I hate making doctor/dentist appointments for Paul. Not only do I hate using the phone and hate trying to figure out appointment times that work (I don’t think quickly, so I’m constantly making appointments that interfere with things that aren’t on the calendar, such as the time I have to meet the school bus or the time I have to do kindergarten drop-off), I also hate the bossy/mothering feeling it gives me when I call. But if I don’t make the appointments, he will not go, and I want him to go, so it’s a matter of working with reality as it is: there’s no sense saying he “should” make his own appointments or that I “shouldn’t” have to, when he won’t and I do.
What I’m wondering is if I’m in the majority or the minority—if most adults make their own appointments, or if most households have one person who makes all the appointments. So I’m wondering if you make appointments for the other adult in your household or if the other adult in your household makes appointments for you or if you each make your own, and also I’m wondering whether the adults involved are male or female.
Let’s also have a poll, just for the one/both question.
[yop_poll id=”3″]
My husband and I each make our own appointments. His schedule during the day can vary greatly so I would never know if he could make an appointment.
The crazy thing is that I make all the appointments for the kids, even if he is the one taking them. It drives me nuts. Another annoying thing is sick visits for the kids. Let’s say he picks up a sick kid at daycare. He calls me and tells me what’s wrong and if we feel a visit to the doctor is warranted, I have to call the doctor. Inevitably the nurse will ask questions that I can’t answer because I haven’t seen the kid. It would be so much easier if the person that physically has the child called the doctor.
This sounds familiar. My kids are grown and out of the house now, but I went through that a lot.
We each make our own appointments, so that’s what I put on the survey. However, Adam only makes them when he REALLY needs them–he sees the eye doctor only when he’s completely out of contacts and has been wearing the last pair for way too long, he hasn’t been to the dentist in years. So, like you, I had to decide what I cared about more and decided that I keep track of all the kids’ appointments too, so this was just going to have to be his responsibility. Same reality, different choice.
This is our situation exactly. I worry enough about other things for my husband that I can’t do it with appointments also…
Same here. We’re both a bit lackadaisical about health-related appointments, though. (I doubt he’d be into it, but I’d be very willing to both set up his appointments and go to ones that he set up for me. I just loathe doing it for myself…)
We do a bit more trading off when it comes to bigger things (plane tickets, hotels), but that involves more research rather than just straight-up planning, so it’s a different category, to me.
I’m in this boat too. I said we do our own, but he hasn’t gone to the dentist in years, despite encouragement from me to go to mine, who I love. He does do some checkups, and definitely schedules his own haircuts regularly.
I do ALL the scheduling for house stuff like our cleaning service and petsitters, and pretty much all the travel plans too, which makes me feel like I will end up being the go-to for kids’ appointments. Maybe this thread is impetus for me to try to discuss this before I go and get myself knocked up. ;)
I’m all in your business here, and totally giving unsolicited assvice, but you may want to consider having a conversation about it. For real, it is one of the top 3 things we are likely to fight about – me feeling overwhelmed that I have to do it ALL IT’S NOT FAIR OMG I’M GOING TO RUN AWAY. Maybe some expectation management would help you not fall into the same pit!
We (both women) make our own appointments. It would never occur to me to make an appointment for her (for one thing I have no idea what meetings etc are on her work calendar), and I don’t think she’d ever do it for me, even though we both should go to the doctor more often.
I ticked off the “We all make our own appointments” selection – and it’s true…to a point. Although Man-Child is technically an adult, I still make all his appointments. As for my husband, he generally makes his own as he knows his daily schedule better than I do. Now, with that being said, other than his dental appointments and the visits to the doctor regarding his blood pressure, I have to nag the ever living life out of him to make any other appointments – such as the eye doctor, etc.
We make our own, but my husband only makes his after countless “gentle reminders” from me.
My husband refuses most appointments, and cancels often so I would never make an appt for him. He does manage to find the time for a haircut every 2 weeks. Priorities!
My husband makes his own apts. we also got married when he was 38 and I wonder if there is any link to years single/not living with someone.
My boyfriend is 33, been living on his own for a decade, and just said he’d only go to the doctor if I make the appointment…
I hadn’t really thought about it, but I have scheduled all of my husband’s hair appointments for our whole marriage. And he mostly avoids the doctor and dentist like the plague, so I stay clear of those.
We each make our own medical/personal care appointments (doctor, haircut, etc) … I do take his car in to be serviced when it needs it.
