Asking Your Wife to Clean the House is Sexist

In Australia it's sexist to ask your wife to clean the house. Oh wait, it's sexist everywhere because, as we all know, asking a stay-at-home mom to, well, stay at home and take care of the house is just wrong.

This My Local VIP cleaning service ad depicts a man returning from work to a house he thought would be cleaned while he was away. Well, apparently, mom was too busy with the kids and all that goes along with managing a household.

My Local VIP has received a few complaints from viewers who say the ad is sexist. Is it? Answer this question honestly. If you (male or female) returned home from work expecting the house to be clean (because you and your spouse talked about it getting cleaned in the morning before you went to work) and it was a mess, would you ask, "Honey, I thought you were going to clean the house today?" Or would you say, "Honey, you must have had a really tough day. It looks like the kids ran you ragged. why don't you go have a seat and I'll get you a glass of wine." Answer honestly.

Of course the second one is the "right" response and the socially acceptable answer but after a long, hard day at work, how many people are really going to be that empathetic? More likely, the returning spouse will say the wrong thing, the stay-at-home spouse will get angry, hand over the baby - as the mom does in this commercial - and storm off...which is not what the mom did in the ad. Rather than get angry, she contacted My Local VIP and got the house cleaned.

While some stay-at-home moms would do that, many would have a few choice words for their insensitive husbands and go pour themselves a glass of wine.

So which is it? Is the ad sexist? Properly representative of the situation? A stupid depiction of an unlikely scenario (calling a cleaning service)? Which?