the year was 2020 and my now-husband and i were living at my parents’ beach house in what felt like a true post-apocalyptic town, the jersey shore in off-season. nothing to do, nowhere to be, and only glimpses of kids like us who broke their city leases to lockdown in the burbs.
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i had always known that dan worked around the clock (because he was always on his phone) and i knew that was part of the deal when we started dating. business first, then family, and then everything else. but once there was no commute to separate our work days from his work evenings it became abhorrent to witness how bad it could actually get.
the problem was that not only was dan constantly working, now his colleagues were too. it was as if a bunch of kids were left unsupervised at a sleepover.
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when left to their own devices, they stayed up til all hours of the night taking phone calls, brainstorming, and problem-solving. three am phone calls became the norm and zoom meetings spilled into meal times.
we both knew that something had to change.
the next day he took his last scheduled call from the grocery store and came home to start cooking an elaborate meal.
out of the corner of my eye i saw the tiny screen on dan’s phone transition from a work computer to a television, and i recognized the familiar shape of podcasters hosting a show. dan’s shoulders relaxed, new aromas wafted from the kitchen, and there were minutes on end without overhearing his boss voice over the phone.
cooking had always been a passion for dan, but during lockdown it became his only escape. if he was cooking, he (generally) wasn’t working, and for what felt like the first time in our relationship i saw a semblance of work-life balance develop in the man i was going to marry.
it’s hard to describe the relief that i felt when i realized that cooking was The Thing that would make my partner stop working. dan and i had been dating for three and a half years at that point and we were freshly engaged. i’d spent the better part of that time navigating how much to encourage him to take breaks and when to respect his process. anyone can tell you that i leaned heavily in the latter camp.
i do not recommend dating an entrepreneur!1
so here was this thing that i didn’t suggest, that my partner loved, that tasted delicious, and made my often stressed boyfriend truly relax. of course i stopped cooking! i never liked it that much anyway!
fall 2023 i give birth to our first child and dan’s cooking ramps up. our fridge fills with homemade oat and chocolate chip lactation balls, protein heavy salads, and full dinners from our meal train.
dan is running his company from our kitchen because that’s the only place a desk will fit in our apartment. by some miracle i’d insisted that he finally move his desk from the nursery mere hours before my water broke. before that i was outfitting our second bedroom with nursery furniture around him.
when the desk moved upstairs i strategically positioned dan’s work camera away from the rest of the house. just on the other side of his all hands meetings was a freshly postpartum mother and their child.
another really fun perk of running your own business means that parental leave doesn’t actually apply to you! instead of four months of paternity leave, dan took five work days. i then spent the next several months bumbling around our apartment in my postpartum-sized underwear and nursing bra trying to keep our infant quiet while dan spent the day in meetings.
during this time i deeply resent my husband and his dumb job and how long it takes for him to rent a fucking office at a co-working space (SIX MONTHS, BUT WHO’S COUNTING), but at least he cooks for me. at least he does the three am feeds. at least he’s an incredible partner and engaged father blah, blah, blah. it all matters to me, it all makes a difference, but my god, i hated sneaking around my own house.
i don’t think either of us realized how much of an impact staying quiet at home was affecting my mental health. we were just doing what we’d always done, centering dan’s business and working towards a future for our family.
we were so wrapped up in trying to do what we thought was best for our family. but not being able to move about my home freely with our new baby added a thick layer of isolation to an already fairly insular time.
in our defense, dan had just become the sole breadwinner of our family and we were both still reeling a bit from when i got laid off at the beginning of my second trimester. the thought of paying for an office and adding another monthly expense to our brand new family was more overwhelming than the actual dollars and cents it would take to establish separate work environments.
so we carried on.
the only sign of dan’s day wrapping up was when he threw on his blundstones and headed to the grocery store. i tried not to get too excited for this half hour in my day when i had the house to myself, but i’d often catch myself listening for the sounds of the front door closing so i could skip upstairs and play my music over the sonos.
when he’s gone i try to revel in a few minutes to dance in the kitchen with my infant like they do in the movies. like many romanticized things on-screen, cradling your baby and swaying to your favorite music is actually so much better in real life.
as much as i resented co-working with my husband for the first six months of my newest and most permanent role of Mother, i knew it was a phase. just like any tough period that we’d been through with the business or our relationship, it was all temporary discomfort to get to the next stage.
