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.
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.
My mother worked full-time and we lived with my grandparents who were retired. Other mothers in the neighborhood said snippy things and my mother's first response was "I don't need to have a floor you could eat off, because no one eats off the floor."
My BIL ended up doing all the cooking because my sister pointed out that when she cooked, he criticized and when he cooked, she said thank you.
How do you feel if your husband criticized that you don't clean to his specifications?
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.
Phil brings up an important point though. The minimum standard of care must be negotiated upon between the two parties. It can’t just be the cleaner one’s standard. If the cleaner one can’t let go of a certain standard for a certain task, then they should take that card for themselves.
Also I’ll add that coming to a reasonable compromise between varying standards is only possible when both people recognize the importance of the task at hand, and have respect for how taking care of it -- or not -- will impact the quality of life of both parties. Someone holding the attitude that housework is bullshit (ie not important, ie, someone else has probably always taken care of this for them, OR, they are so dissociated that living in filth wouldn’t make an impact in their life), and the belief that their domestic choices or negligence in a shared home “shouldn’t” impact their partner’s roles (see ant example above) is coming to the table unequipped with a fully adult understanding of the situation, and therefore a corresponding inability to take full responsibility for their actions within it. This is going to fundamentally impair the effectiveness of negotiation, because said party is going to be operating from a position of “I don’t want to do this; I shouldn’t *have* to do this; and it doesn’t actually matter if i don’t.” Rather than a grown-up’s perspective of: nobody wants to do this but it’s important that it gets done -- and to a standard that suits everyone’s needs as closely as possible. And it is every ounce as much my responsibility as my partner’s to figure out how to accomplish this; and, finally, i *want* to do figure this out and make it happen because i value their quality of life just as much as mine, and the quality and health of our relationship over my own selfish desires.
I agree, but i think the author already addressed this in her first reply, when she suggested (as an example) compromising on cleaning the floors every three days as a middle ground between once a week and every other day.
Everyone on this thread needs to go read Anne Helen Petersen's post on why women clean and weigh in on their thoughts. i'm a bit conflicted about her conclusion.
Just read it and yep, nailed it!! Women can also learn to care less. Control less. Some people want men to pick up half the load, but then control the way they do it. We have to care less!! And if it’s something you just can’t care less about, then you need to take over that particular chore
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.
Agree with your points completely @Cindy DiTiberio. My husband and I fully counted his work as part of household responsibilities, but weekends and evenings we split the work. I did freelance and taught so there were times I worked evenings and weekends and he was the child care provider, cook, etc. He always did the grocery store runs. For several years he had a job that required late hours and he would be embarrassed/feel guilty that he’d be leaving at 6 or 6:30 to have dinner with us while everyone else was still at their desk, even tho he’d work several hours after the kids’ bedtime. It was miserable bc the company didn’t give a fuck about boundaries or employee mental health or family - and most don’t. He finally found a new job - which isn’t easy to make time for when your existing job consumes everything it can - and balance was much, much easier to achieve.
Yes I want to name that our culture of overwork makes this split especially difficult because we are expected to work long hours and be available at all times instead of being able to clock out fully of one job and clock in to the second shift and be able to fully focus on the second job (which is being a part of a family, raising kids, maintaining a household.)
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
Thanks for the article. My ex-husband was quite clear that no cards at all were his responsibility, but he reserved the right to criticize and prioritize for me. When I realized the marriage was over, the first thing I did was stop taking care of things that were important to him but not to me. His personal laundry was chief among these. And now that it is just me and two children without a man baby constantly creating a mess, there is so much less work and more leisure.
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.
We are working through the cards myself. Our son is an adult, but still at home so some of the kid stuff still applies (he has his own set of cards). When we sat down this weekend to divide cards, husband had to make a spreadsheet to write down the nitty gritty details for every card (eg, tidying doesn’t just mean “clear away garbage, food, and dishes”—he needed to specify that garbage included “wrappers and corks from wine bottles”). I was gnashing my teeth in frustration…
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.
My kids are grown and my husband is their stepdad. I write full-time here, on Medium and elsewhere. I write books. I was a newspaper editor previously — like you, I’m not just writing as a fun little hobby.
