I came at "This American Ex-Wife" from the perspective of a husband who credits my almost forty year marriage as the foundation of everything good in my life. I had a few takeaways from the book:
1) I live in a marriage bubble and should not judge the institution of marriage from my own. It's a single data point.
2) Being able to afford comprehensive childcare and housekeeping support is a big advantage in defusing some of the tensions in a marriage. I realize it's very rare to be able to afford that support. It also helps to have grandparents close by who are willing and able and eager to help with childcare. The book made me appreciate these privileges a lot more than I had.
3) The U.S. spends an appallingly low number on family support. According to the OECD we spend 0.7% of our GDP on family support whereas comparable developed countries spend 3-34x that amount. As Lyz writes, other countries have a safety net. The U.S. has women.
4) Although the book was aimed primarily (I think) at women, reading the book gave me some tips to improve as a husband. Mainly, don't wait to be asked to do something to help around the house. For example, take out the garbage on your own initiative. It's perhaps a small thing, but it can make a big difference.
Love the openness to interrogating the institution. One note: In addition to taking out the garbage all by yourself, don’t think of that as “helping” around the house. You’re not an enthusiastic volunteer at a non-profit, you’re one of two people with equal responsibility for, and stake in, all of the domestic work that provides that foundation for everything good in your life.
Good point. Shared responsibility across everything is the right attitude, although inevitably there develop areas that either my wife or I take the lead on. And I'm not referring to the traditional divisions of labor between a husband and a wife.
Mom rage is actually marriage rage. Yes! I’m currently in my own milieu of power renegotiation in my relationship and the thing I keep coming back to is “boy scout culture.”
The other night my partner and I were talking about reflective communication (a thing he’d never heard of but was game for learning/applying). And I finally was like, “you’re an eagle scout! What tf did they teach you about communication?” Surprisingly? Not much! “There’s a communication merit badge,” he said.
And I think that boy scout reward culture is also in the mix of a lot of these habits and inequalities — we train boys from a young age that to be a man is to exist in products and accolades and citizenship and merit badges for “serving others.” But the house work, the intimate work, the being connected and accountable to the people you live around work? Is that anywhere in the boy scout curriculum??
I don't know, honestly! I am feeling pushed more and more to research this! Just because I'm picking up on a staggering gap between the narrative of what an Eagle Scout brings to the world and what they're equipped to offer relationally to their families.
I’ve got kids in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts is mostly run by men for boys, of course it’s patriarchal. Our entire lives are smothered in patriarchy. I think scouts (both kinds) is a great way for kids to learn how to take care of themselves without a parent helping. But just like school, it’s not the end all be all of parenting. It’s just part of my village. I have a lot of problems with Boy Scouts and I talk about those openly with my kiddo. I did my Gold Award 25 years ago (Girl Scout Eagle Scout equivalent) and there was always this idea that Eagle Scout is harder and better. So a lot of our gold award project was justifying why it was important to do. I personally don’t see anything nefarious in Boy Scouts. The adult Eagle Scouts I know don’t seem more/less helpful at home than non scouts. I think society as a whole is more of the problem than the scouts are.
Thanks for chiming in, Leah! My daughter just turned 2 and the Scouts culture is something I'm intrigued by. I grew up pretty isolated from all culturally relevant organizations, so my only real exposure (outside, say, buying Girl Scout cookies as an adult) is my partner the last 8 years. (And "Scouts" is VERY important to him and part of his identity.) Anyways, I'm growing increasingly unsure about whether I'd want my daughter to participate at all in these orgs, and am just starting this learning journey. It does make me wonder if there are other child-centric organizations that have the same broad impact as Scouts? And do they focus on relational/EQ strengths more or less? (Asking this more out loud, than asking you specifically...) Thanks again.
Not sure it's "better", but I grew up in 4-H, which is not gender-segregated like Scouts was (granted, the boys stopped doing domestic things by middle school, but a lot of the project options and programming are ostensibly neutral).We learned a ton about responsibility for ourselves, animals, and community. And leadership stuff like public speaking even as kids, running meetings per Roberts's Rules of Order as middle schoolers, managing our club's budget, and reporting out on club activities monthly to the local newspaper. I dont know what the 4-H vibe is now, but it was an important foundation for me as (a) a 1st-gen college kid and (b) exposure to people beyond my conservative family. (Our town was small, so 4-H was a mix of everyone.) If you're looking for Scouting alternatives, maybe see what 4-H options exist in your area.
