Gathering the data
Let's beat a dead topic...
Been talking to women lately. (Nothing new about that). But after the conversations here during the past week or so, I have been asking some of the women that I know what their experiences have been in regards to housework.
Here is the data so far:
I've talked to 6 women, all of whom are in relationships (some married, some living with partners, and some of the partners are female, some male). All of the women are white, highly educated (most with graduate degrees), middle to upper-middle class, and most have working partners who have college educations.
All of the women I talked to have had (some bigger than others) problems in their relationships because of housecleaning. In general, it seems that they want things cleaned more often, more deeply, or more regularly than their partners are willing to do voluntarily. The ones that can afford it, have (or continue to) hired outside help to solve the problem. The others do their best to either just tell the partner what they want done (hoping that they don't become nags) or swallow their desires for a clean house as often as possible. Two have children, and that does indeed, they claim, make the problem both worse and more important to solve.
It could be that my friends are like me. That actually makes some sense to me, so this little survey is probably not representative of anything fair and unbiased.
But in any case, I'm not the only woman out there are struggling with this. One friend even said that she felt every man she'd ever lived with or dated expected women (either her or their mothers) to do the cleaning if any cleaning was to be done.
It seems to me that these women (and me) want clean living spaces and our partners are less worried about it (some to the point of never cleaning without being asked, begged, or nagged).
Women: am I wrong?
Partners: why don't you want to live in a clean space? I'm going to take you to my mother's house and show you what living in a house that hasn't been cleaned in 20 years looks like. Maybe you'll change your minds. I took Tyler there once, she nearly vomited.
I mean, I know that we were (or most of us were) sloppy/dirty as teenagers and college students, but at some point, many of us grew up and decided that if we wanted to have dinner parties, if we wanted our house value to stay up, and if we wanted to enjoy sitting in our living rooms, we had to dust, sweep, mop, do dishes, vacuum, and clean the sinks, showers, tubs, and toilets.
Attack away.
I will keep asking questions. I'll keep you updated.
Been talking to women lately. (Nothing new about that). But after the conversations here during the past week or so, I have been asking some of the women that I know what their experiences have been in regards to housework.
Here is the data so far:
I've talked to 6 women, all of whom are in relationships (some married, some living with partners, and some of the partners are female, some male). All of the women are white, highly educated (most with graduate degrees), middle to upper-middle class, and most have working partners who have college educations.
All of the women I talked to have had (some bigger than others) problems in their relationships because of housecleaning. In general, it seems that they want things cleaned more often, more deeply, or more regularly than their partners are willing to do voluntarily. The ones that can afford it, have (or continue to) hired outside help to solve the problem. The others do their best to either just tell the partner what they want done (hoping that they don't become nags) or swallow their desires for a clean house as often as possible. Two have children, and that does indeed, they claim, make the problem both worse and more important to solve.
It could be that my friends are like me. That actually makes some sense to me, so this little survey is probably not representative of anything fair and unbiased.
But in any case, I'm not the only woman out there are struggling with this. One friend even said that she felt every man she'd ever lived with or dated expected women (either her or their mothers) to do the cleaning if any cleaning was to be done.
It seems to me that these women (and me) want clean living spaces and our partners are less worried about it (some to the point of never cleaning without being asked, begged, or nagged).
Women: am I wrong?
Partners: why don't you want to live in a clean space? I'm going to take you to my mother's house and show you what living in a house that hasn't been cleaned in 20 years looks like. Maybe you'll change your minds. I took Tyler there once, she nearly vomited.
I mean, I know that we were (or most of us were) sloppy/dirty as teenagers and college students, but at some point, many of us grew up and decided that if we wanted to have dinner parties, if we wanted our house value to stay up, and if we wanted to enjoy sitting in our living rooms, we had to dust, sweep, mop, do dishes, vacuum, and clean the sinks, showers, tubs, and toilets.
Attack away.
I will keep asking questions. I'll keep you updated.
posted by perrykat at
4:09 PM
6 Comments:
At the risk of sounding argumentative, I think the question sounds argumentative. Would you ask a woman who was not wearing red toenail polish why she wanted to look ugly?
Everyone wants to look nice, but nobody (not even Oprah) dresses to the nines everyday.
I still remember as a college student going back to high school to teach band, and all of the students boy and girl alike wearing shorts, T-shirts, and little or no makeup. Then coming back from college (where the attire was somewhat similar) to that school during session and seeing the same kids with the hair gel and aftershave and designer clothes.
What interested me was the different social rules about appearance, even when for many of these people they were hanging out around the same peers.
Well, that's a digression, apologies. But sometimes things are easier to get perspective on when we can identify similar patterns of behavior in different situations that don't directly involve us.
