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Now that we are all tethered to our homes, you may be doing more laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning (did we say dishes?), nose wiping, bottom wiping and emotionally tending to your kids and teens.
So it seems super timely to talk to the woman who has emerged as a leader in the movement to end the gendered division of labor at home and how to divvy up that labor as equitably as possible.
Eve Rodsky has spent almost a decade surveying women and men about who does what at home to understand how and why we divide up labor along gender lines--and how to shift it--she’s talked with Economists, Psychologists, Historians, Neurologists and more.
And she wrote a book that details exactly how to divide and conquer with your partner, the unending duties at home. It’s called "Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution For When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)". If you’ve been listening to Inflection Point, you may have also caught my conversation with Eve at INFORUM last year. I wanted to hear how her system is working in the Covid-19 world.
We spoke live (on Zoom, of course) for The Battery in San Francisco about how to make changes that are a win for everyone in your home and in society.
Be sure to check out Eve’s TOOLKIT FOR ACTION.
TRANSCRIPT:
Lauren Schiller:
Now that we're all tethered to our homes, you may be doing more laundry, dishes, and other housework and if you have kids, you may have become a home school teacher. And every day is like the weekend, except not because you may also be working on top of feeding, cleaning, nose wiping, bottom wiping, and emotionally tending to your kids or teens or partner. So it seems super timely for us to talk to the woman who has emerged as a leader in the movement to end the gendered division of labor at home, and how to divvy up that labor as equitably as possible.
Lauren Schiller:
Eve Rodsky has spent almost a decade serving women and men about who does what at home to understand how and why we divide up labor along gender lines and how to shift it. She's talked with economists, psychologists, historians, neurologists, and more and she wrote a book that details exactly how to divide and conquer with your partner the unending duties at home, it's called Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live).
Lauren Schiller:
If you've been listening to Inflection Point, you may have also caught my conversation with Eve at INFORUM last year. I wanted to hear how her system is working in the COVID-19 world. We spoke live on Zoom, of course, for the battery in San Francisco, about how to make changes that are a win for everyone in your home and in society. If you found any time to read the news, here's a fun fact that might've popped out at you.
Eve Rodsky:
There's been 70, 7-0 articles that have come out since March 8th that say things like women are doing a double, double shift or coronavirus is a disaster for feminism or that it's unsustainable for women to continue to do unpaid labor, and so while I'll say that, yes, it's great to have all these articles. This is not a new problem. We've been talking about this for a hundred years, so it's time for us to move from talking about the problem and keep reintroducing the problem to actually move toward a solution.
Lauren Schiller:
One of the headlines I read was “nearly half of men say they do most of the homeschooling, 3% of women agree”.
Eve Rodsky:
Yes, there's an over-reporting trend between men and women and the heterosis gender relationship and yes, we can definitely go into why that happened.
Lauren Schiller:
This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller with stories of how women rise up. Let's hear a little more about Eve's story and why she began this quest to end the gender division of labor, and then we'll get into how you can get a few hours of your life back. We'll be right back. We're back with Eve Rodsky.
Eve Rodsky:
This started with a text my husband sent me eight years ago, right? My husband sent me a text that said, "I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries." And it was actually a very COVID like moment Lauren, because you can sort of picture the scene, if you can indulge me. I just had my second son, Ben. My son, Zach was three at the time. I had a breast pump and a diaper bag in the passenger seat of my car. I had gifts for a newborn baby to return in the backseat of my car. I had opted out and I put that in quotes now because I learned from sociologist [Pam Stone 00:03:36] that I did not opt out, society pushed me out of the traditional workforce so I just started my new firm.
Eve Rodsky:
I had a client contract. I'm a lawyer and a mediator in my lap. I had a pen that was stabbing me in the vagina as I was racing to pick up Zach from his toddler transition program, which in America lasts like three minutes because we value working families. On top of this chaos where the space time continuum was sort of collapsing on me, Seth sends me this text out of nowhere, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries.
Eve Rodsky:
I pull over to the side of the road that day, thinking to myself this is very cliche, right? That my marriage is going to fall apart over off season blueberries, but what I was really thinking was I used to be able to manage employee teams and now I'm so overwhelmed. I'm not even managing a grocery list and more importantly, how did I become the she-fault as I call them Fair Play, right? The default, the she-fault for most of the cognitive labor, the conception and planning for literally every single household and childcare task that was not supposed to happen to me. I'm a product of a single mom.
Eve Rodsky:
At seven years old I was her partner, her parental child. I paid her bills. I learned how to use her chemical bank checkbook to pay her bills as early as seven. I helped my disabled brother with his SSD. I managed her eviction notices. I had vowed Lauren, that this was not going to happen to me. On top of that, I'm a Harvard trained attorney and mediator so I'm actually literally trained and... overly trained with continuing legal education to facilitate to mediate and to use my voice and so I kept thinking to myself, if this was happening to me that two thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family is falling on my lap. Someone who vowed it wasn't going to happen to them and is trained to communicate then I figured it's probably happening to other women.
