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agonyaunt2022-09-28 11:40 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-09-28 11:40 am
Entry tags:
Care & Feeding: My Wife is a Total Slob...
... And Her Justification for the Mess Is Absurd
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife and I (together for 5 years, married 3) are expecting our first child, a daughter, in February. My wife is incredibly beautiful, talented, sexy, intellectual, fiercely loyal, basically perfect except…she’s a HUGE slob. We often joke that she’s a “slut” in the original sense of the word, i.e. a bad and lazy housekeeper. If I don’t want to live with grimy bathrooms, a sink full of dishes, and tumbleweeds of cat hair blowing everywhere, I have to clean, which I don’t mind doing, if that’s the price of being with her. I was single for over a decade before we met and had all but despaired of falling in love or having a family.
The only thing that irritates me is when she justifies herself by claiming she’s fighting back against centuries of unfair domestic expectations of women, or that being a female “art monster” (a creative artist who neglects everything except their work) makes her rare and special. Her parents are a doctor (dad) and lawyer (mom) and she grew up with nannies and cleaning ladies. I grew up with a hard-working single mom and got used to pitching in from an early age. She’s entitled to her own choices, but I hope I’m not being out of line by NOT wanting her teaching our daughter that it’s cool and feminist to be a slob. How can I instill basic housekeeping skills in our kids, without getting into a verbal war about the historic imbalance of household responsibilities?
— The Art Monster’s Male Maid
Dear Male Maid,
I don’t think that rejecting all domestic work is an inherently feminist choice, but I do know that the reality for women is that “having it all” often also means “doing it all.” Even when both partners work, in heterosexual couples, women in the relationship are more likely to have primary responsibility for doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and preparing meals. Your wife may legitimately feel that she has to choose between her own creative work and the domestic work it takes to keep a home running. She also may simply lack the required skills.
Whatever the case, she’s made it clear she’s not interested in learning them, so it’s really up to you to decide how to move forward. An equitable division of labor is ideal for most, but that balance is unique to every couple, depending on careers, children, finances, etc.
As someone who made it to my late 30s before I even learned how to cook a grilled cheese, I do think it’s important for children of both genders to learn the skills they’ll need to take care of themselves and their homes as adults. But can’t you be the person to instill those lessons in your kids? After all, there are lots of families where one partner does the bulk of the domestic tasks, and when that partner is a woman, I rarely hear any outcry about who will teach the children. Or might you hire a housekeeper, if you have the resources? This is obviously a pretty privileged option, but when it’s feasible, paying someone a fair wage can be a lot easier than fighting about it in perpetuity.
And if you haven’t, I also think you need to have a serious conversation about expectations around the division of labor when it comes to childcare and the work of parenting. The workload at home is about to increase exponentially, and if you can’t agree on the best way to manage it, you’ll likely end up resenting each other, which would be worse for your future child than a sink full of dishes.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife and I (together for 5 years, married 3) are expecting our first child, a daughter, in February. My wife is incredibly beautiful, talented, sexy, intellectual, fiercely loyal, basically perfect except…she’s a HUGE slob. We often joke that she’s a “slut” in the original sense of the word, i.e. a bad and lazy housekeeper. If I don’t want to live with grimy bathrooms, a sink full of dishes, and tumbleweeds of cat hair blowing everywhere, I have to clean, which I don’t mind doing, if that’s the price of being with her. I was single for over a decade before we met and had all but despaired of falling in love or having a family.
The only thing that irritates me is when she justifies herself by claiming she’s fighting back against centuries of unfair domestic expectations of women, or that being a female “art monster” (a creative artist who neglects everything except their work) makes her rare and special. Her parents are a doctor (dad) and lawyer (mom) and she grew up with nannies and cleaning ladies. I grew up with a hard-working single mom and got used to pitching in from an early age. She’s entitled to her own choices, but I hope I’m not being out of line by NOT wanting her teaching our daughter that it’s cool and feminist to be a slob. How can I instill basic housekeeping skills in our kids, without getting into a verbal war about the historic imbalance of household responsibilities?
