Equally Shared Housework

[FrugalToque]

https://www.boredpanda.com/sharing-housework-responsibility-constance-hall/

This has been bugging me for a while, and I think it does relate, in some respects, to healthy relationships and a healthy early retirement with a partner.

The Equally Shared Parenting people will tell you that both partners are supposed to take 50% of all the tasks in a relationship (the housework, the child-minding, the money earning etc.)  But the article above is about women who are bogged down as the task-masters of the house, having to make lists for everyone else instead of having everyone fixing problems on their own initiative.

When I say this has bugged me for a while, I mean I first noticed it over 20 years ago when Mrs. Toque and I had gotten engaged and were attending a pre-marital conference with a dozen other couples at my parents' church. (I guess she wasn't "Mrs. Toque" then, but I digress...)

One of the exercises had us bravely standing up in front of the other couples and our prospective spouses and stating what quality in our future spouse we loved the most.  About half the men there said that their companion's best quality was, "she got my life straightened out" or "she got me on the straight and narrow" or "put me on the right track to think about my career and my future".

This baffled me.  As these accounts were fleshed out in detail, the language used basically sounded like, "I can't live with my mom anymore, and I'm not a responsible adult, so I need someone to fill in that gap".  Did these women know what they had signed up for?  Most likely, these are the women who go on social media complaining about that "third child" they need to take care or how "men just can't handle <simple household task>".

I don't know what the success ratio is for these marriages.  One ended in divorce, but I didn't track the rest of them, so I don't have a good sample.  Basically, you've got a man who has accepted a kind of infantilization and a woman who is purportedly cool with this.  I wished these pairs of people the best, and maybe it's just me projecting my personality, but I don't see how that could be satisfying and stable.

Looking over the accounts on the link I just posted (I found it today), that's what I see.  How did a guy who cooked meals and took care of her kids on his days off turn into a guy who lazed around and only played golf?  How did any of these situations come about?  Whose "fault" is it?

Part of it, obviously, is that initial incompetent starting point in some relationships, encouraged by the media. The same people that work so hard at convincing women they need a shit-tonne of make-up, hair care products and other beauty related products I can't even name because I'm a man and I have no idea - those same people also convince men and women that married men are basically useless morons.

After that, though?  I waste too much time on social media, like everybody else.  And I see a lot - a LOT - of women constantly complaining about how useless their husbands are.  Like a little echo chamber, the women bouncing memes back and forth about the generic incompetence of their male partners.  Someone always chimes in about how overjoyed she is when her husband "helps" with chores or "babysits" the kids.

Babysits.
His own kids.

I feel like this language is just awful.  Those are his own kids.  That's his own house.  He's not babysitting.  He's not helping.  And spending years commiserating with other women with that language is not improving the situation - it's making it worse.  You're making it normal, while he goes and complains to his male friends about how much his wife nags him and how he can't do anything right anyway.

Anyhow, needed to get that off my chest somewhere.

If you're thinking of getting married:
a) make yourself as much of a functional human* being as you can
b) make sure your prospective spouse is as much of a functional human* being as he/she can be
c) don't fall into "joking" traps about the uselessness of either party in any capacity.  "You know how women/men are ..." stories aren't funny and become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Toque

* -  yes, obviously I'm not referring to people who are handicapped.  I'm talking about being a grown-ass, mature human being, here.

[Dollar Slice]

If you're thinking of getting married:
a) make yourself as much of a functional human* being as you can
b) make sure your prospective spouse is as much of a functional human* being as he/she can be

Even aside from fairness and making yourself appealing to a partner, it can have pretty appalling consequences later in life... I'm watching it happen with my parents. They both worked but around the house it was definitely one of those typical uneven household chore marriages. Dad did the "outside" work (took the cars to get fixed, mowed the lawn, took out the trash). Mom did everything indoors, food-related, kid-related, and all of the emotional labor/planning (doctor and dentist appointments, vacation/travel planning, gift buying, family events, etc.).

Now my mom had to have surgery and is unable to cook or clean while she's recovering, and my dad is just helpless to do basic household chores for the two of them. He's OK with laundry and vacuuming but absolutely no cooking skills beyond sandwiches and toast because he hasn't tried to cook anything in about 35 years.

Every able-bodied adult should acquire and continue to practice the skills to take care of themselves. It's crazy that so many people can't. Even if you are married to someone very accommodating, you have no guarantee that divorce, death or disability will not come along and take that away.

[G-dog]

It’s interesting that men are infantilized in one way, and women are treated as children / infants outside of the home (about “serious” matters). 

I doubt division of labor is ever 50:50, but over time it should average out closer to this and both parties should be happy with the split.  It’s hard to compare some jobs to each other (dishes need to be washed every day, but the lawn only needs to be mowed about once / 7 days….).

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

It's depressing on the other side of things as well when wives do not have any knowledge of their monetary situation because "that's a man's job," they're pushed aside,  or whatever reason.  It's great that one spouse or the other has strengths,  and leaning on each other is a beautiful thing,  but it's really helpful when both are competent in all the big things and each help the other fully.

[gooki]

One of the exercises had us bravely standing up in front of the other couples and our prospective spouses and stating what quality in our future spouse we loved the most.  About half the men there said that their companion's best quality was, "she got my life straightened out" or "she got me on the straight and narrow" or "put me on the right track to think about my career and my future".

Do you recall what the women said?

[boarder42]

Had some interesting conversations with different people in my life about this topic over the past year.  It appears to be becoming more prevalent as gender roles in houses are somewhat engrained in people from how their parents were.  Complaining about it on SM is an extremely unhealthy way to handle this situation in my opinion and partners should be having more open conversations about this. 

The big take away i got from conversations and articles i've read is its not just the accepting responsiblity for a larger share but also understanding the mental power it takes to be the planner for everything.  If one partner is expecting lists that means the other partner has to make these lists which takes time and energy. 

Being the cook in a relationship and having to come up with the meals each week has become automatic for me but its something i still have to think about and plan and prep for.  Same with my wife who does the cleaning and keeps that up. 

[RetiredAt63]

Had some interesting conversations with different people in my life about this topic over the past year.  It appears to be becoming more prevalent as gender roles in houses are somewhat engrained in people from how their parents were.  Complaining about it on SM is an extremely unhealthy way to handle this situation in my opinion and partners should be having more open conversations about this. 

The big take away i got from conversations and articles i've read is its not just the accepting responsiblity for a larger share but also understanding the mental power it takes to be the planner for everything.  If one partner is expecting lists that means the other partner has to make these lists which takes time and energy. 

Being the cook in a relationship and having to come up with the meals each week has become automatic for me but its something i still have to think about and plan and prep for.  Same with my wife who does the cleaning and keeps that up.

