Althouse: New York Times opinion art.

May 13, 2019

New York Times opinion art.

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"What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With" Division of labor in the home is one of the most important equity issues of our time. Yet at this rate it will be another 75 years before men do half the work. Illustration by @bonjourameliefontaine for the Sunday Review. #art #illustration #parenting #mothers #fathers
A post shared by NY Times Opinion Art (@nytimesopinionart) on May 10, 2019 at 2:57pm PDT

Opinion art. The best kind.

64 comments:

Clyde said...: And the poor woman has to lift the weight of her kid on one side and Trump on the other! But if you're a cartoonist and all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like the same nail. A Trump nail!; 5/13/19, 5:23 AM
rehajm said...: Sucks for you, like the art.; 5/13/19, 5:27 AM
tds said...: Yeah, and I am sure that in the New York Times writing is done 25% by journalists, 25% by accountants, 25% by lawyers, and 25% of IT. Other work is also assigned equally to units.

Specialization is the key factor making us all richer, somehow NYT didn't get the memo.; 5/13/19, 5:45 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: More spoiled brat whining from rich women.

Disgusting. Ridiculous.

Sometimes it seems as if feminist women are trying their damnedest to give us a good reason to loathe them.; 5/13/19, 5:52 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Yes, because the inside-the-house chores are the only ones that count.; 5/13/19, 5:53 AM
Quayle said...: I think esteeming others as yourself is the most important equity issue of our time and every other time. Show me any other way to make a just and merciful society.; 5/13/19, 5:56 AM
rhhardin said...: Women want the house cleaner than men do. They might want to invite friends over.; 5/13/19, 5:58 AM
rhhardin said...: Men want the house cleaner than dogs do.; 5/13/19, 6:00 AM
rehajm said...: I feel dogs want a clean house too but they're bad with mops.; 5/13/19, 6:04 AM
Narayanan said...: I see woman with boys on man shoulders.

Man doing dumbbells with arms quivering jelly like.; 5/13/19, 6:04 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: Yet another reason for men to turn gay.

Maybe this is nature's way of trying to limit the human population.

Make the women so obnoxious and bitchy that no man with any sense wants to fuck them.; 5/13/19, 6:09 AM
Jaq said...: Yet another reason for men to turn gay.

I know what you are saying, but... I was just reading Death in Venice not knowing what it was about at first, and Mann describes this Polish family with three girls and the boy he becomes infatuated with. As he describes then coming into the hotel lobby the first time he quickly describes the girls and then goes on and on about the boy, after which he pointedly notes that his newspaper is “on his lap.” My first response? Tell me more about the oldest girl! Or even the French governess at the next table!

Sadly, turning gay is not an option for everybody. But I can’t wait until they turn Father’s Day into one more version of what they’ve done to Columbus Day.; 5/13/19, 6:28 AM
stevew said...: There has been a spate of articles like this - men not giving women what they want/need - lately. My reaction is reminiscent of Pauline Kael: there are no couples in my regular orbit that say these sorts of things and lodge similar complaints. Note that through work, family, and friends I know people from a variety of ages and life stages, and economic situations (though entirely middle class, not very wealthy nor poor).

If this is really the situation in the author's life, why doesn't she work it out with her husband rather than whine about him in a newspaper article? I didn't read the article so maybe she covers that, but seems like the article is clickbait.; 5/13/19, 6:31 AM
Jaq said...: “I used to be a corporate attorney for Coca-Cola. I worked eighty hours a week. Then one day I asked my boss for a single Friday off and he said ‘no.’ So I left my dog with my brother and flew to Europe. That was ten years ago. It’s been super fucking chill.”

Substitute “husband” for corporate lawyer.; 5/13/19, 6:35 AM
Not an oldster. said...: If the dumbbells were depicted as big breasts, the "oppressive" cartoon might make some sense, but you would need to understand biology to get it. Doubt the NYT would run a contrary cartoon, or an idea more expansive, than the idea presented in the written piece...; 5/13/19, 6:41 AM
Jaq said...: I dropped Instagram when IRL friends started posting politics because, you know, there shouldn’t be any zone free of them.; 5/13/19, 6:43 AM
Not an oldster. said...: The woman's breasts are more important to fertility and child raising than the man's little testes... Hth.; 5/13/19, 6:46 AM
Jaq said...: If you read the “supporting” links, they don’t seem to be about what the article implies they are, and there are other obvious explanations this side of rank misogyny. For instance, there may be a significant number of women who stubborning prefer, against all hectoring, to stay home and raise a family and men who are happy with the arrangement!

https://contemporaryfamilies.org/is-the-gender-revolution-over/

And the next one:

his study aims to contribute to the exploration of the culture of fatherhood through an analysis of a yearlong Canadian newspaper series dedicated to family issues.

