March 11, 2025 • 52 mins
Madison’s retirement introduced a whole new structure to the Packer household. While Anya used to bear the brunt of childcare, those roles are now swapped. This creates challenges on both ends that the couple hash out on air. Luckily, today’s guest, Eve Rodsky, can relieve the tension. Eve is dedicated to helping couples split domestic labor evenly–a mission she detailed in her NYT Bestselling book, Fair Play. She explains that regardless of family structure, parents can create a more equal household by treating it like a workplace with boundaries, communication, and structure. Listen to hear all her insights, from the unique problems same-sex couples might encounter to how finding your “unicorn space” can help you stay sane.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, I'm Madison Packer. I'm a recently retired pro
hockey vet, a founding member of the National Women's Hockey League,
a pillar in the PHF, and an inaugural member of
the PWHL Sirens.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Anypacker, also a former pro hockey player, also
founding member of the National Women's Hockey League. But today
I'm a full Madison Packer. Stand.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Anya and I met through hockey, then we got married,
and now we're moms to two awesome toddlers, ages two
and four.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And on our new podcast, These Packs Puck, we're opening
up about the chaos of our daily lives, between the
juggle of being athletes, raising children and all the messiness
in between. Hey Maddie, Hello, what's up?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Running on fumes?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Fumes? The tank is empty, there's nothing left. Seriously, how
you doing seriously running on fumes?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
That gives me stress. I'm excited to talk today. I
feel like this conversation is actually pretty enlightening because it's
a little flippy of what we used to do now
what we're doing now. So I think at all points
in time, we've both felt like we're running on fumes.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, fair probably, Although I will point out when you
were running on fumes, we did have childcare.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Really, we're gonna dig right there. We're gonna put the
shovel right there. Yeah, Okay, before we start that fight.
I think it's important that we talk a little bit
about the hockey hot take for the week.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Hockey hot Take.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think there needs to be greater understanding surrounding the
PWHL's fine structure and or at some point we have
to recognize that a five hundred dollars fine or two
hundred and fifty dollars fine is nominal. When we're talking
about players getting injured and finding someone multiple times and
the behavior doesn't change, there's got to be some other
(01:57):
kind of punishment.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So Mattie's talking directly to the PHL Player Safety Committee.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I just think that it's too ambiguous now, like there
doesn't appear to be any rules or any consequence for
poor choices and poor behavior, and it doesn't matter who
you are, there's an obligation to respect the game and
respect the players you're playing against. And it seems like
we're just taking this blanket approach to finding players versus
suspending players, or there seems to be a different level
(02:23):
of standard. I guess I should say because there have
been players suspensions, and that said, sometimes there is a
hard play where you know someone gets hurt or you
know you lose an edge and you hit someone. There
was a play in the NHL on Brad Marsha and
he was hurt. All the Boston players were upset because
his feet got taken out. When you rewatch the play
several times, it stinks, But it's just it looks to
(02:46):
me like coincidental contact. It's a hockey play. You watch
some of these plays that are happening in the PWHL,
they're not hockey plays. When you hit someone in the
back of the head from behind and you bury their
head into the ice, that's not a hockey play. People
are going to continue to get hurt. And then I
think that there needs to be more respect for the
game inherently, versus picking and choosing how we penalize players
(03:09):
based on their former pedigree. Everyone's on the same playing
field now we are allowed to hit. Also, you can't
compare it to the NHL or not the NHL right
taking things from the NHL Player Safety Book or trying
to make your own I understand, is very very difficult,
but I think that there would be value in consulting
former players, not myself, you know, not like anyone that's
freshly out of the game maybe, but other people who
(03:31):
have played somewhat recently, maybe not played in the peda,
but like, have you know, some ability to speak to
what's happening, just because I think the game has changed
so much and there is going to be contact body contact,
big hits are going to happen, but I just see
an awful lot of head hunting and unnecessary plays happening,
and then they get hit with a fine, and it's like,
(03:52):
you know, that doesn't make a significant, significant enough of
an impact that it deters the player from doing it again,
as is evident by the fact that players of doing
it again and again.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean that. And it's also interesting, right, like,
there was a fight, the first ever fight, and nobody
got ejected, nobody got five minutes, and then after that fight,
the league released the rule that it's a five minute
in an dejection, but that didn't happen in the moment,
and then nobody was And not that I want anybody
to be suspended, right like.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I don't think you should. I don't think it should be.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No, I agree, but I'm saying if we're going to
incorporate that in the women's game, then that that rule
has to be hard and fast. It can't be a
question mark because it's going to happen. Now that it's happened, right,
the band aid's been ripped off, it's probably gonna happen again, So.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
We should know it was the rule though, I think,
I mean, just yeah, but maybe the repts just didn't
know the rules. But if you're going to allow women
to hit the way that we're allowing women to hit,
you have to allow women to fight because there because
there needs to be a window of opportunity for you
to get your ass kicked if you take a lib No,
I'm serious, if you take a liberty and there's no
(04:54):
consequence for that liberty. I'm not encouraging people to go
out and hurt each other, right, but there's a different
price to pay when you think about having to face
Jill Sanya after you've buried Hillary Knight from behind in
the corner.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
No, I agree.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I forces, Oh, maybe I'll get kicked out for a game,
or maybe I'll get a five hundred dollars fine. Or
maybe I'll take that extra slash, you know what I mean,
Like you would hope that people disrespect the game enough
not to do it, but it's a part of the game,
Like you have to allow these players to defend themselves.
Now that we're allowing players to turn themselves into torpedoes
at open ice, I applaud Jail for standing up and
taking that fight. I texted her, I was like, I
(05:29):
think I also think it makes for great entertainment. Now
that said, repeated blows to the head probably increase in injury.
There's probably a player safety factor as to why they're
eliminating the fighting and don't want involved.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So that's what I was gonna say, is I was
gonna say, like the extra layer of repeated hits to
the head, repeated open ice blows, like absolute tear down blows,
it's becoming a lot. And so the way to combat that,
to your point is blood for blood, like that's the
only answer and high entertainment factor, and women are very capable.
I'm not saying that we should go back to this
(06:01):
world of no hitting, but if the Player Safety Committee
isn't going to rule with an iron fist tell players
they can't play like that, you know, take people out
for games. If the answer is that it's permittable, then
there has to be a counter answer. You have to
be able to protect yourself. You have to be able
to then start to mold your team to have these
roles that the Soigne trade makes so much more sense
(06:23):
if if right, if these players from Boston are going
to get hit and there's not going to be this consequence.
I mean, she's doing incredible things on this new roster
and it's been a breath of fresh air for her
in this whole kind of like transition from New York
to Boston and all these things. And then she starts
the you know, she gets in the fight, she's starting
to put points up on the board. She becomes this
utility player that is so much more impactful for the game.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Well, she's finally gotten an opportunity.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
That part too, But I'm saying, is it well that
majorly that part, But I'm saying, is it a function
of the Player Safety Committee to make it more clear
so that the players know what they can and CAI
do and then those roles can adapt from there, or
is it the function of the Player Safety Committee to
say we're not going to allow hitting, or we are
going to allow hitting it looks like this, it doesn't
(07:09):
look like that, and then implement postseason hitting clinics like
that's that's the gray area.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's definitely an obligation
on the league to implement some form of like combine
or education like because you can also tell, even at
this level, all these years later, the women who have
played with boys and hit, and the women who have
not a thousand you can one hundred percent tell. I
mean Polin has played with boys. She can lay a
(07:35):
body check shoulder to shoulder. There are times where she
crosses the line, but she knows how to hit. There
are also players out there who are flying elbow out,
knee out, like they have no idea what they're doing. Well,
because if you haven't had to, right, Yeah, how do
you teach someone to hit without teaching them to hit?
There's a lot more gray area and leeway when you're
sitting in a chair watching someone else get hit than
(07:57):
there is when you're on the ice looking to take
one or give one. So I think someone not me
needs to find a way to, you know, educate players
on body checking, or maybe you just start young and
recognize that it is a problem. So we need to
educate the players coming up.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's not necessarily violent. If it's muscle memory, If I
know how to take and receive a hit, it's not violence,
right Like, It's not like I'm not getting blown up.
I can receive a hit, get knocked off the puck,
and then continue to stride in progress and then chase
down that person that hit me, right Like, in a
perfect world, when you watch the NHL, when you watch
men's college hockey, when you watch all these things, these
(08:31):
guys aren't like yard sailing every time they're hit because
they know how to receive one. So it's kind of
all those things I always say, like when I was playing,
if you came to tell me what happened and you
show me a video, like I know, I'm just not
capable of doing that in real time obviously, but I
think it's always hard. When you watch video and you
think that's immediately going to translate to your physical form.
(08:54):
It's not always that easy. So you actually have to
put body on body, You actually have to touch each other,
you actually have to lay some hand, receive some hits.
And that's where I think the burden of liability on
the Player Safety Committee, Like, do I think that they're
being clear enough? Absolutely not. But do I think that
there's like postseason or preseason work that actually has to
come from the Player Safety Committee to make sure players
(09:16):
are being safe?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And where's that money going? The fines kind of just
came out of nowhere, and I don't feel like it's
incredibly clear what's happening with them, you know, do they
go to they go to the other players like a,
sorry I took your head off, here's five hundred bucks,
Like no, and they are and they aren't like tiered.
So it's like, Okay, Maddie, you're making one hundred thousand
dollars you hit me, making thirty five of two hundred
(09:38):
and fifty dollars fine to you is inconsequential For somebody
that's making thirty five thousand, that's a much more important fine, right, Like,
So it's there's all these questions around what's going on
with the Player Safety Committee, But I do think it's
a good hockey hot take. It's not clear enough. Are
they doing the right job to keep the players safe?
And what is the efficacy of hitting, receiving a hit
(09:59):
and should people flight more.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
The hardship for me is as a player who was
constantly attacked and labeled, et cetera for being cheap and
dirty and all these things. You I played my ten
year professional career, nine year professional career without ever receiving
a single suspension, a single fine, and I don't even
think I had a single strike in the PHF. So
(10:22):
you can say whatever you want about me, But I
played the game gritty and I played the game hard.
But there's a difference between being tough and gritty and cheap.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And I rejected one time for you and sarahasorso literally
grab each other's jerseys and punch each other in the face.
You were ejected one time you had one strike?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Oh yeah, fair, I don't getting it a strike. I
got thrown out of the game.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I think that goes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Why did that happen? Because that kid ran me from
behind the sea.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
It was a year later.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
I held on to that for a year.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well, like I said, the rafts have an opportunity to
get right, and if you can't, then I'm going to
defend myself.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, I think that is a perfect segue into the
fight that we're about to have I will be sliding
of the butted and now I am going to absolutely
crush you on this one. Yes, I had childcare. You
used to travel for weekends. Girlfriend, Like, what is this?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
What is a segue into is segueing.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Into our check in? But you started the conversation telling
me that you're on fumes. But I used to have childcare,
so it's not really comparable.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Let me remind you of the format we're at. It's
a number here, So where are we at? Because you
seem like you're flying in at a hot hundie.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I actually feel great. I'm not gonna lie. I am
ready to fight because that did stoke me right up.
But I think I'm kicking it at an eighty five.
I have an eye doctor's appointment today that's really bringing
me down. But outside of that, I feel phenomenon. How
you doing thirty thirty?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Thirty's bad?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I know, babe, you're actually doing a lot of work.
