If You Do the Chores, He Gets the Promotion: The Hidden Economics of Domestic Labor with Eve Rodsky

Summary

Podcast Summary: Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin

Episode: "If You Do the Chores, He Gets the Promotion: The Hidden Economics of Domestic Labor"

Guest: Eve Rodsky, Author of Fair Play
Date: Dec 22, 2025
Duration: ~45 minutes (excluding ads/non-content sections)

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Main Theme / Purpose

This episode dives into the "invisible labor" that disproportionately falls on women in the home, its impact on relationships, and the broader economic implications for women’s careers. Nicole Lapin interviews Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play, to examine strategies for creating more equitable partnerships and to break down persistent myths about competence, time value, and gender roles in domestic labor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Unequal Division of Domestic and Mental Labor

• Women carry the load: Women perform 64% of all domestic labor and a striking 73% of the mental labor (the “mental load”), from household management to child-related tasks.
  • “Women report doing 64% of the domestic labor in their houses and 73% of the mental labor. Yes, that is a thing.” — Nicole, (03:20)
• Why does this happen? Rodsky explains this imbalance is not just about personal relationships but a universal, cultural, and systemic issue.
  • “It was just—I discovered—it’s universal.” — Eve Rodsky, (09:51)

2. The “Blueberries Breakdown”

• Catalyst story: The “Blueberries” story became an origin point for Rodsky’s journey. Overwhelmed post-partum, Rodsky received a text from her husband: “I’m surprised you didn’t get blueberries.” This mundane request, in a moment of chaos, broke her.
  • “How did I become the fulfiller of my husband’s smoothie needs? I thought I was a high-powered lawyer. I had told Elizabeth Warren when I was in law school that I was going to be President of the United States, a senator from New York… What I realized 10 years later was the only thing I was smashing was like peas for my toddler.” — Eve Rodsky, (08:17)

3. The “Sh*t I Do” Spreadsheet

• Turning pain into data: Originally, Rodsky started a spreadsheet listing every single task she handled—anything that took more than 2 minutes.
  • “If I was so overwhelmed that I needed to make a list, then I was going to make the best list that’s ever been made in the history of before AI.” — Eve Rodsky, (10:26)
• Crowdsourcing the invisible: She found women everywhere resonated and contributed to the list—they, too, felt alone and invisible.

4. The Real Problem: Institutionalized Gender Roles & Weaponized Competence

• Weaponized competence: Society assumes women are better at domestic tasks—not by nature, but because of lifelong conditioning.
  • “We’re better at it because it’s a skill that we’ve been taught since birth… Men are taught that their time is to be banked and to be invested. Women’s time is sand... Men’s time is diamonds.” — Eve Rodsky, (14:16)
• Excuses that hurt: Women’s own rationalizations (“He makes more money,” “I’m better at multitasking,” or, “In the time it takes to teach him, I could do it myself”) perpetuate the cycle and devalue their own time.

5. The Home as Organization: Applying Business Frameworks

• Behavior design in relationships: Rodsky leveraged her legal and organizational management experience. She reframed household labor as an organizational issue—“the home is an organization”—and applied frameworks like RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed).
• Mustard metaphor: By asking, “How does mustard get into your fridge?” she exposed that women typically do the conception, planning, and often execution. Men might “pick up” what’s on a list, but without ownership, it leads to mistakes (like buying the wrong kind of mustard), eroding trust and accountability.

6. Mental Load, Marital Satisfaction & Sex

• Mental load is sexy? Or not. Rodsky’s USC-backed study showed that perceived fairness and mutual ownership of “cards” (tasks) in the Fair Play system increases marital satisfaction—including sexual satisfaction.
  • “Marital satisfaction decreases significantly [without this balance]. And sex drive was one of those ways that women in our study describe marital satisfaction.” — Eve Rodsky, (29:55)

7. How to Start the Conversation

• Formula: Boundaries + Systems + Communication
  • “The biggest barrier to entry for Fair Play is actually having the conversation.” — Eve Rodsky, (30:07)
  • Assess where you struggle most (boundaries, systems, or communication) and start there.
  • Use concrete tools (spreadsheet, Fair Play cards), but beware turning it into a “scorecard” or weapon.
• Personal history matters: Understanding each partner’s own history around chores and expectations (e.g., how birthdays were celebrated) can make these conversations more human and less combative.

8. Monetizing Domestic Labor / Economic Impact

• Postnups and legal protection: Rodsky urges women who step out of the workforce to care for family to use postnuptial agreements to secure acknowledgment and compensation for their unpaid labor.
  • “The biggest economic risk a woman can take is having a child. And once we realize that, that’s 80% of our pay gap.” — Eve Rodsky, (54:20)
• “Greedy work” and the gender gap: Men with stay-at-home wives, able to do “greedy work” (unlimited hours, total devotion), overwhelmingly make up the “1%.” The structure penalizes anyone (usually women) taking unpaid care pauses.

9. Tradwife Culture and Social Media

• Critiquing #Tradwife: The recent “tradwife” trend is, Rodsky argues, a sanitized performance of domesticity—focusing on non-essential, visible tasks (breadmaking, decor) while ignoring the grind (medical forms, appointments, garbage) that truly underpins a household.
  • “If you actually look at what it takes to run a household, then the tradwife content is not even relevant.” — Eve Rodsky, (71:23)
• All the help: Honesty is needed about how much support families have—nannies, family, etc.—so women don’t feel inadequate trying to “do it all.”

10. New Models of Parenting & Role Modeling

• Teaching kids (especially boys): Rodsky talks openly with her sons about fairness and gender—one even took gender studies as a “gift” for her.
• Fairness ≠ equality: The goal is perceived fairness, not rigid equality. Couples may not split tasks 50/50, but can still feel mutual respect if systems and boundaries are clear.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “How did I become the fulfiller of my husband’s smoothie needs?… What I realized 10 years later was the only thing I was smashing was like peas for my toddler.” — Eve Rodsky (08:17)
• “Women’s time is sand. It’s infinite. It’s not valuable. Whereas men’s time is diamonds.” — Eve Rodsky (14:16)
• “The only way your time can compound is if you’re not giving it away for free.” — Eve Rodsky (15:59)
• “The home is an organization. And organizational management scholarship works.” — Eve Rodsky (21:19)
• “Marital satisfaction decreases significantly… And sex drive was one of those ways that women in our study describe marital satisfaction.” — Eve Rodsky (29:55)
• “What is the alternative? For me, it was being a gray version of myself and dying inside and parenting my partner.” — Eve Rodsky (32:37)
• “The more we talk about that, the more we will get more of those Diary of the CEO routines to say my morning routine is taking my kids to school and …wiping a vagina from front to back.” — Eve Rodsky (74:22)
• Final takeaway: “Time is a currency. Women have been unfortunately told how to use our time for so long. The more that we can reclaim our time choice, the more that women can understand that our time is diamonds as well.” — Eve Rodsky (75:38)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:20] Women’s share of domestic and mental labor
• [05:54] The Blueberries Story (origin of Rodsky’s awakening)
• [10:26] Creation and spread of the “Sh*t I Do” spreadsheet
• [14:16] Explanation of weaponized competence and gendered socialization
• [21:19] Home as an organization, not just a private space
• [29:55] Domestic labor, sex, and marital satisfaction statistics
• [34:37] Boundaries + Systems + Communication: the Fair Play “equation”
• [52:05] The imperative for postnups and legal/economic risk of unpaid care
• [59:16] “80% of the 1% are men with stay-at-home wives”
• [71:23] Critique of the tradwife trend and sanitization of labor
• [74:22] Men’s accounts of fulfillment from participating in domestic/mental labor
• [75:38] Final “straight to the bank” tip

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Tone & Style

Informal, candid, often humorous but deeply empathetic. Both Lapin and Rodsky use personal stories, self-deprecating asides, and accessible language—making abstract concepts feel immediate and actionable. Rodsky’s directness (e.g., “That’s really fucked up advice” about making the to-do list) and Lapin’s transparency about her personal experiences ground the discussion in real life.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is an invaluable primer for anyone interested in:

• Understanding the real scope and economics of unpaid household labor.
• Strategies for rebalancing responsibility in relationships.
• Connecting the home front to wider gender and economic justice conversations.

Rodsky’s “Fair Play” philosophy—which advocates for ownership, communication, and boundaries, not tit-for-tat scorekeeping—is both practical and hopeful. Whether you’re navigating your own partnership, raising children, or looking to change workplace dynamics, the episode offers concrete frameworks and the reassurance that you’re not alone in facing these challenges.

