>> For current low being a is an evidence-based decision.

She's only kind a kitten because here's her evidence.

Women in heterosexual marriages who are the primary breadwinners do almost twice as much cooking and cleaning as their male spouses.

That evidence is further explored in her new book having it all.

What data tells us about women's lives and getting the most of yours.

And here to talk about these findings is the author herself, Karin Lowor professor Chicago area native.

Thank you for joining Thanks so much for having me up to what led you to do this research.

You had your own experiences.

Yes, so I was in the thick of it myself.

And I was feeling I was juggling all these once and they were all falling down on me.

And it's like, is it just or like what's wrong here?

And so I was an economist and >> have been studying economics of being a woman, my whole career.

And so I decide to start looking into it and I started looking at time use data and what I found shocked me, which is that it just doesn't add up.

It's not in our heads.

It's that gender roles have converged in the workplace.

They haven't converged at home.

The staff that you just mentioned, but not only that we have explosion of parenting time that comes in the 1990's meeting.

We spend twice as much time with our kids as our own mother's dead.

>> And that parenting time explosion is a result of what we learned about the benefits of being with our kids.

Absolutely.

So it's because we actually understand child development and it's important to hold your in fans and talk to your toddler and say that the kitchen table doing homework together.

So.

>> I think it's a beautiful affirmative choice for a stunt.

Do that.

it's tremendously costly in terms of our time.

Yes, because with that comes a lot of pressure of being, you know, better parents and great parents and but let's get back to households who are because, you know, asking for friends, why don't men do what is I want to their fair share, but do more of a household chores even when some of those men are not employed because there are modern day stay at home.

Dads as well.

>> Yes, so I think, you know, there's some assumptions there, some gender norms there.

And some of it is just like lack of information.

And I don't think >> that it's working from an either or, you know, I think that they they want to do more and do better.

But I often say that they try to do half of the tasks that they're aware of, right?

So say, OK, drop the kids off half the time, but they don't know in order to get to that drop off.

Well, we had to make sure that there were the right-sized and seasonal clones.

We had to make sure that lunches packed.

We had to make sure the replay dates after school care right?

And so that's all that.

And as a believer and so one of the solutions I talk about is saying, look, I think there's a win-win here, which is that your spouse doesn't want to be like a low-level junior employee at home either.

So promote him to Co-CEO and really divide ownership over the tasks and the work of living so that you can let go of some of that mental load.

So it sounds like a conversation that that women wives are not having with husbands, I don't like and want to place blame on anybody.

But one of things I suggest because the data was so important for me to understand is that you can actually get data in your own household.

So you can actually track your time.

And that's one of the exercises in the book is like, make that invisible labor visible, You write about the house work changes and how it changes relative to.

>> Women's age and income Varities 3 eras of one's life that you describe.

What are those walk us through?

Those I call era one the time, but no money era.

You're in your 20's and you're investing in your career and then get into this era 2.

And this is what's so important.

The squeaky cheese housework and childcare time skyrockets.

But you're still making investments in your career.

Haven't paid off yet.

So you don't have money to throw at the problem.

And then eventually we'll get to ERA 3, which I call the ironic relief because housework and childcare comes down and now you also have more money because your career investments have paid off.

But for a lot of women, it's actually hard to kind of get back on the high-speed career track at that point in time.

So I have a lot of strategies that recommends a kind of getting through squeeze with just saying, like you have to radically prioritize when you are in that era, like what actually matters and say no to everything else.

Does that amount and is it sort of shift to the right?

Maybe a little bit in the 40's as women have children later?

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

So 8 is going to depend on when you're caregiving responsibilities are at their peak.

And yet we see an average in the data.

You know, it's just it's right around that time when your kids are John.

But it's so short it doesn't last.

And so well, part of message to from this is if you can retain women through that squeeze, right, then you're going to have that talent innovation and that competitive edge through the rest of their working career.

And so we've got to do better at having strategies to survive that period.

What are some of the ways that firms employers can support those women during that squeeze to make sure they stick around?

Later on the research shows that women don't want flexibility.

They want boundaries.

And that's why health care, which is a very inflexible profession.

Nursing is 86% female.

It works for women because its structure and so what firms can do to get that structure is saying, let's use the technology.

We have to say alright in office, work ends at 05:00PM and then you can block off that time for dinner and then we can back on after bedtime.

We could have rotating on call shifts where you're not always waiting for your phone to ring.

You actually have a designated on call shift like in the healthcare industry but also encourage women to not wait for their employers to make these changes to set some of those boundaries themselves.

Now, there's also, you know, you talked about how you made the choice to in from your dating pool.

You have a wife now your wife.

You have together you have your 2 children that's not an option for and that defer sort.

But even though that was where like I ended up in my life because I was married to a man.

And, you know, eventually I said I'd like try something different.

>> But I have a lot of faith in people making partnerships, work, you know, with with partnerships.

And so I think if you're looking for a partner right now and you're looking for a man that we want to date, then what I tell people is we interview for the wrong position.

We interviewed for the position of boyfriend and we need to interview for a Co-CEO if the household right?

It matters a little bit less like.

>> Who like going to the movies with and over the course of our lives in matters.

Who does your laundry what you like to cook and what want to play with our kids.

So you know, after, you know, you've worked through the you've lived it yourself.

Would you say you have a better grasp of >> having it all as the title of your book says?

I think once they really looked at the science and, you know, figure out some of the strategies, what I've realized is, you know, can't have everything at once.

Okay.

The idea that we're going to be a super career woman who's going to be perfect in every dimension and we're going to be Instagrammable track life.

Those are 2 separate full-time jobs and they don't add up the 24 hour day, but we can have what we need to have a life that's sustainable, rich and fulfilling.

I really hope that together we're going to have that conversation.

That's in the book about how we do that, OK?

all those conversations with me, my friends, people, I know what going to have.

All of those.

Enjoyed having with you.

Current low.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you