Sharing house duties

One thing that our current period of social-distancing has highlighted, for me at least, is the nature of my domestic living arrangement. My boyfriend and I live together and have done so since the beginning of this year.

Something of interest as a homosexual couple is the breakdown of domestic labour. Among heterosexual couples, things have improved drastically since women began to take on a greater role in the workforce since the 1950s, but there remains a fairly sizeable gendered breakdown in the portion of domestic labour undertaken. To put it bluntly, women continue to do more irrespective of the (waged) hours worked in a household.

As we are both men, this is not a useful frame through which to view domestic work in our household. However, I do notice that we tend to gravitate towards different areas of strength and weakness. I am much more concerned with tidiness – I don’t like items being left in the ‘wrong’ place, and I have been particularly fervent about this since spending much more time at home during the COVID outbreak. My boyfriend is arguably less bothered by this, but is more focused on what you might call ‘cleanliness’ particularly with regards to the bedroom and bathroom. He is much more likely to want to wash the bed sheets, disinfect the bathroom and wash clothes more regularly.

I don’t really have an analysis for this, but I think they are interesting differences. Further, he is a doctor (a brave front line worker in his words – cue eye roll from me) and so is still spending considerable time out of the house. In raw terms, he also works more hours than me and certainly works harder in a physical sense and, at times, under considerable pressure. Perhaps because of these factors, I find myself taking on a more classic ‘feminised’ role in the house – it is much more common for me to shop for food, cook, vacuum and tidy, usually at times when he is either sleeping (due to night shift) or at work.

I am always hesitant to apply heteronormative structures to our relationship – why be trapped by these socially constructed rules if you’ve already broken out of them, by necessity! These are just my observations. I’m interested to know how other young couples, gay and straight, who live together divvy up the domestic duties.