Am I expecting too much from my husband, or have I become his maid? (Reader Asks)

Welcome to my feminist advice column. For those of you who want to write me a letter, you can fill in THIS FORM directly. I will answer your question in a letter here in about a month (or potentially more, my backlog is a bit crowded, sorry!).

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Reader Asks: Am I Creating a Manchild, or Am I Just Being a Fair Partner?

For the past several months, I’ve been handling essentially all of the housework because I wasn’t working. I recently found a part-time job, but I don’t start until August, so for now I’m still home most of the day. Since I’m the one at home, I’ve naturally taken on the cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, and just about every other household chore. Somewhere along the way, though, it started feeling like more than simply doing a larger share of the work. I catch myself picking up after my husband constantly and sometimes it honestly feels like I’m waiting on him hand and foot.

I finally told him that I was starting to feel more like his mother or his maid than his wife. His response was that he stays out of the cleaning because I don’t like the way he does it anyway, so it’s easier if I just handle it. I could see the logic in that at first, but the reality is that it’s left me responsible for virtually everything in the house, and I’m exhausted.

To be fair, my husband currently works full-time, from 7:30 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, and he’s covering almost all of our expenses while I’m between jobs. Part of me feels guilty even writing this because I know he’s carrying the financial burden right now, and I genuinely believe that taking care of the house is one way I can contribute to our marriage while I’m not yet working.

At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that something is off. There’s a difference between doing more because I have more time and feeling responsible for another fully grown adult. I’m about to start working again, and I’m already worried that nothing at home will actually change. Am I being unfair by expecting him to do more around the house, or have I accidentally slipped into a dynamic where I’m parenting my own husband?

My Answer: Women Are Conditioned to Confuse Fairness With Motherhood

One thing I want to gently challenge in your letter is the question itself.

You ask whether you’re creating a manchild, but I think that’s giving yourself far too much responsibility that should rightfully belong to him. If he is behaving like a manchild, that’s on him; you’re not creating this behavior, just putting up with it.

Adult men are not passive clay that women accidentally mold into competent adults or incompetent ones depending on their luck or skill. Your husband is making choices, so you don’t need to wonder if you’ve somehow turned him into a manchild. The question is whether he has discovered that it’s easier to let someone else carry the domestic burden than to step up himself.

Now, before I go any further, I actually want to say something that many feminist advice columns don’t: I don’t think it’s inherently unfair for the partner who is temporarily not working to take on a larger share of the household labor.

If one person is home all day and the other is working full-time to support the household, it makes perfect sense that domestic labor won’t be divided fifty-fifty, depending also on each couple’s circumstances, each person’s aspirations, capabilities and so on. Equality doesn’t mean splitting every task down the middle regardless of context, it just means both partners making contributions that are fair given the reality of their lives. (So often, the language of a strict 50-50 just ends up being a potential trap for women to justify stealing even more or our lives.)

So if your husband is working full-time while you’re currently home, I don’t think it’s automatically unreasonable that you’re doing a bit more of the cooking, laundry, and cleaning.

That’s not where I think the problem is. The problem is that you’ve stopped describing a division of labor and started describing a relationship where one adult has gradually become responsible for managing the other adult’s existence.

There’s a world of difference between maintaining a home and taking care of a grown man as if he were a child.

• Cooking dinner because you’re home first? Reasonable.

• Doing more laundry because you have more time? Reasonable.

• Picking up after a fully capable adult because he leaves messes for you to deal with? Not reasonable.

• Waiting on him hand and foot? Definitely not reasonable.

That phrase caught my attention because people don’t usually use it casually. It tells me that somewhere along the way, your responsibilities expanded beyond contributing to the household and into caretaking.

That’s where your resentment comes from and it’s entirely justified.

Not because you’re cleaning, but because you’re parenting someone who is not in need of parenting. Your husband’s explanation also warrants a closer look. R