 All right well it looks like why don't we go ahead and get started so let me just first of all you know hopefully people will continue coming in we understand that what we're talking about is what happens at home the gendered division of labor and that particularly now in the pandemic things are really crazy for uh for all sorts of people so let me just first by start by welcoming everyone that's here um my name is Bridget Schulte I'm the director of the Better Life Lab and we are really excited to be hosting this happy hour I hope that you all this is sort of relax and casual I have my my wine with my happy hour here so hopefully you will all have a drink just we're here to really have a conversation um you know we started this Better Life Lab experiments project about a year ago and we've got a number of beta testers we're hoping that they join but again because we understand that times are crazy we are also recording this so we want to let people know um you know if you'd like to turn your camera off please feel free um you know but so many people can't make it synchronously we want to make make it available for people who can't be here many of them because of the division of labor at home and child care um so uh I'm going to turn it over to Emily Halgren who is our intern who is going to be kind of telling you about what to expect this evening uh and I just really you know we'll dive right into the conversation but just to I think we most people who are here know we're here because uh the the division of labor at home is really one of the final frontiers to true gender equality for for all people across the gender gender spectrum you know right now it's still very much considered the primary responsibility for women and that has huge implications for their for women's being able to um compete in the in the public sector but at the same time because men are expected to be breadwinners that really cuts them off from their ability to fully engage at home and so uh we started this project about you know launched it about a year ago we've been working on it for about two years I would say before that about a year of planning and really trying to think about how we could develop very practical tools to create more awareness to create space for communication in a way that doesn't get into that typical nagging tip for tat fighting that goes nowhere how can you have some honest conversations and how can we try some exposure therapy using tools from behavioral science to try to to actually move the dial and and create new behaviors new attitudes uh and so part of what we're really hoping to do here is to get everyone's input to figure out well what can we do to make this more impactful what could we do to scale this how can we really move the needle on gender equality at home so with that let me turn it over to Emily who will tell tell you all what to expect from this exciting happy hour so cheers and welcome thanks for dead yes cheers hi everybody it's really lovely to see you all here thanks so much for joining us for the happy hour um so we we didn't make this like a really long drawn out event right like we were saying it's pandemic times right we all have a lot of things to focus on a lot of things competing for our attention so we're looking at this as about an hour for the first 30 minutes we're going to have a lively discussion with our three panelists just talking about their own experiences with the division of household labor or what they've learned during this very unusual last seven months and if you do have questions for the panelists during that time feel free to throw those in the chat and then our two moderators uh Bridget and Hailey will make sure to take a look at those questions and incorporate them so just feel free to put those in the chat and then after about 30 minutes uh having a discussion with the panel we're actually going to transition into some breakout rooms for about 15 minutes or so and that's just so we can really hear from people you know how uh how are things going at home right in this very unusual time um have you tried some BLLX experiments just really try to get some feedback from you as uh Bridget was saying we really try to see how we can really take this to the next level and really make this effective for um uh diverse households so um and then after about 15 minutes of the breakout rooms we'll reconvene as a whole group share some takeaways and um just you know leave with some announcements next step and we'll take it from there so um that kind of gives you an overview and then Hailey if you want to take things off with the panel I'll turn it over to you. Thanks so much Emily folks should know since Emily came on board with us a couple months ago this project has just gotten new life under it and and it really is as somebody who's been studying this exact topic for many years now I can say I've been really frustrated by the lack of data we have out there about solutions we are getting better and better and better about measuring the problem of of the unequal division of labor between men and women and of course that affects some families much worse than others certain family types for example but I think what where we're really lacking at the same time we're telling families get with it do it equally you know we're actually lacking concrete advice for how to do that how do you go about that when so much of what happens in our homes on a daily basis is on autopilot and I think especially during the the COVID pandemic you know you really don't have time to plan what you're really doing is responding responding responding and BLLX from the start was was our our hope at trying to really test and figure out what actually works for people and you know we turn to the best of behavioral science we turn to the latest research in sociology and economics but one of the best ways we learn about what works and and what doesn't is by actually talking to people about that and I think any number of the people here that I'm seeing on the list are of attendees would have stories to tell about what COVID has been like for them and their households and we hope we get