So again, everybody wants to look good but there is always more that you can do, and the standards (and even definitions) of what is attractive vary by social group. Similarly, everyone wants to live in a clean space, and no space is ever completely clean. (Also, though less importantly, people have different ideas of what clean means -- I'm thinking of people who keep plastic covers on sofas so that they will look nice.)
So if you replace the word "clean" with "cleaner", I think you'll be more likely to get to a satisfactory answer. And maybe if we work with a few examples it will be easier than generalizing (I can't remember the last time I dusted, but I really really like the sinks to be clean all the time).
That help any? (I'm actually really paranoid because whenever I think about a general question I immediately think of seven or eight different interpretations of the question, all with different resulting answers... and I imagine giving the right answer to the wrong question to everyone's confusion and frustration... so I'm hyper-anal about defining the question, and I'm paranoid that that comes across as argumentative -- this happens to me at work as well -- and right about the time I think everyone is on the same page about what is being discussed, everyone else has tired of the topic... anyway, I really hope this doesn't come across as argumentative.)
Okay, with those caveats out of the way...
First, let's make a distinction between neatness and cleanness. I don't think any of the things that you mentioned in the post refer to neatness (are the books put back on the bookshelf, are the shoes in the closet or wherever, etc.). So let's assume that none of this applies to neatness.
In the interest of trying to flush out some interesting specific examples, I'll do a little free association on cleaning up things in general, trying to touch on some of the examples you listed.
Dusting -- I have a feeling this may be one of the most different sensibilities. If I had any kind of allergies, I'd be all over the dusting thing. But I go to libraries, and I don't know anyone dusts those, and I don't think of them is being unpleasant places. When I've been sensitive to dust is when I have open flat surfaces (like a table) and the dust is visible. I want that cleaned, because the shine of the surface is pleasing to me. If I stack 80 odd things on that table, the same amount of dust may accumulate but I don't feel from a cleanliness perspective any need to wipe down the papers etc..
Strangely similar, I really don't like it when my car is dirty, I love love love it when I leave a car wash, but it always seems like the car is dirty again in about two days.
Newsflash: now this is just freaky, I'm sitting in my apartment alone at the computer watching the football game and dictating this post. And the TV channel just changed. I can see the remote control sitting on the couch. And the TV channel just changed. From ESPN to NBC. Weird...
Anyway, the car, so it occurs to me that if money were no object I'd take the car to the car wash twice a week. As it is, I usually wait to wash the car after I've done a big drive or I'm going to see someone I know. Seems a waste of money otherwise.
Dishes. I'm good and bad about this. What I'm bad about is bowls from cereal and drink glasses. Cereal bowls because I'm usually eating cereal only because I'm hungry and busy, and once all the cereal and milk is gone the bowl visibly looks empty. That seems to matter for some reason. And I may not take the bowl to the dishwasher until the end of the night. Drink glasses, I always like to have a drink nearby and so when I go to bed I may have a glass of water at the bedside and it may stay there. And when I wake up, I'm rushing off to work, and since it's just water it doesn't seem to be hurting anything. So I'm bad about that.
What I'm good about, is that anything with food on it (plates, pots, pans, anything with sauce on it whatever) gets rinsed and goes into the dishwasher almost immediately. If I'm cooking, I prefer to wash the pots and pans while the meal is being prepared so that there is the least amount to do afterwards. I can't stand dishes left in the sink... for some reason a sparkling clean sink matters.
Sweeping and mopping, I've tried my best to get into the habit of taking off shoes as soon as I walk in the door. The threshold for these is something visible or tactile. If I can see dirt on the carpet I want it vacuumed up. Anything sticky on the kitchen floor, anything I can feel on my feet (no shoes), I don't like and will clean up. But in the absence of that, and if there are no visitors coming over, I don't feel like it has been X days/weeks since this was cleaned and therefore it needs to be cleaned.
I happen to really like the bathroom countertops, faucets, mirrors to be cleaned. Maybe it's because I used to clean those with my mom when we did condominiums. I clean those very regularly but even when I'm living with Annette I never think "man why doesn't she clean that, it's dirty"... it's something I do to make it look nice because the nice-looking bathroom is appealing to me. It doesn't seem that it would be dirty or unpleasant if I didn't do that, it would just be like messed up hair or an unironed shirt.
...
To try to give some thoughtful responses to the motivations you mentioned, I think it is interesting (to me anyway) how those are grouped together. If I wanted to have a dinner party or sell the place I lived in, I assume that there would be some work I would need to do... just as if I were going to a dinner party I might put a bit more work into my appearance than usual. I wonder if I should infer that the level of not cleaning that you're talking about is such that it would be an obstacle to having dinner parties and would be detrimental to house values.