This is it so much!  The person saying "just tell me what to do and I'll do it" is dumping a load of work on the other person.  It's a lot easier to let someone else do all the planning.  It also means abdicating personal responsibility.

It bugs me even more than fathers (it is almost always fathers) saying they are babysitting the kids.  NO, babysitters babysit the kids.  Fathers are parenting.  Seriously, when I look after my grand-daughter I don't say I am babysitting, I am grand-mothering.

[chemistk]

In our household, I take care of all the cooking, 75% of the laundry, and at least half the cleaning. I'm not trying to be self-congratulatory, just pointing out that I really resonate with this post.

I also do ~2/3 of the grocery shopping, and I tell you what - the looks that women (especially older women) give me are just frustrating. When we go shopping as a family (or if my wife takes the kids), and they start acting out people often treat her as though she's failed because the kids are being unruly. There's side eye, scorn, dirty looks, and whispered comments for DAYS. But if the kids do the exact same thing with me (which they definitely do), I get little cheers of encouragement (you've got this, dad!) or extra space in the aisle or looks of sympathy.

My wife's also in a moms-only FB group (which also happens to skew very conservative Christian) and the language used is exactly the same as in the article. Half the time, when she bothers to scroll through, it's just a huge husband-bashing. And the WORST is anyone who says that their spouse is babysitting. I want to slap those guys across the face and tell them that if your wife has to describe your parenting as "babysitting", you're doing it WRONG.

Ironically, she actually gets frustrated with those groups because that one common ground that those women have is one she can't share in.

[MudPuppy]

Obligatory link to the metafilter guide on emotional labor

[RetiredAt63]

Obligatory link to the metafilter guide on emotional labor

THANK YOU!

I read that a long time ago and wanted to post it here, but couldn't find it.

There was also a blog by a man whose wife divorced him basically because he was oblivious to the work she did and basically didn't respect it, just made more work for her.  Found it:

https://mustbethistalltoride.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink/#:~:text=The%20wife%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20want%20to%20divorce%20her%20husband,trust%20him.%20She%20can%E2%80%99t%20be%20safe%20with%20him.

[Morning Glory]

Obligatory link to the metafilter guide on emotional labor

THANK YOU!

I read that a long time ago and wanted to post it here, but couldn't find it.

There was also a blog by a man whose wife divorced him basically because he was oblivious to the work she did and basically didn't respect it, just made more work for her.  Found it:

https://mustbethistalltoride.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink/#:~:text=The%20wife%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20want%20to%20divorce%20her%20husband,trust%20him.%20She%20can%E2%80%99t%20be%20safe%20with%20him.

Thank you for these links and to Frugal Toque for starting this thread!!! I really wish this discourse had been more easily available before I ever moved in with my partner. It's so hard to change habits once they become ingrained. My mom has had two husbands and neither one ever did much around the house when I was growing up, so for a long time I didn't even question the fact that my spouse wasn't doing his share. Even once we had kids and he became the stay at home parent I was still doing 80% of the chores and 100% of the management tasks like making appointments and filling out tax returns. Things have changed over the last year but it's been a struggle. 

[tygertygertyger]

I've been giving a lot of thought to what someone - Malcat maybe? - said a few weeks ago about overfunctioning / underfunctioning in relationships. Like, if one person always just takes on more of the work because "it's easier if I just do it myself", so the other person acclimates to never being required to do work.

Happens in romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, even in friendships I imagine, where one friend plans activities and the other person gets to just show up. And this isn't exactly a problem all the time, but I am watching my own relationship because I can see this tipping further into me doing more.

My partner has genetic hearing loss, and hates talking on the phone. He has tried hearing aids, but hated those as well. And I get it - it's legitimately hard for him. But I don't want to be the only person calling to make our medical/dental appointments, or vet appt for our dog, or calling plumbers or tradespeople, or calling stores to check their hours or whatever.

Luckily there are alternatives to phone calls now, so when he talks about getting a new internet provider, I say "Great! Whatever you want - I know you'll take care of it."

I really don't want to overfunction and end up in my grandparents marriage, calling each other "Mother" and "Father" with one of them (always the same one) springing up each time the other wants something to drink. Shivers.

[FrugalToque]

One of the exercises had us bravely standing up in front of the other couples and our prospective spouses and stating what quality in our future spouse we loved the most.  About half the men there said that their companion's best quality was, "she got my life straightened out" or "she got me on the straight and narrow" or "put me on the right track to think about my career and my future".

Do you recall what the women said?

I just checked with Mrs. Toque, and neither of us remember anything specific.  I think each woman gave an example of a particular personality trait that she liked in her future husband and there was so much variance in that list that, after 21 years, neither of us remembers anything specific.   The contrast between that and the mass male dependence was pretty glaring.

[ender]

Our ratio is definitely not 50-50, but then again I work fulltime and my wife works fulltime as a stay at home parent.

I think it's actually trickier in these situations to see what is "equally shared life work" (I don't like "housework" in this phrase because... a lot of life isn't just "housework").

On the whole, I'd guess we're close-ish to 50/50 but it looks really different. My wife definitely does a lot more of the home stuff, other than cooking (which I do almost all of) but it also comes in different varieties.

Where this is blatantly obvious is when you have two working parents and the dad is basically not engaged in the housework/parenting at all even though both parents have equal work requirements.

Which, of course, is really common.

I think another thing that a lot of men think is "well I do all the maintenance/'dad' stuff and that's equal!" without doing math around... how much more time almost everyone needs to spend on the "moms work" stuff compared to the "dads work."  As if spending a couple hours a week mowing equates to cleaning/cooking/doing laundry/etc.

[MudPuppy]

one of them (always the same one) springing up each time the other wants something to drink

As someone who hasn’t poured their own drink in about 13 years, I need to call 911 for to get this burn treated

[Kris]

I really don't want to overfunction and end up in my grandparents marriage, calling each other "Mother" and "Father" with one of them (always the same one) springing up each time the other wants something to drink. Shivers.

Watching this dynamic between my husband's parents drove me absolutely batshit. UGH.

I have (stumbled into?) a very equitable marriage. And in lots of ways, I think it might just be down to luck. The lucky part: my husband absolutely loves to cook. This means he does all the cooking and all the grocery shopping. That is a lot of work. And since he retired a couple of years ago, he does about 80% of the laundry, too.

I still do the lion's share of the emotional labor. But the good thing that works for us is, we each have "our" domains of work, which means that the other person is not at all responsible in those areas. I clean out the litter boxes 100% of the time, which means I am never mad at him for not doing it. I do all the house cleaning: same deal. Conversely, he is never mad at me because I started dinner late, or forgot to pick up milk and eggs at the store.

It's remarkably stress free. I love it.

