AIBU to ask you to help me make a list of unseen labour that you do?

[Oreoqueen87]

Background is there has been ongoing tension between DH and I about division of labour. We have agreed to a make a list of all household tasks so we can see who does what. I am the default parent to a newly 7 year old. I do all the childcare organising, all the emotional labour, anything that requires thought basically! . I also do all the cooking and food organisation. I also do more childcare.

Can I please ask for your help in thinking of all the unseen things I do? I do everything apart from vacuuming, most of the washing and home maintenance eg mowing lawn.

He expects a lot of emotional support for himself. He wants to talk through every little decision and it’s exhausting.

DH can sometimes be reasonable when presented with facts, so I want him to acknowledge all the work I do. I doubt it will change much, but it gives me a basis for better boundaries in the meantime.

Longterm I need to LTB. Our child is undergoing evaluation for suspected autism/adhd, and I need to make sure it’s completed and a we have agreed how to manage it before any split.

If nothing else I want to have the list to look at so I can remember not to cave.

I do know a few mums who don't feel they need to or aren't interested in doing as much of this unpaid stuff as others and I salute them for it, but I'm afraid the result is their lives are more chaotic and their houses have at times been in poor repair/grubby because their husbands don't "see" stuff nor do it. The men did not step up.

None of them has judgemental mums or MILs though which may be relevant.

It's always about the money, at least at some level. If you could afford to go it alone, you can insist on certain things. If you couldn't and you push it...

How to organise planning, researching, booking, paying any tradesmen needed for work in the house. Knowing the schedule for such things. For example, how often are the windows cleaned, the outside of the house painted, the chimney swept, the boiler serviced. Also include the above for cleaners and gardeners if you have them. When the people are doing the work, who lets them in and supervises them. Who talks to the neighbours about any work that may affect them (extra vans on the road, dust, noise etc). I feel tired just writing that out 😵‍💫

Do you think they are a) all equally unequal or b) that everyone is equally unhappy at the inequality.

Do you ever think about why either of these might be?

@Tonissister this really resonates with me.

DP is not DD’s dad and has no kids of his own.

He is in many ways pretty good on this front. He pulls his weight at home and does well over half here. He never takes this for granted.

What he has never understood is that when you have a child everything you do in your leisure time (apart from kid stuff) is another job. And it all adds to the endlessly mounting list of stuff to fit around your other two jobs (your job and being a parent).

When we were first together he would send me loads of ideas for social stuff: dinner, theatre, parties, activities. Which was great but he never got that as a single parent each time you step outside the house without your child you have to either call in a favour or pay someone. So a midweek date in the pub which he could do without thinking about would cost me the best part of £100 and require a fair bit of planning, so I had to be pretty disciplined about what I chose to go to, which he couldn’t understand and initially took as a snub. Then he once got arsy because I was late to something waiting for the babysitter.

We had a big row once about his failure to think about stuff like this. I said he needed to accept that dating a single mother means a lot more admin and cost and that while I accepted this was my burden and responsibility, he owed it to me to think about how it impacted me. So he couldn’t unilaterally sign me up for two social things (both of which require babysitters) in the same week.

The penny has now dropped and DD is a teen who doesn’t need babysitting anymore but its still this assumption that all social interaction will be organised by (and any associated support will be sorted by) me in a completely frictionless way. It really grates on me.

DH and I split actual physical tasks reasonably evenly eg I cook and food shop, he does laundry, bins, gardening and more cleaning then me. But on the kids front I do it all.

Organising, paying for and taking them to regular and one off activities.
School admin, home clothes days. Charity donations, cake sales. Parents evening. Checking up on homework/GCSE coursework, making a revision timetable and nagging DS to stick to it. Outfit for prom.
Buying train/bus passes and checking they remember them.
Interaction with DS boss (he has a paper round)
Birthdays: decorating the house, presents and cards, cakes. Parties. (Our own and other peoples)
College and uni open days, ucas forms, student finance, dsa.
Planning and booking holidays.
Christmas.

And a million other things. None of this would get done if left to DH.

School
School research,
applications,
admin
Readiing school emails
managing calendar
Kniwing what uniform is needed on what day, Managing clubs.
School run
Uniform buying, labeling, ironing, taking the hems up or down.
School trip attendance
School meetng attendance
Leasing with teacher / TA
Clothes for non uniform or special days we had yellow day, London history day, cultural day.
School holidays cover, trip planning,
play date planing and facilitating
Homework completion.

