Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Unpaid work. It can be one of the key issues. Couples fight about sense of unfairness in the way the household is looked after. Not just who does what chores, but who actually manages the caretaking of the household, the administration thought consideration. It is all work, and it all takes time, energy, and effort. Today we are unpacking unpaid work to give couples a clearer understanding behind how it shows up in a household, and importantly, how they can work together to make the distribution fairer for all. Hey, we're Kim Andro and we're here to show couples how to get the best out of their relationship so they can start living their dream life together.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 We're a west Aussie couple who are living the life of our dreams. We don't entertain the word should we think about the future as a field of possibilities, and we let joy be our compass.
Speaker 1 00:00:50 We've taken the simple idea of working as a team and applied it to our marriage, and it's been a game changer, allowing us to work out what truly lights us up in life and to go after it together.
Speaker 2 00:01:00 From living in snowy Japan to starting our own house ripping business, we've achieved some big dreams, and most importantly, we feel fulfilled and are having the most fun we've ever had.
Speaker 1 00:01:08 Pick conversations from inspiring couples, thoughts from relationship experts and tales from our own lives as we help you to gain the wisdom and skills you'll need to turn your relationship into a real team.
Speaker 2 00:01:18 These are relationship conversations for real people, by real people. So sit back, get comfortable, whatever tickles you, pickle and enjoy living the team life to today, we're talking about invisible work. I think most of you know what we mean when we say that, but really we're talking about work that goes on unnoticed generally in the household.
Speaker 1 00:01:49 Yes, it goes unnoticed. I think that's a pain point, but I, I just need to start with the title Invisible Work, which I'm seeing out there a lot. And I know the idea is to acknowledge the fact that people don't even acknowledge that these tasks are being taken care of. But the word really irks me. It's not invisible. The work is right there, and I get it. Like it cuts both ways. We're trying to acknowledge the fact that people don't see it, but I just think by calling it invisible, you're just, you're actually just breath breathing life into the idea that it is invisible and it's just not.
Speaker 2 00:02:25 So, yeah, I mean, I guess the idea is that when you are working in a business or for someone else, you are, um, remunerated with dollar dues and at home you are not, and there seems to be some sort of social, uh, power or credit or, uh, it just seems to be treated as being more important than a lot of the core hygiene, admin and life things that happen that often are done. I mean, let's put it out there. 'cause it's true, often are done more by women than men.
Speaker 1 00:03:02 Yeah. The remuneration part of it's such a, such a massive issue, uh, and I think causes it to be Well, let, let, let me before we get into that, let's just unpack this from the high, higher level because we'll, we'll, we'll cut into all the things that we'll talk about. What makes it unpaid labor or, or this, this labor that isn't acknowledged well enough. Uh, and we'll get into actually how that impacts the relationship and, and some of the suggestions we have for improving this situation. Uh, so let's just start first with what, what unpaid labor is, let's call it that. And unpaid labor is any of the domestic chores you do that you do not get financially compensated for, which is what you were saying, Roger. And it can include things like caregiving, which is, uh, caregiving of a child, caregiving of an elder, whatever it might be. Uh, uh, special needs caregiving, uh, whatever the caregiving is, tidying, preparing for family activities, cooking, cleaning, researching, administration, offering emotional support, volunteering. They're all, uh, unpaid labor that, uh, that can go on in the, in the household and the annual household income and labor dynamics survey. And this is where the issue really starts to crock up. This survey found that in 2019, women were doing about 21 hours more unpaid work per week than men. So women were doing on average 48.7 hours of unpaid work per week,
Speaker 2 00:04:38 Which is, yeah, so, so men were doing unpaid work, but women are doing 50% more. Well,
Speaker 1 00:04:44 You just think about it like this. A a standard job is 40 to 50 hours per week. Right? It's what it's meant to be. I realize people work beyond that, especially the way we're, we're connected socially these days. But 40 to 50 hours is meant to be the standard job, and women are doing 48.7 hours of unpaid labor on top of that. Where does that time come from?
