My greatest joy is discovering somebody I wasn’t aware of who’s doing something uniquely meaningful.
That brings me to Brian Page. He is a Modern Husband. What does that even mean?
Brian Page spent his career improving lives through personal finance education and he has now founded a platform called ‘Modern Husbands’ to help couples navigate their home as a team.
He and his wife have been married for over 20 years and have 3 kids. He says they’re an everyday dual income American family.
For the early part of their marriage, Brian was the one working out of the house and working long hours. His wife was home managing their life and taking care of their kids. Then one day things changed. His wife got a great job opportunity that paid more than he was making, and they made the decision to swap roles. Brian’s new job was much harder than he ever realized. When he and his wife switched working roles, he was seriously blown away by his new work responsibilities as a stay-at-home Dad!
He recently posted something on his LinkedIn that caught my attention.
It was the list below called ‘The Mental Load List’.
It’a a helluva list of all the things that go on in a day for whoever is at home managing a family household. Wow – It really gives respect and insight to the day-to-day responsibilities of the stay-at-home spouse!
Brian said,
“For much of our marriage, I was the 60-80-hour-a-week breadwinner who did very little to manage the home. Early in our marriage, I probably would’ve rolled my eyes at a conversation about the mental load. You just don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. “
“Many men rightfully feel defensive when we hear we need to do more at home. Most of us simply slip into doing certain tasks without understanding the invisible labor that goes with them.”
“I created a mental load list with just a few examples to provide some context of what it takes to run a home. However, as much as we would like our homes to be run by checklists, it’s just not that simple.”
“It’s been my experience that men desperately want to be great for their spouses. What often stands in the way is an understanding of the mental load that accompanies the tasks needed for a home to run, which is why I wrote this extensive post.”
Marriage is a partnership built on trust, love, and mutual respect.
Brian says he’s trying to show couples how to navigate life as a couple better.
I personally thought Brian’s ‘mental load’ list was LOUD and worth sharing for any stay-at-home parent who’s been frustrated trying to explain to their spouse what the heck they’ve been doing all day ‘at home’!
More about Brian and how to navigate life successfully as a couple on ModernHusbands.com
BTW: Brian who spent 15 years as a personal finance and economics educator was recognized as a National Educator of the Year by the Milken Foundation and Ohio Department of Education. He was a CNN Money Hero, a CEE Forbes Award winner, and a former Working Group Member of the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability.
He says, life and family change, and his priorities now are to support his wife’s career ambitions and his children’s needs.
Enjoy meeting this modern husband Brian Page in this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the audio transcript is below
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
And now back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
0:00:03
Like the legend of the Phoenix. All ends with beginnings. All right, all things have a beginning.
0:00:09
Hopefully not all things have an end.
Let’s talk about modern marriage for a second and a modern husband. What does this all mean?
Hey, everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro. You know, my greatest joy is discovering somebody I didn’t know about who’s doing something really meaningful and then getting a chance to share that person and what they’re doing
0:00:47
with all you guys.
So that brings me to Brian Page. He is a modern husband. What does that mean? Well, Brian is going to join us and tell everybody what couples need to know about that job these days.
0:00:59
He is a modern husband. He’s built an entire platform to kind of help couples navigate their home as a team. He and his wife have been married for over 20 years, got five people all together in their family and he said they’re an everyday dual income American family who went from living in Atlanta to Cincinnati and that was to of course support
0:01:26
his wife’s career ambitions.
So now what does this mean because his wife is an executive in the financial industry. He was a personal finance and economics teacher for 15 years but they just had to flip things around because his wife back when he was doing his thing was home and leading the household and she paid the bills and did the laundry and managed the family calendar she was the rock and now I think he swapped it around and realized wow wow that was like a lot so he wrote
0:01:55
this thing on LinkedIn called the mental load which delineated all the individual things that go on in somebody’s head who’s home managing a household to really give respect and insight to the other spouse, like this is no joke this is a really hard job and you need to know how to navigate life as a couple better so I’m like Brian you got to be on my show so here he is hello Brian
hey thanks for having me
Brian I love that you’re a modern
0:02:22
My wife does too.
0:02:24
Isn’t that something?
0:02:26
It’s been a wonderful journey. I think all the wives listening and partners would love to have a modern spouse.
Okay. So I know you did this just recently where you became the stay-at-home parent, or is that, am I reading it wrong?
