How Women Are Expected To Be Unpaid Project Managers, And How To Stop It

[ItsAll4Kim]

"Men marry women, hoping they never change. They always do. Women marry men, hoping to change them. They never do."

There is much truth in this old adage.

I married quite young. Neither of us could know the other's habits or expectations very well. We floundered and failed, despite many years of trying on my part (I can't say whether she was or was not). I own all of that.

My second marriage, we both had time, both had past experience, both had wisdom to know what to look for, and both had the time spent living together to know whether we would do okay for the long haul. So far, so good, 13 years and 6 weeks after I showed up at the door...

 

[ItsAll4Kim]

Your comparison of stereotypical mens work and women's work is apples and oranges. Car maintenance is done every ~5k miles, while dinner is a nightly task. Some things might be roughly equivalent, say laundry and lawn care, but many of the things that are "women's work" are continuous.

I DO agree with your suggestion of deciding before getting together, though.

Yep, I do everything any man can do as "man's work" around a house. Including building a cabin and essentially completely rebuilding our residence. It still isn't as much constant work as the day-to-day grind. Not even close.

When both partners are working, both have to share the job of keeping house.

 

[ItsAll4Kim]

The boy

???

 

[halcyondays]

Neither moms or dads get paid for being moms and dads.

The "mental workload" of household management depends on the personalities of the individuals involved, their egos and their expectations of what a relationship is, what they think their role in a relationship and parenting is and what their own parents roles were which often set those in the minds of their children. It's rare that couples are consciously aware of what living together is going to be like in advance, let alone having kids.

For example, if one parent is a neat freak and the other organizationally challenged they're going to clash and it's unlikely either with change very much. These are personality traits. Trying to change them doesn't work.

Emma's complaint is timeless and sexist: men should know what I'm thinking, what I need and how I feel. Men should always be helpful or offer to help. I'll let him know if I don't need it.

Humans cannot read minds. They must communicate. Asking for help when needed or wanted is part of communication. It's part of leaning how to be a better partner. Some individuals have a personality which will always help only when asked!

For every woman who doesn't want to manage household chores on her own there's a woman who insists on it. I know way more women who own and guard that turf than those who don't.

The irony of this story is that Emma visits and doesn't offer to help her friend. She sips wine and chats with her friend's unhelpful husband. Then she publishes a story complaining about him. Talk about passive-aggressive.

I'm reminded of what my mother told me more than once. Your father and I had no idea what were doing when we got married and had kids. We winged the whole thing.

 

[spaj8987]

Don't know if this will help and don't really know how to help this but what i've noticed in general that some people take gender roles on as part of their identity. And even further get afraid of changing said identity. With masculinity it's well if i'm not the bread winner then what am i. With femininity it's well if i'm not the project manager then what am i.

I've met both. And neither are as happy as i think they could be (could be wrong). It seems to me that trading places would help if they could/would. That the pressure from gender roles and the fear of the unknown keeps people in routines that of course make them unhappy to whatever degree.

I'm also thinking that sprouts from a need to be useful. A need to be seen as useful. Since society in general puts an illogical amount of focus on being useful. While ignoring positions, ways of being and ideas that are and deeming some as useless. A guy who can cook isn't valued as highly as a woman who can. Meanwhile that value is pushed more into industry than raising a child. A woman who is good at fixing things isn't as valued as a man who can and women who are are also pushed into industries. Very specific ones that aren't on the same level of men but for the purposes of a point i'll leave it there.

I think society pressuring people into these sorts of roles creates a kind of void. There is no 100% across the board detailing of which gender normally does what. That's never as accurate as saying we all are and can do blank. Kind of reaching weird territory here but yeah. Not all men are only masculine and not all women are only feminine.

Don't get me wrong though. Masculinity and femininity isn't like sexuality. While people are both born and can choose what sexuality they are. We're all both masculine and feminine to some degree or another. Same goes for gender roles.

