To question the normal division of chores and childcare based on some recent threads?

[theydrinkitinthecongo]

Bit of background - I don't have any DC's, but DH and I are in the 'shall we' stage of life. Lot of friends having babies, feeling like it might be our next step but a few things worry me and it mostly comes from threads on here.

Is shared parenting, and I mean real shared parenting where neither parent feels taken advantage of/put upon etc.... the exception or the rule?

Our relationship is fairly equal right now, but do we need to have 'the talk' before even thinking about trying for a child to ensure we're both happy with what divisions of labour/chores/childcare should be?

I just keep reading things (mainly on this board which may have skewed my perception) which make men sound like entitled children with no desire to contribute to family life unless you repeatedly sit them down and explain to them what they need to do.

This isn't normal family life, is it?

Sounds like a good work position congo, I'm envious

Another thing to add to my previous post is that the split needs to be re evaluated every so often.

For example if one parent takes on most child related admin while the other does most housework, that may work out fairly when there is 1 baby or young toddler but once there are 2 dc and they are at nursery or school and having more in the way of activities/parties/stuff needed for school, that will be a lot more work than the housework.

Best of luck with it OP!

I think it never hurts to have that talk, even if you're 99% certain you're on the same page. There is a tiny minority who suddenly want to recreate the traditional set-up they grew up in when they have their own kids.

There is just so much to do! Whatever is on your plates now, there will be a 24/7 caring role added to the mix, and your resources time, space, money will go down. DH and I communicate and both try to support the other. In spite of this we both generally feel like we do 60% of the work! With no family close by there's masses to do.

It's fab though.

This is an interesting question. With our two under-fives, I think we've got a reasonable but not perfect balance even though I took a full year's maternity leave both times and now work part-time.

Things that make it tough are that even with the possibility of shared maternity/paternity leave are differences in maternity provision (my work's maternity provision is much better than statutory so made sense for me to take it) and the fact that my husband earns more than me which has meant that it made more sense for me to e.g. go part-time, take parental leave etc.
I also get more annual leave so usually am the person who takes a day off work if one of the children is ill. There's also the fact that is makes strategic sense to prioritise one of your careers rather than screwing up them both with child-related stuff. Before we had children, the earning differential was a total non-issue whereas now it does make a difference to decisions that we make, not helped by the fact that having children is expensive!

Breastfeeding is the other big thing - the feeding itself isn't the issue. It's the fact that it's very hard to not end doing the nights if you are breastfeeding. I think this has been the major source of inequality between the two of us, and although my husband has always stepped up when I have asked him to, there also isn't much point both of our sleep being interrupted.

I think there's also a lot more pressure on mothers in terms of 'quality' of parenting. If you are a mother you will get judged for things that fathers won't. To a certain extent you just have to shrug this off when it's something you don't hink it important (quality of fancy dress costumes immediately springs to mind), but I don't deny that it is hard. There is also the fact that you almost certainly will have different standards about things and it's hard to anticipate all of these in advance - the most heated discussions here have been about safety issues (e.g finding the 15 month old climbing the stairs by himself!) and food (as in home-cooked vs processed, excessive availability of cake, fruit juice vs water etc) but that is a very personal thing.

Things that I would recommend:

• Get a cleaner if you can afford one. There's still lots to do even when you have one, but outsourcing the main cleaning at least eliminates one pool of arguments.
• As other posters have said, avoid 'maternal gatekeeping'. Dads need to learn to make and learn from their own mistakes :-) And also figure out their own ways of doing things. There's no one right way to soothe a crying baby or do bedtime and babies and children can learn that different parents do things in different ways.
• If you decide to use a nursery, think carefully about how you share the nursery runs - apart from the time and time constraints involved, whoever does these will also be the person who ends up having to make sure that they take all the right things in, wear appropriate fancy dress when required, remember presents for the staff at christmas etc.
• Read 'Lean In' if you need a bit of encouragement about combining careers and children. 'Half a wife' is worth a read too as a reasonably nuanced discussion of the issues around work, childcare etc.
• Make sure that you both have reasonable expectations around the fact that there will be almost no time for hobbies or socialising without children once the baby arrives for quite a long time.

If you decide to use a nursery, think carefully about how you share the nursery runs - apart from the time and time constraints involved, whoever does these will also be the person who ends up having to make sure that they take all the right things in, wear appropriate fancy dress when required, remember presents for the staff at christmas etc.

Yes, and try to involve dad in finding childcare in the first place. Lots of mums I know organised found the nanny/nursery/childminder while they were on maternity leave - which makes sense - but fairly easily you are left being the one who knows the holiday details, how/when to pay, daily routine etc because you are the one who does all the initial set up - like being the person who is in when the boilerperson shows you how to work your new boiler!

DH and I both work full time. We have completely shared parenting also it does differ slightly in line with how the rest of our relationship works ie I'm more likely to out in the leg work looking for good times for classes the kids want to do but DH's job is a bit more flexible in terms of start/finish so he does the school drop off and pick up.

IME the people I see with the most unequal situations seemed to be in that pattern in some respects before they had kids. It isn't really an imbalance as it works for that relationship with both sides happy and it often does.

"maternal gatekeeping" is a brilliant term for a very common issue. I remember having a conversation with my baby class group about 4 months in, where we were talking about our partners and the common phrase was "he just doesn't understand what's involved/how to do x/how long it takes". I just wondered whether any of us had really given our partners a chance to do so.

