For better or worse, people are waking up to the fact that raising a kid is a lot of work. Add in the general need to maintain a household, work a 9-5 job, and possibly extra kids, and even the most hardworking among us will be exhausted. But at least the advantage of having a partner is that you can rely on another person to pick up the slack and help out when the going gets tough. Or so one would think.

A woman asked the internet if she was in the wrong for leaving her husband with their four kids for two days. This seems like a case where context is key, and readers discovered that not only was she doing all the housekeeping but also working full time. So any reasonable husband would at least not protest when she wanted to take some time for herself.

Divvying up the responsibilities of parenting, finances, and general household maintenance can strain even the best relationships

Image credits: EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA (not the actual photo)

A woman shared her experience with a husband that dumped all the household responsibilities on her since she worked from home

So she decided to take a few days just for herself and found out her husband was basically incapable of anything

Image credits: AnnaStills (not the actual photo)

Image source: Chemical-Mess-7883

Working from home does not equal a leisurely life, particularly when childcare is involved

Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)

The mother in the story mentioned that she worked from home, a point of contention with her husband. While it certainly must seem nice to be at home and not, say, in traffic or on a crowded subway, this particular woman also had to keep track of not two, not three, but four young children. Her ability to keep a job at the same time is seriously impressive. And why wouldn’t she want to stay home? Most Americans, if given the opportunity, will work from home. One-third of those surveyed by McKinsey had the ability to work from home full-time and chose to use it. 23% preferred the hybrid model and would come in a handful of days a week. Setting that aside, there is also the question of who will actually take care of the kids in this scenario.

While very old-fashioned folks would still insist that a woman needs to watch the children, the flexibility of modern work makes this argument irrelevant. Particularly in this story, where there was no indication the man was the primary breadwinner. His inability to clean dishes does not point towards discipline or a hard-working gene. Regardless, in the 21st century, more flexible jobs have actually helped many couples deal with sharing domestic responsibilities. In the UK, after WFH became more normalized, husbands tended to actually help more around the house. Interestingly, the cases where the division was still very unequal were in areas or companies that chose to limit WFH possibilities.

No matter how convenient the arraignment, unequal work around the house leads to unhappy marriages

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual photo)

The unfortunate reality is that working from home won’t help couples that already maintain an unequal balance of household responsibilities. This is a social and cultural issue suffered predominantly by women in marriages where they are expected to still work and keep the house clean. Setting aside boilerplate sexism, it is embarrassing that the husband in this particular story could hardly keep the house together after a mere two days. To add insult to his own injury, he insisted his wife had it easy while failing to maintain her partial workload for less than half of a week. It’s also worth noting that the wife, based on her follow-up comments, is a software developer, which is a far cry from a simple job.

Every relationship is different, but the general trend in marital satisfaction points towards honest communication and helping each other. More bluntly, marriages, where one partner does everything, have less happiness across the board, both in the bedroom and in general life satisfaction. This same study also indicates that even in cases where the arrangement benefits the man, like this story, couples indicated less intimacy and less overall satisfaction with the relationship. In cases where the man indicated that he was very happy with the arrangement and his marriage, it was a result of him seeing the wife as more of a domestic servant than a partner and human.

Commenters sided with OP over how badly her husband treated her

Others offered advice on how to proceed with what was clearly a dysfunctional household

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