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Further Resources

• Fair Play (book, card game, and methodology) – [link via show notes]
• Free tools: Fair Play Institute resources, downloadable “Sh*t I Do” spreadsheet.
• Eve Rodsky on Instagram/TikTok for ongoing conversations.
• Encourage discussing these topics with partners using “minimum standard of care” questions.

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Final Takeaway

“Time is a currency. The more that we can reclaim our time choice, the more that women can understand that our time is diamonds as well.” (75:38) — Eve Rodsky

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This summary captures the heart of the episode—equal parts statistical reality, practical advice, and the permission to seek fairness (not just equality) in our most important relationships.

Transcript

[A]

For the holidays, my family and I are headed to Florida to visit my in laws. It is super important to me that my daughter knows her extended family and has the opportunity to spend time with them. While we're leaving one warm zip code for another. I know we'll still be getting that cozy holiday feeling of being with loved ones. The not so cozy part is the cost of flying three people across the country. I know a lot of us are feeling that this time of year the costs add up fast. That's why I love hosting my home on Airbnb. It's an easy way to bring in some extra income while we're away and that extra cash can help fund our next trip. Let's say you have a big trip planned or or are escaping to a warmer part of the world to work from the beach. Why leave your home sitting empty and dark when it could be making money for you? This year it's easier than ever to host your home thanks to Airbnb's Co Host Network. With the Co Host Network, you can hire a local co host to take care of your home and your guests while you're away. A co host can do it all, create your listing, handle check ins, provide on site support, and give you peace of mind that your home and guests are are being taken care of while you're away. So if you've been thinking about hosting but you don't know where to start, find a co [e-mail] host if you take only one thing away from today's episode, Money Rehabbers let it be this in my not so humble opinion, Public is the best brokerage for investing in bonds, stocks, ETFs, options and even crypto. You can try it out for yourself and see why I love it so much. @Public.com MoneyRehab Public is legit, the only platform I use to buy bonds. Before public, I used to buy government bonds the hard way. Slow websites, confusing interfaces, website designs straight out of the early 2000s. Just picture where fun goes to die. That was it. And then I found Public about five years ago and I have not looked back. I can now finally buy bonds without wanting to rip my hair out. Public makes it so easy to buy bonds. Whether you're into treasuries or corporate bonds, you can browse thousands of options right from your phone. But like I said, Public isn't just all about bonds. You can also find stocks and ETFs and they offer a high yield cash account with a 4.1% APY, which is higher than the national average. They even have retirement accounts. You can now open a traditional or Roth IRA or both right on public so your future self covered and for a limited time you can earn a 1% match on all your IRA deposits, IRA transfers and 401k rollovers. If you want an investing experience that's both smart and simple, head to public.com money rehab one more time. Public.com money rehab is a paid endorsement for public Investing. Full disclosures and conditions can be found in the podcast Description I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some Money Rehab. Women report doing 64% of the domestic labor in their houses and 73% of the mental labor. Yes, that is a thing. My friend Eve Rodsky is the author of the book Fair Play. She has championed not only research on this, but also strategies to help level the playing field in relationships. Her book was not only a New York Times bestseller, but it was also a Reese Witherspoon Book club pick. Which is a big frickin deal. So today we talk about how you can make your relationship more equal on your terms and answer some of the most viral questions out there about relationship equality, like whether or not it is okay to have a 9010 relationship. I found this conversation extremely helpful and honestly pretty cathartic. And I think you will too. Eve Rodsky welcome to Money Rehab. Welcome back to Money Rehab.

[B]

Yes, I got to be here before.

[A]

I don't think I've ever said this on the show that you are legitimately one of my favorite humans and I don't see you all the time but when I do I just love you and I love everything you stand for and I feel like such a great connection to you and you came to my rescue during the fires like the ultimate woman's woman that you are. So so thank you.

[B]

I always rooting for you. I think your messaging is crucial. Obviously not just for women, for everybody, but especially to women. And. And you also were one of the most wonderful people to me when I was launching my first book. You have a busy life and so you sat down with me and gave me such important advice. We met actually I gave you all my spreadsheets.

[A]

I was like do you want my spreadsheets? And you're like you are. That is my love Language Excel.

[B]

And you know that I love a spreadsheet since my entire movement is based on the shit I do spreadsheets. So our we bonded over our mutual love of spreadsheets. Spreadsheets.

[A]

But I have to come clean about something. Like, I love the messaging, obviously, and I saw, like, what a chord it struck with women. But I was single at the time, and so let me tell you, since you came on the show in 2022, I've gotten married and have a baby and hold. Holy. Does everything you say now resonate on a whole other level? Like, I got it, but now, like, you got it? I. I got it, like, in my core, in my soul. Like, ancestral.

[B]

Yes, ancestrally.

[A]

I do. Like, truly everything you've talked about. I think looking at the response that I would see at live events of yours online of women being like, yes, yes, Eve. Like, I saw it, and it was so cool. But, like, now I'm one of those. Yeah, I'm one of those ladies.

[B]

I see. I see all of your invisible work. I see you raising an amazing daughter.

[A]

I think about the Blueberry story that you tell. You've told in your book, you told on the show. And this sounds so wrong, but there's a part of it that, like, is a little bit fuzzy to me because mom brain is so real. So you're in the car. There's something about stabbing your vagina that I don't remember, but I think about this all the time.

[B]

Yes. So the story, for those who maybe not haven't heard us before, Nicole or me at least, is that I now I did. I've launched a movement that is now reached millions of people. We can say from our data, and is in 27 countries.

[A]

Mazel tov.

[B]

And it started with a text that Seth sent me. The text was, yes, my husband Seth, and I'm still married to him. So that's apparently a very important question a lot of people ask. But the text he sent me was, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And so the scene I want you to picture, because now that you have your beautiful daughter, it's probably easier for you to picture. I'm surprised you didn't get Blueberry's text. That still triggers me 12 years later. Happened when I had a toddler that I was picking up from a toddler transition program and a new baby at home. And what I remember seeing in the car as this text was coming in was a breast pump and a diaper bag on the passenger seat of my car. Very familiar gifts for a newborn baby to return because you don't want to lose out on those gift cards. But a lot of returns in the backseat. And as you said, a client contract.

[A]

In my lap because You're a badass lawyer.

[B]

Also, I also had been at that time forced out of my corporate job. And. And so I had started my own law firm. So I was very eager to get back and to get my own clients. And so I was marking up a contract in the car as I was racing to get Zach. And that's what I remember.

[A]

Oh, the pen.

[B]

The pen was.

[A]

The pen was jabbing.

[B]

I marked things up analog and the pen was in between my legs as I was driving. And it was like inching into my vagina as I would hit stop every, stop sign every. And that. That chaos was what the text, you know, that's how I received the text in the middle of all this chaos. And as we all know, Right. And especially as mediators know, which is what I am. I'm a lawyer and a mediator for high net worth individuals, which could be a whole other podcast we could talk about, specifically succession problems. What I can tell you is that the presenting problem is never the real problem. And so obviously, maybe if I. My emotion was lower and my cognition was higher, as my therapist always loved to say, it wouldn't have hit me so poorly. But that text sent me into a breakdown. I call it now the Blueberries breakdown. And I remember sobbing. First of all, we live in la. We don't take pulling over lightly. Or at least I don't, because we know we're going to be back in traffic. So the fact that I pulled over to cry, I was sobbing in my car alone, thinking, how did I become the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs? I thought I was a high powered lawyer. I had told Elizabeth Warren when I was in law school that I was going to be President of the United States, a senator from New York, and unironically, a Nick City dancer. Because you could do. Because why not, right? I mean, we were the Legally Blonde era.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

What, like, it's hard.

[A]

You went to Harvard Law School.

[B]

I did go to Harvard Law School. I did. And so I was very. I was embodying, I think, Elle woods at the time when I said that. But I really did feel all that I would be able to smash glass ceiling after glass ceiling after glass ceiling. Nicole. And I think in that moment, What I realized 10 years later was the only thing I was smashing was like peas for my toddler.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

While trying to negotiate my new law firm and a relationship where two thirds or more, which is the statistic, I didn't know at the time, but 2/3 or more of unpaid labor to run A home and raise a family fall on women. And I think even if I had just known that statistic at the time, I would have felt better that it wasn't my marriage, it wasn't my Seth that was doing this to me. It was just.

