Great article about the kinds of mental load involved, for women, in domestic labour.
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Great article about the kinds of mental load involved, for women, in domestic labour.
Sadly, this is old news.
Twenty years ago I completed a PhD thesis that unpacked & examined these aspects of domestic life.
By interviewing parents & kids separately, asking the same open ended questions - ‘what gets done, who does what, is it fair, & how do you think it should be?’, which I ran through 3 times, first for domestic tasks, then for the work of identifying what needs to be done & making sure it happens, then for noticing how everyone is feeling & keeping every happy in the process - then taking the family as my unit of analysis, I showed that men & kids were unaware of much of the physical & almost all of the intangible work women did in their homes. Boys & men thought everything was fine. Girls did not want to assume, as adults, the domestic servant role they saw their mothers placed in but had no strategies to achieve this beyond ‘I’ll just tell them’.
There was a hierarchy of work in these families in which men’s work & leisure time had highest priority, then kids’ schooling & leisure, then domestic work of all kinds. Womens paid work & leisure was lowest priority of all.
The families that lived without conflict were those in which the hierarchy of work was not disputed. Where women sought to disrupt the hierarchy there was conflict - which became another part of the domestic load she was expected to manage.
My findings showed that contrary to popular narratives of ‘progress’, this dynamic was not likely to change until men as well as women recognise the dynamic & choose to shift it.
This argument was not popular.
Twenty years later, here we are.
I wish I had been wrong.
#DomesticLabour #EmotionWork #MentalLoad #sociology #research #women #mothers
Women carry bulk of the mental load, but men are active in one stage
While research has found mothers do more in all four stages of cognitive labour, there was one stage where men were more active than others.
(www.abc.net.au)
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Great article about the kinds of mental load involved, for women, in domestic labour.
Sadly, this is old news.
Twenty years ago I completed a PhD thesis that unpacked & examined these aspects of domestic life.
By interviewing parents & kids separately, asking the same open ended questions - ‘what gets done, who does what, is it fair, & how do you think it should be?’, which I ran through 3 times, first for domestic tasks, then for the work of identifying what needs to be done & making sure it happens, then for noticing how everyone is feeling & keeping every happy in the process - then taking the family as my unit of analysis, I showed that men & kids were unaware of much of the physical & almost all of the intangible work women did in their homes. Boys & men thought everything was fine. Girls did not want to assume, as adults, the domestic servant role they saw their mothers placed in but had no strategies to achieve this beyond ‘I’ll just tell them’.
There was a hierarchy of work in these families in which men’s work & leisure time had highest priority, then kids’ schooling & leisure, then domestic work of all kinds. Womens paid work & leisure was lowest priority of all.
The families that lived without conflict were those in which the hierarchy of work was not disputed. Where women sought to disrupt the hierarchy there was conflict - which became another part of the domestic load she was expected to manage.
My findings showed that contrary to popular narratives of ‘progress’, this dynamic was not likely to change until men as well as women recognise the dynamic & choose to shift it.
This argument was not popular.
Twenty years later, here we are.
I wish I had been wrong.
#DomesticLabour #EmotionWork #MentalLoad #sociology #research #women #mothers
Women carry bulk of the mental load, but men are active in one stage
While research has found mothers do more in all four stages of cognitive labour, there was one stage where men were more active than others.
(www.abc.net.au)
This right here:
"If I was someone's secretary — this [work] is exactly what I am paid to do."My spouse appreciates my efforts, but when it comes to the world outside our household, my decades of unpaid labor mean nothing because I don't earn a paycheck. It has no value because I can't put it on a resume as a skill or brandish it as an accomplishment.
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Great article about the kinds of mental load involved, for women, in domestic labour.
Sadly, this is old news.
Twenty years ago I completed a PhD thesis that unpacked & examined these aspects of domestic life.
By interviewing parents & kids separately, asking the same open ended questions - ‘what gets done, who does what, is it fair, & how do you think it should be?’, which I ran through 3 times, first for domestic tasks, then for the work of identifying what needs to be done & making sure it happens, then for noticing how everyone is feeling & keeping every happy in the process - then taking the family as my unit of analysis, I showed that men & kids were unaware of much of the physical & almost all of the intangible work women did in their homes. Boys & men thought everything was fine. Girls did not want to assume, as adults, the domestic servant role they saw their mothers placed in but had no strategies to achieve this beyond ‘I’ll just tell them’.
There was a hierarchy of work in these families in which men’s work & leisure time had highest priority, then kids’ schooling & leisure, then domestic work of all kinds. Womens paid work & leisure was lowest priority of all.
