The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Cressida on August 25, 2015, 11:41:07 PM
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This thread http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/the-great-chore-divide-and-women-vs-men/ already shows signs of getting pretty annoying. I thought some actual data would be useful.
I'm not looking to start a fight here. I don't care about everyone's individual story, just the poll results.
And yes, this is certainly a Mustachian issue. Sometimes it leads to couples hiring outside help, which is a big expense.
Lesbian/gay folks, I am sorry for excluding you from the poll. Look at it this way - there's at least *one* problem you managed to escape, for whatever that's worth.
ETA: There's some confusion about what "household work" means. It means, any work to maintain the household. It is not restricted to indoor work or routine work.
There have also been questions about whether it would be appropriate for a SAHP to participate in the poll. The answer is yes.
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Couple of temporary factors in play right now means DH does a lot more*. Very soon it will be more equal.
*And without complaint. I am lucky as hell.
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You forgot the kids in your poll! My kids take care of: load/unload dishes, mow lawn, garbage and recycling, own washroom, and pitch in monthly for group cleanup day, plus occasional sweeping, dusting, etc. It's actually quite a bit.
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Regardless of whether you're interested in the stories behind the poll numbers, they're important.
Ours is a temporary man-does-more situation. DH currently works part time, so he currently does more chores. When we're both full-time, we split 50/50.
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Regardless of whether you're interested in the stories behind the poll numbers, they're important.
I think I only meant to discourage the comments from turning into a shitstorm. But, yes - your statement is fair.
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I do more simply because my fiance is military, so when he is away, I do everything. When he is here, we split closer to 50-50.
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He does more, I'm a woman, BUT one of the conditions of my FIREing earlier than him in 3 years will be I pick up more household cleaning than I do now.
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you probably should add "i do more I'm a woman but its also my only job" to weed out the women who are "homemakers" for a living.
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I do a bit more housework than DH, but I wanted to add that I work at my actual job a bit less in a typical week so I think it comes out fairly even as to the total hours of "work" we do each week. And on the weeks that I work more, he does more housework.
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you probably should add "i do more I'm a woman but its also my only job" to weed out the women who are "homemakers" for a living.
And the converse. My husband does more, but I am the sole breadwinner.
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There isn't a neat and tidy category for this, but we share household and childcare chores relatively equally in terms of time spent on them, but I have more responsibility, if that makes any sense. He's more of the "helper" and I'm more of the "have to keep track of everything and make sure things make it on the To Do list and get done." I would work harder to fix this inequity, but he travels a fair amount for work, and so I feel like I have to keep track of everything that needs doing so I can pick up his stuff when he's gone. It causes friction in our marriage when he's traveling a lot, but we live quite harmoniously when he's not.
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I do more but he works 10 more hours a week than I do. Either we split it equally and spend the few hours a night we get together doing chores, or I do it and we get to spend more meaningful time together. I choose more meaningful time. But he always helps if I ask.
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I work FT and she is a SAHP with a side hustle. She does more of the housework, but we try to make parenting close to 50/50 since that is our purpose in life.
That said we both settle on a responsibility to generally pick up after ourselves. The first person to put a dirty dish on the countertop instead of in the dishwasher when it's getting loaded loses the game, etc. Nagging is not a part of it.
I take care of most home maintenance and exterior work.
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I do more childcare, because my wife travels for work some and because I just like it. We try to split chores pretty evenly and not to do the same ones all the time, but that's a tricky balance. We say that one parent is doing something too much when our three year-old says that it's "Mom's job" or "Dad's job". It's a good way to try to rebalance and to teach that either parent should work on household chores.
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My husband works full-time, I in theory work full-time but in actuality work about 25-30 hours a week, plus I have a side hustle for the other 10 hours or so.
We are extremely lucky in that we have literally never had an argument about housework.
In our case, my husband loves to cook. So, he is in charge of all the cooking and all the food shopping.
I'm in charge of literally everything else: cleaning, laundry, litter, errands, taking cats to the vet and making sure we have a supply of their food and litter, scheduling any appointments with repair people, paying bills, doing our retirement planning, making sure the taxes get done and filed, record-keeping, taking Husband's shirts to the dry cleaner, etc.
It works for us. He gets to do something he loves, and I get to remember how delicious last night's dinner was when I'm paying bills the next morning.
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I'm one of those people who has a hard time with polls!
Depends upon the year, month, day--I was a SAHD for many years, now at office 65-70 hours a week baseline. DW may be home very little in weeks when she has a lot of patients delivering babies.
Also, what is "household work"? Does it include: taking care of financials/taxes, grading the driveway, cutting the fields, putting snow tires on just before the storm, replumbing bathrooms, and the like? (me) How about gardening and taking care of most car maintenance/licensing and all other "appointment" chores on the 1/2 day off you have most weeks? (DW) How about cooking--is that a chore, like during the week, or something that you do for fun if both of you are home on the same weekend afternoon?
DW sees dirt where I don't, but hates doing dishes. She does the detail work whenever, while I have kitchen cleanup/dishes each night when I'm in town. Whoever is home on Saturday or Sunday the longest tends to do laundry. Other stuff gets done every other weekend per schedule.
Bottom line, even enough for us.
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Hmm. Tough question to answer because we do complimentary things.
My wife tends to handle more of the child care related chores, and I tend to do more of the house maintenance / landscaping / taking garbage out stuff. We cook about the same amount, but I usually do dishes. I do laundry and hanging the stuff most of the time, but the wife tends to do the folding. Cleaning is probably an even split. We both alternate for getting groceries. I do all the taxes for both of us.
I think it's close, but she probably does slightly more.
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There's an unequal division of domestic labor in my relationship (I do virtually all of the housework, though my partner cooks twice a week and occasionally helps unload the dishwasher), but we're both women so it's unrelated to gender. Her job is much more demanding than mine, so we expect this to continue throughout the rest of her residency and fellowship. She claims she'll help more with basic chores once her schedule's less hectic, but we know there are some things (like overseeing finances and home maintenance) that will always be my domain. If we have kids, I'll be a SAHM for a few years.
I don't mind the way we do things currently, since she's naturally a slob and I'm a neatnik. The way our life together is structured feels like a team effort, with the work I do to keep our lives running smoothly facilitating her ability to focus on her career.
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Sexism driving this topic is bunk.
For the first 10 years out of your childhood home, your habits and how you are raised drive many of our actions pertaining to chores. Plus people who are experienced do a chore much, much faster. If you also like a clean home, it is a no brainer to clean it.
After that, the 'shoulds' start to fade and people rebalance to what works for them. As in 'you should clean a toilet every other day', a good wife 'should' keep a neat home..
In homes where men and women are both working, I don't see a sex division of labour at that point. Out of 5 closest friends, I know 2 where the guy does a lot more and 2 where the woman does. And it is definitely NOT related to who works or is paid more. Especially obvious if one spouse loses a job for a year. Note that none of us have a dry clean, MIL inspection worthy home unless a housekeeper is involved.
This is the new trend any those of you here that are 35 to 45 will likely agree.
Women do like to come together to complain on this theme. It is fun. It is traditional. Just not reality anymore with so many dual working households. Men like to complain about how much women spend. I have noticed. All of it is just vacuous small talk.
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As of this month, things are starting to approach equality... which may be a direct result of the previous month's "either this actually improves or I will look at other solutions because I am NOT living like this long-term" conversation.
We've been together 7 years. In the past (before having a child), I did maybe 70-80% of the housework (while fighting about the extra 20-30%... but garbage needs taking out, we need clean clothes to wear, and dinner is also needed, so not doing any of it isn't really an option). And I did this while out-earning him by an average of 50%, and also working 10-15 hours more per week than he did. And now that I type this out, I'm kind of astonished that I stuck it out. Hello, backbone, please come back...
But add a 16-month-old on top of that? No. I cannot do 70-80% of the child care in addition to most of the housework in addition to working longer hours. No. Not gonna happen. Done. I'm exhausted and have nothing left to give.
Fortunately he seems to understand that, and things have improved somewhat. Let's just say I'm not over it yet.
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Agree the poll has the issue of not disregarding stay at home parents or those with disproportionate hours. We both work full-time and commute together, so to serpentstooth's point, our compensated hours are similar. He used to work about 0-3 extra hours a week at work (in those cases I'd usually stay late at the office too) but doesn't anymore and I'm more apt to do that these days (working from home). I also serve on a non-profit Board, which adds approximately 15-40 hours to my uncompensated workload each month and is not accounted for below. No kids.
I primarily do:
Cooking
Laundry
Loading/emptying dishwasher
Dishes
Cleaning kitchen (wipe counters, clean sink/stove/microwave)
Planning meals and groceries
Sweeping floor & vacuuming
Laundry (sorting, running, folding)
Changing sheets
Cleaning bathrooms (tub/showers/sinks/floors)
Putting "things" (leftovers, groceries, daily detritus) away
Prepping trash/recycling for the dump
Picking up goose poop from yard
Gardening upkeep (trimming, weeding)
Admin (scheduling contractors, researching purchases, planning vacations, figuring out HSA totals)
Paperwork (filing, responding to, recycling)
Figuring our charitable deductions for taxes for "stuff"
He primarily does:
Grilling (as noted above, I do more of the total cooking - inside and out - though)
Running to the store if something is needed immediately
Changing his cat's litter box
Taking trash/recycling to the dump
Lawn mowing
Gardening planting & watering
Driving
Taxes
Together we:
Grocery shop
Run errands
Pay bills
Clean toilets
Rake leaves
Shovel Snow
It's been suggested by some that those who have higher standards ought to do all of the work of their extra expectations. I think some of those people may be assuming or thinking that the person with higher standards has above average standards. What about when one party has no standards?