[A]

It's universal.

[B]

Universal. Yeah.

[A]

And then from that, we're basically. Your husband texts you, like, why didn't you get blueberries? Like, as if you are in charge of, you know, stocking everything, which now I fully know. And being postpartum is a whole other bag.

[B]

3 months postpartum at that time, which.

[A]

Is, I mean, really hard. Really hard. From that, it inspires you to create a spreadsheet.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So the spreadsheet started originally just for Seth. And what did you. What did you put in this spreadsheet?

[B]

I'm laughing because it wasn't just, I created a spreadsheet for Seth. This is pre Fair Play movement. Now we have over a thousand plus therapists that are in our fair Play movement, trained by our credentials, but a therapist actually told me to create a spreadsheet for Seth that if I was so overwhelmed that I should just make a list. And I don't know if anybody out there has heard that. That advice, but it's really fucked up advice. I don't know if you have to bleep that out, but. But I really despise that advice because it puts all the onus on women and it sort of assumes that because of our gender, somehow we know better. Somehow we have the better skills to raise a child, which is, you know, false in so many different ways. But, yeah, therapist told me to do that, so I did. I did, because I love Excel and I'm a researcher at heart. And so I figured, okay, if I'm so overwhelmed that I need to make a list, then I'm going to make the best list that's ever been made in the history of before AI. Of course, that couldn't get any help. And that's what I did. I opened up Excel and I started to write on the bottom every single thing that I did that took me more than two minutes of my time. And then, Nicole, I found women like you. This is 2011, so we didn't have even social media. Then I found them through baby groups and through early Facebook. And I would say, nicole, like, what do you do that's invisible to your partner? That takes you more than two minutes, and two minutes became an arbitrary threshold. But I don't know why I picked that. And then I started to get national responses. People were Receiving this Excel sheet in not even done form and coming back to me with things like, eve, thank you for this Excel sheet of all what I started to call the should I do spreadsheet for Seth. Women were coming back to me saying, I love that you have medical and healthy living as one of the tabs for kids. I see you have vaccine schedules. I see that you have formula versus breast milk on here. But I don't see sunscreen. I don't see the application of sunscreen. And then I would put in, okay, here, you want me to add two minutes for the application of sunscreen? And then the woman would come back and say, no, what about the 30 minutes for the chase? And I was like, oh, toddlers need to be chased to put on their sunscreen. Okay, I'll add 30 minutes for the chase. And it was that granular. But to me, it was at that time, again, I know we have a lot more resources now. We have TikTok, we have Instagram. But at that time, we have you speaking to women. There were no podcasts, There were no. There was no Instagram. There was no TikTok. It was just me thinking I was failing. So at that time, the responses from those women, Nicole, were my lifeline. That even if I had never created the book Fair Play or the movement, just getting the reception back from those women, that I wasn't alone. That no matter whether they worked, whether they were stay at home parents who work in unpaid labor, whether they were single mothers, everybody could relate to the fact that we are invisible and the work we do is invisible too.

[A]

You touched on something that I wanted to double click on. Because one objection that women get when they try to shift responsibility to their partner is like, oh, well, you do a better job at that. You're just better at that. So shouldn't you do that? The idea that it's weaponizing competence. So maybe we are better at a lot of things, clearly, spreadsheets, coming up with the list. But it is that cognitive load. It's like the mental load of handling it.

[B]

We're better at it because it's a skill that we've been taught since birth. And what do I mean by that? It didn't happen, you know, because our brains are wired differently for care. They're not. Nobody is good at multitasking. Task switching is actually bad for everybody. But what happens, Nicole, is that when we're born, we start to live in a world that has an assumption about how women and men are supposed to use our time. And so this gets Into, I think, a lot of your other guests and themes. I was listening to you this morning in my ear. Thank you. But, you know, time is a currency, and it can be invested, just like you talk about. And I think there's blue chip investments for it. There's risky investments. But for women, we've been taught that the blue chip investment is care, and we get rewarded for that. Oh, she's such a good girl. She's so compliant. She's a great babysitter. And so since birth, we're taught that women, our time is to be given away as a currency for free, whereas men are taught that their time is to be banked and to be invested. So women's time is sand. It's infinite. It's not valuable. Whereas men's time is diamonds. And I have said that to you before, but when we have, when we live in a society like that, it's not your partner or Seth, it's that. Can you imagine being a gender that's been conditioned to protect their time? They don't even realize that the other gender has been conditioned to give away their time for free. So what happens in a culture like that is not only do women get rewarded and punished for not doing things like sending gifts, we start to do things early. We learn to wrap gifts. We're with her by our mother's side when they're unloading the dishwasher or learning to cook. What happens is that men are taught that anything feminine is bad. You're a pussy. You know, I say to my sons, if you wore a dress to school, what would happen? They say, well, you know, we would be beat up. I mean, it's, it's, it's a horrible world out there for men, too. And so that patriarchal assumptions mean that if you try to come into care, men are considered pedophiles. You don't see as many young men as babysitters. You have to call them coaches or else it's weird. So it's just a whole society not teaching men to care. And so for me, what happens in that situation is not only do men not learn the skills, but women start to make excuses for being complicit in their own oppression. And so those are the things that make me most sad for women, because I cried when I did it myself. I did a huge look in the mirror when I wrote Fair Play. Typically, the most common excuse complicit in your expression toxic time message women use for why they do more care is because they say their husband makes more money than them. But in a culture, again, a patriarchy, where women are always going to have a pay gap, then it would mean that men would never do care. So we can't use that excuse. The other toxic time message women say is that we're better multitaskers. As we just said that we're wired differently for care. But that's completely false. Even if you look at. There's no evidence, but one brain study shows actually men are a little bit better at multitasking. So I don't say that to women because I think it would explode, you know, their whole worldview. So I just try to say no one's better at multitasking. The other one that's really hard for me to handle is in the time it takes me to tell Seth what to do, I should do it myself. Yeah, and that should probably hate. You should probably hate that too, because that's like a present value problem. So when you're talking about all of your economic themes, like that's like devaluing your future time, because of course it would make sense to time value. Time value of time. Right? The time value of money. The time value of time. You want your money to compound. You talk about that beautifully, all the time. I make my friends listen to you. But you want your time to compound. And the only way for your time to compound is, is if you're not giving it away for free. So of course you want to teach someone even if they aren't better at it. As we said, if they don't know how to wipe asses, do dishes, all the things that, you know, we've had to be penalized when we don't do, we teach those things. It's annoying. Of course we want them people to be able to do things without asking. Unfortunately, men don't always have those skills for what we just said. But when you get into a place where that person is doing those things with ownership, which is about fair play, then you get all that compounded time back.

[A]

For the holidays, my family and I are headed to Florida to visit my in laws. It is super important to me that my daughter knows her extended family and has the opportunity to spend time with them. While we're leaving one warm zip code for another. I know we'll still be getting that cozy holiday feeling of being with loved ones. The not so cozy part is the cost of flying three people across the country. I know a lot of us are feeling that this time of year, the costs add up fast. That's why I love hosting my home on airbnb it's an easy way to bring in some extra income while we're away, and that extra cash can help fund our next trip. Let's say you have a big trip planned or are escaping to a warmer part of the world to work from the beach. Why leave your home sitting empty and dark when it could be making money for you? This year, it's easier than ever to host your home thanks to Airbnb's Co Host Network. With the Co Host Network, you can hire a local co host to take care of your home and your guests while you're away. A co host can do it all, create your listing, handle check ins, provide on site support, and give you peace of mind that your home and guests are being taken care of while you're away. So if you've been thinking about hosting but you don't know where to start, find a co [e-mail] host did you know that raising your credit score can save you thousands of dollars on your next car loan? It's true. People with better credit get better rates on every big purchase, but building credit can be hard when you're starting at zero. Today's sponsor Chime, makes it easy. They offer the Chime Card, a secured credit card. Secured credit cards are basically deb cards, which means they are backed with your own cash, but they report to the credit bureau to help you build up your credit score. The Chime card offers 0% interest, 1.5% unlimited cash back rewards and can be used at any of Chime's 47,000 fee free ATMs. Just like a debit card, Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people. With products like MyPay giving you access to up to $500 of your paycheck anytime and getting paid up to two days early with direct depos it, Chime makes your everyday spending work harder by delivering real rewards and financial progress. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.commnn that is chime.commnn Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking Services A secured Chime Visa credit card and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancor Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com feesinfo advertised annual percentage yield with Chime+status only. Otherwise 1point APY applies no min balance required, time card on time. Payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score.

