Should the husbands of full time homemakers help out with housework?

Putting a misconstrued debate to rest.

It is a common refrain among traditionally-minded women that a man should be able to come home to a clean home and relax, rather than be bogged down with requests to help with dishes, diapers, or other sundry household tasks.

This is a piece of advice that I consider to be quite valuable, personally. Many women, particularly in the busyness and chaos of a household with babies and small children, look forward to their husband’s return from work as an opportunity to get some help with their own “job” at home, an occupation that we all know does not end at the close of business, like the 9-5 that breadwinning husbands typically work.  

Yes, household chores are a normal part of adulting, but it is an aspect of family life that often causes tensions when duties are not shared. This is yet another reason why having a full-time homemaker is such a benefit to any family.

So it stands to reason that a full-time homemaker should be willing to make sure her husband can, at the very least, come home and relax when he’s just finished his primary responsibilities for the day.

This common bit of advice, however, often seems to translate to many as the moral imperative that women should “never ask your husband to help with housework.”

Encouraging struggling wives who are at home full time to take on the duties of a full-time homemaker without expecting their husbands to help is simply not the same thing as believing a man must never touch a broom or help out with bath time. We are all adults, and it’s hard for a man to raise young children without participating in family life, in whatever form that might take.

But if he is working full time to support his family, we extend very solid advice to his wife when we encourage her to design their family life so that he can relax and enjoy his family at the end of the day.

We do not need to view this as a strict rule but rather a way of life in which a wife cheerfully works towards creating a nice home environment for this to happen, as he works full time to provide for her.  

To say that a man “shouldn’t” have to help out with household chores if he works full time and his wife is a homemaker is like saying a woman “shouldn’t” have to work if she’s married and ought to be cared and provided for.

It’s just a belief about how to extend support and care to one’s spouse, based on typical, sensible generalities about men and women and how to run and provide for a household.

It is an admonishment to a spouse to cheerfully work to make the other one comfortable in a very sensible, enjoyable, mutually beneficial way and to plan to make sure that they can both relax when he gets home.

I believe that this issue is most often addressed because wives who stay at home full-time feel resentful that their husbands get home from full-time jobs and do not want to help out with childcare and cleaning.

At least, virtually every discussion I’ve seen about this topic involves women admonishing men and other women that “men are adults they live there too” so it certainly shouldn’t be a woman’s sole responsibility to do household chores.

Meanwhile, women who admonish other women to let their husbands relax and not have to worry about chores when they get home are doing so for the aforementioned reasons — because it’s a great way to love on and appreciate your husband, you’re an adult and live in your home too and are also financially provided for, and homemaking is simply not anywhere near as grueling as we seem to have accepted it as.

Here's the hard truth: after decades of combating the presumptions of feminism about homemaking, a lot of women have opted to compare homemaking to a full-time job, a practice which unfortunately simply makes it sound, just as the feminists falsely claim, like literal slavery.

Because if homemaking is just like a job, it’s a 24/7/365 job.

But this is simply not the case.

Women have managed to assume sole responsibility over household chores with small children running underfoot for literal millennia, and we have more technology and resources to make our tasks easier than ever before. I know it often doesn’t feel like it, but you are capable of managing your house well enough to not have to dump a bunch of chores on your husband when he gets home. 

Every husband has his flaws, and a wife will do well to exercise tact and patience when she is struggling unreasonably and her husband won’t support her, yes.

But trust me, most responsible men will do their “man” chores around the house that often go unappreciated by their wives, if we somehow need further reason to appreciate the work they do for their families when they are working full time.

And generally, a lot of men are going to be way more likely to see a need and pitch in to help if it’s not being shrilly demanded of them at the end of a long day. It’s not crazy to suggest that any adult human being be patient and considerate when wishing someone would help them out with the tasks that are otherwise generally delegated to them.

After all, a housewife is going to be far more pleasant and eager to manage the home if she feels appreciated, am I, right ladies?

On who, then, is the onus to ensure this symbiosis of consideration and pleasantness can occur?

Whoever it is who thinks it ought to — but the hard part is that he or she is then the only person whose behavior can be changed.

Man or wife, none of us can morally control the free will of another person, and certainly not with constant contentions nor abuse and tyranny.

So if we want to admonish men to pitch in and help with the duties of family life even if he works full-time, fine.

But this is hypocritical and ineffective if we do not also admonish women to do their best to manage the household smartly and — far more importantly — lovingly and patiently.

No one can expect to nag their way into healthier and happier marriages. But we can all encourage each other to love selflessly, do unto others, and learn to expect the best from our spouses.

There’s no reason this can’t extend to housework, too.

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