How Same-Sex Couples Divide Chores, and What It Reveals About Modern Parenting

It's up to individual women to value the work we do. Creating and supporting a family and home entails a huge amount of work. When two people partner to undertake any other project it is generally understood that tasks need to be assigned. So why the constant fretting about making sure everything is 'equal'? What does that even mean when so many types of tasks must be performed? I kinda can't believe this conversation is still even happening. Ladies- you are free to live the life you want. Find a partner where love and respect is mutual. Make work and life choices based on reality- saying yes to one thing means saying no to another. That's okay- for me personally this is the season in my life when I work in the home. If you decide to stay home don't waste your good fortune. Celebrate it by being grateful for the food you are able to nourish your children with, for the home that keeps them warm and dry, for the great miracle of living in a time and place with such abundance. Living a tit for tat existence is a sure way to turn any relationship into a living hell.

Gender specific chores are so unfair. Like my wife takes care of the housework and I take out the trash and take care of the yard. Only she hires someone to do it for her.

Can't same sex couples or differing gender couples have one do something better than the other? And that's how it just works out to both partners benefit? Me (male) working nights, tended to the kids school stuff while the wife worked.

I am a hetero-married man in a household where both my wife and I earn roughly equivalent salaries in professional jobs. A couple things: 1. Lawn mowing is not an "infrequent job". It is a solid 3 hours of hot sweaty work every week from April to October. Laundry is just as 'infrequent' (once a week, with about five stints of 15 minutes folding and putting away clothes). I am not sure why this part of the article bothers me, but it does. It is something I have seen repeated many times, as though laundry is an all week chore and guys just mow for fun or something. 2. My wife and I have always been very equivalent (we both do the same in terms of laundry and dishes, I do most of the cooking, she does most of the 'picking up'), but when it comes to the child's stuff, we have learned that it doesn't work. The school only wants to deal with one parent. But more than that, is that there is so many moving parts with kids stuff, that it takes constant communications about all sorts of mundane things when you try to split it up. Take a dance class for example, you have to know where the outfit is, the 'right' shoes are, when the next rehearsal is, whether you need to order a new outfit still, was the last months fees paid or not, do they know about the trip coming up next week and the absence yet, and so on, that when we both try to take care of it equally, it becomes more work trying to keep the other person in the loop and vice versa regarding all the little pieces of the puzzle.

What's interesting is how little one key problem for shared delegation is observed and discussed: when spouses/partners differ about what's an acceptable result for the work performed by the other spouse/partner. If delegation means, impliedly, "I expect you will do X the way I would do X", then it means delegation is much less likely to be fruitful and sustained. This is one reason where sex roles get reinforced, because men and woman are culturally more likely to have stronger opinions about the acceptable boundaries of work quality for subject matters they've followed, as it were.

My husband and I both work time-intensive jobs, and we quickly realized that we had to split things 50/50 after our kids arrived to keep our respective sanity. We split the cooking, morning drop-off, the laundry (God, the laundry), cleaning the house, going to the transfer station, and clothes shopping. He tends to be in charge of school-related things, I tend to be in charge of doctor and dentists' appointments. We split drop-off and pick-up from sports and church prep on Sundays. And at least once a week I ask myself, usually by Thursday morning, "How do single parents do it? I can't even fathom it. I'd spend most of the day in the fetal position." I've also spoken to moms who work and have husbands who travel, and invariably they pull back from the workforce, at least until their kids are in middle school or high school. The economy is still skewed toward traditional male schedules, even in situations I know where the woman works the killer full-time schedule and the husband is primary caretaker.

We have always had a fairly equal division of labor in our home. My husband's hours are earlier than mine (and I typically work longer hours), so I typically dropped the kids off in the morning and he picked them up, did the grocery shopping and prepared our dinners (he is a much better cook than me), while I paid the bills but also fold the laundry (he will throw loads in). This was a matter of practicality. I earn higher wages, but not enough to change this dynamic. I think that this has had a very positive impact on our daughters. When they were babies, I certainly assumed more of the ultimate responsibility for the kids and still handle making doctor appointments, but overall, this has kept our relationship healthy and probably more stress-free than if there was more imbalance. I found this article to be fascinating.

