Gender divide all man-maid

Gender divide all man-maid
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 20, 2012
Section: Opinion

My husband thinks a period drama is a movie about a woman with PMT. When he sees a petticoat and a china cup in the same television frame, he goes in search of the newspaper. By the time Downton Abbey finished its season, he was very well read and I was in mourning for Sunday nights, and the abrupt end to my well-to-do fantasies about living as landed gentry (mostly so I could have a maid.) When I dabbed daintily at my tears after the hero lost his leg in the trenches (he found it later in the army hospital) my lord of the manor would look sideways at me from his newspaper, with lips as pursed as the dowager Maggie Smith.

Why can’t men enjoy women’s television? – it always has stout-hearted blokes in it, what’s not to like? Take Downton Abbey’s gilt-edged example : a  manly aristocrat running his boundless estate, his wife, five daughters and a house full of servants. Ain’t that gentrified male fantasy too? : money, power, control, ladies-in-waiting? Or am I being common?

The gulf of good breeding between my beloved and me is widening as fast as a fallen woman in the family way. He thinks being confined to the Grand Prix for half a Sunday is all the drama anyone needs. Don’t get me wrong – I love cars as much as the next woman  (I had a buttercup-yellow Datsun 180B once) but I’ll be blowed if I understand why staring at cars doing perpetual loops of a racetrack constitutes entertainment. I ask questions about which driver’s doing what and why to stave off the boredom, but after ten minutes I am catatonic, even from pole position (closest to the telly).

And it’s not just about who dominates the remote control. Domestic responsibilities are still unfairly divided along gender lines. I know this because our washing line has not been touched by a man since it was rigged up by one last century. Our washing basket lives undercover behind enemy lines – no-one but me knows it exists. It straddles the space in the laundry I call occupied territory – and there’s no peace for me until it’s empty. I don’t know why my freshly ironed spouse thinks he can ignore all entreaties concerning washing, drying, folding and putting away the family’s clothes, but my civil authority over this matter is clearly non-existent. (I now know encouraging people to put their smalls out is part of the delicate cycle of being a housewife.)

The dishwasher, however, is the land mine in our house. I love that appliance like no other, we know each other so intimately, I could fill and empty it blindfold. But my soft-skinned occasional kitchen-hand continually rearranges my bad packing ‘for the good of the dishes’. I say it’s a workhorse happy to get rough treatment, he replies that my cavalier attitude towards the art of plate stacking is contemptuous. Late at night I hear him muttering under his breath as he restores efficiency and symmetry. It’s just a pity he’s not around to rearrange the two loads I’ve already done without him.

Domestic servitude is a dead end job. We all hate it, we all want to do less of it, or share more of it. But it’s a rare man who thinks about housework like women do. I know that because the latest census figures show a woman my age – a youthful 44  – spends two hours and 51 minutes on housework a day compared to her mate, who puts in an hour and two minutes (the two minutes is for procrastinating. Actually, maybe it’s the hour that’s for procrastinating?)

Lo and behold the census reveals that suddenly, at the age of 85, Australian men get a taste for housework and out-clean their wives by eight minutes a day. The only possible explanation is that by 85, a bloke probably feels he’s held out long enough, or his wife has kicked the bucket waiting.

My live-in eye candy has become ever more short sighted since I left my career on the box for life back in the nest. His clothes are now left where they’ve fallen, his coffee cups are plopped into the sink for the dish-hand and my morning vacuuming  is an annoyance that interferes with radio news. He still mows a mean lawn, has the deft touch of a handyman and can get a squirming toddler dressed without tantrum, but I remain handmaiden to all.

But lately, an odd thing has happened. I seem to have risen above the resentment of feeling subordinate in my role as housewife, and have grown to tolerate the gentle hum of my morning rounds. While the breakfast chatter of children is at full throttle with dad, I quietly make beds with hospital corners and find homes for lost things. I think it’s the need to control one’s environment: my home is my office is my home. I still detest cleaning, but  a veneer of household order is at least something achieved when writer’s block strikes, or I discover that  5 year old has given 2 year old a sly haircut with the craft scissors.

Working mums have it much tougher. Many arrive home to the dreaded ‘second shift’. After a full day on the job, they walk in the door to make a start on cooking, homework, baths. In between they try to jam in some meaningful time with their children. If they’re lucky, they have spouses who help to shoulder the load but plenty of partners are still toiling away in the office. Why has the division of domestic drudgery proved so resistant to change, despite ever more numbers of married women entering the workforce? Why are women still picking up the slack? Because most still aren’t earning as much as men?  Or because men would rather work late than come home to face a mountain of washing? No question – I’d rather stay holed up in the office as well.

I have sampled all the permutations of domestic life: I’ve been a double-income-no-kids, a working wife and mother of one, and a single mum trying to be all things to a 3 year old, pay a crushing mortgage and keep a level head at the office.  Now I’m a mother of three with a breadwinner who allows me the luxury of a few precious years at home. Luxurious the hours may appear through the window of an office in town, but my day is no longer divided into work and rest – instead, I am always ‘on’ and ‘doing’.   I’m backed here by the latest statistics showing women get much less free time a day than men. No matter whether they work for money or love.

The biggest problem with domesticity is that it never ends, and no amount of technology has circumvented the tedium of keeping house. All I’ve learnt is that the more housework a man does, the happier his partner is. And I’ll hypothesise that men who willingly share the load get a lot less grief from the trouble-and-strife. In the meantime, I’ll try not to care if my house gets trashed. I’ll just remind myself that it’s clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy.