Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Household Division of Labor: Making the invisible work fair, if not equal

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Household Division of Labor: Making the invisible work fair, if not equal · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:02
Speaker 1: This is parent data. I'm Emily Oster.
0:05
Speaker 2: In your household, whose job is kid's doctor's appointments? In
0:13
Speaker 2: some ways, that sounds like a really simple question, and
0:17
Speaker 2: probably the first thing that comes to your mind is, well,
0:19
Speaker 2: who takes the kid to the doctor. But actually, doctor's
0:24
Speaker 2: appointments is not just the job of taking the kid
0:26
Speaker 2: to the doctor. It's the job of remembering when the
0:30
Speaker 2: kid has to go to the doctor. It's the job
0:32
Speaker 2: of calling the doctor and making the appointment for the kid.
0:34
Speaker 2: It's the job of making sure that the school knows
0:36
Speaker 2: that they'll be out of school for that time while
0:39
Speaker 2: you take them to the doctor. The last mile there,
0:42
Speaker 2: the driving, the sitting in the office. That's only a
0:45
Speaker 2: little part of the job, but it's the visible part
0:48
Speaker 2: of the job.
0:49
Speaker 1: The rest of that it's all invisible.
0:53
Speaker 2: And when we talk about household work, this idea of
0:56
Speaker 2: invisible work, it comes up for a lot of families,
0:59
Speaker 2: and in the ALA a.
1:00
Speaker 1: Lot of cases it seems like the.
1:03
Speaker 2: Woman in the family, particularly in heterosexual couples, is doing
1:08
Speaker 2: most of that invisible work. This is one of the
1:12
Speaker 2: most common sources of resentment, unhappiness, anger in parents that
1:18
Speaker 2: I talk to.
1:20
Speaker 1: Once we have kids.
1:21
Speaker 2: There's a lot more work visible and invisible, and when
1:24
Speaker 2: one person is doing the lion's share of that work
1:28
Speaker 2: and doesn't always feel acknowledged for it, it can bubble up,
1:32
Speaker 2: they can linger, It can cause our marriages, our relationships
1:37
Speaker 2: to be less than they would be otherwise. Today on
1:43
Speaker 2: the podcast, I'm talking to Eve Rodsky, who has written
1:46
Speaker 2: a book, fair Play, which is all about this gender
1:50
Speaker 2: division of labor in the household and all about solutions,
1:54
Speaker 2: all about thinking about really, how can we get to
1:58
Speaker 2: a better place, a place where we are happier with
2:02
Speaker 2: the way that work is allocated inside our homes. And
2:06
Speaker 2: her insight is that we need to treat our homes
2:10
Speaker 2: more like businesses in insight, which I certainly appreciate, and
2:14
Speaker 2: what I've talked about in other contexts before, I think
2:17
Speaker 2: this kind of approach, focusing on systems, focusing on organization,
2:23
Speaker 2: focusing on being honest about who's really doing what and
2:27
Speaker 2: what we really want, that's kind of the key to
2:29
Speaker 2: fixing some of these problems. So I'm delighted to talk
2:32
Speaker 2: to Eve about this. And I think everyone, whether they're
2:36
Speaker 2: doing the invisible work or the visible work or all
2:38
Speaker 2: of the work, will get something out of this episode
2:43
Speaker 2: after the break, my conversation with Eve Rodsky.
2:52
Speaker 1: Eve Rodsky, thank you for joining me. I'm so delighted
2:56
Speaker 1: to have you here.
2:57
Speaker 3: I feel the same. I feel like I know you.
2:59
Speaker 3: It's parasocial relationship with someone you read their newsletter every
3:03
Speaker 3: week or you know what, hoever freaquency it is. I
3:06
Speaker 3: feel like we're best.
3:07
Speaker 2: Friends totally, and I love your book so much, so
3:10
Speaker 2: I feel like we're I mean, I also feel like
3:12
Speaker 2: I know you.
3:13
Speaker 1: There's some stories in your book that I.
3:15
Speaker 3: Think about a lot.
3:18
Speaker 2: I would love to just have you start by introducing
3:20
Speaker 2: yourself for the people you don't have a parasocial with.
3:26
Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Eve Rodsky. I'm an author of
3:31
Speaker 3: a book called fair Play and another one that was
3:34
Speaker 3: a follow up called Find Your Unicorn Space. I will
3:37
Speaker 3: say I did not set out to be an expert
3:39
Speaker 3: on the gendered division of labor. That was not Emily.
3:43
Speaker 3: What was on my third grade what do you want
3:44
Speaker 3: to be when you grew up? Board? I think it
3:46
Speaker 3: was like veterinarian or something, or maybe a chef. Yes, yeah,
3:52
Speaker 3: maybe exactly, yes, yes, that was probably later, And you
3:57
Speaker 3: know it wasn't this this topic that we're to be
4:00
Speaker 3: talking about today, around women's identity, creativity, how much unpaid
4:05
Speaker 3: labor they shoulder. It was definitely not on my radar
4:07
Speaker 3: when I went to law school either, because I'm resolutely
4:11
Speaker 3: gen X and I remember Elizabeth Warren was my orientation
4:15
Speaker 3: teacher at Harvard, and she asked us what we want
4:18
Speaker 3: to do with our law degree, And again I did
4:21
Speaker 3: not say I want to be an expert on the
4:22
Speaker 3: gender division of labor. I actually thought we had equal
4:25
Speaker 3: opportunity because I was told that lie right, that everything
4:31
Speaker 3: that happened in the generation before us was to pave
4:34
Speaker 3: the way for women to have equal opportunity in the
4:38
Speaker 3: workplaces at home. So that's who I am. I came
4:41
Speaker 3: to this work from research, that's what they call research,
4:44
Speaker 3: right when it's yours research. And now I'm here as
4:49
Speaker 3: an expert on the gender division of labor.
4:53
Speaker 2: So I want to start by talking about something I
4:57
Speaker 2: wrote a couple months ago about how schools always called moms.
5:00
Speaker 1: So the title of the post was schools.
5:02
Speaker 2: Called Moms, And it was a post based on an
5:06
Speaker 2: academic paper in which some researchers so they had done
5:09
Speaker 2: what they call an audi study where they called schools
5:14
Speaker 2: and they pretended to be either a man or a woman,
5:17
Speaker 2: and they said something like, can you call me back?
5:20
Speaker 2: They were looking for some information about the school, and
5:22
Speaker 2: they said some version of either you know, I'm very busy,
5:24
Speaker 2: but you can call my wife, or I'm very busy,
5:26
Speaker 2: but you can call my husband.
5:27
Speaker 3: And they varied all these things, and.
5:29
Speaker 2: Basically what they found is the schools were a lot
5:31
Speaker 2: more likely to call moms if it was both options
5:35
Speaker 2: or or even if the you know, if the woman
5:38
Speaker 2: said I'm free, but my husband is busy, they never
5:41
Speaker 2: called the husband, whereas if the husband said I'm free,
5:43
Speaker 2: but my wife is busy, like sometimes they still called yeah,
5:46
Speaker 2: the wife. And I was thinking about this this morning
5:48
Speaker 2: because my son vomited at school and they called me,
5:53
Speaker 2: and of course I didn't answer, which I'm not like
5:56
Speaker 2: out of spite, but just because I didn't hear the phone.
5:59
Speaker 2: And then they did call my husband afterwards. But it
6:03
Speaker 2: strikes me always as it's one small thing. It's of
6:07
Speaker 2: many things. But for me, this is the story I
6:10
Speaker 2: would tell if somebody said, can you describe what invisible
6:13
Speaker 2: labor is? This might be where I would start. But
6:16
Speaker 2: I'm curious if I said to you, when we say
6:19
Speaker 2: the phrase invisible labor in the household, what is the
6:21
Speaker 2: story you would tell?
6:22
Speaker 3: What is the way you would go into that? Well,
6:25
Speaker 3: it's a great question. In fact, I did call fifty
6:27
Speaker 3: schools in twenty twelve, before I was I even had
6:31
Speaker 3: fair Play as a book in my mind. I didn't
6:34
Speaker 3: start really writing it as a book till twenty sixteen,
6:36
Speaker 3: but I was just looking for I was desperate for
6:39
Speaker 3: my own solution, and I'll tell that story a little bit.
6:42
Speaker 3: But yeah, I called fifty schools and asked them why
6:44
Speaker 3: they call women first, and it was actually pretty interesting.
