The Dynamics of Household Gender Roles

In this episode, the hosts delve into the complex and often controversial topic of gender roles in household and childcare duties. While one host argues that women naturally prefer and are better suited for tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare, the other host counters with anecdotal experiences, social expectations, and humor to provide a nuanced view. They cite various studies that suggest women tend to gravitate towards household tasks and enjoy them more, often influenced by both evolutionary and cultural factors. Additionally, the episode explores the disparity in standards between men and women in fulfilling these roles. With a blend of data, personal stories, and humorous insights, this episode examines whether traditional gender roles are a product of innate preferences or societal pressures.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] speaking of childcare duties, I have a big duty in this bears outfit

Malcolm Collins: , okay. I'll let you do the things that you enjoy doing. Have a good time with your little recreational task there.

And I will see you shortly.

Simone Collins: Hello everybody. I am so excited to be speaking with you today Though very conflicted because as a san francisco bay area raised Woman, I was raised in blank slatism and women can do everything in my life should be about having a career and never getting married and never having kids and yet today I am going to argue to you that women have no place to complain that they share an undue burden in household tasks because of one woman.

They choose to do more household tasks than men, and two, they enjoy them more, and this is backed up by both science and humor both of which I think are very legitimate. This

Malcolm Collins: episode is going [00:01:00] to focus on that women Should be in the kitchen.

Even if they have a job, they should also be in the kitchen.

What's worse though,

Simone Collins: is that they, they want to be in the kitchen.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so actually, Shu On Head had a thing about this recently, where she was like, doing an episode, and she let it slip. She goes, you know, all women, and of course, she didn't mean all, she meant most women when, when somebody says this. But she was definitely speaking about herself.

They go, they want a man to take care of them and support their babies. And I've like,

Simone Collins: I can't believe she said that. Like, honestly, that's, I mean, it takes balls to come out and say that as anyone.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I mean, this episode is definitely going to be one where the you know, like Funday, Friday type people, the people who love to criticize conservatives for saying what is reasonable and statistics based because they're like, no, but we should all live in a fantasy world that doesn't exist.

And again, to clarify what she's saying here is women shouldn't feel [00:02:00] forced into these positions. However, creating societal expectations around women not taking these positions, which we have done as a society right now where it is as a woman, you feel bad. If you are doing too much of this stuff, you are being a trad wife.

And many women are like, I would never, it's a white, white nationalist to be a trad wife, right. To, to, to cook meals and do the dishes and dress well. And you know, so they, they are going to feel bad and feel this cognitive dissonance. Yeah, but then

Simone Collins: the problem is that the converse of this, let's say that a woman like politically is like, okay, well, we have to split everything 50 50 just to make things right and proper as they should be, they'll be less happy.

Because they'd rather do

Malcolm Collins: a lot of these things

Simone Collins: by the statistics and again, not

Malcolm Collins: every

Simone Collins: woman, not everyone we're talking about, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but you'll also see going into what some of these household labor tasks are that like most women would be like, Oh, but well, I, I want to do that, like, you know, home aesthetics decorating for [00:03:00] Christmas.

Women are like, Oh, I mean, you know, like they'll be like, Oh, it's such a struggle. You know, I'm just decorate for Valentine's day, but like, and shopping, Oh God, I'm so sorry. You don't want to go shopping anymore. That's okay. That's okay.

Malcolm Collins: Simone get into the data.

Simone Collins: Yes. So big hat tip to Diana Fleishman for cluing us into this.

The, the research that we're looking at this for the research, research portion of this episode is a paper called gendered perspectives on sharing the load, men's and women's attitude toward. Family Roles in Household and Child Care Tasks, one, they just sort of note the general research that in broadly, acknowledges this to be a truth universal that there's this like sort of mismatch between labor and desires. They cite, for example, Miller 2020 in that young people today are holding onto traditional views about who does what at home.

And young people are no more likely than older couples to divide household chores equitably. So both young and old people are still kind of [00:04:00] Attracted to these traditional roles, which should be surprising to people they, they also site Steve Stewart Williams, who's really, I think, active on Twitter and really interesting that selection has equipped human family females with not only the physiological apparatus for maternal care boobs and vaginas, I guess.

But also the psychological drives that are necessary to operate it successfully. That is strong communal tendency. So women also kind of have evolved the tendency to want to take these tasks on. They,

Malcolm Collins: and let's be clear about what is, is meant here because this is clearly seen across studies that women perform and feminists will laud.

Oh, women perform better at emotional tasks. Women are better in group dynamics. Yeah, but once it has

Simone Collins: to do with like home labor, they're like, But, but, they also, they, they cite Wood and Eagley in 2002 research they point out this isn't just like across studies, this is across cultures. Females engage in more childcare than males do in every human [00:05:00] culture for which they're reliable data.

