Gender-Balance Starts At Home | #BalanceForBetter at Home

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It’s International Women’s Day this week and it has me thinking about gender balance. Not just gender balance in the workplace but gender balance starts at home too. The theme for the 2019 International Women’s Day is #Balanceforbetter. Many moms feel like they carry the burden of home organization and parenting by themselves, and don’t realize the benefits of delegation. Should gender balance start at home?

I keep hearing moms, tired and exhausted moms, say their husbands don’t do enough around the home or with the kids.

These are moms that work outside the home, moms that work from home, and stay-at-home moms. I’m going to be very clear here. It doesn’t matter which mom you are. You deserve gender balance at home too.

How do we get better at gender balance at home? Is it possible?

According to an old study I found, the trend for gender balance at home is increasing! Woohoo!

What does that mean though?

It means that more dads are helping pick up the kids after work, they are taking kids to activities, helping with chores around the house even when it is hard.

Hard?!

Yes, hard!

Just like us moms battling the societal expectations and endless guilt of not doing something, they have the same battle of going out of the “norm” for generations of men before them. Dad’s can suffer from working-mom’s guilt too, or should I say working-dad’s guilt.

Just leaving work “on time” to pick up the kids from daycare brings a wave of guilt and worry that it may look like he’s not being a team player by staying late. It can be extremely hard to walk out that door when he’s the only one doing it. Even though that extra time will generally be “free labor” if he is on salary.

Believe me, as a female engineer in a man’s work environment I’ve felt that wave of guilt every day as I left to go pick up kids. It’s not fun.

The bottom line is we as moms and dads need to work together for our individual families. It’s not about moms needing help or dads not doing enough. It is about creating a team at home to survive the chaos and thrive as a family. To do that, gender balance needs to start at home.

Gender-Balance Starts at Home

There are 5 simple mindset changes that both my husband and I had to do for our gender balance at home. I’m not sure if I started this process or if it was a work in progress for both of us. However, I do know that our open communication and being willing to ask for help have helped us over the years.

5 Simple Mindset Changes to Start Gender Balance at Home:

1. Giving each other time to decompress after work
2. No Fewer expectations
3. Understanding outside responsibilities and difficult seasons in our lives
4. Putting our relationship ahead of housework
5. Working together as a family to get things done

1. Giving Each Other Time To Decompress After Work

I had to learn the hard way on this one. For years my work schedule was an early morning start and then I was off work in the late afternoon. My husband’s workday was later than mine, which meant his day finished later.

I would be responsible most days for picking up the kids and starting our evening routines of homework, activities, and dinner. By the time my husband walked through that door, I was done, overwhelmed, stressed, and needing a break. So I launched myself at him expecting him to listen to my rant-of-the-day and take over the kids.

He hadn’t taken his coat off yet.

He was still processing all of the drama at work himself.

Then my wave of overwhelm lands on him before he can decompress.

For myself, I needed to decompress before picking up the kids from daycare. These tricks helped me:

1. I would often take a moment to sit in the car outside the day home.
2. Not listening to the radio on the drive home, with complete silence in the car helped immensely.
3. If I took transit to work, I’d read a book on the way home.

One day, my husband spoke up and said that he just needed a minute or two to himself. He needed a quiet moment to work through his day so that he could be present with the family. Relate? I know I could relate but never thought that he would need that too until that moment of clarity. Permission granted!

2. Fewer Expectations

This will be hard if you are a control freak, like me. If we need help at home because we can’t do it all then we need to have no fewer expectations. Having no expectations is my ultimate goal, but I’ve been working on it for years. I have fewer expectations which is much better for my health, my family relationships, and most of all my marriage.  

If we need help then we need to have, at the very least, fewer expectations on what needs to get done in the day, and how it gets done. What are the priorities for the family?

Ours were making sure the kids were happy and healthy. Then we wanted to make sure we took time for each other so that our marriage stayed strong.

What about “all of the things”? If I don’t do them who will? What if they aren’t done the correct way?