[B]

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[A]

So what's happened to the spreadsheet? It's been shared with a gazillion.

[B]

So let's talk about that. So the spreadsheet starts to become a point of data for me. So I put my research hat on and again, I'm still running a law firm at this point. And this is just for fun because I like. I like to. I don't know. Idea. Yeah, I don't know. It was my idea of fun. I would live. I should have like literally found a bed in a university and just embedded myself in there. And I should have been a professor. There's always a next step and a next chapter, so maybe I'll do that next. But I think the sociological side of things. My mother's a professor of social work and sociology. We have a lot of family colleagues who are in sociology. And I majored in anthropology, economics with a minor in sociology. So I had a lot of this information already at my hand disposal about how to gain data. And so what I'd started to do with that spreadsheet was just ask couples how they divided up their labor. Because so many women were coming to me saying that they were really overwhelmed and that they had a helper in their house but not a partner, and that they were losing their sex drive and that they weren't as interested in their partner anymore. So it was sort of interesting to hear all these themes. And so what I did was I asked a very important question which was, hmm, where can I put my unique skills into this research? So I knew I wasn't a therapist, I knew that I wasn't a technical sociologist, but I am a lawyer. And what I love about the legal system is that we are designing behaviors, Nicole. So I'm not sure any other lawyer thinks of it this way, but this is how I've always thought of it. I wanted to go to law school because I didn't want to ask you every single time. Excuse me, Nicole, can you stop at the stop sign? Use I statements. I would love for you to stop at the stop sign. I wanted more global change and I knew that we stop at stop signs because we passed laws to force people to stop at stop signs. So that behavior design element became very interesting to me and I thought, can I use that design element of like governance and laws, which I use for my clients, my very high net worth clients in their Very tricky financial situations, and they're very tricky succession situations, and they're very tricky governance situations. There are organizations, and this is what I do for a living. And so what I premised was, could I use my legal background and write on a whiteboard? What if the home was an organization and I use the spreadsheet to help me posit whether that's true? Is the home an organization? The spoiler alert is, yes, it's a very important organization. It's probably our most important organization. So if you believe me that the home is an organization, then organizational management scholarship works. And so that's what I did with the spreadsheet. I took it and said, okay, I'm not getting good data. So if I ask you and your partner who's handling your daughter's first birthday, I would probably get back. We both are. Okay, that's not helpful data for me. So I changed the question, and it opened up an entire world, which became fair play. Instead of asking, who's handling X, who handles groceries, who handles the birthday party? I asked. I looked at the groceries tab of the 98 tabs on my should I do spreadsheet? And I said, how can I ask this differently? And so in 28 countries over the past 10 years now, I've been asking the same question, which is, how does mustard get in your refrigerator? Why that is such a powerful question, Nicole, is because it allowed me to map a raci framework for any of those out there who know sort of what a or an organizational management framework into this discussion. And what I found was that if I used a very simple organizational management framework, which I called conception, planning, and execution, that's probably the simplest one you can use. I realized that women were conceiving. They're the ones who told me in 27 countries, even Iceland does it this way. So that's why I feel better, because it's not like Seth is a villain. This is happening literally everywhere in the entire globe, on the entire globe. Women are the ones who notice that the mustard's low. Well, that's planning. So first, though, conception was women telling me they have yellow mustard in the refrigerator because the pediatrician told them their child was anemic and the child needs more protein. They conceived of this idea that there would be a better way to ingest protein as opposed to, like, forcing iron down their child's throat in a supplement. And that would be to drench it exactly in mustard. Make a sandwich. But you need yellow mustard, and the kid needs a lot of mustard on it to Take their bites of their sandwich. That's conception. And then exactly what you just said. Women were also the ones getting stakeholder buy in from their family for what they needed for the grocery list. They didn't say stakeholder buy in, but that's what I was listening for. And like you said, they're watching the mustard, monitoring it when it runs low. That's planning. And then the reason why men were saying that they both handle groceries was because it was true. In these hetero cisgender marriages, men were the ones going many times to the grocery store, but they bring home spicy Dijon. And the problem with that is not the blueberries or not the mustard, but when somebody brings home spicy Dijon, what that does is it erodes. The two things that I always tell my clients are the most important thing an organization needs. It's really only two things. It's pretty simple. An organization just needs accountability and trust. So what happens if you don't have accountability and trust? The opposite of trust is control. And then we start sliding to, I'm handling all the mental load and you could maybe help me go get the balloons. But then your partner loses psychological safety because they're bringing home like Marvel balloons and your child has a mermaid themed party and you're like, what am I going to do with these Iron man balloons? So it's these small accountability and trust erosions that were leading to the biggest problems. And that's why Fair play was able to provide a solution to solve those you have.

[A]

I want to go back to one thing you said, though, because Alex Cooper did an episode of Call Her Daddy. I don't know if you saw it, where she said that the least attractive trait is a man who wants his wife to be.

[B]

Absolutely. It's been found.

[A]

So do you agree? Does it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Impact.

[B]

Oh, sex life.

[A]

Sex life attraction.

[B]

It does. And not only that, we just did our first big study, Nicole, to show that fair play, yay, does work. And we did it with USC and we got money from a big healthcare company because they're looking at how the mental load affects women's physical health, which, spoiler alert, it does. But what we found was that the more cards. So fair play, just the spoiler alert was that the spreadsheet and the system became a metaphor of playing a deck of cards. So, like, there were that hundred tabs on this Excel sheet, there's now 100 cards. And you deal the cards for full CPE doesn't mean you have to hold it forever. But if you're holding a Card, I want you to own it. So I want you to own the grocery list. I want you to come home with everything you think the person needs by getting planning, by asking their partner. And then when it comes home, if you're bringing home spicy Dijon, you carry through your mistake, right? That's how you own things in the workplace. I know I'm not working for Nicole Lapin. If I say to you, hey, Nicole, what should I be doing today? I'm just going to wait here to tell me what to do. I know I would be out of your organization tomorrow. I just know you. So why do we allow that in our home? Right. I know that. That no employees on your staff would. Would do that. So why do we allow. Why is my Aunt Marian's mahjong group. Why does she have more clearly defined expectations in the home? Apparently, in her group, if you don't bring snack twice, you're out. But the home, I have systems engineers telling systems engineers telling me that they're waiting to decide who's taking the dog out right when it's about to take a pee on the rug. And when you get into this chaos spiral, we found in our study that not only does fair play work, but that marital satisfaction decreases significantly. And sex drive was one of those ways that women in our study describe marital satisfaction.

[A]

What's the best way to bring it up with your partner? Because maybe they'll be defensive and they'll say, like, no, I am doing mustard shopping and I'm doing, what do you want from me? Yeah, I'm doing more than my dad best I can.

[B]

Yeah, that happens all the time. It's definitely the thing that makes me the most reflective about fair play, because I think for anybody who's in maybe the health profession, they know that if they have their patients walk more, that they're going to be healthier. But they can't get their patients to walk. It's sort of like that, right? The hardest thing, the biggest barrier to entry for fair play, is actually having the conversation. So what I say in that situation, if you are somebody who. You have a wonderful open helper in your home right now, then you can absolutely launch into the systems part of the conversation. Hey, I found this really cool system. It's like an asana or trello, and it's here to make our lives more efficient. So I say there's three ways you can enter. That's systems. There's a secret formula, though, for entry, and there's two other ways. One is boundaries, and the other is Communication. So I call it like, you're. You can take a 20 second assessment. We can ask your listeners to do that. Do I struggle most with communication? Do I struggle most with systems? Do I struggle most with boundaries? And I would say start with the thing that's hardest. And what I mean by that is I struggled with all three. When it was my turn to come up and think about how I was gonna bring this up to Seth. But when I was struggling with all three boundary systems and communication, I realized my boundaries, for me were the hardest thing to rectify. Meaning I kept breaching my boundaries. I would say, I'm gonna have Seth do bath tonight, or I'm gonna go out with my friends. And then I'd be like, ugh, you should it. My child wants me and I should just do it. I'll come home, I'll go out after. And then I'm tired, then I'm resentment, you know, resentful. And so I really had to think about why it was that I kept breaching my boundaries. And then that's when I started to think about those time things that, wow. You know, I notice that it's not. I'm not really resentful about the mustard. I'm resentful about the fact that Seth has three hours after our kids go to bed to watch SportsCenter work out and finish a PowerPoint deck where I'm doing things in service of our home till my head hits the pillow. And that's still an hour after Seth goes to bed. And so I think when I finally realized that that was the issue and that I was. And what was the alternative, Nicole?