— The Art Monster’s Male Maid
Dear Male Maid,
I don’t think that rejecting all domestic work is an inherently feminist choice, but I do know that the reality for women is that “having it all” often also means “doing it all.” Even when both partners work, in heterosexual couples, women in the relationship are more likely to have primary responsibility for doing the laundry, cleaning the house, and preparing meals. Your wife may legitimately feel that she has to choose between her own creative work and the domestic work it takes to keep a home running. She also may simply lack the required skills.
Whatever the case, she’s made it clear she’s not interested in learning them, so it’s really up to you to decide how to move forward. An equitable division of labor is ideal for most, but that balance is unique to every couple, depending on careers, children, finances, etc.
As someone who made it to my late 30s before I even learned how to cook a grilled cheese, I do think it’s important for children of both genders to learn the skills they’ll need to take care of themselves and their homes as adults. But can’t you be the person to instill those lessons in your kids? After all, there are lots of families where one partner does the bulk of the domestic tasks, and when that partner is a woman, I rarely hear any outcry about who will teach the children. Or might you hire a housekeeper, if you have the resources? This is obviously a pretty privileged option, but when it’s feasible, paying someone a fair wage can be a lot easier than fighting about it in perpetuity.
And if you haven’t, I also think you need to have a serious conversation about expectations around the division of labor when it comes to childcare and the work of parenting. The workload at home is about to increase exponentially, and if you can’t agree on the best way to manage it, you’ll likely end up resenting each other, which would be worse for your future child than a sink full of dishes.
no subject
Maybe she's neuroatypical. That's a possibility I hadn't considered. Except, as I consider it, I think about all the conversations I've seen online where Person A is given a pass for behavior that affects Person B and Person B is advised to suck it up because "Maybe Person A is neuroatypical". I've seen that patternin discussions of everything from chores indeed to sexual assault. I don't know.
But maybe she is neuroatypical. MAybe he came up with the "slut" joke first and her statement that she will feministically not do chores is a counter. We don't know the order of operations, just how he wrote them.
But I look at this, and his description of her wealthy childhood, and I think about how I could never, ever, ever say to anyone I've ever lived with "I'm not doing chores as a feminist statement." What I'd get would be hilarity and a sponge. And I have lived with people I loved dearly but who did things that made my life more difficult, and I did resent them. It probably would have been better for my soul if I didn't, but I'm not sure I could not have. I'm not sure LW can climb over all the mounds of laundry and crusty sinks to purge all resentment from his soul.
Maybe if I knew the wife's side I'd know she has far more weighty reasons for this than having grown up wealthy. But right now we have what we know, even if written by a more or less unreliable narrator. I don't know if this one is all his fault.
no subject
Like. The "slut" joke and the "male maid" signoff are SUCH red flags. The whole tone of the letter is so contemptuous. He's really angry at her, in a really gendered way. (It is, in fact, sexist as fuck for him to constantly throw in her face the idea that she's failing as a woman by not being a good housekeeper! That is the not-very-sub subtext of the slut joke and the maid joke and the comment about the "price of being with her"! Literally none of that would even be in his arsenal if the genders were reversed. She's NOT WRONG that the whole history of feminism and gendered labor is relevant here, even if she's being a jerk about it.)
That doesn't mean she hasn't been behaving badly, or that she hasn't made asshole jokes of her own, or that she's not being a privileged twit about who does the dirty work of the household. But she's not the one who wrote in - and my advice to LW specifically would be "take some accountability for your own hostility and reconsider your approach, before you sabotage your marriage even worse than you already are."
Hopefully they actually do like each other enough to work together on solving the housework problem, if they can get out of the loop of "you suck because you're a slob!" "you suck because you have sexist expectations!"
ETA: personal context - the "lazy slob" thing also does push some personal buttons for me, too, so that's relevant. I'm a disabled and depressed person who does rely on other people to do some "basic" household maintenance stuff, and I have some kneejerk defensiveness when that kind of language gets thrown around, because it's been used against me both directly and indirectly (people talking about what "a decent person" should be able and willing to do re: cleaning often stings pretty badly, because, well. I'm not a decent person, by that reckoning!)
