Equally Shared Parenting's main aim is for you both to enjoy all of the aspects of your lives together and to spend about the same amount of time in a particular are such as child care or those house work chores. So it's not that each chore has to be equally divided. In fact, we like to cal this Equally Shared Parenting, not Equally Divided Parenting because we're not focusing on the division, we're focusing on the sharing. So within the realm of all of the chores, you want to spend about the same amount of time on an average week tending for your home. Now, you can divide these things in a number of different ways. Sometimes a task works best when divided exactly down the middle. It's something neither of you really want to do and it's something that has to be done a lot. So you might say, "Oh, you do half the laundry, I'll do half the laundry," then we only have to do half the laundry. Other tasks however can be divided in a number of other ways such as you do what you see need being done or our family when you're home, I'll do what I see needs being done for our family when I'm home. We both are capable of doing everything but we're adults and we'll do what we know needs being done. Other ways to do it is it's your turn then it's my turn, then it's your turn then it's my turn which might work well if you make it practical, not for the sake of, "It's your turn. Now it's your turn," kind of mentality. So, for example, if you're home earlier than your spouse on Tuesday, it makes sense that you would be the one to prepare dinner, maybe help the kids with homework, maybe pack their lunches for the next day. When your spouse comes home, he hasn't had as much time with the kids. Maybe he can have fun with them in the evening while you clean up. Then you know that's your job on Tuesdays because it makes more sense. On Wednesdays the opposite might happen and you know don't have to do any of that on Wednesdays; you can come home and enjoy the children. So swapping back and forth works well if it's something that's kind of built into your lives as practical. Other ways to share are to do things together or to divide and conquer. So one person can really be interested in doing the grocery shopping and enjoy it. The other person, that can be the task from hell. So the person who enjoys doing grocery shopping might say, "Oh, I'll take most of that," and the other person can be very relieved and take most of something else that they enjoy. However, I caution you not to divide things 100%/0% because you want to retain one of the beautiful perks of Equally Shared Parenting and that is being able to pitch hit for each other on any front. So you ought to know kind of how to do the grocery shopping and do it occasionally even if your spouse is doing 95% of it. The other thing I want to caution you on is not dividing chores solely by competence or even worse, by incompetence. "Oh, I can't boil water. You wouldn't want me cooking for the family. Why don't you make all the meals," is kind of a slippery slope to your getting stuck with all the cooking. I think if you offered your spouse a million dollars, even if he thinks he can't do anything or boil water, he'll be able to create a good meal. So we want to get outside of our comfort zone, we want to be able to learn new things from our spouse or from experimentation and feel good about the fact that we can do anything. I can figure out how to get the oil changed in the car, even though it's not something that I would have signed up for but I don't want to label myself incompetent and then pass that task onto my husband.