Relinquishing Control: Some Thoughts on Men, Women, and the Domestic Sphere

The comments below this post continue to come in, and there's an interesting exchange worth following up on.

Stacer wrote:  it can be very hard for women to relinquish control over what is traditionally her domain, especially if she was raised traditionally and/or has family members who pressure her in that regard.

I replied: Helping wives to relinquish that sort of control is a task that men, especially those who also come out of a conservative background, ought to consider embracing.

Caitriona asked in response: Uhm, just how do you propose that men "help" their wives relinquish control in these areas?

This is getting into some tricky stuff.  Let's see if I can wade through it.

I've known a fair number of women who have been raised with the notion that the home is their domain.   The cooking, the cleaning, the childcare, and the general presentation of the household are things they see as entirely, or nearly entirely, within their bailiwick.  While many feminists have rightly asked their boyfriends and husbands to "step up" and take an active role in domestic tasks, many traditional women have not.  In some instances, they don't ask because they don't expect their male partners to be interested or willing to help.  But in other cases, these women have bought in to the notion that their very identity as wives and mothers is inextricably linked with how they "keep house."

Again, it's difficult not to share too much from personal experience.  I've lived with quite a few women (some to whom I was married, some not).  They came from widely divergent social, economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.   In some of these relationships, my partner and I agreed to live in a kind of low-key slovenliness.  (I'm a bit of a slob, as anyone who has seen my office can tell you!)  In other cases, we agreed to keep the house or apartment up to a "higher standard", and we either shared the labor or (more recently) hired help to do it for us.

I almost never tell stories about my exes. Here's a reasonably safe one.  One of my former wives was, like me, fairly sloppy 'round the house.  Laundry piled up, dishes were done intermittently, and so forth.  And then, a few months into our marriage, her mother (who lived some distance away) announced she was coming into town.  The day before my mother-in-law arrived, I found my wife on her knees scrubbing the bathtub.  While I had been off at school, she had been cleaning every square inch of the home.  "For heaven's sake", I said, "what are you doing?  Your mother is going to stay in a hotel anyway."

My ex looked at me, almost tearfully, and she said "Hugo, you don't understand."  She went on to explain how much pressure she felt to live up to her mother's standards for how a home should look.  She said that pressure had only really become acute after we were married.  "My mom expects me to take care of you", she told me, "If the house isn't perfect, it means I'm a lousy wife and a bad woman."  Though my ex-wife was a bright and competent and educated woman with a career outside the home, on that afternoon many years ago she was a frantic and anxious daughter, worried desperately about not living up to a standard that I simply could not understand.

I've come to realize (after three divorces and now, at last, in a truly happy marriage), just how often society at large (particularly in traditional culture) judges women by not only the state of their homes, but the outer appearance of their husbands.   I've realized that for some people, when a married man seems stressed or unkempt or troubled, the wife is invariably to blame. My former mother-in-law didn't just expect a clean house from her daughter, she expected her daughter to have successfully arranged my life!  According to my former wife, she would be judged by her family in no small part on how comfortable, well-fed, and settled I appeared.  This was a stunning revelation to me. 

I've come to realize that this particular ex-wife did not come from an unusual family in this regard.  A great many traditional women know that they will be assessed and judged by family, peers, and community based on their domestic skills and the behavior of their husbands.  And as men, I believe we do have a role to play here!  We must be willing to do more than "help out" around the house (the language of a child doing chores).  We must proactively assert ourselves in domestic decisions, lifting a culturally-imposed burden off the shoulders of our spouses.  While it is not our job to help our wives reject their backgrounds, it is our job to help our wives escape the prison of mandated gender roles.  We do that not only by doing the dishes, but by being willing to say "Hey, it's my kitchen too.  I can take care of it, and I will take care of it.  Let me be your equal partner here."

