How to share household chores to avoid quarrels and ruin your family

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Be fair and compromise.

What's the problem?

The phrase about a love boat that crashed about everyday life is not just a cliché. Almost a third of Russian families have serious quarrels over the distribution of household responsibilities. 8% of them get divorced due to disagreements in everyday matters.

Unfortunately, the statistics do not tell exactly what problems couples face, but it's not hard to guess. Household responsibilities are shared unfairly, according to data from the International Labor Organization.

Men spend on average 1 hour 23 minutes a day on housework, women - 4 hours 25 minutes.

It could be assumed that the former provide for the family, while the latter are busy with the housework all day. But statistics again interferes. In Russia, 81.1% of men of working age and 75.1% of women work. So they both do their household chores not instead of, but after work.

In all fairness, it should be noted that men do, on average, spend 3 hours 48 minutes more per week at work than women. But household chores are engaged in 22 hours 14 minutes less in a similar period of time. The difference is almost a day - there is something to think about.

And what are the consequences?

There are many more potential problems here than simply creating feelings of injustice.

A woman does not have time for rest, entertainment, self-development, communication with her husband, in the end. She is often tired, irritated, sad. Insomnia, nervousness and even depression are not excluded. In an effort to reduce her workload, a woman may choose a less difficult, but at the same time, less paid job. Accordingly, the husband will be forced to work harder or / and harder, which is fraught with nervousness, insomnia and depression for him.

Unfair distribution of responsibilities leads to the fact that women, on average, may be slower to climb the career ladder or even lose such ambitions. For example, during the coronavirus epidemic in the UK, women scientists began to send scientific papers to journals less often for publication. Men became more active. The researchers attribute this to the fact that women in isolation were responsible for all the housework, including caring for children who were previously in schools and kindergartens. In contrast, men have freed up time for research.

If you emerge from the world of scientists, this is quite a practical problem. Lack of money is the most common reason for quarrels and divorces. Two full-fledged salaries and a fairly divided life provide a better quality of life than the results of the work of two people who are stuck and do not understand each other. And misunderstanding will arise sooner or later: it is difficult to stay on the same wavelength if you do not have time for each other.

So how should responsibilities be divided?

There are no hard and fast rules. Any option is good if both of you are comfortable and you agree so. But the problem is that people's ideas about the conduct of life and the distribution of responsibilities may differ, and not everyone is discussing this issue. Therefore, you need to talk about them honestly and in an adult way. Here are some tips to make the process easier.

1. Make a real list of household chores

There are adults who discover after thirty that toilets are white simply because they are being washed. Less obvious work may slip out of sight altogether. And if a person is unaware of the existence of some cases, he will not be able to offer to separate them.

It is useless to compile a universal list of household chores. Firstly, each family will have its own. Secondly, it is endless. So it's better to discuss it within the couple. In this case, cases can be divided into several groups. All of them are important, necessary, take time and effort.

Routine

Daily and weekly activities like washing dishes, cooking, doing laundry, ironing, and so on. This is a very thankless job because the result is short-lived. But it will be very noticeable if you do not do it.

Seasonal affairs

Tasks as needed. This includes nailing shelves, changing winter tires to summer tires and vice versa, general cleaning, washing windows.

Taking care of children and elderly relatives

These labor costs should be allocated in a separate category, because children, like relatives in need of care, are not available for everyone. But if they are, then taking care of them takes a lot of time. Of course, society tends not to consider it labor. Like, why give birth if you don't want to assemble a pyramid with your child for 10 hours in a row. But it seems that besides mothers, only slaves in Egypt spent the same amount of time on building pyramids, and where are they all now?

Management

A very time consuming and most overlooked part of homework is remembering, planning, and allocating. For example, keep in mind when a touchy aunt with a large inheritance has a birthday or how exactly the children's circles were transferred in order to deliver them everywhere on time. If you distribute and partially automate these processes, life will become much easier.

2. Don't "help your mom"

A four-year-old can be an assistant in household chores. He needs to be accustomed to routine duties, explained how and what to do, praised and motivated. For adult family members, household chores are their area of responsibility equally. So no one should wait for special instructions from someone else.

Taking on something means performing the entire cycle of work. For example, taking out the trash - not only grab a bag of waste on the way to work, but also monitor the fullness of the bucket, its cleanliness, and the presence of bags.

3. Stop dividing responsibilities into male and female

One could start with how, in ancient times, men worked in the fields, and women were busy around the house. But let's not. Firstly, everyone worked on the ground, otherwise where did all these stories come from about the fact that they used to give birth in the field. It is unlikely that women deliberately fled from home to the furrow in order to heroically reproduce. Secondly, it is time to stop pulling the traditions of two hundred years ago on modern society. Nevertheless, many refuse to do certain things, because it is a "woman's business".

You need a drill to hang a shelf, not a dick. Dishes are also washed with hands, not genitals.

The only area where gender matters is in the use of force. If you need to lift something heavy, it will be easier for a man. The rest is all about skills. Nobody knows how to wash the floor or do the laundry since birth.

4. Do not discount the cost of time and effort for household work

Progress gave us a lot of wonderful technology that protected us from doing laundry in the ice hole and cooking over a fire. But, alas, it has not yet been possible to delegate matters completely to automatons.

The words "cooks a slow cooker, washes a machine" betray a person who normally did not work with either one or the other.

If you suddenly know a model of a typewriter that collects dirty laundry from the closets and takes it out from under the bed, sorts it by color, puts it in itself, pours in the necessary liquids, takes out the washed, hangs it up, makes sure that it does not dry out, iron it and put it on the shelves, then write the model in the comments, we all want this.

Household chores have become easier with the advent of electronic assistants, but have not disappeared anywhere.

5. Distribute responsibilities appropriately

It is logical to compare the volume of household work with the waste of time and effort at work. For example, if one person is on his feet all the time, and the other sits on a chair, then at home you can change. The first will take on quieter things, and the second will work physically. But if both work in the office for 8 hours, then the contribution to household chores should be comparable in degree of complexity and time costs.

6. Be prepared to compromise on household standards

Ideally, when partners have the same requirements for life. For example, one puts his socks in a corner, and the other doesn't care. And even if the mountain of socks is about to evict them from the apartment, they are happy and satisfied with each other. It is much worse if one does not see anything wrong in a light mess, while the other has a microstroke every time the crumb falls to the floor.

If people have completely different attitudes to cleanliness and order, you will have to work with what is. This is not at all a reason for "dirty" to sabotage household chores with the words: "You will not please." Like, let the neat and tormented, his own requirements. It is worth taking a step towards each other.

7. Remember each other's preferences

If one takes care of all the simple things, and the other - the complex and disgusting, it will not be very fair. So try to accommodate your preferences. Suddenly, you are okay with washing dishes, and your partner perceives vacuuming as meditation. Why not let each other do nice things.

8. Be flexible

Vary the distribution of responsibilities depending on the circumstances. For example, if one of you is having a difficult period at work, it's okay for the other to release him from some of the household chores. The main thing is not to forget to reconsider the agreements later.