This week Mr Infrastructure kindly took a week’s holiday leave, so he could stay home and allow me time on projects that I needed to work on. The Role Reversal Experiment has been an interesting insight for both of us.
We agreed that I would work a similar schedule to Mr I’s hours. We have an upstairs study and that was to be my “office” for the week. I would come up at the same time Mr I would usually leave for the train (approx 7.15am) and work until after 6pm. On a good day, Mr I is home by 6.45pm, but there are many late nights that go significantly past that – but 6pm was enough for me!
Naturally there was flexibility through out my day and assistance given as required, but on the whole MR I was running the show.
This is what I have learned so far:
- I miss doing the daily stuff with the kids. Things like the walks to school, the pick ups, helping them with their reading or homework and hearing about their days. They are not so interested in repeating the news of their day a second time around much later in their day.
- The children can cope without me! When both mum and dad are both around the children still come to me and as such I tend to do the majority of the primary care. I probably need to let go a bit and empower dad to deal with these daily issues.
- When Mr I puts his mind to it, he can actually cook.
- Due to my behaviour, the children expect an ordered and routined life. For some of the children, if dad did things slightly different to me, they were not always happy about it.
- I love being home full time with the children.
Mr I will guest post next week to share what he learned from the experience. Sometimes it is good to see if the grass is really greener on the other side!
EDIT: You can see Mr I’s post on how he felt about the role reversal experiment here.