We're gonna take a moment of silence for that. You're
doing a lot of work. I'll give everyone some background
because no one really knows what's going on now.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So I'll give the background. Oh gosh, so I retired November,
and we went to Michigan for Christmas, which weren't originally
planning to do, and we were like, why don't we
just stay in northern Michigan at the lake house. My
parents have a lake house in northern Michigan, so we
went up there. We took the kids skiing, We had
a blast. We were loving life. Let's go to Jackson,
Let's go to Idaho, Let's go to Colorado. We just
(12:17):
kind of kept going and going and going, and the
kids weren't in school. And then we came home. Our
kids are like rabid squirrels.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Like the way that you're like setting this up.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And I love you and I appreciate you, and you
did do a lot while I was playing. All I
was pointing out was that when I was on the road,
like you would get up and it was probably really
hard to get them ready for school and take them
to school. But then they were at school.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yes, and they didn't go to school when you were
in Ottawa for the weekend and went trail for the
weekend and flying here and going there, and I had.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
To It's it's not a comparison now, it's just harder
for me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That's fine, you could absolutely have it be well. I
actually laughed because we're having this conversation and the conversation
that we interviewed is with Evrodsky, and Evronsky is a
New York Times bestseller for fair play. It's literally all
about managing your life so that your partner, like it's
splitting labor between two people.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We need to have her back on.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, she needs to re therapize what we're doing here.
But at the time you were still playing, you were
living in Jersey, you had your apartment, and I was
here with the kids, and we were kind of doing
a lot of that in terms of childcare and what's
going on. So while it is not evergreen and it's
changed very much, I think the conversation is still really
really important. We want to share it with our audience
(13:36):
and we will be back in a little bit so
you can hear now with this side of the story,
the other side of the story. When we talked with Evrodsky,
I never.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Thought I'd be so desperate for an apartment in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I'll get you an apartment in New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Of don't worry, Eve Hi Hi Anya High Madison so
happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
For all the contexts, for all of our listeners. Eve
is an award winning author. She writes about the things
that matter most. It's the emotional load, it's the silent work,
it's the second shift, it's all the things that task
us moms, and is obsessed with women's sports. I did
want to call out because in my research I learned
you were you miss Alumni. Yes, had you ever gone
(14:32):
to a hockey game over there? Where's your connection hockey?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Of course?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Well, my cousin is the commissioner of the NWSL, but
she started her life in hockey, and I convinced her
to actually transfer from Brandeis to Michigan. And the second
she got to Michigan, which is both of our favorite
places in the world, she started to manage the men's
team and they won the national championship our senior year,
(14:59):
the same year that we won the national championship.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
For football as well.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
So we are huge, huge sports fans, women's sports especially,
been traveling around the world to the Women's World Cup
last year. We went to the Olympics this year, and
I'm so happy to be here and follow your career.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Madison.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, I've got a small bone to pick because I'm
a badger. But I will say I would have gone
to Michigan if they had a women's hockey team at
the time, but they didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, I assume that they did.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
We're all trying to push to get to get more
teams out on the ice.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So I love it, Yeslue, Well, so if you don't mind,
I wanted you just to maybe tell us a little
bit about yourself and what inspired you to write fair
Play and focus on the mission about household domestic equity
and partnerships.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
I think it's important just to back up and say, yes,
I work as an expert on the gender's division of
labor and sort of how the assumptions placed on women
regardless of their family structure, affect their work outside of
their family structure. And that's important work. But it's not
like I start it out and my third grade what
do you want to be when you grew up board
(16:03):
saying that I wanted to be an expert on the
gender division of labor or the effects of the mental
load on women. I think I said I wanted to
be a veterinarian or an astronaut. I was never an athlete,
so I never said that but I was a dancer.
But then in law school, I'm a lawyer by trade.
And Elizabeth Warren was our orientation professor before she's a senator,
(16:24):
And this was in nineteen ninety nine, and she asked
us what we wanted to do with our law degree.
And what I said was without irony, that I was
going to be the President of the United States and
a senator from New York and then also preferably a
nick City dancer, because this was the legally blonde era.
And I felt, well, I have the degree. Feminism is
(16:47):
behind us. Women are an equal playing field to men.
I could legislate in the Senate during the day, and
I could fly Air Force one at night to Madison
Square Garden dance on a Saturday and come back. And
why couldn't I be a senator and president and a dancer.
And I think smashing all those glass ceilings felt really
(17:10):
close to a reality for me. And then what I
could say to you is that, honestly the reality of
my life. Say ten years later, in twenty eleven, was
the only thing I was really smashing was.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Maybe pease for my toddler, Zach.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
While breastfeeding a newborn baby Ben and barely holding onto
a corporate job that told me if I wanted to breastfeed,
it would have to be in a supply closet and
bring a battery pack.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And so I think.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That ten years of watching all of those dreams sort
of go down the drain, like what theF happened in
my life is sort of where I started this work.
It really started with a text my husband set sent
me that said, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries, and
being the fulfiller of his smoothie needs was really the
only thing I thought was my role at that time.
(18:02):
And I guess what I would just say is I
think I wish I knew that this idea of two
thirds or more of what it takes to run home
and family will fall on women and women of color,
and women always hear messages if you're so overwhelmed, just
get help. And men are never in this picture, and
we don't include them in these conversations, and then our
(18:24):
school systems default to us, and then our work systems
also tell us that we're not committed to the workplace,
so why should they invest in us? And so there's
a lot of unfortunate societal effects of these assumptions around
women's labor.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I want to unpack some of that because everything you're
saying is so topically relevant, and then add the layer.
So we talk about this all the time as female athletes,
your task to do all these things with less right
off the rip, and then we compare you to who
has the most. We watch this play in real time,
but you created us as you created a way to
(19:01):
categorize and talk about it and actually deal with it.
So do you want to talk a little bit about
the fair play system and how that could apply?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And first I will say that I started this work
in twenty eleven after my Blueberries breakdown and starting to
put my researcher hat on to ask what was happening
to me fair Play. The book launched in October twenty nineteen,
and I got to go to Davos, Davos and talk
to world leaders as part of my book launch, and
(19:27):
I kept saying in January of twenty nineteen that we
were one crisis away from losing thirty to forty years
of women's labor force participation. And the beauty of the
pandemic was that we actually lost thirty to forty years
of women's labor force participation due to their domestic duties
two months later. So it was actually a very big
(19:49):
catalyst for why fair Play just stopped being just a
book but became a movement. And I think one of
the beautiful things that happened was we got to see
the NBA bubble and that experiment of putting men in
a bubble was so interesting because I was able to
rail against it and say, what is happening here. There's
(20:10):
a bubble for male athletes where their families are not
allowed in. Who is taking care of these children? What
are the assumptions about these players with family that they
can leave their homes for an entire year and basically
not interact with their family. How much offscreen work has
to be happening, And of course in women's sports, that
(20:32):
is not something that could happen. We can't just say
peace out to our families for a year. Women are
mothers and that has to be part of the story,
not just hidden. And I do think that hopefully the
pandemic did expose that, and so I just needed to
say that on you before we get into the system
that the unfairness is built in. It's a design of
(20:56):
the system. It's not a bug, and so we just
need to understand that and then say, how can we
redesign the world so that women's labor, whether it's childbirth,
whether it's the unpaid labor of the workplace, doing the
non promotable tasks of being a mentor, of having to
be a mouthpiece for equity, and play hockey, you know,
(21:17):
basically beg the governments that title nine doesn't go away.
And like Billy Jean King play sports. There's a lot
more on us, unfortunately than what men have to face.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And so much of what you just said is applicable
directly in the world of sports to equal pay and
the concept of equal pay. Right, you see all these
people A lot of times it's men online that are
like groaning, oh, women shouldn't this that. Like, no one
is saying that we should get the same salary as
Lebron James. But women do need more of an investment,
and equal is equal access to resources and opportunity and
(21:50):
the things that we need as women to do our jobs.
I can bring my kids with me on a road trip,
but that's it. Well, who's going to watch them? What
am I going to do with them? Like it's great
that I get my own hotel room, like, don't get
me wrong, but that I have to supply the person
to watch the kid because I have to do all
of it. There's so much more that goes into doing
(22:11):
what you have to do as a mom, period, and
no one really gives any thought to the system behind that.
It's just well, women have always done it and so
women can continue to do it.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
And if you think about equal pay in sports or
in all areas, there's two factors that really stick out
to me. One is that there's something called occupational segregation.
When women enter male professions, salaries automatically go down. And
on top of that, like you said, Madison, the idea
that somehow women should catch up without equal resources, right,
(22:45):
without equal opportunity, and the oppressed have to be the
one to forge those opportunities means that a lot of
women just end up really getting burnt out. It's hard
to do your job and to have to be an
activist and have to talk about all these other issues.
It is the reality of what you know women have
to do. And on top of it, the motherhood penalty
(23:07):
is that you know, in most jobs, women are seen
as less committed to their work because they want to
have a family. And so I think for so long,
unfortunately this idea of, you know, I want to be
a pregnant person, especially in athletics. I mean, I do
think it is changing, that narrative is changing, but I
(23:28):
do think it's still really hard. And I think Alex
Morgan just recently said something about this, that there is
this reality of you know, having children in the middle
of an athletic career, and instead of having to hide that,
we need to start addressing it and making much more
fair for women to be able to do both. Because
men can. Men can have families and play sports. So
(23:50):
guess what, there's fifty percent of the population that is
doing it. So I believe that we can get there.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, I mean for us, particularly, Madison and I got
engaged when we were both professional athletes, and then the
pathway to having a family is I will retire and
Madison will continue on, and I will birth our children
and then I'll continue to work and she'll continue to work,
and we'll go through it like that. But but someone
does have to make the ultimate sacrifice. And I was
(24:18):
ready for that transition in my life. But we always
joke like, if we were both men, we would both
be making eight million dollars a year, So would it
be that easy to just be like, I'm gonna stop.
And it's a very different situation. So that's just like
it pops into my head every time we talk about
these things, and I love the way you framed it
that it's just should be normal. It shouldn't be like, oh,
(24:41):
is she going to make it back or else in
Felix who loses all of her partnerships until she rallies
ahead and says no. And we should have a mother's
room in the Olympic village. It shouldn't be so cutting
edge for us to ask for these things that are
just basic human rights.
Speaker 5 (24:56):
And I want to say that on You're in my situation, right,
You're that person who took a step back in their career,
and I think it's very it can be very painful.
Like for me, I made more money than Seth when
we first met, and I'm the one with the Harvard
degree and you know, just given the reality of his
job versus my job during those birthing years, you know
(25:20):
I did become the fulfiller of his smoothie needs crisis. Yes,
you're right, and I think regardless of the family structure, again,
you could be two women married to each other, but
there's still this assumption that there's going to be a
primary parent, or the fact that you know, when Madison
on the is on the road, you'll be the one
(25:41):
who's picking up the kids through when they're sick from school,
and there's some realities around that, but there's also a
better way, I think, and this is what fair play
is about to discuss these career transitions, because ultimately, regardless
of your family structure, there will be assumptions on who
does what, based on who makes more and who's actually present.
