Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline, and Caroline spring has sprung. It
Speaker 1: is now April, and it's time for spring cleaning, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get all that pollen off your car. Do you
Speaker 1: do the spring cleaning thing? It depends I if I'm bored. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I usually am too busy to think about it.
Speaker 1: I do think about it. That's good. I don't tend
Speaker 1: to do it though. Well, we're talking about whether women
Speaker 1: are cleaner than men, and you have a male roommate,
Speaker 1: your dude roommated roommate, and you talk to me about
Speaker 1: how you guys do have some some differences in your
Speaker 1: cleaning approach. Yeah, dude roommate is super neat. He gets
Speaker 1: mad if I leave shoes or purses in the living room.
Speaker 1: But he's not clean as in cleaning dishes, sprang down counters, vacuuming.
Speaker 1: I I'm the opposite clutter. I'm naturally a bit of
Speaker 1: a clutterbug, uh, which I can handle, but I can't
Speaker 1: stomach a dirty kitchen for instance. Now with the wouldn't
Speaker 1: that if he can see though a pile of dishes
Speaker 1: in the sink? Is that not? Does that not mess
Speaker 1: with his neatness? Well, see, the thing is due roommate
Speaker 1: doesn't cook very much, so there's never quite a stack.
Speaker 1: It'll be just like a pot that sits low in
Speaker 1: the sinks, so it's not in his field of vision necessarily.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Um, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into more about the differences in how you know,
Speaker 1: women and men are clean or not clean, And we're
Speaker 1: looking mostly at hygiene kind of stuff, and I think
Speaker 1: that we could agree that the general assumption is that
Speaker 1: women are cleaner than men, right, Yeah, Men have the
Speaker 1: whole thing like, oh, they're just messy guys. They're boys,
Speaker 1: they're dirty, you know, in childhood there's a whole thing
Speaker 1: about girls are made of sugar, spice and all things
Speaker 1: nice boys or snip snails and puppy dog too. I
Speaker 1: don't know that if you've ever been to a public restroom,
Speaker 1: I don't think you could argue that women are necessarily
Speaker 1: cleaner than them. That's true, But as far as the
Speaker 1: standards of cleanliness, what people tend to expect clean wives
Speaker 1: out of boys and girls. There was a study that
Speaker 1: came out of Oregon State University by Sharon Klohe, who's
Speaker 1: the philosopher UM and she talks about how the standards
Speaker 1: of cleanliness are generally hire for girls, even by the
Speaker 1: age of five, and it has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with differences such as girls being dressed in dresses whereas
Speaker 1: boys are in more rough and tumble cargo shorts or
Speaker 1: denom pants denom pan denom pants the gene um and
Speaker 1: she talks about how these gendered norms of cleanliness go
Speaker 1: back to nineteenth century US in British schoolyards, where physical
Speaker 1: cleanliness was really taught in school as a form of morality,
Speaker 1: and for girls especially, that emphasis on physical hygiene extended
Speaker 1: to how they carry themselves and presented their bodies. The
Speaker 1: whole cleanliness is next to godliness and the whole virtuous
Speaker 1: woman thing checking themselves. So Chloe would say that from
Speaker 1: the earliest age, girls are acculturated to be cleaner than boys.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would necessarily apply to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. The more the longer we do this
Speaker 1: podcast together, the more I think my childhood was very
Speaker 1: strange and atypical for girls. I did wear a lot
Speaker 1: of dresses because my mother, like would still want to
Speaker 1: dress me in smock dresses if she could, But so
Speaker 1: I always need to change out of the dress and
Speaker 1: go outside and play. But when my parents built their house,
Speaker 1: they didn't finish off the backyard for years and years.
Speaker 1: So it was just like this huge mound of Georgia
Speaker 1: red clay, and I would slide down it on my
Speaker 1: butt in my cute pink shorts, and my mother would
Speaker 1: yell at me, and I'm like whatever, I like the mud,
Speaker 1: sassy little Caroline and shaking my finger like whatever, Sally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a mix of both of those on the
Speaker 1: one hand, wearing lots of dresses. But then as I
Speaker 1: got a little bit older, I wanted to be more
Speaker 1: tomboyish and play with my older brother and get messy
Speaker 1: and stuff. So maybe it is more of an age thing.