I'm not suggesting, ala some of the Promise Keepers, that men begin asserting the traditional notion of "headship" in the home.  But I am suggesting that men will do well to remember that their wives and girlfriends will often come from backgrounds that have loaded them up with crushing expectations about fashioning a domestic paradise.  While some women no doubt delight in some domestic tasks from time to time, feminists recognize that it is spiritually and intellectually deadening for women to connect their own sense of self-worth to the deliciousness of a casserole or the spotlessness of a floor or the whiteness of a freshly laundered t-shirt.  In the pro-feminist world, casseroles do need to be made, floors do need to be swept, and the laundry will still need doing.  But husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends can work together to extricate women from connecting these basic tasks to their own core identities!   

It's not enough for men to simply volunteer to do a task occasionally (and then do it so badly that they have a permanent deferral from household work!)  Husbands must be willing to shoulder domestic burdens, and shoulder them well.   But husbands and boyfriends do well to be firm here.  Some women will be deeply anxious about relinquishing control over the domestic sphere, both because they may be afraid their husbands will screw up, and because they fear losing an aspect of their identity.  They may, as Stacer suggests, fear the harsh judgments of their culture; they may, as my ex-wife did, fear the contempt and disappointment of their own mothers.  While remaining compassionate and understanding, men also have to be willing to gently challenge their wives to let go of this ancient and tiresome baggage, and we have to be willing to shoulder our half of the load.

UPDATE:  I just re-read what I've written, and I think I'm going to catch some hell for the penultimate paragraph, which seems unfairly dismissive of domesticity.  I've opened myself up to the charge of sexism here, by making condescending assumptions about what tasks ought to be at the core of women's self-worth!  Still, I'll let stand what I wrote.  Just thought you should know that I can see another side or three...

Comments

[Vacula]

I think you're right to secont guess your statements about how "deadening" it is to tie your identity to things like cooking (is it ok if it's outside the home? Are all chefs "deadend"?). Would you go so far as to say tying your identity to what you do or to the results of your labors is always deadening?

I'd finesse it a little by saying it's a terrible thing when a woman ties her identity to the cleanliness of her home or the quality of her food without being able to take pride and/or enjoyment in the skills it takes to get there.

[sophonisba]

But in other cases, these women have bought in to the notion that their very identity as wives and mothers is inextricably linked with how they "keep house."

Well, okay, that's close to half of it, maybe. The other half is that if keeping house is your job, the house is yours. Cleaning every inch of a house means you know it intimately, and it means you own it. Paying the rent means nothing in terms of real emotional ownership compared with physical care; that care makes a house a home, and it makes it your home, and your husband a grateful guest, particularly if he works for a salary and you don't. If both of you earn income, you have to come to terms with the fact that primary ownership of the home is not rightfully yours, but otherwise, the fact that housework is physically demanding, borin, and never-ending is not necessarily a good reason to share it. The rewards are as real as the burdens, and just as unfairly skewed to you.

Housework isn't fun for most women who cling to it and it isn't always a source of identity, either, but it is a source of real power and control. You don't sound so much dismissive as just not getting it: think of the way you write about your devotion to running: to a non-runner, it seems like boring, tedious, painful drudgery for tiny, pointless rewards. Like housework. But for you, it's more, and better, and I would even guess, has many of the same motivations. Ordering the home is very much like ordering the body, and as hard to give up to a partner.

[Hugo]

Points taken. My concern is for those women -- whose numbers are not insignificant -- who don't a priori derive great pleasure from cooking and cleaning, but who believe themselves to be living out a prescribed role (as with the example of my ex-wife.)

[kate.d.]

have you read the bitch in the house? it's a great compilation of a lot of interesting womens' stories, and touches on a lot of interesting issues. what surprised me most about the book, though, was the way many of the authors came to the realization that they were angry at their husbands for not sharing the burden of housework AND kinda resenting them when they did try to help out. talk about a lethal combination!

i think it speaks volumes about the depth of socialization that happens around "keeping house," and the way that women internalize so much of that responsibility that they have a hard time giving it up even when they WANT to.

[Chris T.]

Bitch Ph.D. had a post on this very same subject today. I think your perspectives on this work well side-by-side.