Ha, Bethann looks like we were typing at the same time re: 4-H. I've been hoping to get involved with our local extension office and do some volunteering with the 4-H org in my area.
Very cool! You probably know this, but I really appreciate that extension agents do a lot more than help people kill weeds in their farm fields. They were important role models for me as a kid and also as a young adult when I came home from college and got involved in local, community development programs they ran. Hope you find something great to connect with! (And, I'm not a farm kid, I was a town kid, and these programs were still relevant and important.)
I didn't have as close up a view of the extension agents per se, but I heartily agree those roles and adults make a difference for people. As a lifelong horse girl, I spent lots of time riding and working with horses and loved my horse 4-H clubs wholeheartedly. Just great programming all around. Also a town kid who spent a lot of time in the barn and excitedly, just returned to it with a part time job! Feels like the biggest joy to be around horses again.
I participated in 4-H as a kid and loved it - I was around a lot of compassionate and kind hearted adult volunteers as well as club leaders. I got to do a lot of fun and low cost activities and meet new people. It also taught me the skills of public speaking (that terrified me!) and kids could participate in so many different avenues if they wanted to do 4-H. I definitely recommend it, though emotional learning wasn't part of it tbh.
Our public school system does an excellent job with the EQ stuff - they have a weekly “special” in elementary school that’s totally dedicated to EQ. I haven’t seen it specifically addressed in any after school activities. I feel like it would depend on the coach/leader/teacher - but it’s probably more prevalent in arts/music/drama. I could see someone identifying as a scout - it’s setup as a lifestyle group -
It can be religious/militaristic. I take a gentler approach to it because I value many of the same things scout’s do. And I openly rebel against the ones I don’t value (I refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag for example). I would like my kids do to the same. We don’t have to blindly follow. I guess what I’m saying is that all these organizations can be what you make them.
I appreciate a lot about this, looking out at the world from my DINK marriage on the eve of my 40th birthday. We have our ups and downs, but we've also deliberately maintained a ton of independence (like solo international travel and smaller stuff, too). So, I recognized and related to a lot of the positives you both described re divorce. But, I noticed the whole frame seemed to assume that the divorce involves the dad still co-parenting and providing support via time at least, if not also a tacit assumption of $ support from him. But, I have experiences of dear friends (multiple brilliant, strong women) whose self-initiated divorces led to their having full custody, solo parenting and little if any child support. (And none of them were financially independent, and it's been really hard since.) The ease of time and space, the solo nights, etc., aren't part of their lives and won't be until their kids leave home. I'm genuinely interested in your takes, Lyz and Virginia, on what the considerations are for folks facing that kind of dynamic vs. one that's more supportive. And also, thoughts on what the support network from friends might be asked to do. Thanks again for opening this up this topic. It's given me a lot to think about.
This is a great question. Lyz writes a lot in the book about the financial piece -- research shows that women absolutely do take a hit (and Lyz did herself) in the immediate aftermath of a divorce, but that single mom income increases after 5 years. Which we never hear about/is fascinating to know!
I'll absolutely own my own privilege of having a very good co-parenting relationship with my kids' dad -- so much so, that I do debate how much I can claim the label of "single mom," because I know there's a huge difference between me having the kids 60+ percent of the time, and single moms who have 100 percent custody and/or no financial support from an ex. It's a category with a lot of nuances!
I think one throughline is that anyone single parenting (to any degree) gets to have a different relationship with their kids than they did when parenting through marital conflict. And that's going to be better for the kids in a lot of ways, and for the parent in a lot of ways. So that would still be true in an 100 percent situation -- probably even more so, in some ways?
But the best way to offer support in those situations is probably to offer free babysitting (or pay for some babysitting if you're not local). I am so grateful to the moms of my kids' friends who went out of their way to plan playdates with my kids in the first few months of this, or to offer rides, carpools, etc. A solo caregiver really needs that relief pitching, especially when the kids are little. (Another version of this is my bookclub, which has absolutely been scheduling around my custody schedule for months now -- and super understanding when we had to meet at my house because I couldn't get a sitter and didn't have a back-up parent in the house, but still really wanted that social time after the kids were mostly in bed!)
Thanks so much for this, Virginia! I've tried a lot of things over the years to support them, and it's interestingly become a bit easier post 2020, as we've learned the many things that can be done, sent, and arranged virtually. (For ex: I can't bring meals, but I can have them delivered.) Your point about babysitting also makes me think of supporting other domestic work like cleaning.
