71. How Did We Get Here? When Modern Marriage Falls Into Traditional Roles

Hey doc,

In this episode of ✨Stethoscopes and Strollers✨, I’m revisiting a live I did called: "The partner you thought you had😩 How gender roles turned your progressive hubby into a 1950s a-hole"

Because let’s be honest: even the most modern, educated, emotionally intelligent men can slide into outdated gender roles once kids come into the picture.

You’re a physician. A mother. A leader. So why do you feel like you’re living a version of your mother’s or grandmother’s life, except now, you're expected to do it all, with a career too?

This conversation is not about blame. It’s about:

• Why “progressive” partners still default to traditional gender roles
• What socialization, family modeling, and unseen expectations have to do with it
• How resentment builds, even in good marriages
• What to do when the dynamic at home doesn’t feel like a partnership anymore

You didn’t marry the wrong man. And you’re not wrong for being exhausted.

Let’s talk about the invisible pressures, the unspoken assumptions, and the tools you can use to make a change without waiting for him to magically “get it.”

Listen to Episode 23 Spouse Skeptic? Navigating Au Pair Objections for Physician Moms to find some of the communication tools that I discussed in this episode.

Grab the Nanny Hiring Checklist here!

Thinking about getting an Au Pair? Get the Au Pair Checklist!

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If you feel you need direct support or someone to talk through the unique challenges of being a physician mom, schedule a free coaching session.

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Transcript

 Hey Doc, a while ago I did a Facebook Live called the Partner You thought you had, how your Progressive hubby turned into 1950s, asshole. And I wanna talk more about that.

The live was about how in Even the most progressive relationships, once the kids come, once you get married and you have this family, things kind of fall into default dynamics, right? These "traditional" gender roles that you didn't sign up for. And this is not about blaming you for ending up in this situation or bashing him. It's for us to all understand and realize how we end up in this situation. If you have ever looked around and was like, "How did I end up here? I am high achieving. I am a whole doctor. Why do I feel like a 1950s housewife? And then I still have a whole ass job to go to and save people's lives."

This is for you.  want you to be able to recognize where this may come up in your life.

I want you to know that it is not your fault that it happens to a lot of us, and I want you to be able to change it, right? I want you to be able to change it. So let me start off with a story, and it's the story of how this showed up in my marriage. So for context, my husband is very close with his parents and how much he loves them and their relationship is actually a big part of what made me fall in love with him.

It wasn't like this weird mama's boy type of situation, but they were very close and there was this level of respect that I just found so endearing, and I knew he had a good example. I knew he would be a good father and a good husband, so it really shaped our relationship very early on. And what I always found so fascinating was he would talk to me about the things his father told him about how.

They didn't really value the benefits of a stay at home wife, right? There was no expectation to have a woman taking care of you while you were out doing the work, because that's not what his father valued and that's not the relationship that they had. His mother always worked and.

She was an entrepreneur and was able to follow her passions and do all those things. It was framed in this very egalitarian, you know, value a strong woman, you both contribute to the household and nobody's just at home taking care of anybody.

Right. So this is the context that I had. Fast forward to when we actually have the children and I have all of the frustrations that you know about by now. Right.

Feeling like I just have to deal with every single detail, including, even though I didn't physically clean, 'cause I've always had a cleaner, but the tidying in between, the coordination of the childcare, the groceries, the everything that it takes, was for me to do. And in one particular situation where my mother-in-law happened to be here, um, helping us with the children, I was complaining to her about her child and how messy the kitchen had been left.

And I was just like, come on. Like, I'm doing so much. I was postpartum. Like, why can't he just, you know. Clean up. And if you're wondering, wow, you're telling your mother-in-law that yes, she's wonderful. Like the relationship is great. She was here for months at a time. I love her. And you know, I really had to be at my peak to even tell her, yes, we're good, but it's not like I confided in her in that way.

But I was just so frustrated and she very calmly was just like, yeah, that's, that's men, you know? And it wasn't in a way to make me feel bad. It wasn't like, well, you should be doing it. It was just that she was resigned to the fact that. That's men. And this is what happens when you get married to them when the children come.

