Language is important: A feminist primer

Dr. #2 is going to have to help me out on this post since she’s the feminist scholar.  (Everything I learned about feminism I’ve been learning from her and academic blogs!)  But I’m beginning to know subtle sexism when I see it.

Language is a tricky thing.  We can say one thing overtly but use language that implicitly says something quite the opposite.  How we say something can be more important than what we actually say.

Woman as child

There is so much infantilizing of women.  When’s the last time you called a woman over age 18 a girl for any reason?  Please, check yourself.  If you get together with a group of women, are they girlfriends?  Who gets called baby?

[disclaimer:  I think this song is MAD CATCHY!]

Pronouns matter

Much of this information comes from the work of Janet Shibley Hyde and colleagues. 

Much research shows that when people read, say, or hear “he” or “him” as generic pronouns, they almost always think of male examples.  In one study, participants read a sentence about “the average student” at a university, and that student was referred to as either  his, their, or his or her.  Then participants had to make up stories about this fictional student.  When “the average student” got the his pronoun, 65% of the stories were about men.  Using their resulted in 54% of stories being about men.  Using his or her, 44% were about men.  There are a lot of studies that replicate this finding.

That study was from 1978 with adults, so Hyde wanted to look at children and how they developed these ideas. She gave children a sentence such as:  When a kid goes to school, ____ often feels excited on the first day.  She filled the blank with either he, they, or he or she.  When the word was he, not a single boy in all of elementary school (through fifth grade) made up a story about a girl.  In fact, most children, girls and boys, did not even know about he being (supposedly) gender-neutral.  However, despite not being aware of the rule, most children thought of “human” as equivalent to “male”.  In another sentence, Hyde had children fill in the blank: If a kid likes candy, ____ might eat too much.  Overwhelmingly, the children filled in “he” to represent a random kid.  Even the girls.

This is true in English, which does not have genders on all our nouns, and also in other languages, like German and Spanish, which do.

Finally, Janet Shibley Hyde gave elementary school children a paragraph describing the fictional occupation of wudgemaker.  She varied the pronouns, and then asked children how well a woman could do the job, and how well a man could do it.  When rating men, pronoun had no effect on what children thought of them as wudgemakers.  They answered that a man could do the job pretty well whether the pronoun described wudgemakers as he, they, she, or he-or-she.  However, when figuring out how well a woman could do the job, pronouns mattered.  Children who heard the pronoun he to describe a typical wudgemaker rated a woman as being “just ok” at that job.  Children who heard she rated a woman as being very good at the job.  The other two pronouns were in the middle.

Sexist language can even lower females’ ability to remember content from a passage of reading.

Media and sexual abuse

Rape

And don’t get us started on language used in rape cases.  Well, I guess it’s too late.

Problems include passive language:  “Every year thousands of women are raped.  How can this problem be stopped?”  Hello.  Every year thousands of men rape women!

In another study of sexual assault coverage, most of the quotes used were from the perpetrator or his lawyer (eww).  Who gets to tell their story?

Child Abuse

It gets worse with child sexual abuse in the media.

The media often use “it” to describe a child (most victims of sexual abuse are girls), and even when the media identify the gender they will later revert to using it, in something called Gender Slippage.  Language is of critical importance in influencing societal views.  When they do this, the article becomes more neutral and reduces the reader’s emotional involvement.  It also reduces the perceived seriousness of the problem.  Do we want to do that?

When adults abuse children, the media often frames the situation as a consensual relationship.  Media sometimes use the word “affair” between a 60-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl.  That is not an affair.  That is abuse.  “Jailed teacher afraid lover boy will dump her”  (O’Mahony, 1998) is one example.  Again, ewww.

Domestic Violence

Johnson (1994) did an incredible study of San Francisco newspapers’ coverage of domestic violence (DV) cases involving death of the victim.  Professional DV experts were quoted in only 25% of articles; the main source of quotes was perpetrator’s family.  Who has voice?

The term “domestic violence” was used repeatedly for non-white couples but rarely for white couples.  White perpetrators were usually described as nice, normal, sweet, and loving; minority perpetrators were described negatively.  In the articles, violence was seen as aberration in white communities but expected in minority communities.

Bullock and Cubert (2002) studied over 200 Seattle newspaper accounts of domestic violence.  They find that many many articles shifted blame from attacker onto victim or circumstances (“the divorce was hard on him”).  EWww!  One possible mechanism for how this happens is DARVO.  There was also a misconception that abusers should be readily identifiable (i.e., not the rich white people-next-door).

