[quote=UCGal]Wow – after reading through this entire thread I realize a few things:

– My marriage must be highly unusual… Maybe my husband struts too much or too little, but I don’t care.
– There are a lot of people who don’t recognize the give and take of a partnership. Domestic duties (child rearing, house cleaning, cooking, budgeting) are as important as working for a salary. But working for a salary has value as well. I guess I’m lucky because I never had to put more weight on one or the other – I worked for a salary (until June when I became a slacker on that front) for my entire marriage. I also did domestic labor. But so did my husband. Yes – some of it was divided by gender – he’s better at installing windows, hanging drywall, etc. I don’t mind cleaning the kitchen, running the vacuum. We both cook. We both deal with the kids. (Although he was challenged on the breastfeeding front. LOL).

I don’t think my marriage is that rare or unusual. My husband isn’t some whipped guy who just does what I tell him. I’m not some mouse that does everything he tells me to do. We both contribute and it works. Looking around at friends – this isn’t that rare. (And my friends consist of people who have a stay at home parent, and couples that have both parties working for salary, and a few single parents of both genders.)

After reading this thread – I get the idea that my friends and I are truly exceptional – and I know that’s not the case.

So guys – strut your stuff and bloviate. Women, chatter on about how women deserve “me time” more than men. There are plenty of selfish self absorbed people in both genders. Get over yourselves if you’re one of them. If this doesn’t apply, then don’t take offense.[/quote]

Reading back through this thread to see how we got so deep in the woods and realized that I didn’t address this and clarify something in my post about men contributing little more than wage-earning and the uneven distribution of labor. It was related to the comment about women leaving long-term marriages in order to “find themselves” after serving others for decades. These marriages were older marriages, so the gender roles were more defined than in today’s marriages. I did not make it clear that I was referring to older marriages (though the “divorcing after multiple decades” part was in there). It is well known that many men of those days would not participate in domestic chores or child rearing; that was “women’s work.”

As I’ve stated in another post on this thread, men have come a long, long way since those days. They are most definitely participating to a much greater extent in family life and domestic chores than their predecessors and the labor gap is closing. Women are taking on a greater share of the income earning, too.

Each family needs to decide what is best for themselves because each situation is different. People bring different abilities, skills, interests, income-earning potential, etc. to their marriages. And different families have different needs, too. There is no one-size-fits-all way to do this, and nobody should denigrate the work that others do, or the choices that other people make for their own families.

And there is a HUGE difference between finding “me time” and living life as a single person — as though nothing (marriage, kids responsibilities) has changed WRT hobbies, interests, friends, etc. Huge difference. Nobody here ever claimed that women deserve “me time” more than men (nor claim that doing domestic duties was more valuable than paid labor).