When someone says a spouse “should” be like something, I am always reminded of the Donald Rumsfeld quote:
“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have…”
We make our own appointments but I generally choose, or coordinate the choice of, the doctor or dentist for everyone in the family. I do this because I carry the benefits so I know our plan, I deal with the kids (now technically adults but still on our plan) who need reminding/information about who/what/when/how and I pay the bills, so I’m in touch with billing accuracy and the providers’ general cooperation related to billing issues.
In the past 5 years, we’ve switched dentists (poor care, then “in network” preference) and optometrists (TERRIBLE service overall and billing issues) so I chose the new providers and told hubby who to call.
Goodness, I hadn’t really realized what a clusterf*** our situation is until this question made me ponder it.
Two pieces of info to know, 1) My husband commutes to a job a little over an hour away and 2) we moved to our current town a few years ago. Current town is 40 minutes away from old town, which is halfway between where we live now and where my husband works.
Ok, I made all appointments for myself and our two kids, as well as research any new doctors we might need (a full set when we moved, plus any specialty doctors) and to see if they are in our insurance plan. I also take care of all insurance related questions, follow-ups, etc. I also make eye appointments for both of us, because since you only need to go once a year we schedule them one right after another and trade the kids off. We used to do this for the dentist too, however, the dentist I found in our new town was totally amazing, then totally sucked in short order. I have not yet found a new dentist for us in our new town and my husband needed a dentist, so now he schedules his appointments with our dentist in old town. Also, my husband has a chronic condition that requires a specialty doctor. Since his work is pretty much just meetings all the time, he found a doctor in the town he works in so he can manage appointments with his work schedule and get to that doc fairly easily. My husband also makes all of his hair appointments.
Even though one of our “arrangements” when we got married was that I would manage all laundry duties if he would manage all car duties, that does not hold all of the time. We both schedule car appointments pell-mell for our two vehicles. Sometimes he calls me and asks me to schedule, sometimes I realize it is needed on my own and sometimes he realizes and schedules. Blergh.
I used to make all the appointments but then I got irritated that he would cancel them, or the appointment people would call ME with reminders, so I quit and now he has to do his own planning. The worst is when I need his help (childcare) to get my own appointments taken care of. My schedule is flexible, so I can book for almost any time, but my husband’s is impossible and also not known to me (meetings/travel days are on his work calendar), so I wind up having to call back and rearrange things.
I make my appointments and the kids’ appointments. My husband makes his own appointments, which also means he doesn’t actually go to the doctor or dentist unless there is a problem. I gave up on trying to force him there.
I make all my husband’s appointments because like Paul, he won’t have appointments if I don’t. It does bug me but I’d rather make them then have him never go. He does legitimately have a much busier workday than I do and can only make personal calls on lunch. I can pretty much use my cell phone any time I want. Luckily I’m good at scheduling (it’s actually part of my job) so it’s not too big of a hassle.
THAN have him never go. Dammit. THAN.
I feel like my poll answer is a little misleading. Yes, we “make” our own dentist appointments, mostly because our receptionist schedules the next one as you leave the office. But he will probably forget his and miss it unless I spy the little card lying on the counter, put the appointment in my calendar, and remind him to go the day before. He does make his own doctor appointments (which are rare) and goes to a walk-in haircut place on his lunch hour so appointments there. I do all the appointments for myself and the kids.
My husband makes all our appointments — when I went deaf in 2008, it obviously became his job. I have cochlear implants now but I still don’t hear well enough on the phone to be comfortable with it, so he just continued doing all the phone stuff. (He is also hearing impaired so I give him major props for using the very hated telephone — we do have one that captions our conversations, so that helps…and I can use it if I absolutely have to.)
I wish there was a third poll option that would indicate a split situation. DH would rather explain his complicated schedule to me and have as many as three calls from me to arrange his medical appts, but when they set the follow-up at the appt, he takes charge of that one. He handles the “lower” pressure appts, like haircuts.
Man, shocked to see that I guess I’m in the minority. If I don’t make Hubby’s appointments he won’t make any. On the list this week is his first colonoscopy I have to schedule for him, after I made a physical appointment for him a month ago because he hadn’t been to a doctor in 12 years! See, if I don’t do it he won’t go! I try nagging him to call for himself, but then I still have to give him the appointment phone number & his medical record number… it really just is easier this way. Then I only have to nag/remind him to go!
