Bad-Husband-Lady and Neurotic-Wife-Man Review "Fair Play"

I'm the primary childcare provider and chill about chores, he works full time and is neurotic about chores. We argue over chores constantly. Who will win Fair Play?

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NOT based on a true story, do NOT put it in the papers that this is real

A great deal of discourse has been circulating about Fair Play, a card game (or more realistically, conversation facilitator) meant to help couples equitably divide domestic labor. Each card in the “game” is a different task to be distributed, and while the designer, Eve Brotsky (also behind the eponymous book and documentary) is clear about the goal not being a perfect 50/50 split, the endgame should be a division of labor that feels, well, fair, and upon which both people can agree.

The underlying assumption is that even after everything is split equitably, the woman will always be doing more. Lyman Stone negatively reviewed the game for being based on passively-aggressively shaming the person with fewer cards. I was a bit afraid of this myself because my husband, well…as soon as I told him we were doing this, he insisted he would “win.” I cannot imagine anything more defeminizing than seeing my husband hold all the Fair Play cards. I was terrified I would be the first woman to “lose” this game. But alas, I was willing to brave this possibility for you fuckers.

Let me back up here, because obviously our marriage is not a typical dynamic. It’s not atypical because my husband is a #FeministAlly, but rather because he’s far more neurotic and tightly-wound about household stuff than I am. As I’ve written about before, domestic labor is a common bickering topic for me and my husband. I’m relatively chill about everything that isn’t safety or child-oriented, and he has diagnosed OCD that basically makes him a neurotic control freak about everything involving our house, food, or plans. Just an example: he regularly deletes “unnecessary” grocery items from the Whole Foods/Amazon cart before it’s placed, and eventually made a rule that I’m not allowed to place the grocery order myself. This is something I’d be perfectly happy to handle, but he gets anxious giving up control. He also doesn’t let me arrange double dates with other couples. Once, I tried, and after the other wife and I agreed on a restaurant we all liked, he jumped in to change the restaurant because he wasn’t in the mood for sushi. Because he invariably changes or erases my work on various tasks, I stop doing them.

He would readily admit this, by the way, but he would insist he needs to be a control freak because if he let me decide things, everything would explode. Don’t worry, he’s not a “I need to read your texts and you can’t have friends,” control freak. He’s a “you’re not allowed to turn on the lights in the house after 6 PM unless it’s red light for my insomnia” control freak. He’s like Squidward in that episode where he leaves Spongebob in charge of the Krusty Krab and repeatedly runs back to make sure Spongebob hasn’t burned the place down or given all the money away.

So either way, we seem like the perfect couple to review this game—we don’t fit any predetermined archetype, we have no specific political or ideological agenda going into this it, yet domestic labor is clearly a hot button issue for us. Before we played the game, I’d say both of us felt that the other one was blind to the extent of our invisible labor.

Perhaps the first sign this would be an interesting experience was that my husband got annoyed that I spent $18 on the game without asking him first.

While some people have issues with Fair Play being icky because it’s a game (some feel it’s treating men like toddlers, others feel that your marriage is already over if you need a game for this kind of thing) I actually disagree with this critique. A lot of tasks go into keeping a household running, and a lot of people, through no fault of their own, might have a hard time remembering all of these tasks or even knowing which they need to do. Some tasks are “invisible,” and one spouse might overestimate their respective contributions because they don’t notice these things. A long time ago, my husband and I basically attempted our own version of Fair Play (before we knew what it was) just by listing out tasks, but we missed a bunch of things. Fair Play takes care of this for you.

Don’t mistake this for me already being squarely on Team Fair Play. I am not shy about the fact that I find domestic labor discussions tiresome, and I think it’s because, like “therapy speak,” this type of language really appeals to people who love to see all of their problems as signs that they are victims of society. I have met women who believe, purely by virtue of being women, that they toil constantly in the invisible labor mines, when they don’t actually have jobs, have hired help, and have husbands who actually work ten-hour days. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing, but given that self-involved narcissists exist, and at least some of them are married women, it’s not unfathomable that these women would flock to systems like Fair Play to provide legitimacy to their martyr narratives. But that doesn’t mean Fair Play is shameless propaganda or total nonsense—the documentary was actually much more even-handed than one might expect, and even if some insufferable women have latched onto it, it’s there to address something very real for a larger swath of women. I have to remind myself not to let the most annoying people on the Internet cloud my perception of something that could be very real and important.

Quick gripe about the documentary though: at one point, a sociologist confidently claims that “very few” women leave the workforce to be SAHMs because they want to, and suggests they are more frequently pushed out by sexist bosses or husbands who feel threatened by their income. This feels like a major SOURCE NEEDED moment, but the rest of the documentary was good.

I also want to make one point clear about the distinction between emotional labor and invisible domestic labor, because I see them used interchangeably (often by people making fun of the concept) and as someone who has pretty nuanced beliefs on this topic, let me firmly say that emotional labor as something you perform for your family is stupid, but invisible labor isn’t.

