Girls, Boys, Laundry.

Warning: Rambling ahead.

I went out with a bunch of mom friends last night. So picture a gaggle of 7 mothers sitting around a table talking and laughing a bit too loudly as they sip their lemon drops (oh hush, I had a virgin daiquiri).  I rarely feel like much of a girl, except when I'm with these women. And naturally the conversation went along traditional lines: our kids, our husbands, what we read in People magazine. And then of course, separation of household duties and the never-ending nature vs nurture.

I raised the subject of family laundry responsibilities as it's been a recent curiosity of me to see how others split this up. David and I consolidated checking accounts when we got married yet we didn't merge the laundry; we each have our own dirty piles and take care of washing and drying and putting away our own clothes. I didn't realize until last night that this makes us complete freaks. Every other woman at the table, whether or not she worked, did the laundry for the entire family. Yikes. So chalk that one up to "Didn't know how good I had it until I knew what it was like for others." They all thought we were weird.

Of course, there are a variety of reasons why we haven't merged, probably the main one being that my standards are much lower than my husband's (the man folds his t-shirts into perfect squares!) and I am a firm believer in the "If you don't like the way I do it, then do it yourself" rule for determining separation of household responsibilities - assuming of course that neither side purposely does a bad job in order to avoid the responsibility ;-).

Another topic where I was the sole voice on one side was nature vs nurture. Half-Changed World mentioned this recently, linking to an interesting post on Jo(e) discussing this as well which again lead me through an interesting romp on the blogosphere (On a side note, I love finding new bloggers through links to topics in which I'm interested).

Myself, I am firmly in the nurture camp - not that I deny that nature plays a role in the development of a child, but I tend to disagree with the specifics that are often attributed to the genders when this issue comes up. I.e. I don't believe that there's a part of our genetic code that says XX like jewelery and makeup and XY likes throwing dirt, or that girls tend to talk more and boys tend to hit more. I believe that in general, we train our children to act that way starting from the way we treat them even before they're born (here's a short summary of some related studies and this is interesting as well).

There has always been and will continue to be tomboys and sensitive men, and each generation does modify its stereotypes, of course. Now to be clear, being in the nurture camp does not mean that I believe I can change my child to be what I want him to be. He's a sponge; he soaks up an amazing amount of information each day from the world around him. If I were the only person he ever interacted with or ever saw, just maybe I could have significant influence... But that's never going to be the case.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard moms-to-be who knew the gender of their babies describe their in-utero boys as so active, kicking all the time, and yet according to the mothers, the in-utero girls seemed to be much more quiet and reserved and gentle. Yet somehow when they come out, all babies cry a lot. My son's current favorite color is pink, and so I made sure one of the trains in his birthday cake had pink frosting; a three year old boy at his birthday party wanted the pink cake out of all of the cakes, and his father tried to convince him otherwise. Before Jared was born (we didn't find out the gender for him either), several members of my family kept trying to convince me to find out the gender so they knew what color baby clothes to buy; I insisted that I didn't like pink anyway so they could buy whatever and the baby would wear it.

Side note: I have to admit that I get a small thrill out of the fact that he loves pink, as if it is a meaningful milestone in my attempt to minimize the amount of socialization I myself do (it's not - but I still like it :-). Recently, Jared and I went to the local thrift shop to buy a toy; Jared picked a red truck out of a pile and we were on our way to the cashier to pay for it, and then he saw the pink car and kept saying "pink car! pink car!" I gave him a choice and he chose the pink car.

I like to think that I'm always open to changing my opinion based on new information, so I'm looking for some good books or articles to read on this subject... anyone have any recommendations? I've run across this one, but it's a wee bit pricey, much of the books seem to be more of the textbook variety. In the meantime I'll browse the blogs...

Comments

[Anne]

I'm in the nurture camp too. I think there probably are natural differences but we have a hard time seeing what they really are because we're so sure we know how girls act and how boys act. And even if boys and girls differ on average in some respect, there is probably a lot of overlap. I don't think you can tell anything from looking at a small sample of boys and girls (especially just one boy and one girl, as many parents of two different gendered kids like to do) even if you could overcome deep-seated ideas about the differences between boys and girls.

My son loved pink until about four or five when he decided it was a girl color and instead his favorite color was red. Until then, I had him promoting "pink is for everybody" to everyone, including his teachers, darn them for saying that pink is for girls!

As for laundry, I do it in our house but only because when my husband does it he doesn't do it to my standards. I make him plan birthday parties though because I am too antisocial for that! So a lot of it just breaks down by who's better at one thing or another, or who has pickier standards.

[Cynical]

Anne: Exactly... I would love to read some scientific studies about this, rather than listen to yet another anecdote about a girl who put on necklaces while the boys chased each other around with guns at a birthday party. I just haven't found any yet.

