Husband and Dad #Goals

Ethan: Here is what I wrote today Scott. No hard feelings at all if it's not a good fit for your email distribution. If I ever dream of being a writer I've got to start somewhere though and give it a go:

Sharing the load

My wife put her career on hold when we had our oldest son 7 year ago. About a year ago, my wife and I read Melinda Gates’ book “The Moment of Lift” and both of us realized how important it was to value my wife’s identity and potential. I walked away after reading the book with a fire in my belly to support my wife to fulfill her dreams and share a more equal load in our home and with our child rearing. 

She applied for a Master’s program in UX design in London, although she had no formal training or background in it and she got in! So, 6 months ago we sold nearly everything from our home in Provo, Utah and took 10 suitcases and our 3 kids (ages 2, 5, and 7) to London. Fortunately, my work let me transfer to our London office. 

Our older 2 children are attending a local public school and our youngest attends daycare part of the week. 3 days a week, I pickup the kids from school and bring them to their after-school events and prepare dinner for the family, and then I work in the evenings after my wife gets home. One day a week, I watch our youngest all day, and work into the late evening. All of this has meant that we now have a much more equitable share of ownership for child rearing and home-maintaining and here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

1. Being a caregiver can be a thankless job. Working at a job with other adults yields a very quick ROI. If I do a good at work I’ll get feedback immediately - a good and decisive meeting, praise from a colleague or manager, or possibly a raise/bonus. However, there is no spot-bonus If I do a good job of staying calm and collected while my toddler has pooped in the corner for the 3rd time in a day. Raising children is a very long-term ROI. It can be easy to assign yourself value based on your time investments and that can be discouraging as a caregiver.

2. It’s important to find out what roles you like to do at home. For years now, my wife has managed buying groceries and meal planning for our family, even though it was a source of anxiety for her. I happen to really enjoy cooking but we just never load-balanced properly because of the gender expectations we were conforming to. Now that I’m at home cooking dinner 3 days a week, I’ve fully taken over buying groceries and meal planning, and I really like it! It’s a huge load off for my wife and it’s something enjoyable for me. I further leverage it as a way to connect with the kids by assigning each one of them one day of the week to help me plan and cook the meal. 

3. Rearing kids is exhausting. It makes for really long days (and long nights with kids that don’t sleep great). For the first time in my life I’m really having to wrestle with my own mental health and have just started meeting with a therapist. 

Overall, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything else right now. I feel so grateful to have this challenge to bring a little more balance to our family. I have a lot more empathy and gratitude for the amazing woman who is my wife. We honestly don’t know what’s going to happen after her master’s program is done, but I know it’s something we’ll choose together with a little more empathy for each other. 

-Ethan Grabau

Thanks everyone for giving me writings to share. I will continue to dip into the 20 articles I received over the next few months. These have allowed me to have full days being without much distraction

SP