DIVISION OF LABOUR IN THE HOME AND PRACTICAL STEPS TOWARDS HOUSEWORK EQUALITY – A BEGINNER’S GUIDE.
Warning: this article contains generalisations. Some men are brilliant housekeepers. Some women are dreadful slobs. In this article, I’ve tried to put together some useful advice, based on my own learnings and from gleaning information from friends and family. My apologies in advance if these generalisations come across as thoughtless, culturally insensitive, or hetero-normative.
The patriarchy exists. We are dealing with the fallout of centuries of inequality and oppression and somehow in 2018 in a western democracy, housework is STILL a major sticking point for lots of couples and women do, on average, twice the amount of unpaid domestic work than men. Know this, my children, (and especially my children from culturally diverse backgrounds): women are not innately ‘better at’ housework than men. Men are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their share of the grunt work of daily life. Most of them are just socialised to believe that they don’t have to. If you want to read more about this issue, the classic text is Wifework by Susan Maushart.
Cohabiting with someone involves you and that someone fitting your daily lives and your stuff together. This inevitably creates mess. When you first move in together, you’re probably mostly OK with the mess. The daily, boring tasks of cooking, tidying, washing, can take on a new, cosy significance when you do them with your sweetheart. Out of the love-haze, the mess doesn’t look so bad, and because you are both showing-off a bit, you will probably pull together fairly happily. Gradually, though, as the novelty wears off couples will fall into their patterns of learned behaviour and that’s where the trouble can begin.
Practical Step One: Do Not Play House It’s important to begin as you mean to go on. Do not think it’s cute or even particularly caring to make up for a partner’s domestic shortcomings. Play the long game and don’t look back and regret a choice you made to iron his underpants once twenty years ago, in an attempt to be a domestic goddess or some crap like that.
Practical Step Two: Mutually Recognise the Innate Crapness of Housework Household tasks are boring. They are repetitive. Some are disgusting. This can be a good opportunity to examine your own preferences and find easy solutions. Example: if your live-in partner hates to cook and you love it, it would be unkind and probably gastronomically-distressing to insist on a 50/50 split of that particular task.
Practical Step Three: Mutually Agree on Bare Minimum Standards People do have genuinely different standards for what is ‘clean,’ ‘liveable,’ or ‘organised.’ The beginning of a cohabiting partnership is the ideal time to discuss these, along with other significant questions which can lead to important discussions and agreements: Who did the lion’s share of the housework in your family of origin? When you go to visit a couple and the house is untidy, to which member of the couple do you automatically assign the blame? Do you feel that each member of the household has a right to equal leisure time?
Practical Step Four: Do Not Play or Assign the Role of Housework Consultant If one member of a couple is housework-challenged, (possibly through strategic incompetence) THEY should be the ones who buy a book, look up a website, outsource their worst jobs to a cleaner, or call someone (else) for advice. Constantly asking the other for advice about cleaning is the same as absolving responsibility for cleaning, and ‘not knowing how’ is only an excuse for 0.78 seconds until the Google result for ‘how to get wine out of upholstery’ comes back with its 1,120,000 hits.
Practical Step Five: Language Matters Men should not ‘help out’ with housework. That phrasing implies that housework is a woman’s role and that men might magnanimously do a bit of it in order to be kind or score some brownie-points. No. They are participating in their fair share of life’s grunt work. And he is not doing the dishes ‘for you’ either.
Practical Step Six: Acknowledge That This Can Be A Deal Breaker Housework incompatibility is a good enough reason to split up with a partner. Don’t feel like it’s frivolous or inconsequential. Daily shared living goes on a lot longer than the early-relationship bliss-cocoon and resentment is poison. Ideally, BEFORE you move in with someone you have gauged whether you have similar standards of hygiene, and if your beau’s share house bedroom looks like a rubbish tip maybe reconsider the relationship’s long-term potential.
Practical Step Seven: Understand That Babies Wreck Everything
Having kids changes relationships and unfortunately the female sex’s sole possession of working mammaries casts us in the role of primary carers in a majority of cases and that often means time at home and an increase in domestic duties. So if you’re embarking on a relationship that you think might be the start of a family, deeply consider your potential co-parent’s housework habits and attitudes. Let their actions guide you, not their words.
Good luck to those navigating the early stages of relationships and remember that the privileged don’t tend to wake up one day and surrender their privilege. Men benefit from the current unequal situation so it will be up to women to change things.
Heather Holt is a CDU Alumni who writes freelance (call her! She’s great at job applications!) and works in the public service. She also parents a small whirlwind, coaches horse riding, and sings a lot.