The authors of the study completely and blindly hand over the work to a newspaper reporter. No way that there could be any political bias or selection for the loudest whiner!

OK I will soldier on..; 5/13/19, 6:55 AM
Henry said...: One alternative is to do 100% of the work. Who needs a partner?; 5/13/19, 6:57 AM
Jaq said...: This resistance is not being led by socially conservative men, whose like-minded wives often explicitly agree to take the lead in the home. It is happening, instead, with relatively progressive couples, and it takes many women — who thought their partners had made a prenatal commitment to equal parenting — by surprise. Why are their partners failing to pitch in more?

Ha ha ha ha! There, I got my $2 belly laugh this week!; 5/13/19, 6:57 AM
RNB said...: Is there a companion piece expressing the disparity in workplace mortality between men and women?; 5/13/19, 6:58 AM
Henry said...: In honor of mother's day, these kind of articles remind me a little bit of my kids asking "how come there's no children's day?"; 5/13/19, 6:58 AM
Henry said...: It's a pretty good illustration.; 5/13/19, 7:00 AM
tim maguire said...: I don't know...I'm looking at the kids, I'm looking at the parents and...is he sure he's really the dad?; 5/13/19, 7:02 AM
Jaq said...: From another provided link:

The title of this chapter suggests a troubling contradiction: Whereas boys and men “come from” or “have” families, they often experience profound difficulties being “in” them, insofar as they typically seem incapable of offering the emotional intimacy or providing the personal care that have become the hallmarks of modern family life. Popular culture tends to assume that families need fathers and that men and boys need families, but when we look closely at ideals about expressing boyhood or achieving manhood, it is clear that notions of masculinity have much less to do with everyday life in domestic settings than ...[PAYWALL]

There is an old joke “Why do women have pussies? So men will talk to them.” that goes back to the fact that humans are the only great ape species where the female is always sexually receptive, which helps a great deal in keeping him around to provide food and protection.... But that’s not an interesting observation! Evelution never happened!; 5/13/19, 7:02 AM
Jaq said...: The thing that amuses me most about feminism is the fundamental faith that the human psyche is fundamentall and completely malleable. Marxists also believe it. The only difference with feminists is that so far they haven’t dug trenches and machine gunned the recalcitrant men into them.; 5/13/19, 7:05 AM
tds said...: How do they even calculate that? E.g. let's say in one marriage the man is a bread-winner, woman is a house-wife. Woman does grocery shopping. Shopping is paid, however, with money earned by the husband.

What is the calculated share of doing grocery shopping in such case?; 5/13/19, 7:05 AM
Henry said...: tim maguire said...
I don't know...I'm looking at the kids, I'm looking at the parents and...is he sure he's really the dad?

They look like siblings to me. Big sister. Little brother.; 5/13/19, 7:06 AM
Jaq said...: I don't know...I'm looking at the kids, I'm looking at the parents and...is he sure he's really the dad?

Yeah, it kind of looks like Donald Trump is the dad.; 5/13/19, 7:08 AM
tim maguire said...: Nobody said...Yeah, it kind of looks like Donald Trump is the dad.

Underappreciated observation: No woman ever fantasized about being ravaged by a hippie.; 5/13/19, 7:11 AM
Jaq said...: There’s an old saying about how people sleep comfortably in their bed because of hard men willing to do violence. Well, for millions of years, that was one of men’s roles in human pair bonding, pair bonding based on the woman’s always ready quim, BTW.; 5/13/19, 7:21 AM
MayBee said...: The 75 years statistic sounds entirely made up.

Couples need to talk about how they want things done. Is it really possible to create 50/50 lives? Each responsible for exactly half of the income, each responsible for exactly half of the childcare, each responsible for exactly half of the housework?
That's not the way my husband and I divided things up.
I DO know one way to a divorce is to constantly keep score on who is doing more work, who is taking more time for themselves, and to get competitive about it.