Eve Rodsky:
And now as we know that there's 70 articles that have come out since March that say that coronavirus is a disaster for feminism. The UN has a sustainability goal, 5.4, which says value unpaid labor so that women don't do $10.9 trillion a year of unpaid labor, that that's unsustainable for economies. I realized that this was not a me issue, that my private issue was actually a public trouble and that was sort of the eight year journey to get where I was today. I will say that I'm not surprised by how everything breaks down because again women statistically do two thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family, regardless of whether we work outside the home and it's worse, it gets worse. The higher, the more you make, which is very counterintuitive.
Lauren Schiller:
The more money you bring into the home, the more labor you're doing at home.
Eve Rodsky:
The more work you do. Correct.
Lauren Schiller:
Now what is happening there? Because no one could do it as good as we can. Is that what-
Eve Rodsky:
Correct. Yes, I think what's... so again, what I love, we'll definitely get to practical those solutions and I appreciate that couples are here together, but I think it's really important again, to go a little cultural consciousness and 70 articles have been about this issue and then we can get into practical solutions which do work. My husband is not that blueberries man. He's holding many cards right now and we'll talk about the metaphor of the Fair Play cards, but the real core issue was that the smallest details Lauren, are creating the biggest problems.
Eve Rodsky:
I have a woman telling me that she hates her husband because he leaves beard shavings in the sink. I had a man tell me he was locked out of his house over a glue stick. This is before COVID. He had to go into New York City. He lives in White Plains, New York because he forgot to bring a glue stick home from his wife's perspective. She'd been working two weeks on an Einstein biography project. She just needed that glue stick. I'm crying over off season blueberries, right? This issue is manifesting as a private life issue that we all sort of gripe about but as a mediator I'm trained that the presenting problem is never the real problem.
Eve Rodsky:
I went out and looked for what the real problem was. That took me 500 interviews with men and women that mirror the U.S. census and what I found was that the core underlying issue in the division of labor problem that needs to be fixed first, before we go onto solutions, is that as a society, men, women, and children, especially in those homes. Men, women in society and children, we view men's time as finite like diamonds and we view women's time is infinite like sand. That value of time discrepancy, we see that in the workplace because women and men in the same job make less money.
Eve Rodsky:
If you're a woman of color, it's even worse. We know that as women enter male professions, the salaries go down but what I wasn't prepared for was what I had to keep writing in every interview, which was CIYOO which was complicit in your own oppression. It was women. Women, we are the worst purveyors of what I call these toxic time messages where we guard men's time like diamonds and we treat our time as infinite like sand.
Eve Rodsky:
I'll just give you three examples and then we can go more Q&A. One was, women who said to me, of course I do. I pick up the call from the doctor and take my kids to the pediatrician. I pick up the blueberries because my husband makes more money than me, so that's a losing argument for women because that means that because I chose philanthropy and my husband chose private equity, I'm now going to be doing unpaid labor for the rest of my life. It doesn't work, especially in the same job even if we don't even make the same as men. The time is money doesn't work.
Eve Rodsky:
Women said to me, things like I'm a better caretaker. I'm wired differently. I'm a better multitasker. Lauren, I went to the top neuroscientists in this country that one of my clients funds and that was the only other day I cried besides the blueberries day was when this man said to me, when I said are women wired differently? Do we have better executive function than men? This old school, white neuroscientist said to me, no, but imagine if we can convince half the population, we being men, that they're better at wiping asses and doing dishes, how great for me and the other half of the population, he's like, it's totally pat... he didn't say patriarchal. He said, it's just totally conditioning.
Eve Rodsky:
That made me cry. I actually cried that day, and then one of the most popular was a lot of women in heterosis gender relationships were saying to me in the time it takes me to tell my partner what to do, I might as well do it myself. I went to [Dan Arielli 00:10:35] my close friend and very top behavioral economist in the Wall Street Journal. He said, that's a terrible argument because of course it makes sense to tell your partner how to wipe the asses and do the dishes. Otherwise you're doing it forever and your resentment is up here and your partner is invisibly living with you and it sucks. Finally, even women and men in the same job, I had two shipping supervisors at [UPS 00:10:57].
Eve Rodsky:
I had two colorectal surgeons say to me, "Well, yes, we have the same job, but I can find the time, and my husband is better at focusing on one task at a time." As I like to say, unless you're Albert Einstein and know how to fuck with the space time continuum, there's actually no way to find time and especially now when our space time continuum is collapsing. Unless we retire these old tropes of these toxic time messages and we start creating an understanding that all time is created equal, Lauren then nothing, nothing I can say after this, no practical solution is going to matter.
Lauren Schiller:
I mean, there's so much in there and I'm thinking... in fact, as I'm talking with you over to my right is a bed full of laundry. He was waiting for me to fold it. Now that everyone's at home... okay, so you are preaching this. We talked last summer, maybe or fall these actions can be observed on a daily basis by both partners.
Eve Rodsky:
Correct.
Lauren Schiller:
What are you hearing about... I mean, is there enlightenment afoot. I mean, are people now that they're home together and more privy to what's going on, I mean, in spite of the fact that the headline that I stated which is the over-reporting factor but the, what do you do all day question? Is that being answered?
Eve Rodsky:
Yes. Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
But with their own eyes.
