There’s a new system to balance household duties and caregiving more fairly between partners – The Fair Play Method – but does it work for stay-at-home parents?
Many stay at home moms (SAHMs) have absorbed society’s unspoken expectations that if they take on daily child care – full-time, or even balancing part-time work – that the entire home becomes their domain.
Is it unreasonable to expect more than this from a partner when you’re a stay-at-home parent?
The State of Stay-At-Home Parents
The majority of households have two incomes today. Over the past twenty-five years, it’s ranged from 52-58% of households, and dips during recessions and periods of high unemployment. (BLS) However, according to the Pew Research Center, 18% of parents (all genders) don’t work for pay.
The number of fathers who are stay at home dads has increased slightly, from 4% to 7% over the past 30 years. This means that 1 in 5 stay at home parents is a father.
We WON’T debate the merits of working vs. stay at home parenting – enough has been said on that over the years. Perhaps more important are the reasons that women exit the workforce. Sometimes this is a voluntary, willing desire. But oftentimes caregiving expectations and financial constraints play a significant role in these decisions.
For instance, the motherhood penalty results in lower wages, diminished access to opportunity within a company, and fewer promotion prospects. So, believing that mothers simply “don’t want to work” is oversimplified and uninformed.
When women take on the role of stay-at-home mom, they also take on the vast majority of the domestic duties.
PART-TIME WORK AND DOMESTIC RESPONSIBILITIES
This may lead you to wonder whether work obligations create more equity at home. Do increased work hours for women cure the imbalance of household responsibilities between partners?
Well, let’s take a look at part-time workers. Societal factors – like men’s reluctance to take parental leave after the birth of a child, stigmatization in the workplace, and the gender wage gap that occurs even just a year out of college – all contribute to women cutting back their work hours after the birth of a child.
But working part-time won’t cure the domestic duty imbalance between partners.
According to the Pew Research Center, “responsibilities are shared more equally when both the mother and the father work full time than when the father is employed full time and the mother is employed part time or not employed.”
When we say “more equally,” though, how equal is it??
WHO’S BRINGING HOME THE DOUGH
Let’s discuss the role of money. Even when both partners (in heterosexual marriages) earn about the same salary, domestic duties are imbalanced. Wives devote about 2 hours more per week on child care and 2.5 hours more per week on household chores. Meanwhile, husbands in these relationships have more “fun and relaxation time” – spending 3.5 hours more per week on leisure activities. (Pew, 2023.)
In these “equal earning” full-time partnerships, traditional gender roles haven’t disappeared. Women still report doing the majority of:
- Laundry and cleaning
- Planning and preparing meals, food shopping
- Planning family activities
- Caring for children
- Furnishing the house, and more.
Meanwhile, the only two areas where men take on greater responsibility in these partnerships are yard care and car maintenance.
There’s only one type of heterosexual partnership where men do more caregiving than women – when the wife is the sole breadwinner. But even still, in those partnerships both spouses do EQUAL household chores.
Should SAHMs ask for more household participation from their partners?
Why, then, should it be so taboo for a stay-at-home mother or part-time working mother to expect her husband to do more than take out the garbage and occasionally mow the lawn?
If full-time working mothers evenly share household chores with a non-working spouse, it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect the same to be true when we switch genders.
Let’s reframe a couple of common ideas about women and households that are rooted in traditional gender stereotypes.
Myth #1: You wanted to stay at home with the kids, so you should take care of everything related to the home and children.
Reframe: remember that a stay-at-home parenting job does not start at 9:00am and end at 5:00pm. You likely wake up an hour before the kids to “get ahead” on the day – possibly squeezing some quick exercise, a shower, and maybe throwing in a load of laundry or packing lunches.
Likewise, parenting and running a household continues well after 5:00pm. And, let’s be honest, evening care can be more exhausting because both children and parents start to lose their patience. You’ll continue to prepare dinner, feed the baby, give baths, and then spend your “downtime” doing invisible work. Meaning, you’re on your phone researching birthday party locations, babysitters, and advice about potty training. Full-time parenting has no end time and few breaks.
If both partners act as a team in the morning and evening hours, with realistic expectations for what can actually get done during a full day of child care, partnerships will feel less resentful and more collaborative.
Myth #2: My partner works a ton, so we could never have a 50/50 split of chores. Why even bother?
Reframe: There are many households in which one partner works two jobs, travels frequently, or serves in the military. It probably feels unrealistic to share the household chores, child care, and mental load 50/50. Which is fine, because an equal split doesn’t need to be the goal!
The Fair Play method does not require or even suggest an even split of domestic duties. In fact, there’s no tallying or score keeping to see who does more.
Can Fair Play Work for SAHMs and Part-Time Working Parents?
The most important thing is for the partnership to FEEL fair and collaborative, without simply relying on old gender roles.
There isn’t a one-sized-fits-all formula for how you and your partner can split up household duties to be fair. It’s highly individualized to your partnership and your family.
But the good news is that there IS a system for how to do this! If you’re a stay-at-home mom, a working parent, or a couple that’s newly cohabitating, this can work for you. If you’re interested in learning about sharing household duties more fairly, let’s set up a free consult so that you can learn more.
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