1 post tagged “bad data”

This is why I should never, ever come online. 

So, there's this article rehashing the old complaint that women do sooooo much more housework than men do and so this is proof that women are ...well, whatever.  You know, because it gets said all the time.

I have a lot of problems with this.  Let's examine just this little blurb, a little blurb on which I'm sure much blood of men is going to be spilled.

1. The graph doesn't match the data in the lede.  The graph indicates that single men in 2005 do considerably less housework than married men, yet the accompanying text says that marriage saves men an hour of housework a week.  Then the text later goes on to say that married men do more housework than single men.  So, I'm guessing the graph is the correct version, in which case the opening of the article is just false and unfortunately reinforces the impression that, again, women have it so bad while men have it so good.
2. They say it's based on a time diary, yet they also did one of those fiercely unreliable surveys asking people to recall how much time they spent in the previous week doing whatever activity.  People's memories on this front are crazy unreliable.  Most Americans, for example, underestimate the amount of TV they watch per week by at least a couple of hours per day, and we know that from time diaries. 
3. If you look at the graph, assuming it is the correct representation of the data, the amount of housework done by married women and married men is getting pretty close to equal--that is NOT a 7-hour difference on the graph.  Time diary data I've seen before--as opposed to the surveys from memory--suggest this is true.  Bear in mind that this sample probably also included some people, most likely women, who do not work outside the home and it seems natural that they would do more housework than their spouses, no?
4. Why isn't gardening, lawn care, vehicle maintenance, and home repair counted?  Is that not housework, of a sort?  I know my husband does most of the vehicle maintenance and home repair, and I count that.  It's as integral to the running of our household as doing the dishes, possibly more so (If the furnace is on the fritz, we're fucked--if all the dishes are dirty, which is unlikely, we can always use paper, ya know?).  In my experience, most women do not count these activities as housework, and so when I hear them bitch about how their husband doesn't do the dishes, I'm all, "Oh, do you split the wood?  Do you fix the drippy faucets?"  Yah, some women do (I do, if I have to) but most don't.  Most seem to want their husbands to do all that work and an equal amount as they do of what they consider housework and also be sensitive and romantic and not watch football and also take them out to dinner because they are so oppressed by their housework.  God almighty.  It's a wonder more men don't crack.  And of course most men are still the primary breadwinners and expected, by society yes, but also very often by their wives, to put in long hours to make a brilliant career and pay for that goddamned mortgage.  It would drive me to drink.  (I am suddenly so reminded of some men I met in Japan, mostly Aussies but also Japanese and other nationalities who asserted boldly that marrying an American woman is akin to death.  It's not just that we have goals.  It's that we will slowly kill you with sudsy liquids.)
5. And finally, why is no attention paid to the fact that while the amount of time women, single or married, spend on housework has greatly decreased (by 10 hours a week or so for married women--and I would wager they fill almost all those hours watching Oprah), the amount of housework done by married men has increased by almost the same amount.  What sort of tragedy will befall the nation if we are forced to admit that men are actually stepping up and doing housework?  If we totted up the amount of time spent doing household repairs and lawn maintenance and so forth, I would hazard a guess there would be absolute parity here.  I also hazard a guess, though, that this survey was done at least in part with the old received wisdom that women do much more housework, even today, than men informing the survey--I am guessing, from what I've seen, that the theory drove the collection of the data, and I know for a fact it drove the way that reporter wrote the story up.  NEVER LET YOUR THEORY DRIVE YOUR DATA; IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND.  ALWAYS.

I know I used to take it as truth that women today still do much more housework than their husbands.  I took that as fact, without any evidence to back up my belief, until I took a seminar called The Philosophy of Daily Life.  It was inexpertly named, but expertly conceived and taught.  Albert Borgmann wanted us to think about daily life in philosophical terms, to use philosophy as a way of thinking about quotidian and pedestrian things, to talk about the Good Life and what it meant and how to get there in terms of actual life.  He was distressed that philosophers tend to ignore the philosophical meanings, for example, of central heating (without a hearth, the focal point of the home has become the television, and the television tends to discourage familial interaction, while the hearth encouraged it) and the absolute state of disrepair that the family meal has fallen into.  One of the books we read was a survey of how Americans actually spend their time, and it was based entirely on time diaries.  That means that for every, say, half-hour segment of every day, as they were doing it, people wrote down what they were doing.  One thing they found was that, by and large, women are not doing nearly as much housework as they fancy they are, and in general, everybody has vastly more leisure time than they think they do.  They also, naturally, found that most people spend most of that time watching TV but think that they do not.  It's an interesting book and, no, sadly, I cannot find it anymore and cannot remember the name.  But I was shocked.  A theory I had held forever had been undermined by data.  I found myself forced to give up my belief.  If only others would follow suit.

