The Sugar Daddy Podcast
Ready to normalize talking about money? Then welcome to The Sugar Daddy Podcast. Every episode will get you one step closer to your financial goals. Whether that is learning how to invest, budget, save, retire early or simply make better money choices, Jess & Brandon have got you covered in a way that's easy to understand, and easy to implement. Tune in as they demystify the realm of dollars, so it all makes cents, while giving you a glimpse into their relationship with money and each other.
Brandon is an award winning licensed financial planner, and owner of Oak City Financial, with over a decade of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the United States.
New episodes published the first three Wednesdays of every month.
The Sugar Daddy Podcast
76: Eve Rodsky on Rebalancing Equity and the Price of Unpaid Labor in your Home
Ever found yourself buried under household tasks, wondering why the balance feels so off? In this episode, Jess and Brandon unravel the complexities of invisible work with Eve Rodsky, author of "Fair Play" and "Find Your Unicorn Space," as she shares the often-unseen challenges of unpaid labor in relationships. The discussion reveals the significant emotional and cognitive burdens women face as the typically designated caregivers and home managers, underlining the need for equitable partnership to alleviate these. In detailing her transformative "blueberry breakdown," Eve reveals how recognizing and redistributing unpaid labor can help revolutionize domestic dynamics.
With compelling stories and practical insights, this episode offers a fresh perspective on the power of equity and the potential for meaningful transformation within our homes.
What’s talked about In this episode:
• Understanding the concept of the second shift and emotional labor
• Eve's personal journey leading to the the NYT bestselling book, "Fair Play"
• The impact of upbringing and societal norms on domestic responsibilities
• Strategies for achieving equitable division of labor in partnerships
• The transformative effects of shared responsibilities on relationships and individual well-being
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Learn more about Brandon and schedule a free 30-minute introductory call with him here: https://www.oakcityfinancial.us
And so that day was a day that I felt less shame, because even these strong women that I really admired were going through the same thing that I was, and so I felt like, oh my God, if none of us are immune to these issues, then maybe this is a bigger problem.
Speaker 1:And so that's when the researcher hat really came on to understand that this phenomenon that we're talking about had a name, a couple names actually the second shift, unpaid labor, emotional labor, cognitive labor and invisible work. That was my favorite one, jess and Brandon, because it came from 1986, an article I read, and the woman, the sociologist, was arguing that unfortunately she didn't believe that women's work in the home would ever be visible, because visibility in our society equals value, and if we gave value to the unpaid labor, we'd have to pay for it or we'd have to acknowledge it. And the invisibility is what is allowing America to have women as our social safety net, and that is something that we need for a capitalist patriarchy to thrive. And so she argued that we would never make the invisible visible. So then I got mad at her and said well, I'm going to make the invisible visible, and I started with the Should I Do? Spreadsheet. And that's how Fair Play began, hey, babe.
Speaker 3:What are we talking about? Something that I think every mother, parent, working person, especially working person with a family, feels deeply in their soul, and that is that second shift, that mental load, the five to nine after working, a nine to five, the oh my gosh, who's going to do the tooth fairy money? What about the goodie bags for the classroom party? The crap that inundates our minds. That is what we're talking about today. And before you're like, no, I don't want to hear abouting because I read her New York Times bestselling book, fair Play, when we had a one-year-old and we were drowning and then we found out we were pregnant, and then we were in a pandemic with two under two and I was like, oh my gosh, how do we come up from air? And Eve really, really helped us come up for air. And so, eve, we are so, so thrilled to have you with us today.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here and it's been fun to listen to you and I love your banter and I'm just happy to be here oh, thank you.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you know partially, our banter is because we're still happily married.
Speaker 2:Because, thanks to your book, we figured it out.
Speaker 3:You helped us get there, so thank you so much. For anybody who is not familiar with Eve's work, let's get into this incredible bio, because you really have put in the work for this book and to help families come up for air and really figure out a system that works in their home. And it's all about equity, not equality. I think we all realize nothing will ever be equal in a home, but we can find equity between the roles, whether you're in a heteronormative relationship or otherwise, finding what works for you. All of our relationships, of course, are our own and they're personal, but you've really put a system in place to help us figure that out. So let's get into this bio and then we'll follow up with your money memory and get into how this all came to be. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 3:Her New York Times bestselling book and Reese's Book Club pick Fair Play, a gamified life management system that helps partners rebalance their domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, has elevated the cultural conversation about the value of unpaid labor and care. So much unpaid labor. In her highly anticipated follow-up Find your Unicorn Space Reclaim your Creative Life in a Too Busy World. She explores the cross-section between the science of creativity, productivity and resilience, described as the antidote to physical, mental and emotional burnout. Rodsky aims to inspire a narrative around the equality of time and the individual right to personal time choice that influences sustainable and lasting change on a policy level. Her work is backed by Hello Sunshine, reese Witherspoon's media company, whose mission is to change the narrative for women through storytelling. Rotsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in LA with her husband, Seth and their three children. Welcome, eve, thank you.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you for that bio.
Speaker 3:Oh, how do you feel about it? It's a big bio. You should be so proud.
Speaker 1:It's. You know, I actually feel more aligned with your statement about raising children during the pandemic. That's what really triggered me. It was a hard time.
Speaker 3:It was. It was a hard time for so many of us and I'll tell you I listened. I'm an audiobook girl through and through. If I read a book I'm going to fall asleep. So I have to do audio audible or audio. And when I heard your voice talk about the blueberry breakdown, when I tell you I don't know that I've ever felt so seen in my entire life. So for anybody who is an audio book person, I cannot recommend Fair Play enough, because it really is just like the conversations that you have with your girlfriends around, just all the stuff you know, the never ending to do list. And so we're going to get into that blueberry breakdown because that is, I know that's really the catalyst.
Speaker 3:I know it really is the catalyst for this extraordinary journey you've been on. But before we get there, raised with a single mom, I'm sure you have an incredible first money memory. Can you walk us through that?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:My first money memory was getting an eviction notice under the door.
Speaker 1:We lived in a place called Sives in Town, which is a rent stabilized sort of middle class working class housing project in Alphabet City in New York City, and I remember my mother worked nights.
Speaker 1:She was a teacher, a professor, so she worked nights and I would be home with my younger brother and I remember a blue piece of paper being pushed under our door and what I remember about the eviction notice was I think I was a relatively new reader, I must have been like third grade and and all I could you know as a young reader process was something that said you will be, you know, basically out of a home, and so I didn't understand the context that my mother was overwhelmed with all the unpaid labor and that she just had forgotten to pay our bills, or that you know it was. She was paying rent on credit card debt, but I didn't have the context for that. All I thought when I saw that blue piece of paper was that we were going to be homeless and, and so that that was probably my my first and and one of my most formative money memories and one of my most formative money memories.
Speaker 3:Have you been listening to our podcast and wondering how am I really doing with my money? Am I doing the right things with my investments? Am I on track to reach my financial goals? What could I be doing better? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it's time for you to reach out to Brandon to schedule your free yes, I said free 30-minute introduction conversation to see how his services could help make you the more confident moneymaker we know you could be. What are you waiting for? It's literally free and at the very least, you'll walk away feeling more empowered and confident about your financial future.
