062 – Emotional Labor Pt. 2: The Great Divide, What Makes Division of Labor Difficult for Entrepreneurs

Podcast Episodes – Marriage Startup Podcast

Show Summary

We do our best to figure out why we work together so well in our business but why we revert back to a terrible, draining, backwards 1950s style when it comes to home & family. In part one we succeeded in figuring out what the big picture problem was and in part two we take a deep dive into what may be causing it so we know where to improve.

Show Transcript

Download the pdf transcript here.

Show Resources

• Arlie Hochschild created the term ’emotional labor’ in 1983 in her book, “The Managed Heart.“
• Will It Fly? by Pat Flynn (Amazon Affiliate link)
• Living Forward by Michael Hyatt (Amazon Affiliate link)
• Crafting a Rule of Life by Stephen A. Macchia (Amazon Affiliate link)
• A (kind of silly) online estimator of who does what around the house: “Chore Wars.”
• A helpful guide on how to “Negotiate a Fair Division of Household Work” from the University of Rhode Island.
• A fun and insightful video by “Song a Day” maker, Jonathan Mann (he and his wife overcame this issue with kanban!)
• “Among couples we studied, on average, men worked longer hours outside the home, yet even in families where women worked equivalent or longer hours and earned higher salaries they still took on more household responsibilities. When our data were merged with the Chicago Sloan Study of 500 working families, we learned that men spent 18 percent of their time doing housework and took on 33 percent of household tasks, whereas women spent 22 percent of their time on housework and carried out 67 percent of household tasks. Women performed over twice the number of tasks and assumed the burden of “mental labor” or “invisible work,” that is, planning and coordination of tasks. Moreover, leisure was most frequent for fathers (30 percent) and children (39 percent) and least frequent for mothers (22 percent).” ~ From an excellent article in The Atlantic, “The Difference Between an Happy Marriage and a Miserable One: Chores.”
• Another nicely toned article from the Atlantic on spousal chore distribution: “Spouses Probably Shouldn’t Try to Split Household Tasks Exactly Evenly.” “Husbands help wives (and wives husbands) not because they “owe” each other, but because that is what spouses do. In fact, if you are out the point where you are figuring out who owes what to whom in terms of hours or percentages, something has already gone wrong. Counting hours is a sign of a problem, not a potential solution. …housework is a feminist issue—and why both men and women need to work to stop it from becoming the whip that makes one spouse the master and the other the dog. But I don’t think you keep this from happening by splitting housework equally. Rather, you keep it from happening by remembering that your spouse is not your debtor, but your spouse. The goal is not to clear your ledger, but to live with each other, and love each other, day in and day out for the rest of your lives.”