Sharing household responsibilities can make it easier to tackle them, be it cleaning, taking care of the little ones, cooking, or anything else, for that matter.

Redditor u/1mmOff knew cooking was not his wife’s forte, which is why he became the one to take care of the family’s meals. He also did the clean-up afterwards, which he didn’t mind. What he did mind, though, was his wife making comments about it, with which the OP maliciously complied.

Sharing responsibilities ensures everyone takes part in the household chores

Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual photo)

This redditor was in charge of cooking for his family, but that changed when he maliciously complied with his wife

Image credits: Gary Barnes (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Liliana Drew (not the actual photo)

Image credits: 1mmOff

Sharing household duties equally has certain benefits, but that’s not the norm in most households

Sharing household responsibilities can make things so much easier for everyone involved, especially if one person is better at certain tasks than the other. Take the OP’s arrangement, for instance; upon having learnt early in the relationship that his partner doesn’t cook, he took over the cooking duties. His wife, in the meantime, now typically takes care of other things, such as putting the toddler to bed or doing the laundry, as the redditor pointed out himself.

A 2016 study revealed that sharing household duties can affect the well-being of both the person and the relationship; it found that unequal distribution of such responsibilities can lead to lower psychological well-being of those involved and family conflict. Yet it also suggested that negotiations concerning household and family duties are often overwhelmed by gendered assumptions about who is expected to perform certain tasks.

Some gendered assumptions or expectations might not be created out of thin air, as statistics reveal that household chores are seemingly not shared equally among men and women. According to Pew Research Center’s 2019 survey, nearly 60% of women believe they take care of the larger part, while only 6% say that their partner does. Roughly 34% of their male counterparts agree that females tend to do more housework, but 20% think men do; nearly half (46%) say the responsibilities are shared equally (vs. 34% of women who feel the same).

Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)

Women seem to be the ones to do more shopping and cooking

When it comes to shared household responsibilities and gender stereotypes, women taking care of the cooking duties is arguably a prevailing one. And even though the OP clearly proves that that’s not always the case, it is the more common arrangement in US households nowadays. According to another survey conducted by Pew Research Center, kids or no kids, females do more shopping and cooking than the male members of the family.

Be that as it may, no two households are the same in the way they divide responsibilities; but people in quite a few of them believe that sharing household chores is one of the key elements to a successful relationship.

In addition to dividing the tasks, it’s also important to let the other person take care of theirs on their own terms, as the OP wanted to do with the cleaning. He emphasized that in the comments, pointing out that he stays out of his wife’s duties, expecting her to do the same.

Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual photo)

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