Being the Default Parent — and Asking for Help
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A few months ago, I was really stressed. It was of those times where you’re vibrating from stress and you can’t fall asleep because of your stress, and then if/when you wake up in the middle of the night you pick up right where you left off worrying (perhaps with a few more anxiety loops thrown into the mix for extra middle-of-the-night fun).
The why doesn’t terribly matter, but it was a perfect whirlwind of traveling for a work conference (stressful!) right before taxes were due (stressful!), in a really complicated tax year for us (as I realized with a sinking feeling when I sent them off to my accountant on April SEVENTH), with upcoming knee surgery (torn ACL!), and the added stress of getting enough blog content in the bank so that I could actually HAVE the surgery and recover without feeling like I was ducking tomatoes the whole time. And I was the default parent.
My husband, darling that he is, kept saying, “Hey, babe, let me know what I can do.” I did ask him to take care of a few things here and there: You pick the paint color we’ve been going back and forth on! Please take care of X purchase! Look into Y issue!
But: I never asked him to be the default parent… And stuff fell through the cracks. (It wasn’t big stuff; J. turned in an empty assignment because no one helped him with it. But it still was enough to make me feel like a truly lousy mother.)
Now: Here at the blog, I feel like we talk about the concept of “the default” parent a lot. I even have the original Huffington Post article on a loop to come up every so often as a Facebook or Twitter post — that’s how good I think the article and concept is. But guess who I’d never discussed the concept with? My husband.
So from the airport gate, on the way to my conference, I sent him a slew of text messages basically giving him a heads-up that I was going to send him an article and I needed him to read it, and I wanted us both to be on the same page about this.
“To be clear,” I wrote, “I’m not pissed at you! You’re great! Wonderful! There’s just a bunch of hidden assumptions and sexism regarding women always being the default parent, and I need you to read and process this so that if I say something to you like, ‘I need you to be the default parent right now,’ then you totally get what I’m talking about and you can do it.”
Have you realized that you’re the one who’s the default parent? (“If you have to think about it, you’re not,” the original essay says.) If so, have you had a conversation with your spouse about it, or tried to distribute tasks and responsibilities more evenly between the two of you?
Further reading:
- Mom: The Designated Worrier [The New York Times]
- “Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor [The Toast]
- Emotional Labor: The MetaFilter Thread Condensed [MetaFilter]
- Here’s a Short List of Some of What Default Parents Actually Do [The Dish]
- How Being the Default Parent Is Your Fault [Doctor Mama Esquire]
I am definitely the default parent but a lot of it has to do with my perfectionism issue. I also do it because I want my daughter to always know how much I was there for her with everything. I love how organic this post is. It takes a lot of courage to put your issues out there especially when they relate to your personal relationships. I recently wrote an article about dealing with household chores and marriage (the default cleaner): http://www.briggs-artstudio.com/blog/category/relationships
I would love some constructive criticism from a fellow blogger :)
These are all really great articles.
You know those fake babies they send home with high schoolers? They should let married couples thinking of having a baby borrow those to work out these issues ahead of time.
I went from being a marriage where I was the default EVERYTHING to a new marriage where we share the load, especially the parenting load.
This happened because it was something I intentionally looked for in a partner- someone that would truly be a partner and share in the load. This was easy for me to do because my son was already in the picture when I was with my new husband. Those conversations are harder to have/anticipate when you’re with someone before you have a child, and I think that makes it really, really tough.
So in addition to the default parent issues related to chores/school/long-term planning, I struggle with the fact that I am the preferred parent. At night, the kids want to hang out with me, and so my husband basically lounges around from dinner until bedtime while I am hanging out with the kids. Which I love to do, except when I need to work at night they won’t play with him. Help?
In addition to the annotated, organized version, the original MetaFilter thread on emotional labor is excellent too: http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor. Read it if you want to have many instances of “YES! Exactly! That is EXACTLY how I feel!”
My husband is the default day to day parent, to the point where I know he’s getting annoyed and I need to step back in – he works from home so he handles getting ready in the morning, daycare/school dropoff, lunch packing; and lately I’ve been working late so he’s had to handle pickup as well and start dinner. I used to be better about leaving work at a reasonable time to make daycare pickup at least a couple days a week, and I need to get back to that.
On the other hand, no matter what I do, if I’m home, my kids see me as the default parent to ask for things. Like the story in the original HuffPo article about the kids walking past dad to go ask for mom’s help when she’s in the shower – my kids do this kind of thing. For instance, if both of us are sitting in the living room, they will automatically ask me to get them whatever it is they want, or they’ve walked *right past* my husband who was in the kitchen to come up to the second floor where I was in the bathroom to ask for something to eat or to sign a permission slip or to ask where XYZ is, never mind that their father does most of the cooking anyway. At least we’ve finally managed to make “you have to knock first and wait to be invited in” stick so they aren’t bursting in on me anymore, but I still don’t need a kid knocking or whining outside the bathroom door.
