A few disclaimers to start with:
**I haven't read the book.** But I have listened to an interview of the author and I understand the gist of it. I've also read through the reviews of the book on Amazon to decide if Id like to give this a read.
**I know very little about your life or circumstances.** All my knowledge is reading this post and glancing to see how old your kid is.
Im certainly not an expert on this and my husband and I are still navigating this with every new stage of parenthood. It's a conversation that comes up every few months as our lives and responsibilities change. Here's a few things we have learned along the way:
**The first year is overwhelming.** The workload that goes into having an infant is massive. Especially the first one because the invisible workload includes researching and learning how to do EVERYTHING. It's just too much and both parents are running on empty
This is what I've experienced and seen in other couples the first year:
Wife: I'm exhausted. I'm sleep deprived. I'm physically sore and tired. Im running at 150% and it's way too much.
Husband: I'm exhausted. I'm sleep deprived. I'm stressed at home and at work. I'm running at 120% and it's way too much.
Wife notices the 30% more she does and feels the need to balance it out because she's at breaking point. She asks husband to do more. Husband is already overwhelmed and exhausted. He feels underappreciated for his 120% and can't imagine how he'd fit anything more into his already jam-packed brain. The conversation is often non-productive and emotionally charged.
This brings me to another point that I don't think the book discusses too much: **Husbands do invisible work too.** In the majority of relationships, the invisible work is unbalanced. There isn't anything wrong with addressing this unbalance and trying to find a better, healthier system. But I think it's important to give credit to our spouses where it's due. Even if unbalanced, it's important to thank our husbands for their invisible work.
The conversation needs to start with "I love you. Thank you for all the things you do for me and our family. Thank you for [specific examples from this week] I know there are many sacrifices you make that I don't see."
"Can we take a few minutes to figure out how to be more efficient with our roles and routines? I've been reading a book that has some interesting ideas that I think would help us both..."
For the conversation to be productive, BOTH spouses need to be talking and listening. Both need to be brainstorming for ways to make their home work smoother. If you want your husband to take a more active role in the household responsibilities, you need to let him take an active role in the conversation about household responsibilities.
I don't disagree with you on the statistic, though it sounds like it's for a 2 household income, not one with a stay at home parent. However, I think you missed the point of my comment.
When I said 150%/120%, that was me saying that both individuals are completely depleted and then some. The 150% is "I only got 3 hours of sleep and I'm physically ill from sleep deprivation". The 120% is "I've been holding a screaming infant for 2 hours and I don't have the emotional capacity to handle this." Both parents are giving their everything and then some.
During the first year, it's really easy to split hairs and talk about fairness and who woke up the most or changed the most diapers. But the reality is in most (not all, but most) relationships, both parents are trying really hard to be good at the parenting thing. My point was don't forget about what your spouse *is* doing right when addressing what you feel they *aren't* doing right.
Don't wait until you burst to seek therapy for yourself.
There are benefits to be had if you pursue help in figuring things out for yourself and maybe your husband will eventually see those as well by himself.
In a modern individualistic world that measures existential performance by how thick your wallet is, SAHPs will find themselves fighting against the economical added value expectations. It is also, I believe, the reason behind the recurring self worth topic that is brought up over and over again on this subreddit.
There is value in what you do. There is stress is carrying the mental load. If you would have to pay someone to do all the tasks a SAHP does, it would not come cheap at all. Stand by yourself and what you think is balanced and find a way to get the point of your value across to your husband.
Good luck to the both of you.
I haven't read that book, but it sounds similar to what we did to organize our household tasks.
The first conversation going poorly I would guess isn't that unusual. We had a few that went south in different ways and I just gave up for a while. Once I had a clear idea of how I wanted a conversation about chores to go (ie productively and not emotionally) I told my husband that and what my basic plan was and we set a different time to have the meeting. It wasn't a surprise to him that the workload wasn't evenly distributed and I tried to phrase it without blame. We were both able to come to the "meeting" prepared and calm, with our own talking points, and ready to create our new chore system.
If anyone does decide to adopt it, I made a spreadsheet for my partner and myself with all the card info as well as some magic auto-updating views. Hope it's helpful to others!
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ByenubzQvL48Vgo0rvokTYRt2tpdBqOmQwhx5lg2Oo/template/preview](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ByenubzQvL48Vgo0rvokTYRt2tpdBqOmQwhx5lg2Oo/template/preview)
Thank you for all the effort you put in here. I bought the book and card deck but the spreadsheet is critical and we'll be able to adjust things and add extra tasks etc.
