All The Rage: how to get your husband to do his share

Rebecca: [00:00:10] Welcome to Parenting Bytes. This is Rebecca Levey of KidzVuz. I’m here today with Amy Oztan of Amy Ever After.

Amy: [00:00:16] Hi.

Rebecca: [00:00:17] Hello. And Andrea Smith our technology guru extraordinaire.

Andrea: [00:00:24] [laughing] Hello.

Rebecca: [00:00:26] [laughing] Hello. Today on the show we have a special guest: Darcy Lockman. She is a psychologist and author and she has a new book out which is I think taps in to the zeitgeist right now of post Mother’s Day feeling un– I don’t know what

Amy: [00:00:46] Unappreciated.

Rebecca: [00:00:46] Unappreciated. There you go. We’re gonna talk to Darcy about her new book and jump in to sort of the myth of the quote unquote good dad and also the myth of equal co-parenting or modern parenting which is seriously a myth. So we will be right back with Darcy and then we will have our Bytes of the Week.

Interview with All the Rage author Darcy Lockman

Rebecca: [00:01:09] So we’re joined today by Darcy Lockman. She is an author and psychologist. She’s the author of the new book All The Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership. And she had an amazing op-ed in The New York Times which I felt like got the ball rolling called “What Good Dads Get Away With” and I made air quotes which I realize were on audio so that’s stupid but good is- good is in quotation marks. Hi Darcy.

Darcy: [00:01:34] Hi. Thanks for having me on.

Rebecca: [00:01:36] We are so excited to have you on. I feel like this book has hit such a nerve that op-ed was shared a bazillion times. I can’t tell you how many people sent it to me, I’m like I know. I even know her. I get it and it was right before Mother’s Day that it was published which I thought was especially perfect and apt for the time. I think this whole idea of the good dad the modern Dad we’ve talked about on the show before but sort of piercing that was incredibly interesting. Can you talk a little about how you came to develop the book how the idea came to you?

Darcy: [00:02:22] I was really surprised when my egalitarian husband and I became parents and we were both working full time at how much of the work of managing our kids just defaulted to me without him even being aware of it happening and I saw this going on all around me all the other full time working moms I know were experiencing the same thing and were pretty pissed off about it and none of us were doing- were proving very effective at getting through to our husbands or causing anything to shift. And in the first years of parenthood this question was just on my mind all the time. This isn’t what we expected, why are we still living this way? I couldn’t get the question out of my head. It really became the most burning question of the early years of my kids lives. And finally I thought well you know what. Why don’t I set out to answer that question. I’m a journalist, I’m a psychologist, I can, I can look at all the research so the book really grew out of like wanting to kind of break this down and figure out why the expectations that almost everyone I knew had going into parenthood didn’t really manifest in any sort of a great reality.

Women are the default organizers

Rebecca: [00:03:26] You know one of the things that I found just in my personal experience and from my mom friends is there becomes this default that the woman is better at it, that somehow we innately just organize things and remember everything and and then just become more and more pissed about it. Did you find that in your research that there’s this other weird… It’s not like a gender norm like woman should stay home but almost like a woman is more capable?

Darcy: [00:03:53] Yes. Right. Women are more capable has come to stand in for women should stay home. You know we can’t say anymore women can’t do anything else but we still all kind of have this belief that women are better at it. And one of the interesting things that I found is that that’s not true. It will not surprise you to hear both men and women are biologically primed to love and care for small people. Men’s hormones change during pregnancy. Lesser in degree than women’s, but the same hormones rise, neuro imaging studies have shown that the par- the brain activity of parents is dictated not by gender but by being the primary caretaker. So really parenting is all about learning which is what that study really emphasizes. We don’t have instincts as human beings. We talk about maternal instincts but it’s really a bastardization of the term. That’s not what it means in biology. Instincts are a set of behaviors that happen invariably among members of a species in response to a stimulus. Human beings don’t have instincts. We rely upon learning. So parenting is learned and not innate for males as well as females.

Rebecca: [00:05:02] Or not. [laughter] I think you’re right. I feel like we all know people who actually were you know really didn’t have any and maybe they didn’t have the desire to learn. But it’s interesting to me because I have friends whose husband has taken a bigger role in that and they’re not- and they’re both full time working parents. But somehow the husband, I don’t know, felt more comfortable being the one stepping up to do the organizing, filling out the stupid blue cards at school. And you had a great example in your book I think of a couple where the dad- the mom was really the breadwinner and the dad wasn’t. And the mom was still getting all the emails from school and how horrible that made her feel.

Darcy: [00:05:46] Yes she felt really guilty right. Yes. The assumption is so so on the side of women are going to be responsible for most of this because it’s really what they’re good at, and it’s really what they want.

Amy: [00:05:56] And it’s not just schools and workplaces. I know that there have been many times when I’m sitting on my computer working and my husband will be playing video games and my kids will come to me with a problem and I’m like Hello Your dad is over there playing video games. Could you please go to the parent who is not working? And they look at me like I’m crazy. “But we go to you for this stuff!”

