Summary Of Jessica Grose's Article 'Cleaning: The Final Frontier'

Jessica Grose’s article “Cleaning: The Final Frontier” was published by the New Republic in 2013. Grose acknowledges that when it comes to cleaning in a household, the distribution of cleaning is unfair between both gender roles. In the beginning she explains how household chores should be equal between the wife and the husband. She goes into talking about how women work more than their male partners. Grose argues that men do not do enough cleaning and that they are the problem, but she contradicts herself and later realizes that men are not the problem, women are. She starts her article with effective appeals, strong credibility and facts about men not doing their share but later her argument becomes ineffective and loses her argument at the end.
Grose uses a Logos appeal towards the beginning when she persuades her readers with her reasoning being that men do not put enough effort in around the

house. She mentions that “a mother who works a full time job still works even more at home; unlike a father who works full time”, this is because working women with children are working “a week and a half more” each year. She mentions that because even though mothers work “more” then their spouse they still have time to clean and do housework. Some of Grose’s statistics say “about 55 percent of American mothers employed full time do some housework on an average day, while only 18 percent of fathers do.” Grose mentions that when fathers do work around the house it tends to be more outside work on nice sunny days instead of indoor work, while mothers are stuck inside cleaning all day. She is informing her readers that men still help around the home but it does not compare to how much more women work throughout the day and even the week.
Grose effectively utilizes a pathos appeal throughout her article. She begins her article with a story of her and her husband the day after Hurricane Sandy. She mentions how her and her husband share household jobs equally except when it comes to cleaning and also includes that she is eight months pregnant. By mentioning that she was pregnant and saying, “it’s really hard to fight with a massively pregnant person” she is informing her readers that they should feel some sympathy towards her because she is eight months pregnant. While pregnant, a woman’s mood can be easily altered. This could be causing her to hold a strong position towards her argument and then completely changing her position as she continues to write her article. Grose puts a lot of negativity into her article with her word choices. Some of the word choices she made are: that women do “drudgery” work or when she states that “women are more inclined to clean then men is a ‘headachey’ … project.” Her word choice brings out a negative connotation towards cleaning that makes her readers feel sorry for women.
Grose leads up to a strong argument in favor of men, but she loses everything that she argued for in the end.

She is so confident and has many credible facts to support her argument. Then as her article is coming to a close she contradicts herself. She slowly loses her argument when she explains that men do want to help around the house but when they do they don’t get any of the credit for it. She says, “A lot of women shoo their husbands away from cleaning because they know the men will do a sub-par job of scrubbing the sink.” She goes from arguing that Men do not help; to the idea that men try to help but women just do not allow them to because women believe they cannot do the job up to the standards they want. Then from this she comes up with two solutions to deal with men not helping around the house. She decides to 1. Divide the chores based on the economic theory of comparative advantage or 2. Women need to lower their filth threshold. Grose has a good idea to solve the inequalities between men and women in a house but is unable to show this in her own

home.
At the end of Grose’s article she tries to tie her argument back to her article but is unable to do. The last paragraph has a change in emotion/opinion from her problem solving ideas to making cleaning more fun. Grose starts out with a serious problem and argues for it and then weakens it when she transforms into a different position on the topic. She ends her article stating, “If there was some new electronic hovering Apple product that cleaned the bathroom, I’d try it…I bet my husband would buy one.” Right there she concludes her article on a note of confusion for her readers.