Conventional wisdom

Men do not do their fair share because they are selfish. Nobody, and that includes women, likes to do chores and men simply try to get out of doing them. Obviously women should insist firmly on men doing their part according to the couple’s situation. It is sad to say but the state of things as they are now show the men not pulling their load.

What if

What if the situation was a bit more complex? What if, like many other things in men-women relationships, the problem was partially one of communication?

Granted, as things stand right now men are doing almost nothing. Unsurprisingly the picture even gets worse as educated levels go down. Let us establish clearly that surveys on the subject concur that men are putting in way fewer hours than women.
How does it happen precisely? What are the dynamics involved in perpetuating such a state of unfairness? Well, the principle is the following: people will only accept responsibility for things that they have power over. Not only does the principle apply to men and women relationship but it also is a sound principle of business management. If it is of any consolation to your situation, that principle is usually ignored in business with terrible consequences as well.

That is why management great thinkers came up with the total quality concept. The idea at its root was that workers at different levels in the enterprise knew how to make their portion of the work more efficiently or better the quality of their portion. Of course all this improving at every levels had to be supervised and synchronized by everybody.

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The key thing in this method was to empower everybody from the bottom up. Everybody would be collectively responsible for the product and because everyone’s opinion was considered everybody would be more motivated.

As with many other things in management, this concept (which is a very good and psychologically sound concept) was torn apart by human nature. Workers liked the idea of being consulted but there were a few itches. Some suggestions made them work harder but resources to compensate were often scarce if there at all. The accountability coming along with the new dealing with a “communication challenged” authority. Finally most workers simply thought that there was a lot more additional responsabilities than empowerment and thus started dragging their heels through the whole process.

On the management side everything was not seen through pink glasses either. Relenting what was almost considered God-given powers was not always seen as a plus, to say the least.
And so begins a new dynamic, management wants better results done its way and the workers reluctantly go through the motion of what they perceived as a bad deal. Yet another fad management concept bites the dust. Fortunately a new star arises on the lecture tour and on and on it goes! To make such a concept work you have to really understand on what psychological laws it stands on.

Let us look into that principle more closely. It stated that individuals who have the final say on a subject will be a lot more willing to work and invest themselves in that subject. Conversely if any individual feels that he has no authority on a subject he feels less responsibility toward it. You could say it is the capitalistic way to look at work, the boss usually feels more inclined to work for his business than the average employee.

But how does that translate into couple relationship? The first thing you have to realize is that in our society the girl is expected to know how to best run the household. Not that there is any logic to it because nowadays girls are rarely formally taken aside by their mother to be taught how to do things. So modern girls who barely know more than boys on how to cook, clean, raise kids and so forth are nonetheless expected to know.

Meanwhile the boys are told that they should listen to girls when it comes to matters of the household. So the boys gladly accept this. If the girls know so much, they reason, let it be their responsibility. In other words let us weasel out of it.

The girl then builds the household rules and edicts how things are to be done in a “proper” way. She then asks for help from the boys. “Here is what I would like you to do. Please do it exactly as I say because I genetically know better”. It is at this point that the boy realizes that the girl has delegated part of her workload but none of the power along with it. Sensing a good occasion not to do his fair share the guy will eventually not do it. Mind you, the guy is as guilty of a lack of communication.

What to make of it

If a man is in charge of cooking, he has to have reasonably the last say in what he cooks, how he cooks it, when he cooks it and even where to eat it (in case you have a dining room). The prerequisite of a man doing his share is the authority he enjoys over the chores. So if the children are occasionally not dressed according to the weather (or to you) let it go.
That principle alone will not solve that very important problem (some women clearly have no life to speak of) but it should go a long way toward making men responsible.

If, as you are reading it, you are thinking about how unthinkable it would be to let your husband have the final say on anything … well I believe you will be working very hard in the next few years! I hope you will at least enjoy your power over the dishwasher.