Ask Annie: husband's choice of public transit is taking hours away from our family every day

[lemonsharks]

Dear Annie: My husband is passionate about doing what we can as individual citizens to combat climate change. He believes the largest impact any one person can have is decreasing their driving. So, to do his part, he has started using the public transit system as much as possible.

Our city’s public transit is far from perfect and transforms what would be a 20-minute drive into a two-hour train/bus/bike trip. This has dramatically increased the amount of time he spends commuting.

I want to support his desire to be more eco-friendly, and I agree with his argument that using public transit more often will help increase ridership and, eventually, with luck, increase and improve service. But right now, it is taking a very long time. We have a small child, pets and a household to run. Every time he spends four hours to do something that could be completed in less than one, I feel so frustrated that he is choosing public transit and climate consciousness over his family, leaving me with more work to do.

How can I honor his desires and passions while also trying to strike a balance where I am not shouldering the extra work? -- Frustrated With Public Transit


Dear Frustrated: Props to your husband for his noble goal. When his humanitarian spirit starts affecting his personal relationships, however, it might be time for a compromise.

There are many ways to lead an eco-friendly life, and driving less is certainly one of them. Why not create a list of sustainable practices that do fit into your lifestyle? For example, you could start composting or stop using disposable plastic food containers.

On days where public transit is too much for you -- for example, when you have a pet and a baby in tow -- remind him that your household is doing its part in other ways. Then you can protect your time and still greenlight his green lifestyle.

Comments

[jadelennox]

composting and using less plastic are tiny retail changes that fix nothing and create the illusion of individual change for a systemic problem. (Disclaimer: I do both. But I'm clear-eyed about their limitations.)

Taking public transit is also an individual retail choice, but it's one with a much larger footprint than the other two. So on that note, Annie's advice is garbage. Also she ignores the fact that LW isn't complaining about taking public transit herself; she's complaining about her husband taking time biking or taking the bus instead of driving so he can do more chores!

Better advice: "Your husband can make the moral choices that matter to him, but he can't make them for you. And you can't make them for him. You can divide the household responsibilities, and he can decide how to get his done. If he chooses to bike to the grocery store, maybe that means he has to stay up until 3AM folding laundry, or he has to use his play money to hire a kid to do the raking. You don't get to tell him he has to drive, but you do get to tell him that the pair of you agreed to split household responsibilities down the middle."

And don't take Annie's advice, or Husband might realize that actually effective environmentalism involves massive political activism and next thing you know he won't be around to bike the baby to day care because he'll have been arrested with Extinction Rebellion folks.

(Second disclaimer: I know most of us can't do real effective environmental activism. I also self-soothe with composting and farmer's markets and canvas tote bags. I am not shaming anyone who can't do those things, because that's literally the point: Annie is part of the system of trying to persuade us all that we can save the earth through capitalism and individualism. There's no evidence LW feels that way, to be fair; she's just exhausted that her biker husband isn't pitching in enough. I shame nobody in this situation except for Annie, and possibly Husband, depending on how he responds to a reasonable pitch from LW.)

[purlewe]

I agree with this. Annie didn't have any real help here.

[lethe1]

+1

[castiron]

Yours is much better advice.

I sympathize with LW. I spent a year without a car after divorcing my first husband; getting from work to daycare to home in the evening by bus took three hours. Biking would've cut it down to an hour and a half, but would've required going on roads with 40 mph speed limits and no bike lanes. Once I had a car, I could leave work, get the kid, and get home in 30 minutes. I was living a more environmentally friendly life without the car, but it was also a more stressful life, and I had no time for anything beyond the most basic household necessities.

I'm curious, though -- if Husband is really serious about the environment, has he gotten a vasectomy yet? On most sites I've seen where you can estimate your environmental footprint, having kids is the big footprint increaser.

[lethe1]

Yes, that was my first reaction: if Hubby was really concerned about the environment, he shouldn't have created that baby.

[lemonsharks]

• You can divide the household responsibilities, and he can decide how to get his done.*

I suspect that LW needs her husband at home for parenting duties during times when he is absent due to his commute. For example, cranky/overly energetic early evening little kid time or wake up the kids and get them ready for the day time.

I can also see “husband is awake until 3AM doing chores” leading to husband performing poorly at work and experiencing the consequences of that, which serves no one.

TBQH i think his concern for reducing his carbon footprint is a smokescreen for wanting to do less than his fair share of the homemaking.

I think it’s more than fair for LW to draw a line in the sand here: either figure out how to convince his boss to allow him to work from home 4 or 5 days a week; find a new job with a 20 minute or less commute by transit; or drive to work.

[cereta]

Yeah, I was going to say, childcare is not really a "chore" that you can make up for by staying up late, unless you have a colicky infant. Because of our relative job schedules, I spent much more time at home with our kid when she was tiny, and NGL, there were times when I resented his seeming determination to do anything other than hold the baby. (Note: things vastly improved when she got a little older and childcare didn't involve just holding her.)

I applaud the husband's idealism, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that he prioritize time with family until the child is old enough not to need constant supervision.

[lemonsharks]

Edit: wrong thread

Hubs gets to make moral choices but not at the expense of doing an equitable amount of parenting.