It’s like these whiners have never heard of boarding school. Okay, I kid, I kid. But, seriously, who obsesses over gender roles in parenting anymore? Do you split all your parenting duties equally? Or do you work together to get things done without worrying whether or not it’s men’s work or women’s work? If your man is getting away with not cooking or shopping or doing laundry, you’re doing it wrong. I’ve seen every kind of parenting style. None of them work. Yet, most of them are adequate.
One thing we definitely need is more time off so we can focus on our families and get chores done.
What do you think?
I am not saying a word until I hear from cabin girl š
As I was about to say, more importantly, what does Cabin Girl think?
Way back in 1965 in a lab class, I spilled some kind of acid all over my dress, it was destroyed and I needed to go home to change clothes. I’m sure the school called my mother to fetch me.
To my surprise, it was my father who showed up and took me home. These small shocks to our expectations are our lessons about the ways of the world, no matter what we learn in school.
Most of my childhood, my Dad commuted to NYC and got home around 7 O’Clock. My mom worked the whole time but she was home before my school ended. Basically, my Dad was Don Draper without all the fake identity, adultery, and alcoholism.
If your man is getting away with not cooking or shopping or doing laundry, you’re doing it wrong.
AGREE
I’ve seen every kind of parenting style. None of them work. Yet, most of them are adequate.
AGREE + FUNNY!
One thing we definitely need is more time off so we can focus on our families and get chores done.
OH DEAR GOD YES
We DO need more time off for family, but these people are fucking whiners. Oh, poor lawyer and tv newscaster, their burden.
Try being low income and distance parenting. Fucking asshole.
they could at least afford a fucking nanny or au pair to help out if they wanted to.
I don’t have children; but, from what I have seen by my friends and family with children, I agree with all those comments.
We do what we are best at. In my case, earning a paycheck. In her case, homemaking. We used to split cooking when she was working and I wasn’t. I cooked the evening meal for me and the grandkids. She worked in the evening. When she cooked, she insisted of doing everything. I drafted the kids into helping which they enjoyed very much except for the boy who was stuck cleaning up (I rotated this KP duty). We did a gender reversal in the good cop/bad cop game. I make a much better good cop and she makes a much better bad cop. Now, she won’t even let me make a sandwich. Too much “mess”.
I’d love to do laundry. I did it at school and in the Air Force, but she takes a proprietary interest in “her” machines. I’m afraid that I might loss a limb messing with them.
Regarding my own youth, my father worked the night shift and I only saw him on weekends when we almost always had a good time together. Perhaps that’s why I make a better “good cop” and readily cede discipline to my wife.
I’ve been married for 31 years and have three sons, 25, 23, and 19. My husband and I have always shared chores and sometimes we’ve alternated our responsibilities. During heavy work periods or weeks with extra hours, the other would pick up the slack.
When the boys came along, my husband completely stepped up. He changed their diapers, fed them, rocked them and wiped runny noses. There were never instances where he “babysat”; he was just being a Dad.
Sure, there are times when it’s not fifty/fifty. Who cares? Stuff gets done and at some point the other person will make up for it.
I made sure our sons all had chores, too. They all washed dishes and did their laundry, and we rotated bathroom cleanings. After the boys had been doing dishes for a few months, I would go ahead and wash them from time to time. Then they’d say, “Thanks for doing the dishes, Mom”. That made me feel pretty good.
Your last paragraph brought a smile to my face. And what a smart way to teach them to not take everything you did for granted.
I made sure our sons all had chores, too. They all washed dishes and did their laundry, and we rotated bathroom cleanings. After the boys had been doing dishes for a few months, I would go ahead and wash them from time to time. Then they’d say, “Thanks for doing the dishes, Mom”. That made me feel pretty good.
You are a genius.
I am raising three boys myself–just a little behind yours in age. They all know how to do laundry, perform chores like cleaning the bathroom (damn but that is the worst job in a house full of boys!), wash the dishes, and treat women with respect. I see my oldest with his girlfriend and it makes me so happy to see the way he treats her with kindness, encourages her to pursue her interests, and is able to have his own interests as well.
I’ve made a ton of mistakes and definitely wish I could go back and do some things differently but overall my boys are turning out to be good men.
The bathroom thing though–oh my.
Two major things have changed from the ’50s nuclear family, mom stays at home, dad goes to work ideal. (Three if you count that the nuclear two-parent family itself is a minority of family arrangements these days – it’s just as often one or three or four – and four if you count all the work-at-home options now – but I digress.)
One thing that’s changed is societal norms around gender roles. The other thing that’s changed is that it now takes two incomes to support most families. Both parents may work, but it still takes the same amount of work, if not more, to raise kids.
