Examining the Roles of Both Males and Females in Housework: A Balanced Solution
In the pictures above, which panel is socially acceptable? This question has been heated debated in today’s society. On one left, the idea of a man doing housework is condemned by other males. On the right, the idea of women only doing housework is condemned by females as sexist. These major stereotypes and tropes about who is responsible for doing housework is an issue that deserves more attention. The middle picture depicts an ideal norm where both male and female share the responsibilities of the housework.
How does something so common like washing dishes, or tidying up the house become such a heated topic? According to Angela Davis,
In society, the norm is that mothers are the ones who is expected to do most of the housework. We hang onto the idea that women are naturally good at taking care of various aspects that require organization and cleaning to push this role of a caretaker onto them. While partly true, the idea of being a good nurturer doesn’t include relegating the roles of cleaning the house onto a single gender. Biologically, mothers are known to have a greater tendency to care for their children and thus spend more time taking care of their children’s needs. Whether it is cleaning diapers or feeding the baby, the mother tends to dedicate more of their time towards common house work while the male goes out and earns a living for the family. This classic trope has been around the time when the industrial revolution started. Men would go out into the factories and work while women were expected to stay home and take care of the kids. A nice meal and a clean house would be expected when the man comes back from work. In today’s society, there has been a major push back against the idea that men are the ones who provide for the financially while the females are to be the breadwinners of the family. This is partly due to women receiving better education and social status. Even now, there are emerging number of families where the women are earning more than the men. Housework is slowly losing its grip on women and has become more of a universal task than a gender one.
“Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative — these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework” — Angela Davis
As education increases in our society, so does the desire for more knowledge, creativity, and equality. With the rise in education, women are wondering why they are stuck doing mundane housework and forced to support their male partner’s ambitions and aspirations. With this emergence, society is slowly gravitating away from labeling women as just house workers. Instead, women are now holding 8 hour jobs which makes this topic even more debated. It is not really fair if a women works for the whole day and comes home only to find that no housework is done because your partner is waiting for you to do it. However, the flip side of this argument would apply for males as well. It wouldn’t be fair if a male comes home to a messy house because the women deems it to be sexist to do any housework. There has to be a balance to doing work around the house. One cannot use gender as a means to push a role, which frankly is just physical labor, onto a specific sex. Housework should be treated as an equal nuisance that both members have to take turns doing.
A household where both men and women share housework would be considered ideal. Even if the mother is considered better at nurturing the child, it doesn’t mean that the males have no connections in the house. Different family members can have different roles but simple acts such as cleaning the sink or taking out the trash should be a universal gesture that should naturally be carried out in a household. It doesn’t matter if the women are better at nurturing than men. Housework should be done by both members of the household because that disperses the stress and responsibilities between them. Not only will this cause you to have better relations with your partner, but also a better home atmosphere. The idea of using gender as an excuse to not to housework is mostly outdated today as the majority of households now share equal responsibilities in doing housework. However, there is still small pockets of families that believe that women are the sole caretakers of the house and that they are entitled to a clean house and already prepared meals. There are more opportunities now for equality so feel free to pursue better options and shake off that stigma that these regressive men have on you.