Speaker 3:Link is in our show notes. Go, schedule your call today. I mean that being able to read part of that notice even I mean that would definitely be formative. What do you think you have gained, or how has that shown up in your life today and the work that you thought you would do? I mean, obviously you are a Harvard trained attorney by background. I mean you don't get there without hard work. So did you have like a moment where you're like this is never going to happen in my adult life? Or how have you absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, for me it was absolutely formative. I did not want to be my mother and until Fair Play and I really started to understand and become an expert on the gender division of labor Jess yeah, I'm an expert on the gender division of labor. Brandon, not probably your most anticipated podcast to have?
Speaker 3:to sit through.
Speaker 1:But, but. But that wasn't on my third grade. What do you want to be when you grow up? Bored right To be an expert on the gender division of labor? But it all actually started with, you know, the explosion of having a mother who did it all and saying that I didn't want that life and trying to build a life where I had an equal partner, and then watching that completely break down in shame and exhaustion. I did everything to try to be the antithesis of a single mother raising two children, working nights, and I thought I had built that partnership until, as you said, jess, I had a lot of breakdowns, but one that was really memorable, which I write about in Fair Play. As you said, my blueberries breakdown.
Speaker 3:The blueberries breakdown. Well, thank you for sharing that formative memory, because that I'm sure was hard to process then and even reflecting now.
Speaker 2:I mean that's you know, these memories shape us and they stay with us.
Speaker 3:And then having your own children, you're like I'm going to do it different, you know, which is a whole nother added level of stress that I think any parent who strives to be a good parent and do better know better for their kids, you know, deals with on a daily basis. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:And later with the fair play cards. I just want to say I want to play something with you to remind me I want to play the game.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've got them right here.
Speaker 1:Perfect. The therapists have been using them in a way that sort of helps us tell some of those stories that you ask about. So I was thinking when I was listening to you about money memories, I was like, ooh, I want to just ask them a question later on, but not yet. Sorry, brandon, you go.
Speaker 3:Let's do it.
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to say that I always find it very interesting to hear people's stories of being raised by more than likely a single parent, but most often a single mother, because I was raised by more than likely a single parent, but most often a single mother, because I was raised by a single mom as well. She raised my brother and I, but I'm so blessed and lucky that finances was not an issue in our household, thankfully.
Speaker 2:So, it's, you know, looked very different. I would say that my upbringing was much better than probably most people that have two parents, and it's just always interesting to hear you know those dynamics of what happens, you know, with a single parent. Now, granted, I know she was overwhelmed, I know she would have the same problems that you're, you know your mother probably have from being overwhelmed, because they're doing everything outside of just working.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I think that that's the key, what really resonated and I'm sure you would say this too is even when you have great spouses like Seth or like a Brandon, sometimes it's still not enough, right, because we're missing that foundation of a system in our home. And so that, I think, is really what spoke to me in the book. Is that, no, I have a husband who does laundry. I have a husband who will empty the dishwasher. I have a husband who will do my daughter's hair, or our daughter's hair. How is that not enough? And then you know, my heart breaks for the people who don't have that and are really, really doing it all. But putting that system in place really is so, so important. So can we kick it off with the blueberries breakdown?
Speaker 2:Before we get to that real quick, I do want to, you know, specify to the men out there. You have to be open to having this conversation and not taking it as criticism or an attack on you. So please listen to this podcast without getting upset. Just be open to the idea of, you know, making your relationship better.
Speaker 1:That's a good call. Thanks, brandon. What I will say is that I had this one CEO who said to me, you know, I got through your book, which I was like, oh, thank you for saying that. And he said and the reason why I got through the whole thing was because the first half, you know, I didn't. I thought I was going to put it down because it was so full of anger, but the second half is so full of solutions. And I was like well, thank you for accepting female anger.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you getting through it, but, but I but again, I do think that if you stay along with us, some of this will go dark, but then we do go light, because the good news is that fair play works, the systems work. The only way to end bias, as we know, one of the best ways is structured decision making. So we're going to talk about how great it is when you have tools to make things more efficient. You get time back, but I do think it's important to give context, which is anger and sadness, which is exactly where you know sort of that blueberries breakdown starts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's get into it. Tell everyone and you know, don't listen to this podcast and then not read the book. Read the book because it is a gem of a book, and then get the cards as well.
Speaker 1:But we'll get into that. Thank you, look for me again. As I said, I did not aspire to be an expert on the gender division of labor. It was not what I had written in my what Do you want to be when you grow up? Bored in elementary school, it wasn't, in fact, what I answered when Elizabeth Warren she was our orientation teacher before she was a Senator from Massachusetts in law school and she asked us, jess and Brandon, what do we want to do with your law degree? And without sarcasm, I legitimately said something like president of the United States, you know, senator from New York and Nick City dancer, and preferably all at the same time, because it was sort of that legally blonde era where you know what, like it's hard, well, it turns out, it is really hard.
Speaker 1:But so in in 1999, when I said that I thought, you know, I'd be smashing all these glass ceilings. And then, you know, if you really look at my life, when I had the blueberries breakdown in 2011, 10, you know, basically 10 years later, the only thing I can actually, you know, legitimately say I was smashing, you know, was like peas for my toddler, zach, while nursing a newborn baby, while desperately trying to grasp at straws, to hold on to a corporate job that didn't want me back, that gave away my direct reports and told me if I wanted to breastfeed it would have to be in a supply closet. And that context is important because that is the context in which I was operating a workplace that abandoned me my dreams that I thought I was going to have 10 years earlier sort of you know by the wayside. And then, on top of it, sort of the person closest to me, my husband Seth, as I was racing to get my toddler from a toddler transition program which in America you know they last like seven minutes and they cost our entire salaries Around this time sends me this text that says you know, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And if it wasn't for that context, yes, I don't think you know, without the context it's understandable, especially to men, men, why that would have caused an entire movement, not just a book.
Speaker 1:But at the time, what happened to me was, when I got the I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries text, I pulled over to the side of the road which we don't do lightly in LA because of traffic and I was late to pick up Zach, that toddler, and I just sat there crying, and I was crying not just because Seth was ascribing to me that I was the fulfiller of his smoothie needs, but I think what I was really crying for was that I was the default.
Speaker 1:I started to feel like there was no end to this mess of a tunnel that I was in, where I was the default or, as I call in Fair Play, the she-fault for literally every single household task for my family, and what I realized was I was living a statistic, jess and Brandon, that I didn't even know at the time, which is that women shoulder two-thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family, regardless of whether they work outside the home, and actually the amount of invisible, unpaid work that they handle increases as the money they make increases.
Speaker 1:And so we know this is not a work problem, this is a gender problem. And so that breakdown on the side of the road. I think back now to that day, and even if I hadn't created the Fair Play system, even if I didn't have an institute that's fighting for paid leave and childcare and to make things easier for all of our families, even without that, if I had just known that statistic, that I wasn't alone that other women shouldered two thirds or more of what it took to run a home and family, I think I would have been in a better place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially when you have young children and you're working, and whether you're career oriented or not, whether you're in a corporate lifestyle or not, there's so much about motherhood, especially, that's so isolating, even when you know you're not alone. And so when I listened to that book and I was thinking this is a Harvard-trained attorney. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were talking about you had file folders on your lap.
Speaker 1:You had the breast pump next to you.
Speaker 3:And then here's the audacity of Seth asking you about the blueberries, and it's like, oh my God, I god, I felt the rage yeah, he chose violence that day yeah, yeah, I felt the rage.
Speaker 1:You know what else could I do for you, seth? What else could I fucking do for this family, you know?
Speaker 2:she knows I would never send her that text, only because there's certain there might be things that you think in your head. But then like you gotta take a second and pause, like yeah, this is probably not going to come through the way that you had just walked out of the grocery store, Right, it's.
