I actually have two friends who started reading the book, fiddling with the cards, and decided NOT to take it to their husbands because they knew it would go nowhere and they didn't want to have to face down what you faced down in having that conversation. We can have our husbands read Fair Play all day, have them hold the cards in their hands, but as long as they are socialized to believe household management is a wife's/mother's JOB, they won't be able to embody their role in a true partnership. It's really something else. ... I thought about what you said about your ex being one of the "good ones." The "good one" bar is SO LOW. It's like: He... participates! Inconsistently and on his schedule! Cool, cool. ... I think that one of things that never goes away is this default we have that the woman in a hetero marriage keeps track of it all. The man slots himself in when it suits him. I believe Rodsky has addressed this: but the fact that Fair Play itself is almost exclusively first read by the woman in the couple and then presented to the man. Heaven forbid a husband should pick it up independently.
Oh CINDY! Thank you so much for this post! Your and Eve's story is my story and many, many others, I'm sure. My husband and I raised our kids in the mid-90s to mid-2010s and struggled for years with the division of labor in the household, especially after I cut back my work to be the primary parent. I am with you 100% that the household labor needs to be shared. And I understand your reaction when your husband came in with "can I add a few things?" I can't tell you how often we went round and round about this same tension...his career demands, my pulling to get him to co-parent with me.
But I often wonder whether there may be just a bit of truth in the breadwinner's side of the issue. (Please don't take offense)! I've been trying to tease this apart in my own writing and thinking for decades, and it feels complicated to me. There's lots of things that have to happen for a family to thrive, and one of them is earning money. The parents have to do that. Does it have to be just one partner? No, but as you note, in the absence of high quality affordable child care, that is often the way the math shakes out. Of course I wish that careers were less demanding, that companies offered (or were mandated to provide) more parental leave, that care work was valued and paid. But without those things, we are stuck. So... when partners talk together about all the kinds of work that go into sustaining a family...do we really want to say that the breadwinner's efforts don't have anything to do with that calculus? (Again, I am not saying the status quo patriarchal model is in any way ok!)
Really curious as to what you think. Thanks again for this substack, it is brilliant. xx
I totally agree that there is a tension that is not fully named in this post, which is that of course earning a paycheck is a huge job and a huge responsibility. So how many "cards" does that get you out of? I guess I would also argue that when the children are young, that being the primary parent is your paid job. So that when the work day is done (let's say 6 pm to be generous), we have both clocked out of our previous jobs and are now on duty jointly to manage things. Being a primary caretaker does not provide you with endless amounts of time to do all those other things. Yes, we do our best to squeeze in grocery shopping with littles (oh my gosh, I would always hope for those carts with the cars attached because it made things so much easier). Or responding to emails. Or cleaning the house. But that "watching" which is a card in Fair Play, is so all encompassing. Now, once they go to school, you get some hours to yourself to do the other household stuff. But I think we could all agree that you could easily use all five or six hours a school day affords doing the tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning and laundry and volunteering at the school and securing Halloween costumes, and going to Target. Right? The issue is that there are so many other things that take mental load and time and just because one person is earning the money from 9-6 doesn't excuse them from taking on their fair share once they get home and on the weekends. I wasn't asking him to pick up the kids from school or drive them to their extracurriculars or do anything extra during the work week. I was wanting more support on the weekends OR on the big picture things like what are eating this week and what are we getting them for Christmas and should we give up on sending Holiday Cards? I think something else that needs to be addressed as you mention is our 24/7 work culture that doesn't allow the paid worker to unhook once they are home. They are often doing a second shift of work after the kids go to bed, leaving them unable to have any bandwidth for the house and home. This isn't sustainable for anyone. AND let me name that while some people are 100% stay-at-home (which I was during the pandemic), most women work in some form after motherhood, they have just downshifted to freelance or part-time which makes everything worse because they are trying to do the mothering and the household and earning some $ for their own sanity and to contribute to the family income and it drives them INSANE.