I have gotten shit before for pushing back against the idea of emotional labor, especially the (frankly, insane) claim that having sex with your husband is a form of it, let alone a “full time job.” I simply do not believe that a term invented for service workers having to smile at strangers should be extended to showing love to your spouse or children. That said, emotional labor is not the same thing as domestic labor. It is simply not emotional labor to do the dishes. That is domestic labor, and nobody should be expected to enjoy it because they’re doing it for people they love. Moreover, even within marriages where both partners work, domestic labor frequently falls on the woman in a disproportionate way (even after accounting for the hours worked outside the home). Fair Play isn’t popular for no reason. It obviously addresses a real issue for many women (and the documentary shows it working for same-sex marriages between men as well, so clearly not just a woman thing).

Anyway, now that you all know how I feel about these things, here’s how our experience was. First of all, my husband has diagnosed ADHD and has a very hard time showing enthusiasm for things he finds boring. When we were engaged at the ages of 24 and 26, I suggested we write our own wedding vows, even though he thought this was silly. We had the officiator come to our house to help us draft the vows, and he was so tired and bored that he actually lay flat on the sofa the entire time and refused to sit up. He puts tremendous effort into doing nice things for me—birthday gifts, planning vacations and date nights, you name it—but anything he views as a stupid formality, he will simply not take seriously. I was concerned that he might view Fair Play this way.

Initially, he showed some enthusiasm for Fair Play because he knew I would write an article about it and he likes collaborating on my articles. Also, he was fairly convinced he would “win” by having the most cards. I know it’s not a competitive game and the point isn’t to win. But also, yes it fucking is. Yes, the whole point is to “make the invisible visible,” which is shorthand for “show your blockheaded husband how much more domestic labor you do than he does.” That’s not to say there aren’t husbands out there who need to be shown! But knowing this dynamic didn’t apply to us, Mr. CHH was eager to win.

As soon as we started, he asked why there were so many cards. I was a little confused about this too, because despite other reviews of this game indicating it’s a one-night affair, apparently the book says it’s supposed to be done as a lifestyle over a longer period of time, taking on different cards in smaller doses until you figure out what works for your family. But I didn’t want to wait that long, so we just took out all the cards and tried to figure out which one of us held more. We figured if the distribution was wildly uneven, we would start trading or taking cards to make it fairer.

One thing you need to know about Fair Play is that for each card, the couple needs to agree on the minimum standard of care. For example, some people think the garbage needs to be taken out daily; other people think you should wait until it’s full. I imagine the minimum standard of care is a big sticking point for a lot of couples. There are many unfair reasons why women might get saddled with more domestic work than men, but one of the more benign reasons is that a lot of women and men just disagree about what constitutes a “mess.” Women also may have higher standards for certain child-related things than men do. One thing that drives Mr. CHH nuts is if I change my five-year-old out of his pajamas and into his school clothes in the kitchen (this is where I have to do it because he doesn’t want to get dressed and I usually have to bring the clothes to him and then chase him around). Sometimes, in the frenzy to get him dressed, I leave the pajamas on the floor. If the pajamas remain on the floor for even ten minutes, my husband finds this intolerable. I, on the other hand, think it’s fine if the pajamas remain there for even a few hours, as long as they eventually wind up in the laundry.

A few of the critiques of Fair Play pointed out that “female-coded” labor was broken out into multiple cards, while “male-coded” labor was bundled into fewer cards, which stacked the deck against men. I agree with this criticism, although frankly it was the only thing keeping me from a humiliating Fair Play defeat, so I was happy for it. For example, I am really into the holidays, so naturally I swept all the holiday cards. But there are quite a few of them: holidays, holiday cards, holiday/seasonal item storage, and magical beings (pretending to be Santa, Easter bunny, etc.) Meanwhile, “lawn and plants” is one card, which could conceivably cover several different things! My husband took that one because he mows the lawn, but I’m the one who tends the vegetable and herb garden, so it was a debate. It felt odd, to say the least, that holidays got four cards and all landscaping got one! The same was true of home maintenance, which only got one card despite encompassing lots of different things in the home (my husband also got the home maintenance card.) There was also no card for things like raking leaves in the driveway or de-frosting black ice.

Children’s school stuff also got broken out into many more cards than felt necessary: “showing up” (which included attending recitals, daddy-daughter dances, etc.) and “school service” (which includes chaperoning school field trips and volunteering for the school.) Then, there was a completely separate card for “school forms,” one for “school transitions” and another one for “communication with teachers.” On top of that, there’s a separate card for “VIP gifts” which include gifts for teachers. It’s hard to see these cards and not conclude there is a conspiracy to over-emphasize the woman-coded labor while minimizing the male-coded labor—for example, there is basically one finance card, but you don’t see separate cards for managing investment portfolios, managing budgets, and negotiating property taxes. Again, these cards did juice my score, so there’s that.

Once we were about halfway through the card deck, I noticed my husband was in this exact position:

I asked him what he was doing. As it turns out, he was doing fantasy basketball. When he saw I was writing this in my notes, he clarified that he was debating whether to drop Norm Powell from his fantasy team.

