I am the oldest of three children, with a little brother and sister. My brother is lazy, and my mother enabled his laziness. While it was expected for me and my sister to clean our room, do laundry, and wash dishes, it was a victory if my brother succeeded by washing his behind correctly. He got allowances while my sister and I may have got a pat on our back. And my sister and I were expected to be responsible for others while my brother could be as raggedy as he pleased. Hindsight is always 20/20, and now I can tell you that the girls in the house have much more discipline than my brother, and my mom is probably kicking herself now for not teaching my brother how to appreciate the work that it takes to make a home and keep him comfortable.
With all of that being said, chores were divided in my house, but I enabled my husband to be lazy. I did all the cooking and cleaning in the house, and then got mad because my husband acted like he was allergic to picking up a pan. But since i've been out the country for work, he's had to figure out how to do the basics hisself. So when I go back, TRUST AND BELIEVE there is going to be a new standard. I do hate going outside for cutting grass and cleaning grills and such, so I usually leave that work for him. But I have done it before. I just feel like if I do a majority of the work inside the house, the least he can do is do yard work.
Now we've got one daughter, so I don't have to worry about what I pay my son vs. my daughter argument. BUT, I will make sure she does every chore, both inside and outside the house, so she has the tools to take care of herself.
This is long enough. Thank you for reading and talking about this! It's really interesting.
Beans - 5 years ago
Whew, I could write a dissertation on this but since there's a 4000 character limit, I'll try to get to the point.
Not only were chores divided by gender but essentially my girlhood/womanhood and, to a larger extent, my literal humanity, were put on line due to my ability to do chore and do them well. I have an older brother and a younger sister and while my parents preached the nonsense of "We all live in the same house and we all use the same things so we all need to be responsible for taking care of the house," that was very blatantly untrue. My father, literally couldn't be bothered to pick up the remote a foot next to him and called my siblings (mostly my sister and I) or my mother to fetch it for him. Up until the last few years (I'm 32), I've never seen my father do domestic work. My mother would often go out of her way to insult me if things weren't to her liking and say that no one would want to even sit next to me because I couldn't do X, Y, or X in the way she liked. Even some of the more "manly" chores were still relegated to my mother and us kids, though my brother was increasingly excused because he was working and in school...despite my sister and I also going to school and working. I'm sure in my mother's mind that one day sister and I will be wives and mothers (the joke's on her because we both don't want kids & could go either way about marriage) and there's the idea that you'll always be working so you might as well start now. They're also immigrants from the Caribbean so it's even further instilled and there's almost no room for discussion because, as far as they're concerned, you're just complaining for trying to ask or discuss fairness.
I have zero tolerance for it. I'll clean up after myself (though my room is a mess but that's not hurting anyone because no one else is in that space) and help out around the house, though. If my boyfriend and I do get married, he already knows what the deal is about these gendered chores.
Mia P - 5 years ago
I only had sisters and lived in a single parent home with my mom so we had to do ALL THE SHIT gender didn’t matter I guess since we where all the same gender but when I moved in with my husband (who did things by gender growing up) we bumped heads for a while. Nigga you use these dishes just like I do you can wash them ! Took some breaking but now he don’t associate chores by gender and we work together to get the housework done.
Joe - 5 years ago
"Division" is an interesting term here.
When I was a kid, I had a turn washing dishes and vacuuming. My sisters had turns at taking out the garbage. However, only my brother and I had turns mowing the lawn. I'm sure there must be things my sisters did, that neither I nor my brother did, but I cannot think of anything. Ultimately, though, I would put things at divided.
I am the oldest of three children, with a little brother and sister. My brother is lazy, and my mother enabled his laziness. While it was expected for me and my sister to clean our room, do laundry, and wash dishes, it was a victory if my brother succeeded by washing his behind correctly. He got allowances while my sister and I may have got a pat on our back. And my sister and I were expected to be responsible for others while my brother could be as raggedy as he pleased. Hindsight is always 20/20, and now I can tell you that the girls in the house have much more discipline than my brother, and my mom is probably kicking herself now for not teaching my brother how to appreciate the work that it takes to make a home and keep him comfortable.
With all of that being said, chores were divided in my house, but I enabled my husband to be lazy. I did all the cooking and cleaning in the house, and then got mad because my husband acted like he was allergic to picking up a pan. But since i've been out the country for work, he's had to figure out how to do the basics hisself. So when I go back, TRUST AND BELIEVE there is going to be a new standard. I do hate going outside for cutting grass and cleaning grills and such, so I usually leave that work for him. But I have done it before. I just feel like if I do a majority of the work inside the house, the least he can do is do yard work.
Now we've got one daughter, so I don't have to worry about what I pay my son vs. my daughter argument. BUT, I will make sure she does every chore, both inside and outside the house, so she has the tools to take care of herself.
This is long enough. Thank you for reading and talking about this! It's really interesting.
Whew, I could write a dissertation on this but since there's a 4000 character limit, I'll try to get to the point.
Not only were chores divided by gender but essentially my girlhood/womanhood and, to a larger extent, my literal humanity, were put on line due to my ability to do chore and do them well. I have an older brother and a younger sister and while my parents preached the nonsense of "We all live in the same house and we all use the same things so we all need to be responsible for taking care of the house," that was very blatantly untrue. My father, literally couldn't be bothered to pick up the remote a foot next to him and called my siblings (mostly my sister and I) or my mother to fetch it for him. Up until the last few years (I'm 32), I've never seen my father do domestic work. My mother would often go out of her way to insult me if things weren't to her liking and say that no one would want to even sit next to me because I couldn't do X, Y, or X in the way she liked. Even some of the more "manly" chores were still relegated to my mother and us kids, though my brother was increasingly excused because he was working and in school...despite my sister and I also going to school and working. I'm sure in my mother's mind that one day sister and I will be wives and mothers (the joke's on her because we both don't want kids & could go either way about marriage) and there's the idea that you'll always be working so you might as well start now. They're also immigrants from the Caribbean so it's even further instilled and there's almost no room for discussion because, as far as they're concerned, you're just complaining for trying to ask or discuss fairness.
I have zero tolerance for it. I'll clean up after myself (though my room is a mess but that's not hurting anyone because no one else is in that space) and help out around the house, though. If my boyfriend and I do get married, he already knows what the deal is about these gendered chores.
I only had sisters and lived in a single parent home with my mom so we had to do ALL THE SHIT gender didn’t matter I guess since we where all the same gender but when I moved in with my husband (who did things by gender growing up) we bumped heads for a while. Nigga you use these dishes just like I do you can wash them ! Took some breaking but now he don’t associate chores by gender and we work together to get the housework done.
"Division" is an interesting term here.
When I was a kid, I had a turn washing dishes and vacuuming. My sisters had turns at taking out the garbage. However, only my brother and I had turns mowing the lawn. I'm sure there must be things my sisters did, that neither I nor my brother did, but I cannot think of anything. Ultimately, though, I would put things at divided.
That said, I pay somebody to mow the lawn now.