Photo: TikTok
The unfair division of labor is really weighing on this mom. Why would her husband go on a 10-day trip right before their kids start school?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Apr 28, 2023
A man was prepping for his 10-day hunting trip just a week before his kids started school and recorded his wife flipping out on him while she went over the things that she would have to deal with while he was gone.
It’s unclear why the man was recording his wife’s outburst to begin with but she made sure that she was going to let him have it regardless of the company they were in.
The mom claims she has to take care of everything for the next 10 days.
“You’re leaving for hunting today, so what does that mean for me? What does that mean for me that you’re leaving for hunting today for 10 days?” The woman reiterates, clearly frustrated that she’s going to be left alone to deal with everything for 10 days.
She initially rants about how her husband, who is currently recording the video, left the laundry room a mess in order to prepare for his trip. “What else does that mean? That means for the next 10 days, I have to take care of everything. Chores, house, school, kids, work, cross-country, you name it. So I hope you have a super good trip.”
A woman who goes by the name Laura Danger was actually stitching the original video and covering it for the husband’s crimes of unfair division of domestic labor — no that isn’t a real crime, yes I made it up. But maybe it should be punishable by law!
Laura claims that she had been sent this TikTok many times for her to cover since she frequently posts about the domestic labor inequalities in relationships and marriages, but the story didn’t stop there.
The mom claims that her brain works differently than her husband’s.
“I said our brains think differently. So right now, as I’m putting towels away, about to go to my job, I’m thinking ‘What are the kids going to have for cold lunch tomorrow on their first day of school?’”
The mom goes into talking about how they don’t have bread for sandwiches, and so she thinks about how she doesn’t know when she’ll even be able to get bread because she works nonstop, and so she gets into thinking that she’ll have to go get “lunch stuff” right now for “24 hours ahead.”
“You’re thinking about like, five minutes from now,” the video ends with the mom saying — and she has a point. Laura pulls up an infographic and says “On average, women are doing 2.5 times the amount of domestic labor at home than their male counterparts.”
She also talks about how women are doing different things than men are around the house and how it “costs us a lot,” mentally and physically draining women.
A 2022 meta-analysis of 19 studies covering 70,310 people globally, published in The Lancet Public Health found that the more domestic labor women do, the worse their mental health is. Other studies have similarly found that women’s household labor is associated with poor health, both physical and mental. These findings may explain why women are more often diagnosed with anxiety and depression than men
Laura says that it’s important to start saying no if you related to the woman’s video because the reality is, there’s more at stake here than a little bit of stress for the next 10 days.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.