State Of The Union
Wage slave or noble breadwinner? Domestic drudge or happy homemaker? Exhausted supermum or the woman who has it all? How partners rate the fairness of their relationship depends on a lot more than who puts out the garbage, as Bettina Arndt discovers.
This article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald 15 April 2000.
Margery Anderson is a full-time mother of seven, married to Eddie, a university professor.Her domestic work is never-ending. Yet when asked who gets the better deal in her marriage, she's quite sure she does. "Of course I'm better off," she says. "Who'd want to be a man and have to go to work? I don't have that dreadful, 'Oh, not Monday morning again!' I get to choose what to do with my time, I get to be with the children. I have the best of everything."
Joe Del Vecchio is a Sydney dentist who gets up at five every morning and drives from Rose Bay to Parramatta to greet his first patients. He thinks he gets off lightly compared with his wife Maria, a high-school teacher working part-time and caring for their daughter, 11, and six-year-old twins.
"I have the better end of the deal," he says. "I go to work, I come home to a nice house, a happy family. The dinner's ready, the children have been taken care of, all the home issues are presented to me already cleaned up and scrubbed and I only have to tick or cross them. That's easy. For me, it would be much harder doing what she does than what I do. I'd go stir-crazy running around after the children."
Two people, in very different situations, equally convinced they are well served. But what makes us decide we are being fairly treated in a marriage? What do we take into account when we conclude the balance is tipped for or against us, or reach the happy conclusion that it all evens out?
Such questions go to the heart of our hopes and expectations about our relationships. Most of us have a strong sense, a gut feeling, about whether we're getting a fair deal. Some people give more weight to some issues than others.
But there is one hot topic, the big issue that almost everyone wants to talk about, gripe about, make confessions about. Is it sex? No. Money? No. It's housework.
"Yes, the deal isn't fair. I probably should do more to help at home," many men confess sheepishly. And there are plenty of women happy to agree. Domestic grievances pour out about his never noticing what needs to be done, or doing the jobs so poorly that it's not worth asking, and then expecting to be thanked. "No-one ever thanks me and I do these jobs every day," women say.
Yet this turns out to be far more than a story of guilty men and disgruntled women. For every woman complaining about the unfairness of their second shift, there are others who take the work in their stride. And most women don't assess the fairness of their situation simply in terms of hours spent or nappies changed; more subtle factors come into play.
Take Margery Anderson. Her domestic workload hugely outweighs that of her husband Eddie, yet she's very conscious of the long hours he faces in his work as professor of management at the University of NSW and the sacrifices entailed in her choosing to stay home and raise their seven children. He drives a battered second-hand car, for instance.At the same time, her husband is in awe of the job faced by his wife: "I don't know how she does it. I'd hate to be at home." When he is at home, Eddie is ready to help: "I hate ironing," says Margery, "and if he comes home and sees me ironing his shirts, he'll say, 'Here, let me do that.'"
According to Melbourne sociologist Professor Ken Dempsey, women like Margery judge the fairness of their situations not just in terms of the time they or their husbands spend on child care and housework. "They take all sorts of other things into account, such as the hours their husbands put into their work, their own enjoyment of the nurturing role, whether they feel appreciated for what they do and, most important, their sense of emotional satisfaction in their marriages," explains Dempsey, who has spent the past five years investigating how women judge the fairness of their domestic workload.
He is bent on explaining a conundrum that consistently shows up in research on housework - the fact that women, even when in the paid workforce, do most of the domestic work, yet in most cases (up to two-thirds) still see the situation as fair.
Women who are less happy in their marriages are more likely to judge their workload as unfair, says Dempsey, but those who feel loved and appreciated tend, in turn, to be appreciative of whatever efforts their husbands make. "She'll say, 'Well, he would do it if I wanted him to' or 'He would do it if he wasn't so busy.' The husbands of these women weren't doing much more than other men, but if the women felt they were willing to co-operate and were sensitive to their needs, that was enough," Dempsey reports.
So it seems that the strength of some relationships can diminish the perception of inequity. But it is also true that persistent unfairness can poison much that is good. Dempsey suggests that in the case of women who have a strong ideological commitment to equality in their marriages and perceive themselves to be unfairly treated, resentment builds up and can damage the relationship, sometimes leading to total breakdown.
