When it comes to household chores and parenting duties, men and women are judged by entirely different standards. It happens in Hollywood and in happens to everyone else too: nobody bats an eyelid when women manage to get dinner on the table, the washing on the line, the dishes scrubbed and the kids picked up from school.

Men, on the other hand, are often showered with praise when they prove themselves to be enlightened and “hands-on” individuals – with a red carpet and 12-piece band on standby whenever they so much as pick up a dishtowel.

While, obviously, not all relationships are like that, it’s a pervasive idea that’s demeaning to both sexes in this day and age, setting an unfair expectation that women in heterosexual relationships manage home and hearth.

And, more importantly, it’s a toxic belief that can seep into even the healthiest of relationships, through common and everyday turns of phrase.

Nailing the issue perfectly, Celeste Erlach – who is the primary caretaker of her children – has penned a letter to her husband explaining why she cannot “do it all and make it look effortless”.

The letter – which begins with the phrase, “Dear Husband, I. Need. More. Help” – was posted to the Breastfeeding Mama Talk’s Facebook earlier this month. And, in it, Erlach describes what she needs from her husband during this busy time of no sleep and crying babies.

“Last night was hard for you,” writes Erlach. “I asked you to watch the baby so I could go to bed early. The baby was crying. Wailing, really. I could hear him from upstairs and my stomach knotted from the sound, wondering if I should come down there and relieve you or just shut the door so I could get some desperately needed sleep. I chose the latter.

“You came into the room 20 minutes later, with the baby still frantically crying. You placed the baby in the bassinet and gently pushed the bassinet just a few inches closer to my side of the bed, a clear gesture that you were done watching him.

“I wanted to scream at you. I wanted to launch an epic fight that very moment. I had been watching the baby and the toddler all damn day. I was going to be waking up with the baby to feed him all damn night. The least you could do is hold him for a couple of hours in the evening to I can attempt to sleep.

“Just a few hours of precious sleep. Is that too much to ask?”

Why this woman’s powerful open letter to her husband has gone viral