Can women have it all? Not unless men help at home.

Gone are the days of my mother’s generation when women quit working when they married and shortly thereafter had a child. Long, long gone. And though that might seem like a good thing at first glance, women and their children have actually been shortchanged.

During a discussion with a male friend about men, women, and marriage, he noted that we’ve come a long way. After all, a man these days expects a woman to work to help support the family.

Yes, but the flip side of that rather new expectation is not the same for men. When the honey-I-expect-you-to-work discussion takes place before marriage, most women do not have the same expectation that their future husband will do half of the housework, laundry, cooking, and child rearing. And therein lies the problem. That expectation should go both ways.

While it is true that women have entered the work force in record numbers and barriers that existed have long since been removed, the average man is not loading the washing machine or dishwasher. They don’t want to. The majority of men could easily complete household tasks, but they haven’t been taught to think it’s their job.

On the whole, woman’s work is still woman’s work. In addition to her paid work, she still has to get the unpaid work done.

Women wanted the prestige and positions men hold because they are enviable. Girls want to go to college so they can get well-paying jobs, like men. It is hard to imagine a young boy who wants to grow up to do laundry and clean floors. Not only is women’s work never done, it has never been valued. No one aspires to do it.

I grew up in the 1950s, when moms were at home and taken for granted. Biology was destiny – if you were a woman you became a wife and then a mother. I’m not suggesting we go back to those days, but there is no denying that women back then had one job, and the time to do it.

My mother used to sit down after dinner and read a book. She had time off from her job of raising us. With five kids, she had pressure, but she didn’t have to come home after a full day at work and then start a second job. If you ask 10 women who work full-time and have a few kids when was the last time they sat down and read a magazine, they’d laugh – an exasperated, tired laugh at the very thought.

Women were liberated, yes, but not all the way.

They were liberated from the low expectations of their ability to compete in a man’s world, but not from the idea that cleaning bathrooms and picking up dirty socks were tasks that men could share. Women can excel to the best of their ability at work, but they still go home to a sink full of dishes, a messy house, and children to care for.

Some women make enough money to hire a cleaning service, which is primarily made up of women who clean other people’s homes during the day and then their own at night. No matter how much hired help a woman surrounds herself with, or how tired she is at the end of the day, she is still “Mommy.”

Back in the 1950s, I took my mom for granted, but I knew what her job was. I was the most important thing in her life. If I got sick she’d take care of me. She was at home when I came back from school. At the end of her tenure of raising five children, my mother was lost. She got a part-time job but the money she made was never contributed to the household. She had huge potential that she was never able to explore and forever walked in my father’s shadow.

It was experiences like hers that inspired my generation to do more with our lives. This ultimately led to meaningful outside work for women, but in addition to raising a family. Women have achieved more on the whole, but at a cost. Women of my daughter’s generation are spread thin, exhausted, and often resentful. Doing it “all” is impossible. Someone comes up short and most often it is women. It can seem as though there is no way out.

There is a way out, but women will have to demand it, as they demanded the right to vote and the right to work.

Just as the idea of a woman doing a man’s job has gained acceptance, the notion of a man doing a woman’s job will have to be woven into the fabric of married life.

The first step will be to acknowledge that such cooperation on home tasks has to be done. It’s work that often lacks appeal, but it’s work that both sexes are capable of doing. Until both women and men can truly work together in the home, we will continue to hear our exasperated, liberated women roar... for a little help.

Kathleen Vallee Stein is a freelance writer.

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