The families that lived without conflict were those in which the hierarchy of work was not disputed. Where women sought to disrupt the hierarchy there was conflict - which became another part of the domestic load she was expected to manage.
My findings showed that contrary to popular narratives of ‘progress’, this dynamic was not likely to change until men as well as women recognise the dynamic & choose to shift it.
This argument was not popular.
Twenty years later, here we are.
I wish I had been wrong.
#DomesticLabour #EmotionWork #MentalLoad #sociology #research #women #mothers
Women carry bulk of the mental load, but men are active in one stage
While research has found mothers do more in all four stages of cognitive labour, there was one stage where men were more active than others.
(www.abc.net.au)
@26pglt your summary points are completely spot on. And I’ve learned that IF I specifically inform the adult male here as to what needs to be done, the answer is “It’s not that bad”. Apparently I am the only one who will pick up a piece of trash from the floor, or clean the toilet, Change a lightbulb, put TP on the dispenser, clean the sink, or use glass cleaner on mirrors.
Also related:The worst insult is daily seeing all the dishes that must be washed still in the sink at 6 am. Even when I specifically ask for the adult son to do them or do them in the dishwasher overnight. It’s just a soul-killing grind over and over for me. And so upsetting that I can’t even just try to ignore them because I need to use the sinks to make my coffee right away.
I’ve tried the strategy of not giving in to do them when promised they will be done. Turns out every piece of silverware and most dinnerware can be dirty and the man here will just ignore the mess. “There is no bottom” is a phrase to describe when a man thinks we need to get the dishes done. I have not yet tried the strategy of homicide.
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@26pglt your summary points are completely spot on. And I’ve learned that IF I specifically inform the adult male here as to what needs to be done, the answer is “It’s not that bad”. Apparently I am the only one who will pick up a piece of trash from the floor, or clean the toilet, Change a lightbulb, put TP on the dispenser, clean the sink, or use glass cleaner on mirrors.
Also related:The worst insult is daily seeing all the dishes that must be washed still in the sink at 6 am. Even when I specifically ask for the adult son to do them or do them in the dishwasher overnight. It’s just a soul-killing grind over and over for me. And so upsetting that I can’t even just try to ignore them because I need to use the sinks to make my coffee right away.
I’ve tried the strategy of not giving in to do them when promised they will be done. Turns out every piece of silverware and most dinnerware can be dirty and the man here will just ignore the mess. “There is no bottom” is a phrase to describe when a man thinks we need to get the dishes done. I have not yet tried the strategy of homicide.
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@26pglt your summary points are completely spot on. And I’ve learned that IF I specifically inform the adult male here as to what needs to be done, the answer is “It’s not that bad”. Apparently I am the only one who will pick up a piece of trash from the floor, or clean the toilet, Change a lightbulb, put TP on the dispenser, clean the sink, or use glass cleaner on mirrors.
Also related:The worst insult is daily seeing all the dishes that must be washed still in the sink at 6 am. Even when I specifically ask for the adult son to do them or do them in the dishwasher overnight. It’s just a soul-killing grind over and over for me. And so upsetting that I can’t even just try to ignore them because I need to use the sinks to make my coffee right away.
I’ve tried the strategy of not giving in to do them when promised they will be done. Turns out every piece of silverware and most dinnerware can be dirty and the man here will just ignore the mess. “There is no bottom” is a phrase to describe when a man thinks we need to get the dishes done. I have not yet tried the strategy of homicide.
@cobalt123 I’m sorry this is happening to you. Heartbreaking & so common. How can our grown up kids learn to be adults if their dad does not behave like one
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This right here:
"If I was someone's secretary — this [work] is exactly what I am paid to do."My spouse appreciates my efforts, but when it comes to the world outside our household, my decades of unpaid labor mean nothing because I don't earn a paycheck. It has no value because I can't put it on a resume as a skill or brandish it as an accomplishment.
@dulcedemon So unjust. Also so hard to manage the big feels
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@cobalt123 I’m sorry this is happening to you. Heartbreaking & so common. How can our grown up kids learn to be adults if their dad does not behave like one
️🩹@26pglt Yikes, how did you guess their dad was this way? I would have thought since I raised them that they would see what I daily or at least weekly cleaned.
But, nope. I do think that common issues has their first point: they really are oblivious and then: they don’t feel it’s that important to clean. And I’m not known for being a super picky cleaner. I just get enraged that bending over to pick up an errant potato peel would just not happen unless I pointed it out and asked them to pick it up.
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