Oh YES. House cleaning is huge. Also, if you want a splurge-y gift that is legit a life-changer I endorse a robot vacuum. I'm obsessed and just sent my sister and her husband one because they're having their first baby this summer. Maybe not everyone's go-to baby gift, but a winner if this is a parent who relaxes more easily when floors are clean!
I also think about the financial piece as a disabled mom who hasn’t worked full time since before I got married. I totally understand the importance of taking care of yourself in case something happens (could be divorce, but also unexpected illness, injury or death). I’m honestly not sure I will ever be able to be financially independent or afford to live on my own (I’m not sure I could afford a studio apartment in my local housing market, let alone a place for me and my kid).
I also keep hearing the assumption that women are basically already running everything in the family themselves, and so being a single parent is not much of a shift from that place. That just isn’t my situation. My husband does almost everything that requires sustained executive function. When I’m with a group of women who are venting about their husbands, I hear myself in their experiences—I’m the husband! I leave dishes on the table. I don’t put stuff on the calendar. My email inbox is a mess! 😅
Not to diminish the experience of most married women—I absolutely think these conversations are important for everyone, gender conditioning is worth questioning for everyone, and I give major side-eye to marriage as an overall institution. It’s a relief to hear people questioning marriage out in the open. I’m just finding it difficult to figure out what my personal takeaway might be, given that we don’t currently have a good social safety net for disabled people, and many of us rely on a spouse or family members for financial and other support.
As a woman who’s been married 40 years, and felt all the happiness and rage that comes with that, I will tell my granddaughter that she is not required to be married to be happy. She should pursue a career that makes her happy, and she should be sure whatever she chooses, she can take care of herself. No one will be coming to save her and the deck is stacked against her.
I can't lie, the divorce lit and numerous articles about divorce scare me. I've been programmed to be scared by it. I have known a lot of women in happy marriages but I also see a lot of my peers (mid 30s, 1 or 2 kids) struggling. And I hear from these friends that kids have really, really affected their marriages.
I am a big therapy nerd and have found the work of Esther Perel and Terry Real (both couples therapists) to be super helpful in how I navigate my own relationship that hasn't felt the impact of kids (yet) but has gone through a miscarriage, job loss (mine), and a cross-country move in like, the last seven months. It has been hard as shit! But I also joined an inter-generational household - my husband and I are living with my Dad and having a 3rd adult around has some real perks! We share cooking, cleaning, pet caretaking, meals together, etc. It's a small eco-system that low key has me dreading going back to just a 2-person household without some serious changes to our domestic labor patterns.
There’s a very clear bridge in my mind between the Thomas Jefferson comments and the experience of friends and acquaintances wanting you to be sad post-divorce.
Even in divorce, it is baked into our culture that the only lens through which we relate to a marriage ending is that a man “did it.” Whatever “it” is — cheated, left, died (!), you name it. But the woman is surely a poor, wrecked, grieving bystander in this man’s reality. People are still so uncomfortable with a woman being centered, a woman “doing” instead of having something being “done to her,” that there is no frame of reference for any emotion besides sadness to appear in that woman.
Just a thought that I wanted to share! It felt like such a direct correlation to me. Great interview.
Loved this conversation, Virginia! I got married and divorced young and without any children (thank goodness - it was an emotionally abusive situation and I’ve never been happier to never talk to someone again!). I remember feeling so struck by how wonderful it was to not have to think about someone else’s feelings all the time and just do what I wanted to do. I hadn’t realized how much of a shell of my former self I had become, and how much I had carefully molded myself in order to not create friction. It was freeing and scary at the same time.
On a total side note, I always read these transcripts rather than listen, and I have to say the image choices are the best. I’m not sure if that’s you or Corinne, since I think she edits the transcripts, but reading about training your husband like a golden retriever followed by a picture of said golden retriever made me laugh out loud.
I absolutely love Lyz Lenz. Thank you for having her as a guest. She is honest and kind and intelligent and funny, and so many more things. I am inspired by her ability to talk loudly and respectfully about hard or difficult things or things that usually get whispered about.
I loved this interview and look forward to reading this book. When I ended a long relationship I had so many friends say I was making a mistake and one even said that my ex was worth staying with “because he was polite”. 😂 I had to explain to her that him saying please and thank you and using the right fork was not enough to make me happy. I was so surprised by how many of my friends discouraged me from ending my relationship based on “but he’s a nice guy”. I’m allowed to be unhappy in a relationship and want to move on, EVEN if it’s with a nice guy!