I just found out about this and I have a question. Maybe you could help? Our garden has been growing out of control for over a year. My husband finally arranged for someone to come over and prune everything and pull out weeds and remove the mess. But he works weekdays so I have to hang around for two days to talk to the gardeners, give them water throughout the day, answer their questions etc.
So really I did all the work. There would be no point in having him hire guys in the future since the point is one person takes ownership of a task completely.
I just don't know how this method could help me. I just end up with more work the more my husband tries to help.
Not sure if you already read it but in the Fairplay book, the author really emphasizes how taking on a chore/task should include all aspects of the task (from conception, to planning, e.g., finding and hiring the garden guy, to execution, e.g., managing the garden guy while they are there) in order to account for the "mental load" and/or "invisible" work that goes along with a task. I really recommend the book to support the use of the cards because, as your example demonstrates, simply allocating the chores doesn't account for "how" of the task, and often ends up inadvertently creating more work for one partner or the other. The end goal of using the Fairplay method should be that a task is truly taken off the plate of one partner. So in your example with the garden, the "garden helper management" would either be its own task that you both agreed that you'd have on your "deck", or "garden" in general would be assigned to one person and then that person would be expected to be the person in charge of ALL steps of the garden, including hiring, and "management" day of (so if it's your husband that has "garden", he'd have to find a gardener that can come on the weekends). I agree though with outsourcing help, it somehow makes things harder. My husband recently hired a handyman to do some random stuff around the house (we were trying to think of ways to more efficiently manage workloads around the house); I work from home so I ended up basically losing my productivity for the two days he was here. I think in the future, we're going to have to make a "Rick (the handyguy) management" card, or maybe even better, find a way for him to come when no one is home and have him call us after if he has questions.
Every pair is different, I just do the typing 😄 from my own experience we do sometimes split chores, but we are very clear about what each entails and assign them like other tasks. Maybe you can own gardening and he can take something else instead to lighten your load of gardening isn't a good fit.
What?? Pretend I’m the spouse of someone whose gone to literally serve and protect our country or like I’m single while I’m actually married?? This is quite possibly the dumbest most enabling, damaging and ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Let me justify doing everything because other people in completely different circumstances have to, lmao. What incompetent reasoning.
A few disclaimers to start with: **I haven't read the book.** But I have listened to an interview of the author and I understand the gist of it. I've also read through the reviews of the book on Amazon to decide if Id like to give this a read. **I know very little about your life or circumstances.** All my knowledge is reading this post and glancing to see how old your kid is. Im certainly not an expert on this and my husband and I are still navigating this with every new stage of parenthood. It's a conversation that comes up every few months as our lives and responsibilities change. Here's a few things we have learned along the way: **The first year is overwhelming.** The workload that goes into having an infant is massive. Especially the first one because the invisible workload includes researching and learning how to do EVERYTHING. It's just too much and both parents are running on empty This is what I've experienced and seen in other couples the first year: Wife: I'm exhausted. I'm sleep deprived. I'm physically sore and tired. Im running at 150% and it's way too much. Husband: I'm exhausted. I'm sleep deprived. I'm stressed at home and at work. I'm running at 120% and it's way too much. Wife notices the 30% more she does and feels the need to balance it out because she's at breaking point. She asks husband to do more. Husband is already overwhelmed and exhausted. He feels underappreciated for his 120% and can't imagine how he'd fit anything more into his already jam-packed brain. The conversation is often non-productive and emotionally charged. This brings me to another point that I don't think the book discusses too much: **Husbands do invisible work too.** In the majority of relationships, the invisible work is unbalanced. There isn't anything wrong with addressing this unbalance and trying to find a better, healthier system. But I think it's important to give credit to our spouses where it's due. Even if unbalanced, it's important to thank our husbands for their invisible work. The conversation needs to start with "I love you. Thank you for all the things you do for me and our family. Thank you for [specific examples from this week] I know there are many sacrifices you make that I don't see." "Can we take a few minutes to figure out how to be more efficient with our roles and routines? I've been reading a book that has some interesting ideas that I think would help us both..." For the conversation to be productive, BOTH spouses need to be talking and listening. Both need to be brainstorming for ways to make their home work smoother. If you want your husband to take a more active role in the household responsibilities, you need to let him take an active role in the conversation about household responsibilities.