6:49
Speaker 3: Mostly it wasn't because the women were the first on
6:52
Speaker 3: the list, which I thought I would hear. It was
6:55
Speaker 3: typically because we don't want to bother men, so we'll
6:57
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about that, or that men don't
7:00
Speaker 3: pick up so it's disturbing, but we can. I'll explain
7:05
Speaker 3: I think what the origin of that is, but I
7:08
Speaker 3: didn't know that at the time. So the story that
7:09
Speaker 3: I typically tell is a story that I write in
7:13
Speaker 3: fair Play. I write a couple of stories, but one
7:15
Speaker 3: of them, one of the stories that was the hardest
7:18
Speaker 3: for me, Emily was that the abandonment of what it
7:23
Speaker 3: felt like to be a parent. There's a lot of
7:25
Speaker 3: talk about, I think, the isolation now, whereas you know,
7:29
Speaker 3: when I had Zach, my first child, in two thousand
7:31
Speaker 3: and eight, the only book and resource I had was
7:33
Speaker 3: you Know what to Expect when You're expecting, which was like,
7:36
Speaker 3: your child's a jellybean size, but you know nothing really
7:39
Speaker 3: about what to expect what you're expecting. And so I
7:41
Speaker 3: came into motherhood really shocked, like many of us are,
7:45
Speaker 3: with the just the magnitude of work that was required
7:50
Speaker 3: that I didn't expect and the toll it was taking
7:53
Speaker 3: on me and my husband. But the hardest for me,
7:57
Speaker 3: I think, was I didn't realize that it was a
7:59
Speaker 3: toll until my second child came. And that's why it's
8:02
Speaker 3: actually hard to collect data because it's sort of a
8:04
Speaker 3: longitudinull death by a thousand cuts, where women start getting
8:09
Speaker 3: sick physically and mentally over time, and it gets worse
8:13
Speaker 3: exponentially by how many children they have. And I promise
8:15
Speaker 3: we're going to get to the light part because the
8:17
Speaker 3: one man said to me, I go very dark to
8:19
Speaker 3: go light. So we're going really in the darkness right now,
8:22
Speaker 3: but in the darkness. What I want to say was
8:24
Speaker 3: that after my second son was born and I was
8:27
Speaker 3: trying to go back to work, that's sort of when
8:29
Speaker 3: everything hit me, because what I realized was my first son.
8:33
Speaker 3: I was hearing in America that we don't really have
8:36
Speaker 3: a social safety net, but that school is a social
8:38
Speaker 3: safety net that once I get to school, I'll have
8:41
Speaker 3: people who can support me, help me carpool and so
8:44
Speaker 3: I was really excited to have a social safety net,
8:47
Speaker 3: that social safety net I was waiting for. At the
8:50
Speaker 3: same time I was negotiating to go back to work
8:52
Speaker 3: after my second son was born. My workplace was the
8:55
Speaker 3: first place to abandon me because they did not want
8:58
Speaker 3: to take me back in the same capacity. They did
9:00
Speaker 3: not want to offer any flexibility, they did not want
9:03
Speaker 3: to allow me to pump. There were many issues that
9:07
Speaker 3: made me feel like I quit, but really I was
9:10
Speaker 3: not opting out. I was forced out of the workplace.
9:12
Speaker 3: So I was abandoned by my workplace. Then I was
9:17
Speaker 3: abandoned by my school community because I was so excited
9:19
Speaker 3: to join this community, and when I finally got there
9:22
Speaker 3: for a toddler transition program, I saw my name tag
9:26
Speaker 3: around with just other mothers and a couple of gay fathers,
9:29
Speaker 3: and my name tag said Zach's mom. So all of
9:32
Speaker 3: a sudden, these people who are supposed to know me
9:34
Speaker 3: better than anyone's ever supposed to know me, which is
9:36
Speaker 3: what the preschool teacher said, don't even know my fucking name.
9:40
Speaker 3: So I have I am Zach's mom. I don't have
9:43
Speaker 3: a job anymore. And then on top of it, as
9:46
Speaker 3: I was sort of negotiating going back to work, because
9:49
Speaker 3: I'm a lawyer by trade, I believe in behavior design
9:53
Speaker 3: as a legal issue. If you want to get people
9:55
Speaker 3: to stop at a stop sign, what you do is
9:57
Speaker 3: you pass a law. If you don't want them to
9:59
Speaker 3: vote in Georgia, guess what you do, you pass a law.
10:01
Speaker 3: So I look at myself as a behavior designer. When
10:04
Speaker 3: I went back to work to do that work with
10:07
Speaker 3: the families I work with, I work for families that
10:09
Speaker 3: look like the HBO show Succession, and everyone should feel
10:12
Speaker 3: bad for me because those families are hard. But I
10:14
Speaker 3: went back and started my own law firm at this time,
10:16
Speaker 3: and my husband was very supportive of that. But the
10:19
Speaker 3: third failure in this trifecta after school was failing me
10:23
Speaker 3: by calling me Zack's mom and my workplace had told
10:26
Speaker 3: me I couldn't come back, and then I decided to
10:28
Speaker 3: start my own firm with the support of my husband.
10:31
Speaker 3: My husband failed me, and that wasn't a story that
10:33
Speaker 3: I tell about going on my first work trip back.
10:37
Speaker 3: It was a day trip to Seattle where Seth texts
10:40
Speaker 3: me at seven am a guy left a jacket and
10:44
Speaker 3: beer bottle on our lawn.
10:46
Speaker 2: I remember that story so vividly from your book because
10:50
Speaker 2: it is an extreme example, but it does epitomize an
10:55
Speaker 2: experience I think a lot of us have had, which
10:57
Speaker 2: is like, I'm on this work trip and you're there
11:02
Speaker 2: and you're doing the things, but the amount of scaffolding
11:06
Speaker 2: that has been put in place to make it possible
11:10
Speaker 2: for me to be away can feel quite big, and
11:15
Speaker 2: in some ways it it echoes these smaller things, like
11:18
Speaker 2: people talk about dinner, Like making dinner is not just
11:23
Speaker 2: cooking the dinner. It's thinking about what would be the dinner,
11:26
Speaker 2: procuring the ingredients for the dinner, and like making it
11:29
Speaker 2: so the person who gets there to cook the dinner
11:31
Speaker 2: just cooks the dinner, which is a contribution, but it
11:34
Speaker 2: isn't the whole contribution.
11:37
Speaker 3: Correct and so that what happened to me by realizing
11:42
Speaker 3: that that text that morning when Seth said, you know,
11:44
Speaker 3: a guy left his jacket and beer about on our lawn,
11:47
Speaker 3: and when I come home sixteen hours later, Emily, right
11:50
Speaker 3: and still and the jacket is still there on the lawn, right,
11:54
Speaker 3: and I talk about how I did give set the
11:55
Speaker 3: better of the doubt because I figured, you know, maybe
11:58
Speaker 3: he was dead. But then when I found out that
12:01
Speaker 3: he wasn't dead, right, he was actually happily alive and
12:04
Speaker 3: laying on the bed and telling me that he had
12:06
Speaker 3: three hours after our kids went to bed to check
12:08
Speaker 3: sports center, finish a PowerPoint deck and work out write,
12:11
Speaker 3: plenty of time to decompress from his day, but not
12:14
Speaker 3: enough time to pick up a drug guy's jacket and
12:17
Speaker 3: beer bottle that were left on our lawn. But I
12:20
Speaker 3: realized was that was my first active resistance, Emily, because
12:25
Speaker 3: I decided to time myself, and all in all, it
12:28
Speaker 3: took me twelve minutes. Twelve minutes from taking every shard
12:33
Speaker 3: because I had a toddler and I didn't want them
12:34
Speaker 3: playing with glass in the morning, every shard and putting
12:38
Speaker 3: it from shard one all the way to the alley,
12:42
Speaker 3: throwing out that jacket and beer bottle and coming home
12:44
Speaker 3: because this is before fair play, when I still thought
12:46
Speaker 3: it was on me to do. But I think what
12:48
Speaker 3: was the most interesting about timing myself and having that
12:51
Speaker 3: twelve minutes was I realized that the Textess sent me
12:55
Speaker 3: wasn't day hey, this is so weird it this is
12:58
Speaker 3: on you text. And then I started to multiply at
13:02
Speaker 3: that point, almost ten years of marriage times how many
13:05
Speaker 3: this is on utechs I had received from Seth and
13:08
Speaker 3: I started to realize that we are literally racing up
13:10
Speaker 3: against a clock from the moment we wake up. And
13:15
Speaker 3: that started a path for me that I never thought
13:18
Speaker 3: and I expected what ever happened to me, because at
13:20
Speaker 3: that time, the only narrative I was hearing was sort
13:22
Speaker 3: of the e prey love narrative, which was like, get
13:25
Speaker 3: the fuck out. My mother is a single mother, right
13:28
Speaker 3: my father and her divorce. I knew that narrative, but
13:31
Speaker 3: I was trying to look for it an alternative. Could
13:34
Speaker 3: I find divorce for married people? And that's when I
13:38
Speaker 3: said to myself, I could either eat, pray, love this
13:40
Speaker 3: out of my marriage, or get my ass in gear
13:42
Speaker 3: and become my own client, and because I'm an expert
13:45
Speaker 3: at organizational management and behavior design through a legal lens,
13:49
Speaker 3: I sat down in twenty twelve, again so far away
13:53
Speaker 3: from a book or writing it down systemically or collecting data,
13:57
Speaker 3: just to understand what was happening to me. And I
14:00
Speaker 3: went to the library and that's when I realized what
14:03
Speaker 3: was happening to me had a name. It was called
14:05
Speaker 3: the second shift. The second shift, it was called invisible work,
14:09
Speaker 3: it was called emotional labor, but my favorite term was
14:12
Speaker 3: invisible work. It was coined in nineteen eighty six by
14:15
Speaker 3: a sociologist named Arlene Kaplan Daniels, and what she argued
14:19
Speaker 3: was that the work that women do in the home
14:21
Speaker 3: will never ever be valued because we are the social
14:24
Speaker 3: safety net of countries, especially in America, and if we
14:29
Speaker 3: try to illuminate that work, add it to the GDP,
14:33
Speaker 3: or create any value for it, then societies would collapse.