In any kind of modern parenting, chores are equitably divided according to preferences. I, the female wife, did the lawn and garden, cooking, ironing, grocery shopping, dressed the young children, managed the money, taught the children to play the piano. He, the male husband, did the dusting and vacuuming, dinner clean-up, laundry (except ironing), emptied trash cans, cleaned the bathroom, took out the garbage, read to the children, and picked them up at day care when I worked late--then microwaved the dinner I had prepared for them the evening before, cleaning up the kitchen and dishes. We took care of our own cars, but he vacuumed the interiors of both, and enlisted the children to help. It's all a matter of respect for each others' preferences and talents. To this day, in my retirement, I still prefer lawnmowing, raking, and weed-pulling to sweeping, vacuuming, and dusting.

I've now been married for almost 30 years. I wish we had discussed it explicitly at the beginning before we had children. Now, domestic chores are almost wholly my responsibility while my hetero husband earns the bulk of the money. It was not an arrangement I would have preferred. I would advice younger women to have this discussion from the beginning of their marriage to enjoy peace and a sense of fairness later.

I enjoyed this read - I feel it looks at an old feminist conundrum in a new way, and somehow manages to remain objective. Not once does the article say that single-earning or double-earning couples are better. Questions it brings up for me: If heterosexual women are least content with their chore division, why? Is it country’s business to provide affordable childcare, like in much of Canada? I also wonder about Mr. Hunt and his career transition from ballet to Interior Design - will staying home with his child delay or hinder his career change? Is that ok?

People who choose to have children also often like to take time to be present to them and raise them. Why does this continue to be so shocking? Though there are certainly a subset of parents who like maintaining a two career household with children, for the majority having to have both parents work and rely on childcare is a sad necessity, not a preference. Almost every couple I know chooses to have a stay at home or mostly stay at home parent if they have the option.

Having been in a relationship with a man for 15 years, I found that we divided our responsibilities based on the ability to perform the task better. This "assigning/accepting" of a specified role in the home resulted from a recognition that one is better at something such as cooking, etc. Even with this "default" designation--circumstances dictated when it was appropriate for the other to assume a certain task or responsibility. Ultimately it is recognizing and accepting that sharing is fundamental to a successful relationship--even with adjustments or slight imbalances.

When I get married, I will expect to be the main breadwinner and the main housekeeper. I'll even be the diaper-changer. My wife's chores will be to work out two hours a day and to be available for s-x any time I'm in the mood, which is all the time. My only fear about parenting is missing sleep. I need 7 hours. I work at home. So, I can watch a child while working. But I might hire an overnight nanny to attend to my child between midnight and 8AM, so I and my wife can sleep and having morning s-x.

Though I am heterosexual, my friends who are lesbian and/or gay share the same issues that I have in my life, be it dating, marriage or child care. Therefore, the fact that these couples divide chores much as I did when I was married does not surprise me.

I've been married almost 30 years, and we've adjusted our lives to what each likes or dislikes. If you love your partner, you'll take on duties that you may not like, but that you dislike less than your partner does.

"Chores" were never split like Hollywood showed up until 70's. That was a Hayes code driven illusion. Middle stage capitalism generally supports "traditional" roles until it can't(or the US's case the 70's or the late 60's). Then comes "liberalization" for the "minority". Thus becomes late stage capitalism when GDP per capita and wealth peak creating a obnoxious culture of self-gratification, "sexual liberation"(or commercialization and promotion of sexual release), high fashion or staged events boosting job growth. Guys, my point is, that early stage capitalism that 'conservatives' or "early liberals" have fantasies about is not possible anymore. It can't support the population growth it created. When that support is gone, so is support for capitalism. It is also why socialist movements always ended up more conservative as it progressed. The need to drive growth and debt is what makes capitalism go. So comes the "tolerance" for liberation movements to boost growth. Interestingly, homosexuality is probably the least important since homosexuals were already providing value to the economy while in the closet they would of out of it.

This article is ridiculous. 1. The division of household labor is far more varied then just heterosexual/homosexual couples because households in the US are far more varied. Households composed of siblings, siblings with children, single parent with children, single parent with live-in boyfriend/girlfriend, single parent with children and children's SO, multiple single parents with children, grandparents, etc. "Traditional household" composed of just a sliver of all households in the US in the process of finding those traditional households researchers let their confirmation bias influenced the outcome. Look at the households in the study, all white couples in their 30s and 40s in middle class to upper-middle class. When you throw out most households in the US to find what to are looking for you are going to find what you are looking for. 2. Homosexual couples still adhere to traditional gender roles. Terms that describe the male/female in a homosexual relationship didn't come from nowhere. It is possible this is cultural and limited to the western world but then again homosexuality isn't nearly as popular in non-western countries. I feel the decades long drive to make homosexual relationship "the norm" glossed over many similar challenges faced by homosexual and heterosexual relationships and made homosexual relationship into this unrealistic, idealized thing that impossible to achieve. The idea that homosexual relationship is more equalitarian probably falls into this.