In my own marriage, I am increasingly aware of how degrading housework is for someone who is not called to it. (I think that's the crucial difference in this—some women may find fulfillment in domestic tasks, but many, perhaps most, do not.) Neither my wife nor I likes most of the tasks—whatever enjoyment my wife derives from them is based in having control over how the house looks. She likes it that the house is clean, but she certainly doesn't like cleaning it any more than I do.

So my problem is the opposite of what you describe—it's me who needs the kick in the pants, and I'm gradually getting better about shouldering my part of the load. But breaking the "domestic glass ceiling" will also involve progressive men helping create a home environment that liberates SOs coming from more traditional backgrounds.

[Emily H.]

I get that you didn't mean to be dismissive of domesticity.

But one of the things that strikes me as a proto-Marxist is that when you're washing dishes, or baking cookies, you can be a lot less alienated from your labour than when you're flipping burgers or doing something that has no more meaning than what you get paid for it...

This is not to say that I take 'great pleasure' from housework. I'm a fair cook and a terrible housekeeper, and wouldn't do much of either out of anything but necessity. (Baking bread, I'll admit, is fun). But working fast food was worse; working many jobs would be worse. Is it any better if women end up organizing their self-worth in performance at a soul-deadening job that pays money?

[Chris T.]

Oops, I messed up the link to Dr. B's post: here it is!

[M Light]

I'm not a domestic-type woman (more the outdoorsy, gardening, hiking type), but sometimes housework needs to be done. I'm more particular about things being sanitary than uncluttered.

But...my mother-in-law is one of the best housekeepers I've ever known. Half an hour after a large family dinner, her whole house could be photographed for a magazine (okay, her family is well-trained too).

I used to try to get our house up to those standards every time she visited, and, of course, I dreaded visits. This sort of worked for awhile, but, by the time I was homeschooling two children and working two part-time jobs, it was a stupid thing to try. I still would clean for two days straight whenever she was coming over.

I finally realized it wasn't working one day when I was dusting baseboards (about the only time I ever did that, actually. Who invented baseboards anyway? Some feminist architect should come up with a creative non-dusting-needable solution to the same problem). One of my children came up and innocently asked if I would play, and I practically snarled that I couldn't because Grandmother was coming over.

And then I listened to myself. That would be a great way to get them to dread her visits, and I didn't want that to happen. Part of why we live where we do is so that the kids can be close to relatives.

It was difficult to unlearn the habit of frantic, mother-in-law-induced cleaning, but I've pretty much learned to. My husband also appreciated not having to do that anymore.

After a few decades of marriage, I've finally gotten to the place where I view the house as a setting for our family life, and, as such, I find it easier to do housework. I wouldn't say that I identify with it or get my self worth from it, though - I do that more with other activities like gardening, hiking, and teaching aerobics (which threw me for a loop last summer when I had planter fasciitis in my left foot and couldn't do any of those).

[badteeth]

An ex-girlfriend who I used to live with once complained to me that she hated the fact that I liked to cook and that it made her feel un-feminine that I usually wound up cooking more often than she did. I told her something along the lines of "why are you complaining if you're getting home cooked meals out of it" and told her she was a lunatic and a pain in the neck. (Actually I cleaned that language up a bit.) Probably not the most productive response I could have given.

Later on we had to rent a truck to get some hand me down furniture from one of her uncles. I still do this day can not drive a stick shift, she can. I remember riding in the passenger seat feeling like a worthless slug the whole way back and forth.

Fortunately she didn't get to call me a pain in the neck and a lunatic, because I had the sense to keep my mouth shut about what was bothering me.

[Caitriona]

What your ex described to you is quite prevalent, IME. It can be hard to live up to what we *think* we're supposed to do, based on what we were taught or observed or thought we observed growing up.

I saw my grandmother being a wonderful manager of the home and farm. She sewed our clothes, gardened and canned, babysat, quilted, studied her Bible, kept the house "lived-in" clean, provided a shoulder for half the community, and still was able to have something fresh-baked nearly every day for our after-school snack. And then after school, she monitored us to make sure we were doing everything we needed to get done while she fixed dinner.

