Papou didn’t lift a finger around the house. As a modern man, I reckon I’m doing my fair share

A survey has found that men in heterosexual households with children still do six hours less housework a week than their female partners, despite women working more paid hours over time.

Apparently over the years men have become convinced they do more housework than they do, but I can tell you, I’m the exception.

Vacuum cleaners and mops can offer opportunities for funky bass breaks as men clean up around the house.Credit: Getty Images

My wife works full-time, earns more than me and is studying for an MBA. I work full-time, have more flexibility and finished a six-year part-time PhD last year that nearly broke us.

As a Greek Australian man who does it all, I feel I am a perfect example of generational change. So, I told my wife (who’s Spanish) that I would write about how, like Achilles, in my mercurial maleness, I’m quick to wield the mop but can easily become distracted. After a cynical snort, she said, “Yeah, tell them how I have to go around telling you to pick up after yourself.”

“Are you kidding?” I was incredulous. “What don’t I do? I do everything.”

“You’re OK, but you need to be told about how and when.”

According to her, my housework is “random and without logic” and apparently, I work at my own “languid pace”.

“Why vacuum without dusting first? It makes no sense.

“Don’t use the same sponge you just cleaned the toilet with.

“What are you doing now? Why are you outside pruning? You haven’t finished the lounge room.”

I was reminded of my “strange habit” of taking things to the recycling bin “one by one”.

Apparently, when I do not collect all the recycling in a box or a bag and take it all out at once, I waste time.

To avoid bickering on the Saturdays when we need to clean the house as we both work full-time – and cannot afford a cleaner as many of our peers do (she says we can but choose not to) – I now ask “What do you want me to do?”

That’s no help at all. “Why do I have to tell you? Can’t you see? It’s like a uni share house in here … books here, blanket there, empty cups … You might want to live in a share-house, I do not.”

“OK, OK, relax!” is not the thing to say, nor is sulking about something one should do.

“No, you relax! Stop whining, all you Greeks do is whine.”

In the end we make up and I follow the rules as best I can. I love cleaning and tidying and hate dirt and clutter. I like freshness and neatness even if it’s short-lived.

But I do it my way, and at my pace, and preferably alone. I just don’t like being managed.

My pleasure is to put on Led Zep’s Immigrant Song or Parliament’s Chocolate City, ramp it right up and get into it. Between air guitar, and funky bass breaks on the mop, I might do laundry, or begin to cook.

I may decide lights can mix with the darks, or after vacuuming, make an informed decision that dusting can wait as “it’s not too bad”. And yes, there have been times when in between tidying the lounge I will notice chaos in the library – Cold War books, colonising the Byzantine Empire – and that needs immediate attention and may take hours.

In the end, I do a lot more than my old man. My mother would have a seizure if she caught me washing dishes after the age of 13.

“Oh my god, get away from there!” she’d scream, “men don’t do that”, as though I’d broken some holy gender covenant. She was born in 1933.

My sister always called me, “Mummy’s boy” or “The golden child”. Yes, and poor late mum was right, “Don’t worry, my boy, they’re all jealous of your good looks and intelligence.”

By 14 I’d graduated into my old man’s ritualised household tasks (if you can call them that) – cooking crab, grilling meats and fish, occasional gardening.

My father, born in 1930 and a committed and active socialist, very well read, exalted the virtues of equality among men and women, yet never did much around the house. He was very comfortable beading wedding dresses my mother sewed, stitching hems and so on, but he could not make his own coffee.

He could pour a great whiskey behind a 1970s bar in our 1980s lounge. The only times I saw the old man clean the house was when we organised for a party. That was two or three times a year.

At the end of the day, I do all household work, but my way, a little unorthodox.

Do I do the same time allocation as my wife, as per the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) study?

“Yeah, maybe, in a really frustrating way … but, babe, you’re a great cook – especially BBQ meats and seafood,” my wife said.

“Now give me a hand in folding these sheets, no, no, hold tight …”

Fotis Kapetopoulos is a journalist for the English edition of Neos Kosmos, a leading Greek-Australian masthead.

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