For a specific example, how often do you think your tub/shower ought to be cleaned? How often do you actually clean your tub/shower? Over a 5 year period, if you clean it:
once a week, that's 260 times
once a month, that's 60 times
once a year, that's 5 times
When I met DH, he had bought his condo five years prior. In that time he never once cleaned his tub/shower. This makes "compromising" to even a below average cleaning by objective standards tough. And I bet at the same time you are telling me I just need to do it all myself because it's "my" standards, you'd also decline an offer to take a shower in that old condo tub, because it was well below what any reasonable person might consider ok.
The original post in the prior thread was presented in a biased manner, however, studies do show that women tend do more household chores than men, even when both work:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/household-chores-by-gender/?_r=0
http://business.time.com/2012/06/28/more-women-are-in-the-workforce-so-why-are-we-still-doing-so-many-chores/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123144222.htm
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It's been suggested by some that those who have higher standards ought to do all of the work of their extra expectations. I think some of those people may be assuming or thinking that the person with higher standards has above average standards. What about when one party has no standards?
THIS. I mean. My standards are not HIGH (for example, I HATE washing floors. On a good month, they get washed once, and a quick vaccuum a few times a week for the debris, dirt, and pet fur that always seems to accumulate.) I'm not particularly picky about most things. But: we have a baby. She crawls on the floor, and takes baths instead of showers, and puts in her mouth whatever she finds on the floor. At a baseline, we need the floor to be clean enough that she's not putting spoiled food in her mouth, and the tub to be washed weekly (because she fills her stacking cups with water and drinks it, and I'd prefer she not drink grime-y water...). We need the dishes done frequently enough that the milk bottles don't turn into cheese, the counters wiped down so they don't get stained (with the associated cost of either fixing it or lowering the resale value...), etc. I don't think these are unreasonable standards. I think they're bare minimum standards to
I remember MMM writing a post a while back about how most people clean too much, and I generally agree with him. I'm not going to clean if it isn't dirty. But you do have to have SOME standards. Especially when one of the household members doesn't yet know that they shouldn't put everything on the floor into their mouth, not cleaning at all isn't an option.
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I'm a man(obviously), and I do probably 80% of the household chores. I did closer to 100% when I was still working from home, but it bothers me alot more about how little the DW does when I am in the office 5 days a week. We usually end up having a conversation about the chores like once a month, where she picks it up for a couple weeks, then slacks off, then I talk to her, rinse, repeat...
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When we first got married, my husband was the sole breadwinner while I went to school and got my citizenship sorted out. By the time I graduated, he had a successful business. Shortly thereafter, we sold it. To this day, my husband's business endeavors are what enabled us to FIRE.
While he was busy running his business (I helped, but not to the same degree), I was essentially a "kept woman" and the burden of household labor fell to me. It is not unfair to say that I did 100% of the household labor, including cooking, cleaning, laundry, bill paying, lawn care, pet care, errands, etc. plus some business secretarial work.
When I went to work full time as an accountant (and he was retired), I really didn't have time for that burden. We made some effort to switch it (he does the dishes and is responsible for cleaning the basement, helped with cooking prep) - but it never got beyond a 75% me 25% him split. Now I am also FIRE'd, although I work from home part time.
It wasn't sexism that made it this way. It just happened by matter of convenience. And once the habits were in place they were hard to change. My husband confessed last week that he was afraid to use the basement bathroom because, in his words, him cleaning the basement "wasn't working." He decided to hire a cleaning service to clean our house.
My instinct was to grab the bleach and bucket and go take care of business - but you know what? I don't want to clean his filthy bathroom. And if I did that, I couldn't really blame him for the fact that our division of household labor suddenly skewed against me again. He was honest with me, told me it wasn't working, and offered a solution that involved less work for both of us. We hired a service.
I could have chosen to keep banging my head against the wall of unequal distribution of labor and taken over the chore - but I know where that leads. I'm done taking over chores. It was my choice whether to accept his solution or not.
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This is an interesting topic to me simply because it is one of the four key areas in our marriage that has never completely been solved after twenty plus years. It comes up occasionally, whether via an explicit complaint by DW or by an implicit "I'll guess I'll get that."
I'm a structure/process kind of guy. What works for me is "DH handles x, y, and z every day/week/month" and "DW handles a, b, and c every day/week/month"--rare overlap by one person unless in a situation that really requires it. So we agree to some form of division of labor, and then she still does half of my work one week. She then hits the "a little help on the housework, please" button while doing her part of the weeklies. I refer to said agreement, but she says something like, "It needed to get done, and you weren't doing it." Not in the worst tone, but she does mean that I wasn't doing it right then. Which is true.
Then I revert to the "Fine. Just let me know what you want done and when, and I'll see to it." Her response--"I shouldn't have to ask. You can tell when X needs to be done." No schedule, no plan. Just clean/wash/dust/dry/fold/vacuum on any random day. Not one aspect of my life works like that, but that hasn't been a workable line of reasoning thus far, regardless of the myriad of real-life examples.
As I type this, it sounds almost as bad as it gets during those conversations, but those times really are occasional, not weekly. Her positive qualities are really amazing, but the four power buttons in our marriage still get pushed more than they should. It just amazes me that after years of this, we have never gotten this sorted out and settled once and for all. Fourteen ways of addressing it, rationalizing it, and polishing it apparently haven't worked. The work always gets done, but occasionally it still requires a little bloodletting.
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We both work full time, kid is grown and out of the house. He's more a neatfreak so he does more because it bothers him more. I think I could go a couple months without even thinking "hmmm, maybe I should vaccuum."
I'm ashamed to say we have a dishwasher repairman coming today and last night I had to check with him that I know how to turn on the dishwasher right.
I do all the grocery shopping, all the cooking, and handwashing of pots and pans, I'm not a total slacker, but I should do more.
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'm ashamed to say we have a dishwasher repairman coming today and last night I had to check with him that I know how to turn on the dishwasher right.
After we had been living in the house for 6 month, DH told me "I know this is going to sound bad, but how do you start the dishwasher?"
Yes, it not only sounded bad, it was bad. Until then I was under the impression I was loading and starting the dishwasher "only" ~90% of the time, not 100%. (And I figured out how to start the dishwasher on my own - it didn't take a Harvard PhD to figure it out.)
This is an interesting topic to me simply because it is one of the four key areas in our marriage that has never completely been solved after twenty plus years. It comes up occasionally, whether via an explicit complaint by DW or by an implicit "I'll guess I'll get that."
Out of curiosity, what are the other three?
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Using CommonCents' list to help me divvy up chores below.
As far as compensated work is concerned, we each work M-F 8-5 salaried jobs, but she commutes further and does more work from home. I make 25% more than she does.
I primarily do:
Grilling (primary protein-preparation method during summer)
Laundry (she does sort and store her clothes)
Dishes
Cleaning counter-tops/floors
General tidying up
Taking out trash/recycling
Repairs/renovations around the house
Finances and Admin stuff
She primarily does:
Cooking (non-grilling, though I assist)
Meal planning
Cleaning bathroom
Together we:
Grocery shop
Run errands
Roommates help with:
Lawn/garden care
In pure time I probably do a bit more around the house. Chores naturally divvy up the way they do with little discussion, we've never had a fight about household tasks but everything seems to get done.
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I'm ashamed to say we have a dishwasher repairman coming today and last night I had to check with him that I know how to turn on the dishwasher right.
After we had been living in the house for 6 month, DH told me "I know this is going to sound bad, but how do you start the dishwasher?"
Yes, it not only sounded bad, it was bad. Until then I was under the impression I was loading and starting the dishwasher "only" ~90% of the time, not 100%. (And I figured out how to start the dishwasher on my own - it didn't take a Harvard PhD to figure it out.)
I'm laughing here, but also anything with electronics or motors tends to fall to him because he's got some weird psychic connection with them that intimidates me. True story - one night we were upstairs in bed watching tv, and he suddenly says "did you hear that?" I'm thinking well, I hear the tv. He says "the bearings on the dishwasher need to be replaced." Me, I wasn't even aware the dishwasher was running. The repair issue today is similar, he noticed from the sound that the pump was filling the dishwasher, then draining out some of the water before actually running. Who notices that sort of thing???
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I really dislike this construction. There is a set amount of labor that is necessary to run our lives. Some of it is compensated. Some of it isn't. I do almost all the non-compensated labor, but my husband also makes triple what I do and works far more hours. When you compare total hours worked, whether free or paid, I am pretty confident he is working and commuting more hours than I am working, commuting or doing housework. So I am not about to start playing my tiny violin of feminist woe and oppression over the fact that running the household falls to me.
Why do you keep hammering on compensation??? No one's brought that up except you, in both threads.
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My husband does more. Especially now that I am pregnant and been so sick. I'm really slacking.
We both work full time jobs, though I travel more for work. He makes about 3% more than me. His commute is much shorter, but I get home earlier because I go in earlier. We wake up at the same time, but he sits down for a nice breakfast every morning.
But we aren't passive aggressive about things. Although he typically takes out the trash, for instance, if I notice it getting bad (well before I threw up at small smells...) I just take it. Although he typically shovels snow, if I get home first, I will do it. He does the grocery shopping, but will send me lists if he is busy. I do laundry, but if I travel for work, he does it. If I've left one too many dishes out, he'll tell me to go clean them up.
I am messier than he is, but he tends to tidy as cleaning. For the first 5 years we were married I don't think he ever cleaned a toilet. He didn't like the chemical smell- um, no one does? I do most of the disinfecting cleaning (toilets, floors, etc), except for the kitchen. The kitchen is his, and I try to stay out of it in general, with the exception of emptying the dishwasher, which is my chore (though right now with the vomiting thing, I don't go near the sink/dishes at all). I do my best to not leave stuff lying around, but we have different thresholds. I am SO much better than I was 10-15 years ago though.
