Читать книгу Zero to Five - Tracy Cutchlow - Страница 14

Share the chores equally

Women in two-income households still do most of the work around the house.

This imbalance is a major minefield that new parents face, especially because baby brings so many new chores. It’s also one of the most frequently cited sources of marital conflict. Find a fair solution, and it might save your marriage. (Hey, it might even improve your sex life. A study of nearly seven thousand couples found that as men’s share of the weekly housework increases, couples have sex a little more often.)

Bottom line: if you’re both working outside the home, household duties need to be shared fairly.

Gay couples are much better at this than straight couples, studies show, because they can’t fall back on the assumptions that come with traditional gender roles. They have to start from scratch and divvy up every single task.

This is what you need to do, too.

A ton of work

My husband and I were pretty surprised by the increase in housework that came with having a baby. This may be because, focused on our careers, we had done as little of it as possible. For example, we used to do laundry every two weeks, if we felt like it. Baby’s cloth diapers and major spit-up habit meant we suddenly found ourselves doing laundry every two days.

We used to dirty one or two pans for dinner—if we weren’t eating out. Plenty of nights we’d cook some pasta, stir in some spinach, and open a jar of sauce. Or toss a pizza in the oven. When baby started eating solid foods, I spent a lot more time cooking fresh produce, beans, and grains. Suddenly we were cleaning a whole pile of kitchen gear every night.

Not to mention wiping off and sweeping up food smeared on the table and dropped on the floor three meals a day. Or picking up toys and the contents of drawers constantly strewn across the house. Or making sure the floors were passably clean, since baby spent so much time on them.

You get the point. Housework goes from “if we get to it” weekly to “must be done” several times daily.

So you can imagine how resentment will quickly build if one person shoulders an unfair amount of that work.

Who will do which chores?

People tend to be satisfied with their contribution to household work—and dissatisfied with their partner’s contribution, studies show. And both parties feel underappreciated. So putting things down on paper is a clear, data-driven way to get on the same page.

With your partner, write down the household tasks each of you is responsible for, or use the list at right as inspiration. If the list is lopsided, decide how to balance it. One strategy is to claim chores you’re each good at or don’t mind doing. Compromise on the rest: flip a coin, trade off, or do them together.

Doing some chores together (say, one person cooks the main dish and the other makes the sides, or both of you clean at the same time) is good for your relationship, too.

FIRST SHIFT, SECOND SHIFT, THIRD SHIFT

The house turns into such a wreck each day, my husband and I made a pact. He would clean the house in the morning, after feeding baby breakfast and playing, so I wasn’t starting the day with a mess. I would clean the house before he returned from work, so he wasn’t coming home to chaos. Then we would tidy up together after dinner. When we stick to our plan, we find that our moods improve, and so do our attitudes toward each other.

TRY THIS

One quick way to make sure you’re left doing most of the work is to continually criticize your partner’s help. Cut each other some slack. Just say, “Thanks. I really appreciate that you put the dishes in the dishwasher.”