[TheFrenchCat]

Our marriage isn't 50/50 in every aspect, mostly since I only work part-time from home, so I do more house work to balance that.  But it works for us, and I think our labor is pretty close to 50/50, including the emotional labor.  My husband takes care of everything outside the house, like the yard, the cars, and the lot we own and has taken the lead on building our house.  We equally take care of our daughter's school work and activities, and I do most of the cleaning, cooking and money management.  However, especially due to my illness, my husband can and does pick up my half whenever I'm too sick to keep up with all of it.  And he does it by doing the emotional labor of figuring out what I haven't done, instead of needing to bug me when I'm low.  So I'm quite satisfied with the way we split what needs doing.

The only thing I'm worried about is that we have a daughter and since we've split up the jobs mostly along traditional gender roles, I worry that she'll think she has to do those jobs.  We do have my husband show her how to fix the cars and such, but I want to make sure she knows that every marriage needs to work out it's own balance, and that ours isn't the way everyone should divide the work.  When she's older I can just talk to her about it, but I'm not sure how to model it now when she's only 6.  Does anyone have any advice on how to teach girls that it's not their job to do all the emotional labor and housework? 

[FrugalToque]

I think another thing that a lot of men think is "well I do all the maintenance/'dad' stuff and that's equal!" without doing math around... how much more time almost everyone needs to spend on the "moms work" stuff compared to the "dads work."  As if spending a couple hours a week mowing equates to cleaning/cooking/doing laundry/etc.

If he spends an hour mowing the lawn and she spends an hour making dinner, those are not the same amount of labour.

Lawn mowing is tedious and perhaps tiring.  You have to make sure you charged the lawnmower's battery and maybe sharpen a blade.

Cooking requires creativity, menu planning, internet searching arranging the presence of ingredients etc.  There's a tonne of work done ahead of time: shopping lists, nutritional requirements requirements etc.  If you're just counting the hour in the kitchen, that's like only counting the hours a teachers spends in the classroom and none of the prep-work/marking/meeting parents etc.

[pasadenafr]

Oh god.

Both my parents always worked full time jobs (with a big train commute for my mom). All my life, they've shared everything when it comes to family work. It was roughly divided according to what each one of them was better at / liked better / disliked less.

Grocery shopping? Together, including putting the groceries away afterwards.
Cooking? Both, depending on I don't know what. Mom makes simple things, Dad does more fancy cooking. They often cook together.
Cleaning? Mostly Mom - we did have a cleaning person, but otherwise it's Mom. She actually likes cleaning the house. Dad never leaves anything untidy, and cleans up his own (or other people's) messes when they happen.
Laundry? Mostly Mom, but they both do it.
Ironing Dad's pants and shirts? Dad, because Mom refuses to iron dress shirts (I'm with her on that one). She irons everything else.
Light and heavy house maintenance? Dad - he's very handy and actually built their current house. That part was always a lot of work for him.
Gardening? Dad. Mom hates it and never does it.
Taking care of the cats I promised I would take care of when I was 7? Mostly Dad :)

As kids, we would be responsible for setting the table, cleaning it up after lunch/dinner, washing whatever dishes didn't go in the dishwasher, and loading/unloading the thing. There was no way we could ever avoid that.

When we were in elementary school, Dad was the one getting us up and ready, and driving us to school.

When it comes to taking care of us, I have never in my life felt like one of them was parenting us more than the other. Even now, trying to think back for this post, I can't find a single thing (well, helping with schoolwork was Dad, because Mom sucks at it lol).

They were also an annoyingly united front.

Now that they're in their 70's and Dad has a host of health issues that makes it really hard for him to walk / stand, they've hired out what he can't do anymore and Mom has picked up some of his stuff. But he still does a lot.

So... this unfortunately explains why I'm still single lol. I've had my share of adult baby boyfriends, including a long-term one, and I relate SO MUCH with the OP. My sister managed to take it for like 20 years, until she couldn't anymore and got a divorce.

We blame my parents 😂

[GuitarStv]

We split chores and housework, but do different things.  I think it's closer to equitable than when we were a younger couple.  My wife was taking too much on and it was causing her stress.  We're getting close to equal now, but I suspect my wife still does a bit more than me.


Cooking - 70/30 wife/me
Dishes - 70/30 wife/me
Groceries - 40/60 wife/me
Yardwork (except gardening - mowing the lawn, trimming hedges and trees, fixing fences, etc.) - me
Gardening (this is something that she enjoys and I tolerate) - 90/10 - wife/me
Anything irregular/mechanical/electrical/plumbing - me (this covers stuff like fixing bikes, changing tires on cars, replacing sinks/toilets, painting, drywall plastering, fixing electrical problems, replacing light fixtures, etc.)
Son's parties/play dates/extra curriculars - 80/20 wife/me
Helping son with schoolwork/homework - 60/40 wife/me
Reading to / bathing / putting son to bed - 10/90 wife/me
Cleaning/Vacuuming the house (I started doing this mostly because my wife will start asking about hiring a maid otherwise) - 10/90 wife/me
Laundry (wife does not understand how to properly wash a gi so this became my thing) - me
Any kind of social planning (trips, visits to friends/family, etc.) - wife
Taking garbage/compost/recycling out - me

[HPstache]

Money making - 0/100 wife/me
Cooking - 70/30 wife/me
Dishes - 70/30 wife/me
Groceries - 20/80 wife/me
Yardwork - 20/80 wife/me
Gardening - 90/10 - wife/me
Anything irregular/mechanical/electrical/plumbing/maintenance - 0/100 wife/me
Son's parties/play dates/extra curriculars - 70/30 wife/me
Helping son with schoolwork/homework - 50/50 wife/me
Reading to / bathing / putting son to bed - 50/50 wife/me
Cleaning/Vacuuming the house - 60/30/10 wife/cleaner/me
Laundry - 80/20 wife/me
Any kind of social planning (trips, visits to friends/family, etc.) - 20/80 wife/me
Taking garbage/compost/recycling out - 5/95 wife/me

[Kris]

We split chores and housework, but do different things.  I think it's closer to equitable than when we were a younger couple.  My wife was taking too much on and it was causing her stress.  We're getting close to equal now, but I suspect my wife still does a bit more than me.


