Is our relationship fair? Am I missing something?

[frozennile]

Hi everyone, looking for some opinions as I'm struggling to see the wood for the trees.

My (M40) wife (F41) have a 4 year-old daughter and a dog. We both work from home, me full-time and she has Fridays off with the kid.

We split the household chores as follows:

Me: Cooking / dishes / kitchen cleaning and tidying up, laundry, nursery drop-off and pick-up, bins, bathtime, all overnight get-ups (since she stopped breastfeeding), 3/4 of the dog walks (2 per day), finance management, ordering groceries, car stuff, house and garden DIY, one-off major physical jobs, about half the nursery and school admin.

Wife: Bedtime stories, ordering clothes, anything dog related eg vet stuff, buying things online for the house and for the kid, birthday presents for other children, watching the kid while I cook (we only allow an hour of TV every other night max) or run on a Sunday morning, swim and dance class bookings, other half of the nursery admin

She also tells me she does 'all the cognitive load stuff'.

She goes to a gym class on Monday nights, yoga on Tuesday nights, and dog agility training on Sunday late morning.

We have a cleaner once a week.

I believe we split the childcare evenly in terms of solo time with child.

My question is really - what am I missing here? I feel like I'm doing really quite a lot and I'm always on my feet. In addition I'm responsible for about 3/5 of the household income so need to keep on top of my work (I run my own business). Do I just not understand the cognitive load thing? When I ask her about it she gets very defensive ('oh you're accusing me of not pulling my weight again') and it's hard to have a sensible discussion.

I'm basically concerned I'm being a stupid man and not understanding something.

Yet one that would have been posted more than once should the op have been female

@TheSmallAssassin no way does one agility class offset a weeks worth of dog walking. That class will be a few hours. I spend at least two hours a day walking my dog and if the dog is fit enough for agility classes it’s going to need a lot of walks.

So who does:

Hoovering
Tidying living room
Dusting
Washing floors
Daily cleaning of bathrooms
Toilets
Making beds
Putting laundry away
Ironing
Cleaning windows inside
All the other non-kitchen cleaning/tidying

Because while I appreciate the stuff you do seems like a lot, there is a ton of other housework not mentioned on that list. I appreciate you have a cleaner, but kids and dogs make a lot of mess and just a cleaner once or twice a week won't stay on top of it.

It sounds as though she does more of the things that require planning and remembering (buying presents, booking classes) and you do more of the things that need doing physically (cleaning, DIY). I find the planning and remembering more draining than the seeing and doing, so maybe your wife is the same.

If you both swapped tasks for a month, would you be able to do everything she does without her telling you what it is or when to do it? I think that is where the mental load comes into it - someone can see that the kitchen is messy and needs cleaning, but you can’t “see” things like (for example) it’s XX’s birthday next week and you gave them a train set last year so needs to be something different, or the dog is running out of time to get its jabs done

I think it’s a hard one to measure because comparing physical vs mental load can be hard. Laundry for example doesn’t take long to do, a few minutes maybe to sort a pile and stick it in, whereas the mental load of sorting clothes for a growing child takes more time and thought- does we have enough of this size? Does it still fit right? Does she have a winter coat, jacket that fits and is right for the weather? I’d probably rather do the laundry because it is more mindless and takes less time & thought, whereas someone who dislikes the physical side would rather do the organising.

Laundry takes longer if ironing needs to be done and clothes sorting for size isn’t a weekly task

She's taking the piss. Sorry, but if you were a woman everyone would come down on your other half. Try switching roles for 2 weeks in order for each one to see how the other one lives.

What leisure / down time do you get in comparison to one another?

What hobbies do you do outside the home? You've said about her classes but what about you?

It does sound like there’s an imbalance. Your wife works 1 day less a week so has plenty of time to deal with “cognitive load” tasks unless she’s entertaining your child all day
long on that day. You have 1 child aged 4 so the cognitive load shouldn’t be particularly heavy or unmanageable, unless your child has additional needs. Honestly, she does sound like she’s not pulling her weight. Perhaps she’s just a bit lazy; perhaps she’s depressed. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. But yes, it sounds like there is an imbalance between you and it needs to be addressed.

Agree with others here .Maybe wife has low iron or a little depressed .Periods can take it out of you .Perhaps a check up at GPs .I think cards showing "who does what " seem mad to me .Also if you can afford it maybe a cleaner once or twice a week ,hello fresh may help with dinner too

I'm sorry but the whole cognitive load stuff is a cop out. There really is not much, or any, cognitive load involved in going on vinted every so often to buy the next size up coat, or sticking a few generic type presents in the shopping basket to have on hand for birthdays.

It doesn't equal the daily grind of housework and night wakings, no

I think a few weeks of swapping jobs might help understand what’s happening - it might be that you aren’t playing to each others strengths and it would feel less burdensome the other way round.

