How do you split childcare tasks?

[wanderingback]

Just curious for people who have kids and aren’t single parents, how do you split the daily childcare tasks? Dinner, baths, lunch/bottles for daycare or school, clothes, etc.

Up until now we had a part time nanny so didn’t have to worry about the hustle of prepping things for going to daycare. Plus she wasn’t eating 3 solid meals, but now she’s a foodie So far we’ve split things pretty evenly, so just curious how we’ll do things going forward now with more daily tasks.

So how does it work in your household?

[pinkplasticdoll]

It's split fairly evenly in our house, I have a toddlerish and a elementary kid. We alternate cooking dinner, I cook 2-3 days a week and he does 4 days a week but I do breakfast 5 days a week. 75% of the time he does bath time while I am cleaning up dinner and their lunch boxes. For the school week he will pack 2-3 days worth of snacks and make 1-2 lunches while I do the other days, this is if we dont bulk prep snacks and lunches. I throw a load of laundry in the washer when I get back from dropping the kids off at school and we fold it at night after they go to bed. He works most saturday nights so I am on my own for dinner-bedtime. 

When my oldest went to daycare I would pump the milk and make the bottle, he would wash the bottles each night. When we sent food to daycare I would make the food when I was making my lunch each morning.

[beerlover]

We have a 7 year old (one and done). I WFH, and H goes into work earlier than me and also stays later, so I do all of the driving DS to and from before and after school care (and daycare before he was school aged). It's always been that way. Because my job is more flexible, I also typically do the doctor's appointments and stay home with DS when he's sick. I cook all the dinners because I'm home earlier (and I enjoy cooking and planning), but H will do the dishes, but I'll usually chat with him in the kitchen while he does that. We then kinda do everything else together - sit with DS during his homework, and we usually both go upstairs for bathtime/bedtime and do all of that together. Sometimes one of us will take the lead while the other is cleaning up something or doing other chores, but generally the 3 of us are together for all the evening routine stuff.

Overall I do a little bit more of the childcare tasks just because of being home, so its not an even split, but if I want to go do something for an evening, H has no problem handling everything himself and will rearrange his schedule to pick him up if needed.

[gt7301b]

I do morning drop off and everything that comes with it. (My DH has to be at work by 7:15 and before care doesn't open till 7 so it is difficult for him to do drop off without someone covering for him for a few minutes) My son is 7 so that is getting less over time, he now gets him self up, dressed, and makes his own lunch. My DH does pickup. DS has piano one night a week and don't have a good schedule for that but we split it pretty evenly. I am the default parent for things like sick days because I work from home and have a more flexible schedule. I can usually reschedule things at work to do a last minute pick up and I end up being the one to make the call about keeping DS home.

I cook dinner and DH cleans up.

We rotate bed time and bath night every two nights. The other partner takes the dog for a walk during bed time.

On the weekend we each get one morning as ours where the other partner is on. Sat mornings I get in my long run and DH takes DS to whatever activity takes place that day. Sun morning DH usually runs long and I take DS to church. If DS is participating in a sport we usually both go to games.

We split the physical tasks pretty well but don't do a great job sharing the mental load of parenting, I still end up taking on a large share of these tasks.

[erbear]

Not that well. I’d say I do 85% of the child related duties. Part of it is my job (I’m home the same hours as the kids) but I carry 100% of the mental load. It’s frustrating.

DH does a lot around the house and he puts in a lot of time with dd1 especially (she’s tough and he gets her better) but a lot of it is doing the fun stuff and not the work.

[goldengirlz]

It’s shifted over the years based on our careers, what our DC has needed and our natural abilities.

H will always be the more hands-on parent because he’s way more patient than I am. He makes lunches and cooks dinner, checks homework and quizzes them before tests, packs snacks and toys when we travel, plays games of make believe — all the stuff I’m either not good at or don’t like doing.

I’m better at the higher-level stuff. I plan birthday parties, schedule doctor’s appointments, buy clothes and school supplies — and increasingly now that we’ve hit the tween years, handle all the heart-to-hearts.

We split things like who does drop off/pick up, who takes time off when DC is sick, who goes to school conferences — we prioritize both careers equally when it comes to that kind of kid management stuff.

My H would be totally self-sufficient without me. The longest I’ve been away from home was nearly three weeks (not by choice, my dad was dying on the other side of the country) and my household did not miss a beat. I didn’t even get a single question.

