by Jancee Dunn
At the moment, my daughter wants to be a clown in the circus when she grows up, but I’d like her to feel confident that she has a shot at being a CEO if the whole clown thing doesn’t work out.
It is time to make some changes around our housework. I conscript a flotilla of experts to help me begin.
The first order of business, advises psychologist Joshua Coleman, author of The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework, is to change my language. Your husband isn’t “helping,” he tells me, nor is he “doing me a favor.” “You are both parenting,” he says pointedly, “and this is an even exchange of services.”
Then have what psychologists call an “intentional conversation,” in which you are extremely clear about your need for change and your wishes going forward. “Most men are actually willing to negotiate and compromise, but they expect the woman to be direct,” says Coleman, who cheerfully admits to being a reformed “lazy husband” himself. “Men often do best if they know exactly what to do.” Do not use moralistic or shaming language, he continues, which only brings on defensiveness.
A useful mantra is affectionate though unmovable. Coleman says that women who get the most compliance from men are those who are comfortably assertive in their expectations of their participation—as though it’s a done deal, and you’re merely figuring out how to get there. If you’re hesitant, vague about what you want, or guilt-ridden, he says, you set yourself up to be at the mercy of your spouse’s goodwill—not very twenty-first century. (Or, as Oprah Winfrey says, “You teach people how to treat you.”) “And stay in the game longer,” Coleman coaches me. “So many women tell me, ‘Well, I asked and he said no.’” He laughs. “That was just round one!”
And so one evening, after our daughter has gone to bed, I ask Tom if I may have a quick word. He eyes me like I’m a clipboard-wielding Greenpeace canvasser asking for a moment of his time. “This cannot be good,” he says warily. “It’s like a telephone ringing in the middle of the night.” But he sets aside his newspaper.
I’ve been counseled that I need to begin my “intentional conversation” with a statement of appreciation, so I take a breath. “I really appreciate how hard you work and how much time you spend with Sylvie. However, even though we work equal hours, I am doing almost all the housework and childcare” (state the problem in a neutral way). “This has made me exhausted, unhappy, and resentful. Our current system is not working. When you have a child, your household has to function at a higher level, because there are so many more moving parts.
“You have told me that you feel guilty sometimes that I am doing almost everything. If you would just do your bit, instead of ignoring me or giving me attitude like a teenager”—(oops, “shaming language”)—“I mean, instead of fighting me, you wouldn’t feel guilty, I would be happier, our child would be better adjusted, and our lives would be more peaceful. Don’t you want peace? Who doesn’t love peace? Instead of wasting your energy by taking a stand, why not just channel that energy into doing what needs to be done? If you are afraid I will assign you even more jobs once you have finished, you have my solemn vow that I will not. Nor am I asking for fifty-fifty, even though Caitlin Moran tells me I should.”
Then appeal to his sense of fair play. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, says Dallas psychologist Ann Dunnewold, an expert in women’s issues, inform him that you work just like he does—and in many ways it’s tougher, because he is at least surrounded by adults all day, while you are with needy children. Most adults, at least outside of the company holiday party, are not going to vomit on you, grope you, or have spontaneous crying fits.
“My husband says that I ‘have it easy’ because I stay at home with the kids all week,” says my friend Sarah. “He has the balls to tell me, ‘You’re at the park in the sunshine while I’m at the office.’ I tell him, ‘If it’s so easy to be at the park with three kids under six, why don’t you do it on the weekends?’ Because it’s work, that’s why! Our two-year-old thinks it’s funny to run into the middle of the road! I’m on high alert all the time.”
