Let's Spin The Chore Wheel

Ok, confession time... when I was a kid, I had a problem. Dinner would be winding down and I would always sneak away to go to the bathroom. It happened so often that it would catch the eye of each one of my family members. I would sit on the toilet, not necessarily needing to use the restroom, but rather I was trying to get out of my duties of cleaning up the dishes. I would sit and wait til I heard they were all done then magically reappear from the hallway to see the great accomplishment my siblings had done. This did not last long in my family and I soon learned that the more I tried to get out of my clean-up duties, the more dishes they left for me to clean up when I would return.

Growing up I remember sharing a great deal of the household chores. Everyone had their respective roles, even my parents. The "family duties chart" shed some light on the fact that there are specific responsibilities that fell to certain members of our family. While the kids had specific chores we would rotate them throughout the year. My mom and dad had specific tasks that they would generally continue to complete throughout my formative years. While it was not a absolute reality, my mom would often be the one responsible for cooking. However she would rarely be the one to clean up the dishes afterwards. The rule is if you cook, you don't clean.

The list of typical family duties often left me choosing both parents as responsible for certain tasks because I remember them sharing much of the burdens. Because my mom was a teacher, she watched my siblings and I during the afterschool hours, but when my dad came home from work, he also was helping out around the house. This type of sharing of duties is different from how Sociologists would describe the nuclear family.

Sociologists describe working mothers as having a "second shift" when they come home from work and have to take care of much of the house chores. This was the case for my mom yet I would argue it was also the case for my father. I rarely remember him relaxing once he came home from work any more than I did my mom. That being said, my parents are not perfect. Before I can remember they got separated and talked about divorce, luckily they got back together and I am sure realized that marriage is very difficult and requires a sacrifice of themselves to the relationship and the family to make it work. My mom is also the kind of strong woman who would speak her mind and it would be difficult for her to allow what writer Betty Friedan described as an oppressive domestic life without communicating to my dad where he needs to help out.