Sometimes, though, to protect the marriage and to avoid feeling exploited, women will surreptitiously change the criteria by which they judge fairness. A woman might decide that although her partner fails to do an equal share of the housework, it's actually okay because their territories are divided into house for her, garden and garage for him.
The male analysis of the situation is equally complex. A group of men whose partners were all in the paid workforce were asked by Dempsey if they thought household tasks should be divided equally. Ninety per cent said yes. "But when I went through those tasks one by one, asking them who did what, it turned out that the women did nearly all of them," says Dempsey. "Then I'd ask them if this was fair and they'd say yes! Each one would have reasons why the equal division rule didn't actually apply to him: he worked longer hours; his wife did the tasks better and more quickly; he did the outside jobs; she didn't complain, so it must be all right.
"Everyone, women and men, has these contradictory internal beliefs," says Dempsey, who confesses to a certain inconsistency in his own relationship. "My partner actually prefers to make the housework her territory, but I notice that when I do perform some domestic task, I am waiting for her to notice and thank me! It's pathetic, but I love being appreciated for doing what I should be doing automatically anyway."
The other issue that emerges strongly in Dempsey's research is children. He finds one major reason so many women are still willing to carry the major load at home is the satisfaction they gain from caring for their children. But they want attention for the children from their partners, too. According to Dempsey, women will tolerate numerous shortcomings in a spouse as long as he provides fatherly love and attention. But when women see their husbands falling short in that role, the entire deal is judged more harshly.
Annette Guerry, 47, puts her husband Eric's problems with his children down to the way he was brought up: "His parents didn't have a lot of understanding of what kids need." When her four children, aged nine to 18, were younger and Annette ran around ferrying them to sport and social events, Eric's reaction was dismissive. "If they had to get right across town, he'd say, 'Let them get there on their own.' And if that meant they couldn't get there, he'd say, 'Well, they just can't go.'"
Annette was upset by what she saw as a failure to provide the nurturing she wanted for her children. And she cringed when the children felt the brunt of Eric's short fuse. "He'd just shout at them," she recalls. "Although he was good at negotiating with them, most of the time he didn't have the patience to put in the effort."
It made for some very tough years for the couple, who work together running a bicycle parts and accessories business. Looking back, Annette acknowledges she spent years absolutely furious at a situation she saw as anything but fair. "The deal used to be, 'You get to do everything, you get to go to work full-time, you get to wipe all the bums, do the housework, the shopping, the schlepping. At home he did hardly anything at all."
Eric admits that's the way it was. "I've always been aware it wasn't really fair. I don't know what made it right for me not to do it."The marriage went through a major upheaval, triggered by a financial crisis in their business. As Annette explains, when her successful husband discovered he'd made some critical financial miscalculations, it led to dramatic changes."It rocked his whole self-image. He looked at himself closely and felt he'd let us down."
Eric now describes his previous attitude to housework as "Neanderthal", and is making strenuous efforts to share the domestic chores and improve his relationship with his children."My values changed," he says. "Whatever pomposity, whatever made me think I didn't have to share, has now evaporated. I'm a different person. My family still might not be getting all that they should from me, but they know I am striving to change."
And the deal now? Annette: "It's a lot fairer than it used to be." Eric, too, feels it is becoming more equitable but, "It's still weighted towards me."
Psychologist Candida Peterson has studied couples' perception of fairness at different stages of family life cycles and finds that as couples grow older, and particularly when children leave home, both men and women start to judge their marriages as becoming fairer. As well, though, they are likely to apply standards of equity more strictly because the children are no longer there to distort the picture or to distract attention from the balance sheet of contribution and gain.
Not surprisingly, there's the greatest likelihood of perceived equity when there are no children on the scene - both prior to child-rearing and in the empty nest stage - and most people tend to agree that the low point for most women is the early child-rearing years.
