Work/Wife Balance

[canyonwalker]

That BuzzFeed listicle I read earlier in the week about women who make more than their male partners also highlighted the problem of unequal division of responsibilities at home. Traditional thinking holds that as the man is the primary breadwinner of the family, the woman is the primary housekeeper. The personal stories reveal that while this is supposedly an economic division of labor it's really a gender role (unsurprising to many). Even women who become the family's main breadwinner report still having to do the lion's share of the housework.

In our household we've always viewed housework as something to be split evenly. We're both responsible for it— and we're both able to do it! That doesn't mean everything splits 50/50, though. There's more to the equation to balance than simply whether we both did an equal number of minutes of vacuuming each month. In particular I've been doing more than 50% of the housework for several years now because of something I jokingly call Work/Wife Balance. (Yes, it's a play on the term work/life balance.)

My wife works a job that requires she be in-office at least 4 days a week. That seems broadly true of her industry; it's been the case across 3 companies she's worked at in the past 10 years. During the same time jobs in my industry have been largely remote-first.

Working remotely gives me two big advantages when it comes to free time. One, obviously, is that I don't have to spend time commuting. My wife spends at least 45 minutes a day commuting, and it was 90+ minutes before her company moved office several months ago. That's extra time I can use to take care of chores that's not available to her. Two, I have flexibility in my schedule during the day. I can take a few minutes here and there to put sheets and towels through the wash or unload the dishwasher. I can take a long lunch once or twice a week and pick up some food at the grocery store.

Again, equitable division of responsibility doesn't mean equal number of minutes pushing the vacuum. It's about balancing free time and energy. It's my work/wife balance.

Comments

[sorcyress]

Equity vs equality! Yes!!!

My household is three adult humans (and one adult cat*) and we rarely argue about chores...in part because we all do different ones! The kitchen is the clearest example, as Ezri does the cooking and grocery list making, Rey is in charge of keeping dishwasher loaded, run, and unloaded, and I am in charge of washing un-dishwasherable items, cleaning the stove, and buying small amounts of groceries on my way home from school 2-3 times a week. We're not necessarily doing "equal" work by any definition, but we're all pretty much only doing work we enjoy doing!

~Sor

*Nigel does not pull his weight with the housekeeping, but he does perform a significant amount of the house Looking Cute duties

[canyonwalker]

We also divide our chores by who's better able to do what. For example, I do all vacuuming because of the lifting involved. I also scrub toilets because it bother me less than it bothers Hawk. Hawk does straightening and dusting. She loads and unloads the dishwasher more than I do. I cook most of the shared meals. Overall I do about 75% of the chore work because I have more free time & energy due to working from home.

[some_other_dave]

I know what you mean about the cat. We have three (down from four!) and none of them does a lick of housework (pun intended). We even have to brush the little bastiges!!