some of that in this discussion but I want to start with our panel and start hearing just a little bit of the different glimpses each of our panelists has gotten of this issue during the pandemic as they've been talking to other families working with other families in different capacities as practitioners as researchers but also in their own households you know this is just one of those issues that touches every single one of us whether we wanted to or not and so what I'd like to do is start by asking our panelists here to tell us a little bit about what this has been like for them and what kind of knowledge they've gained during the pandemic about how you actually moved toward equality in sharing the load at home so we have fantastic panelists here I'm going to introduce them briefly and then I'd like to just maybe somebody can raise their hand of the three of them and start us off here with what they have learned we have Eve Rotsky who's the fantastic author of a book Fair Play which got a lot of headlines right before the pandemic struck because so many of us are facing this problem how do you go about forging an egalitarian relationship and Eve scoured you know the research of many many many of us here scholars who are on this chat scholars that we know that we cite and in addition to that interviewed families and tested a system for helping them institute gender equality at home so in terms of experience and a wealth of exposure to what different families go through we can you do know better than Eve here and we also have one of our very own Josiah St. Julian who's a newly a research associate at the Better Life Lab Josiah has been watching all the research come in about this throughout the entire pandemic and really thinking through what it takes to move the needle and what it takes to try to work toward progress and equality under really dire circumstances really not the ideal conditions that you would set for yourself if it came to when do we want to have these kinds of conversations and so Josiah has been doing that research but also figuring that out not with a partner and her family in the same home but with roommates and we think at BLL but this tool should be something that helps no matter what your household situation is because this is a problem anytime you have more than one person in a household that has to be solved and I think there's really interesting insights to come from there and then we have Steven DeFianco who is a co-founder of a startup Dad Ventures and has become a close friend of the Better Life Lab in the past months we actually met Steven during the Crisis Conversations episode or podcast that we did throughout the first six months of the pandemic every week to find out what was going on in people's households and workplaces and Steven has been at the same time running a business raising children and negotiating the division of labor with his wife who's also working so Steven maybe we can start here with you what has it been like for you during this pandemic to do all this juggle all this work and at the same time aspire toward a more equal division of labor yeah great question and thank you to everybody for being here and for you know having me part of this conversation um it's certainly uh you know we now say seven months right did we switch you know six months and that was that were seven months and and time just just keeps flying by and and I think about how how even just every couple months things change you know in March it was like oh well we'd be back in school before the end of the year uh will we be oh what school's ending are we uh what are we doing this summer oh no what what's going oh wait oh wait school's coming back okay wait what are we doing now and it just it just is so fluid it's it's it's it's like the last seven months feels like so many different stages and um I would say that sort of two big things that that I've learned along the way number one from the very beginning was I can't sit on the sidelines like my family cannot uh serve like survive and thrive if I'm waiting to be told what to do uh maybe that in many ways was a default for me in a variety of different responsibilities pre-pandemic but when my wife is focused on her career I'm focused on my career and my kids are stuck and they're lost like somebody has to step up somebody has to jump in and so we have um adjusted to that and I would say that putting efficiency making our family like helping basically saying now is normal and saying this is this is the normal this is just what it is and we just have to adjust to these times and how can we survive and thrive in these times uh is how we've approached it now I would just say the last thing is the downside is that on one hand we've become a really efficient machine like we we have our systems we're like getting things done I understand what I need to do she understands what new she needs to do but what kind of gets lost in all the efficiency is just the humanness is the like oh my god I'm burning out oh my god like I need some time I need some help I need to see my friends um how are you how are you taking care of yourself and um and I think that's just been uh the the balance is like okay we have to jump in we have to it's an emergency we have to change but in that it's just like whoa hang on like it's if if uh if we don't take care of ourselves and each other then we're in even worse worse trouble thanks so much for starting us off with that Steven um Eve how does how does Steve's story compare with what you've been hearing from families what you've been seeing as you continue this work well a few things I think the secret formula that I've seen uh same thing calling through all of our data and our research and now even with Daniel Carson and he has a new paper coming out he calls task sharing which I think is a dangerous word I call that re-dealing of the cards but same same work um this idea that systems are part of it right and Fair Play's a system an ownership mindset and thank god for Carol Deweck for when I used to talk about mindsets people had no idea what I was talking about but now our kids are inundated with