(26:02):
And I've always thought that those assumptions have eroded the
accountability and trust of the relationship, and so there's always
better ways. And that's really what fair plays about. It's
not really about a system just for women married to men.
What it's about is understanding that in a partnership, the
home is an organization, and it's often forgotten that the
(26:23):
home is an organization, and that organization gets thrown to
the wayside in favor of three toxic words. We're just
going to figure it out. And when you figure things out,
if you say that typically just leads to the assumptions
that we're talking about, where then one person is the
fulfiller of the SMOOTHI needs, and then all of a sudden,
the relationship is eroding accountability and trust. So that's really
(26:44):
what fair play is about. It's about rebuilding that accountability
and trust by treating the home as an organization and
saying that every organization, whether it's the home or the workplace,
or even Aunt Marion's Majen group, like my Aunt Marion
Majen group, you have to bring you bring snack twice
every year, and if you forget your snack, like you're kicked.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Out of the group.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
Like even my at Marion's Magen group has like more
clearly defined expectations in the home. Like that doesn't feel
like a recipe for success. So let's like do a
little better than at Marion's Magen group. Every successful home,
every successful organization has three things. It has boundaries, systems,
and communication. And so when you ask me what the
fair play method or system is about, it's really about
(27:28):
restoring boundaries, systems, and communication to homes. Again, regardless of
that family structure.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
For your book, you interviewed heterosexual couples, but you also
interviewed same sex couples. Oh yeah, so I'm interested. I
think annual it is too. But did you find the
same trends for everyone or maybe I'm most interested in
partners who were both women. Were they more empathetic about
sharing some of the domestic work or was it kind
(28:07):
of the same across the board.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
In theory yes, in practice no, it's interesting. And now
you know, we're in seventeen countries and I have women
married to women and almost all of them. And what
I'd say is that I think they both acknowledged that
there's more societal pressures and so they have more empathy.
But I think what was happening were two things. One
(28:31):
was that the assumption around gender was replaced by money,
which was interesting. So the person that made more money
or was a breadwinner ended up doing less cards, the
fair play cards.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It's a metaphor.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
It started with the Shit I Do spreadsheet that I
presented to Seth that was one hundred excelled tabs that
turned into these fair play cards. And so what I'd
say is that it was more equitable. But when then
children came along, there was this assumption. While I'm the
one who is the breadwinner, so you have to handle
everything else off screen. So that was sort of replicating
the dynamics of stay at home mothers and heterocysts relationships.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And I didn't love that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
I didn't love that we were like living in those
same systems. I wanted women marriage to women to say,
let's just blow all this up, let's not make any
assumptions and come to the table. But when there's no
language to do that, often we do fall into somewhat
of the same assumptions that being the breadwinner means there's
less domestic responsibility. So that was one thing. But again,
women came back to the table easier. I didn't have
(29:28):
to convince you and drag you back to the table.
Communication was absolutely better on a whole, I would say.
I think the other phenomenon that was really interesting was
for women married to women. Because of the societal pressures,
there was a lot of what I call double up.
So fair play is really a system of ownership that
you know, Madison, you're on the road, so you may
not be the one picking up the kids from school,
(29:50):
but you will gain more in your family by always
continuously having ownership over certain things in the home, so
you feel like you're always contributing. That's what it's worked
across every single subset of data that we have that
people want to feel psychological safety in their home organization.
So the person not there on the ground doesn't want
to have to come home and be like have the partner say, oh,
(30:12):
it's worse when you're back.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
You're ruining all my things. You just came in.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
You have no Yeah, you have no idea what's happening. Like,
that's painful over that person, right, And so I think
the reintroduction of a person who's sort of on the
road or traveling that re entry point is really important.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
But I'd say the other.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Big phenomenon was this idea that women, because of the
societal expectations, did feel more pressure to do things.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
So there was a lot of double up.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
One of my favorite stories was this couple their kid
had an allergy, and so the school sent out this
allergy form, and so both of the mothers sort of
you know, high powered working, they each took it upon
themselves as a double up to fill out the allergy
form because they were trying to help the other person.
And so what happened was one of the women checked
(31:01):
off all the boxes that their child could participate it
was a science experiment with like powders, and then the
other mother checked off that one of the substances in
the experiment was probably not great for the child based
on the allergy. And so then the school emailed them
that both the parents filled out the form differently, and
(31:23):
so now they actually need to get a doctor's note
for the child to participate in the activity. So, you know,
that's the thing I don't want to see.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That's sotpable in this specific house, because it's like I
thought I was helping you, and like we always joke, like,
you know, assumption makes an ass out of you and me.
But I'm assuming that I'm being helpful in that sense.
Like not only was that not helpful, but like so
Maddy does all of our laundry, and so I'll like
throw a sweater in there, and I'm like, I'm not
telling her that sweater doesn't need to be dried, but
(31:53):
it's in my head. So when it's in the dryer
and it comes out, and I'm like fuming mad because
now my sweater's seven times too small. Yeah, I've done
that to myself and I've not communicated what I need
from that situation. And that's like a silly example, but
it's a great one, because great we do the same thing.
Like when you look at our house, every heteronormative grandparent, parent,
(32:13):
somebody trying to figure out what we do will be like,
who's the dad, right, Like I hate that question, But
they try to put us in these boxes like who
does what in the house, And Maddie's a professional athlete.
Women's hockey is not where it should be by way
of compensation, where no women's sport is, but we're so
we're trying to get there. So my job allows us
(32:34):
a lot of the flexibility breadwinner, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
But a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
In season load is also on me. So it's like, yes,
I get to fill two of these roles. But then
not to discredit the fact that my wife is the
only reason this house is clean, it's the only reason
we have what we need, it's the only reason the
kids go to the doctor. Like I don't do any
of these things, And so when we try to like
explain who we are, it doesn't fit into a box.
(32:59):
And I love and hate that it's so easy to
fall into the pattern of like I have the job,
I have the money, I am the one that can
check out. I'm not going to call it husband or dad.
But it's like I can now step away because it's
not my job, and I feel like dialing back in
is actually really hard when you're in that ad space,
or when Maddie's on the road to come back in
(33:21):
the insecurity of well, you might discipline one way, and
then as she's doing that, I try to like, ooh,
intervene and then she feels like I'm discrediting her mommy, which.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Is so hard.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yes, it's so hard, But again, these are issues. There's
a lot of issues that we see all the time.
So again with professional athletes that we've interviewed, similar to
the military, similar to people who are consultants, there is
a re entry period that can make things hard. As
you said, this box that people try to put you in,
like who's the primary parent? What fair play does instead
(33:54):
of a primary parent or assuming that like just because
you're the person who's great at laundry or not great,
but is the one who can own laundry, it doesn't
mean that you may want to do that forever, and
it doesn't necessarily mean also that the other person can
check out from that task and just say, well, you're
better at it, so you should do it. What fair
play does is, like I said, it's a metaphor for
(34:15):
one hundred cards. So instead of saying who's the dad
or who's the mom or putting people to boxes, what
I say is there's one hundred cards, and it's like
you and your partner against the cards. And what these
cards are a lot of them are things that we
think about, like laundry or dishes or transporting the kids
to school. But there's actually fifty cards that are what
(34:36):
I call the non outsourceable cards, or ones that two
parents really do need to be involved with. And those
are cards like medical and healthy living like aus. As
much as you love Alexia or you love Maddie or Anya,
you probably want to have some stakeholder buy in from
the other person around whether your child's adenoids are being
(34:57):
taken out?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
And what about like middle of the night comfort? Right?
Speaker 5 (35:01):
You know who is in charge of what that middle
of the night comfort looks like? You know, when they're
a baby, are they swaddling? Do they come into your bed?
Is one person just inviting that person to the in
your bed. The other person wants people to be able
to sleep in their own room. Right, these are all
discussions that we should be having, But because we don't
talk about the home as an organization, we forget to
(35:22):
talk about these things, and so then it becomes a
place where we're giving feedback in the moment and we're
not sort of practicing communication. So what I would say
the number one takeaway from the boundary systems communication formula
that we learned for re entry couples, it is just
having check ins when emotion is low, cognition is high,
even if you're on the road and you're like, well,
(35:43):
this doesn't matter. This person doesn't need to know what
happened today with say like the vaccine shots or whatever
it is, but you do. And so what I would
say is that the boundary systems communication, investing in communication
as a practice and having those times, those weekly check
ins became like really really important for those families.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I love everything that you just said. And this year
in particular has been difficult because I'm gone so much.
Right I'm at the rink and I'm home, I'm in
bed early, I'm up early, Like everything falls on Anya
couple that with the road trips, and then this summer,
actually I made the choice to stay in Connecticut and train,
and Anya took the kids to our summer house in
northern Michigan for ten weeks with my parents Wow. And
(36:25):
the plan was for me to go there three or
four times, but we decided as things went on that
it was just best for me to keep focusing on
the training. And so for the kids it was like
every time they saw me, it was like it was
the best thing ever. And then I was only there
for a couple days, and so you know, I have
the guilt of being gone and wanting to spoil them.
Anya always jokes that my guilt is expensive, but like
(36:46):
I want to be doing things with them, and then
I have to leave again and then I'm back, and
so it's like good cop, bad cop always. But then
when good cop leaves, Anya is, for all intensive purposes
a single parent, and that's really hard. And then I'm
checked with her and it's like I can tell that
she's drained, but she doesn't want me to feel that
because I'm also tired. And it's like an impossible space
(37:07):
almost to live in because it feels so helpless and
sometimes you don't even know how or where to ask
for help. But the re entry process in period is
not even something we've not talked about that before, babe.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No. I think the part that I like the most
is that idea of boundaries is yes, I like it
because I don't know how to communicate it. I can
just go hyperindependence and then to your point almost be like,
can you please go away again, because now we're going
to fight. I'm fighting with these kids. Now I want
to fight with you, and like all of it feels
like it shouldn't. I always say this, I'm like, Babe,
should it be this hard? I think the answer is yes, yes,
(37:41):
yes it should be yes. But we don't have to fight.
Let both of us fight with these two little kids.
Like I think that's a great idea. But I love
the idea of like these boundaries. And so we do
a thing where we check in where if we're say,
like trying to put Whale into bed that's our oldest
four year old, and Mattie's like really grinding, Like I
can tell she's like, oh, like it's not going well.
(38:01):
We're really struggling. I'll be like, hey, where are you
at one to one hundred.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Where are you at?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Cause if you're at like a thirty, I'm at like
a seventy. I could deal with this. Let me tap
into this situation. Or you know, we wake up in
the morning, if she's on the road, I call her.
I'm like, how you doing, She'll be ninety. I'm great.