My partner is the bread winner and we are a gay male couple. The sometimes 4-5 hours I spend a day cleaning/organizing/laundry/gardening/decluttering/general fussing blesses us with an inviting and relaxing home. I am grateful, rather than resentful to have such a beautiful home to maintain and as I said I consider the time spent a blessing on our household. Not being afraid to have someone come over at literally a moment's notice, and having my partner literally put his feet up with nothing to be done in the house gives us a happier atmosphere and quality time spent with each other. It takes me to another point, I never had any chore responsibilities growing up. The house ran like clockwork, and my parents had indoor and outdoor routines that they consistently did. There wasn't extra work to be done to be handed down to the children. They were simply efficient and consistent with their chores. The most important factor in that however was the fact they we grew up in the same modest starter home they started out in. They never traded up to the larger and grander home that they could have afforded, and many of our neighbors on our middle-class street did. So for people that are overwhelmed with the amount of housework and maintenance that needs to be done, they should really consider either downsizing to something more manageable, or if they can afford it hiring some help.

The most important sentence in this article: Work and much of society are still built for single-earner families. Exactly! It's time for us to stop treating child-rearing as an expensive hobby rather than one of our most important jobs and to revamp a work culture that still presumes that employees have a "wife" to take care of all home and child matters, when that has not been the middle-class norm for a long time — and of course, poor and working-class parents have always had to work. We haven't begun to reckon with this issue, with even mild parental-leave policies being controversial.

My husband and I tried to both have it all, in terms of hard charging careers, and kids. It took such a toll on the whole family. If both parents actively decide on specialization and who is doing what, then there is equality, It is when the un-discussed expectation of staying home falls to one gender that causes the distress. Raising a family and managing a home is valuable work, just discuss whose work it will be first.

In the good old days, when parents were drunk and sprawled out on the sofa, kids learned to do things for themselves.

When I interviewed Deborah A. Widiss, associate law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, about her paper, “Changing the Marriage Equation," she told me what needs to happen: "we should be more honest about the extent to which law still tends to encourage role division. If we as a society really want men and women to share responsibilities equally, then yes, it might make sense to think about reducing the extent to which marriage laws incentivize specialization. It would be equally important to think about how we could change employment laws and workplace norms so that it would be easier for men and women who want to balance work and family responsibilities to do so." She also suggests that we probably shouldn’t “idealize” marriage as an equal partnership and just accept specialization.

My husband and I divide the chores pretty traditionally along 'gender' lines--he does the yard work, I do most of the cooking (we split other chores)--but it is definitely not because he's a man and I'm a woman. How absurd to think/automatically assume that's why those chores are divided the way they are! I have allergies (pollen) and am very sensitive to insect bites--I don't mind doing the yard work but it would literally make me physically irritable and miserable. My husband doesn't have these problems so he does them. I enjoy cooking, not because I'm a woman, but because in my family when I grew up, cooking was a strong bonding element between my parents and myself. I think it's absolutely ridiculous in this day and age for an article to start off with the assumption that heterosexual couples split chores by sex and not because of personal preferences. All of our friends split chores by preference. Just as I would never assume something about a gay couple just because they're gay, I think it's time for people to also not assume things about straight couples just because they're straight.

Almost sounds like feminist ideologues have been manufacturing envy and resentment. "After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives... However, when all 25 choices are the same, the great news for women is that then the women make more than the men." https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opinion/exploiting-the-gender-gap.html

The most interesting point in this article is buried -- that lesbian moms suffer a pay cut after giving birth **but then recover it within 5 years** while straight moms never recover those same lost earnings. That indicates that it's not the simple act of giving birth that hurts women's careers. Whatever's happening in gay vs. straight marriages are NOT equivalent. Husbands are holding their wives back. How is that not the focus here?

My ex and I were a hetero couple. She'd usually do the cooking. While she was cooking, I'd do laundry. Both of those are traditionally considered "women's work", but she didn't like doing laundry, and I didn't do much cooking. It worked out pretty well.

Perhaps the reason there is more unhappiness with women who take on the care taking function in heterosexual couples is the added expectation that they will take care of the husband, rather than just the children. I’m lucky to have married a man who is the son of a small town home economics teacher -- whose “Senior Survival” class, that taught the realities of housework and caring for yourself, at a rather high level, was mandatory for both genders. (At her recent funeral proud grandmothers brought things like complex and beautifully constructed vests and backpacks their sons had created in her class -- that their grandchildren were still using -- to show off to the assembled mourners). Maybe we should do a little more to prepare boys for the reality that their wives are not their moms too.

