A lot of us grew up with the idea that women are somehow just naturally better at housework. This includes Darla Halyk, who realized pretty quickly that there was a hierarchy in her house and that chores split between her and her brother were assigned based on gender. That’s why it was no surprise her mom worked hard to make their house a home while her dad did the yard work, manual fixing, and playing with the kids.
As Halyk and her brother got older, their responsibilities increased, but chores were still divided by gender. This often meant the workload wasn’t fair, as she did cooking and cleaning while her brother would periodically mow the lawn or take out the trash.
“There weren’t a lot of blue jobs that needed daily attention. I noticed my workload was different, perhaps even harder at times, but I was the girl, and it was what was expected of me,” the blogger wrote on Facebook. “There were multiple days I spent bickering with my brother because I was having trouble handling my workload. I still remember thinking, I just want his help.”
This same scenario started playing out in her marriage years later.
“It was in those moments I realized his chore list seemed a little heavier in physical weight but much lighter in actual duties,” she wrote. “Nevertheless, I didn’t rebel. I didn’t speak out, complain, or say anything.”
Halyk knew that if she did complain about all that she did, she’d be labeled as a nag or a crazy woman.
“The word ‘nagging-b—-‘ had no trouble spilling from my Grandfather’s lips while my Grandmother waited on him hand and foot,” she wrote. “I had spent my whole life watching the women in my life carry the weight of the entire house on their backs while men sat back and watched them do it. It was normal, expected.”
This all needs to change.
Well, listen up, guys: Halyk isn’t her grandma or superhero mom, and just because they were goddesses who proved they could run the world with support from their husbands – as they sat on the couch – that doesn’t mean Halyk is going to.
“I want to smash the patriarchy for allowing me, my mother, and all women to believe we’re not capable of doing it all, without being labelled. That we were and are crazy for resisting our overburdened and under appreciated workloads. When in fact we were and often still are, doing everything, to keep our houses afloat. Making homes.
“We can change our world for the better if we allow our preconceived notions to change. Not just for women and men, families. Marriages. And, most importantly our children, and our children’s children.
“It is time men stop telling the women in their lives they are crazy. It’s not crazy to be exhausted. It’s not crazy to voice fatigue. It is not crazy to ask for help. It isn’t nagging when a woman pleads with her husband to clean the toilet or help around the house. She shouldn’t have had to beg him to clean his mess in the first place.”
‘Women aren’t crazy; they are tired.’
Halyk likely speaks for most overworked moms when she calls for men to step up more and to “Stop calling women nags and b—-es. Start doing your job as their partner so they don’t have to complain about the s— you don’t want to do. This isn’t about men helping women to run the house, it’s about men actually seeing that it isn’t only a woman’s job.”
Her concluding words make us want to cheer: “If I learned anything from my superhuman Mother, it is: ‘I can do it all, but all of it is not mine to do.’”