We, humans, are social beings. We want to socialize as well as needs such as food, shelter to live, and sometimes we are in search of a life partner with whom we can spend our life. Sometimes we celebrate this relationship with a wedding, we call it marriage, and sometimes we just say we love each other, and we continue our life journey together by trusting each other’s promise. Celebrations, togetherness, and having a life partner who is spending your life with are good in many ways, but the key points of a long and healthy relationship are communication, sharing, and respect. Today, women in hetero relationships have serious problems in their relationships. Especially in sharing the burdens of the household chore. It would not be wrong to associate the term household burden for women with an iceberg. The visible part of the iceberg is the term “household labor”, which is cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. The part that is not seen, or ignored by society, is the terms “Emotion labor” and “Mental labor”. “Mental labor”, determines the planning tasks, such as determining the needs of the other family members, organizing their activities, etc. The planning process in the” Mental labor” is timeless as it is a mental job, and generally, women make mental plans while carrying out the works under the “Household labor” category. The concept of “Emotion labor” can be defined as tension management. The successful completion of this task assigned to women depends on the fact that the verbal communication of women is strong and persuasive, and at the same time, women find new effective ways to calm their family members. In addition to this, there are also paid workloads for a working woman.
Well, did you ever wonder, isn’t that too much of a burden for a single person? If you’re wondering, I won’t hesitate to say yes, it is quite a lot and tiring for a single person to do so much work. When a person is loaded with too much work like that, this situation pushes her into role conflict. Creary and Gordon explain the term role conflict in their article “Role Conflict, Role Overload, and Role Strain” published in the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, as a “Role overload exists when an individual fulfills multiple roles simultaneously and lacks the resources to perform them”. When we say conflict, many scenes and emotions come to our minds. Often conflicts do not create good or peaceful feelings in us, and we may not always be able to predict the results of conflicts, while conflicts are sometimes quite destructive, sometimes they can just create stress or a bad mood. But it is not wise to play with relationships and mental health. Creary and Gordan briefly describe the consequences that can be experienced in their article “Overloading a role creates fear and stress that the person will not be able to fulfill the roles, as well as creating exhaustion, tension, or anxiety. The competing demands associated with managing multiple roles — such as work and family roles — can drain an individual’s time; personal resources, such as self‐efficacy, organizationally based self‐esteem, and optimism; and mental resources, such as attention and effort.” It would be meaningless to expect a happy and sustainable relationship in a house where there is no mental health. It would be meaningless to expect a happy and sustainable relationship in a house where there is no mental health.
Researches generally reveal that women are more under the burden. “According to Gatrell, studies worldwide reveal that 65 percent of women’s total work time (paid and unpaid work) is spent doing unpaid household labor, while only 30 percent of men’s labor is spent on unpaid domestic work.” “In the United States in 2001 women on average spent 11 hours more a week than their male counterparts doing unpaid household labor, and in the United Kingdom in 2004 women spent an average of 10 hours more a week than men doing domestic labor ”. In addition, when you examine the article from Lopez, who is a marriage and family therapist, you will find compare data. According to the researchers, the similarity between the rates of males and females doing housework was more similar in 1965 and 1998. For speaking of net proportions, women reported 2.2 times more cooking/cleaning and 2.6 times more daily childcare than men, and known in hetero relationships women’s free time or the time they spare for themselves is 30 minutes less than their partner.
With these data, women can enter a deep questioning phase. “ WHY DO I HAVE A LIFE PARTNER IF I’M GOING TO BE ALONE?” The important point is although it is normal to get divorced or break up, people do not choose a life partner to leave, and the reasons that push people to leave are the reasons that push them to unhappiness. So what causes unhappiness and the divorce it creates? Here are the rates published by a law firm
Domestic inequality is one of the reasons for divorce at high rates. Also, it is in the hands of the parties who are in a relationship to continue living in a healthy relationship without being included in this rate. If a stress-free and peaceful life is desired in domestic as well as in dual relations, load sharing and communication should be learned. By belittling or ignoring each other’s responsibilities, the parties will only offend each other and increase tensions. On the contrary, it improves the feelings of trust and peace of the parties, reduces stress, and keeps the home environment healthy and calm. There are individual and joint strategies to be made for a healthy home environment, while individual work/role priority list and small changes in life come to the fore, what can be done jointly is to provide load sharing by communicating. In addition, the parties should break the taboos in their minds and look at the house from an egalitarian perspective. As a result, it is possible to provide a peaceful home environment within the framework of love and respect.
Sources
Creary, Stephanie J., and Judith R. Gordon. “Role Conflict, Role Overload, and Role Strain.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, edited by Constance L. Shehan,Wiley, 1st edition, 2016. Credo Reference,pplibproxy.howardcc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileyfamily/role_conflict_role_overload_and_role_strain/0?institutionId=248.
Galick, Aimee. “Women’s Roles in Families.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, edited by Constance L. Shehan, Wiley, 1st edition, 2016. Credo Reference, libproxy.howardcc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileyfamily/women_s_roles_in_families/0?institutionId=248.
Oslawski‐Lopez, Jamie. “Gender and Household Labor.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, edited by Constance L. Shehan, Wiley, 1st edition, 2016. Credo Reference,bproxy.howardcc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileyfamily/gender_and_household_labor/0?institutionId=248.
Train, Kelly Amanda. “Household Labor.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, edited by Constance L. Shehan, Wiley, 1st edition, 2016. Credo Reference, libproxy.howardcc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileyfamily/household_labor/0?institutionId=248.
“offer of marriage” by Rosmarie Voegtli is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
“Cleaning” by Ryan Harvey is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
“Holiday fire safety — Unattended cooking on stove leads to a fire” by State Farm is licensed with CC BY 2.0. visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
