I never thought I would be in the situation where Chris and I’s roles would be so traditional. When we first got married I found pride in the fact that we did not conform to old ideas about mens work and womans work. We both worked, both went to school, and housework was about 50/50. He even did all the laundry!
Then we bought a house. Roles became a little lopsided but still…I would often come home to him mopping the floor, or cleaning the shower.
Then we became parents. Okay perhaps I did a little bit more of the work in regards to the baby but it didn’t seem so bad.
Then I quit my job to be a stay at home mom and he suddenly thought that 100% of the house work and parenting work was now MY JOB. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Wake up, tend to daughters needs, clean the kitchen that was dirty from the night before, make breakfast, clean the kitchen again, entertain daughter, vacuum the floor, do laundry, try and do homework, tend to daughters needs every 10 minutes in the middle of all of this, make lunch, clean the kitchen…you get the idea. This is how my day goes.
Every day about 2p.m. I start plotting how I can just go get a job and send her back todaycare. It’s not that I don’t love being home with her, it’s just that I don’t love all the other stuff that goes a long with it. Mainly feeling like all I am anymore is a housekeeper, cook, and maid. Don’t get me wrong those are all valuable professions…but I don’t feel valued.
Things got a little worse when I started school last August. I never realized how difficult it really is to do homework with a 2 year old now 3 year old in the house. I thought it would be a piece of cake…more like stale fruit cake.
This week I have reached my breaking point. I am having Easter at my house on Sunday and guess what? A maid is going to come and clean my house for me. I realize this won’t solve the real issue, but at least it will make me happy for now.
I tried to do a complete strike on Monday…it lasted until about noon when I couldn’t stand living in the sqaulor any longer. There were a few times pre-Eva that I would go on strike for a day when I felt like Chris wasn’t doing enough and that always worked. Now that I am home all day I just can’t stand to be here in the mess.
Some ideas I came up with for a longer term solution.
A. Have Chris give me an actual paycheck every week for all the wonderful work I have done. Oh and monthly reviews where he tells me what a great job I’m doing and gives me a pay raise. -I actually think this would make me feel better but it sounds a little bit creepy. Although I do think not getting an actual pay check is the heart of the issue. For some reason work just doesn’t feel so bad when you aren’t doing it for free. Does that make any sense? Even though I spend the money he brings home it still just isn’t the same.
B. Divide the house so that we are both responsible for keeping certain rooms clean.
C. Make a list of what I do every week and what he does every week and come up with a more equitable list.
I want to hear from others…What do you do to keep things even?
Mommy D says...
There was a moment a few months ago when I realized that paying a maid service to clean my home was the best choice for my family. I actually sat down with a pen and paper and faced the facts of how much time and energy and stress was being wasted cleaning my home. Time and energy that should have been spent playing with both of my children (Luke 4 & Brooklyn 1)and spending quality time with my husband(not fighting about how we both work full time and yet I was handling 80% of all things home on top of my day job). I cannot tell you how much of a relief it has been to all of us and I’m so proud of myself for forcing the fact with my hubby and getting it done. I basically just told him we can fight or we can pay, what would you like to do…
March 31st, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Unplanned Cooking says...
Definitely hire the maid. Now that we have 3 kids, rather than splitting the work, we split the leisure time. And our rule is everybody pitches in to pick up the kitchen before we go to bed at night. I can’t get my feet under me if I wake to a dirty kitchen.
March 31st, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Jill says...
Love it! Maid it is.
March 31st, 2010 at 8:29 pm
pixielation says...
Sometimes they just don’t see the fact that you seem to be “at work” 24 hours a day. If keeping house and cooking and taking care of kids can be done with by 6pm, at which point you can put up your feet and relax, then sure – it’s all yours. But it never is. You start at 7am, you finish at 9pm. If you worked any other job for those hours, you’d want double time!
For me, I work from home between the kids school hours. Then once I’ve picked up the kids it’s all dinner and clearing up and bathtime/bedtime. And my husband will still sometimes open his big mouth and shove his foot in it, suggesting that since I was at home, why didn’t I just also clean the kitchen, scrub the bathroom and do some vacuuming? Not in those words, but it’s comes over loud and clear. “you were here, so why is this place messy?”
I once tried not cleaning the bathroom to see what his breaking point was. Funny thing was, he didn’t have one!
I don’t really have the perfect answer though. Definitely some kind of discussion about what is “your job” and what is household tasks shared by both!
April 1st, 2010 at 11:46 am
Jill says...
Oh my goodness pixielation. I am guessing that your husband works in an office? Wouldn’t it be funny to suggest that he fire the cleaning service at his work and do it himself in between work?
April 1st, 2010 at 6:06 pm
New bingo sites says...
It does seem like the role of them mom greatly surpasses the role of the father. I’m definitely not underestimating the role of the father, but I think marriage is 50/50 work. Hang in there, I know you can do this. I’ve always looked up to moms, and all the work they do.
April 6th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Karie says...
Good for you for hiring the cleaning service. I am too OCD to hire anyone so I spend one ENTIRE day cleaning top to bottom and it usually lasts about 2 weeks until I have to do it again. I would love to have had my hubs pay me for the hard work…every two weeks and daily! LOL
April 8th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Kat says...
Well, honestly, I don’t try to keep things even anymore it is almost impossible. I’m pretty lucky to have married the man I have. Now I know plenty of men who are pigs and who don’t care how much their wives do, they just won’t do anything extra. So I’m counting my blessings!
