Bryan Caplan thinks that the partner in a marriage who cares less about something should always win.
When women see how little housework men do, they interpret it as "shirking" - a willful violation of basic norms of decency. Men, in turn, feel unfairly maligned by the accusation (or, perhaps more often, by the stink eye).Who is right? Let me just throw away any future career in couples counseling, and say: Usually, men.
The evidence: Look at the typical bachelor's apartment. Even when a man pays the full cost of cleanliness and receives the full benefit, he doesn't do much. Why not? Because the typical man doesn't care very much about cleanliness. When the bachelor gets married, he almost certainly starts doing more housework than he did when he was single. How can you call that shirking?
I'm no neatnik, but this is . . . daft.
1) Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates. This is because your own mess is much less unbearable than mess generated by other people. I assume that Mr. Caplan covers negative externalities at some point in his classes.
2) Coasean reasoning only holds if you believe that marriage somehow eliminates all transaction costs.
3) Mr Caplan seems not to have heard of the tragedy of the commons.
4) In most relationships, even keeping a two-person apartment at the level of a bachelor pad seems to be done mostly by the woman, which would seem to indicate that the men are, well, shirking.
5) The introduction of kids raises things to an entirely new level of mess, again, usually beaten back mostly by the woman.
6) Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage? Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living, or spend the retirement fund on shoes because they don't mind spending their golden years in penury?
Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates.
Not me, but I'm cleaner than the vast majority of men. I clean less when I have male roommates than when I live by myself because otherwise I'm always the one cleaning up their messes. Generally we come to some sort of acceptable agreement. For example, even though I like cooking more than doing the dishes, my current roommate is much more willing to cook but doesn't live up to my standard of when to wash the dishes and clean the countertops. Therefore, he has a comparative advantage in cooking despite not an absolute advantage. Economics in life.
It seems to me that Kaplan is arguing that a person in a relationship is only obligated to put in as much effort (or perhaps a little more) towards an aspect of the common good (like cleanliness) as they would towards that same aspect if living alone.
Applying this to your examples in 6, a woman who would be within her rights to be chronically unemployed in a relationship if she would also be chronically unemployed if single, and she would likewise be within her rights to spend her entire share of the household income on shoes if she while single would typically spend her entire paycheck on shoes.
I think you're right on point 1 and partly right on point 2 (I suspect marriage reduces but does not eliminate transaction costs). On points 3-5, Caplan seems to disagree with you on empirical grounds (i.e. he is arguing that the conventional wisdom that men tend to freeload off women's housekeeping efforts is a misinterpretation of mens' general lower valuation of clenliness).
"Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living, or spend the retirement fund on shoes because they don't mind spending their golden years in penury?"
Yes, in fact, they can. And alas, often do.
And that's far worse than not doing housework. Most women vastly overestimate the importance of it.
"Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage? "
I don't know about him, but yes, that's what it should be. People don't change. Marrying people in the expectation that they will change is universally considered a stupid idea. Given that it's stupid to expect a partner to change, the obvious corollary is that the person who wants the change should give it a rest.
Isn't his comments about who is shirking, which, here, means not doing what he otherwise would have if the other person wasn't around? I don't see "Caplan thinks that the slob should always win" coming out of that.
As for me, I don't do as much housework as my wife, and it is exclusively because, as Caplan notes, I inherently don't care as much about the mess. I think Caplan would say that that's not properly considered "shirking", but merely living to your own standards.
Whether you should modify your standards as part of the marriage is another thing altogether.
It's not that people don't change (manifestly they do), but that they won't necessarily change the thing, or in the direction, that their partner would prefer.
M, you should be so very careful with #6... because you might be quite surprised at how these things work...
but naturally this is a POV thing, and the compromise exists about dealing with a mate. The difficulty lies in the idea that both people have that their way is the right way.
What I would say to both you and Caplan is that thinking of the whole "partnership" thing as a new enterprise is needed, because in complexion it is nothing like what you have as individuals. The costs associated are different, and thinking about them as a delta to what you have been doing previously is probably a waste.
there is a whole new level of things that need to be done in shares, and both partners need to look at that. I noticed when I was married, that all of my capacities for fixing things were worth nothing, when taken against cleaning the house. The key issue is all about what thing actually drives you crazy. I found that a slow drain is less craze inducing than a dirty floor, while it may take me hours to fix that slow drain, and sweeping takes a few minutes.
Once the drain is fixed, it's repair is soon forgotten, but the dirty floor comes right back. So, it's the point of view that certainly dictates who gets bent out of shape about what.
In terms of costs and opportunities, I would submit it's a fools errand to try and quantify things in that way. It's better to identify what things really torque you off, and come to an agreement what to do about that. That is a thing that both must be a party to. The breakthrough moment came when I forced my ex to sit with me and hand me tools, while I was upside down under the house cleaning out a drain that was filled with her hair. After 6 hours of that, she was slightly less upset that I hadn't cleaned the bathroom yet.
Opportunity and Cost doesn't help you to see eye to eye. Watching your mate, helps...
Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates.
Not I. Living with other men, it was a complete waste of time even to bother trying. Besides, you can always tell her your roommate's a slob and blame it on him. If there's no "her" to object to the mess, the mess has no cost, so don't sweat it.
Besides, I disagree with your logic: One does not clean another man's mess. Relative bearability is irrelevant.
Of course, the situation depends on the specific facts and circumstances, yadda yadda...
Often, the place is harder to keep clean because of the way the woman chooses to live.
Personally, I only need a PC, a TV, a couch, a closet, paper plates, plastic cups, and disposable utensils. My bachelor pads were clean.
More importantly, I knew what every scrap of paper was back then. I knew that everything but my dress suits could be thrown in the wash, and I never had to figure out whether something was garbage.
Now that I am married, I get tons of catalogues in the mail, half of the clothes are dry-clean only, I have no idea what papers are important, the fridge is full of fancy stuff that I dare not discard...
Frankly, I don't know how to clean in this environment. I risk ruining clothes, discarding important stuff, or putting my wife's things where she will not find them.
Shirking is the optimal strategy.
Scott Adams had a post on this, btw... But I cannot find it. I guess it is in his paper blog book.
Here's a post of his that is almost on point:
By having the nice things that the woman wants, it makes it much harder to clean:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/nice-or-evil.html
I completely agree with #3. My college roommate and I are both fairly neat people -- and yet, the area which was not clearly demarcated, regardless of how generous the two of us were, or how many agreements we had -- was always horribly messy.
Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living?
My observation is that wives often do this even though they're not content with a lower standard of living -- they just expect their husbands to pick up the slack. Is the decision 'unilateral'? Well, not exactly, but the husband is expected to 'support' whatever decision she makes about staying home, or having a career, or working part time.
No, not my wife, but only because I've pushed back when necessary. A couple of times in her career, she's thought that she might prefer to work part time (like many of her women friends) or even switch to a pleasant, low-stress, low-paying job (e.g. working in a plant nursery -- she likes to garden).
My response has always been, "Ah, OK -- are you thinking of us scaling back and selling our expensive house? Interesting idea. Maybe I'll go to work in a bike shop." And I wasn't really bluffing; I'd consider cutting back. But you can probably guess that she wasn't thinking of that -- she was thinking that since I already made more money than she did, she could take it easier without it affecting our standard of living much.
Scott Adams had a post on this, btw... But I cannot find it. I guess it is in his paper blog book. Here's a post of his that is almost on point:
But here’s the kicker: Your spouse loves to cook, and you hate to clean up, especially after a long day and a big meal. As you wipe down the table and wash the extra-high pile of pots and pans from the extra-special meal, which thought do you have?
No, guys, no. That's a huge mistake. My wife and I trade off nights cooking, but I quickly nixed the 'I cook, you clean' deal. No way. When I cook, I clean (and vice versa). Because, the thing is, I really hate a big mess after dinner, so I clean pans and put food away as I go. She, on the other hand, fills all the counters with dirty pans when she cooks. That's OK -- she can be as messy as she wants when she's cooking...as long as she cleans up afterward.
I also do my own laundry, just like a bachelor -- that's key. Once a week, everything together in one load, no need to sort clothes, no socks lost, I always know where my things are. Simple, quick, and efficient.
I love my wife dearly and we've been married a long time, but you have to know how to negotiate.
Indeed, only when women "push back when necessary" on the housework, we're nagging . . .
Indeed, only when women "push back when necessary" on the housework, we're nagging
An unexpected moment of self-awareness. Congratulations! Admitting you have a problem is the first step.
More seriously, I operate on the principle that if one of us happens to be working, the other one should be, too, unless there is a fairly clear understanding that there will be compensation later. Thus, most of the time, one of us watches the little monster while the other one cooks/cleans/does paying work/whatever. Usually I let her pick which she prefers so that she can never complain that I have imposed something unpleasant on her; by definition, she has chosen the most pleasant option available.
Goofing off is only allowed if 1) there is no work to be done 2) the other party is also goofing off or 3) it is understood that there will be a reversal of working/goofing off later, for a comparable time.
This system isn't perfect, but it does avoid the resentment inherent in the "I'm slaving over the bathrooms while you watch football" situation.
Bah, all the sexist assumptions. I've had to deal with these sorts of problems with my male roommates (me being on the "girl" side), but never with my girlfriend. Of course, that's because I'm neater with most guys.
I always wondered how a gorgeous, vivacious lassie like MM could slip by this long without some enterprising lad snagging her.
Now I know.
Ugh, housework!
I've always thought you should arrange to marry someone just a tiny bit messier than yourself.
That way, you do a little bit more than half the work (enabling smugness rights) or tolerate a little bit more mess than you'd like (self sacrifice smugness rights) while not actually being seriously out of your comfort zone.
Did I do this? No. I married a woman instead.
Cleaning the apartment is not important.
What about the person who cares less about justice? (I suspect Caplan isn't quantifying over that, even in your interpretation of him, but I like the thought).
Megan I'll respond to your points by number
1 - I haven't observed enough to be really sure, but I think men with male roomates (at least young men with rooomates) often clean less, because cleaning up someone else's mess is more annoying than cleaning up yours, or because they are shirking, or figure that if they do clean the others will free ride off of them.
2 - Coasean reasoning only perfectly or near perfectly holds if their are zero transaction costs, but it can still be relevant as long as transaction costs are non-zero not too high.
3 - I'm not sure what specific argument you want to make relevant to the tragedy of the commons.
4 - How many woman only want to keep the apartment as clean as a bachelor pad (and I'm specifically talking about a bachelor pad that doesn't regularly have female visitors that the bachelor would want to impress, I'm talking about a "pad" that would be as clean as the guy would want it to be for himself not because of the wishes of a woman)? I don't see how you could have much of a sample to draw any conclusions from. And if you find one (and know that the man used to keep his place at least that clean when he wasn't living with someone else), than maybe you have an example of shirking, but that doesn't mean that not wanting to make as much effort in cleaning as the woman is shirking.
5 - Here you probably have your best point. Of course its only one that applies to couples with kids.
6 - So should the person with the highest standards automatically win, and than impose those standards on the other person? Also see Maniakes' reply at January 23, 2008 6:38 PM
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More generally the level of housework that should be done is not an obvious and objective thing. So it isn't necessarily reasonably to call less desire or willingness to do housework "shirking", or consider it to be automatically wrong. There are trade offs and diminishing returns, and at least once you get past the point where the living space represents a health hazard the proper level is subjective.
