Reply to How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you were gone for three weeks all this 20% work would get done, especially if there was a weekly housecleaner he had to prepare for.  So it’s NBD, just him working on a different timetable than you.[/quote]

Does his timetable include kids? Because that is often when a couple gets "out of sync" over household tasks-- when they have kids. Kids multiply the work while reducing the time you have to do it. So if pre-kids you often took a week to put away laundry or only put the dishes away when the housecleaner was coming so that she could deep clean the kitchen, it was NBD because the rest of the time you were working or socializing and who cares with there's some partially completed tasks around the house.

With kids the math is different. There's twice as much laundry and if you don't fold it and put it away, you're spending every morning picking through the pile of clean laundry trying to get your kids dressed for school. If you never actually finish the dishes there aren't enough dishes for a single meal featuring the entire family. You have to make lunches on the edge of the counter not covered by dishes. You can't finish that last 20% in the morning because you're helping a toddler get dressed and doing a school run. And you can't bank on doing it on Saturday morning because the kids have soccer or swim.

This is when women start getting frustrated because having kids forces women to function at a higher level-- more efficient, more multi-tasking, keeping track of more tasks and schedules. But many men expect their lives to operate exactly the same as before. They are convinced that if their approach to chores and schedules was working okay pre-kids, well it must still work. But it doesn't and this puts even more pressure on moms to over perform. This is how DH becomes another child to be managed. And that kills intimacy and breeds resentment. And then the DH wonders why his wife never wants to have sex anymore and why she always seems annoyed with him.

Kids change things but fir some reason a lot of men are determined to prove this wrong.[/quote]

Or…you can put your husband in charge of dressing the kids, making the dinner, cleaning, etc. I did this simply by getting the higher paid job and leaving the house early and coming home late. [/quote]

I have the higher paid job and we have the same hours and my DH still does not account for the kids in his thinking about anything unless explicitly reminded to do so. I can "put him in charge" of kid stuff and do (though please note that the act of "putting him in charge" is a task in itself -- my DH does not need to assign household or parenting chores to me) but he will not do it on his own. In the end I wind up resenting that I make more money and still have to be the one to just know all about all the household and parenting items we have to know and to be responsible for making sure one of us does it and then on top of that having to complete tasks for him that he halfasses even after it has been explicitly assigned to him and he's agree to do it.

This morning was "his morning" to do the camp run which meant he sat down to work at 7:30 and did not get the kids up or get them breakfast or help pack their bags or make sure they were wearing appropriate clothes and sunscreen or pay attention to the clock so that they left on time. Instead I wound up getting them up and fed (20 minutes after they should have because I thought he'd do it) and then making sure they were ready and I still had to say "shouldn't you guys be leaving" at 8:55 (10 minutes after they really should have left) and DH just stood up from his desk and walked the kids who I got ready out the door. Please compare to the three days a week that I do camp run on my own without him at all because he works in the office on those days and I do all of it without anyone reminding me or helping me. And again -- I make more. But he just absolutely refuses to make kids or household chores a priority and I always have to decide between rescuing him (and thus training him to continue to rely on me to pick up his slack) or let my kids' lives be chaos because one of their parents thinks 50% of any parenting task is good enough.[/quote]
When it is his morning to do the camp run, leave at 7:30.  Go to work, run an errand, get out of the house, go for a run, whatever. Let them figure it out.  How much both of you get paid, isn’t  a factor.   
[/quote]

I've done this and it's mixed, because there really are negative consequences for your kids. My kids were late a lot to school last year because my husband won't get it together. We now have a few years where it's going to matter if they're on time for school but they're too young to get themselves there, and I have to manage this because he will not. [/quote]

My advice in that case is to accept that you are solely in charge of drop offs and then either put more thing on his list or just accept that you do more if you want to remain married. Or get divorced. [/quote]

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