Is Housework Difficult?

There are some men among us who call themselves anti-feminists and yet, they  demand their (prospective) wife works. They will admit that if there is an infant or a pre-schooler in the house he will need a supervisor, but once he goes to school or generally becomes of an age to take care of himself, the mother must work at least part-time, to justify her existence.

One of their chief arguments is that housework in our day and age is easy and doesn't take much time and thus any housewife except mothers of very young children, is just a lazy good-for-nothing.

It once again shows that many of the so-called antifeminist males are just frauds and want to both have their cake (a submissive wife who  keeps the house) and eat it, too (and she is a capable breadwinner at the same time), but that's beside my point. I just wanted to look deeper into the claim about modern  housework being easier than say, a 100 years ago. Well, it depends.

(Another thing to consider is the fact that most men's jobs are also easier than they used to be, btw. Many of the guys decrying housewives are hardly working in the coal mines, themselves but are some sort of an office drone).

Many households at that period still had servants, including cooks, especially in the countries like the UK. The amount of the housework the well-off women did was minimal. On the other hand, poorer women missed such labour-saving devices as a washing machine. Washing by hand is one heck of a job. But...they also had less clothes and washed them less often, etc etc.

It also depends on your housekeeping standards. I heard that, e.g., in Turkey women are famous for washing all of their windows at least once a week and cooking elaborate meals 2-3 times a day. Obviously, it will take you longer to accomplish your work if your standards are that high and you cook all your meals from scratch.

On the other hand, there is a thing about housework: you can't always calculate the exact amount of time you spend on it each day in the same way you would do if you had outside employment because some things fall into a grey area. Taking your children to and from school (no school bus for us here in Europe, sorry). Helping them with housework. Taking the family dog out. Helping a sick neighbour with shopping. Taking kids to the dentist. Running errands and doing paperwork. Visiting an elderly relative etc etc.

While it's not really hard labour, it takes time AND energy and when you get older, you'll start noticing that your energy levels are going way down (men don't often realise that many women are lower energy than themselves because they are physically less strong and lack testosterone). Another thing men complain about is how bad modern women look. They are all fat, badly dressed etc. Well, taking care of your appearance  and gym take time, too, and so does shopping for fashionable clothes even if you do it online. The time which isn't spent in any productive pursuits, but leaves the husband satisfied.

So is housework difficult? It's generally less physically exhausting that it used to be in the past, true. However, there are still lots of things around the house which need to be done and only so many hours in the day. If your wife or girl-friend spends her hours at home chatting with other men online and cheating on you while you work, it's not because housewives are obsolete but because she's a lousy person. That's it.