The podcast episode discusses the connection between marriage and success. It references Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In" and a TED Talk by Aviva Wittenberg-Cox. The speaker argues that work, career, and love are interconnected and that balancing them is important for holistic success. Research suggests that the personality traits and involvement of a spouse can impact one's success at work. Sheryl Sandberg emphasizes the need to empower men at home to achieve equality in the workplace. Sharing domestic responsibilities and child-rearing benefits both partners and enhances relationships. The speaker encourages open conversations about participation and alignment of goals in relationships. Aviva Wittenberg-Cox introduces the concept of conscious coupling, which involves considering alternative models for balancing careers within a marriage. The talk emphasizes the importance of understanding personal values and choosing a path that works for both partners.
Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Ted Chat Podcast with me, your host, where we focus on holistic, professional, and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today's installment is called Hitched for Success. Hitched because we're talking about marriage. We're talking about marriage inspired by two sources.
One is Sheryl Sandberg's book called Lean In, and the chapter specific to this discussion is called Make Your Partner a Real Partner, and also a TED Talk by Aviva Wittenberg-Cox, and the title of that podcast episode is Conscious Coupling, Managing Dual Careers, and I thought this is a material thing, a material subject for any discussion around success. The biggest things that we deal with in our lives are our careers and our families. It's our careers and love, and yet, when we talk about one, we speak as though it is to the exclusion of the other.
When we position them, it's as though it's one or the other, or one against the other. This work-life balance, this suggestion that the work that we do to support our lives is somehow entirely separate from the love that we experience on a daily basis in the family setting seems like a fallacy to me. It doesn't seem quite sensible. In fact, the research seems to show that work, career, and love are so intrinsically intertwined that one has a profound impact on the other.
Research out of Carnegie Mellon University indicated that the personality traits of your spouse can be a determining factor in your success at work. Personality traits, isn't that interesting? Now, that is just, it speaks to the personality, but the reason I always make an effort to find multiple sources is because conversations like these are layered and complicated. Sheryl Sandberg says, the most important career decision you will ever make is who you marry, and I can say from personal experience that that is correct.
The person that you are married to has a profound impact on your ability to earn, your ability to grow, your ability to put your hand up, as you have on their ability to do the same. There's a trend going around, and I don't even know how I dare to comment on trends because I'm hardly ever on TikTok, but there's a trend on TikTok, my sister-in-law sent me a video of a woman saying she will never take advice from a man on how to be successful, because they depend entirely on a woman to make them so.
And in some instances, that is true, perhaps in many instances, that is true. But moving that conversation forward, in my view, is what is required now. Not necessarily sitting in the spot where we complain about how there is unevenness or inequality. I think that's been done. We know this. We know this. So what do we do about it now? And this is where Sheryl Sandberg and Aviva come in. Sheryl Sandberg, I find, added a lot of value to this conversation because she made the particularly valuable point that women have been empowered in the workplace, but we have not balanced the scale by similarly empowering men at home.
In order for the scales to balance, in order for this equality that we seek to play itself out in an equal way, we need to be actively participating either by conversation or doing in empowering men to sit at the kitchen table and empowering women to sit at the boardroom table. Those two things must work together in order for the scales to balance. Sheryl quoted research that found that when husbands do more housework, wives are less depressed, marital conflicts decrease, and satisfaction rises.
When women work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework. For men, participating in child-rearing fosters the development of patience, empathy, and adaptability, characteristics that benefit all of their relationships. For women, earning money increases their decision-making ability in the home, protects them in the case of a divorce, and can be important security in later years as women often outlive their husbands.
Also, many might find that this Also, many might find that this is the most motivating factor. Couples who share domestic responsibilities have more sex. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way for a man to make a pass at his wife might just be to do the dishes. She goes on further to quote studies from around the world that have concluded that children benefit greatly from paternal involvement. Research over the last 40 years has consistently found that in comparison to children with less involved fathers, children with involved and loving fathers have higher levels of psychological well-being and better cognitive abilities.
When fathers provide even just routine child care, children have higher levels of educational and economic achievement and lower delinquency rates. Their children even tend to be more empathetic and socially competent. These findings hold true for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds, whether or not the mother is highly involved. And when I point this out, I do not say this in order to judge a person who's a single parent, because I find myself largely a single parent right now.
I do have a co-parent, but I sometimes find that the way the gender roles play out and the stereotypes play out is in funny little ways, like the fact that my co-parent has no qualms whatsoever about calling when they're meant to pick up the kids to say they're not feeling well. So they call in sick to parenting. And every time it happens, I have a little chuckle to myself. It's probably not funny, but I have a little chuckle to myself at the idea that it would be an absolute shocker if I were to say I'm calling in sick from parenting.