Speaker 3:It's that context of what you described about, you know, feeling rejected at work, and just I mean there's just so much that goes into.
Speaker 1:And let me tell you one other area I was rejected. So around that time, or maybe even like the day after I had the rejection from work and, as you said, I'm trying to start a new law firm with all these you know papers on my lap, I have Seth with this bizarrely passive aggressive that Brandon wouldn't send texts. I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 1:So that means right, like I failed you right, or whatever that the context of that was, which was so frustrating, but at the same time, I was so I was actually very hopeful because I just started that toddler transition program I was telling you about.
Speaker 1:That's where I was on the way to when I had the breakdown and that's where people told me it was going to get easier. Guys, I don't know if you felt that way too, but people said to me, like when you get to school, you're going to start having a community, you're going to have people who help you, you'll have more time. And so when I get to the school, not only am I being failed by my husband and my workplace, but I get to the school and the preschool teacher echoes. You know, welcome to the transition program. We're all happy to see you here. These are going to be people around you that are going to be friends for your lifetime. They're going to know you better than anyone's ever known you. And then, as she's saying this, I'm looking down at my name tag and my name tag says Zach's mom.
Speaker 3:Talk about not having an identity.
Speaker 1:These people are going to be the people who know me better than anyone's ever known me. They don't even know my name.
Speaker 2:This is definitely must be an LA thing.
Speaker 3:I mean, but that's just like icing on the terrible shit cake. At that point I mean that's exactly.
Speaker 1:it was this idea that there was no identity for me outside of being Zach's mom or the filler the filler we have 10 years later, that women, constantly in 33 territories and countries where fair play exists and we have data say to me that they don't believe they have a permission to be unavailable from their roles as a parent, partner and or professional, and that breaks my heart.
Speaker 3:It is heartbreaking because it's so much pressure. You know it's so much I mean think about what we do and I'll speak for women in heteronormative relationships but what we do when we are sick, when we have a fever, when we have a migraine, when we don't feel good, compared to no offense what men do.
Speaker 1:I don't get sick often, he doesn't get sick often, but there are times where he'll be like what men do? I don't get sick often, he doesn't get sick often, but there are times where he'll be.
Speaker 3:Like babe, do I have a fever and I'm like all right.
Speaker 1:You're fine.
Speaker 2:I'm like suck it up, buttercup, you'll be okay, You're going to make it when I get sick, since I don't get sick often. I get sick, sick, yeah, yeah, but's still. You know what I'm?
Speaker 1:saying you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:the man flu is a thing yeah I agree yeah, let's transition from the blueberries breakdown into what happened, because it lit a fire in you. And now you've got, you know, two best-selling books, you've got an entire institute of research behind you, decades of experience. What happened after Zach's mom and the name tag?
Speaker 1:Well, what was? I put my researcher hat on because, as you you know, you kindly said, I'm a, I'm a lawyer and a researcher and and, and I decided that I would start to understand what was happening to me. And one of the best things that happened around that time that I write about in Fair Play that Jess knows, was because of the blueberries breakdown. I was more open to see what was happening around me, and so I write about this experience right after that, where I'm at this breast cancer march for a friend who had been recently diagnosed and being with very powerful women we had like a stroke and trauma doctor there, like a award-winning producer, and they're not all married to men, but the ones who were I was more aware of all of us.
Speaker 1:It was a Saturday morning, so that's extra hard because you're leaving little kids, you know somewhere and at home and asking for childcare, and so we're all together at this march on a Saturday morning and then around noon everyone gets really quiet and we were supposed to be going to lunch and then I started hearing like moans, like oh, I probably should get home, I'm going to skip lunch, and and so then I start to look over people's shoulders, the women I'm with and I'm like, ooh, what's happening over here? And what I realized was that the women married to men were responding to texts and phone calls. And they were texts and phone calls like where did you put Hudson's soccer bag? Um, what's the address of the birthday party? Did you want me to take?
Speaker 1:You know, lily, and did you bring me a gift? Um, do the? You know where's Anna's pants? You know I mean questions like that. But my favorite, my favorite question that I screenshot and I had on a bulletin board for a really long time was my friend Kate's husband Remember this is noon on a Saturday and his texts said to her do the kids need to eat lunch?
Speaker 3:It's just. I cannot wrap my head around it. I cannot.
Speaker 2:I don't even have to say, because they're just making. These guys are just making all of us look bad.
Speaker 3:I mean yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and, and remember, you know it's also, this is uh, 2012. So, you know, we, we, I, I do believe we've made progress, but, um, but back then, uh, nobody was talking about these issues. There was not even social media in any meaningful way. But what was fascinating to me was that that was my first act of resistance, cause Justin Brandon you're asking me about. You know what happened after the the? I got to take some power back because, even though those women weren't willing to stay to eat the dim sum and stay for lunch, because they left their partners with too much to do, and so they did leave me to go bring a perfectly wrapped gift to a birthday party and find Hudson's soccer bag, but what I did ask for them to do is count up how many phone calls and texts we had received, and it was pretty jarring it was 30 phone calls and 46 texts for 10 women, over 30 minutes. And so that day was a day that I felt less shame, because even these strong women that I really admired were going through the same thing that I was, and so I felt like, oh my God, if none of us are immune to these issues, then maybe this is a bigger problem. And so that's when the researcher really came on to understand that this phenomenon that we're talking about had a name, a couple names actually the second shift, unpaid labor, uh, emotional labor, cognitive labor, um, and invisible work.
Speaker 1:That was my favorite one, justin Brandon, because it came from 1986, an article I read, and the woman, the sociologist, was arguing that, uh, unfortunately, she didn't believe that women's work in the home would ever be visible, because visibility in our society equals value, and if we gave value to the unpaid labor, we'd have to pay for it or we'd have to acknowledge it. And the invisibility is what is allowing America to have women as our social safety net, and that is something that we need for a capitalist patriarchy to thrive. And so she argued that we would never make the invisible visible. So then I got mad at her and said well, I'm going to make the invisible visible. And I started with the should I do? Spreadsheet. And that's how Fair Play began, with a giant Excel spreadsheet of 98 tabs and 2000 items of invisible work I compiled over a year from women married to men now in 17 countries. That basically asked the question what is invisible to your partner that you may be doing that they don't see An Excel spreadsheet with 98 tabs.
Speaker 2:I know the entire book.
Speaker 3:I mean I binged it, I think it took me, I think I finished it in two or three days, and I mean as soon as she was done, she was like we need to talk. Yeah, we're going to have a conversation but you know, again because of the systems and we. This is something we're going to be revisiting over and over again, right as our children get older, as our goals change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a practice, absolutely.
Speaker 3:But I will tell you, I was changing the laundry earlier and I was so impressed because Brandon did the towels. You're probably like, where is she going? Yeah, I'm wondering. Now I love this. And all of the hand towels were in there. The kitchen towels were in there, the kids' bathroom hand towels Amazing. When we got married eight years ago, I don't know that brandon would have washed a hand towel. They just magically are always clean and always ready to go and perfectly folded that's a single man.
Speaker 2:I don't think I had hand towels right, right so.
Speaker 3:But I mean, that was. I literally had a cognitive moment of, like every single hand, like I know which hand towel goes goes in which bathroom, and I had a moment of, oh my gosh, it clicked, he's got it. When we do towels, we do all the towels. When we do the bath, mats.