I have appointment-making duty for both me and my husband–no kids yet. The main reason is he HATES talking on the phone, and I don’t mind it at all. If appointments can be made online he does it himself. One exception to the rule is car appointments. For whatever reason we do car stuff completely separate–he never deals with my car stuff and I never deal with his. I get jealous of couples where one person gets the oil changed and puts gas in the car for the other, haha. But like Carla says, you go to war with the army you have :D
We each make our own appointments, but I have been known to nag from time to time, if I think he needs to see his doctor and he isn’t as convinced.
My husband is sooo useless that he can’t even tell when his own hair (and beard) need a trim! He purposely gave me access to his outlook calendar so I can schedule things for him! He usually makes his own dental appts though, he gets the next one when he is there in the office. But the office phones ME to remind him, they dont bother phoning him.
I make the appointments for everybody. “Everybody” consists of myself, my husband (same reason as yours), the children and all animals living in our household. It’s just the way it is. Funny that I am the person who actually requires the fewest appointments. Meh.
i don’t see any responses here where a male/female couple has the man making appointments for the WOMEN. I’m a woman, and i can’t imagine making husband’s personal appointments for a number of reasons, but especially because I don’t know what his work schedule/meetings look like day-to-day. He’s in charge of his own schedule, and I am in charge of mine, and we work out the shared stuff, like childcare pick ups and appointments, together. Why are all these women managing their husband’s appointments, yet none of the responses here indicate the opposite? i’m curious…….
I suspect it falls into the same category as “Why do women tend to do more housework even when both spouses have full-time jobs?”
I think it’s also because in most relationships, women are the nurturers, taking care of the sick and the weak, particularly when it comes to health-related matters. ;)
If we ever needed a “car appointment,” my husband would be the one to handle that because he was a trained airplane mechanic (doesn’t do that anymore, though), and does almost all car-related things himself. If it’s something special that he can’t do, he has mechanic friends who will point him in the right direction regarding who to have do the work.
I make the occasional appointment, but generally I “make” my husband do the calling… HATE talking on the phone. I figure I’m the one being poked and prodded (prenatals) and ferrying the toddler to his checkups, so the least he can do is schedule it.
I make the appointments for everyone in our family. I’m the one that updates our family calendar and makes the arrangements for who will take who where, so it makes sense. I really don’t mind doing it and Dave doesn’t like to. I’d much prefer to take on that task than some of the others he does that I despise. The only thing I DO mind is when I make an appointment (and this really only happens with the dentist) and all the arrangements and then he chickens out and doesn’t go and he blames it on bad scheduling.
I make all the appointments for everyone. I keep the master calendar and know where everyone is supposed to be and when, and I have all the phone numbers. Even if husband has an issue, he has me make the appointment, mostly because he wants me to go with him, so it has to be scheduled when childcare, etc. can be arranged. Funny thing, though, he’s never been to a single appointment with me, ever. Not even the pregnancy ones. Not even the scary pregnant ones – 2 different kids, took a friend to one and my sister-in-law to the other. To be honest, he would have been useless at those and we both knew it – I’d end up comforting him.
I think my husband’s ex wife used to make appointments for him, as he has asked me to do this on occasion. I have reacted with WILD aggravation and put-out-ness, and then have failed to make then appointment within the requested time so he stopped asking. (I make my own appointments just fine, but I was single throughout my 20s and had to, so maybe this is learned behavior?)
I wonder what will change after we have this kid I’m cooking; my husband will be a stay at home dad and I wonder if him making “family” appointments a thing that comes with the territory? I doubt it (I know my schedule and my doctors, so I can’t imagine it would be easier for him to do it than me (I hear you nodding your head while clerk g at Paul, btw) but…who knows
My husband is flaky about a lot of things, but he is really diligent about scheduling and going to his yearly physical and dentist appointments. He actually nags me about going to get yearly blood done! He became this way when his father passed away from a cancer that he might have lived through if he had gone to the doctor more. I guess fearing the reaper has been a good motivator. I would never want him to make my appointments because he doesn’t always know my schedule.
My husband would prefer I make all the appointments, because apparently it is too difficult for him to do himself. Like you, I dislike feeling like his mother making the appointment for him, but more often than not, if I don’t make the appointment, it doesn’t get done. Also more often than not, when I make the appointment, I am inevitably told he cannot make the appointment because of his work schedule. Which necessitates me calling to cancel/reschedule and thus makes me very crabby. I wish he’d just make his own damn appointments is what I’m saying.
