When Dads share in the primary care of their children they strengthen their families in many crucial ways.

One - Many feel sharing both work and family responsibilities improves communication and brings parents closer together as a a couple.

Two - When sharing family care and paid work, both parents understand each other’s experiences better. Both learn, what’s enough work and what’s enough parenting so they have time to care for their relationship with each other.

Three - Each parent develops their own unique strengths around how to play with and care for their child. Together they develop a larger, more flexible set of tools to care for their family.

Four - Sharing care means sharing bread winning. By having both parents play a role in the family’s financial needs it can lead to creative decisions around how to manage earning, savings and spending as a way to have more family time or create more satisfying career paths.

Five - Having shared experiences around paid work means you become an excellent resource for each other around planning and strategizing next steps at work. It also means you have each others backs if some “next steps” take you by surprise.

Six - Creating a shared approach to work and family – especially when both parents have learned how to set boundaries at work – means both parents find more energy and creativity in both aspects of their lives. Work enriches life. Life enriches work.

In short, when Dads are supported and encouraged to play an active role at home – and both parents support each other to craft an integrated approach to work and life – the word “partner” takes on a whole new meaning.

Download our PDF “A Life Committed to Shared Care” to see how Shared Care Dads (and Moms) are creating solutions that are good for their families, good for their workplaces and good for Dads.

Would you like to create more time for your children? Your spouse? Yourself? Male or female, young or old, entry level or executive, there’s a win-win work redesign solution for every job – a flexible solution that is both good for you and good for your employer.

Adam successfully redesigned his work to help share in the care of his two school age children. Adam’s story once again shows us, work can be done differently…and men, women, children AND organizations benefit from these changes. Check out Adam’s win-win solution highlighted in ‘Creating More Flex’.

For those who have been able to truly disengage from work while on vacation, you know the benefits can be quite significant – both for you and your workplace.

Yes – many of us might need to challenge some norms to make this happen: the fear of being perceived as an underperformer; the pressure to see it as a win-lose proposition – either we meet our client and customer needs or our own personal needs; or the worry that maybe there’s no point to take a week off given the demands to be available while away and the difficulty transitioning back upon return.

But there’s a lot to gain when we push back at these norms.

In fact, we’ve learned from the Shared Care parents and Integrated Leaders we’ve worked with, that taking vacations can increase the skills we need to approach work and life in an integrated way.

Here’s a list of things you can do before you leave, and when you return, that should help increase your chances of enjoying your time away from work and minimizing the challenges upon your return.

Vacation Check List:

• Plan vacations around the “seasonality” of your work.  Try scheduling longer trips for less busy periods of work and “long weekend vacations” when work is busier.

• Minimize the unexpected.  Coordinate vacations with your team.  Talk to clients a few weeks before leaving.  Ask delegates to complete work that needs reviewing a week before you leave.

• Block off pre and post “quiet” work days.  Avoid scheduling meetings and phone calls the day before you leave and the day you return to allow for the “unexpected” and for catch up time when you return.

• Create a “what can wait” list.  A week before you go, create a list of things that you can wait to get done after vacation, versus tasks that must be completed before you go.

• Decide how “connected” you want to be.  If you need to check email or voice messages, plan ahead around what’s least disruptive.

• Carefully define emergencies.  Think ahead about what challenges could arise. Clearly define emergencies to avoid everything becoming one.

• Plan ways to totally disengage from work. Avoid the “I’ll just get this one thing done” trap. If you can’t disengage for the whole vacation, set a firm goal to at least disengage for part of your vacation.

• Pre-schedule “check in” calls. Set up meetings or calls to review the work you have delegated to others the second or third day of your return.

• Plan different trips to meet different needs.  Family and extended family vacations are fun, but couples may also benefit from having a long weekend away just as a couple.

• Keep track of what worked well.  Create a list you can refer back to of helpful ideas for planning your next vacation.

And don’t forget, creating vacations that really recharge our batteries may also require us to change how we approach vacations as a family.

What tips have you learned to make the most of your time away from work?  Send us your success stories.  We will then gather them up and make them available to the entire ThirdPath community in a future email update.

Although work life balance can be challenging at any stage, it becomes especially challenging with the birth of a new baby. Not only can this change be exhausting for families because of lack of sleep, too often it also unintentionally sets up couples into more traditional roles at home.

Kristin Maschka’s describes this challenge in her book, This is Not How I Thought it Would Be – Redesigning Motherhood. Kristin is one of the many authors who have written about Shared Care.

Below is what Kristin said that she and her husband gained by switching to a shared approach to parenting. We hope you find it as inspiring as we did.  If you’d like to learn more about Shared Care, contact us, or check out the many resources on our website.  We’ve got twelve years of experience you can benefit from.

 “I knew what I would lose. I’d lose my marriage - Maybe not literally, but something vital at its core. David and I got married as equals, as best friends, as partners. When we were married, we vowed to “be true to the pursuit of the dreams and goals we both share.” The dream we shared now was of a family life with everyone home for dinner, with time for our relationship with each other. We wanted a family life that would allow us to share the family responsibilities so that we both had time to pursue our own dreams and both had a relationship with Kate. How could we hope to have our marriage stand the test of time if we gave up on that vow to be true to the dreams we both share? I would always carry some level of resentment, and he would always feel some defensiveness. If we gave up on the idea that we could share responsibility for our family, effectively we would be giving up on a core value in our marriage.

