Experiments in half and half

My partner and I have had a lot of arguments about who does what when. It was especially hard when our daughter, S, was first born. J was stressed out of his mind, and so was I, and neither of us dealt with it very well. He expected me to care for the baby the great majority of the time because "Babies just like their mothers better!" and yet he also expected me to do a good deal of housework. And he worked at home. He would sit around at his desk, editing something or other and ignoring the fact that he’d become a father.

As time passed, and as I got closer and closer to just losing my mind, J and I worked out new arrangements. He realized he’d been unfair to me. I realized he’d been afraid of not knowing enough about taking care of our daughter. To make a long story short, this is the arrangement we’ve arrived at after a lot of trial and error:

We switch back and forth as to who gets up with S, our daughter, in the mornings
We switch back and forth every day as to who does the major housework
We split the day exactly evenly as to who is on active baby care duty. We either do this by switching every few hours or switching once in the middle of the day. Whoever isn’t on active baby-care can, aside from relevant chores of the day, do whatever — work on a project, go out, nap. Whatever.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here. Maybe just: it seems like task equality can be possible. I don’t think this particular arrangement will work for everyone (especially factoring in jobs), but it does for us. It is, in fact, the only thing that has worked for us in any way at all. Change the balance, and one of us gets grouchy and depressed. Keep it, and we’re all pretty content.