EP1: What Pandemic Research Revealed About Dads

Interview with Kristen M. Shockley / Professor, University of Georgia

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

The pandemic changed parenting and relationships overnight. Kids were forced home from school. Parents were sent into remote work or forced to juggle shifts with parenting. Into this chaos, stepped Kristen Shockley, a professor at the University of Georgia, who wanted to know what this sudden shift did to how couples worked, parented and cleaned up afterward. What she found revealed unexpected insight into on relationships, but it also offered valuable lessons for the new world of work.

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Transcript

00;00;05;16 - 00;00;29;22
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host of the Company of Dads podcast where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects of being a dad in a world where men often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about their parenting roles. I know this from firsthand experience as the lead dad to my three girls, three dogs, three cats, and somewhat shockingly, three fish who are still alive.

00;00;29;24 - 00;00;48;15
Paul Sullivan
I did this all while managing my career, striving to be an above average husband and supporting my wife in her professional aspirations. One thing I know for sure about being a dad is it's not a normal role. You're not doing what dads have traditionally done. Going to work and leaving the parenting role as a mom or someone else.

00;00;48;18 - 00;01;13;20
Paul Sullivan
Nor are you always welcome in a world where moms are the primary caregivers. But here at the Company of Dad, our goal is to shake all that off and focus on what really matters family, friendship, finance, and fun. Today, my guest is Kristen M. Shockley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. I reached out to after reading a story in the New York Times that discussed her research on pandemic parenting.

00;01;13;22 - 00;01;30;06
Paul Sullivan
The results, depending on your general demeanor, were either strangely shocking or completely depressing. I'm an optimistic guy, so I went with option A more on the results later. Welcome, Doctor Shockley to the Company of Dads podcast. How are you today?

00;01;30;09 - 00;01;33;00
Kristen M. Shockley
Good. Thank you so much for having me.

00;01;33;02 - 00;01;50;09
Paul Sullivan
First of all, professor, you're down there at the University of Georgia, so I can't start off any podcast without asking you this question. If I were to buy tickets to any sporting event at the University of Georgia, that was not a football game. What would be the best option for me to say?

00;01;50;11 - 00;01;53;06
Kristen M. Shockley
You got to see the gym dogs gymnastics team.

00;01;53;08 - 00;01;55;18
Paul Sullivan
I love it. I didn't even notice the gym dogs.

00;01;55;20 - 00;02;06;28
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. They, in the past decade, they've they've been quite good. And they sell out in the Coliseum. So people are really into it. It's really cool to see a female sport get that attention.

00;02;07;04 - 00;02;14;25
Paul Sullivan
That's wonderful. But but I have to ask that the ugga does. Does the bulldog go in to the gymnastics? Arena?

00;02;14;28 - 00;02;20;24
Kristen M. Shockley
I have not seen Olga at the gymnastics arena. I have to say, you know, he lives in Savannah, so he lives about five hours away.

00;02;20;25 - 00;02;25;25
Paul Sullivan
So I've read about him. He's got, like, his own, like, like, vehicle that drives around. And he.

00;02;25;25 - 00;02;26;09
Kristen M. Shockley
Does have.

00;02;26;10 - 00;02;27;14
Paul Sullivan
A control.

00;02;27;16 - 00;02;43;17
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, we actually they did this new faculty tour for faculty when they first started, E.J.. So a couple years ago when I started, I did it and they surprised us at the end. And Ugga was there, and it was like a celebrity sighting. His car was there and. Yeah, he's he's very well taken care of.

00;02;43;19 - 00;02;47;19
Paul Sullivan
Do you have, like, an autograph? Like his, his paw and something.

00;02;47;21 - 00;02;53;14
Kristen M. Shockley
No, but I do have a picture of myself with them. And I might have, like, the biggest smile I've ever had in my life on. So.

00;02;53;17 - 00;03;19;09
Paul Sullivan
Oh, man. That's that's wonderful. So so let's kind of pivot back, to, to your research. You know, I recently read about the study that you conducted during the early part of the pandemic. It was published, last November. So I'm guessing you're doing the research. Just as things sort of started, as people sort of went to the work from home, model or many people who could went to the work from home model.

00;03;19;12 - 00;03;31;27
Paul Sullivan
Can you just sort of talk for the listeners just to kind of summarize some of the key findings from that, that that research, you said of the hypothesis that you went in with and then then what you found to doing the research?

00;03;31;29 - 00;03;50;16
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. So also give you a little bit of background on how the study came to be. You know, so it was early March, right, when everything started becoming real in the US and things started shutting down. And, at that time, my son, who's actually his birthday is today. He's turning three. But at that time, he was 15 months.

00;03;50;19 - 00;04;13;09
Kristen M. Shockley
And we got the news our daycare was shutting down. You know, at that point, it was supposed to be just two weeks. And I started sort of panicking, thinking, oh, okay, how are we going to manage this? My husband, is, the chief technology officer of a startup company. So he, he works pretty long hours, doesn't have that much flexibility.