And why is that? It's because we tend to view the role of a mom as the primary caregiver. And that's okay, but perhaps it is time we start evolving onto the next stage. I quote all of this research in order to say that one of the critical things to work out if you're going to go into a partnership or a marriage, right, in which you are an ambitious person who would also like to have a loving relationship and to succeed at both, is to have conversations about participation.
It's very easy to have the conversations in the abstract. Yes, of course, I'll be a present this. Yes, of course, I'll be a present that. What does it look like to you? Have genuine conversations. Understand where the person that you are in love with was raised? What the culture is over there? How were they raised? What was it like in their home? Did their dad participate? Because it is more than likely that the person that you're looking to partner with for the rest of your life will mirror the behavior that he or she saw growing up.
If you are partnering with a woman, for example, and you would like her to work as much as you do, but she is looking to be a traditional housewife, both of these are good options and both of these are perfectly fine options. The problem comes where you are misaligned in whether these things are an option in your relationship. So these are the conversations you need to be having. Genuine conversations about if we are going to be empowered, if we're each going to be empowered in our career and in the home, what does that look like for the two of us? Aviva has an interesting take on this.
So Aviva says, a lot of people focus the discussion on the traditional gender role, but as the world is progressing and as times are changing, and as this concept that she advocates of conscious coupling is growing and taking off, there are more options. A lot of people, she says, will go into a relationship and try to run their careers as they did before they entered into the marriage. And the result is that people end up creating unnecessary pressure for themselves and also creating a dynamic in which each one is trying to run in a different direction.
Aviva states in frustration that instead of creatively designing a life that happens to have two careers in it, we tend to get together and try to continue on two parallel careers, which often ends up feeling like our partner's career is competing with ours rather than complementing it. What we might want to start thinking about is what she calls conscious coupling. And that's built on other models of how we work and love. Then together, we start moving slowly away from what's been called what's been the dominant model, which is either the single career or the lead career in a marriage.
And then we consider other options because there are other options. She goes on to say there are options like alternators. Alternators take turns in being the lead. Partner parallelograms, they fast track together, although that's a tough call. Compliments use different kinds of careers with different pacings and life cycles to work together more effectively. And some will be mergers. And these ones throw in their lot and start a family business together. And there's also a growing number of people who are becoming solo players who will have or who will choose to stay single or life just works out that way.
What Aviva is giving us here is a roadmap or alternative to the traditional paradigm. Because of the way we've been raised and what we have seen growing up, there are only limited options of which we're aware. And the reason why Aviva's talk is so important is because it gives the alternatives. It gives you options. It is very important for you to understand what your values are. There is nothing wrong with choosing traditional roles. There's nothing wrong with choosing a different take or wanting to be equal or wanting to be largely 50-50, whatever.
What matters is that you and your partner are on the same page in real terms about what that looks like. So number one is, like I said earlier, understanding where your person comes from, female or male, understanding how they've been raised, understanding what their value system is, understanding what your value system is, and what your nurture has contributed, and what the context and the social context in which you were raised has contributed to the way you view these things.
What of those things are you able to compromise and not compromise on? Look at the options that have been available, the ones we've talked about, alternators, partner parallelograms, compliments, right? This idea of one dominant career at a time, these are alternators. Whether one of these options is something that would work for you and your partner. These conversations, if you didn't have this conversation before you got married, that's all right. Have the conversation now because nothing stops you from growing as a couple.
Nothing stops you from evolving as a couple. Nothing stops you from saying to each other, this is the value system that we have, and that value system involves us living a long and beautiful life together. How do we make a conscious effort to design that life together? Maybe we have it by changing this and changing that. That is the essence of partnership. A lot of people are moving away from the traditional view, as they should, that one parent, which is the mother, must be responsible for all of the parenting, and the father must be responsible for only a part.
The idea now is, we are each contributing. Perhaps that is how you slice the pie in your relationship, but there should be a sense of partnership, of understanding that this is a person, we are living much longer now than we used to, of understanding that this is a person that you might be spending the next 70 years of your life with. If you're going to be spending that longer time with a person, why not design a beautiful life? Why not avoid the trap of being girlfriendy, and being palatable, and having a conversation early on, and working out that it is easier to have this discussion early, and work out, perhaps this is not the person I should be marrying, rather than going in, simply so you can learn what you're already being told now, and you have to start over, or you have to work the recipe backwards.
