With Enjoli

This Pandagon post on housework inequities (riffing on this article) is really interesting and thought-provoking, if depressing. The gist is that as wives earn more money, they end up doing a greater and greater share of the housework, with the result that women who are the sole bread-winners often do more housework than women who pull in 50% of the family's income. Season two of The Wire beckons me, but I'd like to say something about it in the next few days.

It's funny, but I'm really concerned about the way the Barksdales are losing market share. How are they going to hold on to the towers and the high-rises with that weak-a$# s%*t? At some point Stringer Bell is going to have to do something, no matter what Avon says. Also, I hoped that Stringer's seduction of D'Angelo's girl was going to lead to a lot more shirtless Idris Elba. A LOT more.

Comments

[Kip Manley]

Oh, wow. Are you just now only into Season Two? Damn. Good times ahead. —Though, sadly, not as shirtless as you might be hoping.

[Another Duncan]

The Wire: Best.TV.Ever. I need season 5 like Bubbles needs a fix. HBO need to re-up the package to the corner, you feel me?

Also, "Points on The Package" would be a great name for a Wire fan-site.

[Aeon J. Skoble]

Those articles focus not just on beleaguered wives-with-jobs, but on wives-who-are-big-bucks-breadwinners -- CEOs etc -- who "feel too guilty to hire a maid." This is world's-smallest-violin territory. If you're pulling CEO-level cash, and don't want to do housework, hire a maid. Why the guilt?

[SamChevre]

I haven't read the study, but it's one where checking the data carefully would be important. In some not-tiny proportion of households where the woman's income is greater, the man has some disability.

[Scott Lemieux]

A key lesson here, of course, is that the reification of 50s bourgeois housekeeping standards is a particularly bad deal for women. [/hobbyhorse]