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Addison's avatar

How great would it be if this particular comment section were full of men talking to each other instead of like all women

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Laura C's avatar

I have So Many Thoughts, and for background, in a past life I taught sociology of the family. My thoughts about this are already structured around an academic literature on the subject. But it's also personal, because this is something I struggle with a lot, as the product of a very equal partnership who finds myself, to my real shame, in a pretty unequal one. Or is it? It's complicated!

My husband works a lot more paid hours than I do. Like 10-15 more per week, often more. As a result, we don't have the leisure gap that a lot of the literature on household division of labor talks about. I work out five times a week; he works out once. Our time for reading/watching/playing is probably pretty similar. So how do I weigh the time I spend on household labor that he doesn't spend against the fact that he really is working more paid hours? (Not because I have scaled back -- I work 40+, but he's a biglaw lawyer.)

Childcare is where my husband is closest to equal -- because he prioritizes that and understands it very clearly as his responsibility (and pleasure) to be an active parent. He did very close to half the diapers when that was relevant, he does all the baths, he has a specific chunk of the morning getting-ready-for-school routine that he supervises and keeps on track. Today he will take our kid to the eye doctor after having 10 days ago taken him to another medical appointment. Etc.

But to the mental labor/noticer point, I am the one who made those appointments. I am the one who notices that the kid has outgrown some clothes and orders new ones (and if I don't also put the outgrown ones in the donation bag in a timely way, my husband will give them to the kid to wear and not notice that they are too small). I plan almost all of the meals. It goes on. And as this piece makes clear, that is grinding, exhausting work that is invisible to the person who's not doing it. My husband has read enough pieces about gendered division of labor to understand in principle that I am doing this invisible work, but that doesn't translate to a real gut-level understanding of what it means. And so I am so, so tired, and he does not understand how deep that is.

On the surface, if you add up our paid hours and the amount of time we put in on concrete tasks, we are probably equal. It's just that my mind is never, ever at rest because there is always something I feel like I should already have done, or something that needs Noticing. (And trust, I am not even at 60% on things like family photos or holiday decorations. We're talking about medical appointments and haircuts and having clothes that fit.)

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