Eve Rodsky:
That's the silver lining, I do and I will say that I love all you men out there because what I realized was that Fair Play was a love letter to men because this is not really a partner against partner issue. This is a systematic issue. This is, all of our cultural understanding that we guard men's time. Of course, if my time is guarded, I would want to keep it guarded. I wouldn't even see necessarily the problem, right? But what is happening now is the invisible work, the mental load, the second shift, whatever you want to call it but I like invisible work because it is work. It's just unpaid work is finally visible and that to me is the... it is the silver lining and so people are coming to me more now saying there is an understanding. It doesn't necessarily mean yet we are at the expectation of things changing, but at least there's an understanding that the invisible is now visible.
Eve Rodsky:
My favorite meme is now you'll never ask a stay at home mother what she does again all day ever again, and so that invisibility to visibility stage is really important, but we can't stop there. It does require still a system shift. Not only in all time is created equal, but an understanding that even if you bring in more money, right? That unpaid labor should not fall on one person, and what I mean by that is a completely different way of looking at unpaid labor.
Eve Rodsky:
What I want to challenge everybody, especially if you're listening as a couple, is that it's time to start treating our home as our most important organization. What I mean by that is some respect and rigor. Putting systems in place so that we're not setting the table when we're hangry and cranky or being resentful because we're the ones folding the laundry. Those systems are really, really important and it's actually... all Fair Play is borrowed from, is when I went out to figure out what was happening to me on that dreaded blueberries day.
Eve Rodsky:
I started to look at the gendered division of labor articles and women doing more in the home, and I said, well, in my day job, I'm a mediator. I work for highly complex family foundations and family businesses and I set up systems for them so that they have grace and humor and generosity when they're making the most complex financial organizational decisions. We're the organizational management books for the home. I went on Amazon, I started looking and then Lauren, all I could find was the life changing magic of organizing your junk drawer.
Eve Rodsky:
Like how did we get into a life changing magic of organizing your junk drawer conversation when the life changing magic is long-term thinking? It's setting up those systems so you're not the one wiping asses and doing dishes for the rest of your life and then feeling resentful about it and then leaving a real relationship, and we'll talk about communication just really fast. Communication, it all requires a rewire in how you communicate and understanding that when you give a man, especially a heterosis gender, man, what I call a RAT fucked, the random assignment of a task. I just need the glue stick. That is the opposite of how we do things in the workplace.
Eve Rodsky:
Netflix calls it context, not control. The rare responsible person. We know all a lot in the workplace about intrinsic motivation comes from autonomy. Asking you to pick me up a glue stick is not autonomy, and so the opposite of that is what Apple calls the DRI, the directly responsible individual. All Fair Play is, is taking those very simple concepts and bringing them to the home, to say women men, when you hold a card, a Fair Play card, bedtime routine, groceries, laundry, you are doing it with full start to finish. Conception, planning, and execution. Because what I found, Lauren, was that when I went out into the world, especially in heterosis gender relationships, I found that if you think about mustard, everybody out there think about how mustard got in your refrigerator.
Eve Rodsky:
Somebody had to know your second son, Johnny likes French's yellow mustard with his protein, otherwise he chokes. That in organizational management is what we call conception. Then somebody has to monitor that mustard when it's running low and put it on a grocery list with everything else you need for the week. That in project management organizational management is what we call planning, and then someone has to get their butts to the store to purchase the French's yellow mustard. That is the execution phase and that's where heterosis gender men are stepping in and you guys, you're bringing home spicy Dijon, the gross mustard with the seeds every freaking time. I asked you for French's yellow. Don't you know Johnny likes French's yellows. Don't you live in this house and then all of a sudden, we're not talking about mustard anymore, Lauren, we're talking about accountability and trust.
Eve Rodsky:
The only way to get out of that cycle is exactly the opposite of that article, where men think they're doing half, but really women think it's 3%. It's because of that disparity. In over-reporting the signs shows that men are focused on the execution, the purchasing of the yellow mustard whereas they are ignoring the conception and planning to get to that purchasing of the yellow mustard. Once men take over the full conception, planning, and execution, the context, not control, the autonomy of mind, the intrinsic motivation, everything changes and that's how my own house changed. That's how thousands of couples who are playing are changing.
Eve Rodsky:
It's basically divorced for married people because in a divorce, you have to let them take over. Just do divorce for married people and I promise you, it works.
Lauren Schiller:
Well. I like that declaration. You thinking about it, like, because you have to be thinking as an independent person, not as how does she want me to do it or how does he want me to do it? Right? You held up the cards. I think that it would be really helpful if you could talk about the way that you divided the categories and the way that couples can start talking about these tasks that are with us and now more than ever.
Eve Rodsky:
Yes. I'd like to give you results of my survey for the past couple of weeks. Well, since March 8th. I guess it's been like nine weeks now. I've been asking over social media, asking people to go on to fairplaylife where you can see sort of all the cards in the conception, planning, execution, and asking women and men to tell me which ones are causing the most consternation in the home right now. I call them the dirty dozen because it's really a baker's dozen if you have kids, but this is what my survey unearthed. Laundry, groceries, some similar to the survey. Laundry, groceries, meals, home supplies, tidying up, cleaning, dishes, and garbage.
