In the good old days, life was better.  Men worked and women stayed home, kept the house, looked after the kids and wore frilly aprons over pretty dresses. Everyone knew their place and life was simple and modern issues of career vs career and whose turn it is to race from work early to pick the kids up from day care were non-existent.

Well, so they say.  Behind the picket fence the reality was likely to be rather different.  By this time, a large number of women had a desire to learn, to contribute outside of the home and to have ongoing intellectual stimulation.  Many had gone on to obtain tertiary qualifications. Unfortunately for a majority of middle-class women who came of age in the 40s and 50s, the only post-graduate career option was marriage.   Any further aspirations were at least in part stifled by a cup of tea, a bex and a good lie down (or alternatively an addiction to something less benign).  Plenty of these women worked during the war but then when the boys came back home, they were shunted back into the home with a pat on the bottom.

Of course, there were always women who worked outside of the home too - primarily those forced to do so for financial reasons, and these women were generally in menial work or were not married (and treated with some suspicion).  My maternal grandmother in fact worked through the 1950s and well into the 1970s.  My grandfather had fallen ill shortly after they married as a result of an injury he suffered in the war and my grandmother needed to help support the family.  (Oh, and shhh, don’t tell anyone, but she enjoyed working.)  Her career was restricted however by her primary role managing the house and looking after her children.  She did what she had to do.  There was no choice.  For a woman who had a husband able to support the family it was hardly ‘proper’ to be working in any role that could be described as a ‘career’.

So maybe the silent conflict has existed for quite some time now, and it is just the choice that has changed. We’re just louder and crankier now.  They’ve taken away our bex. You could say that the choice has almost disappeared in the opposite direction in fact.  Most working families in Australia today seem to require two incomes to support their lifestyle (and plasma televisions - more on that another day).

So if we accept the reality that for many modern relationships, two incomes are required and desired, life becomes a bit tricky.  Particularly when you consider that more women than men are likely to have tertiary educations and there is often little or no functional difference between partners in the level of commitment to career (and development). So who picks up the kids from daycare when you’re both slaving in the office at 7pm in the pursuit for a corner office with a view?  Who takes the bin out before going to the gym before work?  Who washes the floor while muttering into a dictaphone on a Sunday afternoon? The division of labour is all messed up - and with that comes serious risk of conflict of a relationship-killing kind.

So on to my point.  People have been harping on about equality for quite a while now.  If large corporates and the government can’t get it right in the boardroom, what chance have we got in the home, where relationships are under even more pressure?  Now this may well be unpopular, but my view of equality in the home does not involve an equal division of labour.  Bear with me, this won’t hurt too much.  Men, stop jumping up and down and rejoicing, this doesn’t mean what you think it does.

This is the takaway.  There is no equal.  I promise you that if you spend your life trying to make things equal at home you are likely to fail.  Spectacularly.  If you suceed you’re a hell of a lot cleverer than i am and you’re an aberration so please go away.  You can waste a lot of time thinking (often out loud, usually brought up at a completely unrelated moment) that cooking dinner is harder than putting the dishes away.  It achieves absolutely stuff all.  The reality is that in a successful partnership, sometimes one partner will do more.  Sometimes the other partner does more.  It balances out.  Think of it like a seesaw, if you each push up and down, you’re both on the seesaw and sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.  It takes a damn lot of effort to hold the seesaw at even height without one or both falling off.

The way it works in my relationship, and, I suggest might work in yours.  Start by working out expectations - what does clean mean to each of you? What constitutes a weeknight dinner?  Sort out a friendly middle ground.  Then each do what you’re good at/don’t hate too much and outsource whatever is left over.  If you approach it with an open mind it is not that hard to manage.  I promise.  Be flexible and pick up the slack when the other person has a crazy deadline or is sick or is just sick of it.  If you’ve got a good partner they’ll do the same for you and keep you both on the seesaw.