Our parents, our mothers and fathers, modeled this behavior for young men. It will take a generation of women to break that pattern, to raise boys to be fully competent men. I agree that it’s not just a question of competency (although as a university professor, I have hard facts to back up your points), it’s a habit. Women have to shed this pernicious “trad wife” BS and see a household as a shared project. Men will protest and they will drag their feet, loudly, but it is time to stop accepting this incompetence. It it’s faked to shirk work, call BS on them. If it’s real, teach them what they need to know and hold them accountable.
About 30 years ago, my husband & I were at a work related dinner and I happened to be the only woman at our table. One man bragged about not having to do laundry anymore with a “funny” story about “ruining her favorite skirt.” The others began piling on with “jokes” about deliberately doing a crappy job with household chores in order to get out of them. I resolved that night that my son, at least, would not grow up to be that guy. When he went away to school he would complain about his messy apartment mates who couldn’t seem to manage household basics. He and my son in law - both in their 30s - are both adults and full partners to my son’s girlfriend and my daughter, respectively. I wonder about the sons of the men at that dinner.
Great piece, Jill. But I query your suggestion that men with desk jobs and men in the professional-managerial class are socialized to do more than working class men (if that's what you're saying). In The Second Shift, her study of two-job couples, Arlie Hochschild found that working class men did as much as middle-class men, but they used the language of helping their wives instead of the language of equal division of labor. She also found that an under-discussed cause of divorce was women's quiet rage at domestic-chore unfairness.
I am also married to a generally competent man, and decided not to go back to work after our children were born; generally I am happy with this decision and he contributes to our life in many ways that are both loving and helpful. He is kind, sensitive, and intelligent. But when I went to turn on the dishwasher last night, I found my husband had piled all the cooking utensils on top of one another, instead of spaced out in the otherwise empty section, and had to re-do that so they would actually get clean. He’s never made a doctor’s appointment for our kids, or RSVP’d to a child’s birthday party, and most of the social organization of our life falls to me. This post hits me hard today.
Enjoyed reading this today. I would like to point out that these issues regarding competency should be worked out before you get married. Good communication is the most important factor in marriage. Other important factors in a successful marriage is how closely you are aligned with three basic life, competency choices. If you don’t align, then your marriage will be filled with arguments About who is responsible. If you are really good communicators, you might avoid this as well. Timeliness cleanliness and money management make or break marriages. Competency is merely a reflection of different value systems when it is applied to real life living.
I recently read a piece noting strong statistical evidence that once women exceed some (woefully small) tipping point in enrolment in a college program, male enrolment drops precipitously — as has been seen over and over again with professions, as soon as it is seen as “feminized” its societal value drops for men. I wonder if it’s a similar dynamic with general competence!
I am a very lucky person. First, I should say, I'm not dealing with kids. I never had any, and my beloved was a single father to his son. Second, because he was a single father, he developed all of his competence long before he met me. Third, his Silent Generation parents modeled some of this behavior: his mother really chafed at gender roles, getting a masters before she was married at 25. But she was forced to leave teaching when she started to show with my beloved: the principal told her husband that she couldn't come back and teach any longer. It took about 25 years for her to find her way back to the workplace, since she had four children in the meantime, which was probably two or three more than she wanted. So in order to keep her happy, her son learned there were things he could do around the house, often at his dad's urging, to assist his mother. Fourth, I am the messy one. I work at home and have a certain obliviousness to what's around me. I lived alone for eight years before I met my beloved. He knew what he was getting into, and we live in a larger house that needs more maintenance and care because we're together. Fifth, I make 90% of the money, and he does 90% of the stuff around the house. That's been our deal from very early on. He's now retired, and that's his contribution to the household.
All of that is to say that women have more leverage than they think. Decide what matters to you enough that you will do it yourself. Let the rest go. Sometimes our perfectionist tendencies or misogynistic expectations make us think we need to do more than we are able and that we should. The older I get (I'm GenX, he's a Boomer) I find so many things that matter much less to me than they used to, and I don't want to waste precious head space and mental health being annoyed and frustrated all the time.
That's because Conservative men don't see any need to be interested when they can force and take what they want with no consequences, Jill, just evil-- there is no in between there, imo.
Men aren't as intelligent as women generally, as well, makes it harder to compete in the workforce generally speaking and it takes a lot longer to mature as well.
Years and years ago, I read a book called Boys Adrift which opened my eyes a lot to what the author (pscyhologist/researcher in MD) studied around the world. Trends, similarities, differences in this phenomenon of underachievement of boys across the globe. Worth a read... if anyone wants to dive into a thoughtful study.
I have a question for all the readers. If a guy hasn't gone to college, does that disqualify him in your eyes? He can still be a good man. He can still have a stable and successful career. He can still make you happy.
I feel like we are becoming progressively lazier with each passing generation. It seems like Gen Z doesn't even want to work real jobs. They want to become influencer or streamers. They want to make money without doing anything
The idea that young people are lazier or people don’t want to work hard anymore is eternal — Paul Fairie has made some wonderful threads highlighting op-eds complaining about it going back a century or more
But, on a more positive note, gender roles seem to be changing with each passing generation. I feel like men are doing more housework than before - but that's not saying much
Our parents, our mothers and fathers, modeled this behavior for young men. It will take a generation of women to break that pattern, to raise boys to be fully competent men. I agree that it’s not just a question of competency (although as a university professor, I have hard facts to back up your points), it’s a habit. Women have to shed this pernicious “trad wife” BS and see a household as a shared project. Men will protest and they will drag their feet, loudly, but it is time to stop accepting this incompetence. It it’s faked to shirk work, call BS on them. If it’s real, teach them what they need to know and hold them accountable.
