Cleanliness is next to…
In a comment last week, Jen wrote:
"There are so many things you can do to fight the domestic glass ceiling beyond requiring all other women to share your life choices!… Like not judging your women friends when their houses are filthy, or at least vowing that we won’t teach our daughters this female-specific shame."
Amanda at Pandagon and Hugo Schwyzer also wrote about how women are judged for the state of their house(hold)s in a way that men aren’t. I had a "click" moment reading these posts — for all the time that I spend thinking and reading about feminism, it hadn’t really registered on me that society really doesn’t judge men for having a dirty house.
A personal story to illustrate: When my parents came to visit after D was born, my mom noticed that our stove top was absolutely filthy. I had been exhausted and sick for much of the last trimester of my pregnancy, and am not sure I could have reached the back of the stove even if I had had the energy to try to clean it. T had been picking up much of the domestic slack (on top of his paid job), but cleaning the burners wasn’t even on his mental list. So without saying a word, my mom found a scouring pad and started scrubbing away. I was simultaneously grateful and absolutely mortified. T wasn’t in the least embarassed.
It’s important to remember that one of the main "weapons" in the drive to push women out of paid employment following World War II was rising domestic standards. All those wonderful labor-saving devices wound up saving much less labor, because expectations for cleanliness rose. When you had to boil water and wash clothes by hand, people got a clean pair of pants every Sunday. With the invention of automatic washers, people started expecting to have clean pants every day.
Perhaps the problem with hiring housecleaners isn’t that there’s something immoral about expecting someone else to clean up after you (as some have suggested), but that it helps perpetuate the expectation that houses should be kept at a level of cleanliness that’s possible only if it’s a significant part of someone’s job to maintain it.
Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I think unreasonably high standards contribute to social isolation. I know an awful lot of people who never have anyone over, because they don’t think they can do so without cleaning their house until it looks like something out of Home Beautiful. And that’s a real shame.
December 7th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
Oh, this is so timely for me! I just wrote a post about hiring a new cleaning lady. I think you hit on some of the reasons it was such a big deal for me– I feel like I ought to somehow be able to keep things neat, clean and shiny at home by myself (after all, I have a husband who doesn’t think it’s all part of my wife role and who does a lot around the house too, and I work only part time), and further that I ought to want to clean more than I do (my interest level=close to zero). I don’t know if I could justify hiring help if I weren’t working, although we’d probably need it more then; at least now we’re not home to mess it up all day every day.
Also, I tend to be a messy sort of person. I organize by piles, I have lots of projects going all the time, I can find my things better when they’re strewn around, and I don’t always get everything “put away.” I have tons of books and hobby supplies, my work materials, toys, etc., and there’s just no way my house will ever look like a magazine spread, no matter how much I clean and how many organizing systems I buy. Your post made me realize that that does sometimes cause me shame or moments of low self-esteem, but also that I needn’t accept picture-perfect as the standard to judge myself.
I hadn’t thought about the gender aspect of it much, either. I don’t think I let my housekeeping habits affect my social life, but I do always clean before people come over, and there are times I wouldn’t want to let drop by guests in; I’d probably do it anyway, but I’d cringe internally. Apart from q pre-major party cleaning, husband wouldn’t ever even think about the state of the house before he invited someone in. Queen Elizabeth could knock at the door and he’d tell her to knock some toys off the sofa and have a seat.
December 7th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Great post.
I think that trying to keep a house clean all the time would drive me crazy. Perhaps television is part of what helped shape the idea that such a thing would even be possible.
Definitely, it is a sexist message that needs to be changed.
December 7th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Excellent post. I also clean furiously before we have guests. In some ways, I like the fact that guests motivate me to clean, because at some level, I prefer a clean house to a dirty house (yet not enough to do it without extra motivation). But there is an element of shame involved (they’ll think I’m a poor housekeeper!). However, my husband seems to share my shame at a dirty house (he jumps right in cleaning and picking up when we’re expecting company), so either it’s not entirely gendered, or else I’ve managed to socialize into a more “feminized” POV…
December 8th, 2005 at 12:32 am
We women are triply burdened, by higher expectations in housekeeping, personal beauty, and parenting. The worst thing about it is that I’ve completely internalized the expectations so that it doesn’t even matter whether anyone else thinks I should be reaching certain near-impossible standards–I think I should be.
Last week, I took one of my five-year-old’s playmate home after a playdate. When she got in the car, she said, “this is a very dirty car.” I was terribly embarrassed but when I told my husband, he shrugged it off, even though he’s nominally responsible for keeping the cars clean and in good working order. I vacuumed and washed the car within a week, feeling ashamed the whole time.
December 8th, 2005 at 12:41 am
This is a really excellent post, and man did it hit close to home.
December 8th, 2005 at 1:24 am
Ditto the other commenters on this one hitting close to home… except in my case, it’s a little different. My husband is the one with the cleanliness standards, and I have an incredibly low tolerance compared to him. And when my parents were here a few weeks ago, my mom kept offering to tidy up and clean things and I kept telling her not to bother, it’ll just get dirty the next day anyway.
So while I do suffer guilt about the house not being clean, my guilt is not a reflection of how I think society views my home skills, but rather my guilt that my husband does more than his share of the cleaning.
I don’t, however, have any qualms whatsoever about hiring someone else to clean the house – when we had house cleaners it was two hours, twice a month. My husband spends about two to three hours a week cleaning the house by himself (I do some organizing & chaos-management on top of that, but I rarely do “cleaning” such as vacuuming), and I would much rather he spend that time with our kids, so therefore we outsource (although we’re inbetween cleaners right now :-).