the power of yet and so the idea of an ownership mindset but I think the other two pieces that we miss sometimes are the boundaries and the communication so I think it's the trifecta of boundary systems and communication being efficient and knowing what you're doing it every time and customizing there was defaults is really really important but the idea that part of it means also the boundaries to be yourself and to say that the intensive togetherness this intensive parenting this sort of pinterest culture the idea that so many people tell me they feel guilty if they don't accompany their partner on a trip to fucking Costco um I just let your partner go get the damn diaper so you can go take a run right it's this idea that we always have to be together all the time so how do you set those boundaries and on top of it the communication so one thing I asked was especially of men why do you communicate I was looking for somebody to give me the answer that they communicate to communicate but actually in all the men I interviewed and there's hundreds now everybody mostly everybody gave me the answer that they communicate as a means to an end well yeah I communicate because I have to get the sponge out of the thing I communicate to tell my wife that she has to log our kids on to zoom so I challenge people to think of communication as a practice and we're investing in um toilet paper more than we're investing in our relationships and so when I challenge couples to add a 10 minute and I check in where you can set a timer if you're long-winded but this idea of checking in I would say that that those are the rounding out pieces of the system the idea of the permission to be unavailable um from your roles and then that idea of how do you check in with your partner to humanize your daily experience even if it's just for 10 minutes and that's sort of the trifecta that I see really working very well right now the boundaries plus the systems plus communication. Josiah when you hear that the boundaries the communication is that coming up in households like yours where this is not about maybe the baggage and the guilt of being there all the time for your partner or your kids but you're sharing a space you're all working and living in that space what what has this been like in in your household? Yes um so definitely the importance of communication has been front and center I think since the outset of the pandemic and that's for a number of reasons number one first of all we are at this point we are five adult women living together so there are no children in the house so there's no one to really tell us what to do we have to communicate to one another our needs and our expectations and so starting out um it was quite clear that each of us at the time had different expectations around you know what our household should look like during the pandemic who should be doing what we had different assumptions about who would be doing what and part of that was because prior to the pandemic we'd all somewhat been operating on this autopilot kind of mentality where we would allow honestly someone who is used to let's say unloading the dishwasher or is used to taking out the trash to continue doing that it was very easy to just kind of walk past that because you know I'm out my I'm out the door I'm on the way to catch the bus uh thank you you know are like oh I have a call but you know thanks for like unloading the dishwasher um and so we basically got stuck in our routine but during the pandemic it was very clear that we're at home 24 seven we can't ignore the fact that the trash is piling up and no one wants to take it out or that the dishes are piling up because now it's four people eating you know three meals a day within the house um and so it became important for us to talk about okay it's not fair for one or two people to always do the same routine task what do you want to do how should we go about breaking these tasks up um and so now we actually have this cute little um chart on the side of our fridge where we have five tasks that need to happen in the house every week and then we have our names as tags and then we just rotate those names you know over and over again um however that took us a while to get to that point this is the second iteration of like what should we you know do at the household when it comes to like managing chores um and so we actually have a house meeting this evening after this call um to talk about you know how are things going in terms of cleaning in terms of you know boundaries and what we need for work spaces and also what does it look like to live healthily and safely as a household um because our ideas of you know we're in this particular state of the pandemic where we can maybe go out more it's starting to look a little even more complicated um and so the need for communication is definitely something that has been coming up time and again but has also been just very helpful in allowing us to feel comfortable sharing our needs um and talking about what we feel is fair or unfair and how to change that thank you so much uh those are all fantastic i've been busily taking notes as well uh and i love that you know everything that that everyone said that that notion of what is fair i kind of want to start there because what's really clear when you look at the at the research from before the pandemic and certainly now you know when you look at who's stepping back and reducing work hours who's leaving the workforce who's you know who who are losing their jobs when you look at the most recent unemployment figures it's women and when you know you dig down about why that is a lot of it is care and caregiving and you know feeling that they're doing more homeschooling or spending more hours on childcare as schools and childcare places are still closed you know so eve let me go back to you and start with this question like how do you create the space to talk about this you know how do you create the you know even the you know set the table if you will with you know the three great you know communications and boundaries and systems that you're talking about when families are just um you know