- Reaction score
- 22
- Points
- 430
With the holidays around the corner, here's why you shouldn't stress
on division of chores...
( ... means I have cut text)
The Case for Filth
...
Cleanliness feels organic while being highly constructed. In Katherine Ashenburg’s
“The Dirt on Clean,” a study of historical standards of cleanliness, the relativism of
hygiene over time is amazing. The ancient Romans would have found Renaissance
Europeans disgusting beyond belief (as their Muslim contemporaries did) and certainly
my grandmother would find my house filthy. The standards have changed. There exists
no agreed-upon definition of “what has to be done” in a household. Difficulties of
definition necessarily haunt all sociological studies, but in the case of housework
those difficulties press in from all sides. What exactly is the housework? How should
the amount of housework be established? Studies generally use either a questionnaire
or a diary to work out who is doing what. A 2007 study in Britain compared couples
who used both a questionnaire and a diary and found significant discrepancies between
them. One study compared self-reporting by husbands and wives, and concluded that
the perception of effort was totally distinct from the actual effort.
...
Housework is intimate drudgery. Understanding its intimacy is at least as important as
understanding its drudgery. In an essay in New York magazine on the subject of housework
in his own marriage, Jonathan Chait defended male indifference to housework as a question
of having different standards than women. The truth of the matter is that it’s far more complex
and darker and more intimate than “standards.” Even the most basic housework proves
ethereal on inspection. ...
These minor insanities can be general as well as particular. Here’s one: In some countries,
women who make more money than their husbands tend to do more housework. An Australian
study described a U-shaped curve: As women approach income equality in their relationships
they do a smaller share of the housework, but past equality they do a larger share. ...
... Like everything in marriage, the division of domestic duties ultimately boils down to sex, the
fundamental struggle to achieve regulated passion. In what seems like one of the most widely
reported sociological studies in history, a team of researchers in 2012 discovered that men who
do more housework have less sex than men who don’t — but that men who do more traditional
male housework, like yard work, have more sex. That old chestnut of sex advice columns, that
tidying up the kitchen will get your wife in the mood, is sadly inaccurate.
... Chores are the world’s dreariest form of foreplay. There is no solution to the economic injustice
of housework any more than there is a solution to human desire.
...
Here is the good news: Men’s behavior may not be changing, but women’s is. According to a 2000
study by University of Maryland sociologists, time-diary data from American adults show that the
number of hours spent on domestic labor, not including child care or shopping, has declined steadily
since 1965. This finding is mainly due to declines among women, both those with jobs and those
without jobs. They have cut their housework hours almost in half since the 1960s.
...
Hooray for disinvestment. Caring less is the hope of the future. Housework is perhaps the only political
problem in which doing less and not caring are the solution, where apathy is the most progressive and
sensible attitude. Fifty years ago, it was perfectly normal to iron sheets and to vacuum drapes. They
were “necessary” tasks. The solution to the inequality of dusting wasn’t dividing the dusting; it was not
doing the dusting at all.
The solution to the gender divide in housework generally is just that simple: don’t bother. Leave the stairs
untidy. Don’t fix the garden gate. Fail to repaint the peeling ceiling. Never make the bed.
(So, after having burns theirs bras, women (yes, we) will let dust settle on theirs brooms
)
on division of chores...
( ... means I have cut text)
The Case for Filth
...
Cleanliness feels organic while being highly constructed. In Katherine Ashenburg’s
“The Dirt on Clean,” a study of historical standards of cleanliness, the relativism of
hygiene over time is amazing. The ancient Romans would have found Renaissance
Europeans disgusting beyond belief (as their Muslim contemporaries did) and certainly
my grandmother would find my house filthy. The standards have changed. There exists
no agreed-upon definition of “what has to be done” in a household. Difficulties of
definition necessarily haunt all sociological studies, but in the case of housework
those difficulties press in from all sides. What exactly is the housework? How should
the amount of housework be established? Studies generally use either a questionnaire
or a diary to work out who is doing what. A 2007 study in Britain compared couples
who used both a questionnaire and a diary and found significant discrepancies between
them. One study compared self-reporting by husbands and wives, and concluded that
the perception of effort was totally distinct from the actual effort.
...
Housework is intimate drudgery. Understanding its intimacy is at least as important as
understanding its drudgery. In an essay in New York magazine on the subject of housework
in his own marriage, Jonathan Chait defended male indifference to housework as a question
of having different standards than women. The truth of the matter is that it’s far more complex
and darker and more intimate than “standards.” Even the most basic housework proves
ethereal on inspection. ...
These minor insanities can be general as well as particular. Here’s one: In some countries,
women who make more money than their husbands tend to do more housework. An Australian
study described a U-shaped curve: As women approach income equality in their relationships
they do a smaller share of the housework, but past equality they do a larger share. ...
... Like everything in marriage, the division of domestic duties ultimately boils down to sex, the
fundamental struggle to achieve regulated passion. In what seems like one of the most widely
reported sociological studies in history, a team of researchers in 2012 discovered that men who
do more housework have less sex than men who don’t — but that men who do more traditional
male housework, like yard work, have more sex. That old chestnut of sex advice columns, that
tidying up the kitchen will get your wife in the mood, is sadly inaccurate.
... Chores are the world’s dreariest form of foreplay. There is no solution to the economic injustice
of housework any more than there is a solution to human desire.
...
Here is the good news: Men’s behavior may not be changing, but women’s is. According to a 2000
study by University of Maryland sociologists, time-diary data from American adults show that the
number of hours spent on domestic labor, not including child care or shopping, has declined steadily
since 1965. This finding is mainly due to declines among women, both those with jobs and those
without jobs. They have cut their housework hours almost in half since the 1960s.
...
Hooray for disinvestment. Caring less is the hope of the future. Housework is perhaps the only political
problem in which doing less and not caring are the solution, where apathy is the most progressive and
sensible attitude. Fifty years ago, it was perfectly normal to iron sheets and to vacuum drapes. They
were “necessary” tasks. The solution to the inequality of dusting wasn’t dividing the dusting; it was not
doing the dusting at all.
The solution to the gender divide in housework generally is just that simple: don’t bother. Leave the stairs
untidy. Don’t fix the garden gate. Fail to repaint the peeling ceiling. Never make the bed.
(So, after having burns theirs bras, women (yes, we) will let dust settle on theirs brooms
)
