It is -21°C (-6°F) at the moment.
And last night our heating went out. Well, first of all, a fuse blew, which I replaced, but then the heating system didn't restart properly, so it was pumping cold water through the radiators instead of hot. I stayed up most of the night getting things working again and then making sure they are actually working, because the consequences are far too severe if the house doesn't stay warm enough. Pipes freeze and crack, and the cost of repair is high, as is the cost and disruption caused by not being able to stay in the house.
Of course, none of this is considered by others in the house.
Equality is selective.
Division of labour in our house at least in our house and many people I have talked with is far from equal in many ways, as the expectation is that men are meant to participate in the "traditional" roles of cooking and cleaning, but all of the traditional male roles like maintenance are still performed by the man. What is also interesting is that there is an assumption that all men are somehow unaccustomed to doing housework, and that they all grew up in some kind of home where their mother coddled them.
It is nonsense.
While it might be the case for some proportion, I think it has becoming increasingly rare for many over the last few decades, meaning that men in my age group and younger are pretty competent and accustomed to taking care of the housework. At least speaking directly from my own experience, I have lived by myself since I was 18 and have taken care of everything. I have also been cooking and doing my own laundry since I was eight or so.
Yet, because we are humans, we overestimate what we do, and underestimate what others do in relation to us. This is likely because we are present for what we do, but don't see a lot of what other people do. But it is also because we value what we do more highly than what others do, even when it benefits us. It is only when we are negatively affected by the lack of performance from another, that we start to value it, and then the "value" is that we complain that something hasn't been done.
In our home, my wife cooks more often than I do, but it is rarely anything extravagant. Not that it needs to be, but my point is, it doesn't take long or require much effort. However, she has also never mowed the lawn, never cleaned the garage, fixed the internet, programmed a TV, sorted out a piece of equipment - or cleaned the shower. In fact, it is me who does the majority of bathroom cleaning, the laundry, the folding, and making sure that we don't freeze through the winter.
Division of labour doesn't work based on equality, because the fact is, my wife and I are not equal. She has never chopped a piece of wood with an axe, because as far as I know, she has never wielded an axe at all. She has also never sawed a branch of a tree, nor has she carried a wheelbarrow full of earth. She just can't.
Should I force her to?
And herein lays part of the problem with equality of task in the home, because while she can't do many of the things that I do, whether through lack of strength or willingness to learn, I can do all of the things she does. And I assume that this is the case in most households. If I wasn't here, she might be able to learn some of the things, but ultimately for a lot of it, she would just have to pay someone to do the work, or rely on the charity of friends and family. Or find a new man willing.
The last one would be the easiest for her.
At times I complain about the inequality in the home, especially when I am called out for not doing something, as if I do not do anything. If I were to just stop doing anything though, perhaps it would highlight what actually gets done. Similarly, I also know that if my wife were to stop doing everything she does, it wouldn't be a great experience for me either, as there are a lot of things that she does that I appreciate her doing.
And maybe it comes down to the appreciation issue, where there is an expectation that men should appreciate the tasks women do, but women can expect men to do their work without appreciation. Women will often cite some kind of media-driven "historical patriarchy", but in a relationship, this is ridiculous. I am not part of that system, nor was I raised in a family that was part of that. I grew up in a household that valued equality between men and women, where there was definitely more emphasis on respect for women.
There was still division of labour.
But was there appreciation?
I didn't see much of it at least. But my family was a mess in many other ways.
It is good that people want to be more independent, but independence today seems far less about being able to do things for oneself, and instead me more about buying goods and services instead. It isn't true independence, it is reliance. It is just outsourcing the division of labour. My wife wouldn't be able to live in this house without me, because even if she could afford the mortgage, she couldn't afford to pay for all of the things I do that she can't in order to maintain it. Yes, all the surface level things I currently do she could do or learn, but a lot of the other stuff, no.
In most of the western world, there has been a shift where women are working more and doing less of the manual house tasks, as not only have men taken more of a role in chores and child-rearing, but technology has also eased the burden. But, has life got fundamentally better for women? Has society got better? And I think that these things have to be considered in the push for equality also. Because even if there was absolute equality, where men and women could each replace each other in the home - would we be happier?
I suspect not.
I think that for our own wellbeing, we need to feel relevant in the lives of the people we care about, but we are losing that relevance rapidly, and this has been another point that has degraded society and community. Now, to try and feel relevant, people are spending their time trying to get attention from strangers, by doing things that don't actually matter to friends and family, or the local community. And as homes with couples and children are also decreasing, the home is no longer a place to feel appreciated, to feel needed and relevant. Social disconnection is happening at so many levels, but people still have the biological need to feel connected.
The social dynamics have changed and are continually changing evermore quickly, but we as animals are not evolving as fast. We still have our needs that have evolved over the space of hundreds of millions of years, and they are not going anywhere soon. The disruption we have created can affect our understanding and desires, but the impact it has on our biology leaves us missing vital components. It is like not getting enough vitamin-C or calcium, or other key nutrients.
We get ill and feel bad.
This obviously goes well beyond housework and conversations around equality. We have changed the ways in which we live our lives and interact with each other, yet continually discount the effect it has on us. We seemingly keep denying our own humanity through a process of intellectualisation to feed our desires. Not just our base desires, but our desires for things like identity and equality. And while it might feel good to keep discussing these things in a vacuum, it is harmful to the reality of the environment, our situations, and taking practical steps toward making something better.
Denying who we are as humans, holds us back from being better versions of ourselves.
We should appreciate who we are, and work toward who we want to be.
Taraz
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