Women at Work - Family Management: Looking to a Post-Pandemic Future

0:01Do you remember school? What do you used to do at school? A book time, circle time. Circle time? What did you do at circle time? I don't remember. You don't remember? Yeah. We'll do it again soon. Erica, it's been a pretty long year. You gave birth. You also raised two kids during the pandemic while also trying to work at the same time. And it seems like we're moving toward a new normal.

0:34So what does that new normal look like for you? It's such a big question, right? Part of me is so excited and looking forward to what this new normal could look like. And then the other part of me is also very, I mean, to be completely honest, nervous about it. Yeah. I mean, when I think about the positives, my new normal hopefully will look like is that I will be able to see my parents more, what's been so hard throughout this process.

1:04you know, coming back to work with both kids and everything is, you know, if our nanny is sick, I don't have any backup. So one of the major things that I'm looking forward to is that I will be able to call my parents. And yes, they're six hours away, so they're not exactly next door. But at least I will feel like I can have them come stay with us. That's going to be awesome. It's going to be huge. Yeah, my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, and it was the first time she saw the kids since September.

1:35It was like Taylor Swift or Santa Claus walked through the front door. Maisie was so, so excited. It was a great thing to experience. Oh, I'm excited, too. For us, you know, my husband's family, his parents live out in California, so they haven't even met Mark. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I mean, I even think about it just in terms of...

2:06like validating that mark exists in some ways like so many times throughout this year i feel like i have the invisible baby that's just kind of growing behind closed doors you know and i just can't believe this first birthday is in june i mean that is not far away and he hasn't met really anybody so that is something i'm really looking forward to and hoping that hoping that we can make happen sooner rather than later how are you feeling about school sending your daughter back to school We are hoping to send Claire back to preschool. Soon, she is such a happy kid with other kids. For me, it's just deciding when. When do we send her back? And how do we make that decision? We made that decision in September to send Maisie back to preschool. And it was the most agonizing decision we've ever made as parents. Because there's so many trade-offs that you have to think about. And we weren't sure.

3:00Whether we're sending her back because we needed a break and we needed her you know to go back to school so we'd have more time to do work or if it was really because you know Maisie is also a social butterfly and she really struggled over the summer without seeing friends and we didn't know if going back to school would be really good for her. And it was hard to weigh those risks. And so there's been a lot of disruptions. There's been a few school closures because of COVID, but ultimately it's been really, really good to see her open up and be so social with her friends. And it seems like that's continuing to happen. I mean, just the other day she asked me, when can I hug my friends? Which was really touching. Yeah, I can't wait for that. I can't wait to see Claire play with her friends. That is just...

3:50Exactly, like when can they hug their friends again, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean the thing with having kids is they can articulate quite what's happening, but I can tell with Maisie she's really opened up even more. She's hugging my wife and I all the time, telling us that she loves us just randomly, which she never really did before. And it's been like this ever since she learned that my wife and I were gonna get vaccinated, which we did last weekend. Boom, vaccine time!

4:21And seeing her reaction and seeing how much energy she has now, I can start to see what my life will be like as we return to work and life returns back to normal. I'm looking forward to feeling more vitality, feeling recharged, getting some rest. So that's where we're at, envisioning the near future. But there are a ton of different situations and emotions and decisions out there.

4:54Here's how other parents expect their lives to change and how they're feeling about it. My name is Nikta Kanuka. I work at a large tech company and I live in Canada. So as more people get vaccinated, I am just still looking forward to setting up play dates. My two-year-old, she's super extroverted and it's been tough asking her to keep her distance or, you know, not encouraging her to run over and play with the neighborhood kids at the park.

5:20One thing I will say though is it's been good to get to know our neighbors better during the pandemic, like seeing the same dad walk with his stroller at the same time every day or you know the couple that walks their dog every evening and like kind of waving at them from across the street. I just feel like there's more of a sense of community directly around me in my neighborhood and I'm getting really excited to get to know my neighbors better this summer. Hi, my name's Elise and I'm from Flagstaff, Arizona.

5:47And I'm the chef and owner of Just Delivered, a meal delivery service for postpartum mothers and new parents. I am just starting to launch my business here, so I'm expecting my life to change quite a bit as I won't be home 24-7 anymore with my two-year-old. And we've been really privileged that throughout the pandemic we've been able to keep our kid home. But I think in a few months we'll have to send them back to daycare and that really frightens me. With no vaccine available for kids their age, I am extremely worried about sending them back to an environment where they're going to interact with other children and increase their risk of catching COVID. So I would say I'm actually going to be a bit more stressed than I was during all our lockdowns and over the past year.

