August 16, 2018

"Children of college-educated parents spend less time on chores over all, but the difference is almost all among girls."

"Daughters of college graduates spend 25 percent less time on chores than daughters of parents with no more than a high school education. But they still spend 11 minutes more a day than sons. Educated parents seem to have changed their expectations for their daughters but not for their sons, [said Sandra Hofferth, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who was a co-author of the recent analysis and has spent her career studying how children spend their time]."

From "A ‘Generationally Perpetuated’ Pattern: Daughters Do More Chores/They also earn less allowance, suggesting that the gender inequality in pay begins at home, and early in life. But there are signs the gap is narrowing." (NYT).

Lots of other statistics in the article, and I find it hard to believe people (adult and children) spend so much time on housework, so I'm skeptical about all of it, but what interested me there is that more educated parents, compared to less educated parents, are easing up on their daughters, while the 2 groups are treating their sons the same. That is, the college educated people are approaching equity by demanding less from daughters, not by making sons do more. If we believe these statistics — and, again, I'm skeptical — it seems that half an hour a day is the expectation being converged on.

What do you think is the right amount of time a child should devote to household chores every day? I think it's completely confusing to measure in time alone and not to take account of the difficulty of the task and the enjoyability of it. Much of the work, I think, is looking after younger siblings, and that's something that can take a long time but also be relaxing, pleasurable, and combined with doing something else you'd do even without that extra responsibility. It's not really accurate to compare that work in time to the work of, say, mowing the lawn. Also, the same task can be done fast or slow. If I one kid loads the dishwasher in 5 minutes and the other takes 15, did the second kid do 3 times as much work? If you say yes, you're encouraging dawdling and inefficiency.

73 comments:

Temujin said...

Yes, of course, the chore gap. It's got to be so exhausting being a liberal.

Birkel said...

Girls: good.
Boys: meh.

College: good.
No college: Boo!

The fact that college miseducates in favor of Democrats is a happy coincidence.

rhhardin said...

Dogs haven't done any chores since driveway delivery of the WSJ ended.

Chanie said...

But the second kid will make her billable hours goal this year.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Is Althouse making some kind of anti-Walker dig, here? Everyone knows Walker didn't graduate from college, and his rule for his children's chores was "you don't work, you don't eat."

Mike Sylwester said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Sylwester said...

Song lyrics by Merle Haggard (1937 - 2016)

-----

Chores

When I was young man,
I worked on my own.
You had the big chore
Of making a home.

Now that I'm the keeper
Of all that was yours,
I'm head of the family
And I'm boss of the chores.

Living without you
Is a chore on its own.
I understand what all you did,
Now that you are gone.

Sometimes it sprinkles,
Sometimes it bores,
When you're head of the family
And you're boss of the chores.

When I lost you, darling.
The kids lost a mom.
Now it's me and the children,
And there's work to be done.

I look out for the babies,
And scrub all the floors,
'Cause I'm head of the family
And I'm boss of the chores.

-----

Sung by Merle Haggard

Ralph L said...

Fewer children of higher-educated parents have younger siblings.

Darrell said...

If you say yes, you're encouraging dawdling and inefficiency.

And reciting the union credo. . .

Ralph L said...

Girls earn less allowance because they buy less beer and get their pot for free. How surprising is that?

Meade said...

Takeaway: college educated parents clearly are dumb. D-U-M -- dumb.

Bay Area Guy said...

Gender Inequality!

Income Inequality!

Chore Inequality!

rehajm said...

The gender pay gap has been proven to be a myth, yet the myth persists. Tell a lie often enough...

TRISTRAM said...

I'd be interested on how they measured the time. Was it the time from task start to finish, regardless of how many different things they did? Was start from 'Do X' 'Okay'even though it took 3 hours before xhe gets out of bed?

MadisonMan said...

It was also my take on that article that sons are more efficient in chore-doing.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

rhhardin said...

Dogs haven't done any chores since driveway delivery of the WSJ ended.

One of my dogs does an excellent job of keeping grackles off the back patio. She gets paid in Cheerios.

tim in vermont said...

If I got credit for taking my little brother fishing, untangling his reel, etc, to keep out of mom's hair, I would have logged a great many hours. Also turning the handle on the bread mixer, that was the regular scheduled one, twice a week, there was a system for it and every so often I had to do 30 turns.

jaydub said...

