2006 Census!
Make it all count!
Question 46 on your individual blue form is usually the domain of women!
We all know how looking after children is a 24 hour job, no money, no recognition, no sleep, no personal life etc.
Make sure you ALL record that you do household work – even drying a single dish, or making a single coffee is housework! AND you don’t get paid for it!!!!
Also, if you don’t have custody, but have some Contact (formerly ‘access’), even just a phone call, or an hour, or however much, make sure you tick that you’ve looked after a child who doesn’t live in your household.
If they do, still tick it – reading a single story, changing a single nappy etc means you’ve looked after a child that does live in your household.They don’t have to be your own children.
Looked after a sick wife / partner, friend etc? Tick the box. Both household and non-household ones.
Volunteer work? even helping out for an hour at your kid’s school trip is enough to qualify.
Be honest. Don’t tick those that you can’t honestly answer, but I figure even a single solitary example that meets the criteria is enough to justify a tick.
Why?
Its a bout time we started bumping up the official stats that we fathers do actually do household chores, look after kids, volunteer work etc etc.
Do it!
Help our cause!
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So, not surprisingly, you suggest wiping one dish or changing one nappy counts as a significant contribution – no wonder so many of you a**holes end up single. Luckily, though there are still a lot of good men.
It’s very interesting how this comment from 2006 is the first to appear on a Google search of myself when I have had so much more to say on the MENZ website since then …
Hi Angela, Are you regretting making this comment now? If so, just say.
I looked up my name and it directs you to a man out to destroy me. I know this site isn’t like that.
No, Julie, I don’t regret making the comment – it still holds true.
Kiwi in Thailand, what makes you say that pray tell? Perhaps you think actually finding a good man is difficult? … what an insult
Angela, OK. I see the point about one nappy or one dish. It has a funny side to it.
But I think the other comments make a good point also.
And if you had sex with a man once and had a child, would you tick the box saying you had no children ?
I don’t think anyone would have sex with “Angela
” twice somehow, smirk
There’s no logic or reason in your reply golfa
Don’t forget household chores relates to the household, that includes fixing the car, mowing the lawns, painting the house, investigating the purchase of household items like the new family car, and planning for numerous other household activities, filling the Bbq bottle when you get the gas, common guys, get outside the square. Lets have a few novel thoughts about the men’s contributions.
Why would you assume MENZ contributors are particularly likely to be single Angela? The majority those who I know personally are in relationships with women.
In contrast to the man-hating attitudes typically demonstrated by feminists, most Men’s Movement activists actually like women and want to live in partnerships with them.
In addition, note that quite a few of us are house-husbands who do most of the domestic chores.
Actually, I can understand Angela’s response.
But coming from a relationship where despite doing a fair share of housewold chores, including virtually all outdoor chores, sharing cooking, dishes, laundry etc, the person formerly married to me took the stance in court that she did all the housework.
How many men do not give themselves credit for household chores done, because they are told they don’t do their share?
Do I not recall a survey a few years back which reported women still did more housework than men?
Yes indeed. But when you read into that survey, women’s housework + paid employment still fell quite short of men’s housework + paid employment.
Again I exhort men: If you can answer the question honestly, stand up and be counted.
Yes, I can understand Angela’s response, even though I believe it quite wrong.
My father was a house husband for eight years to four children. Mum worked fulltime. He did everything!! All the ‘males chores’ and ‘female chores’. And after going back to work he still did the same amount of ‘house work’ as mum didn’t know how to!!
So make it count!! To right.
Well I would like to see the stats actually indicating reality please. You cannot count one dish or one nappy as a significant contribution. Pleasde be honest. There are certainly men who do much so those men will not have any problem with this but to encourage lazy bastards to think and report that having dried one dish they have done their share is a lie. I am a great supporter of the mens movement and sincerely hope that finally the good men will shine and encourage and support the bad men to clean up their act. But while you are encouraging them to get glory for nothing you are not actually improving the situation.
Johanna,
Al does say in his post ‘be honest, don’t tick those you can’t honestly answer’.
And there I think is the nub.
If a man’s helped an aged relative with being sick only once I reckon he’s entitled to tick it off as accomplished.
That doesn’t mean he should be written off and insulted as a ‘lazy bastard’ IMO.
You say you’re a great supporter of the men’s movement, yet I wonder how many men feel supported reading that if they tick yes for having helped thier old Aunty get to a hospital they’re still in your opinion a lazy bastard.
Where’s your heart?
I think the original article suggested that ‘men need to exagerate their minimal contributions’ to housework, child raising, etc.
This is unfortunate- I think the emphasis should be that men should NOT OVERLOOK their contributions. Working dads normally make a large contribution to both, (some don’t), not all mothers, stay home or working, do their share. And then- some women do all the things that are stereotypically ‘men’s stuff’.