Kat
April 11th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Heidi says...
You have just blogged about some of my greatest fears. Since I’m childless, I can’t relate completely. HOWEVER, I do work from home and I have found that this situation lends itself to doing loads of laundry or vacuuming between writing stories and conducting phone interviews. Oh, and walking the dog. Let’s not forget walking the dog. It’s just ASSUMED that I’ll do it twice a day, even though many days I DON’T work from home. At least three times a week I drive an hour to Sarasota, where I cover events and/or meet with people for interviews and photographs. I swear sometimes I work MORE than him, but there’s this unspoken thing that hovers between us that says: You work from home. You are saddled with house chores.
The thing that scares me is what happens when we have a baby? If I continue to work from home, how on earth am I going to juggle it all?
In fairness to my husband, he is a wonderful cook and a very patient guy who could care less if the house is vacuumed. I’m grateful for his culinary skills because I have none. Sometimes I think household chores aren’t split down the middle and then I remind myself of the alternative – sitting still. I do not sit still. I very rarely watch more than an hour of TV a day and I don’t play video games (Joe’s form of relaxation.) I like keeping busy. I like multi-tasking.
Like you, if I waited around for my husband to clean the bathroom, it would never get done. I’m sure the chores thing will comes to a head once we have kids, but for now I’ll clean the house and plot future strategies.
PS. Joe regularly scrubs the bath tub and makes the bed. That’s nice, right?
April 17th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Jill says...
Heidi,
I really think that when you have a baby your going to need some kind of help to juggle it all. If you don’t like the idea of a maid then maybe a babysitter or a nanny to come for a few hours during the day. It might not be a problem when the baby is still little and sleeping all day but eventually it gets nearly impossible to do anything without being interrupted every 30 seconds!
Joe wins major points for scrubbing the bathtub! One of my least favorite chores.
April 21st, 2010 at 8:40 am
Amy says...
There was a moment a few months ago when I realized that paying a maid service to clean my home was the best choice for my family. I actually sat down with a pen and paper and faced the facts of how much time and energy and stress was being wasted cleaning my home. Time and energy that should have been spent playing with both of my children (Luke 4 & Brooklyn 1)and spending quality time with my husband(not fighting about how we both work full time and yet I was handling 80% of all things home on top of my day job). I cannot tell you how much of a relief it has been to all of us and I’m so proud of myself for forcing the fact with my hubby and getting it done. I basically just told him we can fight or we can pay, what would you like to do…
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Heidi says...
I wish we lived near each other, because by the time I have a baby, Eva will be able to babysit.
April 29th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
overwhelmed mom says...
Up until January of this year, I worked part time in retail, starting at 4 am, worked until 6:30 am, went home, got three kids ready for school/ daycare, delivered them to three different places, then returned to work, sometimes done by 10 a.m., other times noon or later. Then I picked up the youngest child from day care, came home put her down for a nap, many days crashed myself, got dressed up, then had to pick up the other two kids from two different schools, drop them off at home so I could go teach for anywhere from 1 to 4 hours. My evenings were cut short because I had to go to bed by 9 at the latest in order to get up at 2:45 am. Between the two jobs (aside from childcare and chores), I could be found at work virtually 6 days per week, and during the holiday season, 7. Now, I didn’t work 40 hours, more like an average of 25-30, but with the combination of everything I felt like it was more like 50+.
Now, the kicker…my middle child is on the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum, and has other disroders to go with it. Over the last 6+ years, I’ve had another part time job…managing his care. The hours spent on traveling to appointments, on the phone with care providers, at the schools for meetings, on the phone with the schools during the day, while they ask me what they should do next, all the while telling me all the horrible things he’s doing there, and the trips to the hospitals, sitting at day treatment facilities so he can get treatment…it was all too much!
He was getting kicked out of every place I ever brought him to, and in January I decided the only alternative was to quit my morning job and homeschool him. Of course, that meant getting rid of day care for the 2 yr old due to my lack of sufficient income. I continued teaching in the evenings, which became my only real connection with other adults. Then, in May, that was taken away when the learning center I taught at closed for good.
All the while, I somehow seem to be the one person in this family of 5 who can’t function properly in a cluttered house. If anything gets done it’s either because I do it, or I have to harass the hubby to do something now and then. He seems to have a high threshold for mess, but at the same time has his subtle and not so subtle ways of asking why the laundry isn’t done, or comments out loud “hmm…there aren’t any clean bowls” or forks, glasses, whatever it may be. Should he scrub the toilet, he feels the need to announce it, like I should have a stash of blue ribbons to award him with.
OK, so if this is “women’s work”, why is it that I have to maintain the vehicles, or they will never get the oil changed. Or how about the ice cream bucket in the basement that had been catching water from the leaky valve, for oh I don’t know, a year or more?? I had to put my foot down on that one due to the mold that was developing. When he starts a project, it just doesn’t get finished. I used to manage the finances, too, which was a ton of work, until I literally quit. I knew he’d have to pick that up! Now, to be fair, he works 40 hours per week.
Anyway, this morning I took pictures of my disasterous house, because I want my lazy, unappreciative family to see what I did today. By bedtime tonight it’ll probably look the same! And they wonder why I am so frazzled??!!
July 15th, 2010 at 8:02 am