so many of them are just hanging on by their fingernails you know how do you i'd like to ask all three of you that how how do you create space in this time when it doesn't feel like there's much space to take on something that kind of can feel like a big project like this well i think um the way i look at it i'm an economist by trade um so i look at it's really the value of time and bridged your you speak so beautifully about time so i think um it's sort of the way women look at their economic equations where they say to me often that they left the workforce because their salary just covered childcare right so we're making very um you know i'd like to talk about like yes we we get into cultural conversations about the life changing magic of organizing our junk drawer right but really the life changing magic is the long-term thinking recognizing that you may not always be partnered recognizing that the motherhood penalty will hit you um recognizing that 43 percent of women with children opt out of the workforce so i think if we look at it as sort of like paper boy i'm i'm dating myself but like you know some sort of game where you sort of see the future obstacles and sometimes easier to plan and a present for what they are so really i'm speaking for the younger women behind us and men to say that you want to get it right now and so if you want to say in the time it takes me to tell him or her they what to do i might as well do it myself right now because i'm in a crunch right so what was happening even pre-pandemic was so many women told me that they were opting out of the workforce because they were what i call new superwomen so this is the fair play the visualization of the deck right of the unpaid labor that they were holding all these cards and so then one more thing came their mother went into chemo one more thing came they had a bad manager one more thing came um their child got diabetes all true stories and they were out out of the workforce once you're out of the workforce one year um you lose those half a million dollars of wages and savings over your lifetime and so i think this idea that we don't look holistically at our decision and so yes of course these are systemic issues but there are also things that we can think about and do in advance in our own households and that's what i love about the life lab so much and what you're doing bridge and hailey my favorite people on your team because you're the best people at combining the systematic systemic inequity with actual recognizing that you can take agency in your own home and so that's what i will say the life-changing magic of long-term thinking and last thing i will say is that a woman who calls herself the mama attorney and she told me she's spoken to over two thousand women now in the pandemic and most of them were saying i'd rather drop out than have my husband take leave that they're due under the new cares apps and they were not willing to ask their partner to take that type of sacrifice um and they said it was easier for them just to drop out you know to that point you know that's one thing that the research shows over and over again that in many partnered relationships men tend to be older so they're that much further ahead in their careers you know and then we have the the gendered wage gap that you know you look at where men no matter what you know no matter what the profession is there is there's a wage gap and even if you've got the same education and experience there's a wage gap and then there's the the sectoral wage gap that we tend to value the work that men do much more than the work that women tend to do in like health and in care and in education you know so you've got all of those um you know reasons i guess for families to sort of automatically favor men continuing to work you know so steven let me ask you you know how do you uh you know how can you i mean that's a huge systemic issue how can families kind of work against that or uh be aware of that or or still work on gender equity at home when the the deck is sort of stacked against you systemically at work i was i was certain you were gonna ask eve about this i was i was like i will share i happy to share my perspective and and you know i i bow down to eve and all the research and you know that she's done and and and how she can back that up where i can you know speak from is is the research that i've done talking to parents as well as sort certainly my personal experience and i would say this that my um i have three children i have two two two girls um 10 eight and then a four-year-old boy and there's so much um that motivates my wife and i uh that is in regards to setting the right example for our children and so eve was was just talking about like hey for for you know for for future generations as well this is highly impactful and i like how eve refers to this is this is inevitable right like but what can we do to speed up this change and so so for me um uh you know valuing my wife's time so my daughter had a uh a orthodontist emergency or orthodontist appointment last week um uh my wife was wasn't sure was it wednesday was it was it thursday uh it's like okay sure let me let me step in she's given me an opportunity she is certainly doing a lot of this work um but there's an opportunity for me to be a leader to step in and and do my part uh so i uh was able to figure out okay it was thursday uh and i said i texted her um even though she was probably upstairs um it's thursday i can take her now i had a i had a conflicting meeting but i could take that call on the road that wasn't a big problem she probably could have taken um our daughter as well but for me it's like the more that i can signal to her that that her time is valuable that i am gonna do my part the more that she can i think absorb that message it's it's it's not an easy one for her to just let go and say okay yeah like because the default for her is she will do it um so like that's sort of how i think about it is like setting that example and then you know having these conversations and and and understanding like okay i recognize that your time is valuable that like uh that that that