Household
Wiping woodwork including skirting, doors, door frames, wardrobes, window ledges, banisters, radiators
Dusting walls, ceilings, ornaments.picture frames.
Washing windows internally and cleaning window tracks.
Vacuuming
Cleaning bathroom, emptying bathroom bin, cleaning bath. sink and toilet
Washing bathroom tiles
Washing and descaling shower glass, taps
Cleaning bathroom floor
Changing towels
Waxing woodword and treating it.
Striping beds, turning mattresses,remaking beds, washing bedsheets,folding them and putting away.
Wiping the kitchen work surfaces. Back splashes /tiles and kitchen units
Washing the kitchen floor
Cleaning the fridge
Defrosting the freezer
Cleaning the dishwasher filters, arms. Making use is got salt, rinse aid.
Cleaning the washing machine and tumble drier filters.
Organising the inside of the kitchen cupboards
Sorting the medicine draw, throwing away out of date medication.
Making sure we have calpol, Puriton, children's ibuprofen, plasters
First aid stocked
Checking smoke alarms
Cleaning kitchen bin, food waste bin, outside bins.

Sorry I got bored

That's really frustrating but I must say that DH (who is DD's dad) appeared to be blithely unaware of the need for babysitters for some types of event also. We've had numerous rows about it because he thinks it can all be done through favours/last minute, not realising that the mum economy already relies on a web of favours and other people have lives and plans too.

@Needlenardlenoo

That's really frustrating but I must say that DH (who isDD's dad) appeared to be blithely unaware of the need for babysitters for some types of event also. We've had numerous rows about it because he thinks it can all be done through favours/last minute, not realising that the mum economy already relies on a web of favours and other people have lives and plans too.

Yep. They think there’s a magic childcare network like something out of Eastenders where people just tip up and dump their kids on the neighbours.

Even if it doesn’t involve actual childcare there is a lack of awareness.

Last month DP booked me in to do something on a Saturday from 3pm until 9pm with two days notice. DD is 15 and fine to be on her own for a few hours but she should have been warned and primed for this. It involves meal planning, changes to homework and hobbies etc which, again, is all all work for me.

Sorry, what?

Are all heterosexual relationships "equally unequal"?
No, I'm sure there's a spectrum between "always a bit shit" and actual rampant abuse, but the point stands that the majority of heterosexual relationships are unequal, so I'm not sure what you're trying to get at there.

I'm sure what you're trying to imply is that it's all silly womens' fault in some way though...🙄

I think that a lot of the life admin/mental load that women end up doing is based on women judging women. Poster upthread pearl clutching about "grubby" houses in "disrepair" where the woman has refused to take it all on. Family homes are homes, not show houses.
Men do not put themselves under the same pressure to be totally compliant to expectations as women do.

No I'm implying that some couples are a better match than others.

Honestly, I agree with a previous response to your earlier comment that it does seem to only be on MN that it's EVEr equal.

BUT, I will say, that I think things hvae gone downhill on this in the last 30 years ago.

When I was growing up, it was quite "traditional" in that most of my friends had dads with full time "traditional" jobs who earned the bulk of the income. the mums did work but usually part time and also often in lower paid roles. Overall, the women did take on the bulk of a lot of the mental load. BUT, and this is the big BUT, there were some things that were just universally on Dads. Some of this was mental and some physical. eg, in most cases, it was Dads doing all the late night lift clubs. It was Dads doign any and ALL heavy labour - whether that was bins, gardens (wives might do the "fun" planting and hobby bits, but the "hard work" was men), or anything else. A silly example would be weekly shop - sometimes the men did it, but mostly it was the women. BUT, when they got home, the men were the ones hauling it into the kitchen and it was often the men who then put it away (or, of course, us kids). My mother and her friends never painted a wall, did any DIY, moved furniture around etc. And it was all done promptly by the men because frankly, there WAS judgement - if the house was dirty, that was on the woman. If the garden was a mess or the front door was unpainted - that was on the man.

Ditto, the men definitely took on all the mental load for bills, utilities, insurance etc - because they had those "big Important Jobs" and all the money.

Again, ditto, it was Dads who took us to get our first bank accounts (they had to sign as the more "important" parent blah blah), or who were responsible for teaching us to ride our b ikes, swim, go hiking etc.

Whereas today, a LOT of those tasks that I grew up seeing as "men's" tasks are now taken on by the women, who have ALSO taken on more employed work and the financial burden. Without giving up any of the tasks they had before.

I think it's very sad. Those men that brought me and my friends up wanted their daughters to be and do anything. They supported us in going to university and building careers. Because it didn't occur to them that their sons or their daughters' partners wouldn't do, at the very least, the bare minimum they'd done their whole lives.