About 30 years ago, my husband & I were at a work related dinner and I happened to be the only woman at our table. One man bragged about not having to do laundry anymore with a “funny” story about “ruining her favorite skirt.” The others began piling on with “jokes” about deliberately doing a crappy job with household chores in order to get out of them. I resolved that night that my son, at least, would not grow up to be that guy. When he went away to school he would complain about his messy apartment mates who couldn’t seem to manage household basics. He and my son in law - both in their 30s - are both adults and full partners to my son’s girlfriend and my daughter, respectively. I wonder about the sons of the men at that dinner.
Great piece, Jill. But I query your suggestion that men with desk jobs and men in the professional-managerial class are socialized to do more than working class men (if that's what you're saying). In The Second Shift, her study of two-job couples, Arlie Hochschild found that working class men did as much as middle-class men, but they used the language of helping their wives instead of the language of equal division of labor. She also found that an under-discussed cause of divorce was women's quiet rage at domestic-chore unfairness.
I am also married to a generally competent man, and decided not to go back to work after our children were born; generally I am happy with this decision and he contributes to our life in many ways that are both loving and helpful. He is kind, sensitive, and intelligent. But when I went to turn on the dishwasher last night, I found my husband had piled all the cooking utensils on top of one another, instead of spaced out in the otherwise empty section, and had to re-do that so they would actually get clean. He’s never made a doctor’s appointment for our kids, or RSVP’d to a child’s birthday party, and most of the social organization of our life falls to me. This post hits me hard today.
Enjoyed reading this today. I would like to point out that these issues regarding competency should be worked out before you get married. Good communication is the most important factor in marriage. Other important factors in a successful marriage is how closely you are aligned with three basic life, competency choices. If you don’t align, then your marriage will be filled with arguments About who is responsible. If you are really good communicators, you might avoid this as well. Timeliness cleanliness and money management make or break marriages. Competency is merely a reflection of different value systems when it is applied to real life living.
I recently read a piece noting strong statistical evidence that once women exceed some (woefully small) tipping point in enrolment in a college program, male enrolment drops precipitously — as has been seen over and over again with professions, as soon as it is seen as “feminized” its societal value drops for men. I wonder if it’s a similar dynamic with general competence!
I am a very lucky person. First, I should say, I'm not dealing with kids. I never had any, and my beloved was a single father to his son. Second, because he was a single father, he developed all of his competence long before he met me. Third, his Silent Generation parents modeled some of this behavior: his mother really chafed at gender roles, getting a masters before she was married at 25. But she was forced to leave teaching when she started to show with my beloved: the principal told her husband that she couldn't come back and teach any longer. It took about 25 years for her to find her way back to the workplace, since she had four children in the meantime, which was probably two or three more than she wanted. So in order to keep her happy, her son learned there were things he could do around the house, often at his dad's urging, to assist his mother. Fourth, I am the messy one. I work at home and have a certain obliviousness to what's around me. I lived alone for eight years before I met my beloved. He knew what he was getting into, and we live in a larger house that needs more maintenance and care because we're together. Fifth, I make 90% of the money, and he does 90% of the stuff around the house. That's been our deal from very early on. He's now retired, and that's his contribution to the household.
All of that is to say that women have more leverage than they think. Decide what matters to you enough that you will do it yourself. Let the rest go. Sometimes our perfectionist tendencies or misogynistic expectations make us think we need to do more than we are able and that we should. The older I get (I'm GenX, he's a Boomer) I find so many things that matter much less to me than they used to, and I don't want to waste precious head space and mental health being annoyed and frustrated all the time.
That's because Conservative men don't see any need to be interested when they can force and take what they want with no consequences, Jill, just evil-- there is no in between there, imo.
Men aren't as intelligent as women generally, as well, makes it harder to compete in the workforce generally speaking and it takes a lot longer to mature as well.
Years and years ago, I read a book called Boys Adrift which opened my eyes a lot to what the author (pscyhologist/researcher in MD) studied around the world. Trends, similarities, differences in this phenomenon of underachievement of boys across the globe. Worth a read... if anyone wants to dive into a thoughtful study.
I have a question for all the readers. If a guy hasn't gone to college, does that disqualify him in your eyes? He can still be a good man. He can still have a stable and successful career. He can still make you happy.
I believe you should not count those men out
I feel like we are becoming progressively lazier with each passing generation. It seems like Gen Z doesn't even want to work real jobs. They want to become influencer or streamers. They want to make money without doing anything
The idea that young people are lazier or people don’t want to work hard anymore is eternal — Paul Fairie has made some wonderful threads highlighting op-eds complaining about it going back a century or more
https://bsky.app/profile/paulisci.bsky.social/post/3kfl6rr6ygk2g
But, on a more positive note, gender roles seem to be changing with each passing generation. I feel like men are doing more housework than before - but that's not saying much