“Parenting by Spreadsheet”
Most weeks since my eldest child was born three and a half years ago, I have filled in the parenting spreadsheet. At the time of writing, it has over 1,000 rows, with a “P” to mark every morning, afternoon and evening of parenting that my husband and I have done. It also includes a chart illustrating which of us is in credit (me) and by how much (as of today, 7.5 days and 24 bedtimes).
Let’s just say that it wasn’t my husband’s idea. “It’s at a time in our lives when we don’t exactly need more admin,” he told me on Sunday evening, during a formal interview conducted in our living room. Still, he has no plans to stop logging his hours. The spreadsheet monitors how close we are to fulfilling our shared objective: dividing childcare as evenly as we can.
I have struggled to find data describing how unusual we are. Not for having the spreadsheet — I know that’s weird. But for wanting to share the job of parenting evenly between us. Traditional attitudes towards child-rearing have softened over time, but surveys of Britons still suggest that our arrangement, of both parents working full time while our children are young, is frowned upon by many.