He does the lawn. That was the deal when we got a giant yard. I didn't want one.
He is also really handy, so he does repairs and home improvement. But when we need a professional, I generally am the one tasked with finding them, getting quotes, scheduling services, etc.
We've never had an argument about it, so I think he's fairly happy with the arrangement. I hate to think he's resented it for the past 10 years!
I did tell him I'd sew a button on that I never got around to (and he just did it himself)- and the shirt sat in the mending pile for about 8 months. So he printed out this sign, and crossed out and reversed the sexes:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/6f/30/fd6f30dcbe08d00db82e03cc914f11e5.jpg
So when he asked me to fix a seam in a t-shirt he ripped, I made sure to do it that day.
With a baby on the way, I suspect I will do more of the child related tasks (just due to proximity I get the daycare runs, and due to my job flexibility I will likely do all the appointments; I can work from home ad hoc; he is a chemist and it is tough to bring the hood home!). And just because of my experience with children, some of the things like diapers, bathing, dressing will fall to me. Because I have breasts, feeding will obviously be my responsibility for 6 months to a year. So it may help that he does more household tasks. A lot of women I know really resent that they do both things.
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you probably should add "i do more I'm a woman but its also my only job" to weed out the women who are "homemakers" for a living.
What about "I do more, I'm a man, but it is my only job?" There are men who are "homemakers" too.
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We do pretty similar amounts. It's really hard to nail down an exact number. Neither of us has particularly high standards for cleanliness, which is great.
My jobs:
Cooking
Keeping the kitchen in order
Vacuuming
Document shredding and worm care (we feed our shredded documents to worms)
Larger organizing projects or things involving furniture
Fixing things and doing bike maintenance
His jobs:
Dishes
Sweeping
Taking out garbage
Fixing the bed
Shared duties:
Laundry (He carries it to the laundry room and back to wash, I hang it to dry)
Grocery shopping (he does more since he's in charge of grabbing random things outside of our weekly shops together)
Bathroom cleaning
Cat stuff (he does more than me)
I'm don't do the whole Cinderella-martyr thing, and simply would not choose to live with someone who didn't pull their weight.
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Posted this in the other thread before I saw this one. I am a woman and I think he definitely does slightly more than me. We have never fought about chores or responsibilities.
He does: take out the trash, vacuuming, all dishes (we do have a dishwasher, but he loads the dirty ones and puts them all away as well as washing all pots and pans that don't fit), all small maintenance items around the house, mows the lawn (only around 5/6 times a year as we both loathe it and don't own our house/care what it looks like), toilet cleaning, minor car repairs
I do: all the laundry, all financial planning/budgeting and vacation planning/travel hacking, filing of important paperwork/taxes, dusting/cleaning of surfaces, glass cleaning, bathroom cleaning (except toilet), most grocery shopping (although he will always stop and pick something up if we need it), all the tidying/putting away clutter, all cleaning of random things that need it occasionally (such as the toaster)
We do: grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking (almost always together), making of our own lunches, changing the sheets on the bed, sweeping/swiffering, cleaning our own cars, working full time
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She does more cleaning; I do more fixing.
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This question cannot be answered with a simple poll, you need to hear the real life situation behind each case. Duties and help within a household shift all the time - 6 months from now, my answer might be different.
Today it is: I do more, because I have the time, he works and I am retired with the occasional side gig - but, I also have an immune disease and when I have a flare up, he takes over, plus he still has a full time job.
I absolutely hate housework of any kind, except for organizing and cooking. I am seriously considering having someone come in to help sporadically or even once every two weeks.
I love to cook, so it is never a chore for me and on days when I am fine, I do all the dishes and daily kitchen clean up. When I don't feel well, I cook something simple and he takes care of the kitchen and helps with the prep too.
We both do laundry and he helps in the garden, but that has shifted to almost 50/50 depending on my health issues. We do have a lawn guy.
He takes care of home repairs.
I do the serious spring cleaning and getting the house ready for the holidays - I prefer to do that myself, since it usually involves some sort of re-decorating and I do get into the nitty gritty of cleaning at those times - which is completely lost on him.
He is excellent in keeping up with the day to day - I am better with coming in for a clean sweep.
It generally works for us, but he does not really understand, how much it bothers me when I am not able to take care of certain things, because I no longer have the energy I once had.
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My wife is mostly a SAHM and also has about 10-15 hrs/month of side gig. I work full time and am in grad school.
So right now... she does more (I do what I can when I'm home and 90% of the things a 7-months-pregnant lady should not be doing... she gets to the other 10% before I can stop her!).
It was different when we didn't have kids and were both working, and depending on what happens in the future may be different again. I would say our who-does-what is more related to who's at home than it is to gender.
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My friends who own a business and have two kids together have a very interesting financial system (they have independent finances and pay one another for everything - from who goes and grabs the car to who has to leave work early to pick up the kids- you can read more about it here (http://messymatters.com/autonomy/).)
But particularly notable is the fact that despite paying each other for all of those transaction the male now pays the female $1000/month for being "default parent". Which isn't for set childcare or anything, it's for all of those cumulative ways that being the first parent ads up: the one the school calls when their sick, when dad is sitting right next to the kids but they yell to mom in the other room "MOM! I need a spoon!!"
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You forgot the kids in your poll! My kids take care of: load/unload dishes, mow lawn, garbage and recycling, own washroom, and pitch in monthly for group cleanup day, plus occasional sweeping, dusting, etc. It's actually quite a bit.
Amen! Not necesarily any easier than doing it myself (probably harder) but it is getting done and the kids are learning something (have kids so they can do all the chores!?). I do handle anything that requires muscle or dangerous equipment.
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I'm a man, I do all the cooking and dishes and most of the pickup/cleanup around the house. She does all the yard work and gets our daughter ready for school and takes her in the morning. Since I cook, I also do the grocery shopping. I also walk the dog every day.
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We both work full time, kid is grown and out of the house. He's more a neatfreak so he does more because it bothers him more. I think I could go a couple months without even thinking "hmmm, maybe I should vaccuum."
I'm ashamed to say we have a dishwasher repairman coming today and last night I had to check with him that I know how to turn on the dishwasher right.
I do all the grocery shopping, all the cooking, and handwashing of pots and pans, I'm not a total slacker, but I should do more.
When we were dating, my husband would love to come over and vacuum, because you could see the results. I didn't own one.
I am similar with the laundry. We got a new top loader with no agitator last year and it HATES me. It normally takes and hour and when I run it, it gets unbalanced and takes at least 3.
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You left out single people (particularly single parents). I do *everything* as there is no other adult in the household. As the kids get older they do a bit - but it is negligible at this point. There is no 'partner" to do anything.
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The bottom line -- the partner that cares about it more and is naturally more neat/anal/whatever is going to do more. Whether that be a lot more or a little more will depend.
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I am the sole breadwinner, and my husband does 95% of the household chores. I take care of the financial planning (though he does the bill paying), I cook every now and again and sometimes I do the dishes or put in a load of laundry.
Okay, saying I do 5% of the household chores may be a bit generous.
Some we do together, like grooming the dog (ex: I feed the dog treats to keep him calm while DH grinds his nails) and other dog care (walking, etc). Oh, and we generally grocery shop together.
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I would be curious about a poll like this for:
Are you [satisfied / dissatisfied] with the amount of housework your spouse does and I am a [male / female].
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I would be curious about a poll like this for:
Are you [satisfied / dissatisfied] with the amount of housework your spouse does and I am a [male / female].
I like this. For the record, I'm a woman, and my husband does more. We've discussed it at some length, and I finally got comfortable that this arrangement works for us for now. It also changes over time. With our baby due in December, there are certain things that I am more likely take on (breastfeeding, middle of the night wake-ups, etc). As long as everyone is happy, I don't think score-keeping does anyone much good.
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I would be curious about a poll to see who here did a little extra housework today after reading this thread. :)
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I would be curious about a poll to see who here did a little extra housework today after reading this thread. :)
I know, right? I had a half hour window when I got home from work while waiting for a dinner ingredient to finish roasting, and decided to see what I could get done for housework - I cleaned the bathroom, scrubbed the stove top and kitchen counters down, watered the worms, and did a few little things. After my boyfriend got home I made dinner, bread, muffins, and we did laundry together. For a 400 square foot place, that's basically everything except vacuuming and cleaning the fridge. Now it's 6:45 and we have the whole evening to go for a bike ride and play video games.
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I primarily do:
Cooking
Laundry
Loading/emptying dishwasher
Dishes
Cleaning kitchen (wipe counters, clean sink/stove/microwave)
Planning meals and groceries
Sweeping floor & vacuuming
Laundry (sorting, running, folding)
Changing sheets
Cleaning bathrooms (tub/showers/sinks/floors)
Putting "things" (leftovers, groceries, daily detritus) away
Prepping trash/recycling for the dump
Picking up goose poop from yard
Gardening upkeep (trimming, weeding)
Admin (scheduling contractors, researching purchases, planning vacations, figuring out HSA totals)
Paperwork (filing, responding to, recycling)
Figuring our charitable deductions for taxes for "stuff"
He primarily does:
Grilling (as noted above, I do more of the total cooking - inside and out - though)
Running to the store if something is needed immediately
Changing his cat's litter box
Taking trash/recycling to the dump
Lawn mowing
Gardening planting & watering
Driving
Taxes
Together we:
Grocery shop
Run errands
Pay bills
Clean toilets
Rake leaves
Shovel Snow
The original post in the prior thread was presented in a biased manner, however, studies do show that women tend do more household chores than men, even when both work:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/household-chores-by-gender/?_r=0
http://business.time.com/2012/06/28/more-women-are-in-the-workforce-so-why-are-we-still-doing-so-many-chores/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123144222.htm
Sex aside it's ironic that I also separate doing dishes and clearing the dish rack/washer and he some how does not. According to your list I definitely do a LOT more than him! And likewise my SO also has NEVER cleaned the shower and he's lived here at least 3 years now. It's not my choice in the matter. Anyways.
