Where does it go ?

~ Emma

I published this comic in french a few months ago and some very awesome readers offered to translate it.
Thanks a lot to Laurence Kozera, Jo Nicoud-Garden and Eloise Lanaud for this huge work !
Also, I’m sorry that most of the links are in french because it’s really important to me that sources are available to readers, but I was unable to find equivalents. Feel free to add some in the comments section though.
Hope you’ll enjoy this read !
Emma

22 thoughts on “Where does it go ?”

  3. Hello, Emma This is just to tell you that I almost deleted your email without reading it, because it was among a lot of junk, but, for some reason, I didn’t. That has been the best thing I’ve done this morning so far. It took me several minutes to read it, but what a time well spent! Congratulations for your wonderful job! The content is thorough and so good!!! Can’t say it enough. Loved it! Send me more, please! Fabiana Meira

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  4. I absolutely love this! I love how you break down not only the issues but also what contributes to the issues and different ways in which the issues can be managed or resolved. A worldwide unlearning is required to mitigate/ eliminate the damage of patriarchal thinking.

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    1. My hubby doesn’t mind living in a mess. He doesn’t do his bed, works at a cluttered dusty desk, and his clothes cupboard is always a mess. He is often heard asking me for his shorts/socks/handkerchiefs.
      Laundry will sit in the basket until he runs out of things to wear, whence upon he would rather go buy new clothes than do the mountain of laundry. When he does do the laundry, he uses up too much detergent and runs a heavy load where a smaller scoop of detergent would have sufficed. Doesn’t think about washing colors and white separately! The clothes lie out in the sun, drying for days together..which leads to faded clothes.
      In the kitchen it’s always, hold this for me, look and learn fr me how it’s done, you are doing it wrong, I can’t find the knife/spoon/salt. I could go on.
      I am a full time home maker doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, wiping, scrubbing,planning meals, shopping for groceries, getting handymen to fix broken appliances, calling up customer care and sometimes looking up things on the internet on how to fix stuff around the house. I also take care of a ten year old child, buy her school stuff, ensure homework and assignments are done and attend parent teacher meetings without him. He just cant attend those, they take up half of his Saturday.
      There’s nothing that can be done about this entire system unless one partner is willing to shed their ego.
      I could so relate to this while comic.. thank you for getting it translated. Precious content. Appreciated much.

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      2. In other words, you are a single mother with two children: one ten, the other a middle-aged man. Honey, get rid of him, he is doing nothing but dragging you down. You’re already doing everything on your own, you might as well make it official.

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  7. Simply brilliant, real and funny. Made my morning. This was such a empowering read! Luv luv luv it! You have to be or have been a mother with young children, or a family of more than two to really comprehend this illustration. As a grandmother, great grandmother and mother, Lord knows, I’ve been there and done this more times than I can count…..This is your calling, are you listening?

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    1. I have to disagree. My partner and I have no children. We do have a dog that requires care. I still very much relate to this. I may not need clean dishes to feed a child but I work from home and need to eat lunch between meetings. This is all still quite relevant to my life.

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  8. Keep going! I read all your posts and some are life changing (emotional load) I am lucky to have a fabulous husband who does more than half the chores. We divide certain other loads – he does finance, I do food and furbabies. I just loved the concepts you explain so well. Thank you!

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  10. The comic was wonderful, and it gives a clear idea of how emotional it is to get negative enforcement. I don`t have a husband but I got some ideas that might work for me in the future.

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  11. All my past de facto relationships have had so many of these dynamics and I just felt resentful, without being able to identify or explain it properly.
    My current boyfriend is moving in with me in a couple of weeks and I have given him your comics to read in advance, so he can be more aware of these dynamics too. I think it will help us have a much healthier, happier relationship than I have had in the past. Thank you!

    But also, this old excuse^^^ makes me so mad! It really boils down to “You’re much better at the housework, so you should do all of it” and “I’m claiming that I’m somehow incapable of learning how to do laundry.”

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  12. Males and females are very different beings: women are often compelled to “clean-and-wash things” on a daily basis. while men will “fix” things when they get around to it. Both sexes tend to resent the attitudes of the other person. Thus was it ever! You either adapt or you divorce and live happily ever-after with a series of easily-discarded, on-again-off-again lovers.

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    1. That’s not inherent within men and women, it’s just a generational pattern that has replicated itself for so long it seems biological. Girls grow up with mental load in mind, even from watching their mothers, they learn the expectations and perform them. Speaking from experience, I came to university able to cook, clean etc, and so did pretty much all of the women I know. Many of the men I’ve met at university have absolutely no house skills at all. They aren’t taught because its not expected of them, so they never question it, because why would they? It serves them well. My father can’t even cook an egg and moved out at 29 due to his mother doing everything for him, and my mother was fully independent and moved out at 16. Putting the weight of ‘adapting’ on one party just means accepting a situation that is deeply unequal and makes you unhappy, while the other did not have to adapt. Why would you be with someone who doesn’t respect you enough to do their share, someone who does not understand you? I don’t see any requests for men to adapt. That last sentence reads as resentful to me. I don’t think that not wanting to be essentially a mother to your husband like it’s the 1940’s means you won’t be able to keep a fulfilling long-term relationship. As the comic says, research has shown that when partners delegate tasks evenly and understand mental load, this encourages healthier and more respectful relationships, which would naturally last. I’d rather be single forever than have a relationship where I’m a cook and a cleaner for a man-child with zero emotional intelligence.

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      1. My FIL is in his 80s but was raised by a single Dad and has always been the first to set and clean the table, kept track of his kids medical appointments and did a lot of the mental load because he grew up with his father doing it all. It is definitely learned behavior.

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  13. This was very well thought out and clearly expressed. It really lays bare the excuses and evasions used by many men to avoid housework. A very valuable piece of work!
    I was really lucky to grow up with a father who did his fair share in many ways, because his own mother raised him that way, back in the 1930s and 1940s. So I know it can be done differently, and coming from an earlier generation is no excuse!

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  14. You are a genius! I have been gifting your comics about 10 times already, preferably as a marriage-present.

    Your pictures and words are explaining everything necessary to know, and are even digestible for men 😉

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