Fair Play Book / Cards

[boiler717]

Has anyone done this? What was your experience? My husband wants to do them, which I think is good, but I’m already annoyed from the initial study without even meeting to talk about things.
The premise of the book is that there are ~100 tasks associated with running a house / family, and each task has a conception, planning, and an execution piece. If you “own” the task, you are responsible for the CPE of it. There are every day things like weekday breakfast, laundry, unpacking kids daily, etc and things like camp forms, Santa/tooth fairy, holiday cards, tracking points/miles, etc. You mutually agree on the standards of execution (eg “dishes need done by 5 pm so I can make dinner”). About 10 of the cards are more occasional/unexpected things like job loss, death of a parent, etc.
My husband told me the book said that heterosexual women feel like their husband “helps a lot” if the husband does at least 21 of the tasks. THE BAR IS SO LOW. He looked over the list and he “does a lot of them.”
I looked over the list and he currently does SEVEN (2 of which are his own self-care and friendships), and we have shared responsibility for 13 (something the book says we shouldn’t do but has been our historical practice). We still need to meet to do the first “deal” of them, so theoretically he will take more after this. But it made me both angry that he thinks he is so helpful when he objectively does so little and has for so long. I also think there is a lot of weaponized incompetence on his part of “I don’t know how to do XYZ” so I’m not sure how the dealing of those will go.

[cricketwife]

I read the book (some? most of it? All?) But we didn’t do it. I think if he wants to do it, that’s a good opportunity to try to balance things out. Maybe your frustration will lessen if you do the cards and he has to take more of them. I do remember there’s an idea of “all time is created equal” which I think some men do not understand.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to get started would be to transfer full responsibility to him for the 13 that you currently share?

Maybe you could read the book and then decide if it’s something you want to do?

Whether you like this method or not, I definitely would try to figure out how to capitalize on my husband looking at our shared work load and thinking about his own contributions.

[minzy]

I haven’t read the book but am curious what the 100 things are. We each separately took a quiz suggested by the pastor who married us, that included responsibilities and who might do what, so maybe it was a similar thing? I wish I still had a copy of that just to see what we had said way back when.

The pastor reviewed our answers and said he had never seen two sets of responses match up so well (to which my cynical now husband said “I bet he says that to everyone”). The pastor’s takeaway at the time was that “it isn’t a debit and credit system” … which is exactly what we say to the other when the first one has done some big task, haha. We also have kind of a running joke we call “behind the scenes” where I’ll email over the completed camp registration or get the kids new shoes, or he’ll cut the grass ahead of a birthday party or submit a health insurance reimbursement, and it’s a #BTS moment that benefits all of us. We don’t usually talk about the division much because we both (generally) do what needs to be done and it is pretty even. He is also very much a doer and I am a verbal thanker (and neither of us are quite as good the other way around) so at least there is appreciation voiced which I think may help (me not feel as guilty, anyway). Truthfully, my husband probably gets the shorter end of the stick, so when he finally grumbles about the dining room table looking overrun again with all my volunteer crap, I try to make an effort to get it under control.

I am sorry you’re irritated but I think it’s an encouraging sign, if the current division is bothering you, that your husband is willing to have a deeper conversation about it. Maybe you don’t implement everything from the book exactly but it sounds like it’s got the potential to be a good jumping off point and you can perhaps take pieces that work for your family. Best of luck at reaching a better solution.

[glitzy07]

I read the book a while back but never went any further with actually executing any of the concepts with my husband. We are pretty equally split on actual tasks (laundry, dishes, lawncare, etc), but I take on the majority of the mental load type things. This was especially clear when I recently had to travel for work on a busy week at home and felt like I needed to write out a list of the important dates/places they all needed to be while I was gone (despite him having access to our family Google calendar).

I would say if he is interested in pursuing the exercise, you should totally do it! If it is as imbalanced as it seems to you, maybe that will come to light and you have nowhere to go but up?

[aspentosh]

I read it and we discussed it, but didn't worry about the cards.

The biggest take away that I had and shared with him and reiterated is that if he "takes on" something, it has to be from start to finish. Don't set yourself a reminder to take out the trash and then say "it's trash day" and feel like your job is done. You bring trash to the can, bring the can down, return the can to the side of the house. Same with dog meds or whatever. That made the biggest difference because the division between tasks was tangible and not as fluid.

If I remember correctly he does around 30-40 things, more of the physical stuff, but I am definitely the mental load parent- making sure appts are set, presents are bought, special visits from Santa/TF/etc are met, and more. He's taken on more recently (to get to that number) because he WFH 100% of the time and has the ability to do it. I agree that the bar is low and it's really sad.

[dcn]

I’d have him list out the things he thinks he does. It’s a good starting off point. If he is open to talking about it and open to taking more on then I would jump on it despite your irritation.

[waverly]

I think it could carry the discussion forward for you both. He thinks he does GREAT (sounds like all men), but only does 7 cards, but thinks he does 21 cards. This sounds like an opportunity to show that more needs to be done. I would just try hard not to let it devolve into an argument.

