It’s a quiet Sunday morning. It’s 9am, but no one is up yet except the cats. The 11yo is with his grandparents and the 14yo is still asleep (as are her two friends). My husband is downstairs, still in bed.
So this seems like the perfect time to write about who does what around here. I love reading other people’s division of labor posts, and have been wanting to write one myself. I’m a little disappointed that it’s happening at the tail end of NaBloPoMo, but I suppose better late than never.
I’ve been considering a way to organize these thoughts – weekday vs weekend? time of day? – but nothing seems to work perfectly, so I’ll probably be putting it together in some haphazard, hard to follow way. I apologize in advance.
In some ways, my husband and I don’t follow gender norms, and in some ways we are the poster couple of stereotypical division of labor in the US. My husband does most of the cooking. I prepare (and I use that word purposefully, because it rarely involves actual ingredients) most of the kids meals, but he does the bulk of the cooking. I endeavor to cook us a meal once a week, but there are many weeks when that doesn’t happen. There are also many weeks when he isn’t cooking nightly, in fact he rarely cooks every night (we eat leftovers, or something easy like pasta, or we’ll “scrounge” – our word for us each putting together anything that satisfies us.) Still, my husband definitely spends more time in the kitchen than I do.
And he’s not in there just cooking. He also does the dishes a lot (this is probably a 75/25% split) and loads and runs the dishwasher (the 14yo empties it). He keeps track of what we need to restock in the kitchen. I do a fair amount of our grocery shopping at Costco (cereal, pasta, Mac n Cheese, butter, cream cheese, tofu, frozen waffles, chicken nuggets, frozen fruit) and the short stops in a local grocery store for milk, veggies and other perishables that I can’t buy in bulk. My husband does at least one giant TJs shop a month for other essentials.
I buy basically everything else, for everybody. That includes toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, facial cleanser, etc) for myself, the kids and my husband, along with clothes, outerwear, shoes, school supplies, etc. My husband recently made his own Macy’s order, but in the past I’ve purchased, or helped him purchase, most of his clothes. I also buy everything for the cats, which isn’t nothing because one of them has dietary restrictions, so I can only get them certain food from certain places.
On weekend mornings I get up at 6am to finish the kids’ lunches (they each have five Bentgos and they pack the non-perishable snack sections all at once on Sundays, so I only add the sandwich, or bagel in the morning). This year I also make the 14yos breakfast and get her out of bed, but my husband has been the sole parent on kid morning duty for every other year. He makes them breakfast and makes sure they get ready on time (and used to get them ready when they needed the help) and out the door. He also feeds the cats in the morning, which is a real task because someone needs to sit with them until Panther stops eating, to make sure Serval doesn’t come over and eat all her food before she has a chance to do so herself.
While my husband takes mornings with the kids, I’m in charge of afternoons and all the driving that accompanies that time frame (we only have one car and I’m usually driving it, so I do pretty much any errand that requires the car). I’ve spend countless hours driving them to swimming (14yo) or martial arts (11yo), though those requirements are changing (the 14yo gets herself to and from swim now and the 11yo walks home from school instead of getting picked up from aftercare). I am the one who takes them to all their other special events (birthdays, friends’ houses) and appointments (doctors, dentist). I’m usually the one who plans something to do on the weekends to get them out of the house and I am ALWAYS the one who makes plans with their friends, and the one who hosts their friends when they are at our house.
My husband does plan fun outings for the family, but I am also expected to join. He very rarely does something with the kids without me, though he does take the 14yo to concerts and recently took the 11yo to a Warriors game. I think he’ll do more with them as they get older and want to do things he likes doing.
I also need to add that my husband plans our date nights and trips. He makes reservations and thinks of fun things we can do near those reservations. When we went to Mexico City he had reservations for us at all the most popular bars and restaurants months in advance. I am HORRIBLE about this kind of thing and very much appreciate that he takes the time to research good places and make reservations. It would take me hours to do the same.
And the husband does do a fair amount of other kinds of planning. He usually initiates the summer camp conversation and already has some ideas bookmarked for each kid. He initiates the summer travel conversations and either books the tickets (if we’re all flying together) or makes sure I book them (if the kids and I are flying before/after him). He handles all our money stuff, which I’m embarrassed about, but also thankful for because I was horrible with my own money stuff before we met and am very thankful that he manages it now. I know he’s doing a MUCH better job than I could.
He also manages the tech stuff in our house, including the kids’ device limits. I get VERY frustrated when tech stuff doesn’t work, and can barely turn on the Switch, and LOATHE trying to interact with our son’s Apple watch, so I really appreciate this.