Why did they leave the non-binary kids out of the stats? Anecdotal evidence has always indicated that home schooled 6 year olds who are transitioning to female see their clothing allowance significantly increase while parochial schooled 6 year olds who are transitioning to male only get their older brother's hand-me-downs. Why does one get new panties and the other have to make do with previously skid marked skivvies? This is probably sexism, too, or maybe religious discrimination, or both. Regardless, it should have been addressed in the same study or maybe even reported to child protective services.

tim in vermont said...

Shoveling snow and mowing lawns goes without saying.

The Crack Emcee said...

"The college educated people are...demanding less from daughters, not by making sons do more."

It's human nature. Despite the propaganda, everyone expects less from girls, and boys today are more frustrated than ever because no one's letting them grow up to be men. The result?

Women literally becoming super-huge assholes - to attract super-huge assholes - and finding them because there's no men around to stop any it.

Just a sad state of affairs.

Jess said...

Considering the sources in the article, and the publisher, someone thinking critically will consider there is an agenda being promoted by all involved.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Also, the same task can be done fast or slow. If I one kid loads the dishwasher in 5 minutes and the other takes 15, did the second kid do 3 times as much work? If you say yes, you're encouraging dawdling and inefficiency.

Man may work from sun to sun
But a woman's work is never done.

Maybe if she put in a little more effort...

Matt Sablan said...

All I know is that as the middle child, I did the chores that my siblings wouldn't or couldn't.

Otto said...

Ok . I want you and Meade to run an experiment. Each of you mow the lawn and time yourself. Report back on your times. If you take less time than Meade i will donate $100 dollars to this website. If Meade takes less time than you , you have to stop talking about feminism for a month.

Phil 314 said...

Well, we only had maids growing up, so I guess in a sense that’s true.

Now by the time my wife and I had kids we did have a male driver but I’m sure driving folks around would not be considered a chore.

PS And please be assured we treated our help in a culturally appropriate manner.

whitney said...

Housekeepers have become ubiquitous for anyone that can afford them. And they've definitely reach the level of necessity for a lot of people. I have my own business and I work for people of different income levels from very rich to apartment dwellers hundred percent have housekeeper. For these people chores are superfluous

Fernandinande said...

Chores are for marginalized populations.

Wilbur said...

Allowance? Wilbur and his siblings did chores, got nothing and, in the words of Judge Smails, liked it. Three meals, clothes and a roof were tough enough for our parents to provide.

I never even knew anyone who got an allowance.

So get off my lawn.

Levi Starks said...

If I were to give a serious explanation for this, it would have to with sports. Boys are more likely (by some percentage) to be engaged in some type of extra curricular sporting activity. The popurpose of chores in the modern world (particularly among the more educated) is not to accomplish needed tasks, rather it’s to teach lessons on the importance of responsibility. If a son, (or daughter) is staying after school for cross country practice, the parent will give credit for time served, and require less busy work when the child arrives home. More boys in sports equals less boys doing chores.

rehajm said...

For these people chores are superfluous

Even for less wealthy households is makes economic sense to outsource menial tasks. Raising good kids is one of the most discussed issues we see in our family professon and it’s led to more formal study. It’s a complex issue and deserves more examination but we’ve observed a tendency for familes to grossly undervalue the value of their time.

Bob Boyd said...

Daughters of college graduates spend 25 percent less time washing hogs than daughters of parents with no more than a high school education. But they still spend 11 minutes more a day than sons.

Howard said...

My kids are so old, my experience doesn't apply. Obviously, my wife spends more time on household chores, but I do more work. It's simple physics.

https://www.physicsclassroom.com/calcpad/energy

Sarah from VA said...

I do a mix of timed chores and task chores in my house. Each child has an assigned chore to do in the morning that rotates weekly: fold a load of laundry, clear or load the dishwasher, clean a sink/toilet/tub, clear and wipe down the table or vacuum under it. If they actually buckled down and did it, it would take two minutes, except on the week they're on folding laundry. But between the complaining and lollygagging, it generally takes them 10 minutes to do their morning chore. Then in the evening we do a general 10-minute pick-up -- we set a timer for 10 minutes and everybody finds something to clean, straighten, organize or put away.

