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The traditional family way, when all housework was the prerogative of women, is no longer so popular. In families where both partners earn, it becomes necessary to share household chores equally. But for many men, such changes often meet with resistance.
Housework is often quite comparable in volume to office work. But it is less honorable and noticeable, including because they do not pay for it. Money is the easiest way to evaluate the value and quality of what you have done. The reverse logic also works: if some kind of work does not bring money, then it is not quoted.
Why, then, when a woman becomes an equal partner of a man in the financial provision of the family, he most often still does not take on half of the housework?
Harvard conducted a survey in which 6070 couples living together took part. They were asked what kind of housework they do, were asked to state their income and how they manage finances with their partner. The results showed that many men used money as an argument to get rid of housework: either they gave their wages to women, allowing them to completely dispose of them, or vice versa they withheld the money.
When a woman pays bills from her own wallet, it can make a man do the dishes more often.
If women tried to discuss the state of affairs, such negotiations rarely led to anything, even if the partners earned the same money.
The picture was strikingly different only in those families where women had their own savings. A study found that when a woman pays bills out of her own wallet, it can motivate a man to wash dishes more often.
Of course, all this may seem too mercantile to many. I would like to believe that a confidential conversation, honest agreements and mutual love can lead to equality and a reasonable distribution of responsibilities in a couple.
Simon Oakes, author of Marrying for Food, Sex and Laundry, offers his own ways to motivate your partner to do more housework. Some life hacks may be shown as manipulative, but the author is convinced that there are simply no other effective ways.
1. Ask your partner to do “man’s work”
This includes anything that involves risk and danger (climbing stairs to clean gutters), requires tools (trimming bushes with a chainsaw), or has an obvious, tangible result (nailing down shelves). Let the man do the hard work—literally and figuratively—and you do the rest.
2. The shutters
Have you spread out the responsibilities but are still doing more? Turn routine homework into an intellectual task. Ask a man to choose a new vacuum cleaner – with three speeds and five suction levels.
3. If you feel that a man does not appreciate your work, show him what you have done.
Oakes says that men don’t underestimate women’s work, they often just don’t notice it. “Just casually pay attention to your partner about what they did around the house,” advises Oakes, “and over time, he will begin to notice changes.”
4. If he still doesn’t appreciate your work, fight.
“It may take time, but sooner or later he will start to notice that the socks are sticking to the kitchen floor and the underwear drawer is empty,” explains Oakes. (This step is only recommended for those who can stand the sight of dirty dishes piled up in the sink and piles of unironed items.)
5. Do a few things together
Oakes offers to work together in the garden, in the country. “There’s sure to be a lot of work to do together, and it’s also not stressful.”
These tips, like Simon Oakes’s entire book, are often called chauvinistic by critics and readers. Indeed, the idea that a man should be tricked into doing a “women’s” job is somewhat old-fashioned.
In the book Manifesto, human rights activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives her friend advice on how to raise her daughter as a feminist. The author writes: “Recently, it was discussed on Nigerian social media that wives are required to cook for husbands. It’s so sad that we still take cooking skills as a test of a woman’s suitability for marriage.”
Maybe if men recognized the need for equality and understood the feminist agenda, this would generally negate the need to argue about who and how much should do housework. And this issue would be resolved in each individual family without regard to traditions, but based on the desires and capabilities of specific people.