Parenting Tip: Fair Play

You might have noticed when it was just the two of you in your partnership before the baby was born, things seemed smooth.

Everyone had their own responsibilities to keep the household running. Tasks got delegated here and there. It felt pretty even. And then for some reason when the baby is born, there's usually a huge discrepancy between who does what. One partner doing much more work than the other.

Eve Rodsky coined this term in her book Fair Play, and she called it “mental load”. Who's ordering the diapers when we run low? And not just ordering them, but making sure we don't get so low that we go a day without having diapers. Who's ordering the toothpaste? Who's getting the paper towels?

So what we would encourage you to do that Eve talks about in her book: take some time with your partner and list out both of your household responsibilities. All the things that are taking up mental energy in your brain. Who's researching preschools that we want to go to? And then look at it together and see where there's some space for movement. Maybe it will become clear. One person's doing way more than the other. And what can the one who's doing less take off the plate of the one who's doing more? So it looks like I'm doing all these things. I'm actually okay doing all these things, but I never want to take the trash out ever again. Can you always be responsible for the trash? And make sure there's trash bags and do the whole job from start to finish so I can take that off of my brain and take it off of my mental load list and feel a little more even with the tasks so that we can like each other again.