14:36
Speaker 3: So instead, what we do is we convince women that
14:39
Speaker 3: their time is worthless. And that article changed the whole
14:43
Speaker 3: trajectory of my life.
14:45
Speaker 2: I mean, it's such a so I love the story
14:48
Speaker 2: and I love sort of two pieces of that. One
14:51
Speaker 2: is this last point about the invisible work in some
14:54
Speaker 2: sense you could put it in a numeric term, so simply,
14:58
Speaker 2: which is just to say the things that you're doing
15:01
Speaker 2: if you're, you know, a stay at home parent, you
15:05
Speaker 2: are doing a large number of jobs which could be
15:08
Speaker 2: done by someone to for pay and would be done
15:11
Speaker 2: by someone for pay if you were not there. There's
15:13
Speaker 2: the childcare piece of that, the cooking piece of All
15:16
Speaker 2: of those things are things that are sold.
15:18
Speaker 3: In the marketplace.
15:19
Speaker 2: And the way we count GDP, I mean, it's like
15:21
Speaker 2: the economists talking, but the way we count GDP doesn't
15:25
Speaker 2: count that if you do it, but it would count
15:29
Speaker 2: it if someone else did it. And so there's a
15:31
Speaker 2: sense in which it's like just literally uncounted. Even though
15:35
Speaker 2: if you and I switched places and I did the
15:38
Speaker 2: job for you and you did it for me and
15:40
Speaker 2: we paid each other, that would be GDP, and as
15:44
Speaker 2: when we do.
15:45
Speaker 1: It ourselves, it's it's not. And I think that's it's a.
15:48
Speaker 2: Weird aspect of accounting, which I think contributes to some
15:51
Speaker 2: of this undervaluation because it's not something we can say,
15:56
Speaker 2: well that you know, this is contributing to the economy.
15:59
Speaker 2: You know, the economy is very important.
16:01
Speaker 3: But it's wild it's wild because again, I'm a lawyer,
16:05
Speaker 3: but I majored in economics, and I almost pursued a
16:09
Speaker 3: PhD in economics before I went to law school, and
16:12
Speaker 3: so my training is in economics, and in fact, law
16:15
Speaker 3: and economics was where I spent most of my time,
16:18
Speaker 3: actually more on the critical race theory side of things
16:21
Speaker 3: in law school because I thought gender resolved. But what
16:26
Speaker 3: was so fascinating to me about reading that Arlene Kaplan
16:29
Speaker 3: Daniels article. She's a sociologist, but as an economist, that
16:32
Speaker 3: was the shock for me that if I hired a
16:37
Speaker 3: housekeeper to do a certain amount of work, it would
16:40
Speaker 3: count as a valuable transaction in society. But if I
16:45
Speaker 3: decided to do that work myself to clean my own house,
16:48
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, that value vanishes, and that doesn't
16:53
Speaker 3: make any sense. So it has to be designed that way.
16:56
Speaker 3: And so once you realize that there is a reason
17:00
Speaker 3: that it's designed that way, which is that we have
17:03
Speaker 3: to have unpaid labor done by women for society to function,
17:09
Speaker 3: you start to understand everything that surrounds it, which is
17:12
Speaker 3: why it became so wild, because at the end of
17:15
Speaker 3: the day, I could design as many systems as possible
17:19
Speaker 3: to handle unpaid labor, which is ultimately what fair Play
17:22
Speaker 3: was a system that came out of you know, my
17:26
Speaker 3: decade of working with families, and we'll talk about that.
17:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
17:30
Speaker 2: No, so let's talk about that now, because I think
17:32
Speaker 2: I think the one because I think the stakes are
17:35
Speaker 2: so high, And this is the one thing I want
17:37
Speaker 2: to say before we talk about this solution is the
17:40
Speaker 2: stakes of this are not just like I wish people
17:44
Speaker 2: would acknowledge the individual labor, it is your marriage. And
17:47
Speaker 2: you sort of say this in the book and in
17:49
Speaker 2: this interview that you know, you kind of find yourself
17:53
Speaker 2: at a choice of like are we going to fix
17:55
Speaker 2: this or am I just going to be like you
17:57
Speaker 2: know what, I'm out? And I think for a lot
17:58
Speaker 2: of people it's like that's that's the only way out.
18:01
Speaker 2: I think the goal of your book, as I see it,
18:03
Speaker 2: is to try to say like, hey, is there a
18:05
Speaker 2: way in can we fix this rather than just abandoning it.
18:10
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so when I became my own client, what
18:12
Speaker 3: I ultimately put on my board, which was my own whiteboard,
18:16
Speaker 3: which is very dorky that I did for myself. But again,
18:19
Speaker 3: why I love you, Emily, because you know that that too, Yes, exactly,
18:24
Speaker 3: I think symbiosis and I feel like you would use
18:26
Speaker 3: the white board is in So this is in twenty twelve.
18:29
Speaker 3: I decided to write the three things that I would
18:31
Speaker 3: tell any family if I was working with them. So
18:34
Speaker 3: question one on my whiteboard was what if we treat
18:37
Speaker 3: our homes as our most important organization? So that was
18:41
Speaker 3: question one. So I look for any book that had
18:43
Speaker 3: thought that, you know, is there any other book out
18:45
Speaker 3: there that has treated the homeless organization? So what did
18:48
Speaker 3: I find? I found, like, you know, the early versions
18:51
Speaker 3: of like organizing your drunk drawer, like what you know
18:54
Speaker 3: now we'd call like recondoing our lives or whatever. But
18:57
Speaker 3: I did not find organizational management applied to the home,
19:00
Speaker 3: which I thought was actually pretty interesting. So then from
19:03
Speaker 3: there I wrote down the three things that an organization
19:05
Speaker 3: needs to have to function correctly, which is one boundaries,
19:10
Speaker 3: two systems, and three communication. So, as you know from
19:15
Speaker 3: being an economist, where would I start? Right? The boundaries
19:18
Speaker 3: is the thing we were just talking about. We can
19:19
Speaker 3: talk about that later, about why we don't come to
19:22
Speaker 3: the table, why women are conditioned to believe this, why
19:25
Speaker 3: we believe our time is sand and men's time is
19:28
Speaker 3: diamonds and how we become complicit in our own oppression.
19:31
Speaker 3: That's all the things we were going to talk about,
19:32
Speaker 3: and we can always go back to that, but really
19:35
Speaker 3: I couldn't deal with that at the time. So I
19:37
Speaker 3: started with in boundary systems communication, where can I make
19:40
Speaker 3: a difference? And so I started with systems.
19:42
Speaker 2: Systems, you know, I mean, I think this is really
19:44
Speaker 2: important because it's very easy for this conversation, this discussion
19:48
Speaker 2: to get into just like like grievance, poorn something like
19:55
Speaker 2: all of the examples of things that annoy you and
19:59
Speaker 2: are bothering us and ways in which this is just.
