Category Archives: Family
On the division of labour
Earlier this evening, I watched Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk on why we have too few women leaders in all walks of life and what we need to do to combat this. It’s a great talk, and there are some very pertinent points made about the specific set of obstacles that we as women face – or create for ourselves – in rising to the top of whatever we choose to do.
But the sentence that remains turning itself around and around in my mind a couple of hours later is not to do with the workplace at all. It’s this one:Â ‘I’ve become convinced that we’ve made more progress in the workforce than we have in the home.’ Â This was followed up with the fact that studies show that where a couple have a child and also both have jobs, the woman does twice the housework and three times the childcare. BIG DEAL I thought – we all know this already, it’s just the way the mop flops if you have the misfortune to to be born a female.
HANG ON A MINUTE. Did you hear that? That was me just ACCEPTING a problem and NOT TRYING TO CHANGE IT. That does NOT happen in any other area of my life. I am usually totally incapable of letting something lie if I think it’s wrong. I totally delight in thinking up solutions to all sorts of problems – sometimes I find myself with such an awesome solution that I am gutted there is not a problem to match it. Seriously.
But it’s not just me who seems to be in acceptance mode about this, is it? It’s all of us. We all collude to preserve the status quo. Whilst the slightest whiff of inequality of any kind would not be tolerated in my workplace, that same workplace is populated with women who, like me, accept that though they may work the same or longer hours as their partners, it is, and it will always be, them who do the majority of the caring, shopping, cooking, cleaning and organising. And more than any other thing, Â it’s the women that do thinking. By that, I mean the non-stop mental processing of the tickertape of mundane yet critical information that keeps most families functioning. (If you just read that sentence and don’t have a fecking clue what I’m on about, it’s because you’re a MAN).
I – and I suspect women in general – need to take some responsibility for creating this situation. I know that I am forever doing something because it is quicker to do it myself, or because that way it gets done how I like it, or very often because I want to avoid being a nag. And the flip side of that coin is probably that the Husband thinks that it’s not worth him interfering and he’s better off leaving well alone, and who can blame him – if I lived with a neurotic control freak like me I’d probably aim for the quiet life too.
But now, now that I am trying to re-enter into an an admittedly as-yet-undefined career, and also to grow into myself a bit as a person, I think this needs to change. I can’t apply myself properly to finding my feet again out there, unless I let go of some of the stuff indoors. I’m not sure how I am going to go about it, and even as I am writing this there is a little voice in my ear telling me to let sleeping dogs lie. After all, who needs ANOTHER argument discussion about housework? But then there’s another voice, and I think it’s a bit louder at the moment, telling me that I do need to try and address this, and probably sooner rather than later – after all, our kids are young, and we have another 25 years of working life ahead of us before we can retire and make our kids wait on us hand and foot.
So how to go about it? The project manager in me is saying to start with an audit – of everything that needs to be done and who does it, and then take things from there. But this feels very, I don’t know, clinical. Or maybe I should go for positive reinforcement – lots of praise for jobs well done. Which seems patronising in the extreme (and he’ll only think I’m after something if I start being too nice.) Or I suppose I could take a tip from the three year old and just throw a massive wall shaking tantrum. No? Well in that case I’m all out of ideas…
Has anyone tackled this successfully – and reached a lasting solution?
On highwaymen
What’s that Sinatra song – ‘Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage, Go together like a horse and carriage’…cute song, full of the joys of love, and, er, marriage. But like all good love songs, it seems to end before the kids arrive, doesn’t it? Just as well, I suppose – ‘Love and marriage and kids, go together like a horse and carriage AND DICK BLOODY TURPIN’
Not that I would wish to compare children to rampaging highwaymen. I mean Dick Turpin by all accounts was single minded in pursuit of his plunder, creating chaos to ensure he got what he wanted, and leaving dire consequences all around him if he didn’t. Nothing like kids at all…oh. Come to think of it, Dick Turpin actually comes out of this looking bit better – after all, he only wanted your money OR your life.
Seriously though, how the effing eff are you supposed to maintain any sort of grown up relationship with young children? If you google the top ten tips for a long lasting relationship  (I haven’t googled this by the way, and if I were to google it, it would TOTES OBVS be for a friend) but just say someone were to google it, while researching a blog article or something, and I bet the top 100 search results would be all spaff like  ‘Make quality time for each other’ and ‘When you talk to each other, make eye contact and listen carefully before responding’ and ‘Have a sexy weekend away’ and ‘Don’t forget the romantic surprises, how about a note in the fridge to tell him you love him’ and ‘Do a relationship MOT once every few months’ and ‘Make sure you have time away from each other with your respective circles of friends’ and blah de bloody blah.
Are you having a LAUGH, internets? Quality time? When, exactly? We used to put the kids to bed at 7 and know we’d at least have a couple of hours to do something together, even if it was only the VAT return…now they are bigger, bedtime is later, and our ‘us’ time is squeezed – and at weekends it’s non existent. Eye contact? We could probably do that, if we slept facing each other and propped our eyelids open – would that count? Romantic surprises? Do you mean the ones that appear from nowhere when you just might be having a bit of cuddle that just might lead to something else and – oh. SILLY ME. Hahahahdebloodyha. What’s next – ah yes, a relationship MOT. Right. So if it’s anything like the car MOT, you remind each other for weeks that it’s due, fail to book it, blame each other for said failure, finally book it, and then wish you hadn’t because you get a whopping great bastard bill to get the stupid car back on the road for another year, oh and a sheet of advisories just to tell you that despite all the cash you’ve just thrown at it, the car is probably going to die in the next 12 months anyway…Nah, not feeling the love for the whole ‘relationship MOT’ thing. And finally, make time away from each other…what the WHAT? If we don’t have time FOR each other, how on this earth are we supposed to make time AWAY from each other? And in all this time making, what do we do with the kids???
Admittedly this is made more tricky by the fact that we mostly work different hours to each other. We worked it out like that so that one of us could always be around for the kids before and after school, but the flip side is that one of us is working at least one evening a week and often two, and one of us is always working on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Throw in Welsh classes another evening (which are essential as the kids go to a Welsh speaking school) and weekly admin for the business, and it’s not unusual for us to go weeks without having time for a proper conversation. Weeks? Possibly months, come to think of it…
So, oh grown up ones who are out the other side, how does it work then? Is it just keep your head down and get on with it? Does it get easier? And when? Are we the only ones who are finding that our kids, desperately wanted and loved as they are, are Dick Turpinning things?
As always – pearls of wisdom welcome!
…16Â months on and this remains as true as ever, so I’m linking up with ‘The Truth About’ over at Sam’s blog ‘And Then The Fun Began’…pop over for a root through truth, truth and more truth from some fab bloggers!
