Whose Job Is This, Anyway?

By Pamela Paul

WHILE OTHER MOMS SCRAMBLE to get house and home in order for fall--out with the beach towels and flip-flops, in with the book bags and blankets--housekeeping is no sweat for Janet Nelson, 35. And though the mother of two works as a public relations manager for the Maid Services Company, the second largest maid service franchise in the nation, she doesn't have a maid. Instead, she has her husband Bob. With Janet telecommuting three

days a week from her home in rural Iowa and traveling to Omaha, Neb., the other two days, Bob stays home to care for the kids and do the cleaning. For the past eight years he has scrubbed the floors, done the laundry and cooked dinner. "So many of my friends complain about their husbands not contributing to housework," Janet says. "But my job is to work five days a week, and Bob does just about everything else. I'm very spoiled."

Janet wasn't always so lucky. When she and Bob escaped the big city in 1996 in order to raise their children in the country, they agreed that one of them should stay home. Because her firm allowed telecommuting, Janet opted to keep her job. At first Bob had to be coaxed into housework. Janet would make him lists of chores, but that didn't go over well. "I felt like a dictator. Bob would tense up every time I told him what to do," she recalls. "He would see me around the house and say, 'Why can't you do more?' It took a while for him to realize I was actually working." Eventually, they decided Bob would compose his own to-do list, and Janet would refrain from criticizing. "Now he says I'm the messy one!" she says, laughing.

While the Nelson household arrangement is unusual, it is nonetheless a sign of the times. Slowly, reluctantly, housework, the grubby stepchild of family responsibilities, is being adopted by men and shared a bit more equitably by couples. "There are few households in which [the division of labor] can be called equal," says Susan Strasser, author of Never Done: A History of American Housework, "but it's certainly the case that men do much, much more housework than they did 30 years ago." New data from the Labor Department show that among married men and women ages 25 to 54, women who work full time spend an hour and a half a day on household chores, in contrast to just 45 minutes daily for working men. Still, viewed historically, this isn't so bad. Dads are actually spending about 50% more time on housework than they did 25 years ago, according to surveys by the Families & Work Institute. Men seem to be picking up, literally, where women are leaving off: the same study found that women are putting in less time. (This survey, which differed in several respects from the larger Labor Department study, calculated men's contribution as two hours a day, against women's three.)

"For men, there are new pressures given the long hours of working couples," says sociologist Arlie Hochschild, whose groundbreaking 1989 book, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, found that through the mid-'80s, women still did the lion's share of cleaning. "I think the ideal of shared housework has caught on."

This revolution-in-the-making has been nudged along by many a bitter skirmish. A survey by the Soap and Detergent Association found that 46% of couples who live together argue about cleaning. Kids add to the friction: 55% of couples with kids fight over housework, vs. 38% of those without. According to Howard Markman, of the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies, housework is the No. 3 source of marital conflict after money and children.

Book editor Katy Hope, 32, and medical resident Alex Cohen, 34, are looking forward to their wedding in October. But the couple battle incessantly over housework. "It's a blowout fight every month," Hope confesses. "It's the only thing we fight about." Hope says getting Cohen to do his agreed upon tasks requires constant reminders. "He'll tell me he'll wash the dishes before we go to bed, and maybe he will," she says. "But by around 9:30, with dirty dishes still in the sink, I'm broiling." It's not that Cohen makes her feel "like a mom" on purpose. As she points out, "He had no household responsibilities growing up."

"We were trained to change tires, not sheets," explains Tom McNulty, author of Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men (and the Women Who Love Them) (Three Rivers; 224 pages), an attempt to show that even the most slovenly Pigpen can conquer the Swiffer. McNulty firmly believes men should do their fair share of chores, but, he says, women too often undermine their efforts by charging men with doing too little, too shabbily, too late. Instead, he says, women should reward even the most pitiful efforts with encouragement rather than a withering "You call this clean?"

Given encouragement and the right gadgets, some men even discover a passion for cleaning. Jenny and Matthew Corsey, of Peachtree City, Ga., used to have traditional roles around the home--housework for her, yard work for him--until Matthew lost his job last year. To their mutual surprise, he took to cleaning with gusto. "He was a chemistry major in college and has this secret formula for making the bathtub shine," Jenny marvels. "He actually likes vacuuming." Now that her husband, who is working part time from home, handles 70% of the chores, Jenny says their once dusty house rivals the spick-and-span home of her childhood.

Many couples are developing their own division of labor, depending on work schedules and preferences--and who notices the mess first. Paul Asimow, 35, a Cal Tech geology professor, does 40% of the cleaning and nearly all the cooking in his home. Growing up, Paul watched his divorced father clean up after himself. "The image of my father maintaining his own house was important," he explains. "I'm also part of my generation, and we have a more equal perception of what it takes." When his wife Colette takes him to task for leaving a sponge in the sink or using a dish towel to wipe the floor, Paul admits, "It is nagging--but it also makes sense."

"We're still a generation that's reinventing our roles and learning to do housework as a couple," says Karen Bouris, author of Just Kiss Me and Tell Me You Did the Laundry (Rodale; 288 pages). "Once you get rid of assumptions about who does what, people enjoy the freedom of choosing what they do best." Or what they hate doing least.