Honestly, as I see my friends' relationships develop, I don't think marriage is the problem. I think it's the nature of committed heterosexual relationships, especially with children. I have friends in longterm relationships who are not married, and they have exactly the same problems as the ones who are — and untangling those relationships when they fail is just as expensive and difficult.
I’ve been married for 25 years, am in my late 40s, and child free by choice. (I think context is important, so wanted to include mine.) While my marriage is easy, I’ve read enough to know it’s an anomaly. Marriage as we’ve imagined it in this country is broken, especially for families raising kids I think. We have so little societal support for families, childcare is in short supply and extremely expensive. Many workplaces are openly hostile to the needs of parents. Schools are underfunded. We don’t have enough safe housing. All of this would stress even a good partnership. Two people cannot carry the weight that should be spread among many.
Side note - it seems that school districts need to take advantage of technology to manage communications with parents. I was surprised to hear that actual papers are still being sent home with kids. The teacher shouldn’t have to keep track of how many copies of what needs to go where for each family, and if there was some kind of sign up at the start of each school year and those comms were handled electronically, they wouldn’t have to. Maybe this already exists however and I misunderstood the situation being described.
I think it varies by district -- ours is at least 80% email comms now and that does help a TON (my kids' dad and I even have a shared email just for this purpose so we both get everything). But there is definitely still more paper coming home than is helpful, especially in the younger grades.
Re paper - depending on the school district, there can also be parents/guardians who don't use email or don't use it frequently enough to make it the best way to communicate time sensitive information.
Also, most of what we see come home in hard copy are permission slips, and I'm not sure that you can get electronic signatures for those. We usually do get a follow up email letting us know to keep an eye out though.
I have the mum/marriage rage, but I’ve mostly been a stay at home parent and the last year I’ve been a part time student too. I feel like I’m not allowed to because I don’t contribute financially. I also worry that in an effort to counteract my own parents putting too much on us too early, that maybe I haven’t delegated enough to my children. I’m mostly tired of hearing myself give orders and being the project manager 😵💫🤷🏻♀️
Rach, full time home management and kid management *is* contributing financially. Think of how much you're not paying someone else to do everything you do all day. HUGS!
I want to push back on the bus stop scenario...I'm not sure it is fair to insist bus drivers keep track of your custody schedule. Bus drivers are not extremely well paid, and are not door to door transport service. I think your solution is great, but also you are asking a lot of people in a stressful, not well compensated job. Just some thoughts on how we treat and talk about service workers.
I appreciate that. My frustration was absolutely not with our very kind and hard-working bus drivers — who had already been going out of their way to confirm the drop-off plan. It was with our school district’s director of transportation who I contacted to develop a plan. It turns out they already have a very simple solution to this kind of thing - we now just write a bus pass every morning that the kids give to the driver in the afternoon. But rather than immediately offering that, the director told me to simplify my custody schedule. That was inappropriate given how many factors go into determining a custody arrangement — including the fact that many custody schedules are court-ordered and not within a parent’s power to easily change.
I think that when we talk about the systemic gender imbalance when it comes to kids/home responsibilities, even when parents are divorces, we need to go even deeper than the systems: the infrastructure isn't there to support two equally-responsible people. I work a lot with customer databases, and I have never found one that doesn't make you list one person as the "primary" contact. Schools and the like are set up to fail us on this no matter how much individual teachers and administrators want to be equitable and/or smash the patriarchy because, when they pull a list of parents to email, the email is always going to go to the primary parent. (And manually adding the second parent for every child whose parents both want to be copied in is beyond the bandwidth of our overburdened teachers and administrators, even if they wish it weren't!)
Basically, capitalism. We need to get mad at the tech companies that architect the infrastructure by which the patriarchy is upheld. Woo!
ETA: just saw your comment above about having a shared email address, Virginia - brilliant.
I just finished listening to this episode and it's SO GOOD! I am in the "still married and mostly happy" camp at the moment, but it was so great to hear how divorce positively impacts women. I *especially* loved that Lyz has a cleaner home and less chores! Haha.
I came at "This American Ex-Wife" from the perspective of a husband who credits my almost forty year marriage as the foundation of everything good in my life. I had a few takeaways from the book:
1) I live in a marriage bubble and should not judge the institution of marriage from my own. It's a single data point.