[A]

What is it?

[B]

What is the alternative? What is the alternative to bringing this up there?

[A]

Well, divorce.

[B]

Right, Right. That's why I kept thinking. Right. Which is how I grew up. And I know you and I, we talked about our backgrounds. Right. It's not. That's not an easy option. So I kept thinking, what? And I would write this in my journal for women who are. Don't want to bring this up, who don't want to practice fair play. I kept saying, well, what's the alternative? For me, it was being a gray version of myself and dying inside and parenting my partner. I mean, that sounds terrible. Divorce. I don't know. Emotional affairs. I mean, a lot of women. Esther Perel talks about that a lot. Or finally just having the boundary to say, you know what, Seth, I noticed this phenomenon that you get three hours after our kids go to bed to watch SportsCenter, work out, finish a PowerPoint, deck. And I'm doing things in service of our home until my head hits the pillow. And yes, you make more money than me, but I have a stressful job that's just as impactful to the world. And that's not gonna mean everything's gonna be 50, 50, but I'm no longer willing to live with this time discrepancy. But, Nicole, that took a lot of work on myself. And that's why I think sometimes I think the conversation we're having deserves a trigger warning, because I think I'm giving you another system. Another system like your financial systems. This should just slot into your other types of conversations. But then I realized that because we've been conditioned this way, because we live in a patriarchy, because there's so much pain around relationships, this is actually a very painful conversation for a lot of women.

[A]

But maybe if you put it on a spreadsheet or numbers, like, it takes some of that out of it. So you say, sit down, like, open the spreadsheet, potentially play the game. That's how you open the dialog. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the viral Brene Brown clip where she talks about, no marriage is 50, 50. So what do you think? At times it's 1090 or 9010 or whatever. But over time, it nets out to 50, 50. Is that the right.

[B]

Yes. Well, I love equations. And you have them again on your. With your other guests. So I'm going to give you an equation where I think, to me, the equation is ownership communication. So back to what I said earlier. If you have a boundaries, if you have boundaries, if you can hold your boundaries, your partner says to you, nicole, I may not be doing everything right, but I do see your time as equal to my time. We Both just get 24 hours in a day. And I want you to have time choice over how you use that. That's boundaries plus systems. So Fair play is a system. Most people, I would say, who aren't even using fair play, who say they have a system, it ends up looking like fair play because it's a system that most organizations use. Like Steve Jobs came up with something called the dri, the Directly Responsible individual. Very similar to Fair Play. A lot of companies use these racy frameworks where someone is responsible for the task. Doesn't mean you can't include other people in the planning, but you hold the responsibility. So it's not new or novel. Fairplay is not a new or novel system. It's just bringing these amazing concepts into the home. So that would be the systems and then communication. So to me, that's the formula where I see, okay, this couple is going to make it. I don't care about 50. 50. I want to know that you say my partner is open to bound to me holding my boundaries to implementing some sort of system so we know what to do in advance and we're not waiting to take the dog out right when it's about to take a pee on the rug. And there is some communication practice in the home. I just want to say something because you were asking earlier about coming into these conversations. Typically, if somebody says to me, I can't bring this up. I'll give you an example. This is sort of funny. So I didn't think I would bring this up, but I think it's worth bringing up. There was a Facebook group out of England during the pandemic called the Reasons I Hate My Husband and Kids During COVID And I love these literal naming conventions. So that was the name of the group. I think it had 22,000 members in it. And I get a lot of these random things people call me after funerals. They call me after. You know, See, I get a lot of data. So someone tagged me in or DM in this group saying, eve, you should check it. Check it out. And they tagged me on a. On a comment that a woman wrote in the group that said, if my husband dies during COVID it's going to be because of me and not the disease. Okay. So I reach out to her on DM and say, I would love to talk to you. I'm a researcher. I would love to talk to you about how you discuss unpaid labor and domestic work with your partner. So the woman got back to me and said, thank you so much for your reaching out. I'm glad my comment resonated. I don't discuss. We don't discuss domestic labor. And we tried. It doesn't work.

[A]

I just went on Facebook.

[B]

Right. So think about that. Right. That. And I. And I have a lot of empathy for this woman, for her publicly threatening to murder her partner in a. In a public realm of 22,000 people felt safer to her than bringing it up directly with her partner. So that's how hard. If anybody out there is saying this feels hard to bring up, I want you to know that we see you. We know how hard this is, and it is easier sometimes to back off. But like I said, what is the alternative to continue to do that? This is a long answer to your question about 50, 50 what I'm looking for is boundary systems and communication. Because when I get people who say they have those things or they're practicing those things, typically I get that they perceive fairness in their home. I don't really actually care about what actual fairness means, but I like to see that both people are perceiving fairness.

[A]

Well, even having a scorecard of whatever that tally. Yes. Feels dangerous.

[B]

Yes. And that's why fair play is a dangerous game if you just use the cards. So the book and the cards are meant to be a system and the cards. There is a card game that is a tool. But what I say is it's a do no harm in my mind where I say on every I say on TikTok on Facebook in the book warnings, don't use the cards without having read the book first or even listening to this podcast first. The problem is it becomes a very quick scorekeeping tool to get very anger angry and resentful. If you're just looking at them and saying, I hold all these cards and my partner doesn't hold any. The the visual is not for you to say I hold everything and you do nothing. The visual is to say it's us against the cards. That unpaid labor sucks. It takes time. It requires skills that nobody wants. I don't want to learn to cook ever. If I didn't have kids, it would just be doordash forever. But look at these skills that we need to learn, especially after a child comes into the home. Unfortunately, we add 40 extra cards when a child comes into the home. So now we're playing with a hundred in the deck as opposed to 60. And then you're looking at them and saying, this is the unpaid labor of our home. It's never going to be 50 50, but who wants to own what? And how can we do that in a way that feels that there's perceived fairness? And so a lot of I would say stay at home mothers who work for for no pay say to me that they hold about 70 cards and their partner's playing with about 15, but that those 15 cards their partner is owning and they perceive fairness. So I don't care how people live, Nicole. I just want them to use the tool in a way that's helpful to them.

[A]

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[B]

That's one of my favorite ones.

[A]

Really? I hope they know where the butter is.

[B]

No, there's a far side cartoon that. So I have a stereotype of a man that I call where's the butter? And that came from a. I think it was a far side cartoon where there, it's an anniversary card where on the front of it, it's just a man opening the refrigerator. And literally every single thing says butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter. And then underneath the caption is honey, where's the butter?

[A]

I mean, but the point of that is that men are outsourcing and brain space correct for things like where is the kid's winter jacket?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, and so how, when you start to think of all of that mental load or like the cognitive load that feel is so obviously invisible work, how do you quantify that?

[B]

Well, the good news is you don't really have to quantify it because you will feel it. You will feel it. I will say that the thing that is you feel the most is the communication practice. So what do I mean by that? I quant. The thing that's to me quantified the most of fair play is not how many cards people hold, is actually how many check ins people have. They'll report to me. Oh my gosh, we did four check ins this month. And what I'm asking people to do, Nicole, is to check in, similar to a staff meeting. But we actually know this from organizational management. If companies have employees where they have regular check ins, that employee is more, more likely to deliver the leader bad news, which is actually a very important thing for leaders to hear that they often don't hear. And so the same thing sort of applies to the home where people are more willing and open to hear bad news. Meaning like I need your help this week with a terrible task, like, you know, crazy hat day for the kids or whatever, if you have a cadence of already coming to the table. So that's typically where I see people quantifying it. The practice of fair play the most, where they'll say, we got our, you know, weekly check in done every week this month, and it made us feel so good. So that's where I love quantification. But I will say where you don't really need it is you won't need it because you start feeling it. And the conversations that really allow people, if you're afraid to bring these things up, which is very normal, hence our Facebook woman. The way I like to say it is the best time to bring things up is on anniversary, on a birthday, where you just say, for my birthday this year, I really want to play with these cards. And what I mean by playing with the Fair Play cards, and you don't have to order them. We have a whole website in the show notes we can link to. We're a nonprofit. We have an institute where we give out all of our resources for free.

[A]

You know how this, the podcast should be?

