Eve Rodsky authored “Fair Play,” a book and card deck designed to help people dive deeper into essential conversations around household equity. After a powerful discussion with Eve in a recent episode, Simone and Daniel take the opportunity to play the “Fair Play” card game, exploring personal stories about gift-giving and breakfast traditions that reveal the unseen emotional labor in family dynamics. Eve shares her insights on how the game not only helps redistribute household tasks but also fosters deeper understanding between partners!
Hello Sunshine, Hey, Messi's we're back and we've got a little treats of brighten up your weekend.
Simone, this is our first ever bonus episode, Capital B.
I'm so here for this.
Love a bonus, We love a bonus.
Okay, So, a couple of weeks ago, we had an amazing conversation with Eve Rodsky. And if you haven't listened to the episode yet, Eve's a member of the Hello Sunshine family. She's the author of fair Play, and it changed the cultural conversation entirely. In it, she sheds light on all of the cognitive labor that women take on in traditional family structures, things like planning and preparing for everyday tasks like even putting sunscreen on your kids.
That takes time.
And she's an expert in organization, so she's talking about everything that a household needs to function. So she didn't just start the conversation. Eve dug in. She researched it, and she's trying to fix the issue. She offers practical ways that family can redistribute all of the work more equitably.
Yeah, that book, Fairplay is a New York Times bestseller and a former Reese's Book Club pick, and there's also a fair Play card game and a documentary. And Eve's been really open about the backstory behind fair Play and how all of these resources have even transformed her own relationships and her home from the inside out, her dynamic with her husband Seth. Us are three kids, Zach, Ben and Anna. Eve told us she designed the fair Play card game as a tool to help us navigate hard conversations better. We actually had the opportunity to play this game with Eve during our original conversation, but we didn't have time to include it in our show until now.
So today we have a very special bonus episode where we're playing Eve's game and all of us are getting really honest. But if you haven't listened to our first episode with Eve, we promise you'll still be able to follow along with this one. But definitely go check out that original conversation If you're interested in buying Eve's game, which I highly recommend I give it as a gift to a lot of friends, especially as they get married. You can find the link to the game in our show notes.
Well, let the games begin.
Here's our extended conversation with Eve Rodsky, The New York Times best selling author of fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space.
You've called fair Play a love letter to men, and I think that's a really important part of this because I know we can all joke about men and the inadequacies that we feel, but we keep marrying them for the most part, and so it's important that they're a part of this and that it feels positive. And you say that the research shows it actually is, oh absolutely so.
Part of our research that just came out shows that fair play works, which is very exciting and the reason why sometimes I actually think, even though it feels so heavy for women that the home organization is so painful for men as well, is because they're defined in one way, which is breadwinning, and actually the value of that men bring to all those other tasks the fair Play cards is exponential, and we see it in the research that when men are involved in transporting their kids to school, kids get amazing advice.
When men are.
Involved with cooking and allow their kids to be involved more as opposed to women who are like, get out of this kitchen and I don't want you being burned. There's just so many different ways that when men are invited into their full power in the home, not only can women step into their full power in the world, but children benefit, society benefits.
It's a really beautiful thing.
So, Danielle, when you're asking about why Fair plays a love letter to men, I think the pain and just being a helper is actually probably as bad as the mental load. When you think about when men are the ones going to the store for the mustard but have zero context for that task. It becomes a random assignment of a task. And we actually know from the organizational management side that if you bring somebody in simone, you're going to be at my partner in the meeting, and I'm really excited for you to be here. And here's why you're here. I want you to Yes, you're going to take notes, but also we're going to go over and you'll help me with this PowerPoint after. That's very different than simone just I need grab a pen. You're coming this meeting with me, And so that psychological safety of understanding why you're part of the team is often lacking in men's understanding of the of the home, and that can be very painful for them. And so I just grabbed my phone because I wanted to read you this beautiful message I got from this man in Korea, and this is just one of thousands and thousands we get from men, which is why I said fair plays become a love letter to them, this idea that they want to be partners in the home.
Okay.
He works in a legal department in Korea, and he says, thank you message from Korea, Dear miss Rodsky, I read your book fair Play Project, and write this message to express gratitude for you. I bought this book as one of husbands in the world, and I confess I thought I'm a fairly good husband, but I was wrong. That's really not fair Play is not much a shame, but in the beginning it could feel a little little angry. But then the system is helpful. So for men who are reading it for the first time, maybe skip to page one hundred. He says, I strongly believe everybody must read this book before they got married or have a baby. Personally, I lost my sister, who was a high court judge and a mother of two elementary student sons, four years ago. It was because a cerebral hemorrhage stroke took her. I believe this disease exploded as she worked too hard and handled too many things. During her father in law's death, which was just a week before her death, she took care too many things as a full time worker and a perfectionist judge. I think of this whole fair Play project over the entire Korea, and every husband executes this project, my sister would still be with us, having a balanced life, with her smiling face, which I terribly miss. Thank you for writing this book and I will practice this method from now on. Wow, how could fair play not be a love letter to men when that's what you see?