Darcy: [00:06:21] Yeah well they learn right, and they learn early. Kind of who, who is more attendance to their needs. And I think it’s so much about the way boys and girls are raised, not even just in their homes but by society. I mean we learn that boys are more important. We learn that girls need to think about other people. We learn that boys are supposed to have agency and girls are supposed to consider the needs of others before their own. And this really has a long term effect on us and it’s certainly not something that shifts easily. This is, these are sort of the expectations for for our genders in our culture and they’re really baked in.

Rebecca: [00:06:57] So how do we combat that.

Darcy: [00:06:59] Yeah well my first recommendation is that we read the book. [laughter] I shouldn’t say we, I’ve read it.

Rebecca: [00:07:07] I hope so.

A dad is not a co-parent

Darcy: [00:07:08] Yeah. I mean, I really, I wrote the book that I would have loved to have going into parenthood I think it would have saved us from a lot of pitfalls. Just having a really good understanding that the modern involved dad is a dad, he’s not a co-parent. Right? We had this idea that dads were so much more involved these days, and they are, you know they’re much more involved with their kids. They spend much more time with them and all that stuff than in the 50s. But the percentage of actual childcare work taken on by men, the planning the cooking the shopping the laundry the signing permission slips, that, the amount of work men did leveled off in the year 2000 without without ever reaching parity. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics time use diaries studies show that women do about 65 percent of the childcare and men about 35 and that’s in two career couples. So this myth of the modern involved father we took it to be, I’m sorry. It’s not a myth of the father, but we took it to mean co-parent and it was not the same thing. It is not the same thing. So I think to go into child-rearing knowing that everything is going to default to the mom unless you really stay on top of keeping it otherwise and really having a deep understanding of why that is will help people from from getting off on the wrong foot. And I’ve heard from a lot of women who’ve read the book who are already you know in it and they have been saying things like they feel really seen and understood and they thought they were crazy or they thought they were doing something wrong. And it gives them like a greater leg to stand on with their partner when they’re trying to kind of renegotiate the division of unpaid labor in their homes.

Rebecca: [00:08:41] You know it reminds me a lot of the Beto O’Rourke sort of blowback when he thought it was a compliment to talk about how his wife does everything because he is on his like finding himself road trip and he thought that was so charming and cute and then everyone was horrified.

Darcy: [00:08:58] Yep. Right. I know he got it. I was glad to see he got a lot of pushback around that.

Rebecca: [00:09:02] Yeah.

The question only women are asked

Darcy: [00:09:03] I saw yesterday Vox is like committed to asking the male candidates who’s watching their kids, like because women are always asked you know when they’re at work like oh, who’s taking care of your children? And men are never asked that question. So I think I think maybe Vox just did a story on this but someone has pledged to commit to asking men that as well which I thought was great. Like just to highlight the fact that it’s not asked and why.

Rebecca: [00:09:25] Right. I mean it’s funny I just saw an interview on New York 1 a couple of, like last week with Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union for their new TV show and he, Pat Kiernan asked one of them, you know how are you guys balancing it? And Gabrielle Union said, “We decided we’re never answering that question.” She’s like, “We’re-“

Darcy: [00:09:43] That’s awesome

Rebecca: [00:09:43] “done answering that question.”

Darcy: [00:09:43] Awesome.

Rebecca: [00:09:44] Yeah. And she was like if you- like Jessica Alba is like, “If you want to ask me how I manage being a CEO of a billion dollar company and this, like sure.” She’s like, “‘Cause I do put…” But it was so interesting, Gabrielle Union’s like, “Until they ask every male actor how they balance all this, we’re not answering.” Pat was like, “Oh I’m so sorry!”

Darcy: [00:10:01] That’s fantastic. I’ve actually heard that before, I came across, I can’t remember what writer it was who who who said the same thing to someone who asked her that but yeah. How fantastic. I love that because it really just highlights the ridiculousness of it. And if we don’t start highlighting that then we’re just going to stay stuck here.

Andrea: [00:10:18] It’s so funny because I am, I write a lot about tech startups and and women in tech and I did a series of interviews with female engineers. You know, how did you get started, what was your path, did you have a mentor. And my editor kept asking, you know, can you ask them how they balance it, you know, how do they balance their workday and their their family life, and I’m like nope, not till we start asking male engineers how they balance it. And I just wouldn’t ask because it just wasn’t you know relevant to the conversation at all.

Darcy: [00:10:49] Yeah.

Rebecca: [00:10:49] But probably it would be great to ask men, right, like instead of not asking women, because it is a question people have. The answer is to start asking men and putting them on the spot to acknowledge how they’re able to have the career they’re able to have if they have a family.

Andrea: [00:11:03] But you know it’s so funny because when I was at Mashable a few years ago men, you know it was right when startups were giving men paid paternity leave which, you know, women still don’t all have paid maternity leaves. But guys were getting a month paid paternity leaves and you know we would be there until our stories were done and I remember the the editor in chief walking out the door one day at 4:30, “Hey I’m going to go see my kid in a play!” And everyone was like “Wow that’s great! It’s so awesome that you’re leaving early to go do that.” And I was thinking, how many days when I was at ABC News- I mean would I ever stand up and, say, “I’m going to leave early today because my kid’s, you know, pitching Little League.”