I think both ways are useful. The assigned chore helps them learn to do something specific the way I want it done before they can be finished, but it bothers their sense of fairness in a way the 10-minute pick-up doesn't. (Even though they KNOW they rotate and will get their turn at the easiest one, it's still somehow unfair that they have to be on laundry this week.) During the 10-minute pick-up we get way more done and they know there's a defined ending time to this terrible torture -- and they are terrible tattle-tales and police each other very effectively if somebody ISN'T cleaning during 10-minute clean-up.

My son does way less than my daughters, but that's because he's 15 months old. He already has his spot in the rotation and will be expected to join in when he's big enough.

I have a cousin who used to have her children do THREE HOURS of chores in the summertime -- she was very flexible, though, with what they could do ("anything that benefits the family") and so one of her daughters would take a long time thoughtfully sweeping the porch each day. But she also used that time to teach them life skills like organizing & maintaining a home, mending, gardening, etc. I'm sure they'll all be great at adulting when the time comes, but I don't have the patience to enforce that kind of thing on my children.

Howard said...

True story. My son is a bit of a slob, letting the dishes and clothes pile up a bit, but his tools and all of his mechanical equipment and infrastructure are always organized and well maintained. His girlfriend is from a family full of doctors and lawyers. One reason she is attracted to him is that he can build, install and fix things unlike the males in her family who hire that stuff out.

Sarah from VA said...

I think my serious explanation of the boy-girl chore time divide is that it's probably related to the kinds of chores assigned. Boys generally have to do the trash and mow the lawn, for example, and that gives them credit for getting out of cleaning the bathroom or kitchen. Taking out the trash is mildly smelly and unpleasant, but takes very little time. Mowing the lawn takes a long time once a week when the grass is growing fast, but only once or twice a month the rest of the year. So the parents feel like they're being fair with the chore division but the time involved is different.

(P.S. I get the lawn at my house, by my demand. I had five brothers and never got to mow the lawn growing up. It is a way better chore than any inside chores. Good exercise, fresh air, and when you're done you can SEE the results and they STAY that way for more than 5 hours.)

chuck said...

I think the children, male and female, should milk the cows at 4:00 AM before heading off to school. It's good exercise and builds character.

stevew said...

Most of the college educated people I know, including my wife and me, pay people to do household chores, e.g.; house cleaning, lawn mowing, etc. I don't know if that makes me and my neighbors outliers. I've always done the more physically demanding tasks (home repair and general upkeep), my wife does the laundry, food shopping, and such. She also maintains a garden, both vegetable and flower, but that is a hobby not a chore. We both prepare meals but not at the same time. Thems that cooks don't clean is our rule. Note though that we are not young, quite close to retirement age.

-sw

wildswan said...

I know a family where the two girls and the boy rotated dishwashing chores. One week the girls washed, the next week the boy; same with drying. But the girls began leaving the dishes to air dry (less germs) while they went off. And so the boy began watering the drying dishes as he left left the kitchen. He was never forgiven; the story was passed down and reached me fifty years after it happened.

Who was being efficient?

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Educated parents letting up on girls, not expecting boys to do more: I believe one reason for the strong push for open borders is that women don't want to do household chores, including child rearing, and it is highly unlikely they will persuade men to do them, despite all the sermons one is exposed to. One can get low-paid people from shithole countries to do them, and tell oneself you are actually giving these people a better life.

TwoAndAHalfCents said...

If we assume that people with college degrees are more likely to be liberal, and that liberals are more likely to be concerned about 'equality' (however one wants to define it), then this makes sense.
My concern is the manner in which chore time seems to be becoming more even. Females are spending less time while male chore time is unchanged. Assuming productivity is the same today as before, this means fewer chores are actually getting done. This is the classic difference between a modern liberal and conservative. The liberal will happily lower standards (or expectations) for some in an effort to promote fairness. If the conservative (who is likely more interested in actual outcomes than time/effort) wanted things to be equal their default would be to make the boys do more chores. This higher standard/expectation leads to more chores being completed and the overall quality of life for the entire house is improved.

Bruce Hayden said...

Back as a teenager growing up we had a puddle. Xe started as a female miniature Poodle, but seemingly transistioned a bit sexually after being fixed after two litters. Maybe we would call xer sexually nonbinary now. I wonder whether xer sexual indecisiveness may have caused a bit of weight gain. In other words, without the expectations of the patriarchy, xe became what might be termed "plump" by eating the food of tge other dog and the cat, when xe could.