She did all this in what was initially a 4-room house with a cistern, a bathtub on the back porch, and an outhouse. (They walled in the back porch and added the indoor bathroom when I was 7yo, then walled in the front porch :-( and added a 3rd bedroom when I was a teen.) I still catch myself comparing my accomplishments as a wife and mother by what I saw my grandmother accomplish, and I am miserably behind the curve.

We now have 4 teens and a 20yo in the house (yes, we recently added a 20yo to the brood and next month the 17yo may be moving back in). They do most of the housework, as their contribution to the family and as a way for them to learn how to take care of a home *before* they're out on their own. Some days, I consider myself lucky that I didn't have this many this closely together when they were younger; some days, I think it would have been easier to teach them to do things the way they need to be done if I'd had them all in my house when they were tiny.

I enjoy cooking for them, especially now that the 17yo is beyond the "complain about everything because it's not take-out or out of a box" stage. Cooking for people is one of the things that's [nearly] always brought me enjoyment. But I won't cook in a dirty kitchen, so they're responsible for making sure it's clean. (We're still working on learning to put things back where they belong so that it doesn't take forever to find the things needed to cook a meal.)

I often dread the time they'll all be gone. I don't want to miss having someone to cook for, the way my grandmother does now that all her grandchildren have moved away and none of the great-grands are close to home. (And I don't necessarily want to do all the housework by myself, either.)

Chewy figures I'll just keep taking in more kids. ;-)

[Kristen from MA]

hugo, don't you remember those 'ring around the collar' commercials? the implication was that if a man had a yellow stain inside the collar of his dress shirt, his wife just wasn't doing her job (and using that particular laundry detergent - can't remember which one). i recall that a lot of women got pissed off at that commercial and the response was usually something like this: 'ring around the collar? wash your *#$%# neck!'

=)

[glendenb]

As I ponder (thinking about examples from my family) two things jump out at me: the expectation that women are supposed to take charge of the home seems to go hand in hand with the notion that men are incapable of housekeeping.

For many women care of the house is a source of power. Given the socially acceptable roles women were often limited to, any source of power was an acceptable alternative. Elaine Tyler May addresses this in her book about the 50s – that for many college educated women, being denied the opportunity for a career, they directed themselves into housework as a source of power, fulfillment and personal growth. In some sense, men were told to stay away from housework because it's too difficult for you to do right (my paternal grandmother literally refused to let her husband or sons help with the housework becuase she said they didn't know how). As more and more middle class women spend their days working, the power in households is changing - women are losing their base of power and not necessarily getting a new one.

Men come out on the good end of the exchange. We get credit for any housekeeping we do, but we can easily agree to do only the parts we don’t mind (ie cooking or laundry or dusting); if we do them badly, the woman is expected to fix it and gets the blame for them being done badly, since men are naturally incapable of keeping house. It’s a great ride for men, and most men won’t give it up for obvious reasons.

The other factor is the More Work For Mother analysis. Vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, sponge mops etc. haven’t saved a minute of time – they’ve made more work by altering expectations. Once upon a time, you took your carpet out of the house once a month and beat it. Now you can vacuum the whole house in an afternoon, you’re expected to do it almost every afternoon. The same phenomenon played out in cooking and laundry and washing the floors and the bathrooms. You can do it faster, so now you have to do it more often.

My personal take on the whole household cleanliness issue: Who cares if your house is messy if you and yours are well adjusted, leading fulfilling meaningful lives? Frankly, if someone walks into my house and says it’s too messy, I hand them a dust rag and the vacuum and say “Have at it! I’ve got better things to do.”