cooking may have started out as the thing that saved my husband from overworking, but it became the pillar that unites our family at the end of the day. it’s the piece of my mother brain that i never needed to develop, a mental load i’ve never needed to carry.
i joke that i married dan for his cooking, but that’s not entirely untrue.
of course there is so much more that goes into running a household as two parents than simply dividing the tasks, a family is not merely logistics. even if it were, there is far too much invisible labor to properly account for it all.
for me, when we became parents i had to unlearn the concept of tit-for-tat and upgrade to an understanding of what my husband and i actually needed from each other based on our personalities, access, and the type of kid we have.
i love the way my friend Leah Hamilton wrote about it in her article The Complicated Truth About Being the Default Parent:
I believe there’s a myth around what an equal partnership looks like, and equality doesn’t exactly mean symmetry. My husband and I are both equally invested in our son, and in our roles as parents, yet we carry very different burdens.
very different burdens!!
do i believe that partnership can or should be symmetrical? absolutely not. do i know that we can each share in the burden of parenting in our own meaningful way? absolutely.
is the burden that i carry as a mother is all-encompassing and ever-present in a way that is different from the father of my child? oh yeah, you betcha. i’m sure it’s not dissimilar to the weight that dan feels as the breadwinner and manager of paperwork in our family.
at the end of the day the biggest relief that i feel from the incessant whirring at the front of my mind is to know that food is not my responsibility. i love that dan can come home and jump into dad mode and i can sign off a bit.
we both feel relief from context-switching at the end of the day. it’s a sort of invisible commute that separates our work days from our evenings as a family. it’s a practice we learned when we transitioned to remote work back in 2020.
there is nothing that makes me feel more loved and supported than how dan owns the grocery shopping, recipe finding, and cooking in our household. there are so many factors to running a home, but, for me, a dad who cooks feels most liberating.
and i know i’m not the only one.
i don’t know if it was the pandemic, modern parenthood, or some combination of it all, but i see many partners of birth parents taking on cooking in the household.
and i’m curious what works for other families. is cooking the responsibility that feels like it tips the scale for parenting to feel more equitable? is there something else that works well for your household?
i’d love to know what it looks like in your family. what feels supportive? how do you divide and conquer? where do you wish you had more support? is there some drop of wisdom you’d like to share with other parents?
let us know in the comments below!
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my top three recommended reads of the week featuring mothers getting curious about what it looks like to challenge the status quo.
Manuela Kouakou, MD-PhD getting curious about how we’ve equated developmental science with parenting advice. i found this article revelatory, a must-read. our generation of parents feels so high-strung in a way that has never really made sense to me. the pressures, all-consuming. Manuela Kouakou breaks down how scientific research has been extrapolated and imposed on everyday acts of parenting.
Stephanie Mendeloff getting curious about the symbiotic relationship between art and motherhood. there are so many gorgeous works cited in this article, many which have helped shape the way that i conceptualize my own art, and i love how Stephanie synthesizes these works through her personal experience. the care of an artist and the care of a mother are one in the same.
Elin Strong getting curious about the impact of taking your work seriously and staying consistent on substack and beyond. this is the reason i was drawn to Elin’s work in the first place. a currently* full time mom who has been committed to showing up weekly on substack for the past nearly two years (!!!) she thinks about this space exactly like i do. the deadlines matter. the consistency is everything. the work compounds over time. we are out here chipping away at our craft as part of our creative and professional process and the result is a deep inner trust and confidence. and that is everything.
*i am also obsessed with how Elin has openly shared with us that she is preparing to go back to paid work. it’s happening and i can’t wait to see what’s next!
because parenthood isn’t linear
this is a living table of contents that is updated as mother curious posts go live. MC was never meant to be digested in a linear fashion, choose what you’re looking for based on the topics below!
CONNECT: thank you so much for being here! i hope you enjoyed reading mother curious today. i’d love to hear from you! say hi to me on instagram, watch me try to figure out tiktok, or leave a comment on substack. the best part about substack is the conversations and connections we build together and i look forward to getting to know you too.
i say this only mildly in jest! of course it’s amazing to watch your person build their dream! but the sacrifice is immense and all-encompassing. it’s really hard to build a successful business and relationship at the same time <3
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