Actually, housework is strongly generated gendered, the sexes have different preferences for what tasks they find more enjoyable, and ignoring that has real detrimental consequences for both individuals and relationships. The sexes are not interchangeable and trying to act like they are can leave you with a relationship closer to that of siblings than spouses.
From the article: Where did the myth originate about husbands who do laundry getting more sex ?The authors explain that the misleading media accounts are based on research that failed to take into account how couples divide household chores. While it may be true that men helping around the house increases sexual frequency—how men help makes a difference. Maintaining the car, mowing the lawn or shoveling snow seem to be more arousing than ironing or shopping for dust ruffles. According to the authors, among heterosexual couples, expressions of sexual difference create sexual desire. Gender-linked tasks are far more sexually charged than prominent egalitarians like Naomi Wolf and Sheryl Sandberg would have us believe.
Does this mean husbands can behave like slobs and let their wives do all the washing, cleaning, cooking, and shopping? Definitely not. The authors warn that a man who refuses to help out with core chores is likely to create strife and conflict in the marriage. And with so many women working full-time, what might be best for a couple’s romantic life may be unworkable and unfair in real life.” Each couple will have to work it out for themselves. Not an easy task. Egalitarian “peer marriages” where couples share all domestic tasks equally can be quite happy, report the authors—though they tend to take on a “sibling-like” tonality that “undermines sexual desire.” End Quote.
A new study suggests that the unequal division of household and childcare tasks within partnerships may reflect men’s and women’s actual preferences. For example, the study found that women enjoyed childcare tasks more than men did and also reported a greater desire for responsibility for these tasks compared to men. The findings were published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
Among both samples, men enjoyed tasks to do with outdoor labor and home maintenance more than women did. Women preferred cleaning, food prep, family scheduling, and home decorating. Moreover, this pattern mirrored the way the participants wanted these tasks to be divided — women tended to prefer men to take care of home maintenance tasks and men preferred women to take care of home decorating tasks.
The participants were also asked to indicate along a scale whether they would prefer to be the breadwinner within a partnership, the homemaker, or to share these roles equally. Across both samples, although 56% of men and 56% of women chose the egalitarian option, 36% of women chose a response closer toward homemaker and 35% of men chose a response closer toward breadwinner.
"the sexes have different preferences for what tasks they find more enjoyable." Way too general. Household tasks and small-farm tasks are roughly divided on the basis of physical strength, especially upper-body strength, where the sexes do distinctly differ. But (for one example) many men love to cook, find it creative, are better at it than their female partners, and one male karate black belt told me he loves to nurture people by feeding them. (Nope, he's neither gay nor "effeminate." He is Latino.) Despite different motivation structures and evolutionary backgrounds, both men and women have both hearts and minds. Much (not all) of the division of home maintenance tasks is arbitrary, traditional, status-based, and way too one-size-fits-all.
Statistical averages are by definition general, this does not make them any less relevant to determining which policies are appropriate for society and most often applicable to individuals. The People - Things dichotomy between males and females is among the strongest findings in psychology and clearly demonstrated even at the earliest ages where there is not yet any significant difference in strength between boys and girls. No, the typical division of household labor between tasks that involve caring for people and more mechanical tasks such as repair and maintenance is not remotely arbitrary or status based, it's founded firmly in which activities each sex tends to find comparatively more enjoyable.
The existence of isolated individual exceptions at the tail end of the distribution curves does not disprove the large average difference in distribution of preferences by sex. I have nothing but respect for men who are great with babies and enjoy cooking/cleaning/etc or women who do home renovations and yard work for fun, but there frankly aren't enough of either to go around to get a remotely even distribution of those tasks by sex when for the vast majority the stereotypes are genuinely accurate and biologically based. Pushing for both sexes to do roughly the same amount of each of these task types does nothing more than insist on both sexes spending more time doing tasks they like less and aren't necessarily as good at instead of letting them follow their preferences. It's inefficient and counterproductive for everyone. Whether applied to housework or STEM/HEAL professions, attempting to force men and women to do the same things in the same numbers is doomed to merely make many of them miserable for no good reason.
Who said trying to get the sexes to do the same things in equal numbers?? My point is turning statistical averages into norms compels those who can to conform and those who can’t to be regarded as freaks. Part of the division of labor is biologically rooted; part of it is historical and arbitrary as technology changes, freeing individuals to find what suits them. And news for you: nobody is biologically programmed to “like” doing dishes.
You nailed....maybe 60% of the issue? But you make the mistake many make when discussing gender roles, which is one size rarely fits all. Also, you miss the point that, while the 'Trad Wives' are surely influencers, they can still be "the submissive persona that they advocate for". And yes, the feminists were right that "women want to make something of themselves in the world" but then you suggest that raising responsible children does not something provide that impact or that satisfaction ("...beyond having children and raising them." ????). I've seen enough kids and adults that are absolute proof of the need for some seriously focused child rearing, whether it is the mom or dad doing the raising (best if it's both). I suggest that housewife IS an appealing position.....for some.