20:01
Speaker 1: Like ah, but fixing it.
20:05
Speaker 2: The way into fixing is to say, let me try
20:08
Speaker 2: to turn that emotion off and figure out what system
20:11
Speaker 2: can I put in place to actually fix this without
20:15
Speaker 2: just being angry about it, which doesn't work.
20:17
Speaker 3: Correct, And the truth is that boundaries is really hard.
20:21
Speaker 3: Like we said, also, communication is really hard. I mean,
20:24
Speaker 3: there was a Facebook I see everything as you can
20:27
Speaker 3: imagine related to these issues now, but there was a
20:29
Speaker 3: Facebook group during COVID call the Reasons I Hate my
20:32
Speaker 3: husband and kids and there's twenty seven thousand members. Emily
20:37
Speaker 3: and one woman wrote, if my husband dies during COVID,
20:39
Speaker 3: it'll be because of me, not the disease. And so
20:44
Speaker 3: I reached out to her and I said, how do
20:45
Speaker 3: you communicate about domestic life? And she wrote back, I don't.
20:48
Speaker 3: This is my safe space. So let's just reflect on
20:52
Speaker 3: the fact that most people this deserves a trigger warning
20:54
Speaker 3: because literally complaining and venting about her husband's to twenty
21:01
Speaker 3: seven thousand strangers felt safer to this woman than having
21:05
Speaker 3: a direct conversation with her partner about changing the dynamics
21:09
Speaker 3: in their home. So that's why this is a movement.
21:11
Speaker 3: Fair play is a movement. But you can't really have
21:14
Speaker 3: communication if you don't know what to ask for, and
21:17
Speaker 3: you can't really set a boundary over your time if
21:20
Speaker 3: you feel like you are the one who has to
21:22
Speaker 3: do it all because aka, your school system, your community,
21:27
Speaker 3: your partner has the assumptions. So again, all I felt
21:31
Speaker 3: I could do was start with the place I can
21:33
Speaker 3: make a difference. Yes there's going to be polluted air,
21:35
Speaker 3: Yes we don't have paid leave, Yes we don't have
21:38
Speaker 3: universal childcare, but you still have to breathe even if
21:41
Speaker 3: the air is polluted. And so to me, the first
21:43
Speaker 3: step was systematizing the unpaid labor because that's.
21:47
Speaker 2: What I knew how to do, and so tell me
21:50
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have to like ruin it for everybody now
21:53
Speaker 2: in terms of the spoilers, but you want to talk
21:56
Speaker 2: a little bit about how you think about that system.
21:58
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I I love spoilers. I don't want anybody
22:02
Speaker 3: to feel like they have to buy anything. We have
22:04
Speaker 3: every tool available on our website. You could put that
22:07
Speaker 3: in the show notes. We really want to make this
22:09
Speaker 3: a movement. Fair Plays become a nonprofit. We have a
22:11
Speaker 3: policy institute, so we really look at this as we're
22:14
Speaker 3: trying to help as many people as possible. But the
22:16
Speaker 3: way it started for me was I couldn't get data.
22:20
Speaker 3: And this is why I'm so happy I get to
22:22
Speaker 3: talk to you, because you can understand how frustrating it was.
22:25
Speaker 3: What I did was the first nine months after I
22:28
Speaker 3: figured out that invisible work was a term that was
22:30
Speaker 3: coined in nineteen eighty six, was I decided visibility equals
22:34
Speaker 3: value because Peter Drucker told me that you can't manage
22:37
Speaker 3: what you don't manage what you don't measure, and so
22:41
Speaker 3: I started to make invisible work visible. I had to
22:45
Speaker 3: start with somewhere. So I started with the Shit I
22:47
Speaker 3: Do spreadsheet, which I talk about in the book, and
22:50
Speaker 3: that became ninety eight tabs and two thousand items of
22:54
Speaker 3: invisible work. So there would be a subtab of say
22:57
Speaker 3: like medical and healthy living. That would be a tab,
23:00
Speaker 3: and then the subtabs would have things like application of
23:02
Speaker 3: sunscreen and next to what it used to say like
23:04
Speaker 3: two minutes, but then people would weigh in and say, no, no,
23:07
Speaker 3: you need to add thirty minutes for the chase. So
23:10
Speaker 3: then it would say two minutes for application plus thirty
23:13
Speaker 3: minutes for the chase. Okay, that would be a subtab.
23:15
Speaker 3: So that's how granular the Shit I Do spreadsheet became. Okay,
23:18
Speaker 3: so it was ninety eight tabs, two thousand items of
23:21
Speaker 3: invisible war. Oh yeah, like things like extracurricular non sports.
23:24
Speaker 3: God forbid. I forgot girl Scalp cookies ordering in sales,
23:28
Speaker 3: so I put in of course, girl Scout cookies ordering
23:30
Speaker 3: and sales, right, So it became very very granular. And
23:34
Speaker 3: then what I decided to do when I wrote Boundary
23:36
Speaker 3: Systems Communication to design a system to divide up this
23:39
Speaker 3: work was I needed to figure out who was doing
23:41
Speaker 3: what in heterocys gender couples especially, So I went out
23:46
Speaker 3: to the snowball research effect. At the time, right this
23:49
Speaker 3: is twenty twelve, I didn't really have TikTok I wish
23:52
Speaker 3: I did, but I started with the snowball effect of
23:54
Speaker 3: just asking people and asking people. And I grew up
23:57
Speaker 3: in a very very diverse, lower middle class neighborhood and
24:00
Speaker 3: Avenue C in fourteenth Street, so I could get a
24:02
Speaker 3: good socioeconomic diversity just by my snowball research. And I
24:07
Speaker 3: found out that when I asked couples who does what,
24:11
Speaker 3: I couldn't get any accurate data because if I said
24:14
Speaker 3: who handles groceries, who handles pick up and drop off
24:18
Speaker 3: of kids from school? Just looking at my cards, who
24:21
Speaker 3: handles bedtime routine? The answer I heard over and over
24:25
Speaker 3: again is we both do it. So I was feeling
24:28
Speaker 3: very frustrated because I knew I was missing something in
24:31
Speaker 3: the data, because we know that women shoulder two thirds
24:34
Speaker 3: or more of what it takes to run a home
24:35
Speaker 3: and family, and so I was missing something. So then
24:39
Speaker 3: I found a study that showed me that men over
24:41
Speaker 3: report what they do and women significantly under report. So
24:46
Speaker 3: I was thinking, how can I break through this gap
24:48
Speaker 3: of figuring out this underreporting over reporting mystery. So then
24:53
Speaker 3: I finally came upon a question, a data question, a
24:56
Speaker 3: survey question that changed my life. The question was how
25:00
Speaker 3: does mustard get in your refrigerator? That question, because you
25:04
Speaker 3: can ask about condiments in sixteen seventeen at this point
25:07
Speaker 3: over twenty countries, doesn't have to be mustard. There's other condiments.
25:11
Speaker 3: Became this is how I knew Norway and the Nordic
25:14
Speaker 3: countries weren't doing it any better, even though finally data
25:16
Speaker 3: is coming out to show that now, because because it
25:19
Speaker 3: was the same every country, Emily, it was the same.
25:23
Speaker 3: It was women telling me that they were the ones
25:27
Speaker 3: noticing that their second son, Johnny, only like yellow mustard
25:32
Speaker 3: on their hot dog or their protein. Otherwise they would choke.
25:35
Speaker 3: The kids would choke if they didn't eat have doubs
25:38
Speaker 3: their protein and mustard. And so then I knew, okay,
25:41
Speaker 3: well that's a conception problem. That's an organizational management, project management.
25:45
Speaker 3: We have these phases. So I said, okay, that's conception.
25:47
Speaker 2: But I just want to say that this is so
25:50
Speaker 2: like you said, you know at the beginning, like mesearch, etc.
25:53
Speaker 2: But like this is such an incredible research instinct, because
25:58
Speaker 2: when you do research studies, one of the things that's
26:01
Speaker 2: really hard is getting figuring out like how you get
26:06
Speaker 2: to the thing you really mean right, because it's so
26:08
Speaker 2: easy to ask these general questions, who does more work?
26:10
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you do more work? You know,
26:12
Speaker 2: It's like we ask people about colic and their babies,
26:14
Speaker 2: like do you think your baby has Everybody thinks their
26:16
Speaker 2: baby has colic, like ninety percent of people. But you
26:20
Speaker 2: got to get the right question and hear the question.
26:23
Speaker 2: It's so it's so simple.