I'm working from the assumption that the partners of the women that you've spoken to, even if they don't dust their bookshelves, don't want to live in places that would make one throw up. On that basis, I think the crux of the question is the "enjoy sitting in our living rooms".
It would be fascinating to be able to hear the stream of consciousness of any of these couples sitting in their living room. That might tell us the answer. The closest I can contribute is to give the "leave that for later" side of the internal dialogue I have when trying to decide whether to clean something up in this apartment.
The excuses I give myself... excuses is the wrong word... the motivations I have for not cleaning up or straightening up a given whenever our something like this:
Well, to cite the immediately obvious, I could be cleaning up rather than posting to this blog. Posting to this blog seems more important, as is keeping me socially in touch with people I care about and keeping my mind from dying a faster-than-necessary death in the corporate world. After this should I clean up? I will mentally look at the list of things I have to do. How do I prioritize that list?
Maybe the answer is here somewhere: priorities.
My approval of how I'm living my life is judged based on whether I'm accomplishing my goals: doing enough blog posts, getting in contact with people, reading enough books, putting together a new mix CD or something else that requires some artistic exercise of the mind. Making progress learning the new technologies that will affect my work appraisal and future career prospects. Measurable, long-term things (even making a mix CD is measured on a kind of "am I continuing to push myself to stay awake artistically" trendline).
So when do I crush the cans? If I can do them all at once and then take them to the recycling center, then that effort is part of my maintaining karmic balance with a working for an oil company. If I have to go put on my shoes to crush the can I'm drinking right now, it's just a pain in the ass. So they can will sit on the counter (empty, rinsed).
Any useful insights there?
Well, the couple more thoughts before bed.
I have to think the social element of this is important somehow. Both in the sense of when people come over you want things to look nice, but even more so in the sense of social gender expectations.
What I mean is, if a friend is coming over I can't help but be aware that I am more sensitive to how things look if that friend is female rather than male. And a guy is generally more likely to have guys coming over.
To be fair to myself, I'm making an effort to channel stereotypical men. There are things that I am more sensitive to than Annette and vice versa, and I certainly know exceptions to the gender stereotype (just as you cited your mom's place).
But I do think there is something to the stereotype. And the part that troubles me is that it seems like the question of whether women are more sensitive/place a higher priority on the cleanliness of the household is a totally separate question from whether men freeload off women in this regard.
What I mean is, to illustrate with the first counter example it comes to mind, stereotypically men want sex more often than women, place higher priority on it. There are exceptions, but there is also a stereotype and there is something to it. It seems to me you could reverse the gender roles in the housecleaning example and probably make a very similar argument.
If such an argument were made, and the question were asked "partners,why don't you want to have sex with your men?" it would be an unfair question.
So in my mind the two questions are:
1) whether housecleaning or sex or which way around the toilet roll should hang, how strong is the gender correlation, and what is its causation?
2) when two people have different priorities for whatever reason, what is the best way (for the individuals and the relationship) to deal with that?
And I have to harp on this one thing, because it isn't clear to me whether the women you talk to make this distinction:
There are things that I cleanup both for myself and Annette, because I know they are things that matter more to me. I know the reverse is also true. And it makes all the difference in the world to me whether I'm doing the cleanup because I want to, because I'm the one feeling the benefit from the cleaning being done, versus feeling that this was in some way expected of me, that it was my job.
so taking the statement "expected women... to do the cleaning at any cleaning was to be done", it isn't clear to me whether this guy just didn't care about cleaning (and ethically neutral position) or expected cleaning to be done but done by someone else (obviously ethically challenged).
===================
Aside: I wish we all had the chance to hang out and talk in person. I'm still in the "bored to tears" phase of Houston, at least during the week. Thanks for letting me brain dump into your comments section, Katherine.
oh, and one more
(I promise I'll completely abstain from commenting on your next post)
When I am at work I have this long list of things that I want to do when I get home, and I'm really motivated to do them. I actually have the list up on my Google home page, and I can't wait to get home.
But while I'm at work I'm also pushing myself literally as hard as I can to do the best job I can.
And when I get home, I'm exhausted. It's not that I don't still want to do those things, because I know tomorrow I'll be at work and I'll be irritated that I didn't get them done.
But it's just from a willpower standpoint, I've used up almost all of my willpower at the office. It's like when you're trying to study for an exam the next day, but you're sleepy, and you think if you just relax a bit, maybe just close your eyes and sit there, you'll get a second wind.
Most of my housecleaning comes on the rare second winds.
