One of the things I had to make peace with when I came home—that is, became what is called a "stay-at-home mother"—was housework. More accurately, it’s one of the things I am making peace with, now that I’m here.
And I’m not doing such a great job of it. Back when I was in graduate school and Mark worked part-time, we shared it. I think Mark must have done more, because when we were home together I needed to nurse the baby and so much of the other things would have fallen to him. Even now that I’ve been home for ten months, Mark still seems to do a disproportionate amount.
There was a time when I would clean the house more; I did it to avoid working on my thesis. Maybe I need to find something else I can avoid through housecleaning. Why don’t I find it more satisfying?
Because the social expectation is that housework is drudgery? Is it because of generations of articles in women’s magazines bemoaning that men don’t keep up their share of the work (not in my house; see above)? Is it because the people paid to do it by the wealthy aren’t really paid that much? (This link recommends that a self-employed housecleaner charge $25 to $50 per hour, with a quarter to half of that paying the business’s expenses.) Is it because it doesn’t require a lot of thought? Is it because it’s uncreative? Is it because you essentially do the same thing, every day, and each day the previous day’s work is unmade and has to be made again?
I don’t think the answer is in the nature of the work itself, because a tiny subset of housework is something I love doing, enjoy doing, do enthusiastically every day with great satisfaction: making dinner. I really, really, really love to cook. I love sitting down to plan the meals; I love paging through cookbooks and selecting new recipes to try; I love fine-tuning recipes to fit my family’s tastes and lifestyle; I love chopping, sauteing, deglazing, simmering, checking the seasonings, garnishing, saucing, and plunking the whole thing down on the table.
I tried just now to think of something I don’t like about cooking, and the only things I could think of were "stirring risotto" (because it hurts my arm, after a while) and "burning my mouth" (I am forever forgetting to blow on the spoon). Come to think of it, I don’t like assembling enchiladas either.
I do have evenings when I just can’t face making dinner, and we go out or I get carryout. But those are pretty rare, and to be honest they have more to do with not wanting to make the kitchen any messier than it already is.
So what’s the difference between cooking and cleaning? More on this later, I hope.
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