How to Divide Chores Fairly With a Stay-at-Home Parent
Couples with kids struggle to find time for themselves. It’s exhausting, particularly when one of your children has special needs. How people choose to tackle the challenge depends on countless factors, including whether one partner stays home.
All labor is work. Paid or unpaid. When folks fail to acknowledge this, they lose sight of what fair should look and feel like. This Reddit scenario is a perfect example.
Three Problems
What’s obvious here is that they’re both working their tails off. They’re tired and overwhelmed. But the issue boils down to three problems.
1. Too many responsibilities
“He Never Gets Time to Unwind”
Answering emails at 11 in the evening and then waking up at 4 in the morning to do the same is a fast track to burnout. I know. I did it for 15 years. The feeling of never-ending work that draws you away from your family takes a toll on your mental health. From what I can gather from what she shared, he seems like a good man doing his best to provide for his family financially.
She’s up at all hours as well. Being a SAHM is a 24-hour responsibility that you can’t escape. When you’re home, you’re at work. She seems like a good woman doing her best for her family.
Neither of them has any free time. This is no way to live. If they have the means, they should outsource as many responsibilities as they can.
I was surprised to read that the family previously paid someone to handle the yard, but Jim stopped the service because he believed there was no reason to pay someone for something he could do himself. That’s a perfect example of when a DIY mentality can be counterproductive.
2. He doesn’t fully embrace unpaid work as work
It’s not uncommon to see the work we do at home as less valuable, or not work at all. It’s impossible to say for sure where he falls on this line of thinking, but deep down I would bet he sees the paid work done outside the home as more valuable.
3. He is not aiming for equal leisure time
“I don't disagree that self-care time is important, and I wish I had that, too.”
That was her response when he asked if she could take something off his plate so he could have a few hours of downtime each week.
I know how he feels. I’ve been where he is; survival mode. We won't approach solutions with clear minds and open hearts when we’re barely making it each day.
That said, the right approach is to schedule time to discuss how they can work together to create equal leisure time.
Moving Forward
It’s clear that they need to focus their financial resources on buying time. Here are four ideas for outsourcing tasks from home:
House cleaning: routine cleaning, deep cleaning, bathrooms, floors, and kitchens.
Lawn and yard care: mowing, edging, leaf removal, landscaping, and seasonal cleanup.
Childcare: babysitters, nannies, daycare, and after-school care.
Laundry: wash-and-fold services, dry cleaning, ironing, and pickup/delivery laundry.
She should be doing less, and he may not do anything at all inside the home if he continues to work from 4 am to 11 pm.
Not every time-saving solution needs to come at a financial cost. I previously posted, Time Saving Household Hacks for Busy Couples, and there are quite a few ideas in there that they could use.
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