Sexism, Housework, and Who’s Right

By their fruits you will know them

Photo by Kelly Moon on Unsplash

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

- Matthew 7:15-20 ESV, emphasis mine

Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.

- Matthew 13:18-23, emphasis mine

“Why can’t he just see what needs to be done around the house, and then do it?”

I’ve heard this question from (female) friends and I’ve asked it myself. It’s a fairly common fight among married couples. I think, at the heart of it, we are trying to answer the question, “Don’t you see that I’m doing more than my fair share?” Or rather, we’re trying to get our husbands to answer the question or to notice that we’re asking it. We’re seeking validation that our efforts are seen and valuable, and that they feel like a disproportionately heavy burden.

But, as I’ve thought about (and had!) this common fight, read books about it, and discussed it with friends, I’ve come to realize that we’re leaving a fundamental question unanswered:

Does it really count as me being “in the right” if the fruit is resentment?

In other words, while I might be doing more of the chores around the home, if I’m spending that time nursing anger that things haven’t been done, ruminating on my husband’s faults, and then turning around and talking with my girlfriends about how irritated I am, what exactly am I accomplishing? Certainly, chores are a part of family life, and a lack of participation in family chores is a failure of love and self-gift. But ruminating in anger and/or pride is also a failure to love. If we want to model for our children what a healthy and holy family looks like, the two “sides” of this argument both need to change, to meet in the middle, and to humble themselves before one another.

I hear a lot of comments about how women doing the bulk of household chores is all the fault of the patriarchy. That if men would just be better, then women wouldn’t be expected to do everything. And, like a lot of feminist propositions, I see some value in the point they’re trying to make. Yes, we should teach our boys as well as our girls to cook, clean, and do laundry. These are basic human functions in the 21st century, not sex-specific ones. Yes, we should ask and expect our husbands and sons to participate in the fullness of our shared family life, which will inevitably include chores.¹

But y’all, can we please stop it with the assumptions:

1. That everyone has to do the same and work the same and be the same

2. That symmetry between men and women is possible, or even desirable

3. That if men would just do this or that, we (women and families) could have it all

4. That trying to “having it all” benefits the person or the family

5. That because women have historically done the family’s housework, women are entitled to be jerks when we do our family’s housework

Am I missing any?

If I’m seeking validation for the feeling that I am disproportionately or unfairly responsible for tasks in our shared life, then that’s something to address. If I feel like a nag, or if my husband sees me as a nag, when I ask him to contribute to the maintenance of our shared life, then that’s something to address. It’s important that the worth and dignity of both spouses is recognized and respected by both parties, and it’s important that both spouses are participating fully in the shared life of the family.²

But here’s the thing, y’all… Sometimes I find myself doing chores just so that I can feel self-righteous about the fact that “no one else around here is going to do the thing, so I guess that’s my job too”. And that’s neither a healthy nor a holy attitude. While it might feel satisfying in the moment, in the long term, that self-righteousness only bears bad fruit. I don’t want to be a tree that bears bad fruit. Instead, I want to be someone who follows this advice:

Wash the plate not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next.

- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

I want to rejoice in the ways I can love and serve my family within our home, and I want my husband to do the same. Whatever that might look like. I want the fruit of my housework to be joy, peace, a clean house, and a holy family. I don’t want to be planting seeds of resentment, bitterness, anger, and confusion with every shirt I wash and every toy I put back on the shelf. How often do we examine our lives for the fruit that we’re bearing? I know I don’t do it often enough. I’m plenty willing to tell the Lord how frustrated I am about a situation, but I am not equally willing to acknowledge that my frustration might reveal an area of my own heart that is in need of healing or growth.

