Bear loves to tease me about a proclamation I made when we were dating. I warned him that he shouldn’t expect me to be some little wifey tending to his every need. I told him, “I will not be domesticated.” He especially loves to tease me about this at a dinner party I’ve thrown when I have done my typical above and beyond preparations. Yeah, yeah, very funny. I was a 20 year old snob.
But what I meant by my warning was that I expected an equal partnership. Getting married so young, I saw a lot of my friends be so excited about their marriage and grown up life that they wanted to play house. They wanted to be dressed adorably when their hubby came home, pack his lunches and have a hot meal on the table, and not let him lift a finger. They wanted to relish their new role without really thinking through the implications. And that was not going to be me.
Since our first days of marriage it was important to me to split the household chores. We were both in school and working part time, and as a young snobbish feminist married to a man who didn’t really care about those things, I was concerned about precedent. Probably overly concerned, given what a great guy I married, but then he’s also a slob who grew up with a maid, so… maybe not.
Over the years Bear has had to pick up a ton of slack as I spent years bedridden with endometriosis and suffer from the unpredictable moods of my illness. He’s a total champ about it, as committed as I am to being equal partners, although wishing that didn’t come with dishes to wash. We communicate really well together, so he’ll tell me when I have to step it up on the laundry because he’s out of socks, and I’ll tell him that I need him to help out with dinner one night, and we think of it all as being a part of Team Edmunds.
With the goal of equality, we each have a daily chore. I do all the laundry and Bear does all the dishes. He handles the animals and the garbage, and helps out wherever else I ask him too, but since I’m home full time, I do everything else. But I do a lot of delegating.
When I talk about this arrangement with family, they’re often shocked. “But!” they’ll say, “Jared works!” “So do I,” I’ll say. I’m always shocked by how few other couples support each other in this way. It’s not just important to me to get some help, it’s important to me to have Atti see his Dad working in a partnership with his Mom. I’ve spent 13 years trying to get rid of the “The maid comes tomorrow, I’ll just leave that mess” attitude he was raised with. The example we set for our kids has long lasting implications, even for something as mundane as household chores.
I’d love to hear how you split the work. How do you negotiate these things in your house?
I’m with you about dividing household chores. After my husband died, I looked at the towering laundry and thought, “Wow! This laundry is really getting out of control!” Among other chores, my husband was the laundry-guy. In his busiest times–when our triplets were babies–he was doing six loads a day! (Yes! He too worked outside the home; actually, he was running our aviation machining business.) Anyway, in recent years he had settled on a good 2 – 3 loads a day. So, back to the TOWER of laundry . . . I realized (after 26 years of marriage) the laundry was now MY job–and I’d better get to it! We divided other responsibilities too–usually according to our interests/peeved. Don’t forget to include kids in the chores! Breaking my right elbow and tearing the tendons in my right forearm when my three were six-years-old, made it absolutely necessary to have them help with household chores. They’ve been helping ever since–they’re almost 16. And . . . don’t let being a special needs child prevent them from helping either. (My three are all special needs, but I’ve discovered there is dignity and an authentic sense of accomplishment that come no other way than through work!)
Although I have made strenuous efforts in the past to split the chores fairly despite the fact that he works and I stay home, right now it's not working. He is under an immense amount of temporary pressure at work and I am turning into 1950s housewife, which I hate. I do everything. Everything. All the meals, all the dishes, all the laundry, all the trash, and all the kids. If he shows up before bedtime I'm lucky. A re-evaluation is definitely needed… although maybe not right now. The thing that scares me is that when the temporary pressure is gone away then I will be stuck being 1950s housewife and that is a recipe for resentment and disaster!
We both hate doing chores, and so have instituted a rotating chore chart for ourselves. Otherwise we 'd have a really messy house and some built up resentment about who does what. People see the chart on the fridge and think it's adorable and surprising that we split the work evenly…even though my husband is unemployed at the moment and I work full time. Would that be their same reaction if it was the other way around? hmm…