I say- answer carefully, let the statistics show the reality!
Lazy bastards can also be female this I certainly know from years of flatting. I still think it is unsound for someone who has dried one dish (over what period lets us say over the last month) to say that they are contributing to the household chores. I know it is very difficult for people to be objective here, I learned alot about my own habits during a period of living alone and I could not blame anyone else for the dishes.
There are people out there, of both genders in my experience, who fool themselves that they do housework, etc, when they barely make a token effort every few months. These people should not be encouraged by such statements as given Al.
In saying this I should join in the encouragement that men should not undersell their contribution when they are making it just because they have been battered into disbelief by bullyish others.
Honesty must start with ones self then pass it on …
Well, John Brett was the only one who actually got the point I was trying to make. Perhaps someone should carry out a study based on real time recording. For the record – in my ex-relationship I did all of the interior and exterior household and garden cleaning and maintenance – including painting the house and cleaning the car. Also, check out the YWCA website – these are not manhaters – respect for all is the ultimate goal. Can this site claim such virtuous intent? I’ve lived in a society where the battle of the sexes is over – there are no winners or losers – all that matters is how you played the game.
Per a recent survey,
Paid Employment:
Volunteer Work:
Unpaid Work:
Which, if my maths is anything close to reliable, means women spend somewhere circa .5hr per day more than men on combined volunteer, paid and domestic activity.
Not bad, Al. Fundamentally flawed however in that I couldn’t see the number of participants in the study – no better than a newspaper article then. Surely you will be aware that the larger the study population the more accurate the result can be applied to a population as a whole. And the study was done five years ago – my how things change. And who exactly were those Stats NZ employees working for? Helen or the other guys?
Angela, you do yourself little credit.
First you simply cry foul that I would exhort men to declare all their efforts, no matter how minicule (refer to thread 2006 Census!)
Then you ask whether any studies have been done, in order to presumably guage the contribution men in reality make to the family.
The, as soon as one very relevent study is presented, you simply decry the results, as presumably they do not declare what you want to see.
If a study was initiated out by a feminist movement, would it have validity?
If the study had, say 1000 respondents, would it carry weight?
This one is a massive five years old – it’s invalid, you cry!
I even provided you the link: you clearly did not bother to read further. You clearly were not even prepared to carry out your own research; but to simply decry the FACTS placed in front of you.
To simply decry the propostion that men undertake, on the whole, a more or less equal participation in both paid employment and household chores, when tallied together, seemed to be your sole objective.
To put it simvply, you appear completely closed-minded.
The survey was commissioned by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in 1997.
It covered about 8,500 respondents, over a one year period, and was the first, and certainly most comprehensive done in NZ to date.
Surveys of that magnitude cannot be carried out every year – that it is so recent is remarkable.
That you seem intent on ignoring a factual reality is something you might wish to take up with your own kin – the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, rather than simply to continue to denigrate men, which to me appears your sole intent.
My sole intention is not to denigrate men – you are wrong. I consider my kin the human race. If the study population is 8,500 then the accuracy can be given as a percentage based on the total population of NZ. This was covered in first year Sociology which I studied over 10 years ago so I don’t recall the exact method. To comment fully would take much more time than I have available right now but no doubt I’ll think about it again next semester when I’m undertaking my Intro to Sociological Research paper. You consider me to be closed minded – because I continue to question what others may view as a final end result?
Or because you have simply relegated very good factual evidence as being ‘fundamentally flawed’, clearly without reading it (otherwise you would have known some very simple details, such as the sample size, and who commissioned it).
If you were not pre-determined in your response, you would have welcomed the factual input. You can choose to disagree with it, but you wouldn’t simply write if off as akin to a newspaper article.
Your past experience that you did ALL household chores (inside and outside, even painting your house and cleaning the car), thereby precluding ANY contribution whatsoever, no matter how small, from your previous partner, seems to support your bias. I would love to meet the man (presumably a man) that managed to never lift a single solitary finger in contribution towards the upkeep of the house.
Or was he too busy working in paid employment, a role we are told, is equal in contribution to the family as that of doing ‘all’ the aforementioned tasks.
For the record, my partner and I share chores. I am not one of those “a**holes” your earlier labelled so many of us.
You asked for information; I provided it. You choose to simply write it off without any sound reason.
That does not strike me as the action of an open-minded person willing to enter into reasoned debate.
I’m doing some research for a tv documentary and would like to talk to a couple where the woman in the relationship is earning more than the man. He may or may not be a house husband. Obviously they need to be interested in sharing their opinions/experience in a tv interview. Thanks.