Why household chore inequity is abuse

Unequal division of labor as abuse, living with a depressed husband, and a bunch of important announcements

“Sure, leave your husband if he gets abusive, absolutely. But not over something silly like who does the dishes!”

“Men are just wired differently. LOL it’s funny how much they don’t notice amirite?”

“Everyone has their role in marriage! You can’t leave your husband because he is bad at folding laundry.”

I get comments like this on Facebook, my blog, and here on Substack every day. People can accept that household chore inequity is annoying and upsetting, but they’re just not willing to label it abusive.

This is because we do not value women’s time. Because if we did, there would be no word other than abuse for endlessly stealing hours every day—shaving literal years off of women’s lives so men can do what they want with impunity.

If you’re fighting this same battle with people who don’t see chore inequity the way you do, or if you’re someone who can’t accept that it’s a form of domestic abuse, I’d like to arm you with a few quick talking points. Here’s why I maintain that domestic chore inequity is absolutely abuse, and absolutely reason to leave your marriage:

1. It is knowing and deliberate. Men are not dumb. They are able to eat and shop and pay bills when they live alone. They can see that children need food, that someone is doing the laundry, and that dishes do not magically put themselves in the dishwasher. Perhaps the biggest lie about domestic chore inequity is that it is invisible. It is not. Men know the good deal they’re getting. That’s why they will do anything to convince women they don’t, and convince society that domestic labor isn’t work at all. Men are knowingly and deliberately buying their free time with their partners’ exhaustion.

2. The abuser can stop anytime, but chooses not to. Men who do not participate in their children’s lives or in household labor can change their behavior if they choose to do so. This is not a difficult thing to do. It does not require years of counseling or to-do lists. Men are not innately incompetent. They can do better, right now. Those who choose not to are actively, daily choosing abuse.

3. The abuser sees the consequences of their abuse every day, yet continues. The exhaustion and demoralization of American mothers is no secret, especially to the partners who witness it daily. If you are doing something that destroys your partner’s life (making them do endless extra work so you don’t have to), and daily witnessing the effects of that action (exhaustion, anxiety, depression, fatigue), and yet you continue, the only word for it is abuse.

4. It erodes women’s opportunities and undermines their potential. Household labor inequity does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a larger system that makes living more difficult for women at every stage. If your partner won’t step up at home, it’s more difficult to get a promotion, more difficult to learn a new skill, more difficult to manage stress, more difficult—and sometimes impossible—to do anything that maximizes your potential. This is not some profound insight. It’s obvious—and it’s obvious to the men contributing to this problem.

5. It treats women as beings who matter less than men. There’s only one reason we’re ok with women working longer and harder hours than men. It’s that we think their time doesn’t matter—indeed, that women do not matter. If you live with someone who thinks your time and well-being matter less than their own, that’s not love. It’s exploitation.

6. It exacts a physical toll. Lack of support at home increases the risk of postpartum depression, of anxiety, of a host of mental illnesses. It also destroys women’s health, increasing their risk of heart disease and shortening their life expectancy (see below for more). What exactly are we supposed to call it when a partner attacks your mental and physical health so they can golf and play video games? Love?

If you want to learn more about the catastrophic effects of unequal marriage on women’s well-being, check out “Is marriage a good choice? Not if you’re a woman,” a post I wrote a while ago that puts a ton of marriage research in a single accessible spot.

News and Announcements

I’ve got a bunch of new content coming out. A lot of this answers a question I keep getting: What can we do about this problem? Some important announcements:

• I’m starting a podcast that will expand on the topics you see in this newsletter and on my website. The first episode will go live on August 1. I’ll post reminders as it gets closer!

• On June 23, in the paid newsletter, I’ll be posting a tool for assessing how bad inequity is in your relationship. It’s something you can do on your own, or with your spouse, and will hopefully make it very difficult for your spouse to argue with you about chore inequity.

• On June 15, I’ll be posting the results of the State of Postpartum survey to paid subscribers only. Free subscribers will get access to all the data two weeks later, on June 30. Be sure to subscribe to get access! If you have given birth in the last 5 years, please consider taking the survey here. To ensure the widest and most diverse audience, please consider sharing the survey link with your friends and family.

• I’ve been posting more on Instagram recently, though it’s still not my favorite social networking site. You can follow me here if you want.

Feminist Advice Friday: My husband is depressed. How do I prevent him from modeling negative thinking to our children?

A reader asks…

My husband is depressed. I’ve spent enough time on message boards and in support groups to know that my story is a common one: depressed husband sucks the life out of his wife, won’t help around the house, won’t really do jack shit. Then blames it all on his depression but won’t seek help.

It’s not great. It’s what I’m stuck with for now, though. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m going to have to live this way or make a plan to leave. In the meantime, I’m worried about my kids. His thinking is so negative, and he subjects us all to it. I’m seeing it rub off on them already. My six-year-old just complains and whines, often complaining in the exact same way he does. And my 10-year-old has started parroting some of his bullshit back. “Dad says other people don’t matter because they only let you down, so why bother being nice to the other kids?”

I hate it. I hate how this is affecting him, and I hate how he is turning them into these little depressive weapons of misery that mean I can never escape him. He’s not actively teaching them or anything. His negativity is just so pervasive that it’s impossible for them not to learn it.

I’m really at a loss. I know you’ll tell me to leave him or get counseling, or to make him get help, but right now, none of these things are really options. Is there anything else I can do?

