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corner with my skirt hitched up and rubber gloves on. My plan was backfiring. “Never learn to type,” my feminist mother warned me in junior high. “Or someone will always expect you to.” She’d have disowned me for the stunt I pulled next, but I could see that my plunge into D-I-Y was setting a precedent from which there was no return. If I fixed the washer, what stood between me and the lawn mower? Me and the plumbing snake? Me and the engine oil filter? It’s not that I believe labor should be divided on the basis of gender—I was raised Free to Be . . . You and Me. But I don’t believe doubling my labor on the basis of ability either.
    â€œHere,” I said, handing over the wrench. “I can’t unscrew the hose. It’s too hard for me.” Patrick looked skeptical. I batted my eyelashes. Then pouted. “ You should be doing this anyway.”
    â€œWhy?” he asked. “Don’t you feel proud of yourself tackling this? Doesn’t it make you feel capable? Like I feel when you leave me alone to take care of the kids for the day?” He had a point there. But I wasn’t about to give it to him. For us, and for every couple I know with young children, division of household labor and parental involvement is an ongoing, perpetually unresolved negotiation, fraught with mistrust and suspicion. It’s hard because raising a family is hard work, more work than any two people without a full domestic staff or an endless supply of selfless relatives can accomplish without yelling at each other sometimes. Each party feels he or she is getting screwed somehow, and not in a way that feels good. Throw in sleep deprivation, the elimination of a salary, and responsibility for handling body waste that is not your own, and every day that we don’t eat our young is a kind of miracle.
    It was my choice to stay at home with our children during the early years, and I wouldn’t have traded it for whatever middle-income wage I could have earned at the time. Notwithstanding real financial sacrifice, I was lucky to have the choice, and I knew it. But choosing to be at home didn’t waive my right to resent the hell out of it sometimes, especially when Patrick came home from his day at the office with the feeling that he was entitled to relax. His working hours were clearly delineated, whereas I was on call 24/7. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if I was tied to a desk all day, every day. I could take my work to the park. My clients were the people I loved most in the world, even if they couldn’t wipe their own noses. My colleagues were my best girlfriends. There were no common denominators to form the basis of an objective comparison between our workloads, just vague jealousies that erupted periodically into open recriminations.
    â€œWhen do I get a weekend off?” I’d mutter, flinging back the sheets to get up on a Sunday morning and make breakfast, while Patrick snoozed, oblivious to hungry kids clamoring on my side of the bed.
    â€œYou got to hang out with your friends today,” he’d observe, surveying dirty teacups on the coffee table and post-playgroup wreckage strewn over the floors.
    â€œI wouldn’t call it hanging out,” I’d say, indignantly. “Would you say you were hanging out with your co-workers all day?” The analogy was a false one, however. I did get to hang out with the friends my children made me, one of the chief benefits of my vocation. But it was hardly leisure time, either. Hosting playgroup was like having a tea party, but one in which two or three chimpanzees accompanied each guest. Going out for any activity was a major operation. I learned to weigh the schlep factor against the merit of being at any given destination. More often than not, that calculation came out to “Nah.”
    Even a day at the beach is no day at the beach. About once a year, a girlfriend and I take our six kids on a