Optimistic that I am going to fix my "default parent" situation

[Anonymous]

I am hopeful that I am in the process of fixing my "default parent" situation. When we first moved in together DH and I shared the chores evenly, but over time, especially as we had kids, I have taken on more and more of the new tasks that came up. This is especially true of the invisible "administration" tasks like planning vacations, buying birthday presents for other kids' parties, keeping track of when the kids need new shoes and buying them, etc. Also, he used to do most of the cooking but now whoever gets home first starts dinner since the kids need to get to bed, so that has added to the imbalance.

What I did was to make a very long chart listing everything that needs to happen to run our household. I broke it into "tasks" (cooking, taking the car to get the oil changed, taking kids to the dentist) and "administration" (meal planning, keeping track of when the car needs oil changes, keeping track of when kids need dentist appointments, researching dentists, making the appointments). There are something like 150 items. The columns are for me and him (separately) to say who we think does what percentage of it now, how much time we think it takes, how important it is that it get done, and how much we like or dislike it (1-5). We started started to fill it out, and once that's done we will use it to re-assign tasks. When I sent it to my DH he said "OK just the number of things on here makes me think you are right that you do more than me." That was such a relief to hear.

This is a premature post since I dont know if this approach will work yet, but I wanted to share my optimism.

[Anonymous]

This sounds dumb and demeaning.

[Anonymous]

I'd love to see your list. Is there a way to share it?

[Anonymous]

You should change this topic name to "How to Make Your Husband Despise You and View You as Totally Unattractive."

Also, do you have a chart for who brings in percentenages of he income and how important it is?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a reasonable approach as it considers both the volume of work and the importance of the work. Perhaps you guys will decide certain items can be removed from the list and you can reallocate the remaining items. The only thing I would add is give your DH the opportunity to add things to the list that he might be doing that you don't realize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should change this topic name to "How to Make Your Husband Despise You and View You as Totally Unattractive."

Also, do you have a chart for who brings in percentenages of he income and how important it is?

What's so threatening about splitting up household labor evenly?

[Anonymous]

^Yes, there are things I'm sure my DH does that I don't even have a concept of ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should change this topic name to "How to Make Your Husband Despise You and View You as Totally Unattractive."

Also, do you have a chart for who brings in percentenages of he income and how important it is?

Haha. Luckily my husband is a grown-up man, not a bitter misogynist troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like a reasonable approach as it considers both the volume of work and the importance of the work. Perhaps you guys will decide certain items can be removed from the list and you can reallocate the remaining items. The only thing I would add is give your DH the opportunity to add things to the list that he might be doing that you don't realize.

Yes I told him he should add things I had forgotten, and he did add some. We also discussed whether some of them were redundant, etc. and made changes based on that.

[Anonymous]

I told my husband I would only have kids if he was the default parent. He agreed, and it's been that way since the first was born. Obviously I did nurse her which kind of put me in the default position for a while, but aside from that DH has done what he agreed.

[Anonymous]

Go OP! I think what helps us is being 50/50 on the major items like daycare drop off/pickup and putting dd to bed. I take on tasks I think are fun (birthday present shopping, clothes shopping, cleaning the house) and he takes on ones he likes too (cooking, taking dd to the park, pediatrician visits). We reevaluate whenever one of us is treading water or upset.

[Anonymous]

I'll never understand how people in healthy marriages think keeping score is a good thing.

[Anonymous]

Who are all these people who can't seem to buy shoes or birthday presents? Honestly, with Zappos and Amazon it takes me about an hour a year. Until I read DCUM it never occurred to me that this was a challenginf and time consuming chore!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go OP! I think what helps us is being 50/50 on the major items like daycare drop off/pickup and putting dd to bed. I take on tasks I think are fun (birthday present shopping, clothes shopping, cleaning the house) and he takes on ones he likes too (cooking, taking dd to the park, pediatrician visits). We reevaluate whenever one of us is treading water or upset.

This is OP. Your approach is what I am trying to emulate. I don't know why but we haven't had an actual conversation about how we split things up for a long time. Instead every so often I get mad at him about it, which is obviously not productive. I think talking it through is going to help a lot.

[Anonymous]

This system works great for us. It isn't keeping score, it's designing a system that is fundamentally fair.

People who accuse others of keeping score usually aren't pulling their own weight.