You’d think I’d have plenty of time to do everything, but lately I’ve felt burnt out and overwhelmed. Thank goodness my husband believes in me! Even after the newspaper industry imploded and I couldn’t figure out how to earn more than a pittance, he encouraged me to keep going. I’m making a bit more now, but only because he understands that what I’m doing is real work.
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.
How in the *world* would it *not* factor in that he had to work full time and you didn’t have a job at all? How many kids birthday parties are you throwing where it matches up with that?
Is he supposed to do 100% of the market labor and also 50% of the home labor?
First of all, I had two jobs, being a mom and launching a writing career. It’s just I wasn’t being paid for any of that work. He was benefiting greatly by not having to pay someone else to do the labor of raising our kids and had for over a decade. And we were factoring in that he worked. We just didn’t need to address the minutia of what his job entailed. The reason we were doing that with our household is that we both lived there and we both raised our kids. I don’t even throw birthday parties. The work I was doing was not frivolous thank you very much but the work of keeping children alive and mentally healthy and thriving. Clothes on their backs doctors appointments food in the fridge organizing play dates scheduling extracurriculars buying new shoes ensuring they had books that would encourage them to read. Please read my math of motherhood series if you are uneducated about the work and value of caregiving.
I want you to consider the value of being provided for. There is financial provision. And then, there is: a meal on the table when you get home from work. Toilet paper always there to wipe your ass and you didn't have to buy it. Children who get picked up from school every day at 2:30 so that you can continue to keep working.
Who is providing here, really? Both people. Read my post on the value of unpaid labor. Both people are financially providing. One with a paycheck. The other by not having to pay others to do the work she/he is doing for free.
1. Men actively seek to be “providers” for status amongst other men, and to have control over their wives, and to avoid having to do work around the house. You know, I know, everyone knows it’s difficult to leave a marriage if you don’t have much/ any money of your own.
You’d need a job even if you didn’t have a wife/ kids. Earning one’s living is baseline in capitalism.
Married men benefit hugely in their careers, and therefore financially, if they don’t need to take any time out to raise kids. Money = control, more money = more control.
As if working 16+ hour days, 6-7 days a week, for room, board and clothing represents a great deal for a woman.
Many many women seek to share the “providing” equally with their husbands and are strongly discouraged/ prevented from doing that - because the husbands don’t want to give up financial control, and don’t want to have to pickup more “women’s work” around the house.
I’d need a job, and you’d need to still do chores. Or maybe not, I’ve never seen the home of a feminist.
But regardless, you can keep your delusion that SAHM is 16 hours a day, for only room and board. At least no man will have to get milked by you just cause he was tricked by young love
I absolutely love the irony of this statement. The implied threat, complete with virtual toddler-like foot-stomping, that "FINE, we just won't marry you anymore!" As if women are the ones who benefit most from marriage and will be devastated that men are now refusing to marry them.
The only straight response I can give to this is something I learned from the incredible Zawn Villines. We can't have rational conversations with men like this. It's a waste of time even trying. They don't WANT to understand and therefore will react with all sorts of emotional manipulation, all while declaring that women are the emotional and irrational ones.
The best thing we can do is go on living our single lives - fulfilled, happy, FREE, and full of as many cats (or dogs or plants) as our hearts desire!
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 find this piece a bit baffling. I have 2 children and used to commute 3 hours a day. My husband did basically all the housework because he had a 10 minute commute. I now WFH and he has a 45m commute so we've worked out a new system where I do more and he does less.
When you have a cognitively demanding job, you need down time. I needed down time FAR MORE from my office days than I need after a day with my children. It's not anti-feminist to admit there are an awful lot of jobs MORE DIFFICULT than homemaking and child-rearing. Mine was one of them.
So yeah obviously your husband would want to count his time working!? An hour at work is often, actually, two in terms of the energy and life force it drains from you. I speak from experience here. I would be utterly furious if my husband, during those difficult commuting years, had raised a fuss about division of labor. Furious.
I'm not sure that an hour at work is more draining than an hour with children. Depends on your children, their ages, your personality and what kind of support you have as well as how many days on end you are doing it. You reference commute times, but have you ever been the full-time or even part time primary parent? "I speak from experience here." My question is, do you speak from the experience of being expected to be the caregiver of your children and the runner of your household at all times and how draining that can be?
