What do you think about roles in a marriage? Should the wife do all the cooking? How do YOU balance it out?

Question

What works for your marriage? For example, my brothers wife used to make most of the money and he did most of the housecleaning and that wroked for them. If I had to do most of the working and my husband had to do most of the cleaning, it would cause frustration. I do all the cooking and cleaning, he dies all the working. If you both work full time, how do you split up the rest of it? I just want to know how some happy couples balance things out...

Answer 1

I work 8 hours, cook, pick up the house, do laundry, and all of that good stuff. I know my place in our home and in our marriage. He is the head of the house and works all day and shouldn't have to cook or clean.
I'm his helper (read The Bible) and I feel like this is what I am supposed to do and I enjoy it. He does pitch in once in a while, he's not a chauvinistic man. I am not his servant either, he does not order me around. We have a traditional marriage.

Answer 2

Well, I am divorced, but this one area where we worked it out fairly well. We both worked full time. I would do the cooking and the cleaning afterwards. My wife did all the laundry, from washing to putting it away. I hated doing laundry, and honestly, she couldn't cook. She cleaned the rest of the house, as I did the bathroom, and all the work outside the house.

Like I said, we are divorced, but this was not the reason. You just have to work out a system that works for you.

Now, and I am going to do this gender neutral, if one spouse is not working, and the other is, then the one who stays home should do most of the household chores. That would allow for the other to come home, and there to be quality time between the two spouses, and and children involved.

Answer 3

Times change. In this day and age the majority of couples are a 2 income family meaning both husband and wife work unlike yesteryear where the man worked and the wife did all the housework and raised the kids.
Marriage is a 50/50 relationship and being such all housework, cooking, and what not should not be one persons responsibility but boths.

Answer 4

I am a stay at home dad and I cook 5-6 times a week. I feel that during the week when she is working I do all the housework and cooking. When she get home she helps watch the kids while I serve or perpare dinner. On the weekends is when I get a break she will cook breakfast and dinner and its a free for all for lunch. I also do the laundry, I wash dry and bring it up stairs, then the wife and kids fold and put it away. I think that both partners have to decide what is fair and work together to get things done.

Answer 5

I think marriage is fluid and organic. No one solution will cover all marriages. Nor will a situation that works now necessarily always work, even with the same couple.

I work and my husband goes to school. Thankfully, we make enough money to hire a housecleaner who comes in once a month to do heavy duty cleaning. In between her visits we can keep the house relatively clean.
As far as cooking, I'm on a diet which has me eating alot of chicken, which my husband is allergic to. So we usually make our own meals.
Other daily jobs like laundry/dishes/trash... we split.

Answer 6

We both work full-time, and are happy. The way it usually works in our family is that each one of us does something they can do better than the other. This means, I do all the grocery shopping, cooking, dishes and laundry, keep track of the pets, and run our "social calendar". He is the handyman and an IT guy - he does everything related to computers and the home theatre, fixes plumbing, does electrical stuff, builds things, and oversees the home improvement projects in general (not to mention pays the mortgage and all the bills). I think I have much easier tasks, and I'm happy with the way things are working out. We also have a maid come in 2x/month, so neither one of us has to worry about mundane cleaning. My husband works a lot more than I do ( he just can't sit still, always doing something), so it would never even occur to me to make him cook or do dishes; it is something I gladly take over.

Answer 7

well in a nut shell I am a slave. I do the cooking cleaning taking care of the kids and I used to work full time. Now I have quit my job and live with my in-laws my husband has never worked in his life. SO I still do all the housework while his father supports us and my husband sits around the house

Answer 8

I am a house husband. I do all the house chores. My wife just brings home the paycheck and cooks on the weekends when her son comes to visit. She also washes his clothes sometimes. I enjoy this very much and wouldn't have it anyother way. I hunt in the fall and fish in the spring and summer. I do the gardening and lawn work and she has her little flower garden. She enjoys doing all these things but appreciates not "having to do them". If I thought for a minute that "_I had to do all the house chores" I would probably want her to do more.

Answer 9

My husband and I both work full time, and we split the work at home... I hate doing the laundry and putting it away, so he does it.. I do the cleaning, he helps with the kitchen.. we go shopping, he will put most of it away.. its just something that we've been doing since we've been together that has carried over since we both started working full time... marriage is a partnership, not everything should fall back on you.

Answer 10

Some women are lucky to have a husband who likes to cook. Unfortuanetly that is not the case here, I believe you and your husband should sit down and discuss what would be best. Maybe he can cook three days out of the week and you cook three out of the week and on the seventh day you both can cook together or go out to eat. Try anything to avoid demanding him to cook because this will cause problems.

Answer 11

Here's how we do it - happily married for almost 37 years:

My wife was an honors math major in HS, so she just sort of took over the bookwork and the taxes. I was totally cool with that. She was also an excellent cook, who enjoyed creating in the kitchen. Another stroke of luck for me.

We've both worked at times, and at other times, it was one of us and not the other. It varied. Basically, my paycheck was always the larger, but that's no big deal.

What we had was a common pot and that was that.

She has always been superior when it comes to math and cuisine.

I do what I do and she does what she does.

Life is good.