Mom v Dad: The 50/50 Debate

Mommy Stacie: So you have the list of stuff you can easily divvy up but then there’s the bottom part of the list of all the activities that are not that fun that we have to have a major negotiation about.
Daddy Clay: Those are all, those are all women things, I’ve noticed those are really better…
Mommy Cathy: Do you think we have an innate ability to put the trash out, an innate ability to empty a cat litter box?
Daddy Clay: Women love that stuff.
Daddy Clay: And we’re back in the lounge continuing our conversation with Stacie Cockrel and Cathy O’Neil, authors of Baby Proofing Your Marriage. We’re continuing our conversation about the difficulties of living in a 50/50 parenting marriage environment. And I guess our question, our ambition now is to achieve the ideal of 50/50?
Daddy Brad: Right.
Mommy Stacie: That’s the goal.
Daddy Clay: What are the best ways? That’s the goal, we agree that’s a fair goal.
Daddy Brad: And I think the reality in some households.
Daddy Clay: And…
Mommy Stacie: Some.
Mommy Cathy: Two. That’s what we, that’s what we’ve heard allegedly.
Mommy Stacie: It is in mine. It took some work.
Daddy Clay: That’s the idea. We all agree that’s the idea. It’s difficult given sort of the changes in gender roles and all the difficulties we’ve already talked about. It’s a hard ideal to achieve so what are the best ways that we can all employ to get to 50/50, cause I ain’t there.
Daddy Brad: Well, yeah I think you need to figure out what each participant is doing.
Mommy Stacie: The first thing you need to do is make an everything list. Everything from earning a paycheck to mopping the floors to taking the kids to the birthday parties to buying your mother in law a birthday gift. I mean everything you do.
Mommy Cathy: Dry cleaning, figuring out where you’re going to send them to school, figuring out family vacation, Christmas gifts, I mean we could sit here for the next 10 minutes and just list everything.
Mommy Stacie: It’s astounding, but most people don’t do that.
Daddy Clay: Do you put making a list on the list of things that you do?
Mommy Stacie: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: If it helps, yep.
Mommy Stacie: That’s the number one thing you do. You make a list.
Daddy Clay: Okay so this makes perfect sense to me. You’re going t o try to catalogue in an inventory of every task that you’re doing in a given week or given month in the house.
Mommy Stacie: Yes because most people don’t even know the work that’s in front of them. It’s astounding and everyone is just reacting all day. And you get into these score keeping arguments of oh I just emptied the trash or well I just did the dishes so you won a gold star.
Daddy Clay: Right.
Mommy Stacie: So you really need to know what’s in front of you first.
Daddy Clay: That’s good I think you know women don’t understand what us guys do.
Daddy Brad: No they don’t, they have no idea.
Daddy Clay: They have no idea. They really don’t, you don’t know, you just don’t know.
Mommy Cathy: And this is why we don’t know because you haven’t listed it all out for us, you know.
Daddy Clay: I gotta change the oil. Do they know that? Do they know I’ve gotta change the oil?
Daddy Brad: Is changing the oil the same as watering the plants inside?
Daddy Clay: I check the tire pressure.
Daddy Brad: Yeah.
Mommy Stacie: I changed the oil in my car a couple of weeks ago. Do I get points for that?
Daddy Brad: Uhhh!
Mommy Cathy: I’m happy to say I’ve never done that, nor do I have any plans to ever do it.
Daddy Clay: You did… like, you know with a filter wrench you went out there and did it yourself or you like took it to the Jiffy Lube?
Mommy Stacie: No, I took it to Jiffy Lube.
Mommy Cathy: You took it to Jiffy Lube didn’t you Stacie?
Daddy Brad: That’s your everything list.
Mommy Stacie: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: Everything list.
Daddy Brad: So it’s a huge list, what it takes to keep a household going.
Daddy Clay: What do you think are some of the things women have on the list that men have no idea about? What would you put on there?
Mommy Cathy: It should be things like even buying the kids their clothes.
Mommy Stacie: Yes. Weeding out the clothes what about the old ones they have to go to good will, it took me a whole day, I have three kids. Yeah my husband had no idea.
Mommy Cathy: Yeah tasks like that, anything that involves sort of the micro-management of a child.
Mommy Stacie: All of the activities you sign them up for.
Mommy Cathy: Ben seemed to be oblivious to that.
Daddy Clay: Do you do closets?
Daddy Brad: Oh goodness no I don’t do closets.
Daddy Clay: I know what I don’t want my daughter to be wearing.
Mommy Cathy: Yes.
Daddy Clay: You know right, it must be very difficult to shop for – nothing that says juicy on the bottom.
Mommy Cathy: Yes.