I never did the cards because they came out after we had this discussion. Basically when we had kids, everything had to re-evaluated. And he also traveled for work Mon-Thurs, and I worked full time. So it was a LOT for me to do with him only home Thurs night-Sun night basically. I wrote up all the tasks on an excel spreadsheet and shared it with him and assigned people (and some were outsourced like grocery delivery and housecleaning). We weren't super strict and things did still ebb and flow, but he really realized that he needed to pick up more, for example he did laundry all weekend for many many years.

We've gone through multiple renditions of chores and schedules since then. I do like the idea of the man takes the whole card because it is not helpful for a man to grocery shop and then text the woman the entire time like they can't figure it out. This wasn't a huge issue in our relationship because historically DH would usually take a whole card. But in other relationships, I can see that taking the whole card might be the way to show that mental load that you do and be very beneficial.

I even, in my own mind only, started putting my mental load of taking care of his depression on the list.  So we had a CTJ talk, and he got a therapist.  He wasn't very happy about it.  But as a working mom, with 2 small children at the time, taking 30 minutes a day to talk through his issues and not helping him because it was beyond my skillset.  I simply didn't have the time and energy to continue to assist him with his depression, and I told him I was done being his "therapist".  This was an example of boundary setting where I stated that I was no longer available for X task and offered an outsourced solution.  And his counselor has been a big help and far more helpful than I was.  

[al dente]

If your husband is initiating it and has read the book I would take full advantage! Divide out the cards so he can physically see the pile difference and hopefully that leads to some change.
I started reading the book and just got so annoyed at everything I do I had to stop lol. My issue is I'm a SAHM and my H is gone for months at a time with a pretty significant time difference. I get into routines and it's hard to break out of them when he back, and then pick it back up when he leaves so things just stay as they are. So really I'm no help, but ya I feel you.

[boiler717]

Yes I definitely want to take advantage!! I read the book yesterday and it helped manage my anger about the situation, even acknowledged that it’s a common thing for heterosexual women to go through when starting up.

[cherry1111]

I quickly just took a look at the cards. I excluded the ones that we both had a card for (friendships, grooming, etc) and the wild cards like death, job loss, major illness.

I believe my husband takes on 2 tasks fully on his own, we both do 3 tasks but he does more than 50% of those tasks, and we do 14 equally.

On the other hand I think I do 45 of them fully on my own, and 13 where we both do them but I take on more than 50% of the task.

Part of it is because I am a bit of a control freak and I think if I don’t do it then it won’t get done. And I think that part of my personality has given him a pass to not do shit. No wonder I feel resentful.

It would be interesting to have him go through and make the same distinction on each task because I’m sure he thinks he does more than I think he does.

[boiler717]

So we had our first meeting where we discussed our values and divided up the cards. He said when he actually counted his list was less than 10 so we weren’t far apart from each other. We took around 16 out of the deck so ended up with 84. He took 26 of them, which is a huge improvement over 7! Today was the first day in practice and I had so much more time. I couldn’t believe it. Some things I am particularly excited about that he’s doing:
- ALL the laundry
- Checking bathrooms regularly to replenish TP and soap (along with maintaining all the other household supplies like laundry detergent, trash bags, light bulbs, batteries)
- All the things for the cars including checking fuel levels and refilling (this is huge because we don’t drive a ton so it’s not an easy thing to monitor but only needs done about once a month)
- Local packing / unpacking — making sure the pool bag is always stocked and my son’s camp backpack is ready to go each day as well as packing for DS’s overnights with my parents
- All the pet care include walking and affection time daily
- outsourcing mgmt of the cleaning lady (writing her check, making sure supplies are stocked)
- daily tidying and cleaning up
Will be interested to see his opinion after a week or so. He’s asked me 3 times to remind him to do something and I had to push back that it’s his job to handle the conception and planning, not mine. I did voluntarily help him with some things and didn’t feel resentful because I had so much stuff to do — I actually had time to work through my huge backlog of house stuff!

[minzy]

That sounds like a very promising update!

[waverly]

Great update!

For reminders for myself I use a to do list on my phone, tasks in gmail and my Google calendar. My calendar also sends me a daily rundown and 10 minute reminders before a meeting.

I wouldn’t manage any of this for someone else, but there are tools that I might suggest for others.

[heygrey]

I've never heard of this, but I am definitely going to check it out! We did an exercise in premarital counselling that divided up basic adulting tasks, but that was 14+ years ago and I'm sure that list is laughable if we had it to read now.

[whattheheck]

I'm a single parent with two teens. For those who have used this - do you think it could be adaptable for parents/children?

[waverly]

Jun 30, 2022 16:14:27 GMT -5 whattheheck said:

I'm a single parent with two teens. For those who have used this - do you think it could be adaptable for parents/children?

I didn’t do the actual cards but something similar and I think yes.

Caveats being their age and the fact that most likely they don’t have the executive function of an adult. They may need more scaffolding and coaching. And perhaps taking the entire card might be difficult.

But certainly at some ages they can menu plan, make a grocery list, get in the car drive to the store and execute. But they might need the prompt or a few more prompts than an adult.