Who does the laundry?

Short answer: both of us.

Laura at Apartment 11D asks who does the laundry (and, of course, the other housework) in families with kids. The implicit assumption she makes is that most families are arranged in the traditional fashion with a careerist father, a mostly-full-time-parent-underemployed-outside-the-home mother, and (a) young kid(s) who contribute absolutely nothing to the labor situation. In our case, that's 100% correct.

Our kid is four months old at this point, so R. stays home full time and does correspondingly more of the housework. I do some (but probably not 50%) of the laundry, some (but probably not 50%) of the cleaning, about half of the cooking and dishes, all of the shopping, and some of the paperwork/filing. We split the childcare 50/50 when I'm home which means that she does more of that as well. I'd like to think we have a fair division of labor, but then again all husbands like to think that. R. would probably have something to say on the matter.

This question was apparently inspired by her reading of Naomi Wolf's book on pregnancy and motherhood. I haven't read it, but I've read Rachel Cusk's UK version, A Life's Work. A short review of Cusk's book: Motherhood completely changed our entire life and now it's ruined. Except that it's not, because they're so cute. But I can't get away for weekends like I used to and I have to hang out with all these ill-bred mothers who didn't go to university and...I'm so confused. (Suffice it to say that I'm not impressed.)

Laura offers an obvious solution to having a careerist husband:

Girls, go for the slackers. They might not make senior partner, but they'll make your dinner and play with the kids. You might not be able to afford a house in town with a good school district, but so what. He made lasagna for dinner.

Fair enough. Being a parent, it seems to me, is all about setting priorities in your life and that is certainly one way to go, although the factors that would make a slacker husband such an attractive mate with young kids around would probably work against him before parenthood and with older kids. The problem is what I call the "wanting to have your cake and eat it too" syndrome. So many people want kids and two good careers and the cavernous house in a good school district and abundant leisure time and...sorry, not gonna happen. You have to make some changes in your life when you have kids and inertia probably causes the traditional path to be the one that is most naturally travelled down. In our case it probably actually does work best for both of us, but obviously it doesn't and shouldn't for everyone.

She also makes what seems to me to be a backhanded compliment about her own partner's contribution:

As a result of Steve's year at home, he can pack the diaper bag (if you're not too picky about sippy cups leaking all over the place). He still does the dishes at night (if you're not too picky about washing the outside of cups) and all the laundry (if you're not too picky about shrinkage).

Not really my place to psychoanalyze, but this sounds like classic passive-aggressive resentment to me, because doing laundry correctly isn't that hard and really doesn't take any more time to do well than it does to do badly. I got a PhD and learned to read a laundry tag and I know which one I found easier to do. Or maybe that's the explicit deal: "OK, I'll do the laundry but I can't be bothered to do it right." None of my business really.

My last thought on this is that nothing made me happier about leaving academia than having a kid. I can't imagine working the 20 hour days necessary to get tenure and doing my fair parenting share. I understand now why most young academics I knew who were parents and were also actually making it in academia had doormat spouses who did most of the parenting. There just aren't enough hours in a day.

Comments

[Laura]

It's not really my husband's fault that he shrinks all my shirts. We have a 20 year old dryer. I just can't resist teasing him about it on the blog. Not entirely fair on my part, but I couldn't resist.

I hear you about leaving academia and raising a kid and not enough hours in the day.

Nice post.