Wow?
I have so emotional hearing that I know, so do I.
I've read it probably over fifty times, and I still tear up because A I hear the pain in his voice, and B I know it can be better, could be better for women out there, And it does require men to step into their full power in the home, and it only only benefits men. There's not one man that I've interviewed again in seventeen countries that has as ever said I regretted taking my child to school that morning, I regretted being there for that recital. I regretted buying the flowers for my daughter and watching her get the yellow Roses that she loves after she did her ballet.
We just don't hear that.
We have to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're playing a game of fair play. Don't go anywhere, and.
We're back with Eve Rodsky. Should we fair play it up?
Yeah, let's fair play it up. I was going to ask you, you know what is the solution? What is because you know you said you know that there is a better way, I'm guessing it's that.
Yeah, Well, I'll say it's the magic formula. The formula is boundaries, systems, and communication.
That's it.
People who use those three things and had the fair play tools to help with those three things during the pandemic performed really really well, and those that didn't. You know, again, that's not quantitative the same way our a study on cognitive labor as yet, but our qualitative studies show that people who didn't have it faar it a lot worse. But how do you even come to the It's not like I could just give you this tool and be like, go for it. So the third piece, communication, I think, is such a big piece of it. And that's what we're going to play today with fair play. So we're not going to divide up the cards as if you and I were in a partnership together. But we're going to use the cards the way a lot of therapists have been using the cards, which I think is so exciting, which is to play a different type of game with the cards.
So and it's basically a communication exercise.
You know, you've got a real game on your hands when therapists they are using cards.
Yes, it's actually really amazing.
Yeah, and we actually have people now trained and a lot of the people who are trained in fair play are therapists. So for all of you out there who see a therapist or who are therapy adjacent, understand how much I value you because again, as a lawyer, I needed psychologists like our friends at USC who helped me do with my studies and it was very important. Okay, so this is what I'm going to have you do, Danielle.
Let's start with you. Okay, I'm going to just have you.
Shuffle the cards and then just shuffle them and then you're going to just pick one. Okay, Yeah, it's sort of they're a little thick, so maybe hard to actually shuffle them like poke for style, but yeah, try it.
Yeah. Oh, actually you.
Did it, okay, and then I just picked one.
Yeah, pick one anywhere on the deck, just yeah, pick one.
Ooh gifts. I love this card. Okay.
So Danielle, you picked gifts for VIPs. VIPs mean very important people in your life. So this is how we're going to play. I want to know any story or anything you can remember about gift gifting in your childhood.
Okay.
Sometimes I throw my parents under the bus on the show, but it's coming from a sincere place. So when I was growing up, there was the Tiffany necklace.
But by the way, can I just say that we literally went through one hundred cards, you picked one, and then you're so smart in articulate you were able to just jump in and have a memory.
I just want to say how good you are that you were able to do that. We did not script this beforehand.
Okay, it's a distinct memory, Okay, for some reason. So when I was growing up, the Tiffany dog chain collar necklace was a big thing, and so many of the girls in my school had it, and I begged my parents for it, and they were like, we're absolutely.
Not getting you anything from Tiffany's.
So for my tenth birthday, I opened a box and it had like a knockoff Tiffany bracelet okay, and it was engraved and it said a decade of Love Dad, And I was so excited. And then I looked at my dad and I realized that he had never seen that bracelet before.
Wow.
And I looked at my mom and she was the one who had given me a gift from my father. And that was the entirety of my childhood. My mom did all of the gifts for everybody, including his parents and his cousins and his aunts and uncles, and it's so ingrained in my mind because I just I feel like she did so much.
I just got chills for many reasons. But I have a question for you. Do you think that in that memory that you realize that later on as you've been processing what you want for your life and your relationship, or do you actually really think in the moment you knew except from the bottom, like from the back of sort of your ten year old not you know, fully executive function brain.
That's such a good question.
I knew because I saw my dad's face and it just wasn't from him, and I knew it wasn't, and I still have it. I love it, but as I've gotten older, I think about that moment a lot, actually, because I don't want that for my hopeful future marriage.