[Can Dance]

I really don't believe I have that problem. I probably should. I am a feminist and a SAHM all in the same breath. I hate cleaning, I hate the mundaness of it (is that a word?) and the fact that my 18 month old will trash it within seconds of it being clean. my husband does next to nothing around the house. he cooks the odd meal (in the microwave no less) and will sometimes pick up stuff from the floor if we have people coming over. Real egalitarian eh? Pre-kids our argreement was whoever didn't cook, cleaned. he then announced to me one day that bc I was staying at home now everything on the homefront was my responsibility. I guess I sit around all day painting my nails or whatever. He recently let me hire some teenage labour to help me out once a week, I guess its his standin or whatever. Thank God for her.I know so much of it is my MIL, who drives me crazy by telling my SIL that because she is a female she is suppose to help out with making Christmas dinner. and who never made her "boys" do hardly any domestic chores, and who also didn't even train them with the toilet seat. (oh and will NEVER be the guardian of my children if I die, NO WAY I want my kids raised in that crap) but I also feel oddly guilty that I want him to help. he is the one bringing home the bacon while I stay at home. in some ways, I can't wait to go back to work. but I also won't leave my babies until they are older. Its going to sure be a shift when we are both in the workforce that is for sure. I hope he gets a good kick in the pants.
its too bad you're taken, you're so enlightened ;)

[mythago]

He can't shovel that shit unless you choose to take it, Can Dance.

Paying the rent means nothing in terms of real emotional ownership

It means everything in terms of real ownership, and it is real power and control. I'm not dismissing your points about emotional ownership, which I think are spot-on. But that 'emotional ownership' is a reaction to the lack of actual ownership. It may make someone feel more powerful and home-owning if they clean it, but they don't really own it.

[Caitriona]

Can Dance, maybe your husband needs to listen to the song Mr. Mom. ;-)

[Can Dance]

Thanks for the support. I know that my labour is unpaid, but I am seriously not very good at being a homemaker. as my friend said "I may stay at home, but I am not a homemaker". I like staying at home with my daughter, and I can't imagine putting her in someone else's care when we are in the position financially that its unnecessary for me to work. I just HATE the domestic expectation on my part. I even like cooking, I just hate cleaning. I don't know what is reasonable of me to expect. I know that when my MIL comes I really don't care if my floor is shiny enough for her, or what have you. I know she has said to me she doesn't think dh should have to do a thing bc he is the one that brings home the money. therefore, I don't know what is reasonable of me to ask of dh. its not like he's this big jerk or something, bc he is really not. but on this front, I am continually frustrated. we try to be egalitarian in many things, but in many ways we aren't. maybe this is just a season of my life I have to deal with until the major shift when I go back to work. any suggestions I would gladly listen to.

[evil_fizz]

How about "We both live here, we both have dozens of things other than housework we want and need to be doing, we have to talk about this. Because I can handle x, y, and z no problem, but there's a heck of a lot more to be done than that. We're partners in this and I need your help."

Over at Tomato Nation, someone suggested having a designated time for cleaning. For fifteen minutes, everyone really cleans: dishes, floors, what have you. No slacking allowed. When the 15 minutes are up, you're done.

It's the sort of thing that's harder when you have a small daughter, but I thought it was a creative suggestion.

[Caitriona]

Can Dance, I *love* being a SAHM, but I've always hated doing "housework." I'm more into kids and cooking. Thankfully, my kids are old enough to help me with the housework.

But ya know what? Who cares if the shelves get dusted and all the hidden cobwebs are found and cleared away? (OK, I do WHEN company's coming.)

I think we all panic over things like that (except my SIL, who is a neat-freak). I think what I want to do some day is have a HUGE house where my brother's family and my family can all live together. I'll cook and take care of the kids, and my SIL can clean. Yeah, that's the ticket! ;-)

I kinda like what evil_fizz wrote. Let your husband know that for certain "chores" around the house, he can either help you get them done or y'all can hire someone to do it for you. It's not good for your daughter, you, or your husband for you to be stressing over little things like that. And if he works with you to get them done, it can be "family building time."

[acm]

The thing that suprises me is that so few people ever consider teaming up to challenge the parental (or other outside) judgementalism -- not just to say "it's clean enough here" or "the laundry is my responsibility, not hers," but "why is it that you think I can't dress myself?" or to overtly ask mom why she's willing to participate in the oppression of her own daughter. I admit that we all have to fight our own battles, and the internal ones are things over which we have much more control, but the older generation can, in fact, learn and is sometimes quite surprised to have the underlying assumptions of their behavior revealed. (I've had similar luck in fighting pressure about children by pointing out that no parent knows whether their child is defiant, principled, or in fact trying unsuccessfully, etc. and that they're wading heavily into delicate territory.)

