Sharing the load

Sharing the Load (previously published by excelle.monster.com)

An article in the February 2009 Parenting magazine claimed that 46% of moms are angry at their husbands once a week or more! The column generated a lot of online discussion and made many frustrated women feel better by realizing they were not alone. My disappointment was that, while detailing many sources of friction, it didn’t recommend enough solutions. So as a working mother (now a grandmother) who recently celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary, I thought I might share some of the advice that worked for me.

My first piece of wisdom comes my mother, who was a working mom when almost no one else was. She was told by manywell meaning friends that her working would have a negative effect on her children. Her answer was, If you love your children, and they know it, it will work out. So much of the frustration and anger working moms feel comes from the sense that they need to do everything right. Love your family and trust the rest to work out.

The biggest issue that drove my frustration, especially when my girls were little, was the feeling that I was doing so much more of the parenting and housework and shopping and laundry and cooking and you name it. When I nagged at my husband, he answered me thatI sounded like his mother. I realized that my complaining was not getting me anywhere and looked instead for other ways to enlist his aid and lighten my load. While these ideas may not solve all your issues, they help.

Begin by trying to make everything easier, regardless of who is doing it. Organize! If you have a place for everything, then it is much easier to train yourself, your children and your spouse to put things away. Put things where you need them (eg- if the hamper is where your husband undresses, he will more than likely put his dirty clothes there. If lunchboxes go in a specific cabinet near where they are filled, if coats hang on a rack on the way into the house, if there is a squeegee in the shower to clean the glass door, it is much easier to get everyone to pitch in. If there are hooks in the bathroom to hang the towels after the shower, it is easier to train everyone not to drop them on the floor).

Try to find ways to get the job done without constant reminders. (eg. I would gather the garbage in a plastic bag and leave it on the top of the steps to the basement. My husband would put that garbage in the wastebin on his way out. If I had asked him to gather it, he’d get to it when he could. Instead, having it gathered and obviously needing to go out, got the garbage out when it needed to go out, and I never said a word.) Consider the tasks that annoy you the most and spend serious time considering how to make them less work. There are many online sources of help for getting organized-check them out for creative and practical ideas. Ask your friends and family for ideas.

When you are asking your spouse for assistance, get over the fact that you have to ask. You will. But ask, don’t order. Keep emotion out of your voice. Start the discussion by saying something like,I have a problem and I need some help. Men love to solve problems. Be honest and specific about what you want them to take on and be sure to say thank you when they do it. (Some women may disagree with me and see having to ask as proof that men don’t pitch in. My answer is, they won’t, unless you train them right and that takes tact, time and some tender tenacity. ) We have the patience to teach our children tasks and to thank them. Give your spouse the same consideration.

One of the complaints I hear from many women is that the men screw up the laundry so they have to do it themselves. They may put colors with darks or put your favorite jeans in the dryer or put a dry clean only item in the washer. (It is hard to understand why someone who can take apart and put together a washing machine cannot figure out how to put clothes into one, but accept that’s how it is. You have to make it more foolproof.) If you have dry clean only items, put them somewhere far away from the washable dirty clothes when they need cleaning. If you have items that cannot go into the dryer, put a sign on the dryer- DON’T LOAD ME NOW! If there was no sign, your husband is free to move the clothes. Asking a man to take one or two items out of a full load to hang up just never seems to work, even when it is his pants! You can go nuts over it or find a way to manage it. I preferred the latter. That way, when my husband loaded the dryer, I could say,Thank you, as opposed to,Oh no, my good pants were in there!

A friend of mine ended a two year relationship with a male friend because he never picked up after himself. After dinner, her children would clear their places but the boyfriend sat at the table expecting to be waited on. (He did live as home with Mom- need I say more?) I am sure there were other problems besides this that ended the relationship but before I gave up, I would have brought the issue to his attention. If that didn’t work, I would have tried something like serving his meal on paper plates while everyone else had real dishes. If he asked why, I would have responded,Since you don’t clean up after yourself, I’m making it easier for you. If something that blatant didn’t get his attention, then nothing would.

An important point to remember as we are bemoaning that we are doing more than half the work is that when the car has a problem or the driveway needs to be shoveled or the leaves need raking, men typically recognize this as their domain and step up to the task. Men generally do one task at a time so while they are raking leaves, it is not a good time to ask them about starting dinner.

As your children get older, involve them in the work as well. A friend of mine with two teenage sons and a daughter assigned one night a week to each child, one to her husband and one to herself. One their assigned night, the family member was responsible for dinner. He or she could cook it, order in, or even plan a night out once in a while. But the dinner responsibility was shared. She said they had some of the most imaginative (not necessarily as balanced as she might like) meals but the benefit was that everyone helped. My daughters took over the laundry completely when they were teenagers.

If you can afford it, outsource. Have someone clean your house. If you can’t afford weekly, how about biweekly, or monthly, or once a quarter? Getting some of the messiest chores handled by someone else is worth skipping a night out or a new outfit or some other extravagance. And if you really feel you need some me time, get a sitter for an afternoon or evening and use it to treat yourself to something relaxing and just for you. (not going grocery shopping!)

Finally, accept that your husband may place a different value on how balanced your toddler’s meal needs to be or how clean the kitchen sink is. Men just don’t see some things that are glaring to women as dirty or out of place. Perhaps if we train our sons and grandsons earlier this will change but I personally think that the gene for clean houses and certainly for doing laundry correctly is not as advanced in the male biology.

Hopefully a few of these ideas will match some of the annoyances that you and your spouse experience. What I found particularly interesting was what happened when I showed this article to my husband. He said he wished he knew then what he knows now and would have helped more And this week he has been clearing his dishes and cleaning up little things before I even have a chance to notice something amiss. Perhaps you should share this article with your husband.

Renee Weisman, owner of Winning at Work, charted new territory as one of the first woman engineers, managers, executives and working mothers in the male-dominated semiconductor industry. Over her 40 years in education and industry, she learned to make gender differences work for her and teaches others how to do the same. She is a frequent speaker at corporations and conferences around the US. Her classes are tailored to enhance women in their careers and to enable male managers to better understand how to capitalize on the differences between men and women in their business. She is the author of Winning in a Man’s World, Advice for Women Who Want to Succeed and the Men Who Work with Them and 5 Ways to Get a Man to Listen and OtherAdvice for Women in Business and is a featured author for excelle.monster.com, smallbizlink and the Poughkeepsie Journal. — Renee Weisman Sign up to receive free articles on winning at your career at www.winning-at-work.net