In this post, we will examine the third assumption we made about housework, namely that it isn’t fair that the wife has to be in charge of so many invisible parts of housework, like planning the children’s schedules and noticing when they are outgrowing their clothes, and making sure things “run smoothly”, while husbands generally get awarded hero status for washing the dishes and vacuuming. (Sometimes it is husband who does these things, and the wife does not seem to notice. The ideas in this post should be applicable to either scenario.)
First of all, it isn’t fair that the wife is generally blamed for a messy house, even if it’s the husband’s socks all over the floor, and his dishes on the coffee table! Things may be changing, but unfortunately, blame is still often assigned to the woman. My answer to that is that the quicker we all learn not to live in other people’s heads the happier we will be. Yes, it would be nice if everyone liked us and approved of us and supported us, but I’m not wasting any more time waiting for that to happen, and I suggest you move on also. Life is too short to try to change other people! To put things into perspective, your husband would probably be blamed for overgrown grass in the yard. So, there’s generally enough blame to go around when you think about it.
The fact is one person needs to be in charge of running the house. That doesn’t mean the other person does not do housework. But there needs to be one person who is the general manager. And that involves a lot of invisible work that doesn’t receive a lot of recognition. Running a home takes a lot more than washing dishes and vacuuming. Running a home is like running a hotel. There are a lot of moving parts! I will be sure and write about the practical aspects of keeping house in later posts. For now, I want you to think about this in a different way. Nothing is wrong if one person is in charge of running the house. It usually works better that way. You can still be a team, and work together, but one of you has to be in charge. If that person is you, that is a lot of responsibility, but there are also some rewards! You get to create the structure for the most important place in the world – your home.