The Kind of “Bad Parenting” I Can Get Behind

Tracy Hahn-Burkett has an essay in Babble today about her rarely clean house. Reading it, I felt as though I could have written it myself. I hate clearning. Last Sunday, after I spent an hour doing dishes (I think they multiply like rabbits if you let them sit overnight) and then cleaned the master bath and master bedroom, I marched up to my husband and asked him, “Are we going to dinner, or is it coming to us?” Mostly because there was no way I was going to make another mess that had to be cleaned up.

At the same time, I hate the idea of a messy house. Seeing mail and school papers and toys and books pile up on the kitchen island drives me batty. Especially when I have to shove them out of the way to serve breakfast.

One legitimate reason I want to keep the place clean is that I want to teach my boys how to do chores so they won’t think it’s “women’s work” when they’re grown and married. But I really think that, sometimes at least, part of my aversion to a messy house is that I’m only worried about what other people—and by which I mean other women—would think if they were to pop over unannounced. So, unlike Hahn-Burkett, if I know I’m going to have guests, I turn into a cleaning—or at least a straightening—crazy-woman. Am I alone in my madness, or is this something else we do to ourselves to help project that superwoman image: “I can work and raise the kids and keep my house spotless. What, you can’t?”

Tags: babble, bad parenting, housekeeping

Rachael Larimore Slate copy chief and mother of three. Addicted to coffee, Facebook, and the Sprout channel.

Comments

hallelujah

By: schleiferkin | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 13:41

Ok--I've always been a dink--dual income, no kids, with the same sorts of (rationalizations?) priorities as many have listed here. Precious little free time, exhaustion due to very long hours, and not a lot of extra money in the budget for a house cleaner. And, much like many ladies here, was comfortable enough with a non-socially-acceptable level of clutter and filth when it was just hubby and me.

He and I stopped arguing about chore lists and just kinda came around to he cooked and grocery shopped (including large holiday dinners), and I cleaned and did laundry. That worked for us.

And, much like you all have said, there was how the house was when it was just us, and how it was when people came over and the furious 24 hour zealous guerilla cleaning effort it took to get it ready for company.

And then, we became parents!

And then, I decided, now that I'm a SAHM, I can be just like a normal 'socially acceptable' lady and have a continuously clean house. And, I'll just suck it up and do it.

Lemme just tell ya. Oh, my bleeping God. It takes a militant, 24/7/365 effort to sustain. Almost a compulsion. I HAD NOOOOOOOOOOOO IDEA.

If ever I let down my guard for 2 hours (God-forbid a whole day), you would think that I never cleaned or straightened. It happens that fast.

Seriously. If the laundry and dishes don't get COMPLETELY finished & put away, the downward slide is immediate.

The difference between how much effort it takes to have a continuously clean, straightened house (even with a monthly housekeeper to help), and the haphazardly messy, lightly filthy, with kamakazi-style periodic cleaning is UNBELIEVABLE. Unbelievable. Like I said, it becomes like a compulsion out of necessity. I had no idea.

I could. But I choose not to.

By: blue lucia | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 12:05

Ah, the feminist revolution, that gave us the right to work 80 hours a week just like the men but didn't free us from the white glove standards set by our stay at home mothers and grandmothers.
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And I'm as guilty as the next woman. Left to our own devices, my husband and I would do just enough cleaning to prevent kitchen and bathroom surfaces from being colonized by alien lifeforms. Even when it comes to cooking, we prefer soups, stews, lasagne, and grilling out -- things that make ample leftovers so we don't have to cook more than about twice a week.
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Although we don't have children (other than the furry, four-footed variety), we both work long hours, and quite frankly household work is just not very high on our list of ways we want to spend our precious free time. Reading, creative endeavors, volunteering, and watching our favorite tv shows all rate a lot higher. So our house is messy. We've got dog-hair-fueled dust bunnies. And for ourselves, we don't much care -- we love our life as it is.
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Except that when company is coming over, I find myself sacrificing all my lovely prioritization-of-time rationales on the altar of Social Expectations. We don't want our friends to judge us by our dust bunnies, so we throw ourselves into a frenzy of dusting, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, scrubbing, and organizing.

re: easy solution

By: buggie | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 10:35

If you $60 a week extra lying around you want to donate to my house cleaner fund, I'll gladly hire one today! Seriously, some of us don't have 2 incomes.

I don't want to spend my weeknights cleaning or my weekends. . .

By: Aurora | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 09:56

My house is a disaster. I don't even have kids! Its not that I don't see it (although I can play the ADD card to some extent here as well), my mothers voice is constantly carping in my head that I need to get it cleaned up, but as long as my twin and roommate isn't going to do it, I'm not going to either. (Yeah we are kind of immature like that) Problem is, I don't want to spend my weeknights cleaning, but when it gets to the weekend I don't want to spend all weekend cleaning either. So the best I can hope for is the dishwasher getting filled and run and two loads of laundry getting done. So laundry mountain continues to grow and I never actully get around to cooking because I can't cook in a messy kitchen. I keep thinking that if I could just get ahead of it, but then when I finally do take the 2-3 hours to clean the kitchen I cook like a crazy person and mess the whole thing up again. Its a vicious cycle. I guess some people learn to pick up their toys as kids as they play with them and the rest of us end up with an endless rotation of dirty house guilt and cleaning frenzy that we are doomed to repeat endlessly.

easy solution

By: themona | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 02:52

Haven't any of you heard of housekeepers? Golly. So easy. Just have a cleaning service once a week and all the fights are over. Kids STILL have to keep their stuff picked up "No, sweetie. Carey's job is to clean, not pick up after you, etc.", your house will be clean, your friends can pop over and you won't be embarrassed. Get one EVEN IF YOU'RE a stay-at-home. What price peace? Enjoy your family. That nice man you married hates cleaning as much as you do.