2) Being able to afford comprehensive childcare and housekeeping support is a big advantage in defusing some of the tensions in a marriage. I realize it's very rare to be able to afford that support. It also helps to have grandparents close by who are willing and able and eager to help with childcare. The book made me appreciate these privileges a lot more than I had.
3) The U.S. spends an appallingly low number on family support. According to the OECD we spend 0.7% of our GDP on family support whereas comparable developed countries spend 3-34x that amount. As Lyz writes, other countries have a safety net. The U.S. has women.
https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure/en/2/553/default
4) Although the book was aimed primarily (I think) at women, reading the book gave me some tips to improve as a husband. Mainly, don't wait to be asked to do something to help around the house. For example, take out the garbage on your own initiative. It's perhaps a small thing, but it can make a big difference.
Love the openness to interrogating the institution. One note: In addition to taking out the garbage all by yourself, don’t think of that as “helping” around the house. You’re not an enthusiastic volunteer at a non-profit, you’re one of two people with equal responsibility for, and stake in, all of the domestic work that provides that foundation for everything good in your life.
Good point. Shared responsibility across everything is the right attitude, although inevitably there develop areas that either my wife or I take the lead on. And I'm not referring to the traditional divisions of labor between a husband and a wife.
BOOM
Mom rage is actually marriage rage. Yes! I’m currently in my own milieu of power renegotiation in my relationship and the thing I keep coming back to is “boy scout culture.”
The other night my partner and I were talking about reflective communication (a thing he’d never heard of but was game for learning/applying). And I finally was like, “you’re an eagle scout! What tf did they teach you about communication?” Surprisingly? Not much! “There’s a communication merit badge,” he said.
And I think that boy scout reward culture is also in the mix of a lot of these habits and inequalities — we train boys from a young age that to be a man is to exist in products and accolades and citizenship and merit badges for “serving others.” But the house work, the intimate work, the being connected and accountable to the people you live around work? Is that anywhere in the boy scout curriculum??
I’m guessing NOT.
Oh so interesting. And I bet Girl Scouts get very different training.
I don't know, honestly! I am feeling pushed more and more to research this! Just because I'm picking up on a staggering gap between the narrative of what an Eagle Scout brings to the world and what they're equipped to offer relationally to their families.
I’ve got kids in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts is mostly run by men for boys, of course it’s patriarchal. Our entire lives are smothered in patriarchy. I think scouts (both kinds) is a great way for kids to learn how to take care of themselves without a parent helping. But just like school, it’s not the end all be all of parenting. It’s just part of my village. I have a lot of problems with Boy Scouts and I talk about those openly with my kiddo. I did my Gold Award 25 years ago (Girl Scout Eagle Scout equivalent) and there was always this idea that Eagle Scout is harder and better. So a lot of our gold award project was justifying why it was important to do. I personally don’t see anything nefarious in Boy Scouts. The adult Eagle Scouts I know don’t seem more/less helpful at home than non scouts. I think society as a whole is more of the problem than the scouts are.
Thanks for chiming in, Leah! My daughter just turned 2 and the Scouts culture is something I'm intrigued by. I grew up pretty isolated from all culturally relevant organizations, so my only real exposure (outside, say, buying Girl Scout cookies as an adult) is my partner the last 8 years. (And "Scouts" is VERY important to him and part of his identity.) Anyways, I'm growing increasingly unsure about whether I'd want my daughter to participate at all in these orgs, and am just starting this learning journey. It does make me wonder if there are other child-centric organizations that have the same broad impact as Scouts? And do they focus on relational/EQ strengths more or less? (Asking this more out loud, than asking you specifically...) Thanks again.
Not sure it's "better", but I grew up in 4-H, which is not gender-segregated like Scouts was (granted, the boys stopped doing domestic things by middle school, but a lot of the project options and programming are ostensibly neutral).We learned a ton about responsibility for ourselves, animals, and community. And leadership stuff like public speaking even as kids, running meetings per Roberts's Rules of Order as middle schoolers, managing our club's budget, and reporting out on club activities monthly to the local newspaper. I dont know what the 4-H vibe is now, but it was an important foundation for me as (a) a 1st-gen college kid and (b) exposure to people beyond my conservative family. (Our town was small, so 4-H was a mix of everyone.) If you're looking for Scouting alternatives, maybe see what 4-H options exist in your area.
Ha, Bethann looks like we were typing at the same time re: 4-H. I've been hoping to get involved with our local extension office and do some volunteering with the 4-H org in my area.
