In early July, Sarah came to my neighborhood to visit her parents (who live about five miles from me…Sarah grew up around here!) and we recorded this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds live from my Zoom Room (aka my office closet). We answered a variety of questions from our Patreon community and social media followers about changing careers, managing energy to play with kids after a long day at work, taking car trips with kids (we are both Team It’s OK to Eat in the Car), and so forth.

Please give the episode a listen! We’ll hopefully be recording another live episode or two in September.

By Jennifer D. Sciubba

One of my prized possessions is a 1967 Teen Guide to Homemaking textbook, found years ago in a successful dig through the thrift store shelves. On the cover is the side profile of a sweet strawberry blonde with a pink bow in her bobbed hair. Inside, girls and boys learn the basics of ironing and good nutrition—including plenty of then-in-vogue canned food. In the section on career advice, the authors explain that boys and girls might have different goals when it comes to a career. They say that a girl “can be pretty sure that she will have to know how to be a homemaker and mother,” and so her career outside the home likely won’t be as important as it would be to a boy.

The world teens live in today is radically different from the world in 1967 when the Susans and Tommys of America were reading the Teen Guide to Homemaking, but has the gender revolution completely freed women from those societal constraints? Is the struggle over?

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild tried to answer those very questions. She studied married women working full-time, with husbands who were also working full-time and who had kids ages 6 and under; in other words, me when I was writing the first draft of this book. She watched them come home from work, fold laundry while on the phone, give the kids baths, and so on. She chronicled her observations in her book The Second Shift, in which she argued that although there had been a lot of changes in gender roles across the decades, there were still larger societal issues making some women question whether getting married and having kids was worth it. Working both a first shift outside the home and a second shift inside it was exhausting.

Multiple pressures on women is a global issue. Researchers Mary Brinton and Dong-Ju Lee find that post-industrial societies that encourage women to work outside the home while also painting them as natural caregivers have lower fertility because they impose conflicting narratives on women. We can see this difficult dynamic in East Asia. In much of East Asia, it’s the norm that men are breadwinners and women are responsible for household and child-rearing duties, but women are also welcome to work. With this gender-role ideology, women struggle to reconcile work outside the home and family responsibilities. As a result, they often have only one or two children or forgo childbearing altogether. In low-fertility Japan, a 2009 survey by the East-West Center showed that Japanese wives of reproductive age did 27 hours a week of household duties while their husbands only did 3—and most of those wives worked a paid job, too. Having a family continues to be incompatible with work for Japanese women. An OECD study of 18 member countries ranked Japan second from last “in terms of coverage and strength of policies for work-family reconciliation and family-friendly work arrangements,” and pointing out that “Japan’s childcare coverage and parental leave offered by employers are both especially weak.”

In contrast, when women are discouraged from working, their role as homemakers and mothers is clearer, and fertility is higher, but it’s the interaction between gender norms and labor-market conditions that affects fertility, not just one or the other. Fertility is actually lower in countries where men and women have equal roles, because these norms lock women into a particular lifestyle rather than give them a range of socially acceptable choices about how to combine work and family. Countries that have more flexible arrangements, rather than strict equality, have higher relative fertility, as we see in Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Finding ways to reduce the pressures on women and share household tasks can be an effective way to support women who do want children.

How does that play out in the United States? At first glance, it seems like mothers in the US have perfect freedom to choose whether or not to work outside the home, and the US does have a higher fertility rate than many countries, but if we look deeper we must acknowledge those choices are highly constrained. “Flexibility” without supportive social structures (like affordable and available childcare before school ages) means that some women who might want children will choose not to have them, and those who might want several might settle for smaller families.

The answer isn’t to prevent women from working, it’s to put policies in place to meaningfully support their choices, policies that are likely to result in higher fertility overall, with benefits to the size of the working-age population in the long run.

Today is a day for posting retrospectives, so I will play along. It’s been a good year, if a tiring one.

I just remembered that the year started with a real professional highlight: I was on the Drew Barrymore show in early January! She was so sweet, and called herself an uber-fan, which was really exciting to one of my kids who kept pointing out that she is the girl in ET. The girl in ET read mom’s book! Nice.