One of my chores growing up was sweeping up the floor under the table after dinner. We had five boys, so it was nontrivial. I certainly had better things to be doing at the time, and was an aspiring engineer to boot, so I soon developed a more efficient solution to the problem - I got assistance from Suzi, our sexually nonbinary puddle. Xhe would do the first level cleaning with xer tongue. I never quite understood my mother's overreaction to my innovative way to help develop technology to help reduce the load of housework around the country. There were mutterings about hygiene, and even suggestions of sloth on my part. And then there were constant references to the principle. Never quite got that - I would think that the principle should have been taught the all important concept of efficiency. Apparently not. I should add the obvious - I was a teenager at the time.

Balfegor said...

What do you think is the right amount of time a child should devote to household chores every day?

Isn't that what upper middle class families hire domestic servants for? Isn't that why posh people are freaking out at the thought that illegal immigration might be curtailed?

More seriously, I do think that while children are young, they should be taught how to do laundry by hand. Somewhat surprising to me (well, not really if I think about it), a lot of my peers don't know how to do laundry by hand. If their washing machines broke, I don't know what they would do. I don't do laundry by hand often myself; I occasionally do it for socks and undergarments if I'm travelling because I think it's embarrassing to charge a client $5 for the hotel to launder a pair of socks or $10 to launder an undershirt. But it's a thing people ought to know how to do, like washing dishes without a dishwasher.

I also wish I had learned to iron dress shirts properly when I was young. I can sort of do it (since it's summer, I have some linen dress shirts in rotation now, so it is something of a necessity), but I take longer than I ought to with each.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

What do you think is the right amount of time a child should devote to household chores every day? I think it's completely confusing to measure in time alone and not to take account of the difficulty of the task and the enjoyability of it.

Exactly.

How much time? Depends on what the chores are. If you live in an apartment or condominium the chores are minimal. If you live on a rural property and have animals or pets to tend, the chores can be many, indoors and outdoors, endless and often quite physically challenging.

Enjoy ability is sort of immaterial. Things need to be done, whether you like it or not. Who enjoys cleaning the toilets? However, if you have a family with several people, why not assign those chores to people who enjoy doing them. The chore will be done sooner and better if it is something that you like to do.

Everyone needs to learn to do all the chores though. Learn how to do laundry, dishes, mop, sweep, windows, clean the bathroom, shop for groceries, cook a few things. If you let your kids out on the world without knowing these basic life skills you are a really shitty parent.

Michael K said...

Xhe would do the first level cleaning with xer tongue.

Winston, my basset hound, would lick any food residue off dishes in the dishwasher, so he was doing his share of the chores.

Scott M said...

What do you think is the right amount of time a child should devote to household chores every day?

Exactly the amount of time required to do the jobs they are assigned. And we do assign them.

Further, I honestly look askance at these types of studies because I get the sense that if the findings had been reversed, we never would have heard about it.

Bruce Hayden said...

Oh, I forgot - both my parents had college degrees. Not sure how that factored into my innovative method for helping to clean the floor under the table after dinner, except that they actually tried to argue with me as to the merits of my invention, instead of giving me a quick swat on the behind, as my partner has assured me would have been my lot with her parents.

Her family had a more heterogeneous distribution of sexes, or maybe genders today, of the children in her family (3F, 2M). The girls cleaned, dusted, and mended. The boys did the yard work, took out the trash, etc. The girls thought the boys got off easy, being able to finish their chores more quickly. The boys would have been quite happy not working in the yard and mowing the lawn, in the 110 degree Las Vegas heat. Her older sister, with a bit of bipolar going on, couldn't sew more than a couple stitches without getting distracted, and probably should have been allowed to join the boys outside. You would think that she would have been less sexist when she became a parent herself. But instead, while the boys might get off easier during the school year, they were the ones rousted at 5 am to pull irrigation pipe in the summer, while their sisters got to sleep in and get their beauty sleep, at least till 7 when their brothers returned from the fields, unhappy at their unequal sexually stereotyped treatment.

Michael K said...

Learn how to do laundry, dishes, mop, sweep, windows, clean the bathroom, shop for groceries, cook a few things.

My parents' house in Chicago had 67 windows.

Ask me how I knew.

Each spring, the storm windows came down and screens went up. IN the fall the process reversed.

