DOMESTIC DUTIES

I am a list maker.  Not working the nine to five routine I get more done if I start the day by scribbling down the tasks I hope to accomplish before opening a bottle in the evening.  Sometimes I cheat and write down tasks I have already completed which makes me feel I have got a head start.  Many of these jobs are fairly banal:  you never tick off ‘Earn a million pounds’ or ‘Conquer the world’, while ‘Do the ironing’ or ‘Weed the garden’ may be uninspiring but at least you get them done.  Whisper it but I quite enjoy ironing while  making my shirts wearable being a curiously calming activity in a busy life.

This is not really the done thing for a bloke, to admit to enjoying - or even being competent at - domestic duties.  “Oh, I can’t boil an egg,” says some man proudly even if he has just come in from stripping down an engine.  What he means, of course, is that he won’t boil an egg, leaving that to his partner, who looks on indulgently as her man scrubs the grease off his well-toned muscles.  There is – or was - a kind of conspiracy of incompetence when it comes to men doing housework.  Charles Dickens, who had very traditional views on gender roles, draws a picture of a man trying to treat his wife by buying and cooking dinner on her birthday but failing completely and causing her far more work than if he had left well alone.

Yet most domestic tasks these days are just one step up from falling off a log.  So it makes sense for men to take on a bigger role in household tasks if women are working to earn money. The trouble is that sense has little to do with sex.  When Julie Burchill said that she could never fancy a bloke who did the housework you could almost hear the sound of brooms being dropped and ironing boards put away as a legion of new men realised they would never get laid again if they did what millions of feminists had been badgering them to do for years and played their part in running the home.   

I was brought up in a house with two working parents, my mother becoming a schoolteacher when we were old enough to allow it at a time when out of the home childcare was not readily available.  She felt it was her duty to take care of domestic matters as well and sometimes found combining both responsibilities overwhelming.  So my father learned cooking and carried out a reasonable share of domestic tasks with varying degrees of competence.  We survived.

The trouble was that deep down my mother considered the kitchen her domain and was always hovering over the cooking which my father was perfectly capable of completing on his own.  Human beings are territorial and do not like to give up areas where they have had control.  One thing that struck me when I saw the film The Quiet Man was how Mary Kay Dannagher (the part played by Maurenn O’Hara) was insistent that theirs could not be a proper marriage until she had control of the kitchen and all her ‘things’ – including her dowry - had been delivered by her brother.  She had no desire for a job outside the home that Sean Thornton (John Wayne) was providing for them because she saw her status as coming from her role inside it.  She was not a real woman until she was a proper housewife.

This may not play well with modern feminists but it made perfect sense at a time when running  a house involved more than turning a dial and flicking a switch.  The introduction of microwaves and washing machines has made those domestic duties far easier and consequently less worthy of respect than they were in the days of Mary Kay who worked hard every day of her life but never had a paid job to go to. 

This territorialism rubs off on me.  I know how to load and turn on a washing machine (one of the many jobs just up from log-falling off) but if my partner tells me to use a particular detergent or setting I automatically obey her without question.  I cook dinner many evenings yet I find it embarrassingly difficult to wear an apron simply because it seems unmanly although my daughter made me one specifically to protect those very shirts which I have just ironed. 

We all draw the line somewhere and not always at a very rational point.  I can clean and iron those shirts and sew on a button or two and cook the dinner but I cannot imagine myself knitting a pullover.  I could not regard myself as a real man if I was clicking away with those needles.  

Talking of clothes, I was travelling with a girlfriend some years back when we stopped for petrol.  It was her car so she filled up and paid.  In those days the attendant came out ot the car for payment and, making conversation, he said that it was usually the bloke who took care of this.  He meant it in a friendly rather than contemptuous way but I felt a complete failure in my duty to get the two of us from A to B at my own expense.  The next time we were in the same situation, I got our of the car to make myself look useful and as the nozzle was brought over to the petrol cap it sprayed me with petrol and made my suit stink.  I should have worn an apron.