"Minimum standard" can be very subjective. Example. CDC says flu mist is as effective as flu shot. So if your husband is in charge can't he make that call? It feels like you wanted your husband to deal with being the "bad guy" and going through one of the tough aspects of parenting-- and that's what made his choice unacceptable. I'm only guessing and could be completely wrong, but that's the sense I got of what was driving your frustration.
I think the cards and "mentally energy" is a good way to go, but with that responsibility has to come the authority to make alternative choices. Minimum standards need to be very clear to everyone and greater weight given to the decisions of the one holding the card.
The doctors have never suggested the flu mist and I am a rule follower and I remember one year they didn’t even have the mist for an option. He knew that the shot was what we were going for, if we were going to do this mist, I could have handled it because it wouldn’t have been a fight. I wanted him to know what it felt like to have to wrestle your child from behind the vending machine to get it done. There were so many aspects of the impossibility of parenthood that he just didn’t experience or he did once instead of daily. When he did the flu shots this was before Fair Play even existed. This is why I think Fair Play can help because you outright discuss minimum standard of care. Can I give another example though? Once I asked my husband to take the car to the car wash because the inside of cars get so gross with kids but because of all the crap IN the car he didn’t get have them wash the inside because he would have had to remove all the stuff so he came back and the outside was clean but the inside was the same. Again, I failed I guess because I should have specified that the part of the car that I was most eager to have cleaned was the inside and when your car is the primary family car it ends up littered with socks and toys and trash and yes that means before the car can be cleaned, as you are packing up the kids to get the free popcorn that is waiting for them at the car wash waiting area, you have to also either remove all the trash or gather all the spare toys in a bag or the trunk or maybe have cleaned out the car before you go to the car wash. Do you see what I mean? Maybe I am a nag or have unrealistic expectations. I think the crux of it is I wanted my husband to understand the extreme tedium and exhaustion of doing all these things over and over with two young children attached to you for years but that was never going to happen and he would never understand because he didn’t do it and thus we are now divorced. Oh well I think we are both better off.
Thanks for the extra details. Instead of nitpicking, I should have said, this was really thought provoking and interesting. I appreciate all the personal history and your willingness to share. It's made me think about my own shortcomings over my 40 year marriage. Thanks for sharing your story and the thoughtful answer to my one nagging question.
I enjoy learning about how other people see things. When I had a young family, I was a stay at home home mom for around a decade. I considered the taking care of the house and the kids to be my job, and I worked hard to be excellent at it. Prior to having children, I worked as a nurse in a busy hospital and was very used to a fast pace and a heavy work load. My husband worked 60 hour weeks.
Although taking care of everything with the kids and the house definitely had it's tedious moments, it was also wonderful in that I could grab moments for myself in a way that was hard when I was working full time. It was also hugely rewarding; all of those mundane everyday things are the stuff that life is made of.
My husband earned a good living and provided very well for us. Me taking care of everything at home enabled him to do that. I considered it a fair division of labor, and I still do.
My life has now pretty much flipped: now I am the breadwinner, and my husband does everything at home except make dinner, which I love to do.
Thanks for your comment. I do feel like when the roles are clearly delineated, it is easier. Yet for so many moms these days, they want to keep a part of their work life alive, so they try and do both, i.e. work "part-time" and be the primary parent. This is a tricky balance and you often feel like you are failing at both jobs. If a mother works part time, those moments when you felt entitled to a break, they feel like they should be squeezing in additional work, which is why they burn out so easily and get resentful of their husbands.
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.
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.
As a single woman, I'm going to agree with Phil.
If it's his card why can't he set the standards?
My mother worked full-time and we lived with my grandparents who were retired. Other mothers in the neighborhood said snippy things and my mother's first response was "I don't need to have a floor you could eat off, because no one eats off the floor."
My BIL ended up doing all the cooking because my sister pointed out that when she cooked, he criticized and when he cooked, she said thank you.
How do you feel if your husband criticized that you don't clean to his specifications?
You hand someone the job, hand them the job.
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.
Or you put his dishes on the floor.