There are moments where men are caring and soft while others with women being stoic and harsh. I think (could be wrong) that most people either not knowing that or never having asked about that creates tension in an of itself. Regardless of if they're in a relationship or not. If they have kids and chores and so on. And by the time they do, most of this is buried in their minds so deep they can't even question it. Don't even know it's there.

I totally could have written that better but for the purpose of just getting it out of my head i'll hit enter.

 

[AlteredEgo]

We lay out plans and goals together. Once we have a shared vision, I execute, he helps. He does stuff without prompting, and frequently asks how he can help. If we were the couple in the blog entry, he'd have made the guest a drink, asked if he should stir the pot, fed the pets, and entertained the guest. Before she arrived, he'd have vacuumed the downstairs (the carpet voluntarily, and then the wood and the sofa, wingchair, and ottoman after I ask), and might have asked if the guest bed needed fresh linens in case she gets too tipsy to drive. He's a good egg. He's just terrible at cleaning, and domesticity in general, and I have made peace with cleaning behind him, and waiting a few weeks to get something built/fixed or doing it myself. At least the building/fixing he does extremely well. His sense of what is and is not clean was poorly calibrated by his manufacturer. And that's the nicest thing I've called his mother in years.

The author suggests what seems like a passive aggressive approach to me. Polite pass. I cannot sit around quietly stewing while my kitchen and baths go to shit. And he does not mind doing his share. I mind his housework. We mostly make good foils for each other.

 

[TheRob]

Stop letting it be a 'damned if you do and damned if you don't' situation with regard to helping.

if you don't want to be the chore manager then you have to accept that someone else might do some random chore (for purposes of the discussion lets go with running the vacuum) at a different level then you yourself would do. in other words you might not think they did it well enough but at least they did it....also what if someone has to pick the kids up from school, it is most likely a good idea if you both know who will be doing that....people often complain about a lack of communication but it also seems to be a problem if communication is expected from them.
asking for help when you need it shouldn't be an issue, I'm willing to bet when you are riding along together and the car needs a flat changed the majority of women are not out there helping the man do it if he doesn't specifically ask her to. obviously everyone is an individual but my experience has been pretty consistent on this particular issue.

now I am familiar with how the internet works so I already know there are only two possible reactions to this post, people will either say "yes that's it exactly!" or something with the word misogyny somewhere in it.

 

[MickeyLee]

Yeah. Half-ass justifying bullshit.

Lets stick with this "picking the kids up from school" chore. This is a task we can all agree has a fairly standard of expectation to meet the definition completion. Nobody is going to say "well, I picked up one of the kids.. If you wanted both of the kids picked up you should have done it yourself"

Grow the fuck up. Do the job. Don't live like bears with furniture. How hard is that? Stop trying to guilt people with the idea that they are asking for too much or are making unrealistic demands.

P fucking S: nobody wrenches on my baby but me. Unless I've been hit by another car and I require some sort of med-evac level of assistance, I'm changing my own tire.

ETA: and I'll tighten all the lug nuts. Not just enough to keep the tire on. See how stupid the whole "well enough" argument is? There are very few instances where that shit flies. The only reason we're hearing it here is because the topic at hand has classically been considered women's work. So having standards are akin to being overly critical or unreasonably demanding.

 

[286798]

I change my own flats, too.

The "not good enough" thing goes both ways, though. When I was married, I mowed the grass while my "wasband" golfed and it looked like rain. When he got home, he bitched at me because it wasn't diagonal stripes. There was no "thank you", or "nice job, but in the future, I'd appreciate..." or "can I show you how,,," nope, just a *you did it wrong!" Did I mow the grass again? Nope. I admit I was bitter and stupid. When we divorced, he asked if I wanted him to come over to mow each week because I "couldn't". I laughed at him... I had been mowing grass since I was like 8 .

