Why Is It So Hard to Get Men to Do the Dishes?
Some dads even teach their sons to feign incompetence to avoid household chores.
“Just do a bad job cleaning the kitchen one time, and your wife will never ask you to do it again.”
It’s parent discussion time at my playschool co-op, and — no surprise — it’s almost all moms here. The kids are playing upstairs in the gym while we sit on ratty community center couches and sip coffee out of mismatched mugs.
This is the one hour a week we get to drink our coffee hot and uninterrupted.
We’re discussing emotional labor, and how difficult it is to ask for help with parenting and household tasks. The instructor’s planned topic is long gone because right now we just need to vent.
This happens a lot: the moment we know our kids are truly cared for — and we don’t have to do that caring ourselves — at least one of us starts crying. The tears flow when we finally allow ourselves to acknowledge the weight of our daily lives, as caregivers, as parents, as humans.
“I don’t understand. I ask him, for the fourth time, to wash the dishes. He finally does it, but then when I’m putting them away later, half of them are still dirty.” This…