We each make our own. But a big big part of that is because my husband’s work schedule is variable and trying to match up his availability with the available appointments requires too much back and forth from me to him to the doctor/dentist. If it were simpler I would almost certainly be the sole person responsible.
I said I make all the appointments, but that’s not really true. I definitely make my own appointments and the kids’ appointments, but it makes sense for me to make the kids’ appointments since I have to take them. And now as I type this comment, I think I really should have selected “we make our own appointments,” because I think that is mostly true. I tend to make the dentist appointments, but otherwise, I think he does his own thing. Car appointments almost always involve coordinating schedules anyway, so we have to do those jointly, but I haven’t made him a doctor’s appointment in a long time. So my vote was a lie, is what I’m saying.
We both generally make our own appointments, but a few times my husband has made appointments for me. Mostly that’s happened when I’m sick and he is going to drive me to the doctor, so it is affecting his schedule as well.
We see the same dentist, so sometimes I make our future appointments for both of us but otherwise, he makes his appointments and I make mine. I wouldn’t know about his schedule enough to do it. But I do harp on him to, like, see the dermatologist once a year or whatever. I think I’m in harping mode because of all the kids so maybe that’s it.
This is tough. We make our own appointments but there are certain things I want my husband to do (go to a dermatologist for scary looking mole, say), that he will not do if I don’t make the appointment. I won’t make the appointment because of the mothering feelings it brings up within me (and thus leads to a fight). Lose-lose.
I end up making 95% of my husband’s appointments, simply because I care about his health more than he does. Its annoying, and weird, and feels motherly, and I don’t like doing it, but I don’t like the alternative either.
We are currently in a stalemate where neither of us has made a dentist appointment and it is not looking like it will happen any time soon. I can wait until he remembers. (The whole family goes to the same practice, and it makes the most sense for us to all go together.)
I clicked on the “we each make our own” option, but it’s not quite true. My husband makes his own follow up appointments when the receptionist prompts him, or he makes his own if I bug him about it. It has to be something that’s actively bothering him (like a broken tooth) for him to just call unprompted…he would never make routine, preventative care appointments himself, I don’t think. And I do make some appointments, like haircuts, for him. And I definitely make our daughter’s appointments.
I voted we each make our own appointments, but truthfully I make dentist appointments for everyone – including him – because it’s easier to do it all at one time and I can make them after work hours so I know his schedule is clear. For any other appointments he needs he makes them himself, after I’ve reminded him repeatedly.
I just encountered this recently! The hubbin and I make dentist appointments on the same day, pretty much always. At the last appointment, they asked me if I wanted to schedule his next one as I was scheduling my own. I thought, Sure . . . then, nah. I don’t think he’d have minded. I just felt a little weird about it. We’ve always done our own. Then I came home and told him, and he scheduled his next one exactly when I would have.
I have totally scheduled appointments for my brother in the past, though, and wish I still could, but he has moved just out of my reach. Now he’ll never go to a dentist. Or a doctor. Unless there is some kind of TRAUMA. SIGH.
I wanted to add that I make appointments for myself of course, all the kids and the pets. He’s just in charge of himself.
Interesting topic. I make all my own apointments and the majority of the kids’ appointments. I make some of my husband’s appointments. It usually depends on the situation- Mike works in retail so it isn’t always easy for him to take time during the day to make the phone call. As long as I have his schedule in front of me, I have no problem making the call. He definitely does more of this on his own now. If he seems to be procrastinating about making an appointment (and actually, he has a follow up with his primary doc that he has NOT yet scheduled), then I will jump in and take care of it if it is something critical. Looks like I will be making a phone call today–LOL!
We basically make our own appointments, but I make all the children’s appointments, even though we tend to split “who takes them” duties. However, I still get way too many requests for me to make appointments FOR him, and then pouting when I suggest that’s impractical because I don’t have access to his work schedule, and in fact am neither his secretary nor his mother, and somehow he lived FORTY YEARS without me there to handle these details for him, and SRSLY, how could I even begin to schedule this on your behalf, and…I seem to have gotten off track somehow.
