Gender Roles or No Gender Roles, Housework Just Sucks.
After a two year long relationship, a past boyfriend of mine and I decided to take on the responsibilities of cohabitation. We took on these “normal” gender roles that became comfortable for us. He worked forty hour plus workweeks and I did the house work while he was away. I also worked, but I had a significantly lower income than he did and only worked part time. I felt it was only fair to do the laundry for both of us, clean the apartment, and have dinner ready when he got home from a long day. It worked out for a long time. I wouldn’t say I was particularly happy, but it worked out. And like in every relationship, things always get tested. After five years with the company he was working for, he got laid off. This was devastating for the both of us. We couldn’t afford the rent with my part time income alone. So I decided to become a full-time employee at my burger flipping job and decided to go back to school full-time at a community college.
At first, I tried to be the “super woman” that you see portrayed in media. I wanted to be hardworking, but also have the trophy wife image of the strong, independent women who was even amazing enough to take care of her partner. Who needs sleep, right? I loved that I was seen as needed and a great girlfriend because I was able to take care of everything that needed to get taken care of. I finally felt appreciated. But after a while, I needed help. My classes started to get harder and my work started demanding more of my time. We started fighting because my stress level was through the roof and he had trouble finding a new job. So I asked him to take care of the housework while I took care of the rent and bills in the meantime. It was basically a proposal to swap gender roles in order to make the relationship work. It was either we exchange responsibilities that was making the relationship work before, or we end things and go our separate ways.
I would leave in the morning at 8:00AM and got home around 6:30PM every single day, even on weekends. His responsibilities were to feed and take care of the cat, do the laundry, wash the dishes, and clean the apartment while I was at work. At first, it was okay. He seemed content with it. After awhile, I could tell he was unhappy with his role in our relationship. He told me that he felt like he was worthless because he couldn’t provide for the both of us. He said he felt less like a man because I was the one working and making sure we had a place to live and had food to eat.
He started to become really sensitive when I would ask him if he could run an errand for us while I was away from home. This relationship clearly wasn’t going to work out because he had it ingrained in his mind that housework is inferior to wage labor. He felt that my ‘flipping burgers for a living role’, was above his homemaking role. In a functional relationship, there needs to be a balance of wage labor and domestic labor. Both are equally important. You need wage labor in order to have a place to live and you need domestic labor to make sure it is in livable conditions. He felt he was ‘less of a man’ even though my new role wasn’t necessarily more important than his.
Although it was a little disheartening that he felt housework, which I was doing for us for years before he lost his job, was inferior to whatever crappy job he had before, I really did understand what he meant by not feeling adequate enough. Angela Davis explains in her book, “Women, Race, and Class” that,
Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: “No one notices it until it isn’t done — we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor.” Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative — these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.
Many people do not consider being a homemaker as a job. But in all reality, it can be as frustrating, stressful, and boring as any other nine to five o'clock career. I felt the feeling of inadequacy when I had the role of doing the house work. And I felt liberated when that wasn’t my only responsibility anymore, even though I worked more hours and did harder work. This gives rise to a lot of questions. Is this because I was actually getting paid for my labor now? Or is this because I had a position of so-called authority over us now? Would I have been happier if I had received paid wages to be a homemaker and not be employed? Why is the culture of “stay at home wives” starting to become a thing of the past?
Angela Davis writes,
“ Needless to say, most of the working women did not have inherently fulfilling jobs: they were waitresses, factory workers, typists, supermarket and department store clerks, etc. Yet their ability to leave the isolation of their homes, “getting out and seeing other people,” was as important to them as their earnings. Would the housewives who felt they were “going crazy staying at home” welcome the idea of being paid for driving themselves crazy? One woman complained that “staying at home all day is like being in jail” — would wages tear down the walls of her jail? The only realistic escape path from this jail is the search for work outside the home.”
Staying at home and doing what seems like invisible work can really be exhausting. Getting paid wages to do domestic labor wouldn’t change this fact. Although I was doing harder, more physically demanding work as a burger flipper, I felt I was contributing more to my relationship and to society in general. I believe this is the reason why women, or people for that matter, feel oppressed as a homemaker. It isn’t the fact that they aren’t getting paid for their domestic work, it is the fact that they feel enslaved because they are stuck in their home doing so-called noncontributing work. It didn’t matter if it was myself or my partner doing the housework, we both felt unappreciated doing it. More and more people are choosing to be career driven rather than being a stay-at-home mother or father. Housework will always need to be done and unless you fill the other parts of your life with things that give you meaning, there is no liberation from the feeling of inadequacy in being a homemaker alone.
