Husband and I have had two rows recently, both provoked by me (well, they usually are: I get mad about something and decide I just have to have it out with him).
Normally the rows are about mess. Is there any woman in the land who feels that her husband does the fair share of the housework? I can sort of accept it when I'm not working and he is - not that it doesn't still offend my intelligence (there's something just too mind-blowingly boring, degrading and unintellectual about keeping the house, clothes etc. clean: I basically do it because I like things to be clean and I hate clutter. Mess clutters up my mind) - but leaving things lying around, for example, I see as downright selfishness and lack of consideration; as creating unnecessary work for me.
I'm determined the children will not grow up just to leave stuff lying around and sometimes I tidy up after them purely because I've got fed-up asking and it's quicker if I do it: inevitably nowadays when I do that a few things get thrown away. Sometimes they can be really good: if Son puts his mind to it he can tidy his room quite quickly. But how are they expected to learn when their father strews clothes willy-nilly around the house and leaves papers all over the place? We have one tidy room in the house, the sitting room: largely because it hardly ever gets used. There is one other tidy room and that's my study, but then hardly anyone else is ever allowed in: it's my sanctuary and I'm not sure how I'm going to feel when it eventually gets converted into the Baby's bedroom. Grumpy, probably. Husband already knows there is no way I am going to share his study, which is a complete pig-sty: I'm hoping for enough money to buy a laptop so I can work at the dining room table but even so I'm not sure I won't miss this little space which is mine, and where any mess is created by me and hence is short-lived.
The rooms I really want to work on and to make nice are the hall - and I have all the materials, just haven't got round to plastering, papering and painting - and the master bedroom (for which I do not have the materials, nor the money - I want a quadruple wardrobe designed to my own specification at some point, as well as to get rid of the rather yucky yellowy paint on the walls). Of course there is stacks more I want to do: paint the sitting room; knock the dining room and kitchen into one and put in new flooring and a new kitchen; add a porch to the back door; do a loft conversion........ and tidy up the garden. Husband and his father are putting in fence posts at the moment but meanwhile the 'lawn extension' (where the pond used to be and where there is a border I need to dig up and transplant) and the rear garden are a complete mess. And Husband reckons the garden isn't looking too bad.... I guess it's an improvement in many ways, especially at the front, on what was there before (overgrown shrubs), but even so I can see lots more to do. A cool £250,000 would do it and then I could design and project-manage rather than getting my own hands dirty (and it would take a lot less time as well). One day... little by little....
I have burbled on about tidiness, cleanliness and men without getting to my real point. Which is that, for me, there is a whole feminism angle to this. I don't consider myself a strident feminist but on the other hand I have always been quite sensitive to times when I feel slighted or looked down upon because I'm a woman, and it makes me really angry. Partly it's because I'm one of those people who, when she is sure of her own opinion, can't see why others can't see it's the most sensible option (and I have to say there have been many times when managers - men - senior to me have been given my opinion, ignored it, only to then take exactly the action I have proposed later on). I did an interesting pyschometric test some years ago, related to NLP I think, which showed I was 'yellow' 'orange' and 'green' and which highlighted exactly that: that if I feel strongly about something I don't see why others can't see it's the best option. The 'green' was an awareness of environment and of others however, so I'm not (I hope) completely self-centred. I wish I could find another copy of the test as it was one of those very subtle tests which it's difficult to 'cheat' at (or difficult to pre-empt the answers to) and it also helps one to understand how others function: Husband I think is 'blue' which is quite traditional and clannish.
So on one level I know I'm intelligent and have good ideas: what frustrates me is when men (as it generally is) fail to see that, and more particularly when I feel as if I'm being treated as somehow inferior (particularly intellectually). I have to say that one exception was my boss at British Waterways, who I always felt gave me the leeway to be expert in my own area, and who was never afraid of being challenged about something. Perhaps the fact that he had a wife who worked full-time and who was something senior in HR made him that way: he was one of the best bosses I ever had.
It would be interesting to know whether other women feel the same way: it's difficult, and not encouraged in the UK, to be big-headed enough to say 'yes, I'm intelligent - I'm a damn sight more intelligent than a lot of the men out there - so treat me as an equal. Why should I do housework, other than because from a personal satisfaction point of view I like a clean and uncluttered house? And why should the fact that I can also bear children make me any less intelligent or any less capable of performing well within a job?'.
I find it curious that I had a stay-at-home 'little wife' type mother and yet grew up, ultimately, to have such different expectations: I think it was the realisation that the full-time mother role just would not suit me intellectually nor personally which perhaps has motivated me, at the same time as the realisation that I did not want to be like her. Having children has created a greater tension as I want to spend quality time with my children - and have the energy to do so - and I want a nice house for the family, but at the same time I want my own life as well: and I do not feel one should have children if they are just going to be farmed out to other carers. After all, they can benefit from my experience and intelligence. My brain being naturally active and curious is perhaps one reason why, since being unemployed, I have spent a lot of time reading quite factually-based books and thinking and writing: but even when I worked it was courses which got my brain sparked off into a heap of new ideas. I would sit in a course jotting down ideas which had been stimulated by the talk, some only indirectly related to what I was meant to be studying.
The trouble is, of course, that this all comes down to a personal level with Husband and hence, sometimes, arguments. He is younger than me: therefore has not reached the same level career-wise. He appears less confident of his own abilities, job-wise, than I am of mine, despite the fact that he is a far more self-assured person than I am: in many ways when it comes to his career he is quite self-deprecating and I think constantly undersells himself. He also had far less capital than me (and I know of other women who have put a large chunk of capital into a joint home) so in reality I could be said to have bought the largest share of our home: which is a horrible thing to say as 'what's mine is his' but is something which gets raised every-so-often. Apparently I was quite horrible to him when I was working full-time while he was at home with the children for 6 months. I can understand that and I fully accept that it was rotten of me: but on the other hand I also don't remember him doing much housework. Housewives complain about men earning money and then turning round and saying 'but what have you done all day while I've been slaving away at the office?': as major income-earner or provider you do tend to feel a certain sense of superiority (rightly or wrongly): when you then have to come home and do cleaning as well it rapidly turns to resentment.
I see no reason why women shouldn't be on a truly equal footing with men and why both partners shouldn't be able to spend quality time with their children as well. Roll on the day when plenty of senior level jobs are readily available on a part-time basis: when employers accept that part-time workers are equally as committed as full-time ones (in fact I think if you allow people time to go off and do the other things they want to do, such as courses or child-care or (say) writing poetry, then you have a more fulfilled and motivated workforce). And at that point if both partners are working part-time perhaps they will both share equally in the household duties.
And roll on the day - which I think will occur at about the same time - when men accept that women do not lose their brains just because they are pregnant or have children.
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