Guess which development adds to the family’s overall workload? Hint: it’s not the one that gets a certain type of man all panicked about doing girly work. Yet not only is the decline of the middle class (which forces many two-parent households into both of them working, whether they want that arrangement or not) not mentioned in this article, it focuses on an upper-income family whining about their own choices instead. Boo fucking hoo.
I would be inclined to cut them some slack. Parenting is HARD no matter how much you love your kids. If you haven’t whined about it now and then, no matter what your personal “choices”, you aren’t human.
Of course it is. But upper-income parents can choose whether both parents should work or one should stay at home or work from home, or whether to hire a nanny or maid to help at home, and so on. Those choices are not appreciably more difficult than they’ve ever been.
Most of us, in this era of the collapsing middle class, don’t have those choices, and don’t have anywhere near the economic cushion our parents and grandparents had. It’s been looted by the kinds of people featured, here and perpetually, in these sorts of WaPo and NYT stories.
I usually do the laundry and bake a couple of times a week. madame boran does most of the cooking. We do our grocery shopping together, even bringing along the now 14 year old b2 boy. (who harasses me while we walk the aisles)
I read an article that quoted Shakespeare on Teenage boys, “They are only good for fighting, getting wenches with child, and aggravating the ancientry.” I read that to my teenage grandson and he said indignantly, “I don’t fight!”. When I asked, “How about aggravating the ancientry?”, he got an evil grin and said,”That’s how I get my fun.”
I’m not a parent, but I can’t see out arrangement would change much if we had a kid. So she does all the cooking since she 1) likes to cook 2) is better at it than I am by far. We do shopping together and I do the dishes and laundry.
Men’s work is killing spiders. Other than that, I’m doing laundry, I’m doing dishes, and I’m doing poopy diapers.
“Men’s work.” “Women’s work.” Why don’t you ask me who brings the scythe to the blacksmith?
Joe, by any chance are you of the post-Free To Be You and Me generation?
We had 3 kids, now 26, 22, 22. When they were little, we had an au pair – with the twins and my wife working, it was a good approach. We had an au pair room on the 3rd floor – the house was from 1922, and there was a bathroom and everything up there. Great house in Cleveland Hts, OH.
My wife worked 1 hr from home, and i was 10 minutes away. So, I did all the cooking. She did the laundry. Nobody did any cleaning much. We did throw stuff out occasionally.
When we move to St Louis, I did most of the cooking, she stayed with laundry and bills. I also did the house-fixing in both places, all the wine- and beer-making, and most of the playing with the kids. We split on homework in both places.
Yeah, that article is moronic beyond belief. I enjoyed my parenthood. We played with the kids. We went on trips. We went to museums. We took out lots of books fromt he library. I coached soccer for all three.
What we do not have today is adult friends. We did nothing except the kids for 20 years, plus moved twice. So, we have no circle of friends. We have some friends at our new church in SD.
“If your man is getting away with not cooking or shopping or doing laundry, you’re doing it wrong.”
I call b.s., sorry. As long as everyone is happy and the kids are growing up healthy, well-adjusted and strong, I don’t give a shit what your family arrangement is, it’s really nobody’s business. There doesn’t have to be a man in the arrangement at all. Or there could be two, or three, and one of them deals only with bedtime stories and the dessert tray. Who cares?
All this baloney about how other people are supposed to live their lives is pretty fucking tiresome.
Great discussion threads here! Parents need to talk about different ways of doing this job. Hell, it’s more than a job, it’s a truly life-changing thing to manage, no avoiding that. But this discourse is inherent to being a practical progressive. We are fact-based. We listen to different perspectives and adjust our own behavior and choices. We are the first to accept variations of parenting that conservatives are too hesitant to accept. I just don’t get how anyone today could say that what’s important is “one man and one woman and the men should do manly things and the mother should…” well, be subservient, really. Where are the moral foundations aligned? To me, I rank the welfare of the kid, the happiness of the parents and kids, the benefit to society, in that order. I hate to throw insults at conservatives, but how can they justify their moral convictions that are often bigoted and extremely religious?? Gender roles don’t even make my list, but we still have opposition to gay marriage, we still don’t have (paid) time off for fathers with newborns, we have employers deciding about contraceptives being in health insurance plans, and we still have vast amounts of the population who are judgmental of things that have nothing to do with the welfare of the child, the happiness of that family, and the ways they contribute to and experience life. Backward.
Those kids are the most important job you will ever do.
My husband and I split everything pretty much 50/50, including child-rearing for our now-teenager. But we don’t each do 50% of each chore: I do around 90% of the grocery shopping and probably 80% of the cooking. He does 100% of the lawn and garden maintenance.
The thing is, he loves gardening and doesn’t mind yard work, whereas I hate those chores. I don’t mind shopping a bit, whereas he hates that. We break it down in ways that accommodate our personal preferences, but I’d estimate it works out to around 50/50 overall.