No, ladies, I think it's time we moved on from this and found some new drum to beat.  This one is old and stinks really badly.  Unfortunately, articles like this one just perpetuate myths that we apparently desperately need to believe in.

You people have no idea.  This kind of thing suffocates me.  That's why I started the Vox, that's why I come across with so much vitriol sometimes, because when I read things that I know from data and from checking out the world around me to be totally untrue and ultimately harmful, the rage smothers me.  If I don't get it out, I can't breathe, until all of a sudden out will come a huge, explosive breath of anger, probably at T, and he doesn't need that.  He's certainly not responsible for this shit. 

I admit to also being greatly frustrated by the fact that when you actually try to converse with quotidian people about their pedestrian lives in philosophical terms, they typically become bewildered and hostile.  No one cares, no one wants to talk about it.  The only thing they can offer up is the accusation that you hate modernity and want to turn back the clock.  When you assert that actually what you want is for humanity to find new ways to keep what is valuable and adapt both modern life and tradition to each other so that we can retain the good things from both, eyes glass over.  Seriously.  It's frustrating and kind of soul-deadening.

Actually, since I'm here and roughly on the topic, I'm going to write about Heat by Bill Buford.  Why is this topical?  Hang on.  I just finished that book today, and I enjoyed it, although frankly it did nothing to ameliorate my opinion that Mario Batali is a bit of a prick (a prick who constantly mispronounces 'piquant' which irritates me).  But it's a good book, and I heartily recommend it.  Stephens, I believe I will be sending it your way.

Anyway, at the end, after his apprenticeship in meat with the butcher of Tuscany, Buford finds himself lamenting what has become of food in our modern times.  He laments the demise of the great Tuscan beef, the disappearance of great handmade pasta, the disappearance of certain traditions and foodways.  He also keeps asserting that the romantic Tuscans are somewhat insane, living without electricity and so forth, to pursue these nutty ideals.  He also goes on to say that he is totally not against global capitalism and blah blah blah.  It's just the food that worries him, how few people will know in succeeding generations how great food is supposed to taste, how it is supposed to connect us with ancestors and landscapes, how it is meant to communicate stories, legends, great epics of life to the eater.  It is not just dinner, and he seems like he's starting to get that...but then he doesn't really.  He doesn't seem to get that it's all connected.  No, you don't have to give up all the trappings and conveniences of modern life, but certainly the global economy and the constant striving for money above all other things of value are major forces in the undoing of food.  He's right that you can't simply blame the supermarkets--it's much more complicated than that.  But he is misguided in judging that people who care more about the culture of food (what Borgmann always calls the Culture of the Table) than they do about money are insane or deluded.  The pursuit of money above all other things means food--and other things, like family--take a backseat.  In the American case, it's not just a backseat; it's been dumped out onto the highway.  Oh, sure, we worship our celebrity chefs, but this is just a symptom of the problem.  We worship them because food has become mysterious to us, handed over to professionals whether they work for Kraft or Babbo or the school cafeteria.  It is only one of the many things we no longer seem to know how to do for ourselves, but it is among the greatest of losses, perhaps the greatest.  We can't get it back by visiting and deifying a great butcher in Tuscany but simultaneously saying that we still want everything else to be the same, with the McMansions and the cheap Chinese imports and the commitment to television.  That is unrealistic and fundamentally misses the point.  If food is culture, then this culture is getting the food it deserves, which is "convenient" and processed and generally pretty cheap (contrasted to the very expensive food in great restaurants) and disconnected from culture and landscape and reality and overall kind of disappointing, if you know how really great food can be.

That's why I don't think that becoming a proficient home cook is merely a matter of cooking being one pasttime among many and those who enjoy cooking should do it and those who don't shouldn't.  It's more important than that.  More is being rejected by those who don't cook and more is being lost--the stakes are much higher here than they are if someone doesn't like football, say, or parades.  That's one place, too, where I agree with Tony Bourdain:  To say up front that you will never eat meat is to reject a vast array of cultures and their traditions and their soul, often including your own--in many cases it is to reject your own family, though it is perhaps not surprising given that we are already often disconnected from our families in profound ways.  It is to assert yourself, as an individual, over the social (except in cases, such as in India and among Buddhist monks, where the society is overwhelmingly vegetarian).  Imagine someone going to stay in monasteries in Japan and refusing to eat vegetables--it would be offensive, an outrage. 

I know.  I'm hyperbolic, I'm judgmental, I'm no doubt making too much of it all.  I'm the one standing on the deck of the Titanic asking why people don't care about saving this incredibly beautiful heirloom deck chair.  I know.  But you know, in my little corner of the world, I'm going to keep that deck chair.  Hopefully, it floats.