My husband can't be a good parent and do the dishes: Bad Advice Friday paid subscriber bonus
A woman explains that her husband thinks he can't parent and do the dishes--and a sexist advice columnist tells her to make life easier for him.
Bad Advice Friday is a twist on my usual Feminist Advice Friday. In this semi-regular column, I look at the bad advice other columnists have given. The bad advice is often rooted in patriarchal norms, in the idea that women’s emotions really don’t matter, and in the cultural practice of centering men’s desires at the expense of women’s needs. You can find a complete list of previous bad advice columns here.
This month’s problem
A reader writes into Care and Feeding seeking advice for “explaining” the load mothers undertake—always a bad sign when a reader thinks the problem is the man’s lack of understanding, not his fundamental laziness and misogyny.
She is the breadwinner, working 50-60 hours per week. She also does 90% of the household labor.
Her husband’s excuse? He can’t do household labor and be a “present” father, so she’ll just have to spend her weekends doing all the chores while he leaves all day to do fun stuff.
So she does everything, and he does almost nothing, except for going to school part-time. It seems obvious that he’s exploiting her, right?
Oh no. In a patriarchy, we can never be honest that men are deliberately and knowingly exploiting women, because then men might have to (gasp!) actually change their behavior and get less free labor. The horror.