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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a divorced guy who was the default parent before my divorce and 50/50 now. I think that the list is a realistic representation of everything. Especially if a kid has special needs, but even if not, there is just a ton to do.

As for OP, I expect she will end up divorced like me. If you're so focused on your career, and keeping track of everything on a score keeping basis, your resentment will only grow and grow, especially when you misscore a situation (which both sides do). I think you can make the two working full time parent situation work if you are both devoted to help each other as much as possible and presume the other person is doing what they can. But I don't get the sense that is your situation. I don't mean to be critical, it just is what happened to me, so I wanted to share my perspective. All that said, I love being a dad, mental load et al., and wouldn't give it up for the world, even if I had known it would lead to divorce. [/quote]

OP here. Thank you for your perspective.

I don't want to keep score, and I don't want a career for my ego. I just want to feel financially safe and not dead-tired from never having a minute to relax for the next 25 years. Honestly, I should have married someone in industry and not an academic, but I do love my husband and he is a good person, so I am lucky in those ways.

I don't have a crystal ball. Right now I am working on simply unloading the things that got shifted to me during period that I was a trailing spouse. My DH got very used to me doing everything, physically and mentally. It is an adjustment for him to have to keep track of things on the home front, but after a lot of conversations and some fighting, he is really making some encouraging adjustments. A big part of this transition is also me just letting go mentally of some of the responsibilities (for example, we need a plumber for a non-emergency situation and I have asked DH to handle it - I need to just let it go now and not be the "manager" of that situation).

Regarding "the list" of pp (lol), I get that there are just an endless number of little incidentals that require mental load when kids arrive, I really do. It does scare me, but my DH has expressed explicit willingness to handle a significant portion of it (he badly wants a baby and looks forward to it). If I back off and have faith, he'll manage fine (maybe not exactly how I would do it, but he is a supremely responsible and conscientious person).

I think your point is really good about presuming the other person is doing what they can instead of attributing malice or laziness or selfishness to them. There is a lot of research to back that point up (you may have seen it yourself). I should really get that tatooed on me honestly.

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