1,956 thoughts on “You should’ve asked”

    1. While I have long felt it, I never had the words to express. I am so grateful to you for articulating this portion of our collective lives. Thank you very much for the English translation. Respect.

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  3. Oh God… Can I get a hard copy of this? I need to frame this and hang it on the kitchen wall – for my three teenage daughters. Too late for me now!

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  5. This is truly wonderful.

    I was wondering if I could translate it into Spanish, maybe you could post it on here or allow me to do so in my own blog (giving you all the credit, of course!)

    Congratulations, your work is remarkable.

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. About 2/3 of the way through this this whining rant I had to stop due my increasing anger. See- I am not a feminist- I am a real woman. Instead of discussing your victim hood with your victim friends has it ever occurred to you to have regular family meetings to discuss the business of the family? What needs to get done this week? How? When? By whom? All this may sometimes be flexible. You usually cook but have a late meeting Tues so husband makes sure the family gets a meal, etc The adults in the family are running the business of the family. It involves, asking, providing info, brainstorming and resolving. Now doesn’t that sound more productive than the time you wasted complaining to your friends? Happy family! No resentments! Missions accomplished!

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      1. This is ridiculously simplistic. What if your partner doesn’t listen? Doesn’t follow through?

        Also, I shouldn’t even bother with some Uncle Tom who says feminists aren’t real women. Shame on you.

        Liked by 5 people

      3. I tried that with child care, my ex punched me in the head several times for having the gaul to expect him to pull his weight. Such is the state of sexist men, quite happy for me to outearn him and live off my superior earning power, but totally unwilling to do his fair share around the house. Your experience is not the experience of the third of women that have to deal with discrimination in their own homes so maybe you should think on that a bit before pontificating about real women. There is a problem of fatal discrimination by the male population towards females, which is where feminism came from – you only have to look at the chronic problem with abuse by male priests, male police officers, male anyone against women and children to see that feminism is the only political movement that addresses male abuse of women and children seriously.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Reblogged this on The Pink Protagonist and commented:
    Re-blogging this comic as I absolutely LOVED it and couldn’t agree more! Even after splitting with my ex, he STILL automatically blames me if he doesn’t have everything he needs for the kids. He refuses to take on the responsibilities outside of the role as “the Disneyland dad” who takes photos of all the great things he does with the kids to make him look amazing. We need to remember that no one should have to ask for help ALL the time. Sometimes it is nice for people to just offer it up. OR just help!

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    1. While this is poignant and true for much of the population, this is not a comic. “Sequential art” is a term coined by cartoonist Will Eisner to describe a more genre-neutral style of story telling.

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  13. Men has to think of running the house or home n bill and other stuffs which needs money n if men doesnt earn the everything will break and if he earns yet again women has issue. What the hell r u on about with this kinda things.

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    1. As a man that has to “run the house” and “pay bills” and “earn money”, it still take more mental load to run a household. Most traditional “male” household tasks (change the oil in the car, mow lawn, repairs) aren’t things that have to be done daily.

      And if you have that much of a problem, perhaps you should have this discussion with your partner?

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      1. Nailed it brother, believe me I want equality between the sexes, but that means equality, not blaming or finger pointing, sharing and dialogue are key. As a man who also took paternity leave, pays bills, does chores, shops and looks after the baby this feels a bit unfair.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Loe@email.com, let me reply to you: Don’t forget, this comic is not about YOU. You may share the mental load, contribute, talk, etc. But for the statistical majority of women, this is not what happens. And that is what this comic is about. Not you.

        Liked by 5 people

      3. This comic describes the majority of cases. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule. When you see something that you don’t feel applies to you, reflect and move on. Simple as that. Just because it doesn’t apply to every person doesn’t make it any less of a problem. And in traditional households (the majority of family situations) it is a significant problem in need of addressing. And many women may feel alone in this problem, so having a comic such as this helps to validate their feelings and give them methods of effectively solving the problem with the help of a partner.

