Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Ask Emily: Your Personal Questions on Marriage
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for a special episode of the
- 0:03Speaker 1: parent Data Podcast. A few weeks ago, I asked on
- 0:07Speaker 1: Instagram if you guys had any questions that were not
- 0:09Speaker 1: about parenting but about me, and I feel a little
- 0:13Speaker 1: awkward asking that, but you did have some really interesting
- 0:16Speaker 1: questions and so.
- 0:17Speaker 2: We're going to try to answer some of them.
- 0:19Speaker 1: And I have asked Alex, who works with me, to
- 0:22Speaker 1: ask the questions so you don't just hear me answering
- 0:25Speaker 1: them and we'll.
- 0:26Speaker 2: See how it goes. So thanks for hanging out with
- 0:28Speaker 2: me and doing this. Alex, glad to be here. Let's
- 0:31Speaker 2: do it.
- 0:32Speaker 3: Let's do this, Okay. So we're going to start with
- 0:34Speaker 3: a warm up, some shorter, easier questions. Maybe the first
- 0:39Speaker 3: question is what's your zodiac sign?
- 0:42Speaker 1: Oh, I don't. I think it's Aquarius. I'm not really
- 0:46Speaker 1: into this. I'm always going to confuse with my birthstone,
- 0:51Speaker 1: which is amethyst, but I'm gonna I think it's Aquarius.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Okay.
- 0:54Speaker 3: The second question is how far is a typical morning run?
- 0:58Speaker 2: It varies.
- 0:59Speaker 1: I would say on a sort of normal aerobic run day,
- 1:03Speaker 1: like a five to six miles. Sometimes I do a
- 1:05Speaker 1: little bit of a longer workout and then usually once
- 1:08Speaker 1: on the weekends, I do a longer run, like depending
- 1:11Speaker 1: on what kind of thing I'm training for or something like,
- 1:14Speaker 1: you know, ten to thirteen miles.
- 1:16Speaker 3: What would you do with a day all to yourself?
- 1:18Speaker 1: You know, we've occasionally had those, like if my kids
- 1:21Speaker 1: are gone, like with their grandparents, And the answer.
- 1:26Speaker 2: Is basically exactly the same thing that I do.
- 1:28Speaker 1: Otherwise, I would like get up and eat breakfast at
- 1:31Speaker 1: exactly the same time, and then go to work at
- 1:33Speaker 1: the same time and eat dinner at the same time.
- 1:35Speaker 1: I maybe if they were gone more, I would adapt
- 1:38Speaker 1: to my day, but I think basically I would just
- 1:41Speaker 1: do the same day that I have already.
- 1:44Speaker 2: That's so boring.
- 1:46Speaker 3: What's your favorite item from Trader Joe's.
- 1:48Speaker 2: Oh, my favorite item from Trader Joe's.
- 1:50Speaker 1: There are these little chocolate covered bond bonds which are
- 1:54Speaker 1: like cookie on the bottom and then there's ice cream
- 1:57Speaker 1: and then they're covered in chocolate. It's like a tie
- 1:59Speaker 1: between between that and these like individual apple pie things,
- 2:04Speaker 1: which in graduate school I used to eat so many
- 2:07Speaker 1: of and then I had to stop because it was
- 2:09Speaker 1: just got out of control.
- 2:10Speaker 2: But those are just absolutely delicious.
- 2:13Speaker 3: Okay, what's your go to mindless TV show.
- 2:17Speaker 2: I love the Great British Baking Show.
- 2:20Speaker 1: And then maybe one of the one of the Real Housewives.
- 2:25Speaker 3: What's your favorite vacation destination with kids and without?
- 2:30Speaker 1: So probably it's the same. So we go visit our
- 2:35Speaker 1: friends in France. Pretty we try to go every year
- 2:38Speaker 1: if we can, and that is my sort of favorite
- 2:42Speaker 1: go to place because it's very relaxing and I know
- 2:44Speaker 1: it and I think my goal on vacation these days
- 2:47Speaker 1: is just to sleep awesome.