There maybe a few hidden tasks - for example you mention doing all the cooking - but who does the food shopping and the meal planning? Also what job does your wife do? So jobs are more draining than others - and if she is doing a heavy cognitive load job, she might feel better doing the physical jobs at home. Which of you actually liked cooking?

Perception is also key. For example my husband’s experience is that he generally cooks as he cooks most of the evening meals when he’s home. However, he works shifts, so in actuality I cook at least half of the family meals - he just isn’t around for them. But neither of us is wrong in our perception - even though they are different.

She also tells me she does 'all the cognitive load stuff'.

This sounds a bit like BS - sounds like you need to rebalance a few jobs - can your wife do more dog walking ?

what would splitting up look like for you?

This is your idea of a normal balance?!

Im glad you’re not my OH.

I'd suggest to your wife that some of the chores would be more enjoyable if you could do them together. My husband and I often fold the clothes and put them away together. Put on some music you both like while doing that.

Also suggest that on once a month on a day off, that you two spend an afternoon cooking up large batches of meals that freeze well, where you could portion them and rotate them for meals during upcoming weeks/months. That way, you could just pop the dish in the oven/microwave/airfryer.

Maybe she will be more amenable if you frame it that you two are doing everything so separately and it's make the chore less of a chore if you're working as a team to accomplish it.

Kitchen duties and laundry duties are two of the major time consuming tasks in a household, so no, I don't think it's fair that one person solely do those things daily. You could ask her what the most disliked task on her list and you tell her yours. Suggest trading that task one day per week to give each of you a break from it.

Good luck.

He's doing loads more! He does everything in the house and garden while she does some online shopping.

If you’re divvying up exactly who does what, don’t forget the fact that to start off with she grew the child inside of her body and gave birth to it, possibly breastfed too.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect to split everything down the middle since the woman in the couple has invariably started off on the back foot having already gone through hard work, physical and mental strain and pain you’ll never know the like of just to get the kid into the world.
Women for the most part do much more of the childcare in the first couple of years. Sometimes they are then burnt out and I don’t personally see anything terrible in the man taking on extra chores etc for a while (obviously not indefinitely but the kid is barely past pre school).

God really. You do women absolutely no favours by acting like they are saints because they once had a child! I had a child, that doesn’t mean I get to be a lazy bugger for the next few years. It means if you are a partnership you act as a partnership and both pull your weight! Some women on here really do treat the act of having a child as a get out of everything free card. We aren’t divine beings because we reproduce!

So glad you said that. It's exactly what I thought when I read it. No wonder some men think women want to be treated as a princess just for doing what we're biologically made to do.

Thanks for the voice @EmailsaysOOO - I’m sure the flaming torches will be alone soon 😂. I just find it so demeaning. I do not need to take life easy for years because I had a baby, and quite frankly if someone does I would suggest they need to see a doctor. I am strong enough to be a mother and to do life shit too and most of the wonderful women in my life are as well.

Oh my goodness you really dislike her don’t you.

it’s not nice to refer to your child as “the kid” like that.

you think she just buys stuff all day long and dismiss her concerns about the mental load she’s carrying?

I have to do a round of laundry every day, sometimes twice.

For each load I have to:

• Gather all the dirty clothes from washing baskets around the house
• Check and empty pockets
• Sort out whites
• Empty tumble dryer and put dry clothes into separate baskets for each person.
• Clear drying rack in same way
• Remove wet clothes from last wash and hang / tumble dry if needed soon
• Put new load on
• Take baskets upstairs (2 trips)
• Fold, sort and put away x 3 people

It takes about 15 minutes for one of these rounds if I'm fast.

How many times does the childrens' clothes inventory audit happen per day and how long does it take?

I believe I would do it correctly provided the tasks were listed and explained once each. I work in project management and am perfectly capable of ensuring things happen correctly and on time. My wife does a good job, but it seems to exhaust her. The issue is that I feel the physical tasks would exhaust her more. I think I'm simply struggling to accept I've got more energy than she does and that means I need to do more stuff. It just doesn't fit well with what I expected fairness to look like in a marriage...

Cleaner does:

• Hoovering
• Dusting
• Washing floors
• Bathroom
• Toilets
• Windows
• Tidying on the day

I do:

• Tidying living room, bedrooms, kitchen, kids play space
• Putting laundry away
• Changing beds
• Cleaning things like the fridge and the oven
• Any ad-hoc cleaning or tidying - which is mostly the kitchen

We don't really iron but when we do we do our own.

My wife will every couple of months sort a cupboard or similar - again useful stuff but doesn't help the daily effort, it's more because she fancies a rearrange

If that’s the true split then you’re doing more than your fair share just by doing all night wakes tbh. Sounds like she’s probably overwhelmed by everything motherhood so is assuming she’s doing more than you but you’re actually doing a lot of the actual tasks.

Id suggest that you both write out everything you do and then discuss