Cooking - 70/30 wife/me
Dishes - 70/30 wife/me
Groceries - 40/60 wife/me
Yardwork (except gardening - mowing the lawn, trimming hedges and trees, fixing fences, etc.) - me
Gardening (this is something that she enjoys and I tolerate) - 90/10 - wife/me
Anything irregular/mechanical/electrical/plumbing - me (this covers stuff like fixing bikes, changing tires on cars, replacing sinks/toilets, painting, drywall plastering, fixing electrical problems, replacing light fixtures, etc.)
Son's parties/play dates/extra curriculars - 80/20 wife/me
Helping son with schoolwork/homework - 60/40 wife/me
Reading to / bathing / putting son to bed - 10/90 wife/me
Cleaning/Vacuuming the house (I started doing this mostly because my wife will start asking about hiring a maid otherwise) - 10/90 wife/me
Laundry (wife does not understand how to properly wash a gi so this became my thing) - me
Any kind of social planning (trips, visits to friends/family, etc.) - wife
Taking garbage/compost/recycling out - me

Thanks for including the "social planning" part in here. Despite all of the attempts recently to account for "emotional labor" as part of the work, most people still tend not to include it in lists of the work each person does. It's a largely invisible thing, but very time consuming (and, as the term connotes, it's also emotionally consuming to be the person who has to keep tabs on buying birthday presents, sending cards, ordering flowers to send for a funeral, making sure a gift is sent for a wedding, RSVPing for events, checking up on sick relatives, calling on holidays, planning dates for visits, etc. etc.)

[StarBright]

This baffled me.  As these accounts were fleshed out in detail, the language used basically sounded like, "I can't live with my mom anymore, and I'm not a responsible adult, so I need someone to fill in that gap".  Did these women know what they had signed up for?  Most likely, these are the women who go on social media complaining about that "third child" they need to take care or how "men just can't handle <simple household task>".

Re: The bolded. Because this is something that my husband and I constantly struggle with and negotiate.

I think there is enough anecdata (and real data) out there to suggest that things tend to devolve once you get through the honeymoon phase, and then really become unbalanced if kids enter the picture. So maybe the women truly do not know what they are getting?

Things were certainly equal-ish when it was just me and my husband, and if I did more cooking and life management it was because it wasn't a hardship and I had some time!

Once we had kids I was totally shocked how home and the kids became my work. It wasn't that my husband stopped doing his original share: it was that he took care of his things but never took anything else on even though our lives had become dramatically more complex. He still saw himself as covering 50% of the load, but it was more like 25% once we had the kids.

And I was so exhausted that it took me years to even notice that our lives had become so grossly unbalanced. I had to essentially recover and get through a place where I was no longer in survival mode to have the clarity to see what was happening and say "Hey, we need to talk!"

Now - I am super into my husband and would prefer to stay married to him because of lots of reasons. So we do the work (and work and work) and strive for balance and we rebalance several times a year. But it wouldn't be worth it if I didn't want to be old with him.

Obligatory link to the metafilter guide on emotional labor

Thanks for reposting! I read this whenever someone posts it and I almost always take away something new/different. What struck me on this perusal was the idea of layered emotional labor, and inter-generational EL. As I get older I see this happening with my mother and MIL and various aunts - I would rather opt out of some of this work, but I love the women in my family and find myself taking on that labor burden to spare them as they get older. That is going to sit with me for a while and I wonder if there is a way to help them that is also more healthy for me.

[Kris]

Obligatory link to the metafilter guide on emotional labor

Thanks for reposting! I read this whenever someone posts it and I almost always take away something new/different. What struck me on this perusal was the idea of layered emotional labor, and inter-generational EL. As I get older I see this happening with my mother and MIL and various aunts - I would rather opt out of some of this work, but I love the women in my family and find myself taking on that labor burden to spare them as they get older. That is going to sit with me for a while and I wonder if there is a way to help them that is also more healthy for me.

Isn't that the truth! When I married my husband, guess who started being expected to buy Christmas and birthday presents for my two stepdaughters and do more communicating with my husband's family? The latter was less of a burden than it might have been because DH's mom is Jehovah's Witness so holidays essentially don't exist for them.

Now that DH is retired and I'm still working, he has re-taken up the "work" involved with helping out his parents (and now just his mom because his dad died). Which is great, because he is kind of rediscovering his relationship with his mother. But yeah, I still do all the special event remembering and planning for his daughters (and now their spouses and children), even though I have no kids of my own.

[boarder42]

I like this table - would actually be fun to have your spouse fill it out too and see how close you think eachother are b/c i'm sure we both over estimate our roles in some areas.

Money management - 20/80 wife/me
Cooking - 1/99 wife/me
Dishes - 50/50 wife/me
Groceries - 40/60 wife/me
Yardwork - 40/60 wife/me
Gardening - 70/30- wife/me
Anything irregular/mechanical/electrical/plumbing/maintenance - 0/100 wife/me
Kid's parties/play dates/extra curriculars - 50/50 wife/me
Reading to / bathing / putting kids to bed - 60/40 wife/me
Cleaning/Vacuuming the house - 70/10/20 wife/robots/me
Laundry - 50/50 wife/me
Any kind of social planning (trips, visits to friends/family, etc.) - 30/70 wife/me
Taking garbage/compost/recycling out - 50/50 wife/me

[G-dog]

I absolutely refused to take care of the social calendar and obligations with Spouse's family.  Nope, nope, nope.

I did Christmas cards, until I just stopped doing them all together (decades ago).

[PDXTabs]

Anyhow, needed to get that off my chest somewhere.

If you're thinking of getting married:
a) make yourself as much of a functional human* being as you can
b) make sure your prospective spouse is as much of a functional human* being as he/she can be

Yea, by the time I married my second wife at 36 years old we had been living together for a couple of years. In this time we negotiated what we thought was an equitable distribution of chores which worked for us. It include me, the man:
1. Washing, but not putting away the dishes (because she hated washing the dishes and I hated putting them away).
2. Vacuuming (for physical reasons)
3. Cooking (ostensibly because her commute was worse)
4. Cleaning up anything especially olfactorily offensive.
And her:
1. Doing most of the shopping (because it was easy with her commute)
2. Laundry
3. Social calendaring (she liked being social, she offered to do this)

EDITed to add: extra cleaning? 50/50 together on the weekends as instigated by her because I'm basically a slob if left to my own devices, which I liked, because it motivated me to get my shit together.

I have no patience for men (or women) that refuse to take care of themselves. Although I do respect adults who wish to prioritize the career of the higher earner so that the lower earner can work less or not work at all while taking care of the house. As long as that's actually a negotiation between equals.

[Zikoris]

Neither of us likes doing housework, so we purposely set up our lives to minimize it. Small, minimalist apartment with no yard/outdoor stuff at all. We just don't do nasty things like wear shoes indoors or throw dirty clothes/random shit on the floor, which apparently a lot of people do. Two non-disgusting people in a minimalist studio apartment means there's really very little housework at all. We don't do things like gifts/cards at all.

For what there is, I don't know the exact split. He does everything nasty or unpleasant (cleaning up cat puke, dishes, dealing with garbage/compost, cleaning the oven, running errands on foot in a rainstorm, etc). We do a fair bit of stuff together, like grocery shopping and laundry. For social stuff, we each handle things related to our own families, and for stuff with friends it's also about an even split.