6:51Or read Yaffe and Ron Your Pass are again trying to decide what is safe for them and their three kids. Where to go, who to see, and what they can do. Right now, the country leads the world and the percentage of people fully vaccinated against COVID-19. And these two parents are in the middle of leading their family out of a crisis. It's a welcome transition, they say, but a complicated and challenging one.

7:16Orit is the chief psychologist at an emergency care center that provides housing and counseling to children who've suffered trauma. Ron is an infectious disease physician at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. Thank you so much for taking the time. I know you're both very busy given your work and your family. It sounds like you have your hands full for sure right now. We're happy to talk with you. Thank you.

7:42Can you take us back to the height of the pandemic and what did your work and family life look like? Yeah, I think we didn't understand what's happening. Maybe Ron understood more because the professional part of it, but we didn't understand what's going on.

8:00And I think for me it was mainly scary because we were both going to work and we were continuing to see lots of people and we were leaving three kids at home. So okay, the 16 year old was 15 then and she is very responsible and everything but still going day after day to work and leaving them at home that didn't feel so good, made me feel guilty. What I was most scared of was that maybe Both of us are going to get COVID-19 and would have to be hospitalized or sent to some place where patients are supposed to be and the kids will have to stay and take care of themselves and no one could come and help because they will have to be quarantined. So that was the main thing that set up here in my head all that time. Yes. I think that the main perspective for myself is a bit different.

9:00As you can imagine, we have different perspectives of life, you know, these dark scenarios never came through me. That's not true, actually. I actually told you that. I asked what's going to happen if we're going... And then I told you. You just forgot. No, and I told you it's not going to happen. Do you think that's because of your personality or because of your professional background, that you're an infectious disease expert? I think it's both, but I think it's way more complicated.

9:29I was practically working on a daily basis out of the house going to work and maintaining some kind of normality in life although work was not that normal or was completely mad. I think we were the hospital who treated the most patients in Israel and I was involved with the Covent patients almost since beginning except for a couple of months off.

9:56I think early on, you know, with the stress and so forth, you start your day early in the morning, like 4 a.m. or something, and it takes time to get back into some kind of a normality. But then you start to create with each one of the kids some kind of activity that you do with. Like some kind of a stupid iPad game with the young one. Or a bike with the middle one or something with the older one.

10:25So in a way it created some kind of routines that enables a unique activity with each of the charts which is kind of an advantage that I don't think I've had before. So in a way one can think that this pandemic is kind of a jump start or a good base to start from.

10:53or to evolve to something new within your family. That's great to hear. In a nutshell, that's the difference. He will always see the positive part and will be less stressed, and I'll keep the worries. I'm the same way. Darker part of life. Can you tell us about a day that is seared in your memory for either it was some sort of work-life conflict or some decision you had to make?

11:21something that comes up to mind when our youngest son went back to school after a week of school or something he had to be quarantined because one of the teachers turned out to be positive and he is an eight year old boy and there was like this difficult decision to be taken because I mean if he's older then he can be just in his room and you just give him food and whatever and he enjoys having some quiet time without his parents and if he's a toddler then there's no question you have to be quarantined with him but he's kind of in the middle and I was just torn because Some part of me thought that as a responsible and caring parent I should be quarantined with him but I knew that I cannot do that in terms of my work because it was very intense and lots of difficult things happening in a center for kids that I'm working with and kids live there so work just goes on and I can't just disappear and I was just torn

12:37how to make this decision and what's the right decision and he ended up being quarantined in his room by himself. Actually he really liked it. He got iPad for longer than he ever did and he got food to his room and he was just very happy. He actually still says that he would like to be quarantined again.

13:01But it was difficult at night time when he wanted to be hugged or kissed and you're not supposed to. And then I really felt this was the wrong decision. And since he still wants to be quarantined, I guess it was not traumatic. But I think this was a challenging moment and it happened again and again three times. Three times. Yeah, but each time he was happier. Yeah, each time he got, he was...

13:30I think it's not a particular woman that made things tougher. It's just the whole year that you need to stop a lot of routines that you were used to and to create a new lifestyle in a way. And in many ways, we posed on ourselves more restrictions that are needed. Practically, we haven't seen friends for a year. We communicated with friends, but It's a year that, other than work, then the person-to-person interaction hardly exists. You know, before the vaccines, then we were very strict and now after we are vaccinated, our daughter is vaccinated, so we can be more flexible mainly with her. But for ourselves, we still haven't got to meet our friends. So, in a way,

14:30This restrictive behavior is what is really tough because when you want to alleviate such restrictions, it comes into a situation that you need to think when, how, should, in what pace. And I think this is like learning to walk again in many, many ways. It's a complicated situation. It's a complicated task, but you still need to go through it and to Starts, in a way, a new life. You guys are pros at parenting at this point. You have three kids who are older than ours. So would you say that you managed well during the pandemic? It sounds like you did. I think I should ask our kids this question. So that's exactly what we did. Hi, I'm Adelaide. I'm 16. I'm Itamar. I'm 13. The little one, he's right here. He can't really speak English, though, so...