I had done a pilot version of the Tranquility by Tuesday project in fall 2020, and (happily) got statistically significant results. So I ran the full Tranquility by Tuesday project in the spring with what wound up being about 150 people. Participants answered questions about their time, learned nine time management rules over nine weeks, answered questions about the implementation, and then reported back at the end of the study (and a month later, and three months later). I wrote the manuscript of the book, and am now on the second round of edits. As I’m reading various “best of” lists for 2021, I’m aiming to write one that will make it on to some 2022 lists. So that is a goal.

2021 was another year of the Before Breakfast podcast — a new episode every weekday morning. And Best of Both Worlds! We launched our Patreon community, and I have really enjoyed the monthly meet-ups.

I feel like much of the year has been consumed with home renovation stuff. We got our permit and our historic commission approval early in the year. We passed inspection (thus closing out the permit) this week. So all clear to move in! Phew, since I booked the movers for next week….I’m trying to keep the mindset this will be an adventure, rather than total chaos when no one can find anything and we have boxes and only half our furniture for a while…

The house really does look nice. There are a few things that are not done. Our shutters aren’t on, so the outside of the house doesn’t look finished. The oven arrived, and was dented, so it was sent back, thus putting us into supply chain chaos to get a replacement, so no oven until February. We can probably make do since we have a stove and a microwave. If not I guess I can get some sort of toaster oven? Our dishwasher also didn’t arrive, but we had kept the old one in the garage from before the renovation so it got reinstalled for the next few weeks. The fridge arrives — fingers crossed — and will be installed Monday. In time for the move Tuesday.

Due to a measuring snafu, there is no carpet in the playroom. That is coming in late January. As is wallpaper in another part of the house. Various pieces of furniture are back ordered. Some stuff that would have been junked will be moved, used for a few months, and then junked. (Or donated if possible…but some stuff is in pretty lousy condition.) Eventually things will be done. Or at least at a sustainable level of un-doneness. By the time I am writing my retrospective for 2022 I want to be feeling very at home in the new home.

I spent yesterday taking down kid artwork in the current house. Some pieces had been on the wall since 2013 or so, which was really giving me the nostalgic feels. This house has so many memories. I am excited about the new one though it is strange to think I only have a few more nights in this current one. And all this art my babies created! And now they are teenagers/pre-teens texting me. Well, some of them. I do still have a baby who will no doubt create his own art that can go up on the walls at the new place.

Even if we didn’t wind up moving during the calendar year of 2021, the year still brought a lot of transitions. One kid started high school, another started middle school, and another started first grade at a new school. It has not been 100% smooth, but we are muddling along.

I feel like I have put a few good systems in place. We now have a good meal system of doing Sunbasket kits on Monday and Tuesday, breakfast-for-dinner on Wednesdays, and make-your-own-pizza Fridays. That only leaves Thursday for figuring out (well, and weekends) but that all feels a lot more manageable.

It was not my best year ever for athletic endeavors, but I do keep running. I ran with a friend on the last Saturday of every month, which we kept up the whole year. We celebrated our streak by stopping (a few days before Christmas) at a brewery that we run past every time — it was quite tasty!

It was also not a particularly distinguished year for reading. There was one big win — I finished War and Peace after reading one chapter a day for the whole year — but I felt like I lacked the mental energy to tackle much else. I read some books on the natural world (a few titles on birds and hummingbirds in particular) and some books by podcast guests and that’s about it. I am not particularly proud of this low tally because I know I had a lot of time that I could have used for reading, including some brainless stuff if I had wanted, and I just didn’t. I spent a lot of time scrolling around on Twitter while nursing the toddler and trying to get him to sleep and such.

On the other hand, I did build a lot of Lego sets with the kids. And I did a number of 1000-piece puzzles. So there’s that.

Anyway, everyone is healthy and reasonably happy so on that measure the year has been a success. Much transition, many long projects shepherded through, and hopefully in 2022 I can start enjoying some of those things!

Happy New Year to everyone! Thanks for reading this blog this year. I really appreciate it.

In other news: I track my time and so I know how I spent all 8760 hours of 2021. If you’d like to find out where the time really goes — just for a week — I’ll be running a time tracking challenge from January 10-16. You can sign up here. I send you motivational emails each day, and I’ll be posting here about it too.