Speaker 1: But the question of our you know, women clearer than men,
Speaker 1: is looking more into our patterns of cleanliness in adulthood,
Speaker 1: because for me, I have lived with guys and girls,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, Caroline, the guys have been cleaner. Overall.
Speaker 1: Women can be very messy, we can be What's up
Speaker 1: with that? What is that? Maybe all of the things
Speaker 1: that we have, which we'll talk about with like office spaces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do have a lot of things. That's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's why my closet is such a terrible disaster.
Speaker 1: But um, Kloe, you know ties in her theories about
Speaker 1: gender and cleanliness to the hygiene hypothesis. Kristen, do we
Speaker 1: want to get into this this now? We don't want
Speaker 1: to confuse anybody. It's kind of a long drawn out hypothesis,
Speaker 1: but basically the general idea of the hygiene hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that a lack of childhood exposure to germs could be
Speaker 1: responsible for adult allergies and diseases. Basically, the idea that
Speaker 1: if the immune system isn't busy fighting off germs, it
Speaker 1: shifts to developing more allergic tendencies. So you know, your
Speaker 1: immune system gets bored and it's like, what can I attack?
Speaker 1: Let's go for peanuts. Yeah, And some researchers think that
Speaker 1: this is responsible for increased rates and things like asthma,
Speaker 1: um and essentially, you know, we hear about it a lot,
Speaker 1: like the question of whether or not like children today
Speaker 1: especially are so sanitized that we are leaving their immune
Speaker 1: systems defenseless. Towards germs like let him go outside good dirty, yeah,
Speaker 1: and solo closed. Theory uh in in her paper is
Speaker 1: basically that girls have it worse because we are expected
Speaker 1: from a young age to be cleaner and you know,
Speaker 1: more prim and proper than boys are. That we are
Speaker 1: exposed to fewer germs and fewer contaminants, and so we
Speaker 1: end up growing up to be a whole mess of allergic,
Speaker 1: asthmatic and autoimmune disorder. Written people, and may I please
Speaker 1: briefly talk about cooties? Oh? Yeah, sure you do? You
Speaker 1: have them? I don't know. I've got my circle circle
Speaker 1: dot dot immunization a couple of years ago when I
Speaker 1: got my tetanus, So I probably get your due for
Speaker 1: a boost. I probably do need a booster. But in
Speaker 1: close paper that she published in the journal Social Science
Speaker 1: and Medicine, she cited how sociologists have actually studied the
Speaker 1: cooties phenomenon and so called pollution rituals that take place
Speaker 1: generally among kids between six and nine years old. So
Speaker 1: we're getting a little bit older, and she talks about
Speaker 1: how girls are far more likely than boys to be
Speaker 1: associated with cooties and be ostracized as carriers of cooties
Speaker 1: utie carriers. Well, and she links that to the whole
Speaker 1: high giene hypothesis and the high the greater expectation for
Speaker 1: girls to be clean because you know, we're from a
Speaker 1: young age. We're told that, you know, we we might
Speaker 1: even have this thing called cooties, and to stay away
Speaker 1: because we're just covered and covered in girl germ. Did
Speaker 1: you ever make the paper? Well, okay, see that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Everybody calls them fortune tellers, but at my school, we
Speaker 1: call them cootie catchers. The thing where the with the
Speaker 1: flaps and you put your fingers in it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would open it, and I wish people could see my hands.
Speaker 1: Our hands are doing that some flapping, but we would
Speaker 1: use them like a beak to pick cooties off of
Speaker 1: our arms. Oh well, again there is a bit of
Speaker 1: a socialization gap with my home school. Well, when I
Speaker 1: tell people cootie schers, they think I'm weird, So don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. I think most people call them fortune
Speaker 1: tellers can be weird together. Great, Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: let's talk about physical cleanliness, so in adults, because I
Speaker 1: think we've established that overall, least expectation wise, girls clearer
Speaker 1: than boys. But as we grow up, what happens when
Speaker 1: we're left to our own devices? Is it the same? Well?
