Women at Work - Family Management: Meet the Parents

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Erica and Kevin show snapshots of life for them these days — basically, frantically working when not giving their all to childcare. They discuss how they’re handling the latest challenges working parenthood has thrown at them, highlighting tools and tips that are helping them cope.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. What do you want? To play Veranda Santa. You? To play Veranda Santa. You want to play Veranda Santa? I just have to do a little more work, though, okay? I'm Kevin, and that's my four-year-old, Maisie. Are you licking a plate?

No. Don't do that. That's a peanut butter almond. Oh, I know. But I have to do a little more work, okay? What are you doing? Don't do that. Dad has peanut butter on it. Oh, I know. But I have to do a little more work, okay? But you want to do it now. I know you want to do it right now.

But it's not time to play right now. Why? Because Willie's not home. Let's wait until Willie gets home. Daddy's not done working yet. It's not five yet. Willie is Maisie's little brother. He's one, and he requires a lot of attention. He gets home from daycare at five,

which is why, up until that moment, I scramble to get as much work done as possible. But five takes too long. It's in seven minutes. You miss me or you left your work? I'm Erica, and that's my three-year-old Claire. She really knows how

to pull at my heartstrings. Oh, dear bug, I always miss you. But I also like work. I like both. No, Mommy, no, Mommy, only one choice. Only one choice? What are you saying? In the eyes of a toddler, life is pretty black and white.

Here's another of Claire's favorite questions, which usually comes right as I say goodnight. Mommy. Yes, love? Tomorrow is a work day or a weekend? Work day or a weekend day? Tomorrow is a work day or a weekend? Work day or a weekend day? Tomorrow is a weekend day. Sunday? Yes, it's Sunday, exactly.

Exactly, yes. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. But when I tell her tomorrow is a work day, she often throws a tantrum until like 10 o'clock. The next morning she's all, when will you come down, mommy? I don't want you to leave, mommy. I don't like work days, mommy. Sometimes when I head upstairs to my bedroom to work, Claire gives me a high five, a funny

high five as she calls it, and a hug and a kiss. Other times she screams for me for what feels like hours. Claire's goodbye sets the tone for my work day. I'm either feeling confident like I can do this, or the guilt creeps in. Being a working parent is hard under normal circumstances. Bring in a global pandemic, unpredictable child care, school closures, and homeschooling, and I think it's safe to say parents have hit a wall. We have. I still think back to when I got the call from Claire's daycare

that they were closing for two weeks. Two weeks, I thought, how am I going to get through two weeks with my toddler at home, my husband Rob at home working full-time time and myself working from home while seven months pregnant. And now here I am over a year later. Over a year. It seems like five. Yeah, no, exactly. It's like we didn't, thankfully, we didn't know what was coming because I really believe if we had, there would have been a collective just panic among all working parents worldwide.

Oh my God. Could you imagine if someone came to you and were like, hey, for a year, you're going to have the kids. You're going to be homeschooling your kids, doing your work and trying to manage all of that all at once. No, thank God we didn't know. I know. I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm really grateful that we didn't know. It's like two weeks I can do this. So then it just seemed like it was like, okay, we can do it for two more weeks, two more weeks, two more weeks. Right. And then now here we are. Right, exactly. So the last time we saw each other, it was February, 2020, late February. I think your doctor said you couldn't work in the office anymore. You had to work from home. And then

a few weeks later, of course, you know, we had a national shutdown. I moved in with my mother, with my two kids. Willie was four months old at the time. So I had a newborn baby. And you were expecting your second at the time. Yes. Yep. And so you were pregnant and you gave birth during a pandemic. What was that like? I was scared. To be completely frank, I was really scared. I didn't leave the house. Nobody knew how COVID was spread. So I was very nervous. And we really did not leave the house at all. We were those people cleaning every bag of Doritos in the house. We were taking it all really, really seriously. So yeah, my last trimester was home with Claire without daycare so claire was around full-time working full-time my husband was working full-time um he was in the travel industry so you can

imagine how that went so he also was dealing with a lot of work stress at the time and you know mark my little baby now who's about eight months old came into the world super quickly, got to the hospital, had him very fast. Oh, wow. Oh, it was a quick one. It was a quick one. To be fair, I was really anxious about having to give birth with a mask on and Rob not being able to come into the room with me. The anxiety of knowing that I was going to have to do this mostly by myself with a mask made me want to stay home for as long as possible. So that's what I did. I basically stayed home almost too long. The baby was born basically two hours after I entered the hospital. So it was intense, but he came and he's lovely.

Wow. That all sounds very stressful. Yes. It's been exhausting. Yeah. That's a good word for it. Exhausting. There's probably another word for it that just doesn't exist in the English language that we just, someone needs to coin a phrase for being exhaustion of parenting during the pandemic. It's, it's been really challenging. And I've had like a lot of ups and downs. There's been times where I felt really good and really resilient.