While some husbands clearly understand the strain, others seem oblivious. "My husband spent the first 10 years of our marriage thinking I was lying at home painting my nails," says a former physiotherapist, now a full-time mother of three. When a husband fails to appreciate the sheer hard work involved in caring for youngsters, women's perception of equity in the marriage can quickly diminish. Women combining care of young children with paid work are particularly likely to see their lot as unfair. Comments a midwife, who works part-time and is the mother of two children aged three and seven months: "Something that really annoys me is that when my husband has to work back, he just rocks up at home whenever he's ready. But I don't have that option. If I'm running late, I'm thinking, 'Oh God, what's happening at home?'"
But for some, motherhood heralds a life change that is more than welcome. Jennifer Baum, 35, sees her situation as perfectly fair, despite the fact she's doing most of the domestic chores as well as caring for a six-month-old baby. She'd done well in her sales and marketing career in the computer industry but felt she'd reached the end of a cycle and sees this time-out as an opportunity to regroup. "I think a lot of it is about the time in your life when you have your babies. A lot of women feel they are stuck, or missing out, and see themselves as getting a raw deal. I've gone through my ambitious phase. I'm happy to plateau," she says.
It helps that she has a partner, Nick Webster, 40, who enjoys housework and plans to dispense with the cleaner when he finishes his evening course and has more time on his hands. Talking to Jennifer and Nick, and many younger couples, there's a strong sense of a new generation that is achieving greater equity. I interviewed couples still in their twenties, who both saw themselves moving in and out of mainly part-time work; couples where the men were very relaxed about sharing household tasks and - in theory, anyway - the prospect of shared child-rearing.
The expectations both partners bring to a union can influence their views of how equitable their situation is. As women's ambitions broaden, new strains can emerge.
"June" is now living in Melbourne, quite depressed at the downturn her career has taken after what proved a rather disastrous interstate move. She and her husband "Dave" decided to shift from Sydney in the hope of career advancement for him. Not only did his new job have little to offer, but June, who'd had a high-powered corporate career, struggled to find a suitable position and dropped $30,000 in salary.
She's stuck in a job going nowhere and has discovered that she's too exhausted to maintain her 12-hour working days now that she has two small children, aged five and three. She's frustrated by all of this and it is difficult to determine just how much this is influencing her perception of the marriage. But one thing is clear: to her, the deal stinks.
Dave is in big trouble for failing to complete his half of the list of tasks they'd stuck up on the fridge, for allowing plants to die when watering was his responsibility, for his deficiencies as a parent and for the fact that his considerably lower earning capacity means she's locked into a job she doesn't like and can't even afford a cleaning lady - unlike her two sisters, who married successful men and have all the help they need."I find it hard not to have choices," she says.
"I get a lot of my self-esteem from my career. I'm not one of those clucky mothers who get it from their children." And she's very sure Dave is the one benefiting: "He has a comfortable life - at the expense of me."
But talk to Dave and you hear a rather different story. Sure, he acknowledges he doEsn't do as much around the house as June expects, but he doesn't feel the tasks are fairly negotiated."It's like, 'You will do this task!'" he says, describing June as the "dominating sergeant-major of the relationship".
He's convinced he pulls his weight. "I think I do a pretty good job. Yes, some plants did die, but I cook meals, I iron my clothes, bath the kids, make all the beds. I fix things that break, do rubbish removal, escort cockroaches and spiders out of the house. But I could never do the jobs to her satisfaction. Of course not - I'm a male."
Dave feels that the battles over housework simply reflect June's disappointment at the turn her life has taken. "It's not that we have a bad life, but even when she married me I was never the rich, handsome social prize she expected."
Clearly this is a marriage under strain - a situation where both partners feel unfairly treated. But one of the discoveries I made talking to couples about these issues is that it's harder to get men to articulate their sense of injustice.
George Burkitt is a Sydney doctor specialising in counselling men in crisis. Many of these men are in the process of re-examining their lives as a result of a crisis such as a marriage breakdown, a career setback, loss of their children, or a friend's death or even suicide. In the process, some start to look hard at what has happened in their marriages and conclude that the deal wasn't all they thought it to be.
But Burkitt finds most men are uneasy about this type of navel-gazing. "For males, there's an instinctive knowledge that they will be seen as losers if they complain about their lot. They are expected to be stoic, to endure rather than to examine their own feelings and voice any unhappiness," he says.As well, he adds, men feel that in exposing personal details about their home lives, they are letting the side down. "Men often say to me that they feel disloyal even talking about what is happening at home."