There's video of DW being physically restrained while I changed my first nappy. Only a hand on the shoulder, but the expression on her face is scary. Once I 'd picked up the basic skills she was OK. I can see that an idle sod or one with a thinner skin might give up at the first huff though.

Yes, 'maternal gatekeeping' is a very apt term for a certain style of parenting. It's why I'm interested to see how much take up there is for the new shared parental leave....
I would have loved the chance to have 6 months off followed by DH having 6 months off, and even if there might have been a slight financial disadvantage (as I had enhanced maternity pay) this would have been outweighed by the benefits to the dcs and DH in having that special time.

Those of us who did not have the year's maternity leave so many take today can see the advantage in going back sooner. You don't then get maternal gatekeeping. If both parents have pretty much had as much experience as each other sexist patterns are never established at home (and you rae able to pay the mortgage too as you haven't lost salary - so win win all round and the baby wins as very quickly it's routine is established rather than life rent asunder by after a year of time 24/7 with mother or father suddenly its whole life changes when she goes back to work).

I was always delighted not to be a maternal gate keeper and happy for anyone to suggest I am incompetent at cooking or cleaning. Wow brilliant - yes happy to take on that mantle of utter uselessness so i can get on with something more interesting than keeping the kitchen clean - more than happy to leave that to a spouse, cleaner or nanny.

For me though the issue with returning to work early would be more about pumping and bf hassles rather than maternal gate keeping.

I think another thing to look at is the longer term consequences of actions, so yes it may seem to make more sense now for the woman to take more time off because of things like extended maternity leave but watch out for the long term hit. Personally I don't think it's a good idea to damage one career whilst supporting the other because it sets up long term inequality for the rest of your life for the sake of perhaps a few months. I would argue that in a very uncertain job market, where no one has that much certainty it's better to have two mid-earners than one high flyer and one pin money earner.

Also watch out for the language that you use, don't 'involve dad', make joint decisions, and never let your dh 'babysit'.

Totally agree with the point made about hobbies and socialising. When you have very small children time is scarce and sacrifices need to be made. It should only be for a short period of time (assuming a smallish family) but I think that it's really worth talking about so that a deal is figured out and no one feels too put upon or excluded.

Yy nooka and it's probably more tax efficient too!

nooka is right . There has been a massive change in 20 years. We now have 70% of graduates female in the UK. In 70% of new marriages women are going to earn more than men, be Mrs Moneybags and the man will have the lower earnings for life. It would be very foolish to let the higher earner jeopardise a future 40 year career.

To pick up on anothernumberone's point, it's important to clarify that many of us who had the 12 week maternity leave were long term breastfeeders... It's quite possible to continue bf following returning to work, though yes, I would agree it takes more planning and effort. I just think its important to put that message out there.

And yes yes yes to nooka's points about not sacrificing one career for the sake of another. Of course, it's entirely up to couples to make their own choices, and there will always be some who prefer to have one 'career' partner and one who chooses to stop work or significantly cut down. But really, in a first world country in 2015 it seems absolutely normal to many of us that women and men should both want balanced lives, without having to sacrifice a major aspect of it, whether that's career, or time with family

Definitely possible lines but not without its difficulty and obviously an additional burden on a working woman. Other countries manage bf and working well like the USA but they would not be what I would aspiring for personally. I think long maternity leave in a society that sees the value in having children for all of society like Scandanavia would personally be more my cup of tea. Then add in parental leave which can be divided between both parents. Most people work well over 40 years 2-3 maternity leaves of 1 year on average in this time should not be having the devastating consequences it is having for women's careers. That is purely a cultural issue.

I think that the issue is not just the year of maternity leave, which I agree should not have a devastating effect, it's the way that even where both parents work the assumption is that the mother will always be primary parent. The one who will take leave when the children are sick, never work late etc. Essentially the one who will always put family before work.

Even when this isn't actually true employers often assume it, and therefore downgrade the woman and not offer her the same opportunities. This can happen to childless women too, because of the assumption that she will at some point have children, and therefore isn't worth investing in.

It's a bit of a vicious circle because women who see that ahead of them are more likely to quit or go part time because they feel it's not worth the fight, thus confirming in the employers mind that they were right all along. I hope that this is changing, but I've certainly seen it here on MN on a fairly regular basis (not experienced it, but I have chosen / been lucky to work in very family friendly workplaces)

Yes Nooka I agree completely, that culture too needs to change. I lecture and DH runs his own business so we are the opposite as he has all the flexibility. I do think that women need to ensure that their partner co parent their child, where they are present, but I hate to see the idea that maternity leave should be eroded becoming a feature of this. Maternity leave and parental leave should be 2 separate things one about recovering from childbirth and nurturing a child while bf, if that is your choice, as part of the biological imperative that women give birth and lactate. Parental leave should be about supporting that child's development on an ongoing basis and should be split between parents as the norm.

I understand if you work for yourself or have very pressing reasons for going back to work early this might not be possible but I still think in the main it is worth aspiring to.

Before dd was born we used to argue quite a bit about housework. DH had much lower standards than me and generally didn't see mess. I hated that We were falling into gender stereotypes on this. When I got preg a friend told me this was my chance to change things. I laid it on pretty thick how little I was able to do whilst preg and how important it was to have a much cleaner tidier house. This worked. It also helped that my truly lovely PIL bought us our first dishwasher just before dd was born. As for childcare, DH was then always happy to do his fair share and we both worked reduced hours, covering separate days childcare until she started school.