My Answer:

Well this is just awful. I’m sorry you’re having to live with this. And you’re right that, in an ideal world, your husband would get help. You’re also right that this is a common dynamic I see over and over again from readers. It looks like this:

When the wife has depression, she’s lazy and crazy and hormonal and she better get help right now so that she doesn’t inconvenience her husband. There are no special accommodations, and the man sure as shit is not going to do extra household labor. In many cases, the wife’s depression is used as a weapon to get even more free labor. “You’re just saying that because you’re depressed and crazy.”

The State of Marriage Survey I conducted a while back showed that, while neurodivergent men use their neurodivergence as a way to escape household labor, neurodivergent women do not. As a result, men with depression and disabilities get additional free labor. Women with depression and disabilities actually end up doing as much or more labor as women without any neurodivergence. It really brings the inequality of marriage into stark relief.

Your husband can’t help that he has depression. He absolutely can control the fact that he has chosen not to seek treatment. My philosophy on depression is that everyone needs to crash every now and again, and it’s reasonable to expect a spouse to temporarily pick up the slack without complaint. After a while, though, this becomes an abusive dynamic that buys relaxation and free time with the non-depressed partner’s exhaustion. It’s basically the same dynamic we see in a lot of heterosexual marriages, but more exaggerated.

After the initial crash, a fair and loving depressed person has two choices:

1. They can work to treat their depression if they want to continue getting accommodations from their spouse.

2. They can refuse to treat their depression, and stop getting accommodations.

You don’t get to blame your behavior on a condition you refuse to treat. You don’t get to ask for more from your partner than is fair if you’re not going to fix the reason you’re doing so.

Your husband has chosen a popular hidden third choice among married heterosexual men: Refuse to treat the depression, refuse to take any steps at all to mitigate its effects on loved ones, forever demand that a partner bear the brunt of the burden of the depression, and reduce the quality of the environment in which his children must live, all so that he doesn’t have to confront his depression.

It is an abusive choice for which there is no excuse. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I do know that you and your children absolutely deserve better. I hope that, if you believe your husband will never work on this, you are working on a plan to leave.

In the meantime, you absolutely must protect your children.

Depression is complex. Popular narratives tell us that it’s genetic or hormonal, but the biopsychosocial model of depression suggests that, while a person can have a genetic predisposition to depression, environmental, social, and psychological factors are critical.

Depression, then, can be learned.

A person who learns maladaptive thinking is more likely to be depressed. So too with someone who engages in harmful behaviors. You’ve probably seen this cycle in your own house. It goes something like this: A depressed person engages in depressed thoughts and behaviors that make them more depressed, which in turn makes it even harder to seek treatment and virtually impossible to stop thinking and acting negatively.

You can’t fix any genetic predisposition your kids have, but you can ensure that their environment models healthy thinking and behavior. Getting your husband treatment or getting him out of your house would be the best way to do this. Since neither are possible right now, I’m going to offer you some alternative strategies:

• Talk openly about your husband’s depression. This should not be in a stigmatizing or blaming way. Instead, your kids need to know that your husband’s way of being is the product of a sickness. This prevents it from being normalized. “Daddy has a disease called depression. It makes him think and do and say really negative things that aren’t true and aren’t helpful. We can help daddy and help ourselves by not mimicking those ways of being.”

• Ask your husband to minimize the negativity around your kids. Sometimes men who can’t be bothered to care about the effects of their behavior on a spouse will still care about their kids. Approach this in a compassionate manner, asking him what he can do to minimize the negativity. And if he’s not willing to do so, please document it. It may help you down the road if you leave him and have to fight over custody.

• Know the difference between toxic positivity and teaching positive thought patterns. Your kids do not have to be positive all the time. Indeed, allowing them to express their negative emotions is critical to their well-being. Positive thought patterns are instead patterns of thinking that encourage people to question their negative thoughts, notice automatic negative thoughts, and prevent false and harmful beliefs. This is a great article on cognitive restructuring that may help you learn some helpful thought processes to teach your kids.

• Establish family routines. All kids thrive on routine. Adults, too. But stressed people often have trouble following a routine. Daily tasks such as exercising, showering, doing homework, and eating become easier when they are integrated into a routine. Model a healthy routine to your kids, and help them follow one, too. Note that a routine does not have to be rigid. It’s different from a schedule. A routine means that you eat lunch around the same time each day, do a similar activity after lunch each day, etc.

• Find emotionally healthy adults who can invest in and spend time with your kids.

• Model self-care. Your kids do not need to see you doing it all because he won’t do any of it. They need to see you living a good, happy, balanced life. Hire childcare if you can. Ask family for help if you can’t.

• Destigmatize mental health by talking openly about emotions, about strategies for managing emotions, and about the challenges of living with mental illness.

Perhaps most importantly, assume your husband is never going to get better, and behave accordingly. A spouse’s mental illness sometimes creates a suspended reality in a family. You’re perpetually waiting for something to change, and delaying living life until it does. Don’t do this. Do all you can to make life good and meaningful and joyful right now. If he ever gets better, he can join in the fun. And if he doesn’t, you and your kids will not have been deprived of the chance to enjoy your own and only life.

Readers, if you’ve lived with a depressed spouse, I encourage you to weigh in with your own strategies.

I publish #feministadvicefriday every Thursday here and every Friday on Facebook. You can get early access to Feminist Advice Friday, as well as other content I don’t publish anywhere else, by subscribing for free to my Substack newsletter. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using this site’s contact form.