00;04;13;11 - 00;04;35;18
Kristen M. Shockley
And then I started thinking, well, if I'm worried about this, there sure are a whole lot of other people in the country that are in the same boat. How are people going to manage when we still have to work? A lot of people still to work, like you said. But we're shifting to remote work. But the vast majority of the childcare daycare centers and we're closed, and a lot of people didn't feel comfortable having, you know, nannies come into their house.

00;04;35;20 - 00;04;53;03
Kristen M. Shockley
So we very quickly launched a study and, we surveyed dual earner couples of both people were working and had to keep working at this point. Who had at least one child under age six. And we wanted to focus on people with young kids who are just a little bit more demanding from a child care perspective.

00;04;53;05 - 00;05;12;12
Kristen M. Shockley
And, so we got the surveys out, like I said, I think it was like March 20th. Asked them, what are your plans for dealing with child care? You know, this upcoming time, how are you going to have to adjust your, work schedule? How will your spouse, we asked. And they were all heterosexual couples. We asked the wife and the husband.

00;05;12;15 - 00;05;30;12
Kristen M. Shockley
And then we content coded that to see sort of what people were saying. And then two months later, we had originally planned to follow up after the pandemic was over. We all know that's kind of a joke, right? We still still are in it. So we decided two months later things, you know, people probably were in a bit of a routine.

00;05;30;15 - 00;05;52;14
Kristen M. Shockley
And then we assessed some well-being. So in terms like psychological distress, sleep, family functioning in terms of relationship tension, family cohesion and then job performance. And going into we really interested in did people use gendered strategies. So was this falling mostly on women or are we seeing kind of more egalitarian, type divisions of labor?

00;05;52;17 - 00;05;53;13
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;05;53;15 - 00;06;13;18
Kristen M. Shockley
And the the part talking about the shocking or depressing part was the biggest. Then we did some kind of complex analyzes, sort of context that data and kind of came up with these groupings. And the biggest group we had, which was 22% of our data, was called the Wife Remote and doing it all. So these were couples where.

00;06;13;21 - 00;06;18;00
Paul Sullivan
And that's that's not something you want on a on a coffee mug, I'm guessing.

00;06;18;03 - 00;06;46;06
Kristen M. Shockley
No. You I don't think well, I could tell you it wasn't great in terms of outcomes for that group. So this, this these couples were just like the name implies, the the wife was remote. The husband sometimes was, sometimes wasn't. But she was doing pretty much all of the childcare. And they, you saw not surprisingly, those people had the highest relationship tension reported, the lowest family cohesion.

00;06;46;08 - 00;06;54;28
Kristen M. Shockley
There were surprisingly, they didn't have the lowest sleep, had low psychological or highest psychological distress and also were not performing very well.

00;06;55;01 - 00;06;59;12
Paul Sullivan
So it doesn't surprise that they didn't have the lowest sleep because they're probably exhausted. And then.

00;06;59;16 - 00;07;17;26
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, just passed right out. And and what I thought was interesting, thinking about this from the dads perspective, I would have thought if you were in that couple then, and you're the husband, your job performance would have been fine because you, you know, you weren't really changing anything, but actually that was not the group that had the best job performance.

00;07;17;26 - 00;07;45;01
Kristen M. Shockley
And I think that speaks to the issue of if one person is taking all this labor, it's creating this tension in the relationship, and that's spilling over into the husband's work life, too, even if he isn't actually doing the childcare. So if we take like a step back and think about it from an organizational standpoint, like it's not great to just not offer flexibility for people because you know, it may ultimately result in them performing worse because you're having them, then they have to put it on someone else in their household.

00;07;45;03 - 00;08;09;29
Paul Sullivan
Right? I want to go back and unpack this because, as a sort of, you know, the people who go to the company of dads, listen, this podcast now, I've got three daughters and they're now 12, nine and, four. But when the pandemic started, they were to, to, seven and, and ten and I obviously I remember the beginning of it.

00;08;09;29 - 00;08;28;10
Paul Sullivan
Well be everything else is a blur because it's just been the same. But in the beginning, you know, the two older ones that got them gathered around, the dining room table, we finally had a use for the dining room table beyond Thanksgiving dinner. And they were there with their laptops. I was there, my laptop. My wife was there with her laptop or in a different room if she had to make a call.

00;08;28;11 - 00;08;44;23
Paul Sullivan
The most challenging one, of course, was was the two year old because her nursery school tried to do, you know, remote, but you know, you can't do remote. The two year old. But one of the things that struck me is that, you know, in your research, you found that the the rules didn't really change, that the moms were still doing more.

00;08;44;23 - 00;09;01;28
Paul Sullivan
And I just I kept wondering, like, you know, what were the dads doing? Because back then, like, I wasn't doing anything. My wife and I weren't doing anything. Like, we weren't going out, like, like suddenly say, I'm about to lunch. You know, everything was close at where I live. Like the it was cold and I couldn't go play golf.