So this isn't like a United States thing, it's not a trad European thing. It's not a Chinese thing or a Mongolian thing or a Nigerian thing. It is. It's a thing. You know, a man woman thing. It also they cited from Brennan some 2020 research so fairly recent national data indicated that women are more likely 44 percent more likely than men at 25 percent to say that given the freedom to do either they would prefer to stay at home.

to take care of the house and family rather than work outside the home. So there's also this greater interest among women. So this is sort of the premise into which the researchers were coming into this. They're like, the actions have stated that women are gravitating toward the home and they're gravitating toward childhood.

What they wanted to explore was, well, okay, so women spend more time on household labor and childcare. Is this a product of their preference? Because normally people are like, Oh, it's culture. It's obligation. It's because they have tits and the [00:06:00] kids need to breastfeed. So of course they stay home. Well, what they did was survey 323 emerging adults.

So like young adults and 113 middle aged adults that probably being on email about one, how much they like, or dislike 58 different household tasks. and 40 childcare tasks to how they prefer to split up each task with a partner. Like, would you rather have your husband do this or your wife do this?

And three, how their ideal prioritization of work and family will play out. And basically they found across both younger adults and middle aged adults that men more than women liked tasks involving outdoor labor and home fixes and maintenance. And these effects were large. We'll, we'll look at the tables together.

And two, there was not a single childcare task that men liked more than women did.

Malcolm Collins: So Fascinating! Well, here's what people say, they'll say that women, they may have liked these tasks more than men, but they must have not liked them on average. Well,

Simone Collins: no, but the problem, like I said earlier, like, there are a bunch of these tasks in here and we'll look at some of the [00:07:00] tables where I'm like, I don't even think of these things as like, like scheduling.

Shopping, emotional support, like these are like, I don't, I, I wouldn't Women complain about

Malcolm Collins: emotional support being labor all the time, Simone, but let's get into the, let's get into the charts. I'll go into the, that's something, yo, they're always like, when they're talking about like a husband paying a housewife and they're trying to break out everything a housewife can pay.

Oh god, yeah, the emotional labor! They're always like, being a psychologist or you know. It's like, well, you're not being a good psychologist, you know?

Simone Collins: Well, okay, what we can look at here is figure one from the research which I sent you via WhatsApp of how emerging and middle aged adults felt about various tasks.

So you're going to see, there's this, this spectrum of going to hate it versus going to love it. That's broken down by men and women. Now, there are some things that. Both men and women are not really into thing number one being disciplining children, both men and women lean toward going to hate it, but actually [00:08:00] men, which this actually surprised me, men are going to hate discipline more than women.

Like women are more chill about discipline. What do you think's going on there, Malcolm? This is, you know, it's with younger men. Middle aged men actually are neutral, which is interesting. What, do they like grow balls when they grew older or something? No, I think

Malcolm Collins: it's this younger generation of men has been raised to be very afraid of doing anything that they see as violent.

Because they're all

Simone Collins: seeing therapists. That's got to be it.

Malcolm Collins: Not just that, but the stigmatization of a men. A man in any way touching a child in a way that could be seen as like disciplinary. This isn't even corporal punishment that this could be like,

Simone Collins: right, right.

Malcolm Collins: But engaging was, I mean, remember I've had crowds freak out on me for just being turned with my kids.

They,

they, they are taught that because they are men, they are not allowed to engage with children in this way. And they face negative repercussions for it in society. And I think that that's what you're seeing in this chart right here. Yeah. And then we have a seeing in the older crowd is [00:09:00] that men historically did take on this role of discipline and we're

Simone Collins: more okay with it.

Whereas when, and it's

Malcolm Collins: interesting here, if you looked at this historic men disciplining children, that was out of everything in the entire chart that, that, that if you're looking at like the average hate amount, because people were like, well, women don't like doing these things on average. It's just, they like doing them more than men.

Yeah. No, that's not actually true. Women do like doing these things on average, and the only one where both men and women dislike doing it on average, men are the one who adopt the responsibility. This is child care. The, the, the one potential alternative You mean discipline?

Simone Collins: You mean to this one.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's scheduling and coordination.

Where women in here, I'm looking at the older age range where, where women do take it on. It's interesting that the older men are like, I freaking hate

Simone Collins: scheduling. That is so you Malcolm. That is incredibly you. There's one other area where, and this is only for middle aged adults. Men are more excited about a child care related task than [00:10:00] women, that is to say like more men, slightly on average, reported they were going to love cognitive support than younger women.

Here's my take on this, is when we're looking at emerging adults, they have younger children. And when we're looking at middle aged adults, they're more likely to have kids who are seven years old, 13 years old. And I kind of feel like men get more excited about providing emotional support and like mentoring to kids once they get older.

What's your thought there? Do you think that resonates? The

Malcolm Collins: what? Women? The

Simone Collins: reason why men are slightly more excited, middle aged men are slightly more excited about cognitive support than women in this study is because specifically they have older kids by the time they're middle aged.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I imagine. I really like interacting with older kids at a cognitive level.

