Our kids are currently being raised by two families -- ours (two adult women, neither of whom are presently working for pay and both of whom do at least some household tasks, though mine are limited by health issues) and their father's (a heterosexual couple, both of whom have part-time jobs and ostensibly both of whom do housework, though I suspect their father passes off his on his girlfriend as he used to do on me). I don't know if they have chores at their dad's house, but they're only there on weekends; the bulk of their "workweek" time is spent with us. And here, they've been taught that everyone does what they can and everyone helps cover the shortfall when somebody can't.

The kids are only six and four, so there are limits to what they can do, but they are regularly asked to help with various tasks, and they like to. Joseph lights up when he's offered a chance to help, and trots back and forth carrying things with great eagerness and reasonable skill. Grace has occasional issues complaining about having to do something when it's assigned by Callie. When it's assigned by me, her desire to please Mama kicks in, and she falls all over herself to be helpful.

Both are still at the age where the supervision necessary to get them to do a job right costs us more energy than just doing it for them, but we consider it worthwhile. It's investing in both our future and theirs. They need to learn the domestic skills involved, and they need to learn the concept that everyone in a household has to work to keep it running smoothly. If that means I spend more spoons on talking Grace through the process of a new kitchen skill or helping Joseph sort his clean laundry so he puts it in the right drawers than if I'd done it for them, that's all right with me.

The concept of anything, whatsoever, being "men's work" or "women's work" just hasn't come up around here, except in that Grace is very proud of the fact that women can build babies and feed them from their bodies and men can't. I point out to her that men can help a woman start a baby, and that's something women can't do; and that there've been a few men who, with medical assistance, have managed to feed their babies from their breasts. Just to keep her from getting overweeningly smug about her own sex.

Both our kids consider the notion that anything unrelated to making babies or breastfeeding them is properly a job for one specific sex to be self-evidently absurd. We have encouraged this attitude.