Division of household labour

[Darknightsdarkmoods]

Have had some comments from friends recently that the division of labour in our house is ‘unfair’ and would love some unbiased opinions.

Person A: Cooks and washes up 100% of the time. Mows the lawn.

Person B: Does everything else. Broadly the mental load, laundry, dusting and hoovering, general kitchen and bathroom cleaning.

Do you think either of these roles is unfair (Yes you are being unreasonable) and which would you rather be if so? I’m very curious. We are DINKS both work full time.

So cooking and pots probably equals around ten hours a week . Cleaning is probably more like 7 hours a week plus mental load /shopping. I’d say its pretty fair

Cooking and pots in my household is definitely more than 10 hours a week and we have a dishwasher.

As long as it works for you why does it matter what your friends think?

Person b has it worst

I guess it varies, so in the week I can whip up a meal in 30 min and I tend to do the pots 2/3 times a day taking around ten min each. But at a weekend at meal might take an hour or so to make plus a breakfast /lunch.

@Darknightsdarkmoods I hope you're person A 😊

Wrt division of chores, draw up a list of everything required to run a household, then divide equally, according to the preference of each partner.

Person B appears to have a heavier load.

It’s wildly skewed, one is doing more. If it works for you, fine, but if you are planning on kids is it likely the cooking person will take on a much bigger share of the work? If not, you will have a problem.

Sounds pretty fair to me!

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

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).

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.

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.

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

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

I find this super interesting and I feel like it’s basically a 50/50 split for which person you would rather be. Which tells me it’s basically fair, or that everyone is so different ‘fair’ is impossible.

Spoiler, I am person B and I actually think my load of perfectly fair. Person A has my eternal gratitude for all of the cooking!

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.

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

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.

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

Single income lots of kids?

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.

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.

Ah - also TINKS - two incomes no kids

I disagree that there is no mental load for people without children, clearly it’s worse with kids but houses still need to be run. Shopping (not just food), bills, organising the calendar, holidays, even socialising all takes planning.

For sure this task will be much bigger once we have kids and maybe the division would need to be re-evaluated then…