Options for dividing household responsibilities

Different couples living together share household responsibilities in different ways. This applies also to creating a budget or any other issues that partners may face. There are no universal rules, but some couples may feel tempted to “pull on” someone else’s standard onto themselves.

For a long time in many cultures, there was a prevailing notion that there are “male” and “female” household tasks. As a rule, a woman was supposed to take care of most of them: cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, and taking care of the children. In addition to that, often women also worked outside the home and they would leave and come back from work at the same time as their husbands. As for men, they were supposed to do “men’s” tasks: fixing things around the house, assembling furniture, and taking out the garbage. No wonder that under these circumstances women felt tired, irritable, and exhausted. This “invisible” labor would consume their energy and even life since they had neither time nor resources to enjoy it.

Debby didn’t want to get married for a long time after observing her constantly tired mom. She was certain that no other options are available and this scared her. When she shared her concerns with Paul whom she has been seeing for over a year, he was surprised. In his family, the available person was doing the chores – there were no gender roles.

Nowadays, people have way more options of how to divide household labor. Both partners are more open to different ways of sharing these chores.

Some couples do it 50-50: they estimate the approximate division of labor and implement it. Of course, this approach has its pluses because everything is “fair”. However, there are minuses as well: some couples get too fixated on “calculating” the proper contribution of each person and this doesn’t promote mutual understanding. Besides, this model doesn’t take into account the circumstances that may change from day to day.

Today, one person may be over-booked while the other one has a day off – in this case the 50-50 model doesn’t look very fair.

There is another approach that seems more flexible… We can name it “the available person does the task” – this is how things worked in Paul’s family. For many people, this approach is quite convenient. You can take into account the unique traits of your couple to make it work better.

Courtney cannot stand cooking, but her husband Dimitrios loves making meals. Courtney’s mom used to tell her that this is not normal: if the wife doesn’t cook, no husband could be happy. But Dimitrios and Courtney decided that cooking is his job, and Courtney would do the dishes and clean the kitchen. For many people (including Dimitrios) these tasks are tedious, but they feel almost meditative to Courtney and help her calm down.

Another option that works well is “we do everything together”. If we need to clean the apartment – we do it together, if we need to unload the dishwasher – I take the dishes out and my partner dries them and puts them on the shelves. And nobody is upset because one person does more or less work.

You can create a list of all household chores and assign them to yourselves. There are special apps for that, or you can use a whiteboard or just a paper sheet attached to the fridge. Any media will do.

There is no single universal formula of the “correct” division of responsibilities: we are all different. The only way is to discuss the situation (that may change), your expectations, and other relevant circumstances.

To summarize, the first thing you should do when dividing responsibilities is to throw away all stereotypes. There is no “it must be this way” or “my parents did it like this, therefore I should do it too”. You need to choose the approach that works for you.

Second. You must be flexible. Sometimes, either you or your partner may not be able to do a certain task today because you are getting ready for a presentation or preparing a report, or you may be feeling ill or have emotional difficulties… Of course, in this case, the partners need to communicate to each other about these circumstances and be able to hear each other.

And thirdly – you need to learn to negotiate. There is no way to negotiate other than “by saying words with your mouth”. As for the rules… Only those rules are effective that you both agree on.