When we finally agreed we needed full-time in-home childcare for the kids back in the fall, I told my husband I wanted him to manage the search for a nanny. I wanted to do what he'd always done, which is show up for the interview portion and otherwise not be involved.

I have *always* managed our childcare arrangements. Before our daughter was born, I was the one who researched and arranged tours at daycares. When we switched to in-home care, I ran the search, managed the communications, scheduled interviews, ran background checks.

Between my daughter's birth and last summer, I had selected two daycares and 8 in-home childcare providers. I managed everything related to childcare: communication, schedules, things that went to and from, pay negotiations. EVERYTHING.

When lockdown hit last spring, my husband and I did an *okay* job of splitting our responsibilities. By summer, when it was clear things weren't going to end quickly, I hired a couple of HS students to watch the kids for a few hours a day, it became evident quickly...

...that I'd been doing a lot more of the childcare than either of us had realized, because with 4 hours a day of childcare, I suddenly went from being able to get absolutely no work at all done to getting 4 hours of work done.

My husband's productivity also increased but not as much as mine did.

Around the time we started looking for full-time childcare for the fall, I was trying new meds that were making my depression & anxiety worse than they already were, my mom had just gotten...

...bad news about her health, and after spending all summer managing the 2 girls and also staying in touch with our daycare, I was tapped.

So I handed everything off to my husband, who was like a newborn baby foal with the whole childcare search thing.

I had no bandwidth, though, so I didn't get involved except for the interview.

After we hired on a nanny, my husband continued to be the person who handles all the childcare: scheduling, communication, EVERYTHING.

It's been incredibly freeing.

The thing I didn't realize is that it not only requires a lot of time and energy to manage childcare, but there's a huge mental load that goes along with it. Before, my husband never remembered when school parties were or when the kids needed to bring special items with them.

I remembered and kept track of all that stuff. I would put things on the family calendar, but he mostly ignored them. I had to remind him.

If school was going to be closed, I'd be the one to figure out what to do with the kids. If the kids were going to miss school, I'd be the

one who made sure the school/sitter was apprised of what was happening. I fielded the bulk of the conversations about milestones and behavior.

I do almost zero of that now. My husband manages it, manages it well, so I get to do other things with my time and brain. It's amazing.

It was a big lesson to me that if I don't want to do some aspect of home or childcare that is disproportionately sucking up my time, I can just tell my husband, "I need you to take over this part." Not *delegate* responsibility, but actually SHARE it.

My husband is generally a pretty fantastic partner. He cooks, cleans, is very hands on with the kids. I've been struggling with depression for months now, and he's taken on a lot of stuff I used to do myself. At this point, he does a lot more childcare than I do.

It's not the default, though. When our daughter was born, the sort of "natural" routine was an 80-20 split in the work, and I feel like there's been a constant process over the years of uncovering things I do as a parent and as a woman in our house that he's not even aware of.

A few years ago, we both changed jobs, and our schedules changed so that for the first time in nearly 5 years of being a parent, he had to get the kids dressed in the morning. He realized he didn't know what to do with the kids' clothes when they got too small.

He didn't even really realize that the clothes don't just materialize in the kids' closets. He had to have this complete epiphany that I make sure our kids have clothes that fit and are seasonally appropriate.

Around that time he also started complaining about how much...

...more he was doing around the house and with the kids than I was. In the middle of an argument about it, I started listing off stuff I did he wasn't even aware of. I also pointed out that he worked 6 days a week, so half the weekend, I did everything.

We were still at probably a 60-40 split at that point, but he thought he was doing more, because men are not socialized or raised to think about all the stuff we do OR to recognize and value it when we do it. Even though he MADE AN EFFORT to do so.

Like I said, he definitely does more than I do right now. Part of it is that thanks to the pandemic, he's home all the time, sees more of it, and has more time.

Part of it is I hit a wall this year and stopped doing stuff. Just said, "I can't," and let him pick up the slack.

In retrospect, I wish much earlier on after we became parents, I'd written down all the stuff that I did, and just said, "Here's everything I do. I need you to take over some of it." He would have been receptive and supportive. I wouldn't have married him if he weren't.

It's just been this big lesson learned. Yes, he definitely should have seen and recognized a lot of this stuff earlier on, but I also should have seen and recognized it as well and said something.

And he's been really, really fantastic about everything. I hit a wall, and he's stepped up and taken on all the things I was doing, and he has been happy to do so. The pandemic has forced us to be much more up front with what we need and checking in with each other.

Being stuck in the house together for 11 months has been a stress test for our marriage, but I feel like it's one that's made our marriage better? Honestly, you either level up as a partner, or your marriage falls apart, and we've leveled up significantly.

Also want to add: this has made me more aware of the gendered work I do at work, too. Like, I am done being the one to remember birthdays and anniversaries and shit or organize holiday parties. I am not the team social coordinator.