Marriage

» rklbond2 - help at home!

I'm not sure why the role of "home manager" falls to the woman most often--whether it's a cultural thing, a society thing, or...conceivably a gender strength.
My newly married nephew told me that he cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Like he can't listen to someone talking to him while he is fixing a bicycle, say. He has to stop one to do the other. He's just wired that way.
I wonder if women, the vast majority of whom, seem to be able to keep more things in mind at once, just naturally make better home managers. I'm not trying to be stereotypical here, and everyone can feel free to disagree with me. But the home manager role is so unique, dealing with the concrete as well as the emotional at the same time...well, it's not a job just anyone can do.
But, being a home manager doesn't mean doing every piece of work in the house. Definitely not! Doing work is part of taking responsibility and growing up.
Sometimes couples divide responsibility, even though the wife, as home manager, tends to be the one in charge of keeping tabs on and communicating the needs of the household to every one involved.
My friend does the finances for her household, and her husband traded her the laundry duty for it.
My nephew loves finances, and his new wife happily lets him handle that while taking over the things he doesn't like to do.
Dale and I, because of his business, operate two different households. Once we tried to BOTH be the managers of one of the households at the same time. Did not work! Talk about communication collision!
Perhaps a planning meeting with hubby in which you look at all the areas of household responsibility together and divide them up?

-- posted by rklbond2

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» rklbond2 - getting kids to help

Hm. As far as getting kids to help. A lot of trial and error here.
My sister likes to use chore charts posted on the refrigerator complete with stickers and rewards. That didn't work for me--or it worked with limited projects only, like certain homework assignments.
I tried to emphasize that the house belongs to everyone, we are all a family, we are all responsible, etc. and make it clear that growing up and being responsible was something to be desired, and admired.

I told my daughters that when I was in college, kids would come to class that hadn't learned to do laundry yet. Eight day old jeans have a certain smell to them. My girls were horrified. Realizations like that helped each of them learn to do their own laundry completely since they were 15 years old.
I would tell them frequently that my job was to raise adults, and this is what responsible adults do...with privileges come responsibilities, etc. Not so formal as all that sounds though! I tried to weave it in to regular conversations.

A friend of mine has a clean kitchen every night -- they have the family habit that no one leaves the kitchen after dinner until the whole thing is cleaned up. I've always admired that!

Perhaps starting in one area? The area of the household that bothers you the most? Look at your kids' strengths and build on those?

-- posted by rklbond2

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