It's interesting to read your comment, Emily. I think that in this arrangement... the "math shakes out" this way only if we buy the default story about "traditional" division of labor. Care work is very expensive, and the parent who is not working outside the home is providing thousands of dollars of free labor per month. If the "breadwinner" were a single parent, he would be paying thousands for the kind of childcare and household manager labor is family is getting for free. ... Anyway. It is a struggle but I think we also have to examine our assumptions about math and fairness
Thank you for your intimate take on this. I recommend Fair Play often, though so far my husband has only taken on "dishes" and "weekly trash," with mixed success. (And he's also one of the good ones, helping with bath and bedtime whenever possible, asking if he can stop for groceries a few times per year, and he just finished coaching his first basketball season!) He was earning 4-5x my salary when I had our first child, so I made the excruciating decision to stay home despite having just landed my dream job.
A couple years in, I really began to miss the intellectual stimulation, but couldn't fathom job seeking with a newborn and preschooler. And then, of course, I had no help during the pandemic with a 4 and 1 year old at home, and thought I might have to institutionalize myself to get a break (but somehow I plowed through). I began to busy myself by establishing a non-profit, and then for-profit social venture, but those don't make any money to speak of. And now that both the kids are in school full-time, I can't seem to get hired back into the traditional health policy work I loved and left, despite a master's degree and good decade of high-level experience prior to parenting, and, of course, networking my face off. Actually, the networking has been hard to do the last couple months, because the kids have only been in school two full weeks since Dec. 11. Yep, you read that right.
I just joined an advisory board that Eve is also on, where Dr. Misty Heggeness is developing a public dashboard for statistics about the caregiving economy (The Care Board Project). I'm interested to see how quantifying the unpaid labor associated with caregiving generally, and mothering specifically, impacts social and legal matters in the US. I hope your work and the resources you're sharing get more people engaged in this vitally important topic. It's not just a parenting or divorce issue; it's a public health issue, and an important part of our country's changing social and economic status.
First of all, "asking if he can stop for groceries a few times per year." That made me laugh. And dishes and weekly trash? That's it? I'm so sorry you have felt so stymied getting back into the workforce. I know your story isn't unique and lately I've been thinking about the emotional and psychological costs to women who face this situation. I'm so thrilled to hear about The Care Board Project. And I agree, this is a public health issue. I also think that some of what comes into play is the power dynamics inherent with a spouse who earns a lot more than the other. I was in the same situation and it downplays our careers even though the work we do may be no less important, it is just less well-compensated. So this brings up all the societal issues of how some jobs are compensated better than others, and how men are socialized to pursue those careers while women are inadvertently pushed towards careers that make less and can be downshifted.
Thank you for sharing about this. I brought fair play to my husband in 2022 and he has been so resistant to it, he has asked questions like “what do you do all day if you aren’t getting all these cards done?” and “why would you expect me to take a ‘whole’ (he meant CPE) card?”
Beth, I'm so sorry about this. And I agree that it is the "whole" card concept that makes things start to feel lighter. But there is so much resistance to the recognition of how much work running a household and handling children is. Do you follow some of the lovely people on Instagram to help you feel less alone? I think seeing more people echo these beliefs in a variety of settings helps us feel more sturdy about what we deserve, which is to not shoulder it completely. and to not have to ask for help.
Thanks so much for this article, I have been looking forward to reading it ever since you hinted months ago that you were going to be writing it.
I am really looking forward to reading Equal Partners, I think it will help my understanding.
I noticed you linked Laura Danger but not the podcast she co-hosts with Krystal Britt, Time To Lean. It is one of my favourite podcasts and applies ideas of domestic labour to a whole range of topics (they are both ADHD-ers so the conversation is delightfully free-wheeling).
I was interested in your line about of course he didn't quit his job during the pandemic because of what it was. I notice that men's work is often prioritised -- the statistics in the pandemic bear this out -- but when women have the EXACT SAME WORK somehow the same values don't apply. Like, imagine if a mother owned a company with employees during the pandemic. Would the facts of her work be enough to prioritise it in the family? Or would she end up shutting up shop? I hope this point makes sense.