First of all- what goal / duty / accomplishment crowns a good citizen? Procreating 1. good citizens & 2. at a rate above replacement value- ergo marriage & minimum 3 law abiding offspring. The more the better the citizen, the less the more useless and maybe even toxic. Cultures go extinct with depopulation and when too much of their population loses values.
Whoever doesn't have these two goals- though they have liberty to do as they please- are basically second-class citizens.
Secondly- being of service to others / caretaking / improving their life or their fleeting moments- is very noble. And useful for career advancement- men also do this constantly at work for increased customer frequency & higher sales. There is NOTHING shameful about serving / caring for others- the more we do this the better citizens we are. Our country is like a sports team- the more we play as a team & fill supporting role positions, the more successful we'll be. And further- it should be more enjoyable to serve our own kids / relatives over complete strangers at work or cats / toy dogs at home.
Thirdly-what is the main purpose of a job? Not for the profession's sake, but for raising and providing a family.
And let's think of Submissive / Subservient more as Supportive of the Breadwinner. Men in charge do this too- even the manager & trainer care for / serve / support the boxer in the corner, down to the spit bucket.
Speaking of in charge- & today's favorite moniker: bossgirl. Who gets to be boss / have final say? Whoever puts up or earns the money, the oldest / most experienced, the ablest. Everyone can & should have a say in decision-making, BUT... the youngest / least experienced without funding skin in the game, who didn't manufacture the product, who isn't the strongest / can serve as protector- is logically the lowest in the totem pole.
And all of that is ok / as it should be- collectively men & women are wired different. The former are more interested in things & physical exertion, the latter in people / caretaking / decorating.
Whatever exceptions manifest individually are minor in number / shouldn't be cause for the chaos of inconveniencing the vast majority to guarantee accommodating the few stragglers. 80/20 Rule applies - the train can't be held waiting for everyone.
I mostly agree with you, though I do feel that many people have overcompensated in their rush to "equalize" everything. Though being a man or a woman is not better or worse, it is different, and many tasks do indeed line up better with the skills and physical characteristics of one more than the other. My thoughts on this, from about two years ago:
This is very well said, and should be entirely obvious. The only think I felt could be added is that the gender roles in the home mostly come into play when there are babies and tiny kids at home, and the only carers for them are the parents. Since dad can't do the breastfeeding, babies are not immediately aware that they are a separate person, mom usually picks up a lot more of the care and attempt to do a lot of the chores during spare moments at home. Once the routine is established, people tend to stick to it. If dad is working long hours it makes sense that he does less of the housework, but would take on more of the maintenance that would be dangerous for a small child to be close to. However, before a couple has kids, when there are other caring adults, as the babies grow (which is the vast majority of our lives), the gender roles make no sense. A lot of marriages could improve if men gave their wives more credit for the care of their young children and helped out in the kitchen at night. It is a time when you can talk to your spouse with one person cooking and the other doing dishes, nobody is stuck in the kitchen all evening, and everyone wakes up to a fresh start.
Thank you for this post. It's ironic how the feudal lords, before feudalism fell and peasant males had agency over the direction of their lives, told the peasant males what tasks they were suited for (which benefited the lords), working land they would never own and the lords extracting their welfare support from the labor, but many men and women believe women are preserved in amber, no changes or advancement allowed. Ther physical differences between men and women will keep some extremely physical (e.g. roofing) and aggressive work (e.g. combat and front-line law enforcement) predominately done by men, and childbearing and nursing always done by women. Then there's the general tendencies of each, but still, there's much variation. We aren't bees or ants with assigned roles. Then there's the fact that not all men and women want to be parents. As a woman, I'm done with wanna-be feudal lords and ladies telling me my tendencies, and they always talk about the "essential nature" of females, never males. But even that changes over time as we can observe with how in the 20th century, secretarial work was part of female "essential nature," yet some centuries earlier when secretaries were called scribes and it was high status, our brains were considered too empty to do the secretarial work. Some want to ignore variation as it's much simpler to have a rigid box for females and agency for males. My tendencies are towards working the land, mechanics and engineering and it didn't get in the way of motherhood. But growing up in the 60's and 70's I endured those trying to force me into the box they built for me as they tried to stomp out my tendencies. I'm almost finished engineering almost a mile of private road that was a one-car wide, eroded sand trail destroying cars that the males have been fighting over and sabotaging for over 40 years. I've very goal oriented and have no time for their hysterical emotions and aggression.
Actually, housework is strongly generated gendered, the sexes have different preferences for what tasks they find more enjoyable, and ignoring that has real detrimental consequences for both individuals and relationships. The sexes are not interchangeable and trying to act like they are can leave you with a relationship closer to that of siblings than spouses.
