There has been a significant shift in the dynamics of marriage and household responsibilities. Yet, women still bear disproportionate burdens of household chores and emotional labor. The lopsided distribution of responsibilities frequently leads to resentment and frustration from wives.
Equitable domestic duties are part of partnership in marriage. However, traditional gender roles still play a significant role in many households. Women often have multiple roles to juggle, from childcare to emotional support.
One primary cause of this resentment is mental load, the invisible work of managing household tasks, such as planning, organizing, and remembering. In addition to men participating in specific chores, wives often coordinate and oversee these activities. Being constantly reminded of what needs to be done can be exhausting and isolating, leading to feelings of resentment towards partners.
Free Downloadable Chores List and Housework List
This free and downloadable chores list and housework list can be a useful tool for you and your spouse, as can Coexist, shared in the same post. However, both fall well short of being enough. For couples to work together effectively they must establish a system that includes four key factors.
A System of Cooperation and Teamwork
1. Communication
The responsibilities need to be divided over a series of household meetings. It takes time and cooperation. Partners need to discuss what they enjoy, what they don’t, and what they are skilled at doing.
2. Acceptable level of care
Research from the University of Cambridge suggests that affordance theory partly explains why men and women can walk into the same kitchen and see two different things. The authors argue that through societal norms, women are more likely to see crumbs on the counter, believe the kitchen is not clean, and feel it needs to be cleaned right now. Whereas men don’t see the crumbs.
Agreeing on an acceptable level of care takes time and compromise.
3. Ownership
Shared household tasks and sharing singular tasks are two very different things. Singular tasks include doing the dishes or taking out the trash. One person should own singular tasks to avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings. More importantly, it frees one partner from shouldering the mental load of all the household tasks.
If you own a task, you own everything that comes with it. If it’s your job to deal with the trash, remember to take it out, bring it back in, deal with garbage sprayed in the yard from a windstorm, and call the trash company when they don’t pick it up. You get the point.
4. Boundaries
Nobody likes a micromanager, especially in your own home. Dr. Coleman is the author of The Lazy Husband. As Dr. Coleman explained on a recent Modern Husbands podcast, some wives tend to be maternal gatekeepers, leading husbands to give up.
There are good reasons for maternal gatekeeping, which is a separate post in itself. However, the fact remains that spouses must respect the approach each takes to manage the responsibilities they own in the home.
The Fair Play System
I am a big fan of using the ready-made system, Fair Play, as a tool to manage the partnership process in household management.
Free tools are available on the Fair Play System. Eve Rodsky, who created the system and wrote the #1 NY Times Best Seller Fair Play, also provides an excellent explainer video.
Resentment builds over time by failing to establish an equitable approach to home management early in the relationship. Societal norms often take root; women tackle more of the daily grind of tasks than men, resent their husbands for not helping or understanding, and the relationship begins to go south.
You now have the beginnings of a solution. And as you know, it’s much more than a chore list.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