But wait, you also get…

We’ve already covered stereotype threat.  Yes, words really can hurt.

You get to choose what you consume in the media.  What will you tolerate?  Do you write letters to the editor?

The Grumpies Weigh-in on Current Issues

Topic 1: students who don’t read the syllabus.

THE SYLLABUS, YOU MUST OBEY!  OBEY!!!!

 (or, take your F and go away)

email me and you will see

how very angry I can be

 #2:  scary!

 #1:  I know right

 #2:  “Dr. #1 is scary.  Don’t take classes from her unless you’re really smart and responsible.”

 #1:  True story

Topic 2: Boobs.

 #1:  so who do you agree with re: boobgate, Historiann or Dr. Crazy?

 #2:  I haven’t read dr crazy yet.  I did read historiann and mildly agree with her.

 #1:  I also agree with historiann

and also understand that most people would have excused the misogyny if he’d at least been funny (and not just “women have no sense of humor” unfunny, but even unfunny to sexist men!)

 #2:  My partner chuckled occasionally, but also felt that a lot of it fell very very flat.  He remarked, “Chances that Seth McFarlane ever hosts anything again:  Approaching zero.”

#2:  I’m reading dr crazy too, and I slightly agree with her as well.

#1:  I think Dr. Crazy is right that this points out the standards of Hollywood.  But I also am fairly sure that was not Seth McFarlane’s intention.  I think that no, really, his audience is jerky 12 year old boys

#2:  actually I think it kinda WAS his intention

#1:  really?

#2:  yes, but our views are not mutually exclusive.  He could be honestly poking at Hollywood while at the same time also appealing to 12-year-olds

 #1:  and even if it did, hollywood can feel good about slamming him down and getting back to business as usual, meaning he messed up.  He needs the “wink” to show he’s being ironic.

 #2:  I feel like Seth McFarlane at the Oscars is such a tiny blip in the landscape of prevailing misogyny that I can’t get that upset about it.

 Sexist or not-sexist, I wish he had been FUNNIER

 #1:  that’s what everyone is saying!

 #2:  some parts were mildly funny

some parts… were bombs

(relatively independently of what the subject matter was)

 #1:  also I watched Will Ferrell accept the Mark Twain award, which also made me laugh and had a little bit of poking at the patriarchy in it, which was a pleasant surprise

 #2:  Yes!

 #1:  the steve martin/alec baldwin intro to the oscars was not actually particularly politically correct, but it sure was funny

 #2:  ah, see, here:  I agree with Flavia:  ”I actually wasn’t particularly bothered by the “boobs” number. It was the casual, relentless misogyny in the rest of MacFarlane’s act that did it for me. Like his description of “Zero Dark Thirty” as testimony to women’s ability “to never, ever let anything go.” Like his saying that it didn’t matter if we can understand a word Salma Hayek or Penelope Cruz say, because they’re great to look at. And on, and on. “

 #1:  right

 #2:  right

the boobs number was actually somewhat amusing.  The “women can’t let go” joke was offensive.

 #1:  I don’t think seth mcfarlane was trying to point out misogyny– I think he just is a misogynist

 #2:  he can be both.

 #1:  well, I meant boob controversy as teh whole thing

he lives and breathes misogyny

can’t help it

 #2:  and here is where I agree with dr. crazy:  ”And so, while I don’t think that McFarlane was a laugh riot, and I am deeply suspicious of the way that irony is used as an alibi for sexism these days, I didn’t find him demonstrably more offensive than most of the pop culture that I encounter on a daily basis.”

 #1:  no, it was obviously the combination with being offensive and not being funny

even ricky gervais was forgiven for skewering hollywood becasue more folks found him hilarious

Topic 3:  Creepy education.

 #1:  I think that this is a good idea:  http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=07ca13bf-c915-4b87-a44e-55ba4d02ba55  but MUST we start an article about education with an assassination analogy?  I think that’s tasteless.

 #2:  more than a bit creepy

 #1:  yes

 #2: intro analogies are pretty bad journalism anyway

 #1:  goddamn, I know.

Ponderings on perfection

One of DC1′s classmates is a doctor married to another doctor.  (Her youngest is best friends with my oldest– they skipped first grade together.)  Dr. Bestfriendsmom is also gifted with organizational and artistic abilities.  Her kids seem similarly endowed and often win the school-wide art contests.