Guys Who Do Housework Get Less Sex https://share.google/vsPweJS6bevcGKono
From the article: Where did the myth originate about husbands who do laundry getting more sex ?The authors explain that the misleading media accounts are based on research that failed to take into account how couples divide household chores. While it may be true that men helping around the house increases sexual frequency—how men help makes a difference. Maintaining the car, mowing the lawn or shoveling snow seem to be more arousing than ironing or shopping for dust ruffles. According to the authors, among heterosexual couples, expressions of sexual difference create sexual desire. Gender-linked tasks are far more sexually charged than prominent egalitarians like Naomi Wolf and Sheryl Sandberg would have us believe.
Does this mean husbands can behave like slobs and let their wives do all the washing, cleaning, cooking, and shopping? Definitely not. The authors warn that a man who refuses to help out with core chores is likely to create strife and conflict in the marriage. And with so many women working full-time, what might be best for a couple’s romantic life may be unworkable and unfair in real life.” Each couple will have to work it out for themselves. Not an easy task. Egalitarian “peer marriages” where couples share all domestic tasks equally can be quite happy, report the authors—though they tend to take on a “sibling-like” tonality that “undermines sexual desire.” End Quote.
https://www.psypost.org/study-suggests-that-men-and-women-actually-prefer-not-to-split-household-and-childcare-tasks-equally/
A new study suggests that the unequal division of household and childcare tasks within partnerships may reflect men’s and women’s actual preferences. For example, the study found that women enjoyed childcare tasks more than men did and also reported a greater desire for responsibility for these tasks compared to men. The findings were published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
Among both samples, men enjoyed tasks to do with outdoor labor and home maintenance more than women did. Women preferred cleaning, food prep, family scheduling, and home decorating. Moreover, this pattern mirrored the way the participants wanted these tasks to be divided — women tended to prefer men to take care of home maintenance tasks and men preferred women to take care of home decorating tasks.
The participants were also asked to indicate along a scale whether they would prefer to be the breadwinner within a partnership, the homemaker, or to share these roles equally. Across both samples, although 56% of men and 56% of women chose the egalitarian option, 36% of women chose a response closer toward homemaker and 35% of men chose a response closer toward breadwinner.
"the sexes have different preferences for what tasks they find more enjoyable." Way too general. Household tasks and small-farm tasks are roughly divided on the basis of physical strength, especially upper-body strength, where the sexes do distinctly differ. But (for one example) many men love to cook, find it creative, are better at it than their female partners, and one male karate black belt told me he loves to nurture people by feeding them. (Nope, he's neither gay nor "effeminate." He is Latino.) Despite different motivation structures and evolutionary backgrounds, both men and women have both hearts and minds. Much (not all) of the division of home maintenance tasks is arbitrary, traditional, status-based, and way too one-size-fits-all.
Statistical averages are by definition general, this does not make them any less relevant to determining which policies are appropriate for society and most often applicable to individuals. The People - Things dichotomy between males and females is among the strongest findings in psychology and clearly demonstrated even at the earliest ages where there is not yet any significant difference in strength between boys and girls. No, the typical division of household labor between tasks that involve caring for people and more mechanical tasks such as repair and maintenance is not remotely arbitrary or status based, it's founded firmly in which activities each sex tends to find comparatively more enjoyable.
The existence of isolated individual exceptions at the tail end of the distribution curves does not disprove the large average difference in distribution of preferences by sex. I have nothing but respect for men who are great with babies and enjoy cooking/cleaning/etc or women who do home renovations and yard work for fun, but there frankly aren't enough of either to go around to get a remotely even distribution of those tasks by sex when for the vast majority the stereotypes are genuinely accurate and biologically based. Pushing for both sexes to do roughly the same amount of each of these task types does nothing more than insist on both sexes spending more time doing tasks they like less and aren't necessarily as good at instead of letting them follow their preferences. It's inefficient and counterproductive for everyone. Whether applied to housework or STEM/HEAL professions, attempting to force men and women to do the same things in the same numbers is doomed to merely make many of them miserable for no good reason.
Who said trying to get the sexes to do the same things in equal numbers?? My point is turning statistical averages into norms compels those who can to conform and those who can’t to be regarded as freaks. Part of the division of labor is biologically rooted; part of it is historical and arbitrary as technology changes, freeing individuals to find what suits them. And news for you: nobody is biologically programmed to “like” doing dishes.
You nailed....maybe 60% of the issue? But you make the mistake many make when discussing gender roles, which is one size rarely fits all. Also, you miss the point that, while the 'Trad Wives' are surely influencers, they can still be "the submissive persona that they advocate for". And yes, the feminists were right that "women want to make something of themselves in the world" but then you suggest that raising responsible children does not something provide that impact or that satisfaction ("...beyond having children and raising them." ????). I've seen enough kids and adults that are absolute proof of the need for some seriously focused child rearing, whether it is the mom or dad doing the raising (best if it's both). I suggest that housewife IS an appealing position.....for some.
