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The University of California at Berkeley tracked 100 couples from their first pregnancy through the child’s entry into kindergarten and found that the primary source of conflict between the spouses during the first three years of parenthood involved the division of labor.
One day, I was complaining to a friend about the impossible amount of housework in my home, and she asked, “Does your husband show appreciation for all you do?” I gave this some thought and said, “Yeah, I guess, but I’m not sure it matters.”
You see, the nature of housework is often so unchallenging and so uninspiring that I could hardly take a compliment as anything more than a joke. I mean, what could he say that would help? Maybe he could give me a wink and say, “Gee, Honey, I really like the aesthetically pleasing way you stacked those dishes in the dishwasher. Did you experiment with a different loading technique today?”
The way my husband shows appreciation is to give me a little help when he comes home. That simple act conveys the message that he recognizes that I am not the maid and that I, too, work. Now don’t get me wrong. The division of labor should be fair. If your spouse is hard at work all day and you are at home, you can’t reasonably expect them to come home and do two or three more hours of non-stop housework every evening. But getting a little help at the end of a long day is surely grand.
So how do we get our man to help? Sex, of course. Next time you are slaving over the kitchen sink, purr, “Baby, have you heard about the research coming out of the Love Lab of Dr. John Gottman of the University of Washington? Seems when men help more around the house, their wives are more likely to get in the mooooood.”
Seriously, when our husbands help us around the house, we can interpret that as a sign of love, which in turn helps us find them more attractive. But here’s the catch. When our husbands help, they typically want to know that their work is appreciated. While we are likely to see their contribution as a natural part of their marital duty, they are more likely to see it as a special favor that they are doing for us. This can be a tough concept for liberated women like us to accept. But you’ll need to get past it in a hurry if you are seriously looking for more help. So stop nagging.
Instead, on those occasions when you catch your husband cleaning, give him a big hug or a sultry wink-wink. It will help assure that he cleans again.
Excerpted with permission from From High Heels to Bunny Slippers: Surviving the Transition from Career to Home, by Christine Conners, MA (Capital Books, 1-933102-14-4, $18.95, http://www.capital-books.com/).
Christine Conners is a psychotherapist and counselor with a master's degree in marriage and family counseling. She was president of the board of directors and a co-founder of the NASA Dryden Child Development Center and worked as a liaison with NASA Headquarters and other NASA centers to define uniform guidelines for NASA child development centers. For the last nine years Christine has been primarily the stay-at-home parent of her four children, though she works part-time as a child therapist for Georgia's state mental hospital in Savannah. Christine is author of 