Dr. Bestfriendsmom also throws amazing parties.  She knows interesting people, both with kids and without, even though they’ve only been living here a couple of years.  She and her husband are both total extroverts.  Their parties are honestly the only ones we’ve really enjoyed (including the ones we throw) since our odd assortment of non-work friends graduated, getting their PhDs, and moved to other states.

The children’s parties that Dr. Bestfriendsmom throws are generally themed.  She does the decorations.  (She makes pinatas in her hotel room on conference trips.)  She does the baking.  (The baking can include 30+ gingerbread houses made from scratch.)  She’s totally amazing.  A non-anal Martha Stewart.

At the last party, other mothers tried to engage me and did engage each other with catty comments about Dr. Bestfriendsmom and her over-the-top baking.  I responded with earnest, “It’s totally amazing,” and “DC1 is loving this” kinds of comments.  Mentally narrowing the eyes in my mind while doing so (the eyes on my face got wider and more innocent looking).

I don’t get the vitriol.  The jealousy.  Why are people so hostile when presented with someone who is awesome?  Why do they feel like they have to tear someone down who is just trying to do things well?

I don’t particularly want to be her… crafts are not my thing even if I had artistic ability.  (Also:  it is my understanding that MDs have to deal with blood.  Urp!)  So much extroversion would tire me out.  But I appreciate that there’s someone in our life who puts in that kind of effort to throw a big party and to make sure her guests are having a great time.

It could be that I don’t feel jealous precisely because I don’t particularly want to be a crafty person who throws awesome parties (though I appreciate being invited to them!).  But I also look up to the awesome women in my field who are at better schools and more published than I am, even though I do want to be them!  I strive for their accomplishments and I appreciate the way they’re opening doors for all women.  (Come to think of it, the ex-friend whose therapist told her to stop talking to me often took instant dislikes to some of these shooting stars, and also accused me of being jealous of her own success.)

Maybe it’s a fixed mind-set vs. growth mind-set thing.  I assume that with enough concentrated effort I could do things, or at least do more things, so there’s no need to tear anybody down to my level.  But really I have no idea.

Related:
Sylvia:  The woman who does everything so much better than you do.
Also Historiann’s recent series on Hillary Clinton.  (Another awesome woman.)

Why do you think some people hate perfection?  Do you?

This is why we can’t have nice things.

This [grant thing] that [redacted] has is really stupid.  So much bad science to “further women and minorities”.  Reading through their annual report and it’s thing after thing of, “We had this workshop, but nobody came.”  They’re also not checking to see if anything works even when people do come.  There’s not even data collected before and after to see if there’s even a change, much less a treatment effect.  There was one thing where they’re like, “we were going to do this survey but…”  They sent the report to me to evaluate, but the entire campus was “treated” and uh… the treatment seems to have been nothing.

Bad science makes the baby Jesus cry.  Poor baby Jesus.

They seem to have a lot of meetings too.  So basically, trying to further the careers of women and minorities at this school consists of making them go to pointless meetings.

See, this is why women and minorities can’t have nice things.

Argh!

(Note:  Some details in the above rant have been changed to protect both the stupid and our own rear ends.)

Are you ever astonished by the amount of bad science done for a good cause?  Have you ever noticed that it’s always the under-represented who have to waste time in meetings?

Students will drive me out of academia, part 2.

I want to write fascinating awesome things with this cool pen. Instead I am stuck answering student emails about why they can’t do their homework on time, have mercy because they have 6 classes, woe is me.  Sigh.

What I said was, you had the assignment for a long time and you have known the schedule all semester. If you waited to the last day to do it, oh well.  [not in those words]

Do your 6 classes not give syllabi with due dates, allowing you to plan ahead? Oh, they do? Well shucks then, I guess you’re just not keeping up.

In general…

my student is a sassing bitch.

  my colleague had a student send threatening emails.

  we’ve both had to protect our TAs from students who harrass them.

Why do I keep this job, again?

I would find this job better if I felt more respected. And if I didn’t feel that at any moment a student might snap and become a creeper.  It’s too bad that I have to tell my RAs and TAs to keep the phone number of campus security handy, for protection from their fellow students who don’t know how to handle their own rage and entitlement.

All my female colleagues have stories of creeper students.

This is not acceptable.  The men don’t get creepers.

I call on all humans to end the patriarchal nonsense!

