Reply to I have an egalitarian marriage, and I HATE it

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I basically have what you want, OP, though my DH is not a particularly high earner. My PT job has very high hourly pay though, so that balances it out a bit. We are pretty happy.

I’d still describe our marriage as egalitarian. We don’t split things 50/50 but we both do everything: childcare, cleaning, earn money. I do more of the long term planning (ok, basically all) and that’s the one part where I feel like my DH is a bit if a shirker. A lot of men seem to hate and/or are bad at that too. Stuff like finding a pediatric dentist, looking into summer camps for next year, figuring out vacation and family visit schedules, etc.

But that’s a major reason I prefer our current set up to one where we both work FT. I’d be doing that planning and household management piece no matter what. I’ve tried delegating at least part of it to DH and it causes strife. He resents it because he feels like he’ll fail and then I’ll be mad. It is absolutely a bit of learned helplessness. So I decided early on after we had kids that if I was going to be the family executive, I needed more bandwidth for it. It was really hard to do it with a full time job, especially with really little kids. [/quote]

We deal with this in our house by having planning count as a contribution. The one who does the planning and managing does not have to do as much of the execution. Problem solved.[/quote]

Sort of. Planning and execution don't always balance, and they don't always work with people's work schedules. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I have found it's very hard to be the planner while having a demanding full time job. I also didn't love my job and wanted more time with my kids, so going PT so that I could focus more on planning and my kids was a no brainer for me. My DH does a lot of the execution, yes. But the whole arrangement only works because I don't work full time. There isn't enough execution for him to do to make up for the planning piece, especially because of course there is some stuff I'm going to execute because I actually want to and because that's often the part that involves interacting directly with your kids and, as I mentioned, I want more of that, not less. We also often do the execution piece together and that's part of our teamwork -- cooking together, taking the kids to activities together, etc. It's about enjoyment and being a family, not just division of labor.

The division of labor piece has to involve a critical look at the paid labor. I know not everyone can afford for one parent to be PT and I feel very lucky in that respect. But I totally get where OP is coming from because the whole "we split everything 50/50 and both work FT" thing is really not a very sustainable option. IME it leads to a lot of women doing a ton of invisible "mental load" tasks but never really getting credit for them, and struggling at work because they are so overloaded with management of their home and kids, while their DH thinks he's doing 50% because he's doing 50% or more of the execution. It just doesn't balance.[/quote]

OP here. I agree with you PP. I think I would like what you have, but I am actually the higher earner so it is never going to happen. I have to learn to delegate better to Nanny, find time for planning, and convince DH that planning counts as work and he needs to execute more if I plan more. Not my dream life by any means, feels like having another employee, kid etc. instead of a partner but DH is never going to be a master organizer. He might have some ADHD issues, but I doubt he would ever admit that. [/quote]

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