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On gender roles — or why I’m not a housewife
By Meg | July 3, 2008
I just read Gender roles on a homestead over at A Homesteading Neophyte. It’s a great post that really got me thinking.
Actually, I’ve always thought a lot about gender roles. Maybe it’s because, like more and more people, I wasn’t raised in a traditional family. Before my father passed away, he was the stay at home parent while my mom worked (though like many working moms, she still took care of most of the domestic chores as well). After my dad passed away when I was still a child, my mom took over both roles, never shying away from traditionally male activities.
Fast forward a couple decades. I have been married nearly 7 years and we have a home that’s at least starting to resemble an urban homestead. However, despite how much I’ve pondered on gender roles, I’ve spent a lot of that time trying to figure out what exactly my role is because my husband and I don’t fit well into traditional gender roles.
Primarily, I hate how some people try to pigeon hole me into the role of housewife just because I work from home (though yes, my husband has been paying the bills since my current work is largely unpaid or underpaid). Let me be clear, I have nothing but respect for true housewives, it’s just that I’m not that into the domestic arts, at least not currently. So, calling myself a housewife not only perhaps an insult to real housewives, but also to my husband since he shares the cooking and cleaning with me and does a better job of it, too. The real problem for me, though, comes when people expect me to perform certain roles which I don’t. “What? You don’t do your husband’s laundry?” “What? You mean he has to cook his own dinner?” My husband and I know how hard I work, but I still hate it when I feel that people think that I’m just some lazy mooch or pampered wife.
So how do things work in the Taylor household? Well, we each have our own careers. I work at home. He works both in and out of the home. At home, we each do our own laundry, we both do some of the cleaning, and we pretty much cook our own meals — though my husband does cook for me quite a bit. We split things up according to who can do what when and best. I can’t say that I do much of the ‘manly’ chores. I do some yard and garden work, but he’s an engineer and therefore, not surprisingly, he does a lot of the building and repairs around here — like building our chicken coop. And for the most part, he also handles the money (though most of that is now set up to work automatically).
As far as chores go, my husband does pour more sweat into them. However, there are a couple roles that I feel like I’ve carved out nicely for myself: researcher and manager. Generally speaking, I’m the one who goes online and finds better ways of doing things. I’m the one that sets up the to-do list and briefs my husband on what needs to be done, when, and why. Yes, sometimes I worry that I may come off as a nagging wife. Fortunately, my husband has assured me on many occasions that he appreciates the work I do.
Nowadays, I don’t worry nearly as much about my role as I did. That isn’t to say that certain types of people don’t still annoy me. There will always be people who have different expectations. However, over the past seven years, my husband and I have figured out what works for us. And in the world we live in, there is plenty of room — and even need — for us to carve out new roles for ourselves.
Tags: Home & Garden, Impressions
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July 19th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
My husband and I have done sort of the same thing. We’ve divided up chores according to either who can do it best (cooking, finances) or who hates it least (laundry, cat boxes).