Speaker 1:we do all the bath mats. So, ladies, Exactly that is it, yes. Well, the point is as, Brandon, as you see from systems is, first of all, you're going to there. There's lots. Fair play is a love letter to men. It became a love letter to men because we'll talk about how painful it is for men to be helpers and not partners. It's just not sustainable to have no context for what's happening in your own home, and so I think there's a lot of pain for men as well.
Speaker 1:But I will say that men, when they understand, after again interviewing them for 10 years, that one, Robert Waldinger, has a TED Talk. That's the most watched TED Talk, I think, of all time. It's about 75 years of a longitudinal study of men's health and well-being. Men are alive regardless of smoking, regardless of race. Longitudinal study of men's health and wellbeing. Men are alive regardless of smoking, regardless of race, regardless of socioeconomic status. They control for all of that. Men are alive at 85 if they have quality relationships at 55. Quality relationships at 55 with Jess are going to be cemented in the spaces in between, in the small things, and folding a hand towel is one of those that's a love language.
Speaker 2:I know her love language.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is a love language. Yes, it matters. But I will tell you, love language has always bothered me.
Speaker 1:Love language has bothered me because I ask people about them and women who did not have acts of service never said anything else. It wasn't like a woman was like I want Brandon to leave all the crap on the floor and disrespect my time, but he can buy me like a charm bracelet. It was always. It was like a Maslow's hierarchy acts of service. The only women who chose something else were ones who already assumed that acts of service were sort of part of the relationship. Um, anyway, that's a whole other thing, but I will say that that is the key to the. The should I do was the opposite of a love letter to men, because at that time the only advice I could find on dividing up domestic labor was make a list.
Speaker 3:And if I have, to make the list and tell you what to do. It defeats the purpose.
Speaker 2:So I have a question.
Speaker 1:But at the time that's what it was and I did send that list to Seth and it didn't work.
Speaker 2:Well, Okay, Brandon, yes, go so in the research that you've done over, you know, numerous years, have you found any information that correlates with, like how a man was, how a man grew up, and like how his home growing up was, as far as you know, labor, whether, that's you know, two parents, a single parent raised by a mother, and how that maybe dictates how they are as an adult when it comes to that stuff?
Speaker 1:It's so interesting because I thought I would see a difference, like I thought well, maybe men of single mothers were more used to helping out around the house. I, we, we haven't. I mean again, this is just a qualitative. We do have a quantitative study that showed fair play works, so that's very exciting. We just did a big study with a big health company and USC, but I don't have a quantitative study about that, brandon. But what I thought was very interesting, the only thing I could see in the qualitative interviews over 10 years was that second born men were a little bit more likely to do to be to already do domestic labor before Fair Play.
Speaker 3:Oh so first borns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was interesting. Firstborn men felt a little bit more tricky than the second born, but that was the only relationship I mean, that was the only personal system I could find, and I think you know why that is Because I think masculinity is so global in terms of what is expected of men, this idea that you have to be the breadwinner, that you have to be strong, you have to be a protector for your family, that you're not allowed to show weakness. So I think, in general, some of those themes overrode what we saw in terms of individual family circumstance.
Speaker 3:Interesting. It's a good question, though, because and I'm, as you said, the second born I'm like thinking about our brothers and I'm like I don't know about that.
Speaker 1:But right, exactly, yeah, it was only, like I said, it was a very small you know thing that we observed, but nothing. What we saw, I think in terms of generally what we saw and this is was the most important. So I'll just skip to what we saw, cause I think it's important because it does help answer that question. Um, we saw that, um, most men, um, were coming from some type of assumption, as one woman said to me. She said fair play taught her this is one of my favorite lines that, uh, that she didn't have a magical vagina that whispered in her ear what her husband's mother wants for Christmas oh my god.
Speaker 1:So I think that magical vaginas thinking was sort of there. Again, like I said across the board, what was most interesting was the people who are most receptive. So the should I do? List, as you could imagine, when I sent it to Seth after a year of compiling can't wait to discuss didn't go over well with him. He basically just sent me back the pixelated like see no evil monkey emoji. Like what is this? You know crap you're sending me. You know crap you're sending me.
Speaker 1:But what did work for him was when I started to apply my day job to what I was doing. So when I realized a list didn't work, what I've always told my clients and because my day job is, I work for families that look like the HBO show Succession, which you should feel bad for me but I create these very complex governance systems so that families can have grace and humor and generosity around difficult, complex organizational family decisions. And so when I realize, ooh, what if the thing that's missing in this conversation is not the psychologists who say use I statements, men are from Mars, whatever women are from Venus. It's not the economists who are talking over here about the cost of child care. Those are both important, but what if we're missing a middle ground here, which maybe, as a lawyer, no one's ever really looked at this as a lawyer, but lawyers are the ones who design behaviors for societies. Jess and Brandon, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, if you don't want someone to vote in Georgia, you're not going to be like, excuse me, use an I statement to tell them not to vote. I don't think you should vote. No, you're going to pass a law telling them not to. You know, make it harder for them to vote. If you want people to stop at a stop sign, you're going to pass a law. So I kept thinking well, what about my governance background? Like the laws I give for families, the roadmaps of laws they're called bylaws. What if I created that for my own family? And so that became.
Speaker 1:When I realized the list didn't work for Seth and the should I do? Spreadsheet was a wonderful exercise for me and it did make the invisible visible. I kept thinking maybe what I need to do with this list is turn it into a system. And so that was the question that changed my life, which is a question I postulated in 2012, which was what if we start to treat our homes as our most important organizations? And what I would say is that, getting back to this, is a long answer to Brandon's question.
Speaker 1:When I started to look at this as an organizational management question, that it's you and your partner against the organization that you're, you know partners in an organization, the people who believe in organizational systems, the men who believed in that, whether they were first born or second born or single mother, they were the ones who were most interested first, and so typically it was coaches and military men, which I thought was really interesting, people who understood the systems of the military, and also coaches who understood that know your role. Like you're not going to put your point guard in for your center unless I guess it's LeBron James and you can play any position, but typically, typically, there are systems you know they're used to working in systems. So those were the men that actually, regardless of their home structure, it was the work that they did that made them most receptive to be a beta tester for, for people who believed in systems, they were willing to give me a shot.
Speaker 3:That's interesting. I love a system.
Speaker 2:I love a system.
Speaker 3:I love a standard operating procedure.
Speaker 2:I love, you know I that is, I love that. So I'm a creature of habit, so a system there, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly so you know. But the good thing about habits, as we know from Atomic Habits, was um I've spoken at conferences with James Clear is that systems, when you practice them enough, become habits. So that's very exciting.
Speaker 3:Yes, we listened to that book together, actually on a road trip.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, which was very good.
Speaker 3:So we're talking about systems. So the boundaries, the systems, the communications, all of that led to CPE. Am I skipping anything before we get to CPE?
Speaker 1:No, because I know that's the most important part of all of this.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about it. Well, so I'll just give you a bit of context. And again, you could always, you know, edit this out, but I like to give context. I think it actually helps men understand how much rigor went into this. It's not just some random person being like you should help out your wife more, right, right? So what I was looking for was data. And so once I realized, okay, the home is an organization, then I realized, well, okay, so if I went, if I'm your producer, jess and Brandon, I come to you and I say, hey guys, what should I be doing today? I'm just going to wait here to tell me what to do, right, we know that that doesn't fly in the workplace. It doesn't even fly in my aunt Marion's Mahjong group, where you would say you know in that group.