Daddy Brad: Is that difficult? Do you enjoy the clothes shopping? Because I think there are intrinsic male activities like mowing the grass, washing the dog, that kind of stuff.
Mommy Cathy: When you do your everything list, what you’ll see is that you will be able to look at it and say, well actually I wouldn’t mind doing that right, and he can say well I’m okay taking responsibility for the cars. And I can say well I’m okay taking responsibility for Christmas gifts of whatever it might be okay.
Mommy Stacie: And it would be scary to see what my husband would dress my kids in or what he would buy.
Mommy Cathy: Yeah.
Daddy Clay: With the list up do you have a draft pick? Do you go through, I mean do you go through, do you say with the first choice, Daddy Clay takes dishes.
Mommy Stacie: Ok
Daddy Clay: Or do you say we’re gonna take all these tasks and split them 50/50, so that means you’re gonna alternate the diaper pail empting.
Daddy Brad: Right, right.
Daddy Clay: Or you’re going to alternate the dishes or scrubbing the toilet. I mean do you split them all 50/50?
Mommy Stacie: Well so you’ve got the part of the list that is an obvious divvying up like shopping or mowing the lawn and stuff like – there again you have the intrinsic interests.
Daddy Clay: And are we indulging in just horrible gender stereotypes?
Mommy Cathy: We probably are but what the hell.
Mommy Stacie: What the hell.
Daddy Brad: Are there any trans-chore-vites out there?
Mommy Cathy: There probably is.
Daddy Brad: I do the laundry, scrub the toilet, and vacuuming just so I didn’t have to write any thank you notes oh for God’s sake.
Mommy Stacie: Yes the thank you notes, yes so we are stereotyping to some degree you know we are just trying to make a generalization to make a point. So you have the list of stuff you can easily divvy up but then there’s the bottom part of the list of all the activities that are not all that fun that we have to have a major negotiation about.
Daddy Clay: Those are all, those are all women things, I’ve noticed those are really better…
Mommy Cathy: Do you think we have an innate ability to put the trash out, an innate ability to empty a cat litter box yeah?
Daddy Clay: Yes.
Daddy Brad: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: Well I wasn’t aware, I wasn’t aware of that really.
Daddy Clay: Women love that stuff.
Mommy Cathy: Oh, okay. That is fascinating isn’t it?
Mommy Stacie: Yes my mother took me aside my whole life and told me every chore. I had to do everything, this is how…
Mommy Cathy: Yeah, we all have secret clubs. When we all get together and discuss techniques of how to wash the dish and everything.
Mommy Stacie: Yeah we all chat about it all day long.
Daddy Brad: Drink beer, drink beer while you’re doing it, it’ll be more fun.
Mommy Cathy: But for those chores that no one really wants to do it probably is a good idea to maybe alternate them, you know one week on, one week off. Or to do like I’m on trash duty therefore you’re on – what’s as bad a s taking out the trash?
Daddy Brad: Toilets, scrub toilets.
Mommy Cathy: Exactly, you know you gotta be fair.
Mommy Stacie: The litter box.
Daddy Clay: Emptying the diaper trash.
Mommy Stacie: Ah, the diaper trash.
Daddy Brad: The worst, I always get the diaper trash.
Mommy Stacie: I’ve never touched that.
Mommy Cathy: The toxic, toxic pile.
Daddy Brad: Now do these things come – there’s kind of equal things you should do? Do these bottom things that are very unpleasant come with sex points? You’re more likely to score if you take those?
Mommy Stacie: No, sex is the last thing…
Daddy Clay: Associate sex, no… taking out the dirty trash.
Mommy Cathy: No, you don’t want to associate trash with sex – toxic diapers.
Mommy Stacie: No, no, no, no.
Daddy Clay: You’re getting into Owen territory, this is Dad-O.
Mommy Cathy: Let’s keep those clean and separate.
Daddy Clay: One thing that’s nice is that we know is that in marriages and raising kids we’re never gonna run out of things to do.
Mommy Stacie: No, our plates’ full.
There’s plenty of opportunities for us to practice this 50/50 principle and hopefully we’ll all get better at it. If you’ve got any techniques or ideas about splitting up the domestic chores just drop us a comment right here on the site and maybe in our next meeting we’ll get a chance to address some of those things. So thanks a lot and thank you ladies for joining us here in the lounge.
Mommy Cathy: Thank you.
Mommy Stacie: Thank you, it was fun.
Daddy Clay: Who’s job was it to get the beer by the way?
Daddy Brad: They pretty much missed it.
Mommy Cathy: They failed miserably.
Daddy Clay: Is it because the ladies are here, we don’t get any beer?
Daddy Brad: It’s 10am. Yeah.
Daddy Clay: This is like the lamest segment we ever did, totally sober sitting next to Brad.