I also have a lot of female friends who don't like the way their husband do certain chores- like loading the dishwasher. It's my theory if you want your partner to take part, you have to accept the way they do things- bad dishwasher loading, mixed laundry loads and all.; 5/13/19, 7:24 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: Anti-male cartoon in the NYTimes? Color me surprised!

THEOLDMAN; 5/13/19, 7:29 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I bet the ladies could get a bit more help with the housework if they were to follow Gwyneth Paltrow's advice...; 5/13/19, 7:39 AM
Anonymous said...: Something I've noticed over the years: Illustration in articles/magazines aimed at women seems to look more and more as if it were being aimed at an audience of small children. As well as just being really crappy, technically.; 5/13/19, 7:45 AM
Henry said...: You really have to dig through the studies to discover that in every country men do more paid work than women (on average). In developed countries the difference in total work (paid vs. unpaid) is 7.1 hours vs. 6.6 hours. That study has men doing an average of 4.2 hours of paid work a day vs. 2.7 for women, which means that we're looking at a huge, undifferentiated aggregate of age groups and lifestyles.

It's also unmistakably clear that the people doing the studies are looking for the conclusions they are finding.

All the journalistic reporting focuses on the differences in unpaid work.; 5/13/19, 7:47 AM
Levi Starks said...: A man must do twice the work in order be considered as having done half the work.; 5/13/19, 7:54 AM
Seeing Red said...: The top dude is wearing a man bun.; 5/13/19, 8:20 AM
Hunter said...: tds said...
How do they even calculate that? E.g. let's say in one marriage the man is a bread-winner, woman is a house-wife. Woman does grocery shopping. Shopping is paid, however, with money earned by the husband.

What is the calculated share of doing grocery shopping in such case?

It's calculated the same way we decide how much of the profits should go to people who operate the machines in the factory. Opinions vary on the relevance of who supplied the machines, who put up the building, who brought the workers in and showed them what needed doing, and who came up with the idea to do any of this in the first place.; 5/13/19, 8:42 AM
Fen said...: "Yet at this rate it will be another 75 years before men do half the work."

When I was an intern, I made coffee and ran the xerox machine for the office.

Because I was inferior. Now go make me -

ah nevermind. I'm tired of letting Stupid Spoiled Women ruin my appreciation for all the good women I've known. It's like having Homer Simpson become the male stereotype.

Freeman probably branded a dozen cattle this morning in between skinning the deer and getting the kiddies off to school.; 5/13/19, 8:44 AM
Karen of Texas said...: I don't want society or a hectoring "journalist" anywhere to opine what my role as a woman/female should be - in or out of the house. That is between me and my husband. Adults usually work such things out between themselves. Lament away about how it should be if it makes you feel like you're accomplishing jack by whining. Or step up and work it out with your partner. Stop bitching and start asking. If that fails, then pull up your big girl panties and deal with it.

I quit my job as an IT professional back in '90 to stay at home with my 15 month old daughter. I did not want her to become an afterthought to my and my husband's 65+ hour work weeks. My dad - and mom who wasn't afraid to tackle most home improvement or maintenance tasks - taught me how to use just about every tool in a workshop. Besides raising competent, respectful, capable kids, I had plenty to keep me busy.

My husband was expected to pitch in as a child in his very large family; when not working in the cotton fields - as all his brothers and sisters did - he had house chores, including laundry, dishes, dusting and vacuuming. He learned to cook when he moved out on his own. I thank his mom and dad every day. My daughter-in-law adores me ;), and my daughter's boys at 1+ and 3+ already "help". They clean up messes, fold laundry, sweep, and the older one makes a mean sandwich.; 5/13/19, 9:00 AM
Caligula said...: The feminist position regarding children seems to be that men should have more responsibilities and fewer rights.

He should do what the mother wants done (and ignore anything he thinks might be more important), he should accept and respond positively all criticism if he doesn't do everything as she thinks it should be done, and, always, she should have the power to have him ejected from the family and from the children's lives, for any reason or no reason. And he should never, ever forget that his place in the family is contingent on her continued good will and approval.; 5/13/19, 9:01 AM
Fen said...: Couples need to talk about how they want things done. Is it really possible to create 50/50 lives?