And I just remember being so surprised because I didn't think that that would be her response because of the idea that I had about their marriage and what was relayed to me from my husband. But. During this time where she was around more helping us with our children, I began to see that, no, she was very traditional and it came up the most when

They would be downstairs, my mother-in-law, my husband and the children, and I was upstairs doing something and as soon as I came down, she would ask me to do something or, tell me something about the children. And I remember being like, but your, your child was right here. The children's father was right here.

So it was like she was waiting for me. And I just wanna give more context. She wasn't intentionally avoiding. My husband because she want, didn't want to bother him. It wasn't even that, I really, truly believe it was subconscious because she holds him accountable in her own way. So it wasn't even that. I really think she was waiting for me as their mother, and I really don't even think she realized that she was doing that.

And that was also confirmed by my husband when I talked to him about recording this episode, he was like, oh, wow, that's fascinating. I really don't think she even knew she was doing that. because of course now we're at a point where we could talk about these things and, talking about this episode was the first time he heard that story.

But yeah, he agreed that she probably didn't even realize she was doing it. So it just made me realize that even in the most progressive households, that generation. Fell into traditional gender roles and that generation, it's a generation that raised us. So yes, unless you had parents that were intentional about rewriting these roles and showing you a different way, chances are you're going to end up just like them, which is what happened to us.

And it definitely took intention and work to tease out all of that and realize that this was not working for us.

 I think it can feel like whiplash, right? Like you meet this person. And they know that you're going to be a working woman. And you're going to potentially have a very busy life and schedule.

And for most of us it's like, oh, this is a good thing. Like look at my, look at my woman. There's, they're proud. Everything y'all do and you get married, shared, you're working as a team, and then the baby comes and all of a sudden you are the default parent you are. Doing everything at home, you're managing everything.

Even if you outsource, you still have the mental load of coordinating everyone and answering all the questions and then, oh yeah, you still have to go to work. And it's just like, look, this is not what I signed up for. Like what happened? Like what happened to that partnership? What happened?

And you start hearing words being thrown around, like helping when referring to your husband, as opposed to you just doing right, like, does your husband help or he should help more and it's just like, wait a minute.

Why is it that you are helping, but I'm just expected to do because of the gender roles, right? It's because, like I mentioned in the last episode, this is what we were trained for. This is what we were conditioned and socialized for. It's for taking care of a house, taking care of children, regardless of the path that we were going to pursue.

Professionally, even if they told you you could be anything, you can do anything. Even if you were pushed into having a profession, you push into being a doctor because you were smart. At some point the expectation is there, and I just wanna be clear, right. The roles themselves are often not the problem.

It becomes a problem when one of three things happens. You have the whiplash. You didn't think this was ever gonna happen to you. You had no desire to fall into traditional gender roles, but then all of a sudden, here you are. Right? So expectations again, like last episode,

but they're also people that are actually fine with the actual role, right? You don't really want childcare outsource. You don't really mind cooking. You love organizing and that's, that's your jam.

Like everything that comes with it is fine, but. Like anybody, it's too much for one person. Right. It's overwhelming. It's that you don't have support that Yes. Even stay at home moms or non-paid working moms need support. Right. And then the third time where the gender roles become a problem is specifically for us as physician moms is when. There's a conflict between who you thought you were and this new role that you have inhabited because you are now a mother, and either way it feels destabilizing. You feel like you don't recognize yourself. It could be that. You are a professional, you love your career, you worked so hard, but all of a sudden you feel like you kind of wanna stay home and do all this stuff, which was unexpected, which happened to me for Hot Second BTWs, or is that now you.

Have this child, you feel like you should want to spend all this time and stay home but you can't wait to get back to work. You're like, uh, I don't want to do all this stuff, but I feel like I should. I feel like this is what a good mom does. So it's the conflict, right? So when one of those three things happens, then the gender roles become a problem.

And then sprinkle in just generally feeling like a failure at motherhood? No. No matter which category you fall into, it's just like, come on, I can't win. I. But like I talked about before in the last episode, this is not your fault. It's not his fault.

You didn't marry the wrong man.

You weren't duped into

 marrying a "traditional" man

when he thought he was progressive.

This is bigger than you and me.

This is societal.

This is ingrained in us

about who is supposed to deal

with the emotional and mental labor

of running a home and raising children,

and who is supposed to be focused

on being the breadwinner.

