Evaluate this married couple's division of labor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse B is making 75% of the household income but insists on doing the cleaning themselves and using it as a point against Spouse A that they are doing more work. Same with the scratch cooking. That is completely Spouse B’s preference.

It’s also hilarious that “putting away groceries” and “packs the lunch that the other spouse prepared” are making it onto this little tit-for-tat list

Yup. They’re doomed. Spouse B is probably a lawyer.

This jumped out at me too. Incredibly nit-picky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Division of labor has recently become an issue in our marriage. Before losing my mind, I want unbiased opinions on whether either spouse has a legitimate gripe. I've tried to be fair in putting together a list of each spouse's responsibilities to see if either of us are overreacting. Neither of us seems to feel like our contributions are appreciated.

Are we both stuck in our own silo. Is this a fair division of labor or does either Spouse A or B have the right to complain? Are there any areas I may be missing? Any recommendations to minimize the headbutting. For context we have two elementary aged kids (3rd and 5th grade).

SPOUSE A
* Works in office 5 days a week; contributes one-fourth of household income
* Responsible for managing family calendar to include scheduling kids activities, camps, etc.
* Does the holiday gift shopping
* Prepares the weekly grocery list for grocery store pickup
* Washing and folding of kids laundry
* Schedules house cleaners (they aren't on regular schedule)
* Shops for kids clothes
* Prepares school lunches
* Picks up kids from school
* Shuttles kids to evening activities with occasional help from spouse
* Responsible for daily dinners every other week (mostly cooks packaged meals like frozen dinners)
* Coaches/leads two kids sports/activities

SPOUSE B
* Works in office 2-3 days per week with great flexibility; contributes 3/4 of HHI
* Responsible for family finances including budgeting, retirement planning, bill pay
* Plans family vacations/trips
* Responsible for house and yard maintenance and upkeep including planning and coordination of contractors for large projects and hands-on work for routine maintenance and repairs
* Picks up and puts up groceries
* Cleans house in between cleaners visits to include vacuuming/mopping, bathrooms, dusting
* Packs school lunches and feeds kids breakfast
* Drops off kids at school and is the primary at-home parent (watches kids on no-school days, picks up kids when sick or early dismissals)
* Primary shuttle for kids weekend activities with occasional help from spouse
* Responsible for daily dinners every other week (mostly cooks from scratch meals)
* Coaches/leads two kids sports/activities

Too late OP. Posting this means you already lost your mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse B OP here. I appreciate many of the comments here. I'll take some suggestions to heart. I'll also accept that the division of labor is fairly equal.

To address a couple of things though: one, I'm not the only one complaining. Spouse A thinks they're contributions are significantly outsized.

Also, ironically, Spouse A didn't do all of the laundry last time so one kid doesn't have clean underwear today. Is it the end of the world? No. But it's frustrating if that's one of their big responsibilities and it didn't get done.

Anyway, even with that, I'm in a better place on this

I have had housekeepers in charge of laundry for many years, and stuff like this still happens. The most annoying is when they wash the sheets and don’t put them back on the beds and I don’t realize it until I go to put the kids to bed.

I can’t get too annoyed with my housekeeper because that would make me a huge jerk. But I can definitely imagine getting annoyed with my husband.
Typing this out, though, it should probably be the opposite, shouldn’t it? We should probably try to treat our spouses at least as well as we would treat an employee or a stranger.

I don't understand how you don't have more than 1 set of sheets. While the sheets are in the laundry bin, isn't there another set to put on the beds? Most people have at least 2 sets. Eliminates this problem.
Can you imagine having 1 underwear and having to wait for it to be laundered before putting on underwear?

[Anonymous]

“Does holiday gift shopping” is number 3 on the list.
Number 3.

[Anonymous]

OP, I would really challenge you to look at this situation differently and at my spouse and I are both unhappy, what we can we work together to change? You are both doing a lot. As others mentioned the coaching is wild. That has to go if you can not make other changes. Otherwise hire out laundry or do grocery delivery or SOMETHING. Ideally several things honestly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems kind of unfair to put down spouse A for making pre-prepared dinners when they WOH AND are responsible for getting kids to all their activities on weekdays.