[B]

Yes, yes. And what we love to say is, like, if you're playing with the cards, the actual deck, or you're using a spreadsheet version of them, and nothing I want for my birthday more right is is sit down with me and let's start talking about what I call in the book the minimum standard of Care. So typically, why conversations around Fair Play don't work is because they will start with, I'm going to give you our daughter's first birthday party, and you own it. So that is an ownership conversation. And you can talk through the conception of what that means, the planning, what the execution of that party could be. Is it just pizza and cake? Is it a blowout because it's a party for you? Because that's how I felt my first birthday parties were blowouts. Full open bar, you know, a hundred people. Because I was celebrating the hardest year of parenting, which to me is the first year. So that's easier. But it often doesn't work that well because you haven't actually come to the core of Fair play, which is sitting down to discuss how were birthdays celebrated in your home. So that's what I like to say. If you have a hard time, if you're not those systems, people who are just willing to go in and make things more efficient, start with a communication practice. Maybe on your birthday, maybe when another time an emotion is low and your cognition is high. And just take three cards. I will assign them to you right now. Take groceries. Let me just pick some that are good, that I love stories. Take groceries. Take birthday parties and take gifts. Pick those three. Those are three of the Fair Play hundred Cards. And just ask your partner who did gifts in your home growing up, do you remember getting any gifts that you love?

[A]

And then how do you want to do it?

[B]

Right. But. But the how do you want to do it? Is harder because we don't realize how much we've been affected by the way things were in our home. I wanted set. I'll give you an example. I want. Seth decided to own garbage, but I was his garbage shadow. I just couldn't stop following him around the house. And he's like, listen, I'm not gonna own this or play this game if you're stalking me over garbage.

[A]

Well, this is, I mean, asking for a friend, taking the marker out of their hand.

[B]

Right?

[A]

I have that problem.

[B]

Right. So especially in this case, he couldn't really understand what was happening, why I was having. Being so triggered over when he took the garbage out. And then finally, when I realized that skipping the step of the minimum standard of care was actually not helpful. So when I finally said, you know, I sat. Sat down. This was years ago when I was developing the rules of the game, I realized, oh, just like the legal system. Back to the. What I said earlier. This is designed similar to behavior design experiment. In our legal system, Nicole, we adjudicate about a trillion dollars a year in something called the tort system. So, I mean, you know that, but you're for your listeners, right? If. If McDonald's serves you coffee that's too hot and you spill it on your leg and you give yourself a third degree burn, is McDonald's responsible? So how do we know if McDonald's is responsible? We use something called the reasonable person test. That's similar to the minimum standard of care and fair play. So when Seth said to me, you're not being reasonable, that you want the garbage to go out four times a day because I'm not even home. And so that's not gonna. So don't leave, like, empty milk cartons near my bed and stop being passive aggressive. Understand that in our house, you can restore accountability and trust in me because garbage will go out once a day. I won't tell you when it's going out. There will be a liner back in the bag, in the bin, and it will go out once a day. And then it was like the Moses partying the Red Sea. I mean, it was the most. That was probably the most important conversation in our marriage.

[A]

Aligning on what that means.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What's the expectation? Because for you, you wanted, like, nobody lived in the house all the time, and for him and Then you had to say, okay, that's now the expectation once a day, if you've done that.

[B]

But. But no, unfortunately, it wasn't that easy. I had to actually go back to my childhood. This is why I said, if you've never done this before, do the exercise. I just said, take three cards, the ones I just gave you and to your listeners, and just sit down when emotion is low, cognition is high, and ask how it was done in your home. What changed, Seth? Finally, and this is why these, this, unfortunately, fair play is a practice. It's like exercise, guys, now we're hearing about strength training. We have to practice it. It is not a one and done conversation. It is just like exercise. And one of the big practices was having these minimum standard of care conversations for the cards the other person was going to own, which takes time. So I will say the onboarding, just like in a company, onboarding in a company. The best companies take six months to onboard. They have a mentor. They really indoctrinate you in the company. The worst. Like my law firm was like, figure it out. Two days. And then I was miserable. But in the onboarding of fair play, unfortunately, it wasn't, okay, this will be our standard. It was. Seth, I may have said this to you off screen before. Nicole. I grew up in a home where I was taking care of my mother starting at 7. There were eviction notices on our door. I wrote out her rent checks. I have a disabled autistic brother who gets a lot of our attention. What didn't get attention was our kitchen. There was garbage pouring out from a takeout bag that sat on a knob. We'd never had a garbage can. And it was the same thing every night. If my brother wanted water, my mother was working late. I would help him and get him his water, close my eyes, go into our small kitchen, turn on the light, keep my eyes closed because I knew that was how the cockroaches and water bugs would scatter when the lights turned on and didn't want to see them, then went to go get the water and bring it to my brother. So I think Seth had to understand my mother. He. He feels a lot of empathy for my mother. He feels empathy for me and my brother. And so when he could start feeling empathy for the garbage and what it's connoted, it was more than the garbage.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And I think when it's hysterical, it's historical.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like you had this, I love that reaction to it. Like, where was that coming from? And you uncovered it and a Lot of this stuff is not rational. Right. It comes from childhood. And there's, you know, this systemic idea that, like, the woman is responsible. I even noticed that our nanny, and we're all in a group thread, like, she'll come to me and ask me the questions, or, you know, in laws will ask about, like, logistics, but just to the woman. And so it's. It's generational, but also not like women who are younger than me or my age, like, will instinctively come to me to ask questions about our daughter.

[B]

In schools, can you imagine what they do to women? I mean, they. No matter how many men put them. Their names on first, and I asked so many men to do that, they skip over their name and they. They call women.

[A]

And what do you do about that? Like, do you put everybody on a group thread?

[B]

Again, I don't pick up on the school calls. I just don't. And eventually you think, like, what, did something happen? Yeah, I do. I do. But I think I channel men. And I think, okay, if they do this without a stress response, you know, most likely it's, you know, Anna bumped her head. Or Ben got a detention, which he did last week, over not eating grapes in his pocket. Like, he kept. You're not allowed to eat in the school. And he was, like, keeping grapes in his pocket. So typically, you pray that that's what it is. Knock on wood. But, yeah, I. I really have had to fight my instinct to do what comes naturally.

[A]

And what about parents that leave their job to take care of the kids? Do you. Do you like the idea of putting a monetary value to a lot of these?

[B]

Oh, absolutely.

[A]

I do chores and I do labor.

[B]

I do. I think I have a. Again, back to our nonprofit institute. We have a guide for postnups, and I think it's really, really important. You've talked about this on your show. The expectation that's set for you in family law is already set for you by the state. So, yeah, you have a prenup. You have a prenup. Right. And so I might. You might as well have one that reflects what you do. And so there's a wonderful woman named Neha Roosh, and she talks a lot about what happens when women take a power pause. She calls it, and. And stay home. Or men, too. But typically, what ultimately happens is that the cards do shift. So you will see the person who's not working take on more labor. But then. Then even in that situation gets very unbalanced and the power dynamic changes in that family. So what I like to say Is if you do a postnup, it helps because it acknowledges there's going to be a power dynamic shift in this relationship. And I want you to value unpaid labor if I'm going to take this shift. And if your partner really is not valuing unpaid labor, then they wouldn't engage in a way that you'll know. You'll know. I have a lot of women say to me, like, I had that conversation, it didn't go well. And then I say, then you can't leave the workplace. Like it's going to be bad later. We've seen too many stories of women who end up in the family law courts with very little alimony. Something called a Gavron warning, Nicole, which is a humiliating document you get from the court saying that you have a duty to become self sufficient, even though you have 20 years of, you know, you left marketing 20 years ago and they're telling you to enter the workplace. I have women. I spoke to a woman who was a marketing executive who became a Mary Kay representative. Again, that's not bad work.

[A]

She had to.

