How do couples fairly discuss childcare, housework and mental load?

[MumWithEspresso]

I've been wondering whether anyone has found a system that genuinely feels fair.
Not necessarily 50/50, but something where both partners feel their time and effort are recognised.

When I was on maternity leave, I realised we kept having the same argument. One of us would say, "But I worked all day," and the other would think, "So did I."

The problem was that we were remembering different things. Paid work was obvious. The endless childcare, planning, tidying, cooking, appointments and mental load weren't.

Has anyone found a practical way of tracking or discussing it without it turning into a score-keeping exercise?
I'm genuinely curious whether there are methods that actually work.

I do t know what the answer is but you do right to get this ironed out now. I ended up working part time for a long time and have done everything. I am back full time and he doesn’t get that I can’t do everything anymore. He always asks why the house is a mess, Urm cos you don’t do anything.

I’m going to be a little blunt here, but if your partner doesn’t recognise that staying home with the kid(s) all day and taking the lead with the housework is just as tiring (or more tiring) than work, then they aren’t an emotionally intelligent person. A very, very small percentage of jobs will trump this.

There’s a difference, of course, to both parents being strung out with life – both woken by a baby at night, both dealing with activities and tantrums and cooking and bath and bed in the evening and weekend – and then having tiffs about who is more tired. That’s commonplace at some point in every marriage where kids are involved.

But a partner consistently not recognising you and consistently not pulling their weight is a different story. They aren’t a good partner and they aren’t a good parent.

I don’t think the question is how to best come to an equal, mutual understanding. Unfortunately I think it’s how to increase someone’s emotional intelligence and care for you. Sadly I doubt that can be done.

That's exactly the situation I was thinking of. It sounds as though the expectation stayed the same even though your circumstances changed completely.

I sometimes wonder whether part of the problem is that paid work has obvious "proof" (hours, salary, job title), whereas everything that keeps a household running just fades into the background because it's expected.

I don't know whether actually writing it all down for a week would change anyone's perspective, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has tried it.

I broadly agree. If someone genuinely doesn't recognise the amount of work involved in running a home and caring for children, it's difficult to build an equal partnership.

At the same time, I do wonder whether there are cases where it's ignorance rather than indifference. Sometimes people simply don't notice everything that gets done because it's become invisible to them. If that's the case, making it visible might help. If they still don't care once it's obvious, then I think that's a very different issue.

There is a set of cards and a book called Fair Play. Eve Rodsky I think?

Well, I'm currently a SAHM. Whilst my husband is physically at work, I do whatever chores I can get done whilst looking after the children. Anything I haven't done by the time he gets back from work, we share. This includes evening childcare so he might look after the kids while I cook, or sometimes vice versa. Sometimes we both do different chores at the same time. When all the chores are done we both relax.

I can't see how this will change when I go back to work. I will probably still do less hours than him, so in any time he is physically at work but I am not, I will do whatever chores I can, and then we will share whatever I don't manage.

By and large I think ignorance and indifference are the same thing once you reach a certain point in adulthood.

No job is really ‘invisible’. They just don’t want to do it.

I try to focus more on having equal downtime rather than thinking about how much we do. I also at one point wrote everything I do down and asked DH to do the same and worked out what he could take on.

This. I was SAHM with five children under eight. My XH thought that his contribution was going to work and that was it. When he was at home it was his 'relaxing' time - he'd been at work all day! He simply couldn't, or wouldn't grasp that having five small people, three not yet at school, dependent on me was work too. I think he imagined I lay on the sofa all day while the children 'played' and the fairies did the housework and cooking.

When we divorced and I was a single mum to five children under ten, it was actually easier because half the resentment at being on duty 24/7, unacknowledged, was gone.

I don’t know “the answer” but like pp, it works in my house because dh and I both share a desire for things to be fair. That’s your only chance otherwise you just become a nag!

Every single day starts with “our tasks” - a silent reaffirmation of our commitment to equality as he unloads the washing machine and I unload the dishwasher.

