We don’t know about you, but no one sat us down as newlyweds and gave us a clear picture of how to think about gender roles, division of labor, and authority in a marriage and household. Instead, we inherited an unclear mishmash of ideas about how to work together to make it all happen.
Our generation was the first one hit hard by divorce. While both of our parents stayed married, we saw that many of our friends’ parents struggled to create a relationship that supported and nourished both spouses and their children. Increasing materialism and challenges to traditional gender roles were not being met well by many couples.
At the time, our mostly subconscious takeaway from witnessing the massive psychological pain created by broken or unhappy families was this: whatever we did in our marriage would have to focus on people over process. Spouses needed to feel loved and supported. Children of all ages needed large doses of care and affection from both parents. Everyone needed to feel hope that they were on a path to being understood and to pursuing their dreams and callings. How things got done in the household economy definitely took second place.
We still think that’s a good ordering of priorities, but looking back, we can see that failing to solidify a clear division of labor created unneccessary inefficiencies that made our family life and running our household economy harder than it had to be. Because even if you tend to think flexibly about how Dad is perfectly capable of cooking dinner and Mom can pay the bills, that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t have assigned jobs.
Not that we didn’t have expectations—Ever tended to do the cooking, tidying, kid activities, and shopping, while Soren tended to keep up with the finances, yard, heavier cleaning jobs, and home maintenance. But we were both capable of filling in adequately, so if one of us didn’t feel like doing something, we didn’t, because there was no truly set division of labor and the other could fill in. We excelled in supporting and understanding each other, but we also “excelled” in excusing ourselves and each other from the various duties of a well-run household.
Did things fall through the cracks while we were being so flexible and supportive? You bet! While lots of work got done, a lot of it also got overlooked. Depending on our emotional state at various moments, we would either cut each other slack (“That’s OK!” when one of us realized the other didn’t do the dishes) or say something unproductive (“How could you leave the dirty dishes for me to do?!”). It wasn’t the end of the world, but it often made our day-to-day life pretty inefficient with less-than-orderly results.
So, how can couples avoid these types of problems? We’ve come to see that couples need a clear division of labor that assigns jobs—preferably on paper and buttressed by weekly Life Meetings—to one individual. When a couple sits down to come up with a set division of labor, the assignments can be based on personal interest and giftedness rather than traditional gender roles, and they can change from time to time, and of course one can ask for help or a day off. But there needs to be one person who is responsible for leading in each area. Because human nature needs that.
Our division of labor is a simple but detailed list that helps us each focus on “the buck stops with me” leadership in over 30 areas of our family life. One glance at this list and you’ll see who oversees tech control, music lessons, finances, grocery shopping, school lunches, making doctor and dentist appointments, or leading the family Rosary. This list provides the content of our weekly Life Meeting, when we skim through it, highlighting anything urgent or noteworthy in the week ahead.
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” As we journey further into 2021 and all that the Lord has in store for each of us, our spouse, our children, and our domestic church or Trinity House, may we become ever more faithful stewards of the graces He has entrusted to us!
Heaven In Your Home Toolkit
In “Household Duties” (For Your Marriage), Mary Jo Pederson writes, “There is no one perfect solution to the problem of household duties, or any other marriage conflict. A marriage relationship is organic; spouses are always growing and changing as is the environment around them. Part of being faithful in marriage is being willing to try new ways of doing things when one way doesn’t work.”
Lauri Przybysz’s “Whose Job Is It” (For Your Marriage) pinpoints the way that perfectionism can become undermining. “We can let go of our idea of perfection in order to accept the help of our spouse,” she writes.
In “Man of the House” (For Your Marriage), Josh Noem takes issue with “what society might expect of me as a father” and boils it down to this: “So, for me, my role in the home comes down to seizing the opportunity to love the people in my family,” and to becoming “more free to respond to the needs of the people God has put in front of me—Stacey, Oscar, Simon and Lucy.”
Robert Kloska’s “Saturday Morning Chores and Catholic Social Teaching” (The Catechetical Review) is an instructive and helpful article. While it focuses more on kids’ chores, the social teaching principles apply to spouses too: common good, gratitude, sanctification, obedience and virtue.
As we work with our spouse on the various duties of the household, are we staying focused on God? Bishop Barron in “On Marriage and Relationships” speaks about “falling in love with a transcendent third.” The husband and wife do not find fulfillment merely in their love of one another or in running a household—but rather, in that they are both in love with God: “Together, we are in love with God,” a married couple can affirm. “God has for His purposes drawn us together so that we might find our salvation in each other’s presence, and that together, we might fulfill a common mission.”
Testimonial
“Trinity House demonstrates the power of hospitality in the public square, a ministry of presence, of sharing a meal with people.”
-Jennifer Fulwiler, best-selling author and Sirius XM radio host. Hear her interview with Soren & Ever here.
Please Join Us In Prayer
For safety and healing for all those impacted by COVID-19, and for all medical personnel;
For the ministry of Trinity House Community, including the staff of Trinity House Cafe, and all individuals and families who are seeking to reflect the life of the Trinity in their homes.
Soren & Ever Johnson
Founders & Directors
Trinity House Community
Making Home a Little Taste of Heaven
