AIBU to think this is a fair split?

[Yourcatisnotsorry]

Person A works Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, various shifts totaling 25 hours per week. No commute time, no out of hours work, low stress job.

Person B works Monday - Friday 9-6. No regular commute but some business trips with 14 hour days at least a couple of times a month. Regular out of hours/late night work and high pressure/stressful job.

3 primary-age children and some pets.

Person A does all the ironing, cleaning, gardening and 70% of the school runs plus after school childcare/taking kids to hobbies 3.30-6pm three days a week.

Person B does all the life admin, pays bills, sorts birthdays and play dates, Christmas, kids hobbies, appointments and holidays etc. All shopping (weekly food shop and anything needed for the house, pets and kids), meal planning and looks after the children after school 2 days a week from 6pm until they go to bed and all day Sunday.

Everything else such as looking after the kids on Saturday, general tidying up, DIY, laundry, cooking, kids homework and pet care are shared fairly equally. Both parents get time to do their hobbies/gym/socialize occasionally.

yanbu to think this is a fair split of chores and both parties should be able to manage their obligations.

yabu if you think one partner has it much tougher than the other.

Sorry but I don't think person B has a "raw deal" . As others have said, their tasks have been listed in detail while person A's have been condensed. It should really read something like this.

Person A does all the ironing, cleaning, gardening and 70% of the school runs plus after school childcare/taking kids to hobbies 3.30-6pm three days a week.

Person B does all the life admin, shopping, meal planning and looks after the children after school 2 days a week from 6pm until they go to bed and all day Sunday.

All the ironing and cleaning alone in a house of 5 people is a huge task.

Sorry if you're person B and feel you have the shitty end of the stick but I think it's fair for your work patterns. Perhaps person A could take on some more life admin because that can be a lot as much as mumsnet likes to minimise it. I get it because it's something I struggle with too.

If you earn that much you need to be out sourcing more.

Get a cleaner.
Get someone in for ironing.
Hire a P.A
Hire a dog walker/someone to help with pets.

Then person A will have less on their list so they can take more of the load from B.

Another hand tip for small admin jobs like paying for school trips and making cards etc is to have a whiteboard/chalkboard up somewhere visible with the list of jobs to do. If either parent A or B have a spare 5 mins they can get it done and tick it off.

I think it's not the high earning/high stress/long hours job that has an impact on your tolerance levels hatred for life admin so much as your ADHD tbqh.

Being able to organise myself to get to the right place at the right time with the right paperwork is one thing, having to do it for others on top is a whole other job. I agree with @sweeneytoddsrazor that it really ought to be as easy as a few clicks on your phone to get things sorted but for those of us afflicted with ADHD it's really not

In our case we tend to split school admin. Whoever was doing pick up was responsible for what needed sorting that day/popping in to the office etc. I'd be having a discussion with your partner to at least pick a little of that up.

Is it the distribution of the life admin that is the key issue? Can I ask why you do 100% of the admin? Is it that your OH isn't very good at this or isn't very organised?

I do 100% of child related admin, we only have one child but at the end of each term when there are holiday clubs to organise, after school activities and wrap around care to book (from several providers) and school dinners to book, as well as other activities that need booking that also run in blocks that align with school term times, there is a lot to do all at once. I did this this week and it took several hours, for just one child.

That your posting this at the end of school term when all this school related admin needs doing, is your OH aware how long this all takes? Would you be able to have a whole day free towards the end of each term to get all the school related admin done at once?

If cooking is shared then meal planning and shopping should also be shared, although like as other posters have asked can your OH take this on? Do you do online grocery shopping? This can save so much time, in our household cooking is shared, one person starts the food shop online and the other person edits the shop to add what they want to buy.

This !

Plus the manual chores such as cleaning can be outsourced. Pay for a cleaner & gardener and move some of the admin chores on to the other person ( I forgot who is A and B).

Lower standards - online shopping, bulk buy birthday cards and presents.

I think its an odd way to split things. I work longer hours and am the higher earner but my job is split between travelling and wfh, DH works in a local office every day. We split chores based on who is best placed to do them - if I'm travelling DH will do the more of the day to day but when I'm wfh I'll do school pickups and most of the domestics around calls / in place of tracel time. We both know what's urgent I.e school pick up and what can be left if were both knackered I.e hoovering. There are times when standards slip but we just agree to catch up together on the weekend. Why do you have to have set chores that are yours?

Flexibility would help here plus if there's friction outsource some of it - get a cleaner or pay someone to do the ironing for example, or agree to have a ready meals twice a week to reduce food prep and cooking.

Life's to short to play the game 'who has it hardest'

You sorting play dates because A needs cover for something that A has booked to do with another child is bizarre. A needs to sort this, not you.

A also needs to find a better job to earn more money to pay for this cleaner and gardener and then they will have more time to take over the admin from you.

So much talking about outsourcing and paying for a cleaner. Why doesn't person A JUST FUCKING DO IT??!?!!? instead of lying around picking their nose

are Person A & Person B in a relationship? When do they get time to spend together (without the kids)?
And why would you make 'life admin' the job of just one person? Surely it would be more sustainable/ sensible to ensure that you BOTH know how to do those things - and know where you're at with dentists' check-ups, household finances, school reports, gift-buying etc - so that if one of you is ever ill or otherwise incapacitated, the other one can easily take over?
How old are the children? do they not help with any of the cleaning/ other chores?

