationship? You've told me nothing about what's going on and why you think that's significant to a thread on Housework.

Changing the beds is a grey area in my house, it's something that just happens when someone thinks about it one day, one of the few duties that isn't a regular job of a specific person.

17:50 / 12.08.08

Well, I thought it was significant because you put forward a reason why women tend to perform the lion's share of domestic labour - namely, that they're more likely to be at home - and I thought it was worth pointing out that this plays a relatively small part.

Why do I think it happens? I'm sure there are plenty of reasons, although foremost amongst them I'd expect to be an imbalance in power, and the socialisation of expectations from a very early age (toys offered to girls, for example, being obviously much more commonly oriented towards domestic tasks than those offered to boys). Could I envisage myself in "that type of relationship"? That's a little hard, as it's very unlikely I would enter a relationship with a man; I suppose if I were to, though, it's not too difficult to imagine that it might happen.

Anna de Logardiere

20:31 / 12.08.08

I'm not sure the gender of the other partner is relevant, if you're female then you've had this type of social conditioning and if you're male then you have less conditioning towards housework, even in a same sex relationship all you would be left with is who was more susceptible to that conditioning because the assumption based on the theory you're positing is that people are socially conditioned. I think men (and gay women) are as able to notice that there's an uneven balance of housework going on as anyone else.

Perhaps you're wondering why I'm a bit uppity about statistics? Well primarily I know nothing about the background for those that you've cited, I don't know if they interviewed or observed people, I don't know how old the interviewees were and I don't know what full time work entails. If I finish work an hour earlier then my partner and work 10 minutes away and my partner tends to work overtime and works 45 minutes away does the academic work cited take into account the extra 3 hours I spend in the house 5 days a week? I don't know and that's an important question and that's why I'm asking you if you think those statistics are relevant.

I also do not think that women clean more because they're given toy brooms when they're little. I'm not sure that women do clean more, I suspect that mothers clean more because they spend more time in the house alone with children and develop a habit. Evidence suggests to me that the cleanliness of non-parents depends on their personalities.

22:44 / 12.08.08

Certainly same-sex couples are just as capable as het couples of noticing imbalances in household work. However, it isn't really possible to examine gender-based imbalances when both partners are the same gender; if one partner does more than the other (incidentally, I'm fairly sure I've seen evidence indicating that gay couples are much more likely to be egalitarian when it comes to housework, though I've no idea where I'd find it) it doesn't have the same relation to gender roles within society as a whole.

For the actual data you need a registration, but looking at the ISSP site, I'd assume this is where the data comes from. It asks questions about how long the respondee takes doing housework, how long their spouse takes, who does particular kinds of housework etc. I'm really quite amazed that you seem so sceptical of figures showing the simple fact that women tend to do more housework than men; I can't imagine anyone would argue this hasn't the case for the past century, so I'd be pretty gobsmacked if it had suddenly evened itself out. No, I can't say anything about the ISSP's sampling methods, but they're a statistics agency, not a partisan outfit, and I can't discern any reason why they'd be inclined to weight their data to reach such a conclusion. I'm pretty certain they're widely cited and respected, as I've seen data relating to other questions in that survey in a few places. So yes, as far as I know it's possible that a tendency for men to work more overtime or further away or whatever, but I find it difficult to believe that you really think it's likely that such explanations are anywhere near sufficient to explain an eight-to-one imbalance in the numbers of women in full-time work (in many of which, it's probably safe to assume and I believe I recall from the lecture, the male partner is not in full-time work himself) doing the majority of the housework compared to the numbers for men.

And obviously, you can't explain vast imbalances in domestic labour by gender just by toy brooms. However, I think that those toy brooms (and toy cookers, and toy bloody shopping carts), and their prevalence, give a fairly strong indication of the kinds of roles young girls will be expected within our society to take on when they're no longer young girls.

13:21 / 13.08.08

There was a gender difference with cleaning in our home and it tended to fall on the icky gross tedious to the female and a few quick distinct jobs to the male.

I grew up in an all female household and sort of picked up the belief that men don't really do stuff. Maybe some sort of drone quality don't push them too hard or else they might break sexism...

Anyhow after reading a feminist article that men are less likely to do the gross "thankless" jobs and be highly praised when they do any sort of household work (rather than it just being expected) I took a long hard look at my habits. I know from experience that when living with other women I'm less likely to hand wave their lack of cleaning and general upkeep in the house. So I talked to the spouse about it and found a solution that addresses his lack of cleaning training and my weird benevolent sexism.

He has a hard time assessing if something needs to be cleaned if it isn't something like an over flowing sink or stinky cat box etc. We discuss the chores and divide 'em up pretty equally now. I get the more general dirt level tasks and he gets the set schedule tasks with a few icky tedious ones thrown in for balance every few months. We also are semi competitive over the dishes now which is surprisingly funny and great for our relationship. Dishwashing is a mutually praiseworthy task. Oh and we thank each other for cleaning while understanding it's required.

Often when one person is doing dishes the other will resort to tickle attacks to take over the job.

Anna de Logardiere

14:17 / 13.08.08

I don't doubt it Pingle I'm just not sure it's meaningful, a large number of women don't have to do more housework they simply are doing it.