A little housework poll

[ailbhe]

This isn't as carefully thought out as I wanted it to be but I've had a hell of a day and topped it off by cooking us all dinner while watching both children - Emer on my hip, Linnea playing in the kitchen. Then we reached a point where Rob only had to hold Emer for her to have screaming hysterics - we've been working up to that for a couple of weeks now, he has always ignored small babies by default and she's really noticing - and now I've gotten her off to sleep and perhaps I will have an uninterrupted, hot cup of tea.

At least Rob is prepping tomorrow's dinner, which will go in the slow cooker. Tomorrow had better be better than today.

[Poll #852294]

Comments

[barakta]

Yes the parental jobs were gender separated to an extent and I think we kids didn't realise that it was possible to have a habitable house without stress until we left home. My mum was a SAHM till I was 10, and then went to nursing retraining and then university after that. My dad is an IT bod who used to work stupid hours like Rob, and after I was 10 was rarely home before 7pm, and often out till later, or leaving at 3 or 4am... I have two siblings, one older, one younger - we are all female.

My mum did most of the cooking, cos she likes cooking and my dad basically didn't care about cooking. None of us would eat dad's food unless it was 'English Breakfast' food which he could cook perfectly and have it all hot at once (which I take to mean he CAN cook if he cares, but he doesn't care so he generally doesn't cook). Interestingly my dad's girlfriend has managed to teach him to cook other food, if you call painful cooking by numbers cooking - the girlfriend won't tolerate a man in her house who can't cook - so a slight incentive there me thinks.

My mum did most of the laundry and ironing, because she had and still has some (unintelligable to anyone else) system which works most of the time. Sometimes she would ask one of us to stick x loads into machine and hang them up and stuff, but she preferred us not to shove her system out of synch while not being bothered if we did do some laundry. She does and did most of the ironing, cos she likes ironing, and does it in front of the telly.

Other jobs were done by whoever got yelled at to do them, usually when the place was a shithole and it needed done. I guess my mum did about 1/2 to 2/3 of the housework with the rest of us doing whatever when required. We didn't have a rota, probably because my mum would have to be organised then - she doesn't like being 'organised' by systems.

My dad would often come home late at night and tidy the kitchen from scratch or whatever. He was perfectly capable of doing laundry and if necessary would iron his own shirts etc. The only job which was gendered was mowing the lawn which my mum refused to do on gendered grounds - she had other legitimate reasons like being not strong enough esp after her mastectomy and having horrible heyfever... But she prefereed to call laundry a man's job.