First of all, love that podcast also, I just ran out of room on this already long post. Perhaps I should do a post just of resources. In the meantime, you are correct, men's work is prioritized. Even if a woman owned a company with employees during the pandemic, I think she still would have felt pressure to do something to pick up the slack with lack of childcare in a way that her husband wouldn't even if he was a salaried employee.
I don't know if this comment is helpful... Please feel free to delete it if it's not. But as someone on the other side of this conflict, I would like to offer an alternative perspective.
For some husbands at least, the problem is absolutely not how many "cards" we hold, or how much work we do/don't do around the house. The problem is the attitude of the wife, which I think is captured rather nicely in your post. The wife wants us to do some work; but we must do it her way; and if we don't, we are judged very harshly. It's very unpleasant!
The dynamic, from my perspective is this:
(1) My wife would want me to do some bit of housework, e.g. cleaning the floors. But when she says "do," she means do it to her standard, which is different to mine. Importantly, she does not recognise that her standard is a choice. She regards it as simply "correct." (In your post, this is "minimum standard of care.")
(2) If I set a different standard, e.g. cleaning the floors once a week instead of every two days, she judged me to have failed. (In your post, "He'd failed at even that...")
(3) She communicated that attitude to me. This was the part that I had the most trouble with. Everyone thinks negative thoughts about their partner sometimes, but you can choose not to communicate them. She didn't. (You don't mention in your post whether or not you used this kind of negative language.)
As a result, I do no housework at all. This was all very explicit in my relationship. If she was going to say unpleasant things to me when I do housework, then I wasn't going to do it... She explicitly said that she couldn't watch me clean the floor wrong without criticising, so I don't do it. Housework is bullshit, and I think that like me, many men are not willing to do it if we will only be judged harshly for it.
Childcare is not bullshit, and so we just had to fight over the childcare. But with childcare, those fights have meaning, because you're both fighting for something you jointly love, so it's... grounded, I guess? For me, any fight over housework was just insane. (The result is that my spouse did the housework until she got fed up with it, then we hired a maid, and now neither of us do it.)
Anyway the point of my comment is that sometimes the problem is not about how much men do. Rather, it is about whether the wife can fully cede control of some task and accept the outcome.
Anytime you start a comment with "I'm not sure if this is helpful," is a sign. I am debating deleting your comment because it is frankly shocking. Housework is bullshit? Sure, except that it has to be done. Your refusal to do it does make your wife your maid. Full stop. I am glad you have now hired a maid, but does she come daily? All I can say is, you might want to line up a divorce lawyer. The attitudes expressed in this comment alone are beyond what any woman should have to deal with. Her comments were unpleasant? Oh no! So is being forced to do housework with a partner who refuses to do his share! The Fair Play method aims to solve some of these issues by agreeing on a minimum standard of care. If you think sweeping the floor every two days is too much, but your wife thinks once a week isn't enough, you could compromise on every three days. I don't understand why you think your wife shouldn't have communicated her frustration to you. "She communicated that attitude to me. This was the part I had the most trouble with." But how could things change unless she asked for a change? The fact that your response was to do no housework at all shows that you feel entitled to her labor. A house does not run without someone doing the housework. Even a maid doesn't solve everything.
I would say that what you're doing is a form of weaponized incompetence- i.e. you're refusing to do a whole task that actually is important in a household because you don't do it well. If you lived alone, would you live in filth because you don't believe that housework is important? One of the principles in "Fair Play" is a minimum standard of care. That's not just child care- it's everything involved in running a household and a family. I would say that it's an act of neglect if you're unable to meet a minimum standard in terms of taking care of your own living space. In many cases, husbands don't seem to understand that running the household (including cleaning) is the purview of both partners. They see their wives as maids, nurses, mothers- it puts women in an awful kind of parental role, even to their husbands, that they definitely don't want to be in.
Imagine having so much contempt for your wife that you’re willing to post about it publicly. These low value men tell on themselves over and over. I’m betting she’s not his wife anymore.
So, the weaponised incompetence thing does exist. But... so does the opposite.
There are two things you say here that I think are wrong.
