How do couples fairly split household admin and childcare responsibilities?

[NurtureGrow]

Hello,

I am interested how people manage life and house admin.
We are married with a 20 month old toddler.

My husband works 5 days a week.
I work 3 days a week out of the home + 2 at home with our toddler.

This equates to us both working 5 days a week, but I would say me more.

Yet I do:

85% cleaning
85% arranging social things
95% of meal planning and food ordering
99% buying anything for our toddler
100% DIY
100% gardening
100% packing and unpacking when going away

I find I'm not coping.. I could work more if my husband did more of the above. When I say it should be 50/50, he always says... 'my business..' as if that's a reason to sacrifice me. I have been struggling with low mood. Forgetting things. I just can't get him to see that 'his business' is a choice and why should I be paying the price. I have been patient for over 2 years.

I would genuinely like to know how others manage and how you get through to your partner, that a relationship should be a partnership. Please tell me.

It sounds wild, but I had no idea so many women become house managers, life coordinators after getting married. I can't believe we are all enduring this.

Meanwhile, sometime ago he also said he thinks 'I have become unambitious.' I used to have a highly demanding job, but how can I do more, when also having to do this. When I say things need doing, my husband likes to say 'it's not a priority,' but indeed just because you ignore it, doesn't make it go away.

Not especially helpful for your situation, but we discussed it prior to having kids, as others around us who already had kids didn’t have a great balance and we both saw that and agreed we wouldn’t do that.

DH works 4 days a week and I’m a SAHM, so while a lot of the “household load” falls to me, he still does his fair share of pick ups/drop offs, kids parties and activities, etc. He does most of the cooking because he enjoys it, I do the organising because I weirdly enjoy it and we split the kids bedtimes to do one each if we’re both home in the evening.

He has a season ticket for the football, if there’s a home match at 3pm, he takes the kids to their swimming in the morning then for a bike ride or trip to the park or does their homework with them before he goes out. I then take over the parenting until he gets home (he rarely goes out after the match) or until they’re in bed.
He’ll happily wipe down in the kitchen or run the vacuum around if it’s needed and I’ve been busy doing other things.
he also does the dishwasher, cats litter trays and bins as his “jobs”
we get a cleaner in once a quarter for a deep clean and I stay on top of it the rest of the time.

and it just works

I struggled with this myself while on maternity leave. I was doing most of the housework and childcare, yet my partner, who worked from home, asked if I could also make his lunches. I found it difficult because it felt as though my time simply didn't count.

I've come to think that the fairest starting point is making sure both partners have roughly the same amount of free time. Paid work and unpaid work are still work.

I'm quite a tech-minded, time-conscious person. I value other people's time and expect the same in return, so I wondered whether transparency might help. I started writing down everything I did each day for the household and the baby. Not to keep score, but simply to make the invisible visible.

When I showed him the list, there was definitely a reaction. I think it made him uncomfortable because it highlighted how much I was carrying and that some of those jobs needed to become his. It didn't solve everything, but it gave us something concrete to discuss instead of arguing over vague feelings.

thank you so much for sharing.

it’s hard to read that, re. lunches.

Ive put a lot of things in place this week, to try to save time, so I can manage more. I’ve written down all I’ve done, but I am thinking it would be good to write down usual days with hours taken as well.. not just tasks.

I used to do this in my work, when I had a highly paid role (not a lawyer etc, but wanted to keep track.) Now I can’t take on that kind of role either our son, but doing most at home.

Thank you again for sharing!

You should agree to it. You should say if you’ve decided the only way you can be present in a reasonable way for your family is by stopping your business then yes I think you had better. I never supported you to abandon me and your child for the business, and that’s what happening, so if you can’t rebalance then you may have to choose.

I worked part-time. DH did the cooking on my work days and kept the house tidy. I tended to do housework on my days off.

Childcare was shared as much as work patterns/shift work allowed.

I did (and still do) all life admin but DH does the garden maintenance, bins, sorting car service/MOT, midweek shopping top ups at bakers/butchers etc.

I was a SAHP after my second was born, but worked part time with my first - two weeks on two weeks off. We had a cleaner.
My DH paid all the expenses (he earned 20 times what I did), and did the financial admin. He cooked at weekends. He was also very tidy and didn’t create mess. He was lousy at DIY. He worked long hours and travelled with his job. He did his own packing, and was pretty self sufficient.
I did 95% to do with the kids. I ran the house. If we needed a plumber I organised it. Car needed MOT I did it. I did the shopping etc. (no deliveries back then)! He was happy to pay for my kids to go to nursery a couple days a week to give me a break, even when I wasn’t working. My second started when she turned one.
I did wish, on occasion, that he was more ‘present’ when he was home, but I understood that his job was in a way his first love. But I can’t fault him. His hard work afforded us a wonderful life. Though I did say on occasion when the job got on top of him, that we could do with much less if he wanted to step back, but that wasn’t how he was built. That was the man I married.