Speaker 1: Yes and no. I think men are cleaner in summer
Speaker 1: guards and women are cleaner and others. Um. There was
Speaker 1: a survey performed by Cuticura hand Wash in that showed
Speaker 1: that men are becoming more obsessive about hygiene. That might
Speaker 1: be strong. Language obsessive might be a little strong. But
Speaker 1: basically the survey in the u K goes against what
Speaker 1: a lot of other studies have said in recent years,
Speaker 1: mainly that there's no big difference in how much we
Speaker 1: wash our hands, brush our teeth, and clean our sheets. Uh.
Speaker 1: The survey said that both men and women wash their
Speaker 1: hands ten times a day and change their sheets every
Speaker 1: three weeks through so, which makes me want to puke seriously,
Speaker 1: every three weeks? Am I the only one who changes
Speaker 1: my sheets every week? I don't change my sheets every week? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sleeping ever any time saying it's fine. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a well, some surveys even find that men might
Speaker 1: wash their hair more than women. But I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that is not a hygiene thing. That
Speaker 1: is a hairstyling thing. Because we're women are told to
Speaker 1: not it's it's actually better for your hair. Do not
Speaker 1: wash your hair. Spoiler. I color my hair and red
Speaker 1: faith the fastest, so I don't want to. I only
Speaker 1: wash my hair like once or twice a week. But
Speaker 1: you do, you change your sheets more than you wash
Speaker 1: your hair about the same. That's a great step. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was another UK survey among a thousand college students
Speaker 1: looking at that whole changing of the sheets thing, and
Speaker 1: it also indicated that that male students might be changing
Speaker 1: their sheets more of them change your sheets at least
Speaker 1: once a month, with more than washing them once a week,
Speaker 1: meeting the Caroline standard, whereas the female students wash your
Speaker 1: sheets about every two months, which is surprising. I would,
Speaker 1: I would say, ladies, what's wrong? But I remember, I
Speaker 1: mean freshman year of college, I barely changed my sheets
Speaker 1: either maybe once a month, maybe once a month. I
Speaker 1: was there with the guys changing my sheets. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: with the whole underwear thing, no big surprise here that
Speaker 1: women change their underwear more often than men do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Forty two. This is back to the Cuticura survey of
Speaker 1: men admitted to wearing the same pair of undepens more
Speaker 1: than once without washing them, and this was often for women.
Speaker 1: This was just and I would like to take this
Speaker 1: time to point out that according to a Keeping It
Speaker 1: Clean That's k l E. In infographic that Christen and
Speaker 1: I found that's great comparing cleanliness and hygiene between the genders,
Speaker 1: they said that poop just does that come off people.
Speaker 1: You need to like really sterilize that if you're going
Speaker 1: to be wearing you can get up to a gram
Speaker 1: of poop in your underwear if you don't wash them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was so excited slash disgusted by that fact that
Speaker 1: I tweeted it oh well once I ran across it,
Speaker 1: And I also texted it out of context to my boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who was then very confused and asked if everything was okay. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just underwear and sheets that we have
Speaker 1: to worry about. Let's talk about our actual physical selves. Uh.
Speaker 1: An American Society of Microbiology study in two thousand five
Speaker 1: found that women's hands tend to be cleaner than men's.
