Adapted from an online discussion.
Hi Carolyn: I find it so frustrating when my partner will not do his share of the housework, saying that if I want the house clean, then I should do it myself. This happens even when his family is going to visit.
Do you think the frequent complaints from women about a gender imbalance in doing housework are because our culture has expectations that a woman should keep a nice home, but seems to have lower expectations for men?
I assume my partner’s mother will see a messy home as my responsibility. We all pay the price for archaic and sexist beliefs about housekeeping — but how do we get past it? Is it fair for me to tell his family that he didn’t want to help with cleaning, and I did not have time to do it all?
— Houseworked
Houseworked: The culture carries a lot of blame, as do parents for not rearing boys and girls to be equally attentive to housekeeping chores, as do the individual adults those boys and girls become for going along with these expectations instead of living in defiance of them — as does this essay, which sent me to my fainting couch (wapo.st/3Ex91tJ) — ha-ha, just kidding, I was furious, yet he was at least trying! — and I’m sure we could find all kinds of culprits.
But the needle/wet-towel pile isn’t moving until we insist that it move. For one, stop partnering with people who don’t carry their weight. If you get faked out somehow or they quit on you once partnered, then leave them for it. Say why.
Because you blew by those exit ramps, try this one: “Clean up your crap or I’m calling your family to cancel, and I will say why. I am not your freaking housekeeper.”
“If you want it clean, then you clean it” is so breathtakingly infantile and disrespectful that it warrants a breakup on its (de)merits alone. Plus, tidying for guests is baseline grace.
We won’t be done with outrageous domestic imbalances until people are done, done, done putting up with them, and answering to them — “tell his family”? wha? — and all the lame excuses churned out to defend them.
So. Are you?
Re: Cleaning: I cringed at “infantile.” I am the woman half of my marriage, and my husband was raised by a control-freak mother who tolerated nothing out of place. The man cannot relax unless everything is clean and in its place. He gets upset when the house, in a very reasonable state, is “out of order.” We are often asked: “Is your house always this clean?” It is very difficult at times to live with this behavior, and I often resort to thinking, “If you want it cleaner than this, then it is on you to manage it.” I don’t think my reaction is infantile or disrespectful, and putting the onus on him at some point is only fair.
— The Woman Half
The Woman Half: Different facts get different answers.
The issue isn’t the neat-freakiness, per se; it’s whether the person with an issue — whatever it may be — admits and manages the baggage, or stubbornly resists admitting there’s an issue. (That’s not uncommon for people raised in an anxious, perfectionist environment.) So the onus is on him to either treat the anxiety or carry the housekeeping burden of untreated anxiety. If your husband won’t take this responsibility, if instead he dumps the anxiety on you, then that’s what needs attention — not the specifics of who bleaches the house.