And I. No, from a lot of men I talk to, they do too. Like when a kid hits that like 10 year old range they become really, really smart. No, like

Simone Collins: 7 to 10, that's when they're brilliant. [00:11:00] Before puberty hits, when they're still like really, really smart. I think that's the, that's the sweet spot. But yeah, I mean, I, I thought, but like you look down here, so scheduling and coordinating, shopping, like.

This is, you know, it's such like women, I feel like most women would be like really pissed if they like, if they were blocked from doing this, they would act as though it was an act of like disempowerment. My God, if you managed our schedule, I don't know if we'd have a marriage, you know? Because I freak out when people do any of that.

So, I thought that was really interesting. I'm checking figure two to see if there's Okay, yeah, actually, so it's, it's interesting. If you look at figure two, you'll see how the emerging and middle aged participants of this research wanted to divide labor. You know, if women, you can sort of see where women wanted men to do more stuff. Actually. Wow. The only time women want men [00:12:00] to do a childcare task more than themselves. Is with discipline when they're younger

We're looking now at figure two which shows the share of work essentially that Each person wants the other partner to do either like I always want myself to do this or I always want my partner to do this the only instance In which women and this in this case is only young women would slightly prefer that their partner always do something is discipline This is the same cohort where actually the men but the men are willing

Malcolm Collins: to take on the task if you see younger and older men are willing to take on the task of discipline, um And, and yeah, so that is really fascinating that the only in the task that nobody wants to do that men end up doing it and that in the test that most people want to do.

It's just that women want to do them more.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and men, men for the rest of things also like would prefer that their partner. It was slightly not hugely that they would, men would prefer that their partner do [00:13:00] the scheduling and the shopping this, this preference actually increases with age for men.

Yeah. And then the preference of the opposite direction, women being like, no, I really want to do this scheduling and shopping also increases with gravity. As age increases with the rest of things like nighttime care, emotional support, the preference for self versus partner is actually quite slight, but when it comes to scheduling and coordinating and shopping it's very interesting to see that as people get older, they're more like set in their gender roles, which is super interesting.

As a side note here, I really think all of this needs to be considered in the context of the famous paper, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, , that looked at how, as women received, quote unquote, more rights, or as feminism, quote unquote, was winning more, Females, when compared to men, became less satisfied with their lives.

Specifically, if you go back to the 1970s, females were significantly more satisfied with their [00:14:00] lives than men, and as time goes on, both male and female satisfaction begins to drop, but female satisfaction drops further, to the point where, in the 1990s, women were both on a net unhappy with their lives and dramatically less happy with their lives than men were. While there are many explanations for this, the stats that we're talking about here could explain this. Specifically, women are forcing themselves to do things they don't like because it creates cognitive dissonance with the female ideal of what a woman should like to do or be.

Malcolm Collins: No, this next one I find interesting. The

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because it looks at how much they enjoy various tasks and here we're seeing a number of tasks that men prefer to do and

Simone Collins: now we're switching from childcare to household tasks. So we're looking at things like home fixes and maintenance, outdoor labor, finances, indoor cleaning, gardening, food, prep, family scheduling and home aesthetics.[00:15:00]

Malcolm Collins: And you, you see that men really prefer to do tasks, like, and, and do enjoy tasks. And women disenjoy these tasks. Huh. Like home maintenance and fixing. Huh. Outdoor labor. Huh. And finances. Finance isn't really,

Simone Collins: essentially young women, especially. We're gonna hate managing finances and men kind of hate it but probably then I guess would end up doing more of it and then you get to middle age men actually don't seem to hate managing finance as much maybe because they like get more wealthy.

I kind of feel like it's because they're further on in their career. It's less about managing debt and more about managing wealth.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's because they are more old school just because they're older and they grew up in a different generation where there was a stigma around that.

As we filled out historically, women often manage the family's finances. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's what this, this really surprised me. Like the one thing that I expected to be a woman's thing. For sure was finances and I also had thought of it as a traditional thing just like you did So I was quite surprised by this what's

Malcolm Collins: [00:16:00] really interesting here is if you look at the Things that women are doing versus things that men are doing like the things that men are doing specifically like home maintenance

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: outdoor labor.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this is stereotypical male labor This is the patriarchy they would say dividing a house in the way that is the default preference for both parties Is, as the one reporter who did the piece on us, like, oh my god, I can't believe, you know, she's so oppressed, she's so living this horrible life, and all of this hatred is just people, you know, as I said, I think it's against Quote unquote tradwives I think in the looser sense rather than the very strict, if you, if you tradwife, then everything will be okay, which I'm against.

But the idea of a traditional gender structure in a household, which they'll call tradwives is so, deleterious to them.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And likely, I mean, if you look at this chart of [00:17:00] preferences, if you're like, huh, why do progressives have such higher rates of mental illness and also experiment with ways of structuring their family that don't lean into the traditional gender roles?

This very chart explains that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they're, they're actively choosing to not do stuff that they'd probably love doing, which is.

Malcolm Collins: Here's one that did surprise me. Gardening. Gardening. What, you thought that'd be a dude thing?

