Shocking news: Men and housework

A recent article in Slate magazine really rubs me the wrong way. Writer Emily Bazelon asks, “When men lose their jobs, could they be doing more around the house?”

Really? Even though the New York Times reports that 82 per cent of layoffs have affected men — so much so that women may surpass men in the labour market for the first time ever — the pressing question is, are they doing enough housework?

Reporting anecdotally (of course), Bazelon writes that her hunch is today’s enlightened man actually does do more around the house. But she, and none of the women she talks to, seem quite able to really believe it. In fact, I have a hard time reading the whole article and getting through their sense of slack-jawed astonishment that a man — a man, for godssakes! — could actually pick up a sock.

Of course, it’s awful for a man to lose his job because his fragile sense of self-worth is all tied up in working — at least according to Bazelon and the women that she interviews:

The phrase “fragile male ego” comes up a lot in these conversations. One woman wrote in from Minneapolis, where her husband lost his job ….  She hadn’t worked full-time in 10 years—she was writing a novel and taking care of their kids, ages 13, 8, and 5. Now she and her husband have switched. She’s at work, and he’s mostly at home. And she is still the grocery shopper, the haircut-getter, and the maestro conducting the household orchestra. When it came time to re-enroll the kids in school, her husband filled out the forms, but only after she told him to. They are both deliberately holding onto their past roles. “You’re right, we don’t want to shift things completely,” she said when I probed a bit over the phone. “When he first lost his job, he was so uncomfortable about being home in the middle of the day, and my friend said to me, ‘Don’t make him into a house husband. Don’t reinforce his upset that he’s not working.’ So I’m not.”

The one man she does talk to didn’t even lose his job, but still — shock! — likes spending time with his kids, and helps out around the house:

When I caught him by phone, he’d just picked the kids up from school. He juggled giving them a snack with talking to me. And, yes, they got fed.

“And yes, they got fed”???

I wonder what kind of ripping words Bazelon would have for a man who wrote an article about women entering the work force with a similarly condescending tone.