My partner, like most modern men, wants to contribute equally to the house. He cooks and cleans without being asked. “How did you get him to do that?” people ask. The answer is, I don’t. I would not be with him if he didn’t.
I have friends in happy relationships with traditional gender roles, who feel satisfied putting in all the household work because the feel they are getting something equal in return – a financially generous partner who appreciates them. Everyone deserves to have their needs met, whatever they are, in a relationship. Personally, my need is not having to spend my life cleaning up after someone else.
Even though my partner is “good around the house”, he does not clean like a woman would. He does not spend hours on TikTok learning how to clean the seal of the washing machine. He did not go online recently to buy a special brush to get in the gap, thinking it would also be handy for dusting down the back of the radiator.
“What’s this?” he asked, holding it up when it arrived. He didn’t even know he had to clean down the radiator gaps, or around the washing machine seal. His brain has been free of radiators and bleach and mould.
It has been thinking about work and other things that might make him money. It is freed up to wonder what he’d look like with a mullet (pretty hot actually), or if he should change banks, or if he could have gone professional in football if he had just pushed himself more. He is blissfully unaware of the stupid radiator and washing machine brushes. And for a split second, standing in my kitchen, I hate him for it.
It is the woman who gets the blame for a dirty house with two adults in it – she is lazy even if their house is in a state
But it’s not entirely his fault. I was brought up as a girl and he wasn’t. I got the message that cleanliness and morality go hand in hand. A dirty house is the sign of a bad woman. I live in fear of people coming over and seeing our radiators are dusty and the washing machine is mouldy.
You could argue these fears are irrational. But I have heard the conversations. “You should see the state of their house, she doesn’t do a thing.” It is the woman who gets the blame for a dirty house with two adults in it – she is lazy even if their house is in a state.
We don’t have higher standards; we’re just anxious of the judgment we’ve been brought up to expect. Back in 1970, Pat Mainardi recognised this in The Politics of Housework, writing, “Men have no such conditioning. They recognise the essential fact of housework right from the very beginning. Which is that it stinks.”
Some things have changed since then, but some haven’t. What I’ve found is that men my age saw their mothers go out to work, but they also saw them do the bulk of the cleaning, the cooking and the remembering of things like birthdays, schedules and dry cleaning.
Some argue that women have ‘higher standards’ of cleanliness and men shouldn’t be expected to perform to them. But something is either clean or it is not
Men are not expected to provide like their fathers might have, but it seems they don’t want to pick up their mother’s jobs either. Perhaps they don’t even know what they all are.
I have heard arguments, lots of them, between tired women and frustrated men who think they really are helping. But helping is the key word here. You don’t “help around the house” if you live in it. You do your equitable share of chores because you are, at the very least, an adult roommate.
The other flashpoint word is “properly”. “I did clean!” says one partner. “But you didn’t do it properly,” spits the other.
Some argue that women have “higher standards” of cleanliness and men shouldn’t be expected to perform to them. But something is either clean or it is not.
Half-hearted broom swipes that just push crumbs under the cupboard isn’t cleaning, that’s just performing so you can’t get yelled at later. There aren’t degrees of a clean counter top. It is either clean or there are marks still visible on it.
My mother was right, the shame of a dirty house would be mine to carry alone
I am thinking about all of this as I rage clean at 11pm. I have just discovered that the bin juice from the past few weeks has been disappearing under a gap in the floorboards, creating an insect feast in the slimy pit. So I boil water, I clean with my special small brushes, and I seethe. I am cleaning late at night when I could be doing something better with my time, like sleeping or writing or picking up the dog poo left by a certain neighbour on the path and flinging it over their fence.
The furious sponging is punctuated every so often by a muttered, “AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO CLEANS THIS HOUSE PROPERLY?”
And that is when I realise I am my mother. I asked her once why she just couldn’t “chill” while she was stress mopping before guests came over. Instead of writing me out of her will, as I would have done in hindsight, she looked at me and said, “Just you wait and see”.
And she was right; the shame of a dirty house would be mine to carry alone. And until that shame is shared equally between genders, neither will the household division of labour.