Simone Collins: It becomes a dude

Malcolm Collins: thing with age. Yeah, it does become a dude thing with age.

Yeah, I think Winston Churchill

Simone Collins: had his whole gardening era. His gardening and painting era, didn't he?

Malcolm Collins: People who don't know, I'm big into gardening. I could tell you so much about gardening.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm negative on gardening. Yeah, there's some things here where I'm like, I don't know, but like, whatever. I'm trying to think, like, to my traditional tropes on gardening, and it was traditionally more of a male pursuit.

All the, like, landscaping architects I can think of historically were male. Then there's Winston Churchill, and even in storybooks like Peter Rabbit, it's [00:18:00] Mr. McGregor's garden. All right? Mrs. McGregor may have, have, have cooked Peter Rabbit's father into a stew, but it was Mr. McGregor. who is tending to his cabbages, all right?

You know, and he was the one who killed Peter Rabbit's father.

Malcolm Collins: He was out in the garden. Here's what I wonder about this, because this actually is interesting to me, because gardening falls as outdoor labor. I would actually guess that these numbers are not wrong. If I'm thinking from an evolutionary perspective, women were much more likely to stay at home while men went out on big risk, big reward things, whether that was raiding other settlements or going on big game hunts, et cetera.

You're talking about like the vast majority of human evolution, which women would have been tending the farm more.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like, well, so, oh, yeah, great example. Abigail Adams, right? I mean, John Adams was like never home for a huge portion of his career within France. He was out in meetings. He was like forming America and she was holding out in the fort, you know, [00:19:00] getting experimental smallpox vaccines and taking care of their land.

I'm sure they had some staff, but like still I don't know. But anyway it's, it, yeah, there's some surprises here, but most of it makes sense. You know, men take to the outside, they fix the big stuff. Women like this granular stuff. Food prep to me is kind of interesting because when you look at the food industry, like when it comes to high cuisine most famous chefs and sous chefs and whatnot are like, are male.

And I, I've always seen kitchens from like a commercial standpoint as being a highly masculine environment. So I don't know, when I think about cooking, I actually really, really think about men, but maybe that's only elite cooking. Basic cooking is a woman thing. I don't know. I don't know. My dad cooked a ton at home.

And also, interestingly, my dad did all the shopping. So And a lot of the cleaning, too. And he's not a girly man. So, I don't know. Of course, caveat, caveat, all of this is on average. Everyone deviates a little bit. No one adheres to this, like, completely. But at the same time, Malcolm's point [00:20:00] stands. Which is that, like, a lot of people who politically avoid leaning into these things, because they feel like ideologically it's wrong or that they're all societal fantasies and not actual inbuilt tendencies and preferences are going to make themselves more miserable.

And it's maybe showing up in the mental health data that we're facing. So, when you, when you look, so now we can look at finally figure four, which is sort of showing how people wish to divide these tasks. And it's very clear. That women really prefer that men do the home maintenance and finance or and home fixes and maintenance and men are like, yeah, I prefer to do it.

Same with outdoor labor similar with finances, which is interesting. I mean, our reversal there is that I do all the finances. You do all the deciding, but I do all the execution. So maybe it's mixed.

Malcolm Collins: Are you looking at another? I'm looking at figure

Simone Collins: 4. Yeah. Figure 4 is the last figure here. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And this is about preferred task split.

Yeah. They have much higher preference here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. The one area where there's a really profound [00:21:00] difference in age is that young or emerging adults are well, at least young men are far less likely to be like, I'm only going to have my wife decorate and do home aesthetics. I think men are getting more interested in, in home aesthetics like in younger generations and women have both young and older women are more like.

Already entrenched in their feeling of ownership of home aesthetics. I actually

Malcolm Collins: feel like the home aesthetics is about men conceding over time.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, it's just like over time, it's like, I'm gonna give up, like she's, she's got this Christmas thing and I'm not gonna get in the way of it.

Malcolm Collins: She wants do Y, I do not care about this particular battle.

But here's where I

Simone Collins: get kind of confused, it's like, there were these stereotypes of what is it, the so and so's family Christmas, the van, Whatever. Come on. Like, what's the, like, with the guy getting electrocuted by Christmas lights and being obsessed with setting up with the Christmas lights. Like, there is a common American trope of dad being obsessed with [00:22:00] Christmas decorations.

And that's where I'm getting a little confused by this. You've seen

Malcolm Collins: National Lampoon's Family Vacation, but they never they never did, the men didn't decorate. He'd do like outdoor decoration, like the Ah, so that falls under

Simone Collins: home maintenance and fixes. Okay. All right. All right. Well, that explains it. He

Malcolm Collins: clearly did it as like a home maintenance type of project, not as an indoor decoration type of project.

Simone Collins: Okay. That's That's fair. That's fair.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I think that what you're seeing here is just the typical retreat of the male.

Simone Collins: Yeah, everything makes sense. And I, I think that this, this this study is good. And basically the, the finding that they had that is really important and a great contribution to the research is this isn't just societal.