Yes they can.
Furthermore, if the husband doesn't like this, to the extent that he is willing to get a divorce, said divorce won't help matters. He will be assessed alimony and will be thrown in jail if he does not continue to support her, even though she does not continue to do housework. Furthermore, alimony cannot be reduced if he chooses to downscale his work effort in the future.
I have always thought that alimony, a continuing obligation to support, is fundamentally immoral because there is no corresponding continuing obligation to do housework.
You might protest that having the former wife come to the house twice a week to clean and every night to cook would be truly awkward, and you would be right. Fortunately, every metropolitan area has paid providers of such services, cleaning services and catering services and gardening services etc. The cost of these services could be and should be deducted from alimony assessed.
-dk
"When the bachelor gets married, he almost certainly starts doing more housework than he did when he was single.
Apparently not, according to a study of British folks released last year:
"on average, an employed woman does 15 hours a week of housework when she lives with her employed partner, up from 10 hours when single. Meanwhile the men, who do seven hours while living alone, do only five when they co-habit."
Meanwhile, a much larger 27-country study that came out over the summer found that "men did an average of about nine and a half hours of housework per week compared with an average of more than 21 hours per week among women. But even more noteworthy, researchers say, is that married men did significantly less housework than men who lived with their girlfriends but were not married."
So.
Indeed, only when women "push back when necessary" on the housework, we're nagging . . .
Well, I tend to think of negotiation and 'push back' as alternatives to and ways of avoiding nagging. So the nagging approach with respect to my wife's job would be to have let her go part-time or downscale and then complain about bills and make a point of talking about promotions other wives got in their jobs and asking when she was thinking about going back to work, etc, etc. I didn't take that approach. And then, of course, housework and bringing home the income to support the family are just not even close to commensurate.
With respect to housework, errands, and the like, one of the things I had to do early on was make sure she understood that I would not be her unpaid underling. The distinction I made was between taking responsibility and taking direction. I would willingly take responsibility for my share of household tasks (that's only fair), but that meant they were my jobs and I got to decide when and how to do the work. And once I had taken on a job, "Fine! Then I'll just do it myself!" was not an option.
Shirking vs. not shirking is a false dilemma.
The real choices are:
A) "Stop nagging woman, get in the kitchen and bake me a pie!"
B) Hire a maid.
Come now. Bryan Caplan has achieved the level of cleanliness that is Pareto optimal. Therefore, griping about a given dirty sock or unwashed plate is deviating from the maximally efficient state of Caplan and his SO's (or housemate's) relationship, indicating an overly emotional response on the part of the SO or housemate. (You might think it has utility for the SO, but it has large negative utility for Caplan.) Such irrationality is why the SO/housemate should not be setting house rules, or macroeconomic policy. Utility can only be maximized if Caplan makes the decisions. "One man, one vote."
If women thought less about cleaning and other repetitively inconsequential things (like matching eyeliner with skirt with shoes, like whom is dating/deserting whom, like whether or not people are staring at your bum when you walk to the office printer), then women would shoot through the glass ceiling and into every corner and crevice of endeavor.
It's that small devotion to triviality that shunts valuable brain power away from creative achievement on a grander scale.
It's that small devotion to triviality that shunts valuable brain power away from creative achievement on a grander scale.
Finn, honey, if you were raised in a comfortable, warm home, replete with Christmases and birthday parties and the like ...
Oh, hell. What a bunch of dumbos. The talent of women is precisely that devotion to what men call "trivial"—no less than the very stuff of life. Child-raising. Making family. Relationship. Connection. Never mind the sophisticated thinking this multi-tasking intelligence engenders.
And this automatic assumption about the nature of the Grand Scale? Here we see a profound limit of male thinking, obsessed for life by one thing: size.
This is juvenile. Everyone who's lived with a roommate has gone through this. This attitude is a good way to find another place to live.
In my house I'm the one who replaces the paper towel rolls and bothers my wife to clean. Yes, it does happen. The secret is to have assigned jobs and clear responsibilities. If the cleaning isn't happening, then we work it out. The main thing is to agree about who does what beforehand. Then it's easy to see if the work is done. You don't want to argue every time a chore needs doing. It should be clear who needs to do it and when. Then it's simply a matter of saying 'Hey, the trash needs to go out. It's your job.' If you won't do your own job at that point, it's pretty clear who's in the wrong. If one of us consistently doesn't have time to do a job, we switch it to the other person. This works remarkably well. If it's everyone's job, then it's no one's job.
Doing housework does not have to be a power struggle. It's just a job that needs doing, and you assign people to do it. The critical thing is to work out who does what in a fair manner. Then it's just keeping your word.
You don't get married so that you can do everything yourself. That means doing things that you wouldn't do otherwise. One of you is probably better at whatever needs to be done, so you both benefit.
As an aside, when looking for a spouse see if your levels of cleanliness are compatible. It seems to me that this is a marriage-ender right up there with finances and different religions. It can be overcome, but it's the sort of thing that comes up so often that it eats away all the reasons you got married in the first place. It's a very hard habit to break. My wife and I are fairly close, my divorced parents were not.
As an aside, it's not fair to Ronald Coase to call the assumption that transactions cost nothing "Coasean reasoning", since the basic point of Coase's papers on transaction costs was to point out just how unrealistic that particular assumption is, and how much of the law exists to remove part of the cost of making some transaction.
6) Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage?
Or for society at large, for that matter? Doesn't one hear echoes in Caplan's rhetoric of "If you want to contribute money towards the care of the old, that's fine, but don't force me to do so"?b
On what planet (or in which cave) does this person live?
It always amazes me to see two income couples in marital therapy who argue about housework. It makes no sense to work full time and come home tired at the end of athe day to a messy home, which you then waste additional energy to clean. Two income couples should get a maid for a sufficient number of hours to reduce the stress to manageable levels. I'm sure you econ guys have a curve to describe that sort of thing.
If one person is staying home and not working outside the house, that person should do the housework, unless the couple is incredibly wealthy. Then they should get a maid.
Most couples ignore this advice. they'd rather fight. This suggests that something else is going on. I don't know if you folks have a curve to describe that or not.
Bill Hocter, MD
Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage? Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living, or spend the retirement fund on shoes because they don't mind spending their golden years in penury?
Well, I think Caplan would say that the Golden Rule applies, and you can't freeload off anyone or put in less than half of what you expect to receive.
But if a woman wanted to retire because she has sufficient savings, or wants to spend more now and have less in retirement ... aren't those perfectly valid choices? Subject to negotiation, of course.
Or to look at it another way, if a woman wanted to work part-time and was happy if her partner did so too, how is that "shirking"?
As long as neither person's cleanliness standards are unreasonable or result in things growing in the house, I think part of what Caplan is saying is that one person shouldn't assume his or her standards are better than the other person's. Just different, and subject to "amicable renegotiations"
It makes no sense to work full time and come home tired at the end of athe day to a messy home, which you then waste additional energy to clean. Two income couples should get a maid for a sufficient number of hours to reduce the stress to manageable levels.
That's great, unless your two-income couple is a fry cook and a maid.
This is a constant argument in my marriage as well. My wife and I approach this issue from two different angles. She hates dirt. I hate clutter.
She can't stand it when the tub has a ring. I can't stand it when I trip over her shoes on the stairs.
We are both constant losers in this battle - and neither is totally right or wrong. It just is.
Setting aside the male vs. female specifics (which could occasionally be reversed, and cause all those involved to bring baggage to the debate), if multiple people joined together, and one of them suddenly decided that they must all share a high standard and must all contribute extra labor to achieve that standard, would you really be so quick to condemn the notion that "he who cares less wins the argument" ?
I would also generally set aside the term "win", since it also brings more baggage than help, but if we were talking about minimum wage, or farm subsidies, or any of a number of huge social programs designed to raise the societal standard for all, would you still advocate that someone not caring about a particular good doesn't free them from obligation to provide that good to their partners?
Now, if we're to hang on to this analogy and map it back, the correct answer is - you have input into the group decisions, but once the group has decided, you do have to pitch in whether you liked the project or not. I am not excused from paying taxes if I disapprove of farm subsidies. But, that's because, in theory, I have a say (however small) in whether we have farm subsidies in the first place, and others may have to support my program of choice when they disapprove.
So in the relationship, IF the man has agreed to a particular standard of cleanliness, then it's his responsibility to either help work to maintain that standard, or exchange some other extra work (I see household repair and child care mentioned above) for his share of this work. However, I suspect that the cleanliness standard is often established unilaterally, as the anecdotes of bachelor living seem to indicate...
TO: Megan McArdle
RE: Wrong
"Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates." -- Megan McArdle
This is the sort of pejoritive comment that always violates good sense. And YOU, of all people, should know better.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Prejudice, n., A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.]
Two points:
1) While I agree that men shirk housework in a relationship, the degree of shirk should not be measured compared to the wife's desired level of cleanliness/orderliness if that level is above that of the husband. Some negotiated settlement near the midpoint is most appropriate.
2) Women should praise movement towards this negotiated settlement rather than complain about the gap between the current situation and the midpoint cleanliness condition (or, ever worse, their optimal level). If a husband recieves negative reinforment whether he shirks or not the optimal response on his part is to maximize shirking.
3) Hire a maid is most likely the most efficient solution to this conundrum for two-income families. Even a visit every two weeks can make a world of difference.
Er, make that three.
In order for a relationship to work there has to be some compromise and also some effort on each individual to contribute.
I hate washing clothes, so I don't, my wife hates to cook, so I do most of the cooking. As for cleaning we kind of split it. I do bathrooms and the kitchen, she does the bedrooms. We also know what is and what is not important to the other. It's called being considerate.
Hey, it's worked so far and it's been 25 years and we've raise four kids.
"Indeed, only when women "push back when necessary" on the housework, we're nagging . . ."
A related observation:
Without necessarily raising her voice, a woman can "remind" over and over, and fuss, using really cutting remarks (aka "nagging" and "bitching") and when she does, its "communicating her unmet needs".
However, when a man gets fed up and raises his voice or looses a few cuss words, why that's "psychological abuse". WTF?
What the hell, a couple more observations:
WRT "nagging"/reminding, why is it so many women only remember that something needs doing and choose to make an issue of it usually when you *can't* do anything about it? Then a few days (or weeks :) ) later, that man, purely on his own, decide to tackle that long overdue task. He feels motivated, its on his own terms, and he's looking forward to the sense of accomplishment, if not of getting the end result, at least crossing one more item of the ToDos. But then what frequently happens just as he's about to get underway? Why, the woman decides that, no, no matter how much she has nagged about him needing to do it, *now* is not the right time and he should be doing something else. Then, later, when he can finally get back to it, it becomes drudgery again, a duty, rather than a positive achievement. While hardly universal, this dynamic seems quite common.
Last observation: I've seen a lot stay-at-home mom's, particularly of the older generation, with kids nearly grown, if not gone, do a lot of unneeded house cleaning as something to do -- I'm talking the vacuuming and mopping nearly every day routine, but NOT by women who seemed OCD. Instead, it was makework -- and it gave them something to complain/bitch about when the husband came home. The only thing I can figure is they perversely *liked* it that way.