[pittpurple]

My husband and I both work full time so have a juggle. Holidays/summer we just work out week to week but our school year has a set schedule that we work out for the whole year. Right now he works at home Mondays and Tuesdays and I work at home Thursdays and Fridays so the days we are home we are responsible for getting the kids back and forth to school. They have 8 activities a week between them and we have a complicated schedule for who does which - broadly even but my husband has slightly more driving around as I do all of the organising for all of it (uniforms, paying for them, emailing various coaches, etc etc). My husband does all the cooking, I do all the purchasing and organising of every single thing that happens... we just try to balance it out a bit. We are extremely lucky to both be senior enough in our roles and have flexible enough jobs that we are able to cover any gaps between us. When the kids were littler, he traveled a lot for work and it was awful as I was still at a full-time desk job and the timing of everything was really difficult. It's so much easier now post-covid and after we both became more senior at work.

We have said a flat no to any other activities though - we are at capacity for what we can handle mentally there. Both kids would love to do more stuff but I can't spend every single night driving them in circles so we are pausing on anything new.

[joy]

I’d do about 75% of it.

EDIT - he would disagree but my schedule is more flexible.

[osulori]

I do probably 2/3 of it but that fluctuates with my husband's work schedule and what days he has off-he's a restaurant manager so he's only home 2-3 nights a week. On a consistent basis, I do drop off for Kid #1, pick up for both, dinner for both, sport practice drop off/pick up for Kid #1, bath and bedtime for both. He does drop off for Kid #2 daily (he goes in later plus her sitter is across the street), and will pick the kids up/help with dinner/do bath and PJs if he's off that night. He's as hands on as he can be given the constraints of his work schedule, whereas my work schedule is consistent every week.

[janegold]

We don't have a formal division of labor in place but when my H is not traveling, he tends to take the lead on drop offs, pickups, and most extracurriculars. I take on more responsibility on the feeding, bathing, cleaning front. And we split bedtimes - he does one kid and I do the other.

[brooke77]

I have a 6 year old.

Me: I am responsible for his packed lunches/snacks and laundry. I enjoy doing those things, so I have never asked H to split it up with me.

We split: Mornings (wake up, get fed and ready, drop off at school) and nights (shower, get ready for bed, and bedtime story/stay with DS until he falls asleep).

Both: I usually “manage” DS’ schedule (doctors appts/sports/school events), but we usually try to go together. If not, we will split.

I’m happy with our split. We have a great mix of family time, 1:1 parenting time, and personal time. The greatest thing we lack is couple time (we are almost never together alone), but I expect that will change as DS gets older.

[noodleoo]

Oct 10, 2023 22:13:32 GMT -5 erbear said:

Not that well. I’d say I do 85% of the child related duties. Part of it is my job (I’m home the same hours as the kids) but I carry 100% of the mental load. It’s frustrating.

DH does a lot around the house and he puts in a lot of time with dd1 especially (she’s tough and he gets her better) but a lot of it is doing the fun stuff and not the work.

This.  I work part time and he's full time, so it is part of the deal.  But it has set up a difficult pattern where I'm always the default parent even when H is available.  I also handle all of the mental load for the kids: everything school related, medical/dental appts, haircuts, buying clothing (which is a LOT with 4 seasons), birthdays/holidays, etc.  I think it has gotten worse as they've gotten older (age 5 and 8 now), there is so much more to manage.  It is exhausting and I've been burnt out for a few years.

It is mental load part that is the worst.  The daily routine stuff isn't too bad:  we split drop off/pickup, we both get the kids ready for school, after school he does baths while I make dinner, we do bedtime together. I handle more of the day to day stuff (grocery shopping, meal planning, laundry) and he does more of the weekly/seasonal stuff (cleaning bathrooms, lawn care, car care).  I used to handle our bills, but I offloaded that to him after DD1 was born.

My advice is to try to be intentional about how you split tasks and to pick some that he can be fully responsible for.  Best deal I ever made was when I was breastfeeding.  We agreed that I'd handle feeding (since it was a LOT of work), so he would handle diapers.  So if he was home, he changed 90% of the diapers.  I would literally hand her over for a poop change and he'd do it, no questions asked.  It was awesome.  He has also been in charge of bathtime since kids were babies.  I wish I could think of a few more things I could completely offload on him.  

[pandorica]

I think we have a pretty even split, because we're both doing it all at the same time usually and it's rare for one of us to sit down for the night before the other haha

H does all cooking (breakfast and dinner) while I manage the kids. I get them dressed and do laundry.

H has always done 90% of all dishes and making bottles. We JUST put away all of the bottles for the last time and the twins are on to whole milk, so we're finally done with that chore!

I make lunches for school/daycare the night before. Now that we're done with bottles, H has started helping with this some too.