Speaker 1:They are clear systems. You don't bring snack twice on your snack day, you're out. So the the only place I could find where we were still using three toxic words, which were we're going to figure it out we're the home. And so I had to start to think about what would it look like to design a system, if it's true that the home is an organization and to do to design any system, you have to have the right data. So I started to go to couples and I would say, with my fair, my spreadsheet, which is now the fair play cards who handles summer breaks for your kids? Oh, we both do. Who does grocery shopping? We both do. Who does couple social plans? We both do.
Speaker 1:And so it was a very funny. I love that you're raising your hand. We'll talk about that later. But yeah, so I would hear this chiming in of we both do these things. So I couldn't get accurate data. Finally, after interviewing and interviewing, now I've been able to ask this question in 17 countries, and so we know that in the Nordic countries, in South America, in mainland China, it's always the same. South America and mainland China, it's always the same. Women married to men, uh, have a certain pattern, and the only way I was able to break that both trap, to get the actual data of what's happening in heterosexual relationships, was to ask the transformational question of my lifetime, which was how does mustard get in your refrigerator? And it's so good, which is Brandon.
Speaker 1:Yes, he's the mustard eater, but it gets in the fridge because of me was how does mustard get in your refrigerator and it's so good, which is so funny?
Speaker 3:And Brandon, yes, once I asked that Because he's the mustard eater, but it gets in the fridge because of me. Yes, are you shaking your head? Are we about to have a fight in front of Eve? That is inaccurate.
Speaker 1:I bought a lot of mustard. No, no, no, okay, okay. But let's explain why that question was so confounding similar.
Speaker 3:Let's explain why that question was so confounding. Similar to you. Just had a reaction to it because a lot of people have this reaction to that, because Brandon's blatantly lying on our podcast, right?
Speaker 1:now. Well, it's not that he's lying. What happens is is that when you don't actually break it down into the project management steps of what that one act is, to the project management steps of what that one act is Remember, it's one act in one groceries card of a hundred cards, which is the fair play system now. So what I was able to do by breaking it down, I could go to each country and pick the condiment of choice it wasn't always mustard and what was happening was women and men didn't actually, they didn't combat it. They would say, yes, this is what my wife does. She's the one in the project management hierarchy, she's the one conceiving of the fact that yellow mustard is in our refrigerator, because our second son, johnny, only will eat protein with yellow mustard, otherwise he won't eat protein.
Speaker 1:So then, all of a sudden, I got consensus on data. Women are shouldering the conception. And then I'm looking for planning, which is another organizational management step. So I'd say who asks for stakeholder buy-in for what you need for the grocery list? I didn't actually use the word stakeholder buy-in, but you get what I'm getting at. So then, when I asked about stakeholder buy-in, who's serving the family for stakeholder buy-in and who's monitoring the mustard for when it runs low? Not, hey, babe, we're out of mustard, but actually is monitoring it similar to the beautiful hand towel that it just keeps rotating and it's there toilet paper.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Brandon for that. So when you're monitoring that for when it's running low, that is a planning phase. And then I got to why we have the both trap because men do participate in the mustard, because they go to the store to go get it, and then you know what happens is and this is why Fairplay became a love letter to men. A lot of times, without context, a man will go to the store because they're just doing the E, the execution. They're bringing home spicy Dijon every fucking time. Brandon and I asked you for yellow.
Speaker 2:We're not a yellow muscle.
Speaker 3:But Johnny only eats that with his protein Right, exactly, and so what is happening?
Speaker 1:And so the yellow's not there. And then what women would whisper to me is Eve, I see, you know you have on this Excel spreadsheet estate planning. You want me to trust my husband with my living will. You know, he can't even bring home the right type of mustard, and so that's when I realized that the home was eroding. The actually the only two things you need for a successful organization these interactions over and over. As a mediator and a lawyer, we always say the presenting problem is not the real problem. So obviously it's not actually about mustard. What it's about is that when you have these interaction of one person holding all the context and the cognitive labor of conception and planning and the other person coming in and execution, accountability and trust start eroding. And if you don't have accountability and trust, you don't have an organization.
Speaker 1:That's where this idea of CPE staying together was born, because in a workplace when you just have execution, again the love letter to men is that you lose something called psychological safety. So the person who's just executing has no context, so they don't feel safe. So often that person retreats or they will feel like I can't do anything right in this job. And then often I would hear that from men, not that I don't want to help, but like what's the point if I can't do anything right? And so then I start to feel really bad for men and I start to call this not nagging, but a rat infestation, and a rat infestation of a home. Nobody wants their home invested with rats was a random assignment of a task, and I realized that men in these 17 countries, even the Nordic countries, were mostly doing execution on their wives' cognitive labor, which obviously is terrible for women because it burns us out, and that's what my new study shows, my quantitative study. But it's terrible for men too, because they lose psychological safety in their most important organization of the home. And so that's why it's terrible for men too, because they lose psychological safety in their most important organization of the home. And so that's why it's really us against the cards, it's us against a figure it out mentality, because that's what a figure it out mentality does for you.
Speaker 1:An ownership mentality is what fair play is. An ownership mentality is you do all the towels. Well, you told me to put this in the dryer. Okay, that's one towel from the swim. Like I said, towels like do you not know the towels upstairs. And so then we start giving feedback. In the moment we use nail, the chalkboard type tone, a person retreats, and so we end up not being able to communicate. Because then you say, well, I can't communicate about domestic life, it's too triggering. And so then all of a sudden we are in this accountability and trust spiral where I don't trust him to do X, so I might as well do it myself, and then the resentment increases. So really there's a very simple solution, and that solution is to move to an ownership mindset. Sadly, because of expectations and, you know, religion and many things that have kept women in the home for so long, it was easier said than done, jess and Brandon, because I thought I was delivering this beautiful logical system to the world.
Speaker 3:You did, but it's hard, thank you. It's hard.
Speaker 1:But it was so painful for people. It was so painful for people to get through the first part of Fair Play that it took us five years to actually get data from people that they were consistently able to actually talk about the, even talk about the cards, to even bring them up. It was so painful and I don't think I was anticipating how much pain would be there and that was my bad.
Speaker 3:Um, I was just I'm sort of I am a lawyer, I'm not a psychologist, so I'm just like I was just I'm sort of I am a lawyer, I'm not a psychologist, so I'm just like, just do what's efficient. Move into the conversation. I knew instantly when I took this to Brandon and I said we've got to have a system, I feel like I'm drowning. I knew he would hear me and I knew he would care, and I do think a lot of that comes from the fact that he saw his mom doing everything and so he doesn't want that to be what happens in our home.
Speaker 3:But I also know that there are many women who do not have that kind of support, and so for that I was always thankful. I do think, as a type A OCD person who really likes control and somebody who does trust her partner, it is really difficult to let go of some of those things. And there's also that element of all right, if I let him do this, let him do this, then he gets to do it his way. Now, if we want to put some sort of boundary or scope around how it's done.
Speaker 3:You know, hey, I wash the towels on hot.
Speaker 3:We rinse them twice, like we talked about it right, like now there's a system. And again, rinse them twice. Like we talk about it right, like now there's a system and again, ding, ding, it clicked right. I saw that today, but it's still hard to let go of that control or the mindset of, if I have to tell you how to do it, I'll just do it myself, because I did that for years, and that's where the exhaustion and the burnout comes from. Is well, if I have to make you a list, if I have to. And so we had a moment this year at our daughter's, our son's birthday party, and I know you're going to like remember this, but you know I'm in the midst of all things, mom, at a birthday party, which is always chaos, even when it's smiling yeah, thanks for coming.