Make no mistake: raising babies, as biological anthropologist Helen Fisher tells me, is humankind’s hardest job. Dunnewold tells clients who are stay-at-home moms that they are working seven days a week if their mates do not pitch in on weekends. “Listen, federal labor law dictates that in an eight-hour shift, we have two twenty-minute breaks and a half hour for lunch,” she said. “If you’re sleeping for eight hours, you have two eight-hour shifts. That adds up to two hours, twenty minutes, per day that you need to be off. So how are you getting that?” When you put it in numbers like that, she tells me, these are points that often make sense to men. “Did he have an hour for lunch? Probably. Did he go to the gym on the way home from work? So you say, ‘Let’s look at the hours we have during the week and try to make this equitable.’ And equitable doesn’t mean equal—it just means fair.”
My friend Jenny, also a stay-at-home mother, uses similar business logic on her husband. “A lot of working folks can appreciate analogies to the workplace, a domain where they might feel more comfortably on top of things,” she says. “I tell friends to embrace the view that home life is a functioning business, albeit a weird twenty-four-hour diner/daycare/hospital type of business.”
Moving on: request, don’t demand. Most of us respond better to a request,” says Gary Chapman, the pastor and marriage counselor whose book The Five Love Languages has sold ten million copies. “You can say, ‘When you vacuumed the floor yesterday, it was like heaven,’” Chapman tells me in his honeyed South Carolina drawl. “Then if you say, ‘Now, if it’s possible, I’d really like for you to get the hairs out of the sink when you finish in the bathroom,’ and he’s feeling loved by you, he’s far more likely to say, ‘Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.’ You know?” The craving to be valued, he adds, is not a male impulse, but a human one.
Of course, this advice isn’t exactly new: Jesus mentioned it during his Sermon on the Mount, when he told people to treat others as they wish to be treated. In 1937’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote that people respond to appreciation and kindness and resent criticism and displays of temper. Yet clearly we still need to be told this, again and again.
Coleman agrees with Chapman. “I understand that you’re annoyed to use positive reinforcement, but in many cases, it probably ain’t gonna happen any other way, and we have to start somewhere,” he says with a sigh. “It’s strategic to be friendly, and complimentary.”
And my request is more likely to be fulfilled if one magic word is used: because. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer found that people are more willing to comply with an appeal if you simply provide a reason—any reason. Langer observed a group of people waiting in line to use a copy machine (mind, this was an earlier era). When someone asked to cut in line but supplied a reason, even when it didn’t make much sense (“Can I use the copy machine first because I need to make a copy?”), nearly everyone acquiesced. The word because appears to be the behavioral cue, so even if your reason sounds slightly bonkers (Please clean up your mess because it’s messy), it can still get results.
What’s not effective is to announce, “Here’s what we’re doing today,” Coleman goes on, because, as mentioned earlier, males are socialized to assert their independence. Instead, he advises me to present the tasks in the spirit of negotiation. “Say, ‘Here’s a list of five things that need to get done—you can pick three.’”
Having to deploy multiple strategies is, frankly, irritating, but the reality is that even though men are doing more housework than previous generations, asking them to scrub the bathroom remains a tough sell. Society is much more apt to celebrate engaged fathers: witness how many male celebrities have made being an involved dad part of their image. They pose for paparazzi wearing infant carriers; they post loving shots of their children on social media. Nowadays, it’s cool to be a hands-on father. “I’m literally an Uber driver now,” soccer star David Beckham mock-lament
ed on a talk show of his post-retirement. “I have four drop-offs at four different schools.”
But while dads may enthusiastically display the huevos rancheros they whipped up for the family breakfast on Instagram, they’re not quite as likely to post shots of the family laundry they just folded—because it’s still not cool for a man to be seen doing housework. A University of New Hampshire study found that only 2.1 percent of commercials featured men doing work around the house.
So how do you persuade them? Coleman compares the process to game theory: “What are you willing to trade off, and how are you willing to use your power?” he posits. Tell your spouse that changing his behavior will directly benefit him because you will be happier and more relaxed. Make trades with items of value to him that are sometimes hard for you to give him: time alone, sleeping late, spending time with friends of his that you aren’t wild about, like the college buddy who still goes by the nickname Toilet Seat.