        Liked by 8 people

    2. “if men doesn’t earn everything will break”? in this day and age, women earn too. so men take on the mental load at work, and women take on the mental load at work plus home. THAT is what we’re on about.

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  15. Thank you so much for this. I have tried to articulate this to my husband many times, but not as eloquently as you! This, he gets. It is exhausting to be the only one who organises birthday parties and holidays, or notices a child needs their toenails cut, or that the other kid has just outgrown all their shoes.

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  18. Thank you so much for this! My husband actually sent this to me with the subject line reading: some truths.

    I’ve been trying to express these ideas to him for years now- marriage and parenthood has nearly killed me. This is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done!

    Thank you for illustrating the problem of division of labour so succinctly for all of us to understand.

    Sincerely, Sophie
    Brighton, UK

    Liked by 5 people

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    1. I suffer from depression too, and greatly upon reading this. I am such an ass.
      I sure hope Bob’s comment (22 MAY 2017 AT 10 H 13 MIN) was sarcasm. If it was not then he’s a bigger ass than I am.

      Liked by 3 people

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    2. Your statement is inaccurate. More women report depression and ask for help, so it looks like fewer men have the problem. Depression is biological, but not gender-segregated.

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  25. HOLY moley. I don’t have children yet I still relate to this on every level. The number of fights I’ve had with partners about exactly all of this….oigh. “You should have asked”. NO. You should have SEEN! I’m just so glad I’m not alone in seeing it this way. Conditioning is pervasive enough that often I thought it was just me being “lazy”!
    Thank you. Eternally, thank you.

    Liked by 4 people

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  27. This isn’t just young families with young children. As a couple age, children leave home, the husband still keeps this role of managed employee while the wife is still the manager. So in retirement he has free time, she has the house.

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  29. Yes.
    This was the demise of my marriage.
    No time for me or my relationship.
    Frustrated and overwhelmed but all of the work
    Finally feeling abandoned as my husband left to go on adventures and meet with friends while I stayed home with the kids
    Now I am alone with the kids but somehow the workload seems less because the burden of expectation is gone- his expectations of what my responsibilities were and my frustration of what I expected from him as a parent, a partner, cohabitor, a lover and a friend.
    So much went out the window once we got married? !? Things suddenly fell on my back that I didn’t know we’re ‘part of the deal’ as far as he was concerned and society supported!
    I am at a loss trying to understand how any relationship lasts when there is so much imbalance in the templates offered by society.
    Perhaps if I had never become a parent I would have found more balance, more time for me, more time for us.

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    1. Have been on my own almost 20 years. Kids are grown but they are still the reason i get up in the morning. Don’t regret one moment with them. Not their fault he was selfish with his time.

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  30. This has a lot of strong truths in it, for sure. One side is missing, though. When you show the mental load and the man is sitting on the couch thinking of nothing, maybe he’s thinking about having to fix the brakes on the car, making the mortgage payment, a big deal at work he’s been focused on, the upcoming family vacation, changing the sump pump, helping the neighbor put siding up on his house so he can ask the neighbor to help him reroof theirs next summer, etc. etc. etc. A lot of guys need to grow up, I totally agree, but you don’t even give a nod to those of us who have. The man you present is essentially the Kevin Can Wait/Two-and-a-Half Men man.

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    1. I’d be grateful if my hubby did all that. Many things you listed are all things I also take care of. My hubby makes the money, but I pay the bills, organize every detail of our vacations, schedule and organize logistics for car repairs (when I can’t figure out how to do it myself with YouTube), schedule house repairs after doing research for the best reliable company (again only if I’ve decided it’s not something we can fix ourselves). I’ve fixed our refrigerator, tuned up our lawn mower, and repaired my daughter’s car. He did fix the dryer after I diagnosed the problem, bought the part, and showed him the instructions on how to do it. And I do the yard work unless I ask for help. Plus, I have two children and am trying to start my own business. It’s all quite overwhelming.