BTW, I grew up hearing stories, particularly from my dad's side, about all the things my grandmother and greatgrandmother did in the old days - turn of the [20th] century up into the Depression. Cleaning and washing w/o modern appliances and cooking *three* meals a day from scratch (the men came home for lunch) including keeping chickens and slaughtering them. Now *that* was some equal work. Today's martyr of a stay at home soccer mom who drops the kids off at school and goes to the gym? bah, hardly the same. i wish I had that much "choice".
He says the "person with the lowest standards wins" when in reality the "person who complains the most wins" at home and at work.
Wow, McArdle not only overanalyzes but also misfires on all cylinders here. This explaineth much. Without going into particulars (which is in this case rather unnecessary), bottom line: Men and women generally have different priorities. The better both parties understand this, the happier the relationship will be. McArdle seems pretty obtusse in this respect.
Next subject.
So what happens when the man does all the cleaning, while holding down a full-time job, and the woman can only be bothered to clean on weekends when company is coming, at which point, nothing the man does is enough?
Cuz that's what happens in my household (both my current one and, come to think of it, my parents' too). I've met more hyperclean men than women, and I know for a fact that the cleanliness of my brother's house went down FAST when he got married.
I think the notion that men are lazy shirkers while women do all the work in the house is so... 1950.
John Lynch got it right: Explicitly negotiate agreements regarding housework and everything else that one or the other partner/spouse thinks is important. In my (limited) experience, women are less likely to want to do this than men. It too clearly fixes personal responsibility and removes the leverage that comes with female passive/aggressive behavior. It's a yin/yang thing.
And there's the notion of utility which enters the picture in all negotiations. Whether the unit of measure is time, money or effort, it is unlikely to have equal utility value for both. For example, if I work ten hours a day, one hour spent relaxing might have far more utility to me than that same one hour has to a spouse who works 4 hours a day. This utility difference needs to be recognized in the negotiations also, or resentments will fester.
I clean everything that is higher than she can reach, and put away the dishes on the top shelves.
Was there anything else you needed?
Just kidding. I do laundry and dishes too. Besides, my son does less - way less, so I'm not the target until he moves out.
Shirking? The University of Michigan time use studies conducted over the last 20 years or so show that, on average, men and women in the US contribute almost exactly the same total hours of work toward a family, especially recently. Some of it is paid, some of it is not. Some of the non-paid work is housework, some is not. This it just the average of course. I don't know how it varies among different demographics. It obviously varies among different couples. I doubt that a one-size-fits-all explanation is correct. Seems to me that claiming men are generally shirkers is another one of those self-serving whoppers along the same lines as the 79% pay myth.
I am much messier and have a much higher tolerence for dirt than my wife. That is just reality. If it comes down to a battle of wills, who will clean it up first, I will always win. My question for Megan is, why is it than men have to adjusted their standards of cleanliness up while women are never expected to adjust theirs downward? It is a compromise. I have become better about keeping things clean and my wife has learned that the house doesn't have to be perfect. You have to adjust. If Megan wants her perfect house here in Washington, my advice to her is to either marry a gay man or go gay herself and marry another woman, learn to live with a higher level of dirt, or just stay single and have a perfect house. But what you can't do is marry someone and then think you can brow beat them into meeting your standards. If you think that Megan, good luck with the divorce.
Some jobs can be done by anyone and need to be done when they need to be done. Mopping up Kool Aid spills should be done when the spill is noticed--it can't wait until she gets home from the store just because it's her job to take care of the kitchen floor. Sometimes the well-being of the house itself takes precedence. Responsible adults know this and mop up the Kool Aid. If the idiot light in her car says her car is overheating, she needs to take care of it now, even if he agreed to take care of car maintenance. Does unclogging the sink a couple times a year mean that you get a pass on the day-to-day business of running house and family? I don't think so.
We both love to cook. After a special meal, his idea is to leave the dishes for tomorrow, no matter who cooks. I hate waking up to a sinkful of dirty dishes, so I opt to clean up. If he joins me--pitching in or just keeping me company--that's better.
Oh, and by the way: Men do NOT deserve extra credit for changing diapers. It was exasperating to hear my mother-in-law brag about how her son changes diapers. It wasn't as if he'd scaled Everest, after all. Any twelve-year-old girl can change diapers with her eyes closed.
If one person is staying home and not working outside the house, that person should do the housework, unless the couple is incredibly wealthy. Then they should get a maid.
Most couples ignore this advice. they'd rather fight. This suggests that something else is going on. I don't know if you folks have a curve to describe that or not.
Two issues with this - first is the assumption that all couples (some with children), can afford said maid's services on a tight budget.
Secondly, some guilt from either spouse over hiring help to take care of responsibilities. The idea that their parents didn't need to hire help or some needless comparison with the Jones's down the street who appear perfect from the outside and cause unceasing stress to conform to their unstated and unknown standards and assumptions.
Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates. This is because your own mess is much less unbearable than mess generated by other people.
Well said. Especially when you are trying to impress the ladies and your roommates aren't, their untended messes become even more abhorrent.
"Oh, and by the way: Men do NOT deserve extra credit for changing diapers. It was exasperating to hear my mother-in-law brag about how her son changes diapers."
Balderdash -- there are still quite a lot of men who don't change diapers, or who don't do the poop ones, thinking that the stay at home mom has that as her job -- and the *women* enable it. hell, some of them even defend their "turf".
I changed the poop ones all along, even doing diapers in the middle of the night quite a bit even though she was on leave from work the first year. Hell, i actually *volunteered* to do one of the first one's [nasty!] in the hospital nursery, when I didn't have to, just so the pros could show me. I changed a diaper [actually many] *before* my wife, who had a scheduled C-section. In the same vein, I got up every night those first couple months for feedings because we had to supplement her inadequate breast milk [I have a whole rant on the La Leche mafia, another story]. I always fixed the bottle even though I had to get up in the morning and she didn't.
So, yes, I do think a little favorable nod is not out of line.
There's no "woman's work" in our house -- domestic chores (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.) are shared, although not equally, as I work full time and she doesn't.
But there is, however, "man's work" -- tasks and chores I'm expected to perform and she is not -- specifcally automobile maintenance, yard work, etc.
When was the last time my wife climbed under the car with a strap wrench in her hand? That would be, uh, never.
Frankly,I'm okay with that. But I find it curious when the division of labor on household chores is discussed, this is rarely raised.
This post is sexist.
It may, in fact, be true that men shirk by doing less household work, on average. But it is most certainly true that women shirk by being less employed (i.e., outside the home), on average.
Indeed, Megan asks: "Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living"? In fact, this is exactly what happens. Women work less outside the home than men, both while single and, even more so, while married (or in another cohabitating relationship).
The real shirkers, on average, are women, not men.
>Mr Caplan seems not to have heard of the tragedy of the commons.
Sadly, this seems also to be true of the more enthusiastic libertarians and market zealots.
Which makes me wonder, in what is only an apparent non sequiter: what percent of libertarians are men?
newscaper, when I hear people praising women for changing diapers, I won't complain about praising men for doing the same. Diaper-changing is just something that must be done: nothing more and nothing less. (Well, maybe a little more--as you probably discovered, diaper-changing time is great one-on-one time with the baby.) So NO--your favorable nod will have to wait. I'll save it for when you find a way to beat back the La Leche mafia. I agree with you on that.
I am suprised that one one has brought up the other common marital bone of contention, sex. It seems to be taken as given that men tend to want sex more frequently than women (just generalizing here). Does Caplan's theory hold here, that if the woman is less horny than her man, too bad mister, that's how it goes?
Sure I know lots of people may complain that that's how things are in their marriage.
But I would submit that in a happy, successful marriage, if you want your partner to make an effort in your favorite area, you should be willing to do likewise in his or hers.
I know I'm usually more receptive to my dear husband's advances when I don't walk in from work to sinkful of his lunch dishes awaiting my housewifely hand...
The key is to marry a very clean person that also is a control freak. You offer to wash the dishes. They watch you do a few plates and then cannot control themselves any more and come over to "do the job right."
I also am very explicit that anytime my wife can earn the same money I do, I will switch over to being a house husband. Funny, she never takes me up on the offer.
This entire discussion is a classic example of the downward spiral created by a self-centered viewpoint. I haven't seen anyone mention that you should treat your spouse the way you would wish to be treated yourself. My husband works hard to provide for our family's financial needs. I appreciate that and I try to use our resources wisely, and my part time job provides a nice little deposit for the the retirement account. Since I'm home with the kids, I do most of the housework and cooking. My husband appreciates that and helps out as the need arises, and cleans up after himself so as not to create extra work.
Neither one of us nags, but we are honest about things that are bothering us. We don't teach the kids to do their fair share and nothing more- we teach them to be considerate and helpful in all that they do. It seems to work pretty well.
I clean the dishes and kitchen at night. I use it as a time to relax, plus until the kids are in bed they usually come talk to me, which of course slows things down.
So, it takes me from at least an hour to two and a half.
This drives my wife crazy.
She thinks I should do it - and do it like her, or I am not doing it.
Note that when I spent a week doing it her way (and doing it in an hour or less) she went up and checked everything - and complained about all the little things I missed.
It is not man/woman - it is personality.
I kept my place cleaner than my sisters keep their houses, but I am not as 'clean' as my wife - and if I had my way, the cats would be in the house and on the furniture - and we would have a great, galumphing dog.
With the marriage strike in full force and gaining more & more support, it doesn't really matter now, does it. We can talk about this once American Women begin to undo what the Feminists have done to the Family Court system in this country. Until then, marriage strike, relationship strike, baby strike.
Cheers
MGTOW
Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates
And a non-married woman would know this how???
"After five years, the dirt doesn't get any worse." - Quentin Crisp
As a born again bachelor who has suffered enough under the yoke of female tyranny, this is my guiding principle.
"As a born again bachelor who has suffered enough under the yoke of female tyranny, this is my guiding principle."
There are sometimes that my wife is harranging me about this or that crap about the house I can't help but think "I could be single and come home and not have to listen to this". I have to admit it is not a thought that is good for a marriage, which is why I put my foot down and don't let my wife nag me, too much, about things. Man or woman, you need to adjust your standards and expectations to your partner. Why women like Megan seem to think that principle doesn't apply to housework is really beyond me.
Marriages that work have partners that never stop wooing each other, in spite of occasional disappointment, bitterness, and mistrust. A spouse is not merely a roommate.
I imagine that the person on this thread who used to date me is silently dying of laughter at the notion that I am simply waiting for a man who can live up to my perfectionist standards.
The point is, it's negotiated to some point between the two desires, and then your contribution is assessed relative to that level, not what you would have done if you hadn't gotten married. Slovens don't get to claim that any level above their miserably low standards is heroic effort, and neat freaks don't get to claim that failing to scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush every night is shirking. Welcome to relationships. Yes, some women (and men) expect unreasonably high levels of cleanliness, but it works both ways--if they really *have* to have all the towels steam cleaned every night to be happy, and you can't comply, then don't marry them. Marrying them and then complaining that they expect you to steam clean the towels is silly. Personally, I declined to date the guy who alphabetized my cans one windy February evening, because I knew that we would not have a happy life together.
The evidence that women do more combined work than men in most marriages seems pretty robust, particularly if your wife has a job.
[Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage?]