Each window frame had a small brass plaque a half inch in diameter with a number.

Each screen and storm window had a similar plaque.

Balfegor said...

Re: Dust Bunny Queen:

Everyone needs to learn to do all the chores though. Learn how to do laundry, dishes, mop, sweep, windows, clean the bathroom, shop for groceries, cook a few things. If you let your kids out on the world without knowing these basic life skills you are a really shitty parent.

I don't know I'd go that far, but in all seriousness, even if you have servants to handle all these tasks, children should still be taught these basic skills, not just how to check whether the servants are stealing the silver. If nothing else, they don't have maidservants and valets for the dormitories at college (yet).

Bruce Hayden said...

"Winston, my basset hound, would lick any food residue off dishes in the dishwasher, so he was doing his share of the chores."

To be fair to Winston, the dishes would soon, thereafter, presumably be sterilized by the dishwasher. My partner has pointed out that our puddle was using the same tongue to clean the color that xe used to lick the nether parts or xer body.

Rick.T. said...

rhhardin said...

“Dogs haven't done any chores since driveway delivery of the WSJ ended.”

Until recently on my backwoods drive to th interstate I would see a black Lab trotting down a hilly drive to pick up a paper on occasion. Hoping it’s a change in the owner’s schedule and not an issue with the dog who had a “mature” look about it. I saw a truck parked at the entrance last week while the owner was checking the mailbox but thought the better of stopping and asking.

Chris N said...

At Peace Pavilion West, we all have work duties, but only one male is in charge of the entire community.

Join our back to nature community. Namaste

hombre said...

College educated parents are preparing their daughters to don pussy hats and vote as moved by their genitalia.

All parents are preparing their sons to bear the burdens of being male in a pussy hat world.

chuck said...

> The boys would have been quite happy not working in the yard and mowing the lawn,

That's what I like about Utah: the girls mow the lawns. OK, not always, but often enough that I noticed when I got here.

RichardJohnson said...

Balfegor:
I also wish I had learned to iron dress shirts properly when I was young.

When I became concerned about the appearance of my clothing, beginning in junior high, my mother was too ill to do any ironing. I learned that if I wanted ironed shirts- in the days before perma press- I had to iron them myself.

Starting when I was 8 years old, my siblings and I washed the dishes. We rotated weeks. My father had and insidious method for breaking us in. My mother and younger brother left town for a month to be with my grandmother after my grandfather had died. My father suggested to my sister and I, "Wouldn't it be fun to wash the dishes?" By the end of the month, he had us trained to wash the dishes. To our chagrin, we found out that the duties continued after my mother and brother returned.

We all worked together to clean up the house before company arrived.

When I was old enough to handle a lawn mower on our hilly grounds, my father paid me a dollar for the front and a dollar for the back. It took me five hours to do both front and back. I was glad to do so: money talked.

hombre said...

As an only child, I had to do all the chores including hoeing weeds for an hour daily in the summer and mowing a half acre of lawn on uneven terrain weekly with a push mower. It was hard to be me (lol), but my wage was generous.

A week after I left for college, my father sprayed the weeds and bought a power mower.

Ann Althouse said...

"Ok . I want you and Meade to run an experiment. Each of you mow the lawn and time yourself. Report back on your times. If you take less time than Meade i will donate $100 dollars to this website. If Meade takes less time than you , you have to stop talking about feminism for a month."

I've seen Meade do yardwork extremely quickly. Stuff like opening bales of peat moss and spreading it all over the lawn he'll do entertainingly fast — maybe faster because he's entertaining me. But he's also likely to spend hours out in the yard doing things for the pleasure of being outside. Watering is a big one. It's a meditative experience. So... speed isn't a consistent demonstration of physical capacity and a hardcore work ethic. It's variable. It's expressive of a relationship with time.

Ralph L said...

He puts peat moss on the lawn?

Never heard of that, but it looks like it works, or doesn't hurt.