Darcy: [00:11:42] Right.

Andrea: [00:11:42] There’s no way.

Darcy: [00:11:43] You couldn’t. Yeah.

Andrea: [00:11:44] And it feels like man- for men, as as we started allowing, as men started being more included in in kind of this family time that we were “Hurrah!”-ing and “Yahoo!”-ing men who actually took the time to do it where women have been doing this and juggling it forever.

Darcy: [00:12:04] And hiding it in order to not lose their standing at work. Yeah.

Andrea: [00:12:07] Yeah.

Darcy: [00:12:08] I mean the double standards abound, right? There’s a never-ending list of them.

Rebecca: [00:12:13] Well how do you think moms can start to rectify this. Like how, how can you even approach your your spouse. You know other than just like handing him this book and being like read it and then we’re going to talk.

Darcy: [00:12:25] Yeah

Rebecca: [00:12:26] Which isn’t a bad idea.

Darcy: [00:12:26] Well women have been telling me that they’re following their husbands around their houses reading them passages out loud. So that’s one way people could do, it could go.

Rebecca: [00:12:35] Darcy you need an audio book version that you can just, like, every time you’re in the car together, “Oh we’re doing a road trip. Here you go.”

Darcy: [00:12:40] There is an audio book by the way.

Rebecca: [00:12:42] Oh good.

Darcy: [00:12:42] And narrated by Abby Craden who did Bringing Up Bébé. So you can do it- so you can find that if you want it.

Rebecca: [00:12:49] Perfect. That’s Memorial Day weekend.

Darcy: [00:12:51] Right. Exactly. For Father’s Day.

Rebecca: [00:12:53] Yeah.

Amy: [00:12:55] That’s an awesome, awesome passive aggressive Father’s Day gift.

Darcy: [00:13:02] It’s, you know it’s really hard because I know my husband and I had a had a tough time with it because I wouldn’t bring it up until I was really angry and then of course he would be defensive and we never got anywhere. So I don’t know Rebecca. You got me.

Rebecca: [00:13:16] Well we’re not going to solve this whole problem in the next 20 minutes? Come on.

Darcy: [00:13:19] Right exactly. It’s funny because I was talking to an economist who does a lot of work on the wage gap. And she said you know people are always asking how to solve it. And she’s like, if little old me could solve this problem it wouldn’t be a problem. So I really liked that answer because I thought, oh I can use that answer, but I do think really appreciating how complex the problem is and how ubiquitous it is is a really good place to start. And I think that’s what the book offers more than solutions, though I did talk to couples who were navigating this more successfully and the ones who are so committed to staying on top of parity. I mean it blew my mind. I mean it’s on one hand it’s so sad that you have to be so committed to it for it to actually play out well, but it certainly seems like that that is the reality of it.

Girls and boys are treated differently from the start

Rebecca: [00:14:08] Do you think part of it is kind of you started with how girls and boys are raised differently? I have found that ironically more chores fall to girls, more expectation of responsibility falls to girls. Especially if there’s younger siblings, like the the older girl is expected to help take care of a younger sibling that it starts young. The boys were sort of let off the hook for a lot of responsibility.

Darcy: [00:14:33] Yeah that’s what that’s what the research finds. There’s an app called Busy Kid. Do you guys know it? You must know it. If- you can pay your kid online for chores.

Amy: [00:14:42] Oh yeah.

Darcy: [00:14:43] Like, they put their chores in and you, you put some payment to a credit card. But the app, the research that the app developers did found that boys were actually paid more for the same chores than girls were. So like this-

Amy: [00:14:55] Wow.

Rebecca: [00:14:55] Oh my God!

Darcy: [00:14:56] So the sexism is so baked into our culture and we don’t see it. It’s not intentional. And so the fact that we don’t see it makes it all the harder to rectify. So beginning to see it and how pervasive it is seems so important. And you notice stuff when you’re raising kids. I mean I talk about this in the book but you know like my my daughter at one point was asking who all the people on the money were on the change. And I was telling her, and as I’m telling her I’m like, Oh my God they’re all men, like what is this teach her, you know. And there are like a million things like that every day, girls learn they’re not as important, that they’re not as valuable, that all the stuff. And it’s not because their homes are particularly oriented toward them, it’s just the world, there’s so much going against us in this way.

Rebecca: [00:15:42] It was interesting one of the things you talked about was how even in the workplace that women will volunteer for the crappy tasks that will not lead to a promotion, that don’t do anything to really help your career or your position. But when the group is only men, men will volunteer.

Darcy: [00:15:58] Yeah right. So right. Men, men step up just as readily in all-male groups to volunteer to perform tasks that don’t lead to promotion. If women are around, women are much more likely to step up and and that’s partly because the men are not doing it. So we really understand that women are responsible for things that are a pain in the ass. And there’s interesting research in academia about this kind of thing and it’s about volunteering for altruistic tasks and women who say no to altruistic tasks take a hit to their favorability ratings and when they say yes they don’t get any sort of a bump. And the opposite is true for men. So when they say no to performing altruistic tasks at work there’s no hit to their favorability ratings although when they say yes to those altruistic tasks their favor ability ratings go up. So it’s sort of like the opposite. And it really speaks to what we expect from men and women without realizing it. We expect that women will do nice things. So why would they get any sort of a bump if they did them. But when they don’t meet that expectation when they say no, they’re thought of more poorly.