I do agree with the general premise of this article. The project management of the majority of the home duties do fall to a woman in many/most cases. I do think that majority of the exterior and car maintenance things generally fall to men (although I handled car stuff in my marriage). In my experience, men are more likely to be able to ignore the undone and do specifically what was asked vs what needs to be done (get baby bottle out of dishwasher vs empty the machine).

 

[Scarletbegonia]

Great article. Sorry, this is long...

What's interesting is that men die sooner, and the prevailing opinion is that stress is often the killer. So do men fail to deal with stress as well as women, or do men actually have more stress? Mental load is stress. Women are better at juggling multiple tasks, whereas men typically do one thing to completion then move to another. In the IT world it's "serial processing" versus "time-slicing".

Speaking for my relationships, I saw women *take* the mental load more than having the load imposed upon them. Wanting control of things (what to eat, where to go, who the friends are) seems more natural, perhaps. I had fights with my ex-wife over the finances....she literally demanded to handle bill paying. She insisted on controlling the food buying and meal planning. Why? "Her mother did those things". So what? So that's just how she wanted it.

This extended through all aspects of our entire 20+ years of marriage. If I did something that she usually did, it was invariably wrong. She literally sought a defect...you could see her doing this. Needless to say, eventually you give in/up. The true insanity of it was that I was essentially a single dad from Monday thru Friday. She traveled for work. So I would do everything (with two daughters) all week, then she'd be home and try to do everything all weekend and act as if she had to make up for being gone.

No matter how complete all chores were....clean, organized house, laundry completely done, fridge and pantry stocked, bills paid, homework done,....and btw I worked a high-stress professional full-time job too...nothing was ever enough. Some flaw would be found and exploited, and she would find things to add to the workload. If I tried to carve out downtime for her, she found a way to not accept it. "I have to..." invariably was the response. If I already did that, she'd find... or dream up...something else.

My present wife likes to be busy. I can't get her to just chill either. Even at our nudist getaway...a cabin I built, at a campground with pools and games and plenty of time to get away from literally everything....she volunteers for events, hosting parties, doing jobs for the campground. Constantly.

But she will let me do things, and not pick at them. We trade off on chores. If I'm not working (I'm self employed) I clean, cook, shop, do laundry, etc. and when I'm working I do as much of that as possible while home, and we share what can't be done by one of us. She pays her bills, I pay mine...our money is separate and we divide the financial burden based on our relative ability to pay.

But perhaps most relevant to this thread is that she will ask if she needs me to do something. But I don't wait to be asked...if I'm sitting and she's working, I ask what I can do, and she knows I mean it and she says what's going on. We communicate and cooperate. She does the same with me...if I'm doing something she asks to help and I let her, or I ask and she helps. No bitching from either of us.

Every day she leaves hair in the shower, tissues on the nightstand, coffee grinds in the filter, and lunch prep mess in the sink. Every day I clean all of it up. So what? I know there are things she does for me, like doing the dishes even though she cooked that night, because I'm exhausted or not feeling well. She's carried me through getting my business going and when work is slow. She's dealt with my health issues. We try to be a team.

I've gotten snarky comments from guys who see me....the big contractor dude...washing dishes and folding 'wares and any other stuff, and I don't give a rat's ass. Someday one of us will be alone. Until then, I want to be a participant in my relationship, home, and world. We both have jobs. We both have a home to keep.

We are far from perfect, hell, we're both part Italian and fight like cornered dogs when something gets to be too much.

But she always kisses me goodnight.

Part of the linked piece began to go into breaking the expectation chain.
In my life, I raised a boy into a man ( I posit half our social problems is we raise children but not adults. I might be helping raise a child, but I expect an adult at the end) who maintains a tidy home, in the face of his partner and his father doing not a whit (Partner is female, and never taught...there’s another gap...teach all children to maintain the home in cleaning, repair, maintenance and financial senses).
He’s acquiring the mechanical skills via his dad, as dad has mechanical things to repair. At best, we repaired a vacuum and the car. Oh, and a bicycle. Here, we built things.

