A Brilliant Idea

Walls

Does this appeal to anyone else? I think it is a *wonderful* idea.

Otis Driftwood

Id be interested in reading the results.This would only work if its done in a 100% unbiased fashion though.

Walls

nedtheshed wrote: »

Id be interested in reading the results.This would only work if its done in a 100% unbiased fashion though.

What, you mean with a control and such? Or with a person not so eager to make demands such as 'change the channel', etc.

SugarHigh

Such a crap article. I bloody hate these crappy writers who rely on gimmicky ideas to write books that no sane person would read. The female section of the Daily Mail makes the rest of paper look good it's full of these annoying lifestyle journalists who think that this sort of drivel which isn't even fit to be posted on a blog is somehow printable.

Just read the comments to get an idea of the sort of women who read this nonsense.

I'm glad I'm single and I will NEVER live with a man again for as long as I live. It's like having a child in the house.

Walls

SugarHigh wrote: »

The female section of the Daily Mail makes the rest of paper look good it's full of these annoying lifestyle journalists who think that this sort of drivel which isn't even fit to be posted on a blog is somehow printable.

Just read the comments to get an idea of the sort of women who read this nonsense.

Actually, I'd say that the entire Daily Mail is drivel. But the idea is what intrigues me; imagine saying yes to the male/female partner for a set period and see what happens.

Galvasean

For a film perhaps,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRv4CoXQoAQ

Reality? No.

c - 13

Walls wrote: »

Actually, I'd say that the entire Daily Mail is drivel. But the idea is what intrigues me; imagine saying yes to the male/female partner for a set period and see what happens.

Taking the partner for granted for one and eventual resentment for the partner for the other i would say most likely.

Unrealistic scenario to be honest (for either sex).

Nevyn

I don't agree with the level of personal servant like change the channel, the gifts and only what she wanted to watch ect unless a couple are into that type off dynamic, but it's not for me.

Two things which did strike me were

This is something I notice throughout the day. Whenever Julie says something, my default setting is to argue with her. It's (usually) not overtly hostile bickering, more like affectionate parrying.

But at the same time, I know it's not good. If you playfully bicker enough, after a few years it stops feeling playful.

I make a mental note to myself to stop seeing conversation as a series of offensive and defensive moves. Marriage isn't a verbal boxing match.

Thinking about how off handly snide or arguementive we can be with our partners with out realisng it is a good thing esp when you've been in a relationship a few years.

When it comes to housework, as a writer working from home, I'd always thought I did my share - certainly more than the average bloke.

According to a recent survey, women still do twice as much housework as men on average, a ratio that holds true even if both spouses work full-time. Even worse for women is the childcare ratio.

Mums do an average of five times as much with their children as dads. The same ratio as 90 years ago.

I asked Julie to list all the household chores she does. 'I clean the children's rooms, I set up playdates for our kids, I take them to the doctor, I pay the household bills.'

If this were a movie, it would show clock hands spinning around, maybe calendar days flipping by. It's a very long list.

She continues: 'I fill the liquid soap dispensers, I wash our table mats, I get new toner for the printer.' Julie does chores I didn't even know existed.

'I'm a shameless comparer. Any time I hear about a husband behaving badly, I can hardly wait to tell Julie'

I tell her that I will do everything that needs doing for the next month. Instead of being bowled over with gratitude, Julie says: 'I can't let you do that. Our house would look like a rubbish tip.'

This is the problem. Julie's just more competent at a lot of these tasks. Or all of them. She's the single most organised person in the world.

Maybe that's why women do more housework. They're better at it. They were born with the tidiness gene.

In the name of research, I call Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who specialises in genetic gender differences, hoping she'll confirm my hunch.

No luck. She tells me it is rubbish and I can't blame my laziness on my Y chromosome.

I think men taking on more of the house work is a good thing, esp opening thier eyes to the things which get done which they didn't know had to be done.
Yes there are men who can multitask and keep house and do a good job but we still do have a generation of men who grew up with it being women's work and don't know what a house cleaning routine is, what needs to be done daily/weekly/montly cos they were shown by thier parents growing up, which then can often leave thier female partner having to do it and cause all sorts of resentments, esp when the ammount of tidying and cleaning gets hit with the exponential factor of small kids in the house.

Sparks

It's not a good comparison though. "I work in the office all day" versus "I fill liquid soap dispensers, do the laundry, make the kids' lunches, etc" isn't comparing at the same level of detail.

