How to Make a Truce in Chore Wars

Do you ever find yourself in “chore wars” or conflict about household responsibilities with your partner? Eve Rods, author of ‘Fair Play’, helps examine how certain ways of thinking about time can keep couples stuck in unbalanced and ineffective cycles of communication and relationship dissatisfaction.

She writes, “...If you’re not getting paid for it, it doesn’t count. Walking the family dog and driving the afternoon carpool for school pickups don’t hold equal value to, say, your husband’s paid working lunch with colleagues. Do you believe that? I don’t either.”

She emphasizes that the point “all time Is created equal” is important for you and your partner to explore and can be a relationship-changing experience by creating a “fair” more  balanced dynamic. It asks you both to reframe how you value time and then commit to the goal of rebalancing the hours that domestic work requires between two partners.

Here are some statistics she mentions: 

“According to the most contemporary research, women still do the bulk of childcare and domestic work, even in two-earner families in which both parents work full-time and sometimes even when the mother earns more than her partner. I stumbled upon another study revealing that men who stood up for their fair share of housework prior to having kids significantly cut back their contributions after kids—by up to five hours a week.” -Eve Rods

She then explained how imbalanced household workloads cost relationships so much more than time; you may pay in the form of exhaustion, resentment, and resignation to feeling alone and isolated in your relationship. There may also be a higher cost to ones’ identity, in the form of a lost sense of your pre-parent self, and a sense of disconnection from the passions and purpose that make you, you! 

“Consider the cost to your wellness, in the form of exhaustion, stress, and compromised mental bandwidth. In a survey done by Today that interviewed more than 7,000 moms across the country, most rated their stress levels at an 8.5 out of 10.”

Remember, this looks different for every relationship + it’s ultimately up to both partners to discuss and determine what is healthy for them. What do you think?