- 2:50Speaker 3: All right, last warm up question, what's your skincare routine?
- 2:55Speaker 1: So I use Sea to Fill fashwash from the drug store,
- 3:00Speaker 1: and I use cet to Phille with SBA fifteen moisturizer
- 3:05Speaker 1: on my face and that's it. And I own very
- 3:09Speaker 1: occasionally wear makeup, but not very often.
- 3:12Speaker 2: It's kind of boring, but it works amazing. It's not
- 3:16Speaker 2: that amazing. I would say, it's kind of like like,
- 3:19Speaker 2: is there a secret.
- 3:20Speaker 1: I don't know, there's no, I don't know if it's
- 3:22Speaker 1: a good if it's a good routine or not a
- 3:23Speaker 1: good routine.
- 3:24Speaker 2: It's very easy. So that's it for warm up questions.
- 3:28Speaker 2: Like you said, people sent in a lot of different questions.
- 3:30Speaker 3: I kind of categorize them into different things like marriage
- 3:34Speaker 3: and career, and I think for today we're going to
- 3:37Speaker 3: focus on one or two of those.
- 3:39Speaker 2: I'm ready.
- 3:40Speaker 3: We're going to start with your marriage. So first of all,
- 3:43Speaker 3: just who are you married to.
- 3:44Speaker 2: My husband's name is Jesse Shapiro. He is an economist
- 3:48Speaker 2: who works at Harvard.
- 3:50Speaker 3: Okay, how did you and Jesse meet? So?
- 3:52Speaker 1: Jesse and I met in college, so we had a
- 3:57Speaker 1: lot of mutual friends, and so we had sort of
- 4:01Speaker 1: heard of each other, and we also both worked as
- 4:06Speaker 1: research assistants for the same economist. And so one day
- 4:10Speaker 1: I was having dinner with that economist his name is
- 4:14Speaker 1: Chris at Adam's house, which is like a it was
- 4:18Speaker 1: like a dorm, and that turned out to be the
- 4:21Speaker 1: dorm that Jesse lived in. And so when we were
- 4:23Speaker 1: we were like waiting for someone else to join us
- 4:26Speaker 1: for dinner. Jesse came along and he because he knew Chris,
- 4:31Speaker 1: he said, oh, like hi, and Chris said, oh, this
- 4:34Speaker 1: is Emily. Do you want to, like, you know, do
- 4:35Speaker 1: you want to join us for dinner? And so he did,
- 4:39Speaker 1: and so we had dinner together, and because.
- 4:43Speaker 2: We sort of knew who each other were, we like
- 4:46Speaker 2: I don't know.
- 4:47Speaker 1: We kind of had had some stuff in common anyway,
- 4:49Speaker 1: so I don't really remember what happened at that dinner.
- 4:51Speaker 1: But then the next day we were both taking exams.
- 4:55Speaker 1: So I was taking an exam in a class called
- 4:59Speaker 1: Images of Alexander the Great, which was a class that
- 5:02Speaker 1: I had to take to fulfill some like requirement in
- 5:07Speaker 1: the Litton Arts see core curriculum. And so it was
- 5:11Speaker 1: like a class where you looked at images of Alexander
- 5:14Speaker 1: the Great, and Jesse was taking like graduate he was saying,
- 5:22Speaker 1: like a graduate macroeconomics class anyway, So we both had
- 5:25Speaker 1: exams at the same time, and then somebody came into
- 5:28Speaker 1: my exam room and said that they had a bomb.