@ReadingCrimeFiction yes that's absolutely true about dads doing all the lifts in the evenings, they did! None of the mums ever picked us up from brownies or whatever. But maybe this was because the men didn't want a woman driving their car 😀!
And my dad always did the Friday big shop as well, again that involved driving, though my mum would write the list for him. He did do a lot of childcare as he had school holidays off but kids were left to do their own thing more than they are now, so it wasn't as effortful. Maybe we should all be a bit more 80s 😀

If your child has ASD it’s likely your husband has too.

Gosh this really resonates with me.

My dad was so useful to me in my late teens and twenties. He made sure I understood finance and investing too. It's been really important long term.

Sorry I haven’t read all the posts on here, but look up Zawn Villenes. She has great posts on household labour inequality. She also devised a brilliant spreadsheet for working out how much labour, paid work plus unpaid work, minus hobbies, each person does as a starting point.

My DP and I used it and it really helped expose the unseen Labour. I was doing way more ongoing, little jobs that all add up.

I really think these things only work if your partner is genuinely willing to make the changes, otherwise it’s just another tiring battle of persuading.

I think it was becuase mums were at home cooking dinner or men picked up on way home from work. And late at night, "night driving" was seen as more dangerous or unpleasant... so the men did it. That was their job as the "big strong man".

I saw a meme the other day where a woman was saying something like, "I have a car guy who sorts out all my car stuff. It's dad. My dad." and even though the "silly little woman" aspect is annoying it did make me both laugh and then feel a bit sad - because the truth is that I am not sure that the men I know ARE going to be the ones their children call when they need help in their 20s and 30s. So many of them are just a bit useless.

But of course, that's not true across the board. My DH probably WILL be getting calls from DD (and possibly DS) Until the day he dies! And perhaps I just lived in a bubble as a child and there wer loads of children who DID not have the competent, hands on dads that me and my friends did.

Also, one glaring difference between us was me doing the ongoing ‘maintenance’ and noticing of everything and partner doing quite ‘big’ noticeable jobs. The problem with this is that the former is more exhausting and you can never switch off. His bigger jobs - washing up, one big bathroom clean, etc, was very visible, whereas mine was invisible and relentless. We’re still balancing that, but it’s better.

it’s partly because I was a lone parent when we met, and had already learned it all.

Nice try.

This is a structural problem, not a personal problem.

Are you trying to suggest that women who are upset by their partners' lack of input should just have chosen better? But the question is....if the majority of men don't contribute as much to the relationship, house and family as women do, and the majority of women want an equal contributor, then where are they going to find these mythical men who do?

Has it occurred to you that people could find others who are generally on the same page as them about the distribution of labour?

This might mean finding someone who also believes that women should do all the housework and men should do all the providing. As long as both parties are happy with how things are distributed, even where they admit there is inequality, they'll be content.

What doesn't make sense is finding someone who has totally different values to you, and has been raised to have those values, and then expecting them to become someone else when they get married/become a parent.

I'm not sure it's so easy to know if your values chime to a high level of detail with a romantic partner.

Sure, if you get married in a church, you do a preparation course of more or less quality and seriousness. Registry office: nothing.

Absent an arranged marriage, it's always going to be a bit of a leap into the dark.

It's hard to predict how parenthood will affect people.

The number of stories on here where male partners have completely changed on the arrival of the first (or sometimes second) child....

What I feel is that as a heterosexual mum you are always struggling against this weight of inertia and expectations and assumptions. Yes you can have a (more) equal relationship but you can never relax about it because inertia or passivity or lack of money tends to push things towards inequality.

And how are you to be sure if people mean what they say? People say all sorts of things and make all sorts of promises.

"Till death do us part" even!

Well it depends on the scale of grubbiness and disrepair. It’s not fair to expect children and adolescents to grow up in a dirty shit hole of a home. But I do agree that having a ‘beautiful’ home is unrealistic for couples like myself and DH, who tend to work OTH for 100 hours between the pair of us. We aim for functional and clean. When people come over I am aware that I don’t have a gorgeous home but it's at least well cared for.

Thing is though if I left house and garden maintenance up to DH our house (which is our main asset) would be significantly degraded by now. He just Does.Not.Care.

I'm not prepared to let massive backlog maintenance costs build up. Nor do I want to live in a tip.

I also don't want to deal with the fallout from the relationships he neglects.

Nor for DD to have a crappy upbringing when we can afford better.