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THIS. I mean. My standards are not HIGH (for example, I HATE washing floors. On a good month, they get washed once, and a quick vaccuum a few times a week for the debris, dirt, and pet fur that always seems to accumulate.) I'm not particularly picky about most things. But: we have a baby. She crawls on the floor, and takes baths instead of showers, and puts in her mouth whatever she finds on the floor. At a baseline, we need the floor to be clean enough that she's not putting spoiled food in her mouth, and the tub to be washed weekly (because she fills her stacking cups with water and drinks it, and I'd prefer she not drink grime-y water...). We need the dishes done frequently enough that the milk bottles don't turn into cheese, the counters wiped down so they don't get stained (with the associated cost of either fixing it or lowering the resale value...), etc. I don't think these are unreasonable standards. I think they're bare minimum standards to
I remember MMM writing a post a while back about how most people clean too much, and I generally agree with him. I'm not going to clean if it isn't dirty. But you do have to have SOME standards. Especially when one of the household members doesn't yet know that they shouldn't put everything on the floor into their mouth, not cleaning at all isn't an option.
I'm particularly worried/scared about this situation after my friend already pretty much said the same thing, and she's just the sister-in-law, not the mom/wife! She said her brother has no clue and does nothing (though a great dad) and she was helping them clean bc they have a newborn. She was actually the one that said her sister-in-law is resenting her husband (her brother) more and more... This may be cultural though. I can try to tolerate a messy house when pregnant but I KNOW I will lose if it's a matter of a baby's sanitation concerns. I doubt my SO will notice. I could be wrong. The fears continue.
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I would be curious about a poll to see who here did a little extra housework today after reading this thread. :)
I totally did! And DH noticed and thanked me. :)
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Equal amounts - I'm a woman. Ex-DH and I didn't split chores, we did them together. That included both the household chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry, food shopping, etc... but also the home, yard, and car maintenance and repair chores. We physically did them together and it was great fun and a really bonding (and often sexy-time!) experience for us both. If one or the other of us was gone, then who ever was around just took care of whatever needed to be done. Current BF and I function like this too and so far it's really great.
I am impressed you could turn chores into sexy time.
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My friends who own a business and have two kids together have a very interesting financial system (they have independent finances and pay one another for everything - from who goes and grabs the car to who has to leave work early to pick up the kids- you can read more about it here (http://messymatters.com/autonomy/).)
But particularly notable is the fact that despite paying each other for all of those transaction the male now pays the female $1000/month for being "default parent". Which isn't for set childcare or anything, it's for all of those cumulative ways that being the first parent ads up: the one the school calls when their sick, when dad is sitting right next to the kids but they yell to mom in the other room "MOM! I need a spoon!!"
We tried doing something similar. I'm slightly older than my SO (perhaps another reason for the chore war) and he owes me money for various things. After he graduated law school and became a lawyer, finally making about maybe 40% more than me, he said he would pay for all the groceries so that I could save more for FIRE IF I do the dishes and that I cook (I enjoy cooking for the most part, not the cleaning). He swears I said all the housework, too. My ass I'd draw two pints of blood from BOTH arms before ever taking that deal. Perhaps just one of his HORRIBLE jokes. The grocery thing lasted two months before he injured himself. I haven't rushed him or anything about the finances, but really I have no incentive to do more chores with a smile on my face after that. I much rather desire 50/50. AND I want to note that I pay for all the electric, water and HOA (so no, he doesn't mow the lawn either and it doesn't snow here) so he pretty much owes me for half of that. It's not like I'm paying the bills with OUR money as we have an uncommon separation of finances thing. I prefer it that way. Except when I'm not getting paid BUT I'm not bringing it up 24-7.
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I would be curious about a poll like this for:
Are you [satisfied / dissatisfied] with the amount of housework your spouse does and I am a [male / female].
My intent in creating the poll wasn't to suss out fairness, actually. I wanted actual numbers. SAHPs can certainly vote too.
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Also, what is "household work"? Does it include: taking care of financials/taxes, grading the driveway, cutting the fields, putting snow tires on just before the storm, replumbing bathrooms, and the like? (me) How about gardening and taking care of most car maintenance/licensing and all other "appointment" chores on the 1/2 day off you have most weeks? (DW) How about cooking--is that a chore, like during the week, or something that you do for fun if both of you are home on the same weekend afternoon?
I missed this comment first time around. It all counts. We're just tracking the time spent to maintain the household.
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I would be curious about a poll like this for:
Are you [satisfied / dissatisfied] with the amount of housework your spouse does and I am a [male / female].
My intent in creating the poll wasn't to suss out fairness, actually. I wanted actual numbers. SAHPs can certainly vote too.
My point is more that it matters a lot more if people feel it's unfair than if it is actually unfair.
There are many situations where the workload might be unevenly divided and yet still very fair (SAHP being an example or where one spouse works more).
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My wife is currently a SHM w/ a 4.5 month old. She'll be at home until Jan 2017. She definitely does more than me now (w/ breastfeeding, general childcare) but I do more than I did before we had a kid. For example, she used to do almost all of the cooking, now it's split. I also do the bottle washing / boiling and the diaper laundry. And I continue to do trash, yard, financial stuff, cat, etc.
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Lesbian/gay folks, I am sorry for excluding you from the poll. Look at it this way - there's at least *one* problem you managed to escape, for whatever that's worth.
Hey Cressida, there's something I don't understand. Are you saying that gay folks are spared the subtext of male vs female stereotypes when fighting about chores? Or is the implication that gay couples simply don't bicker and get upset about chore distribution? Not trying to stir the pot, just want to understand.
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Lesbian/gay folks, I am sorry for excluding you from the poll. Look at it this way - there's at least *one* problem you managed to escape, for whatever that's worth.
Hey Cressida, there's something I don't understand. Are you saying that gay folks are spared the subtext of male vs female stereotypes when fighting about chores? Or is the implication that gay couples simply don't bicker and get upset about chore distribution? Not trying to stir the pot, just want to understand.
The former, yes. I was aware that the poll was heteronormative & wanted to acknowledge that, but you're right, I wasn't totally clear.
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The poll results have slowed down, so this might be a good time to take stock.
It's true that, in the aggregate, women do more housework and child care than men do. It's not necessary to cite a source for this. The sheer number of SAHMs compared to SAHDs would alone be enough to cause the discrepancy, even if all other households showed an even distribution. Again, I'm talking about the aggregate. I'm not talking about the dynamics of individual households; I'm saying that if you take the total hours of housework and child care performed during a year across the entire country, more of those hours are performed by women. By quite a lot.
As of the moment I'm writing this, the poll shows a 60/40 split in favor of women doing more housework and childcare than their partner. (More women than men cast votes, but when I accounted for that fact, the calculation came out the same.) This doesn't prove much of anything at all, since the poll is not scientific and was asking about comparisons rather than raw numbers. But it's fair to say that the poll results are consistent with the above observation that women do more housework and child care than men do (again, in the aggregate, as stated above).
What does this mean? It means that "women do housework and child care" is a cultural norm. We see our parents performing to this norm, we see it in our peers, we see it in media and entertainment. It comes to seem "natural" that women do housework and child care. It's a "thing women do," like shopping for clothes and drinking cosmopolitans.
If a man in an opposite-sex relationship acts as if housework and child care is "not his job," there's likely not one single reason (he might be lazy, he might not know how, he might be an asshole, etc.), but this norm is probably a factor.
Here's the other thing about cultural norms: they are self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. We're all familiar with the norm of hyperconsumerism. People buy stuff, everybody sees people buying stuff, people buy more stuff. Performing the "women do housework and child care" norm is the same. By performing it, we perpetuate it. (And I'm including myself here; I do far more household work than DH does.) Whether you think that's good, bad, or neutral depends on how you feel about gender stereotypes.
This is probably the point where people start freaking out about crazy feminists who are telling people they shouldn't be SAHMs. I'm not saying that. If you think, "being a SAHM is the right decision for my family," and also think, "I would prefer not to perpetuate norms that reinforce stereotypical gender roles," then you're going to have to pick one, and which one you should pick is pretty clear. Martyrdom is pointless. We all live in the world we live in, not the world we wish we lived in.
This problem will probably go away, if slowly. Norms are powerful, but we do have the free ability to flout them (see hyperconsumerism, above) and they do change.
ETA: I used hyperconsumerism as an example of a norm. I also used "women doing housework and child care" as an example of a norm. I'm now afraid someone will accuse me of saying that women who take care of their children should get facepunches. Um, let me be clear that I do not think this. I was only trying to illustrate how cultural norms are perpetuated.
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Just because we can choose to partner with someone who doesn't adhere to stereotypical gender roles doesn't mean that stereotypical gender roles are something we should just live with. In my opinion, they should be dismantled.
[edited: clarity]
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not because they are forced into it by societal expectations.
Agreed, no one is forced into anything.
Which reminds me, I get this a lot when I talk about feminist topics. You start talking about things like cultural norms and suddenly people start blathering about how you're saying women are brainwashed and you're denying their "agency." That's a misunderstanding. First of all, norms influence men too. Second, if the choice is between (1) gender stereotypes in the ether that can influence people's decisions to varying degrees, and (2) the lack of (1), I just don't get why anyone would say "(1) is A-OK, it's no better or worse than (2), if there are stereotypes we can just ignore them."