Speaker 1: And how did they find this? Did they did they
Speaker 1: go up to people and swipe their hands. No, they
Speaker 1: just they just plain all spied on them in the bathroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harris Interactive Pulling watched over six thousand adults, six thousand,
Speaker 1: twenty eight adults to be precise, just lingering in bathrooms
Speaker 1: waiting to see if you're gonna wash it on tower
Speaker 1: for nine hours. And they found that women wash your
Speaker 1: hands a lot more often than men. And this is
Speaker 1: in public restrooms and Caroline. The worst hygiene, unfortunately, was
Speaker 1: found for both men and women at Atlanta's Turner Field
Speaker 1: Home of the Braves in our hometown. Thirty seven percent
Speaker 1: of men and sixteen percent of women left the bathroom
Speaker 1: without washing. Yeah, but what about all the catchup and
Speaker 1: mustard from hot dogs? Hey, these people are maybe they're
Speaker 1: during a couple of expensive beers and they want to
Speaker 1: get back out there to their expensive seats with their
Speaker 1: expensive hot dogs, watching the expensive game. The biggest gender
Speaker 1: disparity was at New York's Penn Station, where sixty percent
Speaker 1: of men and of women wash their hands. Best hygiene
Speaker 1: What up San Francisco in Chicago. San Francisco's Ferry Terminal,
Speaker 1: Farmers Market in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and
Speaker 1: Shut Aquarium It's a long name were places where only
Speaker 1: twelve of people left the restroom without washing their hands.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to self reporting, also not so surprisingly.
Speaker 1: When Harris Interactive went back and just called a sample
Speaker 1: of a thousand adults, they reported washing their hands far
Speaker 1: more often than the numbers would imply of the of
Speaker 1: the people who were, you know, scouting out actual handwashing instances.
Speaker 1: But the good news is hand washing is getting better.
Speaker 1: And it might seem like, oh, this is handwashing doesn't
Speaker 1: really make that big of a difference. Yes, it does
Speaker 1: make a massive difference in terms of disease prevention, just
Speaker 1: basically washing your hands. And I mean I've heard people argue.
Speaker 1: When I say people, I mean boys. I've heard boys
Speaker 1: argue that, well, it's not like I mean, I'm touching
Speaker 1: a whole lot of stuff in the bathroom when I'm
Speaker 1: in there. They're getting and I'm like, no, think about
Speaker 1: all the stuff you're touching before you go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: You want to wash all that stuff off anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, we're not perfect, but we're getting better.
Speaker 1: And the American Society of Microbiology UH followed up and
Speaker 1: in two they went back to the same places. Kristen
Speaker 1: Turner Field was still the dirtiest, except for the women
Speaker 1: percent of the women, it was still the worst for men.
Speaker 1: Yeah sorry sorry. Thirty five percent of men at Turner
Speaker 1: Field in Atlanta did not wash their hands, but percent
Speaker 1: of the women observed did. That is commitment because those
Speaker 1: lines can get crazy, can But um, the most likely
Speaker 1: place for men to wash their hands still the Chicago
Speaker 1: Museum mentioned eighty eight percent of men. Maybe intellectual types
Speaker 1: pay better attention to hand hygiene. Yeah, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but they were very happy to report and I'm happy
Speaker 1: to read it that the study found that about eight
Speaker 1: percent of people all together wash their hands, which is
Speaker 1: a jump from seventy seven percent in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: and sixty eight percent. And I bet that does have
Speaker 1: to do with more public health awareness in terms of
Speaker 1: washing your hands, the benefits of washing your hands and
Speaker 1: disease prevention, because we've had a couple of animal related
Speaker 1: flues that have sur reculated swine flu, bird flu, zebra flu,
Speaker 1: giraffe flew all over the place. Um, but when we
Speaker 1: do wash there some researchers think that our motivations and
Speaker 1: by army men versus women might differ. And this is
Speaker 1: coming out of the American Journal of Public Health in
Speaker 1: October of two thousand nine. And what the researchers did
Speaker 1: was put up these flashing pro hand washing messages in
Speaker 1: front of in a public restroom, in front of the
Speaker 1: soap dispenser, and it would change every time to see,
Speaker 1: you know, for a different tack. So some of them.