Mommy Stacie: So you have the list of stuff you can easily divvy up but then there’s the bottom part of the list of all the activities that are not that fun that we have to have a major negotiation about.
Daddy Clay: Those are all, those are all women things, I’ve noticed those are really better…
Mommy Cathy: Do you think we have an innate ability to put the trash out, an innate ability to empty a cat litter box?
Daddy Clay: Women love that stuff.
Daddy Clay: And we’re back in the lounge continuing our conversation with Stacie Cockrel and Cathy O’Neil, authors of Baby Proofing Your Marriage. We’re continuing our conversation about the difficulties of living in a 50/50 parenting marriage environment. And I guess our question, our ambition now is to achieve the ideal of 50/50?
Daddy Brad: Right.
Mommy Stacie: That’s the goal.
Daddy Clay: What are the best ways? That’s the goal, we agree that’s a fair goal.
Daddy Brad: And I think the reality in some households.
Daddy Clay: And…
Mommy Stacie: Some.
Mommy Cathy: Two. That’s what we, that’s what we’ve heard allegedly.
Mommy Stacie: It is in mine. It took some work.
Daddy Clay: That’s the idea. We all agree that’s the idea. It’s difficult given sort of the changes in gender roles and all the difficulties we’ve already talked about. It’s a hard ideal to achieve so what are the best ways that we can all employ to get to 50/50, cause I ain’t there.
Daddy Brad: Well, yeah I think you need to figure out what each participant is doing.
Mommy Stacie: The first thing you need to do is make an everything list. Everything from earning a paycheck to mopping the floors to taking the kids to the birthday parties to buying your mother in law a birthday gift. I mean everything you do.
Mommy Cathy: Dry cleaning, figuring out where you’re going to send them to school, figuring out family vacation, Christmas gifts, I mean we could sit here for the next 10 minutes and just list everything.
Mommy Stacie: It’s astounding, but most people don’t do that.
Daddy Clay: Do you put making a list on the list of things that you do?
Mommy Stacie: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: If it helps, yep.
Mommy Stacie: That’s the number one thing you do. You make a list.
Daddy Clay: Okay so this makes perfect sense to me. You’re going t o try to catalogue in an inventory of every task that you’re doing in a given week or given month in the house.
Mommy Stacie: Yes because most people don’t even know the work that’s in front of them. It’s astounding and everyone is just reacting all day. And you get into these score keeping arguments of oh I just emptied the trash or well I just did the dishes so you won a gold star.
Daddy Clay: Right.
Mommy Stacie: So you really need to know what’s in front of you first.
Daddy Clay: That’s good I think you know women don’t understand what us guys do.
Daddy Brad: No they don’t, they have no idea.
Daddy Clay: They have no idea. They really don’t, you don’t know, you just don’t know.
Mommy Cathy: And this is why we don’t know because you haven’t listed it all out for us, you know.
Daddy Clay: I gotta change the oil. Do they know that? Do they know I’ve gotta change the oil?
Daddy Brad: Is changing the oil the same as watering the plants inside?
Daddy Clay: I check the tire pressure.
Daddy Brad: Yeah.
Mommy Stacie: I changed the oil in my car a couple of weeks ago. Do I get points for that?
Daddy Brad: Uhhh!
Mommy Cathy: I’m happy to say I’ve never done that, nor do I have any plans to ever do it.
Daddy Clay: You did… like, you know with a filter wrench you went out there and did it yourself or you like took it to the Jiffy Lube?
Mommy Stacie: No, I took it to Jiffy Lube.
Mommy Cathy: You took it to Jiffy Lube didn’t you Stacie?
Daddy Brad: That’s your everything list.
Mommy Stacie: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: Everything list.
Daddy Brad: So it’s a huge list, what it takes to keep a household going.
Daddy Clay: What do you think are some of the things women have on the list that men have no idea about? What would you put on there?
Mommy Cathy: It should be things like even buying the kids their clothes.
Mommy Stacie: Yes. Weeding out the clothes what about the old ones they have to go to good will, it took me a whole day, I have three kids. Yeah my husband had no idea.
Mommy Cathy: Yeah tasks like that, anything that involves sort of the micro-management of a child.
Mommy Stacie: All of the activities you sign them up for.
Mommy Cathy: Ben seemed to be oblivious to that.
Daddy Clay: Do you do closets?
Daddy Brad: Oh goodness no I don’t do closets.
Daddy Clay: I know what I don’t want my daughter to be wearing.
Mommy Cathy: Yes.
Daddy Clay: You know right, it must be very difficult to shop for – nothing that says juicy on the bottom.
Mommy Cathy: Yes.
Daddy Brad: Is that difficult? Do you enjoy the clothes shopping? Because I think there are intrinsic male activities like mowing the grass, washing the dog, that kind of stuff.
