Sunday, July 18, 2010

Let's Give Our Moms (and Dads) a Hand

Think for a moment about who does the most work in your home? If you remember your childhood, who did the most house work, your mom or your dad? Or maybe it was you? Regardless, it is estimated that women do two-thirds of the world's work, yet they receive only 5% of the world's income. If you think about it, women mostly do the housework, like doing the laundry, or cleaning the house, or doing gardening. In my house, my parents split the amount of work, although my mom tends to clean when she believes something is dirty because that is just who she is. But when I was younger, my dad and my mom cleaned the house, while I sat on my backside and did nothing (of course, now I am helping around the house and doing my part to help clean). But that's just it: people have this tendency to "help" with the labor in the house. My mom would ask me when I was younger, "Can you clean your room for me?" Of course I would huff and puff and walk my way upstairs to do it, but I am only doing, probably, 5-6% of the house cleaning. There's the hallways, bathrooms, kitchen, family room, living room, basement if you have one, and the yard work. In reality, we don't know just how much our moms (or our dads because they could be doing more too) work to maintain the house, and we sit here and take things for granted. Now the point in what I am trying to say is that we shouldn't feel obligated to help the women with the cleaning, we should do it because we want to and before the women even think about doing it. Sure that may sound like helping, but it would be better than other "helping" which is assuming that it is someone else's responsibility. So let's give our moms and dads a hand, and not just for clapping our patting their backs saying "good job" but use those hands to get a duster, or a sponge, a mop, vacuum, lawn mower, gardening gloves, and so on, and do our part in the unpaid labor that goes on in our own household.

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