Fair Play

This book assumes all families look the same - I think there are three sentences in the entire book acknowledging not all adults have children (but these are great habits to get in place before the babies come) and one sentence acknowledging that some women might have female partners or live with roommates or by themselves instead of with a husband. I don't remember seeing any sentences acknowledging the existence of single moms, divorced moms, couples who don't combine their finances, etc. This book might be helpful to the target audience, but it definitely won't work for everyone who “has too much to do” and the heteronormativity made this an exhausting read.

I really think that if the filler had been removed, and that this should've been included with the card set. Most of it is explaining how the game actually works, and giving detailed descriptions on the cards, when I ended up ordering the cards after reading this book, I assumed the cards would have these descriptions on it. They do not. To be totally honest look up “Fair Play free Notion template” and that template has everything you need to get started. You don't really need to read this book at all unless you prefer a book format to understand how to fully play the game.

I also love the overall idea of this, but I really disagree with the authors tone, and the way that she goes about a lot of the method. This sounds like something that would be really important for a couple on the brink of divorce to hear, but if you're in a healthy, loving marriage, that shouldn't be that difficult or that hard to break up these tasks.

One of my biggest complaints is the fact that she will not budge on asking for help with the execution of tasks. She recommends pre-planning and having the other person completely take over the card or asking for assistance from people other than your spouse. First of all, this is very presumptuous to assume that you would have help outside of your marriage, your spouse is your partner, and they should be the first person to ask for help not the last. Second of all, there are times where the execution of a task does not make sense for the person holding the card. For example, if my husband is in charge of auto, but he won't have time to get to the DMV because of his work hours he may be able to set up my appointment and do all the things for me and let me know when something is due but I'm gonna be the one that's going to the DMV. I shouldn't have to take over the 50 other subtasks that fall under auto in order to make that work.

Again, all of this in theory is a great idea, but it just isn't realistic in normal, everyday life. I think it's best to take the ideas from this book and the card set and apply them in a way that makes sense for you and your family . If you feel the need for this much structure, I highly recommend marriage counseling over Fair play.