Mommy Cathy: When you do your everything list, what you’ll see is that you will be able to look at it and say, well actually I wouldn’t mind doing that right, and he can say well I’m okay taking responsibility for the cars. And I can say well I’m okay taking responsibility for Christmas gifts of whatever it might be okay.
Mommy Stacie: And it would be scary to see what my husband would dress my kids in or what he would buy.
Mommy Cathy: Yeah.
Daddy Clay: With the list up do you have a draft pick? Do you go through, I mean do you go through, do you say with the first choice, Daddy Clay takes dishes.
Mommy Stacie: Ok
Daddy Clay: Or do you say we’re gonna take all these tasks and split them 50/50, so that means you’re gonna alternate the diaper pail empting.
Daddy Brad: Right, right.
Daddy Clay: Or you’re going to alternate the dishes or scrubbing the toilet. I mean do you split them all 50/50?
Mommy Stacie: Well so you’ve got the part of the list that is an obvious divvying up like shopping or mowing the lawn and stuff like – there again you have the intrinsic interests.
Daddy Clay: And are we indulging in just horrible gender stereotypes?
Mommy Cathy: We probably are but what the hell.
Mommy Stacie: What the hell.
Daddy Brad: Are there any trans-chore-vites out there?
Mommy Cathy: There probably is.
Daddy Brad: I do the laundry, scrub the toilet, and vacuuming just so I didn’t have to write any thank you notes oh for God’s sake.
Mommy Stacie: Yes the thank you notes, yes so we are stereotyping to some degree you know we are just trying to make a generalization to make a point. So you have the list of stuff you can easily divvy up but then there’s the bottom part of the list of all the activities that are not all that fun that we have to have a major negotiation about.
Daddy Clay: Those are all, those are all women things, I’ve noticed those are really better…
Mommy Cathy: Do you think we have an innate ability to put the trash out, an innate ability to empty a cat litter box yeah?
Daddy Clay: Yes.
Daddy Brad: Yes.
Mommy Cathy: Well I wasn’t aware, I wasn’t aware of that really.
Daddy Clay: Women love that stuff.
Mommy Cathy: Oh, okay. That is fascinating isn’t it?
Mommy Stacie: Yes my mother took me aside my whole life and told me every chore. I had to do everything, this is how…
Mommy Cathy: Yeah, we all have secret clubs. When we all get together and discuss techniques of how to wash the dish and everything.
Mommy Stacie: Yeah we all chat about it all day long.
Daddy Brad: Drink beer, drink beer while you’re doing it, it’ll be more fun.
Mommy Cathy: But for those chores that no one really wants to do it probably is a good idea to maybe alternate them, you know one week on, one week off. Or to do like I’m on trash duty therefore you’re on – what’s as bad a s taking out the trash?
Daddy Brad: Toilets, scrub toilets.
Mommy Cathy: Exactly, you know you gotta be fair.
Mommy Stacie: The litter box.
Daddy Clay: Emptying the diaper trash.
Mommy Stacie: Ah, the diaper trash.
Daddy Brad: The worst, I always get the diaper trash.
Mommy Stacie: I’ve never touched that.
Mommy Cathy: The toxic, toxic pile.
Daddy Brad: Now do these things come – there’s kind of equal things you should do? Do these bottom things that are very unpleasant come with sex points? You’re more likely to score if you take those?
Mommy Stacie: No, sex is the last thing…
Daddy Clay: Associate sex, no… taking out the dirty trash.
Mommy Cathy: No, you don’t want to associate trash with sex – toxic diapers.
Mommy Stacie: No, no, no, no.
Daddy Clay: You’re getting into Owen territory, this is Dad-O.
Mommy Cathy: Let’s keep those clean and separate.
Daddy Clay: One thing that’s nice is that we know is that in marriages and raising kids we’re never gonna run out of things to do.
Mommy Stacie: No, our plates’ full.
There’s plenty of opportunities for us to practice this 50/50 principle and hopefully we’ll all get better at it. If you’ve got any techniques or ideas about splitting up the domestic chores just drop us a comment right here on the site and maybe in our next meeting we’ll get a chance to address some of those things. So thanks a lot and thank you ladies for joining us here in the lounge.
Mommy Cathy: Thank you.
Mommy Stacie: Thank you, it was fun.
Daddy Clay: Who’s job was it to get the beer by the way?
Daddy Brad: They pretty much missed it.
Mommy Cathy: They failed miserably.
Daddy Clay: Is it because the ladies are here, we don’t get any beer?
Daddy Brad: It’s 10am. Yeah.
Daddy Clay: This is like the lamest segment we ever did, totally sober sitting next to Brad.