Reply to Just accepting unequal division of labor

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really appreciated the long post from 9:39. Especially this part, which is what my DH is lacking:

"Third, my parents raised me to internalize the idea that [b]if others are working, you shouldn't be sitting on your a@@ watching. [/b] I teach my kids the same thing. If I am clearing the table, they damn well better be helping, unless they are doing homework or something like that. OP's DH needs to accept that that is the case. [b]No one relaxes until everyone relaxes[/b]."[/quote]

I will say that my DH seems to get this. He didn't always, but I started telling him a few years ago, around when our DC was old enough to be able to observe he dynamic, that I really didn't want our kid growing up thinking "mommies clean and daddies relax." Especially because that is EXACTLY what my home was like growing up -- my mom would make dinner and clean and watch the kids while my dad would come home from work and put his feet up like the dad on the Donna Reed show. It was the 80s! And my mom would have spent the entire day taking care of 4 kids with zero household help, plus she had a part time job, so it's not like he'd been working and she hadn't. Once I explained this to my DH, it clicked for him why it would be really bad for our kid to watch this dynamic unfold.

The workload is still really uneven but he generally doesn't sit around watching me clean. Granted, he does not clean, aside from occasionally doing a single kitchen task (like he will unload the dishwasher but he will not actually clean the kitchen). But if I'm cleaning, he will generally busy himself with something, start a load of laundry, chop some veggies, help DC with homework, something. It doesn't make up for all the stuff I do during other parts of the day, or the mental load, but it's at least a start.[/quote]

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