00;09;01;28 - 00;09;21;19
Paul Sullivan
I wasn't doing anything, you know, outdoors. And I live in Connecticut. And I think my, my day essentially consisted of it. Every day was exactly the same. I was, you know, working, you know, helping my kids with zoom and then, you know, more or less around 5:00, mixing a margarita for my wife and me. So what what when you were.

00;09;21;19 - 00;09;36;25
Paul Sullivan
I don't know if you were able to drill down on this, but, you know, why didn't the roles become, you know, more equal, or what were the dads doing with all that extra time if they weren't, you know, not going to cover off the ball with their with their jobs.

00;09;36;27 - 00;09;58;15
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, I don't know. We didn't we didn't specifically ask that. I can say from some of the open ended descriptions, I mean, some of these people were in couples where their spouse was a, first responder or was in health care. So, you know, those people, like, still really had to go into work. So that could have been part of it.

00;09;58;15 - 00;10;29;24
Kristen M. Shockley
But that's not all of it, because some of these husbands were were remote. Some people talked about, you know, he's he's trying to help, but the kids just sort of prefer mom. Or maybe he wasn't. She just kind of wasn't stepping up in the way that he needed to. Other people seemed to suggest, and I don't have data to speak to this, but my hunch is that during the pandemic, companies were, because of these gender roles in society, more accommodating to moms and dads.

00;10;29;27 - 00;10;46;13
Kristen M. Shockley
So I think in some cases, it might have been easier for the moms to say, like, look, I have to deal with kids. And the company was more understanding and maybe the dads didn't feel comfortable doing that, or maybe the companies were less open because they were like, oh, what's your wife doing? That kind of thing?

00;10;46;15 - 00;10;48;12
Paul Sullivan
That's interesting, probably multifaceted.

00;10;48;12 - 00;10;49;07
Kristen M. Shockley
But yeah.

00;10;49;09 - 00;11;06;29
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I'm sure that I yeah, I don't want to simplify what was nuanced research, but it is it fair to say that the companies bore some responsibility for this, at least in the beginning when they were just expected? Well, okay. You know, you've always come to work every day, so why can't you just keep working at home?

00;11;07;01 - 00;11;27;21
Kristen M. Shockley
I think absolutely. I mean, if you take a step back and look at what people have had with, particularly with kids, have had to endure during this time, I mean, it's pretty wild. Like a lot of people's work, expectations did not change at all. And there was no childcare available, at least for me, for like six months. It's a really long time.

00;11;27;23 - 00;11;46;09
Kristen M. Shockley
And that's why we're seeing huge levels of burnout. I think, it's because people just and a lot of people are back in daycares now, but it's still not 100%, you know, the same. And there's a lot of I can speak from my own experience with my kids in daycare. You know, there's still a lot of times when it shuts down because of potential exposures.

00;11;46;09 - 00;11;53;19
Kristen M. Shockley
And so we're still juggling a lot. And I don't I don't think there has been as much accommodation as one would have hoped.

00;11;53;22 - 00;12;12;02
Paul Sullivan
You know, when I first read a read about your research in the New York Times, there is just this quote that you had in there, and I just want to read it because it was it was really striking and that's and it kind of touches on this corporate angle that we're talking about here. And this is part of the issue is because it's entrenched in so many different things.

00;12;12;02 - 00;12;30;05
Paul Sullivan
There are so many different pieces of it have to move for things to really change. And this, of course, a quote referring to the the parenting dynamic of, you know, still falling primarily on the mom, even if, you know, let's for argument's sake, you know, the two parents that have equal careers, you know, what would have to move?

00;12;30;11 - 00;12;49;03
Paul Sullivan
You know, this is an area of research for you. What would have to change? Like where would you know what would start that change for there to be, you know, more equality or at least and we're going to get down to the different categories in a minute. But at least for that, dad is doing 5% to get him up to 25% or 35% if not, if not, a full 50%.

00;12;49;05 - 00;13;07;24
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. So I, I think part of it starts from when the kids are born, when you look at the data on the average amount of leave people have in the US across the board, it's pretty terrible. But it's the last time I checked for dads, the average was one day. One day of.

00;13;07;27 - 00;13;26;00
Paul Sullivan
Kids, that's that's the average. So I didn't do terribly well, in statistics in graduate school or did it really math in general. But if the average is one day and if I took four weeks off, when my last was born. So I'm skewing the average. So, I mean, can you have less than what you can? You have like.

00;13;26;04 - 00;13;26;29
Kristen M. Shockley
A lot of people have a.

00;13;26;29 - 00;13;29;21
Paul Sullivan
Negative one day, like, you know, a lot of.

00;13;29;24 - 00;13;32;27
Kristen M. Shockley
A lot of people actually have nothing.