[GuitarStv]

We split chores and housework, but do different things.  I think it's closer to equitable than when we were a younger couple.  My wife was taking too much on and it was causing her stress.  We're getting close to equal now, but I suspect my wife still does a bit more than me.


Cooking - 70/30 wife/me
Dishes - 70/30 wife/me
Groceries - 40/60 wife/me
Yardwork (except gardening - mowing the lawn, trimming hedges and trees, fixing fences, etc.) - me
Gardening (this is something that she enjoys and I tolerate) - 90/10 - wife/me
Anything irregular/mechanical/electrical/plumbing - me (this covers stuff like fixing bikes, changing tires on cars, replacing sinks/toilets, painting, drywall plastering, fixing electrical problems, replacing light fixtures, etc.)
Son's parties/play dates/extra curriculars - 80/20 wife/me
Helping son with schoolwork/homework - 60/40 wife/me
Reading to / bathing / putting son to bed - 10/90 wife/me
Cleaning/Vacuuming the house (I started doing this mostly because my wife will start asking about hiring a maid otherwise) - 10/90 wife/me
Laundry (wife does not understand how to properly wash a gi so this became my thing) - me
Any kind of social planning (trips, visits to friends/family, etc.) - wife
Taking garbage/compost/recycling out - me

Thanks for including the "social planning" part in here. Despite all of the attempts recently to account for "emotional labor" as part of the work, most people still tend not to include it in lists of the work each person does. It's a largely invisible thing, but very time consuming (and, as the term connotes, it's also emotionally consuming to be the person who has to keep tabs on buying birthday presents, sending cards, ordering flowers to send for a funeral, making sure a gift is sent for a wedding, RSVPing for events, checking up on sick relatives, calling on holidays, planning dates for visits, etc. etc.)

It's definitely work, and it's work that I hate.  I'd rather spend six hours cleaning the house than one hour at a kids birthday party.

If I wasn't married, I suspect that an awful lot of that social work would just not be done at all - my wife and I have different perceptions on what acceptable behavior is regarding interactions with the humans in our life.  She's a kind/caring normal person while I'm some sort of high functioning autistic hermit living in a large city.  I suspect the social pressures are very different on men vs women in this area.

[fuzzy math]

I was surprised that the Emotional Labor link posted above was not this cartoon that I remembered from a few years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

[GodlessCommie]

Risking being obvious, roots of it are in the "good old days" when about the only acceptable path for a woman was to marry and raise kids. Kinder, Küche, Kirche - all that. A woman who could get a husband *and make him stay* was considered lucky/successful. From that perspective, a man who couldn't take care of himself, but earned money, was a good deal - at least there was a lower chance he'd run away with a younger, prettier, but presumably less organized woman.

That's not ancient history - STOP ERA campaign was built on the very premise that the unequal distribution of work favored women, and ran in the 70s and 80s. Few would say this out loud today, but these attitudes die hard once they got mainstream. And in conservative Christian circles it is still mainstream. So when we ask if conservative Christian women who bash their husbands online knew what they signed up for, the answer is yes, they did. It's not their fault, it's the environment in which they were raised. They were told that it was the good way, good life, and they faithfully built it that way.

[boarder42]

I was surprised that the Emotional Labor link posted above was not this cartoon that I remembered from a few years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

this is the exact cartoon that sparked convos around the office about this with some coworkers thanks for posting again. I too was equally surprised and assumed that link was this cartoon when i clicked on it.

[RetiredAt63]

I was surprised that the Emotional Labor link posted above was not this cartoon that I remembered from a few years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

And then there is the magic laundry basket:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNU

[mm1970]

I like this whole thread of conversation.  I have a number of friends who have complained that their husbands don't help out at all.

I remember specifically a friend who is a teacher...my younger son and her older son are the same age.  She came home from work one day (her husband was off that day).  He was playing video games, the house was a mess, there was a dirty diaper on the floor...  They were in their early 30's at the time.

So, I agree that you need to be a fully functioning human being.  Both my spouse and I were before we married.  So that helps.
But afterwards, we divided and conquered.  Thus, I didn't do car stuff for a very long time.  I felt pretty damned badass when I ended up with a few really low tires on my car when dh was traveling for two weeks.  I saw the tire after getting the kids fed dinner and walking the dog.  I dug out the air compressor, called DH (because the tube was MIA), but ended up topping off the tires TWICE by myself in the same week (the air compressor system at the gas station was utter shit). 

I felt badass because it had literally been decades since I'd check the tires on any of my cars...because we've been married for 25 years.  It was part of our more efficient division of labor.

I also agree that kids change things.  I found that after my first kid was born, a LOT of my friends with kids the same age would say things like "well, I'm on maternity leave for 3 months, so OF COURSE I let my husband sleep through the 2 middle of the night feedings".  To which I said "I'm going back at 3 months, and he's gonna have to wake his ass up to help out then, so might as well start now".  So for many of my friends, they did so much extra during mat leave that it never went back to 50/50 after they returned to work.

I also know a lot of divorced people. In general:
1.  The women are so much happier to not have a 3rd kid (AKA, the husband)
2.  The men actually have to start taking care of themselves again...which, ironically, turns them into better husbands for those who remarry.

[boarder42]

I was surprised that the Emotional Labor link posted above was not this cartoon that I remembered from a few years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

And then there is the magic laundry basket:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNU

this is great.

[FrugalToque]

This baffled me.  As these accounts were fleshed out in detail, the language used basically sounded like, "I can't live with my mom anymore, and I'm not a responsible adult, so I need someone to fill in that gap".  Did these women know what they had signed up for?  Most likely, these are the women who go on social media complaining about that "third child" they need to take care or how "men just can't handle <simple household task>".

Re: The bolded. Because this is something that my husband and I constantly struggle with and negotiate.

I think there is enough anecdata (and real data) out there to suggest that things tend to devolve once you get through the honeymoon phase, and then really become unbalanced if kids enter the picture. So maybe the women truly do not know what they are getting?

I don't know.  Maybe they're happy to have a project?  I know people like this.  Those "type A" personalities or whatever that are happy to take charge of someone else's life and drive them to ... success? ... or whatever.  But half of the women in that marriage group?  I cringe.

I mean, my thing is getting everyone in this house to exercise to together, lift weights, run, what have you.  We used to practice karate together, on nights we didn't have classes, in our own basement.

Now, I keep track of where everybody is for running distance and speed, on the bench press, etc.  I guess I get a kick out of that, but I don't know if I'd want to run my spouse's whole life that way.  I mean, I married a person, not an empty mould to pour some other personality into.

[RetiredAt63]

Really, the assumptions are there. 

