I was sitting in the school parking lot at 10:30 p.m. waiting for my daughter’s bus to arrive from her show choir event, when I wondered, “How did I get here?” Why did I have to leave the cozy comfort of my bed to go out (100% in my pajamas still, of course!) and pick her up in the cold, dark night?
Answer: I’m the late-night parent.
That’s right. My husband is the early-morning parent. He gets the kids out of bed and off to school each day, while I handle all late-night pick-ups or waiting for them to get home.
Which got me thinking, how did that determination come about? How did we decide years ago that my husband would handle the morning routine and I’d be the boss at night? And on a bigger note, how did we figure out who would handle which household chores in the first place?
Because we definitely have “our” jobs. You know, the things I always do vs. the things he always does.
Household chores:
- I do the laundry, but he puts it away.
- He handles outside work like shoveling and mowing, while I do most of the vacuuming and dusting inside.
- I cook dinner and he cleans up.
- I manage the finances, pay the bills, and buy the groceries while he works hard to provide the means to make that happen.
- He makes most of the customer service phone calls and I let him. Ha!
But, it wasn’t until I was sitting in the school parking lot cursing cold weather, show choir, and the existence of 10:30 p.m. on a clock, that I started wondering about our division of labor and how we’d landed where we had when it came to chores.
Nature or Nurture?
Was it based on our strengths and abilities to complete certain tasks? Was it because of our interests and jobs we were naturally drawn to? Or did the decisions come from our upbringing and what we saw our parents modeling as we grew up?
The answers to all of these questions are yes. All of these factors determined who fulfills certain roles in our household.
For example, my husband is naturally an early riser. He also has this mysterious ability to fall asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow. I, on the other hand, dread mornings. I tend to stay up late and struggle getting to sleep, especially when woken in the middle of the night.
Consequently, between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m., my husband is in charge. If the kids feel sick in the middle of the night, they know to skip over mom, walk around to the other side of the bed, and let dad help them out. It’s not that I don’t love my children between midnight and 7 a.m., it’s just that I’d also like to get back to sleep without a two-hour delay in the process.
The same is true of my husband in the evening. After 8 p.m., he loses all patience and the ability to put coherent sentences together. If the kids aren’t home, need uniforms washed before the next morning, or want to talk about their day, I’m the go-to parent.
We learned this over time and fell into our roles. I don’t remember having a formal meeting to delegate chores between us. It just sort of happened.
Some of it was influenced by our parents. When my husband grew up, he didn’t have many chores and, as the youngest in the family and only boy, he got out of the ones he did have. I grew up with lots of chores. My parents had an “all hands on deck” approach to getting things done around the house.
When we got married, those habits came with us. I expected us to work together and equally divide up the chores. My husband didn’t. Oh, he was happy to help when asked, but I got tired of asking and wanted him to see a chore and handle it without prompting.
I can give my husband huge props today. He’s come a LONG way since when we first got married, but we still have moments in our marriage and our home life when our upbringing sneaks in and we’re facing unmet expectations without even knowing it.
Establishing Household Duties
My advice for sorting out the division of household chores is to be sure to have conversations about expectations. Although falling into our roles worked for us, it would have saved years of frustration and under-the-surface resentment if we’d had a conversation early on.
Even if everyone seems happy with the chore arrangement, check in periodically to see if both parties are still satisfied. After all, 17 years is a long time to be taking out the trash.
Hmmm, maybe I could trade him for a late-night, show choir run?