[B]

Yeah, A lot of these MLM jobs become available because the skills that you had in your job or women who are nurse practitioners and have to regain their license when their partners want to leave. And so I always say, and this gets back to the core, I think of why you do what you do. What I love about what you do, what you do is I think you're helping people avoid economic risk and also obviously make money and do some wonderful, powerful things with their capital. But I love, you know that you have a message that also helps people avoid economic risk. And the biggest economic risk a woman can take is having a child. And once we realize that, that's 80% of our pay gap. It's the reason why Lean in is recently saying they have a study came that came out yesterday that said women have no ambition anymore. Over 40, they have an ambition gap. I mean, it's just total bullshit. It's just that we have care responsibilities. They don't even mention the word mother in their study, which I think is so bizarre. We don't have an ambition gap, we have an exhaustion gap. And we need to start talking about the truth of what it is to do unpaid labor. And until we invite men into their full power in the home, women are really not going to be able to step out into their full power in the world. And so that's why I love that we're having this conversation in these contexts because the biggest economic risk women will take is becoming A mother. And it's because society assumes they're going to do the unpaid labor of the home. And then they stop paying us because they think we're not going to be as committed to the workplace. And that cycle becomes vicious. It happens in every generation. And look, we're trying to close it, but right now, unfortunately, the pay gap is the worst it's been in, in about five years.

[A]

So even if you have a prenup, having a post nap, depending on the labor that you're doing in the home is important.

[B]

Well, especially of what you said. If it's. If a prenup is. If you're in the same financial situation as your prenup is not as important. To me, the only time a postnup is absolutely necessary is if you're both contributing money to the household and work outside the home. And one of the parties says, it's not worth it for me to work anymore because of greedy work. We have a Nobel prize winning economist named Claudia golden who says America thrives on greedy work. And so if, say your husband is a law firm partner or about to become a law firm partner and he decides he wants to go for it and he sits down with you and says, I care about your unpaid labor. I see you doing all this work. I need to lean into this partnership. It's going to be 100 hour weeks for the next two years. So you'll have to handle everything off screen. The economic risk that a woman is taking to do that to me merits a postnup because there's no economic risk to the man. He gets the family law system on his side and he gets to leave the marriage with an amazing career. The economic risk is for the person who will give up the paid work because when you re enter the workplace after a pause, we lose exponential worth over time. So women who've taken an exit, 43% of women do take a career detour after kids and they see up to a million dollars or more of value lost in those decisions.

[A]

But also statistically, married men make more than single men, so that's called the marital wage premium. Married women do make more than single women, but it's a much smaller gap. So what do you think came first? This is kind of a chicken or egg situation. Are married men making more money or are men who make more money more likely to be married? And do you make more money in.

[B]

The course of the relationship? If you're married, it is chicken, the egg. What I think is the men who are married are more likely to be able to do greedy work. So they're more likely to be the men who. And we see this because the men who. I'll give you an example. I have this wonderful. Again, people contact me, like I said, in divorce and funerals, in lawsuits. There's a man who just reached out to me because he wanted to let me know that he was a high powered executive at his firm in the tech world. And he decided, he sort of his wife has been listening to me for a long time and they've sort of been in the fair play world. He decided to take his full paternity leave, which is six months on paper. He was the only person to do that in the group and they fired him. So now he's suing them. My point being that men who do what women do will start seeing that they're penalized too. We need, like I said right now, because it's not normalized, you're either going to be complicit or fight. So I say to those men, thank you for the fight. I know it's hard to also be penalized like women are because men are not used to that. But what we see is that the men who can do the greedy work often are the ones who rise up in their career. So much so, Nicole, that this is my favorite statistic. 80% of the 1% in this country are men with stay at home wives.

[A]

80% of the 1%. Yeah. I'd love a stay at home wife.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Imagine things I would get done.

[B]

Oh my gosh. Well, by the way, my good friend who you should have on too, she's a professor at Wharton. She just wrote a book called having it All. And I love because she has a very complimentary perspective because I have the behavior design legal perspective and she has the economic perspective. But her solution, so mine was to hold the boundary and say to Seth, I'm not living like this anymore. Other women's solution is court ordered custody. As we talked about, her solution was to divorce a man and marry a woman.

[A]

What do you guys do now? Like, how do you guys divvy stuff up? Because you both also, since you were married, have become so crazy. Wildly successful.

[B]

Thank you for saying that. Seth would say it's easier when I'm gone, which I think it is. I want to just be completely transparent. We have an amazing nanny, we have set. We moved to LA for Seth's parents. We would have even, I think we would have been even more successful if we could stay on the east coast. I feel like everything happens on The East Coast. So we have Seth's parents and our amazing nanny. We have a college UCLA student who helps drive our middle son to all of his practices, which are over an hour and a half away, three times a week for his club basketball. So as parenting has become more intensive, it's harder. And obviously that's an incredibly privileged position. So we have a lot of amazing executors. But this is the interesting thing. What Seth used to think was, well, if Eve is so overwhelmed, she should get help. And he now says that was like the most sexist thing ever. Because now he realizes, as much as we love our village, Alexia is not deciding whether our child's adenoids are being taken out. And so what he realized, what I realized when we went through the cards for the hundredth time, because we've been practicing fair play for almost a decade now, is that about 50 of the cards, and this is what Seth realized, are not outsourceable. So even if you have a partner who says, oh, if you're so overwhelmed, get help, I want women especially to know that, then start with the non outsourceable cards again. As much as you love Alexia, she's typically not doing your elf on the shelf. She's not doing Santa. She's not replacing the carrot and the cookie with the sparkle dust. You know, I'm Jewish, so I think that happens. Or she's not the one who, again, is deciding whether or not your child should go on flonase or whether you're going to do surgery. That person is not deciding whether to sign yourself, your kid up for club basketball or whether they're going to lean into golf or whatever it is. They're not deciding which, you know, charter school to put your name in the lottery for. So there are about 50 cards like that where even if you have this amazing village that I'm talking about, we still have to own. And that's, I think, been the most helpful realization for Seth is to say ownership means a lot of thinking. And so now I would say he probably thinks it's easier when I'm gone because he has a great team to help him execute on his mental load. But the mental load is smoother. Like, dinner is on the table between 6 and 7. The kids aren't up watching Survivor till 11. Because I decide it's like Survivor night, there's a vegetable on the plate. Because my minimum standard of care has always been like a green on the plate would be like, I don't know, a Lucky Charms, like, shamrock. Not like something that's like what he meant by green. So yeah, I think but again this is 10 years in of doing the a practice of something. So it's like looking at somebody who's been doing CrossFit for 10 years and being like I want to do as many pull ups as them. Like I can't even hold onto a bar. I have like no grip strength, you know. So you're going from no grip strength where you fall off the bar to doing 10 pull ups. As we know. It's a chip away situation. It's a practice. Every one of those quantified check ins that we talked about is where I would start is having some of these amazing conversations about what happened to you as a kid. Tonight I want you just to talk about birthdays. What did birthday parties look like for you and your partner when you were kids? Do you have, can you give me that? Can we practice? Like what is, what did they look like to you?

[A]

I mean I have so many traumatic memories. So it's like never a fun day to go down memory lane. Yeah, I didn't have a lot of birthdays growing up and then when I was in my 20s, I had a lot of birthdays on like non 0 or 5 birthdays to make up for that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I kind of discovered that through therapy that I was like reliving that. And so.

[B]

So my point is you, that may be something that happens with your child's first birthday because that happened to me back to you and I bonded over sort of similar or similar seeming child children childhoods. When I was helping my mother pay her rent checks starting at 7. I also there was a New York magazine, we would get a subscription. In the back were personal ads and there were things like birthdays and gardener, whatever it was. And I would always pick like the clown and like literally pick up the phone and be like, hi clown, can you come to my birthday party this Saturday? So I was always planning my own parties and so birthdays mean a lot to me. And as I said to you, they're blowout parties. And I never got to tell Seth that with Zach because I just started to throw these like circus themed giant parties and he's like, what's happening here? Like this child's one. Like I thought we were getting like pizza and having like three of our family members over and it became like a really big point of contention. So I wish I had had fair play with Zach because I would have sat Seth down and said, do you remember what I told you about my mom's Eviction notices. Well, here's what happened to me when I had to plan my own birthdays. And birthdays matter. And so those are the things I think humanize us and if we can humanize this work. So that's not seen as just like women's housework and chores, but it's actually like our humanity, Nicole. It's like all of our memories are these things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I love learning that about you. I want to now know more about these non 0 and 5 birthdays.

[A]

They were.

[B]

I'm sure they were epic.

[A]

Yeah, they were just delayed gratification, I thought. And it was weird. Like, I had an ex that was like, you're so weird. Why are you doing this blowout for like 28? Who cares? You'll be over it. And so I discovered that in the process. But, you know, having a child, even though she's one, like, I'm seeing so much of my own childhood play out and the mother daughter relationship.

[B]

Well, the good news is you get a beautiful chance, right, to break all those cycles, but you also have a chance for some of that joy.

