How to survive the chores war by going 50/50

Two-thirds of divorces over the age of 40 are initiated by women. And 80 per cent of the arguments they start are about who does what at home, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

LAST WEEK I visited my fabulously expensive dental hygienist whose surgery is next door to an even more fabulously expensive prep school. It was 8.15 in the morning and big cars were drawing up to deposit little girls. As I looked, I noticed something odd. Last time I passed this school, six months earlier, all the cars were driven by women with flashy handbags and smart hair.

But last Monday three cars had men in casual clothes at the wheel.

Could it be, I wondered, that unemployed bankers are responding to the national wave of unpopularity by trying to make themselves a bit more popular at home? I looked again, and one of the men was a different nationality to the children, and appeared to be a chauffeur. The other two, it was hard to tell.

Anecdotal evidence from this slim slice of society suggests that unemployment is not having such a favourable effect at all. A few fathers may be putting in occasional appearances at their children’s schools, but that’s about it. The talk at the school gates is no longer about riches, it is about resentment.

One woman reports how she had to ask friends to help look after her children so that she could take her husband out for consoling lunches. Another says that she cajoled and browbeat her unemployed husband into putting his cup in the dishwasher, but when he finally complied she had to take it out again and put it back in properly.

It isn’t just that husband and wife are renegotiating the jobs that she used to do on her own when he was at work; there are the additional chores that used to be done by the cleaner, who has now been given the sack.

I suspect that when the inevitable rush of banking divorces starts it won’t be because wives can no longer afford a new Gucci handbag. It will be chore war instead.

As it is, two-thirds of divorces over the age of 40 are initiated by women. And 80 per cent of the arguments they start are about who does what at home.

To find out how to do it better I’ve just been reading a new book called Getting to 50/50, written by two American career women, which claims that an equal sharing of the chores solves all problems. “You can have a great career, a great marriage . . . the key is tapping into your best resource – the man you married,” the book claims. The idea that a husband is a resource is not something that had ever occurred to me.

I wonder what poor Jacqui Smith, the home secretary at the centre of controversy after her husband inadvertently submitted an expenses claim for two “adult entertainment” film rentals, would make of the notion.

The book asserts that the way to get to 50/50 is with a spreadsheet. One of the authors felt she was carrying too much of the domestic load, so she and her husband documented every second each spent on chores.

When they saw the result they laughed and said “Wow!” And everything was easier after that.

I have just asked two of my friends who both appear to have great careers and great marriages if they have got to 50/50. The first said that her husband does more than 50 per cent as he loves cooking. Her main job is to sit down and eat the vast meals he has made, whether she likes it or not.

The other friend says she does 105 per cent of the work in her house. Her husband’s contribution is -5 per cent, as he makes a terrible mess and forgets to pick up the children from drama club. This woman is a formidable manager when at work, and so it is strange that she has failed to motivate her husband to lend a hand.

She said she had tried everything: negotiating, sulking and pep talks. The only thing that worked was having a tantrum.

This was very effective in the short term, but in the longer term the status quo returned, and an even greater tantrum was required the next time. She says she married an alpha male and has come to see that alpha males are not good at doing chores.

What they are good at is paying someone else to do the chores for them.

In my own experience nothing is more guaranteed to create disharmony than fussing about 50/50. I have just done a little test and asked some couples I know about the division of labour in their houses. In each case the man says that he does two or three times more than his wife thinks he does.

In my household, my husband feels he does 40/60; I think it is more like 10/90. I don’t mind him doing 10 per cent; I do mind him thinking it is 40 per cent.

A spreadsheet is not going to resolve this as the weighting of chores is a subjective matter. He places a higher value on taking his sons to cricket than I do. I do a lot of jobs that he does not value at all.

The trick is not to get towards 50/50. It is to stop counting and to stop minding. Grilling the fish fingers takes five minutes. Minding about grilling them takes emotional years.

I’m not quite sure how one stops minding, but I do know that getting rid of the cleaner, even when one’s back is financially against the wall, is not only unfair on the cleaner but also the biggest false economy there is.

As my friend says: "The point of our cleaner is not to do the hoovering. It is to stop me from hating my husband."