- 5:31Speaker 1: They did not turn out to have a bomb, but
- 5:33Speaker 1: it was like actually quite scary, and we all sort
- 5:37Speaker 1: of like ran away, and then they evacuated all the
- 5:40Speaker 1: other buildings. So I ended up outside with like no
- 5:42Speaker 1: jacket or gloves or anything because I had like run
- 5:45Speaker 1: away from this, you know, fake bomb. And Jesse was
- 5:48Speaker 1: outside and he had all this stuff because he had
- 5:50Speaker 1: been like sort of evacuated in a more casual manner,
- 5:53Speaker 1: and so he we ran into each other and we
- 5:55Speaker 1: started talking, and then he loaned me his gloves, which
- 6:00Speaker 1: was very nice. And then I stupidly gave his gloves back,
- 6:04Speaker 1: which got rid of the most obvious excuse to see
- 6:07Speaker 1: him again.
- 6:07Speaker 2: But then when I got back to my dorm room,
- 6:10Speaker 2: I wrote to him and said thank you for the gloves,
- 6:13Speaker 2: and then we went out.
- 6:14Speaker 1: And that was.
- 6:17Speaker 2: Twenty two years ago, and that was kind of it.
- 6:21Speaker 3: Do your kids know that story with the bolam and everything.
- 6:24Speaker 1: I think we've told them that story before. Yeah, I
- 6:29Speaker 1: think we've told them that story before. There was a
- 6:30Speaker 1: period of time when they were very interested in how
- 6:33Speaker 1: we met and how we get married and stuff, and
- 6:35Speaker 1: then they kind of like Los Angeles.
- 6:39Speaker 3: All right, that was my own question, full transparency, all right,
- 6:42Speaker 3: back to reader questions. How do you describe your husband
- 6:46Speaker 3: and your relationship to your friends?
- 6:49Speaker 1: Okay, so one thing I will say is most of
- 6:51Speaker 1: my friends kind of know my husband pretty well, and
- 6:55Speaker 1: so I'm not sure they need my description. I mean,
- 6:58Speaker 1: Jesse is very practical. He's a very practical person. Yeah,
- 7:04Speaker 1: he's a very practical person. Maybe that's the right word.
- 7:07Speaker 3: And how do you describe your relationship?
- 7:10Speaker 1: I mean, I think our relationship is is very I mean,
- 7:14Speaker 1: I think is very good. We have a very a
- 7:16Speaker 1: very nice relationship, and I think it is it is
- 7:20Speaker 1: actually sort of well captured by some of the stuff
- 7:22Speaker 1: that that I write about. You know, I think we
- 7:23Speaker 1: do a pretty good job separating like the kind of
- 7:27Speaker 1: business of trying to run our household, the kind of
- 7:30Speaker 1: practical nature of that from you know, the fact that
- 7:34Speaker 1: we really like each other and like to spend time together.
- 7:36Speaker 2: And and I.
- 7:38Speaker 1: Think that's a balance we've come to over time, is
- 7:40Speaker 1: being able to like, you know, like exchange professional emails
- 7:44Speaker 1: about logistics while simultaneously like maintaining weekly date nights and like.
- 7:48Speaker 2: Having a nice time together.
- 7:49Speaker 1: And that's and that sort of it's been a hard
- 7:51Speaker 1: one over time, but I think it works right now.
- 7:54Speaker 2: It works really well.
- 7:56Speaker 1: I mean, I think one thing I will like, one
- 7:57Speaker 1: very specific thing is like often after we have a discussion,
- 8:00Speaker 1: like we will write somebody will write a follow up
- 8:02Speaker 1: email that's like just to rehab the items that we
- 8:05Speaker 1: covered in this discussion will be like a little bull
- 8:06Speaker 1: appointed list. I think a lot of people find that
- 8:08Speaker 1: to be kind of weird. That really that really works
- 8:11Speaker 1: for us.
- 8:13Speaker 3: I don't find that weird. My husband and I I
- 8:16Speaker 3: think fell in love through spreadsheets.
- 8:18Speaker 2: So.
- 8:20Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you need you need two people who
- 8:23Speaker 1: like spreadsheets and bulleted lists.