And already you've bumped into the first problem: Jordon Petterson explains women have a higher agreeableness than men. Which is why, for example, businesses are able to charge more for "pink" product than "blue" ones - it's not sexist pricing, it's that women are more likely to pay more $$ for the lady's version of a product than men are for the male version.

So when men and women talk about fairly dividing the workload, men are more likely to present a division of labor that favors men, and women are more likely to agree to it.; 5/13/19, 9:06 AM
chuck said...: If the guy wants to build strength he should do squats and deadlifts with bigger weights. Problem solved.; 5/13/19, 9:07 AM
Sebastian said...: What Henry said: "You really have to dig through the studies to discover that in every country men do more paid work"

In recent decades men have gained more leisure, but over the course of the past century women's drudgery has diminished most. But who needs data when you can whine with abandon?; 5/13/19, 9:12 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "Women want the house cleaner than men do."

Bollocks. I do the vast majority of the housecleaning (in addition to all the yard work and house maintenance) because I have higher standards. If you want something done right....; 5/13/19, 9:22 AM
Karen of Texas said...: Marriage is a partnership. Sometimes it will be 50-50, but rarely; sometimes it will be 60-40; sometimes 70-30; maybe even sometimes 99-1. If you aren't willing to be on the giving side of that dynamic as often as it takes - understanding that sometimes, for whatever reason, your partner needs to be on the receiving end - then you need to reassess your commitment to each other. If you are each willing to be on the giving end, your marriage will be a source of joy in the good times and comfort in the bad. Otherwise? Misery loves company...; 5/13/19, 9:49 AM
Jaq said...: Bollocks. I do the vast majority of the housecleaning

You aren’t the only one, but do you really want the role of being the “as a rule” Nazi?; 5/13/19, 10:21 AM
Jaq said...: “Women are more agreeable than men, and thus get the short end of the stick”

And that’s why we need a woman president negotiating with China!; 5/13/19, 10:29 AM
Big Mike said...: Yawn. Let me know when women include outdoors chores like mowing the lawn and raking the leaves and shoveling snow in the totality of household chores.; 5/13/19, 10:33 AM
kwenzel said...: Adding to Henry's comment - this Twitter thread from Robert VerBruggen makes the same point about restricting the range to unpaid work, with some data:

https://twitter.com/RAVerBruggen/status/1126861706481799171; 5/13/19, 10:41 AM
Jaq said...: Yawn. Let me know when women include outdoors chores like mowing the lawn and raking the leaves and shoveling snow in the totality of household chores.

I remember one time reading a study that excluded that kind of work since men seemed to “enjoy” it.; 5/13/19, 10:58 AM
n.n said...: Perhaps in socially progressive households. #Juvenile #Unreconciled #HateLovesAbortion; 5/13/19, 11:20 AM
n.n said...: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/is-the-gender-revolution-over/

Both the sex and gender revolution were minority, notably political affairs. Men and women are equal in rights, complementary in Nature, and as mature "Persons" reconcile their differences and interests, and live life as humans do.; 5/13/19, 11:25 AM
Michael McNeil said...: Sometimes it seems as if feminist women are trying their damnedest to give us a good reason to loathe them.

Camille Paglia, in an interview appearing late last year, speaks of this perverse reverse-switcheroo effect for women with regard to #MeToo and the Kavanaugh nomination hearings in particular (quoting…):

The headlong rush to judgment by so many well-educated, middle-class women in the #MeToo movement has been startling and dismaying. Their elevation of emotion and group solidarity over fact and logic has resurrected damaging stereotypes of women’s irrationality that were once used to deny us the vote. I found the blanket credulity given to women accusers during the recent U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh positively unnerving: it was the first time since college that I truly understood the sexist design of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, whose mob of vengeful Furies is superseded by formal courts of law, where evidence is weighed.

(/unQuote)
____

I wonder what Althouse — who certainly declared sympathy for the savagers of Kavanaugh but little for Kavanaugh himself during his confirmation hearings — thinks of Paglia's devastating (IMHO) critique:

“Their elevation of emotion and group solidarity over fact and logic has resurrected damaging stereotypes of women’s irrationality that were once used to deny us the vote.”; 5/13/19, 12:12 PM
Jim at said...: Yawn. Since I didn't get married until 34 - spending many years doing the bachelor thing - I still do all the cooking, cleaning and my own laundry.

