...should well-meaning people tired of housework argue it out with their spouses or should they push for immigration reform so their maids and nannies can raise their own kids?
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My mother made a point of teaching me, starting at about age 8, to cook for and clean after myself.
Later, in college, living with a group of young men who didn't benefit from similar training, I found myself fighting an endless, two front war against the filth of my housemates and their lack of understanding that they had a responsibility to share in the work of keeping entropy at bay.
This situation only disappeared when I changed from a house of guys to a house of women; which created other challenges but that's beyond the scope.
The guys I lived with were spoiled. That's it. Beginning, middle and end of story. In a large sense, they were spoiled by patriarchy. In a more immediate and manageble sense, they were spoiled by their mothers who picked and cleaned up after them (following the obligatory amount of yelling - sometimes) and the fathers who provided a model for the non-helpful male.
In a very real and very practical way the only solution to the continuing problem of men not pulling their weight at home is to stop helping them not pull their weight at home.
If this means some struggle within the home until a generation of domestically self-sufficient young men is produced (not simply a statistically noteworthy cohort) then that's just what it's going to take.
When I was a boy, my mother told me that she didn't want me to be a "burden on the woman you're going to marry." She knew what she was doing.
She understood that girls only assume these responsibilities because they're trained to and that a boy could receive the same training.
This was real feminism in action at home. Not high minded speechifying at some conference, supported by imported domestic labor at home.
DRM
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