One of the two working mothers at the centre of the new Peacock miniseries All Her Fault arrives late to a crucial business meeting with a potential client, offering an apology with a smile: “My husband is in charge of our son tonight, so it’s just little fires.” As she delivers her pitch, her phone pings and lights up with a message: “Where is Jacob’s water bottle?” When she replies, “I’m in a meeting,” her husband texts back: “He’s overtired and crying. Can you talk to him?”

If this scene rings true, you’re not alone. Since the pandemic, many TikTok, Reddit and other social media users – most of them women – have been talking about “weaponised incompetence”: when a person sidesteps responsibilities by acting unable or unsure how to handle a task, by delaying or doing it poorly. They might say, “I don’t know how this goes”, “You’re just so much better at this” or “I’m busy right now, can you do it instead?” The other person often steps in or takes over, and with time, that dynamic hardens into a persistent imbalance.

Although this dynamic was first recognised in workplace settings, and named “strategic incompetence” in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, it is now more commonly discussed within long-term relationships, particularly straight marriages.

Naming something real

In my therapy room, my patients express exhaustion, frustration, anger and resentment related to this imbalance every week. It’s part of a bigger picture in heterosexual relationships showing that women still do a majority of household tasks and childcare, even in dual-income households. And this isn’t explained by male partners earning more.

“What we found in our research is that the time that men spent on household tasks was unresponsive to the wage ratio between him and his female partner,” said Corinne Low, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the author of Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. “For example, wives who are the primary breadwinners do almost twice as much cooking and cleaning as their husbands.”

The inherent unfairness of the situation and the accompanying invisible mental workload of running a household, including figuring out the family’s needs and the best ways to meet them as well as acting as a social secretary, can negatively affect a woman’s mental health, wellbeing and career. It can also diminish a couple’s marital satisfaction and sex life and put them at risk for divorce.

“‘Weaponised incompetence’ bubbled up from pop culture because it captures something real that we did not have a name for,” said Kate Mangino, the author of Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home. “Naming it allowed us to recognise the inequality and talk about it, with a hope of changing the harmful patterns.”

Not all incompetence is intentional

But Mangino noted that the term can sometimes be overused or even problematic. As a psychologist, I have witnessed how using it can antagonise my male patients rather than lead to productive change.

“It is not particularly helpful because it’s blaming and shaming, and it suggests intentional fibbing,” said Tracy Dalgleish, a psychologist in Ottawa and the author of I Didn’t Sign Up for This: A Couples Therapist Shares Real-Life Stories of Breaking Patterns and Finding Joy in Relationships … Including Her Own. “The reasons behind weaponised incompetence are complex but mostly subconscious, stemming from gender roles we’ve learned and internalised over a lifetime.”

When Brian Page, a personal finance and economics educator, started doing more of the household tasks, he recalls struggling with how best to do laundry. He knew his wife “had a particular way of doing it, and I really didn’t want to mess it up,” he says.

He eventually founded Modern Husbands, a financial and domestic labour coaching service for individuals and couples, where he works with men who want to be equal partners. He says they often realise that they have to intentionally develop skills and learn through trial and error. Page is concerned that “accusing, divisive terms like weaponised incompetence can be discouraging and counterproductive for what it is we are trying to achieve.”

Obstacles to change

Although a lack of skills can present a challenge in domestic situations for some partners, Low emphasises that women’s abilities aren’t innate: “Women have made a choice, again and again, to invest in becoming competent in child-rearing, cooking” and other activities.

Unfortunately, by the time adults couple up, men are often playing catch-up. Boys typically have less experience babysitting or taking care of younger relatives and less involvement in housework than girls. So women start doing more, men defer to them and it snowballs from there.

The traditional gender roles are also perpetuated by popular media. Research from the Geena Davis Institute, which analysed 225 scripted TV shows from 2013 to 2020, found that men are still portrayed as nearly twice as likely as women to be incompetent, echoing the familiar “apprentice dad” trope.

“These gender norms are further reinforced by our institutions,” says Paul Sullivan, founder of the Company of Dads, a media company and community platform aimed at men who are the go-to parents in their families. “For example, when you provide a school with your contact information and emphasise that the dad should be contacted first, they’ll still call the mum nine out of 10 times.”

Both partners should give each other space to do the job as they see fit, even if the kids end up in mismatched outfits or the kitchen doesn’t look exactly the same. As long as you’ve married someone who’s a reasonable human being, you should both be able to do the same tasks, even if they are done in a different way, Sullivan says.

It’s important to acknowledge that being able to take on a fair share of domestic duties is not the same as being willing to do so. If your partner refuses to engage in these conversations, persistently deflects responsibility, goes on the attack or offers lip service without any real behavioral change, it may point to deeper issues in the relationship. These patterns are best addressed in couples therapy or, if needed, individual therapy.

A way forward

For partners who are open and willing to engage with each other, joining forces to collaboratively create a fairer household balance is essential. Here are some expert-recommended ways to do that as a couple.

• Set up regular check-ins. These should last at least 15 minutes each week and longer once a quarter. Emotions shouldn’t be running high, and the children should be out of earshot.
• Assess the status quo. Each partner should write down everything they do in a week outside their paid jobs, including the mental labour. It might also be helpful to estimate how much you think your partner is doing at home. Then come together to compare and contrast. Building mutual awareness is the first step towards changing entrenched patterns. A recent study found that men increased their household labour during the pandemic, when working from home made the domestic load more visible.
• Take turns sharing feelings that come up. Listening for the vulnerabilities underneath each partner’s reactions can reduce defensiveness. Page recommends starting with what you appreciate about your partner and why before talking about what hurts. Express your emotions related to the existing division of labour, and ask for what you need. Avoid character judgments such as calling your partner lazy, uncaring, controlling or worse.
• Try to understand the situation from your partner’s perspective. Decades of research on couples’ communication shows that empathy and perspective-taking can increase willingness to change. Before jumping into explanations or solutions, reflect back what you heard. For example: “It sounds like you feel exhausted and resentful that I often find a way to avoid home duties.” Or “I hear that you’re worried about messing up and unsure where to start.” Dalgleish says that understanding where the other is coming from, and emotionally connecting around that, is what makes meaningful shifts possible.
• Make a plan together to redistribute domestic work, one change at a time. And then, if you’re the one who used to do more, “wholesale abandon” the tasks the other partner will now do, Low said. “Refrain from getting involved, micromanaging or supervising.”
• Finally, seek support for these changes from existing or new communities. Sullivan regularly speaks with men who are taking deliberate steps to be more engaged fathers than the ones they grew up with. These families are investing now in the long-term happiness and health of their relationships.

The Washington Post

Jelena Kecmanovic, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in the Washington area and a professor at Georgetown University. Her Substack is No Delusions with Dr. K. Psychologist.

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