Something that I generally hate about “women’s spaces” in the Christian world is the way that they don’t speak to husbands. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? It sounds so dumb to say, but I find myself getting irritated when people say, “You can only change and control yourself, so here are things you can work on personally in your own heart within your marriage.” And I want to claim that this frustrates me because marriage is a relationship between two people, and those two people ought to be constantly communicating and working together to grow in holiness. But if I’m being honest, it really just frustrates me because it calls me to work on my own faults and flaws before worrying about - let alone trying to “fix” - anyone else’s. And it’s just so much easier to work other people than it is to work on myself.³

But today, I’m going to be that person. I’m going to talk about things you can do to change your own attitude, to remove the log from your own eye, without reference to your husband. I’m not going to tell you that he’ll change if you follow these three simple steps, or that he’s ever going to change. I’m not going to even try to talk about what’s “fair” in housework (which has to be a discussion between the two parties involved, understanding the Church’s view of human anthropology and marriage, the feminist assumptions that are just “in the water” in our current culture, and the particular situation and needs of the individual spouses and of the family). Today, we’re just focusing on what we as wives and mothers can do to cultivate good soil within our hearts and bear good fruit in our lives.

Cultivating Good Soil

When I talk about cultivating good soil, I’m referring to the things we can do to dispose ourselves to grace. In the context of this conversation, we’re basically looking for ways we can prepare our hearts and minds so that, when we’re doing housework or feeling overwhelmed by our to-do lists, our tanks are full and choosing virtue is easier. We want to arm ourselves against the temptation to fall into resentment, even when things don’t go exactly the way we want them.

The Lord has been teaching me a lot in this postpartum season about the importance of cultivating good soil. It’s been a struggle to learn, but a tremendous gift nonetheless, both to me as an individual Christian and in my roles as wife and mother. While housework has not been my particular cross in this season, I think the principles are still applicable:

• Pray. This should be a no-brainer, but it’s such a struggle for me to be faithful to my daily prayer times. Even when I do show up, I need to be intentional about not turning my prayer into a Gripe Sesh with Jesus (TM). While He certainly does want to know what is on our hearts, He also doesn’t want us to wallow in anger or pride. I’m finding these days that, when I show up to prayer with a list of grievances to air, the Lord is often asking me to consider where my own heart needs to change, rather than tell Him where I want my husband to change.

• Beyond showing up for daily prayer times, staying close to the sacraments will better enable us to resist temptation and choose virtue. Of course, receiving the Eucharist will help us to grow in holiness, and the sacrament of Confession will force allow us to examine the ways in which we are not living up to our call. But I also encourage you to draw on the grace of your sacramental marriage, by which you are equipped to live that marriage well.⁴

• Speaking of marriage - we can’t forget to be friends with our spouses. Whether this means talking about the books we’re reading after the kids go to bed, having dinner or dessert together, or going for a walk together to enjoy a morning breeze, we must avoid falling into the trap of having exclusively negative emotions about/toward one another. The longer we go without expressing affection, gratitude, and generous charity to one another, the easier and more habitual it becomes to slip into patterns of frustration, resentment, and self-righteousness.

• Building on that foundation of friendship, we can then communicate about housework specifically in a way that is open, honest, and (most importantly) charitable. These are hard conversations, but they are so important and so healing. By relying heavily on prayer, the sacraments, and our friendship, we can whittle away at our pride, evaluate our individual contributions to our family life more honestly, and express our needs less critically. We can carefully choose the moments in which we begin conversations. We can be open to hearing each other’s perspectives and open to changing our views when we are wrong. And we can strategize ways to resolve the conflict without devolving into blaming or shaming one another.

• Another practice I am trying to cultivate in my life, thanks to Jean Pierre de Caussade, is looking for the will of God as it is revealed in the present moment (ie, the present load of laundry, hungry child, or overwhelmed spouse). I cannot say it as eloquently as Caussade can, so on this point, I will leave you with a quote from his book, Abandonment to Divine Providence: “There is no moment when God is not present with us under the appearance of some obligation or some duty. All that is effected within us, about us, and through us involves and hides His divine action: it is veritably present, though in an invisible manner; therefore we do not discern it, and only recognize its workings when it has ceased to act. Could we pierce the veil which obscures it, and were we vigilant and attentive, God would unceasingly reveal Himself to us, and we would recognize His action in all that befell us. At every event we would exclaim, Dominus est!—It is the Lord! and we should feel each circumstance of our life an especial gift from Him.”