This isn't just the fact that like, men are stronger. So lifting trees outdoors is easier and women have breasts. So it's easier to stay at home and. And feed the Children, right? It's it's also that they kind of prefer these things. And I think that's a really helpful finding. But I think there are many more elements to this.

[00:23:00] That have been missed and that you can find using a version of natural experiment that I May overweigh in terms of my standard of evidence. You can tell me if you agree with this, but no That's not

Malcolm Collins: overweight memes are not overweight

Simone Collins: Here's my thing just let me make my pitch to you based campers out there listening somewhere.

I think that If there is a joke online or a meme online and it has a lot of likes or a lot of views, that means that it indicates a level of truth that really resonates with people. And it wouldn't get a lot of traction if it wasn't, like, true. Because Malcolm's theory, which I think is very, very robust about humor, is that we laugh at things because it's kind of surprising or unexpected, but it totally makes sense.

So I think that there's a bunch of, like, sort of, very common joke tropes that I keep seeing. On, I mean, I, I'm only looking at like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, but they're also on Tik Tok because they're originally from Tik Tok that I think are really indicative of additional reasons [00:24:00] why women disproportionately do childcare and household labor.

So I'm going to start off by sending you. A clip from Micah and Sarah.

Speaker 5: Hi! Oh, come on in. How are the travels? Good. This is our place. Sorry, it's a little messier than usual.

Speaker 6: We need to set unrealistic expectations of how we live! This place needs to be spotless! Everything needs to go! Everything needs to go!

There should be no trash in the trash can. I want them questioning if the bin is even real.

Malcolm Collins: Oh gosh, that is So you, when we Not when we have guests over, when we have the cleaner over. Like, we don't have a cleaner, but we have occasionally splurged on a cleaner, like once every three years or something. And you will have a spasm about the house not being clean enough No, I mean, also

Simone Collins: when we have guests.

But like, yeah, no, I, this is, and here's, here's the truth that I think this reveals because this so resonates and [00:25:00] I mean, I'm not alone, like, this has been liked by over 140, 000 people women fear judgment more. This was not captured in the research. Women are like, they do not want to be judged. Like, they don't want, yeah, like, I know this feeling of like, I don't want anyone to think that I've ever used my trash can.

Like, this is, this is an embarrassment. Like, and even when we have guests, I'm like, Oh my God, like, I can't believe they can see that. But

Malcolm Collins: why can't you apply logic to that and be like, I can't.

Simone Collins: I can't. And that's, that's one of those other things that I think is inbuilt. Like there are these inbuilt preferences.

And I think, again, when women actually She's saying

Malcolm Collins: is that women lack a capacity for rationality. They are panicky, irrational beings. They should be kept in cages like little birds. Or they'll, or their little hearts will beat till they die. This trust is real though.

Simone Collins: Like, I, I, I, I cannot deal with it.

And so, like, yes, I think, [00:26:00] but I think this is a very important factor that is underrated that again would explain this and. It's not something that women can help. It also means that like kind of women have to, if you want, if you want to not feel the pain, you're going to have to do some more work cleaning.

I don't know what to tell you. So, but, but this isn't just a loss of rationality. And I'm going to give you two examples with this, which just kind of exemplify that both especially with childcare, but also with health. Women just don't want to deal with the fallout. So here is clip one for you to take a look at.

Speaker 3: This is the um, uh, Um, Uh, transcript. Okay, so, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.

Simone Collins: So, I mean, we've had days like this. In fact, I might send you a clip of like that video I took of you just after a couple of hours of you watching the kids. And what the room looked like. I think it's accurate. Like, and that's just a tickle. Sitting

Malcolm Collins: back

Simone Collins: watching TV. I'm like,

Malcolm Collins: Hey, the kids are

Simone Collins: fine.

On the [00:27:00] ground. Like the floor is just covered with stuff. Yeah. I, I think maybe the kids

Malcolm Collins: are alive and I'll clean up what you want me to.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean, like, that's the thing is, is women don't want to deal with the fallout. And also men and women have like distinctly different parenting styles. And I think sometimes women are just like, what the kids need now is not daddy parenting.

So I'm going to give you another clip that I think exemplifies that.

Malcolm Collins: Take a look. Let me know.

Speaker 7: Goes, where the day flows? Shake that white ass like a mother

Malcolm Collins: This is very long at bedtime. Huh. Yeah. You always get so mad at me at bedtime, you're like, you just got the wrong dump! Yeah. For people who are watching this on audio, the mom's like kneeling and like rubbing the baby's head and whispering to it and the dad's twirling it around in the covers. Yeah, like, like a theme park ride.

I do know that when I'm with the kids at night, they're always like 20 times more excited by the end of that. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm like, can you please

Malcolm Collins: put the

Simone Collins: kids [00:28:00] to bed? And then they're like, ahhh! And I'm, I'm downstairs leading a revolution. Yeah. And I can, I can like literally feel the house shake as they, you know, so I think that this is another factor as proven by views of humorous videos of why women sometimes just choose to take on the burden, even when they don't want to, they're like, I just, I don't want to deal with the fallout.

