The Work/Life Balance: Dad Edition
Working mothers are often asked how they balance having a career with family life. However, working fathers are not often asked this question because no one assumes they are required to take care of both. Society often rewards fathers for basic acts of fatherhood (making dinner for everyone, running errands, caring for the kids for one afternoon without burning the house down), and expects moms to do all this and more, minus the parade for doing so. This is insulting to both moms and dads for a few reasons, so I wanted to make sure I prefaced this clearly before launching into my dad advice. That being said, it’s Father’s Day this weekend! So it’s time to celebrate me and all the wonderful things I do. I am one of those dads that actively participates in family responsibilities, and I do have to balance work and life, and I do assume that my contribution should be equal to my wife’s because I am not an entitled maniac. Hold your applause and flowers while I tell you how I do it all, with my impressive Dad Knowledge.
- Take on tasks and make them your own. I don’t know about everyone but I’m really bad at sharing tasks. I tend to be better when all ambiguity is removed. For example, instead of saying “4 nights I’ll put the kids to bed and 3 nights my wife does it,” I decided it was easier to just own that task. In the past, it would end up becoming my wife’s task because inevitably my son would ask for his mother more, so even though we were ‘sharing’ that task, my wife did it more. Now I just own that. I put our toddler to bed nearly every night.
- Apply some business management techniques. This sounds corny but running a house seemed a lot like running a factory, something I dole a lot of advice out on. I took a lean tool called ‘visual management’ and made a board for my toddler that shows him his schedule. This is not about turning him into a corporate drone but instead more about giving him a look into the week ahead to prepare him for what’s coming, like say pre-school. He handles things so much better when he has some insight into what his day will look like versus just going along for the ride. We also include a checklist for bed and in the morning so I remember to do things like brush his teeth. That may not sound like something needed to most of you but trust me, remembering to brush my kids teeth was something I struggled with until I made that visual checklist.
- Turn chore lists into visual boards for yourself, too. Something I always hated to see or hear about were chore lists that couples share. I’m sure for some people they work great but the idea of a pre-set list of agreed tasks to be done day-by-day by each person makes me want to fall on a sword. Something about it says to me “my life as a human being with any self worth is over.” Note: If chore lists works for you, then by all means continue. Listing things is sometimes very necessary, but with chores it’s just really rigid to me. So instead, I thought about what a more appealing overview of weekly tasks would look like and I made a visual board that includes the days of the week. Each task is a picture with a magnet so I can move the chore to the day on which I wish to accomplish it. On the board I placed cleaning the main rooms of my house plus other main chores like cleaning the car, doing laundry, etc. Now, I sign up for things that day by placing the magnet on that day. For example, I’ll put cleaning the living room and some laundry on the day’s section and as a result, this really helps break down house chores to much smaller, simpler things. Plus if I don’t do it, I don’t feel all guilty about it, I just move it to the next day focusing instead on just getting some things done, instead of trying to do everything all at once from a chore list. This really has worked for me. My wife and I don’t argue about things like, “well that was your job not mine” or “why didn’t you do laundry today” since nothing is really scheduled hard and fast like that. It’s just “hey, what one thing can I get done today” and if I have more time maybe I’ll get even more things done. This means you kind of forget who does what, you focus on what you can get done and it all becomes more manageable.
