The thing I noticed is how completely these two families (who are totally unrelated to each other), help each other out. Both families have mini-vans and they all seem to take turns getting all of the children to various sports activities, appointments, school, and church. They fix meals and eat together at each other’s houses.

It is like they are two families blended into one. And the stay-at-home mom does not seem to be the one burdened with all the childcare and driving just because she doesn’t “work”. I know both of these families very well and I am in awe of the help they give each other. Maybe this also helps take some of the burdens off and makes life easier overall for these families. I do wonder though, how chores and such are broken down within the two family’s homes. Both dads are extremely involved with the children and their activities so I hope they also have an equal division of responsibilities in the homes.

Here’s how the same-sex family responses break down:
13 said “I think it’s pretty fair”
3 said “I don’t think it’s fair, but I’m willing to live with it”
1 said “Totally unfair. It drives me crazy!” (In that case, it was a 2-mom family where one of the moms traveled a LOT for work.)

I just came across this from a new book called “The War On Moms” by Sharon Lerner (p. 50) which answers your question better than my survey did:

“Perhaps not surprisingly, the mounting data does show that same-sex couples tend to share housework and child care more fairly than heterosexual ones do. No doubt this is partly due to the fact that same-sex couple don’t have the same deeply grooved husband-and-wife patterns to fall into. Lesbians with children have a better record of dividing both domestic and earning responsibilities. And both lesbians and gay men are less likely to wind up economically dependent on a partner.”