Just want to say THIIIIIIIIS. I was thrilled when Mr. Meer suggested the parenting book because it meant that he researched a good book to read and he read it! First! This was the first time that had ever happened in our relationship.
I should probably mention this to him.
we did it! We watched our feeding littles course of the night.
And it actually kicked off a really cool discussion on how our childhood was affected by weird eating stuff.
We also came up with a plan to make sure nanny remembers our table rules.
So yes I super recommend watching courses together! When we get thru feeding littles we will do the big little fringe course. 
guess what I have and we havenāt even tried to do yet?
Yeeeeeep.
We did it too!
I brought it up to Husband, and he agreed, but requested that we watch as soon as we put Baby to bed, and not before going to sleep, as I originally suggested. Reasonable.
I had him jump into where I was since I didnāt think the introductory stuff was necessary for him to watch. I made the mistake of saying that the videos were short, like 5 minutes or so (I think I was mis-remembering). It happened to be a 15 minute video. 10 minutes in, Husband asked if we could pause and pick it up the next day. I told him he could play his iPhone game while he listened. 
But we did it.
Hello I am the researcher in our team but partly this is because I am, uh, actually a researcher by nature and now profession. I want to do several of the courses mentioned but I like the idea of doing 1 video together a week. I will give Ponder the list of courses and ask what heād like to do first. In our case, it might be a sickness and safety course (followed by a First Aid course). Ponder does his best to pay attention when someone on his media sources mentions kid stuff, and I do my best to find thing in his preferred media type (I am strongly a reader, he does video and listening).
Haha that typo!
Yeah Iām not even gonna be able to watch another tonight because of evening plans. But hey at least we are chipping away.
LOL I didnāt even notice it 
sleep has been a lil interrupted latelyā¦
One thing that worked for us was me actively leaving space for my partner to know more than me. It started with pregnancy when I bought a couple basic books (Adrian Kulpās week-by-week book and Emily Oster), and did not read them myself. (I almost caved several times but it was very effective.)
Weāve also had the flip side where he goes way deep on something and Iām rolling my eyes. Like when we had a newborn and he was spending hours talking to his dad about investment allocations. It was worthwhile in the end (moved around some 401k stuff that had been underperforming for 10 years, and simplified our accounts, plus he felt like he was contributing to the family) but the 4th trimester so, so didnāt feel like the right time for it. After we both simmered down, we realized our biggest tension was around which shared big projects are even important in a week/month/season; after that we generally see eye to eye or can compromise on the details themselves.
Did you have to tell him to read them? Mr. Meer would assume Iām going to read those books and if I didnāt they would go unread. The book I mentioned above is, I think, the very first time he independently sought out parenting stuff.
For those two, I did (IIRC he asked how he could help; it was during pregnancy). I think the best book, though, was an academic-ish text we scrounged up at a Little Free Library called āWhatās Going On In There: Brain Development from 0 to 5ā. It was sitting on the table and he decided to reading it before me, and then shouted shared random weird facts every day for weeks. I wonder if to him, the depth of the book made it feel more interesting than a chore.
Itās awesome that Mr. Meer found something he was interested in on his own!
I listen to the Slate podcast Mom And Dad Are Fighting and in their bonus segment this week they talked about a NYTimes Parenting article Why Women Do the Household Worrying (and how to get men to do it) (paywall, but I can see it since itās a new month and theyāre allowing a few free articles per month. You may want to print it out if you want to talk about it with your partner.)
The author Jessica Grose talk with sociological researcher Alligon Daminger about her recent paper showing the results of seventy interviews with each member of 35 couples (heterosexual male/female couples).
Because of the perniciousness of this issue, I was excited to read the work of Allison Daminger, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard University. She published a paper in the American Sociological Review that breaks down the mental load ā ācognitive labor,ā in sociological terms ā into four parts: anticipate, identify, decide, monitor.
If weāre using the summer camp example, āanticipateā is realizing we need to start thinking about options for the summer before they fill up; āidentifyā is looking into the types of camps that will suit our familyās needs; ādecideā is choosing the camp; and āmonitorā is making sure the kids are signed up and their medical forms are sent in.
I found that really interesting and thought Iād share it here in case itās useful for anyone else. The article is short but maybe itād be a helpful jumping off point for a conversation? I realized Iāve been a little bit glad about dodging the summer camp question this year because it would have been all me, Mr. Meer wouldāve had no idea to keep an eye out for camps opening up enrollment so early in the calendar year. And even if I mention it now he probably wouldnāt remember in early 2022.
Duuuuude that division of the cognitive labor is so good and mind-blowing
That just helped me articulate to SirB one of our recent chafe points- Iām doing a lot of the anticipation, but then get hung up on identify or decide a lot right now- but even when I specifically outsource it to him, itās not happening right now. Just a hard time right now.
My problem is I canāt let go of control and need to be doing the identify and decide too. And anticipate is ALWAYS me.
Anticipate is always me. This breakdown was really helpful because SirB does do a lot more than I hear about from a lot of other partners- but mainly at the monitor phase. This helps me to be like āoh there IS a categorical difference still in the emotional labor Iām doingā.
That makes a lot of sense. Like I was feeling like the balance still felt a little off, but MrM does do the identify and monitor actively esp after our chats about emotional labor.
And maybe itās ok that we have different strengths on cognitive labor as long as itās acknowledged.
I havenāt eaten or had water in like 13 hrs so I might not be making sense.
Hard same. Mr. M too often just ends up as a tie breaker between me and me. Oops.
Oh wow. This is really useful, I can act on sharing the mental load now I can see it separated like this.
I thought that segment was interesting too (I listen to the podcast, didnāt read the article). I realized two things: 1) yes, I am the mom and I do the majority of the worrying/long-term planningāweāre not doing summer camp yet, but I am the one doing the majority of thinking about when/whether we should send the wiggler to preschool and I will almost certainly be the one to fill out forms and such. But Iām totally happy with that! It makes sense for our family and plays to our strengthsāD, the stay-at-home parent, does the day-to-day stuff, and I do more of the ābig pictureā stuff in terms of parenting. 2) Where this actually falls down is in communication. I have definitely been known to make those long-term plans and fail to communicate when things are happening to D so he can pick it up when day-to-day stuff is required. I need to get better at that!
If I have trouble with one of the four parts, itās ādecide,ā and then (much like Dan and Jeff) I can ask D to do it and heās good at that part.
Bumping up this thread because I was listening to the Oologies podcast about Matrimoniology, or marriage, with Dr. Ben Karney of the UCLA and one part of it in particular jumped out at me, starting about 26 minutes in - āIn marriages that stay together, happy couples find a way to keep the excitement, keep growing, keep exploring together. But that takes effort and opportunity.ā
In the past year and a half, how often have we gone to do anything new during a freaking pandemic? From March 2020 until July 2021 I had zero alone time with my spouse except for these tiny windows of time when my child was asleep and we were exhausted. We did watch the new Marvel shows together when those were new, that was the first novel experience weāve had together in forever. I need to mention this to Mr. Meer so we can figure out fun things to do together, even if itās just going for a twenty minute walk or something. It feeds into the larger picture of when he does any minor thing and I get all snippy at him in my own head but I know if I say something out loud itās going to turn into a whole thing so I just bury it and we donāt have those good moments to balance out the petty day to day stuff that inevitably comes up.