So there's this social judgment. Here,

Malcolm Collins: where if you are saying to the man, well, then you should do it in a way where the wife doesn't have to deal with the fallout. The problem is, is the fallout that she is afraid of having to deal with is, is not an intrinsically negative outcome. It is only negative from the perspective of a feminine preference.

I am not having a bad time. The kids are clearly loving it.

Simone Collins: They're thrilled. They're having a great time. It's just. The mother, unless she's responsible for cleaning up. Although, I will pause it. I will submit [00:29:00] for the jury's consideration another exhibit, which is that men sometimes just literally have such low standards that even if they tried to meet women's standards, like they would fail.

And I think this exemplifies your standards with cleanliness quite well. So I'm just going to have you take a look at this YouTube short here.

Speaker 2: This is how a woman can tell if their, if their clothes are clean. They're clean. Some men do it. Oh yeah, it's clean.

Simone Collins: Do you catch it? So this is a man saying how men and women, just if you're listening audio only. Seeing how things are clean, he, he pulled and like it's clearly a man in his own environment because he's in this filthy room. He pulls like a garment out of a drawer and like looks at and he's like, it's clean.

And that's how like women judge that something's clean. And then he picks like some kind of garment off the floor, sniffs it. Then, like, some, like, kind of, like, dripping piece of mucus attaches to his face from the garment, and he's like, It's clean. And that is, that is you with clothing. Like, you, [00:30:00] you, you, obviously, it's stained.

If

Malcolm Collins: they smell bad, they're not clean. If the clothes still smell good, then it's clean. This is not even about cleanliness. This is about the purpose of washing clothing and the, the lifetime value of clothing because clothing falls apart if you wash it too frequently. So you really should buy, if you buy cheap clothing on Shein, which we don't do.

No, no, no. This is true of. All this is true of a nice suit. This is true of jeans. This is true of everything. Everything has a shelf life.

If

you just wash something, whenever you feel like it, you might as well be lighting clothes on fire. That is a completely wasteful action.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You know what? There, there used to be this kid in my, in my middle school class.

Really, really nice guy. Everyone can hated him. And you know why? Because he smelled

Malcolm Collins: so bad.

Simone Collins: Because he wasn't smelling

Malcolm Collins: the clothing, as I pointed out. This is why you need to

Simone Collins: smell. [00:31:00] That's the purpose of cleaning.

Malcolm Collins: I think he would smell

Simone Collins: lunch too. And he took, he took showers like multiple times every day.

But he wanted his, his nice sports clothing to stay clean.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and this is my, this is why you smell so, you know, but I think I don't, I don't think he was

Simone Collins: able to smell

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: That's the thing. Smell tests only work. Sorry. Hold on. Smell tests only work when you're not smell blind. Malcolm. So I'm just saying, listen, I'm sorry. The audience for the most part has been, and of course I will say there are many exceptional Male outliers on this.

I, I, I had friends in college. Who, okay, admittedly had severe OCD, but were way cleaner than I was. So, I mean, yes, there are absolutely men who are clean. But, yeah, anyway, I will also say, though, and I think this is a really interesting example, like, given these tropes of men, and given that some men are actually exceptionally clean, or good at doing household tasks and [00:32:00] organizing, that just like with sex, we talk about how, for example, there's sort of like a market shortage of dominance.

So if you're willing to be a dom as a male or a female, you kind of have a huge advantage on sexual marketplaces. What we're seeing is actually a similar thing here in some circumstances, that actually being a man who organizes and cleans up and like, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree on this in the extreme. You are now taking the jobs that females have a stated and shown preference for having.

Simone Collins: I disagree. So let me, let me at least submit to your consideration. An Instagram account, he, I think he's also on YouTube. This is a guy named Mason Smith. There is a

Malcolm Collins: reason that the metrosexual male did not last.

Simone Collins: This is the guy named Mason Smith, he goes by Dad Social, that's his tag.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, okay.

And I'm

Simone Collins: sending you like one example of like a typical clip he does.

Speaker 9: The look on her face at the end is what my dreams are made of. Now recently my wife's been talking about how she wants to get into cooking more and I thought this [00:33:00] was the perfect place to start.

Simone Collins: And what, what makes a Mason Smith have a big audience basically it's, you know how like there's been all these jokes that like women porn is like men being like, I'm going to listen to you and nod and say, Oh, that sounds terrible and not give any advice.

Speaker 11: Hello there. Well, hello. How was your day? Do you need to talk? Cause I'll just listen patiently and say things like, Uh huh. How annoying. She's clearly jealous of you. And well, it's his loss. FoR just 24. 95 an hour.

Speaker 12: Yes, please.

Speaker 11: It's the yellow button, sweetie.

Simone Collins: We're like, I

Malcolm Collins: understand that this is women porn. I understand that women watch this and think. Oh, this is so great to watch cause I like watching unattractive man. And I like watching organizing stuff. This is not who women like to marry.

