New Mothers Should Let their Husbands do More Housework, says Associate Professor

Clare Kamp Dush is an associate professor in Human Sciences and Sociology at Ohio State University and the mother of four young children.
She recently carried out a study with 182 couples. Both partners in these couples were college-educated and both were in employment. Kamp Dush found that in most childless couples, both partners regularly and equally share the housework. However, this changes once a baby comes into the equation. Fathers not only do less work around the house; they are also less involved in caring for the new child.

Wow!! So let me get this straight. At a time when the mother has been through what is at best, a trying time, and at worst, an absolute bloody nightmare, the father suddenly gets involved less in the house.

And then we wonder why moms get post natal depression!!

The arrival of a baby is traditionally said to turn your life upside down...so upside down it seems that men back away from the chaos that now pervades what was once an oasis of tranquillty.

According to Kamp Dush's study, the majority of the dads were unaware of this shift in the workload, something I'm not sure I believe....but maybe that's because I'm a cynical old cow. Intentional or not, there is no denying that the effect is profound.

Picture this...you have just been through the roughest experience of your life, your life is turned upside down, you have a new tiny being, dependant on you round the clock, your biological everything has gone haywire...and as if all this not enough, your husband just shimmies his way out of what has become your world.. Because let's be honest, a lot of the caring for a new baby revolves around being at home.
As your previously wide world-is-my-oyster view shrinks to the space encompassed by the four walls of the house, the father withdraws. Already during the period of maternity leave, this can be cause for and stress and resentment. When you go back to work, the stress and resentment can only get worse.

Kamp Dush says that the transition to parenthood is "the critical juncture where husband and wife must create new roles", those of parents, as opposed to those of partners in a couple. 
But somehow, even partners who previously practised equal sharing of housework, find themselves unable to keep up this practice once a baby arrives. Is this just another casualty of parenthood, along with late-morning lie-ins and adult daytime TV?

Or is it just that societal dictates are too hard to break?
The other day we took my son to the GP as he was unwell  (turns out he had a tummy bug, which takes longer than usual to get rid of). While we were there the  GP asked my husband about a burn on his forearm. My husband replied that he gotten it while doing the ironing. Ah...the ironing. No more words were said, but the look on the GP's face was one of puzzlement... Why doesn't she do the ironing?
Now, ironing is the only chore my husband does. He works long days,and as a SAHM, I have figured out how to include everything else into my days, along with the housework and with my writing. But ironing is something I hate, and seeing that the bulk of the ironing is made up of his shirts, my husband (wisely, perhaps) takes care of it himself.
Once we'd left the GP's I told my husband about the look.. He said I'm reading too much into it. It's easy to say that when you're a man and doing a fraction of the housework somehow elevates you to sainthood.

The sad thing is these are college-educated people, people who have worked hard for a career they are rightly unwilling to let go. They would probably be the first to argue that traditional models of division of labour are implausible nowadays.
Yet in times of stress and upheaval we tend to seek out the familiar for comfort. Our own parents probably followed traditional man/woman roles, and this is where we feel safe.
My husband and I are both college-educated. In our family, we have tended to buck people's expectations of what a family should be like. We are certainly not conventional,the sort to go with trends. Yet, somehow even we have fallen into the mom>dad ratio, when it comes to housework and childcare.

Feminists will doubtlessly argue that moms need to demand that their husbands put in equal effort in both housework and childcare. Only if we take a stand will we get the respect we deserve.

But really? Doesn't this simply add yet another burden to the ones already on moms' shoulders? 
Let's face it, new moms are often sleep-deprived and exhausted by childcare alone. How many will have the energy to get into an industrial-scale dispute over the housework? A dispute that has lasting results? As opposed to a mere guilt-induced request to "put your feet up, while I do the dishes"..that lasts all of one night?

Kamp Dush concludes that "a husband who does half of all the housework and childcare continues to remain a rare, semi-mythical creature whom no one believes exists". Unless men are socialised into housework/childcare roles right from boyhood, this will not change anytime soon.

Note. The title of this article is quoted from the article which Kamp Dush herself wrote for Newsweek. I thought it is one interesting choice of words, especially "let". Are there any husbands out there falling over themselves to do the housework, who are being prevented from doing so by their Stepford-style wives? In that case, please let me know...I might manage to negotiate a husband-swap.

