To ask if all women have experienced this?

[BrightonCalling]

I'm 30.
I'm the higher earner.
I'm a feminist.
And yet I find myself doing most of the stuff at home and I'm not sure it's his fault.
My partner works longer hours but earns less.

The problem is its not actually him, its me. He doesnt care what I do or dont do, but I feel pressure to have everything "sorted". I realised yesterday (probably because I had finished reading yhe Work chapter of the Beauty Myth) that I was trying to be likw my mother, who had a career, felt pressure to be well turned out, whilst also keeping the home immaculate and cooking from scratch.

My DP is a nice normal guy and doesnt expect anything. I realise that I put myself under pressure to be and do everything (except cleaning....I dont clean 😂). Should I tell him I want us to split cooking duties (I just took over cooking everything). What about stuff like dishwasher and laundry when I work less hours? If i dont do it I feel mean, since im home anyway. But with eachthing added up, it ends up me doing all household chores, and him coming home and thats it, his day js finished.

I'm wondering on a more general level - is this pressure something all women feel, and how do you break free from it?

I am the high earner. I do everything. He is praised for 'babysitting' and 'taking the kids out swimming'. He is a hero. I am a 'career woman' and he gets sympathy for it. Madness.

boil an egg, make some toast and finish the lump of cheese in the fridge

This would be my strategy

DH would probably make the effort to go to a shop, even if it was the chip shop.

I think it's more of a personality- than a sex- based thing.

Usually I do the majority of house work. But today I have been out with DD, and so DH has put on and hung out 2 loads of washing, walked the dog, and put tea on. although he is avoiding filling out an application form so it may just be procrastination about that

Should I tell him I want us to split cooking duties (I just took over cooking everything).

Why? Even when I was 100% SAHM & DH worked FT, he did almost all the cooking. He said it was easier as daily chore than noticing irregular jobs to do.

is this pressure something all women feel, and how do you break free from it?

Not me, one exception. My theory is lots MNers grew up with a house-proud parent & they think of that as ideal (so did DH). I did not have that role model & feel baffled by the cleanliness & order obsessed.

Nowadays DH manages the house (works PT) while I work FT. DH despairs of me. Every thread you read on MN about useless not-doing-enough-in-house partner -- that's who I am. I do the night parenting & anything emotional, though.

NoOneAgrees me too. I'm the one who doesn't see jobs, and if I do see them, I don't generally care enough to do them immediately. DH does the cooking and most of the cleaning as a SAHP, but even before then the balance was in my favour. My mum is/was slightly cleaning obsessed, so if it is a conditioning thing it didn't work on me. I try, because it's not fair on DH to do everything, but if it's not a natural thing for me to notice.

That ignores that the person working 60 hours may be getting payoffs, eg careerwise. Not always the case of course, eg low paid work,m.

And that the person working fewer hours - but still FT as in OP’s case - may not be happy with doing more at home facilitating someone else’s domestic life (and thereby career).

What rot. If somebody feels their career suffers at the expense of their partner’s then they need to agree a way that they can rebalance the family so their career can progress, not sit on their arse watching their partner do housework gleefully feeling he’s being punished.

I'm the higher earner with part time hours. Dp has full time, physically demanding role. One dc and 7m pg with number 2.

We share the childcare pretty evenly although he gets up with our terrible-sleeping toddler at night on account of the fact that I am increasingly huge and uncomfortable and will soon be breastfeeding a newborn all night and need all the sleep I can get.

Re housework, cooking and the mental load, I do the lions share. Like a pp though, cleaning stuff every day just isn't that important to me. It's not that I can't see that the stairs need hoovering or the shower screen has limescale on it. It's simply that it takes a long time for some things to reach the top of my list because quite frankly I just don't care enough.

If my dp cared more, he'd be more than welcome to get out the vacuum cleaner or the rubber gloves but I assume from the fact that he doesn't, that he either doesn't notice or cares only as minimally as I do.

I prioritise the things I do care about that I feel make the greatest difference. I try to be organised to minimise things like last minute shopping trips. If I ask dp in what free time he has to do something, he does it uncomplainingly. He needs no prompting with our dc which is far more important to me.

You need to figure out what is bothering you about this. Is it the fact that identifying as a feminist makes you feel like he should be doing 50% regardless of other factors? Is it the fact that you have different standards re what constitutes an acceptable meal / level of cleanliness? Do you actually find the time you spend on these activities to be too much of a burden or is your objection more theoretical? There's nothing wrong with caring a lot or not caring much at all about these things, or choosing to outsource the bits you don't want to do yourself. It is, on the other hand, unreasonable to hold other people to your own subjective standards of what is acceptable.

What do the earnings have to do with anything? It's the hours worked/free that count, surely?

Exactly. Very uncomfortable with the idea of the higher earner having to do less shit work, as if thats how it works.

Almost 40
Similar field to dh.
Both have pressured long hours technical jobs
Did earn equal before kids, now he earns more (damn mummy track...)
House and child rearing work split equally. Drop offs, pick ups, sick days split equally.

It doesn’t happen by magic. We plan, we have rough routines and schedules which are flexible. We have similar tidiness standards (fairly low )

We aim to keep it fair and give each other equal free time.

You need to find time to talk about this. What your expectations and wants are. It’s easy to drift especially if you’ve spent time on maternity leave and fallen into doing more at home. Talk about it, work out what you want to happen, then do it.