I noticed recently that H is the only one who communicates with the new daycare, I don't even have their number in my phone. I was the point of contact for our summer nanny and we split the communication with DD1s daycare before she went to PreK, so this is a big change but I'm trying to let go and not take over.

We take turns on daycare drop off. Whoever doesn't do drop off waits for the bus with DD1.

H does bedtime for DD1 most of the time, I do bedtime for the twins.

[minniemouse]

I have a 14 year old and 10 year old. I do most of the childcare tasks (we both work full time). When they were daycare age, he would drop them off in the morning - after I got them dressed, fed them breakfast, and packed their bags.I picked them up after work. I usually gave the baths, did their laundry, set up playdates and more. Now they can handle all of that on their own. It’s awesome. I love parenting older kids!
I don’t consider cooking a childcare task once the kids are eating the same meals as the adults. For that, I’d say it’s been 50/50 lately. I cook about 1/2 the time and he does the other 1/2. The kids or I do the dishes. With older kids, the childcare is mostly driving them around. I’m basically an unpaid Uber driver from 4-8pm daily. Haha.
I handle all the mental load stuff. Researching and signing up for sports or activities, making appointments, checking their grades on the school portal, permission slips, maintain the family calendar, etc.

[tennisgal]

I take care of the morning stuff as he is leaving just as I am getting up. He takes care of the afternoon stuff since he is off earlier than me.

So, I get the kids up and ready, lunches packed, make sure they have all their stuff for school and drop off one at school. The other takes the bus.

He picks the one up from school and usually feeds them dinner. Some of the kid activities start before I get home, so he is responsible for those. I will usually take care of the activities that start later.

I'm pretty much in charge of scheduling appts, bday parties, taking care of the school activities, signup for activities, paying the bills. Laundry: I do mine and the kids and the household stuff (towels/bedding etc). He does his own laundry.

He takes care of the house stuff: lawn care, snow removal, yard cleanup

[Deleted]

My kids are a lot older: 17, 14, almost 12, there aren’t as many daily child care related tasks that they don’t take care of themselves anymore. When they were little my DH was in the military and gone for weeks or months at a time and when he was home he had a brutal schedule so all the kid stuff fell on me as I was the only parent around most of the time. Whatever, it was how it had to be based on circumstances.

My advice on splitting all kinds of tasks in the household, including child related tasks is to have a clear point person for any given task. If a person knows they are in charge of emptying the dishwasher or making coffee or taking cars in for maintenance or paying the bills or making the pediatrician appointments or planning dinners or grocery shopping or whatever it just relieves a lot of the potential for resentment to build and decreases chances balls get dropped. I’ve noticed that DH and I have very clear responsibilities in our household and we are happier than some other friends who have confided in me that they are resentful their DH isn’t doing x, y, or z, but it isn’t clear that it is the DHs responsibility. Break the tasks down and assign them and your life will be better all around IMO.

[penguingrrl]

In our household it has varies a lot over the past 16 (!!!) years of parenting. I’ve been in and out of the workforce, so when H was commuting to the city (2.5 hours each way) and I was a SAHP I did the bulk of it. Now I’m in school full time and he has a much shorter commute and WFH twice a week, so he has taken on a ton more. In 2021 when he was still working from home full time and I was working at the office full time he took on a ton.

I think the only thing that hasn’t changed is that he always did bedtime. Now our older two are teens, but he still reads to our 10 year old every night.

Our mindset has been that ideally we have equal opportunity for relax/me time and kids and housework have shifted to allow each of us rest time. He’s more of a morning person than I am, so he makes sure school lunches are packed before he leaves for work and drops our oldest off in his way (their school starts at 7:30, which is way too early for me).

[waverly]

Oct 10, 2023 21:08:29 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Just curious for people who have kids and aren’t single parents, how do you split the daily childcare tasks? Dinner, baths, lunch/bottles for daycare or school, clothes, etc.

So how does it work in your household?

My kids are older so not sure how helpful this is to you.  DS (13) gets up on his own or I wake him, gets dressed and makes his own breakfast.  I do the nagging (teeth, face, deodorant and time).  Same for DD (10).  DD doesn't eat breakfast.  

Lunches, DD makes her own, DS does hot lunch.  On weekends usually DH will grill something.

Dinner, usually DH because he is more the foodie and wants more control.  I make maybe 1-2 meals a week, he does 3-4 or we eat take out sometimes.

When, I had a baby, I did make purees especially with my first child more as a experience it kind of thing, and that tapered off a bit with the second child.  But, if your child is old enough to eat the food that everyone else eats then that makes it easier.  So we switched to table food earlier with my second child.  

