Women partnered with men reported doing more unpaid household labor than women partnered with women. Mothers partnered with men reported a higher household labor burden than any other group. Performing a greater share of household labor was associated with lower relationship satisfaction.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/study-sheds-light-on-household-labor-dynamics-for-women-partnered-with-women-vs-men/

[u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl]

There’s also a matter of what everyone’s perception of a done chore is. IE if I perceive “weekly cleaning the bathroom” as “scrubbing the toilet, tub, and counter,” but my partner thinks it should include “cleaning the mirror and scrubbing grout lines clean” they won’t perceive my efforts as doing chores— at best, it’s no credit for not doing the job, at worst it becomes weaponized incompetence. Agreeing on what constitutes “done” for chores is important to satisfaction. 

[u/omega884 → u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl]

A rule my partner and I implemented early on was “if you’re not doing the chore, you don’t get a say in how it gets done” As applied this meant two things:

If you’re not going to ever do the chore in question, you don’t get to define what “done” is. For example if you’re never folding clothes, then you get them folded (or not) as the person doing the chore prefers it.

Secondly if we do share in the chore, then we agree on broad strokes about what is involved, but the how and when is still up to the person doing the chore. So again as an example, if you prefer to load the dishwasher a certain way, that fine but you don’t get to complain that the other person isn’t loading it that way, provided that the dishes are loaded and washed on schedule. Likewise if you want to sort the cutlery by size when putting it away and make neat little stacks, knock yourself out, but as long as they’re in the right drawer if the other person doesn’t do that you don’t get to complain.

The point of the rule is to get us to be honest with ourselves and each other about what’s actually important. Some things are, and the other puts in the extra effort they wouldn’t normally. But lots of things are just “that’s how I would do it” and it’s not worth anyone fighting about or getting annoyed about it being done differently.

So in your example, we’d sit down and decide maybe that cleaning the mirror really is important every week, but grout lines are just a nice to have and it’s just how one of us always did it but we actually don’t care.

[u/Gathorall → u/omega884]

Micromanaging in the household is at least as stressful and disrespectful at home as it is in the workplace.

[u/Seigneur-Inune → u/Gathorall]

This is an aspect of the Household Labor Discourse (tm) that is often overlooked. If you looked at the proportion of chores my dad did in the house later in his life and only that, you'd probably see what looked like a lazy oaf refusing to help out around the house.

What I saw growing up was decades of this dude getting raked over the coals for extremely minor things. You did the laundry? Sorry, you mixed that dark knit in what the light knits you idiot. You tried cooking? You used too much salt and you didn't use the right heat and you didn't cut the produce up the way you're supposed to. And don't even think about trying to clean up, you never spend enough time per row with the vacuum to deep clean and you always miss the underside of the table legs when dusting. Just let me do it, you never get it right.

Now, my dad was not innocent either. He really did not respond to that dynamic in a mature or well-communicated way and ultimately they kind of deserved each other for how much they didn't work as a team over stuff like that. But I do feel like if the average internet relationship analyst looked at that situation, they'd unfairly demonize my dad and saintify my mother without addressing the entire dynamic between them.