In Praise of Lead Parents: Lessons from the Trenches of Work & Parenting

I’ve observed that in most households with kids, there tends to be one parent that carries the weight of the parenting responsibilities. It’s typically one parent that owns the family calendar, packs the lunches, schedules the playdates, takes the kids to the doctor, shops for groceries, and chaperones the school field trips. And when the unexpected happens, like a child comes down with a 103-degree temperature on a school day, it’s likely that same parent is the one to stay home with the child that day.

This concept is what was identified as being the “Lead Parent” in a great Atlantic Monthly article written a few years ago by Andrew Moravcsik, a professor of politics and married to foreign policy analyst and author, Anne-Marie Slaughter. While all of us lead at times, in today’s increasing dual-career households, there tends to be one person who owns it more. While dual executive career households in which each parent takes on the load equally might exist, I certainly haven't come across them. In fact, for every highly-successful female executive I know, if she has kids, there is a lead parent in her household. And it is not her. 

In my household, the lead parent is my husband. When my son was born, we had two very involved careers in San Francisco – he was a VP Creative Director at a leading digital agency, and I was a VP at security start-up. Although we initially thought we could do it all, we soon realized that we couldn’t be the parents we wanted to be and maintain our general sanity if both of us had high-pressure corporate careers. Coincidentally, around that time there were changes in my husband’s job that made him rethink his path, and I was offered a great job that would require us to relocate to another state. 

As we processed these changes in our lives, we intentionally decided he would be the lead parent, even though we didn’t have a name for it at the time. It’s not that he didn’t work, he went on to start his own digital agency, but he has intentionally kept his schedule flexible, scaling up and down his client base while balancing the needs of our household – and this has allowed me to accelerate my career over the past decade.

We’ve found that while I’ve been forging new paths at work, he’s been forging a new path in redefining what it means to be an entrepreneur, and the lead parent who happens to be the dad. There are some interesting things we’ve discovered along the way:

Set lower expectations all around: With my career and my husband’s company, we had to quickly learn to have lower expectations of ourselves (and not compare ourselves to the stay-at-home moms of our childhoods) – our house would be messier, our dinner more slap-dash (though we would prioritize being together), we couldn’t attend absolutely every school event or have our kids involved in all extra-circular activities, and spending time with friends has taken the backseat to our focus of ensuring our kids and careers are thriving.

Discuss ownership of household responsibilities: Regardless of who is the lead parent, I’ve noticed that my generation no longer has clear expectations of who does what in the household – who takes out the garbage, cooks the dinner, does the dishes, does the laundry and fixes the clogged sink – tends to be much more fluid than in past generations. It’s important that you talk about it with your significant other – and also leverage your talents. There are times when I find I’m wielding the tool box and my husband is cooking the dinner and we are both happy about that.

It takes a self-confident man: I’ve observed that those of us women who are lucky enough to have our husbands as lead parents, our better half is very comfortable in his manhood. He doesn’t need the material reinforcements of the larger paycheck or a fancy title on his business card. He is forging a new path, is comfortable in his own skin, and doesn’t worry about the potential judgement of others.

It can be confusing: Over the years, we’ve definitely confused some of our family members as to who does what – I have found that the older generation of extended relatives will ask me about the kids and ask my husband about his career. I’ve also had times when I’m sitting in an executive meeting 2500 miles away from home and another mom texts me about setting up a play-date for that afternoon – to which I’m always tempted to respond, “I have no idea where my kids are right now.”

Location matters: When we lived in Seattle, my husband was surrounded by other dads as lead parents. In fact, several years ago on my son’s kindergarten field trip to the zoo, the parent chaperones were all dads - most of whom were stay-at-home or only partially-employed. Yet now that we live in Westchester County, New York, we’ve observed that there are far fewer lead dads – just a handful here and there. And those lead parent dads sometimes feel invisible compared to the horde of lead parent moms that seem to make it to all the school events and volunteer opportunities.

It can be lonely:  Forging a new path can be lonely at times. When our son was age 2, my husband took him to a parent-toddler preschool class during the week and he noticed that there was a group of moms that always had coffee together after class.  After this had been going on for awhile, one of the moms said, “oh, we should invite you, too even though you’re a dad.” He was grateful for the invitation – I’m not sure that he actually joined them – but he was happy to no longer be invisible. While those of us working women know that “boys clubs” are alive and well at work, those of you lead parent dads know that “moms clubs” are alive and well in our schools and neighborhoods. Lead parent moms: Please do include the lead parent dads you know in the fun things you’re planning for the kids or the coffee outings after the school drop-off in the mornings.

Kids tend to seek out moms for comfort: No matter how many scrapes and bruises my husband has bandaged up and tears he has hugged away over the years, we find that our kids still turn to me for comfort and affection. Although I’m naturally less sympathetic than he is (“shake it off” or “toughen up kid” is often my natural reaction), I find that our kids still come to me for their comfort needs – whether it’s a scrape on the knee or hurt feelings from friends at school.

Dads get tired of being the Lead Parent, too: My husband never really understood why his mom had anything to complain about when he was a child – she lived in a beautiful house, with a successful husband and had great kids (especially my husband, according to my husband!). Yet now he understands – he gets tired of the endless need to keep a household in groceries, meals made, lunches packed, clothes clean, kids in good health, etc. Sometimes he just needs a break, too.

He will have no regrets: In 10 or 20 years, I may look back and wish I had worked less and had more time with our kids when they were little; but my husband is sure to look back and will be glad he got the time with the kids - time that men of previous generations didn’t get the opportunity to choose to have. 

In all of this, I am grateful we can choose our paths, and I admire all of you lead parents out there – moms and dads alike.