Amy: [00:17:09] Wow.

Rebecca: [00:17:09] Boy we have such low expectations of men.

Gender norms are baked in

Darcy: [00:17:13] Well we expect men to pursue their own ambitions and needs and desires in a really full and vibrant way. And so they are lauded when they act in those expectable, in the research it’s called agenetic. They have agency when they act in agentic ways. And women are expected to behave in communal ways. And when they don’t meet those expectations they’re not thought of as well. So you have the gender norms are so are so baked in and we we live according to them or we suffer the consequences.

Rebecca: [00:17:44] I so see this in my teenage daughters extracurriculars. In high school like now when I think about it like my, one of my daughters in particular does all the shit work, and like in the things she belongs to, and she has a leadership position but it doesn’t matter she’s also doing all of the grunt work all the time because her- and she keeps saying, if I don’t do it nobody will.

Darcy: [00:18:05] Yep. And she’s with boys? It’s coed?

Rebecca: [00:18:07] Yes yes yes totally coed. And my other daughter also just has gotten a lot of flak for not being, doing enough for that altruistic crap for one of her clubs and has only been called out by one of the guys about it. But it’s all the crap he doesn’t want to do. And I think about that, like how it’s already playing out and how it’s not presented as a gender thing at all. It’s just like how it is.

Negative vs. positive reinforcement

Darcy: [00:18:38] There are interesting observations in preschool classrooms about boys and girls and aggression and boys and girls are equally as aggressive. I want to say the classrooms are like two year olds. But what they’ve found is that teachers intervene to modulate boys’ aggressions aggression far more often than girls. And if you think about kids you know they want adult attention. If the teachers are intervening when boys are aggressive they’re gonna become more so because that’s what they get responded to for and like the following year after all of this intervention the girls are less aggressive and the boys are more so because they’ve learned what gets them noticed. Girls get more attention for talking and more like positive reinforcement. And even though it’s not positive reinforcement with the boys who are like pushing and shoving they do get attention that way so they learn to do it more so-

Rebecca: [00:19:29] It’s like a dog.

Darcy: [00:19:30] These teachers aren’t doing this on purpose. These are, you know, these are like observers behind a glass window doing studies. So no one’s even told what the study is about. It’s just like a normal functioning preschool classroom. So but this is what they find. I mean the ways that we are socialized are so are so different.

Rebecca: [00:19:46] It’s so messed up. Like I just feel like it’s so overwhelmingly rigged against women.

Darcy: [00:19:55] Yeah it is.

Rebecca: [00:19:57] I’m so depressed. Now what do we do?

Darcy: [00:19:59] Well you know the thing is like, it’s communal. There’s nothing bad about being communal about thinking about the needs of others. It’s what’s what’s difficult about it is that it’s so gendered and that we don’t have you know 100 percent of people like thinking about others all the time. And so these two traits, communality and agency, have been measured over time in our culture and in the last 30 40 years women report more of a sense of agency. It’s like been on an ever increasing slope, you know and clearly, women are in the workplace is like totally normalized and women being ambitious is totally normalized. So of course like our sense of agency has increased as a gender over time. Men’s sense of agency has increased a little on a less dramatic slope than women’s over the last 40 years. But what has not changed is self reports of communality. Women still report feeling much more communal than men do, and that as the agency slope has gone up for women the communality slope has not gone up at all for men. And that seems to really be where the problem lies.

Rebecca: [00:21:01] That’s so interesting. I mean you know there’s so many you know women empowerment groups and women, you know like Lean In, and even in schools, like there’s a lot of stuff to bolster girls in STEM and girls in all these areas that need to be bolstered. But it makes you wonder, like, we can’t do it alone, right. Like if men-

Darcy: [00:21:22] Right.

Rebecca: [00:21:23] aren’t feeling part of a community. I mean we’re seeing the result of that, right? We’re seeing how men are finding horrible communities online where they’re trying to find community and things like that. How, like- it just seems like there’s a crisis of of masculinity.

Darcy: [00:21:39] Yet one of the one of the interesting pieces of research I found, there’s a sociologist named Bernadette Park and she talks a lot about how it’s women who have had to change. Like women should become more ambitious, women should become more agentic. And that has happened. But there has been no focus on how how men might change and become more communal. And she advocates, you know, she actually talks about what you’re talking about about how girls have been so encouraged to become involved in STEM but boys have not likewise been encouraged to be, to participate in care work. So she she wants there to be an equivalent of STEM for health care education and caretaking. She- the acronym she uses is HEED and she wants to get, you know she advocates getting like a movement just as there has there has been for girls and STEM for boys in HEED which again is it’s health care education. I can’t remember what the rest is, but she says no one’s really interested in pushing HEED in the same way that they are in pushing STEM. It’s always about how girls can become more like boys not the flip.

