Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Division of Labor

I was having a conversation with a lady last week about our husbands and chores. I'm lucky because Darryl does a fair bit around the house. This lady was complaining about her spouse does very little housework, and she said with exasperation " I even have to do the garbage". Her comment got me thinking, are there certain chores that are women's chores and certain chores that are a man job. Part of me can't believe I even wrote that. I am a feminisit to the core. My inital reacation would be no way. But even in my own relationship Darryl does more of the typical male chores, like cutting the grass, keeping up the cars or fixing things around the house. Where I do more of the typical female chores, like grocery shopping, cleaning and laundry. There are some things we do more equally, like the cooking and the garbage. Not that we are not capable of doing the chores the other one does, for example I can cut the grass or fill the car up and Darryl always helps with folding the laundry.

What about you and your spouse, are the chores divided by the typical man/woman roles?

Till Tomorrow

Jenn

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A friend calls them the blue jobs...the ones the boys usually do. While I too like to think that we divide the jobs around here not based too much along gender lines, I must say, when I stand in the messy garage looking at the dirty cars, I can't help but think those should be blue jobs and not my problem!

Goofball said...

I think you indeed often end up with a more stereotypical division.

Jan will do more garden/technical chores....yet he does most of the grocery shopping and almost all the cooking. As counterpart I must always clean off the table, the kitchen and dishes.

Garbage really depends

Laundry is completely on me but I lately demand that he helps for a portion of the ironing (well ...in fact he always tells me not to iron his stuff, that he'll do it "tomorrow". Only the tomorrow is extandable by 2-3 months and so many idle promises piss me off, so now I really do pile up his stuff and chase him for not doing it until he does).

cars? each takes care of his own car. What is there to be done about cars?

I do most of the cleaning up in the house much to my frustration.

Lesley said...

Over at Team Beck there are no blue jobs and pink jobs. I'm just as likely to be the one to cut the grass as Aaron is to be vacuuming or grocery shopping.

Lesley said...

Oh, except when I was pregnant, than the litter box was all Aaron.

Lori Aitken said...

With the exception of cooking and bookkeeping, all jobs go either way in our house. Don't get me wrong...Ian's perfectly capable of both of those tasks. He can cook and he more than adequately provides dinner for Mackenzie and himself when I'm not home...but he's not a fan of cooking.

We tag-team on everything else (laundry, dishes, cleaning, grass-cutting, shoveling or snow-blowing the lane way, etc...)