0:02:44
Yeah, so really what happened was for much of our marriage, when we got married, we had a child young, and I started out making a little bit more than my wife and then my income grew pretty quickly and then I had a second job and that income grew quickly. Before I knew it, I was working 80 hours a week and she was doing everything at home. It’s just kind of like one of these things where we slipped into these big life decisions without understanding kind of the big picture and we were fortunate enough where my wife who’s
0:03:18
way smarter than me and she’s really ambitious, we decided let’s try something here. I’m going to scale back. She’s going to go from kind of a flexible career to really focusing on her career and we wanted to make sure our company knew it and so she got a pretty significant promotion and another one and then that led us to the opportunity to move from Cincinnati to Atlanta. I’m just some regular guy from rural Ohio and I had a big job down here in Atlanta and
0:03:53
after like a couple of years, it was too much. She had a big job, I had a big job, we had some needs at home and honestly, one of the things that we struggled with was the fact that because of our responsibilities, neither of us had the time to really understand how to take on or have the time to actually deliver the mental load. How is it that we can do all of the things needed to manage a home, to look after our
0:04:18
children, on and on.
It just was time really for us to say like, how can we reevaluate our circumstances and I like to look at it as a metaphor. You know, you have a gardener and a rose in a relationship and you know the rose is the person who is you know really blossoming in their career and the gardener is the one in the background in the home that’s doing everything necessary for the rose to blossom.
0:04:43
And you know my wife, my wife is a rose. She deserves to be a rose and so I’m the gardener now. I am working full-time.
My company, Modern Husbands, is focused on helping busy career couples manage money and the home as a team. I’ve gone through what it’s like to be an everyday guy who really didn’t do a lot at
0:05:05
home, did the tasks. When I say the tasks, I mean the do list.
0:05:07
The garbage?
0:05:08
Did you throw the garbage? Guys think that’s enough. They’re like, okay, I’ll throw the garbage. I got that
0:05:15
It’s not a checklist and I learned that the hard way when I just you know when we kind of flipped our roles and It managing a home. It really it really is about the mental load Okay, really kind of shouldering all of the responsibilities that come with that and I didn’t know that until I went through it myself.
0:05:38
Most men don’t know that. I think that and I say men because we’ve been in a society that even though it’s evolving, a lot of the structure of the family has not gone as fast in terms of evolution. A lot of guys get defensive because they’re like, hey, I’m out getting this. If you have somebody staying home, they’re like, hey, I’m out here all day. That’s your job.
0:05:56
So the mental load list is what got my attention. I wish it was bigger. I know you couldn’t. Is there a bigger version? I wish I could read from a bigger version, but I am going to try because with my feeble eyes I still can read some of it. I caught there was a long list. The mental load list is going to be appreciated by anybody who’s not been respected for this, these jobs.
0:06:17
And one is, when just that alone, you look at that and think, what’s the big deal? Unless you’ve done it yourself, it’s frustrating.
0:06:32
Yeah, it’s frustrating because nobody really picks up that you can actually have a long-term relationship with. They get you to one person, then another person, then a phone tree, then they’ll call you back, and then before you know it, they call back, you don’t recognize the number because they don’t tell you it’s the doctor’s office. It’s all weak.
0:06:46
It’s all weak. And then you got to figure out the health care component with it. I mean, that alone is exhausting.
0:06:54
Then you talk about planning daily meals and grocery shopping. There you go. That will knock out a whole chunk, right?
0:07:03
It takes so much time if you have… So we have three kids, and so winter sports activities, who’s going to be home when? My wife works late sometimes. Just figuring that out, you got to figure out we have allergies in our house, right? So you got to figure out who and we have a
0:07:25
vegetarian, what can I purchase? When should I purchase it? I can’t purchase fresh vegetables if they’re not going to be home till Thursday. When do I need the meals ready? It depends on their
0:07:43
schedule. Sometimes it’s bagging
0:07:47
their dinner because they’re on the run or it’s a late dinner because my wife’s getting home late but I have to make
0:07:39
from school. Right. Just off the top of my head. I know, and how about the childcare arrangements? They’re not all coming and going at the same time, right? That’s
0:07:47
exactly right. You know, if you, there’s this like idea that when the childcare is over when they go to school. That can’t be farther from the truth because schools aren’t built to accommodate a career. No. Schools are built for kids and so the kids come home at 2.30 or 3, you might still be working so my wife works at home twice a week. So when she’s at home, well once a week but when she’s at home, I have to make sure that you know the office door is closed.
0:08:14
When they get home that they have to have their meals ready. I have to make sure that I understand where they need to get to next. What if it’s the summertime and you have young children who can’t drive yet? What if they’re eight or not? You’ve got to figure out childcare for them in the summer, and that’s expensive, too.
0:08:29
Yeah, really expensive. And then everybody’s whining, how do you deal with all the emotional nonsense?