Speaker 3:You know, Brandon goes to pick up the pizzas and he comes back and he has four pizza boxes. There's 32 children, not even counting the parents were at a park, so you can invite everybody. And I was like, where are the rest of the pizzas? And he was like, well, this is what they handed me, total breakdown.
Speaker 1:And so he again rats are right, that's a random assignment of a task. And I will say Brandon, I see you in that, I don't again, maybe. Yeah, and then because this is how I see brandon's point of view if you, what? If you ordered, and all of a sudden he brings back a hundred pizzas and then you say to him oh my god, everybody was bringing their own food. This was just a supplement for the few kids that I told you. They didn't bring their own food.
Speaker 3:Here and now we've all this food waste and yeah, we ordered it beforehand, like I didn't exactly, but either way it would have fallen apart because I ordered the pizza right and then, like you said, I threw him a rat.
Speaker 1:Go pick it up so, yes, exactly, and and, by the way, there are some times where there has to be a rat, but, but, but. What I would say is that if you can anticipate the rat, it goes a lot better.
Speaker 3:So what you're doing, that I will I say exactly?
Speaker 1:I say to Seth I know this is I'm, you know I hold the birthday card. I've ordered the food. I was going to try to go pick it up. Time is running low, uh, sorry, you know feedback in the moment, let's just go do this. Here's the receipt, here's what we're supposed to order. If it doesn't look like enough, wait and get more, you know we can get. This is supposed to feed the entire party. Even like a couple of of context, you know, clues is really helpful.
Speaker 1:But I think that's such a beautiful uh segue to you know I was thinking about when you were talking about the giving up control, um, why it's not just giving up control for women. It's allowing men to forge quality relationships with their children. And so I think part of this is that we've become so complicit in our own oppression by saying things to us like I'm a better multitasker, I'm wired differently for care, like Brandon could never see this the way I did. There's no, there's no justification. We don't task switch differently because we have a woman's brain versus a man's brain. We're, we're, we're the same.
Speaker 1:But I think, as one neuroscientist said to me, women have been conditioned to take pride in wiping asses and doing dishes so that I and then that's great for me because then I have more time to get tenure and for my golf game, and so it is part of the system. It's not anybody's fault that we believe these toxic messages about how we have to use our time, but I want to just you reminded me that I don't get to tell a story often, but there was a couple during the pandemic Richard and Amy and they and what was interesting was that they noticed when they did the audit of the cards so the fair play cards as we've been talking about there are 100 cards. They evolved from the should I do?
Speaker 1:spreadsheet they're beautiful and they're in different suits, because there are suits that are somewhat outsourceable, that people say that they outsource. Those are called the home suit and the out suit. And then there's 50 cards where parents actually said these are not outsourceable. I love Alexia, our babysitter, but she's not going to decide whether my child's adenoids are being taken out, right, you know, I, I love, I love Alexia, but you know she's really not going to go to the barbershop and give my kid, you know, the low top fade. He wants what my son wanted, or whatever, you know. So I'm there, so I was able to see which ones were outsourceable, which weren't.
Speaker 1:But there was one card this couple noticed in their division of the deck that Richard was actually really good at the home suit, so he was doing home maintenance, home repair, really good at dishes, but he had very little of the magic cards and those are cards like middle of the night, comfort, um, all the sort of intangibles, uh, in-laws, in-law management, um, cousins, uh, extended family. So one card he decides to take was the magical beings card and he says, okay, I'm going to be the tooth fairy, um, and so, as you can imagine, the story that they tell me is that when they first start to CPE ownership of the tooth fairy and they come up with a minimum standard I think of like $5, cause they thought a dollar was too little for inflation.
Speaker 3:But these $20 things are because, you're scrambling, I know driving $1.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they did five, but the $20, they're convinced, is because people scramble and forget, and so they're just looking in their wallet and they don't have change. So they, they do the, you know, they talk about it, but the first time that he is the tooth fairy, the tooth fairy doesn't come, and so this gets back to what you were saying, jess. As a type A person, like what? So this is what Amy says. As a type A person that she would have done before Fair Play and Brandon, you can tell me if this relates to you she would have used feedback at the moment and said things all or nothing. Like you've just ruined our child's. You've ruined our child's childhood. Like I can never trust you again with anything for the rest of our kids' lives. I will never trust you with anything. That's important, right? So she was reflecting that. That's sort of the language that she thinks she would have used when she saw her child's distress over. Like what the heck? What happened to the tooth fairy?
Speaker 1:And what was the most interesting, though, was that, richard, he took accountability before she could say any of those things. So, because he had the CPE of the card and they talked about it in advance. He said what he didn't say was you forgot to remind me to put the dollar into the pillow, which is probably what he would have said. And so, because he said something different first, which was, oh my God, my bad, like I totally messed this up, amy said that restored trust immediately because he took, you know, accountability for his mistake and she was able to give him some space to say like yes, this is not ideal, but I'll let you carry through your mistake. Him some space to say like, yes, this is not ideal, but I'll let you carry through your mistake.
Speaker 1:And then what Richard says he emails in front of his child, tooth fairy at gmailcom and he's like look, I'm just going to, you know, put this off really quick. Before you know, you have to go to COVID school or whatever. Let's just email her and be like you know or hit whatever what happened here during the day. As he's working, he gets a response from tooth fairy gmailcom. There's somebody who man it man's that, you know, woman's that email account and it says like, due to covid or supply chain issues, I'm running behind on teeth. Um, I will be there tonight. He prints out that email, shows it to his child. And then he was the tooth fairy the next night, and that's the end of that story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just think that in that, yeah, in that small, but in the space that this partner gave this man to do the magic and to carry through a mistake and to take accountability, I believe that that will lead to more and more shift and change in that change management, that organizational systems of that home, based on just this very, very small story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will say the fair play cards, and we haven't done them in a while. We've found our rhythm. We probably should do it once or twice a year, but I have not filled out a single school form. I have not made a single doctor's appointment. Brandon, my rule is is now listen. I got them out of my body, you can go get them shots.
Speaker 1:I don't need to be there for that.
Speaker 3:So, but those are, you know, those are the little things and that's not. We're certainly not saying we're perfect and we figured it out, and there aren't times where I'm like you said you were going to turn over the laundry, or I mean, it's still life, right, it's still messy, it's still beautiful, it's still all the things, but it's definitely better.
Speaker 2:I think what it helps so. I think what I really took from it was the um, how much she thinks about things and how much that weighs on her. Cause as man like I. I I'm gonna speak for most men, because not all men, but we can turn our brains off. I can literally sit there and not think about anything she's like how is that possible?
Speaker 2:never in my entire life has that happened to my yeah and as a man, you need to understand that a majority of women cannot do that and that is taxing on them just having to think about everything. Even Even if it's, you know you are going to be the one that executes it. She's still thinking about it and I mean we still even sometimes are working through how to take some of that thinking about it away from her Cause. Even sometimes when, like, I'm doing the task, she's still very much thinking about it. We're still working through that. But you really need to understand that how, like potentially more than likely, that's how your partner you know. If you're in a heteronormative relationship, that's how she thinks.
Speaker 3:But there's also, absolutely there's times where society right, we put him as the first contact on all school forms, doctor's forms, et cetera, and we say please call Brandon first. And who do they call? It's always me, they always I'm the default right, you said that earlier 99% of the time he's the one showing his face every single morning, and they still will call me when we've said call him Now.
