How Reading Fair Play Changed My Life

I was introduced to the world of Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky, a couple of years back, during a time of my life when two toddlers had nearly mentally broken me. I searched the author's name on my podcast app, and started listening to any and every episode she was on. This. Woman. Was. It. She was revolutionizing what it meant for spouses to be true partners in households, and she had a new fangirl immediately.

Fair Play explores the division of domestic labor and the particularly inequitable impact this has on moms; Eve offers couples a tool kit and practical advice to divvy up domestic responsibilities (including the mental load) that makes things fair. And as a result, makes people love each other more. No, seriously, just follow fairplaylife on Instagram and let the stories speak for themselves.

My husband and I work together, as I've shared in another post, so it's always tricky to navigate who will do what -- after all, we can both see what each other does literally all day long. Parenting. Working. Eating. Sleeping. It's all done within close physical and mental proximity. I've commented for years on how the generation before us can trick our minds into believing that the smallest task or quickest "favor" done by husbands and dads can make them exemplary. Changed the diaper of the kid you yourself contributed to making? Outstanding. I used to wonder if I was the only one questioning how and why this was celebratory? Enter Fair Play. 

My husband has always been driven to be involved with our household because his OCD and meal standards demand his personal involvement, but kids can be a slippery slope. He worked more today so should I work more all night? Well, I did still work today -- but when I wasn't doing the same exact work he was doing, I was ordering groceries, calling the kids' pediatrician, and emailing the school, I wasn't not working -- it was just different work. This profound realization of how much both parents are truly working all day + night was an eye opener for us both. We realized through the book and our subsequent discussions that responsibilities and tasks do not need to be equal in order to be fair, but they need to be equitable. If you're in charge of dinner, then you need to think of what we'll have, go get the ingredients and make it. If I'm in charge of kids' lunches, then I need to do the same. (BTW, what the hell is everyone putting in their kids' lunches these days that can be done in less than four minutes?) We've settled into a comfortable flow around responsibilities with our kids' activities because while I own signing them up for things and putting it on our shared calendar, I also decide when my husband's schedule allows for him to physically take them, and he does. Does he text me from the gymnastics waiting room about how loud it is in there? Yes, but do I just send back a smiley emoji and wish him well? Also yes! 

Confrontations, Eve noted, happened when families had a serious barrier in communication. Someone expected something that didn't happen, and resentment built. When it happened over and over again, there'd be a break in the family. Things as simple as not giving a child a bath can be so triggering for parents who feel worn thin and want the other person to live in their mind, know how it feels, and take different action. I learned through my own therapy that anger is a secondary emotion, and for me as a parent, it was almost always triggered by resentment. It's been magical to talk openly about the division of labor with my husband -- not just who takes the garbage out but who thinks about it being garbage day, knows we need garbage bags, takes it out and puts a fresh one in -- oof I'm out of breath just typing that (and all of that is his thing, thankfully). When one person has that many considerations for every single responsibility, it is too dang much. 

I hope you'll buy yourself and your husband a copy of Fair Play if this interests you, and if he says he's "not reading some book about moms," kindly (firmly) remind him that the happiest of lives are lived by those who have fulfilling, loving relationships -- and what better place to start than at home in lockstep with your lady. I'll wrap this up by saying: as a mom of both a daughter and a son, I am giddy for a future filled with equity in the workplace and at home as the norm. Won't our kids of both genders be so fortunate to have this distraction in the past if we all face it now!? Happy reading, friends.