Cooperating on Housework and Childcare
While Both Thriving in Sales Administration

Our basic style is to share the housework between me and my husband. I do the cooking, but the cleaning and laundry are my husband’s domain: in this way, we naturally divide the tasks between us. The first time my husband took childcare leave was the December of the year I returned to work. We used it to add to his end-of-year holidays, so I was able to keep working even when the nursery school closed for New Year’s. It was a real lifesaver.
Before having my first daughter, I was able to control the volume and pace of my own work with ease, but now it’s not so simple. I have a real sense that I need both experience and sales skills to be able to deliver good results within a limited time frame. By using my experience in this way, I hope to be able to train the younger employees and build my own career as a salesperson while also focusing on raising my daughter.

From when we first got married, we didn’t have any particular sense of “the husband should do this” or “the wife should do this.” Both of us share all housework and childrearing, and whoever’s hands are free at a particular time takes charge of the tasks. Because we each have different days off, on days when she is working, I’m the one who sees our daughter off to nursery school and picks her up. When both of us are working, we are helped by my parents, who live nearby.
I’ve always been a proactive parent, but being able to take paternity leave has allowed me to gain a firm sense of my daughter’s growth. I was also surprised at the “invisible housework” that my wife does every day, and started to think about whether there’s anything I could do here and there to reduce the burden on her. As husband and wife, we can enjoy our jobs, our housework, and our childrearing together, and I hope that we can continue this going forward.