• And finally, I’m realizing that I need to choose to rest, and probably more frequently than I would like. The more I work myself past my limits, the more easily I give in to resentment and pride. The sense of urgency and anxiety disappears (or, at least, is significantly lessened) when I do not allow myself to buy into the lie that “I never have any time to myself” or “I have to get all of this done today”. Certainly, there are things that are time-sensitive, as the slightly mildewy scent of my washer would seem to suggest. And certainly, choosing to rest means that not everything will get done today, or done at all. But work is not the final telos of the human person, and I lose sight of my ultimate good when I don’t allow myself time to rest.

Bearing Good Fruit

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

- Galatians 5:22-24 ESV

“Bearing good fruit” is a litmus test for how faithful I am being to the Lord. While the virtues St. Paul lists are certainly ones that I can actively choose to practice, they also come more naturally and more easily when I have been receptive to the Word of God and His will in my life.

If I can look back over my day or my week and see that, without a conscious effort, I was at peace, kind to my family, and faithful to my duties, I can trust that the Lord is working in my heart and in my marriage. Likewise, if I can recognize that conscious effort allowed me to be more joyful, patient, kind, and gentle, that’s generally a good sign that I am on the right track. And either - or both - of these realizations ought to prompt us to tremendous gratitude. On the other hand, if in reflecting on my day or my week, I see short-temperedness, irritation, laziness, apathy, and indulgence, then I ought to examine my choices in other areas to ensure that I am disposing myself to receive what the Lord wants to offer me.

We all desire a marriage, family, and home that are loving, joyful, peaceful, and all the rest, but we often miss what St. Paul says next: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” We will not be able to build that family life until we recognize that the path to holiness is the path to the Cross, until we can say with St. Claude, “I embrace the beloved Cross of my vocation, even unto death.” We must be willing to crucify our anger, our resentment, our irritation, and our pride.⁵ And we must be willing to embrace the cross of our imperfect selves and spouses and children, and all the myriad little crosses that follow. Only then will we be able to belong to Christ Jesus, and to one another, in a way that allows us to bear good fruit. So today, and this coming week, let’s choose to lean into the grace available to us and to accept the will of God in our lives, even when it doesn’t look the way we expect or want it to.

What cross in your own life or your family life has revealed a need for you to cultivate good soil in your soul? Where do you see your marriage and family life bearing good fruit? Where is there room to grow?

1. I’m planning a post soon to talk about complementarity in marriage and the proper roles of husband and wife, so I hope you’ll stay tuned for that.

2. There are three books that have been informative in my thinking on this topic: A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot, Fair Play by Even Rodsky, and The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver. If you are struggling with housework specifically, I would recommend reading Fair Play. While there are places in the book I disagree with Rodsky, overall I think the book is an incredible resource, especially for families who really struggle with this dynamic. If I could sum the book up in one sentence, it would be, “Communicate so you don’t complicate.” Except Rodsky gives you a step-by-step playbook of working it out. I’m trying to decide exactly how to cover these books, as they work together quite well, and I almost hate to separate them into distinct Book Club series.

3. Julie at Mrs. Prarie Wife has some very practical discussions of what it looks like to choose joy and self-gift in marriage, even when (shockingly) you are a sinful woman married to a sinful man, and you want to try to claim that since he is imperfect, you don’t have to be strive for holiness. If you haven’t had this thought, I invite you to consider that maybe actually you have, albeit in different terms.

4. This article on Catholic Culture is a helpful explainer on the grace of a sacramental marriage: “This, then is the meaning of sacramental grace in marriage. It is the special mode of Sanctifying Grace which makes the receiver a habitual connatural principle of supernatural action in Marriage — which means that the love, and love-making, and housekeeping and work and worry of marriage are all deified. Further, sacramental grace in marriage brings with it remedies for the weakness of human nature, even for those weaknesses suffered as a result of the infidelities of the married couple. Lastly, it brings a right to the stimulus of God toward knowing the right answers and acting according to them.”

5. Just to reiterate, so it’s abundantly clear, this isn’t to let anyone off the hook for not doing their part to keep a household running. But even if your husband has literally never done anything ever in your whole marriage, you are still called to growth in holiness. Period.