Speaker 2 00:05:07 Yeah, well, I guess you, if you, that's, I think that's such a, a, a great point. Where does that time come from? Because the fact that we can't sit here and go, oh, it's easily A, B, C, D, and E is because often we just don't even talk about it or think about it. And as a result, that's maybe why people are saying it's invisible. But as you are saying, invisibles not the right way to describe it. Unpaid is the right way to describe it. Yes. Because we put a value on things that are paid because our, our biggest identifier or correlator of value is money.
Speaker 1 00:05:38 Yes, absolutely. Agree entirely. And really, you know, highlighting the difference between how much unpaid labor, uh, women are providing compared to men in, you know, is really an example of one of the, the largest remaining demonstrations of sexism we have in society. Now, I didn't say one of the largest remaining, it's the, the largest demonstration of a remaining one. So we have plenty of examples of sexism still in society today. Don't come at me men. It's true. Um, uh, but this one is just so obvious because all of the research and stats support it, that the disparity is absolutely enormous between the amount of housework women are doing and the amount of housework men are doing. So why, why does that make it a topic for the podcast today? This is a relationship podcast, and, and we talk all things relationship and that disparity that I'm talking about that, that gender disparity. So women being the clear, clearly disadvantaged gender in this situation, 48% of women report not being satisfied with the division of labor in the home. Now, if 48% of women are dissatisfied with this, that's going to be causing issues in the relationship.
Speaker 2 00:06:58 Yeah. We're, we're all, uh, living the team life for about building a strong relationship, building a strong team environment. So you can use that foundation, use that strength, use that unity to get the best out of life together. And we know that the division of chores within the household often ranks in the top three, maybe five reasons for fighting and disagreements between men and women. And I don't think that's a big surprise to anyone. So it is really important that we talk about this today. And of course, whenever you start to talk about this, people can start to take very diametric views and go, oh, well women do this. Oh, men, it's all the patriarchal society, but hey, this is a real issue. I think all of us wanna work together to make sure that our partners feel like they are being recognized, feel like they're worth something, and as a result, have a more harmonious relationship.
Speaker 1 00:07:54 I just love that, Raj. It's, we are not, we are not coming at this today from a perspective of wanting to blame someone and, and get someone to admit fault and or part in particular men because it is a gendered issue. And, and make it just more of a equal playing field for women. There's actually a really important component here in terms of building skills as a relationship. Um, don't you want, as you are saying, your partner to feel good, to feel content, to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel like they play a fair role in the relationship? That's what's really underpinning our drive to address this today, because not only will we help couples to reduce the conflict, we're actually super excited today about the skills you'll build when you start discussing domestic work, unpaid labor together, and you start addressing how to make that a more fair situation in your relationship. It has such great underpinning skills for the broader relationship.
Speaker 2 00:09:01 Well, it's a large area of conflict. Yeah. And appears in a household every day. But what's important is if you can get on top of this, if you can get ahead of this, it opens gateways to bigger conversations, especially even for blokes out there, uh, who, you know, if I'm generalizing, but who might be at a job that they're not actually a hundred percent happy in. And when they're having arguments with their partner and the partner's going, you know, all this unpaid work I do is so unfair. It is like, well, I don't quite really enjoy the paid work I do. And you, we will talk about it in a bit, is how you slip into these roles where maybe you're not getting the best out of life. So that's what we want to talk about today is why this, why this is like this is, and how we, we can really target it. So yeah. Kim, do you wanna take us through maybe some of the historical context of why we believe that
Speaker 1 00:09:52 This exists? Thanks, ROJ. I just think very briefly, historically, uh, we know men did the work outside the home, and women did the work inside the home. That's just how it was, right? I mean, we can go all the way back to men being hunter-gatherers and the women being the child bearers and the, um, the domestic, uh, part of the, part of the unit. Uh, the difference obviously is that men have always been remunerated for their work. And, and as household carers, women were not. Now times have evolved and women work outside of the home in a lot of instances these days. But despite that evolution, we still see a monster disparity in the division of the household labor. And, and that's really where we've got to
Speaker 2 00:10:40 In that hoss historical context. Of course, in the agricultural age, people had 10 kids. 'cause they taught, they tour the land and, and the partner had to look after those kids and sort out all the household and life admin while the husband and the kids are toiling in the field. Of course, when we got into the industrial age, uh, there were some women working in factories, but a lot of the work was very shit <laugh>. It was working in factories and, and, uh, there there was that sort of societal norm of staying home. Now we feel that generally most people are breaking away from that and agreed, that's not, that's not where either party wants to be. You know, we want strong partners, we want equality. I effect, I think there's more women coming out of u going in and coming out of universities, uh, than men these days.