And oboy, I hadn't even thought much about the socialization he'll get from teachers, I'd mainly been thinking about the other kids. I'm in for a rude awakening :-)

The "who has pickier standards" is an interesting way of doing it, in most relationships where I've seen this work, each party tends to have something they are good at but they still value the importance of the thing they're not good at. But in my case, the things I'm better at are not as highly valued or critical... e.g. my husband is a great cook, and I'm not. But I remember to write and send thankyou notes. Um. I'll be the first to admit, it just doesn't compare :-)

[Keith]

Okay, a few bits of anecdotal evidence, apropos of nothing...

1) Sarah and I pretty much equally share the laundry duty, as we pretty much both hate it. The only thing that isn't really shared is that some of her girly clothes (no, not bras, etc) I just don't know how to hang up or I know I would mess up trying to hang them. Since she cares more about her appearance than mine, I normally defer those to her to hang up. However, we're both there washing and sorting and folding/putting away.

2) Dinah was very active in the womb. Especially during pieces she didn't like when Sarah was practicing with the DSO.

3) Nature vs nuture: its a bit of both. My Dad and brother love sports, we were in little league, went to all sorts of ball games, and sports was often on the tv. I do not give a rat's ass about sports in general. So, nuture failed there, its just not in my nature. However, my love of reading I attribute to my dad, so nurturing worked there. (No, I'm not dissing my mom, but those are the two clearest cut examples I have.)

[anonymouse]

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4126&n=3

[kz]

I'm solidly in the nurture camp, I think Husband is in more of the Nature camp. He does claim, after all, that his inability to ask directions or put away laundry comes from the genetic material missing on his Y chromosome.

I don't buy it.

Although, I do see a bit of Nature involved with my three girls. All three have had distinct personalities from birth, although they moved about very similarly in the womb.

I have to say that your Husband posts are raising the evil green monster between me and Hubby. Ah well, I have to keep telling myself that I'd much rather the kids be happy, fed, and involved than have a sink clear of dirty dishes. Must... keep.... eye.... on.... priorities. And if you get both, then good for you!

[MaryGarth]

When it comes to gender difference stuff, I'm absolutely with you. We didn't find out the sex of our kids while I was pregnant, either (also to the annoyance of family members--which just confirmed for me why I didn't want to know). The people who are so clearly imposing all kinds of gender distinctions on their kids, and then insist that the difference is all nature, drive me BONKERS.

Laundry-wise, with our last move, we moved to a house that had no dryer. As an interim measure, we found a local laundry that would pick up bags of dirty laundry from our back porch once a week and return them --neatly folded or on hangers--later the same day. Let's just say it's been almost three years now, and we haven't bothered getting a dryer. Fred is better than I am about dividing up the folded clothes into piles for each person and distributing them, and I feel guilt about not doing more of my share of that.

If we didn't have "Mr. Suds", I'd say your solution of having each person do his or her own laundry is really ideal--I point out to students in my family sociology class that there's no particular reason that marriage should be any different from a roommate relationship in this regard... (mind you, they look at me as if I'm crazy when I say this--their mothers pretty much all did all the laundry... and they'll even say they think their mothers liked to do it...)

[Cynical]

Kz: I hear you on the priorities. I work and so we can afford to have a house cleaner twice a month, which has made that less of an issue for us. But before we did that, it was definitely a point of contention (i.e. he was upset that I didn't do it more, but I held the point of view that spending time with my son was more valuable and it would just get dirty again anyway).

Mary: Oooooh that laundry place sounds wonderful!

And I have to admit, I was probably into my late teens before I realized that my mother probably actually didn't *like* cooking dinner every night for us all, 5 kids at the height of it. And yet we had takeout or went out a surprisingly small number of times... I suspect that with my kids, we'll have non-home-cooked meals more often than I did growing up.

So, family sociology - can you recommend a (non-textbook) book that discusses these types of issues? I've been thinking about it a lot lately and would like to read up.

[kz]

My preferred bathroom reading right now is "Queen Bees and Wannabes," that discusses how to help your daughter get through the cliques of childhood (and adulthood,at that) and survive "Girl World."

Sure, you might be having boys, but it also has a couple of chapters on "Boy World." The discussion of socialization of boys, and girls, isn't in-depth, but it is interesting and thought-provoking.

And our dinner for three girls, Mom, and Dad tonight? Canned soup and Dairy Queen. Yah, I'm not one for cooking many meals, either. But, hey, I work all day! We're lucky we had soup in the pantry!

I gotta find myself a Mr. Suds.

[Elizabeth]

We both do laundry -- but we do it communally. Otherwise we'd be running half-loads all the time.

I'm sometimes annoyed that T. doesn't do more of it, since he's home with the boys during the day, and it seems so easy to me to just move things from the washer to the dryer.

Who does the kid's laundry?

[KC]

I was wondering if anyone was going to ask... :-) I do, the vast majority of the time. I've got it down to a science, there's no "separating whites and colors" for him, it goes right from the single hamper into the washer on cold, into the dryer, back into the closet and drawers.

[DORISSalazar23]

It's understandable that money makes us free. But what to do when one does not have cash? The one way only is to receive the business loans and just auto loan.