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Husbands, I know you worked hard all day, but there is still housework to be done
03 January 2010
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Recently, I read a blog post which listed all of the things that men, husbands, should not do. Humorous as the post was, and partly true, I wanted to respond here to the part about housework and how men usually expect some reward for doing any housework at all.
It is partly true that some men expect recognition for doing a job that they think their wives should be doing—another deeply rooted and erroneous belief that is difficult for some men to cast off. What these men think is that because they have been off at work all day—I will not give my men an office job like the blogger did who wrote the list. My men build houses, work in factories, and fix automobiles—and think they deserve a bit of rest. They are physically drained and housework is the last chore on their minds.
What some of these men do not think about, however, is that, typically, especially when there are young children involved, their wives have been working hard all day too. I have worked construction and worked hard, and I have come home and helped to clean the house. I have seen how exhausted my wife used to be when I would get home from work, and it made her even more exhausted to argue with me about housework, when I was not "pulling my weight." She had been cleaning all day—this was during the summer when there were no teaching jobs to be had, or she would have been working as well—and taking care of our young son. Yes, working in a construction trade can prove tiring, but I know I was never as tired as she.
All of that said, if some men thought about their wives in the way I finally realized I should—I didn't for a long time—they might see that their wives work just as hard as they do, or harder in some cases.
However, there are things around the house that need fixing from time to time, and maybe more, depending on how old the house is, and typically, wives either won't do the work or don't know how. That is where husbands come in. Drywall, plumbing, car
maintenance, cement work, plastering, and roofing, just to name a few, all must be done at some point or another, and we all can't afford to hire a company to do them for us. So, husbands who have the know-how, or who know how to read a how-to article online and have the mechanical inclination, usually get the work done.
Yes, I can fix drywall, plumbing, cars, etc, but those jobs are not there every day. The kids and the cluttered house are. Even though I can fix things around the house that break down, the infrequency of the breakdowns give me plenty of time to help my wife keep the place clean. So, men, while you may be able to complete some tasks around the home that your wife does not know how to, you know as well as I do that you could be doing more housework and lightening your wife's load.
**I want to say here that I purposely did not mention stay-at-home dads, who fix the breakdowns, do the housework, and help raise the children. I am trying to make a point. So, I realize that stay-at-home dads work hard too—I was one myself—but the point of the piece is to show that there is more that some husbands could be doing around the house that they are not.
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