00;13;32;29 - 00;13;46;29
Paul Sullivan
But but I don't want to joke about this. Are these people who are just not given the opportunity to take the leave? Are these people who have the opportunity to take the parenting leave as as the dad and choose not to or feel that they can't take it?

00;13;47;02 - 00;14;06;26
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. So that's that's a really good distinction. So this is the amount that they take. So I think you're seeing both of that with people who just don't have access to it. If they do, it's unpaid and a lot of people just can't afford to go without getting paid, especially right when you have the expense of a new baby.

00;14;06;28 - 00;14;29;23
Kristen M. Shockley
And but in a lot of places, there's just is no leave for, for dads, period. And so I guess you could take sick leave, but, you know, again, this is all it's really making it difficult for people to be able to take the leave that needs. So if we start out with a system that's imbalanced, research shows from from the get go that imbalance, you know, is going to carry over.

00;14;29;26 - 00;14;47;00
Kristen M. Shockley
When you look at families where dads do take longer leave, in the beginning, you tend to see a more equal division of labor later on. So that's one issue is and I think part of that is if we don't have really any government support helping, in that sense, you know, we have pretty much the weakest.

00;14;47;02 - 00;15;03;05
Kristen M. Shockley
I think there's two other nations that have no guaranteed paid leave, and in the world, and we're amongst them. So you know, it's it's putting it on companies to sort of do the right thing. And, yes, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't.

00;15;03;08 - 00;15;22;14
Paul Sullivan
So, I wanted a yeah, I'm so interested in this. So I'm just going to interrupt you because I want to know more. When you look at, you know, the correlation between that, amount of paid or amount of sort of parental leave, paid or not parental leave that dads take, and the more they take, the more involved they later on.

00;15;22;16 - 00;15;43;05
Paul Sullivan
I mean, do you have any sense if that greater leave in the beginning sort of primes the dad brain to want to be more involved? Or do you think the dad, who would decide to take, additional leave is just wired? To want to share more of the parenting or want to be more involved with the day to day with with his kids.

00;15;43;07 - 00;16;03;16
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, I think it's probably both. It would be great to be able to do a true experiment where we randomly assign people to take leave, and then we could pass it out. But I did just read an article and I can't remember where, but it was fascinating about they had done some stuff on the effects of, of taking leave on the dads brain early on.

00;16;03;19 - 00;16;17;04
Kristen M. Shockley
And they showed that some different connections were made from dads who had that initial bonding period when they had more time off from work. So I do think there is something that's going on. It goes beyond the, just selection effects.

00;16;17;06 - 00;16;34;01
Paul Sullivan
I don't want to make light of anything. But but I'm thinking back to my own time, being super involved with my three daughters when they were really little. And I just wanted what was going through my brain because I was so, sleep deprived. I started joking, and then it was a joke anymore.

00;16;34;01 - 00;16;51;26
Paul Sullivan
They just try to get the balance between coffee, water and red wine. Correct. And if I could do that, I just keep sailing. But, you know, too much coffee. You're jittery. Too much red wine. Well, I wish you hung over and then, you know, too much water. You got to go to the bathroom at the wrong time. All of which makes it very difficult to the demanding job.

00;16;51;28 - 00;17;10;09
Paul Sullivan
This is, All right, so. So we've got the early stages, and I know, you know, the paid parenting parent leave is a huge issue right now in America. I know it's important, but, you know, as a father with sort of almost 13 years under my belt, you know, I think sometimes like, okay, that's the beginning.

00;17;10;09 - 00;17;42;22
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, it's not easy. It's a lot of sleep deprivation. You know, in my late 40s, I wouldn't want to go back to it for any money in the world, but. But, you know, kids don't get sick at the opportune time. The kids don't fall at the opportune time. Kids fall and get sick or or just need to talk when you have something to do for work, when you, you know you when you have a deadline, when you have a project that's due and you have your boss calling, you know, what is the do you have any ideas as to how to make things you know better for this parent so there can

00;17;42;22 - 00;18;04;15
Paul Sullivan
be more equality or even, you know, in the case of what I'm trying to do at the company of dads, for for the dads to sort of emerge and proudly, you know, take on more of that parenting responsibility, you know, are there things that the government that the companies can do that that society can do to normalize, somebody putting their hand up and say, look, I'm not gonna lie to you and say, I'm sick.

00;18;04;15 - 00;18;12;16
Paul Sullivan
I'm not going to lie to you and say, I got to do this. I got to help my kid, and I got to help my kid for the next three hours, and then I'll. Then I'll log back on.

00;18;12;19 - 00;18;37;23
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. I think that you you hit the nail on the head when you use the term normalize. Because I think that's another part of this multifaceted issue is that it is normalized for women, to say more, hey, I, I have a sick kid, but it's not normalized in the same way for men. And so that's where in that article I was talking about, the author was asking me, do you think these things are going to change?

