If you’re striving for one of those 50-50 marriages where parents share the responsibilities of child-rearing, it’s best not to focus on scorekeeping.

The New York Times’ Motherlode blog ran a post by Amy and Marc Vachon, authors of Equally Shared Parenting, who wrote that in marriages where the partners are committed to equal parenting, successful couples have “simply taken gender out of the way they work together – creating practical strategies to fairly share the load and the joys. They are both equally involved in caring for their home (overall), their kids (overall), and their careers (overall), and spend about the same amount of time doing so.”

But it’s important to note, the authors said, “Rather than twist their days into crazy knots of perfect equality, they make choices along the way that build logic into how they share the chores.” (February 2010)