slider top

What gay couples get about relationships that straight couples often don’t


by Brigid Schulte

Washington_Post_logo

When it comes to dividing the labor at home fairly, straight couples may have a lot to learn from gay couples.

A new study finds that same-sex couples tend to communicate better, share chore duties more fairly and assign tasks based on personal preference — rather than gender, income, hours worked or power position in the relationship.

Straight couples, meanwhile, tend to talk less and fall into to traditional gender roles, what one family describes as “pink chores” and “blue chores.”

…Writer and lecturer Andrew Solomon said he and his husband are constantly talking about how to make all the pieces of their lives fit together. “I feel like we’re constantly inventing it,” he said. “We talk about it all the time. It’s a constantly evolving process.”

Solomon is the primary breadwinner and his spouse has taken on the bulk of caring for their six-year-old son. Everything else, Solomon said, they’ve divided chores based on what they’re good at. Solomon is organized, so he arranges school and summer camp activities. His husband cooks. They share school drop off and they shift duties as the demands of their schedules change.

“People often make assumptions: We get asked, since I’m the one who works more, am I more the ‘Dad,’ and is John really the ‘Mom?’I feel like we have a paucity of vocabulary to describe these roles,” Solomon said. “If there’s one thing same sex parents could teach is that it’s not that one of us is ‘really’ the mom and one is ‘really the Dad. Those are irrelevant concepts. We’re just both in this together.”

(To read the full article, please visit The Washington Post.)