Things “need” to get done. At least that is what our brain tells us. It’s a lie we control freaks tell ourselves.

It “needs” to be done a certain way, all of the time. Another lie.

The truth is life will go on if something isn’t done or if someone does it a different way than you like. The truth is having an “at-home movie date” after the kids go to bed is much better for your health and marriage than making sure the floor is swept.

The world, your world, won’t implode. I promise.

Sometimes letting go of the expectations, and letting them do it will encourage the whole family to help mom out a little more. Teamwork honey! Teamwork! Asking for help around the house helps everyone.

3. Understanding Outside Responsibilities and Difficult Seasons In Our Lives

When other moms find out that my husband does the laundry and cooks and… the list is truly endless. The first thing out of their mouth is “how did you manage that?”. In truth, I’m not sure. For years I attributed it to my in-laws raising a great man. My husband would jokingly tell you that he needed clean clothes and needed to eat.

In truth, we work as a team to get things done. The whole family works together. In busy seasons or stressful periods in our outside lives, we found ways to simplify life at home and pick up tasks that helped each other. There isn’t really a defined list of tasks that we plan for each other, we work as a team.

I will admit that the laundry, along with making homemade pizza, are two tasks that my husband does really well and I gladly enjoy leaving for him and thank him endlessly for it!

When I wasn’t working or when I was working from home, I would do more home tasks. If my work schedule was an early start and early end of the day, I would handle the meals and meal planning.

Now that I’m working later in the day and building a business my husband does more of these tasks. Thankfully the meal planning system we have used for years was simple enough that our kids and my husband were able to continue it.

4. Putting Our Relationship Ahead of Housework

We’ve been married almost 26 years now. We got married young and started our family soon after, while we were going to University. Sometimes I think clutter bothers me more than my husband. He is really great at self-care. After so much research into self-care, I’ve realized that he’s the norm for most men.

This expertise for taking time to decompress is one of the superpowers of men. They’ve naturally mastered it, and women suck at it!

I’ll say this again and again though. We need to take care of ourselves and nurture our marriage if we are going to be good parents and have our marriage survive empty-nest syndrome.

Spending hours every night cleaning the house is not time well spent. That’s my opinion. It may not be yours and I respect that.

I don’t have an immaculate home. My kids are healthy other than the odd cold now and then. I got married in the dinosaur era (not really) and he’s still with me (I didn’t hold him captive either – promise).

We made our marriage and family time a higher priority ahead of housework. It is a way for us to connect and decompress from the chaotic day we both had.

5.  Working Together as a Family to Get Things Done

Most of the time, the housework was done as a team effort so I could relax enough to enjoy family time. After all, my tolerance for the mess and clutter generally seems to be lower than the rest of the family.

They’ve accepted that about me and know that when I ask for help, it usually means it is best to help with mom’s sanity.

My husband is a full-fledged member of the “Happy Wife, Happy Life” team. He’ll be the first to admit that to anyone who asks.

We found a brilliant way to ask for help from the kids that worked fabulously to get things done around the house with less and less fighting over the years. Using this delegation method actually taught them compassion, teamwork, and life skills.

Our two boys live in other cities from us and I sleep very well knowing they can not only take care of themselves with basic home life skills, but they are excelling in their work-life because they frequently use their compassion to understand others and help the team.

#Balanceforbetter at Home

Gender balance starts at home. Instead of complaining about what your spouse is or isn’t doing, try understanding their challenges and talk about it together. How can you both help improve life at home, simplify life at home, to make home great for both of you?

You both need to find ways to decompress after your day. Give yourselves permission to find quiet moments before getting bombarded with the chaos at home.

Gender balance is possible at home if we can all enter that journey will fewer expectations (striving for no expectations). Asking for help when we need it allows us to change the typical super-mom syndrome into a different kind of super-mom. Asking for help, allows us to become super great at enjoying our family.

How will you start your gender-balanced journey?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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