First, the suggestion that husbands "see their wives as maids". This is projecting. To use my floor example, if I don't mop the floor today, it is absolutely *not* because I see my wife as a maid who should mop the floor today. It is because I don't think the floor needs mopping today. A wife is welcome to disagree on that point! She may say she prefers a cleaner floor. What is not helpful is when, on encountering a disagreement over how much mopping is necessary, she says, "you're incompetent."
Second, your suggestion that, "it puts women in [a] role..." A man's lack of action cannot put you in a role. Roles are things you take on for yourself. Blaming your partner for you being this way is... bad.
***Important exception to the above - except in cases of abuse, where men do physically/psychologically force women to do things. I don't mean anything I say here to deny that reality.***
Obviously, everyone brings a different set of experiences to these arguments. I couldn't begin to comment on what you may have experienced. Thanks.
"A man's lack of action cannot put you in a role." Um, yes it can. If a man refuses to clean up after himself, and you don't want to live in a kitchen over-run with ants, you must clean up after him becoming his maid.
Will you share how emotional labour has changed for you post your divorce? It sometimes seems to me that women still do a lot of the child related emotional labour even after the divorce, and still have household and meal duties, albeit with one less 'dependant'.
Ooof, yes, emotional labor increased for real as I shepherded my two kids through the divorce process (which is so much upheaval for them). I felt like I was spending hours each week talking with them about their feelings and how things were over at their dad's house for the first few months. They both thankfully have therapists because I didn't feel like I could manage it all my own. But there is so much less emotional labor trying to keep that failing relationship going so I feel like I have more bandwidth for them. Plus because half the week they are at their dad's, I get a chance to recharge, which was never available when I was parenting full-time all the time day in and day out.
I actually have two friends who started reading the book, fiddling with the cards, and decided NOT to take it to their husbands because they knew it would go nowhere and they didn't want to have to face down what you faced down in having that conversation. We can have our husbands read Fair Play all day, have them hold the cards in their hands, but as long as they are socialized to believe household management is a wife's/mother's JOB, they won't be able to embody their role in a true partnership. It's really something else. ... I thought about what you said about your ex being one of the "good ones." The "good one" bar is SO LOW. It's like: He... participates! Inconsistently and on his schedule! Cool, cool. ... I think that one of things that never goes away is this default we have that the woman in a hetero marriage keeps track of it all. The man slots himself in when it suits him. I believe Rodsky has addressed this: but the fact that Fair Play itself is almost exclusively first read by the woman in the couple and then presented to the man. Heaven forbid a husband should pick it up independently.
Oh CINDY! Thank you so much for this post! Your and Eve's story is my story and many, many others, I'm sure. My husband and I raised our kids in the mid-90s to mid-2010s and struggled for years with the division of labor in the household, especially after I cut back my work to be the primary parent. I am with you 100% that the household labor needs to be shared. And I understand your reaction when your husband came in with "can I add a few things?" I can't tell you how often we went round and round about this same tension...his career demands, my pulling to get him to co-parent with me.
But I often wonder whether there may be just a bit of truth in the breadwinner's side of the issue. (Please don't take offense)! I've been trying to tease this apart in my own writing and thinking for decades, and it feels complicated to me. There's lots of things that have to happen for a family to thrive, and one of them is earning money. The parents have to do that. Does it have to be just one partner? No, but as you note, in the absence of high quality affordable child care, that is often the way the math shakes out. Of course I wish that careers were less demanding, that companies offered (or were mandated to provide) more parental leave, that care work was valued and paid. But without those things, we are stuck. So... when partners talk together about all the kinds of work that go into sustaining a family...do we really want to say that the breadwinner's efforts don't have anything to do with that calculus? (Again, I am not saying the status quo patriarchal model is in any way ok!)