Speaker 1: Some of the messages were more discussed oriented, such as
Speaker 1: don't take the loo with you, wash with soap or
Speaker 1: soap it off all eated light. Yeah. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: other ones that were related purely to being informative, which
Speaker 1: was water doesn't kill germs, soap does. Uh. They found
Speaker 1: that that men really responded to the disgusted messages, whereas
Speaker 1: women were more likely to wash their hands that they
Speaker 1: were armed with knowledge. One that performed well for both.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let Kristen read it is one tied to
Speaker 1: social norms. Is the Poston next to you washing with
Speaker 1: soap that was just solid up talk right there? Uh
Speaker 1: had that um And that makes sense because you know
Speaker 1: it is calling you out. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a public shaming if you're not washing your hands. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, though, in post interviews, when the researchers
Speaker 1: would wait outside the bathroom and say, hey, gal, did
Speaker 1: you wash your hands? Yeah? Did you see that message?
Speaker 1: Not really, so they weren't really sure whether or not
Speaker 1: it just happened to be a discussed, a pro discussed message. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it was something more subliminal. And I did a
Speaker 1: little bit more digging on this whole discussed aspect of hygiene,
Speaker 1: because there is a ton of research out there on
Speaker 1: the emotion of disgust, how it differs for men and women,
Speaker 1: are sensitivity to that, and how it's linked to things
Speaker 1: like not only hygiene, but also morality, sexuality, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: there are some studies that would suggest that discuss sensitivity
Speaker 1: it's higher among women, which would contradict this this study
Speaker 1: finding that don't take the loo with you is more
Speaker 1: effective for men. But I don't know either way. I
Speaker 1: think um, I would I would buy the whole thing
Speaker 1: that the social norm thing of hey, you know you're
Speaker 1: you're gross if you're not washing your hands because everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing it would be effective. Now, what about teeth? I,
Speaker 1: for one, I'm a bad flosser. I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and admit that I feel like I'm in a safe
Speaker 1: space to talk about it, and I'm a bad flosser too.
Speaker 1: I I try, but really it's mainly just after I
Speaker 1: eat popcorn. Um. An American Dental Association study in two
Speaker 1: thousand four found that more Americans are saying now that
Speaker 1: they brush their teeth after every meal, but women still
Speaker 1: outpaced men. A quarter of respondents in this survey that
Speaker 1: they brush their teeth after every meal, more than twice
Speaker 1: the number reported six years earlier. So we're making strides.
Speaker 1: Congratulations everyone. Yeah, and women, though, are still more likely
Speaker 1: to have a regular dentist get their checkups more often.
Speaker 1: Men will tend to go years between dental checkups. Women
Speaker 1: are also more likely to brush twice a day, so
Speaker 1: there's a bit of an oral hygiene gender gaps still there.
Speaker 1: What's up? What's up with people who only brush their
Speaker 1: teeth once a day? Uh? Maybe it is a time thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm really not sure. Just like I
Speaker 1: changed my teets once a week, Kristen, I washed my
Speaker 1: air brush my teeth twice a day. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: all of you very disappointed. But let's take it to
Speaker 1: the workplace, because you know what place is teeming with
Speaker 1: your your desk? Oh? Yes, um Clorox Company has sponsored
Speaker 1: a number of studies. Not so surprisingly, I feel like
Speaker 1: I've said not so surprisingly like twenty five times in
Speaker 1: this podcast. By the way, not so surprisingly, I know.
Speaker 1: But Clorox sponsored a number of studies on germs and
Speaker 1: our cleaning habits. And one of these studies, which was
Speaker 1: conducted by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, it found that women's desks harbor three to
Speaker 1: four times the number of bacteria than men's desks, and
Speaker 1: this was looking at more than one hundred offices around
Speaker 1: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, d C, Oregon, and
Speaker 1: the University of Arizona campus. And Gerba attributes this to
Speaker 1: women having more interactions with small children, keeping food and
Speaker 1: makeup at the desk as well. And even though our
Speaker 1: desks might be neater, they are dirtier, largely because of
Speaker 1: the food in the makeup. Yeah, cosmetics, handlesitions and food
Speaker 1: are microorganism magnets um. The worst offender overall, though, was
Speaker 1: men's wallets, because they're in that warm back pocket that
Speaker 1: just serves as an incubator for bacteria. But not so fast, ladies,
Speaker 1: you're not off the hook either. Most handbags have tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of bacteria on them, just just to let
Speaker 1: you know. Bacteria levels of two hundred are considered safe.