[00:34:00] You

are conflating two incorrect things. You are the guy who is watching the girl on the stripper pole and seeing all the other guys like being like, Whoa, she'd make a great wife.

And the guy next to him was like, no, she wouldn't. She is literally the antithesis of what would make a good wife. And every other guy in this room knows that. And you're saying he's like, he's a, she's a fantasy.

Simone Collins: Cause these are two things at once. Like. A fit male plus doing, doing a thing that women like anyway.

Okay. Well, this kind of actually, this, this, this, this actually does dovetail with my final argument which is that women are this, I think there, there might be some kind of and we talk about this again in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, this concept of super stimuli. We're like, let's say that like a bird has evolved over time.

To sit on blue objects because it's eggs happen to be blue and it needs to evolutionarily like someone's nest. So, you know, the eggs can incubate properly. But then if you give it like blue rocks that are [00:35:00] more blue than its own eggs, it's going to sit on those blue rocks. So that's a super similar life.

And I kind of have this feeling that there are some forms of cleaning related social media that indicate the presence of a, like a, a instinctual. Super singular

Malcolm Collins: and I bet you that no male watches these.

Simone Collins: I know. I know. Well, then are you familiar with clean talk?

Malcolm Collins: No. Okay. No, no male is familiar with clean talk because women are programmed to clean the house.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to be like, look at a woman could be like, this is a very offensive thing to say. And I'd say, well, then give me the gender breakdown on who watches clean talk. And they're like, well, that doesn't count. And I'm like, how does that not count? Women? I know, I know,

Simone Collins: I know. I, I, so I've, I've given you an example of what clean talk looks like.

It's, it's from a YouTube short, I don't have to talk. So that's why it's, it is actually one of tick tocks, largest and fastest growing communities. It has the hashtag clean talk has amassed over 150. [00:36:00] Billion views making it one of the platform's most popular genres and adjacent head tag hashtags like hashtag cleaning Have 63.

2 billion views Hashtag cleaning hacks has 11. 4 billion. 〈

Speaker 4: Rubber Banding Sound〉 〈Splashing Sound〉 〈Rubber Banding

Simone Collins: Views For

Malcolm Collins: somebody who enjoys cleaning and so yeah, I mean it's also like

Simone Collins: this this this is very much like To me, a sign of demonstrated, instinctual, like, like almost porn level reaction to a stimulus of like, Oh, clean. This is porn. You are gaining nothing from watching this.

But that's, but the important thing is that porn is related to a deeply, that instinctual. And I, I'm arguing that [00:37:00] here is proof that cleaning for women is also a deeply set institution. And so

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: am doing you a

Malcolm Collins: favor when I allow you to, to, to burden me with not having to clean the house. And you in your spare time, instead of learning something new about the world, instead of exploring reality or politics or what's happening in society.

I can't respond to

Simone Collins: the fact that from my Raynaud's in the cold, my fingers are so swollen that I can barely strip a bed from sheets. And you

Malcolm Collins: are, you are watching other women and men. Clean things, recreationally, and yet there are women out there who do not use the privilege I bestow to you of cleaning our house.

Simone Collins: Lucky me. [00:38:00] I want to say a huge thanks to Diana Fleishman for sending us this topic. She is the best and also getting us in

Malcolm Collins: trouble with all of these, these, these, these, the fascist wokies

Simone Collins: she has a book coming out, how to train your boyfriend, which she is finishing in mere days, Diana Dave, and I'm sure as soon as you've been

Malcolm Collins: pushing her on this,

Simone Collins: she's going to finish it in mere days.

And you should, you know, look out for a pre order and make a pre order. It's going to be a spicy and delicious book on how to manipulate men. From a science based perspective, you know, none of this old, you know, Well, everyone knows

Malcolm Collins: you are the true master at male manipulation. Everyone always asks, Oh, who wears and they, and the dad saves America show.

We're both talking to you. Who wears the pants in that relationship and in the car is the

Simone Collins: ironic thing, though, like my autistic mind always goes immediately to like, well, what's the empirical proof? Let's [00:39:00] be honest, Malcolm. You like to go commando in our house all the time, even when it's 50 degrees in the house.

I actually think I spend more hours per day on average wearing pants because I always wear pants in the winter. That is true! I am naked

Malcolm Collins: a

Simone Collins: great deal of the time in

Malcolm Collins: the

Simone Collins: winter. A prodigious amount! Which, you know, I mean, you have a lot to show off. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna complain. But, I literally wear pants for more hours per day.

Of, of the year. This is

Malcolm Collins: Uncontestable. This is Uncontestable. If you, if you know our house I care even, even when I'm like forced to like go down and handle the kids or something, I throw on a bathrobe. Yeah. No

Simone Collins: pants. No pants. No pants. Who wears the house? Who wears the pants in this household? It is correct.

