Family roles and workload

Who is doing what now?

Start by listing the tasks that keep things running, such as:

• Driving to appointments, errands, and visits.
• Managing medications and pharmacy pickups.
• Household tasks: meals, laundry, cleaning, yard work.
• Paperwork: insurance calls, forms, bills, benefits.
• Emotional support and “on call” time.

For each task, write down who usually handles it and how often. Often one or two people are quietly doing more than anyone realizes — including themselves.

Fairness versus capacity

Families can get stuck trying to make everything “fair” on paper. In reality, people have different capacities: work schedules, health, distance, money, and emotional bandwidth.

Questions that may help reframe the conversation:

• “Given your work, health, and distance, what feels realistic for you?”
• “What kind of help are you actually able to give — time, money, rides, calls?”
• “Is there anything you’re doing now that is quietly too much?”

Common patterns that burn people out

Some warning signs that the current setup is not sustainable:

• One person is the default for every crisis, appointment, and phone call.
• No one has had a real break in months.
• Resentment is building but not being named directly.
• People are afraid to bring up changes because it might “start a fight.”

Catching these patterns early makes it easier to adjust roles or bring in outside help before something snaps.

Using this with tools and conversations

After you map roles and workload, you can use the Tools page to:

• Compare how different scenarios would change who does what.
• Highlight where you’d need paid help to make a plan sustainable.
• Create a clearer picture to share with professionals or other family members.

Sometimes simply seeing everything written down shifts the conversation from blame (“you never help”) to planning (“here’s what needs to be covered; how can we divide it?”).