We have a game today, I feel amazing, Like everything's great,
and I'm like, great, I'm at four. These kids are
going to school and then a babysitters coming over. Like so,
I think that's how we try to draw those boundary
(38:27):
lines and support one another. Is kind of getting that
like mutual buying, and if we're both at ninety, then
like we're buzzing, like the whole family is going to
be great, like everyone's we're having a homemade meal and
all's well. But like that's that's kind of how we
divine those boundaries, Like is there an improvement? There is
there like a retool?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I love that, No, I love it. I love it
so much.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
What I would say is just also invest in those
check ins that are not feedback in the moment, right,
So a lot of times you want that feedback in
the moment, Like we're both here and I need to
check out. But also having that I know you're tired, hired,
like we don't have time for this, But is the
twenty minute FaceTime on Sundays where you're just like, okay,
you can even say it, except that I have humor
(39:07):
about it now, you know, this is like our high cognition,
low emotion conversation. And sometimes I'll just be like, I've
nothing to say to you except for like I hated
you this week. You know, like there is just a
lot more humor when it's not in the moment. And
also knowing your communication vulnerability for me, it's it's always
been nails on the chalkboard. I have a terrible tone,
and seth is avoidance, and so I could just say, oh, here,
(39:29):
we're doing that thing again where you're like avoiding this
conversation and I'm just coming in hot. So you know,
I think it's always fun to know what your vulnerabilities
are because you can really process it a lot better
if you have that designated time. But I want to
say one more thing about your boundaries though, that I
think is beautiful. That I do think that I found
in women married to women in a way that I
(39:50):
didn't with heterosist gender men, and that is there is
an assumption that Anya's time is valuable. Like I heard
it the way Madison is talking about your time, that
just because this is the choices you've made now in
the season of your life doesn't necessarily mean that a,
(40:11):
this will be the way it is forever. I hear
the flexibility and how you talk to each other. That's
the key because when Seth and I had to come
to this conversation, which is why I wrote a whole
book about him, and he always jokes and people say, well,
how did you get to a fair division of labor?
He's like, well, just have your wife write a book
about you and betray you in a terrible and a
terrible light. But it wasn't that he wasn't putting the
(40:34):
garbage liner back in, even though that was really frustrating.
And it wasn't that we had to move and all
of a sudden, like he just took a suitcase for
like a giant move that we had. We were moving
across town and all of a sudden, I'm supervising a
move and two children, I'm like, wait, is what's happening?
And so the thing that was hardest for me was
I had to sit him down and say, look, the
(40:56):
women I see most empowered have three words in their life,
and those words are cored custody. Like I want to
stay in this relationship, but not if you have three
hours after our kids go to bed to watch Sports Center,
check a PowerPoint, go to sleep early when I am
doing things in service of our household until my head
hits the pillow three hours after you go to bed,
(41:17):
and you assume that that's the way that this is
going to be forever, Like, I'm not going to live
that way, and I need you to start understanding that
I deserve time choice over how I use my day
the same way you do. And I think that was
the main conversation that Seth and I had to come
to grips with that he really didn't value my.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Time equal to his.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't see that in your relationship,
which is good. I think you could go easily to
the systems and the re entry conversations into those systems
and communication because I sense the boundaries there. If you
didn't have those boundaries, then you'd be more like where
I was.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I would be writing a book, right The truth is
the truth is I'm scared of my wife.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yes, these are all good truths. I also like, we
did an exercise before the summer and we took what
we pay a babysitter hourly and then multiplied that across
every minute an hour that you know, the solo primary
caregiver would then be tasked to work. And I'm like,
all right, so I'm doing an extra one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars job on top of the job, on
(42:16):
top of your job, and on top of all of
our mutual stress. And at that point we were like,
every woman is underpaid. That's what we know. Every solo
primary caregiver, to any iteration of children, birth, unbirth, adopted,
it doesn't matter, is an unpaid amount of excruciating labor.
And then you're right. We put the kids to bed,
and then Matty and I are okay, from eight thirty
(42:39):
to ten thirty, we're going to clean the house, do
the dishes, do this, do that. At ten thirty, we
can watch vander Pomp rolls like well, Madison does her lego,
and we don't look at each other and we don't talk,
and that kind of drills me into the unicorn space concept.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, that's where like.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Your word soothed my soul the most, because Maddie and
I call it our me time in somewhere we don't speak,
we actually would prefer to not be in the same room.
And Madison actually is the one that championed it in
our relationship, was like, we are better if we take
a little me time doing whatever it is, if I
go to yoga or if I go upstairs and watch
tiktoks on my phone. Madison does legos, she does her breathing,
(43:17):
she does a norma tech whatever we need in that
moment of servicing ourselves. Madison brought it to me. So
I'm saying it like it's my concept, but I loved
so much that you identified it, named it, and then
have opened the idea that women can be more than
just all the things that sometimes we don't even want
(43:38):
to identify as well.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
I love what you're saying because a back to again
this theme of re entry. What we saw were families
who had, like I said, a re entry parent. All
of a sudden, there was like this bout of intensive
togetherness that I think is like incredibly toxic, Like you
don't need to go to the grocery store together.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You don't need to.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Follow each other around in the park, like the boundaries
still need to be there even when that person is
in your physical space. So I love that you are
incorporating that into your lives. And I will say that
in terms of me time, what I want to just
emphasize is the science behind the me time. What is
helpful in me time is to recognize what mental health is.
And so my second book is about this. It's this
(44:19):
idea that we sort of centered mental health around maybe
this intensive togetherness or love or happiness, but really there's
only one definition of mental health.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
My kids know this now too. They're so weird.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
They tell everybody, like, my mom doesn't want me to
be happy. She she wants me to have appropriate emotions
at appropriate times and have the ability and strength to
weather them. And so that's mental health. It really has
nothing to do with happiness. And so we're all going
to have the appropriate emotions at those appropriate times, whether
they're not happiness, rage, resentment, anger, frustration, because this season
(44:53):
of life is hard, but it's how do you weather them?
A billion strength to whether it helps when you have
French outside of a relationship, it helps when you have
that community, it helps when you have self care, just
those endorphins. But there's a third thing that I write about,
which I do call unicorn space because it is mythical
and magical, but doesn't exist for most women because it's outside,
(45:17):
as you said, any of our roles as parent, partner, professional,
and so we feel guilty and we don't take that time. So, yes,
the friendships is important, Yes, exercise and self care are important,
but what a unicorn space is is really a chance
to get curious and Madison. Now, I would say it's
a little complicated because probably your unicorn space or one
of these spaces of I wonder if I could do this,
(45:38):
I wonder if I could get better at this. It's
tied up in your work and what your profession was. Right,
Creatives athletes like a lot of their unicorn space was
what they devoted their paid work to. So what I
would say is you need even more unicorn space. This
podcast is another version of unicorn space for you. It's hard,
it's scary to put your your relationship and your life
(46:03):
out there for others to hear, and you have to
wonder what that's going to feel like. You have to
connect with each other and share yourself with the world,
and then you actually have to complete an episode. Yes
you have great producers, but you still have to complete
something that's not perfect. And I think so many people
and so many women especially equate completion with perfection. Especially
(46:23):
I would say both of you, because you got to
a professional level at your last Unicorn space. So what
I would say is, regardless of whether this podcast makes
a billion dollars or is just for like two people
on your block, it's important to understand that investing in
that curiosity that connects it with others, and some form
of completion outside of that athletics that may have been
(46:46):
your creative spark, that will be important as you continue
on in your lives.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
And that's really what the science shows us.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And I think a big part of it, I guess
with this podcast, but in general is just like the
ability for women to have those spaces or have those opportunities,
And that was one of the passions of this podcast,
like we get to have so many incredible people, yourself included,
talk about things that so many women can relate to
and so many women want to talk about, but we
don't have the platform to do it. And so we
(47:14):
start having all these conversations and it starts to create
a community, and I feel like a safe space where
women can come, they can share their stories, they can
share their different struggles and recognize that there is so
much in common that we have with one another.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 5 (47:30):
And by the way, that is why you'll know you're
in a unicorn space when you say something like I
can't believe I just did that. So again, whether it's
that uploading that first episode or being able to be
in spaces to talk about what you've talked about in
the podcast, like, you'll start to see that this I
can't believe I just did that.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
These moments keep coming up.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
I was really excited to come home and show Madison
when I could finally do a handstand in yoga, like
unassisted do a handst I was like, I was like, babe,
sit on a bed, let me show you something. It's
the most amazing thing I've ever done. And I finished,
and I'm like, she's like, you've done a handstand. I'm like, right,
isn't that the most amazing thing? And like it does
give us and you know, she clapped. We had this
(48:12):
whole like celebration that I can now do a handstand.
It's actually fun where I'm never like, babe, babe, look
a look at the dinner I made. It's chicken nuggets
and I cut up some French fries. Like that doesn't
happen in the same way. And so I love that
you kind of give that space just to have fun.
I feel like we missed that in our own lives.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
And I can't believe I just did that.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I can't believe.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yes, exactly. That got back to what we just said.
Speaker 5 (48:36):
You'll know that you're in a unicorn space if you
can say to yourself, I can't believe I just did that,
And if you wanted to share that with somebody else,
it means that you were proud of yourself that you
couldn't believe, as opposed to like, shit, I can't believe
I just did that. Like I watched my seventh episode
of Like Something on TV.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
When the TV asks you if you're still there, you're like,
don't say like that, Yes, I'm still watching. I'm so watching,
come on, But I do think okay. So I love
that we could talk about all these things because they
are so topically relevant. But I think The overarching thing
that we end every episode with is this kind of
concept that's really near and dear to our hearts. Is
either a piece of advice that you've received in your
(49:14):
momming era or that you wish you heard. I think
that's the part that we always add in, because there's
some things that we never heard as moms that we
wish we could hear. Is there something that you have
or wish you've received in your momming era in your journey?
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Well, I'd love to end on guilt.
Speaker 5 (49:30):
I want to leave everybody here with something an exercise
you can do. I call it my guilt and Shame journal.
I talked about burning guilt and shame, but for a while,
this exercise really helped me, and now I sort of
do it automatically. Guilt is typically associated when you're doing
something out of alignment with your values. So Madison, if
you decided to train, you can't say you felt guilty
about that, because actually it's your alignment with your values
(49:53):
to be an exceptional athlete. What was happening was that
there are other values obviously that you care about your family,
and also the guilt feeling is really also anticipating other
people's discomfort, Like I know it's going to be so
much harder for my child when I leave, right And
so I think it's really important what I've always done.
(50:15):
I like to write down. I'm feeling really upset right now.
I'm almost gonna change my behavior over this quote unquote guilt.
Feeling like cancel a trip that I was going to
do next week to Arizona because my daughter is just like,
what are.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
You going away again?
Speaker 3 (50:30):
What are you going away again?
Speaker 5 (50:31):
And so I had to just think to myself, Okay,
going to speak to this women's function is in alignment
with my values. It's what I actually do for my career,
and I'm anticipating my daughter's discomfort, and it's about to
make me change a behavior that I don't want to change.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
And so I think that that's.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
What I would say that if you can do that exercise,
Is this really guilt? Is a question that really helps
me because if it's really guilt and I'm sad, I
feel guilty. I yelled at my uber driver because he
was running late. Sure, that's not in my alignment with
my values to yell at somebody who's trying to help me.
But if it's not out of alignment with my values,
(51:12):
and I'm thinking about whether to make that decision. I
think we have to decide how to basically take out
other people's discomfort from that decision, and then you can
have empathy for those people in a way that you
couldn't maybe if you thought it was guilt. So now
I say I have empathy for Anna. I feel so
bad that she feels homesick when I'm gone. But this
(51:33):
is still in the lignment with my values. I chose this,
and I'm going to continue on with that journey. So
that's what I would leave people with.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
I needed to hear that one today. Yeah, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Thank you so much for being on here talking about
all the things, validating some of our current actions and
maybe reshaping some of our future actions. We appreciate you
joining us same, so happy to be here. And that's
all we have today. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
I'm Anya pak and I'm Madison Packer, and this is
These Pax Puck.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
These Pax Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
in Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
It's hosted by us Madison and Anya Packer. Emily Meronoff
is our awesome senior producer and story editor. We were
mixed and mastered by Mary do Our. Executive producers are
Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz, and Ali Perry.