Rebecca: [00:22:42] It’s so interesting because the studies show to right the growth in the economy is actually in health care and a lot of those jobs that all these men who are being put out of work in factories and things like that, this is where the growth is. And yet they’re not deemed masculine jobs.

Darcy: [00:23:00] Right it’s women’s work and women’s work has always devalued.

Rebecca: [00:23:02] Right. It’s so ingrained.

Does it make a difference when the wife earns more?

Amy: [00:23:05] Before we got on I was saying to Rebecca that I can’t even really say anything this conversation because my husband makes so much more money than I do, like that brings a whole other layer to it.

Darcy: [00:23:15] You know what though? Right. But there, there was a theory that what was that, what did they call it, equity. No it’s not equity theory. I can’t remember but the idea was that women do more unpaid labor because they earn less money- relative resources theory, maybe that’s what it’s called, but that’s been upended because in couples where women make more money, which is now more and more common, the gender dynamic does not switch. So women who make less money tell themselves that and I can certainly understand why it seems rational. But you should know that that nothing flips. There’s no, even when women are the sole breadwinner and men are unemployed, division of labor at home still does not reach parity.

Rebecca: [00:23:51] Yeah we went through stretches where Corey was unemployed and he didn’t do the laundry or make dinner or any of it. I mean he was unemployed once for six months. So it was bizarre, like I was doing all the same work and then coming home and making dinner and the grocery shopping,

Darcy: [00:24:08] Yeah you know what…

Rebecca: [00:24:09] And his answer will be, just do Fresh Direct. Well then don’t do the grocery shopping. You know it’s like that whole idea then that you should just, you should just be doing things differently. Then it’ll be easier for you, rather than them doing it.

Darcy: [00:24:21] Right. And it’s so easy to swallow that then you don’t have to fight. And it’s so- right, it’s so- right, the unemployment thing. But Rebecca it’s not bizarre because it’s, that’s the norm actually. I mean I can see how it would have felt bizarre but, but you should know the research shows that that’s simply the norm.

Rebecca: [00:24:37] Right. And I think it’s the norm because they were also raised that way, like when I think about Corey, like his mom went back to work as a lawyer for a good 15 years. And I don’t think anything in that house changed. She had live in help, it was different. But she still did all the child stuff, you know taking the kids the doctors, like- and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Like I don’t think it was ever a question. It’s, it is, it just keeps building on itself. It’s- I’m so worried for my daughters because I see them as the “I will do that” especially one of them. She’s like “I’ll just do it. It’s easier if I just do it,” right? It’s always easier.

Darcy: [00:25:10] Yeah.

Rebecca: [00:25:10] If you just do it.

Darcy: [00:25:11] I don’t know how I’m going to talk to my daughters about this but I want to talk to them about sexism and when they when they see it you know and observe it.

Rebecca: [00:25:20] Oh my God this is so complicated.

Darcy: [00:25:22] It is it’s really complicated.

Amy: [00:25:25] Well I don’t know what to do about the workplace stuff, but, you know, because it can be risky for women to speak up and be aggressive about these things, which is a totally other problem. But in addition to working on our husbands it sounds like the place to start is to really make sure that we’re treating our kids equally so that going forward they can have an idea of how things can be. I mean the the thing about the chore money just blows my mind. So I think we should- you know that that seems like a great place to focus even though this book is about marriage.

Darcy: [00:26:06] You know it’s true, but I don’t know. I think I’m kind of defeatist feeling in this way because it’s not just in the home it’s all around. You know, how do you- like these, these are like preschool classrooms where you know people, where teachers are responding to children as teachers do. I mean there’s so there’s so much that needs to happen. And I think you can be really cognizant of it in the home and point things out to your kids and I do think that is helpful. But again it’s so all around you. I mean my husband and I both have PhDs, at one point when my daughter was little she said to me, you know, “Boys are doctors and girls are nurses” and I’m just like she doesn’t know any like medical doctors or nurses I don’t know where she’s getting this from. And both of her parents are doctors like WTF, you know? We’ve been watching Doc McStuffins for like a year, like what- what is this all about. So the influences are so are so you know beyond the home. But you know you are you are right that it does, it does start in the home and it’s certainly, it’s one piece of it.

Rebecca: [00:27:05] Yeah and I think mostly by example right. Because I mean I’ve been there I’ve been angry like exhausted mom at the end of the day who’s like you gotta be freaking kidding me. Like I worked all day and now I’m the one, like “What’s for dinner?” you know and you’re like “I don’t know.” Like, you know, or like if I go on a business trip the fact that I had to- not now that my daughters are older but you know, leave a giant list of everything that happens and find my coverage for- you know I was the one who made sure they got picked up every day and da da da then just told him who was doing what and still had my two best friends on call right? Like I left all this stuff for him, but just in case, so you guys know my mom’s supposed to pick them up, you know like-

Darcy: [00:27:49] Yep yep.