26:26
Speaker 3: I'm crying because hearing from you that, like you you
26:29
Speaker 3: thought my data question is good is like hearing from
26:31
Speaker 3: like the president, you know, like it's it's the most
26:35
Speaker 3: amazing validation I think I've ever received. So I'm I'm
26:38
Speaker 3: literally tearing up from you saying that. But it was
26:41
Speaker 3: the most illuminating and validating part of my life, besides
26:47
Speaker 3: getting women to tell me that the shit they did
26:50
Speaker 3: was understanding that I was breaking through finally that I
26:55
Speaker 3: understood that there was phases that there was a conception phase,
27:01
Speaker 3: there was a noticing phase, and then there was a
27:04
Speaker 3: planning phase where the women would say that they were
27:06
Speaker 3: the ones monitoring the mustard for when it ran low.
27:10
Speaker 3: And then they were the ones that got stakeholder buying
27:13
Speaker 3: from their family for what they wanted from their grocery list.
27:16
Speaker 3: I mean they didn't say stakeholder buying, but I was
27:17
Speaker 3: looking for that planning. And then the both the both
27:21
Speaker 3: trap was that men were going to the store to
27:25
Speaker 3: get the mustard right, but they bring home spicy dijon
27:28
Speaker 3: every fucking time. And then women were saying, I'm not
27:32
Speaker 3: going to have men, I'm not going to trust my
27:34
Speaker 3: husband with my living will eve. The dude can't even
27:36
Speaker 3: bring home the right type of mustard. So then because
27:40
Speaker 3: the women were holding conception and planning and they were
27:42
Speaker 3: breaking up the execution CPE, there was a breakup. I
27:46
Speaker 3: could see that the CPE breakup was leading to the
27:49
Speaker 3: things that are most important in an organization failing. And
27:53
Speaker 3: the things that are most important in organization the outcomes,
27:57
Speaker 3: not the inputs. The outcomes are accountability and trust. So
28:01
Speaker 3: accountability and trust we're not happening anymore because of this
28:05
Speaker 3: mustard breakdown. And then it was like, oh my god,
28:08
Speaker 3: there's something you can do here. You can hold an
28:11
Speaker 3: ownership mindset and put conception planning and execution together on
28:16
Speaker 3: the should I do spreadsheet and start to play with
28:19
Speaker 3: what it looks like for someone to own a task.
28:22
Speaker 3: And so in twenty twelve, that's what Seth and I
28:24
Speaker 3: started doing.
28:25
Speaker 2: And I think what's quite important and insightful about that
28:28
Speaker 2: is the idea that the conception and planning make the
28:31
Speaker 2: execution possible. Right, Like, when you think about how you
28:33
Speaker 2: do this at your job at you know how you
28:36
Speaker 2: organize tasks at work, you basically you package those together.
28:39
Speaker 2: It would be unusual to say, like I am going
28:42
Speaker 2: to plan, I'm going to think about what needs to
28:44
Speaker 2: be and I'm gonna plan what needs to be done,
28:45
Speaker 2: and then I'm just going to sort of vaguely explain
28:47
Speaker 2: to someone else how they might think about doing it
28:50
Speaker 2: and then rely on them to do it. Like it's
28:52
Speaker 2: just not no business school professor is going to tell
28:54
Speaker 2: you to organize your your test that way, and a
28:57
Speaker 2: well run business won't do it. And yet this kind
28:59
Speaker 2: of separation is, as you say, sort of so and
29:03
Speaker 2: feels like, oh, we're splitting the work, right has this
29:05
Speaker 2: field like we're we're splitting it, But it's like, I guess,
29:08
Speaker 2: but not in an efficient way.
29:10
Speaker 3: Even my end Marian's Majon group understood this. You don't
29:14
Speaker 3: bring full snack twice to the group, you're out everywhere
29:17
Speaker 3: else there was an ownership mindset. I started to see
29:20
Speaker 3: that Apple was quitting a term called DRI directly responsible individual.
29:25
Speaker 3: I start to comb Netflix's They have a huge organizational
29:30
Speaker 3: PowerPoint for how Netflix does their business, and they had
29:34
Speaker 3: the DRI concept. They had something called context not control,
29:38
Speaker 3: that you have to give somebody conception, planning, and execution.
29:42
Speaker 3: And so this one systems analyst, this was the funniest part.
29:45
Speaker 3: I remember an early early interview with a systems analyst.
29:48
Speaker 3: He designed systems for a living, and he said that
29:51
Speaker 3: in his house, they wait to decide who's taking the
29:53
Speaker 3: dog out every night, right when it's about to take
29:56
Speaker 3: a piss on the rug. So I said, okay, so
29:58
Speaker 3: in your day job, you you know that systems are
30:01
Speaker 3: literally to make decisions before you have to make the decision,
30:03
Speaker 3: so you don't have to keep making the same decision.
30:05
Speaker 3: But in your home you make the exact same decision
30:08
Speaker 3: about who takes a dog out every single night without
30:11
Speaker 3: any advanced planning. So I knew that I couldn't probably
30:15
Speaker 3: bring women to the table because we're conditioned that our
30:18
Speaker 3: time is sanded. I knew I couldn't really get them
30:22
Speaker 3: to communicate by just saying emotion is low, cognition is high.
30:26
Speaker 3: You got to do it then, because they were in
30:28
Speaker 3: these Facebook groups ranting. But I knew that at least
30:31
Speaker 3: for myself, I could design a system that would be
30:35
Speaker 3: based on organizational principles that already were rooted in an
30:39
Speaker 3: organizational science, and just bringing them to the home made
30:43
Speaker 3: Seth very open to receiving them because, as you know,
30:48
Speaker 3: he's now more of a feminist but as a resolute sexist.
30:51
Speaker 3: Probably at the time, hearing from the Peter Druckers and
30:55
Speaker 3: the organizational management specialists with my studies and my binders,
30:59
Speaker 3: along with the system I had developed, gave it more
31:01
Speaker 3: validity than if it was just me making it up
31:04
Speaker 3: from nowhere. So he needed to see that this is
31:07
Speaker 3: based in this organizational science of a dri this idea
31:11
Speaker 3: that ownership, and we now know there are studies now
31:15
Speaker 3: that show that when people have context and we see
31:18
Speaker 3: this all over fair play, people who play fair play.
31:20
Speaker 3: When you have contexts, your standards automatically go up. So
31:24
Speaker 3: this whole idea, well, I can never trust my partner
31:26
Speaker 3: because they bring home the wrong type of mustard. Or,
31:29
Speaker 3: as one woman said, she showed me a picture of
31:31
Speaker 3: a knife, a pairing knife in her car seat because
31:34
Speaker 3: her husband's a chef and left a knife in the
31:36
Speaker 3: car seat. How can I trust my husband to transport
31:38
Speaker 3: my kid he leaves knives in car seats. This idea
31:42
Speaker 3: that the only thing I was hearing at the time
31:44
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve for women was lower your standards. Fuck that.
31:49
Speaker 3: So instead, what you do is you put a reasonable
31:51
Speaker 3: person standard, which is a legal standard that we use
31:53
Speaker 3: for tort law. We have a trillion dollar tort system
31:56
Speaker 3: that works fine with a reasonable person standard. I took
32:00
Speaker 3: a reasonable person standard, I applied it to the ninety
32:03
Speaker 3: eight tabs, and I broke out the CPE for each
32:06
Speaker 3: one of those tabs, and I gave it to Seth
32:08
Speaker 3: and we started to play with it. And then we
32:09
Speaker 3: start to have beta testers and more beta testers, and
32:12
Speaker 3: thousands of beta testers and now hundreds of thousands of
32:15
Speaker 3: beta testers, and we've been collecting data for ten years.
32:19
Speaker 2: So I wanted to ask about the the implementation piece
32:23
Speaker 2: of this because a lot of the ideas behind the
32:25
Speaker 2: system involved, you know, taking these tasks and combining them
32:28
Speaker 2: together and then figuring out who should do what. And
32:31
Speaker 2: there's two pieces I think are hard for I mean,
32:35
Speaker 2: there's many pieces that are hard, but I think too
32:37
Speaker 2: they come up are one, you know, starting this conversation, right,
32:41
Speaker 2: So where like where do you start the conversation is
32:43
Speaker 2: one question, But then the second thing is you know
32:45
Speaker 2: there it is true in many couples, many relationships, probably
32:50
Speaker 2: more you know, cis gender, hetero sexual relationships than others,
32:54
Speaker 2: that one person has a more intense out of the
32:59
Speaker 2: home than others. And we can talk about like why
33:02
Speaker 2: that's because of things that happened before, but coming into
33:06
Speaker 2: this conversation, it is likely that for many people it
33:08
Speaker 2: will be unequal in terms of their kind of out
33:11
Speaker 2: of the home expectations. And I'm curious how you talk
33:15
Speaker 2: to people about navigating that, because if it's like, well,
33:18
Speaker 2: I'm already working, you know, I work more, so I
33:21
Speaker 2: can't do the things.