Hey everyone, I'm Madison Packer. I'm a recently retired pro
hockey vet, a founding member of the National Women's Hockey League,
a pillar in the PHF, and an inaugural member of
the PWHL Sirens.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Anypacker, also a former pro hockey player, also
founding member of the National Women's Hockey League. But today
I'm a full Madison Packer. Stand.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Anya and I met through hockey, then we got married,
and now we're moms to two awesome toddlers, ages two
and four.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And on our new podcast, These Packs Puck, we're opening
up about the chaos of our daily lives, between the
juggle of being athletes, raising children and all the messiness
in between. Hey Maddie, Hello, what's up?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Running on fumes?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Fumes? The tank is empty, there's nothing left. Seriously, how
you doing seriously running on fumes?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
That gives me stress. I'm excited to talk today. I
feel like this conversation is actually pretty enlightening because it's
a little flippy of what we used to do now
what we're doing now. So I think at all points
in time, we've both felt like we're running on fumes.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, fair probably, Although I will point out when you
were running on fumes, we did have childcare.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Really, we're gonna dig right there. We're gonna put the
shovel right there. Yeah, Okay, before we start that fight.
I think it's important that we talk a little bit
about the hockey hot take for the week.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Hockey hot Take.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think there needs to be greater understanding surrounding the
PWHL's fine structure and or at some point we have
to recognize that a five hundred dollars fine or two
hundred and fifty dollars fine is nominal. When we're talking
about players getting injured and finding someone multiple times and
the behavior doesn't change, there's got to be some other
(01:57):
kind of punishment.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So Mattie's talking directly to the PHL Player Safety Committee.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I just think that it's too ambiguous now, like there
doesn't appear to be any rules or any consequence for
poor choices and poor behavior, and it doesn't matter who
you are, there's an obligation to respect the game and
respect the players you're playing against. And it seems like
we're just taking this blanket approach to finding players versus
suspending players, or there seems to be a different level
(02:23):
of standard. I guess I should say because there have
been players suspensions, and that said, sometimes there is a
hard play where you know someone gets hurt or you
know you lose an edge and you hit someone. There
was a play in the NHL on Brad Marsha and
he was hurt. All the Boston players were upset because
his feet got taken out. When you rewatch the play
several times, it stinks, But it's just it looks to
(02:46):
me like coincidental contact. It's a hockey play. You watch
some of these plays that are happening in the PWHL,
they're not hockey plays. When you hit someone in the
back of the head from behind and you bury their
head into the ice, that's not a hockey play. People
are going to continue to get hurt. And then I
think that there needs to be more respect for the
game inherently, versus picking and choosing how we penalize players
(03:09):
based on their former pedigree. Everyone's on the same playing
field now we are allowed to hit. Also, you can't
compare it to the NHL or not the NHL right
taking things from the NHL Player Safety Book or trying
to make your own I understand, is very very difficult,
but I think that there would be value in consulting
former players, not myself, you know, not like anyone that's
freshly out of the game maybe, but other people who
(03:31):
have played somewhat recently, maybe not played in the peda,
but like, have you know, some ability to speak to
what's happening, just because I think the game has changed
so much and there is going to be contact body contact,
big hits are going to happen, but I just see
an awful lot of head hunting and unnecessary plays happening,
and then they get hit with a fine, and it's like,
(03:52):
you know, that doesn't make a significant, significant enough of
an impact that it deters the player from doing it again,
as is evident by the fact that players of doing
it again and again.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean that. And it's also interesting, right, like,
there was a fight, the first ever fight, and nobody
got ejected, nobody got five minutes, and then after that fight,
the league released the rule that it's a five minute
in an dejection, but that didn't happen in the moment,
and then nobody was And not that I want anybody
to be suspended, right like.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I don't think you should. I don't think it should be.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No, I agree, but I'm saying if we're going to
incorporate that in the women's game, then that that rule
has to be hard and fast. It can't be a
question mark because it's going to happen. Now that it's happened, right,
the band aid's been ripped off, it's probably gonna happen again, So.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
We should know it was the rule though, I think,
I mean, just yeah, but maybe the repts just didn't
know the rules. But if you're going to allow women
to hit the way that we're allowing women to hit,
you have to allow women to fight because there because
there needs to be a window of opportunity for you
to get your ass kicked if you take a lib No,
I'm serious, if you take a liberty and there's no
(04:54):
consequence for that liberty. I'm not encouraging people to go
out and hurt each other, right, but there's a different
price to pay when you think about having to face
Jill Sanya after you've buried Hillary Knight from behind in
the corner.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
No, I agree.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I forces, Oh, maybe I'll get kicked out for a game,
or maybe I'll get a five hundred dollars fine. Or
maybe I'll take that extra slash, you know what I mean,
Like you would hope that people disrespect the game enough
not to do it, but it's a part of the game,
Like you have to allow these players to defend themselves.
Now that we're allowing players to turn themselves into torpedoes
at open ice, I applaud Jail for standing up and
taking that fight. I texted her, I was like, I
(05:29):
think I also think it makes for great entertainment. Now
that said, repeated blows to the head probably increase in injury.
There's probably a player safety factor as to why they're
eliminating the fighting and don't want involved.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So that's what I was gonna say, is I was
gonna say, like the extra layer of repeated hits to
the head, repeated open ice blows, like absolute tear down blows,
it's becoming a lot. And so the way to combat that,
to your point is blood for blood, like that's the
only answer and high entertainment factor, and women are very capable.
I'm not saying that we should go back to this
(06:01):
world of no hitting, but if the Player Safety Committee
isn't going to rule with an iron fist tell players
they can't play like that, you know, take people out
for games. If the answer is that it's permittable, then
there has to be a counter answer. You have to
be able to protect yourself. You have to be able
to then start to mold your team to have these
roles that the Soigne trade makes so much more sense
(06:23):
if if right, if these players from Boston are going
to get hit and there's not going to be this consequence.
I mean, she's doing incredible things on this new roster
and it's been a breath of fresh air for her
in this whole kind of like transition from New York
to Boston and all these things. And then she starts
the you know, she gets in the fight, she's starting
to put points up on the board. She becomes this
utility player that is so much more impactful for the game.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Well, she's finally gotten an opportunity.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
That part too, But I'm saying, is it well that
majorly that part, But I'm saying, is it a function
of the Player Safety Committee to make it more clear
so that the players know what they can and CAI
do and then those roles can adapt from there, or
is it the function of the Player Safety Committee to
say we're not going to allow hitting, or we are
going to allow hitting it looks like this, it doesn't
(07:09):
look like that, and then implement postseason hitting clinics like
that's that's the gray area.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's definitely an obligation
on the league to implement some form of like combine
or education like because you can also tell, even at
this level, all these years later, the women who have
played with boys and hit, and the women who have
not a thousand you can one hundred percent tell. I
mean Polin has played with boys. She can lay a
(07:35):
body check shoulder to shoulder. There are times where she
crosses the line, but she knows how to hit. There
are also players out there who are flying elbow out,
knee out, like they have no idea what they're doing. Well,
because if you haven't had to, right, Yeah, how do
you teach someone to hit without teaching them to hit?
There's a lot more gray area and leeway when you're
sitting in a chair watching someone else get hit than
(07:57):
there is when you're on the ice looking to take
one or give one. So I think someone not me
needs to find a way to, you know, educate players
on body checking, or maybe you just start young and
recognize that it is a problem. So we need to
educate the players coming up.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's not necessarily violent. If it's muscle memory, If I
know how to take and receive a hit, it's not violence,
right Like, It's not like I'm not getting blown up.
I can receive a hit, get knocked off the puck,
and then continue to stride in progress and then chase
down that person that hit me, right Like, in a
perfect world, when you watch the NHL, when you watch
men's college hockey, when you watch all these things, these
(08:31):
guys aren't like yard sailing every time they're hit because
they know how to receive one. So it's kind of
all those things I always say, like when I was playing,
if you came to tell me what happened and you
show me a video, like I know, I'm just not
capable of doing that in real time obviously, but I
think it's always hard. When you watch video and you
think that's immediately going to translate to your physical form.
(08:54):
It's not always that easy. So you actually have to
put body on body, You actually have to touch each other,
you actually have to lay some hand, receive some hits.
And that's where I think the burden of liability on
the Player Safety Committee, Like, do I think that they're
being clear enough? Absolutely not. But do I think that
there's like postseason or preseason work that actually has to
come from the Player Safety Committee to make sure players
(09:16):
are being safe?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And where's that money going? The fines kind of just
came out of nowhere, and I don't feel like it's
incredibly clear what's happening with them, you know, do they
go to they go to the other players like a,
sorry I took your head off, here's five hundred bucks,
Like no, and they are and they aren't like tiered.
So it's like, Okay, Maddie, you're making one hundred thousand
dollars you hit me, making thirty five of two hundred
(09:38):
and fifty dollars fine to you is inconsequential For somebody
that's making thirty five thousand, that's a much more important fine, right, Like,
So it's there's all these questions around what's going on
with the Player Safety Committee, But I do think it's
a good hockey hot take. It's not clear enough. Are
they doing the right job to keep the players safe?
And what is the efficacy of hitting, receiving a hit
(09:59):
and should people flight more.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
The hardship for me is as a player who was
constantly attacked and labeled, et cetera for being cheap and
dirty and all these things. You I played my ten
year professional career, nine year professional career without ever receiving
a single suspension, a single fine, and I don't even
think I had a single strike in the PHF. So
(10:22):
you can say whatever you want about me, But I
played the game gritty and I played the game hard.
But there's a difference between being tough and gritty and cheap.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And I rejected one time for you and sarahasorso literally
grab each other's jerseys and punch each other in the face.
You were ejected one time you had one strike?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Oh yeah, fair, I don't getting it a strike. I
got thrown out of the game.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I think that goes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Why did that happen? Because that kid ran me from
behind the sea.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
It was a year later.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
I held on to that for a year.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well, like I said, the rafts have an opportunity to
get right, and if you can't, then I'm going to
defend myself.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, I think that is a perfect segue into the
fight that we're about to have I will be sliding
of the butted and now I am going to absolutely
crush you on this one. Yes, I had childcare. You
used to travel for weekends. Girlfriend, Like, what is this?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
What is a segue into is segueing.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Into our check in? But you started the conversation telling
me that you're on fumes. But I used to have childcare,
so it's not really comparable.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Let me remind you of the format we're at. It's
a number here, So where are we at? Because you
seem like you're flying in at a hot hundie.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I actually feel great. I'm not gonna lie. I am
ready to fight because that did stoke me right up.
But I think I'm kicking it at an eighty five.
I have an eye doctor's appointment today that's really bringing
me down. But outside of that, I feel phenomenon. How
you doing thirty thirty?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Thirty's bad?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I know, babe, you're actually doing a lot of work.