Phil brings up an important point though. The minimum standard of care must be negotiated upon between the two parties. It can’t just be the cleaner one’s standard. If the cleaner one can’t let go of a certain standard for a certain task, then they should take that card for themselves.
Also I’ll add that coming to a reasonable compromise between varying standards is only possible when both people recognize the importance of the task at hand, and have respect for how taking care of it -- or not -- will impact the quality of life of both parties. Someone holding the attitude that housework is bullshit (ie not important, ie, someone else has probably always taken care of this for them, OR, they are so dissociated that living in filth wouldn’t make an impact in their life), and the belief that their domestic choices or negligence in a shared home “shouldn’t” impact their partner’s roles (see ant example above) is coming to the table unequipped with a fully adult understanding of the situation, and therefore a corresponding inability to take full responsibility for their actions within it. This is going to fundamentally impair the effectiveness of negotiation, because said party is going to be operating from a position of “I don’t want to do this; I shouldn’t *have* to do this; and it doesn’t actually matter if i don’t.” Rather than a grown-up’s perspective of: nobody wants to do this but it’s important that it gets done -- and to a standard that suits everyone’s needs as closely as possible. And it is every ounce as much my responsibility as my partner’s to figure out how to accomplish this; and, finally, i *want* to do figure this out and make it happen because i value their quality of life just as much as mine, and the quality and health of our relationship over my own selfish desires.
Agree. Name-calling and insulting shouldn’t be part of the negotiation either.
I agree, but i think the author already addressed this in her first reply, when she suggested (as an example) compromising on cleaning the floors every three days as a middle ground between once a week and every other day.
Everyone on this thread needs to go read Anne Helen Petersen's post on why women clean and weigh in on their thoughts. i'm a bit conflicted about her conclusion.
Just read it and yep, nailed it!! Women can also learn to care less. Control less. Some people want men to pick up half the load, but then control the way they do it. We have to care less!! And if it’s something you just can’t care less about, then you need to take over that particular chore
I hire someone else to do it.
Because it's not important to me.
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.
Agree with your points completely @Cindy DiTiberio. My husband and I fully counted his work as part of household responsibilities, but weekends and evenings we split the work. I did freelance and taught so there were times I worked evenings and weekends and he was the child care provider, cook, etc. He always did the grocery store runs. For several years he had a job that required late hours and he would be embarrassed/feel guilty that he’d be leaving at 6 or 6:30 to have dinner with us while everyone else was still at their desk, even tho he’d work several hours after the kids’ bedtime. It was miserable bc the company didn’t give a fuck about boundaries or employee mental health or family - and most don’t. He finally found a new job - which isn’t easy to make time for when your existing job consumes everything it can - and balance was much, much easier to achieve.
Yes I want to name that our culture of overwork makes this split especially difficult because we are expected to work long hours and be available at all times instead of being able to clock out fully of one job and clock in to the second shift and be able to fully focus on the second job (which is being a part of a family, raising kids, maintaining a household.)
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)
Thanks for the article. My ex-husband was quite clear that no cards at all were his responsibility, but he reserved the right to criticize and prioritize for me. When I realized the marriage was over, the first thing I did was stop taking care of things that were important to him but not to me. His personal laundry was chief among these. And now that it is just me and two children without a man baby constantly creating a mess, there is so much less work and more leisure.
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.
That laptop moment made my stomach lurch!
We are working through the cards myself. Our son is an adult, but still at home so some of the kid stuff still applies (he has his own set of cards). When we sat down this weekend to divide cards, husband had to make a spreadsheet to write down the nitty gritty details for every card (eg, tidying doesn’t just mean “clear away garbage, food, and dishes”—he needed to specify that garbage included “wrappers and corks from wine bottles”). I was gnashing my teeth in frustration…
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
This is fabulous.
My kids are grown and my husband is their stepdad. I write full-time here, on Medium and elsewhere. I write books. I was a newspaper editor previously — like you, I’m not just writing as a fun little hobby.
You’d think I’d have plenty of time to do everything, but lately I’ve felt burnt out and overwhelmed. Thank goodness my husband believes in me! Even after the newspaper industry imploded and I couldn’t figure out how to earn more than a pittance, he encouraged me to keep going. I’m making a bit more now, but only because he understands that what I’m doing is real work.
yep, even a comment on this post called "launching a writing career" a privilege and how lucky I was yada yada yada. I deleted it.
