Here's why your attempts at getting household equity don't work.

Men know when things are unequal. And they like it that way.

Your male partner knows things are unequal in your relationship. He wants you to think he doesn’t. This is why all of the well-meaning books and articles telling you how to divvy up chores are doomed to failure. If your partner wanted equality, you’d already have it. Men do not think they should have to give anything up for women, and most will do just about anything to avoid having to.

Some of the questions I get most often all hit on the theme of getting men to see childcare, household labor, and emotional labor as real and important:

• How do I get my husband to notice household chores?

• How do I help my husband understand that earning money isn’t enough? He needs to help with chores, too.

• How do I get my husband to remember to feed the kids?

• Why doesn’t my husband notice when I’m doing housework and he isn’t?

The answer is simple: Your husband does notice. He’s gaslighting you because it works. If he can convince you that he doesn’t understand, or see, or that the Y chromosome carries an incompetence allele, or an “I don’t realize children need food” gene, or that women are naturally better multitaskers or whatever other bullshit we’re selling women these days, then he can extract more free labor. He can convince you to waste your time convincing him. And all the while you’ll be doing dishes.

I’m a big fan of folks like Eve Rodsky, who have worked so hard to help couples achieve meaningful equity. It’s true that in a sexist society, men are not socialized to see the same chores women are—especially since outsiders won’t judge them on the cleanliness of their home or the quality of their parenting. So drawing these chores to their attention can be effective, if they are already fundamentally committed to equality.

This is not most men, and we need to get very clear about that fact.

If the division of labor in your house is 55/45, if your husband gets an hour or two a week more of free time than you do, then systems to more equitably divide chores may help.

Otherwise?

No.

I’m glad that we’re now paying more attention to the issue of household inequality. I’m also irritated that we continue to try to convince women that it’s an accident, and that if they just talk to their husbands in the right way, things will magically change.

Sounds like bullshit to me.

Also sounds like more emotional labor.

You might notice that it’s never men reading the books on how to make things more equitable.

Men are not stupid. They know that food comes from somewhere, that children need to eat to live.

They know someone is doing that work—usually because they can see her doing it as they sit on the couch and play games. The problem here is not a failure to understand that there’s work to do. From the man’s perspective, he’s succeeded. He’s gotten a servant. And he’ll fight like hell to avoid giving that up.

This is why I say that household chore inequity is abuse. Men are stealing women’s lives. Consider that the average man adds 7 hours of work to his wife’s plate a week—and that this is just an average that is likely much higher if you take men who contribute equitably out of the equation.

That’s 364 hours a year.

If we assume women sleep for 7 hours a night, men are stealing more than three weeks of their partners’ lives every year—almost 2.5 years of your life in a 40 year marriage.

What could you do with 2 extra years of life? With three extra weeks each year?

What has your partner taken from you that you can’t get back?

Framing it this way—as knowing theft of opportunity, sleep, and peace—is more accurate, more productive, and a better way to bring us closer to true equality.

Household chore inequity is not an accident. It’s one of the most important pillars upon which women’s ongoing inequality is built.

Ask Me Anything!

I’ve gotten a lot of interesting DMs lately, and have sadly fallen way behind on responding to them. I’ll be doing a live Ask Me Anything on Facebook this week. It begins tomorrow at 10AM Eastern Time (that’s UTC/GMT -5). Click here to figure out what time that is in your time zone. Leave your question as a comment on the AMA post. I’ll answer all questions I receive within a 24-hour period. The session will be here. If this is popular, I’ll do it again.

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