So when LW gets nasty about what a slob his wife is, my immediate reaction is "what's this look like from her side? is she not seeing the dirt, and needs to retrain her eyes? is she seeing it but not acting on it for some reason? what's the reason? what's preventing her from cleaning, and what can be changed to make it easier or more possible?" - basically viewing it as an accessibility issue rather than an issue of bad character. Shame is just not useful here! It doesn't help!
no subject
no subject
Yes. This was what disturbed me about it, but which I couldn't quite articulate while running around during the day.
It's a melange. They have a lot of communication difficulties and swallowed anger compressed into a very small time period, and it's rumbling under the surface, with the so-called "jokes" indicating there's an iceberg's worth of Issues under there.
They're going to need to do a LOT of unraveling their communication problems, and soon, otherwise their co-parenting is going to be *extremely* problematic, and not just about cleaning.
Which I realize sounds alarmist, and also doesn't answer his question.
no subject
I really like this book about how cleaning is morally neutral, shame is not useful, and your space exists to serve you, you don't exist to serve your space
How to Keep House While Drowning: A gentle approach to cleaning and organising by KC Davis
https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Keep-House-While-Drowning-ebook/dp/B09KTGVQRH
no subject
no subject
I think about all the conversations I've seen online where Person A is given a pass for behavior that affects Person B and Person B is advised to suck it up because "Maybe Person A is neuroatypical".
I agree that this is an issue! I think the important distinction here is between "maybe they're ND" as a shut-down, an excuse that ends the conversation (which I agree is bad and a misuse of the language of disability), and making it the opening of a *new* conversation - what's the actual mechanism of the problem here? How can it be addressed in a useful way?
For instance - the refrain that pops up in every discussion of Creepy Guys, where people chime in with "maybe he is bad at social cues because he's neurodivergent". That's not the end of hypothetical dude's responsibility! As an ND person who is by nature shit at social cues, this is an area I've put a lot of work into - and knowing what the problem is helps me figure what kind of work to do. Or another common issue is adult women who figure out they have ADHD and can therefore start trying strategies for how their brain actually works, rather than just thinking they're stupid/lazy/etc.
And in this letter's case, I don't think LW should have to "suck it up" that his wife doesn't clean and is willing to let things get filthy. But I do think that it would be more useful, to him and to her, to reframe in terms of "what is the mechanism of the problem?" rather than assume she's just Bad. Even if she's completely neurotypical and it's a privilege issue - being trained not to "see" dirt because someone else always took care of it is potentially fixable! She could learn new skills! If they can get on the same side and work on it together.
no subject
That makes a lot of sense. Just declaring someone Bad doesn't help figure out how the dishes actually get done.
Also it makes sense that you identify with her, considering your experiences, just like I identified with him, considering mine (I was a scholarship kid at a school for rich children. I ended up pretty unimpressed with the 1%.) One of the interesting things about these tales we read from the advice columns is who identifies with whom and why.
no subject
I went to a public (no-fee) Primary School where some of the kids were quite rich [some of the kids had parents who were bankers and advertising executives], when my family were reliant on food parcels from the church in order to be able to eat. I hear you!
On the other hand, as a Disabled/chronically ill person who just ran my Roomba for the first time today since 3 March 2022 because I was having difficulty picking all the cords, cables, clothes, rubbish etc off the floor due to hip pain when I bend; I have a lot of time for people who can't clean due to pain, fatigue, ADHD, Depression. Too much bending to pick stuff up off the floor = my pain can flare up for a week to the point that I can't sleep due to pain.
I have ZERO time for people who won't clean because "it's below them" or because they think they're too rich/too important.
I really like this book about how cleaning is morally neutral, shame is not useful, and your space exists to serve you, you don't exist to serve your space
How to Keep House While Drowning: A gentle approach to cleaning and organising by KC Davis
https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Keep-House-While-Drowning-ebook/dp/B09KTGVQRH
no subject