I don't know -- and sorry for changing the subject slightly to a (seems to me) related point -- but it seems to me that, in many marriages, the "person with the lowest standards wins" when you're talking about frequency of sex. This also tends to fall out along gender lines.
First off- I think there are a lot of things men generally do that don't get balanced in these studies very often (just as house work didnt in years past). Some women clean the gutters, shovel the snow, and cut the lawn, but by and large those kinds of things are 'man work', just like pumping the gas when its 20 below zero or tinkering with the waterpump in the SUV. Certainly a lot of women DO do these things, just as a lot of men do dishes and laundry- its the statistics we're talking about.
Secondly I think the reality is that women (in general of course) have a lot more choices in lifestyle vis-a-vis whether to work or not, and I think the woman is more likely to be the impetus behind a lot of living expenses (house vs townhouse, furniture etc). Men perhaps feel they have a choice of what color tie they wear while working for the next 40 years. Whatever the reality is, I think a lot of men agree with Steve Martin's character in Parenthood: "Women have choices, men have responsibilities".
Finally, I definately believe men have a much more transactional frame of mind. Ie- I'm doing this because you're doing that... whereas women I believe tend to look at it as 'im doing this because i care about you, youre doing that to show you care about me'. These to philosophies often intersect but they arent identical. Where they run into trouble I think is when the man feels he's getting a raw deal somehow, and 'rationally' withholds his resources to some extent- this to a woman indicates 'you dont care about me' (at least a little bit). This would also explain how the woman could end up getting stuck with more of the work; she's not going to stop because her partner stopped. In the short term men might 'win' that game, in the long term there are probably a lot of divorces that had something to do with dirty dishes, which if you think about it is extraordinary.
And the solution is what it always seems to be: communicate, understand where the other person is coming from, and accept that they are motivated by different impetus.
My parents had an interesting arrangement that worked well for them-anything outside the front door was his responsibility, and anything inside was her's. Of course, as his sons grew older and became the house and garden slaves (I still maintain my strength originally came from spending a summer screening 25 yards of loam with my brother for Dad's yard project), his workload was vastly reduced. Mom, being the perfect Ozzie & Harriet wife and mother, was the type that would make your bed when you got up to pee in the middle of the night. She would also yell at us if we left footprints in the vacuum pattern in the living room! I never did ANYTHING inside the house other than occasionally changing my little brothers' diapers, which is something that my father never experienced.
Fast forward to my college days, and I spent my junior year living off-campus with 2 women (I was not romantically involved with either). They were 2 of the biggest slobs I'd ever seen, and this comes from a guy with 4 brothers! I had hair everywhere, clothes strewn about the place, and worst of all, used feminine hygiene products improperly disposed of!
My ex-wife and I had issues, but the division of household labor was not one of them. She cooked, I cleaned. She dusted, I vacuumed. I did the laundry, she cleaned the bathroom, the Ground Zero of the gender cleanliness battles. It worked for us, mostly because she had a lazy (single) mother and wasn't the neat freak that some women are. My mother used to comment, and not in any perjurative way, that it was amazing how much her sons did around the house because they never did anything at home.
Back living the single life, my place is neat but not overly so. My girlfriend, a neatnick nurse, would occasionally comment that the place could use a cleaning, which I would rebuff with aplomb. She must love me, because I've gotten home from work a few times and found her bouncing around my place with the stereo on 11, wearing one of my t-shirts and cleaning to beat the band!
I guess I'll have to marry the girl!
J--and also wrong, I'd say. I mean, depending on what you mean by low standards. Standards like the "Two minutes, including the cigarette" held by some men are just as bad as "Once a year seems a little excessive to me."
The evidence that women do more combined work than men in most marriages seems pretty robust, particularly if your wife has a job.
The evidence is robust? Really? For example?
To the contrary, the British study cited above by Dan S found the opposite. While women do more housework, men do more outside work and do more combined house- and outside work. Women have more leisure.
Specifically, in that study, women (in a couple) spent 32.48 hours per week at (outside) work, 14.60 hours on housework, and had 120.92 hours of leisure. Men spent 45.10 hours per week at (outside) work, 5.65 hours on housework, and had 117.25 hours of leisure.
Women are the shirkers, not men.
" Personally, I declined to date the guy who alphabetized my cans one windy February evening, because I knew that we would not have a happy life together."
You should have dated him and ditched him. Can alphabetizers are well known for their sexual prowess.
Seriously...
A good marriage depends on each spouse considering the other's happiness as a significant source of utility. How you value neatness or housework is a real, but lesser consideration. In a nasty sense, the person who cares less about the other will usually "win". They have more leverage. The downside is that they might be married to someone they don't like.
A question and two points.
Question: Am I the only guy here who is more concerned about cleaning than his wife?
Point 1: "Does Mr Caplan think that "person with the lowest standards wins" should be a general rule for marriage? Can women unilaterally quit their jobs because they're content with a lower standard of living..." Consider the outcome this leads to: The man brings in all the income and the woman does all the cleaning. Doesn't that sound familiar? Does it suggest Caplan is on to something? I'm not advocating this arrangement, just pointing out that it has been common in the past and perhaps there's a reason for that.
Point 2: Do not, ever, under any circumstances, consider marrying a control freak.
People also have different attitudes about what constitutes "cleaning" (I'd be hesitant on this topic in general to make sex-based assumptions), in that for some folks, a quick once-over with a damp cloth suffices. Others, like me, don't consider something clean unless surgery could be safely performed on the surface. The women I have lived with have tended towards the former approach, causing me to silently ask myself, "This is considered clean? Why did she even bother?" on more than few occasions. I will grant that they were/are somewhat more frequent users of the damp cloth than I am with was/am with the Mayo Clinic standard, so it actually balances nicely.
Anyways, guys, put the time in to become an outstanding chef, and you'll get more leeway on how often you can go between cleanings before being asked to do so. When you are preparing rosemary/olive crusted lamb (humanely raised, of course) with a side of wild rice and mushrooms in a cream sauce, and are ready to pair them with an outstanding old vine zinfandel, you are less likely to be asked to go clean the bathrooms, and the former task is a helluva lot more fun.
Things are a lot easier if a married couple respects each others' priorities, and actively tries to mitigate situations that are making the other person miserable.
There are a lot of things that need to be done around here. Generally, I relentlessly go after things that aren't working, and she relentlessly goes after things that aren't clean. I don't care if she doesn't fix things, and she doesn't care if I don't clean things.
About the only issue we have really had is laundry - there's just a LOT of it. She would get so frustrated with the amount of time it was taking, and she was getting frustrated with me for not helping out. I offered to do my own, but she didn't think that made a lot of sense, so I started thinking about why I wasn't helping out - and it was because I didn't really have a clue what I was doing.
I told her I wanted to be able to walk into the laundry room, and in about 15 seconds be able to figure out what needed to be done next. I wrote down how she wanted each load done, we made decisions about where to put dirty vs. clean clothes, and now I can jump in - almost as an afterthought - and help out without having to interrupt whatever she's doing and ask lots of questions.
"Two minutes, including the cigarette" -- Touche.
I was referring only to frequency, however, without regard to style points. This becomes a more significant issue in marriage after kids. If other commenters disagree, OK then. But my anecdotal information suggests that the sides in this area, like living room cleanliness, are predictable based on gender.
Megan said:
The evidence that women do more combined work than men in most marriages seems pretty robust, particularly if your wife has a job.
Not according to the University of Michigan time use project, at least on average.
"This entire discussion is a classic example of the downward spiral created by a self-centered viewpoint. I haven't seen anyone mention that you should treat your spouse the way you would wish to be treated yourself." - JeanE
I have to agree wholeheartedly with this statement. It seems like a lot of people are commenting to the effect that this is all women/emotion vs. men/economics. This may be part of the picture, but I think respect for your spouse or roommate does enter in somewhere, and importantly so. If you share close quarters with anyone, you have to clean up after yourself if only to show respect for the other person, and not necessarily just to have a clean place. I've had to learn this with more difficulty than many other women I know because I am perfectly happy to have a messy apartment or room, while my husband is not. But I respect him more than to put him into the position of either earning my help (an economic reason) or guilting me into helping (an emotional one).
These are shallow and actively disrespectful reasons to at least one party.
Regarding double standards when it comes to sex...
Over the years (particularly when I was single) I'd peek in the women's mags, Cosmo, etc, and read the sex articles to educate myself, both in terms of general knowledge, and more specifically,w hat the other side was thinking.
One thing I noticed back then, and to this day to some degree, is that the advice to women about their own pleasure, focuses on getting comfortable with communicating what they want, and how to do it (the communication). Naturally, men who respond, or anticipate, are to be prized when found, cultivated if not.
But when it comes to what the *men* want, the advice to women is generally "If you're not really in to it yourself, just say no."
Where's the give and take?
Ha, Ha, Ha
You've all got it wrong.
I lived for several weeks with an uncle, a psychiatrist in his 50s who dated a string of gorgeous women from their late teens to early 30s. His apartment was a wreck... half a year's pile of seeds around the bird cage, bikes laying on the living room floor, every pot, plate and utensil in the house in the sink...
Even I, a confirmed slob, was compelled to ask him how he could live in such a mess. His reply? "In order to attract women, it is very important that their first impression include seeing a place for them in your life."
That was 35 years ago. Best advice I ever got.
Hmmmmm.
The real key is to not shirk at all, but instead be very very eager, energetic and utterly clueless. Do all the clothes washing, even adding clean clothes to the pile, but muck it up so it all comes out pink or shrunk 5 sizes.
Repeat this in every single cleaning attempt and you'll find she'll rather do it herself than deal with your bungling. Plus she'll never accuse you of shirking.
Learned from: My Dad. Thanks Dad!
:)
The problem, as I see it, is that neither women nor men are raised properly anymore. My dad was a military officer and a guy's guy. My mom understood that and let him be himself. When they fought, and they did, it was always about something important, not about who was supposed to clean what.
Since my dad was gone so much of the time, my mother had to do probably ten times what any woman with a civilian husband had to do, and she never complained about it. Ever.
That's the problem, right there: They don't make women like that anymore, but there's at least one man like my dad in the world, and that would be me.
Sorry Megan, but you are a perfect example of the problem by just being concerned about such minutiae as cleaning or respective spousal workloads.
As for myself, I'll continue to "kill and grill," ride my motorcycles, and drive my pickup trucks, without having some harpy I no longer want to have sex with having to give me permission.
I can't even imagine ever wanting to get married again. Those were by far the most miserable six-hundred six years of my life.
The correctness of my decision to divorce my ex-wife is constantly reenforced every time I stop at a rest area and some beaten shell of a man drives up in a minivan full of kids with his bossy wife and looks longingly at my motorcycle.
I don't even date anymore.
The fact that a bunch of Dworkin worshipers repeatedly say something over many years does not make it so. This applies to the amount of work that men and women do, salaries, and many other things. The number of widely-accepted myths derived from the resentment of activists seems limitless sometimes. Not a good basis for either public policy or running ones life. Supposition and can be awfully entertaining, but as a scientist I prefer data.
The problem with women's magazines is that the insight they give about what men want is written by women, gay men, or (at best) a thorougly domesticated (read whipped) metrosexual. This builds a very false sense in readers of what the average man is about. IE- most guys dont fantasize about spicing up the bedroom by bringing some icecubes (most guys probably fantasize about bringing a friend ;) When this kind of nonsense doesnt achieve the expected result, blame Cosmo, not your yourself (or your partner). Those mags would simply never actually ask a normal guy on the street these questions- and if they did they wouldnt publish the answers. They just dont fit the story they make money selling- but that doesnt make what they do reality.
