On Friday Laura Vanderkam linked to an opinion piece in the NYT about the unequal division of labor in most US homes, and also linked to a response she appreciated in The Federalist. Finally, she had this reminder for her readers.
I’d also say that if anybody reading this blog feels the split is not equal in her (or his!) household, presumably you didn’t choose to marry and stay married to an @#@-hole, and you can have a civil discussion about this and talk it through.
After that piece of advice, she provided an anecdote about how recently she had to remind her husband to help more with the laundry, and after that one reminder, (you guessed it!) he totally started helping more with the laundry.
The Federalist piece seemed to hint at the same suggestion – that married couples should just talk about these inequalities at home. Except she didn’t really suggest that. She didn’t really present any possible solutions for unequal division of labor in most homes. Her main qualm was with women who lambast their husband in national publications. Her purpose for writing was to declare it unfair that the men in these marriages don’t get to present their own perspective on the situation, and counter productive to the goal of improving the situation at home! I mean, why don’t ya’ll just sit down and talk about it! Figure this shit out already!
I don’t really want to levy a moral judgement on the women who write – under their real names – disparagingly about their husbands in national news outlets , but I’m pretty sure think they don’t write those pieces to improve the division of labor in their own homes. I think they write those pieces because they HAVE talked about it with their husbands, A MILLION TIMES, and it’s not changing. And it’s not changing in the homes of countless women, despite their talking about it ad nauseum with their husbands as well. Women write those articles not simply to vent about a frustrating situation, but to start a conversation that might eventually lead to a real and significant change in the division of labor in American homes. Because for most of us, just talking about it with our spouses isn’t helping.
Do I really need to say this? Do I really need to write that in many marriages, just talking about it doesn’t make it better? There are few things more frustrating to me than someone reminding me that what’s obvious to me is only obvious to me, and I just need to properly communicate my concerns for the inequality to be rectified. I’m also sick of women being blamed for succumbing to societal expectations and creating their own Pinterest prisons of grueling domestic labor and perfectionism fueled break downs.
Because I am a woman who does no peruse Pinterest or Instagram or ANY social media site, whose house is perpetually messy (no, not the kind of messy that people with neat houses talk about but really, truly crazy-makingly messy), who does not believe her children’s future success and happiness hinges on the amount of extracurricular activities they attend, who does not feel morally obligated to prepare home cooked meals for my family, and I still feels exhausted by the labor I perform (both visible and invisible). I’m also a woman who spent TEN YEARS talking to my spouse about how unhappy I was, and suggesting different divisions of labor, and even went to marriage counseling to address this specific issue (and nothing else) for months, and still wasn’t satisfied with the division of labor until very, very recently.
Oh, and my husband and I make about the same amount of money. And for many years, when I was most unhappy with the division of labor in my marriage, I was making more.
So please, don’t tell me to just talk to my “supposedly not an asshole” husband about how he needs to do step up on the chore front.
In our house, my husband does ALL the dishes (I only wash something if it’s dirty and I need to use it) and he cooks ALL of the meals (I only prepare my children’s dinners on the weekdays, and I use the word “prepare” because there really isn’t any cooking involved because my children are very “selective eaters” who only like four or five “meals” that mostly require a pre-heated oven or microwave to get on the table). He also does all the food shopping, and keeps track of what food we have and need and are almost out of. I might sometimes pick up the specific kefir my son likes (that they don’t carry at TJs) or grab two massive boxes of Cheerios at Costco when I’m already there, but essentially my husband handles almost everything related to the kitchen.
And I do pretty much everything else.
{I feel like I must mention here that yes “cleaning” is technically something I do (my husband has never cleaned the toilet or shower or mopped the floor in all our years of marriage), but I do it so rarely, and so ineffectively, that it takes up WAY less time than it does for people who actually care about how neat and clean their homes are.}
I find this division of labor pretty fair (and I believe that perceived “fairness” is much more important than an actual equal division of labor). The only real issue of inequality that we’re still figuring out is that while we’re both home in the morning, and we each take a kid to school (which requires we each get to work later than we’d like), I am responsible for picking up both kids and shuttling them to their stuff and/ir providing their care, every afternoon. And while yes, I have the car and my afternoons are not contractually claimed by my employer, I still feel resentment that I have to leave work unfinished to get the kids in time or that I have to figure out pick up and evening care for my kids if I want to do something after work, while my husband only has to tell me he won’t be home at his usual time if he needs to stay late to get something done, or attend an impromptu (or planned) event. This is something we’re still working on, and only recently (after I had the umpteenth time we had a blowout fight about it) has my husband suggested that maybe he could ask his boss if he could work from home on occasion, or leave early and finish up later without taking off the hours. (He has not actually talked to his boss about these things, but he did present them as possible solutions.)
So yes, things looks pretty good for me! And one of the reasons they are pretty good is because I had to fight for them to be pretty great for the better part of a decade. It was a fight that made me semi-miserable in my marriage, for a large portion of those years. It was a fight that we took to marriage counseling. And no, I didn’t marry an asshole, I married an open-minded man who would consider himself a feminist, who was born and raised by liberal parents in one of the most progressive cities in the country, and I STILL had to fight him for every percentage point of equality in the division of labor in our marriage.
{I think it’s also important to point out that part of why things feel more equal is because our kids are older and require less time and attention from us, ESPECIALLY at night. I think if they were still under five, I’d still be the only one getting up with them after falling asleep, and I’d be providing the majority of the intensive one-on-one parenting that younger children require and I’d still be unhappy with the division of labor in my marriage. So part of why it feels more fair is because some of the parenting-specific labor is no longer necessary, not because my husband is doing more of it.}
I also think it’s important to point out that, earlier this year, when I was feeling pretty good about our marriage (mostly because I felt less resentment about who was doing what), my husband sucker punched me in the gut by telling me he was NOT very happy with the way things were. I immediately wondered, and still do, if part of his unhappiness is that he does so much more than he used to do, and now HE feels the exhaustion and resentment that I used to feel about our partnership.
So even when a couple finally does find a division of labor that feels equal to the woman, maybe the man will start feeling resentment. Maybe it’s much harder to create a partnership where BOTH spouses feel satisfied and neither feels resentful than anyone is willing to admit. I wonder if someone is ever going to write an opinion piece about that.
In the meantime, I think the women who have husbands who are responsive to suggestions about how things might be more equal at home, (especially the women who employ someone at home who does a portion of the weekday work) might want to give the women who feel frustrated with the division of labor in their homes the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we really don’t care that our houses are messy, and we don’t feel we need to ferry our kids to a million activities, and we don’t feel obligated to cook unique, organic, balanced meals every night, (and we can’t outsource the grunt work to someone else), and we HAVE talked to our husbands about how we need them to do more, AND IT’S STILL A PROBLEM. Maybe it’s not just something women can fix in their marriages by lowering their standards or communicating more clearly (and outsourcing!). Maybe we need to have real and productive conversations about how men need to be doing more, and change employer expectations so that men CAN AND ARE EXPECTED TO DO MORE, not just by their wives, but by their friends, family, employers and everyone else.
So yeah. I read that, and it frustrated me, and I knew I had more to write than would fit in a comment, so I wrote this post. I hope someone understands where I am coming from, and finds this validating in some way.
What are your thoughts on the unequal division of labor in US households? How do you feel about the division of labor in your own home?
