Household chores

There are stereotypical responsibilities of the husband, the wife, and the children in a family. They say that the wife’s responsibilities are, basically, to do everything, as far as I can see … to make the beds in the morning, cook the breakfast, and then, when the children go to school and the husband goes to work, to start washing the clothes, then tidy up the kitchen, do the washing up, clean the kitchen, go shopping and buy the food for the week, and then put out the washing. If she has a garden, she can hang the washing out on a washing-line – and then tidy up the living room, do the “hovering” (the vacuum cleaning), and tidy the children’s bedrooms, although I think it should be the children’s responsibility, really, to keep their own bedrooms tidy.

The typical role of a husband, I suppose, is that during the week he goes out to work and earns money for the family. Maybe, at the weekend, he cleans the car and does more technical things around the house, like changing fuses and putting up shelves. Lots of people in England are really into DIY, that’s do-it-yourself, and they try to make furniture, put in their own bathroom appliances, put tiles on the bathroom walls themselves, put up shelves and things like that, and these things are usually seen as the husband’s responsibility. It’s also seen as his job to put up the wallpaper, paint the walls, and maybe also to work in the garden, mowing the lawn, cutting the hedges, trimming the rosebushes, etc.

I think it’s becoming much more balanced these days, as quite often the wife goes out to work too, and, of course, when she comes home from work she doesn’t want to have to start doing the vacuuming immediately. Some men are more willing to iron their own shirts and sew on buttons than others, but I think, nowadays, they’re quite often willing to help out with the household chores, such as cooking or washing up the dirty plates after the meal.

Concerning the children’s responsibilities, I think they should definitely keep their own rooms tidy, and make their own beds. If I had children, I would give them some pocket money, but on condition that they did some chores around the house every week. In this way, they might learn that the house doesn’t clean itself. You have to get the vacuum cleaner out and do some work if you want the place to stay tidy.

Wife, mother and career woman … well, I suppose if you’re a housewife and that’s what you’re decided you want to be, then that’s fine, but you have to take all the duties that go with that. So you have to be prepared to look after children and really play some part in their upbringing, and help them learn to read and write, and teach them how to tell the time and do up their shoelaces, take them to school, things like that. You also have to be prepared to do all the boring menial household duties. However, I think that if a woman wants to go out to work, she should be able to. Some people think it’s really bad if the wife leaves the children, puts them in a nursery school and goes out to work, as if she was neglecting them, but if she stayed at home with the children and was miserable, it wouldn’t solve anything, because maybe then she would just resent the children. So, a woman should follow her own heart, I think, and if she wants to work, then that’s fine.

Vocabulary

household chores - домашние обязанности

responsibility – ответственность

to tidy up the kitchen – прибираться на кухне

to do the “hovering” – пылесосить

to do the washing up – стирать

to earn money – зарабатывать деньги

to change fuses – менять пробки

to put tiles on something – выкладывать кафель на что-либо

to put up the wallpaper – наклеивать обои

to mow the lawn - стричь газон

to sew on buttons – пришивать пуговицы