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.

Person B is winning, until you have kids, then Person B is fucked.

Shopping (not just food), bills, organising the calendar, holidays, even socialising all takes planning.

Why are you considering this work deserving of a special name? it’s just life. If these things are onerous do fewer of them or find easier ways of doing them.

Booking a holiday for a couple is fun, it’s not work. Socialising? Do you mean messaging a mate and arranging when to meet up? Also not work. Bills? Most people use direct debits these days I think, we certainly do.

And how did your partner cope with these things before you got together and you kindly took them over? Did they not manage to socialise and buy things?

My partner and I have a similar split and have two teenagers. I'm person B. I without a doubt do more but I don't mind that as i wfh so get a lot done in time he spends commuting. The big thing is I can feel overwhelmed more easily as I'm dealing with 150 smaller things whereas he has dishes, cooking and shopping. That's especially true when kids have a lot on or before Xmas etc.

Who cares? If you’re happy then it’s fine, if not then change it. All this “friends said blah blah” is pointless.

I think as long as it works for both of you it's fine. I think it's about making sure you both get the same amount of rest time.

To me, Person A has a lot more work, especially because of the no kids. Surely for only 2 adults, it would only be a few loads of laundry a week? And you don't have kids making a mess everywhere, so cleaning the bathrooms and hoovering, dusting would be very quick in a house of 2 adults. I also don't know what the mental load would be without kids.

I think doing all of the cooking and all of the dishes every single day is a lot, like they get in from work and then cook and then have to wash up as well..
But if you're both happy with the arrangement then it doesn't matter what your friends think!

People always say this about bills but actually if you do it properly, it is a fair amount of work.

If you just stick everything on a rolling direct debit and never review, you overpay enormously.

We review all of our bills - gas, electricity, insurance - annually and the time taken to get the best deal saves us a lot. Similarly we move current accounts every few months and that gets us good deals/new customer bonuses.

I manage our investments and again that makes us a lot more in interest.

Then there's other unavoidable life admin like booking tradesmen.

I do agree that holidays and socialising aren't admin but the rest really does take effort if you do it properly

I often look back and wonder what dh, and I did with all of the evenings, and weekends! We thought we were killed, I need to go back and have a word with my younger self! 😂

The amount of chores before kid is fairly small and I would not argue about it. It’s fine.

It’s when the kids arrive that “washing up after dinner” starts involving scraping food off the floor and sometimes walls, “life admin” starts involving booking seventeen clubs and texting multiple other parents, and “tidying up” involves considering whether to sort expensive LEGO into their own sets or just chuck it all together and forget about it, only to find that the LEGO box now contains unwashed socks, a uniform Tshirt you were panically looking for last week, an apple core and your glasses which went missing. It is at this point that both parties usually start feeling hard done by.