Another followup on the old household division of labor in my family.
My soon-to-be-78 dad was always lousy at house cleaning or laundry of any sort. Cooking breakfast is bout the only thing he can do competently. It is NOT an act so he can get out of it. Rather, when he was growing up in the Depression, in a very traditional, almost Victorian background, the women (his mother & grandmothers) ruled what territory they had, the domestic side of things, with an iron fist. It was the one real power they had -- so my father was not allowed, much less required, to do much of anything.
To my mother's detriment :)
Given your #6, you seem to have totally missed the point. By defining one end of the spectrum as "higher standards" and the other end as "lower standards" you commit the logical fallacy of begging the question. (Finn commits the same sort of error when he presumes to decide that matching purse to shoes is trivial.) In so doing you lose the original point which is that I get to decide my own preferences and you should not be able to disenfranchise me simply by labeling my preferences in some pejorative fashion. (version 1: I'm a slob so my preferences don't count)(version 2: I'm a neat-freak so my preferences don't count) The fundamental question is a universal one -- how to reconcile the interests of people with different interests. Simply defining some interests as valid and some as invalid does not cut the mustard.
"The problem with women's magazines is that the insight they give about what men want is written by women, gay men,..."
The same thing applies in spades to body image and women's weight, yet when screwed up females go anorexic, it is somehow *men's* fault, reaidng between the lines.
Heck, I'd take Tyra Banks at her current larger weight over any of the sacks of bones on "America's Next Top Model". Matter of fact, on a related note, my favorite decade of Playmates is the late 60s thru mid70s. Fuller, natural figures.
Women do that crap to each other about weight, yet we get blamed.
I, too, have read Cosmo - and found it amusing, but an amazingly poor guide to what the other side is thinking, or maybe I just haven't met the representative members of the other side.
As far as "just say no", that doesn't seem the most common response.....I'd say roughly 20% "No", 70% "let's just get this over with", and maybe 10% "ohmygodthisisamazing". The "No" percentage goes MUCH higher on requesting a subsequent round, the "let's just get this over with" seems to be subject to some of internalized quota system. The "ohmygodthisisamazing" seldom requires a request at all.
:)
I was referring, to be blunt, particularly to the inconsistency in advice about oral sex.
Thats an interesting point- volumes have been written about how women's psyche has been affected by their exposure to idealized female body images in magazines. Has anyone ever done a study on the affect of idealized men's behavior in those magazines? Certainly can't help.
Along the same lines:
The whole toilet seat debate always bugs me. I like it up or down depending upon the situation. You like it down. Why are you right and I'm wrong?
Also, I care about sex way more than my wife. I've tried everything I could think of to get her more into it. In the end it's made us both miserable. Should she care about it and put more effort into it? If not, why not?
I suspect that there are more and more men like Angus out there and a result more and more women like Megan are single. I am lucky in that I married a woman who is not a harpy and doesn't brow beat me. I honestly feel for the men who have.
I guess the question is what is important to you. People don't change. They might try to but in the end given enough time they will revert back to who they are. If you have a husband who works and doesn't cheat on you and isn't abusive and loves you, perhaps doing a little extra housework isn't such a bad price? No? If it is not and your perfect house and sense of justice are so strong, then have fun being single. The fact is most people male or female are lucky to find someone that actually cares about them. If you are willing to throw that away over housework, I would say your problems go a lot deeper than being neat.
1) Men who live alone clean less than men with male roommates. This is because your own mess is much less unbearable than mess generated by other people. I assume that Mr. Caplan covers negative externalities at some point in his classes.
...
3) Mr Caplan seems not to have heard of the tragedy of the commons.
Don't 1) and 3) partially work against each other? I clean less when I have male roommates than when I live alone precisely because of the tragedy of the commons-- I can't clean without cleaning up his mess too, and it seems unfair. Thus, I adapt down to my male roommate's standards in order to avoid having to clean all the time.
Megan said:
"I imagine that the person on this thread who used to date me is silently dying of laughter at the notion that I am simply waiting for a man who can live up to my perfectionist standards."
I'd bet that's not what he's thinking at all. "Perfectionist standards" is a narcissistic and self-aggrandizing conceit, covering up the real issue: You're a control freak. Witness the number of responses to 'correct' statements you found necessary to make throughout this thread, despite the fact that you've already had your say in this matter.
"Perfectionist standards", of course, sounds more flattering. But 'correcting' someone else's [perceived] character flaws is hardly a matter of reaching for some higher ideal. Focusing on, and correcting your own, however, may be a lifestyle worthy of that description. The fact that you don't know (or can't face) the difference may be the very reason your ex IS your ex, but I really couldn't presume to know that. (He does, of course, but I'll bet he's not tellin'.)
Apartment-dwellers should feel free to skip this comment, but one thing that always bugs me in these conversations is how 'housework' seems to be limited to cleaning dishes/carpets/clothes etc. - interior cleaning tasks often accomplished with mechanical aid. But for all the homeowners out there, when do we get credit for all the other person/hours required to maintain the home? When was the last time you saw the woman climbing a ladder to patch the roof with shingles or tar - or clean the gutters - under the hot summer sun? How about with a lawn mower/weed whacker/edger/hedgetrimmers/poolskimmer in her hand? Or a bucket of suds & sponge to wash/wax the cars (never mind changing oil or tires)? How about all the plumbing, electrical, paintng and carpentry upkeep-type tasks that are required to keep a roof over the couple's heads (and in a condition that makes the woman happy)? Who is primarily responsible in most married households for the installation/upgrade/maintenance of most wired devices in the home (entertainment/computer/alarm systems etc). Isn't that 'housework'? Isn't it at least possible that married men are more likely to be homeowners, and men who are homeowners are putting in (maybe more than) their fair share of time (and/or effort - I'd wager that an hour on a hot roof with a hammer requires a bit more energy than an hour vacuuming the carpets) on the upkeep of the structure/grounds? Factor this in and I bet a different picture of household labor division emerges.
I actually do believe that I have more "leisure," in the sense of unaccounted-for time, than my husband. We both work, he full-time, I part-time; I make diddly compared to what he makes. But the difference between my husband's day and mine is that very nearly all his labor is done between about 7:45 a.m. - until then, he's just getting himself ready for the day while I get myself AND our three kids ready - and 6:45 p.m. - maybe he'll load the dinner dishes into the dishwasher, but that's it. My day begins the minute I wake up and ends when all kids are asleep. The time I can spend in the middle of the day, doing stuff like commenting here, is determined by ever-changing needs of kids, home, work, and self - but I know full well that I'd better keep the laundry going, because if someone, anyone, is out of socks, apparently I'm the only one who knows what to do about it.
All this said, I'm deeply grateful to my husband for being interested in business so he can go to work doing something he actually likes and bring home lots of bacon, so I can dabble in my very low-paying work without worrying about the old age/cat food scenario.
Ignore, for the moment, the necessary distortions when grouping together "all men" or "all women." Consider the following scenario, which I can testify to:
Man keeps a neat bachelor pad. For years.
Gets married, and the level of mess goes up.
Why? Because he finds that anything he does by way of housework will be either
1) the wrong thing to have done, or
2) done the wrong way.
If not 100% of the time, certainly well above 95%.
Result: he does extremely little, that being the rational response to a desire to avoid (or at least minimize) fighting over "the mess".
Analysis: the man is indeed "shirking" on housework. But the motivation for that....
Anyone else notice that more than 19 in 20 posts are from men? I don't know about the rest, but I'm pretty much skipping over mens' postings because I'm looking to see how women are reacting to all this: as has been said, the woman determines how happy any relationship is, so simply by the logic of our biology, how intensely *they* feel about this subject is the determining factor. I, for instance, will pretty much do anything my woman wants me to for the simple reason that she seems determined to have a happy time of things: I admit it makes me want to help out a hell of a lot more. Her approach makes me do more than I want to, because now I want to.
That having been said, to Marie: do you know any twelve year old girls? Perhaps I live in the pampered set, but girls I know seem singularly unable to do this natural skill. As far as I can tell, it really does rather indicate a standard deviation from the norm that he changes diapers. It may not be much for a woman, but it sure would to a woman who happens to be heterosexual and interested in children. Or, put it another way: so you're saying it doesn't matter that he does or doesn't?
By the by, and this isn't TO Marie, but rather about her to the group: this is what I mean about women determining the happiness of things. It's fairly clear what position she's coming from here and what the emotional consequences are. It's not certain her man isn't happy, but I certainly get the feeling of deep resentment. Not enough to go on, but in my observations, arguments about housework have always been indicators of other, deeper issues.
As an issue in and of itself, I've come to the conclusion that all else being equal, that (and I hate to enter what looks like a cliche') that meeting in the middle might be a damned good approach. I've also come to the other common sense conclusion that it mainly depends on how serious your partner is, but only if your partner is a woman: men who are clean types (and I've known many) should probably learn to just suck it up. Most I know do, too. They tend to have messier houses than they used to, which shows women determine the tone of house life in addition to happiness.
The one thing I am certain of, this should never be an issue that sets a relationship. No matter what or how, you should care more about your partner or either sex than a domestic syllabus. If housework really is important to domestic bliss, something is wrong somewhere else, or the pair of you just aren't strong enough bonded otherwise.
Generally there are three things that will light my sparkler:
1. Clutter in common areas. What's in your room is your business as long as it doesn't smell, catch fire, or attract exotic, non-native species.
2. Dirty kitchen. Seriously, don't you realize that your food comes from there?
3. Dirty bathroom. Seriously, don't you realize that your crap goes there?
The Dust and I, however, have made peace. I can let that go for up to two months before feeling the need to do something about it. It naturally blows off things I use regularly (like the dining room table) and naturally accumulates on things I don't, so why disturb the balance of nature unnecessarily?
Toilet seat: In general, down, and the lid as well. You can't accidentally drop your toothbrush or eyeglasses into it, or find a pet exercising a drinking problem while your visiting 2yo nephew floats boats that he conveniently found on your shoe rack, if it isn't open. Besides that, flushing often creates a bit of peripheral splash or spray, and that's just nasty.
Consider the following scenario:
Woman lives with roomate (female) for over 10 years. House not so clean. Never has to look for her keys or her roommate's keys because keys are always where they are supposed to be. Dirty clothing is always in a laundry basket, never on floor. Woman gets married to a nice man who keeps the cleanest house she's ever seen. But he can't find his keys to save his soul and he throws his socks/underwear on the floor when he removes them. Why? Because clean and neat are two different things. I am neat--I know where everything is and where everthing should be; he is clean--you can eat off his floor; nothing on his countertop because it all gets swept into the nearest drawer whether it makes sense or not.
Wouldn't trade him for anything.
Does the yard work count as "cleaning"? You know; things like pushing the mower, CLEANING up the leaves and cuttings, pruning the bushes and CLEANING up the cuttings.
How about snow shoveling? Isn't that like CLEANING the snow off the stairs, walk and driveway?
In my entire 58 years, I have seen a woman pushing a lawn mower exactly once. I'd guess that I've seen women shoveling any appreciable amount of snow only rarely.