Why? Because I don't mind it. And two? I want it done right. :); 5/13/19, 12:51 PM
chuck said...: Yawn. Let me know when women include outdoors chores like mowing the lawn and raking the leaves and shoveling snow in the totality of household chores.

Haven't spent time in Utah, have you :) Lots of women's equality here...; 5/13/19, 12:52 PM
Jim at said...: I also have a lot of female friends who don't like the way their husband do certain chores- like loading the dishwasher.

Chuckle. My wife is forbidden to load the dishwasher.

I think she screws it up on purpose.; 5/13/19, 12:54 PM
Ice Nine said...: I doubt that she does it on purpose. This is a statement of fact: I have yet to see a dishwasher loaded by a woman that doesn't confirm the (scientifically established, I believe) axiom that women and spatial relationships are not the best of friends. Best one I ever saw: a pizza tin lying across the top of the stuff in the top rack - between them and the upper spray rotor. Placed there by a very smart woman, btw. I rest my case.; 5/13/19, 1:02 PM
Phaedrus said...: How in the hell has this become a caricature of men? Note the comment about the south taking 7500 years.

Whatever... I'm in Texas. I kill little critters with bang sticks and drive a 4X4 pick'em up. As I type this, I'm in my he man cargo shorts and camo tee shirt with a nice little quid of Copenhagen snuff. So I am that redneck southern guy married to the gracious (and well above my social level) and godly lil ole southern belle. I am the primary breadwinner to the tune of putting our household income in the top 5%. My wife has a job, or more of a hobby that pulls in about a fifth of my earnings. So I guess, I'm doing all I really need to do with just being the pocketbook that drives the household machine while the missus tend to our kid and executes the tasks of maintaining the household that I fund.

Except that's not the case. I enjoy cooking so every meal is prepared by me. And since I'm making the meals, I prefer to handle all the grocery shopping. And I like an orderly household so in addition to taking care of the post cooking clean up (can't stand it when my All Clad is misplaced!) I like to keep things tidy outside of the days our cleaning lady is here.

And we have us an "all boy" 12 yo son. So outside of my wife taking him the the two whole blocks for drop off and pick up at his school, any thing involving the kid, Boy Scouts, birthday parties, golf practice, falls squarely on me.

Being the redneck, I keep all the primary fixit stuff handy: duct tape, 16 ga tie wire, chain saw, plunge router, chop saw and all sorts of fun single purpose tools. So if I need to drop a new shelf in a closet, chase down a leaky pipe or trade some shrubs out in the beds (oh... and science projects- oh hell yeah!) I'm also the first line handy man.

So I'm back to where this caricature of men not doing household chores comes from. I am not unique among my friends either. I'd say about 80% of the household tasks fall on me and I couple that with being the majority earner as well. Wouldn't change a bit of it to what exactly is the problem here???; 5/13/19, 1:23 PM
n.n said...: Haven't spent time in Utah, have you :) Lots of women's equality here...

Women with careers. Men doing household chores. Couples with babies. Adults reconciling their differences and interests. We're so conservative, aren't we?; 5/13/19, 2:40 PM
MadTownGuy said...: Stereotypical art.; 5/13/19, 3:38 PM
Jaq said...: I doubt that she does it on purpose. This is a statement of fact: I have yet to see a dishwasher loaded by a woman that doesn't confirm the (scientifically established, I believe) axiom that women and spatial relationships are not the best of friends.

My ex used to insist on loading the dishwasher, and would actually reload it on me, even though she loaded the forks and spoons in such a way that the handles would drop down through and block the swing arm thingy that sprayed the dishes, and even though she committed all manner of DW loading sins against 4D geometry. 4D because the washing arms are in motion. But I let her because it didn’t seem like something to fight over, and she wasn’t somebody who would just give me a blow job to settle a fight anyway. So I let her load the DW. She won! Little miss can’t be wrong won another battle! She won the right to do the vast majority of the housework in the same way.; 5/13/19, 5:38 PM
Henry said...: My theory about dishwashers is that whoever loads it first does it wrong.

Whoever loads it second moves everything around.

It makes sense.; 5/13/19, 6:02 PM