Eve Rodsky is working to change society one marriage at a time by coming up with a new 21st century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering the brunt of childrearing and domestic life responsibilities regardless of whether they work outside the home.
“Imagine walking into your boss’s office each morning to ask, ‘What should I be doing today? I’ll just wait here until you tell me what to do.’”
That’s the question I posed to Tom in the middle of a game-changing conversation on a flight to San Francisco two years ago. We were seated beside each other, WiFi-less on a delayed runway, when I turned and asked if he was married.
In a British accent, Tom politely shared that yes, he was married to a wife who stayed at home with their two sons. Lucky me! I thought. No, really—I was thrilled to have a captive audience of one, because I was gathering interviews for a book about the gendered division of labor in the home—more popularly referred to as women’s invisible work or emotional labor. And I jumped at the chance to interview anybody who was willing to hear me out.
And so I dug in. I explained that I was working on a system—or a game, if you will—to more fairly distribute the workload between partners, and especially married couples with kids.
As our delayed flight lifted into the clouds, I started with the same interview opener I always used with men: “Do you have a clear sense of your role in your home?
“Our marriage is pretty siloed,” Tom admitted honestly. “I focus on work, and my wife focuses on the house and kids.”
“And yet,” I pressed, “do you still feel nagged when you walk through the door?”
Tom laughed, and said, “Yes. I do. But most of the time I’m not even sure what she’s mad about.”
There it was. Almost every man I’ve interviewed for my new book reports that nagging is what they hate most about home life. But still, these same men often admit that they wait for their wives to tell them what to do at home. I turned to Tom and asked, “Why is that?”
Tom reached into his bag and opened his laptop.
“Let me show you something,” he said. “I used to work for Netflix, and I managed big teams there. This sounds a lot like ‘The Rare Responsible Person.’”
He flipped through a slideshow and added, “At Netflix, if you’re not an ‘RRP,’ you’re out.”
I studied the slide:
The Rare Responsible Person (RRP) is:
• Self-motivated
• Self-disciplined
• Acts like a leader
• Doesn’t wait to be told what to do
• Picks up the trash lying on the floor
Interesting, I thought. And Tom voiced what I was thinking: “It sounds like this is what you’re advocating husbands and partners to be: A Rare Responsible Person.”
“And the problem within the home,” I said, now running with the RRP idea, “is that unless you have a ‘company handbook’ that outlines clear roles and explicitly-defined expectations, men will wait to be told what to do. If the expectation to pick the trash off the floor isn’t shared, what happens?”
Tom grinned. “The trash stays on the floor. Or, I’ll be nagged until it’s in the rubbish bin.”
This had me wondering why people can be an RRP at work, but not at home. Tom put it this way: “Work is an environment that embraces context, not control. The home? Not so much.”
In a flash, I thought back to the text I’d sent my husband right before I boarded the plane. Put Zach’s folder in backpack. Pick up dinner.
Now, I imagined him reading it and questioning, what folder? And dinner from where? My text was all control and no context. I’d given him two randomly-assigned tasks and expected him to figure it out.
This is when I asked Tom, “Imagine walking into your boss’s office each morning to ask, ‘What should I be doing today? I’ll just wait here until you tell me what to do.’”
He laughed—because that would never fly. I shared what women like me were saying to each other about their husbands:
Tom shook his head and said, “When it’s chaos, there is nothing to figure out.”
He was right. When it comes to the home, we haven’t created a fair division of labor by clarifying expectations, individual assignments, and roles within our home organization. No wonder it’s a bloody shit show.
As our flight descended, Tom said, “Good luck. I’ve never heard of a systems-approach applied to the home. Do you worry that ‘organizational management’ will take the fun and romance out of the relationship?”
“A woman told me last week that she dumped wet clothes on her husband’s pillow after he forgot to put the laundry in the dryer. Does that sound fun? Nagging, guilt trips, explosions, walking on eggshells and round-the-clock resentment aren’t fun, either. Optimizing for productivity allows for fun,” I explained. “You do know that men who stay married live longer, right?”
Tom smiled. “Deal me in.”