Very cool! You probably know this, but I really appreciate that extension agents do a lot more than help people kill weeds in their farm fields. They were important role models for me as a kid and also as a young adult when I came home from college and got involved in local, community development programs they ran. Hope you find something great to connect with! (And, I'm not a farm kid, I was a town kid, and these programs were still relevant and important.)
I didn't have as close up a view of the extension agents per se, but I heartily agree those roles and adults make a difference for people. As a lifelong horse girl, I spent lots of time riding and working with horses and loved my horse 4-H clubs wholeheartedly. Just great programming all around. Also a town kid who spent a lot of time in the barn and excitedly, just returned to it with a part time job! Feels like the biggest joy to be around horses again.
I participated in 4-H as a kid and loved it - I was around a lot of compassionate and kind hearted adult volunteers as well as club leaders. I got to do a lot of fun and low cost activities and meet new people. It also taught me the skills of public speaking (that terrified me!) and kids could participate in so many different avenues if they wanted to do 4-H. I definitely recommend it, though emotional learning wasn't part of it tbh.
Our public school system does an excellent job with the EQ stuff - they have a weekly “special” in elementary school that’s totally dedicated to EQ. I haven’t seen it specifically addressed in any after school activities. I feel like it would depend on the coach/leader/teacher - but it’s probably more prevalent in arts/music/drama. I could see someone identifying as a scout - it’s setup as a lifestyle group -
It can be religious/militaristic. I take a gentler approach to it because I value many of the same things scout’s do. And I openly rebel against the ones I don’t value (I refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag for example). I would like my kids do to the same. We don’t have to blindly follow. I guess what I’m saying is that all these organizations can be what you make them.
Oh man, married to an Eagle Scout in a family of Eagle Scouts. This hit home!
I appreciate a lot about this, looking out at the world from my DINK marriage on the eve of my 40th birthday. We have our ups and downs, but we've also deliberately maintained a ton of independence (like solo international travel and smaller stuff, too). So, I recognized and related to a lot of the positives you both described re divorce. But, I noticed the whole frame seemed to assume that the divorce involves the dad still co-parenting and providing support via time at least, if not also a tacit assumption of $ support from him. But, I have experiences of dear friends (multiple brilliant, strong women) whose self-initiated divorces led to their having full custody, solo parenting and little if any child support. (And none of them were financially independent, and it's been really hard since.) The ease of time and space, the solo nights, etc., aren't part of their lives and won't be until their kids leave home. I'm genuinely interested in your takes, Lyz and Virginia, on what the considerations are for folks facing that kind of dynamic vs. one that's more supportive. And also, thoughts on what the support network from friends might be asked to do. Thanks again for opening this up this topic. It's given me a lot to think about.
This is a great question. Lyz writes a lot in the book about the financial piece -- research shows that women absolutely do take a hit (and Lyz did herself) in the immediate aftermath of a divorce, but that single mom income increases after 5 years. Which we never hear about/is fascinating to know!
I'll absolutely own my own privilege of having a very good co-parenting relationship with my kids' dad -- so much so, that I do debate how much I can claim the label of "single mom," because I know there's a huge difference between me having the kids 60+ percent of the time, and single moms who have 100 percent custody and/or no financial support from an ex. It's a category with a lot of nuances!
I think one throughline is that anyone single parenting (to any degree) gets to have a different relationship with their kids than they did when parenting through marital conflict. And that's going to be better for the kids in a lot of ways, and for the parent in a lot of ways. So that would still be true in an 100 percent situation -- probably even more so, in some ways?
But the best way to offer support in those situations is probably to offer free babysitting (or pay for some babysitting if you're not local). I am so grateful to the moms of my kids' friends who went out of their way to plan playdates with my kids in the first few months of this, or to offer rides, carpools, etc. A solo caregiver really needs that relief pitching, especially when the kids are little. (Another version of this is my bookclub, which has absolutely been scheduling around my custody schedule for months now -- and super understanding when we had to meet at my house because I couldn't get a sitter and didn't have a back-up parent in the house, but still really wanted that social time after the kids were mostly in bed!)
Thanks so much for this, Virginia! I've tried a lot of things over the years to support them, and it's interestingly become a bit easier post 2020, as we've learned the many things that can be done, sent, and arranged virtually. (For ex: I can't bring meals, but I can have them delivered.) Your point about babysitting also makes me think of supporting other domestic work like cleaning.
Oh YES. House cleaning is huge. Also, if you want a splurge-y gift that is legit a life-changer I endorse a robot vacuum. I'm obsessed and just sent my sister and her husband one because they're having their first baby this summer. Maybe not everyone's go-to baby gift, but a winner if this is a parent who relaxes more easily when floors are clean!
I also think about the financial piece as a disabled mom who hasn’t worked full time since before I got married. I totally understand the importance of taking care of yourself in case something happens (could be divorce, but also unexpected illness, injury or death). I’m honestly not sure I will ever be able to be financially independent or afford to live on my own (I’m not sure I could afford a studio apartment in my local housing market, let alone a place for me and my kid).
I also keep hearing the assumption that women are basically already running everything in the family themselves, and so being a single parent is not much of a shift from that place. That just isn’t my situation. My husband does almost everything that requires sustained executive function. When I’m with a group of women who are venting about their husbands, I hear myself in their experiences—I’m the husband! I leave dishes on the table. I don’t put stuff on the calendar. My email inbox is a mess! 😅
Not to diminish the experience of most married women—I absolutely think these conversations are important for everyone, gender conditioning is worth questioning for everyone, and I give major side-eye to marriage as an overall institution. It’s a relief to hear people questioning marriage out in the open. I’m just finding it difficult to figure out what my personal takeaway might be, given that we don’t currently have a good social safety net for disabled people, and many of us rely on a spouse or family members for financial and other support.
As a woman who’s been married 40 years, and felt all the happiness and rage that comes with that, I will tell my granddaughter that she is not required to be married to be happy. She should pursue a career that makes her happy, and she should be sure whatever she chooses, she can take care of herself. No one will be coming to save her and the deck is stacked against her.
I can't lie, the divorce lit and numerous articles about divorce scare me. I've been programmed to be scared by it. I have known a lot of women in happy marriages but I also see a lot of my peers (mid 30s, 1 or 2 kids) struggling. And I hear from these friends that kids have really, really affected their marriages.
I am a big therapy nerd and have found the work of Esther Perel and Terry Real (both couples therapists) to be super helpful in how I navigate my own relationship that hasn't felt the impact of kids (yet) but has gone through a miscarriage, job loss (mine), and a cross-country move in like, the last seven months. It has been hard as shit! But I also joined an inter-generational household - my husband and I are living with my Dad and having a 3rd adult around has some real perks! We share cooking, cleaning, pet caretaking, meals together, etc. It's a small eco-system that low key has me dreading going back to just a 2-person household without some serious changes to our domestic labor patterns.
I'm really enjoying everyone else's comments here, thanks y'all!
We've all been so programmed to be scared by it. But it's really powerful and useful to name that fear!
Thanks for the acknowledgement Virginia! Appreciate it.
There’s a very clear bridge in my mind between the Thomas Jefferson comments and the experience of friends and acquaintances wanting you to be sad post-divorce.
Even in divorce, it is baked into our culture that the only lens through which we relate to a marriage ending is that a man “did it.” Whatever “it” is — cheated, left, died (!), you name it. But the woman is surely a poor, wrecked, grieving bystander in this man’s reality. People are still so uncomfortable with a woman being centered, a woman “doing” instead of having something being “done to her,” that there is no frame of reference for any emotion besides sadness to appear in that woman.
Just a thought that I wanted to share! It felt like such a direct correlation to me. Great interview.
This is FASCINATING. I’ve never thought about marriages ending and the reactions in this context before. Fascinating way to rework my brain!
Loved this conversation, Virginia! I got married and divorced young and without any children (thank goodness - it was an emotionally abusive situation and I’ve never been happier to never talk to someone again!). I remember feeling so struck by how wonderful it was to not have to think about someone else’s feelings all the time and just do what I wanted to do. I hadn’t realized how much of a shell of my former self I had become, and how much I had carefully molded myself in order to not create friction. It was freeing and scary at the same time.
On a total side note, I always read these transcripts rather than listen, and I have to say the image choices are the best. I’m not sure if that’s you or Corinne, since I think she edits the transcripts, but reading about training your husband like a golden retriever followed by a picture of said golden retriever made me laugh out loud.
That golden retriever pic was ALL CORINNE. She has a gift! (I also laughed out loud as I was doing final edits.)
I absolutely love Lyz Lenz. Thank you for having her as a guest. She is honest and kind and intelligent and funny, and so many more things. I am inspired by her ability to talk loudly and respectfully about hard or difficult things or things that usually get whispered about.
Amen to all of that!
