Many moons ago, when I was much less cynical than I am now, I wrote a story for a newspaper about a marriage in which the man stayed home to look after the kids and household while the woman stayed in her higher-paying job.
It was a financial decision that made obvious sense for this couple – they’d both had good jobs but had together decided her career was the more promising in the long term, so he stepped back because they wanted an at-home parent while the kids were little, and because they could afford it. It was deemed “newsworthy” in a soft kind of way, because in the 1990s it went well against the norm – it was a good illustration of what was possible when you start with a negligible gender pay gap, mutual disrespect for gender norms, and ego-free assessment of which career is best going to provide for the family unit.
The funny thing was that when I interviewed them both separately, the man told me he now did all the housework, and I believed him. I wanted to believe him – this was something to aspire to. Meanwhile, the woman said “… all the housework? He said he does all the housework?”
I’m just guessing, but it’s possible they had a big fight that night.
Couples fight about housework. Couples fight about housework so much, it’s one of the main reasons cited for divorce. Couples fight about housework so much that it’s still incredible that men haven’t twigged to the fact that surely it would be so much easier to just do a bit more housework than it would be to go through a divorce.
In the three decades since that story, what’s changed?
Very little, it seems. The latest Hilda report shows that men are still doing 50% less housework than women, even though they think they are doing their fair share. Hilariously, they reported great satisfaction with this arrangement.
You can see how it happens. Women who have children step back from careers for a while, not because they are biologically more suited to parenthood, but because they generally earn less, as evidenced by this week’s gender pay gap report – which is also called the motherhood pay gap because it only gets worse from this point. Women may be brought up to believe they are equal to men, but if they have children, they quickly find out they are not.
They then have to do more unpaid, unvalued work and become resentful. This resentment, by the way, is real and understandable because it’s not fair to be automatically expected to do something on the basis of your gender, especially if you never agreed to it. It’s also not fair that at this rate it’s going to be almost another 300 years before we achieve pay parity, but that’s another story (it’s the same never-ending story).
Because women are forced into being in charge of the unpaid, unvalued and often invisible work, even after they have returned to work, they have to ask for help. Repeatedly. This is sometimes called nagging.
Nagging, of course, is not gender specific, and is only a function of who has the greater responsibility and needs help. Women do not want to be in charge of the laundry. Women do not want to be in charge of the mopping. Women do not want to be in charge of that thick layer of dust that gathers on top of the skirting boards. Women do not want to carry the mental load of what has to be done. Why would we? Why would anyone? No one expects men to actively want to be in charge of it either – most people do not like doing this stuff – but household things have to be done.
So what are the solutions that might bring real household change, apart from the absolutely obvious?
One suggestion from a social scientist that has stuck with me – from one of the hundreds of articles, studies or books about this subject I have read over the years – was that couples could, instead of being at loggerheads with each other over their household tasks, be united against an unfair world.
This requires an unshakeable bedrock of allyship as a starting point; an understanding that it is indeed an unfair world for women and that here, in our house, we can make it right and fair. Work out what needs to be done to keep the household running – factoring in paid, unpaid, unvalued and invisible work – and divide it fairly, hopefully upending some gender norms along the way. Traditional gender norms, by the way, aren’t good for men either.
It beggars belief that these things still have to be said – it feels like feminism for dummies, and I think I have written a column like this a dozen times. I’m so tired of it. I thought things would be better for my daughter but at this rate, it won’t even be better for her great great granddaughter. My only consolation? The cleanest, tidiest person in my family is one of my sons. Long may it last.