We're gonna take a moment of silence for that. You're
doing a lot of work. I'll give everyone some background
because no one really knows what's going on now.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So I'll give the background. Oh gosh, so I retired November,
and we went to Michigan for Christmas, which weren't originally
planning to do, and we were like, why don't we
just stay in northern Michigan at the lake house. My
parents have a lake house in northern Michigan, so we
went up there. We took the kids skiing, We had
a blast. We were loving life. Let's go to Jackson,
Let's go to Idaho, Let's go to Colorado. We just
(12:17):
kind of kept going and going and going, and the
kids weren't in school. And then we came home. Our
kids are like rabid squirrels.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Like the way that you're like setting this up.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And I love you and I appreciate you, and you
did do a lot while I was playing. All I
was pointing out was that when I was on the road,
like you would get up and it was probably really
hard to get them ready for school and take them
to school. But then they were at school.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yes, and they didn't go to school when you were
in Ottawa for the weekend and went trail for the
weekend and flying here and going there, and I had.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
To It's it's not a comparison now, it's just harder
for me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That's fine, you could absolutely have it be well. I
actually laughed because we're having this conversation and the conversation
that we interviewed is with Evrodsky, and Evronsky is a
New York Times bestseller for fair play. It's literally all
about managing your life so that your partner, like it's
splitting labor between two people.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We need to have her back on.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, she needs to re therapize what we're doing here.
But at the time you were still playing, you were
living in Jersey, you had your apartment, and I was
here with the kids, and we were kind of doing
a lot of that in terms of childcare and what's
going on. So while it is not evergreen and it's
changed very much, I think the conversation is still really
really important. We want to share it with our audience
(13:36):
and we will be back in a little bit so
you can hear now with this side of the story,
the other side of the story. When we talked with Evrodsky,
I never.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Thought I'd be so desperate for an apartment in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I'll get you an apartment in New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Of don't worry, Eve Hi Hi Anya High Madison so
happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
For all the contexts, for all of our listeners. Eve
is an award winning author. She writes about the things
that matter most. It's the emotional load, it's the silent work,
it's the second shift, it's all the things that task
us moms, and is obsessed with women's sports. I did
want to call out because in my research I learned
you were you miss Alumni. Yes, had you ever gone
(14:32):
to a hockey game over there? Where's your connection hockey?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Of course?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Well, my cousin is the commissioner of the NWSL, but
she started her life in hockey, and I convinced her
to actually transfer from Brandeis to Michigan. And the second
she got to Michigan, which is both of our favorite
places in the world, she started to manage the men's
team and they won the national championship our senior year,
(14:59):
the same year that we won the national championship.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
For football as well.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
So we are huge, huge sports fans, women's sports especially,
been traveling around the world to the Women's World Cup
last year. We went to the Olympics this year, and
I'm so happy to be here and follow your career.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Madison.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, I've got a small bone to pick because I'm
a badger. But I will say I would have gone
to Michigan if they had a women's hockey team at
the time, but they didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, I assume that they did.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
We're all trying to push to get to get more
teams out on the ice.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So I love it, Yeslue, Well, so if you don't mind,
I wanted you just to maybe tell us a little
bit about yourself and what inspired you to write fair
Play and focus on the mission about household domestic equity
and partnerships.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
I think it's important just to back up and say, yes,
I work as an expert on the gender's division of
labor and sort of how the assumptions placed on women
regardless of their family structure, affect their work outside of
their family structure. And that's important work. But it's not
like I start it out and my third grade what
do you want to be when you grew up board
(16:03):
saying that I wanted to be an expert on the
gender division of labor or the effects of the mental
load on women. I think I said I wanted to
be a veterinarian or an astronaut. I was never an athlete,
so I never said that but I was a dancer.
But then in law school, I'm a lawyer by trade.
And Elizabeth Warren was our orientation professor before she's a senator,
(16:24):
And this was in nineteen ninety nine, and she asked
us what we wanted to do with our law degree.
And what I said was without irony, that I was
going to be the President of the United States and
a senator from New York and then also preferably a
nick City dancer, because this was the legally blonde era.
And I felt, well, I have the degree. Feminism is
(16:47):
behind us. Women are an equal playing field to men.
I could legislate in the Senate during the day, and
I could fly Air Force one at night to Madison
Square Garden dance on a Saturday and come back. And
why couldn't I be a senator and president and a dancer.
And I think smashing all those glass ceilings felt really
(17:10):
close to a reality for me. And then what I
could say to you is that, honestly the reality of
my life. Say ten years later, in twenty eleven, was
the only thing I was really smashing was.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Maybe pease for my toddler, Zach.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
While breastfeeding a newborn baby Ben and barely holding onto
a corporate job that told me if I wanted to breastfeed,
it would have to be in a supply closet and
bring a battery pack.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And so I think.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That ten years of watching all of those dreams sort
of go down the drain, like what theF happened in
my life is sort of where I started this work.
It really started with a text my husband set sent
me that said, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries, and
being the fulfiller of his smoothie needs was really the
only thing I thought was my role at that time.
(18:02):
And I guess what I would just say is I
think I wish I knew that this idea of two
thirds or more of what it takes to run home
and family will fall on women and women of color,
and women always hear messages if you're so overwhelmed, just
get help. And men are never in this picture, and
we don't include them in these conversations, and then our
(18:24):
school systems default to us, and then our work systems
also tell us that we're not committed to the workplace,
so why should they invest in us? And so there's
a lot of unfortunate societal effects of these assumptions around
women's labor.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I want to unpack some of that because everything you're
saying is so topically relevant, and then add the layer.
So we talk about this all the time as female athletes,
your task to do all these things with less right
off the rip, and then we compare you to who
has the most. We watch this play in real time,
but you created us as you created a way to
(19:01):
categorize and talk about it and actually deal with it.
So do you want to talk a little bit about
the fair play system and how that could apply?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And first I will say that I started this work
in twenty eleven after my Blueberries breakdown and starting to
put my researcher hat on to ask what was happening
to me fair Play. The book launched in October twenty nineteen,
and I got to go to Davos, Davos and talk
to world leaders as part of my book launch, and
(19:27):
I kept saying in January of twenty nineteen that we
were one crisis away from losing thirty to forty years
of women's labor force participation. And the beauty of the
pandemic was that we actually lost thirty to forty years
of women's labor force participation due to their domestic duties
two months later. So it was actually a very big
(19:49):
catalyst for why fair Play just stopped being just a
book but became a movement. And I think one of
the beautiful things that happened was we got to see
the NBA bubble and that experiment of putting men in
a bubble was so interesting because I was able to
rail against it and say, what is happening here. There's
(20:10):
a bubble for male athletes where their families are not
allowed in. Who is taking care of these children? What
are the assumptions about these players with family that they
can leave their homes for an entire year and basically
not interact with their family. How much offscreen work has
to be happening, And of course in women's sports, that
(20:32):
is not something that could happen. We can't just say
peace out to our families for a year. Women are
mothers and that has to be part of the story,
not just hidden. And I do think that hopefully the
pandemic did expose that, and so I just needed to
say that on you before we get into the system
that the unfairness is built in. It's a design of
(20:56):
the system. It's not a bug, and so we just
need to understand that and then say, how can we
redesign the world so that women's labor, whether it's childbirth,
whether it's the unpaid labor of the workplace, doing the
non promotable tasks of being a mentor, of having to
be a mouthpiece for equity, and play hockey, you know,
(21:17):
basically beg the governments that title nine doesn't go away.
And like Billy Jean King play sports. There's a lot
more on us, unfortunately than what men have to face.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And so much of what you just said is applicable
directly in the world of sports to equal pay and
the concept of equal pay. Right, you see all these
people A lot of times it's men online that are
like groaning, oh, women shouldn't this that. Like, no one
is saying that we should get the same salary as
Lebron James. But women do need more of an investment,
and equal is equal access to resources and opportunity and
(21:50):
the things that we need as women to do our jobs.
I can bring my kids with me on a road trip,
but that's it. Well, who's going to watch them? What
am I going to do with them? Like it's great
that I get my own hotel room, like, don't get
me wrong, but that I have to supply the person
to watch the kid because I have to do all
of it. There's so much more that goes into doing
(22:11):
what you have to do as a mom, period, and
no one really gives any thought to the system behind that.
It's just well, women have always done it and so
women can continue to do it.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
And if you think about equal pay in sports or
in all areas, there's two factors that really stick out
to me. One is that there's something called occupational segregation.
When women enter male professions, salaries automatically go down. And
on top of that, like you said, Madison, the idea
that somehow women should catch up without equal resources, right,
(22:45):
without equal opportunity, and the oppressed have to be the
one to forge those opportunities means that a lot of
women just end up really getting burnt out. It's hard
to do your job and to have to be an
activist and have to talk about all these other issues.
It is the reality of what you know women have
to do. And on top of it, the motherhood penalty
(23:07):
is that you know, in most jobs, women are seen
as less committed to their work because they want to
have a family. And so I think for so long,
unfortunately this idea of, you know, I want to be
a pregnant person, especially in athletics. I mean, I do
think it is changing, that narrative is changing, but I
(23:28):
do think it's still really hard. And I think Alex
Morgan just recently said something about this, that there is
this reality of you know, having children in the middle
of an athletic career, and instead of having to hide that,
we need to start addressing it and making much more
fair for women to be able to do both. Because
men can. Men can have families and play sports. So
(23:50):
guess what, there's fifty percent of the population that is
doing it. So I believe that we can get there.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, I mean for us, particularly, Madison and I got
engaged when we were both professional athletes, and then the
pathway to having a family is I will retire and
Madison will continue on, and I will birth our children
and then I'll continue to work and she'll continue to work,
and we'll go through it like that. But but someone
does have to make the ultimate sacrifice. And I was
(24:18):
ready for that transition in my life. But we always
joke like, if we were both men, we would both
be making eight million dollars a year, So would it
be that easy to just be like, I'm gonna stop.
And it's a very different situation. So that's just like
it pops into my head every time we talk about
these things, and I love the way you framed it
that it's just should be normal. It shouldn't be like, oh,
(24:41):
is she going to make it back or else in
Felix who loses all of her partnerships until she rallies
ahead and says no. And we should have a mother's
room in the Olympic village. It shouldn't be so cutting
edge for us to ask for these things that are
just basic human rights.
Speaker 5 (24:56):
And I want to say that on You're in my situation, right,
You're that person who took a step back in their career,
and I think it's very it can be very painful.
Like for me, I made more money than Seth when
we first met, and I'm the one with the Harvard
degree and you know, just given the reality of his
job versus my job during those birthing years, you know
(25:20):
I did become the fulfiller of his smoothie needs crisis. Yes,
you're right, and I think regardless of the family structure, again,
you could be two women married to each other, but
there's still this assumption that there's going to be a
primary parent, or the fact that you know, when Madison
on the is on the road, you'll be the one
(25:41):
who's picking up the kids through when they're sick from school,
and there's some realities around that, but there's also a
better way, I think, and this is what fair play
is about to discuss these career transitions, because ultimately, regardless
of your family structure, there will be assumptions on who
does what, based on who makes more and who's actually present.
(26:02):
And I've always thought that those assumptions have eroded the
accountability and trust of the relationship, and so there's always
better ways. And that's really what fair plays about. It's
not really about a system just for women married to men.