Internet rumor confirmed. Confirmed. I'm whipped.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway I love you and I appreciate that you studied and learned that I force nothing on you. I only give you what you would already prefer. [00:40:00] I did not brainwash my wife. She brainwashed herself by reading research. That is. The, I think honestly, if we want feminism and the patriarchy to die, the first thing we need to torture science because the trans community started this trend.

We need to move it to the other, other parts of the, the urban monoculture, other parts of the woke mob got to take a flamethrower and just. Blowtorch science or we'll call it corrective research. We're just like nothing. It's more white supremacists in science, to be honest.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, like who started it?

Well, a bunch of landed gentry white dudes. You know, what was it called? The association of science.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and here it is science today. Still, when you collect data empirically showing that women and men prefer traditional gender roles cross cultures rules.

Simone Collins: Not a good look, huh?

Malcolm Collins: I love it [00:41:00] when people are like, well, the men and women are acculturated to this.

So my wife is so acculturated to liking cleaning that she just watches it for fun in her spare time.

Simone Collins: But here's the thing is I grew up. Being a blank slate is and also living in a household that was not normative from this perspective because my dad did the majority of the shopping, at least half of the cooking and a lot of the indoor cleaning, like maybe, maybe an equal share.

And he was actually very meticulous about it. Like, he was the one who was conceding about the way that the shirts had to be folded and all this. So I, I, it's not like I even normalized to like, some kind of cultural thing. Like, I, I would have normalized to expecting men to like, do all these things. So, yeah, I, I, I just, I have to concede.

On average, women just prefer this stuff. And then I think humor demonstrates furthermore that women also have additional social sensitivities that make them more likely to have proclivities to clean and do child care. Plus they don't want to deal with the [00:42:00] male fallout because men also just have lower standards.

And that's my thing is whenever we talk to the press about like, Male and female equality. Is it like actually most men are willing to step up to do these things. They might not love it, but they're willing to step up. Women are not willing to accept their work. And I think that's the bigger issue is, is the husbands are like, yeah, sure.

Like whatever it takes. But then like women are like. You call this acceptable. This is not acceptable. So

Malcolm Collins: And that's the fault of female neuroses.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and like, either you get to have to, like, lower your standards for house care and child care, or you've got to do it yourself. And I prefer to do it myself.

Not lower your standards.

Malcolm Collins: And this is the, this is, this is the psychological trick for women. What are you, okay,

Simone Collins: what?

Malcolm Collins: I have different standards for childcare and home care than you have. I care about things that you may not be paying attention to. Like, for example, washing clothing less so it stays good longer.

Oh, yes. [00:43:00] Varnishing the floor less so that you don't strip the top layer off. It's historic, after all. What about the lead

Simone Collins: dust, Malcolm?

Malcolm Collins: All of this stuff. Remember when

Simone Collins: Aladdin came to our house and he's like, the only reason why your children are not developmentally delayed is that your wife diligently wetmops your floors.

Come on, Malcolm. Give me some credit.

Malcolm Collins: Wetmopping? You know that lead dust is better handled by Swiffering. I told you No, no, no. It's very different.

Simone Collins: Power mopping is where the water goes on and it gets sucked back up. If you're just taking like a cloth and swashing it around, that's no good. But if you're doing what I'm doing, which is basically combining them up with a vacuum where the water goes down, gets brushed on the floor and it gets sucked back up, that is the best thing you can do.

This sounds like a fantasy to me. Malcolm, you could call Aladdin.

Malcolm Collins: He was

Simone Collins: my wingman. Ah, anyway speaking of childcare duties, I have a big duty in this bears outfit to go wipe off. And then we're going to do another episode. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. I'll let you do the things that you enjoy doing. [00:44:00] Have a good time with your little recreational task there.

And I will see you shortly.

I feel like she hates

him!

This is what hatred looks like! I have

Simone Collins: no

idea how humans work!

Simone Collins: And before I forget, guys. Marge is right around the corner. NatalCon is about to be happening and there are still some spaces left. So if you're keen to join us, hang out with some really cool pronatalists of all stripes and base camp listener, please go to the natals. Con website and enter the code Collins for 10 percent off your registration Two days of non stop hack fun.

I'm super excited for it. I hope to see you there.

Also if you have a kid who is four years old or younger who is born through IVF And you want to help to contribute to science and the advancement of polygenic [00:45:00] risk for selection Please email us and we will connect you to a very interesting IRB study in which we too are participating as parents

Malcolm Collins: Oh, also something I'm looking to hiring for the game dev team is if you are interested in AI art around AI related video games.

Even if you are not a traditional artist, if you're familiar with, like, Loras or many of the different systems for creating AI art, we are going to be including a lot of it in the game and need people to generate good concept art. At scale. And so if you're interested in that do reach out.

Simone Collins: Thanks malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: It would be paid Not much, but

Simone Collins: Still we're not getting paid for any of this. So

Speaker 14: Did the future police give you the coolest things? Toasty, what do you like the most?

Speaker 13: You guys gotta share. Remember, your promise to the future police was to be nice to each other. Oh, thank you, [00:46:00] Toasty. It's an animal book.