Division of household labour

The amount of chores before kid is fairly small and I would not argue about it. It’s fine.

It’s when the kids arrive that “washing up after dinner” starts involving scraping food off the floor and sometimes walls, “life admin” starts involving booking seventeen clubs and texting multiple other parents, and “tidying up” involves considering whether to sort expensive LEGO into their own sets or just chuck it all together and forget about it, only to find that the LEGO box now contains unwashed socks, a uniform Tshirt you were panically looking for last week, an apple core and your glasses which went missing. It is at this point that both parties usually start feeling hard done by.

I often look back and wonder what dh, and I did with all of the evenings, and weekends! We thought we were killed, I need to go back and have a word with my younger self! 😂

People always say this about bills but actually if you do it properly, it is a fair amount of work.

If you just stick everything on a rolling direct debit and never review, you overpay enormously.

We review all of our bills - gas, electricity, insurance - annually and the time taken to get the best deal saves us a lot. Similarly we move current accounts every few months and that gets us good deals/new customer bonuses.

I manage our investments and again that makes us a lot more in interest.

Then there's other unavoidable life admin like booking tradesmen.

I do agree that holidays and socialising aren't admin but the rest really does take effort if you do it properly

I think as long as it works for both of you it's fine. I think it's about making sure you both get the same amount of rest time.

To me, Person A has a lot more work, especially because of the no kids. Surely for only 2 adults, it would only be a few loads of laundry a week? And you don't have kids making a mess everywhere, so cleaning the bathrooms and hoovering, dusting would be very quick in a house of 2 adults. I also don't know what the mental load would be without kids.

I think doing all of the cooking and all of the dishes every single day is a lot, like they get in from work and then cook and then have to wash up as well..
But if you're both happy with the arrangement then it doesn't matter what your friends think!

Who cares? If you’re happy then it’s fine, if not then change it. All this “friends said blah blah” is pointless.

My partner and I have a similar split and have two teenagers. I'm person B. I without a doubt do more but I don't mind that as i wfh so get a lot done in time he spends commuting. The big thing is I can feel overwhelmed more easily as I'm dealing with 150 smaller things whereas he has dishes, cooking and shopping. That's especially true when kids have a lot on or before Xmas etc.

Shopping (not just food), bills, organising the calendar, holidays, even socialising all takes planning.

Why are you considering this work deserving of a special name? it’s just life. If these things are onerous do fewer of them or find easier ways of doing them.

Booking a holiday for a couple is fun, it’s not work. Socialising? Do you mean messaging a mate and arranging when to meet up? Also not work. Bills? Most people use direct debits these days I think, we certainly do.

And how did your partner cope with these things before you got together and you kindly took them over? Did they not manage to socialise and buy things?

Person B is winning, until you have kids, then Person B is fucked.

Ah - also TINKS - two incomes no kids

If you're both happy then that's fine. Personally I'd hate to never be cooked for or to have to wash up every night and would rather share differently, but that's me not you.

There isn’t much “mental load” for two people with no kids. Meal planning? Really?

I assumed you meant stuff like booking MOTs and getting the boiler serviced. That’s still just normal stuff rarely needs doing and doesn’t qualify for a special label, please don’t buy into this nonsense.

If you’re both happy it’s fine.

Single income lots of kids?

Guessing birthday cards and presents, invitations, entertaining, car insurance etc.

Sounds reasonable enough to me, especially if you're both happy. Cleaning is a lot of hard work, but more flexible. Cooking is more pleasant work (at least to me), but has to be done every day at the same time. It sounds like you also have specific preferences as to which tasks you like/dislike more. That's definitely a good way to divide tasks in a family/marriage/partnership. Don't worry about your friends' opinions. As long as you're happy with your arrangement.

I would rather be person B those jobs can be fitted round the rest of life. Cooking is every single day and can’t really be skipped

Sounds totally fair division of work to me

It sounds fair to me. If there was a whole family to clean up after, I'd say person B had it harder but with just 2 adults it is a lot less to clean, and no mental load really.

If it works for you both, then that's all that matters.

I would love to be person B in that scenario. Cooking is such a faff, it’s a daily grind. I find cleaning so much easier, I find the mental load easier. My partner supposedly loves cooking but he refuses to do it 100% as he also finds it too much when it’s 100% of the time. Whoever cooks usually washes up in our household.

If it was meal planning, shopping and cooking then I think A would be worse but maybe that is just because I find all of this a nightmare with kids (especially ones with dietary issues) and fitting in cooking around hobbies and bedtime. Really depends on how much cooking time and how much cleaning is done but if it works for you doesn't matter what anyone else thinks

Posted too soon sorry!

Was going to say when you have no kids, and especially if you have no pets, then person A is doing more in terms of hours. Not sure what the “mental load” is when you’re just two adults in the household & if I didn’t have kids and a dog I could clean my house on a Monday and it would still be pretty much perfect by the Friday, I also wouldn’t need to be doing washing every day so it would probably be 5 mins every other day putting a load in the washing machine and then transfer to the line/dryer.

Pre kids I used to love doing the cleaning on my own. I loved it, but now we do need to split it 50/50 with the kids. When we were DINKS my partner would make us lunches as we both WFH and then take turns doing dinner.

I don’t think it sounds unfair for DINKS.

I’m not sure I agree. Two adults don’t generate that much mess (assuming person A isn’t a slob for B to clean up after).

When you have no kids (and especially if yI’d say person A is doing more