NO.
First of all- what goal / duty / accomplishment crowns a good citizen? Procreating 1. good citizens & 2. at a rate above replacement value- ergo marriage & minimum 3 law abiding offspring. The more the better the citizen, the less the more useless and maybe even toxic. Cultures go extinct with depopulation and when too much of their population loses values.
Whoever doesn't have these two goals- though they have liberty to do as they please- are basically second-class citizens.
Secondly- being of service to others / caretaking / improving their life or their fleeting moments- is very noble. And useful for career advancement- men also do this constantly at work for increased customer frequency & higher sales. There is NOTHING shameful about serving / caring for others- the more we do this the better citizens we are. Our country is like a sports team- the more we play as a team & fill supporting role positions, the more successful we'll be. And further- it should be more enjoyable to serve our own kids / relatives over complete strangers at work or cats / toy dogs at home.
Thirdly-what is the main purpose of a job? Not for the profession's sake, but for raising and providing a family.
And let's think of Submissive / Subservient more as Supportive of the Breadwinner. Men in charge do this too- even the manager & trainer care for / serve / support the boxer in the corner, down to the spit bucket.
Speaking of in charge- & today's favorite moniker: bossgirl. Who gets to be boss / have final say? Whoever puts up or earns the money, the oldest / most experienced, the ablest. Everyone can & should have a say in decision-making, BUT... the youngest / least experienced without funding skin in the game, who didn't manufacture the product, who isn't the strongest / can serve as protector- is logically the lowest in the totem pole.
And all of that is ok / as it should be- collectively men & women are wired different. The former are more interested in things & physical exertion, the latter in people / caretaking / decorating.
Whatever exceptions manifest individually are minor in number / shouldn't be cause for the chaos of inconveniencing the vast majority to guarantee accommodating the few stragglers. 80/20 Rule applies - the train can't be held waiting for everyone.
I mostly agree with you, though I do feel that many people have overcompensated in their rush to "equalize" everything. Though being a man or a woman is not better or worse, it is different, and many tasks do indeed line up better with the skills and physical characteristics of one more than the other. My thoughts on this, from about two years ago:
https://www.wrongspeakpublishing.com/p/how-healthy-male-and-female-roles?utm_source=publication-search
This is very well said, and should be entirely obvious. The only think I felt could be added is that the gender roles in the home mostly come into play when there are babies and tiny kids at home, and the only carers for them are the parents. Since dad can't do the breastfeeding, babies are not immediately aware that they are a separate person, mom usually picks up a lot more of the care and attempt to do a lot of the chores during spare moments at home. Once the routine is established, people tend to stick to it. If dad is working long hours it makes sense that he does less of the housework, but would take on more of the maintenance that would be dangerous for a small child to be close to. However, before a couple has kids, when there are other caring adults, as the babies grow (which is the vast majority of our lives), the gender roles make no sense. A lot of marriages could improve if men gave their wives more credit for the care of their young children and helped out in the kitchen at night. It is a time when you can talk to your spouse with one person cooking and the other doing dishes, nobody is stuck in the kitchen all evening, and everyone wakes up to a fresh start.
Thank you for this post. It's ironic how the feudal lords, before feudalism fell and peasant males had agency over the direction of their lives, told the peasant males what tasks they were suited for (which benefited the lords), working land they would never own and the lords extracting their welfare support from the labor, but many men and women believe women are preserved in amber, no changes or advancement allowed. Ther physical differences between men and women will keep some extremely physical (e.g. roofing) and aggressive work (e.g. combat and front-line law enforcement) predominately done by men, and childbearing and nursing always done by women. Then there's the general tendencies of each, but still, there's much variation. We aren't bees or ants with assigned roles. Then there's the fact that not all men and women want to be parents. As a woman, I'm done with wanna-be feudal lords and ladies telling me my tendencies, and they always talk about the "essential nature" of females, never males. But even that changes over time as we can observe with how in the 20th century, secretarial work was part of female "essential nature," yet some centuries earlier when secretaries were called scribes and it was high status, our brains were considered too empty to do the secretarial work. Some want to ignore variation as it's much simpler to have a rigid box for females and agency for males. My tendencies are towards working the land, mechanics and engineering and it didn't get in the way of motherhood. But growing up in the 60's and 70's I endured those trying to force me into the box they built for me as they tried to stomp out my tendencies. I'm almost finished engineering almost a mile of private road that was a one-car wide, eroded sand trail destroying cars that the males have been fighting over and sabotaging for over 40 years. I've very goal oriented and have no time for their hysterical emotions and aggression.