33:22
Speaker 3: That's a great question. So I had to do my boundaries,
33:25
Speaker 3: systems and communication audit, and so what I did was, again,
33:29
Speaker 3: I would only get this specific because it's you and
33:32
Speaker 3: you appreciate these things, and so you can edit out
33:36
Speaker 3: whatever you want or not. But this is the specifics
33:39
Speaker 3: of the boundary Systems communication audit we start to do
33:42
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve around the beta testers, I was trying
33:45
Speaker 3: to find out what the hurdle was. So for couples
33:49
Speaker 3: that were really, really eager to do good for each
33:52
Speaker 3: other and they looked at themselves as equal partners, they
33:56
Speaker 3: could jump right into the system. I could give them
33:59
Speaker 3: the ce checklists, which are online again if anybody wants
34:04
Speaker 3: to sort of see them, but basically what they were
34:06
Speaker 3: where they were. This the shit I do spreadsheet became
34:10
Speaker 3: a long list of cpees. So for example, auto, I'm
34:15
Speaker 3: just looking at the one of the checklist. Now do
34:16
Speaker 3: you know what happens if you don't put the nude
34:18
Speaker 3: registration sticker on your car? Researching and planning cars to
34:21
Speaker 3: lease or buy, scheduling, maintenance, tire maintenance, oil tune ups,
34:26
Speaker 3: mile inspections, researching auto insurance, consult with the home insurance
34:29
Speaker 3: cardholder about a bundle, renewing, DMB registration, cleaning inside and
34:34
Speaker 3: out the car, managing inspections, filling gas tank, purchasing, auto insurance,
34:37
Speaker 3: and renewals. So I was able to give these CPE
34:40
Speaker 3: checklists for ninety eight tasks to people if they were
34:45
Speaker 3: already there, and they were like, we just want more
34:47
Speaker 3: efficiency in the home. That was awesome. The harder part,
34:51
Speaker 3: and why Fairplay had to become a movement, was when
34:54
Speaker 3: I had to diagnose the people who a wouldn't come
34:58
Speaker 3: to the table and be why So the read typically
35:04
Speaker 3: people don't come to the table for two reasons and
35:06
Speaker 3: our surveys now and our data one because they can't
35:11
Speaker 3: communicate about these issues. They believe that they've already tried
35:15
Speaker 3: to communicate about these issues and it has not worked,
35:18
Speaker 3: and they've not had a they've had no practice in communication.
35:21
Speaker 3: And in fact, we ended up asking a thousand people
35:25
Speaker 3: in a survey, what is your most important practice? And
35:28
Speaker 3: I did this sort of facetiously because I knew there
35:31
Speaker 3: would be nobody that came back and said communication at all,
35:34
Speaker 3: and I wanted that data for myself. So I'm here
35:37
Speaker 3: to tell you, out of one thousand people, not one
35:38
Speaker 3: person said communication is our most important practice. Most people
35:42
Speaker 3: said it was religious or some sort of meditation practice,
35:45
Speaker 3: or they didn't understand the question. So we know people
35:48
Speaker 3: don't view communication as a practice. It's more important practice
35:50
Speaker 3: and exercise. But people look at it as one and
35:53
Speaker 3: done transactional. Right. I try to have a conversation in
35:56
Speaker 3: two thousand and five. It didn't work. Just like I
35:58
Speaker 3: tell my doctor Emily, right, I try to exercise once
36:00
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five and I'm not fit. It right,
36:04
Speaker 3: That was it right? It wasn't for me. You can't
36:06
Speaker 3: really do that. It's a practice. So those people I
36:10
Speaker 3: had to teach them how to communicate my beta testers.
36:14
Speaker 3: But then there was another even harder group, and those
36:17
Speaker 3: were the ones who I called cyoo as an annotation,
36:21
Speaker 3: and that was complicit in your own oppression. Women who
36:25
Speaker 3: believed to their core that this was their work to
36:28
Speaker 3: do the bedtime routine. I'm just going through all these,
36:32
Speaker 3: you know, the seasonal storage of items for holidays, tidying
36:38
Speaker 3: up in donations, coupons, hosting extracurricular sports, first aid in
36:44
Speaker 3: safety and emergency packing and unpacking for travel, packing and
36:47
Speaker 3: unpacking backpacks, points went miles, and coupons, returning returns in
36:51
Speaker 3: store credits, school breaks, planning for summer school breaks, non
36:55
Speaker 3: summer school bussing me out, transportation on anything. Right. So
37:01
Speaker 3: of the ninety eight task, the hardest people for me
37:04
Speaker 3: were the ones who were the cyoos, and they were
37:07
Speaker 3: the ones who said to themselves four things. My husband
37:11
Speaker 3: makes more money than me, or my job is more flexible,
37:14
Speaker 3: so I have to do all those things. We just
37:16
Speaker 3: listed number two in the time that it would take
37:20
Speaker 3: me to tell him her are they what to do?
37:22
Speaker 3: I should do it myself. That's called the present bias
37:25
Speaker 3: that Emily can talk to you more about. The other
37:29
Speaker 3: one was I'm a better multitasker. I'm wired differently to
37:32
Speaker 3: hear the baby cry. Right. We went to a panoply
37:36
Speaker 3: of neuroscientists, including doctor Pat Levitt. I wanted to shout
37:39
Speaker 3: him out, who said to me, there's no fucking difference
37:43
Speaker 3: in the brain for how you task switch. I don't
37:45
Speaker 3: know what you're talking about. And then the worst was that, yes,
37:49
Speaker 3: we're both two colorctal surgeons, but my husband is better
37:53
Speaker 3: at focusing on one task at a time, whereas I
37:55
Speaker 3: can find the time. Emily, we're not Albert Einstein, right,
37:59
Speaker 3: we can't time. We can't fuck with the space time continuum.
38:03
Speaker 3: This was the hardest group to change because these women
38:06
Speaker 3: believed that their time is owned by their roles as parents, partners,
38:13
Speaker 3: and professionals, and so they wouldn't even entertain that these
38:17
Speaker 3: were toxic time messages that could be could be overturned,
38:22
Speaker 3: and it became a very triggering topic of a lot
38:24
Speaker 3: of sobbing, a lot of crying. And so that's why
38:27
Speaker 3: I think this almost episode may need a trigger warning
38:31
Speaker 3: because a lot of people are not in the system's
38:34
Speaker 3: place or even the communication place. A lot of people
38:37
Speaker 3: are in this boundaries place where you're not even going
38:40
Speaker 3: to come to the table because you've said one of
38:41
Speaker 3: those four toxic time messages to yourself.
38:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really it's interesting because
38:49
Speaker 2: when I think about these same set of issues, you know,
38:53
Speaker 2: it's so easy to come into the system's place, and
38:56
Speaker 2: you're right, there's a set of people who are just like, oh, hey,
38:59
Speaker 2: like I didn't think about this efficiency game, Like that's
39:01
Speaker 2: so great, Like that should all be like thanks so much.
39:04
Speaker 2: It's like it's huge value unlocked. But it's not hard
39:08
Speaker 2: value in the sense that like once you get it,
39:10
Speaker 2: it's like bam, there we are. But the piece of
39:14
Speaker 2: we've gotten into a into a place where I think,
39:18
Speaker 2: you know, whoever is the partner that like, I'm this
39:21
Speaker 2: is my job and there's some.
39:23
Speaker 1: Reason and it could be any reason.
39:25
Speaker 2: I think at that point when you're when you're in
39:27
Speaker 2: the space of believing that you are responsible for all
39:32
Speaker 2: of this stuff, the reason could be anything. There's like
39:36
Speaker 2: an old there's an old like Jewish joke about someone
39:39
Speaker 2: who like won't donate to the synagogue and then they
39:41
Speaker 2: ask him why, and they keep asking why. I keep
39:43
Speaker 2: asking why, and at the end he says cream cheese,
39:45
Speaker 2: and they say, well, kind of answer is that and
39:47
Speaker 2: he says, well, you know, like the answer is no,
39:49
Speaker 2: and so any answer is as.
