with Britt Reints
Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.
You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.
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About two weeks ago, Parenting.com posted an article suggesting that 46% of wives get mad at their husbands at least once a week. (We like to be quick with the current events here on Full Time, All The Time. Sorry, Robyn!) Angella posted her own response over at Committed: The Ties That Bond. (Apparently they actually are caught up on current events over there.)
According to Angella, she is not “mad at dad”. While Angella’s satisfaction with her husband didn’t shock me (after all, they have her write the marriage blog), I didn’t expect the number of commenters who agreed with her.
It seems my friends and I are the only women wanting to shake the snot out of our husbands on a regular basis. (Well, me, my friends, and the other ladies in that 46 percentile.) But even that’s not what surprised me the most about Angella’s post.
What got me thinking was one comment in particular by reader, SKL:
What if all moms, married or not, went into the deal expecting to be 100% responsible for the kids and the housework? Then they would be so appreciative of every tiny thing their husbands did in those areas.
As you can imagine, the responses to that comment were passionate and all over the board. Modern women don’t like to be told that they should expect to do it all.
But does she have a point? Would those of us who fall into that 46% be happier if we’d just learn to stop expecting anything from our husbands? Or is that a load of pre-feminist crap?
My instinct is to err on the side of load of crap.
Why in the heck should I be expected to handle working, parenting and all of the household duties? Why should I have to lower my standards simply because he refuses to comply to them? Why, if someone has to pick up the slack in this happy little compromise, does it have to be me? Why should I have to be the bigger person and suck it up?
Suffice it to say, my instincts are a little… er… self centered.
Of course I don’t want to lower my standards or expectations! Life would be much easier if he (and my boss, and my clients and my kids and also the government, while we’re at it) would just do exactly what I expected of them exactly the way I expect it to be done. Right?
But life doesn’t work that way. And at work, or with the kids (and certainly with the government), I’ve learned to adjust. I’ve learned to take stock of my wants and compare them to realities. I’ve mastered the fine art of choosing my battles and building a compromise. I know when to push and when to pull back and, most importantly, when to let it go.
I think, just maybe, SKL may have had the beginnings of a point in her comment.
To an extent.
I’m never going to advocate that I - or anyone in any kind of partnership - simply accepts the fact that they are equipped and therefore expected to shoulder 100% of major responsibilities like parenting. Or housework, for that matter. Especially if you both work outside the home. Ignoring your own needs in an effort to keep the peace is a recipe for disaster. And martyrdom is highly overrated.
However - if you find you keep fighting about the same things over and over and over again, maybe it’s time to stop and ask if it’s worth it.
Does it really matter if he leaves clean clothes in a basket to get ridiculously wrinkly? Would it kill you to accept that you have to point out that when there is pee on the bathroom floor, someone has to clean it up? I mean, yes, in a perfect world urine puddles would bother everyone. But isn’t being married to someone who mops up when they are asked a pretty good consolation prize?
Maybe the answer to becoming part of the 54% of women who aren’t pissed off all the time is to just… let it go.
Oh this is such a pet peeve of mine! Why do we, as women, simply accept that men will never change and we have to make all the adjustments? That’s complete and utter bullshit. And I know this to be true because I watch my boy cousins with their babies and know they are 100% involved with their little girls. And that is mostly because their wives simply expect them to do it.
People follow the path of least resistence. If you do all the work, he’ll let you. Men are also like children much of the time: You have to tell them what is expected.
All of this being said, you do have to choose your battles or you’ll make yourself nuts. You have to let some things slide (which means that YOU don’t do it, you just let it be). Save your energy for what really matters.
You actually have to kind of laugh that, as far as any of us know, there are no Web sites like this one for “working dads.” Men don’t seem to think about such things; it always seems up to us to deal with everything, doesn’t it? I wonder what would happen if we all started behaving like men?
Finn | February 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
If I were a stay at home mom, then I would happily consider the household and kids my job. And I would do 100% of the housework and take full responsibility for my child and would not expect much out of him. And yes, if that were the case, I would be thankful for the little things he does, like take out the trash. But since we both work full time outside of the home, that’s not the case.
Personally, I keep my mouth shut, and just do it. Then about once every 6 months I let him know how I feel about having to do EVERYTHING, calmly. But as I figured out recently, it goes in one ear and out the other. And I’m still stuck doing everything. Such is life. What keeps me going is realizing that I’d rather live with him and deal with it, then live without him.
Besides, my 4 year old daughter loves sorting laundry and cleaning toilets. So at least I get some help : - )
Erica | February 18th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
I say all the time that in my next life I want to be a working dad. These days more and more women are the breadwinners and the primary caregivers. I think we are letting our spouses off pretty easy.
I will say that if a couple is fighting about the same thing over and over then it’s time to go to counseling to get help. Sometimes you can’t just let things go all by yourself.
robynroark | February 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Isn’t the point of being married that you have a PARTNER? If neither you nor your husband plan on working together as a team, then why would you get married? If I’m going to plan on doing everything by myself, then I might as well dump my husband.
Load of crap is my vote.
When I feel overwhelmed because I am carrying a too large load of the domestic duties, I sit down with my husband and a glass of wine and I let him know. This has happened several times in our 7.5 years of marriage. Once I fill him in on how stressed I am, we work together to come up with a more equitable solution. Our most current plan has us each doing prescribed chores: I do laundry, he does dishes. I cook 4 days a week, he cooks 2, we do take out 1 day. If there is a specific duty I need him to take care of, I simply ask and he does it.
Robyn | February 24th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I do get “mad at dad” sometimes, but overall he’s very much a partner in raising our son and running the household. There are certainly ‘chores’ that are mine and ones that are his, but when he’s doing things for/with our son, he’s not ‘helping’, he’s doing them and doing them damn well.
I often make a point to thank him for being so hands on with the baby and his reply is usually, “I never realized I had a choice. I should’ve slacked from the outset!” of course he is kidding and says that he wouldn’t have it any other way…most of the time.
jane | February 24th, 2009 at 11:28 am