I'm not at all sure that we as a society teach males to ignore work. Again, I don't know of any males for whom this is true.
I know very many--including many men in my family, so I'm not trying to put people down when I say this. And I don't mean that somebody sits guys down and says, "All that housework stuff? Not your responsibility." But--I don't know--I just remember a couple of years ago at a party some of my friends were hosting. (Everyone was college-age.) There were a couple hundred people in the house, but the floor we were on was relatively deserted--maybe only 30-40 or so. A guy threw up on the couch. And even though there was about an equal number of men and women, every person who pitched in to help clean up the mess was a woman, and it was so automatic that I didn't even realize it till later. Just attending group gatherings and such, it's so often the women doing the preparation and cleanup work that it becomes automatic to expect that that is what will continue to happen. Or, I don't know, maybe it's that men are (often, not in all cases, as obviously yours is not) taught to view housework as a series of discrete tasks--here is how you do the laundry, here is how you wash the dishes--while for women it's more a way of life--the whole house should be clean, do what you need to do to make it that way, and if you don't it will reflect on you and not on the men in the house.
I imagine my perspective is somewhat different from yours, though, as one half of my family is extremely conservative (my uncle, in all seriousness, told my mother she wasn't a liberal, because liberals are evil) and obsessive-compulsive to boot. The area where I grew up is also very traditional. Even though I don't know about internal marriage politics in particular, the spectre of the patriarchy is still so strong I have a hard time believing that in that one area, things have become equal.
[Amusing side note: one of the girls on my soccer team in high school just got married. The minister proudly announced that she and her husband had remained virgins. O.o]
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Date: 2007-07-01 09:01 pm (UTC)I know very many--including many men in my family, so I'm not trying to put people down when I say this. And I don't mean that somebody sits guys down and says, "All that housework stuff? Not your responsibility." But--I don't know--I just remember a couple of years ago at a party some of my friends were hosting. (Everyone was college-age.) There were a couple hundred people in the house, but the floor we were on was relatively deserted--maybe only 30-40 or so. A guy threw up on the couch. And even though there was about an equal number of men and women, every person who pitched in to help clean up the mess was a woman, and it was so automatic that I didn't even realize it till later. Just attending group gatherings and such, it's so often the women doing the preparation and cleanup work that it becomes automatic to expect that that is what will continue to happen. Or, I don't know, maybe it's that men are (often, not in all cases, as obviously yours is not) taught to view housework as a series of discrete tasks--here is how you do the laundry, here is how you wash the dishes--while for women it's more a way of life--the whole house should be clean, do what you need to do to make it that way, and if you don't it will reflect on you and not on the men in the house.
I imagine my perspective is somewhat different from yours, though, as one half of my family is extremely conservative (my uncle, in all seriousness, told my mother she wasn't a liberal, because liberals are evil) and obsessive-compulsive to boot. The area where I grew up is also very traditional. Even though I don't know about internal marriage politics in particular, the spectre of the patriarchy is still so strong I have a hard time believing that in that one area, things have become equal.
[Amusing side note: one of the girls on my soccer team in high school just got married. The minister proudly announced that she and her husband had remained virgins. O.o]