Saving Potentially Good Arguments From Stephen Marche

Beth mentioned Stephen Marche’s dumb NYT article arguing that men shouldn’t be expected to do any housework. Jess Grose explains the dumbness, saving me the trouble.

Since this is a longstanding hobbyhorse of mine, however, like Jon Chait I think it’s worth keeping a couple issues conceptually distinct. If the first link is tl;dr, a brief summary:

• There are some domestic tasks — basic sanitation like cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, a minimum level of organization, childrearing duties where applicable — that are necessary, and there should be a presumption of gender equity in how they’re distributed.
• It doesn’t follow from this, however, that the equilibrium every equitable household should reach is 50s-bourgeois standards of tidiness that presumed a full-time homemaker plus paid help.  If it’s very important to you to dust every singe day or have all your clothes ironed or to never have an extraneous object on a table or floor that’s fine, but that’s like a hobby, not a fundamental household task.  Just assuming that all kinds of pointless busywork has to be done is not only a non-sequitur, under current gender norms it’s especially bad for women.