Contrast this with the licence given to women to register their complaints, particularly about housework. Back in the 1950s, American feminist Betty Friedan discovered "the problem which has no name" - women's unvoiced frustrations with their housewifely role. Ever since then, females, inspired by the women's movement, have been encouraged to state their case, loud and clear.But men still lead unexamined lives. If they have their own "problem which has no name", they have yet to discover it. Witness my conversation with a Melbourne man, "Tom". When I ask about the deal in his marriage, he immediately responds that his wife would see herself as unfairly treated. "I don't often enough do things around the house without having to be asked," he says.
I ask him whether he likes his job. There is a long pause, and then he says, "No, I guess I don't like it at all." He explains that he'd left his previous job as a social worker to move into the building industry to make enough money to support their three children.
"Does your wife know you feel this way?"
"I don't know. We haven't talked that much about it."
"What would she say if you told her you disliked the work?"
"She'd just say, 'Well, you don't have to do it. Just leave and do something else.'"
There is another pause. "But it's not as simple as that," he adds wistfully.
George Burkitt finds that when men do start voicing their discontent, they may get an uneasy reception. It's hardly surprising, he says, if a woman gets nervous when the major breadwinner talks of unhappiness in his job. After all, her freedom to make choices often relies on the financial stability he provides.
Remember Eric Guerry, now so contrite about the unfair treatment his wife, Annette, received in their marriage? It took a lot of talking for Guerry to admit to his own frustrations, which focus mainly around the bicycle business he ran with Annette. He envies the fact that she's already cut back to part-time work and feels she can just walk away from their business when she's had enough. "I can't walk out tomorrow and find someone else to run the business," he says.
"The responsibility is on your shoulders. The mortgage is like a sword hanging above your head." Annette knows he feels like this, but her response is that he's had his chance to make a career change, with her support, but hasn't taken it: "He's had options to get out of it and decided not to. He's scared to let change happen and move on."
Burkitt claims that not only do male complaints sometimes get short shrift, but men often get very little appreciation for what they do. Recently, a friend - I'll call her Sharon - who works part-time while maintaining an elegant home for her executive husband, was dining in a smart Sydney restaurant with another couple. The other woman is a full-time homemaker, devoted to her husband and family. When the men were paying the bill, she made a startling announcement. "We'll just have to thank you guys for working so hard for us," she said.
Sharon's reaction was to immediately chime in, "I work hard, too. It's just that I don't get paid for it!" The story struck a chord with many couples I spoke to, as women admitted that they would have reacted just like Sharon. To publicly thank men for their work seems oddly old-fashioned, so hopelessly '50s. We've come a long way from the days when the little woman was expected to genuflect to the conquering hero returning home from slaying bears.
But has the pendulum swung to the point where men's efforts now go unacknowledged? Let's return to the hardworking Sydney dentist Joe Del Vecchio. He was very sure he had the better end of the deal in his marriage. Yet, when pushed, he did confess to feeling a little miffed that his own long hours received so few brownie points. "If someone in casual conversation says to Maria, 'Your husband works so hard,' she'll jump in, 'Well, so do I!'"
Del Vecchio believes that thanking men for their work has gone by the board: "If you ask for a bit of acknowledgment, you are jumped on and then spat out."
Perhaps that's another reason why it was so hard to find men willing to admit they see their own deal as less than fair. Talking to men about their lives, it became obvious that many are locked into situations that give them little satisfaction - sometimes spending years in jobs they don't like, facing career insecurity, working longer hours, seeing very little of their children. But very few men raise such issues when discussing questions of fairness in marriage.
"Men are still doing the men's act, keeping the wheels turning and not thinking terribly much about it," says "Peter", 45, a Melbourne laboratory manager who has spent the past two years involved in a men's group which includes divorced men struggling with the financial consequences of break-up and difficulties maintaining contact with children. "They are just expected to do it and there's no thanks, no respect for the guy who does it. They get a real surprise when the woman leaves them. That's when they start to think."