The social expectation I feel is to maintain appearances. Keep the home, keep myself attractive at all ages...but don’t show your age...,cleaning over creation.
I exempted myself from a lot of it by being in a subculture more than the overculture, but the conditioning is strong.
My kiddo says he feels the expectation is to be strong and do it all. Plus, he took on homekeeping for people who don’t appreciate, and therefore seemingly undo his work in minutes.
So, together, we are unlearning the perfection pressure and paradox.

 

[Sagittarius84]

Yeah. Half-ass justifying bullshit.

Lets stick with this "picking the kids up from school" chore. This is a task we can all agree has a fairly standard of expectation to meet the definition completion. Nobody is going to say "well, I picked up one of the kids.. If you wanted both of the kids picked up you should have done it yourself"

Grow the fuck up. Do the job. Don't live like bears with furniture. How hard is that? Stop trying to guilt people with the idea that they are asking for too much or are making unrealistic demands.

P fucking S: nobody wrenches on my baby but me. Unless I've been hit by another car and I require some sort of med-evac level of assistance, I'm changing my own tire.

ETA: and I'll tighten all the lug nuts. Not just enough to keep the tire on. See how stupid the whole "well enough" argument is? There are very few instances where that shit flies. The only reason we're hearing it here is because the topic at hand has classically been considered women's work. So having standards are akin to being overly critical or unreasonably demanding.

But the fact still remains these men whom are supposedly not carrying their weight in household duties, arent exactly demonstrating their capacity to do so from the beginning. It seems real cart before the horse-ish to first establish a presumably romantic relationship with someone, then insist they "grow up" and clean to your standards once the love buzz has worn off.
The sinplest and easiest solution to this seems to be to not positively reinforce the existing tendencies that are not up to your standards with your affection and companionship, but I catch this odd whiff of...entitlement as if you shouldnt have to; which is weird because if the subject were say, gambling, drug use, sex with other women, you'd probably be amongst the first to chime in about not being able to change a man after the fact.
Nobody is accusing people of having unrealistic standards of cleanliness, its just those standards are not universal to everyone's existence and the only entitlement you have is whether or not you'll tolerate it as a part of your relationship. If so you cant really complain, if not, being single is always a viable option.

 

[MickeyLee]

Okay. Men are a lost cause, incapable of change or growth. Boys will be boys and live in squalor. A clean house or a properly wiped ass is simply too much to expect with their obvious chromosomal shortcomings.

Gotcha.

This is why most of my life I've partnered with women.


Also. This thread proves my ignore list choices are valid as fuck.

 

[Sagittarius84]

Okay. Men are a lost cause, incapable of change or growth. Boys will be boys and live in squalor. A clean house or a properly wiped ass is simply too much to expect with their obvious chromosomal shortcomings.

Gotcha.

This is why most of my life I've partnered with women.


Also. This thread proves my ignore list choices are valid as fuck.

You're being unnecessarily binary about this. Plenty of boys and men, of their own volition do not live in mess or squalor, and order their lives and spaces in ways that minimize the efforts needed for upkeep. Why you dont attract or attract to these men is a whole different discussion. My experiences have been the complete opposite, i minimize clutter and thus easily keep clean, every woman in my life whether as a function of just being messy by default or as a repudiation if expectations of the past clutter the fuck out of my space but still expect things to be kept clean, not by a mitigation of their collateral damage but by a boost in my efforts, and I suspect that is really what is going down a lot here

 

[deleted1547822]

My experiences have been the complete opposite, i minimize clutter and thus easily keep clean, every woman in my life whether as a function of just being messy by default or as a repudiation if expectations of the past clutter the fuck out of my space

Preach.

My sister and I were roommates for a few years. I cleaned, she let leftover chicken sit until maggots formed. When my wife and I were dating, I washed the sink full of dirty dishes. I wouldn’t let her wash my clothes, because sorting colors from whites seemed to difficult for her. 25 years later, I’m still better domestically. Heaven forbid that I leave a pair of shoes at the end of the bed though...

