Yes! Exactly! I don’t speak for anyone else’s husband, but mine thinks that playing with the children and supervising them is my leisure time. He doesn’t understand that supervising the children is not the same as having time by myself. (Yet when he wants to watch the game or be on the computer he expects this time to be childfree)

Yes, and also the age of the child(ren).

I would imagine that many of the people who read and comment on your blog are employed and have some idea of what paid work entails. And talking about averages is a fallacy because people do not experience their lives as an average.

My unofficial survey a number of women who work the same number of hours for pay as their husbands read the original article and said “that’s my life!”

The fact that many men contribute to the functioning of the household is a huge advance over 50 years ago. On an individual family level it will never feel entirely even but you have to negotiate what works for your family.

According to this study, it pretty much balances out. Of course, it doesn’t balance in every marriage, but overall, it does.

For example, my husband “does the laundry” but only if I remind him that it needs to be done, remind him to change the loads from washer to dryer, remind him to fold it and remind him to put it away. He doesn’t do the task if he’s tired or doesn’t feel like it or does half of it and leaves laundry everywhere which leaves me and my kids running out of clothes at times and frequently inhabiting a living room with half of our clothes piled on the sofa. Years of begging have not resulted in his being able to complete this task on a schedule or to finish it completely in a reasonable amount of time (wash everything once a week is my standard of “reasonable”). From his perspective, I am a whining nagging pain in the ass. I am also someone who has no pants to wear to work tomorrow which I have to say, makes me a little cranky so he’s not far from wrong in his assessment. If he followed through on work projects the way he follows through on laundry, he would have been fired long ago.

Immediate and enthusiastic help is a must if you want to have a happy partner. Follow through on chores that you “own” with some sort of sense of personal responsibility and on an agreed upon time schedule is also required if you want your primary caretakers (who are mostly women) to feel supported and relaxed. I would also add – don’t ever ask your primary caretaker partner to do an additional task if they are already engaged in a time sensitive people-care task. Get your own rear off the couch and take care of it. Even if you are tired and don’t feel like it – chances are she is tired and doesn’t feel like it either.

There may be some level of responsibility on the man to recognize when the wife is overwhelmed (I have a three month and three year old…), but I’m generally looking for something to do, and the things that come up to my mind most often are things like dishes, picking up, etc..