Peat moss has fallen out of favor here (and with me) because of dry spells.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Starting when I was 8 years old, my siblings and I washed the dishes. We rotated weeks. My father had and insidious method for breaking us in. My mother and younger brother left town for a month to be with my grandmother after my grandfather had died. My father suggested to my sister and I, "Wouldn't it be fun to wash the dishes?" By the end of the month, he had us trained to wash the dishes. To our chagrin, we found out that the duties continued after my mother and brother returned. ”

Reminds me a bit about neighbors growing up. I was reminded of this at a memorial for the father there. They were a bit unconventional at the time. Instead of putting in grass on the half acre lots there (as my parents did, causing substantial yard work for their 5 boys), most of their lot was a horse corral. Some of the other neighbors had that too. But the real innovation was the target range installed in a large culvert underneath the corral. That is where we learned to shoot in Boy Scouts. It had a pulley system down the top of it to run the targets back and forth. Worked great. But to give an incentive to improve their marksmanship, the four kids would shoot to see who got to do the dishes. Boys and girls - didn’t matter - worst shot got the dishes for the next week.

Jupiter said...

"If I one kid loads the dishwasher in 5 minutes and the other takes 15, did the second kid do 3 times as much work?"

According to the Federal Government, yes.

Francisco D said...

It would be interesting to read the article as published in a sociology journal rather than the NYT. SES seems to be an important variable, but I cannot tell how deeply it was investigated.

Research and statistics are too difficult for journalists to understand.

n.n said...

Sex (e.g. female and Posterity) and gendered (e.g. physiological merit) differences, but also individual differences.

Work = Force (e.g. effort) x Displacement (e.g. time)

Note: Equal work does not imply equal force or displacement. Productivity can be measured objectively (e.g. tax rate) and subjectively (e.g. the much maligned housewife and mother, barefoot and pregnant, or father who brings home the bacon and fries it up in the pan).

JaimeRoberto said...

Only one of us has a college degree, but in my son does more chores. He takes out the trash, vacuums his room, and even voluntarily does the laundry sometimes. He also occasionally is my daughter's chauffeur when necessary. Our daughter has to vacuum her room and empty the dishwasher, but because she is at gymnastics 4-5 hours a day, she often isn't home when it needs to be done. So we, or more accurately, my wife empties it for her.

tim in vermont said...

Should the littler kids get credit for keeping the older siblings occupied?

rehajm said...

Productivity can be measured objectively (e.g. tax rate)

Tax rate is not an objective measure.

n.n said...

Tax rate is not an objective measure.

It is well-defined and proportional to earned income. Two apples are two apples. However, what is inferred from it, especially with respect to productivity, is indeed subjective. A red delicious may be more flavorful than a Fuji.

Michael K said...

My father had and insidious method for breaking us in. My mother and younger brother left town for a month to be with my grandmother after my grandfather had died.

When my older kids were young, we had a live-in housekeeper until they were about 10, 8 and 6. The house had four bedrooms., The maid had one and the kids had to double up. There were three of them. We told them that, if the maid left, they could each have a room of their own.

But they would have to do the chores themselves that the maid had done. They were big enough that babysitting was no longer necessary.

They bought the deal and did chores after that.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I've never known a woman, including my sainted mother and my wonderful wife, who could load a dishwasher in a space-efficient way. Must be a STEM thing.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"They bought the deal and did chores after that."

And left another illegal alien adrift in Ronald Reagan's (I'm just guessing here) heartless America.

RigelDog said...

Son did more chores because son actually DID his chores. Daughter was stubborn first-born; should have made her do chores from an early age because it didn't take when we tried to put our foot down as she got older. Amazingly--thank you Lord--she turned out to be a good person who is thoughtful and helpful.

Jeff said...

I had my three kids rotate on chores. When someone complained that he or she had more work to do than a sibling, I would point out the rotation. If the complaints continued, it led to standing in the corner until the complaints ceased. Like other misbehaviors, that only happened a few times.

Big Mike said...

Did the study adjust for dual-income, college-educated parents who have maid service? Hardly seems fair to have a girl dust the bookshelves if they were dusted by a maid just a couple days before. Leave these families in and the study becomes biased.

0_0 said...

Looking after my younger siblings was NEVER relaxing nor pleasurable.

We all had chores because both parents worked. Half an hour is ridiculous, it took longer than that to do laundry or make dinner.

TheThinMan said...

I’m a guy who had two brothers. We all mowed the lawn and shoveled the driveway and walkway; none of the girls we knew ever did any of that. When I took a girl on a date as a teenager in the 70s, “women’s lib” was in its hayday but I was still expected to pay for everything, via the money I made from after-school jobs. (Most girls I knew had no after-school jobs.) How nice to know that those dark days for upper middle class girls are now over!