The Many Gifts of Shared Care
Bryan and his wife both worked a four-day work week when their son was born. Now they are “empty nesters” and can quickly see how the “gifts” from adopting this approach just keep on coming. Read on to learn what Bryan gained from sharing care with his wife.
Here’s what Bryan learned: I always knew I wanted to be a very involved dad but until the time comes when the baby is born and real, it can be difficult to know exactly what that means. As it turns out, Shared Care has been an ideal way of being intimately involved in the day-to-day care of my son. By spending the first few months at home with my son and wife and then caring for my son one day during the work week (known to him as Daddy Day, Mommy also has her own day during the work week), I was able to develop the kind of relationship with my son that I had always hoped for.
Being able to truly share in the care of my son with my wife has been a true gift, some of the benefits anticipated, others quite a surprise.
As anticipated, the greatest benefit of Shared Care has been to share many more of the ‘little moments’ with my son so that I felt as though I witnessed his growing up first hand. I knew his favorite books and his favorite playgrounds, the stories he made up while playing with his trains, and how he liked his grilled cheese sandwich cooked at lunch.
Shared Care brought my wife and I closer together as we felt like ‘true partners’ in this whole business of raising a family.
We shared our lives on several fronts – the ups and downs of clients and projects and deadlines and co-workers and the ups and downs of playtime and napping and discipline and mealtime. Shared Care has helped to foster a wonderful closeness with my wife and as a family.
Shared Care helped me become a better employee as well as a more productive one.
Because I knew my time at work was limited, when working, I found myself very focused. I became better at prioritizing and retaining a perspective on what part of my contribution was the most valuable both to the company and to clients. My company also recognized my contributions both verbally and monetarily regardless of the truth that I continued to prioritize family alongside work.
Another benefit of Shared Care was learning how to create self-time.
Both my wife and I learned how to structure our lives so that we both had a certain amount of private time in any week to ‘do our own thing’ and recharge. We’ve been able to create windows of time where each of us has the night off, or a morning off, where we can pursue our own interests apart from work and children. This time has always been precious to me.
One of the many benefits of ThirdPath and its mission of teaching couples about Shared Care is that it helps to create a vision of a new family structure where men and women contribute in significant ways both in the raising of children and in the generation of income.
It can be easy to feel isolated at times on this new path, especially when I was the the only father on the playground on a Thursday morning, or the only male senior technical person who worked a reduced schedule. But to my mind I have the best of all worlds. I developed a depth of connection with my sons that I never had with my own father, have done work I love and moved ahead in my career, all while also creating a lifelong bond with my wife. I may be biased but looking back, it sure feels like Shared Care has been a better way to combine work and family.
Thanks for being such a pioneer Bryan! We are confidant that forging this path for all of these years has made it easier for others to follow in your foot steps.
If you would like to hear more stories about shared care, check out this recording from our January 2022 live podcast, where we heard several inspiring stories from couples across the country who share care.