To think I'm doing an unfair share of the housework? (male)

[Unjeffeson]

Hi all, looking for unbiased outside perspective.

I (m40) live with my wife (f40), DD (3) and dog (f5).

My wife has been asking for me to do progressively more of the household tasks over the last 2 years, and I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.

Currently my pile is as follows:

• All meals
• All meal cleanups and dishes and kitchen cleaning
• All laundry and putting away clothes
• All dog walks (twice daily plus evening poo run)
• All bathtimes
• All overnight child getups (typically 2/3 of nights - wife sleeps through these)
• All nursery drop-offs and pickups, including prepping her bag
• All household maintenance (anything physical)
• All grocery shops
• Management of our financial spreadsheet
• Making sure plans go into our shared diary
• Usual man-column tasks like garbage, garden care, car care etc.

In addition I run my own small business and make around 70% of our income, so have the responsibility of not messing that up.

I've recently had an ADHD diagnosis which, while in itself doesn't change much, it's confirmed that I'm quite likely to struggle with too many responsibilities and organisation.

My wife does the other stuff. This includes admittedly high cognitive load stuff like buying all DD's clothes and toys (almost all online), organising medical and vet appointments, the 3 weekly classes DD does, settling her at bedtime, and organising our bi-weekly cleaner. She also looks after our daughter on Fridays, but this is entirely out of choice as we'd be a little financially better off if she went to nursery and my wife worked. (We split childcare 50-50 otherwise).

The problem is that my wife says she feels stressed at work and wants me to take on some more stuff to help her out. But I feel like my schedule is already super crammed and I'm not able to give the attention to my work that I'd like. I've got the chance to take on an extra client as well but she doesn't seem that interested in the extra money, just expresses concern about workload.

She also wants another kid and since she had an early miscarriage earlier this year (which did affect her mentally) she's very focused on fertility at the moment.
I am scared as to how another baby can fit into our world as I don't think I have the bandwidth for much more, and I'll need to if she's got a newborn.

So AIBU to think she needs to toughen up a little bit and split the work more fairly? Or perhaps go back to work 5 days to allow her more work focus time (her 4 day schedule is more like 4.5+ days of work)? I'm aware of the toll miscarriage can have and I haven't pushed back much so far, but it's frustrating me that her contribution to the household seems to be largely doing tasks on her phone and playing with our kid.

No, that's not it. The problem is that we have remarkably similar values. And he knows that I will do a really good job of putting the work in to translate those values into a plan for our lives, and he therefore has the ability to opt out of any responsibility for decision-making, any worrying about it, because he knows that the end result will still be really good.

Three young children, an ongoing renovation project for a house, and we both work full time in senior roles. Bold of you to pretend that I have any spare time or bandwidth to be taken up.

Christ you do more than me and I’m a SAHM

Ok she's either depressed or taking the piss. It really has to be one or the other. Do you have a gut feeling?

If she's not depressed (and don't take this lightly - postnatal depression can start a lot later and last a lot longer than most people think it can, and combining that with the MC, it's a strong possibility), then you need to sit down and sort this out proportionally. It isn't fair at all, and you're right that you're doing most of the physical legwork.

I would be very interested to know what possible excuse she has for e.g. not writing in the calendar herself, or not helping clear up after you've cooked? It's basic manners if nothing else. If all else fails I'd be tempted to go on partial strike - she's not dictating the recipes when she's not shopping or cooking. She also wouldn't be getting a laundry service from me if she never helped with it.

However, as I said, if she is struggling with depression then it is not unreasonable for you to shoulder a bit more of the burden in the short term while she focuses on getting well - but the key bits are short term and some actual focus on getting well.

This has made me chuckle.

No one is perfect. He may be something of a decision-dodging man-marshmallow, but today he got up with the kids at 5:45, got them all ready for school/nursery, put dinner on in the slow cooker to make it easier for me tonight as he's going to a Christmas party, and had coffee waiting for me on my desk.

I suppose you could say that his love language is acts of service. Whereas my natural personality trait is to be compulsively (perhaps neurotically) detail-oriented. And over the years that has drifted into different "realms" that we take care of that has just become a bit too segregated, and overwhelms me sometimes with the sense of responsibility I feel.