- 8:25Speaker 2: But yeah, but it's nice.
- 8:28Speaker 3: Okay, how did parenthood change your marriage?
- 8:32Speaker 2: So I think.
- 8:34Speaker 1: Almost anybody finds the beginning of parenting very challenging, you know,
- 8:44Speaker 1: particularly the beginning of parenting with a first kid, because.
- 8:53Speaker 2: There's this problem that.
- 8:55Speaker 1: You have to solve that you have never tried to
- 8:57Speaker 1: solve before, like how do we It's a series of problems,
- 9:01Speaker 1: but it's like the broad problem is like how do
- 9:03Speaker 1: we raise this kid? The individual problems are things like
- 9:07Speaker 1: why isn't it sleeping? And why doesn't it eat? Uh?
- 9:11Speaker 2: And what's is it so cranky? And doesn't need a hat?
- 9:13Speaker 1: Or you know whatever, these small pieces, but it's like
- 9:17Speaker 1: something that you both care enormously about and also.
- 9:23Speaker 2: Don't have any idea what you're doing.
- 9:25Speaker 1: And so I think, like everyone, the first year, I
- 9:28Speaker 1: sort of remember the first year of my daughter's life
- 9:31Speaker 1: having sort of more conflict than usual because we're just
- 9:36Speaker 1: trying to figure it out, and like we didn't always
- 9:38Speaker 1: you know, we didn't always agree, and there were a
- 9:40Speaker 1: lot of things where we were unable to have prepped
- 9:43Speaker 1: for or unable to have worked out like how we
- 9:46Speaker 1: were going to navigate questions where we were unsure. I
- 9:51Speaker 1: think that when the kids got older, when sort of
- 9:54Speaker 1: we had a second kid and the first kid got older,
- 9:56Speaker 1: we kind of worked that stuff out.
- 9:58Speaker 2: We worked that stuff out better.
- 9:59Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, I think our lives now
- 10:02Speaker 1: really revolve around being parents, and it is we try
- 10:07Speaker 1: very hard to like separate out the relationship from that.
- 10:12Speaker 1: But you know, ultimately, I think almost everybody who has kids,
- 10:15Speaker 1: actually perhaps even more so when the kids are like
- 10:17Speaker 1: in this kind of school age, there's a lot of logistics,
- 10:22Speaker 1: and it can be very easy to sort of exclusively
- 10:24Speaker 1: do like logistics, and there's a challenge in you know,
- 10:28Speaker 1: making sure that like you find time to talk about
- 10:31Speaker 1: things that are not just literally like who needs to
- 10:35Speaker 1: purchase which kinds of Christmas presents for different people at
- 10:38Speaker 1: the school this week, which you know does occupy quite
- 10:42Speaker 1: a lot of December I find, But I don't know.
- 10:46Speaker 2: Overall, I would say I would say.
- 10:50Speaker 1: We are a much stronger team now than we were
- 10:55Speaker 1: before kids, that we have a much clearer shared goal,
- 11:00Speaker 1: a much clearer shared agenda for what we're trying to
- 11:02Speaker 1: accomplish and that's that's probably the biggest change.
- 11:07Speaker 3: Okay, how do you and your husband divide housework?
- 11:10Speaker 1: Okay, so I should I should start by caveating and
- 11:13Speaker 1: saying that we have a lot of help. Uh So,
- 11:16Speaker 1: we have a really amazing nanny who does a fair
- 11:19Speaker 1: amount of house stuff, and we have people clean.
- 11:21Speaker 2: We do a lot of outsourcing.
- 11:23Speaker 1: This is probably part of a longer conversation about like
- 11:25Speaker 1: how things work in my house.
- 11:26Speaker 2: But but.
- 11:29Speaker 1: There are things, of course that are left, and you know,
- 11:32Speaker 1: we try to divide them like somewhat evenly. Uh So,
- 11:37Speaker 1: you know, I cook dinner and he cleans up from dinner.