REGRET

The view below you is amazing. From the top of the highest hill on the island you can see for miles around. Towns rubbing shoulders with each other, barely distinct from one another. Malta is a small island, densely populated and notorious for its army of building contractors, forever encroaching on its diminishing countryside.
She had told you this. An avid nature-lover, she hated that Maltese countryside was being eroded by what she  called greed.
"Always building new apartments, when the birthrate is going down.. And so many apartments standing empty. Why go on building? Greed, pure and simple" she'd huff.
You have been living here long enough to know she's right. Or..she was right. You don't think that she cares much about building contractors these days. She has bigger issues, much bigger problems to deal with.
You know because you were there. You saw the shock and denial and fear. You recognised the PTSD, because you've had it yourself. You still do. You recognised the signs. And you ran.
A droplet of sweat slides into your left eye, the good one. You swipe it away and reach for the bandana stuffed inside your back pocket. Funny, you think to yourself as you swipe at your forehead, and the back of your neck. You have no feeling at all around your bad eye, but one drop of sweat and it burns like fuck.
It is bloody hot for March. But then again, this is quite normal in Malta. You've been here long enough to know that it never gets really cold.
A muscle in your left thigh starts to twitch uncontrollably. Followed by pain down your shin bone. You limp over to the derelict chapel and ease your ass onto one of the fallen stones lying around.
In the shade of the chapel there is a light breeze, the wind a mere whisper through the carob tress growing nearby. Acid yellow cape sorrel blooms bob in the breeze. Their colour still takes you by surprise, even after all this time. So bright, so intense.
You shift around awkwardly. The pain in your leg is bad, but it is something else that is bothering you. It's the rot... Maybe it is time to leave the island, even if it has been your only real home in the past twenty-five years.
Memories hit your brain like burst shots on a camera. Smiles. Shared meals. Lazy love-making. Her wild, curly hair, her snorting laughter. The first time you heard her laugh, really laugh, you thought she was choking.
The memory of that day makes you smile. But the smile fades as other memories follow. Memories that hurt.
Her bruised, tear-stained face.. Her ripped shirt. The marks on her neck where he'd held a knife to her throat. Her screaming abuse at you. What you think of as the scars on her soul.
You know she needed you. You know you should have stayed. If for no other reason, to prove to her that not all men are selfish, arrogant pricks.
But you left. You ran. You told her you needed space. That you needed to process.
She had not argued or pleaded with you to stay. It was almost as if she knew that you weren't going back.. That you were unable to be what she needed you to be. As if...and it breaks your heart right now....she felt like she deserved to lose you .
Stomach acid burns the length of your oesophagus. Bloody heartburn!
The sweat from your climb has cooled off, leaving your skin clammy. This rocky hill had been a personal challenge, an act of defiance. You wanted to prove that you could still do it, shattered body and all. Even though she'd thought otherwise. Jesus Christ! Six weeks since you left, and you're still doing things because of something she said!
You stand up. And your left knee gives out under you. The pain makes your eyes water. Clumsily you lower yourself back onto the stone. Pain swarms up your side to your lower back. It feels like someone is stabbing you repeatedly, the whole length of your leg. Nothing you haven't felt before. In fact, you feel it every time the damaged nerves and muscles of your leg go into spasm. But damn, it's a bitch!
You massage your leg..sometimes, that helps... But you know that basically you must wait it out. Wait for the muscles to stop twitching. Wait for the needles of pain to stop stabbing at your pieced-together shin-bone.
Someone's coming. Voices. Girlish chatter coming up the path behind the abandoned chapel. Five young girls, about 18 years old, come round the chapel, giggling and talking animatedly. As they spot you, they lower their voices.
"Kif hasadni!" one of them says .. The wind carries her voice over to you. You know enough Maltese to realise that she wasn't expecting to find anyone up here.
The girls sit down on a ledge, legs dangling. For a few minutes, they chat amongst themselves, fiddling with their phones and taking a group selfie. Random words, voices now raised a little  because they have already forgotten your presence, float over .. facebook, drinks, xoghol, assignments.
After a while, they get up and brush their skinny jeans with their manicured hands. One very blond girl applies sunscreen to her already pink nose. 
Images ping into your head like messages in your inbox. Faces...and names... Afia, Ghazalah, Ameera, Shadha.... Names you wish you can forget. Faces your mind won't let you forget. The whores in the Afghanistan hadn't been much older than these girls. Neither had those in Iraq. They were the same, just a different colour.
As a soldier it had never bothered you that you sought out what comfort whores could provide. Whores were found everywhere, and were part of the territory. In the middle of all the lunacy, the touch of a woman helped keep you sane. Even if she touched and sucked in return for cash. Even if she was skinnier than an underfed dog, a woman's body could, for a few moments make you forget everything; your comrades who'd died, the explosions, the gruesome injuries, the misery. It was not something you did very often, but you did it.. And you thought it was okay, acceptable even...Those were extraordinary circumstances.
So why does it bother you so much now? Why do you feel like you're in the same category as that rapist piece of shit?
She said she felt dirtied, used. She was forever in the shower. Scrubbing her flesh under the hot water, until it was red and raw.
You'd watched all this..You watched her confusion, her hurt, her fear and her pain. And you were filled with self-loathing. You had done this. Not to her. Not with the same brutality. But you had. You had used women like that...like they were a commodity.
You'd watched her wide-eyed shock turn into stunned denial. Hell! You'd been in denial yourself. Unable to believe this had happened. To someone close to you. Here. On this sleepy, sunny island in the middle of a shimmering turquoise sea.
Then her denial gave way to rage. At everyone and everything that was within screaming distance. Including yourself. Especially yourself.
Consumed with inexplicable guilt over your past, you let her rage at you. Call you names. Throw things at you. You knew it wasn't you she was really mad at. And in any case, you deserved it, you thought
Until one day, you just needed out.
You couldn't bear to see her like that any more. To hear her crying at night, when she thought you were asleep. To wake up to her sobbing in her sleep. To watch her shrink back if you came too close. To watch her impotent rage at the bastard who hurt her. To live with a withdrawn, shattered shell instead of the confident, outgoing person she had once been. 
It was just too much...this willful destruction of a person. Because that's what he'd done to her. More than just abusing her body, he'd destroyed her.
And you just cut and ran... Better this way, you told yourself. Better this way.
It's been six weeks since you left. You think about her every single day. Several times a day, to tell the truth. But you cannot bring yourself to call her, to drop in at the house you'd come to think of as your home.
You should be there. You know that. 
You should be there.
But how can you give her what you don't have?
She needs comfort. She needs someone to tell her she'll be all right. And you cannot do that. Because you know that what he did to her changed everything. It cannot un-happen. And you know it. Same as your own shit cannot un-happen.
She needs someone to tell her that this is not forever, that  things will look up again. And you cannot do that. How can you when you can still see the bodies piled in mass graves? When you can still hear the explosions, the agonised screams of wounded men?
You shake your head. No, she's better off without you. She needs someone less messed-up than you.
She's the first woman you've cared about in a long, long time. You desperately want to give her what she needs, but you don't have it.
How do you give what you do not have?
Even though you tell yourself that she is better off without you, you feel ashamed that you've run away. A soldier doesn't run away. A man doesn't run away, for fuck's sake.
And even now that you're no longer with her, you cannot stop thinking about her. You've lost a piece of yourself with her. Just like you lost something in every other place you've been.
A pebble rolls away from under your foot, throwing you momentarily off balance. Pain claws at your lower back again. Shit!! You are barely forty and your body's a fucking wreck.
YOU are a fucking wreck!
You lean against a tree, till you get your wind back. Your eyes fill suddenly, and it's not because of the pain. Something twists in your chest.
If only you could believe that the damage to her soul was reversible. If only you could genuinely utter the words you'd heard her girlfriends say to her. No that she'd told them what happened. But they are good friends, and they'd realised something was amiss, even when she tried her damnedest to act normally. They are good friends, and they are not being callous or selfish when they urge her to put it behind her and look forward. They genuinely believe that time can heal even the deepest of wounds.
But you know otherwise. You know that even when she looks forward, her vision will be tinted by what happened. Same as the IED which claimed your right eye will always be there, hovering on the edge of your consciousness. Her loss is no less real, although it is not visible.
You know because your own experience has taught you that. You understand the hopelessness, the fracturing of her soul, the never-ending darkness. You understand because you yourself feel the same.
But what use is understanding when she needs a ray of light? And you only have darkness. And pain. And nightmares.
She doesn't need those..she has enough of her own. What she needs are people who genuinely believe it can get better. The twisting in your chest increases as the regret wells up.
You have always believed things happen because they have to happen. Now you're not so sure. Why would this...this terrible thing...have to happen to someone you care about? Why would it have to happen at all? Why would you have to be so damned inadequate, right when she needs you so badly?
If only you weren't so fucked-up yourself. If only you could give her what she needs. If only all this had never happened.
If only....