15:30I'm Jonathan, eight years old. Okay, so this question is going to make your parents a little nervous. They can hear you, so no problem. That's okay. So I had asked how they thought that they managed during the pandemic, and they said, well, you'd have to ask our kids that. So here we are. The pandemic has been really tough for parents. It's been tough for all of us. I'm sure it's been tough for you as well.

15:56Parents have a lot of responsibilities and it's been really hard. So if I were to ask you to review your parents' performance during the pandemic, how would you review it? What would you say? Did they do a good job? I would actually say they did. Though I don't think it was a challenge for him. Me and Ayelet with being alone at home for like four years now. Yeah. The only thing added is that we need to watch our little brothers sometimes.

16:24It was fine. I actually liked the time we had it alone at home. It was like Quality time us three we bonded didn't we? No, no Well in my opinion we did and it was fun. They were a lot more tough on us me and my friends we like to drive to Tel Aviv and go to the beach together and you know on a bus take a trip it's it's fun like you know being kids you you go away but obviously I couldn't go out and do stuff so yeah we had a lot of like tiny arguments about it but I think they did a great job being the rock for us like Telling us what you can do and you could talk to them and be sad about it. We gave the youngest the last word. His brother and sister interpreted for him. He said they were excellent. Well, rave reviews, wow. Yeah, we know our stuff, you know. I think they were polite. Take that into account.

17:39Well, it's so nice to hear their perspective too. I think even just hearing your daughter say what she wanted to do and how normal that would be in normal times just to see your friends and go to the beach even, you know, really struck me in that she she's really missing that. So, you know, this year we've done less with the kids in many, many aspects, you know, we missed the travel and we missed going around with the kids, you know, traveling here and traveling there.

18:06having a vacation here vacation there and vacations have their own dynamics within the family it brings a different vibe a different mood into the family and it's a lot of fun for the kids and for us we haven't went to restaurants while before we're going to once a month at least to a restaurant to dining out with the kids so those are some kind of price that we've paid during this year But having this perspective if somebody will tell you that now for you, you wouldn't go for traveling. You wouldn't travel with the kids. You don't do vacations. No restaurants. You only stay at homes and work and your kids will be schooling at home. You will hear that. You will think, oh, that's going to be a mess, a disaster. But then when you've gone through that, then that was fine. That was OK. But

19:04Then everybody, you know, we were playing those games, where would you like to go now? So each kid has its own perspective on where he would like to go, what he would like to do, where he would like to eat. Do those things seem like they're close to reality now or do they still seem like distant dreams? It's still complicated, you know, because the regulations for vaccinated people are one and the regulations for non-vaccinated people Meaning kids are different and it's kind of a task to go, you know You need to test the kids for COVID for Practically every activity like this so you can do tests like three times a week if you want to do something Although everything is practically open, you know, there's few things which are a bit more complicated going abroad is not realistic thing to do right now It's probably a thing that will be more viable

20:01in six months or so because the burden of disease outside of the israel is different dining out you know good restaurants are making sure that kids won't be dining in unless they have a negative test within the last 24 48 hours so you can't be just spontaneous of going out for dinner you need to make sure that 40 hours ahead you took the swab making sure you got the results on time and so forth and so on so there's too many practicalities that complicate life so It's almost back to normality, but it's way better than it was before It's a process So Ron, I don't know about you, but I'm the least important person in my household the way the kids come before me same here exactly so

20:52Did you get newfound status during the pandemic, since you know a lot about COVID? Were the kids asking you more questions? How did they react to you? So that depends. COVID-wise, obviously, they could ask me. I could explain some things. But other than that, I'm just the old guy with the iPad playing with the little one. So that's kind of a reduction in my size, in a way. Well, the advantage...

21:20Or maybe the disadvantage of having a doctor at home is that he can test you, you don't have to go get tested. But the disadvantage is that he's very, very serious about... Meticulus. Meticulus, yes, about taking the test. And this is not a very nice and pleasant test. And when you have a dad that does that and very, very... well, sticks the swab.

21:46Was this at the point? Did you have to go deep into the nose? Yeah, very deep. Oh, okay. You're the one that tickles the brain. The middle kid actually said that he prefers not to leave the house and not to meet people in order not to have to be tested again by his dad. That's fair. That sounds fair. You mentioned that you'd created new routines as a family during the pandemic. Are there any of those routines or any part of your pandemic lifestyle that you want to keep up?