Speaker 2 00:11:27 Uh, but we still, despite all that historical context, see this disproportionate distribution of labor, of unpaid work going towards women. And I believe it's generally as a result of the transitions through different stages of life. And as we always say, people should live strategic lives. You and your partner should live a strategic life, but most people don't. They just play what's in front of them and they go through the motions of life, and they go through the milestones of hooking up with someone, getting into a long-term relationship, getting married, getting a mortgage, having kids, and all of a sudden you go from a scenario where you've got almost unlimited resources of two single people living and loving together. Two very, very scarce resources of two people with financial stress, time, stress, munchkins running around, who take up a lot of, uh, admin work in terms of them and their caregiving. And because the wife or the, the female partner spends for biological reasons most of her time as the primary caregiver in that first three to six and often 12 months, um, while the husband is at work, I think what happens is people don't discuss it and it just becomes the norm and they don't break or change that cycle.
Speaker 1 00:12:57 I agree that's one part of it, but it's, it's really only one part. It, this is such a complex, layered issue. It's, it's based in, uh, historical, uh, context. It's based in gender norms. It's based in so many elements that contribute to it. So can I just take us back a step from where you are and say, you know, it's based in how we even even address what work is, right. You're gonna,
Speaker 2 00:13:22 You're gonna lay some women's stuff on me now, aren't you?
Speaker 1 00:13:25 Definitely, yes. <laugh> <laugh>, uh, this definitely starts before what you are describing Roger, which is that stage of motherhood and how we can fall into those patterns after, you know, the mother is home. But again, I need to even address that issue specifically. But let me start before there. Before there we have little girls and little boys being raised, and we have these gender norms and you know, little girls are encouraged to be very nurturing, very loving, very caretaking. Little boys are encouraged to go out and play with Tonka trucks and watch the garbage man come. I mean, how many clips have we seen of that on, on YouTube? It's, you know, the thing I know people are gonna say is that times are changing and they are changing absolutely. But we are talking about what the norm is. And the fact is the norm is still that little girls are far more encouraged to be nurturers and caregivers and little boys are far more encouraged to be constructive problem solvers. So we start with that as a basis. And I'll give you an example just to make sure that you know that what I'm saying is right when you are having, when your sibling is having a baby, so say you're a bloke and it's your sister, nobody says to you, mate, you must be absolutely pumped to have this little baby. How excited are you ever? They say, oh mate, congratulations.
Speaker 2 00:14:49 Not, not in that voice,
Speaker 1 00:14:50 They don't <laugh>. No, but they say to a sister, if your sister is having a baby, they'll say to the other sister, oh, you must be so happy. You must be so excited. Because they're, the inference is you are going to be one of the caregivers as well as an auntie. You are the woman, you will give care. And then the irony of all this is when the brother holds the baby, he gets all the photos. 'cause miracle of miracle. It's a beautiful man holding a baby. Like what? Why? Oh,
Speaker 2 00:15:17 There's, there's definitely a thing where if, if a dad just plays with their kid, uh, oh my God, they're amazing, father. Like, or
Speaker 1 00:15:25 People say, you are so lucky. And I think people say that to me all the time about me. Yeah, but you are, you're, I am lucky <laugh>, but not for that reason. Why? 'cause you're pulling your weight and people say to me, you're so lucky. He's such an involved dad. What if he wasn't an involved dad? Is that just the norm? And then you get to be lucky if they're in involved. What about me as a mother? No one says, you're so lucky. She's such an involved mom.