Problem at work: seeking advice

Two faculty meetings ago, I raised my hand while a (large white male Southern) senior full professor was talking.  He immediately turned on me and started yelling at me about interrupting.  I responded that I had only raised my hand and had a clarifying question.  He yelled at me that I talked too much.  After this exchange was over, nobody let me ask my question.

At the last faculty meeting I actually did interrupt him.  One of the (female) professors who was not at the meeting wanted feedback on how to deal with our power hungry IT department (she asked another faculty member to collect feedback).  The senior professor started on a long rant about how she was going about it the wrong way and the first step is to… do essentially what the female professor was planning to do.  Which I pointed out.  Then he turned on me and started screaming about me interrupting.  Since the meeting time was over and it had devolved into complaining, I got up and started to leave.  He then yelled at me that I was not allowed to leave and he had more to say to me.  I told him I did not like being treated this way, let the door close, and went back to my office.

Our previous chair is on an extended sabbatical.  Our current chair was in both of these meetings and did nothing.  I do not feel comfortable discussing this problem with our current chair.  The senior (male) full professor I would normally look to for protection is in a feud with this guy– they both started screaming expletives at each other during a search committee meeting last year that they then both removed themselves from.  (The replacement committee did a great job.)  There are no other full professors in the dept.

This senior professor (the one who yells at me) has become increasingly erratic during the passing years and frequently engages in long angry rants about another group in the department having too many talks, and other bizarre things.  Usually he apologizes after saying something directly awful to me or another faculty member, but as is indicated by his second rant at me, he does not think he was in the wrong and still blames me.  Any time he sees me now, he glares or frowns.  I have not been meeting his gaze, and I go out of my way to avoid him.

I am a small female, though I do talk a lot, especially when a meeting is run poorly.  (I’m the person asking what the action items are.)  I do not feel comfortable talking to this professor directly as he is a big crazy person and I am small.  My chair has done nothing and I suspect that my department may think that as a female I should keep my mouth shut more and let the men take care of things like the majority of my other female colleagues do.  (That is to say, the women do the majority of the service, but the men do the majority of the talking.  Standard fare.)

Assuming that I am tenured, what should I do?  What are my options?

Does living frugally mean you should settle for a smaller salary?

Something that people who follow YMoYL note from time to time is that if you don’t spend much, you don’t need to make as much to become financially independent.  You can choose to do jobs that don’t pay as well, to follow your muse, save the world, that sort of thing.

One thing that is noted is that you can make a big sacrifice by choosing a career that helps people and makes you feel warm and fuzzy rather than one that rakes in the big bucks… teaching in an inner-city school instead of in a highly paid suburban district, for example.

Of course, if you make a super big salary, you can do a lot more charitable giving, enough that could actually make a real difference on its own.

Should you settle for a smaller salary just because you can?  That depends on what your trade-offs are. If you’re really into something that a lot of other people are into and doesn’t pay well… like art, then yes, settling for feeding your muse may be worth it.  (Though note:  Scalzi doesn’t think a person should get paid less than 20cents/word for freelance, but he’s also not beneath taking technical writing assignments!).  If a smaller salary means you get something tangible like a more flexible schedule or the ability to work fewer hours per week, sure.

However, if living frugally means you’re allowing yourself to be exploited… no, we don’t think that’s a good idea.  Obviously, you do have agency, and you are allowed to make that decision to be exploited if you’re conflict-averse, if you don’t mind the negative spillovers being a doormat has on other people who don’t want to be doormats and so on (we’re ambivalent about choice feminism here at Grumpy Rumblings)… But we’d like to remind you that money buys goods and services.  Living frugally means that you can use your extra money that you deserve by being a productive person to help make the world a better place.  You don’t just have to spend it on yourself.  There are better ways to make sacrifices than by accepting a lower salary just because you can.

Motherhood Online: A book review

We  were sent Motherhood Online by the editor, Michelle Moravec.

This book is a scholarly academic tome, but even given that, there are only two articles in it that I would call inaccessible to non-academic readers.  (And those two articles are both short and probably inaccessible to most academic readers as well.)  Non-academic readers will find the first section just as amusing and the second and third sections just as interesting as this academic reader.

