Division of labor
I’m really enjoying the thoughtful comments on yesterday’s post about housework — thanks to everyone who’s written.
In general, I agree with Wayne’s point that neither working for pay nor caring for children exempts you from doing "the scut work that comes with being an adult." But I don’t think that each task needs to be divided precisely 50/50 in order for the overall division of labor to be fair. As Cecily wrote:
"In my house, my husband can’t vacuum successfully to save his life. So I vaccum. But, thankfully, he’s wonderful at cat litter. I can’t imagine that changing if we ever actually get to have a child, even though my husband plans to be a SAHD. It’s not like having a baby is going to make him good at vacuuming."
It reminded me of the big bruhaha at Salon in June over Ayelet Waldman’s essay about how her husband does all the home repairs. Yes, not everyone has the privilege of having a partner who can take over the tasks that you’re bad at, or just don’t want to do. Yes, there’s a risk that your partner could divorce you or die, and you’d have to figure things out from scratch. Or a flu pandemic could strike, bringing civilization to a temporary halt, and you’d wish you knew how to build a solar still from parts lying around your house. But, notwithstanding Robert Heinlein, most of the time specialization does make life easier. (Waldman goes further and suggests that she likes being dependent in some ways, because it’s a sign of her commentment to the relationship. I do find that a little oogie.)
That said, if people duck out of all the unpleasant and time-consuming tasks, the ones that need to be done day in and day out, because they’re "not good at it," my recommendation is that they obviously need more practice. No one is born good at scrubbing toilets. No one has an innate sense of vacuuming.
I think this is particularly important when it comes to the nitty-gritty tasks of childcare. As I believe I’ve written here before, I think one of the biggest obstacles to active fathering is that it’s so rare in our society for men to get long periods when they’re solely responsible for their babies. That makes it hard for them to gain expertise and confidence in their parenting, so that they don’t just hand the babies back to mom when things get rough.
August 4th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I’ve enjoyed the comments, too. And it led to some good conversation with my wife at the air-conditioned play center at the mall where we let our daughter run wild for an hour. So thanks for bringing up the topic!
And what you write here, that work needn’t be divided 50/50, makes good sense to me. I can’t really figure out what the chore ratio is here because we each seem to get out of doing the things we hate the most. There’s a subjective element that makes it hard to come up with statistics about chore distribution.
I like what you wrote about men rarely getting long periods of time with babies.
I’m having a hard time, though, imagining Michael Chabon doing basic home repairs. Doesn’t it mess up his hair? Anyway, as someone else put it, Waldman and Chabon are the Billy Bob and Angelina Joli of the literary world.
August 4th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Laughing! Thanks for the solar still information — I’ll do my best to construct one during the next regularly scheduled apocalypse. But what if the lowest, dampest area I can find is in my basement???
August 5th, 2005 at 7:31 am
I think I’m gonna post about this myself, given the strong feelings your post (and the comments) have roiled up in me. It’s a very interesting debate.
August 5th, 2005 at 11:36 am
A long time ago (high school in the late 80’s) my friends and I came up with a system of rating boyfriends/husbands vis-a-vis household chores. They received no points, we decided, for doing things like taking out the garbage or fixing a leaky faucet. The things they were supposed to do. They won many points for cleaning toilets or washing dishes or caring for children. Gardening/outdoor tasks were probably the only thing that we couldn’t decide on the appropriate allocation.
Gendered assumptions . . . can’t live with ’em, can’t quite kill ’em. Yet.
August 5th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Great to read your posts on this topic, and the comments. Much wisdom. That’s so true about the value of giving dads time alone with kids — joint parenting doesn’t always teach all that needs to be taught. After I spend a weekend alone with kids (rarely), they start to come to me more for help with things, even once both parents are back home. I started three times to offer comments based on our family’s experience with division of labor, but it’s too personal (okay, my contribution falls short of my principles sometimes and I just don’t want to share). I’m sitting here in front of your comment interface, looking at the question “Remember personal info?,” and thinking it would require a box to check that says, “No way!”
August 5th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
My husband and I had a nice discussion about this (thanks for the topic!), and we agreed that there are many daily grind chores that are just to no one’s liking. But they must be done! There are a couple of keys to our success (mostly) in keeping up with a busy family household:
1. Ensure that neither parent has to do the chore(s) they hate the very most. I love my DH deeply for cleaning bathrooms.
2. Don’t get hung up on splitting everything 50/50. There are certain things I am picky about (laundry) so I don’t mind tipping the scales to ensure I’m happy with the way the laundry is done. As long as both people are contributing reasonably, just be happy that it works.
3. Find a way to make the most out of the chores. In our house (both full time work outside home), DH always cooks dinner and I always clean up. My clean up time in the kitchen is quiet time, as DH and DD do something together, and I enjoy giving my mind some time to process the day.
4. Just get over the fact that you’re doing chores. They must be done. Suck it up. There are lots of things in life that are no fun (waiting at the DMV, paying your taxes, sitting in traffic) but you can’t be doing something fun all the time.
5. Use chores as an opportunity to teach some real life survival skills to your kids. Who wants to end up with a 17 year old who has no idea how to do laundry? I would be embarassed as a mother.
I think DH & I have it a little easier, though, because we both work in an office all day and put in similar hours. So there’s no trying to compare whose job is “harder” or “more stressful” and, therefore, who should be doing the chores by nature of having had “the easier day.” (I hate gratuitous quote marks, but I used those because I think the subjective meanings of those words are often behind the divisions that arise between SAH and WOH parents.)
August 5th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Merseydotes, I hear you re: enabling each other to dodge the one task you hate. I do all kindsa stuff to be able to avoid the catbox.
August 5th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
And here I thought I was just being flip!
I spoke with my husband about it last night, and he pointed out how unique our arrangement is… we each do our own laundry and cook our own meals and wash our own dishes (we don’t eat at the same time, except when we go out). The rest we split up pretty evenly, but they do fall on some “gender” lines. He tends to do trash and lawns, and I tend to vaccuum and dust.
But I do most of the home repairs because I was raised as the only child of a (poor) single mom (one of my favorite childhood memories is of the time we replaced the clutch cable in our Volkswagon Bug), and he grew up in apartment buildings in NYC where you called the super to change a lightbulb. So I guess it evens out, in a way.
I don’t want to mow in the hot sun anyway. Ick.
August 6th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Before my first kid was born, I had heard about how mothers unintentionally sabotage the father’s relationship with the baby by swooping in if the baby starts crying while the dad is in charge, so I consciously tried to avoid doing that… and it’s HARD! And many times, he would look at me and say “But he’ll stop crying if you take him” which for the most part was true (the two-sided magic of breastfeeding – argh!). I don’t think I succeeded completely, but I’m glad I at least knew it was a common problem ahead of time instead of finding out 5 years later.