00;18;37;23 - 00;19;01;10
Kristen M. Shockley
And I was just sort of pessimistic because, like, how do you change these, this ingrained sort of masculinity? In, in society where, you know, it's not okay for men to admit that they're doing something for their family? I mean, I don't even know if that's masculinity, but this idea that it's not the man's role to do something for their family, which, I think a lot of us on the surface can say we accept.

00;19;01;10 - 00;19;23;01
Kristen M. Shockley
But when you look at behaviors, they don't always align with that. So I think the way is for, for men like you and your listeners to step up and and talk about it. And so that then other people see, okay, it's okay to talk about it. He's talking about it and he's doing fine. Because I think a lot of it and there's some research that supports this idea.

00;19;23;04 - 00;19;43;09
Kristen M. Shockley
Men are doing this stuff silently, whereas women aren't. And so then that's just perpetuating the problem. Because if you're doing a silently, nobody knows the reason behind it. If you were talking more about it and being outward, then I think that would get us there to helping normalize it. But again, that's, that's like a slow, slow change.

00;19;43;09 - 00;19;46;13
Kristen M. Shockley
And it's not like a super easy action oriented item.

00;19;46;16 - 00;20;13;12
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. No. And that's what we're trying to supercharge here. Because there's a flip side to it. It's like, you know, when you're not telling the truth, you're causing a lot of harm. So some men may be doing it silently and not being vocal about it because they don't feel comfortable. And look, I was guilty of that, you know, for, for, you know, almost all of my time at that, The New York Times, because I thought, okay, I can, you know, manage everything around here and but but, you know, I didn't feel super comfortable telling my girlfriend to my town in Connecticut, you know?

00;20;13;14 - 00;20;25;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, the running joke is like, you know, I'd be sort of be after round golf. Look at my phone. You know, my really going to blurt out. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a four year old into a ballet class? I mean, they look at me like I'd had 14 drinks on the golf course.

00;20;25;04 - 00;20;45;12
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. But the flip side of this is they're often, you know, senior female executives. Least, you know, there's my wife who's a working mom tells me, you know who appear like they're doing everything and they're managing everything, and they're not really saying, like, okay, I have a nanny, I have two nannies. I have, you know, a couple nannies and a housekeeper, or I have a husband who's at home and doesn't work.

00;20;45;12 - 00;20;58;28
Paul Sullivan
I mean, I know that may be out of the purview of your your research, but, I mean, is there just a broader case for, for for parents, whatever they're doing, being, you know, bluntly honest with the roles that they're having in the hope of normalizing it a bit more?

00;20;59;01 - 00;21;15;26
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I don't think it's all on men. I, I agree there. If everybody talks about it, particularly women who are higher up in the organizations, I think that can have a trickle down effect. And that's also a good thing just from a role modeling standpoint. So people know you really can't do this all by yourself.

00;21;15;28 - 00;21;41;26
Kristen M. Shockley
It's actually impossible when we go back to that ideal worker idea. Right. Like that one mentality of being totally committed to your job was based on the notion that you have somebody at home doing everything else. You know, it is actually impossible to do both of these things perfectly without tons of support. And I think we just need to be okay with that and talking about it and, and focusing more on, well, what does that support look like?

00;21;41;26 - 00;22;02;24
Kristen M. Shockley
And from the work side, we're still doing work in this old way. Like what can we do now that's different that that helps with support. And I think that's been one cool thing for the pandemic is this remote work shift. You know, now companies there's a huge hesitation before, for remote work, which a lot of parents want to just for the additional flexibility, saying, well, you can't do this job.

00;22;02;24 - 00;22;26;29
Kristen M. Shockley
It couldn't be done remotely. Well, now it's pretty hard to say that when somebody has been doing it for 18 months. Right. And so I'm kind of excited from that standpoint. I think we're going to actually see a real change. And in a rare sort of circumstance where we got pushed into it with remote work becoming more the norm, which I think can help generally with some of these issues, too, in terms of support for everyone.

00;22;27;02 - 00;22;50;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. You said something that you and I were talking about this before we started, the pod, and that was the notion of the ideal worker. And this is kind of goes back to Bill Friedman, a famous economist at Chicago. You know, the business of businesses, business is his famous phrase. But, of course, you know, when that notion of the ideal worker came about, people went to work and they worked a certain number of hours and they went home.

00;22;50;02 - 00;23;12;19
Paul Sullivan
Maybe they were doing shift work, maybe they work 9 to 5, nine, six. And when they went home, they didn't have a cell phone. They didn't have a computer, they didn't have people calling them. And, I wonder if you know, yet yet we still cling to this idea of the ideal worker. I mean, is it a I'm going to answer my whole question here, but it feels like it's, you know, it's time to just put to rest that notion of the ideal worker because because, you know, work is so fungible.

00;23;12;19 - 00;23;30;27
Paul Sullivan
We can we many of us, not all of us, but, you know, those of us who can work remotely, can sort of work whenever we need to. And that's both good and bad, because, you know, I would think, you know, my own situation in the pandemic, I was able to sort of say, okay, you know, I'm going to take an hour and do this with, you know, one of my daughters.