Rebecca: [00:27:51] That’s the part to me that’s crazy and I feel bad that my daughters see that, like witnessed it. You know because it- there’s definitely rage that ties in into that.

Darcy: [00:28:04] Yeah. I know I’ve I’ve been in that position and it is really frustrating and you find yourself asking what, what have we done. What have we done here.

Rebecca: [00:28:13] Right. And why. And why in the name of like, because you’re the capable one. Like you’re supposed to feel better about it because like you’re so good at it.

Darcy: [00:28:21] Yeah. You’re so good at it. I mean you’re so good at that because you’ve been the one who’s been doing it. I mean you’ve you’ve learned how to be good at it. You’ve learned how to be in touch with it and your husband has learned to be…no offense to Corey…

Rebecca: [00:28:34] Right. No!

Darcy: [00:28:35] But oblivious.

Rebecca: [00:28:35] I I said to Amy before we got on this chat, I said I don’t think my husband has all my daughters’ doctors’ numbers in his phone, like I bet if I asked him who’s their eye doctor he’d have no idea.

Darcy: [00:28:51] Yeah.

Andrea: [00:28:51] It’s so funny because I think men also, you know, while they think they’re capable and they- like my husband 20 years ago, you know, we were both working in the city and our son was in an after school program out in New Jersey when we moved and he was the one who got home in time to pick him up from after school. But if he was on the bus from the city and got stuck and you know had to figure out what to do or who to call, he called me! At ABC News in the middle of a working newsroom, you know putting newscasts on. He was like, “Oh the bus is stuck, I’m going to be late” and I’m thinking, why are you calling me? Call them!

Rebecca: [00:29:24] Right.

Darcy: [00:29:24] Yeah.

Andrea: [00:29:27] I can’t just stop everything and call them for you and then call back. And so finally I just one day handed him the phone number of the after school and a friend he could call and was like, here you go. This is what you need to know. Don’t call me. But then-

Darcy: [00:29:41] Right. That’s the perfect illustration of the dynamic-

Andrea: [00:29:43] Right. But then recently-

Darcy: [00:29:43] Right, what you and Rebecca both have just said.

Andrea: [00:29:45] Because they just that’s what they do. And then I was out with a business colleague last week and it was around dinner, it was like seven or eight o’clock and we were out. And her son called her cell phone and I heard her say, “I don’t know you’re gonna have to figure that out.” And I thought wow, that’s a really cool thing to say. And and she’s like, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Ask Dad.” And she looked at me and she said, “My son is home with my husband and he’s calling to ask me what’s for dinner.” [laughter]

Rebecca: [00:30:14] Oh my God.

Andrea: [00:30:17] “And I’m out with you drinking.” So I just-

Rebecca: [00:30:23] Uh.

Andrea: [00:30:24] It’s mind boggling.

Darcy: [00:30:25] It is. Yeah.

Rebecca: [00:30:26] Right.

Darcy: [00:30:26] It is. I mean I stopped interviewing women- I had initially planned to interview 100 women because that’s what Betty Friedan did for The Feminine Mystique. So I thought that was- she was a good role model. And but by the time I started getting into the 30s and 40s in terms of my interviews I realized they were all exactly the same. I wasn’t hearing anything new. I was hearing the same exact thing. And the women were awesome that I was interviewing, everyone was so energized by this topic and had so much to say. But I ultimately stopped at 50 women because I thought, well I’m not going to hear anything new from anyone because everyone, no matter their race or socioeconomic status or, you know, where they fell on the professional ladder, like it was just all the same stories, exactly what you guys are saying.

Rebecca: [00:31:09] It’s- yeah. It’s just fascinating Darcy, I think everyone should read the book. We’ll put a link to it on how they can buy it, or the audio book which, I’m sorry, if you’re road tripping this Memprial Day, stick that thing on in the car, let your husband hear it, let your kids hear it. I think it’s great and very happy about the success of the book and excited for what what question’s nagging you next.

Darcy: [00:31:31] Oh me too. I can’t I don’t have one right now, I miss it.

Rebecca: [00:31:35] I know you’re gonna attack those preschool teachers Darcy. [laughter] Get in there.

Darcy: [00:31:39] That’s gonna be really popular.

Rebecca: [00:31:42] Yeah, your kids are old enough you can do that now.

Darcy: [00:31:45] True.

Rebecca: [00:31:46] But it’s it’s been amazing to talk to you and we hope everyone picks up the book. It’s actually, I don’t know, it’s not such a passive aggressive thing to do for Father’s Day. I’m thinking about it since nobody got me anything for Mother’s Day, which I talked about last week. This might be the Father’s Day book.

Darcy: [00:32:03] Wait I got I got something for Mother’s Day. Do you wanna know what I got? I got plants from the school plant sale that I had to carry home and within two days my daughter was was yelling at me for not watering them and my husband was telling me I better replant them or they’re going to die. I’m like, this is just the perfect example of what Mother’s Day is. Thank you guys. But anyway I’m sorry. Yes. No, this is- it’s not a passive aggressive present. It’s like do your, do your relationship a favor. Right.

Rebecca: [00:32:31] It makes total sense. It’s a generous gift. It benefits future generations as well. So there you go.

