Distribution of family roles

For couples seeking help in counseling, conflicts and misunderstandings about the distribution of roles and responsibilities are very characteristic. Note that the very concept of role conflict is quite broad and relies on the idea of ​​family roles as a kind of system of affairs and responsibilities that ensure the daily lives of spouses and are closely related to each other.
It would seem that the most typical such problems should be for young married couples, where the norms of relationships are only established, but this is far from being the case. With the “bouquet” of conflicts, in which an important place is occupied by these, partners come to the consultation with almost any experience of living together. Nevertheless, the exacerbation of problems of this kind, and consequently, the arrival of spouses in the consultation is not accidental. The aggravating point is often a kind of more or less significant change, which has already happened or is expected in the near future in the family.
Such an event could be the birth of children, the beginning of a child’s visit to a kindergarten or school, a woman’s return to work after taking care of a small child, a serious illness of a family member, a departure or a young family’s meeting with parents, an estimated or actual retirement of one of spouses, etc. The list is quite impressive, but it is easy to find in it what is common that unites all these situations - the changes taking place in the family require rethinking and redistribution of family affairs and responsibilities.
Of course, turning to a psychologist does not automatically follow these family events, and it is often difficult to trace such a link even in the process of counseling.
Moreover, the fact that such problems arise due to changes does not mean that they did not exist before (besides, there is probably a basis for them in most modern families). Rather, in a changed situation, one of the members of the couple, most often the one who, from his / her point of view, has a greater burden of family affairs and duties, begins in obvious and implicit ways (including for himself) to restore justice and try transfer part of your own affairs to your spouse. But since such attempts usually do not look like a desire to come to an agreement, take some kind of mutually acceptable decision, but as accusations and claims against a partner, difficulties in relations arise and begin to develop rather quickly. Equally important is the fact that often the other spouse not only does not do what the “offended side” demands of him, but also possesses a belief system that reinforces precisely the behavior that he (a) himself follows.