What it's about is understanding that in a partnership, the
home is an organization, and it's often forgotten that the
(26:23):
home is an organization, and that organization gets thrown to
the wayside in favor of three toxic words. We're just
going to figure it out. And when you figure things out,
if you say that typically just leads to the assumptions
that we're talking about, where then one person is the
fulfiller of the SMOOTHI needs, and then all of a sudden,
the relationship is eroding accountability and trust. So that's really
(26:44):
what fair play is about. It's about rebuilding that accountability
and trust by treating the home as an organization and
saying that every organization, whether it's the home or the workplace,
or even Aunt Marion's Majen group, like my Aunt Marion
Majen group, you have to bring you bring snack twice
every year, and if you forget your snack, like you're kicked.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Out of the group.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
Like even my at Marion's Magen group has like more
clearly defined expectations in the home. Like that doesn't feel
like a recipe for success. So let's like do a
little better than at Marion's Magen group. Every successful home,
every successful organization has three things. It has boundaries, systems,
and communication. And so when you ask me what the
fair play method or system is about, it's really about
(27:28):
restoring boundaries, systems, and communication to homes. Again, regardless of
that family structure.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
For your book, you interviewed heterosexual couples, but you also
interviewed same sex couples. Oh yeah, so I'm interested. I
think annual it is too. But did you find the
same trends for everyone or maybe I'm most interested in
partners who were both women. Were they more empathetic about
sharing some of the domestic work or was it kind
(28:07):
of the same across the board.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
In theory yes, in practice no, it's interesting. And now
you know, we're in seventeen countries and I have women
married to women and almost all of them. And what
I'd say is that I think they both acknowledged that
there's more societal pressures and so they have more empathy.
But I think what was happening were two things. One
(28:31):
was that the assumption around gender was replaced by money,
which was interesting. So the person that made more money
or was a breadwinner ended up doing less cards, the
fair play cards.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It's a metaphor.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
It started with the Shit I Do spreadsheet that I
presented to Seth that was one hundred excelled tabs that
turned into these fair play cards. And so what I'd
say is that it was more equitable. But when then
children came along, there was this assumption. While I'm the
one who is the breadwinner, so you have to handle
everything else off screen. So that was sort of replicating
the dynamics of stay at home mothers and heterocysts relationships.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And I didn't love that.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
I didn't love that we were like living in those
same systems. I wanted women marriage to women to say,
let's just blow all this up, let's not make any
assumptions and come to the table. But when there's no
language to do that, often we do fall into somewhat
of the same assumptions that being the breadwinner means there's
less domestic responsibility. So that was one thing. But again,
women came back to the table easier. I didn't have
(29:28):
to convince you and drag you back to the table.
Communication was absolutely better on a whole, I would say.
I think the other phenomenon that was really interesting was
for women married to women. Because of the societal pressures,
there was a lot of what I call double up.
So fair play is really a system of ownership that
you know, Madison, you're on the road, so you may
not be the one picking up the kids from school,
(29:50):
but you will gain more in your family by always
continuously having ownership over certain things in the home, so
you feel like you're always contributing. That's what it's worked
across every single subset of data that we have that
people want to feel psychological safety in their home organization.
So the person not there on the ground doesn't want
to have to come home and be like have the partner say, oh,
(30:12):
it's worse when you're back.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
You're ruining all my things. You just came in.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
You have no Yeah, you have no idea what's happening. Like,
that's painful over that person, right, And so I think
the reintroduction of a person who's sort of on the
road or traveling that re entry point is really important.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
But I'd say the other.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Big phenomenon was this idea that women, because of the
societal expectations, did feel more pressure to do things.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
So there was a lot of double up.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
One of my favorite stories was this couple their kid
had an allergy, and so the school sent out this
allergy form, and so both of the mothers sort of
you know, high powered working, they each took it upon
themselves as a double up to fill out the allergy
form because they were trying to help the other person.
And so what happened was one of the women checked
(31:01):
off all the boxes that their child could participate it
was a science experiment with like powders, and then the
other mother checked off that one of the substances in
the experiment was probably not great for the child based
on the allergy. And so then the school emailed them
that both the parents filled out the form differently, and
(31:23):
so now they actually need to get a doctor's note
for the child to participate in the activity. So, you know,
that's the thing I don't want to see.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That's sotpable in this specific house, because it's like I
thought I was helping you, and like we always joke, like,
you know, assumption makes an ass out of you and me.
But I'm assuming that I'm being helpful in that sense.
Like not only was that not helpful, but like so
Maddy does all of our laundry, and so I'll like
throw a sweater in there, and I'm like, I'm not
telling her that sweater doesn't need to be dried, but
(31:53):
it's in my head. So when it's in the dryer
and it comes out, and I'm like fuming mad because
now my sweater's seven times too small. Yeah, I've done
that to myself and I've not communicated what I need
from that situation. And that's like a silly example, but
it's a great one, because great we do the same thing.
Like when you look at our house, every heteronormative grandparent, parent,
(32:13):
somebody trying to figure out what we do will be like,
who's the dad, right, Like I hate that question, But
they try to put us in these boxes like who
does what in the house, And Maddie's a professional athlete.
Women's hockey is not where it should be by way
of compensation, where no women's sport is, but we're so
we're trying to get there. So my job allows us
(32:34):
a lot of the flexibility breadwinner, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
But a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
In season load is also on me. So it's like, yes,
I get to fill two of these roles. But then
not to discredit the fact that my wife is the
only reason this house is clean, it's the only reason
we have what we need, it's the only reason the
kids go to the doctor. Like I don't do any
of these things, And so when we try to like
explain who we are, it doesn't fit into a box.
(32:59):
And I love and hate that it's so easy to
fall into the pattern of like I have the job,
I have the money, I am the one that can
check out. I'm not going to call it husband or dad.
But it's like I can now step away because it's
not my job, and I feel like dialing back in
is actually really hard when you're in that ad space,
or when Maddie's on the road to come back in
(33:21):
the insecurity of well, you might discipline one way, and
then as she's doing that, I try to like, ooh,
intervene and then she feels like I'm discrediting her mommy, which.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Is so hard.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yes, it's so hard, But again, these are issues. There's
a lot of issues that we see all the time.
So again with professional athletes that we've interviewed, similar to
the military, similar to people who are consultants, there is
a re entry period that can make things hard. As
you said, this box that people try to put you in,
like who's the primary parent? What fair play does instead
(33:54):
of a primary parent or assuming that like just because
you're the person who's great at laundry or not great,
but is the one who can own laundry, it doesn't
mean that you may want to do that forever, and
it doesn't necessarily mean also that the other person can
check out from that task and just say, well, you're
better at it, so you should do it. What fair
play does is, like I said, it's a metaphor for
(34:15):
one hundred cards. So instead of saying who's the dad
or who's the mom or putting people to boxes, what
I say is there's one hundred cards, and it's like
you and your partner against the cards. And what these
cards are a lot of them are things that we
think about, like laundry or dishes or transporting the kids
to school. But there's actually fifty cards that are what
(34:36):
I call the non outsourceable cards, or ones that two
parents really do need to be involved with. And those
are cards like medical and healthy living like aus. As
much as you love Alexia or you love Maddie or Anya,
you probably want to have some stakeholder buy in from
the other person around whether your child's adenoids are being
(34:57):
taken out?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
And what about like middle of the night comfort? Right?
Speaker 5 (35:01):
You know who is in charge of what that middle
of the night comfort looks like? You know, when they're
a baby, are they swaddling? Do they come into your bed?
Is one person just inviting that person to the in
your bed. The other person wants people to be able
to sleep in their own room. Right, these are all
discussions that we should be having, But because we don't
talk about the home as an organization, we forget to
(35:22):
talk about these things, and so then it becomes a
place where we're giving feedback in the moment and we're
not sort of practicing communication. So what I would say
the number one takeaway from the boundary systems communication formula
that we learned for re entry couples, it is just
having check ins when emotion is low, cognition is high,
even if you're on the road and you're like, well,
(35:43):
this doesn't matter. This person doesn't need to know what
happened today with say like the vaccine shots or whatever
it is, but you do. And so what I would
say is that the boundary systems communication, investing in communication
as a practice and having those times, those weekly check
ins became like really really important for those families.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I love everything that you just said. And this year
in particular has been difficult because I'm gone so much.
Right I'm at the rink and I'm home, I'm in
bed early, I'm up early, Like everything falls on Anya
couple that with the road trips, and then this summer,
actually I made the choice to stay in Connecticut and train,
and Anya took the kids to our summer house in
northern Michigan for ten weeks with my parents Wow. And
(36:25):
the plan was for me to go there three or
four times, but we decided as things went on that
it was just best for me to keep focusing on
the training. And so for the kids it was like
every time they saw me, it was like it was
the best thing ever. And then I was only there
for a couple days, and so you know, I have
the guilt of being gone and wanting to spoil them.
Anya always jokes that my guilt is expensive, but like
(36:46):
I want to be doing things with them, and then
I have to leave again and then I'm back, and
so it's like good cop, bad cop always. But then
when good cop leaves, Anya is, for all intensive purposes
a single parent, and that's really hard. And then I'm
checked with her and it's like I can tell that
she's drained, but she doesn't want me to feel that
because I'm also tired. And it's like an impossible space
(37:07):
almost to live in because it feels so helpless and
sometimes you don't even know how or where to ask
for help. But the re entry process in period is
not even something we've not talked about that before, babe.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No. I think the part that I like the most
is that idea of boundaries is yes, I like it
because I don't know how to communicate it. I can
just go hyperindependence and then to your point almost be like,
can you please go away again, because now we're going
to fight. I'm fighting with these kids. Now I want
to fight with you, and like all of it feels
like it shouldn't. I always say this, I'm like, Babe,
should it be this hard? I think the answer is yes, yes,
(37:41):
yes it should be yes. But we don't have to fight.
Let both of us fight with these two little kids.
Like I think that's a great idea. But I love
the idea of like these boundaries. And so we do
a thing where we check in where if we're say,
like trying to put Whale into bed that's our oldest
four year old, and Mattie's like really grinding, Like I
can tell she's like, oh, like it's not going well.
(38:01):
We're really struggling. I'll be like, hey, where are you
at one to one hundred.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Where are you at?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Cause if you're at like a thirty, I'm at like
a seventy. I could deal with this. Let me tap
into this situation. Or you know, we wake up in
the morning, if she's on the road, I call her.
I'm like, how you doing, She'll be ninety. I'm great.
We have a game today, I feel amazing, Like everything's great,
and I'm like, great, I'm at four. These kids are
going to school and then a babysitters coming over. Like so,
I think that's how we try to draw those boundary
(38:27):
lines and support one another. Is kind of getting that
like mutual buying, and if we're both at ninety, then
like we're buzzing, like the whole family is going to
be great, like everyone's we're having a homemade meal and
all's well. But like that's that's kind of how we
divine those boundaries, Like is there an improvement? There is
there like a retool?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I love that, No, I love it. I love it
so much.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
What I would say is just also invest in those
check ins that are not feedback in the moment, right,
So a lot of times you want that feedback in
the moment, Like we're both here and I need to
check out. But also having that I know you're tired, hired,
like we don't have time for this, But is the
twenty minute FaceTime on Sundays where you're just like, okay,
you can even say it, except that I have humor
(39:07):
about it now, you know, this is like our high cognition,
low emotion conversation. And sometimes I'll just be like, I've
nothing to say to you except for like I hated
you this week. You know, like there is just a
lot more humor when it's not in the moment. And
also knowing your communication vulnerability for me, it's it's always
been nails on the chalkboard. I have a terrible tone,
and seth is avoidance, and so I could just say, oh, here,
(39:29):
we're doing that thing again where you're like avoiding this
conversation and I'm just coming in hot. So you know,
I think it's always fun to know what your vulnerabilities
are because you can really process it a lot better
if you have that designated time. But I want to
say one more thing about your boundaries though, that I
think is beautiful. That I do think that I found
in women married to women in a way that I
(39:50):
didn't with heterosist gender men, and that is there is
an assumption that Anya's time is valuable. Like I heard
it the way Madison is talking about your time, that
just because this is the choices you've made now in
the season of your life doesn't necessarily mean that a,
(40:11):
this will be the way it is forever. I hear
the flexibility and how you talk to each other. That's
the key because when Seth and I had to come
to this conversation, which is why I wrote a whole
book about him, and he always jokes and people say, well,
how did you get to a fair division of labor?