[edited: clarity]
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Nice conclusion but I'm pretty sure outside the US (more so) there are religions & countries that force women and men to do things, or they will otherwise be persecuted, killed and/or their families killed. At least that's what the news tells me, so not everyone has a choice. Americans are just fortunate in that aspect. I know ur poll & comment doesn't take that into account, but it does remind me that chore wars is a 1st world problem. Kinda humbling actually so thanks.
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This is probably the point where people start freaking out about crazy feminists who are telling people they shouldn't be SAHMs. I'm not saying that. If you think, "being a SAHM is the right decision for my family," and also think, "I would prefer not to perpetuate norms that reinforce stereotypical gender roles," then you're going to have to pick one, and which one you should pick is pretty clear. Martyrdom is pointless. We all live in the world we live in, not the world we wish we lived in.
I think someone can be a SAHM and still not reinforce stereotypical gender roles. My wife is a SAHM and my kids understand that she does more of the housework, but they also see me doing it when I'm around and there is nothing involving house/child care that we aren't both capable of doing. To my mind, reinforcing stereotypes would be if we had a "Mom does the cooking because Dad's a man and men can't cook" situation. My kids also understand that not all families operate as ours does, that that's OK, and that at some point in the future my wife may work while I stay at home if that ends up making the most sense. I suppose the general structure could perpetuate the gender-stereotyped norm to some degree, but I think much more of it is in how the couple approaches the situation.
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The poll results have slowed down, so this might be a good time to take stock.
It's true that, in the aggregate, women do more housework and child care than men do. It's not necessary to cite a source for this. The sheer number of SAHMs compared to SAHDs would alone be enough to cause the discrepancy, even if all other households showed an even distribution. Again, I'm talking about the aggregate. I'm not talking about the dynamics of individual households; I'm saying that if you take the total hours of housework and child care performed during a year across the entire country, more of those hours are performed by women. By quite a lot.
As of the moment I'm writing this, the poll shows a 60/40 split in favor of women doing more housework and childcare than their partner. (More women than men cast votes, but when I accounted for that fact, the calculation came out the same.) This doesn't prove much of anything at all, since the poll is not scientific and was asking about comparisons rather than raw numbers. But it's fair to say that the poll results are consistent with the above observation that women do more housework and child care than men do (again, in the aggregate, as stated above).
What does this mean? It means that "women do housework and child care" is a cultural norm. We see our parents performing to this norm, we see it in our peers, we see it in media and entertainment. It comes to seem "natural" that women do housework and child care. It's a "thing women do," like shopping for clothes and drinking cosmopolitans.
If a man in an opposite-sex relationship acts as if housework and child care is "not his job," there's likely not one single reason (he might be lazy, he might not know how, he might be an asshole, etc.), but this norm is probably a factor.
Here's the other thing about cultural norms: they are self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. We're all familiar with the norm of hyperconsumerism. People buy stuff, everybody sees people buying stuff, people buy more stuff. Performing the "women do housework and child care" norm is the same. By performing it, we perpetuate it. (And I'm including myself here; I do far more household work than DH does.) Whether you think that's good, bad, or neutral depends on how you feel about gender stereotypes.
This is probably the point where people start freaking out about crazy feminists who are telling people they shouldn't be SAHMs. I'm not saying that. If you think, "being a SAHM is the right decision for my family," and also think, "I would prefer not to perpetuate norms that reinforce stereotypical gender roles," then you're going to have to pick one, and which one you should pick is pretty clear. Martyrdom is pointless. We all live in the world we live in, not the world we wish we lived in.
This problem will probably go away, if slowly. Norms are powerful, but we do have the free ability to flout them (see hyperconsumerism, above) and they do change.
ETA: I used hyperconsumerism as an example of a norm. I also used "women doing housework and child care" as an example of a norm. I'm now afraid someone will accuse me of saying that women who take care of their children should get facepunches. Um, let me be clear that I do not think this. I was only trying to illustrate how cultural norms are perpetuated.
The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
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SAHM versus SAHD isn't necessarily all about gender roles directly, either. I think girls and boys going into college feel different amounts of pressure to major in something that will get them a high-paying job. Then when they get married, the man makes more than the woman, so if somebody's going to stay home, it's going to be the woman.
Also, pumping and bottles are a hassle, so a nursing mother gets a lot of convenience out of staying home if it's possible. That's something no amount of cultural change will alter.
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SAHM versus SAHD isn't necessarily all about gender roles directly, either. I think girls and boys going into college feel different amounts of pressure to major in something that will get them a high-paying job. Then when they get married, the man makes more than the woman, so if somebody's going to stay home, it's going to be the woman.
Interesting point... would like to know if someone's done some research on that and if any pressure has changed over time.
Though my personal experience is that the pressure on almost anyone to figure out how they're going to be employed post-college hasn't been very high of late (though now it may be getting higher). There has been research on men feeling pressured to make more money than their spouses do though, and I suspect that's still quite relevant.
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I think someone can be a SAHM and still not reinforce stereotypical gender roles.
We disagree, then. I would say that being a SAHM inevitably reinforces stereotypical gender roles, just as I reinforce stereotypical gender roles every time I wear a skirt and heels. I'm not going to stop doing it, for a number of reasons, just as I'm not telling women not to be SAHMs. But a stereotype is a stereotype.
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
So do you think women are coming here and lying, then?
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
So do you think women are coming here and lying, then?
Not necessarily. For your assertion to be true, you need to ignore all the other categories other than the 'I do more work and I'm a woman one'. It would make more sense if 'my partner does more, I'm a man' and 'It's close but my partner does a little more. I'm a man.' categories were higher to match. I guess one sex must be lying?
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
So do you think women are coming here and lying, then?
Not necessarily. For your assertion to be true, you need to ignore all the other categories other than the 'I do more work and I'm a woman one'. It would make more sense if 'my partner does more, I'm a man' and 'It's close but my partner does a little more. I'm a man.' categories were higher to match. I guess one sex must be lying?
Or, the site attracts particularly industrious and enlightened men who actually DO an equal amount of work on the home front, and all the lazy slackers of the women folk here who said they do more are off playing video games instead of hanging out here. ;-)
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Now that we both work, I say that DH does about 35-40% and I do 60-65%. I do most of the cooking and grocery shopping. I cook 3-4 days a week and let DH figure out the other days, but his cooking skills are lacking so he normally just makes one of those pre-made stirfrys or pops in a pizza. He drops the kids off at school/camp and I pick them up. We split the trash duty and yard work. I do more house cleaning but he does the handy stuff around the house. When I was a SAHM I did 90-95% but that was fine. I had the time and energy then.
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I am the primary wage-earner and I do more housework. My husband is starting a business, and he works from home, but his tolerance for mess is much, much higher than mine.
He does do all the car maintenance, most of the car washing care, and half of the outdoor work. but as far as cleaning bathrooms/ kitchens/ floors, he is just not bothered by conditions that I find disgusting. I do laundry and folding, and typically I do the scrubbing, dusting, and deep cleaning when it is necessary.
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he is just not bothered by conditions that I find disgusting
After 20 years of marriage, I have come to the conclusion that this is part of the issue for me. My tolerance, especially for clutter, is way, WAY lower than his. He can walk by a pile of stuff and it just doesn't bother him where it will drive me insane and I have to deal with it. It took me awhile to stop being resentful about it. I do things that drive him crazy too.
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
So do you think women are coming here and lying, then?
Not necessarily. For your assertion to be true, you need to ignore all the other categories other than the 'I do more work and I'm a woman one'. It would make more sense if 'my partner does more, I'm a man' and 'It's close but my partner does a little more. I'm a man.' categories were higher to match. I guess one sex must be lying?
I don't understand your math. As of now, 17 + 15 + 13 + 49 = 94 people say the woman does more housework than the man. 20 + 8 + 7 + 16 = 51 people say the man does more housework than the woman. Again, about a 60/40 split. Why does anyone have to be lying?
If we were surveying both halves of the couple, the numbers would have to reconcile. But we're not doing that.
ETA: I made a 10-key error when I calculated the percentage. It's actually 65/35.
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I voted "equal," because although he still doesn't know how to turn on the dishwasher after two years in the house, my success rate at starting the chainsaw is roughly 0%, and I can't reach the pedals on the backhoe well enough to drive it safely on a slope (we live on the top of a mountain with a steep switchbacked private road in). He's building something and/or working on a car most weekends and doing almost all the laundry. I do all cooking and kitchen cleaning and any other cleaning that gets done (often it doesn't on busy weeks, and we have not yet died). Somebody always grocery shops before re we starve, and often it's both of us.
We do different things, but the labor is fairly equalized. His is hotter in summer and colder in winter, if it comes to that. I'm the sole breadwinner at the moment, and we commute together (he's attending the college where I'm a professor).
Regardless, it all works for us, now. We had some squabbles early on, mostly over my higher standards. We've streamlined some stuff and added enough space that there's actually a place for everything, which helped tremendously. And I've lowered some of my standards by getting over the guilt that was driving them - if he's happy and I'm happy, it's none of anyone else's business, including my mother's or his mother's, not even if they try to make it so. Realizing that, deep down in the gut and not just in my brain, has been truly liberating.
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I looked at the choices and wanted to pick that I do more, but I think I'm just thinking about the things that I do that I don't want to do. Like the dishes that are piled up right now.
But I don't do car maintenance, and I know that there are times that he doesn't want to crawl under my car and fix the exhaust again, but he does.
Any bitterness probably comes from my expectations/tolerances, like others have mentioned. Overall we don't argue about chores much (ever? It's hard to say) and I'm pretty satisfied with our chore split.
