FLEX! by Annie Auerbach

Author:Annie Auerbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Be aware that men tend to do the outdoor chores that are infrequent and women tend to do everything else. Try and mix it up. Dad, pack for the holidays. Mum, take out the bins. Everything might fall apart, but who knows, it might not and your kids will dislodge their assumptions and expect the load to be shared when they grow up.

CREATE A JOINT VISION

Of course, flexing the home isn’t just about the chores. It’s about creating a joint vision of the lives we want to live, our career goals, and how that will work over time. We need to think carefully about when we accelerate at work and when we consolidate and slow down. When we do this, we take control.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, gender expert and author of How Women Mean Business, advocates big-picture thinking. She thinks that it should be less about the jigsaw puzzle of two different careers and more about designing a life together. She asks: ‘What’s the life that we want to build? What are our goals, our mission? What are we going to prioritize, when? Is it family, is it money, is it impact?’ Within that framework, where do we flex around each other’s ambitions and needs?

One way of thinking about this is the ‘Borgen model’. Borgen is a Danish political drama television series which aired in the UK in 2012. My friends and I became obsessed with it, in particular the Birgitte Nyborg character, who became the first female prime minister of Denmark. In the series, she had an agreement with her husband Philip, an academic, that she would have the ‘lead career’ for five years as prime minister, whilst his career took a back seat and he managed the emotional load, looking after the kids and the home. After this, she would step back and give him his turn. Despite it not quite going to plan, I loved this arrangement and found it inspiring. The generosity of making trade-offs for one other, and seeing a bigger picture of joint and intertwined success seemed like a revelation. It is also a bold and proactive approach, rather than just fire-fighting in response to opportunities or problems.

Now, this need not be a five-year set-in-stone contract. It could be a looser agreement to flex around each other’s ambitions.

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