I so empathize with this post!

By: Cec in Israel | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 01:39

As the mother of 4 boys, (alright, I admit that they have all grown up and moved out and the mess is pretty much all mine!) I have managed to grow comfortable with a level of mess and - gasp! - dirt - that most Israeli women could not live with. Fortunately my partner is sensible about it and, while he doesn't clean up much either, he doesn't nag me. (Which would lead to a lot of fights but not necessarily a cleaner house.) As an artist I tend to sprrreeadd out over everything - a few beads here, a pencil there, a box of jewelry findings on the sofa (next to my newest knitting project), some copper foil on the kitchen table and *bam* the house looks like burglers tossed it after they ate dinner and didn't clear the table. I do sweep because I work with glass and we occasionally like to go barefoot.

However, I do tend to feel a terrible chill when guests enter the home - I can't help but notice the place through their eyes. Where did those dust bunnies come from and why didn't I clean them up? Unfortunately I have not learned to have this insight before guests arrive and probably never will. And I refuse to feel bad about my mess, since it is my house and my lifestyle. But I do mention it with a smile, along the lines of "hope you don't mind, our lifestyle's a little messy." Most people feel comfortable with that. And it clears the air and renders the dust a little less visible/less important for most visitors because, honestly, most people live like that at home or would if they allowed themselves to. I'm not a hotel and I don't have or want a cleaning crew. "Home" has connotations and liberties that "hotel lobby" or "operating room" do not. I suggest that we all try to embrace our mess and get on with life with a smile!

God, I hate cleaning. I hate

By: wami | Fri, 11/20/2009 - 01:22

God, I hate cleaning. I hate it so much. I hate it so much that one of the main reasons why I'm going to start working again and end this stay-at-home act is so I can start heaping more of the cleaning house responsibility back on my husband.
I'm petrified of anyone coming to my house unannounced. Our bathroom looks like a science experiment. I turn into a cleaning Nazi, will come up with a nightly to-do list for my husband to tackle after work and will stick my daughter in front of the TV for a few hours to get the house fit for guests. But on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, I figure cooking dinner most nights and cleaning up after it is more than enough.

Oh, there's shared labor in our house!

By: Rachael Larimore | Thu, 11/19/2009 - 18:19

XXreader,

Even though I was the one cleaning last weekend, I can assure you my sons are getting a glimpse of a fair division of labor. My husband cooks dinner almost every night and does most of the dishes. He ends up with most of the yard work (kinda sexist, I admit.) We take turns with most of the household chores. However, it's almost impossible for us to clean together considering our children are 6, 3, and 7 months. If one is cleaning, someone has to be making sure the baby isn't sticking one of the many toys on the floor into his mouth and the 3-year-old isn't jumping off the furniture. Last weekend just happened to be my turn!

My concern with having a messy house is that the kids will grow up not knowing how to clean or that it's important to keep the place clean at least once in a while.

I don't have kids or a

By: buggie | Thu, 11/19/2009 - 18:13

I don't have kids or a live-in partner, but I worry about my messy house. I fear that my friends will judge me as a bad, unhygienic person who wasn't raised well- if you leave dishes in the sink, you get roaches and mice; if you don't clean the tub you'll catch diseases; if you don't fold your laundry you'll ruin your clothes. I'm always afraid that if I ever need roommates no will live with me if they see how messy I am. But it's not just about other women- my ex boyfriend wouldn't shower at my house because he thought I didn't clean the tub often enough. His house was so clean and tidy it looked like no one lived there. He always made me feel like a horrible person because I had clothes on the floor and I would use leftover water in the tea kettle twice. My parents always say that I shouldn't get so upset about my messy house in one breath, but then comment on how it's not clean or tidy in another. I have ADD and am extremely all-or-nothing oriented, so when I do clean it's an all-day, all-room event with the goal of perfection. I usually can't get myself just to clean up dishes or fold laundry on a weeknight- what's the point of putting my laundry away if I don't have time to put my dishes away too?

cleaning=parenting?

By: femomhist | Thu, 11/19/2009 - 17:55

eek if cleaning = parenting I am in BIG trouble. However, for the past year, I have involved both my kids in cleaning! Each Sunday we set aside a few morning hours (aided by our crack of dawn wake up and small house) to clean at least the down stair's public rooms. My husband does the toilets and the floors later in the day and voila clean house or at least passably cleanish. Within a day or two things are cluttered and unclean again, but at least it keeps the filth at bay.