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 😉
How in the *world* would it *not* factor in that he had to work full time and you didn’t have a job at all? How many kids birthday parties are you throwing where it matches up with that?
Is he supposed to do 100% of the market labor and also 50% of the home labor?
First of all, I had two jobs, being a mom and launching a writing career. It’s just I wasn’t being paid for any of that work. He was benefiting greatly by not having to pay someone else to do the labor of raising our kids and had for over a decade. And we were factoring in that he worked. We just didn’t need to address the minutia of what his job entailed. The reason we were doing that with our household is that we both lived there and we both raised our kids. I don’t even throw birthday parties. The work I was doing was not frivolous thank you very much but the work of keeping children alive and mentally healthy and thriving. Clothes on their backs doctors appointments food in the fridge organizing play dates scheduling extracurriculars buying new shoes ensuring they had books that would encourage them to read. Please read my math of motherhood series if you are uneducated about the work and value of caregiving.
I mean I know the value of caregiving but I also know the value of being provided for.
Tbh I read pieces like these and just think men shouldn’t agree to marriage anymore. It’s just a trap.
I want you to consider the value of being provided for. There is financial provision. And then, there is: a meal on the table when you get home from work. Toilet paper always there to wipe your ass and you didn't have to buy it. Children who get picked up from school every day at 2:30 so that you can continue to keep working.
Who is providing here, really? Both people. Read my post on the value of unpaid labor. Both people are financially providing. One with a paycheck. The other by not having to pay others to do the work she/he is doing for free.
https://cindyditiberio.substack.com/p/the-math-of-motherhood-episode-2
Oh please.
1. Men actively seek to be “providers” for status amongst other men, and to have control over their wives, and to avoid having to do work around the house. You know, I know, everyone knows it’s difficult to leave a marriage if you don’t have much/ any money of your own.
You’d need a job even if you didn’t have a wife/ kids. Earning one’s living is baseline in capitalism.
Married men benefit hugely in their careers, and therefore financially, if they don’t need to take any time out to raise kids. Money = control, more money = more control.
As if working 16+ hour days, 6-7 days a week, for room, board and clothing represents a great deal for a woman.
Many many women seek to share the “providing” equally with their husbands and are strongly discouraged/ prevented from doing that - because the husbands don’t want to give up financial control, and don’t want to have to pickup more “women’s work” around the house.
We see you, and we see the real trap.
I’d need a job, and you’d need to still do chores. Or maybe not, I’ve never seen the home of a feminist.
But regardless, you can keep your delusion that SAHM is 16 hours a day, for only room and board. At least no man will have to get milked by you just cause he was tricked by young love
Newsflash bro: adult life requires a person to *both* have a job *and* do chores. That is the most basic of baselines.
Didn’t for her
I absolutely love the irony of this statement. The implied threat, complete with virtual toddler-like foot-stomping, that "FINE, we just won't marry you anymore!" As if women are the ones who benefit most from marriage and will be devastated that men are now refusing to marry them.
The only straight response I can give to this is something I learned from the incredible Zawn Villines. We can't have rational conversations with men like this. It's a waste of time even trying. They don't WANT to understand and therefore will react with all sorts of emotional manipulation, all while declaring that women are the emotional and irrational ones.
The best thing we can do is go on living our single lives - fulfilled, happy, FREE, and full of as many cats (or dogs or plants) as our hearts desire!
I think I understand fine, better than you actually understand yourselves.
But congratulations on recommending exactly what I did while also trying to insult me for it
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 find this piece a bit baffling. I have 2 children and used to commute 3 hours a day. My husband did basically all the housework because he had a 10 minute commute. I now WFH and he has a 45m commute so we've worked out a new system where I do more and he does less.
When you have a cognitively demanding job, you need down time. I needed down time FAR MORE from my office days than I need after a day with my children. It's not anti-feminist to admit there are an awful lot of jobs MORE DIFFICULT than homemaking and child-rearing. Mine was one of them.