Just another penny for the pond.

[Mr. Bad]

Can Dance, when your husband is at work making the money to put the roof over his family's head, he is indeed contributing to the 'housekeeping,' which in turn allows you to stay at home. It would also be interesting to hear his side of this scenario because I believe it would be very different than yours.

I think an equitable division of labor might go like this: One half of the time he's at work, you should be cleaning and doing other such housekeeping chores, and the other half of the time you should be devoting to childcare. So, if he's working an 8-hour day, you should be spending about 4hrs on housekeeping and 4 hours on child raising (with a couple of 15-minute breaks and 45 minutes for lunchtime). Obviously these periods won't be continuous; in others words, they'll be mixed together. Make a conscientous effort at sticking to this schedule for a week and then you'll understand his situation at work with a supervisor watching over him, and then perhaps begin to understand why he's beat when he comes home at night. Further, if you stray from the plan, e.g., take 90 minutes for lunch, clean only 2 hrs in a day vs. 4 hrs, etc., then you should make up the time at night. Now, at the end of the day when you both have put in your 8 hrs, let us know how much energy you have left to do all the things you wish your husband would do for you. Also, split up the rest of the chores (e.g., cooking, dishes, etc.) that need to be done in the evening equitably between the two of you.

I suspect that if make a good-faith effort at this you might not see your husband as the slacker the way you seem to be doing now. Being a feminist and a SAHM while the husband is off working to make enough money for you to live this way is quite a luxury.

[LMYC]

About the phenom of women playing homemaker-despot, it's not just that everyone else expects her to and judges her by it, it's that in so many ways, our lives are circumscribed. Still. Even with the advances that have been made. And these pressures are particularly strong for traditional women who have been raised to believe that making money, having a career, getting a really good education, all that is the domain of the male.

Their lives are crammed into the cracks; all they are permitted is the home. So god damn it, if that's their sphere, it's going to be their sphere. If that's the only place that their ambition is allowed to manifest itself, then a man is not going to be welcome when he tries to muscle in on that as well. A woman like that is subconsciously likely to react with, "Damn it, the world in these little four walls is all that I'm allowed, and you are NOT going to take that territory away from me as well. I may not be in the Senate or the Fortune 500, I'm not allowed any decision-making in the Church, but god damn it, here MY word is law! Out of the damned kitchen!"

Basically, control of home and hearth is the last remaining crumb for a traditional woman, the only place on Earth where she is really allowed to exert control and influence. A man who enters that world is going to be seen as someone who is trying to steal that crumb away.

All women, but especially traditional ones, have been allowed that tiny little box as the only place on the entire planet where the buck stops with us. Our first reaction when a man encroaches on that, our only alloted territory, is going to be suspicion and anger that that will also be taken from us.

I don't know what the ultimate solution is. This problem has been millennia in the making.

[Caitriona]

Mr. Bad, if that's a bona fide post, it shows just how little you know of what it takes to be a SAH parent, mom or dad. Especially with little ones involved. She's already posted that she has an 18mo.

You don't divide the day into "4 hours to clean and 4 hours to take care of the children." It's more like 18 hours to take care of the little ones with cleaning breaks and 2 minute rest-breaks worked in as you're able. If you're lucky, you get that other 6 hours for sleep and for the cleaning you couldn't do during the 18 hours. Oh, and you have to work cooking meals and running errands in there somewhere, too.

If you're lucky (as I am), by the time they're teens, they can help with the house so that you have more time for things such as running the family's start-up business (already drove to the bank, checked on a possible new meat processor who's local, and picked up feed), supervising the kids as they learn to do the things that need done around the house (which reminds me, YS needs to put a shelf into my new kitchen cabinet this afternoon), driving the kids to/from wherever they need to go (need to go pick up kids from work shortly), making sure the children's education is up to par (whether public, private, or home educating), continue running the family errands (need to pay some bills before I pick up the kids), working a part-time job (need to call and remind all the exchange students about the holiday party next week), and/or doing projects for fun and/or the community (stopped to ask advice from my jeweler/mineralogist friend about a beaded orchid I'm doing for church for one of the Advent Sundays), all the while making sure that the family's physical, mental, and emotional well-being is taken care of. (At least we budgeted in for eating out tonight, since we got discount tickets to take the family to see the Ice Bats.)