Bottles was mostly me because I was dropping off and picking up for daycare, and I was also breastfeeding.  DH would wash them.  DH traveled for work during the week during the daycare years. 

Baths, probably mostly me when they were young because I feel like DH is not very hygiene conscious especially of young kids; DH does seem more conscious now of nagging DS to get into the shower because teenager/ sports/ body odor.  But we have thankfully grown out of the giving kids baths stage, yay!  And now it is more of a hey you need to shower type thing.  I usually don't wash DD's hair anymore, but occasionally.  

Clothes, we both do clothes and shoe shopping.  I do more of the going through drawers and getting rid of smaller stuff, but he has occasionally done that.  DH likes to shop so that works out in my favor.  Lately it seems like we always need something, seasonal changes, Halloween costumes, shoes, sports equipment, so it seems really constant lately although I am sure that was true with babies switching sizes so frequently back then also.  I used to be able to hit up resale stores, and they have sadly aged out of that.  When we were dressing them, it was mostly me which I hated because wrestling toddlers into clothing is very hard.  

DH works from home now, so he is the first in line for the kids being sick, home in the summer, or after school.  He is working and not readily available, but he did the lunches when they were home in the summer and checks in on homework after school.  I do a more formal homework check when I get home from work where DS brings up his homework document and reviews it.  I do most of the kid appointments which suck because I can leave work earlier.  He used to do all the dentist appointments but they needed to switch to a pediatric dentist and there went that.  

[icedcoffee]

I think we have a good split.

Most mornings my H handles most of the daycare dropoffs, but we usually both walk older DS to school together (with the dog...it's very cute LOL).

Dinner my H cooks and I clean. I pack lunches while I clean.

Bath and bedtime we alternate. And I LOVE it. It means it's split equally so you feel like you get a break but also it's good for the kids. I think this is a huge part of why I feel like we have a good split.

Pick up from school and evening activities we split and we kind of pick based on preference. Who picks who up depends on who is out and who is doing the activity. I don't know. It works out. Sometimes I'll do activities just so my H can cook dinner to be ready when we get home.

[felicity]

It has changed some over the years. When DS was little I did the bulk of it and more of the household stuff, and it was too much and not fair. When we decided to have a second I said before even trying that we needed to even things out more. I’m a SAHM so I still do a lot more kid stuff naturally, but we try to make it so we have even downtime. DH does all of the meal planning and cooking since I can’t/don’t want to do that with a toddler running around, dishes, dinner cleanup, more household cleaning than before, and he does a lot more with our older son now like taking him to school, making his breakfast and lunch, and getting up with him the morning since I’m up with the baby at night.

[186momx]

99.9% of DD (12) falls me and 110% of the household mental load. I would say when DD was under school age it was 90% me.

I went away to a convention a few weeks ago. I had DH take the 2 workdays I was gone off so that he could do everything I do. His work's office lady also was at my convention and she said it was funny that he needed to take both days off "to be me" and told her own husband that being a working mom is hard work.

[ssmjlm]

It's pretty much I do mornings, he does after school. That's shifted a bit post COVID with more WFH, but still that's our core. At 10, I do mornings M/T/Th/F and he does Wed because he WFH that day. He does any after school pick-ups and takes her to dance. We switch off who does horseback riding and gymnastics because they're when I'm off from work for the day.

When she was little, he did bathtime, but now she's does it herself.

We trade off dinners, I do most of the planning, he executes. Homework is minimal at the moment, but when she had projects last year, I'm the crafty one.

[rhian]

How exactly things are split has varied as our son's needs and our work situations have changed, but I think we have a pretty even division. We discuss every so often to make sure things feel fair to both of us, especially as our son's needs change.

I do daycare drop off and pick up Mon-Thurs. Daycare is at my work and I need to be there Mon-Thurs anyway. When we get home, my partner usually gives our son a snack and takes him to the playground so I can squeeze in a bit more work (to account for the not quite full day I get while doing both drop off and pick up). Fridays, I work from home so my partner does both drop off and pick up then. I also handle making sure anything that needs to go to daycare gets there when they need it (e.g. diapers).

My partner gets our son ready in the mornings (diaper changed, dressed, breakfast) while I get myself ready.

My partner packs our son's lunches and does his laundry (he also does the rest of household laundry, and I do our clothes).

For dinner, usually I cook and my partner does the dishes, but we've currently swapped. He usually takes our son grocery shopping on the weekends.

We alternate actual bathtime, and then collectively get him ready for bed. I nurse our son to sleep, so I do actual bedtime.

We mostly alternate taking our son to doctor's appointments. I usually take the lead on scheduling the appointments, but we're trying to shift this to my partner after a recent discussion about me taking on more of the mental load. Our son is on my partner's insurance, so he handles insurance communication, paying medical bills, etc.