Photo: Empty pantry, ready for us to fill it…probably a metaphor in there somewhere…

My flight from Des Moines to Chicago left at 6:25 p.m. Thursday, after my speech. I saw there was an earlier one, 4:55 p.m., and I thought about trying to switch, but I would have had to rush after my talk, and I was chatting with people and listening to the last speaker, and I couldn’t have gotten on an earlier flight to Philly from Chicago anyway, so it wouldn’t have gotten me home any earlier. So I stuck with the 6:25. I had a 48-minute layover in O’Hare. Not my favorite option, but that was what there was to make the last Philly flight (8:45 p.m.).

Despite the rain, we took off on time. We landed early! I was thrilled how well this was going. And then we taxied and taxied and…circled all of O’Hare, finally parking somewhere on the tarmac to wait for a gate that did not become available until 8:35 p.m. About 10 of us ran to the Philly flight, and all “missed” it. As in, the plane was still there at the gate, and was for several more minutes, but they’d shut the door so that was that. While everyone was yelling about that I went online and grabbed a seat on the 6:20 a.m. flight (the 9:30 a.m. one disappeared before my eyes) and booked a room at the nearby Marriott. Alas, I wound up getting only about 4 hours of disjointed sleep because I was a bit worked up by the evening sprint through O’Hare. After writing a blog post about not running every day, I wound up running twice in one day! Only once by choice.

The speech itself went well. Alas, this was the first trip where my new dietary issues wound up being something of a bummer. Longtime readers have heard my lament of suffering from sore throats and congestion. It appears to be a combo of “silent reflux” and certain food sensitivities. Dairy is a big one.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time in airports over the last three days and it turns out to be a lot harder to avoid dairy than I’d realized when you’re eating at the sorts of places that pop up in airports. Everything has cheese on it. Almost any salad has a layer of cheese. Sandwiches all have cheese. Pizza is of course covered with it. Many random other entrees are served with, say, a cream-based topping. I wound up eating a sandwich with cheese on the flight out because I was hungry and I am pretty sure the “special sauce” on a burger I got later was dairy-based (I’m not experienced enough in this to ask…and maybe it’s denial. I want to be a person who can eat anything and it looked good.) Sure enough, throat trouble.

(I now realize that some of my older episodes of Before Breakfast sound a lot more gravelly because of my chronic congestion. While I am bummed about the dairy issue, my singing voice is more clear in its absence!)

I am back home now. I think things will calm down next week. I turned in the Tranquility by Tuesday manuscript. My four speeches this week are all done and I only have one event next week (virtual). We listed the house, and while keeping it clean for showings won’t be easy, at least the ground work is done. There is still a move to orchestrate at some point soon but not quite yet. So time to pause and breathe. Well, and take the kids trick-or-treating….

Photo: 5 a.m. airport selfie. Good times. 

I had a goal for that last one. By trying random ideas out, I would hit upon a plot that I could then use for my NaNoWriMo novel (National Novel Writing Month…when people write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November — it’s a great way to get a draft done quickly).

And so I have faithfully written since January 1st. I missed one day, which I then made up (word count wise) the next day. I have 41,000 plus words in that free writing file from the almost 300 days that have passed in 2021.

And I’ve got…nothing. Ten months of trying stuff out has not revealed to me a plot that I actually want to write about. Ten months of thinking about this question daily has not produced an answer.

I’m not sure what to do about this. Perhaps if I just start writing on November 1st something will come to me but if it didn’t in 10 months that’s a tall ask of a particular day.

Perhaps my method was off. Because of the small daily required word count, I’d write little vignettes, or observations, or tiny character studies. Maybe if I’d made the word count higher I would have gone deeper. Or maybe doing something daily makes it something to be checked off, rather than something to be explored. I don’t really know.

So we shall see if NaNoWriMo happens now. I do think it’s a good discipline to do some creative writing every day. But I wish it had been a bit more fruitful! Is anyone else planning to do NaNoWriMo?

For those new to this blog, my family faced a decision about our housing once we learned kid #5 was on his way. My husband and I both need office space, my baby sleeps in a closet and I have two kids sharing a room who really don’t want to (although, curiously, I also have two other kids currently sharing voluntarily, but that was a late summer thing — they plan to separate).