Really curious as to what you think. Thanks again for this substack, it is brilliant. xx
I totally agree that there is a tension that is not fully named in this post, which is that of course earning a paycheck is a huge job and a huge responsibility. So how many "cards" does that get you out of? I guess I would also argue that when the children are young, that being the primary parent is your paid job. So that when the work day is done (let's say 6 pm to be generous), we have both clocked out of our previous jobs and are now on duty jointly to manage things. Being a primary caretaker does not provide you with endless amounts of time to do all those other things. Yes, we do our best to squeeze in grocery shopping with littles (oh my gosh, I would always hope for those carts with the cars attached because it made things so much easier). Or responding to emails. Or cleaning the house. But that "watching" which is a card in Fair Play, is so all encompassing. Now, once they go to school, you get some hours to yourself to do the other household stuff. But I think we could all agree that you could easily use all five or six hours a school day affords doing the tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning and laundry and volunteering at the school and securing Halloween costumes, and going to Target. Right? The issue is that there are so many other things that take mental load and time and just because one person is earning the money from 9-6 doesn't excuse them from taking on their fair share once they get home and on the weekends. I wasn't asking him to pick up the kids from school or drive them to their extracurriculars or do anything extra during the work week. I was wanting more support on the weekends OR on the big picture things like what are eating this week and what are we getting them for Christmas and should we give up on sending Holiday Cards? I think something else that needs to be addressed as you mention is our 24/7 work culture that doesn't allow the paid worker to unhook once they are home. They are often doing a second shift of work after the kids go to bed, leaving them unable to have any bandwidth for the house and home. This isn't sustainable for anyone. AND let me name that while some people are 100% stay-at-home (which I was during the pandemic), most women work in some form after motherhood, they have just downshifted to freelance or part-time which makes everything worse because they are trying to do the mothering and the household and earning some $ for their own sanity and to contribute to the family income and it drives them INSANE.
It's interesting to read your comment, Emily. I think that in this arrangement... the "math shakes out" this way only if we buy the default story about "traditional" division of labor. Care work is very expensive, and the parent who is not working outside the home is providing thousands of dollars of free labor per month. If the "breadwinner" were a single parent, he would be paying thousands for the kind of childcare and household manager labor is family is getting for free. ... Anyway. It is a struggle but I think we also have to examine our assumptions about math and fairness
Yes to this! I encourage you both to read my post on the Math of Motherhood, calculating the unpaid labor of the at home spouse. https://cindyditiberio.substack.com/p/the-math-of-motherhood-episode-2
Totally! In most cases, a husband literally could not afford to pay an employee for the amount of unpaid care his wife does
He is only able to work BECAUSE she does (unpaid)
That laptop moment made my stomach lurch!
Thank you for your intimate take on this. I recommend Fair Play often, though so far my husband has only taken on "dishes" and "weekly trash," with mixed success. (And he's also one of the good ones, helping with bath and bedtime whenever possible, asking if he can stop for groceries a few times per year, and he just finished coaching his first basketball season!) He was earning 4-5x my salary when I had our first child, so I made the excruciating decision to stay home despite having just landed my dream job.
A couple years in, I really began to miss the intellectual stimulation, but couldn't fathom job seeking with a newborn and preschooler. And then, of course, I had no help during the pandemic with a 4 and 1 year old at home, and thought I might have to institutionalize myself to get a break (but somehow I plowed through). I began to busy myself by establishing a non-profit, and then for-profit social venture, but those don't make any money to speak of. And now that both the kids are in school full-time, I can't seem to get hired back into the traditional health policy work I loved and left, despite a master's degree and good decade of high-level experience prior to parenting, and, of course, networking my face off. Actually, the networking has been hard to do the last couple months, because the kids have only been in school two full weeks since Dec. 11. Yep, you read that right.
I just joined an advisory board that Eve is also on, where Dr. Misty Heggeness is developing a public dashboard for statistics about the caregiving economy (The Care Board Project). I'm interested to see how quantifying the unpaid labor associated with caregiving generally, and mothering specifically, impacts social and legal matters in the US. I hope your work and the resources you're sharing get more people engaged in this vitally important topic. It's not just a parenting or divorce issue; it's a public health issue, and an important part of our country's changing social and economic status.
First of all, "asking if he can stop for groceries a few times per year." That made me laugh. And dishes and weekly trash? That's it? I'm so sorry you have felt so stymied getting back into the workforce. I know your story isn't unique and lately I've been thinking about the emotional and psychological costs to women who face this situation. I'm so thrilled to hear about The Care Board Project. And I agree, this is a public health issue. I also think that some of what comes into play is the power dynamics inherent with a spouse who earns a lot more than the other. I was in the same situation and it downplays our careers even though the work we do may be no less important, it is just less well-compensated. So this brings up all the societal issues of how some jobs are compensated better than others, and how men are socialized to pursue those careers while women are inadvertently pushed towards careers that make less and can be downshifted.
