division of labor: the rest should be fair
one major burden when it comes to care tasks is dealing with an
uneven division of labor in the home between partners. I do not have time to do justice to a complete evaluation of this very valid struggle here. I can, however, offer you a new framework to approach the conversation.
Most couples approach the division of labor from a lens of
making the work equal. The formula then should be to quantify how much “work” your paid job is and then quantify how much “work” my paid job is and then dole out the care tasks on top to make it equal between the two. This approach looks a bit like this:
The problem with this approach is that quantifying how much work a task requires isn’t an exact science. Deciding who works
harder is often a game of apples and oranges. Do you go by hours
consumed? What if one job is physically demanding but has shorter hours? How do we compare jobs that are mentally or emotional
draining to those that are not? What about those whose jobs create an “on call at all hours” atmosphere? Should someone who travels for work be doing fewer care tasks because they are spending so much time at work or more care tasks because they are doing no
joint care tasks at all when they are away?
 |
Most importantly, when I see couples begin to argue from the stance of “who works harder” the discussion is already lost. If the
framework is keeping things equal, then when a partner says, “I need you to do more,” what the other hears is, “You aren’t doing enough.” Once feelings of not being appreciated have joined the discussion, we aren’t really talking about the dishes anymore. Partners are now operating from fear. Fear of being taken advantage of (since they clearly don’t see how much you work) or fear of taking advantage of someone (or being perceived as if you are). This leads to some
partners taking on too much, burning out, and becoming resentful and others taking on too little because they no longer trust their
partner to look out for them, and feel they won’t be cared for unless they take for themselves.
The goal should not be to make the work equal but to ensure that the rest is fair.
Those who think they will escape this conflict by having one
partner stay at home are often the most embroiled in it. Imagine a coal miner and the stay-at-home parent. Let’s say they agree that one hour of mining coal is more difficult than one hour of caring for
children. Therefore, they presume that the partner doing the less difficult work should take on all of the family’s care tasks. Their chart looks equal. So what’s the problem?
The issue is that in most of these families, the coal miner is
getting off work at five and getting two days off a week. Since they have put in their work for the week, they’ll feel no issue sleeping in on the weekend and using that time to go and recreate and do what
they want. Meanwhile, the partner doing the “easier” job does not have those built-in breaks.
 |
The coal miner and the stay-at-home parent can argue until they are blue in the face about who works harder. The truth is that both are tired. Both want their labor appreciated. And both deserve rest.
That’s right; even if you have the “easier” job, you still need rest. Care tasks by nature are fundamentally different from paid work. Not
harder or easier. Different. They are cyclical and never ending. There is never a moment, especially in the care of children, when everything is “done” and you can clock out. Think of the “easiest” job you can
imagine and ask yourself if you would want to work it sixteen hours a day while being on call overnight for 365 days a year. No person can do this and be healthy.
So what would it look like to start the conversation with making the rest fair? For starters, you have two people tasked not with
having to prove the value of their work to each other but instead with having to look out for each other, and who ask themselves: How can we ensure we both get rest? This conversation will entail who does what around the house, but it will entail so, so much more.
Regardless of whose job is “harder” or “brings in the money,” the coal miner is going to need to take on some portion of the care tasks and childcare to create room for their partner to also have times in
their week to rest and recreate. True partners will want to do this.
They do not view themselves as more entitled to rest than their
partner based on paycheck or hours worked. This isn’t a business
deal where you need to protect your interests against an adversary; it’s a partnership where you care about the well-being of each other.
This goal is less like the bar graph comparing work and more like a
line graph where both work together to ensure rest and enjoyment of life remains fair even as seasons change.
 |
how we hacked fair rest
Michael is a lawyer working at a busy firm. For the first eighteen months of his new career, he worked seven days a week. I was a stay-at-home mom caring for two children. We both deserve rest and we had to figure out a way to ensure our home functioned and we both rested. Here is what we came up with. First, let’s get specific
about what rest is. Our understanding of rest is as follows:
-
Rest is fun. It’s a time when you engage in a recreational activity of your choosing. It can be relaxing like watching
television or painting (or taking a nap!) or it can be active like hiking or shopping. Rest is not doing care tasks alone. Grocery shopping, getting your hair cut, or taking a shower is not rest.
