Motherload

In the wake of the Mumsnet and Woman's Hour investigation of who does what in the home, I went on thinking about such matters, and ended up giving a short talk about housework at the wonderful  Feast of Reason , a simultaneously laid-back and high octane Supper Club in South London. The Chore Wars investigations, which took place in October 2014, strongly recalled Vanessa Engle's 2010 three-part documentary on the impact of feminism on women's lives — one episode of which was devoted to the division of labour in the home. Engle revealed the not very surprising fact that little had actually changed for women, especially married working mothers, despite their apparent 'liberation' since the 1960s (whoopee! Such a long history!). Women, according to Engle, had essentially won the choice of working outside the home, but not won the war of getting their menfolk to step up and do more in the home. Engle's documentary came out in March 2010 — I remember rant...

Professor Jonathan Gershuny of the Centre for Time Use Research in Oxford was making depressing and familiar points on  Woman’s Hour this week  (‘ Chore Wars ’). W omen have been completely done over in the modern world, he said. Because women cannot expect marriage to last (statistically), they'd better keep earning, plus they can still expect to shoulder the majority of the unpaid work at home.   This isn't news to me, but it's depressing to hear a Professor say it. I found it a little simplistic: what about how women cop the unpaid work at   work   as well? All those emotional dynamics, the presenteeism, the bringing in of fattening cakes, and, frankly, the menial   paid   parts of jobs.  Be that as it may, Professor Gershuny's argument was that domestic labour has been progressively 'feminised', through labour-saving devices like boilers, dishwashers and hoovers. He argues that men used to lay the fires in the average home. Domestic jo...

Yesterday, Mumsnet asked me to write a guest post for them on their current Chores Survey. You can read the post here , and I've added it for convenience below. Enjoy! "On Monday I met a friend for lunch. I'd put ‘Luncheon with Janet’ in the calendar, because it made us both laugh to think of ourselves as Ladies who Lunch. As we were sitting chatting, my husband walked into the cafe, carrying a big bag of food shopping. He looked rather dashing, actually, all six foot three of him; he had on one of his dark work jackets, and those deep chocolate brown eyes were twinkling. He wanted to know whether I had the car with me, so he could put the shopping in the boot and walk home. As he left the cafe, we flirted with each other, and he pulled an imaginary forelock, Clifford to my Lady Chatterley. How are we to interpret this silly little anecdote? My heart burst with pride to see my husband in an unaccustomed context and to see him caring for the family, but the tra...

Radio 4 Woman's Hour was getting all steamed up this morning about the social rights and wrongs of tutoring children during the school holidays. "Socially divisive", "giving the posh kids an extra leg up they don't need", "impossible demands placed on young shoulders", etc etc. According to some amongst us, children turn into vegetables during those precious few weeks of summer, and need to be kept nose to grindstone lest they forget how to spell, punctuate, do times tables and stand still in the lunch queue. I've been tutoring children and young people from 11 to 18 years old for the past few years, and it's completely changed my views on what tutoring actually is . In the summer holidays, most of my tutees stop, unless they are preparing for a selective entrance exam that's going to come up early in the next academic year. These poor souls have to keep going, yes. I find it next to impossible to force my own poor children to d...