There’s always stuff to do around the house. The end of chores isn’t really a point when everything is done, it’s a point, when things are good enough. It’s a point when food is put away, dirty things are cleaned, and most things are put in their place. It takes a lot of teamwork between me and my wife to keep the house together.
When I’m home, I want to spend time with my boys, but there’s always things to do. Yes, I want to play with Ollie when I get home from work, but sometimes it’s my responsibility to cook dinner, so I have to tell him to wait before I can give him my attention. Sometimes instead of helping him build something, I’m sitting next to him folding the laundry. While it is important to have time when I’m 100% focused on Ollie and Ethan, there are times that this doesn’t happen. This is modern life with two kids. This is my life.
Ollie is at the age that he can help out with things. He’s a fan of doing the laundry, putting clothes in, transferring them to the dryer, and his favorite: turning on the machines. He’s okay at folding hand towels and kitchen towels, and enjoys sorting socks, but he often loses interest before the load is done. He’s getting better with cleaning up his own toys, and bringing his plate into the kitchen after he’s done eating. While part of me wishes we lived in a reality where taking care of chores wasn’t interwoven into daily life, I think the work provides meaning. When you work on something, like a house, you care more about it, and it means more to you.
Sometime I put things off in the evening like doing dishes so Ollie can get my undivided attention in the evening, and we can share the limited waking hours we have together. Often this is my instinct, but I’ve realized that when I do stuff around the house when Ollie is awake, even if he’s not helping, it benefits him (I’m talking about a benefit beyond having a clean house).
Ollie lives in a house where he sees both parents take care of the house. He sees a dad come back home from work, spend two minutes getting settled and get started on dinners. Ollie knows his mom cooks as well and share in the duties. There’s no one parent who is solely in charge of anything. While I currently take the lead with helping him with his bath, it hasn’t always been this way and Diana is just as comfortable doing bath time as I am.
Are the chores around the house split evenly between me and Diana? No, but we try, and there’s nothing that one of us never does, or doesn’t know how to do.
I’m proud of the fact that Ollie and Ethan live in a house where the “second shift” of housework, isn’t placed solely on the women because her work taking care of the kids or working from home (as Diana currently does) is not as valued as the husband’s job. I’m proud of the fact that my boys will know a home where both parents understand how the house runs and that gender roles don’t determine the work that we do. And I’m proud of the fact that my boys see us work as a team, more focused on getting stuff done than on who’s job it is to do the work.
One of my goals as a parent is to raise my boys to be feminists. This motivates me to push myself to get off my butt and do stuff around the house. Yes, I like having a house that’s put together, I enjoy supporting my wife, and some things like cooking I genuinely enjoy. However, it’s all for naught if my boys don’t grow to understand through our example how partners can and should share a life together the responsibilities of sharing a home.
This is about more than housework. This is about how my boys will work with girls in grade school. This is about how my boys develop and nurture friendships with girls. This is about my boys navigate workplace politics, and this is about how they honor, understand and appreciate themselves and their life partners.
This is about changing the world in one small way by taking out the trash without being asked to, folding socks, and cooking vichyssoise.
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