Speaker 1: But don't worry men's wallets or four times dirtier than that.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and say that
Speaker 1: maybe I have very low discuss sensitivity with the in
Speaker 1: terms of pathogen disgust because it doesn't bother me. Our
Speaker 1: bodies are teeming with bacteria. Sure, but just don't put
Speaker 1: your purse down on the bathroom floor or anything. That
Speaker 1: is a good point, but one thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not hopeless, don't worry. Fewer bacteria were
Speaker 1: found on desktops that were regularly sanitized, So keep those
Speaker 1: antibacterial wipes around or sprays whatever you feel like using.
Speaker 1: I I have a huge, like industrial size canister of
Speaker 1: of wipes because I feel like people get to all
Speaker 1: the time at work. Well, that is sick building syndrome
Speaker 1: is a thing, and researchers have attributed to bad habits
Speaker 1: like people not cleaning their desks and and speaking of
Speaker 1: women and food in the desk. Charles Gerba, that University
Speaker 1: of Arizona professor, said something along the lines of uh
Speaker 1: if the apocalypse ever happened, he would immediately just rush
Speaker 1: to a women's workspace because of the amount of food
Speaker 1: that we keep stowed away in our desk. I don't
Speaker 1: have any food at the moment. I usually keep some
Speaker 1: granola bars, but those are sealed up. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything. Which when you're hungry, the most oppressing thing
Speaker 1: to do is open your drawer and only see utensils
Speaker 1: that could be for food that's not there, your imaginary
Speaker 1: hook food back when they had the in in the
Speaker 1: movie Hook anyway, uh So, but the opposite was true.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, in a plus one study may performed by
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly, who's a biology professor at San Diego State University.
Speaker 1: He looked at ninety offices in New York, San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and Tucson and found that men's offices, not women, had
Speaker 1: up more bacteria. So basically, just be aware people that
Speaker 1: your workspaces gross, particularly if you eat at your desk.
Speaker 1: You want to just clean that sucker off maybe once
Speaker 1: a week or once every other week. Yeah, that's San
Speaker 1: Diego State University study got a ton of press and
Speaker 1: like thinking about all the stuff of you know, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: men have more oh, but handbags are so gross. All
Speaker 1: the stuff, I feel like it all kind of comes
Speaker 1: out in the wash pun there because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that the jet that kind of jet
Speaker 1: or difference matters that much. It's more of an overall
Speaker 1: message of saying, you know, I just maybe we should
Speaker 1: keep our spaces a little bit cleaner. Um. But once
Speaker 1: we leave work finally and we go home, who is
Speaker 1: doing a majority of that housework? We've talked about it
Speaker 1: in podcast Divorce. We're not going to spend a ton
Speaker 1: of time on it, but it's the women. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we as women are more likely to do more housework
Speaker 1: more often. Well, we should say that is in a
Speaker 1: male female combo household. Yes, and that's also in the
Speaker 1: caroline and du roommate household. Also, not that we fight
Speaker 1: about it or anything dot dot dot, but yeah, so
Speaker 1: we reference that keeping it Clean info graphic earlier. According
Speaker 1: to the research they did for that, men are less
Speaker 1: likely to do some housework every day, not in general,
Speaker 1: just every day, and that's of men versus of women.