I make my own appointments and all child appointments, and I am also the one who takes the children to appointments, which used to annoy me because there were a LOT of those for Simone, but then one of the few times I sent Scott he came back from the appointment having retained exactly NONE of the information the doctor had given him/any memory of what transpired in the appointment at all, really. Also I can rattle off the medical history, he very much cannot. He makes his own appointments, but usually only with quite a lot of nagging and hounding from me. It honestly had not occurred to me that I might be allowed to make appointments for him, since he is an adult, otherwise I probably would have done so at one time or another just to get him to go…
THIS. I schedule for myself and our kid. I always take the child too, since my husband is pretty much useless at those appointments. He asks none of the questions we’ve agreed to ask, and then retains nothing about what WAS discussed anyway. I still tease him about asking if our child could have a pillow yet, but forgetting to ask about this scary lymph-node-type thing that we had concerns about.
I make all the appointments. And it is really annoying because Matt tells me something like “can you make me a doctor’s appointment for Friday?” And then I call the doctor and they say “we don’t have Friday, how about Tuesday?” Yet I have no idea if he can do Tuesday because I AM NOT HIM. So I take the Tuesday appointment and usually he can do it, but about twenty percent of the time, I have to call back and change it again. Which could all be avoided if he just made his own appointments with his own work schedule in front of him, but you know, it isn’t annoying FOR HIM so he has no motivation to change. And same deal as you, ideally, no, I wouldn’t make his appointments, but the real world doesn’t always work on those ideals. If I didn’t do it, then he wouldn’t and also, we’d have more arguments.
I do all the phone calls for all things people and house and vehicle related. It’s frustrating. The only exception is the dentist – Leo deals with his own dentist appointments. I’d almost prefer that he let me do it, because he never tells me about it and he always makes the appointment for a ridiculous time in the morning, well before he and I would need to be on campus. It disrupts our whole morning. At least if I made the appointment I’d know when we needed to be in early, rather than the morning of, when he finally tells me after I’ve gotten the kids and me out of bed at our regular time. Growl.
The other issue is that someone it’s always MY job to take the kids to their doctor & dentist appointments. Leo’s job is more flexible than mine, yet somehow I get the task of doing that. Growl again.
Since I’m the one who takes off for the kids’ appointments, I make those, but I draw the line at making my husband’s appointments. I just don’t know his schedule well enough to say what will be most convenient. If he forgets and it doesn’t get done, that’s on him. I’ve already got two kids to worry about. I don’t need to mother a man who will turn around and insist it’s okay for him to go all day only eating a pop tart and handful of crackers topped with cheese from a can because he’s “a grown man who can take care of himself.”
I pretty much make all of the appointments for both of us and the kids. I used to do the dogs too, but have turned that over to him to balance out the appointment making! We have our insurance through my work and he tends to use that as an excuse – that I know more about our insurance and where we can go. Like I receive some sort of special insurance training at work or something? In reality all the info is on the card and I just call and say “I have blah blah insurance. Do you take that?” Obviously this is too much for him.
I also don’t send him to kid related doctor appointments because he retains little info or it comes out over the course of a few days, which is not helpful if we were supposed to be icing something or elevating something or giving a certain over the counter medication.
This winter he traveled to my MILs with our youngest who has ear tubes. He got a crazy bad ear infection while there (blood and pus pouring out of his ear). Usually for kids with tubes, you just call the ENT and they call in a prescription for ear drops. My husband waited 2 days until he was on his way home to mention it to me, which???? It didn’t occur to him that I could have taken care of it from afar and he could have picked up ear drops from a pharmacy close by.
Thankfully he is a wonderful dad in so many other ways! I blame all of the above on the fact he grew up in a family where you went to the doctor if you needed stiches or had a broken bone.
I used to make all of the appointments for myself and the kids and husband would make his own only after nagging. Then I just got tired and irritated about the whole situation since we both work FT and it’s no easier for me to take the kids to appointments than it is for him. So now I tell my husband he needs to make X child’s appointment for Z thing when it’s his turn. I don’t nag him about going to the doctor anymore either. So, of course he hardly ever goes. I often remind myself of what a character in The Wire said “you want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.” So often marriage and family seems to be like that ;-)
Fascinating, as usual.
Now I’m feeling a little guilty – a few weeks ago, I got a call on my cell phone from our (shared) dental office, reminding of hubby’s cleaning appointment. (His previous dentist retired, so husband now goes to mine.) I was staggered and perhaps a little short with the woman, thinking “Why on EARTH would you call me about another adult’s appointment?” Now I see why. :)
We make our own appointments for individual needs–haircuts, doctors, family gatherings, etc. But I make the appointments for anything house-related. I think it’s because I owned the house and had to do it all myself before he moved in.
