Many people have different feelings about cleaning. I need my area to be clean to be able to focus, so I like to clean unless I am told to clean. Cleaning makes me feel peaceful and keeps my head on straight and helps me feel more in charge. Some people don’t like to clean and that is alright. When it comes to cleaning, it’s really about whatever makes the person feel good; but every adult needs to be able to clean up after himself or herself and those he or she provides for. In Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier, Jessica Grose starts her article with an anecdote describing, how her father-in-law was coming to visit after being shut-in their apartment during Hurricane Sandy, and Grose had to tell her husband to help clean up for their visitor. …show more content…
She brings up statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics quoting that 55% of mothers that also work full time go home and do some housework on an average day, while only 18% of full time employed fathers do some housework on an average day (1). Grose then furthers her point by adding that “even in the famously gender neutral Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a day than their male partners” (2). Another statement that strengthened Grose’s argument was from her interview with David Michael Perez (publisher and editor of Kindling Quarterly) that even if a man does more decorating and cleaning (as he does), the wife will receive the reward or credit …show more content…
I believe men and women should be able to care for themselves and those they provide for. Adults should not be able to be considered adults until after they can cook for themselves and clean after themselves (and those they provide for.) I agree with the solution that Jessica Grose is also inclined to pick, Jenny Anderson says household “tasks should be divided up according to the economic theory of comparative theory” (4) meaning that if the wife is twice as good at one task and only a smaller amount better at second task, the husband should always do the second task. The solution for women lowering their filth thresholds is my least favorite solution as I am someone who wants something cleaned and cleaned completely or it isn’t
American culture has defined the ideal dynamic for a family for many generations as one with a single, or perhaps multitude of dominant male figures, a submissive role or roles usually filled by the women in the household, and of course, children, who are deemed more acceptable if they are “seen and not heard”. Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping deconstructs and twists around what has grown to be custom in American Literature, and challenges the reader to feel uncomfortable about missing or swapped gender roles within the story itself. In Housekeeping, Ruthie and her sister Lucille have been transferred through several relatives after their mother’s death, and find themselves aching for a “normalcy” that they have never experienced, one that
“The 1910 Report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching… further heightened expectations for substantial improvements in the quality of medical care and in the general health of the population” ( Winkelstein, Jr., 2009, p. 44). Issues such as major medical care problems and public safety existed in US cities after industrialization. The emerging progressive era would work to correct sanitation and medical system issues which lead to the US improving conditions. Most of the U.S. population would not acknowledge that there were any problems and these institutions would try to exclude certain people from having access to any health programs. In the Progressive era issues in the healthcare and sanitation systems were improved
Instead these life decisions are primarily influenced by an individual’s personal limits, beliefs, and morals. Though sexism and pay discrimination still exist there are so many regulations and penalties in place that such behavior has become very uncommon. Dorment creates a new scene where he asks women to not only take on the same sacrifices men past and present have all while realizing that men are doing the best that they can. I believe that this scenario created is key to realizing that women can only take on leadership roles or progress in their careers if they are willing to make sacrifices. They can’t expect special treatment or think that being successful doesn’t come with downsides when the thing they are fighting for is equality. According to the Pew Research Center 60 percent of two parent homes with children younger than eighteen consist of dual-earning couples. This study explicitly shows how men are no longer the sole provider, but instead that women are taking on careers while giving up the stay at home role. In addition, despite men typically spending a little less time at home than women it is become increasingly normal for the home work load to be more evenly divided in dual-earning households. As Richard Dorment mentions, this raises the question “Why does the achievement gap still exist?” Men and Women are increasingly splitting the home work load between each other yet men still appear to be achieving more in the workplace than women. Though the opportunities available to each are the same it is the personal motivation and limits that are resulting in the gap. Women value family time over work time greatly while men are much more willing to sacrifice personal time for work because they feel it is for the good of their family. The difference in personal importance is one factor that contributes to the gap and
Women burning bras in the 1960’s became a sign of the Women’s Liberation movement. However, this was not the beginning of the women’s movement. This began many years earlier in the late 1800’s. In Marge Piercy’s poem, “What’s That Smell in the Kitchen,” she gives a description of what the women in the 1980’s are doing to be a part of the women’s movement. According to Bell Hooks, "Feminism is a struggle against sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires" (26). Piercy argues that women do not have the single goal of being servants to their husbands whether they are in the kitchen or the bedroom.
She grew up with her mom, dad, and thirteen siblings on a farm and enjoyed it very much. Laura and her sisters helped her mother with tend to the house. Her mother worked from home doing chores for other people and the interviewee continued on saying “That’s all married women could do.” Laura stated how there weren’t a lot of jobs for women to begin with. Most of the jobs available for women went to those who were widows or single so it was normal for married women to work from home. The women working from home not only did laundry and iron for other families for income but they also were babysitting the children of people working outside of their home. Her father never did any of the household chores, and was never asked to help with them either. He did all of the work that needed to be done outside such as farming, cleaning the barn, cutting grass, etc.. Her brothers also helped the father complete these tasks. The work they did included milking the cows and goats, cleaning out the barn, tending to the chickens by cleaning their chicken coops and gathering eggs. They then walked to the nearest store to sell their items. “Each of us had our own set of chores we had to do daily or we didn’t eat supper,” the Laura explained. “We had to dust, sweep, cook, do laundry, make beds, wash the dishes, anything to keep the house
Women, however, have had the very different role of the "universal caretaker." This translates into the woman being responsible for all that is within the privat...
Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping represents the benefits of being labeled a deviant by society. With the inclusive aspects of women's marginality and domesticity, Robinson uses Ruth’s character development to portray the cost of being rule-breaker in the 1950’s. Ruth is handed a life of permanence, but with the entrance of Sylvie and the reflection of past key figures in her life, Ruth is able to attain a craving for transience and,therefore ultimately decides for a life of transience in order to obtain freedom. The theme of transience in Housekeeping is indicative of women in society and allows for the shift in perception in relation to family
Dempsey, K. (1997). Women’s Perception of Fairness and the Persistence of an Unequal Division of Housework. Family Matters, 2(48), 1-11.
In “Housewife No Longer a Dirty Word,” Lucy Cavendish uses personal experience to bring light to the world of a stay-at-home mother. She reminisces on times when she loved to play dolls and bake but never thought of it as something that she might do all day. Her mother never loved staying at home; she worked for a significant amount of her life, until she married Cavendish’s father. Even then she complained about how boring home life was and stressed the importance of education to Cavendish and taught her about historical figures of feminism, like Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, and Simone de Beauvoir, that influenced both of their belief that they could be anything they wanted. At one time Cavendish believed she was a firm advocate of working women against men, but she and many other women have changed their minds. She argues that the way women
It was a right-of passage that I, and everyone else I knew, had to endure. I do not know one person who likes doing chores. My parents not only had me do them because they had to get done, but to teach me how to be self- sufficient. No self-respecting adult should ever have to ask anyone how to wash dishes, clean a bathroom or do their laundry. These were the types of chores I did on a weekly basis. The statement that Enrenreich makes is probably one of the rudest things I have ever read, “Upper-middle-class children raised in the servant economy…are bound to grow up as domestically incompetent as their parents and no less dependent on people to clean up after them”(Enrenreich). I cannot even remember the number of times I have washed dishes, mopped/vacuumed floors, taken out the trash or even shoveled snow. As I said before, I am guilty of being an upper-middle-class child. Though people have cleaned my house, I too have done that. So I completely appreciate it when others do the cleaning, but I am speaking for myself and not all children that grew up in an upper-middle-class household. Reading Enrenreich’s article did cause me to reflect on how I acted around the cleaning people that worked in our house. Her anecdotes brought back memories of some of the things I had done. Though, I was young and did not fully understand that what I was doing wrong. However, as I continued to read the article I felt compelled to check my
During the video clip Changes in the American Family Since 1970 we were learning about the changes that had occurred in American families since 1970, which have, even since then, changed in other ways. At the time of the video clip we were learning different things from experts Arlie Hochschild and Timothy Biblarz. One of the changes that have been made, this change being the most drastic, is the amount of women who were working in the labor force at the time. According to Arlie Hochschild, mothers of children 18 and under, less than half of them (43%) were in the labor force in the 1970s. Today over 2/3 of women are now working in the labor force, and taking care of children when they arrive home from work. Once women joined the labor force it seemed that the roll of men seemed to change drastically also. Once women were gone at work during the day, along with the men, the men were beginning to help more around the house. Hochschild had made the comment during the video clip that men are doing more work at home and women are doing a lot less, which all together means that less work is being done at home. In the home in the 1970s the rolls that each spouse had were different in many ways. Before women joined the labor force women took care of the children. By taking care of them, women did the important things such as bathing them, brushing their teeth, combing their hair, as the video stated, the maintenance things. As a father in the 70s th...
The McGuffey Readers mentions the women’s duty to clean in multiple places. In this handbook it gives clear directions to the woman on what she is to do when cleaning, “This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings with brushes dipped into a solution of lime. (Gorn 111). ” The book explains how it is the women’s job to thoroughly clean the house once a year in a manner that sounds very laborious!
...could relate to the daily struggles of completing chores to please their husbands and children and understood how Minnie Wright could develop feelings of desolation due to the lack of variety in daily activities. When the men found the unwashed towels by the sink and the burst jars of fruit in the cupboard, they quickly took a tone of disgust and disappointment that Mrs. Wright fell short of her “womanly duty” of picking up daily messes. Women in the early 20th century often were not rewarded for completing difficult tasks amongst the homestead on a daily basis, but could be punished and mistreated for not completing the tasks in a timely manner. Glaspell’s work “offers a sympathetic portrait of an abused wife, a woman who is mistreated economically, psychologically, emotionally, and perhaps physically… [her actions] supporting battered woman syndrome” (Keetley).
More and more women work outside and inside the home. The double demands shouldered by these women pose a threat to their physical health. Whether you are an overworked housewife or an exhausted working mother the chances are that you are always one step behind your schedule. No matter how hard women worked, they never ended up with clean homes. Housewives in these miserable circumstances often became hysterical cleaners. They wore their lives away in an endless round of scouring, scrubbing, and polishing. The increased strain in working women comes from the reality that they carry most of the child-rearing and household responsibilities. According to social trends (1996), women always or usually do the washing in 79 percent of cases and decide the menu 59 percent of the time. Picking up the children at school or doing grocery shopping are just a few of the many typical household-tasks a woman takes on every day.
Education is one of the major factors that influence the division of housework between men and women. Education plays important roles in society and to ensure the progression of the public, each person’s duty is to contribute to its development considering education is the greatest tool for accomplishing this goal. The basic ingredients of the society are men and women, however mostly societies think that w...