39:50
Speaker 3: Good as any other.
39:51
Speaker 2: So I think it's it's sort of in this space
39:53
Speaker 2: of whatever you're gonna say. It's because my brain works
39:57
Speaker 2: more quickly. It's because you know he's better at his
40:00
Speaker 2: It's because you know he makes a little more money.
40:02
Speaker 2: It's because I've always done it, because he doesn't know
40:05
Speaker 2: the muster.
40:06
Speaker 3: Where the mustard is. There are all of these these
40:08
Speaker 3: pieces and.
40:10
Speaker 2: In my car seat right because they're nice makers, and
40:12
Speaker 2: some of those pieces I think are really deep seated,
40:17
Speaker 2: and some of them miss a pretty fundamental issue about
40:20
Speaker 2: learning by doing, which is that you know no one
40:23
Speaker 2: is good at the thing the first time they don't right,
40:25
Speaker 2: and the first time, you know. I sometimes I talk
40:28
Speaker 2: about my husband does the dishwasher, and so there was
40:31
Speaker 2: a time at which I did the dishwasher and then
40:33
Speaker 2: at some point like we switched, I don't know, after
40:36
Speaker 2: we had kids, and now he's responsible for the dishwasher.
40:38
Speaker 2: And I don't think he was like amazing at it initially,
40:41
Speaker 2: but now like, not only is he really very excellent
40:45
Speaker 2: at the dishwasher, he won't let me touch it. Like
40:47
Speaker 2: it's like this sort of thing where like if I
40:49
Speaker 2: get near it is he sort of like it starts
40:51
Speaker 2: to twitch. He gets a little twitchy because I've lost
40:55
Speaker 2: my ability to do it effectively.
40:57
Speaker 3: Which I love, by the way, because any any time
41:00
Speaker 3: men step up in the home, right, I love the
41:02
Speaker 3: reverse since that's not the norm. So yes, I'd love
41:05
Speaker 3: for him to just keep that.
41:06
Speaker 2: But it is, it's like it is there's a sort
41:08
Speaker 2: of there's a learning by doing, which I think we
41:09
Speaker 2: want to remember that when you make any of these transitions,
41:13
Speaker 2: there will probably be a period of time. And again
41:17
Speaker 2: it's like the parallel with work, right, Like if you're
41:19
Speaker 2: training someone to take on a task that you've done,
41:22
Speaker 2: you don't assume that they will do it as well
41:25
Speaker 2: as you did the first time that you did it.
41:27
Speaker 2: That's part of what that's why we have training at job.
41:32
Speaker 3: And also why you can't do everything right because typically
41:35
Speaker 3: you're hiring someone because you're recognizing right that this is
41:38
Speaker 3: going to be somebody who can handle tasks and own them.
41:43
Speaker 3: And I think that's the hardest part, right, because I
41:45
Speaker 3: would ask people if they would hire somebody who would
41:48
Speaker 3: come into their office and say, Hey, Emily, what should
41:52
Speaker 3: I be doing today? Right? I'm just going to wait
41:54
Speaker 3: here every single day until you tell me what to do.
41:58
Speaker 3: And that's what the home is like, which is so
42:01
Speaker 3: frustrating because we would never even hire like a basic assistant.
42:05
Speaker 3: If someone said that to me more than three days
42:07
Speaker 3: in a row, they would be fired. But in the home,
42:10
Speaker 3: we accept this idea that we have a helper and
42:13
Speaker 3: not a partner. And I find that I was in
42:17
Speaker 3: that situation too, So that's why I can speak to
42:19
Speaker 3: it right, because it's not like I'm condescending to people
42:22
Speaker 3: who believe these things. I'm more educated than my husband,
42:26
Speaker 3: but he makes more money than me, and so for me,
42:30
Speaker 3: it was this really and deep work that I had
42:32
Speaker 3: to do to say to Seth especially after the drunk
42:35
Speaker 3: guy's jacket, that this is not about you just taking
42:38
Speaker 3: and picking up a drunk guyed jacket. This is about
42:42
Speaker 3: the fact that we both just have twenty four hours
42:43
Speaker 3: in a day, seth and you look at our time
42:46
Speaker 3: as money. I see it. You think your hours are
42:48
Speaker 3: more valuable than mine, and I'm here to tell you
42:51
Speaker 3: that I deserve an equal time. Choice may not be
42:56
Speaker 3: equal distribution of tasks, but I do deserve equal time, choice,
43:00
Speaker 3: agency or how over how I use my day and
43:02
Speaker 3: when I'm doing things in service of our home till
43:05
Speaker 3: my head hits the pillow two hours after you go
43:07
Speaker 3: to bed, that's fundamentally unfair. And so that was the
43:12
Speaker 3: conversation that changed our marriage, not you know, you have
43:15
Speaker 3: to handle the drunk guy's jacket, even though ultimately that's
43:17
Speaker 3: what he ends up doing, and that's the dishes and
43:19
Speaker 3: all those other tasks we just read out, But it
43:22
Speaker 3: starts with I think taking personal agency over how you
43:25
Speaker 3: view your own time. And I think, as women, when
43:28
Speaker 3: we've been conditioned to believe our time is sand, it's
43:32
Speaker 3: very hard and if people don't believe us. There is
43:34
Speaker 3: the data that shows that if women enter male professions
43:39
Speaker 3: the salaries automatically come down. It's called occupational segregation. So
43:44
Speaker 3: we know that society's viewing women's time is less important. Emily,
43:48
Speaker 3: you can still go to health systems in this day
43:51
Speaker 3: and age in twenty twenty four and see that they
43:55
Speaker 3: hand out flyers that say breastfeeding is free when it's
43:58
Speaker 3: an eighteen hundred hours.
44:00
Speaker 1: I know it drives my mind, drives me out of
44:04
Speaker 1: my mind. It's free, not free, it's not free.
44:07
Speaker 3: Right. But again, but if you're hearing that right everywhere
44:10
Speaker 3: since birth, you're gonna absorb some of these messages that
44:15
Speaker 3: your time is less valuable than men's time. Right. And
44:17
Speaker 3: so I'm not mad at anybody for doing it. I
44:20
Speaker 3: did it myself, but I think that it's unfair that
44:23
Speaker 3: back to Jewish the talm Wood says that we're not allowed.
44:27
Speaker 3: We don't have to finish the work, right, but we
44:30
Speaker 3: can't abandon it, and so we have to break these
44:32
Speaker 3: generational cycles. Whereas one woman said to me in a
44:35
Speaker 3: funny way, that fair play would have did for her,
44:37
Speaker 3: was it made her really realize that she didn't have
44:39
Speaker 3: a magical vagina that whispered in her her ear what
44:43
Speaker 3: her husband's mother wanted for Christmas, like she couldn't believe
44:46
Speaker 3: that it actually was work, like she actually had to
44:49
Speaker 3: find out what her mother in law wanted and that
44:51
Speaker 3: it wasn't a magical vagina. And I said, no, you
44:53
Speaker 3: don't have a magical vagina. It's not it's not magical.
44:58
Speaker 3: It's not magical.
45:01
Speaker 2: So, if you had to give people one piece of
45:05
Speaker 2: advice for what to do next beyond like by your book,
45:10
Speaker 2: visit your website, if you want to give people one
45:12
Speaker 2: piece of advice about how to start here. If this
45:14
Speaker 2: is resonating, what would you say?
45:17
Speaker 3: I would say that it's really really important to do
45:20
Speaker 3: an internal audit of what's happening for you right now.
45:25
Speaker 3: If you feel that the two word cloud words that
45:27
Speaker 3: would come up for your life are overwhelm, a rasure, boredom.
45:33
Speaker 3: Those are not things that I want for anybody. And
45:36
Speaker 3: I'm your ghost of Christmas future to say that those
45:39
Speaker 3: they don't get better on their own, they get worse.
45:41
Speaker 3: And so the internal audit would be how am I
45:44
Speaker 3: feeling right now? Do I feel and this is the
45:47
Speaker 3: most important question, do I feel like I have the
45:51
Speaker 3: time and bandwidth to be consistently interested in my own life?
