Why house chores can't be equally shared
This post won't be a review of the long years of discussion over household work, there has been a lot said and discussed about it and it definitely deserves some reading. I'll leave a pretty comprehensive article about it here. It was written for a great series of articles for The Guardian in Feb 2018. (you can also find it here)
When discussing this topic we have been following an basic feminist idea of equality: Our goal is for both men and women to work the same hours, make the same money and share the same amount of house chores. But as we start to shift to a new reality we are finding out this is just impractical.
What's actually happening is much more complex, as we see women raise to become the breadwinners in 30% of dual-career couples (and that number is expected to raise quickly) women are facing a difficult question, "If I'm making more money and need to work longer hours, what's wrong with my husband doing most of the house chores?"
Questions like this are coming up more and more as we do our research for The New Husband. We are finding that in our current economy, (with the tight job market, women having higher education and the high costs of child care) is very difficult for a dual career couple to have the same level of professional success. Companies are trying to figure out how to deal with dual career couples for a while now and any HR director will tell you it's extremely hard with you have two equally ambitious players married. What often happens is either the couple figure out who is more fit for each job (parenting vs professional) and adhere to these roles or they decide to take turns alternating devoting time to their careers and their family. In both scenarios the division of house care is not equal. It reflects the overall division of tasks that it takes to run a family.
So we should be looking at this topic with a more holistic approach to factor in all the other hidden tasks that it takes to create and maintain a happy family. When reality meets our dream of equally divided house chores.... The outcome is actually better than we anticipated! 50/50 may not be the ideal way to share house work anyway...
This will be one of the topics discussed and debated in our documentary! Subscribe and get the latest news of production.
Here is a list of some of the most interesting articles we came across if you want to read further...
