My family has always been very egalitarian. Everyone pitches in from cooking, to setting, to cleaning. My husband's family is very Midwestern and the men in the house (historically) didn't do much while my MIL ran around doing everything.

My husband has definitely come around over the years to seeing how he, his brother, and his dad left his mom to do all the cooking and cleaning and is very proactive in doing things/asking how he can help but it's still a work in progress with my inlaws. I've slowly weaseled my way into giving people jobs.

Today, we hosted and I made most of the food. But we prepped most things yesterday and my husband either helped prep food or cleaned around the house. Today, we made homemade churned butter (cuz we're bougie) and I assigned all of us to help shaking the cream to make the butter. They also took my infant daughter so I got some alone time in the kitchen which was AMAZING.

Then after dinner, my husband and MIL were busy cleaning up dishes and I pointed out to my grandparents inlaw and FIL that we didn't want the cats to get into the food in the dining room. They all excitedly jumped at the chance to help move the food and dishes to the kitchen.

Sometimes, it's not malicious but when people are raised in a patriarchal society, women are raised to see and quickly fix a need to be addressed and men are taught that there needs to specific (preferably 'manly') problem to solve before jumping into action. If no problem is brought up, they are blind to the issue. As soon as a problem was brought up though (cats in the food) they were more than happy to jump in and fix it.

Not to discount AT ALL the reality that the disparity in labor is fucked up. Just that we are all often blind to how we are raised in a patriarchal society and sometimes the best way to fix it is to simply pull back the curtain on what isn't being done.