family commitement & domestic support

We continued discussing a list of His 5 largest emotional needs and Her 5 largest emotional needs. We finished talking about Family Commitment. Here are some things group members suggested during our discussion
How can we show our spouse our family commitment?

• Don't undermine the others authority, specifically Husbands make sure to support what the wife has decided if she is the one at home all day with the kids.
• It makes it easier to both be involved in the development if the course of action is decided on in agreement between the two of you. If it is all just one persons idea, the other is disinclined to help.
• Take care of the family in other ways too, not just domestic... wills, insurances, etc - family decisions that she for what ever reason can't or doesn't want to do.

What makes our spouses feel like we do not have family commitment?

• When we give our time to anything else, even normal work sometimes.
• When we make our spouses feel bad for working (this was said specifically about working mothers, but I think wives also make husbands feel guilty for working sometimes).
• If mothers stay home and a husband suggests that it would be better if she worked so they could have more money, making the mother seem unvalued.
  

Next we talked about His need for "Domestic Support" - loosely defined as 'he has a need for comfortable home, and needs his spouse to be supportive in that area'
We only got as far as to hear from Guys in the room about whether or not it was truly a need of theirs and I think it was a clear Yes. We agreed that we wanted our homes to be places of rest and refuge, especially right after work (which is typically when we are called on to take over for the mother). Women also, obviously, would like some domestic support, so here again is an example of how it is a felt need of both spouses. Men just typically rank it much higher on their list of needs than women do. According to his research this author says that men would typically give up affection, conversation, openness and honesty, as well as financial support and family commitment to have a spouse that provided domestic support. We also mentioned that men need to remember the other forms of "domestic support" that may wives provide, not just house stuff, things like keeping up with family members for us, doing the cordial stuff like RSVPin, thankyou cards and birthday cards, wedding presents, things that makes our household better, more hospitable and respected by others. We will pick up on this topic in a few weeks, and continue up the lists.

Here is some interesting reading. The first one, pay attention to the graph, which shows that historically men are doing heeps more work than they use to, and women are doing less than they use to. And, now the increase in work from single to married is about the same for men and women, women just already did alot more work to begin with while single. Also, since I still have access to most of UT's online library I looked up the original publication and I was surprised to find out that almost everything that men typically do around the house wasn't considered "housework", namely house maintenance and repair, yard work, and car repair & maintenance, which I kind of feel helps maintain the home so should have been included.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080403191009.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070827174300.htm