Eve Rodsky:
Now, if you have kids, you add discipline and screen time, homework, which is now home school, watching of children whether they're infants or teenagers who are trying to escape quarantine and social interactions for kids, which I was surprised by, that that would be a big one, but it's a high stressor from couples telling me that keeping their friends connected to their friends, so house party and Zooms is actually highly labor intensive for them. I think that that dirty dozen is a good place to start because those are the places where people are getting stuck right now where the small details are the biggest problems.
Eve Rodsky:
Communication shifts that I talk about in Fair Play is really, I'd say, start with the dirty dozen, if you can iron out the dirty dozen then everything else is probably just gravy. It'll fall into place.
Lauren Schiller:
I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point. When we come back with Eve Rodsky, why ownership of the to do's is more important than divvying things up equally. I'm back with Eve Rodsky. One of the things that you talk about in the book is that it's not necessarily about 50/50. It's about being equitable.
Eve Rodsky:
Correct.
Lauren Schiller:
How would you advise people watching today, listening today how they start that conversation about who does what and how they do it the right way?
Eve Rodsky:
Well, I think 50/50 is a terrible idea. Thank you for bringing that up because how do you even measure that? Right? I mean, that's just a score keeping exercise in futility. I like to say let's like throw out 50/50 and instead focus on ownership, and what I mean by that is when Seth started to understand the idea of CPE, we sat down and we sort of talked about what the full breadth of say extracurricular sports for my two sons meant and so bless his heart, right? Again, this is back to the heterosis gender male.
Eve Rodsky:
He talked to people and told everybody he was in charge of extracurricular sports for my kids, for my two sons, because he showed up at the little league fields. When I explained to him that the conception was serving their friends to see what sports they want to play and what leagues they want to play in and then the planning was ordering their equipment online, returning it to Amazon when it didn't fit, signing up the five waivers that they needed, xeroxing their birth certificate, paying for coaches gift, being snack parents once a week, arranging all of the carpools, every single practice which for my son's basketball team was three days a week and my youngest son's was... for his baseball team was one day a week.
Eve Rodsky:
Once he understood that that was all the planning that went behind getting to the execution, getting them to the field. I got six hours, Lauren of my week back. For me, that could have been fair. Seth just handling the extracurricular sports card where I held the other 89 cards for my family. That could be fair in your family. I'm not here to tell you what your fair looks like, but I know that there is not always equal and equal is not always fair, especially if there is a breadwinner and somebody isn't. But I do know it means that one person should not be doing all the unpaid labor in your home if you're privileged enough to have a partner.
Eve Rodsky:
It could just be one card, but like I said, extracurricular sports, which was one card saved me six hours a week and that for me... in the beginning of Fair Play years ago felt there. Now at we're at a point where Seth is holding probably 38 to 50 cards of our 87 that are in play most of the time and now a lot of our cards, right? Having it all doesn't mean doing it all. A lot of our tasks have been retired because the good news is COVID is a slower lifestyle, but it does mean that those dirty dozen are way grindier. I'm not going to hold laundry forever because now two loads seems to be like 17 loads and I'm not sure why, but that's just the way it is.
Lauren Schiller:
Or like happened to me the other day when the water starts mysteriously leaking out from under the washing machine. Whose job is it to get someone to come in?
Eve Rodsky:
Correct. That's the home maintenance card and I hold that right now but how great is that if you pre negotiated in advance. Part of communication is not communicating. That's what my husband says. The beautiful thing he says about Fair Play is that the CPE allows us to communicate more about things that matter and that we're drowning less in decision fatigue. Because again, who wants to be making the decision of who sets the table when you're already hungry and cranky. That to me is the key.
Eve Rodsky:
The conception, planning, execution, the CPE of a card means that we do not have to communicate because he owns his shit. I own my shit and we redeal if it gets annoying or unfair, but we know the full context of what it takes to complete that task from start to finish and now our sons know that. That's the beauty. We have eight and 11-year-old sons who are playing with us and they're understanding the executive function that goes from curiosity to completion because that's hard. All those steps are not easy. The conception and planning are not easy.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, what's interesting having kids at home now and doing online schooling is that they actually have to become better at the conception, planning, and execution, right? Because their teachers-
Eve Rodsky:
Absolutely.
Lauren Schiller:
...aren't feeding it to them. They don't have a place they have to show up every single day at a certain time. In a way, this is kind of like good training for becoming an adult who's sharing responsibilities, even though the main responsibility is yourself as a kid.
Eve Rodsky:
Absolutely. Well, if you're not ready to bring these concepts of CPE to your partner, then at least bring them to your kids, right? Because the beauty of this is... I'm telling you all, any of you don't have kids yet, or you have them, right? Or if you're even in your own relationships or if you think you may have them. What we're seeing now in terms of successful adults, and you see this in all the books, how you raise an adult, you talk to deans from colleges, is that the kids who know how to do things from start to finish with executive function, with time management and it is also kids who know how to communicate.