And I’ve told my story more than once of having to re-train the school not to default to calling all of my contact info before trying my husband – it’s taken some time, but it’s finally sticking.
We have a few specific chores that are “ours” -he loads the dishwasher, I unload; he does all yard care and snow removal, I buy all children’s clothes; etc. But there is definitely some overlap, which is how we both wound up buying toilet paper on Amazon one day apart and both came home from running errand with cases of La Croix and then had to figure out where to store 96 rolls of TP and 72 cans of La Croix, and in the meantime we had no paper towels, napkins or tissues.
Ugh yes this is a constant issue. I am the default parent and it kind of has to be that way right now because my husband’s job has long hours and is not very flexible. He also has a longer commute. I recently got the opportunity to go part time and I jumped on it, but I feel like it’s going to cement the default parent thing. Basically I’m mostly just giving in to it because his career (in medicine) is unlikely to get much more flexible soon, though hours should improve after next year. I am often jealous of women whose partners have more flexible schedules, but I knew what I signed up for in marrying a doctor and having our first child during residency. I do try to make a point of carving out areas/times where he can be completely responsible for stuff.
Practical tips:
-when my husband is home on weekend, im not shy about making plans to have lunch with a friend or similar so that husband is alone with baby (16 month old) for at least an hour or two. It is so important to do this regularly and because of his work schedule, the only time it can happen is on weekends.
– meal kit services (home chef, blue apron) really helped get husband involved with dinner. Now he has no excuse for not cooking- ingredients are labeled and there are step by step directions.
– I’m very careful with language- husband doesn’t “babysit,” domestic related tasks he does are not “favors” or “helping me,” and I don’t ask if he can stay with baby while I go to lunch I weekend, I just tell him I’m going.
– as others have said, I try not to criticize or micromanage his parenting decisions.
Yup. I lost it on my husband when he said “He was doing better than every other dad he knew”. Yeah, but those dads have SAHM wives, I work full time and travel, if that’s the best you can do why should I work?
Sigh. It was a pretty big fight but he’s stepped it up since then. It didn’t help his case that I pointed out that when he travels he comes home to a clean house, laundry done, all family appt’s handled, mail/packages sorted and put away/etc. When I travel I come home to a messy home, take out in the fridge, groceries needing to be replenished, piles of laundry waiting for me, and husband exhausted from ‘doing so much!’.
Has anyone seen Jonathan Mann’s Youtube video about realizing he was a “Sh*tty Feminist” because of his failure to support his wife after their baby was born? I’ll link to in a response. I’ve had several guy friends watch it and realize that the guy is them.
I really encourage moms to give up all control over child care once in a while. If your kid is dressed in clothes that are too cold, they’ll tell dad and he’ll have to figure out a solution or risk the kid’s wrath. And he’ll learn for next time. If they eat processed chicken nuggets a few times a month, they’ll be OK. And if hubby shrinks your sweater, it’s OK to let him know that’s not acceptable but you still expect him to continue doing the laundry. He isn’t doing laundry as a favor to you; it’s his responsibility. So he can’t give it back. But he can outsource it.
This is something DH and I have been talking about / trying to navigate as I’ve hit a breaking point a couple of times since the baby was born in December. I have the same issues everyone is talking about in not being willing to “settle for less” in areas I really care about. So we’re trying to think of discrete areas that can be totally his responsibility to manage / worry about / stay on top of. So far, we have:
– Car…he is responsible for all things car-related (including making sure it is full of gas at all times, scheduling and going to appointments, etc.)
– Scheduling and taking the baby to doctor appointments and when the time comes, dentist and other appointments
– Doing all vet-related stuff
And I think he is going to be the “volunteer” parent for daycare/school because he has a non-traditional schedule (so some time off during the week) once that becomes an issue.
I’d love other ideas for discrete areas of responsibility. I do finances, general scheduling, most emotional labor as to remembering birthdays/anniversaries/other family milestones, planning vacations, paying bills, meal planning, grocery list creating…
Up until very recently, I have been the default parent for our 3-yr old. My husband just began a year-long training program, and he now works ~30-40 hours a week compared to 70+ — and he’s become the default parent. This happened without discussion; he just has tons more time now so it made sense for him to be more involved. Ex: kiddo’s daycare is next to his school, so he does pickup and drop off almost every day; he has taken over scheduling appointments for dr and dentist; he schedules and attends extracurriculars (swimming and soccer, each once per week). It’s very weird for me to give up the control and closeness I have had with kiddo up until now (not to mention I have no idea who her little school friends are, don’t know other parents, etc.), but it’s been such a wonderful change. I realized I was going down the martyr road (I work full time! And I’m basically a single parent! Poor me!), and this is saving me from what I think would have become a lot of resentment. I’m hopeful that once husband goes back to a normal schedule, he’ll remain more involved than he was, especially because he’ll be more confident in his parenting abilities.
