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  • Motherhood After Tenure: Domestic Duties

    By Aeron Haynie October 29, 2008 10:14 pm

    Tomorrow is my best friend’s birthday and I’ve decided to give her an unusual present: I’m paying to have her house cleaned. I admit I love having my own house cleaned, despite the political and ethical issues it raises. According to Mason and Goulden’s study, academic women with children spend an average of 14 hours a week on housework (compared to the 11.6 hours a week men with children spend) in addition to 26.7 hours a week “care giving.” Taken together, that’s a second job.

    That first time I had my house cleaned I felt intensely self-conscious. I chose a local, family-owned cleaning service that pays a decent hourly wage, offers health insurance and vacations. Still, the women who clean my house look tired, poor, and bedraggled. They carried buckets of rags and cleaning supplies up my front stairs as I drove to work. As I sat in my office, I was aware that they were cleaning my toilets, scrubbing the grime off my floors, dusting corners and ceilings that had been neglected for months, and even scraping the muck off my toddler's wooden highchair. When I got back, I walked quietly into my house. The kitchen looked serene: the floor clean, the sink sparkling, every canister wiped down. Sun poured into the dining room, but there were no dust particles hanging in the light. I walked around the house in a state of wonder, marveling at every clean corner. The house looked like it did the day we moved in. I could feel their hands moving over the surfaces of my house, and each movement felt like the sweep of a gentle hand on my brow: loving and capable. It was amazing that someone would do this for me, would take it off my hands. Later, I pointed out every detail to my husband, "the corners of the window sills are clean!" He smiled but didn't share my wonder.

    I grew up thinking that people who had cleaning ladies (or maids) were incompetent and indulged. After all, you should clean up your own mess. I was raised by two poor, working, single parents (divorced, joint custody) and while my father's apartments were always depressingly dirty, my mother's system of chores was fiercely efficient. My mother taught me to be competent and to see the world as a battle that could be won by unflagging hard work and vigilance. I learned that mothers were always tired and always nagging about chores.

    So now I trade my money (such as it is) for more time to write. And a woman who probably has fewer resources than I gives up her time. Why does hiring a cleaning service seem so indulgent? After all, I rely on poorly-paid labor every time I eat out, travel in a foreign country, or buy something at Target. Probably because women have been trained for generations to take care of their homes, to see their houses as a reflection of themselves. And maybe because it brings the inequities of class into our own homes, uncomfortably close.

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Comments on Motherhood After Tenure: Domestic Duties

  • Posted by DDG on October 30, 2008 at 11:25am EDT

  • Well, yes and no. Mostly no.
    Why should we feel guilty for paying someone else to do housework? It is work that needs to be done, and there are people seeking this kind of work. You are paying a fair wage and appreciating the service. How is it somehow more fair to someone, who may be poor and bedraggled, not to employ them?
    One of the big gaps in the women's movement is the fact that there was never any accommodation made for housework as women entered the workforce. We were, as you pointed out, expected to work a second shift, doing all the things our non-working-outside-the-home mothers or grandmothers did, plus a 40 hr work week.
    To me housecleaning for working parents is just as legit an expense as commuting and childcare.

  • housecleaning
  • Posted by CAS on October 30, 2008 at 2:35pm EDT

  • I am in a dual working family with 2 kids (age 9 and 12). I love my job, but I also love my house. My husband convinced me that it is ok to pay for housekeeping services. Otherwise, I would be spending my weekends cleaning and doing laundry. I would rather spend my weekend PLAYING with the kids, doing hobbies and having a good time. Granted, I still do laundry, but I'm much better off because I have help with the "other" stuff.

  • Posted by BK on October 30, 2008 at 4:15pm EDT

  • When I first learned that the professional women in my book club had house cleaners, I thought it was too extravagant. I also thought it was too expensive. I promised myself, however, that if and when I worked full-time, I would use the extra money to hire a housecleaner. I compromised a bit, by having her only vacuum the bedrooms and leaving the basement as is, so that my kids would still learn to clean-up their rooms and play spaces. But as the writer said, now on weekends we have time for other family activities or larger projects, like sorting through the seasonal clothing. The cleaner is in my house today, so last night and this morning were hectic, preparing for her arrival, but when I get home tonight, it will look fabulous!

  • Posted by m. cortez on October 30, 2008 at 10:30pm EDT

  • I can definitely empathize with this piece. And as someone who worked on and off throughout my undergraduate years cleaning houses and resort rooms (and for one quarter during my graduate years), I remember the resentment I felt toward employers who treated me as though I was invisible, or who had the luxury to not think about dirty dishes and toilets, or who falsely accused me of stealing money or other missing items, or who had me spray their kitchen for ants without protective gear rather than hiring more expensive professionals. Does that mean all employers are like this? Of course not. I've also worked for women who treated me as an equal, talking to me while I was working and letting me know how much they appreciated my help. But there is undeniably a power differential involved when you hire domestic help; as Haynie correctly points out, it brings class inequities into the home. And while I don't think guilt is necessarily a productive response to those inequities, I almost want to defend the nagging discomfort Haynie describes as a way of remaining open to an awareness of those inequities, and resisting the impulse to regard the labor (and the laborers) as invisible. It's the discomfort, I feel, that allows her such deep gratitude for the work, to the point that she continues to feel the women's presence in her clean house (beautifully expressed in the passage that starts, "I walked around the house in a state of wonder").

  • ethical issues?
  • Posted by right wing professor on October 31, 2008 at 5:00am EDT

  • Lady get over yourself, there are no "ethical issues" to hiring someone to clean your house, it is honest work and if you want to pay someone to do it go ahead. It is no different than hiring someone to mow your lawn, or put on a new roof, or come in and change your dying grandmother's diaper, or clean your septic tank.

  • Ethical issues?
  • Posted by cheddar on November 1, 2008 at 6:25am EDT

  • I hate to say that I agree with a right wing prof, but I don't have any ethical qualms about my house cleaner. She gets paid $25 per hour and doesn't buy her own supplies. She doesn't work for unpleasant clients or clean really disgusting homes. My mom and my sister both worked for 20 years or more in low paying retail or cafeteria jobs where they made only a third of what my house cleaner makes per hour in real terms. I understand that not all house cleaners are as well paid or as enterprising, but it isn't a profession we should automatically feel embarrassment about.

  • hiring a cleaning ladies
  • Posted by Janice Fedor on November 10, 2008 at 9:00pm EST

  • For me, having a cleaning lady means not having to make a choice between cleaning my bathrooms and reading my kids a book. My bathroom doesn't care who cleans it, but my kids care who reads them a book.

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