I would never have guessed that you make his appointments, Swistle, with your antipathy for the phone! I hope you get big-time points for that. I don’t make my husband’s appointments because I turn into a gibbering idiot half the time when I’m on the phone with an officey-type person. Sometimes I’ve even gotten him to call and order food for me when I’m at home and he’s at work because I’m such a wimp about it. But I do make the kids and my appointments though, so I’m not totally hopeless.
I make the bulk of our appointments. Kevin works six days a week, ten hours a day and works with giant equipment so it doesn’t seem fair to have him do it when I work part-time at a desk job.
But we’re old school so there’s that.
My situation is slightly different. My husband is a stay at home dad/work from home parent and does take care of his own dentist/hair/other appointment making (with occasional nagging for chiropracters and such).The twist comes in that as the work out of the home parent, I put my work calender into a google calendar for him, so that he can schedule around my work meetings if we need me to be available for child care. It was a bit of a pain to set up the calendar initially, but not bad to maintain now. I also make the appointments for anything else for any of the other living things in the house (kids and pets) and generally need to be available to take them to those as well.
We make our own, but I generally have to remind my husband. He had me call the doctor once and they couldn’t give me any information for privacy reasons anyways, so I haven’t made any calls at all since then.
We make our own with the exception of eye dr appointments because he needs specific times that full up fast and if I make the appointment for him he gets the time he needs, if he does it, he gets the time he needs but 2months from when he needs it.
We each make our own, but I make appointments for the kids, even if my husband will be taking the child to the appointment. That is okay with me, because he does things I don’t do at all, like call contractors for bids and figure out who would be best to do the work.
I can’t really answer your survey – my partner and I (both female) each hate to make particular kinds of appointments, so we handle the kinds we don’t hate, for both of us.
For example, I can’t stand making medical appointments, so she makes those for both of us. However, she hates making appointments for hair cuts, so I do those (the receptionist at our hair salon is exceptionally efficient – I know exactly what he’s going to ask, every time, and in what order. It’s brilliant). I also hate making restaurant reservations, so I either make them online via Open Table, or she calls and makes them over the phone.
Generally we skew towards her making appointments, since I hate the phone, but I make up for my lack of usefulness when her mother calls and leaves passive-aggressive voicemails – my job then is to summarize what she needs to know while deftly removing the passive-aggressive bits that would just make us both angry. :)
I think you guys win. :)
I couldn’t bring myself to vote, because I really needed an option for “I do most of it, but he gets off his ass once in a while”, but now I see that a lot of people probably needed that option but voted anyway. My husband and I both hate the phone, and he has to do a lot of it for work, and I’m still at home, so I wouldn’t say I don’t mind, because it spikes my anxiety, but I also don’t think it’s monstrously unfair. He hasn’t been to the dentist in years, even though I keep telling him he has to go, but he did start making appointments for a yearly physical after his father had a heart attack, and he made the appointment for his own vasectomy. I do everything for the kids.
Right now the only appointments that my husband makes are for the dentist. He doesn’t go to the doctor. He has in the past for things like checking a mole or extreme stomach pain, but that was years ago and he doesn’t go for regular check ups. I used to make his dentist appointments for him back a few years ago because he hadn’t gone in 4 years and was very scared they were going to say he needed $10,000 in dental work or something and so I made the first appointment and maybe the next few after that and then he took over. He doesn’t make hair appts, he just shows up on a random Saturday at the barber without an appointment and the guy cuts his hair. I make ALL other appointments including stuff for the kids, boiler service, spraying the foundation for ants, ordering more oil, car repairs/oil changes, vet appts, and ordering take out. My husband very much hates using the phone just like you Swistle and I like the phone. I also like having control and knowing everything that is happening and when and knowing it’s done. We just sold our house and are moving to a new house in 2 weeks and I literally had a phone call to-do list every day for the last 3 months. It was a bit stressful, but I liked knowing what was done and what still needed to be done and not having to worry that someone else forgot to make a call.
My husband makes his. I make mine. I make our kid’s. I used to allow DH to take DS to his appointments (DH is a SAHD, I am a WOHM, but then he said OK to dental x-rays when DS was just 5 (I had not thought to prep him) and I was not OK with that, so … I go to ALL DS’s appointments. Also he is in general MUCH more clueless about all things DS than I am (e.g. had not noted a large mole on the kid’s hip that I meant to ask about LAST YEAR, forgot, and then finally got to asking about at THIS YEAR’S physical after over a year had elapsed).