Agree. This makes no sense at all. The WAH should do dinners, can just be crock pot or something simple. If I hustle to leave the office at 5, pick up kids from school and then get home. THEN I have to make dinner and then drive the kids to practice? This makes no sense. What is the WAH spouse doing at this time?

I guarantee that this is exactly what spouse A wants, for spouse B to pick up either meal prep or taking kids to activities since these are the hardest things for someone working full time in person to do, and spouse B resents it because, while they might not say it out loud, they believe their higher income should exempt them from these particular glamour-free parenting tasks. Even though logistically it makes way more sense for them to do them.

Just wait until spouse A finds out spouse B is using the time that spouse A is spending on driving the kids around and picking up dinner to work out, relax, or pursue a hobby. Because spouse B feels they are entitled to this leisure time, due to their income, whereas spouse A has to "pay the family back" for making less by doing more of the grunt work.

Yikes, what a mindset. I do a LOT more of the grunt work, so my spouse makes sure that weekends are mine to work out, relax, or pursue a hobby, often at their expense. I think this is not the fairest arrangement to them and am working to change it so they can have more weekend down time, but am so exhausted I am gratefully accepting this gift for now

[Anonymous]

just be more efficient and/or outsource more .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Make other people coach your kids activities! This is a lot!

+1

This seems like a lot of a coaching for 2 parents who are working full time.

My DH coached youth sports for a few seasons and it added a LOT of extra work to my own plate. He was happy to do it (and I was happy to support this for limited timeframes). We were happy to do our share, but it isn’t something most families are able to do every season or for every activity. Other parents need to step up too.

I cannot even imagine each of us coaching multiple activities. We really don’t have the bandwidth for that.

Honestly, if you are taking kids to things weeknight and weekends you are all overscheduled. Drop activities and drop coaching, for sure. If you can, let your kids walk to school themselves, and walk home. I think more scratch meals is good, so no shade there.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why one spouse is making lunches and NOT putting them in lunch boxes? That seems weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Shops for kids clothes” includes numerous time-consuming tasks

Agree. I think spouse A does more. I recently delegated figuring out what clothes one of our kids grew out of to my spouse and the result was pitiful. I had to explain how to do it.

One of my kids is older than OP's, but scheduling and keeping track of all the things the kids need is a TON of work.

That’s a good point. If shopping for the kids clothes and doing the kids laundry also means making sure that the kids have all of the things they need clean and ready for all of their various activities, then it is kind of a lot.

And considering they do sports - that's a lot of gross and sweaty clothes, depending upon how old the kids are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why one spouse is making lunches and NOT putting them in lunch boxes? That seems weird.

Either it has to be refrigerated overnight and is easier to do in sandwich bags than lunchboxes, or the first spouse is putting them in lunch boxes and the dropoff spouse is giving themselves credit for making sure the kids put the lunchboxes in their backpacks. In both scenarios the "chore" is done by the parent who makes the lunch. Packing a made lunch is not a thing that is worthy of making it onto a list. It's like saying you have to unfold your laundry before putting it on so you have the same number of chores as the person who folded it for you -- that's not a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why one spouse is making lunches and NOT putting them in lunch boxes? That seems weird.

Because OP wants more tick marks in her boxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Does holiday gift shopping” is number 3 on the list.
Number 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why one spouse is making lunches and NOT putting them in lunch boxes? That seems weird.

Because OP wants more tick marks in her boxes.

OP is clearly picky about what she considers a proper lunch so, instead of letting her spouse make it all quickly and pack it in the morning or the night before, she takes it on herself to prepare the food. This is really a control issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does Spouse A have to work? 25% of household income- Is that 50k and HHI is 200k? Or is it 100k and HHI is 400k?

It just sounds like Spouse A doesn't have a very good job and should focus on getting more money or more flexibility. Zero flexibility and little money is a bad combo.

+1 And it's insane that both spouses coach youth sports. One parent at a time, ONE sport.

This seems the craziest to me too!

+3!