Question
Men and women employed in full-time jobs have to share evenly household chores and caring for children at home. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.
Sample answer
Housework and child-care ought to be shared by full-time working men and women "naturally" which means "unevenly." To insist on having the same degree of responsibility, for that matter, is likely to get a wrong picture of what family happiness is all about. Office hours being equal, mothers know best regarding child-rearing and house-cleaning, but no father should have a feeling of quilt for doing less.
It is not easy being a mother; if it were easy, men would do it. However, usually busy mothers are happy women. From doing the dishes to sweeping the house to keeping an eye on kids, any mother can perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. It can be seen that most men cannot outdo women in this respect, even if they would like to. By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off as men do. Women employed in nine-to-five jobs belong to the vacation-less class, in a way almost like destiny. In all appearances, a mother can take the place of all others at home and no one else, including a father, can take the place of a mother.
Men are not to blame for not doing enough housework since housework is not the main reason that women go to office. Although people of both sexes have equal rights under the modern law, it seems strange that men and women should take turns mopping up the floor or feeding a new-born baby. More by biological nature than by social tradition, women probably enjoy doing that kind of things which most men are not born to do. No wonder, the trouble of a man living alone is that it is always his turn to do the dishes. In a certain sense, even a husband's weekend role at home turns out to be something poetic like a perfect summer day when the sun is shinning, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the land mower is broken. In short, men are always like men; and women, working or not, always become like their mothers.
In real life, what is equally shared by working men and women alike is the joy of raising their children and not necessarily of sharing the same amount of the household chores. Therefore, it is proper to conclude that the happiness of a "healthy" family does not depend on the cleanness of the house, which is next to impossible. In fact, the house may be clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy, no matter who does what.