This entire article is focused on the parents' needs, whether it has to do with profession, personality or gender. But what about the children's needs? My child raising experience (heterosexual, two children, almost 50 year marriage) made it clear to me that often, one parent does better at raising a particular child than the other. Therefore, parental chore assignments should also reflect the dynamics between parents and children which is frequently not predictable until you become a parent but which should influence who does what.

"More like Man and Wife" or you know, like a married couple equally splitting the responsibilities of the household. It's 2018, why are gender roles still a thing?

This is a fascinating story that suggests that the increased flexibility of gender roles may provide more options, and happier lives, for individuals and society.

At last, the pleasure of a fair, centered, impartial and factual article on a (personally) much awaited analysis of this common simplification of the egalitarian utopia. Although work and other social pillars are built around the concept of single-earner families, it is companionship, a share of sacrifice in the division of labor to create a de-specialisation of tasks and, ultimately, an inter and intra-sex (or gender, if you will) coordinated attempt of change in traditional roles that will potentially determine the future of household dynamics. The problem surfaces when women in heterosexual relationships (following the popular line of thought based on the wage gap), by earning less than men, are trapped in a system that confines them to a prioritisation of household work. This division of family roles on the pre-supposition that sex will be the main, if not the sole, determinant is something gay and/or lesbian couples do not trouble about, therefore leaving them with the same decision demanding problems but sole solved on an objective basis.

I feel like there's interesting research presented here, but I totally disagree with its main point. First, the article says that when both homo/hetero couples have a child, it's likely for one of the partners to stop working to focus on child-rearing. But that has nothing to do with gender - what's gendered is expecting the person to drop work to be the woman. And of course, in same-sex couples, either both are women or neither are. In same-sex couples, the article says the one who stopped working was simply the one who was making less. Furthermore, there's a huge point that the article itself mentioned: women who have children often still work and even when working, they still do most of the chores. However, in homo couples, that's not the case. The partner who works doesn't do as many chores. Both partners see that as fair and equitable. On the other hand, it's clearly unfair for hetero women to be both working and doing most of the chores. This article is arguing that traditional gender norms are reified even in homosexual couples and our entire society is inextricably bound to the construct of gender. But it doesn't present any evidence for this! I see same-sex relationships as an opportunity to totally discard gender norms and I think this article is doing a disservice by creating a false equivalency.

I think that we should place greater value, as a society, on the not-for-pay and traditionally feminine tasks that need to be done on a daily basis. It ain't glamorous or rocket science, but it is really useful. I have few complaints about the division of labor in my household. But society at large seems to judge people very harshly for spending time on household, childcare, and eldercare rather than on earning.

A division of labor is not a bad thing since it is inherently efficient, but the lack of fluidity when circumstance change, and the inequality of the sexes make it bad. Typically, it is tougher on women than men. Regardless of one's sex, if one is spending more time at work, then the partner, wanting an equal relationship, needs to pick up some of the other duties. When I am between jobs - I work in technology, often as a consultant - I cover more of the home tasks like shopping, cleaning, and errands. Even when working, we both cover tasks that we interested in, better at, or especially equipt for. A minor note is that we benefit from fortnightly help with cleaning. Both of us were hating the amount of time and drudgery we spent on weekends doing chores. We are much happier, although it does not help much with equality of labor.

Government-funded preschool would go a long way to helping parents of all sexualities to remain competitive in their chosen fields. If you've worked very hard to gain momentum in a career that really excites you, the choice to become a parent shouldn't have to derail those dreams. As midterms approach, I urge everyone to look for candidates who support paid family leave reforms and programs that allow parents of any gender or orientation to remain committed to career goals and family alike.

Re: "Before same-sex marriage was legalized, it was financially riskier for one partner to stop working because that person would have few rights to the couple’s joint property in the case of a breakup or death." Umm - you seem to miss another obvious reason we couldn't stop working to stay home with our kids - whose health insurance was going to cover me if I quit my job? If I'm the biological mom, whose health insurance is going to cover our kid when our marriage and my wife's parenthood isn't legally recognized? Joint property after death is a very nice thing to worry about - our concerns pre-marriage equality were much more immediate. We still don't take this for granted (and in our current climate, we certainly can't afford to).

Every new piece of evidence that we are equal, facing the same pressures and standing to benefit from the same things (paid parental leave, better wages, respect for work-life balance, respect as a family, etc.) is a welcome nail in the coffin of intolerance.