My dental hygienist asked when my husband would be coming in for his next checkup, and could I schedule it for him - after we were separated and she knew we were separated.  Not his social secretary anymore.  Not the one to make all the Christmas arrangements with his family anymore.  Not the one to take his car in for winter tires because he couldn't manage to schedule it anymore.

[teen persuasion]

I was surprised that the Emotional Labor link posted above was not this cartoon that I remembered from a few years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

And then there is the magic laundry basket:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNU

I was wondering when the magic coffee table video would pop up.  DS4 and I had several discussions about it - mostly about how his college suite-mates would stack dishes in the sink and never wash them.  Once they ran out of clean plates, they'd wash ONE plate, use it, and back in the sink pile.  DS4 would wash his own stuff, but leave theirs as long as he could stand it, to see if someone else would eventually step up.  Nope, and DS4 would break down and wash everything because he couldn't stand it.  They were just oblivious to things.

DH and I have our split of labor, sometimes along traditional gender lines (I cook, he mows, etc), sometimes by personal inclination (I manage our finances), and some things we tag team or divide and conquer as best we can manage (with 5 kids, kid activities was all hands on deck and took some creative scheduling at times).  But with all those kids, we treated things as a family responsibility, not just husband/wife.  So dinner-making involved the kids, as age appropriate: little ones might tear lettuce for salad, older ones cut carrots, someone set the table, another got drinks from the fridge...as kids got older, they took on more challenging tasks, eventually taking on making dinner when I had evening commitments.  Yeah, I still prepped things for them and left notes.  Then older ones moved out for college, younger ones moved up in tasks.  So it's an evolution in our family.

Roles are reversing somewhat for us now.  I was SAHM until the youngest entered pre-k, then I worked very part-time, while DH had a longer commute.  Over the years, my hours have increased, so others have been picking up more of the slack on household work.  Now DH has retired, while I'm still working, so he's shifting to do more stuff around the house because he's home to do it.  But there's still the management issue - he asked if I was planning to do a load of laundry today.  So I was the decider, I sorted, I started the load, he had to hang it outside (I was at work), he brought it in before dark, and the basket of unfolded laundry sits in front of my favorite spot on the couch, waiting for me to fold, sort, put away. 

DH has also begun cooking dinner on my late days, instead of relying on DS4 to do it (after working a 9 hour physical job, and dirty so he wants a shower).  I still prep for dinner before I leave for work...

But he also spent his day chasing down some snow tires for my truck, and then some pork fat for the venison his hunting friends are helping him harvest tonight.  We had a deer sitting in our yard last week; it was injured.  He called around about it: wildlife rehabilitators for advice, the hunting friends, local police to put it down/get a tag.  We don't hunt, so it's all new for us.

[sonofsven]

Easy solution: live by yourself! I clean my house once a month, whether it needs it or not!
(not really, I'm kind of a neat freak)
But it is nice to only have yourself to please.

[GodlessCommie]

DS4 and I had several discussions about it - mostly about how his college suite-mates would stack dishes in the sink and never wash them.

Same with our son and his roommates. Whoever is brought up valuing a standard of cleanliness and pitching in to maintain it, carries the burden. These things don't always break on the gender line - although in a heterosexual family, they of course do.

[FIRE Artist]

Oh god.

Both my parents always worked full time jobs (with a big train commute for my mom). All my life, they've shared everything when it comes to family work. It was roughly divided according to what each one of them was better at / liked better / disliked less.

Grocery shopping? Together, including putting the groceries away afterwards.
Cooking? Both, depending on I don't know what. Mom makes simple things, Dad does more fancy cooking. They often cook together.
Cleaning? Mostly Mom - we did have a cleaning person, but otherwise it's Mom. She actually likes cleaning the house. Dad never leaves anything untidy, and cleans up his own (or other people's) messes when they happen.
Laundry? Mostly Mom, but they both do it.
Ironing Dad's pants and shirts? Dad, because Mom refuses to iron dress shirts (I'm with her on that one). She irons everything else.
Light and heavy house maintenance? Dad - he's very handy and actually built their current house. That part was always a lot of work for him.
Gardening? Dad. Mom hates it and never does it.
Taking care of the cats I promised I would take care of when I was 7? Mostly Dad :)

As kids, we would be responsible for setting the table, cleaning it up after lunch/dinner, washing whatever dishes didn't go in the dishwasher, and loading/unloading the thing. There was no way we could ever avoid that.

When we were in elementary school, Dad was the one getting us up and ready, and driving us to school.

When it comes to taking care of us, I have never in my life felt like one of them was parenting us more than the other. Even now, trying to think back for this post, I can't find a single thing (well, helping with schoolwork was Dad, because Mom sucks at it lol).

They were also an annoyingly united front.

Now that they're in their 70's and Dad has a host of health issues that makes it really hard for him to walk / stand, they've hired out what he can't do anymore and Mom has picked up some of his stuff. But he still does a lot.

So... this unfortunately explains why I'm still single lol. I've had my share of adult baby boyfriends, including a long-term one, and I relate SO MUCH with the OP. My sister managed to take it for like 20 years, until she couldn't anymore and got a divorce.

We blame my parents 😂

Sounds like you and I had very similar parenting and very similar outcomes  😂.

With 6 kids, my parents even divided up things like making school lunches by the year, one year it was my mom's job to do the shopping and making, the next was my dad's.  I will say that my dad was the better bag lunch maker by a mile, he would get up and hit the grocery store for opening so he would make us pita sandwiches with shaved deli meat, fresh soft fruits like bananas, peaches, plums and have a fresh donut in the bag for a treat, my mom was a bulk once a week/bi weekly shopper so we had regular bread sandwiches often with tined meat/tuna, hard fruit like an apple or orange and a wagon wheel for a recess treat.  Two people getting the same job done with very different flair and efficiency, but we were fed.  Conversely for holiday diners when my mom worked my dad managed to get the turkey and some potatoes cooked, but my mom could do the whole spread with special sides, homemade desert etc.  Again, same result with different flair but the family was fed.  My dad was also the king of breakfast for diner when mom was working late. 

BUT, my mom did all the emotional labor.  She was the person who made sure we got to the orthodontist from booking to driving us there on her days off.  Thankfully for her the expectation of after school activities was very, very different in the 70's and 80's so no managing kids' over booked activity schedules. 

[tthree]

I think it's: (a) easy to let things slide, (b) strongly situational.

When I met DH he was 20 years old, and fully "adulting".  He washed, folded and put away his own laundry.  He did most of the cleaning or coordinated the cleaning in his apartment (included a female roommate).  He made us three course meals "for fun".  At this time he also had the ability to organize, as in he arranged excursions for his entire faculty.