Well, so interesting is I wonder, right, if you were in a partnership in that situation with a child and then your partner says to you, you know, what are we giving them for their birthday? It could be a bigger trigger for you than say the average person.
Right.
And I don't know how much a partner would know about that, because that wasn't how we've ever been taught to ask people, Hey.
Who gave you gifts growing up?
Right?
But I do feel that I know you in a deeper way just that was probably I don't know how long did that story take?
Forty five seconds?
Right?
Maybe a minute?
In that minute, just by doing that game, I feel like I have a really interesting and deeper sense of who you are as a person.
So I just I love that so much.
Well, Simone's shuffling.
What I just realized playing that was I'd always thought of fair play as a division of labor, and I didn't realize that these cards could be used to understand your partner better and hear stories.
Yeah, yeah, well we're going to talk about how important that is. But I think the biggest piece of that formula we were just talking about boundary systems communication. It keeps going back to why these conversations about the home are a movement and not what I thought in the beginning. Oh, I'll just give you this tool and everything's going to be fine. Is because each piece of that puzzle of understanding your own boundaries to the system of understanding what actual ownership is, and not just the piece that you see like going to the store, but all the mental load and on top of it.
Now we have to learn how to communicate in a different way.
Not just why didn't you get the necklace or go to the store for the birthday gifts? We have to sit down and say, wait a second, these are not just chores and housework.
These are humanity. It's very, very big. It's big than I thought.
Yeah, we're talking about a five years later, right, that's how big it is. And I think we'll continue to have this. Okay, so now we're going to go to you. Okay, we just just pick any card in the deck.
Okay, I'll do this.
Oh what came up?
Here weekday breakfast.
We breakfast.
Okay, let's go back. You're in second grade or third grade. Do you have any memories of what school, I mean, home was like before you went to school in the morning, or what your lunches look like, anything related to meals as a child, but especially breakfast.
Yeah. Actually, I'm going to talk about my dad too.
Interesting.
We've always had a really tight daddy daughter relationship, and we moved around a lot when I was growing up. That's something that's been a defining characteristic of me and has shaped me into who I am. And it's funny in each city I can remember these breakfast traditions that we had.
I got again.
I swear to God to the listeners, we did not script this in advance. We just literally picked a card out of the deck. Okay, so tell me please.
So I think from a really young age in elementary school, I have this vivid memory of my dad making me smoothies every morning. Oh my God, and he really inst under Back then, we were a vitam ex. We were a cutting edge family. We had a blender. It was crazy, but he would make me smoothies. And I think to this day he instilled a love of smoothies in me and I think about him whenever I make them. And then we also had a beautiful tradition of going to get Cuban food in Miami.
Wow, So what does that mean? Tell us more?
Yeah, so it's it's actually pretty ritualistic getting a Cuban breakfast. So it's typically bread, coffee coletche, and then like eggs and rice and beans. And I distinctly remember just like what you do whenever you have a Cuban breakfast is you dip the bread into the coffee coleche and then you eat it and it's like the sweet and savory combination. So honestly, my dad is the one who I have all these breakfast memories with.
Oh my gosh, Well again, the fair play is a love letter to men. This is a love letter to your father.
Yeah.
Did your parents? Were your parents together where?
I am?
Yes?
Are they still together?
Yes?
And are you still close to your dad?
I am yeah?
Can we say his name on the air, yeah, Charles, Charles, thank you for doing breakfasts. It's become a memory for your daughter as part of her humanity. So tell me, do you have any traditions now for your children?
And food.
I really take pride in my kids nutrition.
I really want to set them up for success, and I know that food is one of the best ways to do that. So I do all the weekday breakfasts. While my husband is getting the kids ready and dressing them for school, I do the breakfast, I do the lunches.
And honestly, it doesn't feel like a chore for me.
Yeah.
I love the act of putting intentionality and thoughtfulness into their meals and hoping when I'm making their food, I think about them opening it up at school and being like, oh, my mom got me the snacks that I really wanted, Like I remember that feeling of feeling so cool at school when you had like I don't know, fruit roll ups, whatever, And I have to shout out my mom, like yes, my dad, we had all these great breakfast memories together, but my mom did all the rest of the cooking, so like the lunches, the dinners, and we always had a tradition of sitting and eating dinner together. And I think I've inherited her. I hope I have inherited her intentionality when it comes to feeding my kids.
So if we were married, that could again that that would be something that we hadn't talked about the way you just so beautifully told me, and we just went into a relationship together and we just started to make meals may have been a point of contention for both of us because I grew up sort of a you know, latch key kid. Nutrition was literally the meal I ate from sixth grade till college at the bodega because I didn't eat breakfast was a toasted plain bagel, extra steak fries and extra ketchup. It's actually very delicious, it is, but that toasted bagel with steak fries in the middle and extra ketchup was what I ate for basically a decade.
