House wars over housework

A woman was asked why she and her partner broke up, and she thought long and hard before she said, with an air of experiencing an epiphany, "His stinky clothes heaped on the floor in our bedroom."Evidence is piled high as a mountain of laundry that women who hold full-time paying jobs still do the bulk of household work. Put a group of women together and a cosy chat will usually turn into a raging rant about how it takes a stack of dynamite to get their guys moving to help around the house.

Making a home
Malodourous Jockeys may seem like a trivial reason to sever a relationship, but it goes much deeper than that, says Robert Glossop, director of programs for the Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family. "We tend to think of doing the dishes and the laundry and shopping and that kind of stuff as nothing but drudge work. But these activities are, in fact, the foundation of why we do everything else. To make a home is to make decisions with another and have a commitment to spend time and communicate with another."

The critical value of housework lies in doing it together as a couple, Glossop says. You don't really care who is doing the dishes. What is most distressing to somebody is if they alone are responsible for doing the dishes and the other person splits to watch television. At that point, it does become drudge work. If two individuals behave in their home as though they are isolated and atomized, then that represents a distance that will ultimately jeopardize the relationship."

Challenging traditional roles
If there's so much riding on this, why do women still wind up with the burden of housework? It's a complex subject, involving traditional family role models. As Glossop points out, the division of labour involving men bringing home the bacon and women cooking it, then cleaning up afterwards, harks back several generations. The tables turned when more women began bringing home the bacon too.But it's clear that changes on the domestic front haven't kept pace with changes in the workplace.

Some women simply find it easier to do the drill on their own instead of rallying the troops with the same old list of instructions. In other cases, husbands and children who weren't taught early on how to clean, cook and wash are happy enough with the Mommy Maid service.

Self-saboteurs
Betty Ann Habig, a network resource producer for www.momsonline.com , a massive North American website, chat room and poster board, says that women sabotage themselves. She hears the same story about housework again and again from all over the continent. Teaching kids to clean up after themselves is one thing. But a grown man? "We look at them as equals: they are mature, they are grown adults, they should be able to read our minds and unload that dishwasher," she says.

To be fair, though, men are getting better. Doris Anderson, a former editor of Chatelaine magazine and a veteran in the war for social change says, in previous generations "most men married expecting to get a maid and a housekeeper. I think my generation has done a much better job on their sons. Consequently, most men now aren't looking for housemaids; they're looking for partners."

Anderson has probably struck the key to the solution. To make any progress on the housekeeping front, we have to keep teaching our sons, and teaching them well. If we keep teaching them with patience and diligence perhaps letting up a tad on the criticism who knows, the next generation of men might be perfect.