Speaker 2 00:15:48 Times have changed. I think they did a, a study where 41% of men, uh, 30, 40 years ago hadn't changed a diaper or, you know, new fathers, while it's only 3% of new fathers now haven't changed a diaper. So, so things are changing. But again, a lot of the social norms, and we've talked about this before, don't actually keep up with with society.
Speaker 1 00:16:11 Yeah. And I think youth make a great point gie. 'cause I don't wanna sound like, I don't wanna sound like I'm not acknowledging the change. I just want people to also acknowledge that the issue's still there. That the gender norms are still there. Right? So that's one thing. Then you've got things like economic disparity. Men are still paid more than women Can't argue with me on that. The facts are right there that makes it hard to argue for a woman to be taking more of the paid work on because the family needs more income, right? We have, it's becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the other reasons that women stay home is that because women culturally and historically and gender-wise have been put into this position of the default household task master, they then go to get a job after child rearing, for example. And they find it's all too much because they're still doing all the default stuff.
Speaker 1 00:17:04 So they look for a part-time job because they need to manage both the household and the job. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, uh, you know, patterns of behavior. We start doing something and, and once we've started, we just continue down that path because it's hard to change behaviors if we're not talking about them. Uh, there's an idea that women are natural bearers of the emotional tasks in the household. There's this idea that women should be the default bearers of all the emotional labor. People are gonna laugh when I say this word, but women, you know what I'm talking about. Why are we the ones that have to remember everybody's birthday and make sure that the presents are purchased? Or make sure that, you know, whoever's little so-and-so's had a rough day at school with the other kids. You know, that we are giving them the mental support and the emotional support that should be a shared task that is not the responsibility solely of women.
Speaker 1 00:17:53 They're not the only ones able to give that sort of love and care and nurturing. Uh, there's obviously a lack of, um, supporting structures in society in terms of parental leave and things like that. I mean, that's a whole nother discussion. And I think the biggest contributor to this, uh, unfair distribution of labor is a lack of clear communication within the relationship. All of the above context, contextual problems exist either way, right? But you don't have to, we don't have to abide by what the societal norms are or the gendered norms or any of that. We can notice these things and make a change within our relationship ourselves. And something Roger and I are very passionate about is questioning societal norms, questioning the status quo and seeing if that actually works for us. And so, lack of communication doesn't allow you to question the status quo if you are not talking about what your expectations are for the household chores. If you're not talking about what your roles are in the household, how on earth could you question what the default default position is?
Speaker 2 00:18:59 Yeah. So if you're not communicating, you are making assumptions. And we often make assumptions. And the problem is with those assumptions is they actually stretch out to encompass a very large portion of our lives. And I think if we often we can look back and go, what? Why was it that way? Was 'cause at the time we weren't sitting back communicating with our partner. And I think communication's often the, the first step to strategy to understanding where you are and where you want to go. But we're making these assumptions on based on social norms. We're making assumptions of what, what we saw our parents and friends and coworkers do because we go, well, if they're doing that, if they've got the, you know, 2.7 kids in the white picket fence house and the Volvo out the back in the nice suburb, um, even though they're stretched mentally, physically, financially, but they're, they're successful, right?
Speaker 2 00:19:54 But of course, as we've often said on this show, and as most people find out far too late, is you get to define your own definition of success. You get to say what your successful life is. You get to say what your rich life is. You get to, I guess, be the master of your own domain. When we don't communicate, we often say things like, I wanna spend more time with my kids. I wanna spend more time with my partner. And they're far more important to me than working and stressing and fighting with my partner. But because we don't actually do anything about it, because we're not talking about it, the assumption we made that this is the life path we have to go on. And the societal norms of these are the gender roles we have to fulfill often lead us to a place where we're unhappy with our partners and unhappy actually with our lives. And that's where you go and hit the midlife crisis.
Speaker 1 00:20:43 Yeah, the assumption part of everything is a, is is a real problem for relationships. It does keep us in a lot of the patterns that can be really unhelpful. So let's look at, you know, what we've talked about, obviously women feeling di a large portion of women feeling dissatisfied with the division of unpaid labor in the household. What does that mean for the relationships? What, how does that show up?
