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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   30348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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You're pretty much either really really old, not American, or were the super poor and rural folk if you grew up a substantial amount of time without running water. I'll believe it, but it's definitely rare enough to be questionable. But even with that, you were a kid and not experiencing all the adult parts of life for yourself. You were the one being taken care of, not the caretaker so it's bound to look and seem a lot easier from your life perspective anyway.

Additionally while "without running water" is worse off than people have it nowadays, that's only one of the various improvements that technology has brought to household work. Unless you wanna say your mother also cleared out the ash and soot from a wood stove, killed and defeathered live chickens from the market, and hauled tons of firewood on top.

There's still a lot of work to be done in households now; we expect washing to be done regularly, not just on one specific day. The house should be cleaned every day, not just once a week or longer intervals where you would take up carpets

If you're spending a whole morning every day cleaning up now, then your family is either top percent dirty or you're OCD. That is not common or necessary for most families.

And as Parkinson's Law states, "work expands to fill the time available".

Exactly, many women with newfound time available to them got jobs to fill that time with new work.

Fewer hours, but not fewer expectations. Someone pointed out that women now spend more time with their children than 1950s full time housewives,

Exactly! Women, thanks to technology, are spending less of their time in hard labor tasks and more of their time bonding directly with their children. It is in some way "work" still yes, but this comes about because there's so much more free time when you don't have to beat the rugs or mend the shoes or make the soap.

She's Irish.

Well I got no idea what conditions would have been like for the Irish housewife then. I would guess it's rather similar but I can't say for sure.

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