Does anyone have a marriage where the mental loa is truly equally shared?

[Poiul]

Or is that disparity just the price you pay
for being a woman?

I’m engaged to a lovely, modern man. We definitely share 50% of chores. We have both done well academically and professionally. On paper I have probably surpassed him in fact. Df definitely respects me as an individual and would never expect me to be his “mummy” and iron his shirts. But I will as an expression of my appreciation for him if he is running behind.

I have just noticed that I am more thoughtful. I just think about things that would never enter his brain. And on a more strategic level. He isn’t on my level with thoughtfulness but he’s pretty good by most standards. But the standard is shit let’s be honest. He will buy presents for his nephews, organise meals out, plan holidays and run baths for me etc.

Im just worried that once kids enter the mix I’ll start resenting him for somewhat deferring to me. Albeit not intentionally.

Df’s brother just had a baby. As one of our gifts I crocheted a mini replica of their dog for the new baby. Everyone loved it. I know I enjoy these sort of things so perhaps I’m being harsh. I just would’ve liked something really thoughtful to come from Df - his ideas are all a bit generic.

Am I just overthinking this? I’m scared that I will resent Df. But obviously he’s a guy so many would accept that his brain is wired differently.

I can picture writing a note from the tooth fairy in a few years and being pissed off that I’m the one who thought of it/doing it.

It was all on me until about 2020 and then my career became more intense and DH took the pressure off. He’s truly amazing.

Today alone he has remembered stuff like DC asthma reviews, repeat prescriptions for DC, forwarded me DCs school new ofsted report to read, has added stuff to the fridge planner / list for next weeks shop and booked parents evening. Oh and booked DCs birthday party.

I love him to bits but marriage is difficult. We’ve worked v hard to get to this stage and we’ve had a few blips along the way. But I believe if anything, he carries more mental load now!

In my marriage I take the bigger share of the mental load, organising most things for the children, I also do more of the housework. He works more hours and does every single morning with the children, work days and weekends. He does more than 50% of the parenting when he is home. It is by no means equal, but feels very fair to me. We both have our own time and respect each other.

I have friends who have divorced over the resentment about things not being completely equal. This just doesn’t make sense to me. Divide tasks, sure, do the things which play to your strengths. Try to not set yourself up to fail with expectations aligned with what you perceive as what you/he ‘should’ do. When kids come into the mix it gets way, way harder to manage this sort of thing.

Your example of crocheting doesn’t make a lot of sense. Generic gifts are great, and not everyone appreciates home made things. Are there other examples of what you mean?

I do think it changes with babies.

you carry the child, and are initially primarily responsible. This means you’re at home with them, learning their needs and routines.

dad then defers to you as “the expert”, or subconsciously or not assigns the baby role to you as the female. It becomes “women naturally are better with babies”, rather than “I’m better with the baby because I’ve spent 24 hours a day with them for the last year, I’ve learned what they need”.

then you’re on mat leave. You pick up more of the household chores as you are “off work” and “at home all day”. Even if it’s just so you can spend more time when he does get home from work relaxing rather than washing up and doing laundry.

6m later when you go back to work bay related stuff is your job, and now the majority of the housework is too. He’s used to going to work, maybe doing baby bedtime and putting the bins out, that’s it.

It’s a natural slide and it is very difficult to get out of when you go back to work. Then you add the workplace- you’ve now got a baby so you aren’t expected to be as committed, his work are well you’ve had the baby for a year and not needed accommodation, why do you need time off/to come in late? And why can’t your wife do it. After all, women are naturally better with babies…

so you pick up the slack, career falters, possibly go pt/sahm- which means you pick up more housework and childcare…

it’s a combination of things, and it actually takes quite a bit of confidence and stubbornness go against the flow.

To answer your question - now yes, at the beginning no. I did everything out of a kind of guilt when working very part time hours with three preschool children and it took years to reverse the habit. I'd say that we share the mental load now they're teenagers and I work full time outside the house - I'm simply not physically at home from 7am to 5pm (although I do take a child with me to drop off at the train station 😜 and usually pick him up and/ or a different child up from sports on the way home) and DH works mostly from home.

I wouldn't crochet a toy dog for a new baby or wrote notes from the tooth fairy either (and I am the mother of three children).

I think there's a difference between mental load and sweet frilly stuff tbh.

The crochet dog is the frilly unnecessary elf on the shelf type stuff. Nothing wrong with it and it's very cute and lovely but its as much for the adults as the children, probably more for the adults in all honesty.

Mental load is remembering to put a coin under the pillow perhaps, but writing a note is sweet frills as much for the parent as the child. A bit Instagram really.

Mental load is much more banal, daily grunt work:

do the children have the right clothes clean and everything they need for school/ activities tomorrow?

Have we paid for the activities and the bills and is there petrol in the car, is it taxed and insured and MOTed, is the windscreen washer refilled and do the tires have enough tread? Do any kids capable of taking the bus alone have bus fare/ bus pass with them and a charged mobile with money on the payg if relevant?

Have we thoroughly thought through how to keep the children safe online/ with mobiles and are we monitoring daily if they're still young or taught them various strategies if we choose to let them out and about but not to have a mobile yet?