You hit a nerve today, Kat! my husband and I had a spat about this, this morning. I am the default parent and I also work full-time. I came to the realization today that we need to have a serious discussion, because my current effort levels are not sustainable. As my kids get older, I am finding that this default parenting gets a little more complicated with more homework assignments and activities. I can’t do it all.
What I tried to explain to my husband, is that I don’t want to always be asking for help. I want him to help plan and assume some responsibilities. Otherwise, I just feel like a delegator and he does not take true ownership.
Okay, so my husband has extended work travel. The flip side of this is that when he’s home, he doesn’t have to go into an office and handles the vast majority of the house/family stuff.
I am (obviously) the default parent when he travels, but he takes on the role when he is home. We did have a breakthrough moment though. He was doing something and I was criticizing/correcting (I think I was critiquing the last time baby was changed and that he wasn’t changing frequently enough) what he was doing and he looked at me and said, ‘Do you trust me as a parent? Because right now, your words and actions are saying that you don’t trust me as a parent.’
That was my turning moment. Yes, I absolutely trust my husband as a parent. Does he sometimes do things differently than I would? Yes. Does he truly not believe that overalls need a shirt underneath? Why, yes. But he is an excellent parent and a different parent than I am and learning to respect that was really wonderful for our relationship and our parenting team.
I’m less than a year into this parenting thing but I think what’s hardest for me is the need to either delegate specific tasks, which in itself becomes work, or letting go completely so that I don’t care what happens. Mr. AIMS is super progressive, doesn’t believe in gender roles, yadda yadda, but in the morning the best we can come up with is he dresses the baby but I have to lay out the clothes, or he feeds the baby but I have to say what she’ll be eating and/or make it. And all this requires some prompting from me, which is also a pain. But if I just say “you deal with it,” she’ll be dressed in something too cold/warm or eating something less healthy than I would make/put out. I realize that part of the problem is I keep doing it so he never gets a chance to figure it out but it’s also harder to let go than I ever anticipated.
I think inherently there is some measure of judgment that I self impose if my kid looks like a mess or whatever and so I feel invested in having her look cute and clean and seasonally appropriate in a way most dads do not. And I probably feel a certain amount of societal guilt/responsibility to ensure she eats something healthful so that just feeding her yogurt from a pouch feels wrong to me in a way it may not to her father. I think a lot of this hopefully gets easier as the kid gets older because there is less to control and more concrete areas to delegate (vs. just tasks). But I also think some of this is so emotionally loaded – I have friends who just do not want to give up being the default parent and what can you do there?
I’m the default parent. It’s not by choice, exactly, but when I do relinquish some of the control it makes me feel less connected to my kids. I kind of enjoy some of the default parent stuff, maybe because I work long hours so I’m home less. When I go on a work trip, my husband picks up the day-to-day default parent stuff pretty easily, but he doesn’t do any of the long-term default parent tasks.
Wow, those were all good articles. The metafilter one makes me table-flippingly enraged. But also grateful. The section about how women do all the EL which is a huge burden, but we also get strong deep friendships out of it in a way most men don’t. I have really experienced that this summer in an unfortunate family crisis. Women have been with me every step of the way. It has been inspiring. I have also never been angrier at some of the men in my life after seeing how useless they’ve been. Absolutely zero initiative. They just stand there and stare blankly or say “what can I do” but when assigned something, half ass it, do it wrong, or don’t do it at all.
The thing that I think is the hardest is that my husband does not recognize “emotional labor” as a thing that exists or if it does, thinks it is of minimal importance. We had a huge blowout fight after weeks of this family crisis (which I handled with zero help from him) when I just needed to vent and he was tired of hearing about it (well, so sorry, but try DOING IT. Believe me, I’m sick of that too). And he told me its not like what I was doing was “hard” and it occurred to me that I had never told him about the emotional aspects of what I was doing. And how I had to support other people and talk them down when they were upset, etc. And he was all “well, I just wouldn’t do that.” Like it’s that easy. No. If you don’t do the emotional part, people don’t trust you. If you don’t make the friendly phone call to the hospice nurse. If you don’t thank and thank again the caretaker and calm her down when your idiot uncle is a jerk. He just wouldn’t “do that” because he’s never had to. It was like we were from two different planets.