I hate that word, by the way,

and protecting the family

and, you know,

doing the manual labor and all of that.

It is above us.

So your husband may still respect you. He may still know that you know, this is the career that you chose, and he knew that when you married him , but he may still be expecting that the home is taken care of, the kids are taken care of. He still may assume that that's not his responsibility.

Or he may not even realize that he assumes and expects all those things because it may have been unconscious just like my husband, so, okay. Now that we understand what has happened.

We have named what you are going through, what are we going to do to change it? Right? You have fallen into a role that you didn't want to, you didn't expect to, or you feel unsupported in. What are we going to do? And if this has happened to you as it did with me, there's already resentment there. But let me tell you, resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, and that is not what I want for you. That is not what I wanted for myself, and that is why we are having these conversations.

I understand that if the resentment is already there, a lot of the things that I say may be a little bit difficult to navigate because you are already so pissed off. So that's why I'm gonna give you some tools to deal with it in a way that is going to affect the change that you want in the fastest time possible with the least amount of arguments, right?

So. Communication, and I framed this in episode 23, where I talk about how to convince your husband to get an au pair. But I'm just gonna go over it real quick again. So. You want to make sure that this conversation that you are going to have about the roles and how you want things to change is the most successful.

Therefore, making sure the stage is set, making sure that you are in the best mood possible, as much as you can manage that in this current state, and also making sure that he's in the best mood possible.

So if he had a long day. You had a long day, y'all are bickering. Probably not the best time to bring it up, So choose your time well, and you want to start off by asking, Hey, I wanna talk to you about something that's really important to me. Are you available?

And this way, if you're not sure about his mental state or if it's a good time, you find out right away without trying to wonder and figure it out. We are about getting the the information directly right. Just ask, is this a good time? And another added benefit is the fact that you asked. Will soften him and make him more amenable to whatever it is you're about to say, because it's a little bit of respect there where you are considering his schedule, what he has going on, which if you're honest with yourself, doesn't always happen because whatever you have going on is so often so much more important and so much more tiring that it's just like, well, I don't actually care what what you're doing.

We need to talk about this now. So it avoids that and it's just like, oh, well thank you for asking. Yes, I am available. Or if the answer is no, that's fine. Don't just leave it there. Find out, okay, when are you available? And decide on a time and circle back. Super important. So whenever the time comes or if he says, yes, you wanna frame.

Let him know what it's about and you are speaking about you from your heart connected to your own feelings. If it starts off with, these are the things that you are not doing, this is how you are making me feel.

These are the things that you need to start doing. There's gonna be an immediate shutdown, and you're gonna be less likely to get any kind of positive response, even though that may be how you're feeling, right? Our goal is to get you what you want. So staying focused on you and how this situation is now making you feel?

I feel like I'm failing at something that everybody said was supposed to come naturally. Like I look around at my life and I do not recognize myself. I don't recognize this life and I don't like how it makes me feel. And I don't know if I can go on like this, I feel like I am a drowning housewife, except I then have to wake up and go to work.

And it's affecting my patient care, is affecting my mood at work. I'm snapping. I just feel like I'm drowning. And something needs to change. I really , I need you to be in it with me as my partner, and as my co-parent, right? So I. Truly connected to how you are feeling deep below the pissed off. You know, what is this doing to you mentally, emotionally? How is it affecting your work? Because chances are he does not know. Chances are all he knows is that you're pissed.

All he knows is that you think he's doing something wrong. But there's a good chance that for any husband who truly loves you, regardless of how your relationship is at the moment, if he truly knew, he would at least attempt to make a change. Right? So that's how you start and as you go through. How the roles in the household are currently and how you want them to change. You want to be very specific and using language that. Evokes partnership instead of helping. So saying, can you help with bedtime? That gives the feeling that number one is an option, which you've already established. It is not because if you continue like this, you're gonna break. And number two, it.

Lends to this idea that he's in fact helping you with your job instead of taking part in the job that you both share. So instead of, can you help with bedtime try, let's split up bedtime. Which nights do you wanna take? It's respectful and it sets the stage that this is a shared responsibility that we are going to split up. And just one note, things don't have to be equal, right? I think trying for equality just doesn't make any sense and it ignores some.

