Dr. Sheck
Both my husband and I are students and part-time workers. We are both very busy people. My husband works much more than the 15 hours each week that he is paid for. I take care of the household chores and cooking. We are expecting our first child in April. I am exhausted by day’s end, but don't get much opportunity to rest.

When the baby comes, he says he will help around the house. However, he has been saying that for the 8 years we've been married. I'm worried that I can't handle all of this myself. How can I help him see that I really need help?
                                                                 HB
Dear HB
With the great increase of dual-career marriages in the past decade, the division of domestic responsibilities has become a major source of marital conflict. There seems to be an increasing consciousness in our society that the husband and wife should share the household responsibilities more evenly. However, behavioral change in the family is not consistent with this belief.

Wives are still assuming the bulk of the household and child care responsibilities, whether they are employed or not. Men in dual-career families on average still perform only half as much child care and housework as their working wives. The husbands and wives both collude in continuing this trend.

Men are just not that motivated to assume these responsibilities. Whether this is genetic (from caveman days of the hunt) or environmental (what society "teaches" us) is irrelevant. The question is, what to do about it.

Tracking the pattern is a good start. Generally, marriages begin with some willingness on the part of both spouses to share responsibilities. Did you and your husband wash dishes together when first married? Or make the bed together? Was there a more equitable division early on in the relationship? What changed? What was your contribution to the change? Where was your responsibility in accepting/tolerating it?

You are very correct in wanting to deal with this issue now, before your child is born. Children have such great needs and demands. The stress on the relationship will be greater than ever, as the focus is on the newest addition.

Now is the time to determine and agree upon the new (and existing tasks) and who will take care of them. Don’t wait for someone to volunteer or it will be you! And being in an exhausted, sleep-deprived state will not make you more open to negotiation. Your resentment will increase even more.

The solution is for you and your spouse to really organize yourself. A structured exercise I often have couples do in my office is helpful for this.

First, each of you make a list of all of the household responsibilities (including child care), and rate each task by importance on a scale of one to five (one being "don’t care," five being the "deal-breaker"). Next, share your list with your spouse, and have them rank your list, also on a scale of one to five.

Time to make one big list. Anything that you both rank as a five, goes to the top of the list. Tasks of decreasing importance go further down on the list. Finally, on the bottom, goes the tasks that you disagree about (I say it’s a five, my husband says it’s a one).

For you, HB, just having your husband see a list of perhaps eighty or one hundred items will impress upon him that there really is a lot to do, too much for you to accomplish without his help. But, the exercise doesn’t stop with this awareness.

Now, it’s time to assign the tasks to each of you. First, whatever tasks you’d like to do, that you enjoy doing, that give you pleasure, give them to yourself. And, whatever tasks you rank as a five, and that the other spouse ranks low, figure on taking responsibility for those tasks as well. Those tasks remaining after the above process, that you both feel are important, you can flip a coin on, or alternate doing them.

Finally, you will have a list of tasks that nobody thinks are that important or that nobody enjoys doing. Time for the two of you to act your age! You’re going to be parents soon. That’s what discipline is for, to do things you don’t want to do, because you recognize that they need to be done anyway!

And try to be loving and creative in the process! After all, you do love each other and are developing a family together, based upon that love. If you need help remembering this, take a look at your child once they are born. If you still can’t get into it, seek professional help, a therapist or a spiritual advisor.