December 8th, 2005 at 6:56 am
I’ve noticed that within our circle of friends, when the dad goes on a business trip, people are relatively blase, when will he be back, etc. When the mom goes on a business trip, there is a big expression of concern, the mom-less family gets invited to dinner, do you need help, etc. In our case, it’s a little peculiar – she’s the one who works 65 hours a week, I’m the one who works 40, and arranges playdates, and cooks 90% of the dinners. But, hey, I’m always happy to get invited to dinner…
December 8th, 2005 at 8:31 am
I’ve finally gotten to the point in my life where I will actually have people over if my house is messy, but it took a while. I think that the difficulty I’ve had in overcoming this is really from my mom, because I’ve noticed that my brothers are exactly the same way. In fact, when I was in the hospital having my son, my mom came and cleaned my entire house, and then nagged me about it later. It wasn’t one of those helpful cleanings, where the person does the work just to be of some use at a difficult time. It was more like a vengeful cleaning–as if she was saying, “I’ve just waited to get my hands on this place.” My dh still talks about it, over two years later.
December 8th, 2005 at 9:23 am
I fear I suffer from this more than some because my family made the working-class-to-middle-class transition fairly recently. As Elizabeth has noted elsewhere in a book review (or was that your piece in Brain, Child?), for working class families cleanliness is a greater sign of good parenting than for the middle class.
I am a semi-failure at breaking the cycle with my own girls. I have this obsession with them helping around the house, partially to avoid that sense of entitlement that seems to be lurking just around every corner, partially so they understand that life involves work. Sometimes this manifests itself as the kids putting their own dishes in the dishwasher, for example, which I consider cross-gender. But sometimes we end up at “Mommy and the girls spend most of Saturday cleaning the house while Daddy disappears into the garage.” Which is exactly how I grew up — yuck.
December 8th, 2005 at 9:45 am
My wife used to let piles of moldy dishes sit in her sink when we were dating, and now I’m always the one who does them. I am generally more concerned with cleanliness (and also guests’s impression), but the one thing she is more interested in cleaning than I is the stovetop, and only when guests come over.
December 8th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Exactly.
And hiring a cleaning person is always the woman’s job, not the man’s.
December 8th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
heard in my head just now “Click”
December 8th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
heard in my head just now “Click”
December 8th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
yes, this definitely hit close to home with me. i have fairly high cleaning standards for what i can live with, fortunately not nearly as high as my mother’s! however, with me it’s more about “tidy” than “clean”. dust & pet hair & dirty stove burners don’t bother me the way that clutter does. things have to be put away in their place or i feel uneasy.
one of the problems i had during first trimester pregnancy was that i was too sick & tired to keep up with the housecleaning. (& my husband & i don’t co-habitate at the moment so expecting him to clean my house was not an option. it’s hard enough getting him to change the cat litter on a timely basis).
but living in a “dirty” house really bothered me psychologically during the few weeks i was too exhausted to get off the couch & vaccuum. i don’t know what will happen when the baby is born — i’ll either be bothered by it, get used to it, or we’ll hire a cleaner. and of course my husband will be living at my house at that point, so i can count on him to help out some ~ but his standards are not the same as mine so there will be negotiating.
what really struck me to the bone in the above is the bit about judging other women based on the cleanliness of their houses. i don’t know that i was even conscious of doing that until it was brought up & pointed out in this blog discussion. this is something i definitely inherited from my mother, and i’m going to try to work on it. but ingrained patterns of how to view the world can be really hard to change.
December 9th, 2005 at 2:53 am
What interested me in your post is this idea that cleanliness standards rise as the ability to clean gets easier. These days, in this society, if there’s a *spec* of dust in the house it’s terrible, but not long ago most people had dirt floors. Certainly some of this is hygenic — clean floors means no ants or other bugs — but I wonder how much is driven by commercialism.
Also — surely there’s a male equivalent to female feelings about cleanliness. In our household my husband worries what the neighbors will think of the pine needles on the roof and in the yard, while I couldn’t care less.
December 9th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
The House Beautiful trap
Elizabeth at Half-Changed World has a excellent post on the way that self-imposed house-cleaning standards contribute to our own oppression. We worry about what other women will think when they see our house (how many of us clean with our mothers loo…
December 11th, 2005 at 10:03 am
I agree. I had that “click” moment when I was married to my first husband, who’s even more of a slob than I am, and realized that when people came over to visit our pigsty, it wasn’t him they’d be judging for it.
And if you saw my house now, you’d realize I’m over it. LOL I figure as long as the house is clean enough that no one is getting sick from it, it’s clean enough. The beds are never made. The pants are not cleaned every day. The floor has dust bunnies. The windows do not sparkle. Neither does the sink. NOthing does, actually.
I do clean when other people come over, but that’s not because I think they’ll judge me for a messy house–gods now that even after the cleaning sessions, it’s not out of BH&G, and most of them know me well enough to know that the regular state of my house is normally quite different. But I see it as a sign of respect for visitors–like having something nice to eat and drink, and a game to play or a movie to watch. Anyone who thinks I ought to be cleaning isn’t likely to be my friend in the first place.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:14 am
My friend lives in a really filthy apartment. I’m not kidding – filthy – thousands of fruit flies and all. I have no problem with that except that she invites me to eat at her place. I can no longer force the food down without barfing.
Please, can someone tell me a polite way to tell her that I do not want to eat there. I don’t want to lose a friend, so I desperately need advice on this.
Thanks
January 21st, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I am curious to know if anyone cares about the bacteria spread by currency. My company cleashs dollars or allows you to clean them and looking for ways to improve world health one cash transaction at a time