The Feminine Mystique

Friedan explains that housework is not actually demanding enough to take up the majority of anyone’s day. Housewives who find it difficult to complete their domestic tasks are experiencing a common and well-known psychological phenomenon: Humans will find ways to draw out even simple tasks if they know they have a long amount of time to fill. The same thing often happens to men who work in undemanding jobs; the phenomenon is not unique to housewives or to women.

Some men fail to understand how women can do housework all day long and still struggle to complete it; attempting the same tasks themselves and finding them not particularly difficult or time-consuming, they assume their wives must be incompetent. In reality, women merely find ways to lengthen their tasks so that their days will not be empty. Those who do not do this must find other ways of filling their time, such as community events, playing cards with other wives, or drinking. Although the misconception that housework demands all their time keeps many women from making a change and starting a career outside the home, their household would not actually fall apart from were they to try this.