{"id":1425,"date":"2017-03-15T12:06:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T12:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/families\/?p=833"},"modified":"2017-03-15T12:06:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T12:06:05","slug":"revisit-when-real-men-do-housework-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2017\/03\/15\/revisit-when-real-men-do-housework-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisit: When *real men* do housework"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Peelers” via judygreenway.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are memes all over the internet proclaiming that men who do housework \u201cget laid\u201d more often. Google \u201cmen who do housework,\u201d and you\u2019ll find, \u201cPorn for Women<\/a>:\u201d a calendar featuring shirtless men doing household chores. What\u2019s so sexy about men doing housework? The underlying message winks at the fact that, in the US,\u00a0women continue to do the bulk<\/a>\u00a0of household labor even though almost as many of them work for pay outside the home as do men. Even after more than a century of feminist movement, most heterosexual households are still organized along gender lines. Heterogendered tradition still valorizes (and separates) male breadwinners and female caregivers. In this context, men who relieve women of housework are seen as rare, exotic, and even \u201csexy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, real housework isn\u2019t sexy at all. Preparing meals, doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning \u2013 these are tasks that never end. Another common internet meme asks, \u201cDon\u2019t you just love those 12 seconds when all the laundry is done?\u201d We noticed that you could create a lively, acerbic Pinterest page just on\u00a0gender and housework<\/a>!<\/p>\n

So what does it look like when \u201creal men\u201d\u2014men who consider themselves breadwinners and heads of the household\u2014do housework? Why would these men do housework in the first place? They might do it if they became unemployed. We interviewed 40 men who lost their jobs during the recent recession. Most (85%) of these men expressed traditional viewpoints about gender in the home, saying that men should provide for women and children. And yet, after losing work, most (85%) of these men became financially dependent on their wives or girlfriends. This caused an ideological as well as financial quandary for them. Because their beliefs about masculinity were tangled up with employment, they had to redefine manhood while they were unemployed.<\/p>\n

So how did these men prove their manhood? They tackled housework, and they crushed it \u201clike men.\u201d Ben, who called himself, \u201cMr. Housework,\u201d explained that he mopped, vacuumed, and steam cleaned the floors multiple times a week. Richard said, \u201cI won\u2019t even use a mop on a floor, just on my knees and stuff. I find it somewhat cathartic, believe it or not, but I roll the rugs up, the ones in the kitchen, shaking them outside, leaving them [to air] out.\u201d Our subjects embraced housework to do their part in the family, and they redefined women\u2019s work as hard work\u2014work befitting men. As Brian said, \u201cI would prefer to be working but I just have to step up and be a man in a different kind of manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it apparently takes a recession to blur the division of labor in traditional household. Will this blurriness last as the economy recovers and men go back to work? Maybe. If \u201cheads of households\u201d and \u201cmen\u2019s men\u201d see household labor as real work, this could elevate its worth in larger society, making it less surprising and funny when men and women cross gendered boundaries in their homes.<\/p>\n

Originally posted 6\/3\/16<\/em><\/p>\n

Kristen Myers is Professor of Sociology and Director of\u00a0<\/em>Center for the Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality<\/em>\u00a0at Northern Illinois University. Ilana Demantas is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at University of Kansas.\u00a0<\/em>They write about their research in detail in\u00a0<\/em>\u201cBeing \u2018The Man\u2019 Without Having a Job And\/Or: Providing Care Instead of \u2018Bread\u2019\u201d\u2014a chapter in\u00a0<\/em>Families as They Really Are<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are memes all over the internet proclaiming that men who do housework \u201cget laid\u201d more often. Google \u201cmen who do housework,\u201d and you\u2019ll find, \u201cPorn for Women:\u201d a calendar featuring shirtless men doing household chores. What\u2019s so sexy about men doing housework? The underlying message winks at the fact that, in the US,\u00a0women continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8959,55,255,1976],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-families","tag-gender","tag-housework","tag-masculinity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}