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    2. Then write your own blog about how you poor men are so mistreated by women because we want them to help out. This was the author’s personal experiences. I pay all the bills (mortgage, utilites, everything because that’s women’s work), work full time, and totally take care of the house. The only time the male partner does anything on his own is mow the yard once a month. So I don’t buy the crap that the poor man is sitting on his ass worrying about everything while I clean the house, cook meals, clean up meals, pick up after him, do the laundry, etc.

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      1. Why do men have to sit on the couch to worry about all of that? I am worrying abou all of that while I am doing all of the other stuff. Sit and worry? Who has time for that?

        Liked by 3 people

      2. I think he was pointing out how the article lacks a male perpective on the issue. Or really a lot of sympathy. A little constructive critisism, about how others might engage with the peice better isn’t a bad idea. And given your comment about “not buying the crap etc.” Maybe its not a bad idea. You can’t know what guys are thinking, only guess. I would say there is a lot more going on under the hood than what has been assumed in the article.

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      3. You should’ve married better men then. Don’t dentro the existence of the other side of the discussion just because you set down with a bum.

        Liked by 2 people

    3. I want to be gentle because it looks like you mean really well. I know tone doesn’t translate on the internet but just know that I’m not yelling at you or being nasty.

      The reason why the kind of men you’re talking about weren’t mentioned is because this comic is focusing on women. Our experiences, our frustrations. You’ll notice how many of the comments here are from women who are relieved that someone put into words what we’re going through.

      I also noticed that your counter-example mostly includes tasks which are one-offs or happen relatively rarely – one doesn’t fix the brakes or replace the roof every day. The comic deals with daily or weekly things, like cooking for the kids or doing laundry. The stuff that happens most often in a household is still typically the responsibility of women, and thus what fills our minds. You get the brakes on the car replaced and you’re good for years. The family is always going to need food and clean clothes.

      Basically, it’s not an even distribution of responsibility, and even if your relationship has equity, enough don’t that this comic had to be made, and it should be okay for this comic to focus on the women who are struggling and not take time from its message to give kudos to men who do better. In fact, if you’ve talked with your partner and she doesn’t recognize anything in this comment, then the comic isn’t about you at all, and you’re okay.

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    4. When I was married I earned the money (my ex was an artist), paid all the bills, AND did the lion’s share of the housework. Yes he did deal reluctantly with household repairs, but these are not daily grind-you-down tasks. You may fix the fence or the sump pump, but the dishes and the floor and the laundry will have to done hundreds of times before you have to do that again. Even with him as the at-home parent I was the one who remembered our kid’s homework, and that she had a school field trip tomorrow, or needed cupcakes for class.

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    5. You might have noticed the part in the piece wherein she addressed what you’re saying. Also, as someone else has said, the jobs typically “assigned” to men are not recurring, regular jobs. In addition, women make up a large percentage of the workforce, but many to most of them still are expected to carry the mental load at home too. So get off your horse there, bud.

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    6. She does give a nod to those who have, and as mentioned above, the chores you mentioned don’t have to be done 24/7. They’re every-so-often things.

      Also, very few families don’t have two “breadwinners” now – so she’s thinking about making the mortgage payment, too. It’s no longer the ’50s where *all* women had to do was housework, cooking, child-rearing, oh and doing all the “project management” too…huh, that’s a lot. But now we also work outside the home, same as you. Hence the term “second shift.”

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  32. Reblogged on BetterisBetter.us and commented (including link back to your post):

    This post was originally written and posted on Emma’s blog. She gets full credit and my enduring gratitude for discussing something rarely talked about and very hard to put into words.

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  33. Wow. How depressingly accurate. Exactly how I’m feeling right now. Hubs does a huge amount of housework but I take 100% responsibility of kids’ lives. But instead of complaining – I am supposed to feel grateful that he “does” so much 😦

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  34. Reblogged this on Better is Better and commented:
    This post was originally written and posted on Emma’s blog. She gets full credit and my enduring gratitude for discussing something rarely talked about and very hard to put into words.

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  35. You’ve so perfectly articulated the issues I discuss with so many other women. This invisible workload is so often overlooked, its mental and physical toll unaccountes for… I don’t know how to reverse it – I just hope you it’s not impossible for our generation.

