Women really need to “get over themselves”. First, they say being a housewife is the most rewarding job there could be……and then a higher percentage of them stop being housewives and go to work. So, are they saying they would rather have a less rewarding job? or were they just lying about it being rewarding??

Stop the whining about housework. I’ve never, and I mean never, heard a house-husband complain about the housework. His wife is working and earning the money and he is doing what he should be doing….taking care of the house and the kids (if they have any).

I am sick and tired of hearing about how women think they are unappreciated or should get paid for taking care of their house. If your husband is busting his butt to provide a house and everything it takes to run that house…..then stop whining about having to take care of it. When it comes to taking care of a house such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc., you can always hire someone to do that anyway – so to me, the housewife can be replaced. (If prostitution were legal, you wouldn’t need a wife for that either, but that is a whole other topic.)

So, ladies…….for those of you who have had time to read this…..I hope you are paying attention. If you have a GOOD MAN who is the only bread winner in the family and you are not also bringing in a paycheck….stop whining. Do your job! You want hubby to appreciate you…..guess what…..the fact that he is busting his butt every day to give you the house to make a home is his way of saying “thank you…..I love you” and by doing nothing but complaining, you are taking that love and telling him he isn’t worth the effort. (By the way….if there are househusbands who do this also….same applies to you.)

What’s so difficult about sharing the labor? There’s too much that needs to be done! My husband’s 70 hour work week, my 25 hour work week, and the 70 hours + required in childcare (not to mention cooking, cleaning, etc.) No matter how you divide it, it’s overwhelming.

Are kids are coddled? No, kids are overworked. There’s the longer school day (My daughter attends a kindergarten several hours longer than the one I went to.), with increased academic expectations. They are not only expected to learn the same material at an earlier age, but more subjects: more foreign language, music, etc. These increased expectations continue. I used to do interviews for college, and I’ve had to ask top high school students if they actually have time to sleep.

For the record, I’m 41, married and have two children.

Crimson is correct in the context of my frame of mind that day at lunch with Philip. All the rest of you conjecturing are just projecting. Lisa Williams, Ellen Zhao, Melissa: Thank you. I plan to spend a long time with this woman. I love her. Some days we all just need a friend to listen to our B.S. about our relationships.

The guy is whipped and puts up with it because his girlfriend is young. He whines but he stays and pays. You make good points about the selfish spoiled nature of many of today’s women, but what about the men who put up with this?

Your 40-year-old male friend makes about as much money as his 2x-year-old girlfriend? Considering the significance of experience and being male on wages, this hints at a huge imbalance. Either your friend is highly subservient, working years without much of a raise, or his girlfriend is a born leader who really knows how to get what she wants. It’s no wonder this power structure shows up in their relationship.

I’m married and I have two children, who are one and three. Anybody who has kids knows how much work that is, and both my husband and I put in a lot of work to make our household viable, both inside and outside the house.

That said, I don’t think the “household economics” split is really the biggest problem today. I think younger people have an overly idealized conception of marriage. This brings them to the unrealistic expectation that their marriage will provide for all their needs, both economic and emotional. My grandparents would have scoffed at the idea of married people needing to be “soul mates.” Yet I don’t believe anybody would say that their marriage was not successful, objectively and on their own terms.

In an article I read recently on childcare, the author said something smart: “We try to do individually what we’ve given up doing as a society.”

It seems to me that many married couples are pretty isolated — they no longer live in the context of an extended family or community where they know everyone, they don’t have reliable daily contact with friends other than their spouse. Add to that that in many couples both people work, often long hours. The problem isn’t entirely within couples — it’s the context that couples play out their lives in, an increasingly harsh and lonely context that puts even more pressure on that relationship to provide everything and to provide it into an ever smaller and more squeezed time that makes things very difficult.

And all these changes have happened in only fifty years — far too fast for us to create new cultural norms that make us feel okay about what we’re doing.

I don’t see anything much wrong about men doing more than half housework than women, even the entire. Just think about the suffering women would have when they bear children….It’s just fair for men to do something for women when they can. And, I don’t understand nowadays what’s so hard about solving the trivial mundane tasks like housework. Is hiring a part-time professional housework engineer (maid that is) that expensive? As the employor one not only gets more time for more creative/productive activities but also creats job for other people…

And, I agree with andre. The scale of generalisation of men/women in this post is way too large. And, people are moody, more or less. Even for the same person, different behaves on same matter would appear at different times, depending on her/his physical status, mood, etc, etc….Okay, here’s the opinion from a born-in-’80s.

While you are hearing your 40 year old friend whine about the disproportionate amount of domestic work he has to do in this relationship you are not hearing his, “Holy Jesus, I’m banging a hot 20 something year old.” Clearly he’s more interested in a hard body than an emotional peer and team member.

Just like some people are only happy when their miserable, some people *choose* to be in relationships where they are the martyr (like your friend) or where they are the slacker (like your friend’s g/f). Either way, it’s a mess of disfunction and to try to reason about it rationally is foolhearty at best.

re:” A friend in her 40s pointed out that perhaps by coddling our kids we’ve produced an entire generation too selfish to make a marriage succeed.”

Apparently this is a big problem in China, with a generation of only children now grown up and a skyrocketing divorce rate.

The 50-50 division of labor is a complete and total feminist canard. The ’studies’ undertaken with this level of sophistication about what constitutes work remind me of the European violinist union demanding a higher pay because after all they play nearly twice as many notes. I’m glad to see your is friend is man enough to provide the complete meal service and not complain about it. An excellent example of masculinism at work. He’s not complaining, right?