Thank you for sharing about this. I brought fair play to my husband in 2022 and he has been so resistant to it, he has asked questions like “what do you do all day if you aren’t getting all these cards done?” and “why would you expect me to take a ‘whole’ (he meant CPE) card?”
Beth, I'm so sorry about this. And I agree that it is the "whole" card concept that makes things start to feel lighter. But there is so much resistance to the recognition of how much work running a household and handling children is. Do you follow some of the lovely people on Instagram to help you feel less alone? I think seeing more people echo these beliefs in a variety of settings helps us feel more sturdy about what we deserve, which is to not shoulder it completely. and to not have to ask for help.
I follow Laura Danger and Crystal Britt, realZachthinkshare and KC Davis, who was the first person I heard mention fair play.
Oh and Worldshaker who occasionally talks about fair play
I love what he is doing!
And I realize I feature him in the substack I mention above, the math of motherhood! you can read it here. https://cindyditiberio.substack.com/p/the-math-of-motherhood-episode-2
Thanks so much for this article, I have been looking forward to reading it ever since you hinted months ago that you were going to be writing it.
I am really looking forward to reading Equal Partners, I think it will help my understanding.
I noticed you linked Laura Danger but not the podcast she co-hosts with Krystal Britt, Time To Lean. It is one of my favourite podcasts and applies ideas of domestic labour to a whole range of topics (they are both ADHD-ers so the conversation is delightfully free-wheeling).
I was interested in your line about of course he didn't quit his job during the pandemic because of what it was. I notice that men's work is often prioritised -- the statistics in the pandemic bear this out -- but when women have the EXACT SAME WORK somehow the same values don't apply. Like, imagine if a mother owned a company with employees during the pandemic. Would the facts of her work be enough to prioritise it in the family? Or would she end up shutting up shop? I hope this point makes sense.
First of all, love that podcast also, I just ran out of room on this already long post. Perhaps I should do a post just of resources. In the meantime, you are correct, men's work is prioritized. Even if a woman owned a company with employees during the pandemic, I think she still would have felt pressure to do something to pick up the slack with lack of childcare in a way that her husband wouldn't even if he was a salaried employee.
I figured you would have heard of Time To Lean and commented about it for the sake of other readers 😉
I don't know if this comment is helpful... Please feel free to delete it if it's not. But as someone on the other side of this conflict, I would like to offer an alternative perspective.
For some husbands at least, the problem is absolutely not how many "cards" we hold, or how much work we do/don't do around the house. The problem is the attitude of the wife, which I think is captured rather nicely in your post. The wife wants us to do some work; but we must do it her way; and if we don't, we are judged very harshly. It's very unpleasant!
The dynamic, from my perspective is this:
(1) My wife would want me to do some bit of housework, e.g. cleaning the floors. But when she says "do," she means do it to her standard, which is different to mine. Importantly, she does not recognise that her standard is a choice. She regards it as simply "correct." (In your post, this is "minimum standard of care.")
(2) If I set a different standard, e.g. cleaning the floors once a week instead of every two days, she judged me to have failed. (In your post, "He'd failed at even that...")
(3) She communicated that attitude to me. This was the part that I had the most trouble with. Everyone thinks negative thoughts about their partner sometimes, but you can choose not to communicate them. She didn't. (You don't mention in your post whether or not you used this kind of negative language.)
As a result, I do no housework at all. This was all very explicit in my relationship. If she was going to say unpleasant things to me when I do housework, then I wasn't going to do it... She explicitly said that she couldn't watch me clean the floor wrong without criticising, so I don't do it. Housework is bullshit, and I think that like me, many men are not willing to do it if we will only be judged harshly for it.
