Parenting and marriage should be a partnership split between two people. Unfortunately, it’s not always so simple. It’s hard to quantify effort, especially when each person in a relationship excels in different areas. Sure, no one wants to scrub the toilets, but for some, taking out the garbage might be worse. If couples can agree on what they deem an equitable division, that’s all that really matters.
Fifty-fifty only sounds good in theory, and as one man on Reddit realized, it’s a lot more complex in practice. He ran into a bit of a kerfuffle with his wife about the division of cooking labor and learned that contributing to a family isn’t as simple as “If I cook dinner, you cook breakfast.”
The husband refused to cook dinner unless his wife made him breakfast.
“My wife and I have two kids that are both in daycare,” he explained in his Reddit post. “My wife will take the morning shift, which includes getting the kids up, getting breakfast, and to the daycare.”
His wife brings the kids to daycare at 8:00 a.m. and is often in a rush because she has an hour-long commute to work. She usually gets home at around 6:30-7:00 p.m., just a half hour before the children’s bedtime.
Conversely, he works from home from around 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and handles the “night shifts, which is getting the kids from daycare, doing dinner, and starting to get them ready for bed.”
Lately, his wife has not been making him breakfast.
“The issue is around breakfast,” he wrote. “We agreed that I would make dinner each night and she (would do) breakfast. She already makes food for the kids, so it’s literally just making an extra one of what she is already making.”
Unfortunately, this plan has not worked as well as he anticipated.
“For the past month, she will either not make it at all for me (or) not tell me that it is done,” he said, adding that she keeps switching up the schedule so breakfast is at a different time each day. “One day, they are eating at 7:00 in the morning and then getting dressed, other days she is giving them toast before getting into the car.”
He’s done what he can to remedy this, but nothing has worked.
“I have talked to her multiple times and explained that it is not considerate,” he said. “We got into an argument and she told me I am home so just make my own food. I explained I may be home but I am doing my job.”
Stockbakery | Shutterstock
“Yesterday she didn’t make anything and I had enough,” he continued. “She came home and I didn’t make her anything for dinner. When asked, I told her she (was) home and (could) make her own food. This started a huge argument and she called me a jerk.”
While parenting responsibilities should be shared, that doesn’t mean they must be split perfectly down the middle.
Splitting responsibilities in a family and around the house so each side has an equal 50% share isn’t always practical or fair.
Counselor Dr. Wendy Whinnery told Baby Chick“One parent may have to travel further for work than the other and may have less flexibility to leave to accommodate the family’s needs. This may put added stress upon the opposite parent, who may have to assume the majority of these duties during the work week.”
This is what Reddit commenters reminded this dad of. As one person wrote, “You’re home. You can easily have a bowl of cereal in the morning while you work. She’s getting the kids ready and out the door. Dinner is very different.”
Another commenter pointed out that “in the morning, there is a deadline.”
“She has to get to work on time … so her priority in the morning will be speed,” they noted. “At night, it’s different, because you won’t get fired if you don’t get the kids to bed on time.”
Really, it’s not about the number of hours spent or the amount of tasks completed. It’s about making sure the family is cared for. This man’s wife is doing her share of that. He could stand to make himself breakfast.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
Comments are closed.