Can you spreadsheet your way to equal parenting? With Corinne Low

Soumaya Keynes (0:00)

Last month, I wrote about my parenting spreadsheet. Roughly once a week, I note which mornings, afternoons and evenings I spent looking after my two wonderful toddlers.

My husband does the same. The data feeds into a chart showing which of us has done more. Readers responded with this.

SPEAKER_2 (0:22)

Every single second I have spent with my children has been a pleasure and a privilege.

My wife and I don't use a spreadsheet to record those precious moments. We see them every day in each other's eyes.

SPEAKER_3 (0:37)

The maternal role is the most wonderful and rewarding contribution that a woman can make to a family. It stems from the heart.

In the early years, the children connect to the parents via the mother. No spreadsheet can control or express this.

SPEAKER_4 (0:52)

Crazy obsessiveness with 50-50 and everything and everything is like a form of communism, totally unachievable due to major inherent differences between men and women.

SPEAKER_3 (1:03)

Wonderfully amusing to see that economists can't give up on numbers even in private life. The question I'd ask the author is, what ranking does spontaneity have in her married life and how is it measured?

SPEAKER_5 (1:17)

Is looking after children a chore? Why does it need to be tracked in a spreadsheet?

If you need to excel rows in your marriage to tell that someone should do more, you should not have married in the first place.

Soumaya Keynes (1:31)

I get it. The parenting spreadsheet is highly unusual. But the point is to get me and my husband closer to our shared objective, to split childcare as equally as we can. And yes, it was by idea, I'm an economist, I like data.

So much that in today's episode, I'm asking another economist what the data tells us about the job of raising children.

This is The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes. I'm joined this week by Corinne Low. Corinne is an associate professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where she focuses on the economics of gender and discrimination. Corinne has looked extensively at the economic choices parents make and what they get wrong. She is the author of a book which is called Feminomics in the UK and Having It All in the US. Corinne, hello.

Corinne Low (2:32)

Hi, great to be here.

Soumaya Keynes (2:34)

Okay, so on this show, we always start with a question where the answer is on a scale of 1 to 10 So on that scale, how insane do you think my parenting spreadsheet is?

Corinne Low (2:46)

One. I love the spreadsheet.

Soumaya Keynes (2:50)

Okay, so you think it's a good idea, but have you got your own spreadsheet?

Corinne Low (2:53)

Well, on my website, I have a spreadsheet, but everybody can download for tracking your time with your partner, because I'm like, how can you try to divide things the way you want to divide things without data?

I know because I've been studying the American Time Use Survey, that whenever I present the data about how unequal the division of household labor still is between men and women, that everybody is shocked by it, and every man is convinced that they're the exception. They're like, yes, but that's not true for me, because I do so much. So, okay, well, let's look at the data then. I think one of the problems is household labor is like an iceberg. There's the big obvious tasks that are like the tip of the iceberg, that's dropping the kid off at daycare or doing bedtime. But then there's all of this invisible labor beneath the surface, which is making the doctor's appointments. And it's being the one who gets called in to cuddle in those last 45 minutes where you think it's after bedtime and you hope that you could open your laptop and then you get called back into the room, right? And so if we can't see that iceberg, we can't divide it. And your spreadsheet made that visible.

Soumaya Keynes (4:00)

Okay, well, I should probably clarify that the spreadsheet doesn't record all of that stuff, right? The spreadsheet is, were you present physically for a bedtime and were you parenting for the whole morning? But that kind of invisible labor, so you're advocating measuring that as well all the time?

Corinne Low (4:17)

Not all the time. I'm advocating in your household as an experiment, track your time. Because as you said, this is about you and your husband reaching your shared objective, your shared value.

And so if you have a conversation that says, we want to equally share parenting duties, right? And if your husband says, yes, that's how I see myself as a dad, I see myself as an equal partner. Okay, well, let's get curious about how is the reality aligning with that shared objective? And so invisible work, you can also surface. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm even more insane than you.