I prep DH for his own appointments, too, if I think it is necessary (i.e. if I think of something he should ask about). This year that included several vaccines at his physical, and it also includes more strategy re: timing of elective appointments and paying of bills (to maximize insurance benefits and tax deductibility) than DH would ever manage independently. But I don’t go along, unless I’m needed for some reason, and he doesn’t come to mine, either.
I am looking forward to reading the other comments, but thought I would answer for us first.
It used to be that I would make appointments for the whole family, including my husband. I hated it. It just seemed inefficient to call, make a “tentative” appointment, check with him, and then call back to confirm when he could make one call and be done with it. Plus, I’m a bit phone-phobic and procrastinate about making calls anyway.
I love that the dentist’s staff offers to make an appointment on the spot, as soon as I am done with the last appointment. Sure, it’s 6 months in advance, so I don’t know what other things might be going on to interfere, but most of the time it works. They text me a reminder a few days ahead of time (yay! no phone calls!).
Somehow, I’m not sure when or even why, my husband now is able to make his own appointments. Maybe it’s because he’s unemployed, so he feels it’s his duty to do all those extra things, freeing me up to “focus on work and keep my job.”
Even though he is making his own doctor, dentist, and eye appointments, he still defers to me for all things insurance-related. Annoying, because there are so many details and stipulations, I don’t remember them all (besides, they keep changing), but I guess he sees it as our long-standing division of labor. Given that he’s gradually taken over a lot of other household responsibilities (I haven’t washed a dish or vacuumed in years, and he does most of the cooking these days, deferring to me for advice and direction because reading a recipe is too hard, apparently), I guess I can pony up and handle the insurance part.
I’ve noticed how many of you also have husbands that would never go to the doctor, except for extreme emergencies, and my husband is like that too, EXCEPT that he has a couple conditions for which he needs to take prescriptions, and it is customary for prescriptions to only be valid for a year, after which you have to see the doctor again before you can get a new Rx for something you’ve been taking for years. So he begrudgingly goes, but thinks that the doctor should be able to simply extend the Rx because “nothing has changed.” Husband doesn’t “get” that things can and DO change, but aren’t always visible, that an annual physical is a good idea and a way to stay on top of things (*rolleyes*).
Another thing he does that’s slightly off-topic, is not take his prescriptions on schedule, instead trying to “get by” by taking them less often. So he stretches a year’s worth of meds to ~15 months. I think his “logic” is saving money, but in the long run it isn’t that smart because the amount he’s saving is a pittance compared to what it could cost him if the conditions he has aren’t kept under control. We’re frugal enough in the other things we do, that we can well afford to take prescriptions according to schedule. I refuse to be a nagger, but on the rare occasion when I’ve asked if he’s taken something if he hasn’t his excuse usually is that he needs to take in after food and he hasn’t eaten yet. This is a guy who “can’t eat” when he’s upset and has been known to go over 24 hours without eating. Aaaaaargh!
I make my own appointments and all of the kids’, husband takes care of himself. He is a bit of a hypochondriac at times, so he is good about going to the dr when he needs to. We usually split up taking the kids to various appointments (we have two in braces, the appointments are constant), esp since I have a nonflexible work schedule and one strict hour for lunch, where he can usually work around appt times. However, I am the Calendar Master, so knowing who needs to go when has always been my responsibility.
And I want to add (even though you didn’t ask) that when he does take the kids to various appointments I am constantly anxious about the lack of information that returns with him. Or I’ll ask him to find out some answers to my Important Questions, and he doesn’t bring them up. Or he’ll come home and say, “that doctor wasn’t any good”. ELABORATE PLEASE. Or the time I told him he would have to pay x amount of dollars, and the receptionist asked him for more than x, and he argued with her, “But my wife said I would pay x!” Um, honey, I have no authority in that office, just pay what she says.
In the end, I make my own appointments and Kevin makes his. BUT. With certain dreaded or even just much-procrastinated appointments, like the dentist after a too long interval. Then, we mostly THREATEN to make the appointments for one another, and that plus the shame of our irresponsibility is usually sufficient motivation. But sometimes not. Sometimes, my FRIENDS have gotten fed up with my nonsense and called for me. My shame is epic.