The privilege of ignoring housework

There's a must-read article in today's New York Times, "Wedded to Work, and in Dire Need of a Wife."

I only have a few minutes to blog because yes, I am in the middle of cleaning up the house before my cleaning person comes. And yes, I am very grateful to be able to hire someone to help me with the work, but it does not get me out of a lot of chores.

The interesting thing about "Wedded to Work, and in Dire Need of a Wife" is that it really shows the male privilege of being ignorant about the benefits of having a wife. A couple is interviewed separately. The wife's perspective is:

“Men lock the door and leave. Things could be a wreck or whatever and it doesn’t affect their other world,” Ms. Santana said. “I walk out and worry about the house looking nice, because the kids have play dates, etc. Someone has to worry about that, and it’s usually not the dad.”

While her husband sees things differently:

“We both do whatever we can do while we’re not sleeping,” he said. Regarding the earnings advantage of married men, he commented: “I can’t think of why that would be. I can’t think of what they’d be doing that would cause that.” He has noticed that some married colleagues bring a lunch from home, which he guesses has been packed by the wife, but he doubts that it would increase anyone’s paycheck.


Not only do men get out of doing an equal share of the housework and childcare, but they get to ignore the problem of housework and the benefit they are receiving by having their wives taking care of the issue. (This evokes the idea of white privilege, in which white people don't realize that they are running a race with the wind at their backs.)

I have written quite a bit about this issue of male privilege and it's a drumbeat I intend to keep sounding. Until men realize the benefit they are getting from "women's work," it will never COUNT, economically or socially.

How will this all play out as the Boomers age and "someone" has to take on the task of caregiving? What does it mean to know that we may spend more years taking care of our parents then we do taking care of our children? When "childfree" people, men and women, find themselves dealing with the "non-optional*" issue of parental care, will we come up with some real solutions that make caregiving count? Or will women be left holding the bag once again?

In my family the "kids" in their 60's are very grateful that the "parents" in their 80's and 90's have stable and caring life situations.

Back to housework for now. I know I've previously linked to Judy Syfers' classic 1971 article "Why I Want a Wife," but it's time for one more go-around. It used to make me laugh, but today it makes me want to cry!

And back to the New York Times article for a minute, when both husbands and wives fantasize about whom they could conjure up to be a "devted, trustworthy helper" to rescue them from the drudgery of household management, they both wish for....a Mommy.

Uh-oh.


(*Of course on a societal level, childrearing is also non-optional, but the fact that having children is framed as an individual choice has allowed U. S. society to get away without providing adequate consideration for the caregiving work that parents do.)