Realities that are significant, right? Like, if you are exclusively breastfeeding, how are you gonna say, let's equally split up feeding, right? Because that, you know, sure, you can say you're gonna pump and he can do half the feelings, but then that also means that you.

Have to pump, which some people just don't wanna do. So you may not want to split some things up evenly. It may not make sense to shoot for equality, but you wanna make sure it's at least equitable. That at least feels good and is aligned with what is actually important to you. You may want to do every bedtime, right?

So that's just an example. But the phrasing and the communication is what's important, right? So direct language that states very explicitly that this is shared responsibility and we all we are doing right now is figuring out how it is shared. So the thing that I love the most, the thing that we did to help with this problem of, you know, what is traditionally his versus mine, and. The thing that I tell my clients to use when they are having this issue is , a list of every single thing it takes to run your home and to raise your children.

And, this is accounting for every single thing, tangible and not all of the mental load, everything that it takes to run the home. There's a very specific way to do it. For the most success. And I'll admit this is not the way that I did it with my husband because I did not have all these skills at that time.

But I am going to save you all the trouble of doing it the wrong way and just tell you how to do it the right way. So you want to use a spreadsheet, it's the easiest thing. Use Google Sheets, and.

Create a list of all of the household duties,

all of the tasks that it takes

to run the home

and to raise the children.

Then you're gonna have two columns,

one with your name,

one with his name.

If there's another adult who is living in the home and that's part of the caretaking, sure, you can put them on there as well. The important thing is

you do not assign any roles to anybody, right?

The columns should be empty,

so you are going to your husband

with the list of the tasks

and the names on the top

and it's going blank.

And it's being framed as,

Hey babe, I really want to look at

how the home is run

and make sure that we have

everything covered for the home

and for the children.

Can you look at this with me?

And you all sit down

and go through the list together

and put an X

by the person that is responsible

for all of these things currently.

And it's very important that

you make it open

and expected that he add things

that you may have forgotten.

Two reasons. There is a chance that he's doing stuff that you don't actually know about or don't really appreciate. It may be hard to believe, but it may happen and related to that, but a separate point is that It again allows for him to

feel like this is a collaboration

and to avoid feeling like

this is just a list showing you

how many things you're not doing

and how much of a failure you are,

which is what a list may seem like

if you come with your name by everything.

And it's just like,

See, see?

  



  📍  📍 Right? So doing it in this way, coming with it blank, and then encouraging him to add things as you go through will make this whole exercise a lot more successful. So for most of us, I assume that most of the Xs are gonna be by your name. And that visual representation of this list and how many things you are actually doing is often all most men need.

Because in my postpartum crash and burn. One of the biggest arguments, which is when I first tried to do my first iteration of this list was that my husband truly believed that we were doing equal things, and he actually thought he was doing more because I have been an outsourcer and I didn't cook and I didn't clean.

But he did the physical stuff, he did the lawn, he went to Costco. He did. The trash. Like there were more tangible things that he could do. He truly did not know what just taking care of the kids truly entailed. And it was only when I detailed all of the decisions that I had to make on a daily basis. All of the things that I had to keep track of, all of this stuff that is involved in. Actually running this household and keeping these children alive, was he like, oh, okay.

And it was like a light bulb moment. So the visual representation of the inequity, I. Is often all that is needed for some kind of change. So you all together can decide, okay, which X is gonna move into his column, which X are we going to get rid of completely. That just doesn't need to be done by anybody, which X needs to be done by somebody that is not either of you, right?

This is the way. That you are going to make this change and flip those gender roles and just throw it out of the window, and I want to address one possibility that the resentment is so strong. You have been drinking the poison for so long, that is like, there's no way I'm going to be able to get through a conversation like this.

I think I might actually throw my laptop at him before I sit down and do this spreadsheet, so miss me with all that mess. That is the time where I would say just outsource as quickly as possible so you can catch a breath, you can get the mental space. Rest to not be that angry and then try all these things because if you are so exhausted, so angry, so everything that you cannot even communicate with him in a productive way, none of this stuff is gonna work.

So just get the help. Find somebody to give you a little bit of a break so that you can then work on this stuff.

I have to then talk to my pre-baby people. You wanna talk about these things because. A lot of our problems would not even have existed if the right questions were asked and if we even knew to ask the questions, if we even knew to, have the conversations.

