Talking about how you will divide household and parenting tasks before marriage can avoid conflicts later on.GETTY IMAGES
Ask Women and Work
Question: My partner and I both have very demanding careers. We are planning to get married and have kids, but the idea of taking on that new chapter is daunting for me. Can I have both a top-tier career and the family life that I want?
We asked Amal Masri, CEO of leadership accelerator and DEI consultancy Fix the Broken Rung, to tackle this one:
You can have both, but it takes intentionality, clear communication and planning, especially in heterosexual marriages.
I coach my clients, who are typically women executives with very demanding jobs, to have a conversation as far in advance as possible before they get married, and to approach it like an invisible labour prenup.
Invisible labour is the labour in your home and family life that often goes unpaid, unrewarded and unrecognized. So for example, it can be the mental labour of anticipating needs like birthdays and medical appointments, coordinating childcare and housework, meal planning and helping with homework. It’s volunteering for school activities and events, managing the social aspects of your kids’ lives. It’s being the emotional anchor or conflict manager in the household. It’s picking up gifts for extended family gatherings and remembering milestones. Elder care is another big one.
In essence, it’s propping up the different systems of your home life, and if you stopped doing it, the house would fall into disarray, kids would be impacted poorly and your home life would suffer.
I find it’s almost always women doing a lot of this labour, and it can be just expected of them because of social conditioning and gender roles. A lot of millennial men have a belief in equity, but sometimes under a lot of stress or sleepless nights, the deeply embedded cultural scripts and values come out, and it may not even be ill-intentioned. Sometimes they just don’t see it.
An invisible labour prenup is about treating time as an asset like you would investments or real estate. I think it’s good to have a document outlining your plan, but not necessarily a legal one.
First, have a session where you’re brainstorming all the different tasks that might come up. Talk to married couples and parents at different stages and ask them what their to-do lists are like. After you’ve had all these discussions and laid it out, price out what it would take to outsource it all, because that helps you understand the price of that labour. And don’t forget the opportunity cost. A lot of women don’t realize when they stay at home for five years, it’s not just income being lost, it’s also the overall impact to your career being slowed down.
Then, make the trade-offs tangible. Make it clear: What does it mean that we’re going to be equal partners in parenting? Are you going to split the roles so one person does more execution and the other one does more of the project management and carries the mental load? Maybe we’re going to trade off pick-up at daycare or and one of you will own the project management around doctor’s appointments and school forms. Maybe one of you is better at meal planning and the other is better at cleaning. Play to your strengths as much as possible.
When you do this before the marriage, you surface your values and your beliefs and it can prevent a lot of conflict. You’re not going to be able to figure out every little thing and needs change, people change. It’s more about understanding how good your communication is.
It’s asking: What are our operating principles as a couple when conflicts come up? It’s knowing that we can have these deeply uncomfortable conversations and we’re going to be okay.
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