14 DAY TRIAL // Seeing a woman as the main breadwinner in the household is no longer a strange occurrence. However, as we all know, this also entails that, in order to become it, she has to give up other responsibilities around the house, which usually translate in a reversal of roles in the relationship. On this note, researchers have just tracked down the origin and, at the same time, busted the myth of Mr. Useless, the stay-at-home man, the Guardian informs.
After looking at the cases of 1,500 women who were the breadwinners in their respective households, researchers led by Dr. Rebecca Meisenbach, professor of communication at Missouri University, discovered that women who claim their stay-at-home male partner is basically “useless” without them are clearly exaggeration. Apparently, women who always say that their partner would not be able to handle himself around the house without their assistance are deliberately blowing things out of proportion.
They’re not doing so only for the pleasure of telling a little white lie, though, as researchers have also established that, by stressing that the man is useless without them, these women are reaffirming their position in the household. Admittedly, they feel guilty for straying from their attribution, that is, for having to forego their responsibilities around the house to pursue a career, and are trying to compensate for that by showing the man that they’re still in charge.
“Working women who provide the majority of the household’s income to the family continue to articulate themselves as the ones who ‘see’ household messes and needs as a way to retain claims to an element of a traditional feminine identity. These women are struggling with the intersections of their status as the breadwinner and other gendered societal expectations. By highlighting stories of how men have to be told or asked to do specific chores in the home, these female breadwinners are making sure they still fit gender boundaries of a wife as someone who manages the home and children,” Dr. Meisenbach says in the paper “The Female Breadwinner,” as cited by the aforementioned publication.
This way, their exaggerations towards their friends as regards their men’s competence with household chores are just their way of staying in control when they feel things are slipping through their fingers. “By directing the housework done by their husbands, they maintain a sense of control over the traditionally feminine sphere of the home. This path of expressing control of and responsibility for both home and paid work may be essential for working mothers to manage competing discourses of ideal worker and intensive mothering,” the author further says.