We had been looking at houses on and off for a year from 2019-early 2020. We had hired a construction firm to come look at our current house and see if we could renovate the attic to create two bedrooms and a bathroom. We could. They drew up a plan. We were thinking of doing that, but Covid put a pause on everything. Then, in the course of hunting around, we decided to go look at a historic property near here. I didn’t like the main picture on all the real estate sites, which is why we hadn’t looked at it seriously during the year-long hunt. But it was on a private road, so we’d never driven past. We did once while my husband was driving me home from dropping my car to get repaired and I was…taken.

It turned out that the “front” of the house didn’t face the road. The facade that faced the road was beautiful. The house was set back and private. The grounds were large and well-landscaped, if a bit overgrown. Our inspector informed us that the house needed a ton of work. This was why it had been on the market for a while. But we decided to go for it.

Our offer was accepted in late August 2020. We closed in early November. We signed a contract with a general contractor in January, hired an architect to make our case to the historic commission, got approved, and began work in March.

It is now September. The process has been…long. I have made a great many decisions. There were decisions I didn’t even think to realize were going to be decisions — like whether to keep the outlet in the middle of my office floor and what material to use for the shelf in several different showers. And that’s with a general contractor managing all the subs, and with a designer showing me limited choices so I don’t go crazy. We are basically renovating the whole house. There was the less-sexy stuff like an all new HVAC system, scoping out the drains, and putting a sloped floor in one of the basement rooms. We’ve put in new windows where the historic commission approved (long time readers recall the “muntin” debate…). We put on a new slate roof (it’s basically done now). We gutted the kitchen and two adjacent sitting rooms to make a more modern family kitchen + family room. We re-worked the master suite to be less chopped up (with a gut renovation of the master bathroom). We completely redid another bathroom and put new toilets in all of them. The third floor had several tiny rooms, so we knocked down the walls between them to make a playroom. It is now light and open and airy and pretty. All the floors are getting sanded and stained, with new paint everywhere, new wallpaper, new carpet…

To answer some comments earlier — yes, it is expensive. Yes, it is stressful. It is not possible to make all decisions well which means that some are going to no doubt annoy me when we move in, but so help me if anyone else who was not attending all the meetings and being 100 percent part of the selection process involving multiple showrooms complains about any choices…

(Just kidding ha ha! We would never have that fight! Especially not about the mudroom tile.)

Anyway, we seem to have weathered most of it at this point. We are still married and both of us have kept our jobs, so that’s a win. We’ve discovered most of the major things that could potentially be wrong now that we are through the demolition process. Some get changed. Some you live with. It is an old house. It helps to remember that you don’t have to fix absolutely all problems. The new walls and such are in, and things like paint and carpet are straightforward. We can see the house taking shape, and it’s going to be exciting to move in (probably around the beginning of the year). I think we’ve got a nice combination of honoring some of the house’s historic character (I have a brass figure that looks like William Penn on my office door, I kid you not) while also making it more energy efficient and family friendly.

I’m not sure I have any great advice for home renovations, though here are a few ideas. First, if you can, don’t live there while it’s happening. This wasn’t possible in our case, so we didn’t face that temptation. We did live in our house during the kitchen renovation a few years ago, but that was much shorter, and we did an overlap with spring break. Even so, it was challenging.

Second, just assume the project will cost more than originally planned. If you know this going in, this reduces your stress levels considerably (even if you, like me, are always looking for ways to save some $$. We went with the cheaper closet finish, in case anyone is wondering. It will constantly be covered by my clothes anyway!)

Third, it helps to be a satisficer, rather than a maximizer. There are a lot of white paints out there. There are a lot of mudroom tiles. If you are trying to find the best of anything you will go crazy. (And then when you find it, it will go out of stock!) Most things can be changed if it doesn’t work out. And few choices are truly wrong. Well, design choices at least. You can definitely have the wrong “rough-in” dimension on a toilet (10 inches? 12 inches?) But for most things, good enough is good enough.

As for time management, it helps that the new house is only 5 minutes from the old one. It’s easy to run over for something quick. But in general, I try to “batch the little things” — making home decisions and dealing with administration/logistics during certain times, and then keeping my prime hours for my main job. Easier said than done, of course. But worth trying.

