I love this. I feel very unbalanced at home regarding this kind of domestic labor division. But my husband is constantly saying I don't do enough. I don't know how to communicate effectively that I am doing a lot and he is not picking up the slack and instead complaining that I do nothing.
Love this! My sister and I are twins, so we both had a similar oldest daughter vibe of being high achievers in school, and we definitely helped around the house, but we followed our mom’s lead and didn’t stress much about cleaning constantly- we would clean really well for company and keep it vaguely picked up the rest of the time. Both our parents worked when we were kids, and my sister and I always assumed we would get married, have kids, and work. My sister surprised herself by wanting to stay home with her oldest for 18 months, and then since her 2nd was affected by COVID, he ended up basically being with them until he was 1 even though she tried to have him start daycare February of 2020 (he went for a few weeks only initially). She works from home (lawyer in her own business with my dad) and her youngest is currently in school 3 days, but they will both be in elementary school in August.
My husband asked if I secretly wanted to stay home when our daughter was born because he didn’t want me to feel like I didn’t have the option since technically he made enough that we could’ve gotten by on one income with a strict budget, but it was a big no for me, so I have worked as a preschool teacher and had her with me at my center since she was 14 weeks old. She is 4, but she has a late birthday and won’t start kindergarten until August of 2025.
I hope that we are modeling well for both my nephews and daughter that chores are not gendered, but I think that despite division of labor being okay on paper, what they see may still be Daddy more at leisure and Mommy doing more. Both our husbands regularly cook dinner and do nearly all of the grocery shopping. They take care of the yard and the cars and various home maintenance projects. But the majority of the indoor cleaning tasks are still done by me and my sister (to the extent that we do them at all- sometimes we just let stuff go altogether if it’s something like scrubbing the tub that can be put off a bit). So I am curious to see if that gender difference shows up even in different households- I wonder if my nephews will clean less than my daughter or think they should have more leisure time as they get older. She already loves making things organized in her room the way she likes it and putting away her clothes, packing her bag for the next day.
I really appreciate this measured take on the data. It underscores the Buddhist teaching that none of us choose our causes and conditions. And yet, we are all responsible for untangling the knots we were handed. You can also be the best communicator in the world and still the other person may not be ready to change, so I appreciate the grace extended to those who may be unhappily doing more than their 50% because their partner cannot or will not take theirs on in this season. I will say that this is the biggest divide I see in my peer group: not between partnerships that are 100% equitable and those that are not, but ones in which both partners agree to try to tell the truth as kindly as they can, to understand each other’s experiences and to make compromises as necessary to recalibrate if things have drifted into something other than an equitable situation, even if it’s uncomfortable — and those where one or both partners cannot get there.
This is disheartening to me. Not because of the share of domestic between me and my husband, but because I stay home and that makes me worry about what it says to our daughter. I think I’ve said this before in another thread, but it bears repeating: I have a bachelor’s in engineering and a master’s in information sciences, my husband didn’t get through college (partied too hard), and I’m the one who stays home because he can earn more (but also because he wasn’t pregnant and nursing during a pandemic). Thanks, patriarchy! It’s frustrating to me; I never wanted to stay home, and frankly I’m not sure I’m very good at it or that the kids are better off for it. But I also don’t know how I would manage it all if I had the responsibilities and obligations of paid work. Life is much messier than I expected when I went to college and made a plan.
Thank you so much for addressing guilt at the end of this post! I could hear that tea kettle starting to whistle in the back of my head as I was reading, and it really helped to have that acknowledged.
My husband cooks a few meals a week and does all the dishes, which is awesome and I'm glad we model that for our kids. He also does all the yardwork and gardening (I have a weird, primal fear of worms, lol).