How about CLEANING the gutters on the house so they work?
After the man finishes replacing the innards of the toilet or replacing the kitchen faucet or installing a new ceiling light fixture, or replacing a wall switch or outlet, or installing a new storm door, or new locksets on the doors, he has the CLEAN up the old stuff. Does that count as CLEANING?
Just curious as to what CLEANING is exactly.
James, my husband changed diapers and my brothers changed diapers and my dad changed diapers and my brothers-in-law changed diapers. The women in my family also changed diapers. My impression is that changing diapers is done by men and women, not that men changing diapers is something to be praised as an unusual contribution to family happiness. I am definitely not complaining that my husband doesn't pull his weight.
I was merely pointing out that people (like you? but definitely like my m-in-l) who think that men changing diapers is akin to a four-year-old doing calculus...those people are wrong. When I was twelve I changed diapers. All the girls I grew up with were able to do that. Maybe little girls today are different. I suspect that people who grew up in large families and had baby brothers to diaper learned different things. Today's children who have a single brother or sister...maybe they are learning something different.
Regarding the funny business of the toilet seat :
My position (not that it gets me anywhere) is that a seat still up means the man raised it rather than dripping/spattering pee all over it.
She should count her blessings :)
Or put another way, why is it the guys job to both raise the seat before *and* lower it after?
Her lowering the seat sounds like a perfectly fair trade for me having to raise it. That approach evens the "cost" out rather nicely, but is never acceptable.
Do the studies about the gender/leisure time divide break down between who's working full time and who's not? Jamie acknowledges that working part time outside the home gives her more leisure time than her husband.
Perhaps Megan's "robust" evidence compares women and men who both have full-time jobs. Certainly, if it is true that on average, women have 3 hours more leisure time than men, then women with full time jobs have significantly less than their husbands, on average. There are stay-at-home dads, but there are many, many more stay-at-home or part-time-working moms.
The question about what counts as housework is fair. If the statistics don't count time doing repairs, yard work, etc., then they are invalid. The correct analysis is to compare leisure time. My husband and I actually use the phrase "household time" to denote anything other than leisure time.
It's still hard to measure in some respects. Almost every night, I'm the one that gives the kid a bath and puts her to bed. It is mostly enjoyable, but it is a task that has to be done, and it takes significant time. I don't consider that leisure time.
Yes, the question about what counts as housework is fair. Yardwork and home repairs should definitely count. While we're measuring, though, can we figure out a way to "count" whether the chore is a daily chore or an annual chore? And whether the chore is done in peace and quiet or whether it is done with toddlers clinging to your legs? Is it a chore that stays done or do you have to repeat several times a day? Oh, and let's figure out if the chore is something enjoyable to the person doing it. One person's chore is another person's hobby. I know people who love to do laundry because they love the sorting and the folding of it. Some people love gardening and count it as a treat to spend time trimming the yews. Those pollsters sure have their work cut out for them.
The reality is that most husbands will do anything their wives ask them to do as long as the sex life is good (that is, frequency and energy reflective of male testosterone regeneration, not dependent on whether she "feels like it").
As Maggie heard from her mother-in-law in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", everything else would follow if she would "keep him happy in bed" (B-Minerva above says something similar). That's not exactly the advice that young wives get these days.
The lower interest person always prevails, whatever the topic (sex or housework), because one can always use martyrdom and half-baked performance to send the message and win regardless. No one wants to be around an unwilling martyr, which is why wives often sigh and tell their husbands to get lost, she'll finish the scrubbing. And why husbands don't approach their wives romantically any more after they've internalized the "once a week on Saturday if I'm not too tired or irritable" routine.
Of course, in today's world, no one is supposed to do anything with pleasant grace that one doesn't wanna do. Therefore, husbands who are eunuchs by their standards (maybe 2/3?) reflect that by not "feeling like" doing housework to her standards.
Megan, no offense, but Caplan is married with twin boys and you are single. I would think that he has a very good personal understanding of marriage, the tragedy of the commons and everything else you mentioned.
Anyway, when I was growing up housework was done by everyone, with only a subset of duties divided along gender lines. My dad was mechanically minded, so he worked on the cars, the electronics, and the general house repair. My mom is an excellent cook in the Southern tradition, so she fixed all meals. But as far as cleaning and yardwork goes, those duties were done by everyone, since no one had a real comparative advantage in them. My dad, being old and pretty sickly, wasn't stronger than my mom, my sister and me so it never made sense for him to mow the grass, or shovel mulch. So I grew up the strongest in the family and the most likely to climb on the roof and clean the gutters, mow the fairly large yard, and haul leaves, mulch or rocks all over the place.
Now as a married lady, I tend to do most of the household cleaning, but my husband will pitch in when asked, and has responsibility for maintaining the kitchen. I have exclusive domain over laundry, which he hates to do, and he is the only one who cooks, which bores me immensely. When it comes to the yard work or mechanical projects, he tends to take the lead, but not because I don't want to help, but because he considers it unmanly to allow me to do it. One day I mowed the grass while he was taking a nap and he thought for sure the neighbors would think him a big jerk for making his pregnant wife mow the grass. I didn't do it to make him feel bad, I just developed a liking for lawn mowing since it was one of my chores growing up.
A point about nagging. I find myself more likely to nag when I'm around to see what's not being done. When I give my husband an assignment and leave the house, I find that 99% of the time the task is completed when I get home, and usually he's busy doing something else equally productive around the house. He says this is because I'm a big distraction, and he can just get more accomplished when I'm not around.
I could only get through about a third of the comments. I can't understand why so many men in today's world agree to marriage.
re: "I know people who love to do laundry because they love the sorting and the folding of it."
I aggravate my wife because I have no problem sorting dirty laundry and loading the machines, and even hanging the hanging clothes.
But I *hate* folding (other than towels, an obviously special case :)
Since the remaining pile of clean clothes is the final thing in the process, it bugs her a great deal so I don;t get much credit even though I did the other 2/3s of the work. Sort of the way some bosses only seem to remember the last thing you did wrong rather than the other 95% that's right.
As to relative value -- no, I don't need my sock and underwear folded - a messy drawer doesn;t bother me at all.
BTW, she doesn't do my ironing - for the most part I've started investing in no-iron shirts as well as pants (plug: I can;t recommend the Brooks Brothers non-iron Supima cotton highly enough)
A more general observation about the way my wife and I get on each others nerves in different ways: she'll annoy me by telling me *what* to (and etending to expect it *now*). OTOH I screw up in, when she's doing something, volunteering too much about *how* she should do it :)
About the sex divide: I think the reason women frequently decline to perform certain activities, or engage in sex at all, while men generally don't is because of the nature of The Oldest Profession being overwhelmingly a female industry.
I know that to me getting a request is akin to being treated like a whore, whereas, a request to my husband is more like giving him permission, if that makes sense.
Think of it this way, who would be more likely to appreciate having their head pushed down?
Or put another way, why is it the guys job to both raise the seat before *and* lower it after?
Her lowering the seat sounds like a perfectly fair trade for me having to raise it. That approach evens the "cost" out rather nicely, but is never acceptable.
Ever wake up at night when the clock says half-past-sane, stagger blury-eyed and incoherent into the restroom, and try to sit down on an open bowl when the seat is up?
Bloody murder is both the first and least of the subsequent thoughts that follow.
I never understood the whole toilet seat should not be left up meme. Why not? Or more accurately, what is the big deal? Goodness, it takes less energy to bring down the seat than it takes to swat a fly. Why is it that I never hear of a man complaining why the toilet seat was not left up considering that is the position he is often going to need it to be.
Me, I do not care either way. I am just amazed that many women seem to take umbrage at the issue with the assumption being that they are in the right.
No, Christina, the Oldest Profession is a female industry because of the biochemical difference between men and women. Libido has nothing to do with sociology.
Ever wake up at night when the clock says half-past-sane, stagger blury-eyed and incoherent into the restroom, and try to sit down on an open bowl when the seat is up?
Bloody murder is both the first and least of the subsequent thoughts that follow.
I hope you wouldn't mind a man using the excuse that he peed all over the seat because "it was half-past sane" and he couldn't be bothered to check if it was already up.
Housework cuts breast cancer risk
The research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries found doing household chores was far more cancer protective than playing sport.
Dusting, mopping and vacuuming was also better than having a physical job.
We all live in prisons that we're primarily made for ourselves.
The best advice anyone can ever give a young single person today is to never marry.
Did Alexander the Great say, "Marriage is not for the faint hearted"?
"When I give my husband an assignment and leave the house, I find that 99% of the time the task is completed when I get home, and usually he's busy doing something else equally productive around the house. "
Christina, you "give your husband assignments"? That has got to be one of the most demeaning and insulting things I have ever read. No one gives me assignments in my own home. I frankly can't believe your husband allows that to happen. You must be real fun to live with.
Re- the toilet seat problem: Since sharing is necessary, the seat down makes sense. Not necessarily fair- just logistically logical.
Of course the simplest answer is to install a urinal as a common appliance in homes. That will never happen either- and its not men 'standing' in its way I suspect...
This brings us full circle to the demands of meeting the social and class norms, and again I would suggest women are the primary arbiter of that in most households. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, just an eventuality, probably dating back to tribal societies.
You may get your wish, Mark . . . they're becoming an upscale accessory.
Megan, no offense, but Caplan is married with twin boys and you are single. I would think that he has a very good personal understanding of marriage, the tragedy of the commons and everything else you mentioned.
Further, it seems to me that the correct interpretation of Bryan's post is that bargaining is an appropriate solution to this particular commons problem.
"Re- the toilet seat problem: Since sharing is necessary, the seat down makes sense. Not necessarily fair- just logistically logical."
Please justify that, Mark.
Actually, a compact urinal would be a real water saver, as well as reducing (or at least confining) the mess.
The evidence is fairly robust that:
1) Wives overestimate their own contributions to housework.
2) Wives underestimate their husband's contributions to housework.
3) "Housework" only includes typical cleaning, tidying, and cooking chores within the house, and excludes hours of property maintenance and repair.
Thus, the only way the wife will be happy is if the man does 100% of the work she considers to be "his" (car repair, house painting, lawn mowing, drain unclogging, scary bug killing) and 60-70% of the work she considers to be "hers" (since she underestimates his contribution and overestimates his).
In my situation, however, I work full time and she stays at home. She is generally okay with 50s-era traditional division of labor...but she wants me to express gratitude and concern for her exertion. It is apparently enough for me to merely offer to help when she is feeling harried.
Well, I'm the man and I lose. Yeah, I was a sloppy bachelor. Turns out, though, my wife is even sloppier than me. So whereas I used to live like a pig, now I live like a pig surrounded by unlaundered clothes, empty food containers, and stains. It's pretty sweet.
"Ever wake up at night when the clock says half-past-sane, stagger blury-eyed and incoherent into the restroom, and try to sit down on an open bowl when the seat is up?" anony-mouse
No.
And when we come to the agreement for the sake of domestic tranquility that the seat and lid will be lowered everytime by any party, what'cha gonna do then? Pee on the lid? I have to make a decision every time about what position the toilet parts need to be in relation to what needs doing. Why shouldn't a woman? That will happen ad hoc or if the lid is closed every time.