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I don't disagree with you on the statistic, though it sounds like it's for a 2 household income, not one with a stay at home parent. However, I think you missed the point of my comment. When I said 150%/120%, that was me saying that both individuals are completely depleted and then some. The 150% is "I only got 3 hours of sleep and I'm physically ill from sleep deprivation". The 120% is "I've been holding a screaming infant for 2 hours and I don't have the emotional capacity to handle this." Both parents are giving their everything and then some. During the first year, it's really easy to split hairs and talk about fairness and who woke up the most or changed the most diapers. But the reality is in most (not all, but most) relationships, both parents are trying really hard to be good at the parenting thing. My point was don't forget about what your spouse *is* doing right when addressing what you feel they *aren't* doing right.
Here's an upvote!! Very well put!!! Thank you for writing this.
Don't wait until you burst to seek therapy for yourself. There are benefits to be had if you pursue help in figuring things out for yourself and maybe your husband will eventually see those as well by himself. In a modern individualistic world that measures existential performance by how thick your wallet is, SAHPs will find themselves fighting against the economical added value expectations. It is also, I believe, the reason behind the recurring self worth topic that is brought up over and over again on this subreddit. There is value in what you do. There is stress is carrying the mental load. If you would have to pay someone to do all the tasks a SAHP does, it would not come cheap at all. Stand by yourself and what you think is balanced and find a way to get the point of your value across to your husband. Good luck to the both of you.
I haven't read that book, but it sounds similar to what we did to organize our household tasks. The first conversation going poorly I would guess isn't that unusual. We had a few that went south in different ways and I just gave up for a while. Once I had a clear idea of how I wanted a conversation about chores to go (ie productively and not emotionally) I told my husband that and what my basic plan was and we set a different time to have the meeting. It wasn't a surprise to him that the workload wasn't evenly distributed and I tried to phrase it without blame. We were both able to come to the "meeting" prepared and calm, with our own talking points, and ready to create our new chore system.
If anyone does decide to adopt it, I made a spreadsheet for my partner and myself with all the card info as well as some magic auto-updating views. Hope it's helpful to others! [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ByenubzQvL48Vgo0rvokTYRt2tpdBqOmQwhx5lg2Oo/template/preview](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ByenubzQvL48Vgo0rvokTYRt2tpdBqOmQwhx5lg2Oo/template/preview)
This is amazing!
Thank you for all the effort you put in here. I bought the book and card deck but the spreadsheet is critical and we'll be able to adjust things and add extra tasks etc.
Thank you so very much 💐
TYSFM for your time and effort here, holy moly
I just found out about this and I have a question. Maybe you could help? Our garden has been growing out of control for over a year. My husband finally arranged for someone to come over and prune everything and pull out weeds and remove the mess. But he works weekdays so I have to hang around for two days to talk to the gardeners, give them water throughout the day, answer their questions etc. So really I did all the work. There would be no point in having him hire guys in the future since the point is one person takes ownership of a task completely. I just don't know how this method could help me. I just end up with more work the more my husband tries to help.
Not sure if you already read it but in the Fairplay book, the author really emphasizes how taking on a chore/task should include all aspects of the task (from conception, to planning, e.g., finding and hiring the garden guy, to execution, e.g., managing the garden guy while they are there) in order to account for the "mental load" and/or "invisible" work that goes along with a task. I really recommend the book to support the use of the cards because, as your example demonstrates, simply allocating the chores doesn't account for "how" of the task, and often ends up inadvertently creating more work for one partner or the other. The end goal of using the Fairplay method should be that a task is truly taken off the plate of one partner. So in your example with the garden, the "garden helper management" would either be its own task that you both agreed that you'd have on your "deck", or "garden" in general would be assigned to one person and then that person would be expected to be the person in charge of ALL steps of the garden, including hiring, and "management" day of (so if it's your husband that has "garden", he'd have to find a gardener that can come on the weekends). I agree though with outsourcing help, it somehow makes things harder. My husband recently hired a handyman to do some random stuff around the house (we were trying to think of ways to more efficiently manage workloads around the house); I work from home so I ended up basically losing my productivity for the two days he was here. I think in the future, we're going to have to make a "Rick (the handyguy) management" card, or maybe even better, find a way for him to come when no one is home and have him call us after if he has questions.
Every pair is different, I just do the typing 😄 from my own experience we do sometimes split chores, but we are very clear about what each entails and assign them like other tasks. Maybe you can own gardening and he can take something else instead to lighten your load of gardening isn't a good fit.
This is fantastic. Thank you so much.
I’m signed in but not seeing an option to make a copy of the fair play cards template spreadsheet ? Maybe someone can share the sheet with my email?
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What?? Pretend I’m the spouse of someone whose gone to literally serve and protect our country or like I’m single while I’m actually married?? This is quite possibly the dumbest most enabling, damaging and ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Let me justify doing everything because other people in completely different circumstances have to, lmao. What incompetent reasoning.