When Two People Have Children, Why Does the Work Become Hers?

I recently commented on a discussion about marriage and something I believe we need to talk about more openly: the burden women often carry inside marriage doesn’t disappear simply because they also work outside the home.

My ex-husband and I both worked full-time.

But taking care of the children and managing much of what needed to happen in the home largely fell on me.

And when I shared that experience, the comments underneath opened up an even bigger conversation.

One person asked:

“With all of that mental and emotional load on women, do you think it’s fair to push wives & mothers to work full time if they have the leverage not to? What do you recommend?”

That was a fair question.

But I think we need to examine the question itself.

Why is the solution to an unequal distribution of responsibility for the woman to work less?

Why isn’t the first question:

How can we distribute the responsibilities more equally?

Because work-life balance becomes especially important when we start looking beyond who washes the dishes, cooks dinner or takes the children to school.

We need to look at the mental and emotional labor involved in running a family.

Who remembers the appointments?

Who knows when the children need new clothes?

Who keeps track of school activities?

Who notices when something is emotionally wrong with a child?

Who plans the meals, remembers what is running out, organizes birthdays, communicates with teachers, manages schedules and anticipates what the family will need next?

There is the physical work we can see.

Then there is the invisible work of remembering, anticipating, planning and managing.

And when someone works a full day outside the home and then comes home to another shift where they are still responsible for keeping everything functioning, when exactly do they mentally clock out?

Work-Life Balance Is Also a Health Conversation

This is where I think the conversation becomes much bigger than marriage.

It becomes a conversation about women’s health.

Chronic stress doesn’t remain neatly contained in our emotions. Long-term stress can affect sleep, mood, concentration and physical health.

A person needs opportunities to recover.

So if a woman is constantly moving between employee, mother, wife, caregiver, household manager and emotional support system, we have to ask what happens when there is very little space left for her.

And I know this personally.

Years later, my ex-husband is healthier than I am.

I cannot say that marriage caused every health issue I experience, nor would that be scientifically responsible. But my experience has made me think deeply about what years of carrying multiple responsibilities can mean for a woman’s well-being.

That’s why I don’t believe the answer is simply:

Women shouldn’t work full-time.

Financial independence matters. A career can matter. Personal fulfillment matters.

And if a woman chooses to stay home or work fewer hours because that arrangement works for her family, that’s perfectly valid too.

The important word is choice.

Reducing a woman’s professional life shouldn’t become the automatic solution to a household where responsibilities aren’t being shared.

Then Came Another Comment

After I explained what my life had looked like, another man asked:

“With such a gruelling schedule, I wonder why you chose to have three children. Why not just one or none at all?”

And there it was.

That question unintentionally demonstrated the very thing we were discussing.

He didn’t ask:

“Why did you and your husband choose to have three children?”

He asked why I chose to have three children when my schedule was already so demanding.

But I didn’t have three children by myself. 😂

Two people made the decision to become parents.

So why does the workload created by that decision suddenly become evidence that the woman made a poor choice?

Think about the assumption underneath that question.

If the mother is overwhelmed, perhaps she shouldn’t have had so many children.

But why isn’t the immediate thought:

Where is the other parent in this workload?

That’s the conversation.

Motherhood Shouldn’t Automatically Mean Ownership of the Work

Being a mother doesn’t mean every responsibility associated with children naturally belongs to her.

And being a father shouldn’t mean “helping” the mother with responsibilities that fundamentally belong to both parents.

If two people work full-time and come home to the same house and the same children, then the conversation shouldn’t automatically be about what the woman needs to give up so that everything gets done.

Maybe the conversation should be about what both people need to pick up.

That doesn’t mean every household has to divide every task exactly 50/50.

Relationships don’t work like spreadsheets.

One person may cook while the other handles homework. One may manage finances while the other handles appointments. There may be periods when one partner carries more because the other is struggling, working longer hours or dealing with something difficult.

The goal isn’t mathematical equality.

It’s recognizing when one person’s life has quietly become responsible for holding everybody else’s life together.

The Question Behind the Question

This is exactly why I developed The Emotional Decoding Framework™.

I like looking beyond what someone says and asking:

What belief or assumption sits underneath it?

“Why did you have three children?”

On the surface, that’s a question about family planning.

But underneath it can sit a much older assumption:

Children are primarily a woman’s responsibility.

And if that’s the assumption we start with, then everything that follows makes sense.

She’s exhausted? She chose motherhood.

Her career suffers? She chose motherhood.

She’s overwhelmed? Maybe she shouldn’t have had so many children.

But change the underlying assumption to:

Two people became parents, therefore two people share responsibility for parenting

and suddenly we start asking completely different questions.

Maybe instead of asking women why they chose children, careers and marriages they couldn’t possibly juggle alone, we should finally ask:

Why did we expect them to juggle it alone in the first place?

The Emotional Decoding Framework™Suzette M. Lindo