Coleman points out that a tradable item of value for me was Tom’s lengthy bike rides. “Tell him, ‘I’m willing to do this for you’—the phrase ‘do this for you’ makes it clear that this is a favor, and not something he’s entitled to—‘but I want you to do more when you’re around, and here are some things you can do that would make me feel much better.’” Calm. Specific. Businesslike. Assuming it’s a done deal.
Fired up, I approach Tom with Chapman’s and Coleman’s scripts. “What now?” he asks resignedly as he sets his book aside.
“I love that you checked Sylvie’s homework this morning,” I say. “And when you went out to get us bagels, it was like heaven.”
He regards his new wife quizzically.
“Now, I’m wondering, if it’s possible, if you can take Sylvie to a birthday party at the bowling alley this weekend. Because I don’t feel like it.” I smile at him. “Please,” I add.
Normally, I happily take our daughter to birthday parties. Some people moan about them, but I love the overexcited kids, the balloons, the face painting, and, especially, the supermarket sheet cake encrusted with sprinkles. When it is brought out to a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” I always give Sylvie a penetrating look that says Now, you know what to get for Mommy, right? She will nod discreetly, and telegraph back Corner piece, which has the most frosting.
But I’m terrible at bowling, I tell Tom. “And you’ve never once taken her to a birthday party by yourse—” Whoops, too negative. “And it would be a fun thing for Sylvie to have her dad take her to a birthday party alone.” Yes. Better.
He shrugs. “Okay.”
“And if you want to go on a long bike ride on Sunday, I’m willing to do this for you, if you’ll take us to lunch afterward. I would look forward to that.”
I brace myself for pushback, but he nods. “All right.”
It is as simple as that. As a friend of mine says, “If you don’t ask, you’re probably not going to get. So I negotiate my fitness time, book a class and prepay it, so it’s locked in. I make a plan with a friend and get it on the calendar. I’ve learned to be protective of my time, just as my husband is.”
Once you have a child, says New York psychologist Guy Winch, whom we will meet later, everything has to be up for renegotiation. “You both are managers of the household, and should have regular discussions, every two weeks minimum, about how things are going, and brainstorm about what needs to be done, and track and tweak accordingly,” he says. I say that this seems a little chilly and transactional. “If it feels transactional and not the organic way these things are supposed to develop, there is no organic way these things are supposed to develop,” he counters. “Couples should negotiate all the time, and it requires communication and coordination.”
We take his advice. Every Saturday morning, when we are feeling relaxed after a late breakfast, we start building in a fifteen-minute managerial meeting. Managerial meetings aren’t exactly sexy, or fun. Sometimes they feel collaborative, but other times they feel distancing and lawyerly as we briskly run through what needs to be done. But I see now that our hectic daily life is never, ever going to sort itself out organically, as I once envisioned. Within a few weeks, our meetings become a necessity.
As Winch puts it, “Each spouse has his or her own needs, and the marriage has its own needs. The relationship is a third entity. So you’re thinking not ‘What would be good for her?’ or ‘What would be good for him?’ but ‘What would be good for the marriage?’ And this invites a more cooperative, teamwork kind of attempt at resolution.”
One Saturday, we trade a three-hour chunk of time—a bike ride for him (which he is desperate to do) and a stint at the gym and coffee with a friend for me. I keep in mind what Ann Dunnewold told me: when a mother takes care of herself, children absorb important lessons. “Both boys and girls learn that mothers have needs, too, which is also very important if they have children of their own,” she says. If you must conquer guilt, she adds, tell yourself, ‘When I take time for myself, I come back and I’m more the mother I want to be. More patient. Less reactive.’”
After my gym and coffee date wrap up, I still have a half hour of free time. I fight the urge to pop by the grocery store, mindful that a woman’s free time is likely to be “contaminated,” as one study put it, by other things, such as taking care of kids or housework.
