Housework norms.

This article from ABC Australia discusses splitting housework more equally with your partner. It's pointing out that women in heterosexual relationships still do more than half of the housework for the couple, and that this increases very substantially when the family expands to include children. In couples with children, women are spending double the number of hours on childcare that their male partners are spending.

At the same time, women are carrying the large majority of the 'mental load' of housework, household management and childcare. The mental load is much more than the hours spent on a task - it is all the remembering, planning, organising, understanding and knowledge that is necessary to make a task happen. One person in a couple might put on a load of laundry to wash when their partner asks them to. The other partner recognises that they're running low on clothes, notices that the laundry basket is getting full, checks and sees that you're running low on detergent, remembers to bring the laundry liquid bottle to the shop to get it refilled, makes the time to go to the shop during their busy work day, knows what wash cycle is needed for these particular clothes, makes sure there is space on the clothes horse to hang the clothes, puts on the load to wash early enough that it will be finished at a reasonable time, then remembers to take out the clothes and hang them. That's a simple example, many things take far more invisible remembering and planning, with all the mental energy and time that takes up. Each partner might put on the same number of washes or spend the same number of hours hanging clothes, although the stats tell us even that split is not equal, but usually only one partner has the additional unseen labour of the mental load.

This reminded me of a feminist comic about houeshold chores I read 'some time ago' which I was surprised to see was actually 4 years ago in 2017. This talks about women, particularly mothers, who are in the position of houeshold manager while their male partners are effectively underlings in this shared project. The male partner does what he's asked to, and might say 'why didn't you ask?' when the female partner is doing a huge amount, but they do not know or manage or keep track of what needs to be done, and think that doing half of the visible, physical tasks is the same as doing those tasks plus all the invisible management of the tasks of both partners. It isn't. I don't agree with everything int this comic, or the article above, and of course they have a particular perspective, but I certainly recognise a great deal in them, and their principal points are familiar and strongly supported by the evidence.

There are two things I have noticed about this phenomenon, which don't get so much attention. One is exemplified by a personal experience. A short while ago, my (male) partner and I went through a phase where in the course of a single day, and sometimes in the course of a few minutes, my partner would exasperatedly shout "just tell me what to do!" quickly followed (or preceded) by him exclaiming "don't tell me what to do!". This farcical exchange, which would be repeated with more or less stress for both of us depending on the impossibility level of our joint workload at that moment, ranging from impossible to completely impossible to ridiculously impossible. These two phrases illuminate the problem - in any healthy relationship, no-one likes being told what to do, and no-one likes telling their partner what to do, so getting to a point where either phrase is being said frequently is not good. The problem is that one partner, the one shouldering the majority of the mental load, essentially does know 'what to do', because they have done the work of knowing what to do. Sometimes this is going to come out as telling the other partner, who has not taken on the mental load, what to do. In my case I don't like this or want to do this, but it happens, because I'm usually the one carrying most of the mental load. The other partner doesn't know what to do, because they haven't made it their business to know, and they shift between not wanting to be told what to do, which shows up their own lack of knowledge and can also feel infantilising, and wanting to be told what to do, because it alleviates the stress they feel not knowing and because evidently something has to be done, even if they're not clear exactly what that is. Thus my partner's comically diametrically opposite exclamations. It's more commonly recognised that people, especially adults in consensual relationships, don't like being told what to do. But it's less commonly understood that adults also don't like being in a position where they are being pressured to tell their partner what to do - pressured to be the manager and their partner the 'underling', when they both want to be equal partners.

The second dimension of this discussion that doesn't get much attention is the unspoken norms of what housework, or indeed childcare, entails. What 'needs' to be done, what standards are, what tasks are necessary. In the laundry example, there is an assumption, say, that clean clothes are essential and that clothes must be washed when they have been worn a certain number of times (perhaps once), that this washing should be done by the owners of the clothes at home in a washing machine or possibly in a laundrette, that clothes of a certain type must be worn in certain contexts and that they should be clean and dry, and a whole heap of other assumptions besides. That one partner might think a different level of cleanliness is acceptable, might prefer to give their clothes to a dry cleaners or serviced laudrette to be cleaned, might have so many clothes that they can wear different ones without needing to wash any particular item of clothing, these possibilities and many others are ignored. There are assumptions made about what 'must' be done, in other words there is a strong norm about what is considered necessary. And there is a second, crucial assumption that the partners share these norms. So the problem is presented as one of a shared, commonly understood joint project of housework, that is unequally split, both in terms of amount of work done by each partner, and type of work done, between manager (high mental load) and subordinate (low or non-existent mental load). Whereas it seems clear to me that the shared project of housework, of maintaining one's shared home with one's partner, is not commonly a project that is understood the same way by both partners. It is shared but each partner has a different conception of what it is that they are sharing. Each partner has a different idea of what is necessary, and of how it should be done, and indeed by whom. While often being unaware that these differences exist. This can lead to conflict, and it can be irreconciliable. Or just repeatedly annoying. When children are in the picture, it can seem much more serious. It's okay for adults to wear the same clothes for days, or eat takeaway for every meal or no food at all if they want; it can seem less okay to do these things for the child in your care.

Articles that talk about unequal housework splits or compare the number of hours done by women and men are making important points about the value of unpaid work. This needs to change. But unpaid work is infinitely expandable. As well as achieving equality in this work, we need to ask whether on the one hand, more work is required overall - are there important things that are not getting done? This is again important in a different way when it come to children - it's apparent that some important kinds of care and elements of the work of raising a child are simply not getting done for some children because a caregiver is not doing enough or the right kinds of work, and hasn't taken on the mental load of knowing what needs to be done. On the other hand we can ask whether less work is required in some ways - that it might benefit us to recognise that we have assumptions about what 'needs' to be done, and to question those assumptions, and perhaps, together, create new norms that mean less and better work for everyone.