Do we as a complete family have everything, from hygiene and medical supplies to clean clothing in the right size appropriate to weather and activities to pack to take on holiday next week?

How will child 2 get to football at the same time child 3 has to be at judo and child 1 has a birthday party to be at, all in different places? Has child 1 got a present and do children 2 and 3 have clean kit? What are the logistics of everyone eating a healthy meal, ideally together and at the table, around work, school, football, judo and the birthday party, have we got ingredients for a fairly healthy meal everyone will eat and who will have time to cook it and when?

Has everyone done their homework if relevant and learnt for tests, done reading/ coursework or whatever according to age?

My dh is a good man.
I stress tested him pre kids and selected him with a good father /husband mindset

Having read MN i deludedly believed that we'd be 50/50 because i am smart, i have good boundaries i am not a pushover etc.

we are not 50/50

Mn really made me feel like i was doing something wrong my boundaries were shit, i was at fault because i did it when he forgot or cba, because i didnt "make him" or didnt phrase it the right way ...whatever

I had standards, i provlem solved, i sat down and we agreed who would do what
i cried screamed yelled threatened divorce at one point

Its just not 50/50 its like 70/30, 65/35 on a good day

Amongst my niace MC friends with "good husbands and dads" he is probably better than most if not all.

As a mother you are the primary. You are the "expert" you do more.
maybe it changed or gets better but i have a toddler and baby and it is NOT 50/50 for anyone i know

Just saying this so you dont end up in unhappy knots for over a year like i did.
Im actually much happy now i have just accepted he is trying but i just do more and earn more...

When did notes for the tooth fairy start? I’ve never heard of them before.

Yes we do. I work part time so we split the week in terms of whose responsibility the kids are (with help from grandparents; we each communicate with our own parents usually), but I tend to do more of this simply because I am at home more.

Housework is split 50:50 after my two days at home are taken into account; when the children were small, he’d do more housework at the weekends but now they’re older I get a lot done on my days off so we split what’s left between us.

There are jobs I do (food shopping, cooking, children’s school admin) and jobs he does (bills, insurance, car stuff). In terms of mental load I would say we’re fairly equal really, but for different things. Money is joint.

In terms of parenting we really are equal. He has always done as much as I have and still does: with his work being fairly long hours with nights away, he will pick up more when he is home (bedtime stories etc). He goes out more than I do but I have the option whenever I like and wouldn’t have to think twice about organising anything whilst I wasn’t there.

Well, today is DH day to get the kids. DD had an event after school. At 5pm I messaged him I was leaving work and he messaged me back that he might go and get DD already. The event had a fixed end time at 5pm!!

When he got there DD was waiting with the teacher who couldn't go home because he hadn't picked her up.

Apparently he had no idea when it ended and instead of realising that was a problem he just waited for me to come back / thought he would guess/ I don't even know what his plan was. WTAF?!

Even free this he doesn't see why this was wrong. Just needed to rant.

50/50 really around here. Probably he actually does more, now I think about it 🤔

The danger zone is when you have a baby and go on mat leave while your partner is working. Over that period I just naturally took on a lot of the home stuff because I was around, and I had the red book and took dc to be weighed, so just naturally carried on with their appointments etc etc. I did have easy babies and a year off with each of them, so there was plenty of time for this.

It's hard to reset it though after a period like that

It's probably different for everyone but I did find it became much more equal when the children were secondary age - in my case it was least equal when they were tiny not only because of three lots of pregnancy, maternity leave and breastfeeding in five years but also because I worked very part time until the youngest was three (both our choice to have a sahp and not use childcare under 3 and I only worked when DH was at home with the children).

As they got older actually things like "thoughtful presents" slowly became more DH's field because a genuinely thoughtful present is all about the recipient and what they want and many teens and preteens want tech, and DH really knows and is willing to research his stuff in this area - not only building gaming PCs from components and talking in detail to DC2 about graphics cards, but in the pre and early teen years being really diligent about researching anything they had access to from games to apps and keeping them safe online etc.

Logistics become genuinely shared when children are old enough to put everything in an online shared family calendar - nobody has to just remember, everything is there and everyone checks it (our eldest is driving now and I'm really proud of how she's joined the adult ranks in terms of also proactively volunteering to take a sibling with her and drop them off when they have commitments suited to lift sharing).

This. My partner’s brother is disabled so won’t ever have kids of his own but even if he did I can’t say I’d be that bothered! His family, his responsibility. But yes I’d say my partner and I are genuinely equal. We don’t have kids and don’t want any so I can’t comment on what he’d be like if kids entered the equation but he’s certainly an equal dog parent. He’s also very emotionally open and supportive.

I love this reply - you typed everything I would probably have said.

DH and I share the load, but we're also very pragmatic about what capacity we actually have.

For example, we long ago agreed with our siblings that we wouldn't get presents for nieces and nephews, and it's been a lifesaver over the years.

If one of us was resenting the other for not doing extraneous stuff like writing thank you notes to tooth fairies or hand-making 'thoughtful' gifts then our marriage would have gone to the dogs long ago. Instead we've just celebrating 25 years and we're both happy.