Darcy: [00:32:37] Exactly.

Rebecca: [00:32:38] Well it’s great having you on. Thanks so much.

Darcy: [00:32:40] Thanks for having me here. I appreciate it.

Rebecca: [00:32:42] We will be right back with our Bytes of the Week.

Bytes of the Week

Rebecca: [00:32:47] We are back with our Bytes of the Week. Amy what you got.

A QR code tribute to school shooting victims

Amy: [00:32:51] Ok, I’ll try to get through this one without crying. It’s graduation season, so there’s a lot of graduation stuff online. And this one caught my eye on Mashable. This woman, Gina Warren, she’s an 18-year-old high school senior in Ohio and she decorated- you know how people decorate their caps, their graduation caps. They put stuff on them so like all, you know, everybody in the crowd can see what it says, and usually it’s something funny, you know, something about student loans, whatever. Well she decorated hers with a QR code, and for those of you who don’t know a QR code is, it’s like, it’s like that black and white squiggly square thing that when you take a picture, it takes you to a website, and people who took pictures of her cap were taken to a website that listed dozens and dozens of students who were killed in school shootings and were-

Rebecca: [00:33:48] Oh my God.

Amy: [00:33:48] unable to graduate

Amy: [00:33:49] I’m crying thinking about it.

Rebecca: [00:33:51] Wow.

Amy: [00:33:52] And the response has been incredible. She had posted it on her Twitter account and it was shared like, I don’t know, more than three hundred thousand times. And if you read through the comments on Twitter she’s being thanked by friends and family of people that she listed, of students from those schools… It’s- I just thought it was an incredible gesture, so we’ll link to that Mashable story and to our Twitter account. And now I’m going to get some tissues.

Rebecca: [00:34:24] That’s amazing because I was gonna say I just went to my my niece’s Penn graduation last weekend and the coolest kids were not the- they were- the architecture students built buildings on their hats. [Amy laughing] So they march out by major, and they all have these incredible like, full like, cityscapes.

Amy: [00:34:43] Oh that’s awesome.

Rebecca: [00:34:44] So the other end of the spectrum.

Amy: [00:34:46] That’s awesome and doesn’t make me cry.

Rebecca: [00:34:48] Exactly. They were like- you knew exactly who was an architecture student. Like, the buildings are walking down! Very nice. All right. Andrea what do you have.

“Buckle to Drive” from Chevy

Andrea: [00:34:58] That is really cool. OK. So a while back, months back, we talked about Chevy’s teen driver package, which is something in new cars that can be used to set speed alerts and give parents report cards that track their teen’s behavior. Well they found that teens have among the lowest rates of seatbelt use and more than 70 percent of drivers tried to shift the car into drive within 20 seconds of getting into the car. So they have just this week announced a program or a feature called “Buckle to Drive” which I think is really cool. Their new Chevy Traverse, the Malibu, and Colorado models will not let the car shift out of park for 20 seconds if the ignition is on and the driver doesn’t have their seatbelt buckled. So you know you get that annoying, sometimes I even confess to driving home from the gym which is just one minute away with the car going beep beep beep because seatbelts-

Amy: [00:36:01] Oh, Andrea!

Andrea: [00:36:01] not buckled. I know but the speed limit here is 15 miles an hour.

Amy: [00:36:05] But not everybody is going to follow it!

Andrea: [00:36:08] That’s true. That’s true. So, OK. I’m bad. And teens are bad. And so they have this feature that not only is it going to go beep beep beep but if you try to shift into drive without wearing a seat belt an alert comes on right on the dashboard with a message that says “Buckle seatbelt to shift.” So- and the radio also is lowered until the driver’s buckled up. So I think it’s really cool. Chevy says they could expand it to other drivers but this was a really good place to start. A lot of parents-

Rebecca: [00:36:37] Why isn’t it just the default in every car. I don’t even get it.

Andrea: [00:36:40] Well- exactly. Exactly. And this right now is in- it’s not in every car, it’s in that teen driver package. But I think, you know, listen, it’s one of the things they’re studying which is why they decided there was a need for this. But I think that with all these safety features today you know, with with the blind spot features and this, the, you know, the car will kind of slow down if you’re in cruise control if it senses something. We need to protect ourselves, right? Yes I am guilty of driving 30 seconds with the car going beep beep. But you know if I was on the highway at 65 70 miles an hour I would certainly, I mean I always buckle up when I leave my community. So I think, yeah, putting it in every car, I mean I remember my mom getting in my car once, you know, she’s a city person. I mean I was a city person, I didn’t even learn to drive until I left the city. She would get in my car and I would say, “Mom, I’m not starting the car until you buckle your seat belt.” “Oh it’s fine it’s fine.” So I think that- I think that would be a great safety feature to put in all cars. But this is a good place to start.

Amy: [00:37:47] City people also have a weird blind spot about cabs. Like I-

Rebecca: [00:37:52] When you’re in a cab you don’t need a seatbelt?

Amy: [00:37:54] Right.

Andrea: [00:37:54] Right. Right!