00;23;30;27 - 00;23;47;21
Paul Sullivan
And I justified it to my hat to myself by saying, well, if I if I was on a phone call with somebody right now and they and my boss is trying to reach me, well, she wouldn't be able to reach me because I'm on a phone call doing work. So what's the difference if I'm, you know, spending this hour with my daughter, doing whatever I want to do with her, she needs to do that.

00;23;47;21 - 00;24;00;21
Paul Sullivan
And but I think I still that I had to come up with a strategy like that to justify taking an hour away. Whereas, you know, if I was in back to back meetings and she was calling a day to answer the phone, I wouldn't really worry.

00;24;00;26 - 00;24;26;23
Kristen M. Shockley
It's just really interesting in the way work has historically been structured. And then we have it, like you're saying, we haven't shifted it with the changes in technology. It's actually kind of crazy that we even still work 48 hour most people more than 40 hour work weeks based on the increases in efficiency we've had. You know, and it really stems if you look at the origins of the 40 hour workweek, it's came up in a very different time than today.

00;24;26;23 - 00;24;41;27
Kristen M. Shockley
So we don't it should just be do what you need to do. Right. Like there's this idea of a results only work environment, which I think is, is really cool. And they've been studies that show the benefits of this. But it's just get done what you need to get done when you need to get done it and that's it.

00;24;41;27 - 00;25;03;08
Kristen M. Shockley
So if you want to do something with your kids in the middle of the day and work later at night, like, fine, you know, it's like the accountability factor is there, you know, why do you need to physically be I mean, for some jobs, of course you do need to be physically there. But why? For a lot of jobs, you need to be physically in the same place from these set hours, taking up like most of your waking hours, like.

00;25;03;10 - 00;25;23;05
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, we'll we'll move on for this. I could talk about this forever, but I do think of myself like a history major in college and graduate school. And I was like to remind people like the 40 hour workweek, it it was instituted at a time when people retired, when they're 62 and died about 64, you know, so it was kind of structured in a completely different era.

00;25;23;05 - 00;25;44;27
Paul Sullivan
And now yet we still cling to it. One of the things I like to talk about from your research is you talked, you know, the about a couple of these, these personas or archetypes that you found among the sort of father mother relationships and how they kind of split up, the childcare duties and the household duties during the beginning of the pandemic.

00;25;44;29 - 00;26;10;20
Paul Sullivan
I would like you to talk about, you know, some of the other ones you talked about, you know, wife remote does it all, but there's wife remote doing most, you know, alternating days. There are all these different strategies that that, you know, people came up with, to sort of make it work for them. And it'd be great if you kind of highlight, you know, the significant ones and then sort of explain to the listeners, why those why those worked or didn't really work.

00;26;10;23 - 00;26;29;22
Kristen M. Shockley
Sure. Yeah. So we have the the wife remote does it all. Then we had the wife remote and does most and what I found fascinating about this group. So the only difference was these people would say, like I'm doing all childcare except for, you know, Thursday afternoons my husband takes the kids, or if I have a big meeting, he'll step in.

00;26;29;24 - 00;26;38;21
Kristen M. Shockley
And, you know, we saw a lot of negative outcomes like I talked about before with the wife. Remote does at all. But we did not see that same trend with the does most, except for.

00;26;38;21 - 00;26;40;10
Paul Sullivan
Like why do you.

00;26;40;13 - 00;27;00;28
Kristen M. Shockley
Sleep? I'm not sure. I think there could be something about, there's other research that suggests that gratitude plays a really big role in couple dynamics. And so I, I think if you're in that situation and you're recognizing I'm, I'm doing a lot of the childcare and maybe it's because function of our jobs, it just works better this way.

00;27;01;01 - 00;27;19;29
Kristen M. Shockley
But my husband's trying to step in when he can. Like, that takes away a little bit of that resentment. And that tension, just to some extent. That would be my hypothesis. I don't know, we couldn't really parse that out with the data, but I thought that was really fascinating, that just having a little bit of relief seemed to go a long way.

00;27;20;02 - 00;27;34;21
Paul Sullivan
Meaning like I have, a couple of big calls, later the week at, you know, 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, whatever. Can you rearrange your schedule to do that? And that's when the the wife remote doing most when the husband kind of came in. Is that how this scenario worked?

00;27;34;24 - 00;27;58;29
Kristen M. Shockley
Exactly. Or they would just have like a set afternoon that he, you know, that was his one afternoon to watch the kids. But yeah, it was a mix of those two things. So that was interesting. And then, we had a couple egalitarian strategies. So those, those two were those skewed towards traditional gender roles. And the egalitarian strategies tended to be, the first one was alternating days.

00;27;59;01 - 00;28;19;14
Kristen M. Shockley
So these were people who were largely not remote. And so, you know, one might work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and the other Thursday, Friday. And we actually saw some pretty positive, comparatively outcomes for those couples. And I think that's because there's something to being able to totally segment your day. Like today I'm on with work. Today I'm on the kids.