Brining a gift for the school raffle is also optional isn't it? If you're too busy, just don't do t.

I earned 4 times as much as my ex, and we split chores based on who was best placed… I worked from home and ended up doing everything. Your approach only works if your OH isn’t inclined to take the piss

I think the way you have written it is very strange.
You have broken down the jobs for person B to the tiniest level yet put persons A jobs into large swathing categories.
Perhaps reframe it as this
Person A
Works 25 hours a week
Hass full responsibility for 3 children for 6 days and 5 nights.
Does all cooking
Does all washing
Does all ironing
Does all cleaning of a house big enough for 5 people
Looks after all pets including cleaning and necessary exercise
Does all morning school runs.
Does two afternoon school runs
Is out of the house three afternoons a week doing after-school activities (this maybe the missing 3 afternoon school runs)
Does all gardening
Person B
Works 40 hours (9- 6 5 days minus an our for lunch?)
Does weekly shop
Life admin (which takes about 20 mins a week on average, slightly more on the run up to Christmas)
Makes children's appointments but I'm guessing Person A takes them.
Has full responsibility for their own children for 1 day and two nights a week.

Person B has it very easy in comparison.

I thought Person B did the cooking? I thought that was why she had a raw deal actually. Cooking every day or multiple times a day, whereas cleaning and ironing might not be every day.

omg, same! Headphones on and cleaning, gardening, DIY = my brain is my own. All the little itty-bitty things to remember = no space to actually think or daydream. Our split, work, everything is different but I am the little itty-bitty things person in our relationship and I FUCKING HATE IT.

I do think you have a raw deal here. And someone said A does the childcare – well, B does half the weekend alone! You really only get half of your weekend.

Sounds like A is contributing more to the running of the household/ kids, which makes sense when they work less hours .

I agree with this. You say “cleaning” in one word like it’s nothing yet make “arranging play dates” into a major task. With no mention of who supervises the play dates. which is a much more onerous task than arranging them.

Who gets the kids up and out In the morning? Another stressful task. Person A

Also the other big job, cooking, is split equally.

Who are you op? And who Is moaning?

i think person B has it really tough and I am assuming you are a woman with a male partner.

i just cannot imagine a man earning 8 times his wife’s salary doing life admin and meal prep!

I wouldn't stay with someone who took the piss to that extent in all honesty. I left ex for this reason, as he refused to pull his weight and I was exhausted and just figured if I'm going to do it all I may as well be on my own and living life on my own terms. Now my current dh and I support one another's kids and it would be a deal breaker for me if he did not pull his weight I was clear on this from the outset. Don't get me wrong, occasionally one of us feels the pressure more but it's usually just when there's a lot going on and we're both knackered as there's not enough hours in the day

Supervising children while they make homemade cards, can’t you just buy cards? Then that’s one activity ticked off your list. If you’re frazzled, you have to find ways to lighten your load.

What the fuck is life admin? I’ve only ever heard that phrase on here where it’s made out to be a huge onerous task.

As far as I can tell it’s just filling in a permission form once in a while, booking a holiday once a year, buying a present off Amazon while enjoying a relaxing poo every so often etc. What ‘life admin’ are you all doing that takes so long?

It might be helpful to switch this around and look at how much free time/ you time each of you have. It is always hard to compare how equivalent different chores are but as a family, you should both be above to enjoy time with your children, time with each other and time to yourself.

If you find your share stressful/difficult, that doesn’t mean that Person A has it easy. It sounds to me like both of you are doing plenty to keep this family running. It is possible for both of you to be finding it difficult.

Sometimes someone just needs a bit of a rant. Yeah you might work longer hours and have more to do, but that doesn’t mean they have it easy. They might have had a really shocking day and just needed to let off some steam.

If, however, they are constantly nagging you to do more so they can do less, that’s different. That’s when you need to do the thing that many people seem to avoid, which is actually sit down and set it out the way you have here, with them doing the same (so a proper breakdown of their responsibilities), and look at where you can rejig the plan for both of your benefits.

I think both parents probably feel frazzled with 3 kids and demanding and/or antisocial hour jobs that mean one or other regularly has all 3 at the same time, and no outsourcing of support, either paid or family. Little down time for either etc.

I tend to think that this phase of life just IS stressful and monotonous. The years with young children feels like decades and then it gets easier once they are a bit more self sufficient and can muck in and help more. The key part of this is BOTH parents remembering the other and caring about them. Don't let resentment about how hard you have it creep in, as you both have it hard.

When you are at the point of not picking about an exact division of chores, you need to take a step back and look bigger picture. Have honest conversations with each other about how supporting each other looks and what you both need.

Person A doesn't have full responsibility for 3 children for six days and five nights. They work three days a week, so that leaves four days a week but one of those days is Saturday when the care is shared with OP. Plus all the children are at school so for three days a week, Person A won't be doing any childcare between 9.00 am and 3.00 pm.

They share the cooking, laundry and pet care.

So you have greatly exaggerated Person A's responsibilities and minimised Person's B responsibilities. Plus Person A's job is low-stress while Person B's job is high stress which is unsurprising as they earn 8 times as much as Person A.

Person B appears to have it much harder with the high pressure job and out of hours/ late night work plus organising everything and sharing cooking/laundry/ childcare and looking after DC on the Sunday while partner works.
Person A should be doing laundry/ cooking, some of the life admin and switching their weekend work to the week if possible so that Person B has a rest at some point.
Or, get a cleaner if that works financially.