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  36. I like that you included that it’s “okay sometimes to leave stuff lying around”. Patriarchal roles go both ways sometimes. I think the modern obsession with spotless parenting is not something that needs to be extended to men as well. A little bit of mess and a few pathogens are not going to make much of a difference in the long run to a child’s life. The neuroses of perfect parenting oppress women. Sometimes, benign neglect is a virtue for a child.

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    1. Funny thing: my husband is the neatnik and I am the one who leaves something in the middle if the floor so I know exactly where to go d it when I need it later. Drives him nuts.

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  38. Reblogged this on BreadWinHer and commented:
    Crazy accurate for me and my family. It’s even more stress to deal with being the main wage earner and almost solely responsible for meal prep, grocery shopping, chores, cleaning, etc. I always have giant to-do lists at the beginning of the week that I break out into “Work” and “Home.” Almost always, my Home list is 2-3Xs longer than Work.

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  41. Have you read Tiffany Dufu Drop the Ball? It’s about exactly this and how to stop it! An amazing read. My life is one giant series of dropping the ball and it’s ace!

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  43. Sorry but I don’t completely buy this. My experience is that men are useless and women are naturally better at doing this stuff.That’s why women bear children – they need to be able to look after them properly whereas the man can just f*ck off if he feels like it. I am a single parent of 2 girls and I do everything because there’s no one else to do it. Where do they get their positive role-model/stereotype from now? Don’t tell me to teach them to do the stuff and muck in because children are worse than men when it comes to evading chores.
    The real issue is that we have been told we can have it all but actually all that’s happened is that we now do it all. The only way this can change is if women are paid the same amount to stay at home, if that’s what they choose, as they would be to go out to work and that their work as mothers is valued. Secondly men would have to be given as much paternity leave as women get and be forced to take it and be taught what to do to actually be helpful during the babies first months and years. Thirdly men need to buck the f*ck up and be more like women, god knows we’ve been trying to be more like them for long enough.

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  44. I would say this is right and certainly very moving. But I might point out that when a man is portrayed as going out to “save capitalism” (one of the elements of this strip) he is actually going out to get money to run the household. So, the woman does 25x the chores but surely you should add that the man does at least 25x the money earning? And without money there is no household at all. Perhaps in households where the woman and the man both work equal hours and earn equal pay and contribute equally this strip has ore resonance, but then of course they are both outsourcing the daily work to others. So, today’s man does 25x the money earning plus a good portion of chores, although much less of the mental load of managing the house.

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    1. Nonsense. Most households have two parents working outside the home. They have to, with cost of living right now. For your assumption to work, a man making $50k a year (about average in the States) would have to have a partner making $2k a year. Extremely rare, that. Specious argument.

      Also, studies show that increasingly many women outearn their male partners and *still* do the mental/physical labor of housework and childcare…so your assumption falls apart again.

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  45. If you don’t ask, don’t expect. People aren’t psychic, and people have different expectations. Also, there are several things that my wife generally does not want help with – it actually annoys her. A better approach is to start with a clear, mutually agreed upon division of labor, and then ask when you need help within that division. In our house, if it’s outside, it’s my task. If it has to do with cleaning a surface (sweeping, vacuum, counters, showers, etc), it’s my task. If it has to do with a car or fixing something, it’s my task. If it has to do with finances, it’s my task. Thus, we both have our own lists to manage, and can delegate as necessary.

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    1. That’s not what the comic is about. She specifically said in one of the later panels “if chores are split equitably, great! But don’t assume everything’s truly split equally just because you feel like they are.”

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  48. I agree and disagree. Obviously this is an issue. My concern is that we know it isn’t true for all relationships, yet this seems to paint all men with the same brush. That generalization is something that we strive as a society to overcome, so why is it ok in this arena? Full disclaimer I am a man, married who does the cooking and other non traditional roles.

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    1. She specifically said in one of the later panels “if chores are split equitably, great! But don’t assume everything’s truly split equally just because you feel like it is.”

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