(author's note -this is a piece I wrote for a writing competition I took part in some time ago. hope you like.  please, please, please......write in and tell me what you think..even if you don't like it)

Election 2015

I've just been to cast my vote at the General Election here in the UK. My locality was also holding elections for the borough council and the parish council (here, parish is nothing like parish back home; it is a local government thing)
To be honest, I hadn't given it much thought. Of course, I knew about the General Election. After six weeks of intensive electoral campaigning I'd have to be brain-dead, not to know.
I was well aware of all the parties, had heard their manifesto sound bites, and yes, I have my personal opinions about things. So in all honesty, it was not lack of interest on my part. When you live in a country with population of more than 64 million, though, you do get a feeling of 'What difference can I make?'
But a vote is a vote, even if democracy means that the choice is not always my choice. Like most Maltese people my age, I grew up hearing "Il-vot hu dritt u dover"(Your vote is your right and your duty) and "Kull vot jghodd" (Every vote counts). Hearing this mantra repeated on various bulletins over the past few days was a bit of a throwback to the Eighties for me.
So, just before going to pick up the kids from school at 3.15pm, I trotted off to my polling station to do my duty and exercise my right. Not knowing what to expect, I left thirty minutes earlier than I usually do.
And guess what?
It was laugably simple and straightforward. No parking restrictions. No spray-painted markings on the ground. No police officers milling around to maintain order. No queuing outside the "kamra tal-votazzjoni". No stamping or marking of the voting documents in quadruplicate. No ridiculous curtain to draw behind you when you vote.
We had voting for three separate elections going on in my polling station today, and there were less than a dozen officials. Saving resources, time, money and energy. And by the way, there was no disposable, laminated voting document valid only for today... If your name is on the register you can vote; simple as that.
Malta could take a leaf out of this book, methinks. We might save ourselves some badly-needed cash.