We also play to our strengths, so he books holidays and I pay the utility bills, for example.

This is a really good explanation of how it happens. DH was very hands-on when DD was a baby, but I was more confident because I spent more time with her. He actually took shared parental leave and was at home with her for two months at the end of my maternity leave, and that’s when he really became as confident as I was.

A lot of things are set up with the assumption that one parent (usually mum) is the default parent. DH too DD for her 12 month jabs and was asked if I knew he was taking her! Later on, it was an effort to get him added to the school email list as the paperwork we filled in only had took one email address (and because I’d been leading on school stuff, I put mine down). Little things like that.

Mental load very much shared over here too.

Yes, genuinely 50/50 here, but we also play to or strengths and don't dictate how the other does their half. So in your example if dh is dealing with his families gift giving I wouldn't have given a shit how 'thoughtful' or 'individual' it was. That's on him and I don't judge myself nor would I expect others to judge me on whether I/he could crochet an individual gift or not....
Just to manage expectations though I probably only know if I've other couple in our circle who is also 50/50. It takes a lot of work and constant monitoring especially through the babies and toddler phase when the entire system works to push you into defined gender roles

No the majority of the mental load is which is annoying but ...
He does more household stuff - we both cook but he cooks more often. He does all the laundry and hoovering and changing beds. I clean bathrooms and kitchen, dust and do most child related stuff and family admin including insurance, tradesmen, holidays, Christmas, birthdays etc. We both work FT.

I can live with that trade off as I don't feel like I'm being mugged off too much. I'd love someone to arrange a lovely holiday for me sometimes. It was my big birthday this year and I arranged and paid for my own party, own birthday dinner on the day and a celebration holiday afterwards. H just turned up and enjoyed it all. I would have loved if he'd thought to do any of that for me but it won't happen and at least i get all my clothes washed and nice clean bedding without ever having to think about it.

Is it ok if your partner is as critical…eg what a waste of time the crocheted dog they would have preferred Cook vouchers and a bottle of champagne. Perhaps you need a cone of your perfect self.

Gently, OP - are you a bit of a perfectionist? Because the examples of the sort of things you’re worried you might resent in future seem to me to embody the phrase ‘don’t let Perfect be the enemy of Good’.

He will buy presents for his nephews, organise meals out, plan holidays and run baths for me etc.

This all sounds great. Thoughtful. It’s not a crocheted dog, or a personalised Tooth Fairy - but it doesn’t have to be, does it?

Looking towards a future where you’ll inevitably resent him sounds a bit bleak. If you love each other, are alert to the pitfalls of Default Parent/Home Brain then you’ll figure it out.

I was prepared to see YANBU, but then I actually read your post and totally changed my mind. Your examples aren't anything to do with 'mental load' at all. They're totally optional, fluffy things that sure, may be important to YOU but are not a usual part of day to day life and not important to everyone. I can't remember how to crochet - learned in childhood and haven't done it in many many many years - and I can't imagine ever writing a note from the tooth fairy - my eldest recently lost her first few teeth and that wouldn't occur to me to do. I don't think that means I don't share the mental load with my DH! I'm fact if anything I unfortunately carry more of it than him, but I actually think he does more of the practical work than me, so it is still a fair partnership anyway. I'm the brains and he's the brain

Cooking and housework are mental load unless you are telling him what to do and when. Meal planning to coordinate everyone's needs and schedules with ingredient shopping and cooking is definitely mental load.

I'd say we're close to 50/50. I used to do much more but then we divided the tasks. He does all the admin related to be car (insurance, service, MOT, etc). I do all the admin related to our apartment (insurance, internet, electricity contract etc).

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing more, but that's also just our personalities. I'll start thinking 2 months before a friend's wedding what present to get, he'll start thinking about it the week before the wedding.

I think you do what a lot of women do, that you impose your standards on someone else. It’s not done “properly” or “good enough” unless it’s done your way. Thats not going to work. If someone else shares the load, they do the load their way.

This. How DH does his half of the load is different to how i do mine. I make more effort on the kids creative hobbies. He is pushier than me on sport. Im cleaner, he is tidier. I will buy a more individual gift, he'll probably spend more/throw money at a problem.

He does his share, that's what counts.

I think so.......

Me:
DS school stuff
DS medical/dental stuff
Holidays/travel plans
Laundry
House insurances and all household bills
Vet stuff

DH:
Car insurances/tax/MOTs/maintenance
Shopping
Washing up
hoovering/dusting
bathroom&kitchen cleaning

Birthday/Christmas presents are usually 50:50

We don’t have a 50/50 split and it’s getting harder for me now as I work more. It used to be reasonable IMO as I was a SAHM and he worked full time. But now I work 30 hours a week too.

DH does - gardening & DIY. More likely to remember the bins/recycling day.

I do - holidays, cars, bills, house repairs organising, cleaner, meal plans, food shopping, any other kind of shopping, arranging ad hoc childcare, all school communication & admin, knowing about homework, majority of laundry, telling DH what time clubs are happening etc etc etc.

really I just posted so I could write that out & feel justified in my anger!