NPR yesterday: Shameful debate about how men don't do their share of housework

DeathPreys · 2014-05-20T20:06:18+00:00

For the record I have a friend who was out work for 9 months and spent his days caring for his newborn and cleaning house while his fiancé worked. She would constantly belittle him for not bringing in any money and assured him she's better than him because of that. Now he works 50hr weeks and watches the child in the evening while she goes to work putting in 20ish hrs a week and still doesn't do the housework.

2014-05-20T20:30:15+00:00

I'm a father, and I do all of the housework. If my fiancee washes a few dishes, I count myself lucky to get a break.

It's not that she doesn't contribute. I'm getting ready to return to university, and as a parent, without her assistance with little ones and her moral support, I won't make it. She works part time too, and doesn't hesitate to knock out errands so time can be freed up for me to do other things.

But when it comes to cleaning dishes, sweeping and scrubbing floors, toilets, bath tubs, and surfaces, doing laundry, keeping things organized and tidy, doing yard work, doing repairs, taking out the trash -- it's all on me. All of the stereotypical gender role household stuff from both genders.

We're not an anomaly. We know other couples who are the same way.

I don't usually post here, but since I have daughters, I read about feminism so that as they get older I won't be a total dipwad regarding things they face. The MRM is just the other side of the same coin, so I read here too.

This just irks me because the NPR should know better than to devote air time to a blatant hasty generalization. That kind of thing doesn't help anyone. It just panders to those who lack skills with critical thought while misrepresenting feminism in the eyes of the unfamiliar.

bikemaul · 2014-05-20T18:22:34+00:00

The host of Q, Jian Ghomeshi, is hit and miss with gender hypocrisy. Sometimes he will admirably call out bias of his guests, but other times he lets blatant discrimination slide. Overall I like his show, but most of the gender issue guests are biased against males.

xNOM · 2014-05-20T21:27:52+00:00

Actually this has been studied and it turns out men and women do about the same amount of housework as they did as single people before marriage. In other words, women make housework. Also, anything car or yard related somehow magically doesn't count as housework.

DoublespeakAbounds · 2014-05-20T17:58:43+00:00

No mention of how men work more or do the yard/maintenance work, of course. Just lazy, filthy men refusing to clean up dust bunnies.

The lady in this argument sounds like the typical feminist idiot - the guy (who isn't much better) states that cleanliness is subjective and the girl disagrees while espousing her subjective standards as if they're objective.

There's a funny, hypocritical moment at ~18 minutes where the woman mentions that it's different in her home because she is home more than her husband....

Juan_Golt · 2014-05-21T06:29:37+00:00

Housework turned into a pretty big argument on my household in the last couple of months.

When I was unemployed I was expected to do all the housework because I was always home. I was actually still bringing in more money. I would get contracts that paid $65 an hour for 3-4 12 hour days, working part time at one of my old jobs pulling wire or programming phone systems. Meanwhile she worked 25-30 hours while going to college.

After I got a full time job, that's been averaging 45 hours a week and paychecks about 4-5 times as much as hers I as still being expected to put in an "equal share" of the house work.

It took quite a few arguments about it. We finally came to an agreement, that I help when she is overwhelmed with school or is called in for some extras hours that I would help. But overall since she is only bringing in a portion of the income and spends more time at home that she would have a greater responsibility of house chores.

This has nothing to do with me being the man, so I shouldn't do housework. Or she being the woman so she does the housework. I believe in equality, but she disagreed what being equal actually meant. Since I am supporting us financially I want a support system aswell.

If she had a job working 40+ hours I would agree that we should put in a more equal effort with the housework. Except I would probably hire a maid, because I fucking hate housework.

Our conclusion pretty much game to ms hours. If she puts in 20 hours into work and 15 hours into school, and I put in 45 hours into work she owes the support system 10 hours of work. Now we don't track our hours or anything extream like that but she at least started to understand equality in the real world rather than assuming because she does more housework that she must be some sort of subservient figure.

questionnmark · 2014-05-21T07:08:31+00:00

One thing I wonder about is whether women are 'triggered' into action on chores faster than men. I notice that I hate having a messy kitchen more than my flatmates, so I end up doing most of the dishes as I hate having a dirty kitchen when I cook. Women seem to have a bit of a hangover from the 50's where they litterally had nothing much to do due to advances in home appliances/motor vehicles, so they cleaned the house to ridiculous standards. It seems that the house-keeping standards have carried on into an era where women are expected to be working nearly as much as men, so women are infact stressing themselves to keep up to standards which were never appropriate.

baskandpurr · 2014-05-20T22:28:54+00:00

I live by myself so I do all the housework. If NPR wants to shame me they are welcome to do more of my housework than I do. Otherwise, this just isn't going to work.

MaestroLogical · 2014-05-21T08:38:45+00:00

I would've loved to toss the recent study/report citing that the more housework a man does, the less attractive he becomes to them, typically leading to divorce... You know, just for consideration in the debate.

2014-05-21T02:07:26+00:00

Ok guys, who's not cleaning up the cat vomit?

The only reason i can think of for the disparity, and admittedly i am going only by my subjective personal experience, is because i can not do it correctly. My mother slapped me upside the head once because i did not properly fold the god damn wash clothes. If i cooked, i had to cook my meal, then promptly clean the kitchen before i could sit down and fucking eat my meal because otherwise my mother would nag me the whole god damn time i was eating.

weh....that was cathartic.

HolySchmoly · 2014-05-21T13:20:58+00:00

This is not a shameful question. Nor is "do women benefit from an overly large share of the family spending"? The two go together. Or to put it another way do women earn their fair share of the family income. Income minus expenses equals profit.

Remember to assign a value to housework too.

Also relevant is "do men get to chose as women do whether to be full time, part-time or no-time(full time home maker)"?

Edit: Google keyboard messed me up again, sorry.

writeonbrother · 2014-05-21T19:43:08+00:00

Conversation like that aren't about housework. They're about dominance.

Tusse · 2014-05-22T16:46:12+00:00

I'm don't think this is a gender thing, its more of a cultural issue.

For the past 2-3 generations, kids of either gender haven't been raised to tidy and clean as they go, but have been allowed to skive chores and the culture of being house-proud has been dumped as 'oppressive'.

Being tidy is an ingrained habit that is very difficult to pick up as an adult, so, it's best not to share house with a messie in the first place --- because this always ends up as an unwinnable war and misery for both sides.

But if you like the messie you're living with, hire a cleaning person, it's money well spent on solving a small problem that has big consequences.

Title	NPR yesterday: Shameful debate about how men don't do their share of housework
Author	DoublespeakAbounds
Upvotes	29
Comments	27
Date	May 20, 2014 4:47 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/261jqz/npr_yesterday_shameful_debate_about_how_men_dont/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/npr-yesterday-shameful-debate-about-how-men-dont.1000472 https://theredarchive.com/post/1000472

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