[A. E. Stallings]

Well, they (slovenly men) don't feel the necessity of cleaning up after themselves especially if someone else will do it for them... same is quite true of children, who are happy to leave their toys all over the floor for someone else to put away.

I am a much bigger slob than my husband, who is quite tidy. Over the years I have learned to be a bit more organized, and he has learned more or less to put up with my chaos, if it can be kept within certain parameters. He went to (male) boarding school, I grew up in a certain amount of chaos. Here, I think, nurture not nature! Or if it is nature, it is an individual character thing, not a gender one.

Childrearing is another matter.

We would--all of us--write more if we had a traditional "wife" (of either gender) handling all of our day-to-day hassles, or a housefull of servants. Some writers' colonies provide this sort of atmosphere for brief periods (I was unbelievably productive at Hawthornden for a month some years back, with no telephone, having meals prepared for me, laundry done, etc.). What a luxury! But it does tend to be easier, for instance, for male poets with small children to take advantage of these opportunities than female poets, who are often--not always but, sure, most of the time--the primary caregivers. I could not take advantage of a month somewhere now.