So yeah obviously your husband would want to count his time working!? An hour at work is often, actually, two in terms of the energy and life force it drains from you. I speak from experience here. I would be utterly furious if my husband, during those difficult commuting years, had raised a fuss about division of labor. Furious.
I'm not sure that an hour at work is more draining than an hour with children. Depends on your children, their ages, your personality and what kind of support you have as well as how many days on end you are doing it. You reference commute times, but have you ever been the full-time or even part time primary parent? "I speak from experience here." My question is, do you speak from the experience of being expected to be the caregiver of your children and the runner of your household at all times and how draining that can be?
"Minimum standard" can be very subjective. Example. CDC says flu mist is as effective as flu shot. So if your husband is in charge can't he make that call? It feels like you wanted your husband to deal with being the "bad guy" and going through one of the tough aspects of parenting-- and that's what made his choice unacceptable. I'm only guessing and could be completely wrong, but that's the sense I got of what was driving your frustration.
I think the cards and "mentally energy" is a good way to go, but with that responsibility has to come the authority to make alternative choices. Minimum standards need to be very clear to everyone and greater weight given to the decisions of the one holding the card.
The doctors have never suggested the flu mist and I am a rule follower and I remember one year they didn’t even have the mist for an option. He knew that the shot was what we were going for, if we were going to do this mist, I could have handled it because it wouldn’t have been a fight. I wanted him to know what it felt like to have to wrestle your child from behind the vending machine to get it done. There were so many aspects of the impossibility of parenthood that he just didn’t experience or he did once instead of daily. When he did the flu shots this was before Fair Play even existed. This is why I think Fair Play can help because you outright discuss minimum standard of care. Can I give another example though? Once I asked my husband to take the car to the car wash because the inside of cars get so gross with kids but because of all the crap IN the car he didn’t get have them wash the inside because he would have had to remove all the stuff so he came back and the outside was clean but the inside was the same. Again, I failed I guess because I should have specified that the part of the car that I was most eager to have cleaned was the inside and when your car is the primary family car it ends up littered with socks and toys and trash and yes that means before the car can be cleaned, as you are packing up the kids to get the free popcorn that is waiting for them at the car wash waiting area, you have to also either remove all the trash or gather all the spare toys in a bag or the trunk or maybe have cleaned out the car before you go to the car wash. Do you see what I mean? Maybe I am a nag or have unrealistic expectations. I think the crux of it is I wanted my husband to understand the extreme tedium and exhaustion of doing all these things over and over with two young children attached to you for years but that was never going to happen and he would never understand because he didn’t do it and thus we are now divorced. Oh well I think we are both better off.
Thanks for the extra details. Instead of nitpicking, I should have said, this was really thought provoking and interesting. I appreciate all the personal history and your willingness to share. It's made me think about my own shortcomings over my 40 year marriage. Thanks for sharing your story and the thoughtful answer to my one nagging question.
Thank you for this amended comment! It means a lot.
Interesting piece, thank you!
I enjoy learning about how other people see things. When I had a young family, I was a stay at home home mom for around a decade. I considered the taking care of the house and the kids to be my job, and I worked hard to be excellent at it. Prior to having children, I worked as a nurse in a busy hospital and was very used to a fast pace and a heavy work load. My husband worked 60 hour weeks.
Although taking care of everything with the kids and the house definitely had it's tedious moments, it was also wonderful in that I could grab moments for myself in a way that was hard when I was working full time. It was also hugely rewarding; all of those mundane everyday things are the stuff that life is made of.
My husband earned a good living and provided very well for us. Me taking care of everything at home enabled him to do that. I considered it a fair division of labor, and I still do.
My life has now pretty much flipped: now I am the breadwinner, and my husband does everything at home except make dinner, which I love to do.
Thanks for your comment. I do feel like when the roles are clearly delineated, it is easier. Yet for so many moms these days, they want to keep a part of their work life alive, so they try and do both, i.e. work "part-time" and be the primary parent. This is a tricky balance and you often feel like you are failing at both jobs. If a mother works part time, those moments when you felt entitled to a break, they feel like they should be squeezing in additional work, which is why they burn out so easily and get resentful of their husbands.
My mommy did all the housework including repair and remodeling, and then wondered why she had no time for a job or training.