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We appear to have stabilized around 60-65% of household work done by the woman in opposite-sex partnerships. I see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently; and if they do, they probably tend even more toward women doing the housework, since this forum skews liberal.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
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The way I'm reading it, it looks like work is pretty evenly done . . . but women just claim to do more of it. :P
How do you figure?
Well, other than the 'I claim to do more work' category for women . . . they're pretty evenly matched in all responses.
So do you think women are coming here and lying, then?
Not necessarily. For your assertion to be true, you need to ignore all the other categories other than the 'I do more work and I'm a woman one'. It would make more sense if 'my partner does more, I'm a man' and 'It's close but my partner does a little more. I'm a man.' categories were higher to match. I guess one sex must be lying?
Or, the site attracts particularly industrious and enlightened men who actually DO an equal amount of work on the home front, and all the lazy slackers of the women folk here who said they do more are off playing video games instead of hanging out here. ;-)
This! While now-ex hubs and I did share most/all of the household chores (did them together rather than split them) I didn't want to do them as often as he did so I would find excuses to put them off - and drag him down into the laziness with me :-)! Now that I'm divorced I find I do less household chores overall even though I do them all myself. I just have my life set up in a very simple way now compared to when I was married, and that means less overall chores are needed to be done.
Wow, is there a way of just quoting the one person instead of all the text, lol. I agree with you, well I'm not divorced but I have set my life up to be more simple so I have less housework.:)
I have hacks to let me do less, I wash my dishes as soon as they are dirty, I don't buy clothes that need ironing, I don't have a laundry basket so I just put the dirty clothes in the washing machine etc... It makes everything much easier on a daily basis.
I do much more than my husband but he does certain chores that I hate like emptying the cat litter box and putting out the rubbish daily.
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I thought about this poll several times as I tuned into who was doing which chore this weekend and wondered about a breakdown of kids vs no kids. I know my husband and I were much more egalitarian before we had children. We actually fell around 50-50 on division of labor. I think mostly because we did the cleaning, yard work and errand running together.
It was weird though - even though I've been the breadwinner in our house for years, as soon as I popped out the babies it was like a switch was thrown and all of the sudden I was doing 65-70% of the house and yard work. Every now and then the balance would start to get very out of wack and I would have to say something to my husband. Luckily he just rolls with it and pitches in for a good while until the balance gets wonky again.
Both he and I are products of families who embraced traditional gender roles so i suspect that has something to do with it. Even with the best intentions both of us revert to our childhood norms and something about having children seems to have really reinforced this. He also got a full time job this year that will help much more with household finances so I'm waiting to see if that affects the DOL as well.
I'm hoping that as the kids grow and he gets settled into working full time I'll see his participation increase (especially for our children's sake as I want to model an egalitarian relationship) but in the meantime I'd rather live with him than without him so I'll take what I get :)
Thanks for the poll! It has been fun to follow this thread.
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I voted that the wife did more house/child work, but it's close. assuming house work was more about laundry, cleaning, etc
but if you look at total household work. imo, i do way more (since this is all on top of splitting chores and kids)... because I manage all bills, all car maintenance, all home maintenance/repair/service scheduling, do most of the yard work, do most of the household/automotive purchase research, and finance planning.
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DH fired in 2011. He handles most of the home front. I do keep the main bath clean because I choose to use it. (it is our fancy bathroom and I like waking up and feeling pampered in the bigger space.)
If he is busy with the rentals I will run the vacuum and pick up. I do so because I have a higher clean standard with the floors and he is tends to slack when busy. Rather than nag, if by thursday they are not done and need it, I do it.
He has always cooked and the kitchen is his domain. We are on different schedules now so I make most of my own meals, which often are pulling out something he cooked and mixing it into whatever I want at the moment. He definitely keeps us stocked with meat cooked on the BBQ (year round)
He's the primary shopper as he goes in the am when there's less of a crowd. He hunts the deals for our stash, he is our stasher, likes to have a year's worth of condiments safely nestled in our cabinets etc.
Once I FIRE things will change, but I am not sure how that landscape will look since we plan to hit the road and travel in an RV for who knows how long:)
Sometimes we squabble and I always say if you want me to do x% house chores I will hire it out. I have a stressful IT job and am more than comfortable paying for it to be done (we are currently FI so no money issue there since I still work and don't need to). I want to come home and relax not be stuck with more work than I am already responsible for. He says no you don't need to do that... blah, blah. It comes up once or twice a year.
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We appear to have stabilized around 60-65% of household work done by the woman in opposite-sex partnerships. I see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently; and if they do, they probably tend even more toward women doing the housework, since this forum skews liberal.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
Your poll doesn't provide the conclusion you've reached.
It also ignores other factors that have been discussed in both threads.
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We appear to have stabilized around 60-65% of household work done by the woman in opposite-sex partnerships. I see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently; and if they do, they probably tend even more toward women doing the housework, since this forum skews liberal.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
I don't think the OP from that other thread was maligned because she suggested some men don't do household chores on equal par with women, she was maligned because she made very broad strokes comments about how all men are vs. how all women are that were (IMHO) extremely sexist and biased. She has since corrected those statements (and kudos to her for doing that).
If you read the comments, it's clear that even a less absolutist stance would have been found unacceptable. So I disagree with your assessment.
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We appear to have stabilized around 60-65% of household work done by the woman in opposite-sex partnerships. I see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently; and if they do, they probably tend even more toward women doing the housework, since this forum skews liberal.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
Your poll doesn't provide the conclusion you've reached.
What conclusion is that?
It also ignores other factors that have been discussed in both threads.
It's a poll. It's asking a single question. By its nature it ignores any "factors" of anything.
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We appear to have stabilized around 60-65% of household work done by the woman in opposite-sex partnerships. I see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently; and if they do, they probably tend even more toward women doing the housework, since this forum skews liberal.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
Your poll doesn't provide the conclusion you've reached.
What conclusion is that?
It also ignores other factors that have been discussed in both threads.
It's a poll. It's asking a single question. By its nature it ignores any "factors" of anything.
Yet, the OP on the other chore thread was bullied - in fact, I would assert, gaslighted - into apologizing for daring to suggest that households where men are reluctant to do household work *even exist*. Seems contrary to fact.
So basically your poll does nothing to make this assertion, conclusion, whatever you want to call it.
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So basically your poll does nothing to make this assertion, conclusion, whatever you want to call it.
I didn't say the poll proved anything. What I said was that I "see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently" than the poll: that is, where women do more housework in around 60-65% of households. I meant exactly what I said; I'd be surprised if the true distribution is wildly different, if women do more housework in, say, 80% or 40% of households.
If you do see a reason why I should think the distribution is very much different than 60-65%, let me know and I will certainly be happy to have that information.
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We do a similar load, but the nature of our tasks is really different.
He does all the constructions, the organizing of the renovations, 90% of the reno labour, 90% of the gardening, 50% of the cooking, 20% of the cleaning, 10% of the bills, 80% of the paperwork.
I do 90% of the laundry, 80% of the dishes, 50% of the cooking, 70% of the groceries, 90% of the bills, 10% of gardening and renovations (the stuff that doesn't need any skill)
We both work full time, we earn similar amounts and we split the bills 50:50
I'm not gonna do the math, but I believe I do more, especially because the chores I do are boring tasks necessary to our life and well-being (groceries, cleaning, laundry, bills), while what he does most is a cross between chores and hobbies (gardening, DIY).
A silly example: last week-end he commented that our sheets were disgusting. In the whole week, he didn't go as far as changing the sheets - I did it on Sunday, and washed the old ones, a full week after he commented that the sheets were disgusting. Note that he works from home while I work outside and I have a 2 hours commuting every day. Yes, I am a bit bitter about those sheets.
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I voted that my wife does the majority of the housework, but since she is a stay-at-home-mom, that is simply her role in the household. Even still, I dedicate one hour per weekday towards 'taskers' (a small, well defined task; a term I only heard used this way in the military). So while I do manage to commit 3-5 hours per week, total, towards my "honey-do" list, my wife is notorious for not recognizing how much I actually do around the house, despite the fact that things do get fixed, eventually.
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I would like to view results without voting but it doesn't let me. Is this a firefox issue?
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I do it all. It's only fair. The Hub has a full time job and a side hustle to compensate for the fact that I don't work. I am moderately useless for reasons that don't matter here but I can certainly drag myself off the couch to do a little housework now and then.
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This is an ongoing issue at my house too. My spouse and I are engaged in the long game of "Who Cares Least Wins." It's not so much an issue of DOING the work, it's noticing that the work needs doing. After one-too-many grousing matches about this, he hired a cleaner, saying it was worth it to him not to have to think about the ongoing cleaning tasks. Well, now he doesn't even think to schedule the cleaner!
I also deal with other issues in his housework, such as "I don't know how to do that," and half-assing the job so much that I'll do it next time. Both of these make me livid.
Starting from Wednesday, though, I won't be working a 9-5 job, so I suppose cleaning is my job alone again. *sigh*
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I voted that I am the wife and we both do equal amounts of work. This was not the case when we got married years ago, simply because his mom had done everything for him, and he didn't know any different. That changed pretty quickly. We are both employed full time outside the home.
He takes care of the lawn, the trash, odd "fix-it" jobs, keeping the cars maintained (he even fuels up my car for me!) and running errands. He also takes the kids to school/makes sure they get on the bus in the mornings, and picks-up or drops off a child somewhere they need to be at night or on the weekends about half the time.
I handle all of the finances and taxes, with him having full knowledge and input at all times. I take the kids to all of their doctor appointments and go to all of their necessary school functions. I do the dishes and shop for groceries and household supplies. We split the cooking fairly evenly.