we have to support each other and it's not just you supporting me but it's supporting each other i love that and you know if you describe it so beautifully that women tend to think of their time as like sand you know or we tend to think that the you know it's infinite and that we think of men's time as diamonds i think that that sister was such a brilliant thing that you said you know do you have thoughts and chid's eye do you want to anything to add in uh you know at this really critical moment how to try to create space for for this and then let we turn it over you know we'll let each of you give a quick response and then i'll turn it over to haley we've got a question from the chat yeah i think something that really came up uh in terms of what steve and both of you mentioned were this idea of agency and the importance of um number one being actors in taking you know responsibility and taking up tasks but also thinking about you know what um patterns what behaviors um what trends are we setting for the future and so when i think about then the context of our household of five women aging from you know 25 to 35 years old we're all single women at the time um i'm wondering you know when we are thinking about work in our home you know what are the expectations that we're setting and what are the patterns that we're setting for ourselves moving forward you know in what ways can we disrupt um the the i think the default of someone taking care of one thing two things and allowing that to be the norm um and so i'm hoping that by thinking about ways to equally share the household within our home um we are going to set ourselves up with expectations when we do enter into you know relationships of when i lived with my roommates i never you know took care of everything that was never the norm so i'm not going to expect that you know when i enter into this new relationship you know this long-term relationship with someone else and so i think that even when we are in these situations it may not be like a traditional household setting we should train ourselves to think about you know household work in a way that is equitable that when we enter into new stages we are carrying that framework in mindset with us so that's kind of like that idea of agency and making that a habit that's coming up for me wow yeah i mean what what just i just said there resonates so much with me i mean i had to say uh you know i i just recently married uh my my my love who uh i actually met at the better life lab so um you know many common interests mutual interest in equality the interesting thing is that uh i'm married to a woman and the rest of my life i had only lived with male partners and i can i i suddenly have this weird thing happen to me where i'm the one who's not carrying the mental load or i'm the one who doesn't get to the dishes fast enough and i never had that experience when i was with men i it was always sort of simmering like fine i guess i'll do it because i see it and it's not worth the conversation and now that's totally flipped where i started to notice you know in the first year we live together like you know i think she wants me to wash that dish but i really don't want to right now like it doesn't need to be washed right now and it totally flipped the script and it was this it's the same where we're i mean we work through it every day like any couple of course you have to work through your expectations my expectations but the liberating thing about it is exactly what jaziah i think was talking about like that it puts us back almost in a role where we don't have those gendered scripts and we get to just talk about what do we want our household to feel like what do we how clean do it doesn't need to be what are the kinds of like rules we can put in place to mostly keep it fair and then from there we work it all out and i think that that's kind of been liberating which is one of the reasons i was so excited about had just having jaziah talk about the roommate situation like if we brought roommate fairness to bear on our our romantic partnerships our families what what would that change especially in the way women approach those conversations so that's kind of my lesson from COVID and the the strange stressful times that it's brought about is if there's a way you can approach those conversations without that baggage in some way put yourself in roommate mode whatever it is you know and you're not mad at the whole you know population of men or whoever else when you come into those it really changes the dynamic um and i'm grateful to my partner for doing that not projecting my own habits you know as sort of like this is what everybody has ever done to me before it can just be on on that terrain of our household so i'm curious as we close out here i this this time just flew past but i'd love to hear from all three of our panelists before we close out and i think this is really about um anabella's question what she's getting at too how do you disrupt these scripts how do you move beyond it if there's one piece of advice you can give to families or households however people are sharing the load for how to do this in a pandemic what would that takeaway be what would that one insight be that you're hoping could um create some change and disrupt some of these patterns that that just sort of take over uh somebody is anybody like willing to go first steve jaziah eve i think you're all worthy eve all right i see you unmute yourself um i think this all comes down to time um again it's it's it's um you know the economist and me um when you devalue your own time you're not going to disrupt any patterns or use your voice or or lose your guilt and shame and so when you say things to yourself like i do more because my partner makes more money than me or when you say i do more because i'm a better multitasker and that's my superpower if you say i do more because in the time it takes me to tell him her they what to do i should just do it myself those are all highly toxic messages that are devaluing your own time and what they do is they they devalue all of your future time and that also leads to society devaluing our