If anyone else has gone through a major home renovation, feel free to share your tips!

Photo: Part of the master bedroom. If you don’t like the blue don’t tell me. 

In life, we need a lot more rain dates — that’s why one of my Tranquility by Tuesday rules is to “Create a back-up slot.” I was reminded of the necessity of such dates this week as I attempted more of my Mommy Days.

These are the one-on-one days I have with each of my older kids during the summer. This week, my older two boys didn’t have camp, so I’d put their Mommy Days on the calendar for Monday (14-year-old) and Thursday (11-year-old).

Neither day happened as planned. Over the weekend our nanny had a family emergency and needed to take the first few days of the week off. My husband could theoretically have been the back-up for Monday (with the 11-year-old being a father’s helper for calls where he needed to focus) but this happened to be the week that he went on his first business trip in 16 months. So he wasn’t there. The Mommy Day needed to move (in this case to the weekend when he would for sure be home).

As for Thursday, all was good with childcare, but on Wednesday, I looked a little more closely at the weather forecast. My son wanted to go to Hershey, and I’d seen the little thunderstorm icon, but I assumed it was one of those summer afternoon things where it blows in and out. Once the 24-hour forecast was available, I realized that they were actually predicting severe storms with high winds. So we decided to move that one too (and good thing — the eastern part of PA plus NJ wound up with some tornadoes touching down and a watch for the whole area). I moved everything out of a day when he didn’t have camp to accommodate the rescheduling.

Two days, two back-up slots. Life happens. Storms happen. If you really want to do something, it’s not enough to carve out time for it. Sometimes you need to carve out more time for it than it will take. Designate a “rain date,” though, and the odds of something happening go up a lot.

One other thing…The BLS released the American Time Use Survey, this one from the pandemic era (though it is not as complete a study as previous years, because they stopped collecting data from March 19 to May 11, 2020). No surprise that the proportion of people who did some work at home on the days they worked nearly doubled — from 22 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in 2020. People in general spent more time on screens and less time on grooming! Time spent driving around decreased. While primary childcare did not increase, the amount of time spent on secondary childcare — that is, watching kids while doing something else like, oh, working — increased by about an hour a day. This increase was higher for women than for men. Both men and women did more housework, and the increase for men was higher than for women, though women still spend more time on these tasks overall. It’s all quite fascinating, and worth a look! And wow, do we sleep a lot. The average amount slept in 24 hours was…9.01 hours.

Ken Honda, also known as the “Zen Millionaire,” frequently tells the story of how he came to his second career. He was at a park with his daughter when he witnessed a mother and child fighting. Mom wanted to leave the park. Mom said she had to go to work, and the daughter wanted to play longer. Ken spoke and has written of feeling so terrible that mom “had” to work. If only she had handled her money better! He needed to teach people how to have a better relationship with money!

And so even though he had “retired” at the age of 29…he needed to go back to work teaching mothers that if they don’t want to spend all day pushing their kids on the swings it must be because they are terrible with money. OK, that last bit is my editorial comment. He sounds like a lovely person in general, and I know his advice has been helpful for a lot of people — men and women. 

But… I have been pondering why that story bothered me so much. As I think about it, my annoyance goes beyond the particular men-judging-mothers-who-are-not-100%-available-for-their-children’s-every-desire angle, to a problem I have with parts of the “FIRE” movement.

FIRE stands for “financial independence, retire early.” I am a big fan of financial independence. I’ve talked before about how my husband and I are both naturally frugal people. We’ve also both been working for decades. This has happy results in terms of resources — something I am profoundly grateful for. When we have more resources, we have more choices in our lives. This includes a lot of choices about work — for both of us!

So why aren’t either of us at the park all day? Retiring early is a different matter. Some of the loudest voices talking about FIRE can come across as stridently anti-work. Work is that evil thing keeping you from pushing your child on the swings for three hours in the park. Work consumes your life force, and thus all expenditures must be measured in terms of the amount of life they suck away from you as you make the acquisition. But for this to make sense, we have to define work as “something you don’t want to do.” Or “something someone else makes you do from at least 9 to 5 in a specific location every work day with only two weeks off per year.” So you’ll hear people talking about having “retired” at some ridiculously young age…and then gone on to do other income-generating, time-filling, productive activities such as writing books, hosting podcasts, giving speeches, running websites, etc. This sounds suspiciously like what I do for a living now.