Where I find the most frustration, though, is that he does a generally crummy job when I ask him to help clean the bathroom or do laundry. I often have to go back and re-clean to remove streaks and spots he missed, or pick up in the middle of a load he's forgotten in the wash. Part of it is some undiagnosed attention issues (certain things just don't register in his brain) and another part is that his parents never really taught him to clean (but you can bet they taught his sister...). I feel like I don't have the bandwidth to coach him on this stuff but don't see another way to make improvements... I wish there was some sort of class he could take, haha!
Over Christmas I came so close to saying to my mother-in-law, "If you'd had a daughter you would never have tolerated her being as helpless as you encourage your sons to be." Which is 100% true -- including that she constantly tries to enforce her view of the appropriate gendered division of labor on me and my husband, although she strongly identifies as a feminist. But saying it would have made Christmas really miserable.
"they found that boys’ aspirations and beliefs about gender roles were not predicted by parents’ beliefs or behaviors" <--- I'd love to hear more this. Did the boys have more egalitarian aspirations & beliefs? What *did* influence boys' aspirations & beliefs re gender roles? Seems like this is an important part of the equation to understand.
This is the part I think about a lot, “the researchers surmised, girls are more attuned than boys to social information and are more likely to internalize cues about social norms.”
Sometimes I find myself actively teaching my 9 yo daughter to “read the room” and then I think, “no. The world will reach her soon enough! Let her be 9.” Reading the room can be a bummer super power IMHO (learned from Tara Mohr’s Playing Big, which I adore and recommend).
In my anecdotal family our 6yo son is tidier and quicker to help with chores around the house. He doesn’t seem to “see” things as easily for his sister so I try to let him find them himself instead of pointing out where they are.
All this is hard. Good for us for trying out best. :)
Such a good post and convo in the comments! I am also glad you added the part about guilt at the end. I have two boys and no girls and while I’ve read some of this in articles, I have to admit I also feel pissed about it 🤣. I’m like okay I already feel like I do more as a woman, I understand social norms etc are against me, but now I also have to figure out how to change my sons and household on top of trying to figure out how to communicate with my spouse about mental load etc and everything else? It feels like a lot and I’m just not willing to go there right now. 😭🤯
I love this. I feel very unbalanced at home regarding this kind of domestic labor division. But my husband is constantly saying I don't do enough. I don't know how to communicate effectively that I am doing a lot and he is not picking up the slack and instead complaining that I do nothing.
Love this! My sister and I are twins, so we both had a similar oldest daughter vibe of being high achievers in school, and we definitely helped around the house, but we followed our mom’s lead and didn’t stress much about cleaning constantly- we would clean really well for company and keep it vaguely picked up the rest of the time. Both our parents worked when we were kids, and my sister and I always assumed we would get married, have kids, and work. My sister surprised herself by wanting to stay home with her oldest for 18 months, and then since her 2nd was affected by COVID, he ended up basically being with them until he was 1 even though she tried to have him start daycare February of 2020 (he went for a few weeks only initially). She works from home (lawyer in her own business with my dad) and her youngest is currently in school 3 days, but they will both be in elementary school in August.
My husband asked if I secretly wanted to stay home when our daughter was born because he didn’t want me to feel like I didn’t have the option since technically he made enough that we could’ve gotten by on one income with a strict budget, but it was a big no for me, so I have worked as a preschool teacher and had her with me at my center since she was 14 weeks old. She is 4, but she has a late birthday and won’t start kindergarten until August of 2025.
I hope that we are modeling well for both my nephews and daughter that chores are not gendered, but I think that despite division of labor being okay on paper, what they see may still be Daddy more at leisure and Mommy doing more. Both our husbands regularly cook dinner and do nearly all of the grocery shopping. They take care of the yard and the cars and various home maintenance projects. But the majority of the indoor cleaning tasks are still done by me and my sister (to the extent that we do them at all- sometimes we just let stuff go altogether if it’s something like scrubbing the tub that can be put off a bit). So I am curious to see if that gender difference shows up even in different households- I wonder if my nephews will clean less than my daughter or think they should have more leisure time as they get older. She already loves making things organized in her room the way she likes it and putting away her clothes, packing her bag for the next day.