time so i think for me that my dream i always say is like an hour holding your child's hand in the pediatrician's office is just as valuable as an hour in the boardroom and it was white professional class men that could not say they believed that an hour holding your child's hand in the pediatrician's office or as steve said at the orthodontist office is as valuable as an hour in the boardroom once we get society to believe that those are equal hours then white men will do this and we need those we need those men who are still unfortunately the leaders in this country to value care and so that's that's my dream that the more we work together as cultural warriors to disrupt the fact that we devalue women's time and we don't believe housework and childcare is valuable the more we disrupt that together the more collective power we have to make real change and the future thanks so much for that jiziah you ready you have a takeaway of advice for us yes i do um so my negative advice is going to sound very familiar but it's basically if you see something say something that's what they like the thing they have like in the airport or something but they yes if you see something say something um and when i say would you see something i mean if you see something that your roommate or your partner is struggling with or is always doing and you notice it you should say something that's what i mean by that um and hopefully that will open up a conversation where they feel like they're seen and valued without having to complain about something and then that can open the door for having these conversations um about you know what does it look like to maybe change this or to do this more fairly um that would be my nugget i love that i that's like uh exactly exactly what my wife and i have come to is that when you see the unfair pattern it's on you to say something because i've been in the on the other side of this right when it was on me to try to figure out how to initiate that conversation and and i i so now know how liberating it is to have the other person you know when when you're already carrying the mental load you don't also have to want to be responsible for that conversation so i really love that advice and steve how about you yeah uh totally agree with with with um with both recommendations and and just to build off of see something say something i've learned i've learned the hard way that there are many bad times to talk to my wife like during the day when she is like has like two minutes between like phone calls and she's just getting some food and like you know she's got to go you know she's in the middle of some like deep concentration work right and so uh to me it's like oh it's on top of my mind i should tell her this because otherwise i'll forget it and then like that just leads to disaster so like see something say something at the appropriate time uh and maybe that's scheduling it maybe it's like hey i'm texting you hey can we talk later tonight uh this needs you know there's this going on and so like that has been a huge because i i've stepped in that line my too many times i don't want to do that anymore and i i urge uh everyone to uh let's just keep that in mind that's great all right well i thank you so much for this you know for this really fascinating and important panel and i feel like we could go on for hours but again in the interest of time i think what we're going to do now is move to breakout rooms where we've got um let me turn it over to Emily who can tell us a little bit more about the experiment that she's uh developing and we're really hoping to get some feedback on this as well as some of the other experiments we're running in this in this project and how we can really um you know work with you know Eve's project fair play is so excellent and how can we work to amplify and support that work to really help people at home so Emily what can people expect now yeah thank you so much that was such an an really wonderful discussion and i think a lot of really productive advice came out of that so thank you so much um so yeah so now we're going to shift into some breakout rooms for about 15 minutes or so um there'll be uh four of us who will be facilitating those so you'll either be in a breakout room with myself uh Jeb Zaya Bridget or Hailey uh one of us four and no i'm sorry Shade sorry actually it'll be myself Shade Bridget or Hailey sorry about that um and uh yeah so we'll yeah we just have some questions just trying to get a better sense of like you know what motivates people to sort of take part in this beta testing community get your feedback and then we also have a sort of a new tool that we're developing an idea that we have for a future better life lab experiment and so um we were going to uh have everybody take a look at that did we actually get a chance to put that in the chat the link to that okay great so um actually i um can you um can the events team help us uh transition over to break rooms to breakout rooms definitely you all have been randomly assigned to the four rooms and you will have 15 minutes with some notifications of countdown here you go hello it looks like we're the only ones back I guess we had to you know we had to choose to leave and I was you know Melissa you're right in the middle of such a great oh no you know I don't know how great it is but I um it might take some pressures off um it's so complicated right I think it's so complicated and you're you know people are in a really tough place um because of the pandemic but also like life stage um with little kids and two jobs um it's it's a really tough spot to just recognize it could be a hump to get over and things could get better you know yeah that's such a good point and Janet one of the things that you know we do have a beta test that's uh you know that we call it ninja level where you like write out all the tasks and then you decide who does it but one of the things that I you know and my husband and I were trying to like figure out how to rebalance things when they gotten so bad is we just had a session where we just sat down and talked to each you know kind of like had you know even with