Feminism, like all political 'isms' atempts to take much undeserved credit for social changes.

l am under 40 and my mum and dad had me doing house chores from age 12. All the kids had to do their share. Every saturday morning was a house keeping working bee. We can all do everything... set/clear dinner table, wash/put away dishes, mop floors, wash windows, clean ovens, stoves and fridges inside and out, vacuum, polish floors, laundry, ironing, scrub toilet/shower/bath, mow lawns, weed gardens (funnily the sisters never had to do yard work), rock the lttle baby to sleep. Oddly, the boyz can do everything the girls can, but we can also change a tyre, change the oil and all that typical 'mans work.'

My mum resented the feminist sanctimonious vilification of her being a stay at home mum. She brought us up to be self reliant in the basics of life bacause she came from a large and poor European family where everyone pulled their weight out of necessity.

What l find comical in this day and age are the following:
1. women still have a view of certain tasks as 'mens work' but shudder when men speak in terms of 'womens work.'
2. if l complain that my girlfriend is not compatible because she doesn't cook nor clean and her version of cooking is to make a restaurant reservation and hand me the bill, then l am chewed out for being sexist. However, when women complain , nag and ridicule their menfolk for being lazy and useless around the house and not cooking or cleaning, then that is seen as OK.

As a man, what l see, is a lot of complaining about nothing much. So what if the house isn't cleaned as often as the lobby of Buckingham Palace. My standard of homliness is good enough for me. The complaining about standards is just a smoke screen for a power struggle. Whoever sets the standards makes the rules. Whoever makes the rules (and can enforce them) has the power. POWER is the essence of this housework complaint. Most men these days, at some point, become the sole/primary bread winner and at this point they too have power (to ignore the nagging) and for many men its the only way to restore some balance. And its all a bit silly.

All this nonsense about household politics is what keeps me away from alter and crib. Its just too much adoo about nothing in my book. Living one's life and brow beating one another to achieve patentally unattainable politcal ideology in our daily lives.

lm tired of all the contradictions and l find it easier to avoid the issues and hangups of the political indoctrinates. Everything is a power struggle if you see it that way. Its tedious. Some people just need to get over themselves and learn to relax.

Trade,
I would agree that men can do anything women can do (apart from giving birth and lactation), and housework in the modern house is so easy. Looking after children is not that difficult either.

It is quite probable that many women see their children and their home as extension of themselves and also a power base, and the matter has all come to a head with such things as child custody issues. However these issues now represent extremely important issues in society.

We now have a situation where up to 50% of marriages and de facto relationships end in divorce and separation, but 90% of the time the children are removed from the father and he is made to pay child support. Seems gross inequality there, so unfortunately it can’t be just pushed to one side and ignored any longer. If that continues it becomes impossible to explain to young men what their future life is going to be.

Also the older a man becomes, the less likely he will have children, so if you are in your 30’s – 40’s I would suggest you think very intensively about the issues, as basically your time is running out (unless you marry a much younger woman, and that can also present problems).

NB. I you do decide to take the plunge, a pre-nuptial agreement is totally and absolutely essential. Also a covenant marriage system is definitely worth investigating to see if that can be used for your marriage. Take no chances

This report by Dale O'Leary, gives an example of some current advocacy research aimed at devaluing fatherhood and the heterosexual family.

"Who Needs Dad?"
By Dale O'Leary

In the July edition of The American Psychologist, Laura Silverstein and Carl Auerbach argue against the traditional view that both fathers and mothers are essential to optimum child development.

In "Deconstructing the Essential Father," Silverstein and Auerbach contend that heterosexuality, heterosexual marriage, and the biological family of mother and father are not to be seen as natural.

Both writers are social constructionists, and they hold that the differences between men and women are social constructs created by a patriarchal society. Since gender differences are created by oppression, they can and should be eliminated. In fact, the very idea of a "natural" family structure sends up a red flag: for social constructionists, such ideas are called "heterosexism," and they are the very equivalent of racism. …

One wonders, is social-constructionist research concerned with discovering the truth about human nature? Or could this be a politicization of the authors' personal rage and rebellion into social science theory, and translated into public policy? Only the nanny state could support a society of fatherless families.

Given the number of journals willing to publish advocacy studies and the number of institutions willing to hire and promote advocacy researchers, the sheer volume of such research is increasing exponentially.

trade, interesting post. I have commented on double standards re the "mens work" issue previously. You did not go down this track so I'm reading into your post what you didn't write, rather following up with some thinking that it raised for me.

I suspect that there is a tendancy to tie those types of double standards to feminism. The question I would ask is if it is feminists who do this? In my own case my ex would not claim to be a feminist. I notice that a lot of the guys who post here pushing for reform to family law are christians which raises the likleyhood that a lot of their ex's are christian (in word if not deed). Christianity is not generally a hotbed of feminism.

Are the women who run the type of double standards feminists or rather those who seek to grab every bit of advantage they can get regardless of the ethics. Certainly they are using parts of feminism but that does not make it feminisms fault.

I've seen a couple of TV segments recently talking about men not standing for pregnant women on public transport. Both implied that there was a stronger obligation on men to stand than exists for women. One pregnant woman even made it clear that she will not accept a seat offered by another woman but insists that she get a seat currently occupied by a man. Any feminists care to support that position?

robert , what man wouldn't stand for a pregnant woman ??