Anyhow, 2 other thoughts about the entertaining thread. So my ex informed me after her 3 month maternity leave, that she had decided against going back to work, and we'd just figure out how to make it. OK. But the one thing that never changed after that was the division of labor. When we both worked, it was 50/50 in the house. Outside? Yeah somehow I got to do all of that "because you know how and I don't" But that aside.
So, #1 son comes along... and she decides to be a stay at home and I start working extra hours to take up the slack. Did we have a discussion on changing the division of labor? Frell no. We had an all out argument that came damn near imploding the marriage right there. I asked her what her job discription was, and what the roles and responsibilities we both had should be... and it was like setting the sun on fire.
Which leads me to #2 point. The person that digs in their heels the most, is willing to be the most vindictive, is the one that will win the argument. Many posters have mentioned [including myself] that you both work at this game, you communicate and cooperate, and it can go well. The unfortunate however in all of that is simply that if one person chooses, the idea of cooperation heads out the window. If the person [either gender] feels put upon or that injustice is being done to them, the question simply derails. If that person happens to be a "I'm not going to tell you what's wrong, you have to figure it out" type, then you have no choice but to figure out what the terms are, and give in. If that person is willing to make you VERY miserable they win. If you decide at some point to use the nuke, and divorce them, it doesn't solve the problem at all. It just masks it behind much larger problems.
So. There are unilateral ways to make these issue nasty. One is nagging, another is micromanaging, and so forth. All it takes to go there is for one person to believe that their POV is the only correct one.
In the end THAT is VERY MUCH what we are talking about. Single men are not slobs and cleanliness is a continuum. But somehow it is in the folklore and urban legends that women are RIGHT about this. That it should be their point-of-view that wins the day. Megan has even made this point, about the robut numbers.
All the robust numbers indicate is that different people have different definitions about what is clean/organized/neat.
Not about who is RIGHT to make the definition. Ideally we would come to consensus as a partnership, but what that means, is that by agreeing? You have to shut UP about it. You don't get to play passive/aggressive. Now, how often is that the case? You can more subtly manage another person if you don't have hard/fast rules... Which is why there often aren't any. If the partnership is pulling together, that doesn't matter. If one person values the cooking of the other, if one person vales the mechanical ability of the other, it's all good. But if what that person does is never enough or never good enough.
Commenters have rightly pointed out that something else is going on in the relationship, but it is also something common. Different agendas and points of view... it's just that it comes out so easily in this case, because the work involved is shared.
[so Newscaper, how do you think John and Aeryn would split up chores? with a pulse pistol? heh, you might know me as AFD ;) ]
""Re- the toilet seat problem: Since sharing is necessary, the seat down makes sense. Not necessarily fair- just logistically logical."
Please justify that, Mark"
Since it requires less work to lower a seat than to raise a seat, and since females use the seat raised 0% of the time while males use the seat down X% of the time, you will save energy by leaving the seat in a default down position assuming both sexes use the toilet an approximately equivalent amount (since if you raised the seat every time you would 'waste' more raises than you waste lowerings). Help prevent global warming, keep the seat down.
To chime in with some of the other commenters here, I was perfectly happy to wash dishes, clean floors, bring flowers, go dancing, etc when my wife and I were having sex basically every day, in all ways and every variation. But somehow, after we got married, sex once a day turned into sex once a week and then every two weeks, and the "variations" turned into standard missionary. Oddly, my interest in washing dishes, cleaning floors, bringing flowers and going dancing declined in direct proportion to the amount and inventiveness of the sex we were having.
Feel free to nag and "negotiate" about housework, Megan. But be advised that if you do, *everything* about the relationship should be up for "negotiation". So unless you've just given him some planet-shaking oral sex, maybe you should let him be about the dirty clothes on the floor.
If cleaning the kitchen floor could only be accomplished when both partners were simulataneously scrubbing away, then the analogy to sex might have more merit. What's interesting is that it comes up in this context. Perhaps it seems tangentially germane if we define marriage/partnership as the collective sum of discrete logical transactions, but should we? Why on earth would we restrict ourselves arbitrarily?
When you ask whose standards should prevail, you've already abandoned the realm of transactions, because there are moral judgments implicit in "standards" and "should" and an imbalance implicit in "prevail." If anything here seems clear, however, it's that transactional analysis and moral judgments rarely throw much light on the nature of successful social partnerships. Is there any actual evidence, nay, does anyone actually believe that equalizing a couple's hours "at leisure" would make the issues here just disappear? Conversely, isn't the very concept of "prevailing" a win/lose proposition in the one place where most of us are aiming for the maximum win/win?
The closest thing to a useful formula I've ever heard was the advice I was given as a newlywed: Marriage is not a 50/50 proposition. If you don't think you're giving 90%, then you're not doing your share. The sooner folks get over the idea that there is a single formula, or an ideal formula, or an equitable formula for the perfect relationship, the better. Perhaps most damaging of all is the idea that there is an identifiable norm against which our own relationships can or should be measured, when the range of marriages and partnerships which work is far broader than any averaging could possibly suggest.
A lot of the difficulties at issue actually revolve around conflicting concepts of what is fair and different attitudes toward indebtedness. To generalize wildly, women tend to see fairness as matter of balancing needs while men see fairness in the preservation of rights. If a family man has put in the required hours at work each day, he has a guilt free right to relax at night, regardless of whether the house is clean or not; if a woman is prepard to meet her family's needs, regardless of when they arise, she's free to tend to her own without guilt. So too, a lot of resentments could be allayed by simple expressions of appreciation, but here again, differences come into play: women see gving and getting thanks as a reward, men take giving and getting thanks as a sign of indebtedness.
While the gender assignments above can be argued, the fundamental point is almost gender free. We all generalize from our own experience without realizing just how distinct and how personal our perspectives may be. There are real differences in the way individuals actually process basic information which affect everything from how we approach problem solving to how we perceive what is right, fair and desirable. I'd suggest that flexibility will stand us in far better stead than formulas -- the kind of flexibility which comes from understanding that we're often tripping over our own expectations, not our partners' failures to fulfill them.
I hope you wouldn't mind a man using the excuse that he peed all over the seat because "it was half-past sane" and he couldn't be bothered to check if it was already up.
If you're going to pee standing, you had better be sufficiently awake to deal with the necessary aspects of balance, coordination, target, and target acquisition. If you're not, sit down instead.
I know that to me getting a request is akin to being treated like a whore, whereas, a request to my husband is more like giving him permission, if that makes sense.
Right ... which is why so many husbands (though not yours, surely) just cut through the crap and avail themselves of the services of an actual professional.
i'm a man who lived with a woman who was a complete pig. i cleaned because i liked living in a clean environment, but she'd take my cleaning as a comment on her own slovenliness! so i stopped being the clean male that i had been up to that point, and soon dumped her and moved out. now i keep my "bachelor pad" very reasonably clean. my point is, generalizing and theorizing based on generalizations is useless.
marie wrote:
"Oh, and by the way: Men do NOT deserve extra credit for changing diapers. It was exasperating to hear my mother-in-law brag about how her son changes diapers. It wasn't as if he'd scaled Everest, after all. Any twelve-year-old girl can change diapers with her eyes closed."
HA! I'm a stay-at-home dad. I've changed THOUSANDS of diapers. I know everything about every brand of diaper, every brand and type of wipe, and every sort of lotion, unguent, salve, and moisturizer made for conditions that develop in diapered babies.
I've changed diapers in places and in body positions you cannot IMAGINE, with improvised materials sometimes. I can do them (even the *bad* ones) perfectly at 3 am, 3/4 asleep, eyes closed, in the dark, with a hangover, having tripped and stepped on seven hard plastic things, and without the little guy peeing all over the walls, the floor, the changing tables, the furniture, the ceiling, the light fixtures, the ceiling fan, himself, his clothes, and the upper half of my body and draining down into my shoes. You only make that mistake once.
I also invented a really good way to burp babies, doing the minimal amount of work.
And you econ-toilet-seat people should read this:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/856/
"The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: A game theoretic analysis"
"Abstract
We model the toilet seat problem as a 2 player non-cooperative game. We find that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient. However, to the dismay of “mankind”, we also find that the social norm of leaving the seat down after use is a trembling-hand perfect equilibrium. Hence, sadly, this norm is not likely to go away."
Lots of good stuff like this:
"Assume that the inconvenience cost of changing the seat position is C. Further assume that the need for #1 arises with a probability p. Let’s look at the average costs to John and Marsha:
The average cost to John as a bachelor
Doing #1 this time when he did #2 last time + Doing #2 this time when he did #1 last time = p x (1 x p) x C+ (1 x p) x p x C= 2 x p x (1 x p) x C (1)
The average cost to Marsha as a bachelorette
Obviously 0 since she performs everything with the seat in the down position."
He has references, though I don't think he refers to a paper I once saw on the topic by an engineer, wherein the "cost" of various forms of female abuse was integrated into the calculations.
My wife and I have found a way to share the housework equally. Neither one of us do it.
Luckily we're both slobs, so "bachelor pad" standards don't bother us too much. In fact "bachelor pad" standards would be a step up.
But we have grown children, both of whom are neatniks. Maybe there's a lesson there.
I'm married almost 9 years, 2 great kids, amazing wife. Been very blessed...
Two great books, quick reads but with a lot of depth to the concepts they convey, and taken together lay out some great wisdom:
"The Five Love Languages" by G. Chapman
"Boundaries" by H. Cloud and J. Townsend
Ideas are that my core personality + worldview determine what boundaries I set in my relationships with other people, spouse/kids included--these usually wind up as a set of expectations (goals) for how I'd like life to go. If I effectively communicate those boundaries to others, they know how I wish to interact. Unless I'm a callous sociopath, I also strive to know other people's boundaries and find a way to compromise with them if I expect to successfully interact with them.
I find that a lot of the day to day work of marriage is about expectation management. She is expecting x, I am expecting y. If we're communicating and we both have a spirit of compromise, we avoid disappointment and our expectations are essentially met, yielding contentment 100% of the time, happiness maybe 40% and sometimes even bliss. 90% of our arguments are due to noncommunication of expectations, the other 10% not being willing to compromise--but that fluctuates as we grow older or as challenges arise (kids, lack of sleep, work stress, family pressures, etc). To young'ns out there who are all starry eyed, beware the person who says "you just need to figure me out" or is not willing to compromise. Cut it off now, because what that person is basically saying is "I'm just gonna be me, and you're going to have to 100% conform to my boundaries/worldview." Do you REALLY want to spend the rest of your life with that person?? Are you carazzzzy or something? (I can't stand the whole "just be true to yourself" crap because that's just an ego-stroking way of saying "it's OK to be selfish.")
The absolutely crucial thing is figuring out what the _other_ person's goals/expectations/boundaries are based on their worldview and life history (which are usually intertwined), then weighing those against your own. It's foolish NOT to do that starting about the third date or so. That's where the Love Languages book comes in REALLY useful. Yeah, on the surface it comes off as somewhat jingoistic, but it gets you much of the way toward understanding your own boundaries and your mate's.
Put it all together and the healthy married people are good at treating their spouses mercifully and graciously. Both stem from the acts of the will, not emotion or "good feelings". Common goals/worldview/boundaries make those acts of will a WHOLLLLLLE lot easier.
Mercy = not getting "payback" when the other person wrongs you (oversteps agreed boundaries).
