Growing up, I was in a home where duties and family roles were pretty traditional: my dad worked forty hours a week, my mom was at home with the kids. Dad maintained the cars, mowed the lawn, managed the garbage; Mom did laundry, grocery shopping and most of the cooking, and most of the cleaning. They gardened together, though, and Dad took over the kitchen for Sunday morning breakfasts and pizza nights and often tackled the dishes; Mom usually paid the bills, though she left the taxes for my dad. Now that they're empty-nesters, my mom is working full time too, and they share most if not all of the chores. My husband's family was fairly similar.
Our home, however, is different. It's one of the things my students are often curious about, especially when we've been talking about a Christian perspective on gender roles. After five years of marriage and two years of parenting, my tentative conclusion is that practically speaking, each person's role in the home has as much or more to do with personality as it does with gender.
Here's how it works for us:
I teach a "full-time" load of 12 credit hours a semester, with some of the work happening in the classroom/office, and some of it happening at home after our daughter has gone to bed. My husband is her primary caregiver, but he also teaches music lessons one afternoon/evening a week and does church music on occasion. I get to spend much more time with her than either of our fathers did with us, even though I'm the primary "breadwinner" in our family; that has a great deal to do with my flexible schedule, however. Until our daughter was a year old or so, I was home with her full time while my husband worked.
And all of that chore stuff? We're both equally capable of it, though we have our strengths and weaknesses. The "stain or be stained?" law of laundry sorting works for both of us. This last year, though, my husband has been carrying the lion's share of the housework with me working "full time" on the teaching and dissertation. It works pretty well for us, though it isn't always easy. I've had to learn to be more hands-off about the housework and let him work out his own system; I've also had to adjust to a slight feeling of guilt when I realize that he's better at keeping track of our daughter's needs, especially when we're out with company, because that's usually what the moms around us are doing. I also suspect he is the more patient parent. I can't really speak to how he has found it, adjusting to being at home, except that I know he has been happy to have more time to work on his project bikes and woodworking/furniture refinishing.
What does this sort of thing look like in other homes? How much of the household arrangements are based on gender, and how much on personality?
I think for us it has more to do with likes and dislikes. I enjoy doing dishes whereas Lars doesn't, so I usually do them while he cooks a couple nights a week. One night a week we cook together. He usually takes care of the garbage, recycling, and cat litter, mostly because it's heavy and he's faster and neater at it than I am. When the time comes for kids, we'll both be working at first (my PhD stipend will cover the cost of day care and we'll live on Lars's salary). Once I get a job as a professor, I'm hoping we can figure out a way for Lars to go back to school part-time and do most of the kid-watching. Then maybe he'll work and I'll kid-watch. We'll see.
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