the kids and just sort of like wrote it down brainstorm together what's the bucket of work that need that we need to do to run this house and then when you write it all out and you do it together and then you see it then it's almost like then you can begin having conversations about well who should do what or are there certain things that you can cross off the list all together you know that maybe that's that's one thing that really that really helps sort of a practical solution for um my husband and I when I was in my rage phase right so um yeah I was just gonna say are we all back now are we still waiting for other breakouts I think everyone is now back okay but it sounds like we caught you all in a very interesting conversation and the breakout rooms also cut off Heather while she was making a great point about uh where we were so um I think we have many many uh fantastic not only uh participants who are experiencing this but also have a lot of expertise for president so it's just really fantastic breakout for Jen that's great ours was as well so why don't we do a quick lightning round I know that we're getting really down on time but um we really wanted to have one person from each group just kind of report out what the main um thoughts were on challenges as well as solutions and so Janet um in our group had um you know was just experience what a lot of caregivers and particularly women are experiencing um and and sort of talking about some of the challenges that we're trying to resort to address with BLLX and so we were talking about some potential kind of you know experiments that might help so Janet let me turn it over to you. Hi um so I have uh some young children um and there's definitely imbalance in the caregiving aspects um among other things um and because of that imbalance I'm I mean I am staring right at losing my job I've already had my hours cut back so I'm at least going to end up being part-time and lose my benefits it's just a terrible situation so that's that's tough to deal with um and then um we've noticed that under stress we just fall back on our old old ingrained patterns that we didn't even know were ingrained um that we kind of picked up from our families when we were growing up um and my husband and I have very different patterns that we're falling back on um and then we also struggle with how do we even create the space to have the discussions that we need to have um by the time we get all the kids in bed like I'm probably already asleep he's probably already asleep I'm you know we don't even want to talk to each other we just want to like go to sleep so how do we how do we make that conversation happen um in a in a in a peaceful place um so that's a struggle for us yeah thank you so much Janet and so we were sort of brainstorming solutions and I was just really briefly one of the BLLX experiments Melissa Milky had a great suggestion of like you know taking what Jed's eye was saying like you know the list on the refrigerator so it's kind of written and it's clear and you're not nagging and it's not still kind of like ambivalent and so even though we have a sort of a ninja level experiment that we actually we attribute to the Gottman folks who do a lot of really great work with um partners and marriages and couples and families um but that what I did in my family when we were in a very unbalanced and I was very resentful and rageful all the time we worked together I sat down with my family and around the table when I said I just had had it and we said let's let's put the bucket of work that it takes to run this house together and then once what was on paper and we all created it together you know and then we could just see how much there was and then we could see and like who does it mom mom mom mom mom mom mom we've got it's got ridiculous and then it became clear how ridiculous it was and it was the beginning of conversations about how to change that so that was one of the things we were talking about with Janet so let me turn it over to the next group am I the next group on my screen I'm like right next to Bridget but I don't know if that's how other people's screens look go for it yes okay um our our conversation um followed a lot of those same lines same lines particularly how um oftentimes the roles that you end up inhabiting aren't necessarily the roles you saw for yourself it's just a habit it's what you saw growing up um and because it feels so natural because you've been doing it you know for however long it's really hard to stop doing it and to like set new patterns um I don't know if anyone else wants to share because I myself am young and childless so this isn't really me speaking from my experience um so if anyone else in in my small group wants to share um they can they can go ahead and do that I'll just jump in briefly with what our group discussed because it builds really off of the themes here but along these lines of you know the roles we play in the scripts we follow we I really put it kind of straight to folks in our group about one of the tensions of BLLX which is that the people who are drawn to the experiments are the people who are already overburdened with the work and so it just you know can become one more thing and so how do we get more men involved and you know you can see the participants even when we have a dad on here to talk about his experience it's mostly women who come and attend um and so we really talked about that directly and one of the really great insights from Kate and Heather was write some experiments around what men feel they disproportionately carry and it might not that there we know from statistics right where things are falling but that might be an inroad for men to see themselves in this and be able to gain some empathy over what it must feel like to be on the other side so maybe enter into some of those arenas with the experiments and try to degender them from the other side you know whether it's managing finances or um or yard work or household repairs you know these kinds of things that we see in those surveys again and again that men do more of and maybe think about it um in those terms and then I also