Grace = giving something good that's either undeserved or wasn't anticipated or requested.
Thus, it's not simply "you do the housework, I do the home maintenance." It's also who...
Does the taxes?
Brings home the bacon?
Washes, folds, and puts away laundry?
Fixes the furnace when it breaks?
Unplugs the toilet?
Changes poopies?
Cleans up kid barf?
Drives the kids to school?
Determines where we go on vacation?
Determines how much time we spend with family, or friends?
Sets the budget?
Buys the groceries?
Cooks?
Does dishes?
Puts up/takes down the Christmas lights?
Spends "alone time" doing the hobby/sport of their choice?
etc etc ad nauseum.
A 50/50 split in chores is overly simplistic, unachievable, and a mentally exhausting exercise. As long as both people are happy and not codependent, does it matter what the percentage is? Which spouse is "advantaged" is going to be constantly changing over the course of the marriage. And what happens when one spouse gets struck with personal tragedy or hardship (say, depression, or a physical handicap)? Who's at more of an "advantage"--the stricken person who simply can't carry the load they could before, or the caregiver who needs to readjust to a new reality--does it really matter? If such a question seems trite during bad times, why isn't it when times are relatively good?
Take care!
It is funny that I never "lift a finger" per my wife, which a hidden camera would show to be untrue, yet when she wants to sit down to a movie with a nice fire, and burns the wood that I cut, split, stacked, and brought in, this counts for ZERO. Why? Because I seem to "enjoy" it, so it can't be work. Same with all yardwork, home repairs, etc. Since I don't hate doing them, they are worthless labor in the negotiation. She can spend the entire day shopping and classify that as "work." I think I just picked a really bad woman, or somehow I have encouraged her to be such a b&*^ through not calling her on it early on. I wish I had been smart enough to realize I was in a negotiation, I thought we were just two kids who loved each other trying to make each other happy. I was a fool.
Christina, if you've never "pushed someone's head down", you've obviously got some issues that this thread will NOT satisfy...
I think if you approach the toilet seat dilemna from a games perspective, you can come up with an answer. But you have to assume:
1.The context is important, you have to assume the actors arent willing to accept the potential costs of maximizing their advantage at the risk of a divorce. We should assume this is ultimately a cooperative game. Or you could look at it as a single aspect of a larger game (marriage) which is akin to tit for tat- ie defections will be punished making maxizing your toilet seat winnings a pyrriac victory at best.
2.We should also assume that any solution relying on the seat being left up a portion of the time is unstable and unworkable. Mathmatically it probably makes sense to leave the seat up some exact percentage of the time (and no more) to share the costs equally, but realistically you cant put a cost on falling into a toilet in the middle of the night. The lid should always be up or always be down so there is no confusion.
If that is the case, one side is going to bear all the costs. The man, however, will bear a smaller cost than the woman would have to. This is fundamentally unfair, but realistic.
However- there is another solution that will provide for equivalent cost sharing, as well as eliminate the chilly costs of defection: for the couple who value both sides suffering equally (as opposed to minimizing the overall cost at the price of inequality of cost bearing), leave the toilet seat AND LID down at all times (as someone mentioned above). Both sides share the burden equally, although there is more overall burden to share.
Gotta object one more time on the seat up/down argument (I think pretty definitively if I may say so -- I encourage the interested bystanders to make it to the end):
Your premises 1 & 2 basically have already pre-"settled" the argument before your reasoning.
Pt. 1 basically describes the general reality, that men generally grin and bear it.
As to Pt. 2...
"The lid should always be up or always be down so there is no confusion."
What "confusion" is there? You *see* it, like a grownup, and act accordingly. FWIW I sometimes have to sit down in the middle of the night and have *never* sat on a cold rim. The fact many woman are spoiled by the current general unfair state of affairs has no bearing on the calculus.
Further...
"If that is the case, one side is going to bear all the costs. The man, however, will bear a smaller cost than the woman would have to. "
Clearly, women would be more impacted by a seat always up, than a man impacted by a seat always down (he has to sit down too, at times), but that is an argument for *proportionally* sharing the cost, NOT the one less impacted (by not having his /her way) bearing *all* of the cost.
[BTW, as I and a couple others have noted, the cost of a woman having to lower a seat after a man raised it is at least partly offset by the *benefit* of not having to wipe urine off the seat if he simply left it down all the time, which would otherwise minimize *everyone's* raise/lower labor. That cannot be left out of the equation.]
My proposal for raise/lower as *you* need it, and simply leave it afterward the way you used it, rather than the way you found it, approximates proportionality.
If men and women always took turns, *every* time he pees, in my scheme she only has to lower it *once* for every time that *he* had to raise it (following her). Even if you are looking at total labor (ignoring the splash factor aside above) rather than counting hers versus his, there is NO way that unbalancing who does what will result in an overall reduction. It still has to go up and down the same number of times no matter *who* does it, ergo, no mathematical argument for throwing out "fairness".
However, taking a closer look, my scheme actually STILL favors the *woman* slightly, believe it or not!
"How?" you ask in disbelief?
Sometimes the man follows himself, has to poop the next time after he has peed. In that case *he* has to lower it again after having raised it earlier himself (assuming she went prior). When he leaves it down after he has finished, should a woman follow him she will find it already restored to her preferred state -- *her* advantage!
This effect of two (or more) successive trips by the same person is NOT symmetric -- when she goes back-to-back, all of the trips after the first one are "free", as she always leaves it down. Even her *first* one might be free if the man sat the time before. OTOH the man bears the burden of his own successive trips if he does not always do the same thing.
It is *guaranteed* to work this way -- if men and women alternate, regardless of doing #1 or #2, and the only raising/lowering is done upon entry and not exit, their cost is exactly equal (assuming they chose to live togethe rin the first place :))
If they are NOT going to the bathroom the same number of times, then they CANNOT be alternating -- the more frequent user MUST be following him/herself some of the time, thus introducing the lopsided benefit to *her*.
I think the logic is correct and pretty damned definitive, IMO.
Amending myself here:
"Even if you are looking at total labor (ignoring the splash factor aside above) rather than counting hers versus his, there is NO way that unbalancing who does what will result in an overall reduction. It still has to go up and down the same number of times no matter *who* does it..."
Actually, "always put it down after yourself", aside from making him bear all of the cost, actually *increases* the total number of raisings/lowerings compared to my strategy, because when he pees successive times, "lower after" has done nothing but create more total work, a sort of corollary to my argument above about what happens when my strategy is applied and casues differential *benefits* due to successive turns by the same person.
Not sure if any single woman home-owners have spoken up here yet, but to the gentleman who has only ever seen *one* woman shovelling snow or mowing the lawn ... swing by my place some time for a demonstration. I also take out the garbage.
Also on the seat-up vs. seat-down question: don't leave it up if you have pets.
Otherwise you WILL be woken at 2AM by a furious, soaked moggy who fell in and is now streaking through your bedroom.
Eeeyick. I am not, by most standards, an excessively clean person— you can eat off my kitchen counters but definitely not off the floor— but this whole toilet discussion really gets me.
You ever seen those stories about the aerosolized germs spread out when you flush the toilet? The ones that get all over your toothbrush? Lid down, problem solved. You ever had pets? Lid down, problem solved. Ever knocked something off of the counter, and worried that it will splash? Lid down, problem solved.
If you're that worried about the "extra work" of raising and lowering a toilet lid, I wonder if you wash your hands.
I worked in a temporary location where I had to stand approximately five feet away from the open bathroom (open due to lighting; that was not the world's best location and we had to stay there an extra year due to construction delays.) I couldn't stand having the open toilet there and tried to train my coworkers to put the lid down. I mean, working five feet away from an opened toilet is pretty gross.
Anyway, I got sidetracked, which is to say that I sympathize very much with JeanE, I think it was, who said that the bitterness in this thread is pretty sad, since marriage is supposed to be a partnership. We each do the things we can and don't fret too much about who is doing more. I cook, because I'm better at it. He does the laundry because he does, I suppose. He does the catbox since everybody knows (and will tell you, repeatedly) that pregnant women must never ever clean a catbox. (He also did it before, so as to get in the habit.) If we ever have a lawn I'll be the one to mow it since he's 10+ allergic to grass clippings.
He works a standard work week, about 45 hours, and sometimes comes home extremely wiped out. If he asks for a beer I get it for him— not because it's a "fair" thing to do but because it's a nice thing to do. I am currently working six days a week and don't ask him for especial favors, because I have a higher level of energy than he does and am better able to cope.
We both would like the apartment cleaner than it is but are resigned to a certain amount of clutter for the time being because we're both working a little bit much to get the whole thing deep cleaned. (Plus— and this should always be considered— storage is an issue. We're not hoarders but we have a little too much stuff for our space, some of which is seasonal but has nowhere to go. Enough space will lead to a cleaner space as long as you rein your acquisitional instincts in.)
Anyway, my point is that as soon as you treat it as a "me vs. my spouse" issue, you've got a worse problem than housework. You've just split "us" into "me and adversary." Bad call.
This is a modest point, but worth considering.
My experience has been that men are more concerned with organization, and women are more concerned with being uncluttered. I think a great deal of what couples experience is a push to declutter men (who don't seem to be terribly concerned about organizing their partners).
There's value in both, but they are not the same thing.
I wonder whether the preference for being uncluttered is related to the tendency for women to navigate by landmarks: is it easier to keep track of things if you limit the available landmarks in your nest?
I'm LTTG here, but I just wanted to offer up a few thoughts in case anyone is still reading this:
First of all, count me among the bewildered upon reading about that one study that showed people spending 15-some-odd hours a week on housework; what could there possibly be to do that would take that long? Granted, I don't include things like laundry in that total, because for me, it's always done as part of a multitask with several other things (I'm drying a load as I type right now).
My next question: Is it possible to be too clean? I've been single longer than I've expected to be--sometimes with roommates, sometimes not. At best, my house has been "guy clean" (i.e. sanitary, but not by any means immaculate) for over a decade now. And one other thing is that I hardly ever get sick. Is it possible that, by being over-immaculate, people are screwing up their immune systems a bit?
And finally, re the toilet seat thing: Even though this house isn't being shared with women at the moment, I always leave the seat and cover down. Why? Because at my old house a number of years ago, upon my return from an out-of-town trip of several days, I opened the lid to find a mouse crawling around in the bowl! That only has to happen once to convince you to keep it down all the time when not in use.
I imagine that the person on this thread who used to date me is silently dying of laughter at the notion that I am simply waiting for a man who can live up to my perfectionist standards.
Puh-leeze. This person -- whomever he is -- is probably more likely thinking, "Gee, that Megan is so smart and engaging, even when she's wrong... ;) however could she have slipped through my fingers ... Such a shame she moved to DC...."
Hello I'm a woman and I'm the breadwinner and I get on the ladder in the summer sun and clean the berloody gutters, and maintain the garden.
Can you please stop writing 'when was the last time you saw a women outside?'
It's rubbish.
I'd also like to add that approx 25% of households the woman earns more than the man*.
Not exactly 'pin money', is it?
*According to statistics about NZ, not the US, I don't know if women work or earn less over there, or what. Also I can't cite source, other than what I read in the newspaper months ago, because I'm not going to spend my time irrationally by taking on the search costs of finding a citation to a statistic that is likely to be correct.