Frankly, the whole article is a call for a pity party. It’s sad really.

 

[Enid]

The irony of this story is that Emma visits and doesn't offer to help her friend. She sips wine and chats with her friend's unhelpful husband. Then she publishes a story complaining about him. Talk about passive-aggressive.

First off, that's not even irony. But setting that aside, Emma not helping is besides the point. The point is, the male colleague just sits there and does nothing while watching his wife not only try to wrangle with the young ones, but simultaneously prepare dinner for her family and a guest. He doesn't get to be all like, "WELL, you should've ASKED for help!" That's ridiculous. He's not a child, his legs and arms are presumably not painted on, he can suck it up and try to help his partner make this whole process go much more smoothly.

It's not passive aggressive for Emma to have noticed the skewed dynamic and written a visual commentary about it. She's pointing out a very real problem that occurs every day in a lot of households.

 

[MickeyLee]

On a micro-scale some men might be considerably neater than the women they are in relationships with. However, there is no cultural expectation of those men to be domestic divas.

The lovable schlub with a long suffering spouse, hustling to keep on top of the house, the kids, her career and her perpetual toddler of a husband. Oh, he's just so incapable. It's endearing!

No, it's not. It's out-dated and horribly gender biased.

Idiosyncrasies vs broader reality. Your one relationship is not reflective of society on whole.

 

[HorseHung40's]

This issue is not exclusive to women; it affects men too, albeit not to the same degree. I work also as a college professor. In the department in which I work, I was the one onto whom projects were dumped.

I finally had enough, and, exploded one day. At that point, I no longer cared about consequences. When the head of the department (and pillar of his oh-so-conservative church) told me that my newfound attitude could be detrimental to my career, I paused, looked at him squarely in the eye and said, "Well your awfully close friendship with men on the gymnastics team, including your Thursday night dates at the motel by the interstate could be detrimental to your marriage and position within your church congregation, if that were to become public knowledge."

Problem solved. My workload stayed lighter after that.

 

[Sagittarius84]

On a micro-scale some men might be considerably neater than the women they are in relationships with. However, there is no cultural expectation of those men to be domestic divas.

The lovable schlub with a long suffering spouse, hustling to keep on top of the house, the kids, her career and her perpetual toddler of a husband. Oh, he's just so incapable. It's endearing!

No, it's not. It's out-dated and horribly gender biased.

Idiosyncrasies vs broader reality. Your one relationship is not reflective of society on whole.

Still begs the question, why again are we positively reinforcing the schlub with marriage again? If the issue were inequity with sex, and a man is complaining about the amount of sex in a relationship, will not the 1st inquiry be about his partner's sexual propensity before marriage? And if its established she wasnt much of a sexual being before the fact, would we not then put the accountability at his feet, stating he haf an opportunity pre marriage to express his sexual expectations and couldve opted then to not get married if they weren't met instead of hoping she'll change later on?
One of two things is the root of this problem; either you're implying some collective, yet individualistic effort amongst men en masse to fool women by being clean first then showing their dirty asses later, or women are simply compromising beforehand not on the basis of actual acceptance of lower cleaning standards, but a somewhat hubrist attitude of assuredly being able to change him later...so which one?

 

[Sagittarius84]

As this thread progresses, i wonder if there should be a separation of this unpaid mental labor question between home and professional sitiations as I don't think one is as gendered as it's made out to be.

 

[Nosuportneeded]

I’m just not good at mental load. I purposely keep my life as simple as possible and it does involve sacrifice. I think this is a big challenge if I’m trying to couple with someone who does not follow that philosophy. It’s actually doable if we sit and work it out but you really can’t do it perfectly. It starts to involve assigning value to chores and individual preference weighting them with formulas and equations...
...getting it perfect won’t happen and those little cracks is where da debil hides! It’s hard to keep it quiet on the western front, but communication, yes, that stupid word, will cure it