It’s not exactly retirement, it’s trading one career for another. At least Honda calls it a second career. Some people don’t even acknowledge that. If you don’t have to do it, it must not be work! 

But this isn’t exactly a workable definition for “work.” Following that train of thought, people would go in and out of work all day long as they do things they want to do or don’t want to do.

I think that there can be a more nuanced approach to this than singing the praises of retiring early. Yes, work toward financial independence! Better yet, achieve it. But also try to figure out what kind of work you wouldn’t want to retire from. For those just starting out, I’d note that there’s no law against having your second career first. Work can be a source of great joy in your life. I am rarely happier than when I am working toward a big professional goal such as writing a book, and really throwing myself into it, to the point of achieving flow. When you spend your hours doing work you find meaningful, time can seem to fly by and stand still. It really is magical.

I hope my kids find work like that too. I’m not working because I mishandled my money (I’d also note that according to this Pew poll, only 2 percent of mothers who work full-time say that at this point in their life it would be best for them to stay home full-time with their kids, with 14 percent saying it would be best to work part-time, whereas a full 25 percent of mothers who are not employed say it would be best for them to work full-time, with another 35 percent wanting to work part-time). I’m working because I enjoy it and think I have something to offer the world in addition to my ability to push children on swings. I get to do both! As did the mother in the original anecdote. I’d point out that she was there at the park before heading out — one wonders where the dad was. Working? Watching TV? Who knows — not there to get judged, I guess.

Have you made changes in your career to get more freedom and flexibility?

Any long project can feature low moments. Sometimes you even go through a valley of despair (see: toddler sleep woes…or the build-up to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia…). That’s why it’s good to celebrate any milestones you can. You can even build in milestones to celebrate!

So this morning I turned in three chapters plus the intro to my editor to get feedback. I went out for a sushi lunch with my 11-year-old to celebrate (he has half-day camp this week). I’ll toast getting a third of the book done tonight. Then I’ll toast my progress again when I finish the next three chapters.

There’s nothing magical about three chapters, but part of adulthood is realizing that you can give yourself gold stars if you find them motivational. Given all these long projects, I’m needing a few gold stars. So I’ll seize the opportunity when I can.

Now, on to approve some more change orders…

Photo: From the celebratory lunch

I’m currently facing a different challenge. My personal life is crowding out space to work. Some of this is the result of a toddler who doesn’t sleep well (though I got the guest room again last night and slept 10:30 p.m. to 5:45 a.m. straight, got up to go to the bathroom, then slept again until 6:30!) Some of this is seasonal — the end of year pomp for four school-aged children. With five kids, there is just a lot going on in general: playdates, activities, appointments. I choose to be involved to a high degree, even with a high level of household support. And then there is the house. Oh my goodness, the house. This week’s issues included, among other things, discovering that a bathroom had been mis-measured, requiring a different door on the toilet room. I chose upholstery fabric and will be approving the location and number of electrical outlets in the kitchen tomorrow.

Anyway, it’s all good stuff. It is all freely chosen. I’m very efficient, and with my type of business there are dividends paid on work done long ago. I can work less than I used to, while earning more than I used to.

However, I am writing Tranquility by Tuesday this summer. This is my top work priority for the year. I want to do a good job. And while I am more efficient at writing books now than I was 15 years ago, writing a book does take time.

So I’m trying to figure out how I can expand the hours available to work. I’ve worked a few “split shifts” this week (after the baby goes to bed) and I’ll probably employ that old standby of getting my husband to take the kids out of the house for a few hours on weekends. We can even trade off (he is dealing with a not-dissimilar time crunch, because guess who else is driving kids to karate, making home renovation decisions, etc….). It just requires some planning.

I also need to make my during-the-workday work hours more productive. I should preserve morning hours for writing, and then save those random tasks that arrive (yet another camp form!) for my Friday punch list. Batch the little things, as the TBT Rule #8 puts it. But I won’t get to that chapter until late July…

How do you find extra hours during a work crunch time?