Americans: Pro-Paychecks, Anti-Dirty Houses
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Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress have released a report about women and work that manages both to be interesting and not at all surprising. The report perfectly captures Americans' contradictory attitudes about women working: We're fans of the money women bring in, but we don't show a strong willingness to make the necessary adjustments at home so that women's unpaid labor isn't as necessary. Women make up half the workforce, and mothers represent two-thirds of breadwinners, but women are still doing most of the housework. Changing that and making women's lives easier means rethinking gender roles in profound ways, and Americans don't seem quite ready to do that yet.
The report really captures the way Americans quickly embrace progress after it occurs, but hesitate when it comes to embracing scary new kinds of progress. That 75 percent of Americans feel positively about women's contributions to the economy demonstrates merely that 75 percent of Americans can absorb reality and draw conclusions about the obvious. I'm mostly alarmed about the other 25 percent. Who are these people? Do one in four Americans really not believe that a woman's money spends as good as a man's, or that women are as likely to be competent at their jobs? I have to assume that these are the same 25 percent of Americans who are out of touch with reality in general, the people who would vote for Bush again if they had a chance.
Women who want some relief from the second shift—the feminist term for all the unpaid work like housework and child care that still falls primarily on women's shoulders—will find this report a bit of a downer. Americans embraced women drawing paychecks because we had to; we needed the money. But even though moms across the nation are exhausted, relieving their burden would require men to pick up dishrags of their own free will more often, and so far there's no reason to think that will happen spontaneously. After all, while 55 percent of women claimed that women do most of the housework even when they had full-time jobs, only 28 percent of men agreed. The likeliest explanation for this disparity is men simply can't/won't see all the work that women do that makes their lives easier.
Instead, the standards of cleanliness for two-parent families have slipped, and the country at large fantasizes not about men doing more work, but about having a June Cleaver pop in to take care of it all. That's why 75 percent of Americans can support women working, while 65 percent can claim that the decreasing number of children who have a stay-at-home mother has been an overall negative for family life. In a nation where women don't have enough time and men don't have enough will, of course we're all going to end up fantasizing about having a fleet of undemanding housework fairies who can get all that work done for free.
Comments
@icpshootyz
By: buggie | Tue, 10/20/2009 - 21:21
I kind of have to wonder though about why women might want things cleaner than men, it's sort of a stereotype (though I don't know how accurate it actually is, because the neurotic clean freaks I've ever met in my life have all been straight men). I can say that as a girl, I was raised to revere cleanliness. As woman, it's not "respectable" to have a dirty house. My mother will come to my house and rant about my dirty bathroom, but she'll go to my brother's house and *laugh* about the dirty bathroom. Men are supposed to have dirty houses, women are supposed to have clean houses. It's not "lady-like" to be dirty or untidy.
And that brings me to other point I wanted to make about this, that once again, it's focused on mothers and wives. I honestly believe that even single women face more of these pressures than single men (though I do agree that difference is probably much greater between married women and married men). I really think that I have more errands and chores to do than a similarly situated 31 year-old single man. I think just the personal upkeep is so much more burdensome for a woman than a man. I think it just comes down to what we expect from women and men as a cultural thing.
In response to "That's why 75
By: doug2009 | Tue, 10/20/2009 - 12:10
In response to "That's why 75 percent of Americans can support women working, while 65 percent can claim that the decreasing number of children who have a stay-at-home mother has been an overall negative for family life."
As soon as I read the "Time" article that's exactly what I said to my wife. "Time" pretty much just took & reported a punch of polls but didn't but didn't bother analyzing this most hypocritical poll result.
No, it isn't a joke
By: Hey Skipper | Tue, 10/20/2009 - 12:15
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Never said it was a substitute, only that it counts. Defining that work out of existence, which these studies do, renders the results useless, while adding a whiff of dishonesty.
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My work around the house includes the housework that I help with, plus the non-housework. Not a substitute, but in addition to.
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That is why 28% of men are calling shenanigans.
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Vacuuming the house counts, but vacuuming the car does not. Washing the clothes counts, but washing the car does not. Cleaning the bathroom counts, but not mowing the lawn.
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Explain that to me.
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(How do you put a blank line between paras here?)
Hey,
By: Amanda Marcotte | Tue, 10/20/2009 - 08:01
Nice dodge, but no go. The notion that "car maintenance" done for two hours out of year, and usually be a mechanic, is a legitimate substitute for 20 plus hours a week of cleaning, cooking, and child care is a joke. Same with yard work. As I've been the person who does both, I can tell you that men aren't fooling anyone with this yard work crap. It's a tiny fraction of the work, even with a high maintenance yard. And often women still do it.
Xando,
By: Amanda Marcotte | Tue, 10/20/2009 - 07:58
The "blame women for everything" strategy, while attractive, is unfair. You don't realize that men in that situation will often just walk around complaining about the filth. So they do care, and they know how to make it even harder for you not to clean.
Housework
By: Xando | Mon, 10/19/2009 - 16:38
There's actually an easy way to avoid having to do all the housework: simply don't do it.
At some point your husband/boyfriend/roommate will run out of patience with dirty clothes/dishes/floors/whatever and do the work himself.
At which point you need to decide whether you can tolerate this level of cleanliness in your house. If you can't, then any work you do to raise it beyond this level is solely for your own benefit (since your living partner obviously don't care) and you can stop getting annoyed at your partner.
What counts as housework?
By: Hey Skipper | Mon, 10/19/2009 - 12:09
Reminds me of the University of Michigan study from last year regarding housework. They reached the conclusion that women do more by defining what men typically do right out of existence.
Here is how much a day of car maintenance, followed by a day of yardwork contributes to housework, according to the UoM: zero, nada, nil, zilch.
There could well be a reason 28 percent of men do not agree with the assertion that women do more housework: it is because they don't discount their contributions quite so heavily.
As a fairly progressive male,
By: icpshootyz | Mon, 10/19/2009 - 12:09
As a fairly progressive male, I'll chime in with my thoughts/experiences. I grew up in what can be described as a mom-dominated house. Mom wore the pants in the relationship and was constantly on our (myself and my two brothers) cases to do most of the housework. We did dishes, we did laundry, we did vacuuming, we changed bed sheets, we cleaned bathrooms. You name it, us (male) kids did it. Once on my own, I could still manage these tasks. I have even co-habited (past-tense) with a female, and it went fairly well. What I have noticed is that women simply expect more cleanliness than men. My gf at the time wanted cleaning to happen on a weekly (if not greater) basis, and that's simply not how I live. I don't clean a bathroom every 7 days, or mop, or vacuum or whatever. I do it when it seems appropriate. If something gets dirty enough I clean it. If guests are coming over I'll clean up. But I do not want some regimented, boot-camp cleaning schedule to rule my home. And that seems to be the big difference. Now that I live with male roommates again, we're all happy. The apartment is clean enough, and we clean on an impromptu regular basis. But if anyone put up a chores list I'd tear it down in a second. From what I learned growing up, getting nagged into doing things makes the nagged feel like doing the exact opposite. I don't feel in any way that housework is a woman's job anymore than a man's. But I don't feel that I should have to do housework as frequently as someone else wants it done, either. If you want a perpetually clean house, then by all means clean it. Someone else's pet peeves and OCD issues should remain their issues, not be forced on others. And if I have kids you can bet they'll be the ones cleaning house!