My wife and I both work and we have four kids, which means it’s literally impossible for her to be “mom” for every kid in every instance. There are simply too many conflicts.
That said, she still feels the pressure to do so and I see the effect when I “step in” (i.e. do my fair share) to do things like doctor’s visits, school functions, etc. I’ve been working from home since 2010 and before Covid, when she would have to go into the office during the week, I did a lot of the school and daycare visits. Sometimes (not often), I’d get comments about how nice it was I was able to be there.
At the time, I didn’t realize (yes, I’m a dolt) that the expectation was that these were “mom” duties. Antiquated, a bit rarer in our region (Washington D.C. – Maryland region), but still sometimes present.
Our first post of the day taught me a lot and gave me better insight into that perspective. There’s a lot that you don’t see out there that influences how people behave.
Internalized Sexism & Women’s Finances: How Misogyny Messes With My Money [Brave Saver] – “I was stumped — because no one had said anything — now that I was a mom. And yet, no one had to say a word for me to know some people were judging that choice. And more than that, I knew that I had wondered if I could be a good mom while working.”
If you’ve been wondering “how often should I rebalance?” then Vanguard has a report for you – Rational rebalancing: An analytical approach to multiasset portfolio rebalancing decisions and insights. The summary is that you should do it about once a year, especially if you aren’t doing any tax-loss harvesting.
Given my blind spots explained in the first post, this is a good video to remind yourself that we all don’t start off at home plate in the game of life – Social Inequalities Explained in a $100 Race: