About this item
A revolutionary, real-world solution to the problem of unpaid, invisible work that women have shouldered for too long--from a woman tapped by Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine as the expert on this topic for a new generation of women.Eve Rodsky is changing society one marriage at a time with a twenty-first-century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering the brunt of domestic responsibilities, regardless of whether they work outside the home. The unequal emotional labor and "invisible work" in marriage is a hot-button issue, but no one has offered a real solution to this dilemma, until now. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually is and how to get it done efficiently. The resulting time- and sanity-saving system offers a completely original lexicon that identifies the 100 main tasks in any marriage and then divides those tasks fairly (not necessarily equally!) . Fair Play allows couples to renegotiate all of the work it takes to run a home--and empowers them to reimagine their relationship, time, and purpose. With four easy-to-follow rules and a figurative card game played with your partner, winning means rebalancing your home life and reclaiming your Unicorn Space--as in, the space to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Let's deal you in.
About the Author
This was a book I was born to write. I grew up on the lower east side of New York City with my mother Terry and my brother Josh. I saw my mother struggle as a single mom trying to do it all. I vowed that when I grew up, I would have an equal partner in life . . . and I did! I marked up his operating agreements as he grew a new business and he help me secure my dream job in philanthropy. We took turns making dinner and doing laundry. It felt great and fair. Cut to two kids later and I found myself sobbing on the side of the road because of a text my husband sent me: "I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries." As I sat in my car, I thought to myself: I'm so overwhelmed I can't even manage a grocery list (when I used to manage a team of employees) --and more importantly, when did I become the default for every single household and childcare task . . . including apparently being the fulfiller of my husband's smoothie needs? This was not how I envisioned my life. I knew something had to change. So I embarked on a quest to find a solution for domestic rebalance not only for my marriage but for couples everywhere.I started my journey into the "gendered division of labor" (and other related phrases like "emotional labor" and the "second shift") by reading every book and article I could get my hands on. I was aware that women shoulder about two-thirds of the work required to run a home and raise a family but I wasn't sure why. Early on in my research, I came across an article titled "Invisible Work," written in 1987 by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels. In it she argues that women's unpaid "invisible" work in the home is often not seen as "work" at all and is significantly devalued. The article had a real impact on me and informed my initial quest--which was to make the invisible domestic tasks I did visible to my husband. My thinking was that it is impossible to value what's invisible and I believed visibility would equal value. So I created a "Sh*t I Do" spreadsheet. With the help of women across the country, I catalogued every single action I took in service of my family that had a quantifiable time component. But here's the thing--while the "Shit I Do" list illuminated how much invisible work women were doing for their families, the list also seemed to provoke more rage (and scorekeeping!) than change. I soon realized that my expertise in family mediation, law, and organizational management could be applied to this problem--to create a system to promote sustainable change and get past the resentment and rage. Fair Play is a system tested by couples from all walks of life. At its core is a card game--where couples each hold domestic task cards representing all that it takes to run a home and raise a family.I advise highly complex family organizations. For more than a decade I have worked to bring solutions for family harmo
