Comments on: Best of Both Worlds podcast: Division of labor and mental load with Allison Daminger

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 13:42:42 +0000

@Lisa – very wise to renegotiate roles after a baby, since it’s amazing how much baggage we all come to parenthood with. Plus the babies make lots more work and introduce lots of new decisions — all of which have to be divvied up. When these choices are made mindlessly, they’re unlikely to be made well.

By: Lisa of Lisa's Yarns

Lisa of Lisa's Yarns — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 13:32:40 +0000

We re-visited the split of tasks when I returned to work after our 1st child. The biggest change we made is that my husband does the grocery shopping and contributes more to meal planning. Before I meal planned, shopped and cooked and it was just too much after returning to work. He also does all of the cleaning in our house because he does not want to re-hire a house cleaner (we had one pre-covid, then stopped during the pandemic as they send a team of 3-5 people so it didn’t feel super safe). So I said we hire someone or you do it, and he opted to do the cleaning. 😉 He also does way more daycare drop-off/pick-up because he goes into the office 3-4 days/week and it’s on his way.

Super interesting episode. I plan to subscribe to her newsletter!

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 21:08:46 +0000

This was a great interview! In my house the split is maybe a bit unusual in that my husband does about 95% of the food—that includes meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and most of the dishes. He’s also heavily involved in childcare.
However, I still do all of the laundry and “mental load” type things—scheduling childcare and all appointments for everyone in the family, home/car repairs and maintenance, supplies and clothes, finances, etc. I think it works out okay because I hate grocery shopping and he loves to cook. I think there’s just so much that goes into running a household. ! I found the Q&A to be quite validating—that you both have full-time nannies.
Thanks for the great podcast.

By: Cb

Cb — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 08:53:01 +0000

I loved this episode. We have a super equitable distribution of labour, perhaps about to skew dramatically in my favour as I take on a job in another city. I subscribed to Allison’s newsletter and her discussion of individual and systemic solutions really hit home with me – the joint email address, not assuming that the mom is in charge of everything etc. Really thoughtful stuff, and I appreciated the academic approach.