0:08:32
Oh, and that’s honestly the hard part. I think that’s the part of the mental load that I didn’t fully appreciate until we have done this. And it’s like, it’s honestly, it’s the, how do you quantify worry? How do you quantify worry? How do you quantify whether, you know, your kid came home and had a really bad day and maybe there’s
0:08:54
a bully at school. Maybe there’s something going on in one of their classes that’s stressing them out. It’s not just a matter of trying to help them sort it out. It’s thinking about when they’re gone, are they okay?
0:09:05
Are they working through this? It’s really emotionally exhausting for parents to worry so much. There’s all the kind of technology, track your kid, track this, but you know, you’re tracking everybody. It’s another job. You’re tracking everybody and then they’re tracking stuff in the house and there’s the laundry. So I think you captured it. The list goes on. Did you ever count how many things are on that mental load list?
0:09:23
Oh, that was an easy one. That was only a hundred. I mean, it’s so much longer than that. And I have to say for like the for the dudes out there, like most guys, like Cruxer says this and I see it in my circle of friends, like most of us want to be modern husbands. Most of us, some of us in many ways are. And it’s not like we are, you know, there’s some sort of political statement to us
0:09:49
or some social.
0:09:49
You’re cutting out, you’re cutting out, stand still.
0:09:51
Oh, sorry about that. That’s okay.
0:09:54
It’s not just for us, it’s a low bar of loving our wives. Right. Or a low bar of loving our spouses. We grew up in homes where in many cases, mom either stayed home, mom had the flexible job and so that wasn’t necessarily modeled. In the modern world, 40% of women are the breadwinners or earn around the same.
0:10:23
The way in which we have to support working women looks very different today and when I say that as husbands, supporting working women means making sure that their ambitions and their life’s work toward their career is nurtured because that’s going to bring them happiness.
0:10:43
Yes, and you’re making a very important point because a lot of marriages fail when a woman is unhappy because she can’t be who she dreamed she might be lost in a marriage.
0:10:54
That’s exactly right. One of the statistics shows that when women earn more, they actually do more in the home. My wife is in a women’s group called Lean In. I’m sure you’re well aware of it with Sheryl Sandberg. There’s a lot of good information in there about how women should put lean in work But it’s a hell of a lot easier for a woman to lean in at work if a man steps in at home
0:11:19
Yeah, and that’s a nice line that you should coin that very nice very nice line You know you’re bringing up and why I had you on the show today Is your point that what stands in the way often of a good relationship is an understanding? two parties who are together of the mental load that accompanies the things that need to get done for a home to run and a family to run and it’s why you wrote it. I want to just throw out, you gave out thanks for people who helped you in contributions
0:11:47
so I’ll give them the few minutes here. Paige Cornell, Tara Ryan, CPC, Frederick Van Ripper, RPLC and Zach Watson helped put this or guide you for the ultimate guide to the mental load what you need to know for a stronger marriage and I think I clicked on the wrong link because I do want to post this oh there it is big one it’s big one okay this is going to get like I’m going to share it and I want you to know that I’m so grateful you took the
0:12:14
time to come on the show because this is the loudest unspoken topic that I know of as a mom as a grandma that’s going on in the world right now well I really
0:12:25
appreciate that that means a lot and if you go to modernhusbands.com, you’ll find it in there. And I think like the one lasting message that is important and the one final message that I want to share is that most men really want to be great for their spouses. And it’s just a matter of having a conversation about how to do that and creating a system in the home, like the fair play system, where men have ownership over enough tasks where both spouses have equal leisure time.
0:13:00
That’s what’s key. Because both spouses deserve their own time away from work, away from the home, to chase whatever they want that’s gonna make them feel better about themselves.
0:13:12
Yeah, and back in the day. I had a website. You know very early in the game called working mom.com . I was very early out of the gate for paying attention to what was going on with the dynamics of family And it was a piece of the puzzle that you didn’t mention which I’m going to bring up which is about romance and intimacy In a couple who are happy with each other versus ones who are annoyed at one another So what I came up with as my line was if you want to score, fellas, do a chore.
0:13:41
That’s a good line. Did you know the research actually found that when there’s an equal share of labor inside the home that the sexual intimacy increases?
0:13:53
Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.
0:13:55
Oh, absolutely. I mean, that is not just a, that is a 100% fact.
0:13:59
That is a 100% fact. Okay. You’re charming and I’m so happy you took the time to join me. Brian Page, founder of Modern Husbands. Check out modernhusbands.com. Brian is, I think he’s sort of the modern-day wise guy for how to keep couples together, both, and families together, and functioning, both financially and emotionally. Yes, kudos to you, Brian Page.
0:14:25
Well, thanks for having me on and thanks for all you do. All right.
0:14:28
Have a great rest of your day, Brian. You too. Bye bye. Bye bye.