"I work in the office all day" -vs- "I work at home all day" is better. If you're going to list all the housework chores, you have to list all the office tasks as well.

And I'm not exactly enamored of the notion that men are incompetent at housework, especially when the same sort of notion exists regarding women and DIY. If you're going to lose the latter on the grounds that basic DIY doesn't require a penis, then you pretty much need to lose the former on the grounds that laundry isn't made easier by a vagina.

liah

Think it'd be more interesting if they both lived a month doing whatever the other spouse wanted, instead of just what one wanted, so they both got a sense of where the other was coming from.

Walls

Thaedydal wrote: »

I think men taking on more of the house work is a good thing, esp opening thier eyes to the things which get done which they didn't know had to be done.
Yes there are men who can multitask and keep house and do a good job but we still do have a generation of men who grew up with it being women's work and don't know what a house cleaning routine is, what needs to be done daily/weekly/montly cos they were shown by thier parents growing up, which then can often leave thier female partner having to do it and cause all sorts of resentments, esp when the ammount of tidying and cleaning gets hit with the exponential factor of small kids in the house.

Oh dear Lord yes.

Walls

liah wrote: »

Think it'd be more interesting if they both lived a month doing whatever the other spouse wanted, instead of just what one wanted, so they both got a sense of where the other was coming from.

This could be interesting.....

Walls

Sparks wrote: »

"I work in the office all day" -vs- "I work at home all day" is better.

Actually, it is more fair to say I work in the office all day and do more work than him when I come home at night. The complaint is usually that both men and women work, but women still end up doing the majority of the housework, which is unfair.

Nevyn

Sparks wrote: »

It's not a good comparison though. "I work in the office all day" versus "I fill liquid soap dispensers, do the laundry, make the kids' lunches, etc" isn't comparing at the same level of detail.

"I work in the office all day" -vs- "I work at home all day" is better. If you're going to list all the housework chores, you have to list all the office tasks as well.

Again where both are working outside of the home the division of house hold labour should be equally divided, often it's not.

Sparks wrote: »

And I'm not exactly enamored of the notion that men are incompetent at housework, especially when the same sort of notion exists regarding women and DIY. If you're going to lose the latter on the grounds that basic DIY doesn't require a penis, then you pretty much need to lose the former on the grounds that laundry isn't made easier by a vagina.

I never said all men or men in general only, there are men who were reared to do the house work and to be able to do all the cleaning, my father and my brother were but I know a lot more who weren't.

As for DIY I don't think it's gender based, I think again it's a skill set which has been previously gendered but that is changing as well, but it's slow enough. The notion of men's work and women's work in the home is slowly changing but that being said if I am damned if I am doing all the 'women's work' I not doing the 'men's work' as well not while there is a man in the house who's meant to be pitching in.

Then again ripping up the carpet of the stairs and pulling out the hundred or so nails was fun. :P

Sparks

I think there's something else in there too though - it's not just that "women get reared to know how to clean", it's that that rearing also seems to ingrain a near-zero tolerance for dust or dirt, while men are reared to just get on with it.

How are you supposed to have domestic harmony when both partners are equally competent, but one is taught to have a low tolerance for untidiness or dust and the other is taught to have a high tolerance for them and that there are more important things in life that take priority?

donfers

I just think that often men and women have different standards and aspirations for the home.

For example, having lived with three different women there was one common denominator with all of them, they wanted the house setup how they liked, new curtains, plants everywhere, pictures, new tiles here, new lining in the kitchen etc etc., and often the stuff that they wanted I didn't see any great need for and was happy enough to go without it. However if they want it then fine go ahead but don't have a go at me if I am not 50/50 with the chores/installations for this stuff when you decided you wanted all this stuff in the first place - take responsibility for your choices. In the same way if I get new speakers or a HDTV or router, I don't expect her nor whine at her if she doesn't carry the tv/speakers, hook everything up, tune stuff in etc. In fact not once have I expected or received help in any of the stuff I wanted but with her decorative stuff she expects me to help, even though she makes a hell of a lot more use about of my stuff than I do hers. Trust me I am not thanking the stars every night that there are four plants in the living room or that there's a picture of some sad looking clown over the bed.

