I had an equal partnership – and I still became the default parent
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
Here's how I reclaimed my time without compromising care for my little ones.
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Every now and then, my husband picks up his phone and car keys, and announces he’s going out for something spontaneous. Lunch with a friend. A bike ride. He’s gone in about ninety seconds if I don’t stop him at the door.
And I generally don’t, because I want my husband to have time for himself.
But I also want the same for myself.
Standing behind the closed door, I ask: When was the last time I left this house by myself, without planning it, negotiating it, or trading for it? Not once since my first child was born… three and a half years ago. Then it hits me: I am the proverbial default parent.
In my life, I have moved countries on 48 hours’ notice. I have started businesses and communities on four continents, landed in cities where I knew no one, and figured it out from the ground. Yet here I am, unable to walk out my own front door without a negotiation.
Now I am the kind of person who books a haircut six weeks out.
The load I didn’t sign up for
My husband carries himself with the lightness of someone who isn’t carrying the majority of the parenting load.
The mental one: how many diapers, ounces of milk, and clothing changes need to be packed for a single outing. The emotional one: forecasting ways to address my little one’s growing feelings or managing the conditions to prevent a meltdown. The logistical one: managing energy levels and knowing a missed nap isn’t worth the spontaneity of welcoming last-minute visitors (the hosting of which, by the way, would fall on me).
He doesn’t carry any of that because I do. And I know I’m not alone in this. (There are even several Bluey episodes about it).
But I thought my husband and I would be different. And to his credit, he does a lot for the family, and has always been willing to work towards a situation where I felt supported. Still, for over three years, our day-to-day behaviors set our sails in a different direction; the mere idea that we were working toward a mostly equitable deal blinded me to the fact that, too stereotypically, I was the one carrying the invisible load of parenting.
Reclaiming my time
For a while, I stewed silently, filing away every every “just tell me what to do” and every unplanned walk out the door.
But my resentment wasn’t getting me closer to the future I actually wanted, which is to raise my kids alongside a partner I trust. Anger is honest information, but a terrible operating system. It costs you the very thing you’re angry about losing: your own energy.
So I stopped waiting for space to appear and started claiming it. Here are the steps I took:
1. Acknowledge the load out loud, until it’s clear
The first step was recognizing there was a real problem. Only then could I have a productive, fact-based conversation with my husband.
What helped: talking it out, sharing the situation with friends and watching them nod before I finished the sentence. Those conversations helped clear the fog and made it clear: I had become the default parent without ever applying for the role, and I needed it recognized as a real job, with real requirements, not something invisible and easily taken for granted.
Clarity is a prerequisite for being heard, and it is what moved the conversations with my husband past defensiveness. Until then, the idea that we had a “mostly equitable deal” was blurring his perspective too.
We didn’t get it right at once. Several conversations left one of us hurt, misunderstood, or underappreciated. But we persisted in having the difficult ones. Those conversations eventually gave us enough clarity to lay out, with clinical precision, the ways our partnership had been uneven. We could dissect a messy situation and turn resentment into discernment, naming the areas where I was lacking support and the areas where both of us were lacking appreciation.
Clarity let us stand across from each other, our vision for an equitable partnership leading the way instead of resentment for how it had been.
And we learned something more important: an equitable relationship isn’t found. It’s built. That shared understanding made the next steps possible.
2. Claim the space, and make it work
Once we both understood what my resentment had been trying to say, in more positive, proactive terms, my needs became clearer and easier to ask for. And my husband finally had something concrete to act on.
We put our partnership to work: I defined clear steps to reclaim my own freedom, and he redefined what it means to be a supportive partner.
From there, we made a real plan: a family calendar that protects my time the same way it protects his and provides a predictable rhythm. The gym, daily. Tango on Monday nights. A weekday or two blocked out because I’m in the city for meetings. An evening for dinner with a friend.
And, every so often, a half-day on the weekend for my own creative retreat, which is where I am as I type this: in a literal room of my own, my office and studio, with a door that closes.
I still won’t leave the house on a whim. But neither will he. We plan ahead, tell the other person, and arrange childcare if we both want some time out.
3. Polish the relationship
Relationships tarnish under unmanaged resentment. Bringing back the shine takes work.
From my end, I had to listen more, or proactively ask for his perspective on an issue I’d raised, and work to transmute resentment into something more productive: naming my unmet need. I had to really care about his perspective, and trust that he had been going for “supportive partner” all along, even if our early attempts had been clumsy and left scars.
From his end, he needed to become more observant and make efforts to show up more often in ways that were meaningful to me: offering to hire help for things previously expected to come from me, checking in before making plans on his own, and looping me in before inviting friends and family.
We also started scheduling more romance, whether a babysitter-powered date or quality time at home. But I’d say this came as a consequence of everything above: there was no mood for a date while our relationship was permeated by resentment. The difficult conversations had to come first.
Resetting the default
The work most mothers do is largely invisible. But invisible isn’t the same as involuntary.
I can’t undo how the default got set, or how my own behavior kept reinforcing it. What I can do is refuse to let the default compromise my own health, my relationship, and the example I’m setting for my children. I want them to have the courage to create a life they’re proud to call theirs.
Some of that courage looks like walking out your own front door on a Saturday, keys in hand, for no reason at all: knowing the little ones are safe, and well cared for, because you made it so.
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