‘Shefault’ parent seeks balance
DEAR AMY » My husband and I have been married for six years. We have two children — ages 1 and 5. I struggle feeling like I’m supported at home.
Most days I get up with the kids and start getting them ready for school. My husband will sleep in and either get up on his own, or I’ll wake him up.
I really don’t want to have to add “get husband out of bed” to my morning routine, but that’s what I’ve been doing.
He doesn’t think it’s a big deal — I can just “get him up earlier” if I want his help earlier in the morning.
For me this is just a microcosm of our household — I do the work by default. If I want his participation, I need to coordinate his involvement. He says I don’t give him enough credit for the things he does, and it’s true that we do split some work evenly.
Still, this makes me feel as if I need to not only do the heavy lifting by default and work to get him involved, but then also make him feel like a rock star for getting up with the baby once in a while.
It feels like my work is invisible and his work is not. Clearly neither of us is able to be unbiased about our role in the home.
I feel like he is a “fair-weather dad” — helpful when the work is easy, scarce when it’s hard. For me, it’s killed my attraction to him, and I just feel annoyed basically all the time.
How do I shift my perspective so I can live in peace and be content with what I have? — Overworked Mom
DEAR OVERWORKED » Well, you could work hard to try to shift your perspective, but that would be yet another chore on your “todo” list.
You are describing a fairly common dynamic within traditional twoparent families, and although this balance seems to be shifting, women often become the “shefault” (default) parent. Yes, your built-up resentment over feeling like your husband’s “mommy” has affected your relationship, because it’s a big lift to feel in charge of everyone — and then want to have sex with the person who can’t even manage to wake himself up in the morning.
Your husband feels resentful, too. He sees his participation as a special event, and you aren’t giving him enough extra credit. He probably works hard, too — but at things other than parenting.
Author Eve Rodsky has come up with a useful way for busy parents to reframe their households. As a professional mediator for high-powered families (and a frustrated “shefault” parent of young kids), she realized that some of the tools she used at work could be applied to her messy home life. Her book, “Fair Play: A Game- Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)” (2019, G.P. Putnam’s Sons) breaks down child and household roles in a new way, and “gamifies” it so that couples can negotiate their own solutions.