The book starts out with case studies that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been on a pregnancy or mothering forum.  It does seem that if you’ve been on one of these forums, you’ve really been on all of the forums, for all the differences we perceive between the mothering.coms and the babycenters of the world, the dynamics are not that much different, even across forums from different countries.  Oddly, this section is titled “Theoretical perspectives” but is, for the most part, a-theoretical and, for the most part, focuses on each author’s own experiences with an online parenting community.

The second section… titled, “Case studies” includes articles with a broader theory base, more formal qualitative methods, and comparisons across different cases.  This second section focuses on communities that many of us have had less experience with, but are interesting in their own rights.  I especially enjoyed the studies of teenage mothers, autistic parents, port-wine stain, stay-at-home dads, and really most of the articles in this section.  I felt like I learned something reading many of these articles.

The last section focuses on blogs and community, with the stand-out piece being one on the community of people from developed countries who use (employ?) Indian women as surrogate mothers.

Although the introduction focuses on the positives to these online communities, the articles themselves are even-handed with both the positives (community building, information sharing, support) and the negatives (conflict, incorrect information, rationalization, etc.)  The authors come from a number of different disciplines, including communication, sociology, public health, anthropology, history and others.  These different disciplinary paths and perspectives come across in the methodology and writing.  Obviously we feel more comfortable with the social scientist methodologies, but other disciplines provide for entertaining reading and discussion.

Is this worth reading?  Sure!  Especially if you’re into non-fiction and would like to think a bit about they dynamics of online communities.  The book includes a nice collection of articles that, should, for the most part, be as easy to read as a Malcolm Gladwell book, but with perhaps a few more citations included.

Extreme Patriarchy-Induced Rage (now decaf!)

Quality ranting in today’s instant-messaging:

I should probably not talk to people while I am cutting back on caffeine for the summer.  Also it’s possible I shouldn’t make a major life decision while pissed off about travel and things.

#2: why are you pissed off about travel?

#1: because it sucks ass to get to and from Blighted Town.  It’s super-expensive and massively inconvenient.  Also I maybe shouldn’t make a major decision while detoxing off caffeine.  did I mention we went to another wedding this weekend

#2: ick, caffeine detox

  no wonder you haven’t been up

#1: my favorite person in the dept is leaving here because her hubby can’t get a job here.  and I feel like the seniors in the dept hate me and they’re not retiring

#2: nobody could hate you

  maybe they have bitch faces

 #1: wrong. they are crazy mad insane people and they hate me because of no reason. But they do.

if they have bitch faces, they must also have bitch sentences.

#2:  ha!

#1:  sorry, I’m really really ragey right now due to my mom’s IMing me in the other window about how people screw her over and SHE LETS THEM

#2: my mom is IMing me about how she’s almost done with her revision for a book chapter.  She’s working on the citations

#1: see, my mom is IMing me about how her male authors don’t do the revisions on the book chapters, so she has to, because her boss accepts sub-par work from authors.  my mom does the citations for men. Because her boss lets it be that way.

  my mom, BTW, is not a secretary.

#2: My mom used to be more of a pushover, but since they were assholes when she got breast cancer, she’s gotten less doormatty.

#1: I don’t understand why I have to produce publishable work in order to get published, but other people don’t!

 #2: Because you’re a young woman?

#1: other people get my mom to fix it for them!

#2: It isn’t fair. Though I bet you could get your mom to fix things for you.

 #1: my mom wouldn’t fix MY papers when I was a KID IN SCHOOL! she made me do it myself!  she did proofread part of my dissertation, but she damn sure didn’t do the citations for me.

#2: obviously she’s only a doormat for men.

  hm, your mom is part of the patriarchy?

#1: patriarchy combined with lack of caffeine makes me extra-ragey.

 #2: Perhaps I’m being too mean. [#1 doesn't think so]  But seriously, I’m glad my mom isn’t a doormat anymore.

#1: mostly, my mom’s BOSS is patriarchy. My mom knows this is wack but refuses to change. She is patriarchy too, but less so.  I wish my mom would quit being so patriarchy. She raised us to do better than that.

#2: you should tell her that.

#1: WTF second-wave feminists who taught me that I’m as good as a man but apparently don’t actually live that.

#2: “Mom, I’m sorry to have to say this, but you’re setting a bad example.”

#1: I’ve tried.  but she also has low self-confidence about her awesome skills and ability to get a different job if this one lets her go. Which if they have any brains they won’t because she works like a workhorse and for cheap.