Eve Rodsky:
That's really all Fair Play is. It's just a tool, cheaper than a couple of therapists, right? That gets you to think about what does it mean to take care of a dog for a day? I was talking to my father about this with my son, Zach and I talk about this in the book as he was way younger. My father said he was playing Fair Play because he was taking... he was giving [Marsha 00:26:09] the morning off to take the dog to doggy daycare. And I said, dad, that has nothing to do with Fair Play. That's literally the opposite. That's execution on someone else's mental load still.
Eve Rodsky:
You're breaking up a task. I said, what Fair Play would be is owning a full dog day on Wednesdays, when you take her to doggy daycare and that means being responsible for her special vitamins, for feeding her morning and night, for making sure she was walked, asking the daycare whether she pooped there, whether you have to take her out later. My son was able to tell my dad what it meant to take care of her pet from start to finish.
Eve Rodsky:
That is the beauty, right, of executive function. It's the curiosity to completion journey. Instead of those rainbow color coded schedules, you can actually go on to fairplaylife and ask your kids, "What do you think it means to take care of a pet for a day?" What does it actually mean to tidy up? Why is that important to you? That idea of the conception, planning, execution can be really, really helpful. I think in this time, even if your kids still need reminders, at least they will understand what it means to do something from start to finish.
Lauren Schiller:
I just want to say to everyone that I read the book from start to finish and I actually have a physical deck of cards like Eve is showing you. In preparation for interviewing her the last time she and I spoke, I sat down with my husband for about an hour... took about an hour and a half to go through each of the cards and deal them to one another. We had in our hand, a physical card that said I'm in charge of these however many cards it ended up being, and luckily in our family, it did actually ended up being pretty equal because I have a-
Eve Rodsky:
Wow. [crosstalk 00:27:47].
Lauren Schiller:
...heavy lifter of a husband, but it was very validating for both of us to see what the other was doing. It's a great extra... I'm just going to endorse your book.
Eve Rodsky:
Thank you.
Lauren Schiller:
It's a great exercise to formalize things that you may already be talking about with your significant other, but maybe not as explicitly. The other thing in your deck is... there were two things that I actually want to talk about that seems so relevant right now. One of them is a set of cards within the deck that are called wild cards and that's an unexpected thing that life throws at you. The other one is about unicorn space, which is the ability to have the time to pursue your passion.
Lauren Schiller:
In the era of COVID-19, at six weeks it's already an era, but in the era of COVID-19, it's like one big wild card.
Eve Rodsky:
Correct.
Lauren Schiller:
What are some ideas that you have just generally where we've all been thrown through this giant loop? And then secondly, how do we protect the space that we need for our creative passions?
Eve Rodsky:
What does it mean to be in a wildcard? Well, I talk about that in Fair Play for two reasons. One, because say there's a daily disruption, a wildcard where your child is sick from school. Overwhelmingly, regardless of whether the woman worked out of the home in heterosis gender relationships, women were the one in schools were reporting that they call women. That women are the ones picking up their kids from school and I'd asked schools why they do that. And often it was like, I don't want to bother the men. It was a version of the guarding men's time. It was very interesting.
Eve Rodsky:
Also I talk about wildcards because it's a very important to understand, again, as Lauren said, like, this is not rocket science. These cards are just a mediation tool to get you to clearly define expectations in your home, and you have to do that by communicating and so the wildcard of COVID or while there's wildcards in the deck like job loss and money problems or serious illness or a glitch in the matrix is because it's getting you to recognize that when emotion is high, cognition is low. In a wild card emotion is high cognition is low. Most of my day, I know now that my emotion is high and my cognition is low.
Eve Rodsky:
If I communicate when my emotion is high, my cognition is low that means I'm communicating during emotional cascade. I talk about that in Fair Play and that's toxic. I think it's really important to understand the idea of a wild card, because it all is linked to how you communicate and our communication vulnerabilities... I talk about this as a mediator. Our communication vulnerabilities are most likely to come out during a wildcard. Lauren, would you indulge me in a quiz? What is your partner's name?
Lauren Schiller:
Absolutely. Justin.
Eve Rodsky:
Justin. I'm sad I didn't know that. I should know that. Okay. I want to play like a newlywed game with you where... even though you're not newlyweds, most of us aren't. I want you to tell me what Justin would say about you. I'm going to read you the top seven vulnerabilities that I sort of started writing down and noticing over a decade long career mediating complex family issues.
Eve Rodsky:
I'm going to read you seven and I want to know what you think Justin would say about you when emotion is high and cognition is low. Okay. One, long-winded. Why you're talking and no one's listening. Two, sharp command sir. Your tone and drill sergeant delivery isn't popular with the troops. Three, bad timing. You drop your grievances and requests for help into the conversation at inopportune moments. Thanks so much for the flowers, honey, but you forgot dishwashing detergents. Four, toxic word choice. I wasn't going to say anything, but I really hate it when you [inaudible 00:31:31]. Five, all or nothing. You never replace the toilet paper roll. You always leave the seat up. Six, dredging up the past. This is just like the last time you forgot to [inaudible 00:31:41] or seven, boiling over. I wasn't going to say anything. I avoided the conversation. I didn't say anything, but now I'm really pissed.
Eve Rodsky:
If anybody on the chat wants to tell me too, we can customize the rest of our tips based on what they say, but I'd love Lauren to tell me. What do you think Justin would say about you?