Fast forward to us living together and him having an adult job where he worked 60 hours a week........magically I transitioned into doing almost everything house related: finances, food, laundry, cleaning, mowing, because I was only working 40 hours a week.  He still did what he considered "manly" home maintenance, like cleaning the leaves out of the gutter and changing the furnace filter. He has always made all his own appointments.

Next milestone, kids.....so I did everything listed above, plus all kid related care (bathes, bedtime, feeding), coordinating child care, activities, appointments, etc.  He has always dropped the kids off at daycare/school because I start work before him. 

The U-turn....COVID.  I work in healthcare, so I couldn't stop working.  So DH stayed at home with the kids when they weren't in school.  In some ways it was magical.  He made all the meals.  Did all the laundry and dishes.  And he was generally a happier human being.  I still did all the cleaning (but at this point I'm unclear if he even understands what cleaning is, as he constantly confuses "tidying" with "cleaning"). 

Post-COVID.  He's back at work and we are having a hard time maintaining balance at home.  He quickly slid into no work boundaries again, when we discussed he NEEDS to be off the weekends I work.  Instead I am constantly scrambling for last minute childcare and people to take the kids to their activities.  I've made my peace with the fact I will be preparing EVERY meal, so I started ordering meal kits for 3 meals a week to less the burden there.  And he's very grumpy again, which sucks for everyone else in the house.

In all this rambling I guess I'm trying to say that what you think you're getting and what you end up with aren't always the same thing. 

[Anon-E-Mouze]

DH and I have divided most household responsibilities up based on a combination of what we like to do, what we're physically better equipped to do, what we're relatively better at in terms of knowledge, and who has more time.

On balance, he shoulders somewhat more of the household responsibilities than I do but historically I've worked much longer hours than he has (and he's had some long periods of unemployment, too, which has given him somewhat more time to do household stuff at times).

Cooking - primarily me because I'm a picky eater. But he does a lot of baking (homemade bread, cookies, etc). He also makes the coffee and brings me coffee in bed every day :)
Dishes - I tend to clear dishes away after dinner, load the dishwasher and put food away. But I generally dislike handwashing dishes (especially glasses) and am unwilling to spend 10 minutes figuring out how to put one last dish in the dishwasher. I also get tired much earlier than he does, so he finishes up in the kitchen after I've gone to bed.
Laundry - me. (But he's on his own if a shirt needs ironing.)
Vacuuming - him
Anything to do with plumbing, electricity, carpentry, standing on ladders, complicated tech stuff, or drilling holes in walls - him. He was an electronics and telecommunications engineer in the airforce, likes to climb mountains and ladders and has significantly better eye-hand coordination and agility than I do. (I can't see well and am a super-klutz who has broken many bones). So he's great at all that stuff and likes doing most of it, while I am a liability. I handle the tech relating to our cameras and photo software though.
Yardwork - him. Although I have - ideas. And the herb garden on the deck is mine.
The car - him. I can't see well enough to drive and never learned my way around a car. I'm a pretty good navigator though.
Cat care - both of us. Whoever is already stinkier (e.g. post-workout or yardwork) does the litter boxes. Each of us feeds our three cats at least a million times a day.
Most of the other household cleaning (e.g. bathrooms, dusting, cleaning surfaces, putting stuff away) - we both do it but realistically the split is probably 35% me / 65% him
Grocery shopping - I do the online grocery shopping. He does most of the physical grocery shopping (especially during COVID).
Bill-paying - He takes care of the utilities and property taxes. I handle the mortgage. We each take care of our own credit cards.
Financial planning - Me, mostly. I work in capital markets and I'm more interested in the topic. But he is fairly interested and knowledgeable, too, plus he has better skills for building spreadsheet macros.
Legal stuff (wills etc) - Me (the lawyer).
Travel - I like to say that I'm the travel agent and he's Julie the cruise director (Loveboat reference). I research, plan and book our travel (in consultation with him, of course), except he rents the cars. Once we get there, he's responsible for making sure we get up in the morning and do something with our day.
Social calendar / holiday cards etc - He is more civilized and a bit more sociable than I am, so he probably makes more of our social plans. He also writes a magnificent, creative and funny holiday letter each year and takes care of the address list and making sure the cards go out the door. I photograph and design our holiday card each year, though (I make and sell holiday greeting cards featuring rescued animals and sell them as a fundraiser, so I just make extra ones for us.)

[nereo]

I absolutely refused to take care of the social calendar and obligations with Spouse's family.  Nope, nope, nope.

I did Christmas cards, until I just stopped doing them all together (decades ago).

I’m glad someone else feels this way.  My spouse has four siblings and three are married (all brothers). But it’s their wives that have taken care of the social calendar and obligation with their in-laws.  The word that we frequently use is “inserted” because often it feels like that - very deliberate and forced.


One of the negative aspects of getting married nad having a child is all the gender-performing pressure.  I suppose its always been there and I was blissfully less aware of it, but now it slams into us on a daily basis. 
A few examples:

• Random strangers complimenting me on babysitting my own daughter. Oh, it’s so nice to see a father babysitting his children to give the mother a break
• Contractors turning to me to explain a home repair when my wife asked the question.  One even said (when I was not home) Oh - you should talk to your husband, as this is going to be a BIG repair and make lots of dust [it wound up costing $350 and the cleanup took about 20 minutes’
• The constant assumption that we have “my truck” (an 18 year old beater) and “wife’s car” (our nice electric sedan). Both cars are shared, and we swap as necessary. As she’s WFH I do 90% of the driving in the electric, but still people will say oh, you have your wife’s car today!
• That my wife does most/all of the cooking and housework
• That I do all the yard-work
• My wife was questioned - multiple times - my HR for putting “too much” into her retirement fund. The woman tried all different approaches to get her to lower it, asking do you have your own account separate from your husband? It can be a good idea to have some of “your own” money.  I don’t have a retirement plan at work so we deduct as much as possible from her paycheck.
• That we want to be segregated by gender at parties.  Oh, the boys are downstairs in the ‘Man Cave’. Watching football.  My wife went right down as she’s the bigger fan.
• The whole ‘man-cave’/‘she-shed’ gender specific spaces. Life isn’t a 6th-grade dance.
  
• The subtle but consistent sex-bashing that frugaltoque mentioned. In my progressive, women-led business there’s comments about men having “refrigerator eyes” (had to get that explained to me) and how any decisions on the front-facing portion of our business ‘needs a woman’s eye”.  I’m just gobsmacked at how often a person’s gender is used to explain why something is the way it is (“oh ___ ordered that, and he’s a man”). [l/i]
  
  

[RetiredAt63]

• The subtle but consistent sex-bashing that frugaltoque mentioned. In my progressive, women-led business there’s comments about men having “refrigerator eyes” (had to get that explained to me) and how any decisions on the front-facing portion of our business ‘needs a woman’s eye”.  I’m just gobsmacked at how often a person’s gender is used to explain why something is the way it is (“oh ___ ordered that, and he’s a man”). [l/i]
  
  

What are “refrigerator eyes”?  I googled it and got nothing.