Speaker 2 00:21:13 I, I think from both parties, and you'll talk more on the woman's side of thing here, is there's just that overarching feeling of inequality
Speaker 1 00:21:21 In the house. How is that for both parties? 'cause how does the man feel it's unequal. Well,
Speaker 2 00:21:25 No. Okay. So maybe the man doesn't feel it's unequal, but he's not happy either.
Speaker 1 00:21:30 So the survey that I referenced for this podcast suggested that the overwhelming majority of men actually are happy with the division of labor in the household.
Speaker 2 00:21:39 Oh,
Speaker 1 00:21:40 <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:21:41 I don't see that in our notes. That was a surprise. <laugh>. There you that was a trap. It's a trap. <laugh> look, I look, well, I'm gonna speak on behalf of non data. This is a qualitative non data. We okay, we've gone to
Speaker 1 00:21:54 A one case representation.
Speaker 2 00:21:55 Yeah. This is how, this is how I feel. No, I think it's different, but, um, it might be unfair, but the fight back and because we're not communicating it's not transparent, is that men will then start to feel like they're not appreciated for the work they do. Because I think if you actually thought about it, a lot of people aren't very happy with their jobs or it's not like their dream career or it's, you know, they're there because they have to pay the bills because they have to support, uh, a, a house and a mortgage and a partner who's supporting the kids and send the kids to the right school because they've, them and their partner have made assumptions about where they wanna go and how, what their definition of a rich life is. And at the same time their partners going, Hey, you're not doing enough. And because the communication isn't there, because there's no transparency around, well what does that mean? And how can we work through this together? The guy will start to feel under appreciated and go, well this is BSS as well.
Speaker 1 00:22:53 Look, I really appreciate your perspective on that because, but
Speaker 2 00:22:57 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:22:58 <laugh>, no, I genuinely do because I think what it highlights is even when the issue is very clear in the sense that it's unfair to women, right? The stats all support it. We know that it's unfair to women if we don't communicate that issue openly, it breeds other issues, right? So then you've got your saying as a result of the lack of communication, there's a misunderstanding from men around this issue. They don't maybe necessarily recognize it or even know that it exists. And so they start interpreting a woman's dissatisfaction as dissatisfaction in them. And, and this is what we talk about and why we say that it's so important to talk about the relationship as its own entity and how you nurture the relationship. Because what happens when we don't communicate well together and we don't communicate about the relationship, we personalize these things. And I do think what you're saying is very important, Roger, because each, we all come to a disagreement with perspective. Now the the answer of is it unfair between men and women in terms of the household? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that men aren't, the feelings men are having as a result of the miscommunication around that aren't genuine and valid. They absolutely are. It's a separate issue being caused by another issue. Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 00:24:15 Yeah. Well, I I, inequality it doesn't matter who is balanced towards, in a, in a team environment, is gonna breed all sorts of, uh, negative feelings. Mm-hmm. Um, you're gonna feel un underappreciated. You're gonna feel taken for granted. And I think a lot of, a lot of women resent their partners. Yes. Because they sit there and go, you got to go and do you live your life in your as a, as a career man, you know, I'm here holding the whole household, holding our children together and then I'm holding you when you get home saying, I'm tired from work.
Speaker 1 00:24:49 Yeah. I mean, it's a narrow perspective. 'cause obviously women are at work as well. Um, so actually you've gotta remember that the woman's going to work on top of all that
Speaker 2 00:24:58 <laugh>. Well, but so, so taking it back to the example we used at the start of the podcast. So, uh, husband and wife both were, um, worked in careers. Uh, the wife is having a baby, uh, for the first six months and is going back to work three days a week, uh, at about nine to 12 months. I think while lot the time, what happens is because they're not, it's not transparent. And then of course they've got additional costs of the baby, the car seat, the cribs and all that that have come up. Um, you then have to pay for daycare for, for the partner to go back to work three days a week. You, there is no conversation about, okay, so if I'm going back to the work, what are the extra household chores that need to be taken up? And so the husband is going about his merry ways the woman's going and going, the wife's getting what she wants, she's going back to work. Where, how, how much of a team are we? This is very, um, modern what we're doing, but, but the wife's still carrying a lot of the burden of the household admin and chores especially to do with the children. 'cause that's what started, there's no transition.
