J.K. BALTZERSEN writes:

If a man desires that his wife cooks him food, irons his clothes, does the dishes, cleans the house, etc., one need not look far for those who decry him as pathetic, sexist, disrespecting of women, in need for a replacement mom, doomed to be forever single, etc.

However, if a woman desires that her husband does the work with the hammer, the wrench, the saw, etc., lifts the heavy stuff, fixes the car, etc., why is there not a similar decrying of her as pathetic, sexist, disrespecting of men, in need for a replacement dad, doomed to be forever single, etc.?

Laura writes:

One never reads in the press about women who are not contributing to manly chores around the house. I have never heard of studies on how often women change the oil in the car or fix the plumbing. Quite a few studies have looked at how much housework men do.

However, if a young woman admits to wanting to cook and clean for a man or admits to wanting a man to support her, she is likely to be considered a parasite and loser. So I think the standards are harsh on both men and women. We are taught we are sick if we want what is utterly normal. Or we are told that we are denying economic realities. But whether it is economically possible for a woman and man to live this way is one issue; whether they want it is another. It should be acceptable to say what one wants regardless of whether one can afford it.

I wish more men would openly state that they want someone to care for them in these ways.

Kevin Stay writes:

I almost agree with Mr. Baltzersen. The man who feels cooking, cleaning, ironing, dishes etc. are solely the responsibility of his wife does indeed disrespect her. While there may be days when circumstances have you beg off, their rarity corresponds strongly with your odds of a sound marriage.

Laura writes:

Yes, there is too much to do for a man never to participate in these chores. It’s a matter of general areas of responsibility.

Bruce B. writes:

Kevin Stay wrote: “The man who feels cooking, cleaning, ironing, dishes etc. are solely the responsibility of his wife does indeed disrespect her.”

I think you’ve written something similar in one of your recent entries. Just an observation here. I don’t think my grandfathers (born in the 1920s) or my great-grandfathers (born in the 1890s and 1900s) EVER helped with these tasks. I think that division of labor was so sharp back then that men simply wouldn’t do those sort of things. I’m not saying they were right but that’s how I think it was (I wasn’t there so I can’t know for sure).

They did outdoor work and fixed things around the house. Or they worked hard outside the house and provided their wife with a maid or nanny. But I don’t believe they ever ironed, cooked, cleaned, etc. Were they wrong?

Mr. Stay responds:

Were men of earlier generations wrong for never helping out with “house” work? Absolutely not. Modern materials, construction techniques and tools have greatly reduced the traditional home work loads for husbands and wives, but I believe even more so for us men. Given the relatively little effort it takes today for a man to provide the material needs of the family under normal circumstances he should be willing to give up some of his leisure time to help with some of the cooking and cleaning. (Under abnormal circumstances, such as the husband needing to take a second job to fulfill his responsibilities or having a child with special needs, both husband and wife need to be flexible in those areas.)

Laura writes:

A good marriage is a friendship. Each spouse should have the spirit of helpfulness. Thus if a man has an extremely stressful job, a woman should sense what he needs when he comes home. Sitting down and watching television may not be more restoring for him than participating in menial tasks. But he should not have to do those tasks under a gun. They should be unpressured and done without criticism from a spouse.

What I find to be too often the case today is that because of the woman’s superior ability in these areas she ends up becoming her husband’s taskmaster. This is wrong and as objectionable as cases of husbands who never lift a dish.

Laura adds:

Kevin mentioned that modern technology has reduced the traditional home workload for men. This is true. But it has also increased the amount of travel time to the workplace.

Bruce B. writes:

With respect to Mr. Stay, his explanation doesn’t seem right to me. If anything, technology has reduced women’s work load more. Women did an unbelieveable amount of manual labor several generations ago. My grandmother woke up at 4:00am to iron the families clothes and didn’t sit down until she went to bed. My grandfather might have worked on the car or fixed the occasional thing around the house but it wasn’t much more than what I do.

My impression, based on the older men in my family (from diverse backgrounds – upper-middle class doctors, vets and lawyers to blue collar mechanics and painters) is that men simply did not do “woman’s work” back then. I think the distinctions were very sharp.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

You said, “Kevin mentioned that modern technology has reduced the traditional home workload for men. This is true. But it has also increased the amount of travel time to the workplace.”  Yes it has, and it is also true that modern technology has reduced the level of manual labor needed to keep a house in running order by an incalculable degree–washer/dryers, microwaves, modern stoves and ovens, freezers, and dishwashers have all increased the productivity one can expect from a single person caring for a home.  Has this also changed people’s expectation for what constitutes a minimally ship-shape household?  Maybe.  Men used to do a lot more around the house than they were expected to do in the 1940’s, in part because domestic tasks had become so automated that it seemed natural for women to handle that end of things as long as men were expected to work all day at jobs far from home.  All of these dynamics are very difficult to parse out, and it seems petty and foolish to try.

Still, my personal sense of things is that men have probably gained more leisure time in the deal than women have, but in fact this “gain” is actually a loss.  In truth, most men just aren’t very handy around the house anymore, because of the dramatic division of labor into manual and white-collar trades, and the concomitant de-emphasizing of competency in manual skills.  Running a dishwasher requires rather a different level of mechanical inclination than, say, replacing a car battery, though they are regarded as basically equivalent tasks.  Interestingly, the byzantine technical complexity of modern automobile engines and similar appliances is itself a consequence of the separation of manual and engineering work–white collar men who have never worked on a car in their lives are designing computer-driven engines in ways that any mechanic knows will only make the engine almost impossible to work on without specialized equipment, but the engineer and the mechanic are operating in totally different environments with totally different priorities.  So even a reasonably motivated and competent man sometimes cannot perform basic maintenance.  Because most men have to call a tradesman for even the simplest manual tasks, men have a tremendous amount of free time they never used to have, much of which is now poured into various “toys,” but they are not happier.

It is still the case that housework of the feminine variety does not come naturally to them, so modern men often feel that they are not competent to do anything much at all (and they’re right).  Feminist obsession with bean-counting their hours spent washing up, together with the fact that whatever housework they do is generally supervised by their wives or girlfriends, does not help their state of mind, and they become resentful of whatever they have to do around the house.  It is a resentment driven in part by their own sense of inferiority, the knowledge that they have very little that is masculine to do around the house anyway, and their inability to put their fingers on just where these feelings of inadequacy are coming from.   I don’t know where that leaves us, except to say that women reading your blog who are frustrated by their husbands’ unhelpfulness would do well to consider all these things.  Encouraging him to take up a trade, in a way that flatters his potential, might be a good idea for starters.

Laura writes:

I’d like to add a few more points here, but I have to go and cook dinner!

I think we can all agree on one thing.

The former division of labor, with men doing very little housework, was not based on the notion of women’s inferiority. It was based on an unspoken recognition of her superiority in managing the home and her desire for mastery in that sphere.

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