22:16when this is all over? Yeah, a lot I think. I would be happy to have lunch with my kids at least a couple of times a week or going for a walk in the afternoon. We live in the suburbs of Jerusalem in a very village kind of surroundings and walking around with my youngest son and just talking, taking a walk of two hours. That's amazing and not having to rush.

22:41all the time, also because they don't have to rush to after-school activities. So they have time, it's not only me. So I would like that. And just to spend often, all of us together at home, not just one or two of us, I hope we can keep some of it. Absolutely. I feel, I mean, for all parents it feels like we were forced to do a massive pause with everything that was happening, all of us.

23:08we're so over scheduled i think that having this forcing function where all activities were wiped off our calendars i mean i had this thought with my daughter like she was in daycare five days a week and then on saturdays i would literally say like oh no we're going to be home for a full day on saturday we need to figure out a way to get claire out of the house and so we would you know sign her up for singing music classes or something so this whole idea that we can't just stay home.

23:34has been eye-opening for me too. And in some ways, I hope that I don't, like you said, like I kind of remember those activities that I did enjoy and try to keep those and try not to over-schedule when we do kind of reach some semblance of being able to open up things here as well. Yeah, exactly. Do you have any advice for parents who are listening from other parts of the world where we don't have as much of the population vaccinated and are curious to learn what you have?

24:03Learned going through this transition in terms of phasing more to a place of normalcy. Do you have any advice to share for how to manage this transition? I think actually we have to be ready to be surprised because not all the reactions of the kids are the ones that we were thinking that these are the reactions we're gonna have and to be open for the wider spectrum of emotional experiences and reactions from kids and knowing that this is part of the transition and maybe not getting scared of a child that doesn't want to go necessarily back to school and understanding that it is a process I think we were affected enormously. Even for us that we were most of the time out there normal working-wise not

24:56Socially, I feel that we're still kind of learning how to get back, so everything feels strange. So I think we have to give ourselves time. And even when the magic of vaccination comes to your door, there's still enough people not vaccinated and then the opening of things and the restrictions are still there, so it's a process. Even when everything is being opened, it's not that you go back to your previous normality but you go to some normality that is more open but it's still it's not as open as it was so each time you just get a new things you can enjoy and then nothing and nothing and nothing is like

25:48starting to explore the world around you and then going a bit further and a further and a further it's a process probably it will take two years I don't know really how much time but probably full normality will resume around the globe somewhere in 2022 end of 2021 and up till then you know just enjoy whatever you have And I also think we're different in the sense that even when things are open and you can do something, you're not in the same place that you were, let's say, a year ago. I think I'm much more conscious when I walk around to the number of people around me suddenly and the space between us.

26:38Things that I don't think I ever thought about before so we're kind of mentally changed in a way and some of it maybe will stay and some of it will gradually just fade out but I think this takes time absolutely at the idea of being in a very small.

26:54crowded restaurant, you know, elbow to elbow when you have like all the tables are so close together and you're eating. I don't know how I'm ever going to go to those like small, hold-in-the-wall Italian restaurants again. Yeah, I absolutely agree. It's just realizing that we're different people now, even if things are slowly opening up. Yeah, I think that's such a great perspective. And it's great for me to hear personally because I keep thinking that once I get that second shot of the vaccine that my life, it'll be like going from black and white into color.

27:24And listening to you guys speak, it's obvious that, you know, there's going to be an in-between state. There's going to be a transition period. And I think that's great for everyone to hear. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. And the magic will happen. No worries. I like that. That's it from us for now. It's been a good run. Four episodes. Should we keep going? Should family management the series? Become family management the show?

27:57Feedback from you will help us decide. Please take the survey we created. It's at hbr.org slash podcast survey. We're grateful to the editorial and production team who made this series possible. There are Amanda Cursey, Maureen Hoek, Tina Toby Mack, Adam Buchholz, and Rob Eckhart.

28:27We're also grateful to our families. I want to give a special shout out to my husband Rob for listening so attentively to each version of each episode and always giving me so many words of encouragement. And I want to thank my wife Julie for being my number one fan and for being so willing to share our family life with other people. You may have noticed that in the show notes for each episode we link to HBR articles books and podcast episodes related to the topic at hand.

29:05Find more ideas and advice about work and parenting at hbr.org, including coverage on compassionately leading your family, your team, and your organization out of the crisis. I'm Kevin Evers. I'm Erica Truxler. Write to us at familymanagementathbr.org. Thanks for listening and take care.