[A]

How do you talk to your kids now about invisible work? You have two sons, one daughter.

[B]

It's really for my sons, I would say, appropriate, obviously. Yeah. My sons are the ones, unfortunately, who have to hear it day in and day out. My older son, Zach, he's taking gender studies, which I'm very. And that was as a gift to me. I didn't even ask him to do it. He just was noticing that his school has a new, newly formed gender studies elective. And a lot of his friends were taking media. And then he was sort of mad because the media kids got to maybe be announcers for the basketball team. And he wanted to do that. But anyway, he ended up in gender studies. He's the only boy in the class. And I'd say he comes to it with this really an understanding of how to care for his younger sister. My middle son is my intellectual, more of my thought partner. And all day long he just sends me tiktoks of people who hate fair play. So that's his favorite thing to do. He says, you need to understand criticism. A lot of it comes from the Christian right. And there are some really interesting critiques of fairness, saying that fairness is not a great value to aspire to. But to those people, I always just. I have. I always, with my son, when I say, oh, that's the critique. Well, let's just. Let's put is fairness important to society? Into chatgpt and that's always a fun answer because it's like fairness is the basis for every single legal system in the world. So I would say that, you know, the critiques aren't so they're more vibesy than data driven. But I think it's funny that that's how Ben wants to. He's very aware of fair play, is very aware of who talks about fair play. He Googled. He tells me the most Google search about me is, is Eve Rodsky still married? So he's very involved, but in more of a that's cool. A thought partner way. And he loves to send me any videos of critiques.

[A]

But it's interesting that you use fair, not equal or equality or equity fair, but it gets bastardized. It sounds like.

[B]

Correct. Well, I think what's. What's strange is that there's this new, as we know, a trad wife trend that has sort of emerged and it's sort of same different decade, Nicole. It's coming up and a lot of men are the ones who are actually engaging in the tradwife content. It's not just the women. And it's sort of interesting because to them, fairness is really not the value that they would look at first. They look at like servership. There is a concept in Mormonism called the help meet. I didn't know this until I started to. Since that started sending me to critiques. Women are supposed to be help meets to men in their home. And so the idea there's. So fairness is really not what God has chosen for women. That's not the path. So I hear a lot of arguments like that where religious theory comes into the discussion. What's interesting about that is I'll just say that, oh, I can't combat religious theory and what your beliefs are. But all I can say is that considering I come from a very orthodox Jewish family where I understand that thinking, one thing I will know from a sociological perspective is that female seclusion is something that has been around since the beginning of time. The ultimate tool of the patriarchy is keeping women in the home.

[A]

Well, what do you think about this new resurgence of trad wives and this sort of anti. I mean, I was part of the boss bitch movement, literally wrote the book, and now it's flipped.

[B]

Well, I think if we argue, Nicole, that we are arguing for a hard life, we're not going to win. I think the beauty of the tradwife movement is that it shows a soft life. But here's the beauty of the tradwife movement. If you compare it, I'M having a graduate student do this. I'm having him look at tradwife content and asking which cards it falls into. It's never middle of the night comfort. It's never medical and healthy living. It's never garbage. So it's never that those daily grinds that I was telling you about. It's never a woman saying at the pediatrician's struggling with a kid who's screaming that they don't want to get their vaccine. It's never, like I said, garbage overflowing. It's all this work that is non daily grind work. So it's focusing on non essential work that ultimately can become commodities that these women can sell.

[A]

Like sourdough bread.

[B]

Exactly right. And garlands and home decor. Those are fair play cards. We have a home decor card. But I wouldn't say that any couple is telling me the home decor is what's, you know, ruining their marriage. Right. It's that the dishes have been left in the sink, the laundry is piling up. There's a wild card, someone's lost their job. All the other fair play cards that are really painful are the ones that we don't see the tradwife content engaging with. So what do I think? I think it's a luxury to be able to talk about those non essential fair play cards. And if you really actually look at what it takes to run a household, then the tradwife content is not even relevant.

[A]

Well, I also really love how you talk about all the help that you have because I think it's important to not just ask women how they do it all, but how much help they have.

[B]

That's right. And men too. Right. I think one last thing I can end on, I think is important for the men listening. I know a lot of men listen to you. Like I said, you're my husband's favorite part podcast.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

You and the diary of the CEO, those are. Wow. Yes, but that's. Your show's better for me because the diary, the CEO has like one woman on every hundred guests and the morning routine is always like a plunge bath and like some cold ice thing. And I don't know, it's very triggering. But I want to just end this man who really, I think had good intentions, but this is sort of what, how hard it is to break out. I think of these, these roles and we can really do better. But this wonderful man came to me saying that him and his wife were playing fair play. And again, for them it was one of those more traditional marriages. At the time that we were talking about earlier, because he started to travel a lot and he said, you know, I couldn't do my job without my wife. And I just want to acknowledge that this is like that postnup conversation we talked about. She took a step back in her tech role. He's that the head of a big tech company. He's on the road all the time. And he said, I fundamentally understand that without her, I couldn't do my job. And then right after that, he tells me he wants to tell me about the two single moms on his team that he's sponsoring. And so what I said to him is, it's probably not that helpful for you to sponsor these two single mothers if you just told me they can't do your job. You just said that you could literally not do your job without your wife handling everything for your children off screen. But you're sponsoring two single mothers who have to do all that work off screen. So then your implicit bias was that those women wouldn't be able to do your job. And I'm not saying that to throw him under the bus. I'm just showing that even somebody who was the best of intentions trying to say that they wanted to support other types of family life realizes that his job is something that he couldn't do without somebody doing all the other work off screen. And that's important because the more I say to him and all of those other 1 percenters who do have stay at home partners, I say, that's great, but it doesn't mean that they have to hold all the cards. The more that you can bring in transporting your kids to school. Right. Bill Gates did it. Melinda Gates talked about how he took the kids to school every day and how other fathers were like, wait, if Bill is doing this, then we should be doing it. I have brain surgeons who tell me that their wives, a stay at home wife, but they're holding 30, 40 cards because they know when they, they understand brain health. These are literally brain surgeons. One is a head of a huge hospital who says, I studied neuroscience and I know that when I have oxytocin for my kids and I have endorphins and I have dopamine, these are all things I'm getting from my family. I do better in how I conduct my surgeries. So he does the work for the home. There are other values than just, oh, this is so hard. I have to give it over to somebody. It's a village. But it's also in that space in between when you're doing that mental labor. It's very gratifying. I don't hear any men that say to me, I regret it ever. In 10 years, there's never a man who's called me up and said, I regret that you told me to take my kids to school. I regret that I took them to all their vaccine appointments. I regret that I was the tooth fairy and had to get glitter on my hands. You don't see that in men. You see that they are enriched by this labor as well. And I think the more we talk about that, the more, the more we will get more of those Diary of the CEO routines to say my morning routine is taking my kids to school and playing with them and feeding the baby and wiping a vagina from front to back. Yes. So important.

[A]

By the way, from front to back. Eve as you know, we end all of our episodes by asking our guests for one final tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. Saving, investing, anything.

[B]

I'll go back to your times Diamonds Time is a currency Women have been unfortunately told how to use our time for so long. The more that we can reclaim our time choice, the more that women can understand that our time is diamonds as well. The more that we'll be able to use it to optimize our lives. And that's my goal. My love letter to you, Nicole, is that you always stay in your full power and that you always get to use your time the way that you choose it.

[A]

Amen sister. Thank you for the holidays. My family and I are headed to Florida to visit my in laws. It is super important to me that my daughter knows her extended family and has the opportunity to spend time with them. While we're leaving one warm zip code for another, I know we'll still be getting that cozy holiday feeling of being with loved ones. The not so cozy part is the cost of flying three people across the country. I know a lot of us are feeling that this time year of of year, the costs add up fast. That's why I love hosting my home on Airbnb. It's an easy way to bring in some extra income while we're away and that extra cash can help fund our next trip. Let's say you have a big trip planned or are escaping to a warmer part of the world to work from the beach. Why leave your home sitting empty and dark when it could be making money for you? This year, it's easier than ever to host your home thanks to Airbnb's co host network. With the co host network, you can hire a local co host to take care of your home and your guests while you're away. A co host can do it all, create your list, handle check ins, provide on site support, and give you peace of mind that your home and guests are being taken care of while you're away. So if you've been thinking about hosting but you don't know where to start, find a co [e-mail] host.