Lauren Schiller:
Of the-
Eve Rodsky:
Of the seven.
Lauren Schiller:
Of the seven.
Eve Rodsky:
Shall I read them again?
Lauren Schiller:
Which one-
Eve Rodsky:
One, long-winded. Two, sharp command and tone. Three, bad timing. Four, toxic word choice. Five, all or nothing. Six, dredging up the past or seven, boiling over. What would he say is your vulnerability when emotion gets high and cognition as well?
Lauren Schiller:
Okay. This is actually very hard for me to answer because he and I have been together for so long that I would say I've hit every single one of those.
Eve Rodsky:
I love that. I love it. Well, thank you for being vulnerable and recognizing that you're already communicating.
Lauren Schiller:
Oh yeah.
Eve Rodsky:
Give me one now... Okay. In this wild card, which one do you think that you would have an example of maybe that you could share-
Lauren Schiller:
Yeah, I mean, of course. Over 20 however many years we've been together. Of course there are examples that I can dredge up from the past. That one time that I asked you to do this thing and you brought me this... Like, okay, here's a perfect example. I hate chicken apple sausage, okay. For the record, and we got into this knockdown drag out fight because we went to the baseball game, back when we had baseball games and we were tailgating with friends and the only protein he brought was chicken apple sausage. I sucked it up. I ate it, sat through the whole game and in the car ride home with the poor kids in the back, was just like... I blew my top. You know I hate chicken apple sauce. Now that's-
Eve Rodsky:
That's okay. I love that. I'm writing that down. I want to use that.
Lauren Schiller:
And now it's become the family joke. Like he does not buy me chicken apple sausage anymore.
Eve Rodsky:
Well, that's a bowling offer. It's great. Because... and bad timing. I'm going to say that's bad timing too.
Lauren Schiller:
Acknowledged.
Eve Rodsky:
I mean, your kids make fun of it now, but yes, and what's so beautiful about that is I think it gets to some... what [Sonya 00:33:45] just said actually and [Jacqueline 00:33:46] too, is that all of these are sort of related to this idea that feedback in the moment, whether it was in the moment with your kids or you couldn't hold it in anymore, right? This feedback in the moment or communicating when emotion is high and cognition is low, it can be toxic and so I think that's what I'd love for everybody on your listenership to take away is that it sounds scary and complicated and to enter a system and to talk about cards because we are all believing that we're not communicating.
Eve Rodsky:
It sounds complicated if you say to me, I don't communicate about domestic life, and so many men and women on my Fair Play journey said that Lauren. We don't communicate about domestic life. Okay. One woman says that to me and then I find out, no... then she talks 20 minutes later, not related to the communication question I asked her and she says, yeah, well, my husband, when he forgot the clothes and didn't put them in the dryer, I dumped them on his pillow. Another woman said to me, we don't talk about domestic life and then I find out she has an Instagram account called the shit my husband doesn't pick up, and she's publicly shaming him on Instagram.
Eve Rodsky:
Recently in COVID, I reached out to a woman who told me she doesn't communicate about domestic life, but I actually reached out to her, Lauren because she posted to 27,000 members in a, I hate my husband COVID group, that if her husband died during COVID it wasn't going to be from the disease. It was going to be from her. She publicly threatened to murder her spouse in a 27,000 member forum but she says she doesn't communicate about domestic life. I think the first step is to recognize we're already communicating. As a mediator I'll go on your Nest Cam and I... you've been with Justin for many years. I'll see five ways you've communicated about domestic life, whether it's about chicken apple sausage, or who's folding the laundry that's sitting on your bed.
Eve Rodsky:
What I want to say is that when you recognize, and you can say with some humor and levity, I'd like to do this communication quiz, or I know I use bad tone, and so I wanted to say to you, I'd love to find a time to communicate when emotion is low, cognition is high because it's a wild card that's not often. For [Steph 00:36:04] and me now it's 10 minutes a night after our kids go to bed with either wine or cookie dough. We set a timer because he says I'm long-winded. We set a timer, 10 minutes and we check in.
Eve Rodsky:
Sometimes it's things that have to have happened the next day and they're serious. Sometimes it's just connecting. But recently Steph said to me that he was upset, but he didn't boil over because he had a time. He had a time to communicate with me our practice of communicating. Every night, Fair Play is a practice just like meditation and exercise. You have to invest in your relationships like you're investing in toilet paper. We sit down 10 minutes a night, and he said to me, I'm feeling upset about your minimum standard of care, which is a word from Fair Play about how you're homeschooling our kids.
Eve Rodsky:
When I have the hours that are allocated to me, my phone is on the charger. When I see your hours with the kids, I see you like this. Pointing at them on Zoom.
Lauren Schiller:
With your phone to your-
Eve Rodsky:
With my phone to my ear.
Lauren Schiller:
...ear.
Eve Rodsky:
And so what he said to me was, I'm hoping that your minimum standard of care could be a little higher and that you can block out the times that you are responsible for our kids' learning because that's our minimum standard of care that we're going to be present for them and if you can't do that, then you need to let me know because then... I don't want to do it either. I want to be able to be on my phone. I said, "No, no, no, I'll do it. I'll do it." But that's how we talk about things now in a way that's way better than again, sobbing on the side of the road over off season blueberries.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, you've created a vocabulary and you have a framework and that takes so much of the emotion-
Eve Rodsky:
Out of the way.