Speaker 1: But when they do in the house, it's more thorough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the whole thing about men maybe waiting longer to
Speaker 1: clean the house. But when they do it, they do
Speaker 1: it really, really, really well. Um reminded me of a
Speaker 1: recent article that was published in the Atlantic by Alexandra Brander,
Speaker 1: who's a philosophy professor out at the University of Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about reasons why potential reasons why
Speaker 1: men might do less housework than women in heterosexual marriages,
Speaker 1: and she highlighted three major theories. One is the epistemic hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which is basically, men didn't see their dad's modeling this
Speaker 1: household clean behavior, so they're not gonna do it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Motivational hypothesis, which would be house cleaning or running errands
Speaker 1: is an unjustifiable time cost, so which reminds me of like,
Speaker 1: you know, they might not do it every day, when
Speaker 1: they do it, they're gonna do it really really well
Speaker 1: to make it worth it. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the motivational hypothesis is compelling is because sometimes women
Speaker 1: and I've been guilty of this as well, not just
Speaker 1: with male but also female roommates. Um, women will come
Speaker 1: behind and sort of sweep up behind them or even
Speaker 1: redo what they did. For instance, with me, I'm a
Speaker 1: stickler about dishwashers. Yes you are. I am, I have
Speaker 1: I'm very good at loading it, and I feel like
Speaker 1: you should not waste space. And I have been known
Speaker 1: much two roommates chagrin to come behind them and reload
Speaker 1: the Dishwah, I do that behind dude, roommate all the time?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? What? I just I imagine you might
Speaker 1: have the same thought when you open the dishwasher after
Speaker 1: a roommate, boyfriend whoever, has loaded it. You look at
Speaker 1: it and you're like, in what way did this make
Speaker 1: sense in your brain? Because things are like spread out
Speaker 1: over the entire dishwasher and you're like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: The plates go here, spoons are over here, cups are
Speaker 1: obviously on the hop to the right. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: it ties totally into that motivational hypothesis because man or woman,
Speaker 1: if that's going on, you would say, you know what,
Speaker 1: you're going to do the dishes because you're just gonna
Speaker 1: do them anyway, whether I load the dishwasher or not.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, that's something that Facebook CEO Sherl Sandberg has
Speaker 1: brought up for you know, women who are married to men, saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you want to split the household
Speaker 1: chores fifty fifty. You need to let them do that
Speaker 1: fifty because I think women sometimes unnecessarily kind of buy
Speaker 1: into the whole acculturation of women being the chore doers,
Speaker 1: the maids essentially around the house, and whether we are
Speaker 1: conscious of it or not, and take on more than
Speaker 1: we really have to, and it kind of continues that
Speaker 1: whole epistemic thing, the motivational thing. And then there's also
Speaker 1: the third uh the hypothesis brand under highlighted at The
Speaker 1: Atlantic is the structural hypothesis, saying that basically the modern
Speaker 1: workplace doesn't afford men the time to do it like
Speaker 1: if they would if they could, which which I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think again, I feel like that though, you know,
Speaker 1: like I guess what can be frustrating about my roommate
Speaker 1: being such a neat freak is that I'll get home
Speaker 1: and he'll resent me for throwing my purse on the
Speaker 1: floor something like that, but neither one of us has
Speaker 1: time to deal with it, so we end up, over
Speaker 1: the course of the week building up these teeny tiny resentments.