In the beginning, I felt, you know where I felt really good and really resilient in the beginning I felt you know I felt pretty good I felt like I was protecting my family by going to my mom's house because there's really no way that Julie and I would have been able to get all our work done especially with a newborn and I also felt good because my mom lives alone and I thought it was really good for her not to be socially isolated and so that was great and I felt this urge to get a lot of things done but the struggle was you know there were times when I just felt like I was failing at both roles like in dramatic ways and I remember one event very clearly I had multiple deadlines and people were emailing me and slacking me to see where things were. And Maisie was laying at my feet in her Peppa Pig pajamas, whimpering.

And she had this five-mile stare. Like she looked legitimately depressed. And I've never seen her like this. Like she never stops talking. She never stops moving. She's very histrionic. If she's upset, then you really know about it. And she was like nearly silent. So like my poor little girl's laying at my feet

and I had these deadlines and I had to, you know, sending out emails. I was responding to people on Slack and trying to get things done. But I felt like, you know, I wasn't assuming my role as a dad in that moment when she really needed me the most. But of course there's people at work that really needed me to show up in that moment too. And it was just a torrent of emotions. It was anger and guilt. And I think we talk a lot about like work-life balance or work-life integration, sort of whatever term you want to use. But in those moments, it just felt like a work life car crash. Yeah. Yeah. I know that is like heartbreaking

because I feel like I can, I can picture it, right? I can picture it like your daughter right underneath your desk on, you know, next to your feet, just wanting attention and you not being able to give it to her. And that pull, like the heartstring pull, like I feel like we're home, like we're able to work from home. So we're home. And our children are seeing us work. And because of that, they have this sense of what I'm constantly struggling with is like, why aren't you spending time with me instead? If you love me, why don't you spend time with me instead? And Claire, like, she's going strong. Like, we're a year into this, and she's still perseverating on the fact that I'm not downstairs and playing.

And why do I have to do this? And what you're describing, it's like amplified the normal feelings that working parents have, right? Like, we'd go into work, and in some ways, that was such a clear boundary. Like, I would put on my, you know, work shoes. I would leave the house and I would feel like my professional identity would begin the minute I got in my car in some ways. And now it's just not there.

And I still really struggle with the same feeling of how do you do both when you are so, like everything's happening at the same time, right? Totally. After the break, we'll tell you about our latest challenges and the tips and tools that are helping us cope. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses

have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life.

Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. Let me tell you, my biggest problem right now is getting through the witching hours. So that's between, I would say, 5 and 7.30, when the kids are both home from daycare and preschool to the time that they go to sleep. Okay, Dad, get up. I want to do it now. So I'm an introvert, which means, you know, I can thrive in social situations, but I usually need a nap afterwards. And so after a really busy day at work and going through meetings and talking to a lot of people

I usually need like 10 or 15 minutes just to decompress. But the problem is, and anyone who has kids know this usually at night they're at their craziest. When I need some alone time and some quiet time, my kids come through the door. It's like they down 10 shots of espresso and have a day's worth of grievances and traumas to work through. And it can be really hard because I'm overstimulated.

And it's insanity. It can be a lot of fun, don't get me wrong. So if I'm in a good mindset, I have a lot of fun and it's the reason why I get so much joy out of my kids. You know, they're jumping on the beds and we have dance parties and all that fun stuff. But if I am overstimulated, I mean, just the sounds of their laughter sometimes

can sound like nails on a chalkboard. It's just like a crescendo of chaos. Like it starts off okay, and then it just keeps going and going and going and going and going. And then finally, it just ends in a chorus of cries. Mommy, you're my bed. We love you, Lise. That's good. I'm okay.

He's very okay. Kevin, so how do you deal with that? Yeah, I have a few strategies. So the first thing that I do is I know that I need to take time for myself during the day where I could get that quiet time. So even though my wife and I are alone in the apartment for most of the day, I need to make sure that I'm taking breaks because I've gotten into this habit during the pandemic of just feeling like time is incredibly scarce. So from the moments the kids are out of the house, I'm just like frantically trying to get work done until they come back. I'm definitely overstimulated when I do that kind of stuff. And I'm really tired by the time five comes. So I just make sure that I take breaks. But one of the major things I'm doing

right now, and this is advice from Daisy Dolling. She wrote this great book called Work Parent that's coming out in May. And she talks about establishing a point of control. And a point of control can be anything. It could be a habit. It could be a ritual. It could be an activity. It's just one thing that you own that no one else owns and that you do frequently away from your kids or away from someone else. And so what I've been doing is on the days that I pick up Willie from daycare at 4.30, I leave a little early. I get in my car, and I listen to sports