Lauren Schiller:
...out of the conversation, right? It's like, you can be rational. Well, let's before... I have two more questions before we go to questions and one of them is just to circle back to this idea of unicorn status.
Eve Rodsky:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
Can you speak to that?
Eve Rodsky:
That's why I brought up communication first because we have to ask for what we need. People who are listening with their partners, what I will say to you is I found the midlife crisis even if you're not midlife yet, and that's not breast implants or green Ferrari's. What it is was that the things people told me that made them happiest were the things that their partners resented most about them.
Eve Rodsky:
I'll say that again, the things that people reported to me made them happiness were the things their partners resented most about them. That to me is the real midlife crisis, and that happens because of perceived unfairness. It would be a man saying to me, "My happiness is my triathlon training." And then his partner is saying, "I fucking hate him because he escapes six hours on the weekends and he leaves me to take care of the kids." What I want to say to everybody here is that the permission to be unavailable, to create those boundaries for yourself, by doing something, an active pursuit that makes you, you is actually indicative of how healthy your relationships are and how long you'll stay together.
Eve Rodsky:
If you feel you are resigned to going to Costco together for all day long and not picking up the diapers and all getting the buffalo wings or whatever, or sitting with each other in the park and just being angry and miserable that you're all there because you need family time, Fair Play is the opposite of that. It says own your tasks. Spend less time together as a family unit and actually spend more time on yourself. Especially now we need that, and often because we know the statistic that men take twice as much leisure time as women, and especially we guard men's time. That's back to that time message. It's really important to negotiate that.
Eve Rodsky:
I say, no scorekeeping, no 50/50 unless you're talking about unicorn space, the active pursuit of what makes you, you and that can be crocheting Harry Potter dolls which one woman sent to me and showed me her unicorn space. We're signing up for the volunteer firefighters as another woman did that I interviewed for Fair Play, or it could be training for that triathlon as long as your partner gets that time back for them. Seth and I had unicorn space hours where Saturdays I get nine to 12 and then he gets from 12 to three.
Eve Rodsky:
Sometimes there's self-care built in, but really we try to use it. Professor Laurie Santos who teaches the most popular happiness course at Yale talks about that... she calls it differently. She says, make your leisure time nutritious. That's all unicorn space is. It's not sitting there scrolling four hours on Instagram. It's the active pursuit of what makes you, you. For Lauren, I'm going to assume part of it is your podcast because you have a beautiful way of bringing out ideas in other people and so I would say like identifying you that part of your unicorn space has to be your podcast, because it's a really beautiful skill that only uniquely you can do, but for others, it can be... like I said, it could be crocheting Harry Potter dolls. It could be baking pies, but it's about getting that freedom to be in that permission to be unavailable from yourself without any guilt and shame.
Lauren Schiller:
I think that's so important for us to reinforce for ourselves right now.
Eve Rodsky:
Yes, and we don't give it to ourselves and especially because we think the space time continuum is collapsing on us and I get it because find your passion and purpose things sound like bullshit but in the context of rebalance and efficiency, I promise you, you can get that time back, even if it's five or 10 minutes a day, but sitting there journaling, writing a poem, it doesn't necessarily have to be creative. I'm not creative. I'm a left brain organizational management consultant. I'm a lawyer, but to me it was a curiosity about the gender division of labor. That's what I carved my time out for.
Eve Rodsky:
Whatever it is that makes you, you I'd say don't make it like the mythical equine that doesn't fucking exist. Create that time, reclaim your time by first communicating when emotion is low and cognition is high and I will say one thing that made me sad. One woman said to me, the only time she got unicorn space back was during her divorce because now her kids are half time with her husband and she said it was easier for her to ask for a divorce than it was to negotiate these issues on a daily basis. That makes me sad. Get it right the first time, try at least to invest in communication before you go to the step of divorce and you explode your whole relationship.
Lauren Schiller:
How do you see this translating societaly. I mean, there's the whole leading by example but then in these op-eds that are coming out, within these 70 articles or so, there's been a lot of demands. There needs to be more... there needs to be paid family leave, there needs to be onsite childcare. There needs to be flexible work hours, things of this nature that could potentially start to tip the system in a way that is not still putting the burden on women but on the other hand, it could still just be about reinforcing the norms that we already have. What do you see-
Eve Rodsky:
Correct.
Lauren Schiller:
...as being the right next step from a societal perspective?
Eve Rodsky:
Well, I get scared that we're going to reinforce the norms because as women do more of the homeschooling or the unpaid labor and the dirty dozen, and then the workplace can say, see, I told you, women are not committed to the workforce. Then we get into this terrible cycle of why women are paid less than men in the first place, which is called the motherhood penalty, which applies to women, even if you're not mothers. Yes, I say that societaly, it starts with empathy. It starts with heterosis gender men who are managers of other men saying and modeling.