00;28;19;16 - 00;28;20;06
Kristen M. Shockley
And that makes.

00;28;20;06 - 00;28;30;07
Paul Sullivan
That makes sense to me because it's like you're not being interrupted when you're trying to work into you're just totally locked in. You're working. And then when you're not like, okay, yeah, here I am doing zoom school.

00;28;30;09 - 00;28;34;12
Kristen M. Shockley
Exactly. But by virtue of that, you have to reduce your hours. And a lot of people don't.

00;28;34;12 - 00;28;38;11
Paul Sullivan
Have to be hyper organized to, to be hyper organized if you're going to be trading off like that.

00;28;38;14 - 00;28;56;11
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. And you have to have a job that would allow you like, oh, you're only working Monday and Tuesday. I think some people were probably doing that without telling the company. But, you know, a lot of people could have gotten away with that. So, I think that only works for certain types of jobs then, with two other egalitarian strategies.

00;28;56;13 - 00;29;15;20
Kristen M. Shockley
And they both were we're both people were remote, but in one we called it the planned mini shifts. So these people would just every day it was like the wife's working, let's say, you know, seven to noon, the husband's working noon to five, and they would just have their mini shifts each day. And then we had the second was remote that.

00;29;15;22 - 00;29;32;17
Paul Sullivan
That one there, that one that kind of resonated with me because what my wife and I did was I would sort of it be in the morning when the kids are doing their zoom school, and I'd be at the table and she'd be doing any calls that she has, you know, as many as she could where she needed privacy and, I don't know, answer emails to do whatever and kind of, you know, watch out for the kids.

00;29;32;23 - 00;29;43;02
Paul Sullivan
And then we flip it. And then in the afternoon, you know, as they were finishing up school or doing whatever, she'd kind of step in and I'd go do the, you know, 3 or 4 calls that I couldn't be disturbed for.

00;29;43;04 - 00;29;52;22
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. We thought it was a good chunk of the. It's a little okay, what's up my head. But, I think maybe 15% of the people were doing that strategy.

00;29;52;25 - 00;30;00;12
Paul Sullivan
But just, I mean, just for full disclosure on that strategy with us, the margarita making at 5:00, that that always felt to me.

00;30;00;15 - 00;30;03;13
Kristen M. Shockley
That's an important part of the, the strategy there.

00;30;03;16 - 00;30;05;17
Paul Sullivan
Totally agree at this going.

00;30;05;19 - 00;30;23;18
Kristen M. Shockley
I got actually my got pregnant with my second baby during the pandemic. And my biggest concern was like, how am I going to give up the the 5:00 drink? But I did it. So then then the other strategy with the two remote people was called, we call it needs based alternation. So these people didn't have those many shifts.

00;30;23;18 - 00;30;40;28
Kristen M. Shockley
They were just a lot of them set. Each night we sit down, we look at our schedule and we decide who's going to be with the kids when based on what we have to do that day, and also based on the kids needs. And, ahead of time, I would have thought that seems pretty challenging to me. That seems like a lot of work and a lot of communication.

00;30;40;28 - 00;30;58;12
Kristen M. Shockley
So I would have thought that would have been not as good for for wellbeing outcomes, but actually, we saw better outcomes for that alternation strategy than the mini shifts. So the mini shifts, people were performing worse. And they also had a little bit more relationship tension.

00;30;58;15 - 00;31;04;13
Paul Sullivan
And I mean, because like, somebody might run over on their mini shift and then cut into the other person's baby shift or.

00;31;04;14 - 00;31;21;17
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, I'm not sure if it exactly why. I mean, it could just be perhaps because it was rigid too, and you just didn't feel like you had as much wiggle room. I also think that needs phase alternation required you to communicate. And we know that, you know, communication in general within a couple is is good for a lot of things.

00;31;21;17 - 00;31;34;15
Kristen M. Shockley
So it may just have been sort of a byproduct of that. They had to communicate order to do that strategy. But I was sort of surprised by that finding. But yeah, across the board, the alternation based on needs seemed to be better.

00;31;34;17 - 00;31;59;03
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. One of your findings and you mentioned this earlier on in the pod, but that wife remote doing most was the best outcome for relationships. You could expand on that a bit, but I'd also like to know, was there one strategy that that was the best outcome for both some sort of balance between both the relationship and the sort of work productivity?

00;31;59;05 - 00;32;00;29
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, that alternating days one.

00;32;01;04 - 00;32;01;26
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I think.

00;32;01;28 - 00;32;16;03
Kristen M. Shockley
That was that's we looked across the board. Yeah. That seemed to be the best. Even though they were reducing hours less, people still said they were performing pretty well and it was self-report performance. So maybe it'd be different if you asked a supervisor. But,

00;32;16;05 - 00;32;21;11
Paul Sullivan
Where the hell is Bob that. Yeah. He hasn't been here at Tuesday and like a month and a half. What do you do?

