Aug 24, 2023
Show notes: https://www.tamihackbarth.com/blog/episode-191
We are back from our annual beach redwoods vacation and seven days
from starting school. For me, this week is like the one between
Christmas and New Year's. The exciting stuff has happened, I am not
sure what day of the week it is, and there is a whole lot of New
Year energy swirling around.
This week used to be the worst week of the year for me. My teacher spouse returned to work, and I was left without any childcare. I was expected to pick up all the slack in our household and help get the school year off to a calm start.
Needless to say, it never worked that way because I was so resentful about all these unsaid expectations about how I was in charge of everything house-related because he was working outside the home.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized that lots of couples experience a similar thing. It becomes even more clear when kids come into the picture. There is a default household manager who takes care of all the daily grind tasks: dishes, cooking, meal planning, homework, cleaning, laundry, child care….. the list is endless.
Even when you had conversations about equity and the equal distribution of household labor, somehow, it still ended up with one person doing much more to keep the household going.
The good news is that it isn’t a personal problem. It actually is a
systemic one. Our systems aren’t set up to help us
succeed.
In this week’s podcast, I am happy to introduce you to the Fair
Play Method.
I hope you’ll give it a listen. Fair Play gives words to what we’ve been feeling and a plan for getting us to where we want to be.