Nowadays husbands and wives are splitting more of the responsibilities at home, from child care to household chores. OK, maybe not right down the middle. Studies show that men are taking on more of a role at home than ever, but women still bear the emotional and invisible load. That is probably why a certain "chore chart" that's been making its rounds on social media has caused so much debate.
More from CafeMom: I Think Everyday Chores Can Actually Be a Form of Self-Care for Busy Moms — Here's How
A few years back, a little thing called 'Daddy's Sticker Chart' got people fired up.
It's essentially a DIY chore chart – not for kids, but for husbands – that rewards Dad for doing things around the house.
Things like the dishes. And packing the kids' lunches. And vacuuming out those Goldfish cracker-infested car seats.
For each task completed, he gets a Disney sticker to track his progress, and after he gets six Disney stickers in a row, he unlocks a "reward."
We'll be honest: Our jaw kinda dropped the first time I saw this thing, and we were ever-so-slightly creeped out.
Maybe it was the fact that the whole thing was drawn up to look like a kids' homework project – complete with rainbows doodled in marker and Disney princess stickers – instead of something made by a wife for her husband.
Yeah, that could've been it.
Or maybe it was that coupled with the fact that some of the "rewards" are things such as getting "a naked hula dance from yours truly" and a "12-pack of your favorite beer" and – the pièce de résistance – a "BJ."
(HUZZAH!)
It could've also been the fact that the "tasks" Dad was being asked to perform were things he should be doing anyway. ("Dishes?!" I thought. "Come on, dude!")
It all struck me as more than a scootch problematic. And I was far from alone.
We soon started scrolling through some of the outraged Twitter comments and found ourselves nodding along in agreement.
"Imagine trying to enjoy receiving oral sex from your partner and thinking 'I earned this by cleaning up vomit,'" tweeted Jennifer Wright.
In fact, it was Wright's tweet that kicked off the whole debate, prompting hundreds of retweets from some very p—ed off women.
"This is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life," tweeted one woman.
"JUST GET DIVORCED ALREADY," tweeted another person.
"Imagine being such a bad partner/parent that you have to have a sticker chart LIKE YOUR KID DOES to do your freaking job," another guy chimed in, angrily.
Guys, Twitter was mad. But apparently, Reddit was madder.
"He shouldn't be cleaning up puke so his wife blows him, he should be cleaning up puke because it's his f—ing kid too," one Redditor commented.
"Seriously, if you can’t adult then you shouldn’t be having children," another commenter wrote.
"A girl could always just marry a fully functioning adult man to begin with," someone else chimed in.
(Tell me what you really think!)
It was clear the internet had made up its mind: The dad behind this sticker chart was borderline useless and the mom needed to seriously re-evaluate her expectations.
Our collective feminist nostrils were flaring; we were chomping at the bit.
But that's when we noticed two itty bitty words at the bottom of said sticker chart: Baby Sideburns - aka the parenting humor blog by Karen Alpert.
Knowing that most of her content is humor-based, CafeMom reached out to Alpert to get to the bottom of this whole "controversy." (And to, um, politely ask whether her husband actually follows this creepy AF chart behind closed doors.)
Her reply was quick, and to the point: OF COURSE IT WAS ALL A JOKE.
"Anyone who follows my page knows that most of what I post is meant to be funny," she tells CafeMom. "This was from way back in the day [2014] when my kids were young and motivated by sticker charts. One day it just popped into my head, 'What if I made a sticker chart for my husband? What would that look like?' And of course I knew what the 'grand prize' would be, LOL."
In all seriousness, she says she "would never have used a sticker chart with rewards like this for real."
Honestly, phew. (CALL OFF YOUR DOGS, TWITTER!)
"We have a healthy marriage, and sexy time doesn't happen because someone completes a sticker chart," she assures CafeMom. "It happens when we're both not completely exhausted."
But Alpert, who's the author of the humor book I Heart My Little A-Holes in addition to running Baby Sideburns, admits she was surprised when the chart started making the rounds again, years after writing it.
"The only reason I knew it was circulating again was because my Twitter notices were going bonkers, but I was shocked to see it was this very old post I made," she says. "My kids were babies when I created this."
That said, Alpert knows there continues to be a divide at home for many couples, and she thinks much of the heat this drew could be because of that.
So what was once viewed as an obviously tongue-in-cheek meme was taken oh-so-literally (even by us).
"The world is a very different place than it was five or six years ago," she notes. "In some ways, we've lost our funny bones because things have gotten so serious and divided. Divided between parties, sexes, race, etc."
Still, as equal as we try to make things at home, the fact remains that it is still not equal.
"I think most wives with husbands can [ultimately] relate to this," she tells us, "even if our husbands do half the work around the house. We're just wired differently."
Believe it or not, Alpert isn't the only mommy blogger to get flack for something like this recently.
San Diego mom and influencer Bri Dietz caught some heat when she posted a photo on Instagram with a letter board that read: Helping with housework so you can get lucky is called choreplay.
In the photo, Dietz has her arms draped around her husband and is lovingly planting a kiss on him.
"Wtf," wrote one user, “'helping' with housework?! Stop teaching women that if men do housework it’s HELPING, and they should get rewarded. They aren’t children. It’s 50% their responsibility. Is this from the 50s?!"
“Choreplay'?" wrote another person. "No. It’s his house too. 'Equals' means you both pull your weight because you are equal. Not because of 'choreplay'. True equality is what’s sexy."
Others were quick to tell the haters to chill out, claiming the post was meant to be lighthearted and fun, and Dietz didn't necessarily mean that every time her husband did a chore it was to get lucky at the end of it.
The same, it seems, can be said for Alpert's post – which when it was originally posted on Facebook in 2014, elicited nothing but laughter.
In CafeMom's email exchange with her, Alpert reiterates that she has an "awesome marriage" and feels lucky to be married to a man who "truly does half the work around our house."
The lesson here is one we've learned over and over (and over) again: Not everything we see on the internet should be taken at face value, so maybe we should get the facts before we respond in outrage. But to Alpert's point, it has become way harder to take a joke in the last few years, and maybe, just maybe, we'd all be a lot lighter if we tried.
"You can be angry about something that's meant to be funny," Alpert says, "but where's the fun in that? It's much easier and more therapeutic to laugh."
Oh, how true that is.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
