This is from the AP regarding the affect of men being unemployed on the split of housework between men and women:
"An estimated 2 million wives are now the sole breadwinners in families across America as more men than women have been laid off in this recession, according to the Center for American Progress.
Experts say that unemployed husbands are probably taking on more of the housework and childcare duties — for now. But they don't expect that temporary change at home to create household habits that will stick around after men find work again.
"When men make more money they can buy out of housework in a way women cannot," said Constance Gager, a sociologist in the Department of Family and Child Studies at Montclair State University.
Gager has studied the division of labor in families and said that while men have taken on more housework and child-rearing over the years, women still do two-thirds of it, including day-to-day tasks like diaper-changing, bathing, preparing meals and shuttling the children to activities. Men, meanwhile, tend to play with children or participate in athletic games.
"It is very much the case that women tend to do urgent tasks that are repetitive," she said.
More than two-thirds of women said they are mostly responsible for taking care of their children, according to a recent poll by The Rockefeller Foundation in partnership with Time magazine for the Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver. Only 13 percent of men said the same thing.
"I think the complicated question is: Do women want men to take over these burdens? It's also the case that women feel a kind of propriety relationship to those tasks," said Katherine Newman, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University."
"I think the complicated question is: Do women want men to take over these burdens?
Of course they do. The difference is, most the men I have met in life, would be fine if mold was growing in the toilet and the bathroom smelled like a latrine. The towels smelled heavily of BO before they made it into the laundry. The kids would be turning their underwear inside out, in order to wear them a second time, because the ran out of fresh ones. There would be no milk for their breakfast cereal.......Need I go on? The scary thing is, I've seen this in perfectly competent men, who run engineering companies and hold MBA's. Men, who managed to live successfully on their own, prior to marriage. Then, once married, become incapable of navigating a grocery store, even though they hold a valid pilots license. But, if their wife has to go take care of a sick relative, their daughters end up with their hair hacked off, because Dad can't brush the knots out of it and the kids get Tang on their breakfast cereal.
*** It's also the case that women feel a kind of propriety relationship to those tasks," ***
No we don't. They just need to be done. You have to choose where to put your energy. Fighting with someone who has become conveniently brain dead to household needs? Or getting the work done? A working woman only has so much energy and has to prioritize where to expend it.
Well, Hotlips,you said: "The difference is, most the men I have met in life, would be fine if mold was growing in the toilet and the bathroom smelled like a latrine. The towels smelled heavily of BO before they made it into the laundry. The kids would be turning their underwear inside out, in order to wear them a second time, because the ran out of fresh ones." I don't think that this is fair. I think that men of my father's generation were like this - acting as though housework was beneath them, and doing a very poor job so that no one would ask them to do it again. But my husband is 61, and he has always done at least half of the housework and childcare because I have always worked. And he's done a very good job. He was a little ahead of his time, but now I think that there are maybe a majority of men whose wives are career-women who do this. I think that part of the problem to which the article was alluding is the idea that women who have done things a certain way when they were in charge of the housework might not be open to the husband doing it a different way, not doing it badly, just differently.
Hotlips, you said: "their daughters end up with their hair hacked off, because Dad can't brush the knots out of it". I actually witnessed a scenario like this. At the hairdresser, there was a little girl whose hair was in complete knots. The mom explained that she had been in the hospital and then on bedrest after leg surgery. The little girl was about ten and had shoulder-length blond, thin, fine hair. The dad had lost control of the hair-situation right off the bat. It was a complete mess. Mom and daughter had been there for two hours by the time I got there. Little girl was screaming, didn't want the hair cut, was in pain during the process, getting up and running out of the shop, etc. There was plenty of criticism of dad after they left. Why didn't he brush her hair? Why did he let the situation go? Why hadn't he brought the girl to a hairdresser earlier? When my husband heard the story, he was in agreement. I think a whole lot more isexpected of dads these days.
**I don't think that this is fair. I think that men of my father's generation were like this - acting as though housework was beneath them, and doing a very poor job so that no one would ask them to do it again.**
Unfortunately, I have witnessed this among my contemporaries. I'm not joking when I say it is men who run engineering companies, hold MBA's and valid pilots licenses. It isn't even about their wives wanting them to do it to the same standard. It is about the guys seeming to have blinders on, and having lost their olfactory senses, once married. These are all men that were perfectly capable as bachelors. They managed to feed themselves, and if not clean their own homes, and do their laundry, get a service to do it. But once they were married, with children, it's like they lost brain cells. Sure, they were great guys that "helped" put their kids to bed and read them bedtime stories, pushed a vacuum around when asked, but couldn't find the dairy section of the grocery store or even the grocery store for that matter, when their wives father had a lung transplant, or a hairbrush, when another wife was moving her parents into a rest home. I just don't get why these perfectly, competent, "good" men, find this to be acceptable, on any level. It is highly doubtful, that under the same circumstances, they would return home from a family crisis, to find their household in disarray, the refrigerator empty, and kids in need of a special trip to the hairdresser, to deal with moms incompetent handling of the hair.