And I struggle to communicate that to him, and to even articulate it properly to myself, as it seems so ridiculous to be complaining about him not doing enough when, as per the OP, he already does absolutely loads.

Has he always been like that or has it evolved over time?

We have a similar setup but I have to actively push against it at times or I'd go insane! I think when one person in the relationship is highly capable of making decisions, likes to plan and organise, and puts a lot of thought and effort into everything they do.. the other person can become complacent and lazy in regards to it.

My DH was getting to a point when I asked him to go shopping, he'd ask me to write a list of what we needed! To which my reply was, you know what we need, you know what we eat, think of some meals and get what you think. He is a very capable independent person too but he likes to languish in the safety of not having to make decisions as a default position at times, I refuse to make that my default problem.

The trade off with pushing the responsibility of thinking back is he probably didn't buy some stuff we needed, but over time as I've refused to go along with this 'write me a list' nonsense, he just gets what we need, I don't EVER complain about things 'not being to my liking' because if I want something to my liking I'll do it myself, or have input into it.. and I 'like' being able to offload that responsibility at times! Same goes for cleaning, laundry etc, household tasks, we both pick up and put down as we need to, both do it differently but neither complains about the other and it seems to work well

You don't have to put up with always being the one responsible for everything!

You do seem to be doing most of it considering your also working more hours
Your wife needs to be sat down to discuss this so she can either up her hours at work or do more at home my dh works more then me their for I do all cooking meal planning and finances washing and we split the house work so for example dh will do dishes and I'll cook dh does the shopping I plan it I can't get to the supermarket easily where he is right next to it for work I think you are sounding very overwhelmed with this situation and your wife needs to be told and I don't recommend you have another child

I struggle to believe this is real.

50% of the people I have ever met in my life have been male. I can’t imagine a single one of them doing this much around the house.

You just sound like an average wife to me.

Sandyhappypeople our dcs have long since left home.
We shared childcare too.
When they were pre school I did 90 per cent childcare and chores.
Then he worked 6 days a week
I'm a chef so I then worked Eve or weekend and he had the kids and cooking.Took him a while to get used to cooking as he is older than me but I persisted.
Life isn't perfect and I had to have a conversation about Christmas planning the other day.
They are his kids too so I insisted we shared the load.
He is the bin organizer and I hoover as he has a bad back and can't do the stairs and I don't have patience to see which crisp packet is recycling and which isn't 🤣🤣

The OP does the finance and calendar organisation as well though
It sounds like you have the much better deal in your original post as you failed to mention you have a full on renovation project going on.

A bit of both, I think. He's done the cooking since we first moved in together, and I definitely remember getting cross with him when we were about 25 because I was the one planning all our holidays, so there has always been a bit of a "thinking" and "doing" split between us.

But when we were younger and childfree the edges of it felt less sharp, as we had a much simpler life and there wasn't much to worry about. Having children has obviously given us a lot more time-pressure to get everything done, but has also raised the stakes of the things that are worth worrying about, as I want the best for them (we both do), and decisions that I make that could impact them feel much more important.

I also had a period of life-threatening illness a few years back, and he very much had to take on the burden of doing absolutely anything physical for months, as I literally couldn't do anything. I think that has solidified for him that his "doing" work is something valuable that he can do that gives a tangible contribution to the family.

What does that have to do with how often you need to make those decisions?

Where to live and how much you can afford on a house was a one off decision. Maybe you'll reconsider in another 10 years, but it's certainly not something people have to think about daily or even annually.

Ditto with how many kids to have or where to send them. Those aren't ongoing decisions.

So while it's possible in the last 10 years you've had to make some major decisions, on a day to day basis you don't really make any more decisions than your husband. With the only exception current renovations, but even those, once finished will not be a daily or even annual decision.

It's strange that you have separated out "major decisions" from "day to decisions", then dismissed the former as a non-event and decided that my husband is, in fact, doing the latter. He is not. Feeling solely responsible for major decisions matters more to me than the day to day ones as there is a material difference between deciding whether or not my child should have surgery and deciding what everyone is getting for Christmas. But they are all made by me.

FYI we are currently living in our fourth place in four years. If you can't understand that then you clearly haven't been subject to the current state of the UK rental market.