All is (Un)Fair in Love and Cleaning

Recently an Alternet article about the inequalities of housework between family members—mainly, between wives and their husbands—sparked a lot of controversy on the web. None of the data there surprised me; I had read an article a while back about how, after she gets married, the average woman acquires an entire extra two weeks of work every year—unpaid work, that is, and an entire two weeks, not two “work weeks”—just from cleaning up after her husband. This doesn’t include any children that they may have.

This article went on to discuss how even when women work they typically do twice as much housework as men do, and the work that men do complete—such as mowing the lawn or getting the car repaired—occur much less often than the daily household work that women normally do. The author also mentioned that men benefit more than women in relationships, saying that men who are married have happier lives, get sick less, live longer, and are less likely to need therapy—while married women, on the other hand, are more likely to need therapy, medical treatments and are less likely to be happy.

With all of this considered, I am left with questions that some may find politically incorrect—but I just wonder, what is the situation in gay and lesbian households? Is the distribution of labor more even? Perhaps it’s every person for him or herself, and everyone sort of just cleans up after themselves (a dream come true…). If you are a member of such a household, I’d love to hear what it’s like.

I’d also like to know if there are other women out there tearing their hair out trying to get the whole house to pitch in. We’ve tried chore charts in our home. We’ve tried alternating jobs. They just don’t seem to work. Since I work from home it’s sort of assumed that I’ll just simultaneously juggle cleaning and child caretaking while I work. And some of it’s true—one of the reasons I work from home is so I can be here with our daughter and not resort to putting her in daycare.

That said, it’s not my job to pick up dirty boxers off the floor, or to scrape chili off the wall where someone opened a can for lunch, let it explode and just went on with their day. And yet I find myself doing these things.

Look, I get it if you made the decision to be a homemaker, you talked it through with your spouse, and you consider it your job to keep your home tidy and running smoothly. That’s one thing. It’s another to have to wipe off someone’s toothpaste because they couldn’t aim properly into the sink, or to pick up hobby materials or tools that they left out after using them. Those are things you teach a child to take care of—a grown person should be just as capable!

And when you have a regular job of your own to contend with, it all just seems to add insult to injury.