Childcare is not bullshit, and so we just had to fight over the childcare. But with childcare, those fights have meaning, because you're both fighting for something you jointly love, so it's... grounded, I guess? For me, any fight over housework was just insane. (The result is that my spouse did the housework until she got fed up with it, then we hired a maid, and now neither of us do it.)
Anyway the point of my comment is that sometimes the problem is not about how much men do. Rather, it is about whether the wife can fully cede control of some task and accept the outcome.
Anytime you start a comment with "I'm not sure if this is helpful," is a sign. I am debating deleting your comment because it is frankly shocking. Housework is bullshit? Sure, except that it has to be done. Your refusal to do it does make your wife your maid. Full stop. I am glad you have now hired a maid, but does she come daily? All I can say is, you might want to line up a divorce lawyer. The attitudes expressed in this comment alone are beyond what any woman should have to deal with. Her comments were unpleasant? Oh no! So is being forced to do housework with a partner who refuses to do his share! The Fair Play method aims to solve some of these issues by agreeing on a minimum standard of care. If you think sweeping the floor every two days is too much, but your wife thinks once a week isn't enough, you could compromise on every three days. I don't understand why you think your wife shouldn't have communicated her frustration to you. "She communicated that attitude to me. This was the part I had the most trouble with." But how could things change unless she asked for a change? The fact that your response was to do no housework at all shows that you feel entitled to her labor. A house does not run without someone doing the housework. Even a maid doesn't solve everything.
I would say that what you're doing is a form of weaponized incompetence- i.e. you're refusing to do a whole task that actually is important in a household because you don't do it well. If you lived alone, would you live in filth because you don't believe that housework is important? One of the principles in "Fair Play" is a minimum standard of care. That's not just child care- it's everything involved in running a household and a family. I would say that it's an act of neglect if you're unable to meet a minimum standard in terms of taking care of your own living space. In many cases, husbands don't seem to understand that running the household (including cleaning) is the purview of both partners. They see their wives as maids, nurses, mothers- it puts women in an awful kind of parental role, even to their husbands, that they definitely don't want to be in.
Thank you for stepping in Jenny. I agree with everything you stated. I think Phil is too far gone for any kind of logic to reach him.
Imagine having so much contempt for your wife that you’re willing to post about it publicly. These low value men tell on themselves over and over. I’m betting she’s not his wife anymore.
Also, “housework is bullshit” helps explain why so many men smell awful and have such terrible hygiene.
So, the weaponised incompetence thing does exist. But... so does the opposite.
There are two things you say here that I think are wrong.
First, the suggestion that husbands "see their wives as maids". This is projecting. To use my floor example, if I don't mop the floor today, it is absolutely *not* because I see my wife as a maid who should mop the floor today. It is because I don't think the floor needs mopping today. A wife is welcome to disagree on that point! She may say she prefers a cleaner floor. What is not helpful is when, on encountering a disagreement over how much mopping is necessary, she says, "you're incompetent."
Second, your suggestion that, "it puts women in [a] role..." A man's lack of action cannot put you in a role. Roles are things you take on for yourself. Blaming your partner for you being this way is... bad.
***Important exception to the above - except in cases of abuse, where men do physically/psychologically force women to do things. I don't mean anything I say here to deny that reality.***
Obviously, everyone brings a different set of experiences to these arguments. I couldn't begin to comment on what you may have experienced. Thanks.
"A man's lack of action cannot put you in a role." Um, yes it can. If a man refuses to clean up after himself, and you don't want to live in a kitchen over-run with ants, you must clean up after him becoming his maid.
Will you share how emotional labour has changed for you post your divorce? It sometimes seems to me that women still do a lot of the child related emotional labour even after the divorce, and still have household and meal duties, albeit with one less 'dependant'.
Ooof, yes, emotional labor increased for real as I shepherded my two kids through the divorce process (which is so much upheaval for them). I felt like I was spending hours each week talking with them about their feelings and how things were over at their dad's house for the first few months. They both thankfully have therapists because I didn't feel like I could manage it all my own. But there is so much less emotional labor trying to keep that failing relationship going so I feel like I have more bandwidth for them. Plus because half the week they are at their dad's, I get a chance to recharge, which was never available when I was parenting full-time all the time day in and day out.