Grauniad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/22/working-women-husbands-housework
Quote
'Useless stay-at-home men' a female myth
Working women who claim partners don't pull their weight do so to feel more feminine and in charge in the home
If there is one thing on which many working mothers agree, it is that their partners do not pull their weight on the domestic front.
But research to be published this week reveals that men are being unfairly accused and working women are advancing the myth of the "useless man" so they can feel more feminine. "Working women who provide the majority of the household's income to the family continue to articulate themselves as the ones who 'see' household messes and needs as a way to retain claims to an element of a traditional feminine identity," said Dr Rebecca Meisenbach, whose research paper, The Female Breadwinner, will be published this week in the journal Sex Roles.
But Meisenbach said the trend of the female high achiever and the male slacker is a tall story that women tell each other to compensate for the fact that most career-orientated women feel an "overwhelming sense of guilt" over their role and less of a mother and a wife.
"These women are struggling with the intersections of their status as the breadwinner and other gendered societal expectations," she said. "By highlighting stories of how men have to be told or asked to do specific chores in the home, these female breadwinners are making sure they still fit gender boundaries of a wife as someone who manages the home and children.
"By directing the housework done by their husbands, they maintain a sense of control over the traditionally feminine sphere of the home," she added. "This path of expressing control of and responsibility for both home and paid work may be essential for working mothers to manage competing discourses of ideal worker and intensive mothering."
Meisenbach questioned 15,000 female breadwinners on how they felt about their positions in the private domestic sphere and the public work sphere. She said that her theory was strengthened by the fact that the only women who did not express a strong sense of responsibility for the home were those who did not have children under 18.
"Women seemed simultaneously to be expressing control and a lack of control over housework," she said. "Working mothers face a number of gendered identity tensions, such as the contrast between pressures to live up to 'intensive mothering' norms and 'ideal worker' norms simultaneously." Although female breadwinners are increasingly common in industrialised societies and challenge traditional western gender norms, little research has focused on them.
Maria Shriver, the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, has launched one of the few research papers into the issue. Last year she was in charge of the release of A Woman's Nation, which she described as the first national project to "paint the portrait of the modern American woman" since her uncle, John F. Kennedy, gave the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt the same task in the 1960s.
"For the first time in our nation's history, women now represent half of all workers and are becoming the primary breadwinners in more families than ever before," Shriver said, calling it a "seismic shift" in the economic and cultural landscape of America.
The only British report to look explicitly at the issue was published in 2007 by the Future Foundation. The report found only 14% of UK homes had a female breadwinner, but the same study predicted that this number would double by 2030. The issue, however, is one that society is struggling with. Although gender expectations for family roles are nothing like as rigid as they once were, an Ipsos MORI poll conducted for the Observer last year found that 30% of all people – and 32% of young people – agreed with the statement: "The role of women in society is to be good mothers and wives".
"Housework represents an interesting juxtaposition of control," said Meisenbach. "On one level, women described retaining control over housework – they talked about their partners contributing to domestic chores but almost always in response to being asked or told to do the task by the wife.
"They all gendered their partners' behaviour with comments like 'He's a man, they don't see that there is a mess'. And 'My husband's a guy. He picks and chooses what chores he does'. But by gendering his behaviour, they were also gendering their own as women and mothers, instead of breadwinners."
Despite the anxiety that female breadwinners described, Meisenbach also found that most actively relished the control and power that their position gave them at home. "I didn't find female breadwinners deferred their power to their husbands at all," she said. "Over 60% said they enjoyed the control they experienced, explicitly noting how they were happily different from the '1950s housewife' or even from female friends within the traditional gender norms.
Deep down you all just want to do the laundry, ladies. We all know it. Now go make Thanksgiving dinner. :P
Also: Is "gendering" a verb?
Who gives a shit. I have a Salvadoran maid.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 24, 2009, 06:47:51 PMAlso: Is "gendering" a verb?
It has been for a number of years.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 24, 2009, 06:58:30 PM
Who gives a shit. I have a Salvadoran maid.
Yeah, a "maid", right Seedy.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 24, 2009, 06:58:30 PM
Who gives a shit. I have a Salvadoran maid.
Check your DVD collection. They'll steal you blind.
A man needs a maid.
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 24, 2009, 07:32:42 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 24, 2009, 06:58:30 PM
Who gives a shit. I have a Salvadoran maid.
Check your DVD collection. They'll steal you blind.
That, plus she'll fill up your Tivo with goddamned
novelas.
Or so I'm told.
Nothing wrong with Novelas!
Quote from: katmai on November 24, 2009, 11:29:50 PM
Nothing wrong with Novelas!
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It's not our fault if you men can't pull your own weight. <_<
Quote from: merithyn on November 28, 2009, 07:53:56 AM
It's not our fault if you men can't pull your own weight. <_<
Why should we?
Quote from: merithyn on November 28, 2009, 07:53:56 AM
It's not our fault if you men can't pull your own weight. <_<
So you're here to provide more anecdotal evidence... :lol:
;)
Fact: My father couldn't pull his own weight. Folding towels as a stay at home constituted a big chore in his mind.
I think there are a lot of lazy guys out there, despite what this says (EDIT: I should also mention that there are a lot of lazy girls out there too, though lazy guys are more noticable, probably due to social expectations of men providing and being ambitious, etc...). However, I also see that even women are quite conflicted in themselves of their 'role', a lot of the time.
I'm not conflicted; I'm fucking tired. Working 50+ hours a week and then having to come home to do housework is a bit trying at the best of times. Luckily, my husband easily does 50% of the work, if not more. Plus, we have slaves kids to help out, too.
That being said, my ex didn't do shit at home but sleep. That didn't change after I left him, either. His powder room wasn't cleaned for three years after I left. He finally cleaned it when he found his current wife and invited her over. :x
Quote from: merithyn on November 29, 2009, 12:19:00 AM, my ex didn't do shit at home but sleep. That didn't change after I left him, either. His powder room wasn't cleaned for three years after I left. He finally cleaned it when he found his current wife and invited her over. :x
Is he Korean?
As American as apple pie. His heritage, though several generations in the states, is Greek.
Quote from: merithyn on November 29, 2009, 12:30:52 AM
As American as apple pie.
You realise that apple pie is a German invention, right? :huh:
Quote from: Martinus on November 29, 2009, 05:59:31 AM
You realise that apple pie is a German invention, right? :huh:
And Americans were a British one. :(
Quote from: Martinus on November 29, 2009, 05:59:31 AM
Quote from: merithyn on November 29, 2009, 12:30:52 AM
As American as apple pie.
You realise that apple pie is a German invention, right? :huh:
Not sure where you come up with that. My understanding is that Apple Pie has been around for more than 700 years, but one of the few documented cases of a recipe was in England in the cookbook A Forme of Cury published by Samuel Pegge in the 1700s from a compilation by Richard II's cooks in 1390. (There was a huge difference, of course, in that sugar was rarely used so it wasn't sweet, and the crust wasn't meant to be eaten.) Prior to that, there's mention of an apple pie in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If there are earlier mentions in German texts, I don't know about them, but I think it's safe to say that the concept of an "apple pie" was not born in Germany.
The saying, "It's as American as Apple Pie," comes from Queen Victoria, asking her chef to make her an American Apple Pie, as the American version was sweeter. From there, it blossomed into common vernacular, until it became a common saying during World War II. Soldiers, when asked what they missed most about home would often say, "Baseball, Mom, and apple pie."
But good effort by you. :)
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:lol: