humor me...

[keryx]

A bunch of things recently have made me think about division of labor in (generally speaking romantic) partnerships - be it who picks up the check or who does most of the childrearing or who does the laundry - or whatever.

So I'm curious how the rest of you see this stuff. Indulge me?

[Poll #365253]

[Er, apologies for my apparent issues with spelling "individual", by the way.]

Comments

Other, explained in comments...

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

"How important is division of responsibilities to a partnership?"

I think it's very important when it's not going well! In my relationship, it's going quite smoothly so we hardly ever have to work at it, but I get the impression that this is rare.

good point...

[keryx.livejournal.com]

and I get the impression that lots of households struggle with this, or one partner (the woman in a straight couple most often) feels taken advantage of. I think it's telling that my LJ friends seem to feel like this works out okay in their relationships - almost all of y'all are feminists.

Re: good point...

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

I have a good situation (for me) in that we both work regular 40-hour jobs, have separate finances, and no kids. All the women I know IRL who struggle with this are moms. (In situations ranging from stay-at-home mom to both-parents-work to stay-at-home-dad.)

Re: good point...

[keryx.livejournal.com]

So, do you think it's having kids that starts making the workload balance an issue? That would jive with popular "feminist" thought these days. Not having kids or knowing many people before and after they had kids, I couldn't say anything from experience.

Re: good point...

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

Well, it definitely makes the home-front workload a LOT bigger. I mean, my sweetie and I can pretty much ignore the chores if we want... other than taking care of the cat. And it's his cat. :-)

Re: good point...

[libskrat]

Eh, well. I definitely have my moments of non-working-out-ness. Curiously, it's not the division of manual labor that grates my nerves (when I'm in a space where this does grate my nerves, which is far from always); it's the division of mental labor. The "keeping track of stuff" work.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I also had a difficult time differentiating between "equal" and "unequal based on abilities."

I have a tough time making that differentiation, too. I think it's all about the perceptions of the individuals involved (and therefore probably more of a sign of the health of the relationship than anything else). We're kinda like you with the cooking and washing up, but with money and housework. It's inequal if you look at one sphere, but equal if you look at the sum total.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I said "in an ideal world" the division would be "completely equal" because in an ideal world, we can both do everything and we both enjoy it all. :)

Also, I would echo what peregrin8 said: It's very important, but we don't work that hard on it, usually it's easy to come to a decision. If talking about it is considered hard, then I guess it's hard work?

[peregrin8.livejournal.com]

Oh... in an ideal world I think our robot maid does all the housework and then brings me a martini!

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Are there class issues with robot maids, though?

Maybe they could be issued like social security cards. Yeah. In an ideal world we all have equal robot maids who do our housework and bring us martinis or water and none of us are alcoholics ever despite the constant martini consumption because the world is ideal.

Oy. I really need to never use the phrase "ideal world" again. ;)

[missmeridian.livejournal.com]

sniff.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

aw, i didn't mean to induce sniffing. :(

[firecat]

In my partnership division of responsibilities has worked (and not worked) all sorts of different ways. We divide up many tasks according to who's better at them / who prefers doing them, but we do other tasks equally. Sometimes when one of us has health issues, the other takes on more of the work than usual. It also depends on whether and where and how much one or both of us is working for pay. The OH recently got an office job; I have an almost full-time freelance job, but I have more free time during the day so I've been doing more cooking lately (for most of our relationship, though, he has done way more cooking than I have).

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

In my ideal world...

The basic component of society would not be the co-dependent pair-unit partnership of holy coupledom.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Nor was I suggesting it was now (although there are certainly societal messages to that effect). Thus use of partner(s).