For Peter, knowledge of what could await him if his marriage were to fail colours his perception of his deal in the marriage. He's resentful of having so long borne the brunt of economic support for the family. His wife, "Jane", has only recently returned to limited part-time work, having been at home for the past 12 years caring for their children (aged 12 and 10).
Jane is confident she did the right thing staying home, although she felt unfairly burdened when the children were small. "But I feel I'm hitting paydirt for that now because my kids are so great," she says. She finds she can't cope if she works more than 20 hours a week. "When I'm flat-chat and Peter is flat-chat, it's hideous. I become a shrew. It's not worth it. I didn't have children to shriek at them and blame them."Her best efforts go into running a happy home filled with neighbouring children attracted by her large garden and animals, yet she's very conscious Peter would prefer her to do more to ease his financial load.
Peter appreciates that having his wife at home has given him freedom to pursue his own career and provided his children with a secure and happy family life. Yet the deal still doesn't seem completely fair. "I'll come home stressed and say, 'Where's tea?' She'll say, 'I had a snooze this afternoon.' I'll think, 'Hey, that's not too even!' I've got zippo leeway to adjust my lifestyle if it's not matching my energy level."He mentions the "week's worth of dirty pots" he's had to face on Saturday, while noting the risks of criticising a wife's homemaking skills. "These days, no-one will attack a woman for not keeping a house properly. It's extremely unfashionable. But if a guy stuffs up in the workplace, the consequences of him goofing off will be fair and square in his face."
From Peter's perspective, the current deal in marriage is stacked against men: "If a woman wants to, she can coast and he can't do much about it. If he pulls the plug and divorces her, he'll still be supporting her." Yet, according to Peter, most men just don't see the deal as unfair.
And there are women keen to keep it that way. I talked to a number who didn't want me to talk to their husbands.
"I don't want him to think too much about whether the deal is fair," one woman laughingly confessed.
Mary Mutseer is a teacher in Warragul, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, and finds herself in precisely the situation traditionally faced by men. About 12 years ago, her surveyor husband John, now 58, accepted the redundancy package offered as part of his company's downsizing and seized the chance to pursue his lifelong dream to work as an artist. He paints three days a week and spends the rest of his time on community work. He's as happy as Larry.
"Oh, I've got the better deal," he confesses cheerfully. "I've got a lot more flexibility than Mary and I feel really good about what I'm doing." He's the first to admit he doesn't do as much as he should around the house. "I do it, but it's not always up to the standards expected, and sometimes other things get in the road."
Mary loves her teaching job but, at age 52, she's now facing a good 10 more years in a very demanding, stressful position. "I'd prefer to be part-time, but then I think, 'No, I can't. I have no choice.'"
So while she's happy that John is gaining so much enjoyment from what he's doing, as well as pulling in a reasonable income through the community work and sale of his artwork, she envies his freedom. "Who did you have lunch with today?" she'll ask him through gritted teeth.
"I ask about his day and feel like stabbing him to death," she says with a good-natured chuckle.
From where Mary is sitting, she can't understand why men in full-time work aren't complaining more about their side of the deal. "I don't understand why it doesn't build up more resentment."And she's now very conscious of how little women understand what it's like for breadwinner husbands. "Women think it's easy for men to change jobs, but they are not the ones keeping it all going. As far as I'm concerned, whoever is the anchor gets the harder deal."
So far, though, most of our anchors seem to be convinced they are sitting pretty. Far from envying women the choices in their lives, they see themselves as well placed. George Burkitt feels that this isn't likely to change in the short term, but that the current younger generation of males may end up with a very different perspective on the deal. "In our generation, men just don't get it, unless they hit the wall with a marriage break-up."
Today, many older men, paying mortgages and supporting families, don't have many choices in their lives. Meanwhile, women working two shifts feel they bear the brunt of the domestic burden. But current economic trends may mean the new generation of young couples will manage to avoid being locked into either the "breadwinner" or the "home duties" role. Given the predicted demand for multiple skills and flexible careers, couples in the future will be forced into fresh arrangements.
New deals are on the horizon, but whether they will seem any fairer to men and women in coming generations remains to be seen.