Whomever said marriage was easy, was a liar. Whomever said marriage was easy after kids was a bigger liar. Fair Play follows three separate families and the challenges they face in sharing the responsibilities of being a family and division of household work to ensure a healthy balance between both members of the family. Sure, it sounds great in theory, but, anyone whose ever been in a relationship knows that division is never even, and it is normally the predominantly female member of the relationship that takes the fair share of responsibility.

The film asks the question about how to separate the archaic ideology that men have to be the breadwinner and have to be the ones working while woman have to stay home and take care of the domestic work. It is no longer the 1970s and women are more prominent in the work force, more driven, and it is time for the men to step up and share the work or shift their responsibilities so the woman can work and achieve their goals. It may not be stated out loud, but it is highly unlikely that a woman’s ‘goal’ is to be mother of the year, sure it is something to strive for, but it isn’t anyone’s ultimate desire in my opinion.

Fair Play starts off with one of our three subjects giving detail of what a typical day looks like for her. Driving the kids to school, balancing her job, shuffling a million things around the car while trying to take care of her kids pickups and get clients taken care of, all while being stabbed with a pen that was poorly placed. Then comes an unfortunate text message asking about blueberries and why they were not purchased by her husband. This sets off the imbalance that is discussed an examined throughout the documentary, why does ‘dad’ get to whip up a batch of pancakes and becomes the hero, but if mom does literally everything else but forgets to wash ones’ favourite shirt she’s now the villain. Fair Play explores this dynamic and the mental toll and emotional toll it takes upon the ‘mom’ of the family.

The documentary Fair Play examines these issues throughout three different story tellers to tell us what it is doing psychologically and emotionally to these women and why it has to stop. The duties have to be split 50/50 and fairly amongst both partners in the relationship. It does an excellent job of highlighting what often goes unnoticed and the toll it takes on the figurative rocks of a family unit, and opens audiences eyes to what they may have been previously blind to.

Fair Play is a crucial doc that explores the inequality that exists within relationships and begs for a change to happen in the dynamic of love. There is so much that goes unsaid to the masses that this truly sheds a light on that will give anyone in a relationship a new perspective on and hopefully a new outlook.