I did the full-time wife and mom thing for roughly two decades and then I got divorced. While getting divorced, I got a corporate job.
My sons were doing some of the women's work at home but not all of it. Not even most of it.
After a few months of working full time at a corporate job, I sat them down and said "I'm no longer a homemaker. I work full time and, yet, I still do at least one load of laundry a day. I run the dishwasher about once a day. I do all the grocery shopping and all the cooking."
I told them they either needed to take over the women's work or one or both of them needed to get a job. I told them I would rather they take over the women's work because I felt we would all be better off that way, both in the long run and the short run.
For a family unit, it's more efficient to invest family time and energy into one person being the primary breadwinner. The person able to make a good wage can support the whole family and then other people have time and energy to cook, clean, etc and everyone is better off. That's why that nuclear family model proliferated to begin with.
So my sons listened to what I had to say and they agreed with my logic and we devised a plan to help them make the transition. For the first few months, I gave them money out of every paycheck that included overtime pay so they could buy video games.
After those initial months, they did almost all the women's work without me having to reward them for it. I still went to the grocery store once or twice a week and occasionally cooked for myself, but they cooked all family meals, did the dishes, did the laundry and did most of the grocery shopping.
My oldest son was the person who took over the cooking. There were a few early incidents where I was critical of his efforts and he was like "Whatever, mom. It's not as pretty as what you make but it tastes as good."
When he said that, I stopped and thought to myself "What the heck am I doing here? I actually WANT him to take over the cooking. What is wrong with me that I am nitpicking stupid little details that aren't actually important?"
I told that story in a more detailed way in some online discussion and some guy private messaged me and thanked me for it. He told me that he wanted to learn to cook and clean and was having trouble with women around him giving him a hard time and I had given him some tools for how to deal with that effectively.
I have known women who were extreme female chauvinist sows who made it impossible for men to do any women's work on her turf. I knew a grown man whose mother acted like he didn't know how to cook or do laundry at all when the truth was he did those things at his place but not at hers.
Women are often made into "mom's little helper" as early as age four. By the time they hit adulthood, they may have more than a decade of training and experience with doing women's work. Men often don't have anywhere near as much of such training and experience prior to becoming an adult.
If women want men to do more around the house, it helps to pick your battles and accept that they won't be as good at some things as you are if they have less experience than you have. If men want to learn to do more women's work, it helps to focus on what matters and not let some woman get your goat about details that aren't actually important.
If both parties want to make this shift happen and they cooperate, you can find new methods to handle things rather than insisting he do things her way and up to her high standards or not at all. That is a common expectation and the result is often that he just stops trying.
When my son took over the cooking, I took on the role of mentor and resource person. If he wanted to, say, bake a cake from scratch, I helped him figure out how to make that happen and I explained some of the techniques he was unfamiliar with.
So I helped him succeed and I taught him things when he wanted to learn new things. And I laid off on nitpicking that the food wasn't as pretty as when I did it.
That's not to say I never had genuine criticisms but when I did they were handled differently. I didn't just badmouth how "It's not as good as when I do it!"
One issue that came up was that I needed to get enough veggies and this wasn't immediately happening with his simplified approach to meals. He was unwilling to even try to make a traditional family meal of meat, potatoes, two veggies, etc.
We worked together on solving that in a way that made both of us happy. It resulted in new approaches to eating that worked better for me than the way I had previously done things.
My sons were doing some of the women's work at home but not all of it. Not even most of it.
After a few months of working full time at a corporate job, I sat them down and said "I'm no longer a homemaker. I work full time and, yet, I still do at least one load of laundry a day. I run the dishwasher about once a day. I do all the grocery shopping and all the cooking."
I told them they either needed to take over the women's work or one or both of them needed to get a job. I told them I would rather they take over the women's work because I felt we would all be better off that way, both in the long run and the short run.
For a family unit, it's more efficient to invest family time and energy into one person being the primary breadwinner. The person able to make a good wage can support the whole family and then other people have time and energy to cook, clean, etc and everyone is better off. That's why that nuclear family model proliferated to begin with.
So my sons listened to what I had to say and they agreed with my logic and we devised a plan to help them make the transition. For the first few months, I gave them money out of every paycheck that included overtime pay so they could buy video games.
After those initial months, they did almost all the women's work without me having to reward them for it. I still went to the grocery store once or twice a week and occasionally cooked for myself, but they cooked all family meals, did the dishes, did the laundry and did most of the grocery shopping.
My oldest son was the person who took over the cooking. There were a few early incidents where I was critical of his efforts and he was like "Whatever, mom. It's not as pretty as what you make but it tastes as good."
When he said that, I stopped and thought to myself "What the heck am I doing here? I actually WANT him to take over the cooking. What is wrong with me that I am nitpicking stupid little details that aren't actually important?"
I told that story in a more detailed way in some online discussion and some guy private messaged me and thanked me for it. He told me that he wanted to learn to cook and clean and was having trouble with women around him giving him a hard time and I had given him some tools for how to deal with that effectively.
I have known women who were extreme female chauvinist sows who made it impossible for men to do any women's work on her turf. I knew a grown man whose mother acted like he didn't know how to cook or do laundry at all when the truth was he did those things at his place but not at hers.
Women are often made into "mom's little helper" as early as age four. By the time they hit adulthood, they may have more than a decade of training and experience with doing women's work. Men often don't have anywhere near as much of such training and experience prior to becoming an adult.
If women want men to do more around the house, it helps to pick your battles and accept that they won't be as good at some things as you are if they have less experience than you have. If men want to learn to do more women's work, it helps to focus on what matters and not let some woman get your goat about details that aren't actually important.
If both parties want to make this shift happen and they cooperate, you can find new methods to handle things rather than insisting he do things her way and up to her high standards or not at all. That is a common expectation and the result is often that he just stops trying.
When my son took over the cooking, I took on the role of mentor and resource person. If he wanted to, say, bake a cake from scratch, I helped him figure out how to make that happen and I explained some of the techniques he was unfamiliar with.
So I helped him succeed and I taught him things when he wanted to learn new things. And I laid off on nitpicking that the food wasn't as pretty as when I did it.
That's not to say I never had genuine criticisms but when I did they were handled differently. I didn't just badmouth how "It's not as good as when I do it!"
One issue that came up was that I needed to get enough veggies and this wasn't immediately happening with his simplified approach to meals. He was unwilling to even try to make a traditional family meal of meat, potatoes, two veggies, etc.
We worked together on solving that in a way that made both of us happy. It resulted in new approaches to eating that worked better for me than the way I had previously done things.