put the just at the very and we have like one minute left I put the the thermometers um up on the screen and Kate was saying um Kate's research that people need that zero time like people really need that time when they're not responsible at all and so that and we we didn't get to have the full conversation but I feel like that at least was a good an indication that maybe this kind of experiment getting people to just think even in the craziest of times are they ever at zero that that could be a good springboard for some conversations on fairness. Yeah do we do we have another minute or two so yeah I'll just jump off of that so we did take a look at the tool uh the potential responsibility meters in my group as well and I think we were just saying that you know uh you know anything that's like can be like an like open up a conversation right is all is definitely um good um and just try to get like what's in my head and what's in my partner's head or my roommate's head right out in the open um we also talked about this idea of like if we have to get we really need to get people to buy in um Steven mentioned this idea of like how can we sort of like align our goals with like people's self-interest and Steven feel free to jump in but just this idea of like okay I really need self-care like I'm really feeling burnt out right so like let's have a conversation with that because I care about your self-care and you care about mine right but like this is my need right now right and so like we can find ways to like align the goals with like people's self-interest in a way right um understanding that like people in households also care about each other right um so yeah just thinking about like tools that can help open up conversations that are based in um you know respect and healthy dialogue um is definitely you know something households really need so uh that's kind of all I'll say unless anybody wants to jump in yeah just just uh when Emily uses the word people I use the word men how do you align how do you line men's self-interest with with with a test because and it was it was my self-interest in in taking care of myself that I said hey uh and what is your my to my wife what is your self-care list look like and then we were able to have that conversation but it really for me to be honest it started with my self-interest I need self-care so like uh you know if she had come to me like uh with you know with this thermometer and you know I might just put up like defense like right away like oh what is this like you know but if she's like oh how are you I see you're struggling over here like I understand I'm very empathetic to you and then like that way in and like you're saying whether it's where dad already is meeting dad where already he already is or man you know partner wherever he is uh I think that's a great approach that's fantastic anyone else I think the I think that we got all four breakout groups so thank you all for participating in the breakout groups and sharing those great thoughts um you know let me turn it over to Emily for some of our you know a real quick wrap-up of next steps and then I'll come back on for a final a final goodbye and then we'll let you go yeah thanks Bridget yeah thanks everyone so much for participating that I think this was a really excellent way to kind of like uh kind of relaunch a better life lab experiments for this new time that we're living in so just real quick um I'm really just going to share some resources for sort of staying in touch and building community around um you know BLLX and beta testing the beta tester community so I'm going to pop the link to our Facebook group here in the chat also uh to our Instagram please feel free to follow those uh to post um we've definitely you know love to see that uh type of engagement um and then we will also be sending the newsletter bi-weekly you know in the in the coming months so we'll we're going to try to really uh share like resources and support um in addition to uh coming experiments and you know we just we know that like when people are trying to make behavioral change right or try to make it a change stick that social support is really really important so um if you have other ideas about good ways to help you stay connected or how to build community you know feel free to get in touch with us I'll just put our email in there you may have other ideas or suggestions about ways that we could actually like form right a community that feels more connected and more ongoing um so yeah feel free to share those with us we'd love to hear from you and thank you so much everybody for being here yeah so thank you so much Emily thank you to everyone as she as Emily said as we all have said we really want this to be a community um so please feel free to reach out let us know what you're struggling with let us know what we you know help us figure out how to best help you we really look for your feedback we we're excited to hear back from our beta testers um you know if you you know go to the Facebook page if there's if you tried something and you you know another tweak would work you know share that take a picture of what you you know what you're trying and put it on Instagram let's try to build community and kind of movement around this the other thing for the uh the researchers on uh you know who are who are on the call today we've got some other researchers who are actually really interested in designing experiments themselves and then working with our beta testers to help them with their own research so beta testers you could be part of them again a much uh you know movement for much bigger change so uh researchers think about you know is there an experiment you could think of that you would want to run that you would want to work with our beta testers for um you know we're really excited about continuing to grow this and make this a really valuable resource so that we really can bring much more ease and equity to families and you know all all across the country and uh potentially potentially beyond so thank you all for joining us tonight um and uh onward uh the the the movement toward gender equity continues