Of course, I've got it easy. I know a young lady with a 13yo who is autistic and so can't help much around the house. Her other two are 8yo and 2yo. She works full-time, as does her husband. When she gets home, she cleans, but the children mess things up nearly as fast as she cleans. Then her husband comes home and asks her why she never cleans the house. HELLO!

Sorry, but the attitude of your post is the type that just irritates the living daylights out of me.

[Mr. Bad]

Cait, you're correct, I'm not a parent. But now, come on, let's be real here: Somebody is watching Oprah, soap operas, etc., to the point where advertisers are willing to pay gazillions of dollars a minute for spots on those shows. The Neilsen (sp?) ratings don't lie, and I'd bet dollars to dimes that those viewers aren't men. So IMO there are a lot of SAHMs with substantial amounts of time on their hands for hanging out in front of the tube. Of course, your mileage may vary, but that doesn't make your ride representative of the general population. Capice?

[evil_fizz]

So because someone has the TV on, that means that SAHMs aren't working hard? Please. Serial anecdote isn't data, but I would suspect that Cait's experiences are a lot more representative than you're suggesting. (My mother's experiences were a lot like her's, as were most of the other SAHMs I knew growing up and the SAHMs I know now who are my own age.)

If you have small children, there is no dividing the day up into nice, neat little blocks. There isn't even always time to do things like brush your teeth...

[Can Dance]

Thanks for sticking up for me everyone. I never called my husband a slacker. He does work hard at what he does and I have no complaints that he is lazy when it comes to working. but he does live here and eats food and dirties dishes. As a dad, he is great, he is very involved and I am very pleased with that. That was a concerted effort on my part to not critisize what he does when he takes care of her. I don't consider myself to be overly territorial when it comes to both parenting and housework. just because I am female does not automatically mean that I know exactly what I am doing when it comes to children. we both just have figured it out as we go along.
Another factor that I didn't include when discussing my division of labour problem is that my dh is a pilot. that means he is gone for 3-4 straight at a time. that means that I am the full time, all the time caregiver to my child for 72-96 hours. its very tiring. If she starts having tantrums or what have you, I can't go for a walk when my dh gets home that night. because he doesn't get home. And obviously, Mr B, you have never lived with an 18 month old. Literally the second that I put her toys away, she will pull them out. even if I am just putting them away to vacuum. It never ends. I am not an anal mum about making sure that she "only eats in her chair" either, so sometimes she'll snack on a cracker and I am dealing with those crumbs. At this point in her life, I am about letting her explore her surroundings as long as its not dangerous. its how she learns.
As for your "schedule"? I had to laugh. that is the most hysterical thing I have ever heard. When I get up each day I have a set routine that she always knows what is coming. mostly planned around her napping. I am happy if I get my teeth brushed and out the door at any point. why? because sometimes it takes her an hour to eat, sometimes she doesn't want to eat breakfast so she'll eat it later. and you know, that is perfectly fine. I am not a control freak and my life is relatively stress free because I live on no ones schedule but my own unless I have appointments, going to the gym, whathaveyou. I don't see around and watch TV all day, that gets boring quite quickly. we do fun things like bake cookies, play with playdoh, etc. When you are 18 months everything is new and interesting. does it get boring? absolutely. but I wouldnt trade my boredom to have someone else raise my child. But I never get any time off or whatever.
I don't expect a lot of my dh, I know that. but a washed dish, a folded load of laundry or two, a mopped floor would go a loooooonnnnnngggggg way in the sex department. when he helps me, he looks pretty damn sexy to me. and I do really really resent that he made that announcement after dd was born. that is not cool and definitely not egalitarian. especially because he knows I hate the domestic end of staying at home.