Gender roles - I was the techie in our family.  Ex was not as into computers as I was, and if anything needed doing I was the one who did it.

[economista]

This is an interesting discussion and I think a lot of it also comes down to whether each spouse recognizes and appreciates how much the other does. My marriage is in a very interesting situation because my husband is blind. He is a stay at home dad with our two girls while I work full time and he tries to clean as much as he can but his disability makes it really hard for him. He does most of the dishes and most of the laundry and he is responsible for easy breakfasts (cereal, oatmeal, frozen waffles, toast). I cook all of our dinner and lunches are always dinner leftovers that one of us heats up. When it comes to scheduling appointments or managing the finances we talk about it and make decisions together but I physically do it because it is much easier for me to use the computer. I do all of the grocery shopping and all of the driving to and from appointments, even his, because I’m the only one who can drive. I also do all of the projects around the house and handy-man type things because it is just so much easier and more efficient for me to do it. Have you ever seen a blind man try to use a screwdriver? It can be done, but it isn’t easy.

Overall I do MUCH, MUCH more than he does day in and day out. This became very apparent when we moved recently and I packed and unpacked everything by myself. Even when it comes to childcare, he is a stay at home dad but I work from home and I pop in and out throughout the day to help with things and when I’m off the clock the girls want no one but mama, so I’m primary parent in the evenings. I think what makes our situation still work is that 1) We both knew what we were getting into when we got married and decided to have children, and 2) He is constantly aware of how much more I do and he acknowledges it and tries to do special things for me to help ease my burden wherever he can.

When we are out in public as a family he gets irritated though when people make comments to me about how I have my hands full with the girls (they are only 15 months apart). Seriously he can be the one pushing the stroller and people will tell me that I have my hands full with them. He takes care of them all day while I’m working! However, when he takes them for walks alone he has actually had old women pull over to tell him that he is such a good dad for taking his girls for a walk. It is crazy.

[tthree]

• The subtle but consistent sex-bashing that frugaltoque mentioned. In my progressive, women-led business there’s comments about men having “refrigerator eyes” (had to get that explained to me) and how any decisions on the front-facing portion of our business ‘needs a woman’s eye”.  I’m just gobsmacked at how often a person’s gender is used to explain why something is the way it is (“oh ___ ordered that, and he’s a man”). [l/i]
  
  

What are “refrigerator eyes”?  I googled it and got nothing.

The term I've heard used is "man scan".  As in when men open the refrigerator they only have the capacity to quickly scan, and are unable to see what is right in front of them.  [/list]

[teen persuasion]

• The constant assumption that we have “my truck” (an 18 year old beater) and “wife’s car” (our nice electric sedan). Both cars are shared, and we swap as necessary. As she’s WFH I do 90% of the driving in the electric, but still people will say oh, you have your wife’s car today!

LOL, this struck me as funny, because RN the old beater truck is "mine", and the sedan is DH's.  But as you said, we freely swap back and forth as needed.  The sedan made much more sense with DH's longer commute, and the truck was a third vehicle (that DH wanted), I had a Rav 4 but it died so I just swapped to the truck.  And the truck is registered in my name, because I was the one free to go to the DMV that day...

And we are looking to get an electric vehicle in the near future.

[Sandi_k]

Yep, the gender conforming assumptions are annoying. But there is some food for thought there.

DH and I have been together since our teens. I moved out of my mom's home at 17; he stayed in his parents' home until he was 23. His mom still did his laundry and packed his lunches!

As a result, I refused to move in with him in college - I required that he live on his own for several years. I was NOT about to take him in straight from his mother's house!

It was a good choice. He's still messier than I, but he knows the basics of laundry, cleaning, and shopping. He still does have the surface-level assessment when it comes to cleaning, but we've figured out a "Top 10" list of chores for us both to complete when we're having company. That has helped enormously, as I don't have to discuss specifics each time we have a gathering - instead, I can say "pick 3-4 items from the list, and I'll take mine on once I get home." That has also helped in that I am not telling him what to do - he has a choice in which of the chores he picks.

When we moved further out a few years back, we had to re-negotiate some of our longstanding habits and customary work divisions. It was a little rocky at first. I'd get home at 7:30, and he'd be noodling on the computer. It would be on me to instigate the dinner conversation, pull stuff from the cabinets, and get it done. We ended up eating after 8 many nights, so that needed to change.

Happily, we're in a new groove now, but the number of comments I get - especially when my MIL visits! - as to how he's doing so much more cooking! - get weird and enraging. Once, as they were leaving, she told *me* - "Oh, I stripped the guest bed and put the linens in the laundry room." I SHOULD have just said "thanks so much!". Instead, I blurted out "Why are you telling *me*? DH does laundry, too!"

She actually recoiled, and it occurred to me that DFIL has probably NEVER done a load of clothes wash in their 60+ year marriage.

I am very grateful that my DH and I have a sense of equity around these things. Very grateful.

[LibrarIan]

This has been an interesting thread. Especially because the structure of my relationship with my wife has change a lot in the past year.

We had a kid, she became a SAHM and I still work FT. Not too long before that we bought the house we're in. It needed a lot of work. Our division of work became very traditional. Not because we consciously thought "You do things associated with your gender and I'll do things associated with my gender." It just happened. I mow grass, fix cars, do home improvements, make all our income and other various tasks that involve heavy lifting or grunt work. She does most of the cooking, cleaning, childcare and so forth.

However, I see comments about men who don't help enough with other things outside the "traditional things men do" and I'm of two minds. Part of me agrees, because there are things in the house that need to be done and when I am available I do them. If a load of laundry needs to be done, I do it. If we need a meal prepared and she's busy, I do it. If a room needs cleaning, I do it. However, when many people discuss the topic of division of housework, they are often referring to relationships in which both people work. In that case, of course it makes sense to divide housework evenly since outside-of-house work is divided as well. But in more traditional arrangements like what I've found myself in, I think it's unfair to expect a 50/50 division of housework since I'm working full time outside of the home and she is working full time inside of the home (not to be confused with "working from home"). In our case, if we divided housework 50/50, that would actually put ~75% of all work on me (FT job + 50% housework) and 25% work on her (50% housework).

With all that being said, I agree that people should become good at things even if it's not their primary responsibility. Laundry, cleaning, cooking, childcare, etc. - be an adult and step up when things need doing. Or to flip the script on my wife, if we found ourselves in dire financial straits for whatever reason, she knows how to put together a resume, cover letter and apply for jobs in order for us to gain access to more income and support the household. It's a two-way street.