00;32;21;11 - 00;32;24;17
Kristen M. Shockley
Like, I'm doing great.

00;32;24;19 - 00;32;28;13
Paul Sullivan
He was making the margarita at lunchtime. That that.

00;32;28;15 - 00;32;51;29
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, but that seemed to be. But again, I think that, you know, only works for a certain type of job. So I think you kind of have to look at, okay, what realistically can you do? And within that I would, I would probably advocate for the, the needs based alternation. If you're both able to be remote, if one person really can't do anything, then I would say try to make it so they can step in a little bit and get that, you know, wife remote doing most.

00;32;51;29 - 00;33;04;00
Kristen M. Shockley
Although hopefully it's not just wife to somebody remote do most. And I didn't talk about this at all there there was a small percentage I think was 4% of the data where the husband was doing most or all, but that was only 4% of the couples.

00;33;04;02 - 00;33;08;09
Paul Sullivan
Okay. That makes me feel like that makes me feel elite. That I was in the 4%.

00;33;08;10 - 00;33;11;24
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. Good. Good job.

00;33;11;26 - 00;33;30;09
Paul Sullivan
You know, but you also talked about this and this another interesting point that, you know, the the wife remote and does it all. That hurt the husband's job performance. And you would think sort of intuitively, well why you know, if any he he doesn't have any sort of commute. He's not driving, to work. He's not sitting on a train.

00;33;30;09 - 00;33;44;05
Paul Sullivan
He's he's had all those hours back in his day. He should be super employee. But but he suffered. And you know why, why, why do you think that was the the case?

00;33;44;07 - 00;33;56;09
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, I have to think it goes back to the relationship tension because we saw that group had the highest tension. And that's from, you know, both wives and husbands were reporting high tension. So it wasn't just like the wife was annoyed and he was oblivious.

00;33;56;09 - 00;33;57;08
Paul Sullivan
And he was taking a nap.

00;33;57;12 - 00;33;57;28
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah.

00;33;57;28 - 00;33;59;13
Paul Sullivan
They're both extra hours to now.

00;33;59;18 - 00;34;23;16
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah. They're both picking up on like things are tense right now. And I think it's just hard when you, you know, things are tense at home. It's hard to focus at work. And, you know, there's probably some guilt that came along with it. You know, we didn't really measure any of these, like, resentment, guilt, emotions. But, I have to think that that a lot of that was going on, that was just, just distracting from from being able to be 100% at work.

00;34;23;18 - 00;34;45;13
Paul Sullivan
It's been great. So wrapping things up here, which I really enjoyed talking to you. I mean, your findings, any you talked about sort of revisiting this, you know, at some point, I guess you said at the end of the pandemic. So, yeah, you know, talk to you again a couple years. But, yeah, I hope you do revisit this, because I'd love to see, if anything stuck.

00;34;45;13 - 00;35;13;12
Paul Sullivan
You know, if people, you know, did they learn from their mistakes? Did they learn that what I'm doing is not making anybody happy? Or do they just persist? And what my question, though, is, you know, when you look at this data and and it's probably not your role to be prescriptive, but if you looked at this data and you could sort of advise, you know, fathers and mothers on on how to sort of, you know, interact, react going forward, what would that advice be like?

00;35;13;12 - 00;35;23;18
Paul Sullivan
What does this data show you? What what should we have learned from this to be better parents, husbands, wives, you know, workers?

00;35;23;20 - 00;35;43;19
Kristen M. Shockley
Yeah, that's a great question. I think I would advise, you know, don't just sort of default, to what maybe seems like the path of least resistance, which I think because of a lot of the way things are that I've talked about before, ingrained in society is going to default to the mom being the one that picks up most of the childcare.

00;35;43;21 - 00;36;08;17
Kristen M. Shockley
I would say really sit down and think about, you know, what can we do here that's going to make this, a little bit more equitable? Because even though we found some good outcomes for the wife does most you know, that was pretty short term. I think long term people can't sustain this kind of thing. And so, you know, whether that strategizing about how can you talk to your boss, to let them know, like, look, I have to have some flexibility here.

00;36;08;17 - 00;36;34;08
Kristen M. Shockley
I can't just put this all on my spouse. Whether it's thinking about creative ways that that you can pick up the slack, you know, maybe shifting your schedules a little bit. I think it's really important to to just push things and think outside the boundaries versus default and maybe what feels like the simplest path based because, yeah, society sort of puts that on the mom typically.

00;36;34;10 - 00;36;41;05
Paul Sullivan
Great. Thank you again for joining me, professor on the Company of Dads podcast. I've really enjoyed this this conversation.

00;36;41;07 - 00;36;44;11
Kristen M. Shockley
Yes. Thanks for having me and go dog.

00;36;44;13 - 00;36;48;11
Paul Sullivan
And listeners, please remember we're all in this together.