Speaker 1 00:26:04 I think the lack of communication actually goes even deeper than that because there's not even been a discussion around what household work is. What is the labor in the household? How do we view the labor in the household? So let's get into that. 'cause that's really the very first step is actually getting clear on making sure that you both acknowledge that the chores in the household are actually work, right? <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:26:27 So we've, we've kicked off about all the problems. <laugh>, let's talk about like how can we change this? How can we make this more fair? How can we make this more equal?
Speaker 1 00:26:36 Yes. More fair, not necessarily equal.
Speaker 2 00:26:40 Look. So I think the theme we've had throughout this when we, we talked about the problems is because we're not being transparent with each other. You know, we're not actually identifying the problem. You know, Einstein said if he had a choice, he'd spend most of his time actually defining and identifying a problem before solving it. And we are not doing any of that. So follow follow the smart guy and actually start to discuss the situation with your partner. And if you are, uh, if you are a bloke or whoever does like at less of the housework, actually bringing it up for your partner and go, Hey, I want to discuss how I can support you or we can support each other. So let's carve out a time, let's go for a walk. Let's go out the front and have a coffee to actually discuss this
Speaker 1 00:27:22 With the conversation. I think if it's the man coming to the woman or the woman going to the man, set a time to sit down and talk about it. Say, this is an important issue and I really wanna have a proper conversation about it, when's gonna work for us to sit down and discuss this? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:27:36 So if you need to check out episode 28, uh, how to start the conversation with your partner and we give some three tips on how to have more uncomfortable conversations with your partner to the point where you can make 'em more comfortable.
Speaker 1 00:27:50 Yeah. I love that. Uh, so, so that's it. So get about having a conversation together. When you start the conversation together, you wanna discuss, you wanna, you wanna list all your tasks firstly. So work out between the two of you, what are all the chores in the household? And you know, when women hear me say that they're going to go, that list is gonna be long. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:12 Get a, get an
Speaker 2 00:28:13 <laugh>, get an Excel spreadsheet. Yep. Get a, get a big whiteboard or get a notepad that you can constantly refer to. Yeah. Um, and, and crack your heads together and actually go through what those tasks are and break it up into what are the household tasks, what are the life admin tasks, what are the tasks for the kids? What are the tasks for outside? Because it is all these hygiene factors that are so critical. It's not just the vacuuming, the mopping and the cleaning. And I think that's a real critical thing as well. How much of the life admin work women do.
Speaker 1 00:28:42 Yes. So you wanna get really clear on what the tasks are, but the the, you wanna take it to another level. And this is really, really important because one of the, uh, most annoying parts of doing additional housework is when you actually do get your partner to do, do some of the housework and share some of the chores, but they don't do them the way that you would hope they were done. And it means a lot to you. And I know that it might sound like, let's go to the gendered stereotype here. Oh, she's never happy. She's never happy she asked me to do it. I do it. She's never happy with it. Well that's really unfair because obviously to the partner, the wife in that situation, it's important how it gets done. And men have things that are important to them and how they get done, right?
Speaker 1 00:29:29 So you both need to get clear on what tasks you care about and why you care about how they get done. So what does it look like? And you know, when you're getting clear on, on these certain things, you might go through and say, okay, for example, uh, maybe one of the tasks is sending out thank you card notes, right? For birthday parties or gifts or whatever. And it's fallen to the wife because she feels like she has to. But you both agree actually neither of us really care if we send thank you notes. So scrap the task. It goes off the household task. This, she doesn't have to do it, she doesn't have to worry about it. You guys agreed as a couple that that's just not that important to you in, in the hierarchy of your lives. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:30:09 That, that's a great part about making a list together, is you actually go through that list and you can sense check it. It's like, yeah, a hundred percent, why are we doing these tasks? And and to your other point about making sure that it's done properly, I think if we haven't distributed the task, 'cause we made a list and then we distributed them. If you are just sort of like willy-nilly saying, here's a task, you're not take the, especially for a guy, you're not taking ownership or accountability. You do think it's a one-off. But if this your task ongoing or at least for the week or month before you redistribute, then you all of a sudden know that you are accountable for it. Yes. And that means you're account for it. Getting it done properly.