Right. So you want to find out, always starting with curiosity, what are your beliefs about how a household should be run? What do you, what do you think it takes to run a house when they're kids? You know, how was it. In your house asking those broad questions and then getting down into the nitty gritty, like what do you think about If I'm exclusively breastfeeding, that I just do feedings and I go back to sleep, and then you do everything else and detail what everything else is. You do the diaper changes, you do the bottle washes you keep the house clean, you do the laundry, and then if they're like, whoa.

What would you be doing? Then you gently explain without stabbing him in his eyeballs, that you will be recovering from pushing a whole human out of your body or recovering from major surgery after having a C-section. So it's all in the preparation. If you have the luxury and the privilege of. Hearing this information and broaching these conversations before the kids actually come because it is just so much better to avoid all of this stuff.

Right. And just a quick reminder, even if you like, I don't really mind those gender roles, like I don't want a nanny, you still need support. Because the duties and the tasks that come with the mother was never meant to be yours alone. So you can not want certain things to be done by anybody else and still need support. You could be okay giving up your career in medicine or scaling back and being part-time and all that and still need support. This does not exclude you if that is how you feel. None of this stuff was ever meant for one person.

So now you have those tools and we have the context.

We know that this is bigger than us, right?

And it's not just academic information,

not just my theories

and my opinions.

And it's also not just like a cop out, right?

It's just like, well, it's society.

I really think it's as important

to talk about this because everybody desires

to feel seen and heard, and understood.

That includes your husband.

And this is not a conversation

that I hear happening a lot.

Usually conversations surrounding husbands

as parents has a very singular focus, right?

And there's no goal for understanding,

and there's also no room for growth.

On the part of the mother, there's a lot of martyrdom and self-righteousness that comes with conversations surrounding husbands when they become fathers.

So I want to bring forth

this conversation

so that we could understand our husbands better.

We could understand our marriages better.

And most importantly, we can be happier.

  

  📍  📍 

 And so that you know that you are not crazy, that you didn't choose the wrong man, that you weren't duped, and it is now up to us to change that narrative to flip that script. And it starts with, in your home, it starts with applying all these tools that've given you because you're gonna change the culture,

starting with you and your husband and then that modeling for the children who will then know that this is the norm and that's how we change generations. So this work is important, and I call it work for a reason because it is work coming from experience. It is work, but it is worth it. And I totally understand.

If you're just like, I have enough work. I don't know where to start, this all sounds good, but I don't know if this is gonna work. This is. Such a huge part of my coaching and what I do with my clients. So I would invite you to schedule a free coaching session and let's talk about how I can support you with navigating things like this because it is worth it.

Your happiness is worth it. Your children's future, their happiness, their marriages is worth it. So go to my website, dr toya coaching.com. D-R-T-O-Y-A coaching.com or just go to the show notes, go on my Instagram bio, my Facebook bio. The link is everywhere. It is ready and accessible waiting for you to make the decision that you are not going to just settle for this role that society puts you in.

Society put you both in and you are ready to do something about it. You are ready to change the way that you and your husband navigate your life as parents now,

The most important thing is. To define the roles for your family , what it looks like for you and your husband, and make it fit for your lives. Like I said, equality is not the goal. Equity is the goal and equity that makes sense for y'all because the division of labor in my house, the roles that we inhabit may not work for your family and they could also be fluid.

That list that you're going to make can change as the kids get older, as you outsource it's fluid. You can do with it what you like, but at least you have the framework and you've already established that this is something we do together. We have an all in partnership where we divide and conquer and we do so in a way that makes sense for us.

All right, so I know this was a little bit longer than my usual, but this is important and it's important enough for you to share this episode with another physician mom who needs to figure this stuff out in her own home. Who may be feeling like, how the hell did I get here? Like, what is going on? Why am I pregnant, barefoot and in the or like, what is going on?

Share it with her because it doesn't have to be that way. Things can change and we all deserve to find the roles within our household and within our marriages that fit us. So also don't forget to leave a five star review on Apple Podcast, a five star reading everywhere else. That also helps more physician moms find this podcast and find these tools and improve their lives and improve their marriages.

That's what rating does. So I thank you for leaving that review, and I will see you on the next episode of Stethoscopes and Strollers