Are your heating and cooling bills keeping you from enjoying your 'room with a view?'

I’m in the middle of it so I probably have to answer this one. And of course the response will have to be based mostly on personal experience. Fair in today’s society is 50/50. Unless you and your partner have made arrangements to change this ratio. That would be scenarios where as an example, one partner has a part time job allowing for pitching in a little more on the home front. Lots of people come up with other ratios for all kinds of reasons, but for 2 people working full time, 50/50 could be considered fair. Things change a lot when you add a baby to the mix (not long ago you asked, is it worth it? - absolutely). If you choose to nurse your baby, in the beginning you could be spending 6-8 hours a day just on breast feeding alone. That already puts you way ahead of your partner in terms of the time contribution you have made on the home front, and even if he did every other chore around the house you are still way ahead. (Many women choose bottle feeding for reasons of time constraints – others can feed the baby, freeing you up take care of other things, like work.) Chances are, you’ll do other things around the house than breast feeding. So that sets the stage for a different ratio at least for some time. Later on if you work full time and you want to pump, that will take at least 4 hours per day with getting the bottles ready, pumping, etc. That’s a significant chunk of time that couldn’t really be outsourced to your husband. The problem is, lots of things that has to do with taking care of the baby gets taken out of the equation and falls on the female. Somehow she’s expected to do these things as if they didn’t take any time to do. But if you spend 4 hours or more in baby food preparation/ feeding, that’s 4 or more hours you don’t have to clean and cook for the hubby or for yourself for that matter. In addition, you might have to set aside a little extra time for sleep because both production of milk and waking up at night has a tendency to make you more tired. At least setting extra time aside is a nice idea, that doesn’t always get implemented. Say you wean at 1 year of age, then perhaps things can return to the 50/50. In my family that hasn’t happened both because my personal job situation changed and my husband’s as well, giving him a very long commute. But friends of ours, who both have PhDs and work full time made an effort of returning to the 50/50 after their child was over the breastfeeding stage and it works for them. Sometimes what husbands forget is that even though feeding children is not a ‘chore’ per se, like other chores, it can take an inordinate amount of time where you are not free to do other things. A 1 year old who is learning to eat can spend more than an hour eating dinner. This means my husband can cook a complete meal + clean up before the baby’s done eating. If I’m feeding the kid, he is not allowed to complain that I didn’t also cook. Furthermore, there might be a need to remind him that I wasn’t a good cook when we met. Having a child does not automatically make somebody a good cook. But at least overcooked veggies are OK when you are a little person with no teeth – cooking for the baby does count. So to get back to the environmental thread of this blog, organic baby food is expensive, so I’ll contribute with homecooked organic baby food. (And finally someone likes my cooking). Finally, to venture out on an environmental side track, there is a reason why those disposable diapers have gotten so popular. Time is always in short supply with a tiny little baby. If you are not lucky to be in an area with cloth diaper service, the best choice might be to get the unbleached ones. The cloth diaper services are limited to a small niche in terms of geography. If you are in a large city, chances are better. I did lots of research on the reusable ‘self service’ cloth diapers before the baby came and had settled on a brand that seemed good. Once the baby was actually here, reality set in, and my good intentions right out the window… But I take my hat off for people who can pull off the ‘do it yourself’ cloth diapers.

Posted by: linda | March 22, 2006 at 08:20 PM

My own personal thoughts about 50-50 When my guys were young I had one that I had no choice but use the cloth diapers on his little behind got all red and ouch! And when it comes to time out doing cleaning of those diapers you were lucky to have enough time to take care of the first baby too! I had two sons 18 months apart and while living in Germany in Base Housing..Taking up time was taking the diapers to be washed and because my son couldn't handle those diapers well at all unless they were wash Twice! You know how many diapers one child goes through in a day? Add a second child to the mix and its just felt like mountains of diapers, and I still had to feed the father of those little guys as well. In those days we ate alot of hambuger helper which now I don't eat meat but I can't stop the rest of the house from doing so nor will I .. freedom of choice I do believe in. 50/50 never happen, even when those little ones grew up and they do chores it seems its something to do with men's thought progress, its just doesn't seem to work when it comes to helping out/ Now if they want to eat.. well then they have to help with cooking and cleaning up after themselves. I am not a maid for anyone, if I could afford one I have one just for myself.. But you are so very right when you are nursing/ feeding/ changing/bathing that little one who has time to take care of their father too? Thats why there seems to be a bit of a problem with men when a baby is born, they are no longer number one in your life..My husband got over that fast when he saw he was the father of not one boy but two! It would be fair in a perfect world if the man in your life helped out as well and I think its wonderful that there are men that do. But I think that unless you start with them young with the idea of helping out, they never will. That son grew up and I have two amazing young men who do understand that when you have a women in the house, you better be picking up after yourself unless you want your things out in the trash because I have done it and I will do it again..lol A teaching leftover from my own mum about how to keep a house picked up, you know it does work too. They were lucky I let them keep their trash bag of items after I put it out to the curb. lol One thing I can say I got a Well fed husband and sons that clean. May their wifes of someday keep up with their training of picking up after themselves.. Just my thoughts on the having a world not so 50-50 is not hard to deal with.. Kim M Snyder http://overallbeauty.com/beauty-blog/