While my husband does pick up around the house, and especially in the kitchen, I do all the cleaning. For years I would look at the counter he cleared off and wonder, how could he now also wipe it down! It’s disgusting! But now I just feel thankful he cleared it off, so I can do the most satisfying part myself. I sweep (daily), vacuum (weekly) and mop (monthly?) the floors. I dust and shake out the rugs. The kids clean the upstairs bathroom that we all use (14yo – sink and 11yo – toilet), but I clean their shower and our bathroom downstairs. My husband is better at helping the kids tidy up their bedrooms and then I clean them (the 11yo does vacuums his own carpet, the 14yo sweeps her room).
I change the sheets on the beds (but only once a month – maybe? I want to do a post about how frequently I do things, because I’m pretty sure I don’t change my sheets or wash my towels frequently enough). I do all the laundry, and it’s mostly done on the weekends. I fold everyone’s clothes, but the kids put theirs away (I tried having the 14yo do her own laundry, and fold her own clothes, but it ended up being more of a headache than just doing it myself. I’m hoping to retry next year when we’re past the initial transition to high school and she has the bandwidth for it). I honestly don’t mind folding laundry – putting it away is my least favorite part, so right now I’m okay with this.
I fix things around the house. I unclog sinks and bathtubs. I build furniture when we get it (because it’s always from IKEA). I hang and mount things on the walls. I am definitely the “handy man” around here. My father-in-law bought me my drill!
I also do all the driving. When we take a road trip, I drive most of the time. I am way more comfortable behind the wheel than my husband. I take the car for servicing and to get new tires. The car is definitely my domain, not my husband’s.
I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting, and I wonder what my husband would think of this post. Does he do more than I don’t even see? My first instinct is, “I doubt it!” because I feel like I am aware of everything that happens around here, at least as it relates to our family. But there probably are things he does that I’m not mentioning, because I either don’t know about them or am not aware enough about them. I’m also probably forgetting some things I do. Still, this is a fairly accurate accounting of our division of labor.
As many of you know, the division of labor has been a point of contention in our marriage, and for years I harbored major resentments. The pandemic changed our dynamic quite a bit and now I feel better about things. Would I appreciate a little more support sometimes? Yes. Do I wish my husband could do more without getting exhausted or sulking? Yes. But we’ve found a split that works well enough for us, at least most of the time. Things are definitely a lot better than they were when the kids were young, and required way more of our time. Maybe they will continue to get better as the kids get older.
Reading this reminded me of how much work goes in to raising a family. Like, if you lived alone, you’d still have to eat and clean and so on, but it would likely be much more simple. I should never live alone, I would probably just eat mac & cheese or potato chips for dinner every night.
Same! When I learned about “girl dinner,” I was like, dude I’ve been doing that for decades. 🤣🤣🤣
Same!!! I’d have cereal every night 😉 A bowl of Lucky Charms… Or honey nut cheerios. 🙂
This was interesting! I would say it’s an unusual division of labor in a lot of ways. I love how your husband cooks and does dishes, and does the morning shift with the kids and cats. Those things are HUGE. Yes- when you add up everything you’re doing it’s still more. But unfortunately women still take on way more of the household management than men, even when both spouses are working. As long as you’re okay with your current arrangement- which it sounds like you are- it sounds like it’s working. And I do think it will get easier as the kids get older.
This was so interesting – thank you for sharing your division of labor. It’s always nice to learn how other couples/families *do things*. I am glad you feel like the labor is distributed more evenly now. I am not sure if it’s in our genes or still some leftover of the patriarchy, but women just always carry more of the mental load regardless how much the labor is divided.
This was a really interesting post to me. It’s something I have thought a LOT about over the past year or so. I was married for 20 years, and in 2022 my husband passed away. When we were married I did all the cleaning, all the planning, all the car service appointments (sometimes he’d go with me to get new tires if we could go eat somewhere at the same time and leave the car). His contribution was taking the trash out. Period. I also worked fulltime, up to 80 hours a week at one point. While I like to cook he hated any home cooking and it usually caused an argument if I did cook so I seldom did so.
Two and half years later I’ve moved in with my boyfriend and his kids. (Please don’t judge on the speed of this- we weren’t looking we’re both widowed and found something we weren’t looking for) Our division is a lot more equitable. We both cook, and we both clean. I do all our laundry. The kids have been doing their own laundry for years (14 and 12). The 14 year old is supposed to load/empty the dishwasher although this is a constant aggravation for me as the kitchen is almost never clean. I have an injury that makes some parts of cleaning like heavy scrubbing difficult, so he will do the things that are difficult for me and I’ll do the rest- he scrubs the shower I clean the counters, wash floors etc. He has completely taken over car maintenance because he is absolutely Mr. Handy and likes to do it, and it saves us money. He runs the tech side of our very techie house, I make get kids up, make sure the huge number of school emails are read, permission slips are signed and all that kind of stuff, including coordinating with the moms about playdates etc. I also do the research on things like donations, finding a doctor, anything requiring a lot of reading because I’m a quick reader and English is his 2nd language. We essentially divide everything based on who would do it better. We both cook and on a good day we cook together. Since we cook 6-7 days a week this is a good thing.