Amy: [00:37:54] I mean, you’re not even required to put your newborn baby in a carrier if you’re taking them home in a cab, which just absolutely- I don’t understand that at all. But I had a friend who worked at St. Vincent’s emergency room back when St. Vincent’s existed and he said one of the biggest things that he treated in the E.R. was broken noses from people sitting in the backs of cabs.

Rebecca: [00:38:20] Yup. Tell my friend Karen, brok her nose, smashed right into the partition. Yep I always put my seat on the back of the cab, the only car accidents I’ve ever been in in my life have been in a cab twice, two cabs, never- I’ve never been in another accident knock on wood but two cab accidents. And not going very fast.

Andrea: [00:38:37] I wonder if people also when they get into an Uber or Lyft, you know, is it like Oh it’s not my car so I don’t need a seatbelt” although I always put on a seatbelt in a in an Uber.

Rebecca: [00:38:46] I do too but a lot of times they don’t work. I’ve had cars where there’s no the- the thing is under the seat, you know, especially in cars where they readjust the seats a lot.

Amy: [00:38:54] You’ve got to put that in the rating.

Rebecca: [00:38:56] Yeah. That there- the clippy thing they put the seatbelt into isn’t there.

Amy: [00:39:00] I did a blogging event once where they were driving us around in like a big pink Hummer limo and nobody was wearing seat belts. And I was so nervous the entire time. I was like, there’s there’s nothing protecting us especially because we’re in a limo.

Rebecca: [00:39:18] Limos are exempt. A lot of limos don’t have seatbelts. That’s why like Tracy Morgan- you see these people are- these prom night things that happen, it’s because nobody has a seatbelt on. But a lot of times limos don’t have them.

Amy: [00:39:28] Oh it’s so weird to me.

Rebecca: [00:39:30] It’s terrible because they just have long wraparound bench seating, they don’t have seat belts. I don’t know why they got exempt. You know lobbying, always. Money is always the reason. [laughter]

Andrea: [00:39:38] It’s money.

Amy: [00:39:40] Yeah.

Rebecca: [00:39:39] There’s always money. When you don’t know it’s always money. All right. Well that’s a good one I think they just stick in every car.

Andrea: [00:39:47] Stick it in every car and we’ll link back. We can actually link back to the previous interview we did on the teen driver package.

Rebecca: [00:39:53] Yeah. That’s cool.

Andrea: [00:39:54] So everybody can get their teens safe.

Vintage college pennants

Rebecca: [00:39:57] Sounds good. My- speaking teens, my Byte this week is, if you have a graduating high school senior or a college senior graduating, I discovered this gift guy, he’s out of New Haven but he comes to New York almost every weekend to this big outdoor market. His Web site is called Americana Memories dot com and he has this incredible store of old collectible college pennants from the 20s 30s 40s and 50s when college, these felt college pennants were included in cigar boxes, Hormel Chili, [Amy laughing] like all of these companies that used to have these college pennants and they were collectible so kids would collect all the schools and they’re very cool, they come in different sizes and they’re they’re really beautiful, they’re felt and they’re mounted and framed and they make very very cool gift, and he has really every school you can think of. So we just- we did it for my niece who just graduated from Penn. You know, they have like the old alma mater, you know the stamps on them, the logos, the mottos, they’re like in those beautiful colors still. They’re just cool they’re very retro and it’s kind of a really fun gift to get someone who is looking forward to where they’re going to school, if they’re a graduating senior, if they’re going off to college, or you know someone who’s graduating college, it’s something you could kind of put in an office, if you finally get a job, or anywhere really, they’re just cool, they’re cool and retro and they’re kind of cooler than like actual modern, you know, sort of pennant of your school or something like that. So that-

Amy: [00:41:45] Oh, I want to get one for my son. Does- does he sell online or you have to go where-

Rebecca: [00:41:49] It’s totally online. You can go Americana Memories dot com.

Amy: [00:41:53] Oh, awesome.

Rebecca: [00:41:53] And you could actually search by university and college. So if he has it you’ll see it listed.

Amy: [00:41:59] All right. Well he’s gonna get some of my money.

Rebecca: [00:42:01] Yeah you can email him and ask. You know it’s something, I think he, you know, he has a lot of the very big schools obviously, those are his main things. But you can always email him and say if you come across or whatever, you know, we want it. But yeah it’s really cool. I’m a big fan. And they come framed so, you know, just like the flowers in the vase, when it comes framed, [laughter] you’ve done the work for the person, they can just hang it. [laughing] Nothing is worse than the rolled up thing in your closet you keep meaning to get framed. So that is our show for today. Thanks ladies.

Amy: [00:42:37] Thank you.

Rebecca: [00:42:38] You can find everything we talked about today including a link to Darcy’s book at ParentingBytes.com and Facebook dot com slash Parenting Bytes. Please continue to listen, rate, review, subscribe, share our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and let us know if there’s something you’d like us to tackle, you can always leave us a message on our Facebook page. Until next week, happy parenting.

Andrea: [00:43:00] Bye.

Amy: [00:43:01] Bye.

Rebecca: [00:43:02] Bye.