Mums, do you ever feel that no matter how helpful your husband/partner is, you end up doing most of the work at home?
For parenting blogger Karen Alpert from Baby Sideburns, this is certainly the case.
“I have an awesome husband. If I ask him to do something like pack a lunch or toss the laundry into the dryer, he’ll do it without complaint,” Alpert wrote in a hilariously relatable recent post.
“But that’s the problem. I have to ask him.”
Hear that? It’s mothers across the world cheering in agreement.
“I end up doing like 99% of the shit around here (I’m totally exaggerating, it’s more like 95%) just because lots of stuff occurs to me that never even occurs to him,” Alpert continued.
Alpert goes on to list the 10 essential family tasks she does every day without her husband even being aware of it. Here are a few of our favourites.
Buying and sorting the kids’ clothes.
Alpert wonders if her husband thinks that their son still fits into the clothes that they bought before he was born, because he has never brought home new ones.
“It’s a miracle! Our kid had a growth spurt and grew seven inches but his clothes still fit. Ummm, yeah, not a miracle,” she writes.
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Top Comments
Hubby and I aren't parents yet but we have this struggle on who does the house work.
There is plenty that I think my husband doesn't appreciate but if I don't do it, then it won't get done.
My hubby does help with renos or with things that I can't do on my own, but other than that, I pretty much do it all. Cook, clean, wash, mow, weed, pick up the dog poo, do the bins each week.
Some people have different priorities than others.
It's about compromising
How does hubby compomise?
Firstly, I suspect some husbands could just as easily write a list about how their wife assumes that the lawn magically gets mowed, the dog gets cleaned up after, the lightbulbs get changed, etc etc.
Secondly, if you're in a relationship where you're both basically working the same hours and you're doing the bulk of the tasks, why the hell are you putting up with that? I have two friends who are both intelligent, confident women that earn more than their husbands and work roughly the same amount of hours. Yet both do the lionshare of house/child tasks. One husband is yet to look after his kids by himself for more than a few hours without the help of his mother and the eldest is nearly 5.
Hot tip: if they don't do housework when they live by themselves, they're sure as hell not going to do it when they've got your there to do it for them. Adding kids isn't going to make things any better, either.
Just remember that some of these men have had everything done for them by their MOTHERS so remember if youve got sons, teach them to do all those domestic chores.