Gender-Bias Parenting

Equality between genders, is a difficult and perhaps even impossible thing to achieve. It is such a huge issue to tackle that we may not know where to start. Like all great things, a good place to begin the change is in the home. Changing the way we raise our children and the way we approach things as basic as chores, could make a huge difference. Angela Davis author of Women, Race and Class: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective wrote about how housework can be a real issue since women sometimes have no choice but to take care of their children and slowly become prisoners of their own home. The disparity between the treatment and rewards boys and girls receive for housework from a young age is uncanny. A variety of studies have found that girls are asked to do more work around the house than boys. One study found that girls did two more hours of chores a week while boys got twice as much time to play. Parents claim they love their children equally yet they treat their children differently, dependent of their gender. If this preferential treatment is not the start of gendered housework, it definitely promotes it. Because the idea that women are the ones that should be doing the cleaning is engraved in our mindset, we often times fail to question why women should be the designated ones to do all the chores. No gender is physically predisposed to want to do the dishes or take out the trash, in fact it sounds silly to even think that.

The problem is not so much to get men to do as many chores as women, but to change the systemic approach of raising children to be gender conscious. A boy getting extra play time while his sister washes the dishes, easily becomes a man who watches football while his wife cooks on Sundays. Even if men love all the women in their life they may accidentally be treating them as inferior. It is a common belief that boys who grow up with sisters will treat them better but new research is revealing that they can get used to the special treatment their sisters give them and demand it in their further relationships with women. As much as men love the women in their life they often times just watch their mother do all the housework, watch their sisters clean while they enjoy their leisure, and go out on their off days while their wife is a stay-at-home mother 24/7. Of course it is not all men who do this but it is a common thing. Saturday Night Live has a skit of how women stay in the kitchen while their men enjoy the game. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8WIBv3erj8

In this video they show an exaggerated version of what some women have to put up with because their men are busy watching the game. Although it seems a bit exaggerated,bold statements are what it takes sometimes so that society can realize the nonsense. As easy as it may seem for women to “just clean up the house” it is literally hell for some women to have to live the same thing over and over.Davis mentions how a woman may feel like prisoners of her own home if she is stay-at-home mother. Some prefer just about any minimum wage job over not working, simply because they are given the opportunity to leave the home. Unfortunately, many of them still get home after work to a sink full of dirty dishes and baskets full of dirty laundry. There are so many woman living repetitive lives like this, yet it is remains unheard of for a woman to have a “Mid-life crisis”. Instead, all women get is “Menopause” which has the negative connotation of women being extra moody and hormonal than usual. It is difficult for women to catch a break and when they do, it is seen as a gift rather than a right. We all deserve to take a breather and it is okay for a man to go to the bar after work but why can’t a woman do the same without seeming and feeling selfish? The fact is times are changing and women are getting to do things men always have except women are still seen as evil, selfish, or ungrateful for taking opportunities that should be their right to have in the first place (like going to the bar after work).

What seems to be the solution for welcoming males to participate more often with chores is by making them appealing to men. For example now men seem to be more actively participating in the kitchen and it could be because shows like Iron Chef, Ace of Cakes, Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen are male led cooking shows. If in fact this theory is true then there should be television shows that encourage men to keep a tidy home they could be proud of. It sounds stupid to have a show about cleaning up, but doesn’t it sound just as stupid to say “she was born to wash those dishes”?