45:56
Speaker 3: That is my threshold question. If you do, then I
46:00
Speaker 3: would say you start with the systems right, you can
46:03
Speaker 3: always make yourself more efficient. If you feel like I
46:06
Speaker 3: am so far from having time and bandwidth to be
46:08
Speaker 3: consistently interested in my own life, then what I would
46:11
Speaker 3: say is just listen to this episode a couple more times,
46:15
Speaker 3: sit with it, because this is the first time you
46:18
Speaker 3: may be hearing these things, and they're overwhelming, and it
46:21
Speaker 3: takes a really long time to process. Seth and I
46:24
Speaker 3: are ten years longer into this work and it's still
46:28
Speaker 3: a practice, and so what I would just say is
46:30
Speaker 3: be patient. But it starts with that threshold. To me,
46:34
Speaker 3: do you feel like you have the time in bandwidth
46:36
Speaker 3: to be consistently interested in your own life, Because that's
46:39
Speaker 3: ultimately what we've found, and that's how my whole second book,
46:42
Speaker 3: and hopefully I can come on to do the data
46:44
Speaker 3: that I found in that. But that was fascinating to
46:48
Speaker 3: me because what I found in researching women's identity and
46:51
Speaker 3: passion gap, which came along with the research on their
46:55
Speaker 3: systems and their home, which is why I wrote a
46:57
Speaker 3: second book on these issues, was that we have a
47:02
Speaker 3: problem in society about valuing women's time in any capacity
47:07
Speaker 3: outside of their roles as partners, parents, and professionals, and
47:11
Speaker 3: our mental health and physical health depends on us being
47:14
Speaker 3: able to be consistently interested in our own life.
47:17
Speaker 2: I love it all right, rapid fire question, When is
47:20
Speaker 2: the most inconvenient time you've ever been interrupted by a
47:22
Speaker 2: call from your kids' school?
47:24
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I'm going to say that it was
47:29
Speaker 3: actually at Tomoco day Spa, and I don't know why
47:33
Speaker 3: my phone was on, but I was having like a
47:36
Speaker 3: language barrier and I had to jump off the table.
47:39
Speaker 3: I wasn't wearing clothes, and I did take that call
47:42
Speaker 3: only only because Seth and I hold cards and they're
47:46
Speaker 3: called One of the cards is called It's a Daily
47:51
Speaker 3: Grind of Glitchen the Matrix, and I was holding that
47:54
Speaker 3: card that week, so I was the one responsible for
47:56
Speaker 3: picking up the phone. It's a school called but it
47:59
Speaker 3: was de Spa. Shout out Tomoco. Amazing.
48:03
Speaker 1: If you didn't have this job, what other job would
48:06
Speaker 1: you have?
48:08
Speaker 3: I think right now what I'd still probably be doing
48:13
Speaker 3: if this hadn't sort of evolved into the movement that
48:15
Speaker 3: it did, was I would still be doing the work
48:17
Speaker 3: for my beloved clients, and I would be working on
48:20
Speaker 3: their family businesses and their family foundations to create grace
48:24
Speaker 3: and humor and generosity when they're making their most highly
48:28
Speaker 3: complex decisions. I've always loved my clients, and I love
48:31
Speaker 3: that work. How does the mustard get in your fridge?
48:35
Speaker 3: The mustard gets in our fridge. Buy a redeal. So
48:39
Speaker 3: there are weeks where I'm on the road and that
48:42
Speaker 3: is a card that we redeal. It's the groceries card,
48:45
Speaker 3: and we both now know typically what is on that list.
48:48
Speaker 3: Maybe things are a little bit different, but we're both
48:51
Speaker 3: equally versed in groceries, so that we redeal that card.
48:54
Speaker 3: There are some cards like gifts, where you know, Seth
48:57
Speaker 3: brought this beautiful bottle of tequila to this eighteenth birthday
49:01
Speaker 3: party of a client's son, and I was like, this
49:03
Speaker 3: is America. We can't drink alcohol here, so that's not
49:07
Speaker 3: that appropriate. So that was really not something I needed
49:10
Speaker 3: to give up because I love giving gifts, so I
49:13
Speaker 3: will hold gifts probably forever. That's a card I will
49:15
Speaker 3: hold forever. A daily grind, like groceries, we redeal based
49:19
Speaker 3: on who's traveling. I love it. Thank you so much
49:29
Speaker 3: for being here. This is such a treat. Thanks Emily
49:31
Speaker 3: for having.
49:32
Speaker 2: Me more apparent data, including my own story about how
49:40
Speaker 2: to appreciate your spouse more after the break.
50:12
Speaker 4: Hey Emily, I feel bad asking this, but I'm wondering
50:17
Speaker 4: how I can appreciate my husband more. I've got two
50:20
Speaker 4: small kids. Appreciating him just seems a lot better than
50:24
Speaker 4: resenting him like I currently do. Thank you.
50:29
Speaker 2: One of the things that even I talk about in
50:30
Speaker 2: this episode is the idea of making a list of
50:33
Speaker 2: all the things that go into tasks. And I have
50:38
Speaker 2: always found that idea really resident because I think part
50:41
Speaker 2: of what happens when you make a list of all
50:43
Speaker 2: of the things and you show the other person is
50:45
Speaker 2: that it helps you appreciate the things that they're doing
50:49
Speaker 2: that you don't see. So it's not just about you
50:53
Speaker 2: telling them what you're doing, but it's about you seeing
50:57
Speaker 2: the things that they're doing and maybe appreciating them a
51:00
Speaker 2: little bit more so.
51:01
Speaker 3: My own personal, most extreme version of.
51:04
Speaker 2: This is about the trash. So my husband, Jesse is
51:07
Speaker 2: in charge of the trash. He's in charge of putting
51:10
Speaker 2: an outside and thinking about when it's getting picked up
51:13
Speaker 2: and resetting it. And I always thought of this as
51:17
Speaker 2: like something that took twenty five seconds and so should
51:20
Speaker 2: deserve almost no credit. And then one day he was
51:23
Speaker 2: gone on a Monday, and he sent me an email
51:25
Speaker 2: about the trash. I'm gonna read you the email. It's
51:27
Speaker 2: from Jesse to Emily, subject trash instructions. His emails always
51:31
Speaker 2: have detailed.
51:32
Speaker 1: Subject lines, not like mine, which have no subject lines.
51:36
Speaker 1: Section one. Taking the trash out, tie up binliner in trash.
51:40
Speaker 3: This is a bulleted list.
51:41
Speaker 2: Roll trash out to street, making sure to leave room
51:43
Speaker 2: for recycling. Roll recycling out to street.
51:45
Speaker 1: Make sure there is room between the two bins so
51:47
Speaker 1: they can lift them separately.
51:49
Speaker 3: Section two.
51:50
Speaker 2: Taking trash back in.
51:51
Speaker 3: It's another list.
51:53
Speaker 2: Roll bins back to their area. Recycling goes in first
51:55
Speaker 2: closest to garage, then trash goes. Put some diet tamacious
51:59
Speaker 2: earth in the trackh recycling, put some baking soda. If
52:02
Speaker 2: there is an odor, put a new bin liner in
52:04
Speaker 2: the trash, not in the recycling, then congratulations, you are done.
52:08
Speaker 2: That part was in bold. Apparently there are some maggot
52:11
Speaker 2: and fly issues and I really really really hate bugs,
52:14
Speaker 2: and so he had come up with this elaborate dietamacious
52:17
Speaker 2: earth system. To fix the maggot and bug problem in
52:21
Speaker 2: our trash. I was sorry that he was gone on
52:24
Speaker 2: a Monday and I had to do this, but I
52:27
Speaker 2: was a lot more grateful for the ninety nine percent
52:29
Speaker 2: of the time that he.
52:30
Speaker 3: Does it for us.
52:43
Speaker 2: Parent Data is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from
52:46
Speaker 2: the parent Data team and pix. Also special thanks to
52:50
Speaker 2: our house violinist, my daughter Penelope.
52:53
Speaker 3: No problem Mom.
52:54
Speaker 2: If you have thoughts on this episode, please join the
52:56
Speaker 2: conversation on my Instagram at Prof Emily Oster. And if
53:00
Speaker 2: you want to support the show, become a subscriber to
53:03
Speaker 2: the parent Data newsletter at parentdata dot org, where I
53:07
Speaker 2: write weekly posts on everything to do with parents and
53:09
Speaker 2: data to help you make better, more informed parenting decisions.
53:14
Speaker 2: For example, you can dive more deeply into an article
53:17
Speaker 2: I wrote last year on strategies to divide up family
53:19
Speaker 2: labor more equitably. Remember there is not always equal. If
53:24
Speaker 2: you like what you hear, please leave the show or
53:26
Speaker 2: a positive review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps people
53:29
Speaker 2: find out about us.
53:30
Speaker 3: Write Penelope, write Mom.
53:33
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.