Eve Rodsky:
What I say to men is if you're on this call, the most important thing you can do, especially after COVID... well actually during COVID is... fold laundry on your Zoom. Before COVID in Davos, I asked all these male world leaders to make sure that when they get home, they call their school and that they are the number one person that is called when a child is sick. The more we see men modeling and picking up the phone during work meetings to show that their work and life are integrated, the better we'll do.
Eve Rodsky:
One Google engineer said to me he's a Fair Player, that before Fair Play right, the life part of his work life equation was invisible. He was ignoring it and then he started to think about if he coded and he forgot an important variable, he said the system would crash and so he feels like the system has crashed if we ignore the life. I guess the good news is that the silver lining of this is we kidding no life anymore. We're all that BBC guy with a toddler coming in on us, and so the more we can model behaviors to show that we integrate our life, especially white men, the better.
Eve Rodsky:
On top of that, yes, of course. I talk about Fair Play, which is what we just said, the modeling that behavior, but also fair day and fair pay. If we really truly believe women's time is valued equally to male's time, if all time is diamonds and women's time is not sand, then we'll pay women the same for the same jobs and then fair day is continuing the flexibility that we are getting now and affording that flexibility and saying that employers, you have to make those changes. You have to allow for life. It doesn't mean anybody's less productive. It just means that they're happier.
Lauren Schiller:
All right, we do. Thank you. We have a question here from Jacqueline. She says I'm good at conceptualizing and planning, but execution, not so much. I'm guessing that makes me a bit of the boss in the relationship. I'm not in a relationship at the moment, but could it work if I just do the first two steps of the categories?
Eve Rodsky:
No, no.
Lauren Schiller:
Sorry, Jacqueline.
Eve Rodsky:
No, because then the person you're with is getting RAT fucked. The men that you're with or women that you're with are getting the random assignment of a task. I distill... it finally took me years to distill nagging. What were men especially saying, that they hate nagging? What does that mean? It's such a gendered word. What the hell are you talking about? I hate that word because I think it's gendered. Instead I say, the random assignment of a task, and that is really what matters and I think Sonya has a really important question. Why, especially white men, not all men, because actually I did find that men of color, again, this is 500 men in interviews, but why white men especially were the ones who were most resistant to these ideas and again, it's sort of who knows. I didn't go into the patriarchal reasons why or the political reasons why, but it took me the longest to get white men to agree with the statement. So this is where it comes from to get a little nitty gritty for Sonya.
Eve Rodsky:
I asked a question of men, again, across socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Do you believe an hour holding your child's hand at the pediatrician's office is as valuable as an hour in the boardroom or on the assembly line or in the workplace? White men had the hardest time answering that question? Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
We have a question here from [Tamar 00:46:59]. She says, I think you mentioned that there were changes that employers should make to support Fair Play concepts. Any examples of what can be done. It seems that new mothers are particularly vulnerable for feeling isolated and kicked out of the workforce.
Eve Rodsky:
Absolutely. What I would say to that Tamar, it's this understanding, and I went to Davos to talk about this, but this is... yes, this is a huge crisis because we know that in the professional world, 43% of women take a career detour after kids. It is a huge crisis. I've been screaming this crisis for eight years. I think now finally we're getting a little bit of traction. It's the only way to changes is... and I had a post it, right? We have to invite men in to this conversation because if we just talk about it as women for the next hundred years, nothing will change.
Eve Rodsky:
I know for men, the beauty about men, I'll give you a quick example about... I had a man who is a Fair Player. He's also a fellow philanthropic advisor. We work with a mutual client. He went to his client's funeral. That's a little confusing, but one of his other client's funerals and what he said to me, and this is an executive in Seattle, a mogul, somebody who's made hundreds of millions of dollars that he was at this funeral before COVID obviously, and they start and he said, "Nobody talked about the money he made in his life." What happened was each... he had three daughters.
Eve Rodsky:
They each got up to the podium and they just start reciting a poem that he said sounded like a shell service team poem. It was confusing. All three daughters recited the poem and didn't say what it was until at the end, when the last daughter said, those were three of the poems our father wrote to us as a tooth fairy, and it still makes me cry even though I... I was told the story a while ago, because at the end of the day what this man who was identifying to me, now that he's sort of in the system is that that's how I want to be remembered.
Eve Rodsky:
Part of the long answer is that it requires that empathy for us all to have a cultural shift, to know that an hour holding our child's hand is as valuable as an hour in the board room, and that requires us all being cultural warriors. Just by showing up on this call, by listening to this podcast, you are a cultural warrior in this movement to recognize that all time is created equal and the value of care, and when we start from there, I mean, we can't go back if it becomes a movement.
Lauren Schiller:
That was Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live). Eve also has a podcast you should check out called In All Fairness. Definitely listen to my conversation from last year with Eve at INFORUM, where she lays out the fair place system in more detail and how to put it to work for yourself. I'll put a link to that conversation and the Fair Play website on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller and reporting to you from my new headquarters at home, this is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.
Lauren Schiller:
That's our inflection point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know a woman leading change we should talk to? Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one-time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up. Just go to inflection point radio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
We're on Facebook and Instagram @inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions, and follow me on Twitter @laschiller to find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org. Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Alaura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host Lauren Schiller. Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Speaker 3:
From PRX.