- 11:41Speaker 1: He does a lot of things that I.
- 11:45Speaker 2: Do not that I'm incapable of doing.
- 11:49Speaker 1: So to give you a very specific example, I'm basically
- 11:51Speaker 1: afraid of using the phone.
- 11:53Speaker 2: Like I don't like calling people. Like I can do it,
- 11:56Speaker 2: but I don't.
- 11:57Speaker 1: It makes me like irrationally, I'm just like a rationally
- 12:01Speaker 1: afraid of calling people on the phone. So if my
- 12:04Speaker 1: job were like call the people who are supposed to
- 12:07Speaker 1: pick up the trash because like sometimes they miss the trash,
- 12:09Speaker 1: I just won't do that. Like I'm just like I
- 12:11Speaker 1: just am afraid to like pick up the phone and
- 12:13Speaker 1: call people. I don't know, it's like probably there's something
- 12:16Speaker 1: in therapy there. Let's like put it aside. So he
- 12:18Speaker 1: does basically everything that involves any kind of phone calls
- 12:21Speaker 1: to anyone, which is actually a fair amount of things.
- 12:25Speaker 1: And he also manages like all the stuff that has
- 12:27Speaker 1: to do with the house. So if you own a house,
- 12:29Speaker 1: things constantly break, it would seem. And so he does
- 12:34Speaker 1: like all that stuff. And then I do like much
- 12:36Speaker 1: more of the like manage the you know, buying the
- 12:39Speaker 1: gifts for the teachers, and making sure that we've like
- 12:42Speaker 1: signed up for different things at school, and and sort
- 12:45Speaker 1: of doctor's appointments in those kinds of logistics. So I
- 12:48Speaker 1: think we've sort of gotten to a place where we
- 12:49Speaker 1: try to separate them into things that are like where
- 12:52Speaker 1: somebody has a comparative a comparative advantage.
- 12:57Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't.
- 12:58Speaker 1: Always doesn't always even out, but I would say, like
- 13:02Speaker 1: on the whole, on the whole, it's pretty good. And
- 13:06Speaker 1: we have both gotten very much in the in the
- 13:08Speaker 1: realm of like when it feels like we are doing
- 13:12Speaker 1: more of that stuff than is kind of when we're
- 13:16Speaker 1: like overdoing it. To sort of stop and say like, well,
- 13:19Speaker 1: what can we do to make this easier? Is there
- 13:21Speaker 1: some way to make this task like less something we
- 13:25Speaker 1: need to to do?
- 13:26Speaker 2: So? I don't know, it's a balance. There's a lot
- 13:28Speaker 2: of stuff to do. So is next question?
- 13:30Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you could say that you andrew
- 13:34Speaker 3: husband are both data experts, right.
- 13:37Speaker 2: One might say that yeah, I one might say that yeah.
- 13:41Speaker 3: So the question is what are fights like between husband
- 13:44Speaker 3: and wife data experts?
- 13:46Speaker 1: I we don't really fight wow now, like we never,
- 13:51Speaker 1: but we don't fight about data?
- 13:56Speaker 2: Not quite how to how did this describe this? Like?
- 13:59Speaker 1: Were? So here's what I would say. There are things
- 14:03Speaker 1: where we wonder, like what is the right thing to do?
- 14:06Speaker 1: Where the question is amenable to data, but we both
- 14:10Speaker 1: come into that in the same with the same almost
- 14:13Speaker 1: like somewhat dispassionate approach, and so it is not the
- 14:16Speaker 1: kind of thing that we would fight about because the
- 14:18Speaker 1: answer is just like, okay, well we have to go
- 14:20Speaker 1: find out what that you know, what is the evidence
- 14:23Speaker 1: about that? So it's not like it takes a lot
- 14:27Speaker 1: of the emotional temperature out of something to have this shared.
- 14:31Speaker 2: Way to approach to approach questions.
