Equal Opportunity

Warning: if you are a woman, a wife, and most of all a mother of young children, the following post is going to make you want to slap your computer screen in disbelief. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

Time magazine ran a fascinating cover story recently called "Chore Wars" about the perceived inequality between husbands' and wives' workloads. You can read some of the article here, and I highly recommend that you do.

Many women I know, both those that work and those that stay home to run the household, believe that we (for I will admit that I am one of them) end up doing far more work than our husbands. Come August, not only will I be putting in a full nine-plus hour workday (with barely a 20  minute lunch, mind you) with kids, but then I will come home and make sure Violet gets fed, bathed and put to bed, at which point I'll straighten up the house, lock it up, and only then sit down to presumably dive into more work (lesson planning, grading) before I can even contemplate any leisure activities (ie: passing out in front of the tv). All this will be accomplished on far less than the recommended eight hours of sleep we all need to function as rational human beings. On top of this daily grind, I am primarily responsible for grocery shopping, knowing what to shop for, knowing when we're running out of necessities, doing the household's laundry, keeping track of doctor/dentist appointments. I run the dishwasher. I take out the trash. I plan and cook meals.

I concede that I do not do yard work. I do not manage our finances. Or deal with car problems. Or household maintenance issues.

And I will also say that my husband has lent a helping hand daily at Violet's meal, bath and bedtime for a long time now.

So why is it that we (I) still feel like women bear the larger burden? Get this: after doing the math, working women with children under 18 apparently only do 20 minutes more paid and unpaid work than their husbands. What? Only 20 minutes more? I have a hard time believing it, but there are the numbers!

In the article mentioned above, some interesting arguments are made. One reason for the sense of inequality comes, as the author Ruth Davis Konigsberg points out, because

Time diaries don’t take into account the stress women feel from being household managers, keeping that precisely calibrated family schedule in their heads at all times or knowing what’s for dinner, what ingredients are required and their exact location in the refrigerator.

Can you ladies relate? Another reason mentioned in the article is that women are more likely to combine leisure activities with child care, whereas men keep them strictly separate. Husband going golfing for four hours? He's not likely to drag along the baby. But mom going shopping with pals? Chances are the stroller is being trailed along as well.

“The obvious cost of this leisure deficit,” Ms. Konigsberg writes, “is that women have less opportunity to relax in a way that recharges their batteries.”

So there you have it. We're doing equal work, but it still shakes out to feel unbalanced. Regardless, it's a good point for me to remember next time I feel like I'm doing everything around here. Apparently I'm not, it just feels that way sometimes.