Speaker 3:That's basic, that's more because of a scheduling thing Uh, he works for himself, I don't, and so he has more availability to just pick up the phone if they needed something. But society is still making me the default, even when on every single form we explicitly say call Brandon first, and so you still have to kind of battle with those things, like the pediatrician called a couple weeks ago and said oh, it's time for Aston's, you know well, check.
Speaker 3:And I said please call my husband, like the form says Thank you so much, and she was like, oh, okay, you know but we actually meant it.
Speaker 1:Please call Brandon, not me, absolutely, and I think that gets to what you're saying, gets to why fair play is so painful. Because if it was just an organization, another organizational system for a book or atomic habits for life, right, I could sit sort of in time management and and not have to address the pain of this topic. But I think what you know, what Brandon is building on, is a core premise. That was really how Seth changed the. The way he changed wasn't just acknowledging that I'm thinking about all this cognitive labor and taking it over, which he did, and that was very important but it was more of a fundamental premise of Fair Play which I talk about this realization that as a society, like you said, because I called schools for my research and said why do you call women first? And it wasn't because they were the first in the contact, it was because men don't pick up, we don't want to bother him. So what that was indicating is there's this fundamental assumption in society that men's time is more valuable than women's time and we often treat men's time as if it's diamonds, as if it's finite, and we treat women's time as if it's infinite of it's finite and we treat women's time as if it's infinite like sand, and we know this because of women enter male professions, their salaries automatically go down. We know this because health systems still today say weird things about breastfeeding, like it's free. Breastfeeding is free even though it's an 1800 hour a year job for women.
Speaker 1:But then what happens is women start internalizing these messages that society has given them. So once you know they get enough schools or you know metaphorical schools calling them then we start to get this guilt and shame of well, what am I doing wrong here? You know, am I out of the norm? Maybe I shouldn't be putting so much on my partner. And the way we start to live in a system like this is we start to say things like well, I'm wired differently for care and the time it takes me to tell Brandon what to do, I should do it myself. Yes, we're both colorectal surgeons this one woman said and my husband's better at focusing on one task at a time and I can find the time.
Speaker 1:And what I kept hearing about finding time is, I kept saying to women we're not living in a space time continuum where you can find time. There's just such a different expectation over how we're supposed to use our time. And so even when Brandon is stepping up to say I don't want you to use your time like that, Jess. I'm going to absorb the unpaid labor and use my time, my diamond time, my valuable time, to do this, to free up time for you. Society doesn't really like that. They're uncomfortable with that, and so they're going to keep pushing back on you to maybe break you. Jess and Brandon and I see it with in-laws, I see it with cousins, I see it with schools People don't like something that threatens what they're doing, and so you are cultural warriors, Jess and Brandon, by having a podcast talking about the realities of marriage, doing things differently, practicing fair play.
Speaker 1:It's never going to be perfect, Saying you know, we're going to fight today about mustard, but towels are perfect, right, I mean, life is just hard and it's hard on parents, and that's why we're focusing on, you know, the bigger are perfect, right, I mean, life is just is hard and it's hard on parents, and that's why we're focusing on, you know, the bigger. Policy change too, but you can take agency to become a partnership, and I will say that that's been. The biggest change in my life was when Seth finally said to me not I'll take over school communication, which he did. It was Eve school communication which he did. It was Eve.
Speaker 1:I hear you when you say that I have three hours after our kids go to bed to watch SportsCenter workout and finish my PowerPoint deck, whereas you're doing things in service of the home until your head hits the pillow three hours after I go to bed. I see your unpaid work and I see that it's unfair, that your time has been hijacked and chosen for you by unpaid labor and society, and I'm willing to be a partner here and take some of that off your plate. So I I'm bringing that up because, Brandon, what you said was similar, which is you're not just saying to Jess, oh fine, I'll handle laundry. What you're saying is I see your mental load, I see that your mind and your day has been sort of hijacked by all of what society has put on you, and I'm willing to come in as a partner and take some of that off your plate, and that's probably the most generous thing that any man can do in a heterosis gender relationship absolutely, and he knows if the dishes the dishwasher's empty the laundry's done.
Speaker 2:Guess what that leaves time for you know, I mean let's just be serious and it's true, by the way.
Speaker 1:Sex lives are better sex lives. Relationship satisfaction we just got our first cohort of our study back. Relationship satisfaction increases under fair play. It increases when women have less cognitive labor. Sex increases when there's more domestic fairness. It just of course it does.
Speaker 3:Of course. I mean it's so simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's sexy, you know it's. There's nothing more sexy for women, right, than a man who knows how to fold a towel. It's just who? Who ever told society that you had to be the WWE? You know, vince McMahon, hulk Hogan version of a man Like what? The reason why society is breaking down is because no one's dating those men. We're dating the men who fold, fold and wash the towels and the scent free detergent. That was our minimum standard of care, because our son has asthma. That is what is sexy to women exactly.
Speaker 3:Listen up, guys.
Speaker 2:That's what we want more of, absolutely honestly, I think a big part of is that. I'm the household that I grew up in with a single mom, seeing her do everything, and, like I, grew up with the concept like there's no such thing as a male or female chore, like there's household chores and they need to be done. Your things, you know, you know with your family that need to be done and there's not specific gender roles that need to be um associated, assigned.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right now our children get to see that too. You know we're not saying I mean they're still small. But we're not saying roman, take out the trash and aston, do the inside chore.
Speaker 2:You know, like we're not saying Roman take out the trash and, aston, do the inside short. You know, like we're not doing that, I carry everything you do carry everything Physically. Because you're so strong.
Speaker 3:That's okay, because you're so strong. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:I do, but you know what? You're also metaphorically doing that because, honestly, dealing with a school form is probably to me as heavy as a box. Filling out of school form is one of my least favorite things to do. I'd rather have like seven root canals. So thank you, brandon, for taking, and so actually that's a good segue, I think to this like this, this, this ending game that I wanted to play.
Speaker 1:So what I what? This therapist that we have this whole. You know a fair place facilitators. Now these therapists who have this whole. You know a fair place facilitators. Now, these therapists who have started to incorporate the gender lens and and some of this unfairness, um to fairness conversations into their therapy, which I think has been really fun.
Speaker 1:So one of them reported back that she's using the cards a little bit in a different way for people who aren't ready, um, to go to them and to start assigning ownership like Jess and Brandon were. She's doing something a little different, which gets at Brandon's original question, which is like does your upbringing inform you? So where it does inform you is not who does what more willingly, but in terms of what I call the minimum standard of care, like what you saw sort of growing up. So I thought it would be fun to um, I'll just sort of okay, so let's, there's a million different cards, there are so many cards. I'll just so I'll pick one. I'll pick the one we decided earlier because of the we started with that mustard thing and I want to just the way she uses them and what your listeners can do as a homework assignment is just pick one of the a hundred cards, any of them, and just sit down with your partner on a date night or even for coffee, and just ask them about their childhood memories of that card.
Speaker 1:So, brandon, I'll start with you. Let's just do groceries. Since we started that, we'll do full circle. Tell me what you remember about grocery shopping as a child. Do you remember anything about what stores you went to, if you went with your mother, if your siblings went, like what your refrigerator looked like? Tell me all that.
Speaker 2:Well, we I was when we were younger we would go because my mom was single, so she had take us with her. He couldn't leave us at home by ourselves because we weren't old enough yet. Obviously, once I got a bit older and I can watch my brother, it's easier to shop without kids, but ours was always full because you have two boys who were playing like three sports.