I take the lead on making sure our son has clothes in the next size up, etc.

[niq]

For the big stuff:

* Pickup & dropoff: 50-50
* Cooking: Almost 50-50, though msniq cooks a little more and cooks more fancy stuff
* Dishes: I do almost 100%
* Laundry: msniq does almost 100%. We outsource the kids laundry and mine. There's still a lot!

I do more managing of AM routines for the kids (O is in 1st grade and needs lots of supervision), a lot of the kid activity management and commuting, and most of the "kid social calendar" stuff. msniq does way more tidying than I do. Tidying is the big gap.

In the nursing & daycare years we sort of did "mom is in charge of inputs and dad is in charge of outputs". She did more cooking and I did diapers and cleanup.

[sent]

99.99% of the mental load on me. 90% of the physical load on me on weekdays (though my parents help with about 50% of that), 75% of the physical load on weekends. If my husband has to return to in-person 5 days/week, 100% of the drop offs and pick ups are going to fall on me.

I have to make hot lunches every morning. My kids won't eat cold stuff for lunch and will starve with hunger all afternoon. It's only now that DD got to to middle school that she says school lunch is ok and buys it a few times a week. She can also assemble her own lunch if necessary. DS's lunch is still going to be on me for another 4 or 5 years (cries).

I had to make a paper schedule to get some of the mental load off me. It's definitely helped. DD's schedule exploded this year. DS's activities are few and very regular but still need to be written out because sometimes the kids need to be in 2 different places at the same time.

[noodleoo]

Oct 11, 2023 11:34:32 GMT -5 186momx said:

99.9% of DD (12) falls me and 110% of the household mental load. I would say when DD was under school age it was 90% me.

I went away to a convention a few weeks ago. I had DH take the 2 workdays I was gone off so that he could do everything I do. His work's office lady also was at my convention and she said it was funny that he needed to take both days off "to be me" and told her own husband that being a working mom is hard work.

Seriously.  I saw a comedian on FB recently whose joke was something like:  "I was asked recently how difficult it is to juggle being so successful in your career with being a mother?  Nobody asks that question to men."    It was funny the way she said it, but it was eye opening for me.  She's so right!

[lynn07]

Our balance has changed through the years, because when our kids were younger, I was working part time, so I took on more of the physical and mental load. Now that I work full time as well, we're pretty evenly split.

DH gets the kids going in the morning and takes them to school every morning. He is also in charge of the stuff for the cats (the kids do the day-to-day things, he changes the litter, cleans the bowls, etc), the yard work, does all of the dishes, car/house maintenance stuff, and about 75% of the laundry. He also takes the kids to probably 70% of their appointments because he has the ability to work from home sometimes.

I do all of the cooking and grocery planning (we do delivery), the other 25% of laundry and 30% of kid appointments (I have summers off). We finally broke down and hired a house cleaner, but prior to that I was doing most of the cleaning. I carry more of the mental load of setting up appointments, getting the kids clothes/shoes, planning the calendar, and helping the kids with their homework/making sure they're up to date at school. 

[egishere]

My kids are 12 so self sufficient for the most part... like they pack their own lunch. I do their laundry and fold it but they are responsible for putting it away.

DH WFH full time, travels about 4 nights a month. When he is home he does most of the driving to activities. We have three kids in three different activities/sports but are in car pools for two of the kids so that helps. I WFH on Mon/Fri so I help drive those days. I do the grocery shopping and most of the cooking but he will start dinner etc when needed. I do the laundry. I have a lot of downtime when I WFH so its easy for me to get this done on those days. I take care of most kid appointments. He takes care of things around the house - yard etc. I feel like we have a pretty fair split.

[Jalapeñomel]

DH does the mornings and I do night time.

[felicity]

Oct 11, 2023 12:11:16 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

Oct 11, 2023 11:34:32 GMT -5 186momx said:

99.9% of DD (12) falls me and 110% of the household mental load. I would say when DD was under school age it was 90% me.

I went away to a convention a few weeks ago. I had DH take the 2 workdays I was gone off so that he could do everything I do. His work's office lady also was at my convention and she said it was funny that he needed to take both days off "to be me" and told her own husband that being a working mom is hard work.

Seriously.  I saw a comedian on FB recently whose joke was something like:  "I was asked recently how difficult it is to juggle being so successful in your career with being a mother?  Nobody asks that question to men."    It was funny the way she said it, but it was eye opening for me.  She's so right!

Ali Wong! "Men never get asked that question...because THEY DON'T"