- 14:34Speaker 1: So when there are things we argue about, they're just
- 14:35Speaker 1: like not things that have anything to do with with data.
- 14:39Speaker 1: They're like more things about about parenting. Although we don't argue,
- 14:43Speaker 1: we don't argue in general very much.
- 14:45Speaker 3: And the last question Jen we got about you and
- 14:48Speaker 3: Jesse is what do you like to do on date nights?
- 14:51Speaker 1: Okay, So, our our date night, which is very regular,
- 14:53Speaker 1: we try very hard to have date every week, mostly
- 14:57Speaker 1: involves going to dinner. I think that we have a
- 15:00Speaker 1: very high taste for walking places, eating dinner relatively quickly,
- 15:04Speaker 1: and then walking home. So that's sort of like the
- 15:06Speaker 1: ideal date night is when you get to walk to dinner,
- 15:09Speaker 1: that dinner happens pretty quickly, and then you get to
- 15:11Speaker 1: go home and go to sleep relatively early. We are
- 15:14Speaker 1: not like people who like to go out and stay
- 15:17Speaker 1: out late. But I like a good you know, glass
- 15:21Speaker 1: of wine and dinner and a long walk before and after.
- 15:23Speaker 1: That's kind of my that's like my happy place. So
- 15:25Speaker 1: we've gotten to a good, good routine and doing.
- 15:27Speaker 3: That that sounds wonderful. There are actually some people who
- 15:30Speaker 3: live in Providence that were wondering your favorite dinner spot
- 15:33Speaker 3: and Providence.
- 15:34Speaker 1: So we go to we go to Parkside a lot,
- 15:39Speaker 1: which is like very simple, but the food is good.
- 15:41Speaker 1: It's like down on Main Street, and I really there's
- 15:46Speaker 1: a there's a tap us place called Palo also in
- 15:49Speaker 1: in that kind of area, which I also like very much.
- 15:52Speaker 2: There's a lot of very good food in Providence. I
- 15:54Speaker 2: don't think we're as adventurous as as one might be.
- 16:00Speaker 3: Okay, there were so many more questions for you, and
- 16:03Speaker 3: I think we're going to leave it here for today
- 16:05Speaker 3: and hopefully if people like this, will do it again.
- 16:08Speaker 3: But let's give a little sneak peek to a future episode.
- 16:12Speaker 3: And I'm going to ask you probably the number one
- 16:14Speaker 3: question the people sent in, which is some version of
- 16:18Speaker 3: how do you manage it all?
- 16:22Speaker 2: The answer to that question is.
- 16:26Speaker 1: With periods of panic, not always as easily as it
- 16:30Speaker 1: would seem on social media, and that I have a
- 16:34Speaker 1: lot of help, and I have a lot of help
- 16:37Speaker 1: both in the kind of newsletter stuff that I'm producing,
- 16:41Speaker 1: some of which is from you, thank you, Alex.
- 16:43Speaker 2: But also a lot of help at home. We have
- 16:46Speaker 2: a really really.
- 16:48Speaker 1: Really good nanny who makes things kind of function function
- 16:53Speaker 1: a lot at home, and Jesse, who we spent a
- 16:55Speaker 1: lot of this time talking about is also extremely supportive
- 16:57Speaker 1: and helpful, and so sometimes I worried that it looks
- 17:01Speaker 1: like I'm doing all of these things like pretty much
- 17:06Speaker 1: on my own, and that's just really not not true.
- 17:08Speaker 2: So the answer is just just like a lot of help.
- 17:10Speaker 3: Basically, great, Well, thank you so much for answering all
- 17:14Speaker 3: the ease and being so open. I learned some things
- 17:18Speaker 3: about you, and I'm sure people are gonna love learning
- 17:20Speaker 3: about you.
- 17:20Speaker 2: Do well. Thank you for your help on this, Alex.
- 17:22Speaker 2: I'll talk to you perhaps next time. Thanks for listening.
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