Instead, I force myself to sit in the park. Had I contaminated my time with food shopping, I would have missed the sight of a squirrel perched on a fence jauntily eating an entire ice cream cone. I sit, dreamily musing: Is that chocolate chip? Those could definitely be chips. I suppose it might also be rum raisin. Do ice cream places still sell rum raisin? Is he going to eat the cone, too? Whoops, yep, there he goes.
Next, take a page from same-sex couples and allocate jobs according to preference. A survey commissioned by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit that tracks workplace information, found that same-sex couples were much more likely to evenly share household and childcare responsibilities—and tended to divide chores based on personal preference. This may have stemmed from the fact, the researchers speculated, that same-sex couples have already broken out of social norms and thus could divvy up more innovatively, while straight couples tended to backslide into traditional gender roles—as Tom and I did.
But it’s still unrealistic to demand a fifty-fifty split, says Dunnewold. “The hard-core feminist position would be, ‘Absolutely, it should be fifty-fifty,’” she says. “Well, I’m a feminist, too, but that might not necessarily work if, for instance, you’re breastfeeding. You’ve got to jockey with what works for you.”
With that in mind, Tom and I sit down at the kitchen table and make a list of the chores we actually like and the ones we can’t stand. I start by saying that I like to grocery shop. I am the type of shopper who methodically examines every new product on the shelves: Ooh, look at these sriracha-flavored potato chips! Hello, is that dark chocolate banana–flavored peanut butter? I could easily spend hours at a supermarket. Eventually they would find me at closing time encased in ice in Frozen Appetizers and Snacks.
When I do the food shopping, I’ve noticed that more men are joining me in the aisles—as it happens, a record 41 percent say they are the primary grocery shoppers in their households, according to the NPD Group, a market research company (although bear in mind that this is self-reported information). Another study found that millennial dads were significantly more likely to shop at least four times a week. Male shoppers have been shown to be drawn to bold flavors such as chipotle, as well as high-protein offerings. Accordingly, companies have gone after these “manfluencers”—an actual trademarked term from Chicago’s Midan Marketing—with a slew of products such as “brogurt,” Greek yogurt packed with extra protein.
Tom, with his aversion to crowds and fluorescent lighting, dreads the grocery store. So I take over that duty, along with registering our daughter for classes, commandeering playdates and doctor’s appointments, and cooking, provided I can get one day off from kitchen duty a week. I al
so derive a demented satisfaction out of vacuuming and dusting, and do not recoil from cleaning the bathroom, as Tom does. Tom enjoys supervising homework, all things car and computer related, paying bills, taking our daughter to swim class (“I find the smell of chlorine strangely satisfying”), household errands, and Swiffering. He volunteers to do the dishes and laundry, a task I loathe since the laundry room is on our building’s ground floor and we have to haul a bulging bag downstairs. Every one of our jobs is well defined, which eliminates our usual debate on who is working more hours per week and thus deserves fewer chores.
Clarity is vital when it comes to parceling out household work, as research from the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families found. The couples in their study who “lacked clarity on what, when, and how household responsibilities would be carried out often said they felt drained and rushed and had difficulty communicating their dissatisfaction,” researchers wrote.
Those drained respondents negotiated their responsibilities anew every day, starting from scratch—as Tom and I had been doing. This cracked system trapped the participants in an exhausting cycle of “requests and avoidance of these requests.” Conversely, spouses who knew exactly what to do around the house didn’t spend as much time negotiating responsibilities and didn’t tend to monitor and criticize each other. Not surprisingly, “their daily lives seemed to flow more smoothly.”
Moving on, the experts said I should consider loosening my standards. Maybe our less-frazzled husbands are on to something here. Why, for instance, did I put needless pressure on myself to stay up until midnight making Pinterest-worthy ladybug cupcakes for my child’s fifth birthday, painstakingly piping on a bristling army of tiny antennae? Why, for that matter, did I bother making homemade vanilla cupcakes when most kids just lick off the frosting and toss the uneaten cake into the trash?