As a straight male… Who still thinks like this?? It couldn’t be the majority of us in 2026, could it?
Shit is progressing real slowly saldly
Some might say it’s regressing even
And by “us” you are referring to specific countries right, because it definitely isn’t so in all countries.
I am pretty sure this the image American movies portrayed for decades.
And idiots take it as a blueprint to be the least helpful person in the household.
The whole image fails when the woman is working or the man is a decent person.
Likely a leftover from times when women stayed at home and men worked. Women were expected to take care of all the daily chores.
Less sensible in this day and age, but also less common IMO. I know couples with much more even division of labour, both young and old people.
I grill as often as possible, still only once a week.
That’s one take, sure.
But look at the examples again.
Taking out the trash involves lifting something that’s usually heavy, twice. So the person that’s more likely to have the higher upper body strength handling it makes sense.
Mowing vs gardening, you have a similar difference; particularly looking back at pre-powered mowers. Again, the person with the advantage of muscle mass is going to have less trouble doing it.
Cooking inside vs grilling? A lot less sensible. I really think that comes down to meat and fire rather than any practical reasons.
If you also look at the division of labor for those tasks through the lens of when they became stereotypes, you might notice that trash and mowing are very much a part of suburban life compared to rural or urban. The era when that became the way things work here in the US (where the stereotypes are mostly from) was one where the wife was at home and the man out at a job. Not universally so, but close enough.
The division of mowing and trash is also split along the lines of what needs doing steadily vs what needs doing irregularly, but takes more time to do at once. In a lifestyle where one partner has less day time available at home, them handling tasks on weekends and/or at end of day makes more sense as well.
The whole post war era here in the US shifted home dynamics into that kind of weird dichotomy. Not that the idea of women’s work vs men’s wasn’t a thing everywhere, or that it only existed during that time. It’s about this type of home tasks being split up by the standards of the lifestyle people thought they should have.
There’s also the mess factor, and a shit ton of people born before the eighties or so and after maybe 1900-ish definitely had a concept that women shouldn’t have to get dirty on a regular basis. Gardening in the suburban sense is a vastly different one than in the rural sense. In a suburban area, you’re either talking flowers and decorative plants, or a small vegetable/“victory” garden. Neither of which is as messy or as large as an acre of crops to handle.
Mowing is a high sweat, messy job. Grilling compared to indoors cooking is a tad messier by virtue of the soot and ash.
I kid you not, doing home health back when the generation before the baby boom was solidly into old age, the more suburban a family was, the more likely they were to have the assumption that women shouldn’t have to deal with the more physical, messier home maintenance jobs. Baby boomers carried it over for sure, but for them or was often that they grew up with that paradigm and didn’t question it until later. I had way less gen-x patients that had a sustained home paradigm, so there’s less direct observation for that, and next to zero for millennials.
I’m not saying it was right. I’m not judging it one way or another, not really; people can have whatever home arrangements they want, ain’t none of my business. I’m just saying that it isn’t as single facet as the screen shot tries to make it. It is/was a product of a full cultural shift and it wasn’t as arbitrary as that makes it out to be.
looking back at pre-powered mowers
Oh my god as a kid when we got the push mower with the extra lever for the wheels, my life was changed
My husband grills because I’m guaranteed to burn the shit out of myself
If you go to the toilet beforehand then there will be no shit to burn out of you.
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Taking out the trash involves lifting something that’s usually heavy, twice. So the person that’s more likely to have the higher upper body strength handling it makes sense.
Which is why, as we all know, doing the laundry is a man’s job.
There’s also the mess factor, and a shit ton of people born before the eighties or so and after maybe 1900-ish definitely had a concept that women shouldn’t have to get dirty on a regular basis.
Oh yeah, that’s why changing baby’s diapers is almost always a man’s job.
The examples in the post didn’t include those, so neither did I. Don’t read into it beyond the examples used
I require you to use these cherries, as opposed to others
I stuck to the topic of the post and didn’t veer off. Anyone wants to start a different branch of the discussion, that’s fine. But that’s not what the comment I responded to did. They complained that I didn’t expand on the topic.
Ohhh providing examples that conflict with the narrative is complaining. Got it
No, the dismissing tone of the message providing this contradiction is the problem. It does not have the form of simple nuances or counter-arguments. It has the form of an attack on the previous commenter’s credibility.
If counter examples to highlight flaws in blanket statements are an attack to a person’s credibility then idk what to tell you.
And to be clear, about the core of these comments, form aside. I do not fully agree with the explanations given, while I recognise the reasonning as sound. I am just pretty sure there were and still are additional contributing factors, especially when not focusing on the USA. I do agree with thu counter examples. (Again, not with how these were given.)
If we talkin’ 'bout olden times and origins of tasks here ~ laundry was originally hand washed and scrubbed on a rack, then hung to dry. Tedious, yes; but also you’re doing One Piece of clothing at a time, which isn’t heavy at all.
Women did it because it took like half an entire day to do it. It was practically impossible for someone to work full time and also do this job. Washing machines were considered one of the great feminist liberation landmarks in history for a reason.
But once you bought a washing machine for your wife, then it was still their job… right? Not agreeing with it or anything, and it’s obviously sexist by modern standards; but that was the logic ~ it was sold as a convenience / gift.
“Tired of your wife wasting all day doing clothes? Buy the thing so she can do other stuff instead! Only $7500 (in modern currency)”
Damn, really makes me appreciate how cheap my current washing machine of $150 was…
That’s how we did diapers. The mother handles all the inputs, which is technically more because the baby is growing.
Random advertisement for cloth diapers, it’s less work than it sounds and saves crazy money.
Is it because the assignment of these jobs dates to that brief time and culture when women were housewives and men worked outside the home? It’s as stereotypical as white picket fence.
I mean, mowing the lawn probably dates back to when you had to use a scythe for that. That was actually quite physically demanding labour.
Bringing out the trash might similarly originate from when trashcans were out of metal and didn’t have wheels. I can certainly imagine those being annoying to heave outside when you don’t have an excess of core strength…
but this is lemmy, there’s a pantsless scyther right over there