The kids are teens now and have taken over several of the daily cleaning chores in the house with assistance from me as needed. I pick up the clutter, keep everything organized and tidy, and do the deep cleaning and jobs that don't need done as frequently.
We like to keep things pretty easy going around here. None of us are doing tons of work, and we don't hire any outside help. We are always trying to optimize routines and put as many things on auto-pilot as we can. No-one complains about their "share" of the work. It all gets done, and things run pretty smoothly.
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I also deal with other issues in his housework, such as "I don't know how to do that," and half-assing the job so much that I'll do it next time. Both of these make me livid.
Reminds me of advice I got from an old workmate before I got married. He said that if I break every fourth or fifth dish the first time she asks me to clean up after dinner, she will never ask again!
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I also deal with other issues in his housework, such as "I don't know how to do that," and half-assing the job so much that I'll do it next time. Both of these make me livid.
Reminds me of advice I got from an old workmate before I got married. He said that if I break every fourth or fifth dish the first time she asks me to clean up after dinner, she will never ask again!
Just remember this when you ask your wife to change the oil in the car or tune it up. If she breaks every fourth or fifth thing the first time you ask her to do it (on purpose of course), then you'll never ask her to do it again! We women can get out of doing things that way too :-)
Another difference is that I wouldn't consider asking my wife to do tasks in my list.
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I'm still kind of confused and wondering what constitutes "household work". Is that just cleaning, cooking, and laundry type chores or is that encompassing everything? I see a lot of people saying their spouse/SO doesn't do cleaning, cooking, laundry chores so they have to do them, but are you including household, yard, and car repair type chores in that too? Is SO (male or female) the one who mainly does those DIY type of chores on an ongoing basis? Do you help with those projects, offer to help, or just do it yourself if SO doesn't get around to doing it when you feel it's needed? Some of those kind of chores can be all day, weekend or even week-long or more chores and may end up taking more time then occasional cleaning type chores do. Also wondering what % of people who do the majority of either types of chores are SAH compared to 2 working people and if that would make the poll different. Just curious. I'm currently tearing out an old toilet that's been in place since the 1950's and it is becoming a HUGE job that will end up taking me much longer then I thought it would. Rather be doing dishes for 10 minutes :-)!
spartana, I updated the first post to clarify this. Probably should have done that earlier.
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I'm a woman and I do the large majority of housework, cooking and food prep, and the entirety of banking, filing, diary management.
My husband and I both work full-time, but he travels for work so is away from home about 40 per cent of the year.
As a result:
- I'm often the only one home
- the house needs little attention while he's away because I cook simple meals, pick up after myself, don't produce a lot of washing, etc
- I often use the time he is away to take on less frequent jobs around the house, like defrosting the freezer
The thing I get the most frustrated about is that I like a tidy home, so I minimise the work I need to do to keep it tidy. I pick up after myself, I clean as I cook, I declutter to make housework easier, and I never walk from room to room empty handed. Going to the bedroom? Grab that pair of shoes from by the front door and put them away.
My husband's response is to debate what housework is actually necessary and occasionally suggest my standards are too high.
Living in hotels for a good chunk of his life means he is used to having maids pick up after him.
And ironing remains a slight sticking point. He mostly refuses, I like having everything ready to go in the wardrobe rather than piled up the basket to be ironed at-will. He suggested an ironing lady, but the logistics are too hard with him travelling. He suggested at least getting his shirts drycleaned, then expected me to do pick-ups and drop-offs... :/
That said, after six years of marriage he is a lot better than he used to be. He puts dirty clothes in the basket, lightly worn clothes back on the shelf, polishes his boots, stacks the dishwasher, cleans the bathroom, cleans the toilet without needing to be asked, vacuums (if asked), loves cooking me breakfast, and is generally aware that pitching in together makes for a happier home.
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I'm a woman. DH does slightly more--mostly food related, which seems like a lot as it's an every morning/every night thing. (I do help with food prep/cooking, but I'm damn terrible at it. My cooking is a work in progress.) DH also does laundry on days he works from home to give himself a mental break. I do most of the household cleaning (small apartment, so no outdoor maintenance), meal planning, decluttering, and general picking up--stuff that is less day-to-day, but often more intensive--plus I do most of the household organization stuff (keeping the calendar, finances, dealing with the landlord/utilities/etc). We split Fido duties equally (no kids).
Part of this is how we express our love for each other. DH is a "acts of service": he shows me he loves me by making me food, taking the dog out when it rains, and remembering to not put my jeans through the dryer. I'm a "words of affirmation": which means I' walk him to the door when he leaves for work at the DAMN CRACK OF DAWN and tell him how much I love him and to have a good day, and I'm pretty good at whispering sweet nothings in his ear if it gets me out of chopping an onion.
I know I should help out more, particularly with food stuff; he knows he should be more verbally affirming. We're a work in progress, slowly heading toward a functioning equilibrium.
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Part of this is how we express our love for each other. DH is a "acts of service": he shows me he loves me by making me food, taking the dog out when it rains, and remembering to not put my jeans through the dryer. I'm a "words of affirmation": which means I' walk him to the door when he leaves for work at the DAMN CRACK OF DAWN and tell him how much I love him and to have a good day, and I'm pretty good at whispering sweet nothings in his ear if it gets me out of chopping an onion.
Ah, yes. The love languages. My wife's love language is 'gifts', which doesn't work well with Mustachianism.
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I would like to view results without voting but it doesn't let me. Is this a firefox issue?
No, it's pollster's choice. I just changed it. Let me know if it didn't work.
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Part of this is how we express our love for each other. DH is a "acts of service": he shows me he loves me by making me food, taking the dog out when it rains, and remembering to not put my jeans through the dryer. I'm a "words of affirmation": which means I' walk him to the door when he leaves for work at the DAMN CRACK OF DAWN and tell him how much I love him and to have a good day, and I'm pretty good at whispering sweet nothings in his ear if it gets me out of chopping an onion.
Ah, yes. The love languages. My wife's love language is 'gifts', which doesn't work well with Mustachianism.
Yes! I am acts of service. Husband is physical touch. He would rather I ignore the dishes and go snuggle with him on the lounge. :)
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Part of this is how we express our love for each other. DH is a "acts of service": he shows me he loves me by making me food, taking the dog out when it rains, and remembering to not put my jeans through the dryer. I'm a "words of affirmation": which means I' walk him to the door when he leaves for work at the DAMN CRACK OF DAWN and tell him how much I love him and to have a good day, and I'm pretty good at whispering sweet nothings in his ear if it gets me out of chopping an onion.
Ah, yes. The love languages. My wife's love language is 'gifts', which doesn't work well with Mustachianism.
Yes! I am acts of service. Husband is physical touch. He would rather I ignore the dishes and go snuggle with him on the lounge. :)
I'm a touch, also. Unfortunately, gifters don't care that much for touch.
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The thing I get the most frustrated about is that I like a tidy home, so I minimise the work I need to do to keep it tidy. I pick up after myself, I clean as I cook, I declutter to make housework easier, and I never walk from room to room empty handed. Going to the bedroom? Grab that pair of shoes from by the front door and put them away.
Yes exactly.:) Don't put it down, put it away.
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Serpentstooth would be proud, I just realized the baseboards in the powder room were gross and wiped them off. How do you get stuff off the caulk between the baseboard and the wall? Those still look terrible.
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I'm currently tearing out an old toilet that's been in place since the 1950's and it is becoming a HUGE job that will end up taking me much longer then I thought it would. Rather be doing dishes for 10 minutes :-)!
Weird. I'd much rather have a HUGE job that will take all my time for a few months but has a final completion date than ongoing monthly/weekly/daily stuff that's never really done. I get a much greater sense of satisfaction from completing the former.
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Serpentstooth would be proud, I just realized the baseboards in the powder room were gross and wiped them off. How do you get stuff off the caulk between the baseboard and the wall? Those still look terrible.
That's a huge pet peeve of mine. I assume you've tried a toothbrush? One time I used a toothbrush and Barkeepers Friend and was able to get it clean, but it took a lot of work.
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For example, he recently said "We" need to put the tomatoes from the garden in the fridge (a clear one-person, very easy task), then got annoyed they were still out two days later. I told him I thought they were fine out, and if he's the one who cares, he can do something about it before he gets mad at me that it isn't done. I pointed out that he basically opts out of doing a lot of things around the house because he doesn't care about them and I do.
So the tomatoes are a very silly example, but emblematic of a frequent occurrence. "We" ought to reduce the mail piles (but only "I" go through the mail and actually act on items, recycling, filing or responding to them). "We" ought to make meals a lot (but "he" rarely starts it after saying that and only comes over sometimes to help). "We" need to clean/organize the fridge, particularly the veggie drawer so we don't lose CSA veggies going bad (which I did this weekend). And so on.
YES! Why should *I* do something because *he* thinks it should be done?! It makes me livid.
2) the time disappears into the woodwork - for example, it usually takes DH 20 minutes from me starting to dinner to notice and offer to help if I don't say anything bc he gets on his computer game as soon as he gets home and loses track of time. So he maybe registers he missed 5 minutes of the work once in the week, rather than realizing it's 20 minutes*7 days for over 2 hours of work he didn't "see" me doing.
Anecdote: we usually share cooking 50:50, but this month he had a particularly busy period, and on a particular week I cook every mean from Saturday to the following Sunday, 8 days straight. On the following Monday he offered to make dinner, because "yesterday you made both lunch and dinner". When I pointed out that had I cook every single meal for the previous week and some, he could hardly believe it, and insisted for a while it wasn't true, until I ask him when was the last time HE cook, and only then he gave in.