Posted by: Kim M Snyder | March 24, 2006 at 07:04 AM

My idea of "fair" centers on how much leisure or personal time each person gets to enjoy. I resist the notion that bringing more than half the income relieves a person of more than half the domestic responsibilities even when both adults are employed. Many external factors influence how much money a person earns. Earnings alone are not a good measure of how much a person contributes to the household. Couples may choose to work out their own ratio because the higher earner also puts in longer hours, but to me *time* is the relevant measure. In my experience, child care does get devalued in the equation. Perhaps that is just a reflection of our larger tendency as a society not to value activities which do not produce income and to value high-paying work over low-paying jobs. Is the teacher who shapes and inspires young children contributing less to society than the engineer who earns 2 or 3 times as much for his work replacing American workers with automated equipment? Money is a poor standard for measure in human relationships.

Posted by: Bonnie | March 25, 2006 at 03:19 PM

Are you ladies living me life? It blows my mind how much we Moms all have in common - whether we work or not. I especially relate to what you said about nursing and pumping. When we were carving out duties, my husband didn’t consider nursing and pumping a chore because he was biologically unable to do it - therefore it didn’t count. Excuse me?!? I agree with Kim above, in that 50-50 has less to do with the # of chores but more to do with both spouses having equal leisure/rest time. I have a higher salary than my husband, but he works more overtime. So I know I end up doing more. I'm OK with that - UNTIL - I see him sitting on the couch when I'm working in the kitchen. Then I either carve out some equal leisure time for myself (and the laundry just doesn't get done) or kick his butt off the couch and get him to help me. After my maternity leave, we had to have a serious wake-up call, because my husband treated maternity leave like it was domestic servitude leave. He stopped doing everything except basic lawn maintenance. The first couple of weeks we had help from our mothers, but after that I was on my own. He had no concept of how exhausting it was just to breastfeed and care for our baby. So when I was going back to work, I typed up an actual chore chart – a grid with all of our chores, the frequency they had to be done, and who was responsible. He smirked at it, but I insisted we follow it. It wasn't perfect, and many chores still didn't get done, but it was on our fridge as a testament to the 50-50 ideal. We have since thrown out the chore chart, and I have reverted to doing some of his chores, but he helps out with mine as well. Overall it seems pretty fair – EXCEPT - when he thinks he can sleep in on a Saturday when our child wakes up for the second time (I already let him sleep when our child wakes up the first time for nursing). I solve that problem by bringing the 1-year-old into bed with us, and after that sleep isn't an option. What causes me angst is the feeling that I'm some sort of harpy, hovering over my husband and somehow emasculating him. I am haunted by the phantom of his dear deceased grandmother, who was the pinnacle of proper ladyhood, and always made him breakfast from scratch and had the sports page laying by his plate, no matter what time he woke up. I do think men and women are different, especially the way we are raised, so I enjoy cooking more, and I try to give him "manly" chores like mowing the lawn. It's a delicate balance, and it will always be hard work for both of us – not just the chores, but the constant negotiation of the chores. My latest philosophy is that I don't mind doing extra, especially when he works overtime, but I expect to be APPRECIATED (and will remind him to that effect, much to his sometime annoyance).

Posted by: corrie | March 27, 2006 at 06:31 AM

Different people have different feelings on what value is placed on certain household contributions, as such with your husbands. Chances are you'll never be able to agree on 50/50 because you'll never be able to agree on what things are worth. Some chores (like cooking for instance), are completely relaxing and enjoyable for me wheras my girlfriend would view it as tedious work most of the time. You may have an easier time coming to an agreement if you both discussed openly and honestly what each thing is worth to you on a personal level, and make sure he understands this. Make sure he knows what things you really hate to do, don't mind doing, or actually enjoy doing, and make sure you know the same for him. There's no generally accepted point system, only yours and his, and they are certainly quite different.

Posted by: sakonutz | May 01, 2006 at 04:08 PM

The problem with 50/50 isn't in divding up the chores. It's in DECIDING the chores. Most guys don't care if the dishes don't get done every night. Or if the dirty clothes from the day end up on the floor instead of in the hamper. Or if the front room is messy. And who needs to vacuum once a week. I lived in an apt @ college for 3 years, and we vacuumed about 3 times. total. So, if you can come to an amicable agreement on what the chores are and the frequency of them, then you're off to a good start. You also need to come up with a reward/punishment system for BOTH of you. If one partner gets all of there chores and the other doesn't, then they get a free night in the next week(if you have kids, then the other partner has to deal with the kids for the night, or you get some extra cash to go shopping, play golf, or something like that) That way, there is no harping from either partner, the guidelines are set, and the rewards are doled out. There should also be consideration for additional chores, like cleaning the gutters, fixing the bathtub, adding salt to the softener, putting the crib together, or other things that crop up unexpectedly or on an irregular basis. These additional items not considered should either earn a reward or earn a repreive from a different chore. (for example, its my job to wash dishes, however last saturday i put together a crib, and didn't get the dishes done, therefore my partner did the dishes. in the end, we both did more chores than anticipated, but it was still fair)

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