You put the fries on the page.
Yes, that's what I'm saying, So the steak fries go in the bagel, so it's a it's hardcore, and then ketchup. So again, you may feel if we were together that I wasn't.
Valuing what you valued.
But also I wouldn't really necessarily understand your why, And also maybe you could have a little bit more compassion for me for why I don't really understand the value of that intentionality when what's the big deal? Of course, it becomes a division of labor tool just inherently in seeing the hundred cards. And you you know, people who come to this with these the values you know, with with good intentionality feel like there's no way I want you to hold all those cards like that would feel unfair. So I do visual power, yes, but I do think that the reason why a lot of people are using it to get people to tell their stories is because we've missed that step. We think we know so much about our partners, but actually we know incredibly little about them in our lives that we had before them. So it's been a very eye opening thing for me to do these types of exercises with Seth, with my kids, with my parents. And so if these conversations feel triggering to you or you're like, this would never work in my relationship, you know, my partner would never do X, Y and Z. I don't think you could say my partner would never answer question about their childhood.
I think they would.
And I think that's a good introduction into what we're talking about today.
We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with Eve Rodsky.
And we're back, Eve, are you comfortable doing one.
Yes, of course.
Oh fun, Okay, I never get to do my aunsa, thank you so much for that, and so you do. Yeah, I'll just see what I pick. Okay, Oh, hard questions as kids?
Okay.
What means okay, hard questions is who's doing the research to answer hard questions your children have? What's a blowjob? Why is that person have two moms? Something that you may want to come to with intentionality and not dismiss and make sure that you're on the right values path to answer that question thoughtfully. So let's see hard questions as kids. What hard questions that I have? Well, this is what I think I'll say about that again, sort of throwing my parents under the bus. This is before you know Instagram or Google or any social media.
Right.
I grew up in the eighties.
What I'd say about hard questions was that I found it everything either through friends or through shame. And so maybe that's why I'm sort of an open book with my children. I'm just trying to think of it. I've never made that connection, but maybe I'm too much of an open book.
I'll give you an example.
I was really embarrassed because I went to camp at the end of sixth grade, and I had like full armpit hair, and I remember everybody was like making out in camp and everyone's like, I would never touch Eve. She's disgusting. She's like full armpit hair or whatever. And so I remember thinking to myself and even like crooming like my vagina. I didn't realize that other people like wax stor you know, like I just didn't know anything about bodily hair. And now that I think about it, and I sort of found out with like teasing and shame and so what I'm realizing now to that connection was recently, Zach was with me and Emmy Hill die if he knew I was saying the story, but we were like at the counter and he was like opening after snack, like a blueberry muffin, and I was like, Zach, you know, I just have this memory that my mother and my father, no one ever told me that people trim their pubic hair.
I was like, you know, I wish I knew that earlier.
And literally he took his fucking blueberry muffin and threw it me and he just walked out of the room.
So I remember this like muffin like rolling on the floor.
Oh my god, so maybe I'm too open with hard questions and just wanting to talk about all the hard topics all the time. And so it's interesting because Zach now has a rule with me that I want to put on a T shirt. It's called no specifics. But now I'm thinking maybe it came from this. Maybe it came from the fact that I never had anybody to ask hard questions to. So I'm just like, for sure blurting out hard questions all over the place. So now we've gotten the opposite where where my son's like, do never.
Tell me anything hard again. We literally have a no specifics household.
That is funny.
Well, because you're trying to spare them, you know, from what you have experienced.
Yeah, I am exactly.
Yeah, Eve, my mom's the same way, and her mom didn't tell her anything, and so she tells me all of the things I'm going to steal no specifics. But I'm grateful for it because as things happened to me in my life, I think, oh, I'm not weird or I'm not you know, like for all of it. She told me that my twenties were going to be my hardest decade, and then no one tells you that they're supposed to be the best.
Yeah, and I was so grateful. She told me how amazing. I want to meet your mother. She sounds really wonderful.
Thanks Eve, thank you so much for coming on the bright side and bringing the fair Play deck with you.
Oh, thank you for your vulnerability and for letting me turn the tables and let you answer questions and.
For bringing all that heart.
Thank you, big hugs. Thank you.
Eve Rodsky is the New York Times best selling author of fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space. She's also a proud member of the Hello Sunshine family. Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and feel free to tag us at Simone Voice and at Danielle Robe.
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you Monday, y'all. Keep looking on the bright side.