Treated Like An Employee - Day One

(Carol’s note: The information in this post has been generalized and names have been changed.)

Randi started our first conversation by saying she wished she had more time in the day. She was disorganized, she told me. She couldn’t say no when asked to participate in various organizations. But she reported that the biggest issue in her time management struggle was how her husband expected her to take care of everything in their lives that didn’t have to do with his career. Some of her duties were even attached to his career - for example, every year she organized several fund raiser or corporate events for which her husband received kudos and thanks.

“He actually thinks I play tennis all day,” she told me. “I’m running around like a madwoman trying to keep this ridiculously complicated life in order, and he’ll come home and say, ‘Did you actually do anything today?’

Randi struggles with a problem that is common in many relationships. Recently a study by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research shows that women still lead men in domestic duties, and the discrepancy becomes worse when children are in the household.

But in a high achieving marriage, that discrepancy is fueled by an often-unspoken assumption by both parties that, because he is bringing in a substantial income and she may not have to work, her personal agenda (which might include a paid job) plays second to her duties of being part of his “support staff.” This is the way he has it set up at work and it often defaults to his role at home. At work, he rarely engages in activities such as faxing a document or ordering in lunch for a meeting. His duties are clearly delineated from the support duties that another paid employee performs. But this isn’t a clear-cut decision between Randi and her husband when it comes to who performs what role at home. That’s where the confusion comes in.

“I wish I had all the time she does during the day,” her husband told me during a conversation. “She can do whatever she wants. She has no idea what kind of pressure I deal with on a daily basis in my career.” Clearly, both parties needed to come together for a reality check on what they felt was an uneven workload in their lives.

Day Two