It happens. Life happens. Sometimes you don't get things right. I'm an example of that. I did not get this right, but I also had no one to tell me these things. I hadn't yet understood that you can research things. I didn't have aunts, or mother, my mother, to warn me about some of these things, so I had to stumble in and learn, oh, if you are yoked to the wrong person, if you are yoked to a person with whom you have fundamentally different values about how to approach life, you cannot succeed in your career, or in your home life.
It is so important to know that you are equally yoked in what you view as success, in what you view as financial success, in your money management habits, in your concept of growth and parenting, in your ideas of how many children you're going to have. These are questions and discussions that are uncomfortable, but that need to be had before you get married, or as early as practically possible if you are already married. Again, a reminder, nothing stops you from redesigning your life at any point in time.
One of the points I like to make when I speak on work and life combined is that there are different parts to life, different chapters, I call them, and in each chapter, some things are more important than others, and in this, in life, in partnership, in marriage, you will find that it is possible to evolve through the different options as a couple. So you might find that you start out as parallelograms. You've graduated, and you go into corporate careers.
Then when you start family, you might find that this doesn't serve your personal goals, and that maybe one of you will leave the corporate place, and then will start a business. It might be that 10 years later, the business you started is doing very well, and the other person leaves the corporate job, and you guys become a merger. It might be that you become alternators as life progresses, and in the end, it might be that you simply become people who have created a beautiful life together, and you're living in your 50s and 60s, and you look back at how you've gone through the cycles of different stages of career and career development, but you have each invested in the other.
You see, a lot of times, we talk about leadership in the workplace. We talk about leadership of other people, but there is so much to be gained for you, and for your spouse, and for your combined endeavor to understand that mutual support makes for a wonderful and beautiful life. There is an interesting stereotype about successful women in the workplace. There is this idea that they are mostly divorced, but Cheryl actually looked into this, and she found that most women in leadership positions are actually with partners who are fully supportive of them, and they are fully supportive of their partners, and she said there are no exceptions.
Contrary to the popular notion that only unmarried women can make it to the top, the majority of the most successful female business leaders have partners. Of the 28 women who have been CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 26 were married at the time. One was divorced, and only one had never been married. Most of them said they could not have succeeded without the support of their husbands, helping with the children and the household chores, and showing a willingness to improve.
This is a quote. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie would have a very strong reaction to the use of the word helping, because what we are saying here is that you and your partner are doing this thing together. You are doing this thing together. So it is about parenting alongside each other, feeding the children alongside each other. It's about building a life alongside each other, and not focusing unduly on a mathematical 50-50, but focusing more on a contribution 50-50, on a supportive 50-50, on a value 50-50.
How do you make it work for you and the unit that you have created? Cheryl points out that it's not surprising that a lack of spousal support has the opposite effect on a career. In a 2007 study of well-educated professional women who had left the paid workforce, 60% cited their husbands as a critical factor in the decision. These women specifically listed their husbands' lack of participation in child care and other domestic tasks, and the expectations that the wives should be the ones to cut back on employment as a result of the employment as reasons for quitting.
It's just no wonder, she says, when asked at a conference what men could do to help advance women's leadership, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Cantor answered, do the laundry. Tasks like the laundry, food shopping, cleaning, and cooking are mundane and mandatory. Typically, these tasks fall to women. But now, when we say we're inviting women to sit at the corporate table, we need to remember that we are giving them an additional job. And in order for it to work on the one end, men must also participate on the other end.
There's this meme that's been going around that says research finds that women who work from home do a full day of parenting. How do I say this? That mothers who are stay-at-home mothers are doing 2.5 days of work, essentially. I am paraphrasing, but they're doing 2.5 days of work in a 24-hour period, which makes sense. Because when people stay at home, people tend to assume that they are never off and they're not doing much. But they are working all day, and they don't get to put down anything when the work day, which ends at 5, ends.
They continue into the night. They continue overnight. They pick up the next morning. When people go into the workforce as a partner that hasn't had these difficult conversations, as a partnership that hasn't figured out these things, what tends to happen is people default to the traditional. And research has found that in most instances, women are doing 50% more of the housework, 30% more of the housework, 50% more of the parenting, while the father is more free to just singularly pursue his career.
If the two support each other more, then each will progress further in their chosen path, and the home setup will also thrive. The idea is there are two of you, so that there are two pairs of hands in every situation, and not just the one. And if it's going to be a pair of hands in just the one, for example, the idea is that the partnership is conscious and on purpose, that these things are done by design, that it is a conscious coupling.
Cheryl makes a very good point in saying that she and her husband anticipated some of these things, and they talked about being parents. But because they had never been parents, they didn't know what it would look like, or how it would disrupt their lives or change their lives, for better or for worse. And when things came around, when the child came around, and things turned out to be a lot more difficult, it put a severe amount of strain on both their careers and their marriage.
