“In Spain, where half the men say they do no housework, a new law requires men to share domestic tasks,” reports The Christian Science Monitor. “Beginning this summer, men must sign an agreement as part of a marriage contract in civil ceremonies. If a husband refuses to do his share, he could face penalties in a divorce settlement if the marriage fails.”
I say what about the wife in this aspect, my exwife couldn’t even find the laundry room let alone recognize a vacuum cleaner if she tripped on it!
I agree, aside from any objections to the law itself, this sounds like a very sexist
wording… They should have included either partner. Unless they already have a
version of the law for wives, and have added this for fairness…
How in the world do you prove any allegations of not doing one’s share, anyway?
Wow… it has gotten so bad that they needed to implement legislation to force husband to do their share of house work? And here I thought America was the ‘holy land’ of the couch potato.
I often wonder what reasons the government has for becoming involved in marriage in the first place. It seems that the (US) government has always been doing something that seemed wrong.
*Wasn’t illegal at one point for a mixed race couple to marry?
*Why should I have to pay the government to be married, shouldn’t that be a right?
*I think in North Dakota if you were a couple the land lord could refuse to rent to you if you weren’t married.
*Then there was the marriage penalty tax that they finally got rid of.
It seems like marriage is a default contract that has been approved by the government that gives special rights to set of people for a fee. I have never known how to feel about their involvement in the first place. I just don’t think the government will ever be able to come up with legal definitions for relationships.
More work for lawyers everywhere. Imagine a prenup in Spain that included dusting, doing dishes, laundry and all of the negoitations that are needed who got the siesta first.
It does all sound a bit absurd, what next? I hope they don’t build men having to put the loo seat down and women learning to reverse park a car into the marriage contract. I don’t think the institute of marriage could survive such a test!
Interesting, it has been only us guys that have so far responded to this post so far. I’m wondering when the gals respond that the sh*p will hit the fan and who is going to have to clean it up.
Look, I’m gonna explain this just one more time. In our house there are four males and one female. Assume an average of three trips a day for one (watery) function and one trip a day for the other function. This means that the seat would need to be raised twelve times (3 x 4 males) and down only eight times (1 x 4 males plus 4 x 1 female). Since the seat needs to be raised more times it is only sensible that it should be left in that position. Can you get a woman to understand logic like that? Nooo, but they can give you a look that would freeze every drop in the water system.
Actually, that law sounds very strange to me. Each couple needs to work out the jobs to be done. If the husband cooks the dinners, well then maybe he’d like some help changing the tires on the car. Domestic tasks include many things traditionally done by men, and those aren’t fun either. You have to be careful what you ask for because fair is fair.
If someone is being taken advantage of in a marriage, well that is bad, but I don’t think a law about doing your chores is going to fix that.
Maybe there is some special situation in Spain that we don’t know about. That’s all I can figure. Are men actually looked down upon for doing household tasks? So this law is supposed to help with that? I just don’t know. I suppose being able to cite lack of cooperation at home as grounds for divorce could help some people get out of truly terrible situations. Perhaps their divorce laws require some real concrete complaint.
you owe me a clean set of breeches…
j/k
In our marriage, my wife and I take turns sharing a great deal of the load of responsibility around the house, mostly because one or the other of us has to be with our baby daughter. Does the load ever get divided unequally between the two of us? Does one or the other end up with more to do? You bet, but thats the way life works, and that’s the way a marriage works; when one or the other partner can’t pull their own load, the other must pull. Granted, if one partner or the other is taking advantage of the situation they are asking for trouble.
The whole idea that marriage is a %50/%50 thing is lunacy. So is the idea that a man can marry a woman and expect her to carry the bulk of the domestic responsibility %100 of the time, or vice versa.
A marriage is an investment of %110 by each party, an investment motivated by pure, unselfish love. ( How on earth do the Spanish expect to legislate love?) As is with any investment, the returns by compound interest are greater than the sum of the investment when proper care and attention is paid to one’s investment.
