Both my husband and I thought Knocked Up was just not that funny.

On the housework tip, he mows and I clean the bathrooms, but all that means is that he gets to use gas-powered equipment and I get to use Products and Devices, which makes us both happy. And we pay someone to dust because I HATE f***ing dusting. It’s done and it never looks done, so how can you tell that you did all that hard work?

Also, he’s an adult, not a boy, which is so fricking refreshing that I just can’t stand myself. He’s just a little to old to be part of that generation of males that think life is one long, nay perpetual, adolescence. He’s had a mortgage since 1985. He’s a grownup.

Cleaning up after yourself is a sign of maturity; filth makes you sick and causes vermin problems, not to mention making coming to your home a fearful experience for other people.
…
Only men feel privileged to be immature in this regard, and I despise them when they do that. It’s not cute, it’s disgusting.

You seem to be vehemently agreeing with the notion that “women care more.”

It’s one thing for a man to be a slob and expect the woman in his life to keep things clean - obviously lame. But a male slob who expects his partner to be equally slobby and demands nothing as far as cleanliness - I don’t see the problem in that, and your explanation appears to be that women do in fact just care more.

Many guys feel entitled to either live in filth or have someone clean it for them.

These two things are entirely different. Only the latter is entitlement.

Cleaning up after yourself is a sign of maturity; filth makes you sick and causes vermin problems, not to mention making coming to your home a fearful experience for other people. It shows lack of consideration and a lack of socialization; in the same way that refusing to have personal hygiene is a sign of hostility to other people, refusal to clean and care for your living area is a sign of hostility to others in your home and to visitors. Only men feel privileged to be immature in this regard, and I despise them when they do that. It’s not cute, it’s disgusting.

What most men aren’t taught/can’t deal with is just how much work goes into keeping a moderately sized house clean, and how much of it…scrubbing toilets, getting hair out of drains, cleaning up cat puke…is pretty damn disgusting. But still necessary.

I know a whole lot of adult single men who keep their house alot cleaner than I ever did as a single woman. Keep in mind I said adult and not college boys.

In short, my standards are pretty f’n low, but still the number 1 thing my boy and I fought over was housework. Always the cop out he used was some variation of the “Well you care more than I do.” And always my response was, “You just expect me to do it. That’s why you don’t care.” So finally I determined to win the housework chicken game with him. OMG you wouldn’t believe how really gross our house got. If we had children the state would have taken them for neglect. The dirtier it got the more mad he would get. He’d come home and complain, “The kitchen is so gross I can’t even eat in here.” Me, “Well I guess you should probably clean it then.” Finally there was one great big, end all be all fight, where he admitted to me that it hurt his feelings I didn’t keep the house clean. Because it made him feel like I didn’t care about our relationship. My response, “Well how do you think I feel, when you don’t do your share?” *Light Bulb* Realization that feelings stem from stupid gender role expectations.

Okay, admittedly this is merely an anecdote. But I imagine it’s a whole lot closer to the truth than the whole “Women notice dirt more” Bullshit.

(Also looks like Pandagon ate my post, but I’ll wait a few hours to see if it went through before reposting.)

Rebecca C., I think the problem isn’t that Knocked Up was about a woman who decided to keep the movie. It’s that there don’t seem to be any where the woman doesn’t. (Much like the points made above about buddy movies about men not being bad, but it just being really frustrating that women don’t get anywhere near the equivalent.) We don’t get any depictions of women making the other choice–so in movieland, there IS no real choice (that is shown, or considered valid).

I haven’t seen Knocked Up yet, but I do kind of want to. Though now that I’ve seen so much discussion of it, I wonder if I’ll be able to enjoy it as just a movie or not. Oh, well.

Col Bat Guano–I hear (I don’t have much direct experience, but I hear) that there are people whose family and friends will look down on them if they don’t keep everything Ozzie & Harriet. My mom once knew a woman who would come into her house and look under the kids’ beds to make sure there weren’t dust bunnies. Since my mother is an artistic type, much more about drawing or crafting or writing than making her house Just So, you can imagine what she thought of that! (But didn’t have the guts to say, alas. Luckily it was only an occasional visitor. But my mom to this day still feels guilty about her messy house, even though her kids and husband are pretty fine with it, and though my dad when it gets too messy will take a mop or a dishcloth to it himself without making a big deal of it.)