Excel parenting - how men can learn family work

Every year I travel with my daughter to Norway to visit my best friend and his family. We usually rent a cabin in the middle of the snow and go cross-country skiing. It's the most carefree, fun and educational week of the year. Why? Not just because I'm with friends, but because I'm visiting a family that has everyday life under control.

They do what I call «Excel parenting». When we move into the hut, my boyfriend hangs a table on the wall in which each day is divided into columns: breakfast, ski waxing, lunch, dinner. There is also a row each for the adults (and the eldest child, my daughter). Each activity is allocated fairly to each person.

That creates clarity. You don't have to argue every morning: Who does what? And what usually happens doesn't happen either: The women feel responsible and do the most silently and invisibly, while the men let themselves be celebrated when they cook big for once. Instead, you look curiously at the plan and see: Ah, today I'm making the skis and you're cooking.
Okay, a list of tasks. But that's not all: there's also a list of what's being cooked for every meal. And there's more: my friends also live like this every day. They have the same dinner every day of the week. So lasagne every Monday, soup every Wednesday and so on. Five dishes, takeaway twice a week. Every two or three months, the menu is decided at a family meeting (the children also have a say, as there is always a favourite dish on the worst day of the week, Monday). And all other everyday tasks are also recorded in a gigantic spreadsheet.

Excel parenting was a way for my boyfriend, the father of the family, to get involved in family work. Like many men, he is strongly solution-orientated, but also a bit incapable of getting things done on the side. On the one hand, the plan showed him what needed to be done, and on the other, it became an outlet for his constant desire for optimisation, which was getting on his wife's nerves.

Of course, you have to ask a few questions. These, for example: Isn't this terribly dull? When we say «routine», we think of rigidity and predictability. But the fact is that predictability is something that people - especially children - crave. If we have fixed routines, we have to make fewer decisions. The more automatisms we build into our everyday lives, the more energy and time we have for other things - for exciting things, for example.

Now it's not the case that Excel parenting protects you from unhappiness. My friends also struggle with their children and with life (including the Excel spreadsheet). But they have everyday life, this hell of the present, under control.

My daughter and I fit seamlessly into the office week. We are happy about the clear division of tasks and the lack of discussions. Others do Ayurveda spas, we do Excel parenting. You can imagine how you could have lived. It's a week's holiday from ourselves.

Mikael Krogerus is an author and editor of «Magazin». He writes this column alternately with Michèle Binswanger. Mikael Krogerus is the father of a daughter and a son. He lives with his family in Basel.

Read more from Mikael Krogerus:

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• Mein unsichtbarer Freund
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• Die Essneurosen meiner Familie, Teil 2
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