Cambridge Professors Give Men the Excuse They’ve Been Looking for to Continue Not Helping Around the House
Dirty Laundry
You rise early, feed the kids, feed the dog, clean the kitchen, take the kids to school, walk the dog, race home and open your laptop — to do your day job — and that’s when you see it:
Fresh crumbs on the counter; dirty dishes in the sink. Greeting you like a raised middle finger.
It’s infuriating, but you can’t just leave it. You clean up the mess, while silently fuming at your thoughtless husband.
Now, thanks to professors at Cambridge University, men have an excuse.
Writing in the journal, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Dr. Tom McClelland of the University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and co-author, Professory Paulina Sliwa, say “affordance theory” explains why men can leave crumbs on a counter or a sink full of dirty dishes or a basket of laundry on a bottom stair, strategically placed to force them to leap over it or haul it upstairs.
The academics define “affordance” as a “possibility for action” and suggest that this perception of affordance depends on gender. In a home with a man and a woman, the woman is more likely to feel an urge to act than a man when seeing domestic work…
