Partnering with Your Partner
Regarding Household Responsibilities
BEFORE Baby Arrives
I did not do this and had countless disagreements and stress around this topic the first year my son was born
Make a Plan !!
Create a List of Weekly Household Chores
Have you and your partner circle and initial the chores each of you prefers doing
If there is a house hold chore you both are not thrilled about-
make a plan to change off every other week
There will be new chores that will be added to the list after your baby is born
One thing I found CHALLENGING is getting everything ready to get myself and baby out the door in the morning
Bottles need to be made, the Diaper Bag packed and ready by the door, snacks, water, extra clothes for baby
Make an agreement with your partner to get help either the night before or morning of- getting things ready
to leave the house each morning
Create a weekly chore list for each partner and put it on the fridge -
initial the task when it has been completed
If you have an unusually stressful week
and were unable to get to your chores-
renegotiate with your partner to get more help!
DO NOT TRY TO BE A SUPER WOMAN or SUPER MOM !!
So many moms fall prey to “mom-guilt”
which is an utter waste of time…
ASK FOR HELP when you need it !
So many moms think she should not ask for help
More on Mom Guilt Here
How to Get Your Husband to Help (Written by a Husband)
for MOTHERLY (A Great Blog for Motherhood!)
It isn’t fair.
Women today make up nearly half of the workforce and yet are still largely expected to run the house and take care of the children, just like their maternal ancestors did. Don’t believe me? Think: “Nah, this is 2016 for crying out loud!” Think again.
A 2015 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey found that, on an average day, only 22 percent of men actually did housework compared with 50 percent of women. To top it off, men in families with young children only spent 25 minutes providing “physical care” (e.g., a bath) compared to the hour women spent. Considering the fact that 70 percent of women with children under 18 are now working, this just isn’t fair.
Likewise, for moms who stay home, it still isn’t fair. These moms, in addition to doing more housework and child raising than their husbands, report higher levels of worry, sadness, stress, anger, and depression than their counterparts who work outside the home.
The point is this: moms, whether working outside the home or not, are completely inundated, and their husbands are oftentimes just not doing enough to help. The problem, however, is that these same wives are trying to get their husbands to help in all the wrong ways.
That’s where I come in.
You see, I am a husband…and I regularly do housework and child rearing. (Don’t give me a trophy – it is my responsibility, but that’s a story for another day). Wives, I can help you understand your man.
But before getting into the ways you can get your husband to help, you need to understand a few ground rules:
“Clean” means something different to him
Your husband’s expectations for “clean” are probably different than yours. Don’t try to convince him to increase his standards to match yours. Instead, you need to tell him that doing chores above and beyond his level of cleanliness is one way that he can love you, not because he agrees with your level of cleanliness.
Understand the rule of reciprocity
The rule of reciprocity tells us that if you treat your husband well, he is, evolutionarily-speaking, more likely to respond with kindness. Likewise, if you nag, yell, or treat him with ugliness, he is more likely to respond with ugliness. Thus, you need to treat him well.
You are now ready to take the steps required to get your husband to help.
Before anything else, forgive him
Someone I respect very much once said that forgiving someone means deciding to cancel the debt that they owe you. I want you to tally your husband’s debt against you (e.g., the times he criminally failed to help you) and then, once you’ve taken a deep breath, decide to cancel it out. (Note: this process takes time.)
If you try to do any of the other steps in this article without heeding this one, you’re going to fail.
Communicate your hurt, not your anger
When you (wives) get angry, we (husbands) get defensive. However, when you express your hurt, something within us wants to rise up and protect our girl, even if that means protecting you from our own actions, or inaction. If you want to spark a change in us, it starts with showing us your heart, despite what culture may have you believe about men.
Be specific and straightforward with requests
No sighing and no rants about how we “don’t do enough.” Tell us exactly what you expect us to do. Ideally, we’d sit down and both agree on a set list of chores, including a deadline for those chores.
Assume the best about us
Sometimes we aren’t going to get around to fixing the vacuum as quickly as we told you we would (true story). You have every right to be upset at us. But the best thing you can do in that subpar circumstance is to assume the best. For example, instead of assuming that we don’t care about you or your requests, assume instead that we may have completely forgotten about it. Then, ask us.
Appreciate us when we do the right thing
I’m not talking about showering us with praise or giving us one of those condescending “wow, you can actually do something right” kind of “compliments.” Just be genuine.
I understand the argument that we shouldn’t be thanked because it’s just as much our job as it is yours. And you know what? You are absolutely right. However, when you stick to your principles and decide not to appreciate us, you miss out on an opportunity to love on your husband. You also miss the chance to help him associate your happiness with his helping.
Finally, don’t be afraid to send your husband this article. If I’m right, I suspect this will be a welcome change for him, too.
After all: happy wife, happy life.
Baby-Nup Contracts
Help New Parents
Split Up Chores and Childcare Responsibilities
These written agreements
are like prenups,
but the assets are mom and dad's time.
Here's what you need to know.
You've heard of couples signing a prenup before marriage, but do you know anyone who's gotten a baby-nup before having a child? These contracts, written up before the baby arrives, are supposed to help new moms and dads agree on how they'll divide up the childcare duties and household chores.
And baby-nups (yes, really) are on the rise, according to a CBS2 report. These parenting pacts can be as detailed as the parents want, but it's essentially a chore chart for grownups.
"The idea is just at least have some sort of order," said Rachel Bowie, whose son Finn is "almost a year." She said the baby-nup contract she and hubby Matt Dorville have is more of a flexible agreement, but it's worked well for them so far.
"I think it was just more of an extension on organization honestly," said Dorville. "It's just kind of going, you know what? We're going to try this. We're going to try something new to make it a little bit better. You have to adapt."
And for some parents, a baby-nup can make the chaos that comes with taking care of a newborn at least a little more manageable. Melissa and Greg Biggs decided to come up with a baby-nup agreement when they were expecting their second child back in 2015.
"I remembered how exhausting and stressful it all was when we had our daughter, especially since I was breastfeeding and a lot fell on me," Melissa told Parade. "I consider myself a pretty organized person, so I decided to create a physical chore chart for my husband and I. We both sat down and divided up all the baby and household duties together."
The Biggs' baby-nup is more of a set-in-stone agreement than Bowie and Dorville's. "I listed all the chores we had and assigned a name to each one and hung it on our fridge," said Melissa. "We both signed it so we knew we would stick to it, no excuses."