We agreed that if we are both working FT and raising kids then we need a cleaner. Two hours a week is enough for us - it forces us both to tidy up properly once a week and it means kitchen, bathroom, dusting and vacuum are done.

The next thing that helps hugely is having three magnetic whiteboards stuck on the fridge AND a shared calendar on the wall for planning ahead.

We re-plan every Saturday morning after I come back from the supermarket.

I have a whiteboard grid for the week that shows for each day:

• where is dh (UK work trips/ start and finish)
• meal plan for that day (which kids need packed lunch, and what’s for dinner)
• extras - this is not regular kids clubs which dh and i know by rote, but extras like sports day, play dates, parties, dh night out, my gym classes

The next whiteboard is a List of Things To Do. It doesn’t work brilliantly because I still do mountains behind the scenes and so does dh. But if there’s an annual thing coming up or something we are struggling to get done or is bugging us, it goes on the list.

The last whiteboard is the shopping list (I take a photo on my way out to do the weekly shop).

We also play to our strengths-

• dh likes money and tech and DIY so he handles all our savings, upgrades and big projects.
• dh does the lawns, I do the rest of the gardening
• i like shopping and socialising so i buy all the groceries and kids’ clothes, and cover birthday/ Christmas/ holiday planning as well as all the school admin and play dates. School admin is a constant chore with so many apps and letters to manage.

There are of course some things that cause niggles but after fifteen years we have pretty much got it nailed.

I also do take the time to appreciate him. I am not sure he cares but I regularly praise and thank him for whatever little extra thing he’s done to make our lives better or easier. He never does the same - but I know he recognises my effort because he’ll sometimes jump in to help and say “I’ll get that, you’ve had a busy day” and it makes a difference to feel “seen”.

We had years of issues. When dh and I first lived together I worked from home and had two kids so naturally a lot of the house jobs fell to me and we ended up in a situation where he would do bins/ garden/ diy and I did everything else. This felt unfair and there was a lot of back n forth. Then I started working out the house and naturally he had to cook some meals/ put a wash on etc . Then I got pregnant and the second I went on mat leave he dropped everything agsin.
What worked in the end was I made a list of all the jobs (mental and physical) I picked 3/4 (I work part time now) and I stopped doing the rest. I didn’t tell him to do them or complain I just left them and by some miracle he just started doing them! So now we have a fairer split but I just make sure he doesn’t try to push his jobs on me.

Unless people have a lived experience ofnsomething, they can't know what it is like. They can only imagine. And given that you're not prepared for the relentlessness of it when it happens, someone who hasn't experienced it can't imagine it.

Have equal amounts of free time and leave him to do everything at home. Don't get things ready before you go, finish things off or make it easy. Just leave him with waht you'd be left with.

I've posted this so many times but my then husband had no idea. He imagined I'd be sat at home all day watching TV whilst the baby contentedly gurgled or napped.

When she was nearly 1, I went away for the week and he did everything. And really well. But I also knew he'd planned to have a friend over a few nights to watch a film and thought it would be a pretty relaxing week.

His first words when I returned were, I'm never going to ask what you do all day again! And he didn't.

And he didn't see his friend once. And everything was immaculate when I returned except for the pile of clean laundry that never made it to the drawers. But he never mentioned that again either!

You need to hammer this out and decide who is doing what, but you can’t complain if what he does isn’t up to your ideal. I say this because I’m having a problem now that we are in our 50/60’s. I was a SAHM or PT for a long time so I used to do the housework, as DH was FT. Now he is retired and I’m still PT but he doesn’t do anything near half. If I say anything I get treated as if I’m nagging. He will put a couple of washes on and cook supper on the days I work, plus he cuts the grass, but that’s no where near half.

Disclaimer - our house is never fully clean and tidy by a long shot. However, I work 60 hours a week and dh works 40 in a manual job. We are both shattered and just do as much as we can. Don't have set roles, just do what needs doing. He's often home before me so usually does a big tidy up. I keep on top of things as I move round the house.