Speaker 1 00:30:49 Yes, absolutely. Getting it done properly is a very important part. It's, it's the completion of the task in a way that you have agreed is important to you as a couple. Very, very important. Okay, next step. Distribute the tasks fairly. So now you've talked about what your tasks are. You've talked about why they matter to you, uh, in the first step, you've, you've just talked about household work in general. So you've done all these things and now you need to distribute the task fairly. And we don't say equally because equal just isn't realistic. You know, we have different resources, different skill sets, um, different time allocations, all those sorts of things. And so you need to work out fair means what's unique to you. We cannot tell you how your task distribution should look. That is completely up to you as a couple. You will both be able to agree as to what's fair.
Speaker 1 00:31:38 For example, Roger and I are carers now. Caregiving to a child with additional needs is a very emotional task. It takes a lot of emotional energy with a lot of love, but a lot of energy required. And so we share that task wholeheartedly. 50 50 because of the emotional energy it takes, it's important for us to have that task does allocated quite evenly. Other tasks we don't share 50 50, we don't even share 10 90. Some things just fall better to Roger because of his skillset. Some things fall better to me because of my skillset, whatever. We work it out together and we are very clear on what our tasks are. So lastly, you need to review and redistribute. So you need to go through the tasks and see how it worked for you. Work out which ones you might want, wanna redistribute. And I would suggest in the first instance you'd be doing that weekly.
Speaker 2 00:32:35 Yeah, I think, I think carving out some time weekly to, to do this. 'cause you'll start making those assumptions that got you into trouble in the first place that, oh, actually I, I, I've, I've started this task, but it's taken more time than I thought and as a result I'm letting some other tasks slip or I'm not, I'm not getting resentful. I'm, I'm getting resentful. You know, just like you would at work. It's like, how, how much is on your plate right now? Okay. We need to redistribute work within the team. That
Speaker 1 00:33:02 Is such a great point, Roger. So there we go. Sit down, talk about household work. What, what, what your current situation is, how you feel about it, why it's important to you as a couple to discuss this and, and get clear on it. Uh, number two, list all your domestic tasks that you have, all of the unpaid labor in your lives. Number three, discuss, uh, how you expect these tasks to be completed. What's important to you about these tasks? And get rid of the ones you don't really care about. Number four, distribute the tasks fairly, not equally. Fairly means what works for you guys. And number five, review and redistribute weekly.
Speaker 2 00:33:37 Fantastic. Uh, Kim, what was your golden nugget from today's podcast on invisible work
Speaker 1 00:33:45 For me it's the, the actual benefit of this exercise to the broader relationship is so great. The skills you build in, in getting open and transparent about an issue in the relationship. And this is a big one for a lot of couples. The skills you build around this, and it's such a great issue because it's so pragmatic to be able to resolve it. It's got such clear borderlines around it, you can make it so structured. I just think it's, it's just so beneficial to a relationship. That's my nugget. What about you?
Speaker 2 00:34:14 I'll sort of use that one a little bit as well because I think if you can master or at least dramatically improve talking to each other about household chores, then you'll have the opportunity to get better at talking about the fun things like your dreams in life. You are amazing. You've just spent quality time on your relationship.
Speaker 1 00:34:37 Feel out you're on a roll. If you want more living, the team life, relationship, insights and conversations, head over to Kim and roger.com where you can find all the show notes as well as tons of other relationship goodies.
Speaker 2 00:34:48 And if you like today's episode, please hit subscribe or let another couple know where they can find us. It'll make them happy and it'll make us really happy.
Speaker 1 00:34:56 Until next time, keep on living the team life.
