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To one degree or another, most spouses are dimly aware of an inequality in work and home responsibilities that is often linked to gender differences.
In heterosexual marriages, even though wives earn about as much as their husbands or more, they are likely to spend more time on housework and childcare than their husbands, according to a Pew Research Center study published in April. Women spend approx. 3.5 more hours of housework on average each week than menbased on 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, not including errands, grocery shopping or childcare.
So much of the work of running a household is unspoken or intangible, that unless you go through the exercise of writing down all the details, couples don’t get the whole picture. At least the husbands don’t.
After my wife, Kate, got a full-time job last year, she sometimes said we needed to sit down and go over all the household and parenting responsibilities. She worked just as hard as I did on her paid job, and now we needed me to work just as hard on the unpaid jobs.
I got the feeling that I was balancing too much because items started falling through the cracks. Deadlines would be missed. Forgotten dates. Repairs left unrepaired. It would annoy me (unfairly), even if I were the solution to the problem.
Prior to her full-time job, Kate’s project-based freelance career had meant flexibility and bandwidth to take on most of the unpaid work it required. to bring a family of four (seven if you include pets). We had a prior understanding of that. But with his new job, the situation changed long before the default workload balancing did.
About a year after she started, because she was too busy and I had no sense of urgency, we finally got down to business a few months ago. He handed me a pad of Post-it Notes to write down the things I was responsible for. I only needed a few. After typing “mow the lawn,” I sat for several long, embarrassing minutes while Kate ripped note after note, mosaicking our dining room table.
The Post-it note as a medium was helpful, unlike a list. It created a visual representation of the imbalance and made it easy to move tasks back and forth.
When the notes were completed, I was disturbed by both the imbalance and my ignorance of the volume of articles. I had thought for a long time that Kate and I shared most of the chores, like doing laundry, picking up trash, and chauffeuring our kids, and that while she did most of the cooking, I did most of the cleaning afterward. . I hadn’t even considered less visible items like “car maintenance” and “pet medicine.”
The point of the Post-it Notes exercise was not to embarrass me for all the responsibilities I was shirking, or even inadvertently. It was to move as many of them as possible from Kate’s column to David’s in an effort to achieve parity. This peaceful transition of power included transferring entire categories to me, like “lawn care,” “pets,” and a big one, “school.” (School meant reading all the mail for dates, deadlines, permission forms, and more.)
Kate was mostly left with items that she preferred or I would have little chance of success at, like shopping for kids’ clothes, meal planning, and all financial matters. For my new Post-it homework, in most cases, Kate had to give me a little 101 on who to call and what to ask for to get me started. But she was teaching me how to fish and she was no longer the sole keeper of these fishing rods. In the end, Kate still had more than half the stack, but I think we made real progress.
My new responsibilities have kept me busier ever since, but I don’t care because they’ve had four other major side effects plus fewer things that escape me.
First, Kate’s mental health. She had been carrying a backpack full of rocks in addition to her demanding job. By putting some of the rocks in my less crowded bag, she immediately made it lighter. Even a pebble-sized duty relieved her of the mental burden of having to follow the pebble’s trail. And in the future, she knew that everything associated with those rocks was now my burden.
Second, immersing myself in the sometimes intricate details of household responsibilities made me more appreciative of all Kate had been up to, and sympathetic (rather than angry) with all she had missed. “I don’t see how you did all this by yourself,” I commented more than once after spending a day chasing a particular chore item or another.
Third, my new duties have made me more committed to my own family. Instead of going to my wife to ask what is happening and when, I now know myself. Or at least I know more than I did, which feels particularly important for those responsibilities involving our children.
Finally, we are modeling equity for our two daughters who will eventually be in a relationship. And we hope that fairness, cooperation and good communication are the guiding principles of your relationships. The more they see me do, the more they will expect that level of commitment and effort from their partners.
This exercise is simple and effective, which is the best kind of trick. I recommend that you take an hour to take the Post-it note challenge. Review it annually for balance; in fact, your first Post-it note might be to organize the Challenge. Do it for your partner, for the children, for your relationship and for more equity in your life.
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