Thank you for your response.
How long did it take to get to this system feeling automatic rather than something you had to keep negotiating?

I was a SAHM.for years but the moment dh walked through the door we were 50-50 on everything.

I worked weekends for some years and it used to drive me insane when people asked '' is your dh babysitting " I used to respond "No he is parenting I am not paying ukm to mind our children"

While I was a SAHM. I took on more of the mental load. But when I started working full time that got spread between us. Theese days dh works from home so he does more of the mental load than I do.

I do wonder though if my growingnup i Scandinavia gave me a different view of this ad I often just expected dh to do stuff friends dh didnt do without asking..

Thank you all so much for such honest and thoughtful replies — this thread has genuinely been one of the most useful things I've read on this.
I'll be upfront about why I'm asking this next bit: I've actually been building an app around exactly this problem, so I'd love your honest take, good or bad.
The idea is that you'd log the hours you each spend on housework/childcare/mental load, it works out roughly what that time is worth, and shows the split alongside paid work — then suggests where tasks could realistically be redistributed based on actual time and capacity, not guesswork.
If you'd had something like that years ago, do you think it would have helped things along faster — or do you think it wouldn't have made a difference to how things eventually got resolved for you?

So, not a genuine post then? Right.

Well I've reported it. Research isn't allowed on here.

But my honest answer to your last post is that no one is actually going to have time to use an app like this. You're effectively asking people to complete a time and motion study alongside actually doing everything.

Not gonna happen.

I’m not sure we had a system as such but from memory we basically both kept going until everything was done and we could sit down together or go to bed. Whether he’d been at work all day and I’d been wrangling kids all day, neither of us expected to clock off until everything was done.

what helped:

• very similar standards in terms of tidiness / housework / food etc. so we had the same expectations about how things should be domestically.
• both grew up with dads who did their bit and did not slack off.
• Digging deep and finding a reserve of kindness towards the other person. Accepting that we are both knackered and stressed - for different reasons but the end result was the same.

Bad show OP - that’s not on.

Most men grow up sheltered from the amount of work required to live family life.

when they grow up, they choose to look away because 1. it suits them to do so and 2. Society enables them, by pretending that the incredible inequality this creates (and which would be considered outrageous if it were along any other axis of power than sex) doesn’t exist.

When I worked for a putatively feminist website I proposed an app that would allow you to enter literally every ‘job’, including planning/keeping things in mind/mental load) so that the discussion could be had slightly more neutrally. Alas, it fell on deaf ears ;-)

but I think there is something accidentally similar - ie an organisation app that encourages you to drill down into every aspect of life and assign each one an amount of time and a level of stress.

I think if you need an app your relationship needs work.

I think having a list of things that are really important to you individually can help. For example, waking up to a clean kitchen is really important to me, so both of us do our best to make sure that happens. My partner finds it very important to have some free time where we or he does something fun so we also try to make sure that happens by organising the weekend to allow for it and making sure it isn't full of errands.

I think you have to be on a similar page about how you want to live first, because then you both have a standard to work towards maintaining.

I have to talk about a friend of mine who was spending all the time interacting with the baby for months and wasn't doing any housework or finding the time to make herself something to eat. I had to agree with her husband that it isnt sustainable and it is important for baby to learn to entertain themselves for a few minutes while you get on with basic acts of daily living like washing dishes or making a sandwich for yourself.

That's fair on the format, and I take the point on the rules — I'll be more careful about that going forward.
For what it's worth, this isn't hypothetical for me. I went through exactly this as a single mum, and it's the reason I started building something at all. I probably should have led with that instead of asking it as a survey question.

We put effort into not making it competitive and not point scoring off each other. We are a team. It’s also important to remember that it can’t always be 50/50. I don’t always have 50 to give 😂 so DH picks up more and the same the other way round.