/End rant
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This is interesting. I answered that my wife does more but it's definitely different type of stuff. We both do dishes, she handles laundry more, I handle vacuuming, she mops, we both do yard work, but right now she's mega-pregnant so that changes everything.
I think the important thing is to talk about it if you feel like your overwhelmed. It's so much easier to unload the dishwasher with an extra set of hands instead of unloading it angrily while someone else is sitting on the couch.
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I think the important thing is to talk about it if you feel like your overwhelmed. It's so much easier to unload the dishwasher with an extra set of hands instead of unloading it angrily while someone else is sitting on the couch.
Sure, but there is a limited amount of times I want to remind my SO the same damn thing every fucking week. It's great to talk but the other side has to listen, and not just hope I'll stop nagging.
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It's so much easier to unload the dishwasher with an extra set of hands instead of unloading it angrily while someone else is sitting on the couch.
I find this to be one of the keys to getting things done and lowering resentment. Clean at the same time. This past week-end, my husband vacuumed while I cleaned the kitchen. It just feels so much better and more communal to work together. If someone else is sitting on the couch while you are breaking a sweat scrubbing something, it can really irk. But if you are doing it together....
This can be hard with kids, since oftentimes one parent has to entertain or watch a younger child while the other is cleaning. That sometimes annoys me as the cleaner, though, even though I know all too well that watching a child is also work. I guess in my head I think, "My husband is watching the baby, and instead of relaxing I'm cleaning." But it has to be done some time.
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I think the important thing is to talk about it if you feel like your overwhelmed. It's so much easier to unload the dishwasher with an extra set of hands instead of unloading it angrily while someone else is sitting on the couch.
Sure, but there is a limited amount of times I want to remind my SO the same damn thing every fucking week. It's great to talk but the other side has to listen, and not just hope I'll stop nagging.
I don't want to pry but that seems like a bigger issue than just the chores...
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I do get the frustration and resentment some posters feel when their SO isn't doing their agreed upon fair share, but then I would just treat them like a roommate and care for myself. Do my own laundry, buy my own food, make my own meals (and plop down on the couch next to them while they played video games to eat the fat juicy steak I made for just me). I figure SO can find the kitchen just as easily as I can. However if we had agreed that one SO did "x" things and the other did "y" things, then I wouldn't expect the other SO to help normally if I chose to split chores that way.
What if we can't agree upon what's a fair share of chores? My SO just refuses to make prior agreements over who does what, because "we're not roommates and we don't need to make rotas/divide tasks". I think it's an unreasonable position, but in 3 years none of us changed idea.
Some days I just have to chose if I want to feel like a maid or if I'd rather feel like living in a pig-pen.
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I do get the frustration and resentment some posters feel when their SO isn't doing their agreed upon fair share, but then I would just treat them like a roommate and care for myself. Do my own laundry, buy my own food, make my own meals (and plop down on the couch next to them while they played video games to eat the fat juicy steak I made for just me). I figure SO can find the kitchen just as easily as I can. However if we had agreed that one SO did "x" things and the other did "y" things, then I wouldn't expect the other SO to help normally if I chose to split chores that way.
What if we can't agree upon what's a fair share of chores? My SO just refuses to make prior agreements over who does what, because "we're not roommates and we don't need to make rotas/divide tasks". I think it's an unreasonable position, but in 3 years none of us changed idea.
Some days I just have to chose if I want to feel like a maid or if I'd rather feel like living in a pig-pen.
I suppose I meant more along the lines of what kind of roles, if any, in the household you each decided to be responsible for before marrying. Was there an understanding that you would do the bulk of the domestic work? Or was itr understood that you both worked full time and so would do things equally? If the latter, and you feel your SO isn't pulling his weight and it's making you angry and resentful, then you are free to just take care of yourself. Just because you are married and a female doesn't mean you have to be the caretaker or cook or clean for him. You don't have to do his laundry or clean up after him in anyway. I would just calmly tell DH that you felt he wasn't sharing in the household chores and that it was building resentment in you towards him, so from now on you will each will fend for yourselves unless he's willing to work out an equitable agreement. And stick to it. You have no reason to feel guilty if you only buy enough food for you, or make dinner or do laundry, etc... for yourself if he isn't contributing to those things and expects you to do the full amount alone. Get a maid and split the cost if you feel that there is no way you can work out a fair equal agreement. Also make sure you are aware of the things he does do - he may do a lot more things to make your life easier (car and home repair chores, etc...) then you think he does even if it's not domestic stuff. Take the value of those things into account too. Otherwise I don't think there is much you can do except marriage counseling to work out the issues.
He didn't agree to a rota/defined share/defined roles, but we agreed on a 50:50 ratio because we had the same work schedule and income.
This is not happening because, like many other couples, we have different standards, and also because he has been doing renovations/fixing around the house/house-related DIY projects, so he feels he's pulling his weight, even when those things weren't agreed. For example, he spent a good chunk of the summer building an outdoor kitchen on the balcony and building tall flowerbeds to plant vegetables. So he did a lot for the house, but not things I care about, as we don't need a balcony kitchen and our garden is too shady to grow vegetables (and the arctic weather doesn't help).
I know I don't have to clean after him, but am I supposed to let empty cookie boxes on the table for weeks? or not use the drier until he put his clothes in the closet? I can't change the sheets only on my side of the bed...
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So basically your poll does nothing to make this assertion, conclusion, whatever you want to call it.
I didn't say the poll proved anything. What I said was that I "see no reason to think that American households in general break down much differently" than the poll: that is, where women do more housework in around 60-65% of households. I meant exactly what I said; I'd be surprised if the true distribution is wildly different, if women do more housework in, say, 80% or 40% of households.
If you do see a reason why I should think the distribution is very much different than 60-65%, let me know and I will certainly be happy to have that information.
There is nothing in your poll to suggest men are reluctant to do household chores.
These are words you said. That is all.
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ETA: DH has many great qualities, he's just shit at equitable division of household labor, which is a problem when we work roughly equivalent hours. I'm not a maid nor am I a 1950s housewife. He would tell you it's not that he wants me to do them, it's just that he doesn't want to do them (and they are called "chores" for a reason), but the end result is that means I have to do them (as neither of us are keen on spending the money to get them done now) or live in a pigpen.
Have you thought about a cleaning person? Would it break your budget? Some people have said on her that they think hiring out some of the cleaning saved their marriage.
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This is a lot of perception stuff at my house. My wife thinks she does more.
I most often do the shopping, cooking. Wife tends to load the dishwasher (the dishes come out nasty IMO). I mow the lawn, (2 hours week) repair crap, address maintenance headaches, vacuum occasionally. She tends to do the bathrooms.
She has taken to doing most of the laundry and this appears a cross she likes to bear. There are 3 of us and she does 5-7 loads per week. I tell her she over washes. My personal stuff should only take one load per week.
I generally clean the fridge. I bake the brownies. I generally walk the dog more.
All in all, I don't think we do a lot of household work and could probably do way less if we organized.
This is an interesting question and I think I will start tracking my actually hours.
I do value you my hours at 3 times hers though because she is unskilled labor and I know how to repair things, paint and generally know how the house and cars are put together. If I were not there, she would need to pay a handyman to do much of the stuff I do. Although it would be infrequently. You won't ever see her patching drywall and paint matching. You won't ever see her fixing a leaking drain or repairing the lawn mower.
So yeah, I think the question of who does more is better stated if there is a value attached to it.
Housework does suck though --- I mean some people like it, but I'm picking electronic toys over scrubbing the toilet 98% of the time.
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This is an interesting question and I think I will start tracking my actually hours.
I do value you my hours at 3 times hers though because she is unskilled labor and I know how to repair things, paint and generally know how the house and cars are put together. If I were not there, she would need to pay a handyman to do much of the stuff I do. Although it would be infrequently. You won't ever see her patching drywall and paint matching. You won't ever see her fixing a leaking drain or repairing the lawn mower.
Ok this is total shit. Your time is just as valuable as her time and vice versa. Barring some truly nasty stuff like I don't know...cleaning up the burst sewer pipe?...it should be valued equally in the marriage when considering time spent doing chores. The cost of outsourcing is something entirely different.
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This is a lot of perception stuff at my house. My wife thinks she does more.
I most often do the shopping, cooking. Wife tends to load the dishwasher (the dishes come out nasty IMO). I mow the lawn, (2 hours week) repair crap, address maintenance headaches, vacuum occasionally. She tends to do the bathrooms.
She has taken to doing most of the laundry and this appears a cross she likes to bear. There are 3 of us and she does 5-7 loads per week. I tell her she over washes. My personal stuff should only take one load per week.
I generally clean the fridge. I bake the brownies. I generally walk the dog more.
All in all, I don't think we do a lot of household work and could probably do way less if we organized.
This is an interesting question and I think I will start tracking my actually hours.
I do value you my hours at 3 times hers though because she is unskilled labor and I know how to repair things, paint and generally know how the house and cars are put together. If I were not there, she would need to pay a handyman to do much of the stuff I do. Although it would be infrequently. You won't ever see her patching drywall and paint matching. You won't ever see her fixing a leaking drain or repairing the lawn mower.
So yeah, I think the question of who does more is better stated if there is a value attached to it.
Housework does suck though --- I mean some people like it, but I'm picking electronic toys over scrubbing the toilet 98% of the time.
And she won't ever see you scrubbing a toilet. Seems like you're getting as much from the arrangement as your wife is. So your "3 times" assessment is completely bullshit and I'm glad I'm not married to you.
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Yes, valuing your time as more valuable than hers is messed up. You're in a marriage, not a wage earner/payer relationship. So the question shouldn't be whether your around the house skills would hypothetically earn you more in the free market, but instead whether your free time and her free time are equally important.