“The number one thing men hated about home life was nagging, and the No. 1 thing women said they hated was the mental load.”
Eve Rodsky “Fair Play”
Eve Rodsky hit a breaking point. She realized as mom she was the “she-fault” parent and was carrying most of the mental load for her husband and three children.
If you’re not sure what mental load means, French cartoonist Emma brilliantly explains the mental load and its effect on working mothers with her piece, You Should Have Asked.
“When a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, he’s viewing her as the manager of household chores. So it’s up to her to know what needs to be done and when. The problem with that, is that planning and organising things is already a full-time job.”
But, how do we fix it?
In 2011, Eve Rodsky created a spreadsheet of the invisible tasks she would do around the house or for family members, lovingly called: “Sh*t I Do.” The spreadsheet was crowdsourced by couples across North America who added their domestic work: laundry, taking the kids to school, bake sales, dioramas, science projects, doctor’s appointments, etc.
The spreadsheet grew into a book, ‘Fair Play’, which outlines a system for how to divide up household tasks fairly, based on your needs. A way to rebalance the domestic responsibilities.
A book isn’t much good if only one of you read it though. Rodsky says when she initially sent the spreadsheet to her husband and said things needed to change that his response was . . . underwhelming.
So, Eve Rodsky came up a card game with 100 tasks and chores that need to get done to help couples share the load. And it gets down to specific details – kids’ sports means register them for the team, fill out all the paperwork, carpool with other teammates, go shopping for equipment and take your turn in the snack rotation. Not only is it a great way to spark the conversation about just how much invisible labour may be happening in your relationship, Fair Play helps you prioritize what’s important to your family.
Yes please.🙌🏽
Nesta Matthews 