Here's where the gender element may come in. When Annette is here, I have learned that I cannot give 100% at the office, because I won't have enough to give to her when I get home. Both in terms of attention and patience, and having the energy to keep the place clean. I've learned that the hard way, but I have learned it. You can have anything, but you can't have everything.
And maybe this is the point in some way... for all the talk about cleaning up when people are coming over, when I'm living with someone there is always someone over. So even if I have soda cans all over the kitchen, they wouldn't be there if Annette was here.
Not because it matters to me, but because it would matter to her.
Okay, off to bed!
Jebbo,
I think you finally hit on it in the last comment here, and I think this is exactly the core problem for me. If I live with someone, if I want to maintain a relationship with someone, I have to have energy for that. So, I keep some in reserve for the relationship. Some of that reserve goes toward cleaning up (at least) after myself so that my partner doesn't have to live in my filth, and sometimes some energy goes into cleaning up after him. The problem for me is, I need that energy outflow to be reciprocated by my partner and sometimes it isn’t. And I do think that this energy allocation problem is (at least partly) found in the gender divide. My partner, like you, seems to give most of his energy to the office. Many of the men I know have also been taught and have decided that work is the "thing" that gets their energy. I don't like that men have been taught this. I don't want anyone (male or female) to believe that work is everything that there is. If I ever have a boy child, I will try not to teach him this. It is just a basic worldview that I disagree with. Of course, we might call that into question since I married someone who thinks this way. My only defense to that is that when I met (and fell in love with him, pesky little love thing), he was broke, living in an apartment with no furniture, had no car, and didn't seem to have the killer work ethic I now see. Still, I should have looked closer, I guess.
As to your question about the specific woman in my comment, I will have to ask her, but my sense is that this man she described both doesn't care about cleaning and continues to live with woman after woman who will do the cleaning for him: he never lives alone, which leads the woman who spoke to me into believing he is (maybe subconsciously) searching out women to do that work for him. But, I can't be certain. I'll ask.
Oh, and yes, I mean clean (not neatness). A cleaning service only does the stuff I mentioned (no clothes, no dishes, no picking up papers or even straightening of junk). To have that done, one has to hire a real "housekeeper," although my nanny friend tells me that part of her job is to straighten up after the kids. So, no matter who cleans, we all have to straighten (and I'll admit I am less concerned about neatness than my partner is – if it is in a drawer or closet, I’m fine; he wants pantries and closets straight). That is probably a whole other topic.
I do think that we all have different expectations and desires for our lives. I don't believe that all women are the same that all households have the exact same issues, but it is interesting to me how many patterns I see emerging in the conversations that I have. Like I mentioned earlier, I do wonder if I have chosen women friends who are much like me and so their answers are closer to my own because of their similarities to me rather than to "all women." It could also be true that we women like to complain to each other – I don’t know.
In the end, I'm keeping my little mouth shut this week about what I see as "needing to be cleaned" and I'm not doing the cleaning myself. Both are VERY difficult for me. Through all of this I am seeing some stuff about me:
I want carpet and cloth furniture vacuumed, hardwoods and title should be swept and mopped, the sheets changed, and furniture dusted once per week (this might be because of the animal in my home, but said animal exists, so he must be accounted for). At two weeks, a toilet and shower visibly show a ring, so they should be cleaned at least every other week along with the sinks. Kitchen countertops should be cleaned off (if one cooks) daily. But, I live in the real world. If all of these are done twice each month, I’m good. I’m waiting to see where my partner’s timetables fall, then we can discuss how to make it work.
In the end, it is always personal, and therefore no one can solve it except me and my partner.
On the other hand, I can’t help but think about the gender divide. As a man that I would consider “feminist” you have presented some fairly good points. I keep wondering what the sexist men would say. My father, for one, is a better housekeeper than either his present or past wife. I can just hear Richard saying to me at Shoney’s, “KP put that broom down; nothing turns me on more than a woman sweeping.”
Sometimes I miss Richard.
So maybe there is a stronger achievement component in masculine culture? And I can't help but wonder how many "great" people (Einstein,etc) fit the description of absent-minded genius or were otherwise mentally somewhere else. Does masculine self-image depend more on being 'great' rather than ordinarily happy? Maybe something to do w/ competitiveness?
In my experience guys seem more the gambling types that need to win big to be happy. And I definitely know guys who are very happy to take advantage of some ladies' desire to mother them, and think they can ride that horse forever. Unfortunately I can't speak well for them.
Plus, my example is poor, as l'm choosing to live a very coollege lifestyle (tiny apt, no nice furniture) so i can be more in line w/ A. and we can save for nice stuff later. Nice stuff demands more care,so i don't know how j would rreact to living in a nice space.
I too am more bothered by mess and clutter; drives me nuts.
i think you would like the greys anatomy premiere yesterday.
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