I really appreciate this measured take on the data. It underscores the Buddhist teaching that none of us choose our causes and conditions. And yet, we are all responsible for untangling the knots we were handed. You can also be the best communicator in the world and still the other person may not be ready to change, so I appreciate the grace extended to those who may be unhappily doing more than their 50% because their partner cannot or will not take theirs on in this season. I will say that this is the biggest divide I see in my peer group: not between partnerships that are 100% equitable and those that are not, but ones in which both partners agree to try to tell the truth as kindly as they can, to understand each other’s experiences and to make compromises as necessary to recalibrate if things have drifted into something other than an equitable situation, even if it’s uncomfortable — and those where one or both partners cannot get there.
This is disheartening to me. Not because of the share of domestic between me and my husband, but because I stay home and that makes me worry about what it says to our daughter. I think I’ve said this before in another thread, but it bears repeating: I have a bachelor’s in engineering and a master’s in information sciences, my husband didn’t get through college (partied too hard), and I’m the one who stays home because he can earn more (but also because he wasn’t pregnant and nursing during a pandemic). Thanks, patriarchy! It’s frustrating to me; I never wanted to stay home, and frankly I’m not sure I’m very good at it or that the kids are better off for it. But I also don’t know how I would manage it all if I had the responsibilities and obligations of paid work. Life is much messier than I expected when I went to college and made a plan.
Thank you so much for addressing guilt at the end of this post! I could hear that tea kettle starting to whistle in the back of my head as I was reading, and it really helped to have that acknowledged.
My husband cooks a few meals a week and does all the dishes, which is awesome and I'm glad we model that for our kids. He also does all the yardwork and gardening (I have a weird, primal fear of worms, lol).
Where I find the most frustration, though, is that he does a generally crummy job when I ask him to help clean the bathroom or do laundry. I often have to go back and re-clean to remove streaks and spots he missed, or pick up in the middle of a load he's forgotten in the wash. Part of it is some undiagnosed attention issues (certain things just don't register in his brain) and another part is that his parents never really taught him to clean (but you can bet they taught his sister...). I feel like I don't have the bandwidth to coach him on this stuff but don't see another way to make improvements... I wish there was some sort of class he could take, haha!
Over Christmas I came so close to saying to my mother-in-law, "If you'd had a daughter you would never have tolerated her being as helpless as you encourage your sons to be." Which is 100% true -- including that she constantly tries to enforce her view of the appropriate gendered division of labor on me and my husband, although she strongly identifies as a feminist. But saying it would have made Christmas really miserable.
"they found that boys’ aspirations and beliefs about gender roles were not predicted by parents’ beliefs or behaviors" <--- I'd love to hear more this. Did the boys have more egalitarian aspirations & beliefs? What *did* influence boys' aspirations & beliefs re gender roles? Seems like this is an important part of the equation to understand.
This is the part I think about a lot, “the researchers surmised, girls are more attuned than boys to social information and are more likely to internalize cues about social norms.”
Sometimes I find myself actively teaching my 9 yo daughter to “read the room” and then I think, “no. The world will reach her soon enough! Let her be 9.” Reading the room can be a bummer super power IMHO (learned from Tara Mohr’s Playing Big, which I adore and recommend).
In my anecdotal family our 6yo son is tidier and quicker to help with chores around the house. He doesn’t seem to “see” things as easily for his sister so I try to let him find them himself instead of pointing out where they are.
All this is hard. Good for us for trying out best. :)
Such a good post and convo in the comments! I am also glad you added the part about guilt at the end. I have two boys and no girls and while I’ve read some of this in articles, I have to admit I also feel pissed about it 🤣. I’m like okay I already feel like I do more as a woman, I understand social norms etc are against me, but now I also have to figure out how to change my sons and household on top of trying to figure out how to communicate with my spouse about mental load etc and everything else? It feels like a lot and I’m just not willing to go there right now. 😭🤯