He's like, well, just have your wife write a book
about you and betray you in a terrible and a
terrible light. But it wasn't that he wasn't putting the
(40:34):
garbage liner back in, even though that was really frustrating.
And it wasn't that we had to move and all
of a sudden, like he just took a suitcase for
like a giant move that we had. We were moving
across town and all of a sudden, I'm supervising a
move and two children, I'm like, wait, is what's happening?
And so the thing that was hardest for me was
I had to sit him down and say, look, the
(40:56):
women I see most empowered have three words in their life,
and those words are cored custody. Like I want to
stay in this relationship, but not if you have three
hours after our kids go to bed to watch Sports Center,
check a PowerPoint, go to sleep early when I am
doing things in service of our household until my head
hits the pillow three hours after you go to bed,
(41:17):
and you assume that that's the way that this is
going to be forever, Like, I'm not going to live
that way, and I need you to start understanding that
I deserve time choice over how I use my day
the same way you do. And I think that was
the main conversation that Seth and I had to come
to grips with that he really didn't value my.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Time equal to his.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't see that in your relationship,
which is good. I think you could go easily to
the systems and the re entry conversations into those systems
and communication because I sense the boundaries there. If you
didn't have those boundaries, then you'd be more like where
I was.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I would be writing a book, right The truth is
the truth is I'm scared of my wife.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yes, these are all good truths. I also like, we
did an exercise before the summer and we took what
we pay a babysitter hourly and then multiplied that across
every minute an hour that you know, the solo primary
caregiver would then be tasked to work. And I'm like,
all right, so I'm doing an extra one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars job on top of the job, on
(42:16):
top of your job, and on top of all of
our mutual stress. And at that point we were like,
every woman is underpaid. That's what we know. Every solo
primary caregiver, to any iteration of children, birth, unbirth, adopted,
it doesn't matter, is an unpaid amount of excruciating labor.
And then you're right. We put the kids to bed,
and then Matty and I are okay, from eight thirty
(42:39):
to ten thirty, we're going to clean the house, do
the dishes, do this, do that. At ten thirty, we
can watch vander Pomp rolls like well, Madison does her lego,
and we don't look at each other and we don't talk,
and that kind of drills me into the unicorn space concept.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, that's where like.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Your word soothed my soul the most, because Maddie and
I call it our me time in somewhere we don't speak,
we actually would prefer to not be in the same room.
And Madison actually is the one that championed it in
our relationship, was like, we are better if we take
a little me time doing whatever it is, if I
go to yoga or if I go upstairs and watch
tiktoks on my phone. Madison does legos, she does her breathing,
(43:17):
she does a norma tech whatever we need in that
moment of servicing ourselves. Madison brought it to me. So
I'm saying it like it's my concept, but I loved
so much that you identified it, named it, and then
have opened the idea that women can be more than
just all the things that sometimes we don't even want
(43:38):
to identify as well.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
I love what you're saying because a back to again
this theme of re entry. What we saw were families
who had, like I said, a re entry parent. All
of a sudden, there was like this bout of intensive
togetherness that I think is like incredibly toxic, Like you
don't need to go to the grocery store together.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You don't need to.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Follow each other around in the park, like the boundaries
still need to be there even when that person is
in your physical space. So I love that you are
incorporating that into your lives. And I will say that
in terms of me time, what I want to just
emphasize is the science behind the me time. What is
helpful in me time is to recognize what mental health is.
And so my second book is about this. It's this
(44:19):
idea that we sort of centered mental health around maybe
this intensive togetherness or love or happiness, but really there's
only one definition of mental health.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
My kids know this now too. They're so weird.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
They tell everybody, like, my mom doesn't want me to
be happy. She she wants me to have appropriate emotions
at appropriate times and have the ability and strength to
weather them. And so that's mental health. It really has
nothing to do with happiness. And so we're all going
to have the appropriate emotions at those appropriate times, whether
they're not happiness, rage, resentment, anger, frustration, because this season
(44:53):
of life is hard, but it's how do you weather them?
A billion strength to whether it helps when you have
French outside of a relationship, it helps when you have
that community, it helps when you have self care, just
those endorphins. But there's a third thing that I write about,
which I do call unicorn space because it is mythical
and magical, but doesn't exist for most women because it's outside,
(45:17):
as you said, any of our roles as parent, partner, professional,
and so we feel guilty and we don't take that time. So, yes,
the friendships is important, Yes, exercise and self care are important,
but what a unicorn space is is really a chance
to get curious and Madison. Now, I would say it's
a little complicated because probably your unicorn space or one
of these spaces of I wonder if I could do this,
(45:38):
I wonder if I could get better at this. It's
tied up in your work and what your profession was. Right,
Creatives athletes like a lot of their unicorn space was
what they devoted their paid work to. So what I
would say is you need even more unicorn space. This
podcast is another version of unicorn space for you. It's hard,
it's scary to put your your relationship and your life
(46:03):
out there for others to hear, and you have to
wonder what that's going to feel like. You have to
connect with each other and share yourself with the world,
and then you actually have to complete an episode. Yes
you have great producers, but you still have to complete
something that's not perfect. And I think so many people
and so many women especially equate completion with perfection. Especially
(46:23):
I would say both of you, because you got to
a professional level at your last Unicorn space. So what
I would say is, regardless of whether this podcast makes
a billion dollars or is just for like two people
on your block, it's important to understand that investing in
that curiosity that connects it with others, and some form
of completion outside of that athletics that may have been
(46:46):
your creative spark, that will be important as you continue
on in your lives.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
And that's really what the science shows us.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And I think a big part of it, I guess
with this podcast, but in general is just like the
ability for women to have those spaces or have those opportunities,
And that was one of the passions of this podcast,
like we get to have so many incredible people, yourself included,
talk about things that so many women can relate to
and so many women want to talk about, but we
don't have the platform to do it. And so we
(47:14):
start having all these conversations and it starts to create
a community, and I feel like a safe space where
women can come, they can share their stories, they can
share their different struggles and recognize that there is so
much in common that we have with one another.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 5 (47:30):
And by the way, that is why you'll know you're
in a unicorn space when you say something like I
can't believe I just did that. So again, whether it's
that uploading that first episode or being able to be
in spaces to talk about what you've talked about in
the podcast, like, you'll start to see that this I
can't believe I just did that.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
These moments keep coming up.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
I was really excited to come home and show Madison
when I could finally do a handstand in yoga, like
unassisted do a handst I was like, I was like, babe,
sit on a bed, let me show you something. It's
the most amazing thing I've ever done. And I finished,
and I'm like, she's like, you've done a handstand. I'm like, right,
isn't that the most amazing thing? And like it does
give us and you know, she clapped. We had this
(48:12):
whole like celebration that I can now do a handstand.
It's actually fun where I'm never like, babe, babe, look
a look at the dinner I made. It's chicken nuggets
and I cut up some French fries. Like that doesn't
happen in the same way. And so I love that
you kind of give that space just to have fun.
I feel like we missed that in our own lives.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
And I can't believe I just did that.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I can't believe.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yes, exactly. That got back to what we just said.
Speaker 5 (48:36):
You'll know that you're in a unicorn space if you
can say to yourself, I can't believe I just did that,
And if you wanted to share that with somebody else,
it means that you were proud of yourself that you
couldn't believe, as opposed to like, shit, I can't believe
I just did that. Like I watched my seventh episode
of Like Something on TV.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
When the TV asks you if you're still there, you're like,
don't say like that, Yes, I'm still watching. I'm so watching,
come on, But I do think okay. So I love
that we could talk about all these things because they
are so topically relevant. But I think The overarching thing
that we end every episode with is this kind of
concept that's really near and dear to our hearts. Is
either a piece of advice that you've received in your
(49:14):
momming era or that you wish you heard. I think
that's the part that we always add in, because there's
some things that we never heard as moms that we
wish we could hear. Is there something that you have
or wish you've received in your momming era in your journey?
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Well, I'd love to end on guilt.
Speaker 5 (49:30):
I want to leave everybody here with something an exercise
you can do. I call it my guilt and Shame journal.
I talked about burning guilt and shame, but for a while,
this exercise really helped me, and now I sort of
do it automatically. Guilt is typically associated when you're doing
something out of alignment with your values. So Madison, if
you decided to train, you can't say you felt guilty
about that, because actually it's your alignment with your values
(49:53):
to be an exceptional athlete. What was happening was that
there are other values obviously that you care about your family,
and also the guilt feeling is really also anticipating other
people's discomfort, Like I know it's going to be so
much harder for my child when I leave, right And
so I think it's really important what I've always done.
(50:15):
I like to write down. I'm feeling really upset right now.
I'm almost gonna change my behavior over this quote unquote guilt.
Feeling like cancel a trip that I was going to
do next week to Arizona because my daughter is just like,
what are.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
You going away again?
Speaker 3 (50:30):
What are you going away again?
Speaker 5 (50:31):
And so I had to just think to myself, Okay,
going to speak to this women's function is in alignment
with my values. It's what I actually do for my career,
and I'm anticipating my daughter's discomfort, and it's about to
make me change a behavior that I don't want to change.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
And so I think that that's.
Speaker 5 (50:51):
What I would say that if you can do that exercise,
Is this really guilt? Is a question that really helps
me because if it's really guilt and I'm sad, I
feel guilty. I yelled at my uber driver because he
was running late. Sure, that's not in my alignment with
my values to yell at somebody who's trying to help me.
But if it's not out of alignment with my values,
(51:12):
and I'm thinking about whether to make that decision. I
think we have to decide how to basically take out
other people's discomfort from that decision, and then you can
have empathy for those people in a way that you
couldn't maybe if you thought it was guilt. So now
I say I have empathy for Anna. I feel so
bad that she feels homesick when I'm gone. But this
(51:33):
is still in the lignment with my values. I chose this,
and I'm going to continue on with that journey. So
that's what I would leave people with.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
I needed to hear that one today. Yeah, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Thank you so much for being on here talking about
all the things, validating some of our current actions and
maybe reshaping some of our future actions. We appreciate you
joining us same, so happy to be here. And that's
all we have today. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
I'm Anya pak and I'm Madison Packer, and this is
These Pax Puck.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
These Pax Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
in Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
It's hosted by us Madison and Anya Packer. Emily Meronoff
is our awesome senior producer and story editor. We were
mixed and mastered by Mary do Our. Executive producers are
Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz, and Ali Perry.
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