Guys, Just Doing The Laundry Sometimes Could Save The Middle Class

Let’s talk about something boring for a change: laundry. 

“Boredom” has actually been the most remarkable part of 2021. With the United States no longer lurching from daily crisis to daily crisis without competent leadership to steer the ship, it’s surprising how much extra time we have to think about… other things. The economy has grown faster in the last few months than at any time in recent history, buoyed in large part by reopening economic sectors; even AMC, a company most observers had already left for dead before the pandemic, has been surging as theatres once more start selling tickets for big-screen adventures. Unemployment is dropping as Americans get back to work. 

Well, less “Americans,” and more men. The “shecession” remains in effect for women across the United States; women left the workforce in greater numbers than their male counterparts over the last thirteen months and have not regained numbers at the same rate. According to the National Women’s Law Center, despite losing more jobs as a percentage of workforce participation, women only accounted for one third of the employment gains in March of this year. Further, women who left the workforce are more likely to consider themselves “retired” than “on pause,” which means they aren’t expecting to return. 

So what does this have to do with laundry?

Well, everything. The pandemic has taken a far greater toll on the mental health of women than on men; women are more likely to report pandemic burnout and a decline in quality of life, according to Gallup, and the news has been replete with stories for over a year now about the additional burdens the pandemic has unequally lain on the shoulders of women in opposite-sex relationships. Women, we’ve seen again and again, have been disproportionately expected to juggle housework and childcare (including managing remote learning), even if they’re working full time. That burnout, that stress, cannot remain forever, and thus we see the decline in women’s participation in the US workforce. Something, inevitably, had to give.

The knock-on effects are going to be long-lasting; fewer women in hiring positions means fewer women getting hired; large gaps in resumes demonstrably results in lower lifetime earning potential and lower starting salaries, which also increases the incidence of child poverty with the resulting declines in academic and career performance. Reduced workforce participation among women, simply put, reduces the opportunities for economic independence and advancement for all women. And it turns out there’s a really simple thing our partners could try to alleviate a lot, though not all, of these problems.

Just do the damn laundry once in a while. 

During this pandemic, women have been burning out (according to a 2020 study from LeanIn.org and SurveyMonkey) at twice the rate of men in terms of sheer physical symptoms, like a raised heart rate and sleep deprivation, and are wildly more likely to report that the pandemic drastically increased their daily workload. And it comes down, on a day-to-day level, to who’s doing what at home. Women, on average, spend twenty more hours a week on housework than men do, the equivalent of an entire part-time job. It’s not hard to see why so many made the decision to leave work when there is so much to do at home and remarkably little support in doing so. 

So much of this can be reduced or eliminated by a more equitable division of labor at home, and since men are working from home as much as we are, there’s absolutely no reason why men, as a class, can’t step up and take on an equal share of the burden as their working partners. Not as a “gift” or to earn husband points, but as an obligation to her in much the same way she has an obligation to him, especially if she still has an outside income. You will be helping to create the conditions at home that make her continued ability to earn an income possible, as well as improving your daughters’ long-term economic prospects by contributing to the growth of healthier social norms and helping your sons be better partners in the future by modeling an egalitarian relationship. It really comes down, in the end, to whether or not you’re willing to pick up the burden right alongside her, because she’s working herself to the bone. Millions of us are. But we don’t have to be.

Since 1980, household incomes in real dollars have stagnated even as productivity and wealth have grown exponentially. The middle class depends, as it has for decades now, on the ability of both partners to maintain an income—something the pandemic has set back dramatically. Without women’s participation, what growth the middle class has had in that same time period would have been entirely erased, according to the Brookings Institute, and pre-pandemic, 40% of households with children include mothers who are either the sole or primary breadwinner. Establishing true equity in household labor provides a stable foundation for economic growth at the human level, while also allowing the great majority of households in the United States—70% are dual-income—to maintain their present standard of living rather than have to scale back because of the loss of one income. In other words, doing the laundry can help you pay your bills and send your kids to college.

There is no such thing as “men’s work” and “women’s work;” there is only work, the plodding, often dull, repetitive things that have to happen if we’re going to continue on. Taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, putting away the clutter, making sure the kids are doing their assignments in their Zoom classrooms—none of these happen on their own by magic. Someone has to do them. The question I’d ask all the men in live-in opposite-sex relationships is whether they think their partner’s wellbeing, and that of their daughters, is worth the cost to whatever it is that’s keeping them from picking up some of the housework.