I loved this interview and look forward to reading this book. When I ended a long relationship I had so many friends say I was making a mistake and one even said that my ex was worth staying with “because he was polite”. 😂 I had to explain to her that him saying please and thank you and using the right fork was not enough to make me happy. I was so surprised by how many of my friends discouraged me from ending my relationship based on “but he’s a nice guy”. I’m allowed to be unhappy in a relationship and want to move on, EVEN if it’s with a nice guy!
YUP
Honestly, as I see my friends' relationships develop, I don't think marriage is the problem. I think it's the nature of committed heterosexual relationships, especially with children. I have friends in longterm relationships who are not married, and they have exactly the same problems as the ones who are — and untangling those relationships when they fail is just as expensive and difficult.
I’ve been married for 25 years, am in my late 40s, and child free by choice. (I think context is important, so wanted to include mine.) While my marriage is easy, I’ve read enough to know it’s an anomaly. Marriage as we’ve imagined it in this country is broken, especially for families raising kids I think. We have so little societal support for families, childcare is in short supply and extremely expensive. Many workplaces are openly hostile to the needs of parents. Schools are underfunded. We don’t have enough safe housing. All of this would stress even a good partnership. Two people cannot carry the weight that should be spread among many.
Side note - it seems that school districts need to take advantage of technology to manage communications with parents. I was surprised to hear that actual papers are still being sent home with kids. The teacher shouldn’t have to keep track of how many copies of what needs to go where for each family, and if there was some kind of sign up at the start of each school year and those comms were handled electronically, they wouldn’t have to. Maybe this already exists however and I misunderstood the situation being described.
I think it varies by district -- ours is at least 80% email comms now and that does help a TON (my kids' dad and I even have a shared email just for this purpose so we both get everything). But there is definitely still more paper coming home than is helpful, especially in the younger grades.
Re paper - depending on the school district, there can also be parents/guardians who don't use email or don't use it frequently enough to make it the best way to communicate time sensitive information.
Also, most of what we see come home in hard copy are permission slips, and I'm not sure that you can get electronic signatures for those. We usually do get a follow up email letting us know to keep an eye out though.
I have the mum/marriage rage, but I’ve mostly been a stay at home parent and the last year I’ve been a part time student too. I feel like I’m not allowed to because I don’t contribute financially. I also worry that in an effort to counteract my own parents putting too much on us too early, that maybe I haven’t delegated enough to my children. I’m mostly tired of hearing myself give orders and being the project manager 😵💫🤷🏻♀️
Rach, full time home management and kid management *is* contributing financially. Think of how much you're not paying someone else to do everything you do all day. HUGS!
I want to push back on the bus stop scenario...I'm not sure it is fair to insist bus drivers keep track of your custody schedule. Bus drivers are not extremely well paid, and are not door to door transport service. I think your solution is great, but also you are asking a lot of people in a stressful, not well compensated job. Just some thoughts on how we treat and talk about service workers.
I appreciate that. My frustration was absolutely not with our very kind and hard-working bus drivers — who had already been going out of their way to confirm the drop-off plan. It was with our school district’s director of transportation who I contacted to develop a plan. It turns out they already have a very simple solution to this kind of thing - we now just write a bus pass every morning that the kids give to the driver in the afternoon. But rather than immediately offering that, the director told me to simplify my custody schedule. That was inappropriate given how many factors go into determining a custody arrangement — including the fact that many custody schedules are court-ordered and not within a parent’s power to easily change.
I think that when we talk about the systemic gender imbalance when it comes to kids/home responsibilities, even when parents are divorces, we need to go even deeper than the systems: the infrastructure isn't there to support two equally-responsible people. I work a lot with customer databases, and I have never found one that doesn't make you list one person as the "primary" contact. Schools and the like are set up to fail us on this no matter how much individual teachers and administrators want to be equitable and/or smash the patriarchy because, when they pull a list of parents to email, the email is always going to go to the primary parent. (And manually adding the second parent for every child whose parents both want to be copied in is beyond the bandwidth of our overburdened teachers and administrators, even if they wish it weren't!)
Basically, capitalism. We need to get mad at the tech companies that architect the infrastructure by which the patriarchy is upheld. Woo!
ETA: just saw your comment above about having a shared email address, Virginia - brilliant.
I just finished listening to this episode and it's SO GOOD! I am in the "still married and mostly happy" camp at the moment, but it was so great to hear how divorce positively impacts women. I *especially* loved that Lyz has a cleaner home and less chores! Haha.
My audiobook came in and I’ve been devouring it! Really enjoyed this conversation.