“What would David lose? - I didn’t want David to miss out on the richness of the relationship I had with Kate. A richness that came from putting a cold washcloth on her feverish forehead, from reading and giggling about stories in her bed at night, and, yes, from the times she drove me crazy and I yelled and then said I was sorry and she hugged me anyway. I didn’t want David to find many years later that he didn’t know his own child, had missed her childhood and couldn’t have a meaningful conversation with her. I wanted more for him. So badly it brought me to tears. And I was pretty sure he wanted it too.”

Change the reality don’t change the vision - As Kristin explains, “Whenever people feel the pain of a big gap between current reality and the way we want things to be, there are two options. Change the reality or change the vision. Reality is tougher to change, so the easiest and fastest way to relive pain is to ratchet down our expectations. For example, we tell ourselves mothers are just naturally better at family so it will never change. For a time, we feel better. The painful gap between what we have and what we want is a little less because we’ve decided to want less.” But then she asks, “What have we lost in the process?”

Want to Read More?
The Libra Solution, Shedding Excess and Redefining Success at Work and at Home, Lisa D’Annolfo Levey (2012)
Equally Shared Parenting, Rewriting the Rules for a New Generation of Parents, Marc and Amy Vachon (2011)
This is Not How I Thought It Would Be, Remodeling Motherhood To Get The Lives We Want Today, Kristin Maschka (2009)
Getting to 50-50, How Working Couples Can Have it All by Sharing it All, Sharon Lerner (2009)
Daddy On Board, Parenting Roles for the 21st Century, Dottie Lamm (2007)
How to Avoid The Mommy Trap, A Road Map for Sharing Parenting and Making it Work, Julie Shields (2003)
The Four-Thirds Solution, Solving the Childcare Crisis in America Today, Stanley Greenspan (2002)
Halving it All, How Equally Shared Parenting Works, Francine Deutsch (2000)
Love Between Equals, How Peer Marriage Really Works, Pepper Schwartz (1995)

Our most recent Thursday with ThirdPath call was an inspiring examples of what’s possible when leaders courageously hold on to their goals of living integrated lives.

Jennifer Johnson is Co-founder Current Designs – a small research instrument manufacturing firm. Ken Stern is Founding Partner, Stern & Curray – an immigration law firm. Jennifer and Ken are also both great examples of Whole Life Leaders – leaders who have been successful at work while also creating time and energy to be an involved father, mother, grandfather, husband, wife and community member.

Whole Life Leaders model and support progressive conversations at work – Whole Life Leaders help their team develop 21st century skills and an integrated mind set so that everyone increases their capacity to develop win-win solutions – solutions that foster a thriving workplace and multi-dimensional lives.

Whole Life Leaders create more sustainable workplaces - Whole Life Leaders who are small business owners, like Jennifer and Ken, are also leaders who are helping us create a blue print for 21st century workplaces. Workplaces that truly support everyone – from entry level to executive level – to follow integrated career paths.

Whole Life Leaders support progressive conversations at home - In addition, Whole Life Leaders are changing what’s happening at home. Together, they are working as a team to step out of traditional gender roles and address the changing needs of work and family. Sometimes this means one parent – the father or mother – temporarily steps out of work or reduces work to create a workable solution for the family. But they see this as one part of an on-going story where both parents are partners in caring for their children and meeting the financial needs of their family.

Download our Whole Life Leaders PDF and see how these pioneers are changing how we do things both at work and at home.

We really do understand that it can feel challenging to imagine yourself adopting an integrated approach to work and life, but  this goal is within your reach.  Key to this journey is (1) becoming clear about what you want time for outside of work and then (2) getting support to move towards these goals.

To illustrate the importance of these two simple truths, read Brad’s story. 

Brad is a father who learned many important life lessons on his road to becoming a Whole Life Leader. Brad started his career in a large law firm, but over time made many changes to create a more satisfying approach to work and family. Click on each of his “life lessons” to follow his journey.

Lesson 1. Taking parental leave makes a big difference.

Lesson 2. Make sure each parent has alone time with the children.

Lesson 3. Get support to leave an unsupportive workplace.

Lesson 4. If you expect to encounter resistance, develop a good track record and then ask to try something as a pilot first.

Lesson 5. Don’t let go off your goals, even when the going gets tough.

Lesson 6. Look for other role models.

Lesson 7. It’s a process, not a solution – things will keep on changing at work and at home.

Lesson 8. Take a long-term approach to your collective goals and step by step you’ll get there.

Lesson 9. Whole Life Leaders are modeling a new approach that others can follow.

Would you like to join one of the calls we have just for fathers?  Check out our events calendar to find out more about our calls for fathers and fathers-to-be.  These calls address:  (call 1) The new definition of fatherhood, (call 2) Career success and family success, (call 3) Making it work financially.  Contact us and let us know if you’d like to learn more about this unique opportunity.