-
Rest is recharging. What you find recharging is unique to you and there are lots of different types of rest. I have friends who find going to a spin class recharging to their mind because the activity helps their mind go blank. This is mentally restful to them. I tend to experience exercise as both physical and mental work and not restful. You may feel most rested when you get alone time to binge-watch your favorite show. I often
find stimulating conversation with a good friend over a child- free lunch recharging and socially restful.
-
Rest includes time autonomy. Care tasks should be divided in such a way that there is time for everyone to rest and keep the home functioning. In partnerships with children, rest times
likely have to be more structured—looking more like protected times in the week when you can decide what you will do
without having to “get someone to cover.” A situation where
one partner can come and go on a whim and assume the other will care for the children, but the other partner has to practically file HR paperwork with their spouse three weeks ahead of time in order to leave for an afternoon is not a partnership with fair rest. Everyone deserves a window of their week when they have time autonomy.
-
Rest isn’t being on call. This means that getting to watch a TV show on a Saturday while your kids play in the living room and come in to ask you for snacks and to referee fights every ten minutes is not rest.
-
Rest includes responsibilities. It is your partner’s responsibility to protect your rest time but your responsibility to actually rest.
If your own perfectionism has you using your rest times to scrub baseboards, that is not your partner’s fault.
What I am not saying is that watching television while your kids are in the living room isn’t fun or that it’s not important to get the space to take a shower alone. What I am saying is that those activities do not meet the vital human need for rest.
You’ll remember earlier in the chapter I said that rest is more than sleep. This is true. But rest is not less than sleep either. Which is why our goal of equal rest started with sleep. Shortly after our first was born, Michael and I began to divide up our weekend days to ensure we both got sleep. On Saturday mornings I wake up early with the kids, and on Sunday mornings he does. The sleeping partner gets
until 10:00 am to either sleep in or presumably wake and do
whatever they want (we’ve always chosen to sleep). Michael often has to work at least some hours on the weekend and it’s understood that I am holding down the fort while he does that. However, we have an understanding that non–sleeping or working hours during the
weekend are assumed to be family co-parenting hours. No one just walks out the door to go to whatever assuming the other will watch the kids. Instead, we game plan what we need or would like to get done that weekend by way of both obligation and fun. It’s not about getting permission; it’s about giving respect. Free time does not
automatically belong to one parent at the expense of the other.
In the evenings when Michael comes home from work, he rolls right into engaging our children. I will pivot from the children to
making dinner and then he does bath time and bedtime while I do closing duties (more on those later). We both finish up around 7:30 pm and sit down to watch television with each other until bedtime.
Oftentimes when we sit down at 7:30 the living room is a mess,
the laundry is unfolded, and at least one area of our house looks like a bomb went off. Yet we sit down anyways. Everyone clocks out at
7:30 pm. That’s because the key to ensuring fair rest in our home has much more to do with showing appreciation and giving each other
the benefit of the doubt than it does with whose job it is to take out the trash. How we speak to each other, enjoy each other, and love each other in the million non–care task spheres of our lives sets a foundation of trust. Michael doesn’t wake up early to get kids ready for the day and that’s fine with me; I assume that means he needs
the extra sleep. Likewise, our home is never picture-perfect when he comes home and that’s just fine with him; he assumes that means
the kids and I must have had either a really fun or really difficult day.
Michael and I are not without our normal marital struggles. Like all couples, we have disagreements on family labor at times. But it has still served us best to focus on striving for the rest being fair. Fair
rest covers a multitude of division of labor sins.