radio. I'll do it for 15 or 20 minutes. And I don't even like sports radio, to be honest. It's like, I don't care about their hot takes about Tom Brady and whatnot. But it just puts me in a good mindset because I'm not thinking about anything else. I'm just listening to these hot takes on sports. They're inconsequential. They don't mean anything, but it's a good way for me to just reset myself. And then I go in, I pick them up from daycare, and then I come home and I feel like I have that nice transition period between work and home. I love that. I love that piece of advice. Having that moment of respite, we all need it. Right.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. So Erica, I know you still have both kids at home during the day. Like what are you struggling with right now? Yes. The idea of getting in a car sounds heavenly. I do drive around to nowhere sometimes. So yes, I have my eight month old and my three year old

at home with a full time nanny. So I'm just so grateful for that. That said, I have my eight month old and my three year old at home with a full time nanny. So I'm just so grateful for that. That said, I still feel like I'm always on, you know, like you described, like if you have childcare, every minute of that is now work time, right? It's like the sacred time where you have someone taking care of your children, and you have no time for breaks, you have no time, really to do anything other than work. And so I'm constantly feeling like I'm on. I come upstairs to my bedroom. I'm in there basically for, you know, eight, nine hours while we have the nanny here. And I don't take breaks. And I know I need to get better about this. But other than lunch, which sounds like a break, but that's when I'm on

parenting duty. I think she'll be done soon. There's all very routine-based. So at 12.30, she starts waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs so she knows. So that's when time starts ticking in terms of her patience level. So I need to get down there. And then we eat lunch together and we have playtime together. What are you doing?

It's time to turn on the timer. You turned it on? And I invested in a visual timer. And I have to say, people had told me about these visual timers. I was skeptical, but it's been a game changer. I put the visual timer on. It's essentially like a timer that's colored. So it's blue.

So you can see the 15 minute countdown getting smaller and smaller. So we put our 15 minute timer on. Claire knows it. She goes, whoa, mommy, this is like a super long time. I'm like, it sure is. So she's excited about it. And then in that time, we, you know, we have lunch together and then we have our playtime. She crams in, let me tell you, as much as she can in those 15 minutes. And when she starts to see the color kind of get smaller and smaller, she just keeps wanting me to do more and more. So I often am a student in her classroom.

She loves the letter C. So she's just drawing Cs and trying to tell me how to draw the letter C. I'm singing songs with her trains. Then I'm pretending to cry because one of her dolls is hungry. And we make some special concoction with her fake green peas and her baby bottle milk. And we make, you know, some special concoction with like,

you know, her fake green peas and her baby bottle milk. And we're doing all of this, the timer goes off, I'm realizing, okay, I've got a one o'clock meeting. Now it's time to run upstairs. So all of this is to say, you know, I'm running upstairs. And then I am trying to roll switch very quickly with no break, essentially, because I was a parent. And now I'm back to being, you know, an employee. And this constant pull of never having a moment just for myself is absolutely exhausting. And poor Mark, I haven't even mentioned poor Mark, but he's still nursing. So the little guy needs to eat. So in midst of this, he's doing really well. Like I can go two or three hours without feeding him, but I also nurse. So that also is that feeling of breaking up the day.

So I really feel that all my breaks, anytime that I'm not working, I'm really putting towards childcare and taking care of my kids. Oh, I relate to that so much. I just remember, you know, when I was living at my mom's house, I felt like a hostage upstairs because we had to hide away from the kids. And then when we did come downstairs, it was so intense because they hadn't seen you for hours. And so they want to make the most of that time. So that's really hard. When the timer goes off, I never know how well the transition will go. I mean, I'd say since the nanny has started and she's been here a few months now it's gotten exponentially better so now I get kind of just like softer questions in terms of like mommy why do you have

to work why aren't you spending time with me yeah how do you answer those questions I have to say I mean sometimes I basically you know crouch down I give her a hug and I say Claire you know I miss you too and she then you know she has her pretend she says, Mommy, I'll send you a message if I need you. And I'm like, okay, Claire, I'll have my phone next to me, too. And, you know, I've also relied on a lot of advice that we have on our site as well. We have a great discussion guide called How to Talk to Your Kids About Work During the Pandemic. One of the pieces of advice is to schedule family time without distractions. And for me, that's what the timer is. The timer is when I don't have my phone on, I'm not checking Slack, and I have those 15 minutes, right, that I am with her and she knows are only for her.

So it's allowed me to kind of set these boundaries, which I didn't realize how much I needed. Yeah, totally. I feel the same way. I'm just hoping that at the end of the pandemic, I keep up those boundaries as well. Thanks for listening to the first episode of Family Management. We'd love to hear what you think about the series so far. Email us at familymanagement at hbr.org. On our next episode, I talk with leadership development coach Amy Jensu about the importance of cultivating joy. Bringing some greater

intentionality to noticing the small things in life can make a really big difference. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Tobi-Mack, Adam Buchholz, and Rob Eckhart. I'm Erica Truxler. And I'm Kevin Evers. And for a list of the HBR articles and books Kevin and I mentioned, check out the show notes. Thank you.