This paper reports on some of the findings from the project “Postmodern Lives? Work, Family and Gender in ‘the New Economy’”. The project draws on a qualitative material consisting of interviews with Swedish heterosexual couples and highlights how these women and men negotiate and justify their distribution of household work and child care responsibilities in relation to paid work responsibilities. The paper focuses the household as an arena of potential conflict and explores intra-household power relations and the impact of these power relations on the negotiations over household work that the couples engage in. The paid employment for at least one person in each couple is characterized by flexible working conditions and working hours. The paper explores specifically the impact of this work flexibility on the possibilities to balance work and family. The main concern of the paper are the different lines of argumentation concerning love and respect in relationships and how the informants operate within discourses of ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘mother’, ‘father’ and ‘gender equality’. The paper pay’s special attention to if and how the informants use gender equality as an argument in their negotiations and sheds light on the impact of individualization on how people organize their daily life.