Speaker 1: So one of us finally cleans because we're both busy,
Speaker 1: we both work, but as we pointed out too in
Speaker 1: other podcasts, this issue of the division of the household
Speaker 1: chores not such a divisive issue with same sex couples
Speaker 1: because there aren't those, you know, those gendered norms of
Speaker 1: you know, women clean and men yeah uh where you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you, you find your strength and
Speaker 1: you stick to it. Like for you and I, we
Speaker 1: should probably do the dishes, whereas if someone wants to
Speaker 1: do the laundry, have at it. That is not my
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world to do. I feel like
Speaker 1: laundry is such instant gratification. But I really won't get
Speaker 1: into all of that because I really, I mean, I
Speaker 1: could talk about yours. But once we circle back around though,
Speaker 1: to the household cleanliness, you start to see that a
Speaker 1: lot of the patterns that we have an adulthood do
Speaker 1: trace back to those childhood gendered norms that start out
Speaker 1: with the assumption that you know, a girls you need
Speaker 1: to be cleaner than boys. You don't in appearance wise,
Speaker 1: down to neatness and cleanness. So the question of whether
Speaker 1: or not women are cleaner than men, I think the
Speaker 1: answer is no, because there might be expectations, but you
Speaker 1: and I both have plenty of clean, clean men, and
Speaker 1: I know plenty of dirty women, like I have had
Speaker 1: some female roommates whom I love dearly, But spaghetti bowls
Speaker 1: were kept in bedside tables. Oh yeah. I won't even
Speaker 1: get into any stories about women that I have lived
Speaker 1: with who have destroyed spaces that we've shared anyway, So
Speaker 1: maybe it would be a good thing for all of
Speaker 1: us if we abandoned that that gendered notion that women
Speaker 1: are the cleaner sex and just all start pitching in
Speaker 1: and everybody wash your hands. And I'm really never going
Speaker 1: to touch a male wallet again because those things are jeremy,
Speaker 1: a male wallet, a male wallet. Uh. So I will
Speaker 1: be curious soo to hear from listeners on this one,
Speaker 1: especially folks with roommates out there, because cleanliness is such
Speaker 1: a such a big factor I think for room I mean,
Speaker 1: the number one thing I can think of with having roommates,
Speaker 1: Like whenever fights would come up, it was about cleanliness, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was it. It was about the dishwasher. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Only if I could just live by myself in a silent,
Speaker 1: uh cluttery, but apartment with a nice dishwasher, I'd be
Speaker 1: happy paradise. Yeah, it does sound pretty nice. Well, listeners,
Speaker 1: let us know your thoughts on whether men or women
Speaker 1: are cleaner. I know you've got them. Send them our way.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at Discovery dot Com is our email address.
Speaker 1: You can also hit us up on Facebook as well.
Speaker 1: And now back to our letters. I have one to
Speaker 1: hear Kristen from Jenna. This is about our pole dancing episode.
Speaker 1: She says, you talked about pole dancing in the latest episode,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to say that. I think it's
Speaker 1: a very empowered thing to do, to tell those who
Speaker 1: would scoffy your independence and strength as a woman that
Speaker 1: they're wrong. So all the double standards and morality aside,
Speaker 1: I think that means a lot. It's very admirable. I
Speaker 1: look up to strong women like that personally, so thank
Speaker 1: you for the perspective. Jenna. Well, I've got an email
Speaker 1: here from Tina and it's about her daughter, who's five
Speaker 1: years old and she's the youngest of four. She has
Speaker 1: three older brothers, ages nine, thirteen, and sixteen, and she writes,
Speaker 1: my daughter, since she could speak, has described herself as
Speaker 1: quote a girl and a boy, and will explain that
Speaker 1: she likes girrel stuff and boy stuff. She's as comfortable
Speaker 1: in the two day old clothes, playing in the dirt
Speaker 1: as she is in a princess dress with lipstick and
Speaker 1: a tia. It's a nerving to some people, such as
Speaker 1: my mom when she calls herself a boy and a girl,
Speaker 1: even though they have no issue with her acting like
Speaker 1: quote unquote one of the boys, and they try to
Speaker 1: encourage her to you the word tomboy instead. My husband
Speaker 1: and I have always let her describe herself however she wants,
Speaker 1: and we tell her that she can be whatever she wants,
Speaker 1: whenever she wants, and to try not to draw attention
Speaker 1: to the labels. She starts kindergarten this year, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious to see if the new pressures will change the
Speaker 1: way she describes herself. And she does note that her
Speaker 1: daughter has been in daycare, so it's even with that
Speaker 1: kind of socialization, she still does see I'm a girl
Speaker 1: and a boy. Yeah, so I thought that was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So thanks to Tina and everybody else, we're
Speaker 1: writing into mom stuff at the scuy rate dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also, of course find us on Facebook, where
Speaker 1: we do lots of fun things during the week. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter at mom stuff podcast and
Speaker 1: on Tumbler as well. It's stuff Mom Never told You
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com. And as always, if you'd like
Speaker 1: to get smarter this week, you can head to our
Speaker 1: website it's how stuff Works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com