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- Newsgroups: soc.women
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!ugle.unit.no!ugle!cindy
- From: cindy@solan10.solan.unit.no (Cynthia Kandolf)
- Subject: Re: Housework
- In-Reply-To: kendall@adobe.com's message of Mon, 18 Jan 1993 18:04:27 GMT
- Message-ID: <CINDY.93Jan22214627@solan10.solan.unit.no>
- Sender: news@ugle.unit.no (NetNews Administrator)
- Organization: /home/ludviga/cindy/.organization
- References: <CINDY.93Jan17163616@solan10.solan.unit.no>
- <1993Jan17.233339.1620@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
- <1993Jan18.180427.25720@adobe.com>
- Date: 22 Jan 93 21:46:27
- Lines: 36
-
- I've been asked via e-mail whether i think my husband does his share
- of the housework because he's Norwegian and he was brought up that
- way. The sender asked that i reply by posting, so that's what i'm
- doing.
-
- My answer is i'm not sure. I do know that in Norwegian schools, for
- many years now, every child has been required to take classes in
- cooking and to knit and sew in art class, and every child has had to
- do some carpentry work. This means that every adult under a certain
- age in Norway technically should know how to do these things.
-
- On the other hand, i know some Norwegian men who don't do their share
- of the work. I don't want to mention any names... At the other
- extreme, i know a man who is taking leave from work right now to take
- care of his baby daughter (and all the housework) while his wife
- finishes her studies.
-
- I think there are two more important reasons than nationality as to
- why Steinar is the way he is about the house. First, he is the oldest
- of five children. His father was out of the country for two years
- when he was a child, working for the UN. In a situation like that,
- everyone had to do chores, there was no question and no trying to
- bargain your way out of it. Related to this is the fact that his
- parents never dealt out chores based on sex. The boys had to take
- their turns at cooking and the girls had to take their turns at mowing
- the lawn. The second reason is that he lived alone for a number of
- years before we married. If he didn't take care of things around his
- apartment, they simply didn't get taken care of.
-
- In any case, i consider myself very very lucky to be married to him.
- Washing the dishes is only one of his good characteristics! ;-)
-
- -Cindy Kandolf
- cindy@solan.unit.no
- Trondheim, Norway
-
-