And I can speak from experience, because I didn't have the right conversation. I wasn't understanding what that contribution would look like. I didn't know how I would be affected by becoming a mother. And it takes a lot out of one of you. And in order to change that, there is, of course, the request or the idea that men participate, that equality be at home and at work. There's also the idea that women need to stop gatekeeping.
In many cultures, when a child is born, the woman is ferried off to her mother or her aunties, and she stays there for months, learning how to be a parent, while her partner twiddles his thumbs and does not learn how to change a diaper. Cheryl says whenever a married woman asks her for advice on co-parenting with her husband, she tells him to let him put the diaper on the baby any way he wants to, as long as he's doing it himself.
And if he gets up to deal with the diaper before being asked, she should smile even if he puts that diaper on the baby's head. Over time, if he does things his way, he'll find the correct end. But if he's forced to do things her way, pretty soon she'll be doing it herself. Anyone who wants her mate to be a true partner must treat him as an equal and equally capable partner. In her feminist manifesto, Shimamanda says that a father is biologically able to do everything that a mother can do except breastfeed.
And I thought that was just true. It is just true. The perception of a man's ability or capacity as far as parenting comes purely from societal norms. Because of these societal norms, a lot of women gatekeep, right? So a study found that wives who engage in gatekeeping behavior do five more hours of family work per week than wives who take a collaborative approach. That means they're more tired, they're more burnt out, and they're more overloaded sensory-wise.
Another common and counterproductive dynamic that occurs when women assign or suggest tasks to their partners is that instead of sharing responsibility, they are responsible and they dole out some of it to their partner. And it becomes as though this person is doing you a favor. This is where language like father's babysitting comes from. Because a father cannot babysit. You cannot babysit your children, you parent them. You're not doing anyone a favor and you do not require special applause for doing so.
You are just being a parent, something that you signed up for. I have friends who when they had their first baby and second even, the husband was quite involved and he would leave work for all of her appointments with the gynae and her checkups. And it was never received well at the office, which is remarkable, right? It's remarkable that societal norms extend not just to individual interactions between you and your spouse. They also extend to the workplace.
Recently, people have started, men especially, have started suing employers for leave, for parenting leave as it's now called in the more advanced countries. Because you see, when family-friendly benefits like paternity leave or reduced work hours are offered, both male and female employees often worry that if they take advantage of those programs, they'll be seen as uncommitted to their jobs. And for good reason. Employees who use these benefits often face steep penalties ranging from substantial pay cuts to lost promotions or marginalizations.
Everything I listened to, read and looked at confirmed this view. And why it's so important for you and your partner to be aligned is you need to be able to support each other within the bounds of your relationship and also within the bounds of societal norms. We all know how we would treat a father coming to a mommy and me class. The fact that it's called a mommy and me class will tell you something. But understanding all of these things, understanding the dynamics, understanding the things that you are up against when you are deciding who you want to be partnered with, will help you understand why it's important for your partner to be open-minded.
Why it's important for your partner to be open to the idea of challenging a social norm. Why it's important for your partner to be a person who says, we are doing this together versus I am in charge of you. Why it's important for you to find a partner with whom you can say, this is the goal. How do we get there? Are we both entirely flexible in how we get there? Or we would like to choose a combined path or to create our own or to, as a conscious couple, design our lives.
Because that is where you can ensure that you get the best out of both your career and your home life. It's only women who are asked about balancing life and work most of the time. It's like, why are we asking women about work-life balance and not asking men? When you do, and when I say work-life balance, I mean it more, it tends to come, when it is based on gender, it tends to come along the lines of, how do you do it all? When a man is doing it all, in quotes, no one's asking him that question.
And you need to work out whether you're with a partner who facilitates the doing it all, if that's what you want, or if you're with a partner who facilitates the thing that you want, and whether you facilitate the thing that they want. You see, the days of viewing marriage as a peripheral aspect of life, and viewing career as a separate and peripheral aspect of life, while you figure out how to do work-life balance in the middle, are gone.
Work, life, career, are all one thing. How do you make the most beautiful version of it all for yourself and your partner? Understanding what that beautiful version looks like for the person you seek to marry is vital. Understanding what that beautiful vision looks like for you is vital. If enough of those pieces align, if enough of those values align, then you make the most important decision to your success, bearing in mind that success is a combined result.
You make the most important decision to your success, who you are going to partner with in achieving it. Otherwise, you simply make a decision by default on who you're going to partner with in failing at it. Have a beautiful week and make wise choices. And rate and review the podcast if you have that functionality on your app. It makes a world of difference for me. Thank you. Bye.