Speaker 2:I used to always joke that like we had an extra pantry outside in the garage where it was just filled with cereal boxes, like people come to our house and we'd have like 40 cereal boxes at one time because we'd go through one every day.
Speaker 1:I love cereal, so you played sports. And then what was your favorite cereal?
Speaker 2:I was a big Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups guy.
Speaker 3:Super healthy. Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so healthy. Well, we'll get into that, because that's how I grew up too. I grew up on Lucky Charms. Still to this day. It's what I'm probably going to eat for lunch after this. Or Cocoa Pebbles probably gonna eat for lunch after this, um, or cocoa pebbles, um, and then. Do you remember what supermarket? That you would go to or do you have a sense of?
Speaker 2:like Kroger's so is that a west?
Speaker 3:coast that's west coast right east coast east, gotta be east oh east coast?
Speaker 1:I don't remember. Yeah, kroger's. Where was Kroger's? Where'd you grow up? North Carolina oh, north Carolina. Yeah, maybe it's south and west because we had Pathmark and ShopRite. What about you, jess? What do you remember about grocery shopping growing up?
Speaker 3:That the fridge was always full, the pantry was always full, lots of fruits and vegetables. My mom's a vegetarian, so, yeah, always healthy stuff. We were the house that like never had Kool-Aid, never had soda, never had, you know, juice was. Every now and then we'd have like an organic apple juice and we would have to mix it with water. I grew up in Europe originally, but so definitely not the fun food, absolutely no. Reese's peanut butter cup cereal None of that. None of that, none of that.
Speaker 1:Interesting. And do you remember who did the shopping for your home? A hundred percent, my mom.
Speaker 3:Definitely my mom, so it's interesting.
Speaker 1:So you both had mothers who did the shopping. So I'm just saying, if it wasn't you, what the therapist was trying to say to people is that there's some implicit assumptions here that may sneak in if you don't address them. You know, through a system Like because both of the times women were the ones in the domain of grocery shopping. And then the other thing that I think is very fascinating is back to that minimum standard of care. So it could be predictably one thing. It could be that if I didn't know you, brandon, you grew up with just you know, tons of cereals, processed foods, so now you want to do everything different. You want everything organic, you want your children's, you know food cooked. And then, jess, you could rebel and be like I hated being that house that you know I. I hoarded, you know chocolate at my friend's house. I took it home in like a bag and hid it under my bed. Or you could be a household more like Seth and me, where he grew up with fruits and vegetables and a fridge and I was a bodega eater, and so he would say to me what the fuck? You know, every meal you're giving our kids, like the only green, is like a shamrock from the Lucky Charms box, like this is dinner.
Speaker 1:And so, when it comes to minimum standard of care, I think it's actually very important to understand our upbringing, because I would predict, maybe again, that Jess is the one you know putting apple slices you know into like a nice bento box with you know slices you know into like a nice bento box with you know purified water. And I'm saying, like who gives a shit? Just put like a zone bar in a brown paper bag, and like you don't need to slice the apple. Like what is our minimum standard of care here? Right?
Speaker 1:And so I think the humor and why we're all laughing about this is because it's more fun to talk about in the past, because then you can be like, oh well, I'm predictable, because I'm, you know, the kid that grew up with cockroaches, seth. So that's why I'm stalking you about garbage again, as opposed to what is wrong with you. Like do you not see it that our kids need to eat healthy? And I'm like, actually, no, I don't see that. Like to me, processed food has fortified vitamins. I grew up with it. There's literally I don't want to.
Speaker 3:I'd rather spend my money on experiences. You're like I went to Harvard and I grew up on Lucky Charms.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and for 12 years, the only thing I ever ate it for lunch was I'd go to the local store and get a toasted bagel, add steak fries in the middle, extra ketchup. So you know, my point being is that we assume so much about what the other person is going to see and the lens that they're going to see it with that it really can, um sideline decision-making in a very inefficient way. And so that's where I think, even if men weren't at first receptive to the pain that they heard in my storytelling, they were receptive to the idea that, wow, if we have this minimum standard of care conversation once, then I like never have to hear about this again. Garbage can just go out once a day, and then I don't have to have a garbage stalker, you know. So it becomes a lot more accurate and efficient.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, we have the garbage conversation of. I would like the garbage cans out by Monday night at this time. Yeah yeah, it's six, because it was, oh, are you going to do it? And he's like yeah, I was going to do it after the kids go to bed and I'm like already stressed that it's not going to be out by tomorrow morning. And he's like that's so excessive and I'm like that is where my mind goes, please that's my exact.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so again I mean, I was, I was a garbage stalker, yep, garbage stalker.
Speaker 1:Same thing, you know. Just throw the extra liner bags around and just put it near his pillow and he's like why is there a garbage bag on my pillow? Because you didn't put the liner back in yeah, you didn't put the liner back in. He's like you didn't put the liner back in. He's like I was about to put the liner back in, I just had to pee, you know.
Speaker 3:It's like how dare you? Oh my gosh. The part of the book we can end here. The part of the book where I think one of your girlfriends puts the wet laundry on the bed the wet laundry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it was so funny, it was great. But you know we've all been there. It was so funny, it was great, but you know what was funny about her? What was funny about her was that she said to me she doesn't communicate about domestic life.
Speaker 3:Well. But then tells me she dumps wet clothes on her partner's pillow. Yeah, it's a communication.
Speaker 2:We all communicate differently, so maybe we end on that yeah, everybody communicates we are communicating about domestic life.
Speaker 1:I can go on your Nest Cam today. Jess and Brandon can go on your Nest Cam today. We will see the five to 10 ways you've communicated about domestic life. So look at this as a shift and not a start.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely love this. You have to get the book. Everybody Fair play. You have to get the cards, although correct me if I'm wrong, eve I think they're for free online where you can just print them, but these are beautiful, exactly, and I like beautiful things, so I bought the cards.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're a nonprofit institute. Now we're the Fair Play Policy Institute, so if anybody can't afford any of our resources we have in the show notes, you can reach out to our team, perfect Info at fairplaypolicyorg. We can provide you with any of the resources if you want to get started. We also have a lot of resources on the website that hopefully you can link to in the show notes. So we're really here to you know, spread the message as equitably as we can.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for all of the work for helping so many. I'll just say people feel seen. All of the work for helping so many. I'll just say people feel seen make their relationships better, stronger, sexier, all the things because it really has impacted our lives.
Speaker 3:I talk about every single friend we have knows that. We've read the book, we've got the cards. We try to put a system in place as much as we possibly can, and so we just wanted to share this far and wide with our audience, because you really have transformed how we operate in our home, and we know that others can do it too.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, all these stories, I think kind of make me look better, to be honest.
Speaker 1:They do yeah, oh yeah, well you're, you are wonderful, and I think again. But but the reason, like what I hear in your banter, like I said earlier, we knew that, I mean, we know again. But but the reason why, like what I hear in your banter, like I said earlier, we knew that, I mean, we know again, life is not easy, but there is a certain tenderness and um and trust that I see in couples who have started to understand that both of their time is valuable and they're willing to work with the other person to see it their way, and I see that in both of you. And so, like I said, I just appreciate the fact that you've devoted time in your life to do this podcast and to be cultural warriors and to push back on norms, and you know we see your work and it's so, so valuable.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for saying that. Well, that's a perfect ending Eve, so we'll just end there. Thank you so much for being with us today. We so appreciate you and the work that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Don't forget, benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest you just got paid Until next time.
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