With things like chores and cleaning I do my bit but I often have worked longer hours than the girlfriends I have lived with and more to the point I don't have the same standards when it comes to cleanliness as they do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slob, I clean the bathroom, wash the dishes, do the laundry etc but I don't actively search the house for every little trace of dust nor do I have a coronary if a jacket is tossed over a chair instead of on a hanger etc. So my point is that cohabiting couples should try to understand and agree upon an a MUTUALLY acceptable standard of cleanliness instead of having one dictate to the other how things should be. I don't want to be nagged to clean windows or curtains or to dust ornaments if I am perfectly content with living with slighly dirty windows or slightly dusty curtains or slightly dusty ornaments, why should a cleaning mania dictate in any household?, everybody should have a basic standard and adhere to that but if you are Mr or Mrs Cleaner of the Universe and have a go at me for not varnishing the bedside every other day then I reserve the right to tell you to get knotted (although that perhaps will remind you to launch into a diatribe aimed at me about unknotting something or another).

Nevyn

Many men prefer to wait until it gets to a near intolerable level and then 'rescue' the room/house and then leave it to build up again, to make it a herculean effort they can be proud of but usually women don't prefering a routine which gets thing done and maintanes them.

One factor also is that people don't judge a man on how well kept the home is they judge the woman as it's still seen as woman's work.

,

Walls

donfers wrote: »

everybody should have a basic standard and adhere to that

The arguments start however in a few circumstances. The first one is that He agrees to do X, then doesn't, and then wonders why she's so mad about X. The second is when the most basic standard isn't adhered to - stuff in the bathroom, say. Most folks will have this as a no-go, non negotiable area. Any refusal here to deal with it on the grounds of "I'm comfortable with my levels", etc, is going to cause problems, because no one else will live with that.

Sparks

5 minutes tidying a day, every day, is what I've always heard cited by every woman who's mentioned this topic to me as being what's required for acceptable cleanliness levels. Even leaving aside the point that that's inevitably proven by experience to be an underestimate by a factor of two or three, there's the point that it's 35 minutes a week - when cleaning once a week rarely takes more than 20 minutes.

Now, maybe 15 minutes isn't that important to you... but you're missing the point that when you're doing task A, a five-minute break does not interrupt task A for five minutes. It interrupts it for "five minutes" plus another ten to twenty minutes to get back into task A (if it's not a physical routine task), if you don't lose your train of thought completely. So that's between 25 and 35 minutes per day, which is up to four hours a week instead of 20-odd minutes once a week.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this "five minutes a day" mentality. At all. If life's too short to stuff a mushroom, it's way too flippin' short to worry about dusting under an ornament on a table that never sees any use other than holding up that ornament...

Snowie

this thread makes me want to be a grumpy old man when im older im gonna go for lessons with rick wakemen and jezzer and my dad

SugarHigh

liah wrote: »

Think it'd be more interesting if they both lived a month doing whatever the other spouse wanted, instead of just what one wanted, so they both got a sense of where the other was coming from.

I think it would more interesting if lifestyle journalists actually lead interesting lives before they decided to write about them.

The Corinthian

Silly article, TBH. I think the suggestion that both partners/spouses taking turns at 'serving' the other has some merit as a means of understanding each other better, but otherwise the whole exercise was something that could only be taken seriously by someone who thinks that the Sex & the City 2 is a cinematic masterpiece.

Two observations though:

Firstly, any partnership involves quid pro quo in responsibilities. While some couples may aspire, even successfully, at a fifty-fifty split of these, the reality is more complex than a simple question of housework.

In reality, it's not simply a case of housework that needs to be shared, but financial costs and, where applicable, child care. Focusing on only one and ignoring one or more of the others gives a false picture of the shared responsibilities.

Consider a childless one-income couple, as a very simple example, where the one covers all the financial costs and then shares the housework. Even if they do less than half of the housework, they are actually likely to be carrying the bulk of the responsibilities in the relationship, when one considers the full picture.

Secondly, in the case of housework, people often have different expectations. As donfers pointed out above, your partner may have expectations that are much higher or different to your own. He/she may feel that the house should be painted at least once a year, or vacuumed every day, while you may feel that a lesser frequency would suffice.

Unless you compromise to a middle ground on such differences, then effectively you are asking one to shoulder an equal share of the others uncompromising vision.

This is not to suggest that this becomes a 'free pass' to absolve one from responsibility - "she wants the house painted twice a year, so she can do that herself" - but if one wants things their own way, they need to accept that they will likely shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for such a choice.

Sparks

Sparks wrote: »

5 minutes tidying a day, every day, is what I've always heard cited by every woman who's mentioned this topic to me as being what's required for acceptable cleanliness levels.

No thanks ;s
I'd rather let it build up for the week and do it at the weekend. All this tidying malarky beyond the basics every day does my head in