#2: ridiculous

  but I suppose it provides health insurance

#1: how the F*CK can we make OTHER people pay us what we’re WORTH when some people think it’s totally ok for a woman to get treated like a doormat? As long as there are some doormats, the rest of us get trampled too.

#2: it is true.   we get blowback for not being not doormats

#1: IT’S PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT MAKE MY STUDENT EVALS GO DOWN

#2: exactly!  My mom says she wishes your mom were her editor.

 #1: my mom doesn’t seem to understand why I’m so mad about her job. It’s because she’s teaching men that a woman will do their work for them, and then I have to deal with the little shits in my classroom.

#2: yup

 #1: I told her that but she doesn’t believe it’s anyone’s fault but their parents. HELLO you are a parent too.

 #2: My mother agrees with you.  I’m sorry that your mom is a tool for the Man.

#1: maybe your mom and my mom should swap jobs for a week. My mom can write things. Your mom can be an editor that’s not a doormat.

 #2: She wouldn’t though.

 #1: the pay isn’t good enough!

p.s.  Sorry Mom, I know that patriarchy is a system, not just you.  There are many systematic forces going on here.  I love you even though you annoy me.

Grumpy Readers, Does it bother you when other people are used by the system (and have given up on trying to stop being used)?  Does it matter if the person is a loved one?

Cleanliness is next to cleanser in the dictionary: a deliberately controversial post

Why do we have to train our kids to want to be tidy?

Yes, we need our kids to be polite and respectful of others’ spaces.  They need to know the basics of how to clean a floor or a dish or make a bed or whatever, because some day they may be a guest in someone else’s house and when you’re in someone else’s house you need to be a good guest.   But why do they need to get uneasy, unhappy, upset, etc. when a room isn’t clean?  Isn’t the ability to deal with a little bit of mess a much more important skill than the need to make sure a room is clean?

Many (but not all) women I talk to can’t even comprehend this idea.  They look at me like I’m nuts.  Eyes narrow.  Conversation gets really awkward.  Cleanliness really is next to Godliness and is something we should all be striving for and God hates those who don’t clean up after themselves.  Usually it’s women who are SAHM or who are WOHM but always stressed out and complaining about not having any time and having husbands who don’t help out enough that are most unable to comprehend the idea.   Really, just let things go.  It may even help your relationship!

(For some reason, I’ve never met a man, other than the rare case who has been formally diagnosed with OCD, who seems to have this hang-up.   A pathology in men is the social norm for women.  IBTP.  Also:  think about the implications this situation has for gender division of chores in a game theoretic framework.  The person who cares is the one who does the work.  The one who does the housework gets to relax less at home.  And bam, you’ve just supported a Gary Becker hypothesis about wage-gender differentials.)

But I think they *can’t* let things go because having things cluttered really bothers them.  It gets down deep into the craw.  And yet they want their children to have the same disability.  The same visceral need to have the place be spotless.  As if it’s a virtue.

I don’t mind a house being clean, but I don’t mind it being messy either.  Messy houses are more comfortable.  Clean houses are more like places one goes to visit.  Both have their virtues, but neither one bothers me.  Obviously there’s a problem with broken glass, rusty nails, excrement etc… but that kind of thing is not going to be an issue with the average family (even if news reports make that kind of thing seem more common).

We don’t have a house-cleaner.  We don’t need our house to be spotless.  We don’t need it to be tidy.  If company comes, we clean.  If stuff is in the way on the floor, it gets moved out of the way.   It doesn’t take that much cleaning to make sure that the kitchen and bathrooms aren’t going to be giving anyone salmonella.  Things that need to be found in a hurry are organized (like spices or paperwork).  But that level of cleanliness sure as heck doesn’t require the fly-lady.  Or spending $80/week on a cleaner.

Disclaimer:  We are NOT saying there’s something wrong with you if your house is clean.  If you have the time or the money and it’s something you value, go for it.  But if you don’t have either and it’s stressing you out, we feel bad for you.  Sure, one solution might be to somehow find time, money or family support to get things shiny, but another is to work on being more comfortable with something less than perfection.  And the ability to live with imperfection is a gift we should give all our daughters (and sons).

Does your house have to be clean?  Do you need to train your kids to become neat and tidy?  Does a made bed (Gretchin Rubin’s hang-up) or kitchen sink you can see your face in (flylady’s thing) make that stress you didn’t know you had go away?  Are you unable to function in a cluttered environment?  Do you worry about “what others must think”?  Does a messy house make you feel like less of a person… less of a woman?