One thing we struggled with was that a lot of these cards described things we both did in what felt like 50/50 divisions, especially because we have two kids. For example, bedtime. My husband does all the naps for our two-year-old daughter because she refuses to go down if I’m the one putting her down (she rightfully assumes I’m a softie and I will not leave her in the crib if she’s whining or upset). Despite over-indexing on the female-coded labor, there is oddly no card for naps! However, when it comes to the nighttime bed routine, things are very split. Often, I will get my daughter dressed and ready for bed while my husband gets our son in pajamas. Then, we will switch—my husband reads my daughter a story and puts her in her crib, and I read my son approximately seventeen stories, go through the ABCs with him, sing him two verses of his favorite song, get him a glass of water, and then do an elaborate bedtime hug and kiss routine. Granted, my part takes more time because I am putting down the more imperious child. I felt like this card should be mine. But my husband felt it should have been his because he does naps and I don’t. In the end, he took the card.

Another confusion came up around the “school breaks” card. There are two cards for school breaks: summer and non-summer. This felt like another area where we already split things. When our older child is out of school, I am the one who fills in the childcare, which often means watching both children for close to the full day. But when it comes to scheduling summer activities for him, such as a part-time day camp, that’s something my husband does. But when it comes to picking him up or dropping him off for these activities, it’s 50/50. Then, on top of that, my husband is the one who plans any family vacations that occur during school breaks, but there is a separate card for travel. How are we supposed to divide this?

We got into one amusing argument over the “keeping the calendar” card. This is indisputably something that I do, and we had evidence of it a few weeks ago. Our son had a day off school. My husband didn’t know this until he picked him up from school and saw that he was bringing his nap mat home. The teacher releasing him informed my husband that he had the next day off. My husband came home and asked why I didn’t know this, and I told him I did know it, because it was on the calendar.

He said “What calendar?” I said “The calendar on the fridge.” He then walked to the fridge and said, “I don’t see a calendar.” I then pointed to the school calendar that I taped to the fridge and have been doing every month. The calendar was directly in front of him. He said, “Oh? I didn’t know I was supposed to look at that. I never noticed it was there.” I guess if I am fully owning this task, it was up to me to tell him about the day off, but until we did the Fair Play deck, this wasn’t a spoken and agreed-upon responsibility. He said this was one of many “stupid cards.”

That’s another point I want to make. Fair Play is ideal for one particular type of husband: a guy who genuinely wants to help his wife with more things, but doesn’t know where to start (the kind of guy who says “Just tell me what to do.”) This type of guy, ideally, will not think the game or any of the cards are stupid. It’s not ideal for men who think the concept of invisible labor is stupid, or men who go into the game with skepticism.

For example, my husband thought a lot of the cards were ridiculous. He immediately noticed how the female-coded labor seemed to be deliberately broken out as granularly as possible, and thought some of the cards were silly or repetitive. I have a feeling a lot of men notice this and feel this way, which means they will not be especially moved by their wives holding significantly more cards than they do. They might say, “Oh, wow, you do so much more than me” but might secretly be thinking “Why is there no card for dealing with spiders, ants and other pest infestations?”

This game is also not ideal for men who are already aware of all the tasks in the household. This wasn’t something Mr. CHH and I would have bought if I wasn’t writing about it, because even though my husband was sassy throughout the process, it’s obvious that he’s already pulling his weight around the house and wasn’t shocked by the existence my tasks.

I will say I should defend Fair Play against a rumor about two particular cards. From a previous critique of Fair Play (by someone who had researched it, but hadn’t actually played it) I was under the impression that there was a card for social media and a card for tracking interior decor trends. I felt that both of these were obviously frivolous, but there’s more to the story. The “social media” card actually refers to kids’ social media and managing kids’ friendships. The “interior decor” card isn’t about scrolling Pinterest; it’s about the purchasing of furniture, but presumably the tracking of trends is part of that. Funny enough, my husband took the furniture card. But here’s where I also think male-coded labor should have been separated: what about the person assembling furniture? This takes up a lot of time and effort, and for many couples the person assembling furniture doesn’t fall to the same person who buys the furniture. I also wanted this separated for selfish reasons: I am usually the one who assembles furniture.

Once we divided all the cards based on the labor we currently perform, my husband began jumping up and down with a level of excitement I haven’t seen since the Cavs won the 2016 championship: he had 37 cards, and I had 36. At this point, I attempted to start a discussion about whether or not he found this split surprising, how he felt about his cards, whether he felt overburdened, or anything else. He pulled up his phone again, tucked his chin into his neck, and said, “I don’t care, I won, stop bothering me.”

He was obviously joking, but in all seriousness I think a lot of men do see the game this way. Men like to win, okay? If you play a card game with a man, his mind will be on winning. Even if he tries his hardest to view it not as a game but as a “conversation facilitator,” he will likely still want to win. And if he’s like most husbands, he won’t win. So there’s a decent chance he will leave the conversation feeling a little bit annoyed, or coming up with examples (some not unreasonable) for why the game was stacked against him. But if he’s not interested in winning, if he sees this game more as a tool to expose tasks that need to be done, and he’s interested in taking on more work, it could be helpful.

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