The Libra Solution – Families in the Balance
L ast week I eagerly phoned Lexingtonian Lisa D’Annolfo Levey to discuss her new book The Libra Solution: Shedding Excess and Redefining Success at Work and at Home.
Work/family balance and gender norms have always fascinated me.
How do we perform well at work, provide financial support for our families, parent our children, and nurture ourselves in a way that is both personally rewarding and sustainable? It’s a question that working women and men struggle with throughout their lives.
As we talk, I realize that I have been on this path all my life growing up as I did in the sixties, becoming a working woman in the seventies and a parent and working mom in the eighties. Along the way I’ve been frustrated, confused, rebellious, sad, furious, exhausted, disappointed, and grateful—indeed, finding balance is as complex as our modern lives.
In the early seventies when the promise of the women’s movement lay thick in the air, smart young women thought they would be entering a post-patriarchal society when they went out into the professional world.
Many were shocked to find that they weren’t welcomed, appreciated, or treated as equals in the workplace. With relative dismay, they also found that their male peers reverted to a 50s mentality once they stepped off campus and joined the “good ole boy’s club.” It was much more challenging to fight entrenched gender bias than we had ever imagined. And, once career women began having babies, they were totally unprepared for the strong force that motherhood exerts—especially when it is combined with the enormous societal validation of becoming a mom. Even the most liberated women could recognize that motherhood was the one arena where they had authority and control. That was quite intoxicating when combined with the strong biological need to nurture.
Over the years, women have been accused of wanting to “have it all” to the detriment of their children or not being committed enough to work to the detriment of their careers. Companies continue to struggle with the needs of women and families. Women are tired of working the “second shift” after coming home from the office. Exhausted and frustrated, many women drop out to raise their children because they can’t find a balanced approach. Corporations worry about “brain drain” as talented employees “opt-out.”
Meanwhile, intrepid consultants like Lexington resident Levey are still studying the world of work and family and attempting to drive organizational transformation in Fortune 500 companies. Over the past twenty years, Levey has interviewed hundreds of employees, and she has heard first-hand the frustrations of women and men who feel stuck and trapped in gendered roles. She has worked with an impressive portfolio of clients from Deloitte to Marriott to help evaluate their workplace culture and policies.
A Long Journey
Levey’s parents had split up by the time she was three. She was the youngest of seven, and she had watched her mom exhaust herself caring for the children. Observing her mother had an effect on her, although she didn’t know it at the time or for many years. As a kid, Lisa didn’t spend much time idealizing family life or dreaming about getting married like most little girls did. Somehow, she looked at her mom, who she writes “was born in a generation—and in a situation—where he never got to live or to even understand her dreams,” and knew she wanted something different. It began with education and a career.
When Levey had her own children she wanted a more balanced approach to marriage and family—though she admits questioning at the time whether she wanted to have children at all. She had been married to her husband Bryan for nine years before she became pregnant with her first son. When they became parents, they began a journey of putting theory into action, a process that she admits “worked exquisitely” at times and other times “not so well.” The Libra Solution is a systematic approach to co-parenting that she and her husband have evolved over the years. It’s an approach to family life that has allowed them to achieve more balance. Through her book, she hopes to inspire those who are interested in a new approach to marriage and parenting. “I don’t want to convince anyone of anything,” she says. “I just want to put it out there in the world as a model that has relevance—that is viable.” Levey invites you to consider this parenting partnership as one possible path through family life. It is a path of “partnership, gender equality, and moderation.”
True Partnership
With all of the craziness of work outside our doors, Levey advises couples to look for ways “in their own homes, in their own lives” to find more balance. The Libra lifestyle is a true partnership model in which both parents are equally responsible for children, housework, and the financial support of the family. In the Libra model gender does not determine the division of labor at home or at work.
This is a model that won’t work for everyone, and Levey is clear about that. Levey cites data around the division of labor in the family between dual-working couples that indicate most couples still adhere to the traditional gendered model where the mom does most of the parenting and most of the housework in addition to holding down a job.
“The people who are attracted to the Libra model have an openness and generosity toward their partner. The wife wants to work so her husband won’t have to shoulder all of the financial responsibility and the husband wants that full partnership both because he wants a close relationship with the children and he also wants to support his wife’s career.” This takes a very confident set of individuals who are willing to push back against expectations.
Levers of Influence
Levey’s book is a deep investigation of workplace cultures, working styles, gender identity, and parenting. It invites us to explore our own self-defeating habits and beliefs. Every step of the way she cites pertinent research and insights from her own work and the work of others in the field. Levey says, “A big part of my goal in writing this book was to ask: Where are your levers of influence?” That’s important because, in this fast and furious world, it’s easy for all of us to feel that we have no influence—no control over the two forces of home and work. Levey feels that our current way of working is unsustainable.“I think that the rules of engagement have changed,” she says. “We’ve gone a little crazy with this all the time, everywhere availability—it’s just sort of expanded. There’s no container for anything and we don’t spend a lot of time exploring the downside of what we’ve created.”
However, she is still optimistic that employees can work with employers on setting boundaries at work. “There’s a lot of falsehoods out there like working harder is more efficient and being constantly connected makes you more committed,” she says. Levey effectively documents the way in which the drive for increased productivity has created longer and longer work hours and less time for family life. The current business culture too often rewards this excessive behavior that Levey describes as the “ADHD” work style.
While her work has focused on the workplace and its impact on the family dynamic, Levey’s personal takeaways are insightful. Throughout the book, she helps to illuminate the ways in which we contribute to our own problems and recommends changes we can make to think and work differently.
Extreme Parenting
Her chapter on “Extreme Parenting” will resonate with many Lexington parents who struggle with the “high-pressure and test-focused approach to public education.” combined with the general climate of “outsized expectations.” Levey explores the lure of electronics and the way they disconnect us from our kids, the plethora of “parenting experts” that make us feel incompetent as parents, and the escalation of enrichment programs, activities, and other programs designed to give our children a competitive advantage. Because women are assigned by society to be primarily responsible for the success or failure of children the anxiety they face as parents is intense.
One of the major goals of the Libra model is to “purposely bring the intensity down” on all fronts—especially in parenting. By enlisting the full participation of dads in the parenting role, women can ratchet down the stress and begin to enjoy their kids. “Getting dads involved right from the beginning, to have time alone with their children where they are totally in charge is a powerful thing.”
But it’s not easy for many women to invite men into their sphere of influence. Just as men have acted as the gatekeepers in the workplace, women, often unconsciously, follow the same practice when it comes to parenting. Being a mother is the one role in society in which women are automatic experts and unquestionably in charge. Women are validated as mothers in a way that they may have never experienced before—not even on their best day at work!
Of course, just as excluding women from full acceptance in the workplace reinforces gender stereotypes, excluding men from a fuller role in parenting has the same effect. The Libra model advocates for full inclusion on all fronts because it strengthens people—both men and women—and it greatly strengthens families. Implementing this type of arrangement in your life takes trial and error, planning, lots of compromise, and sacrifice. To make this lifestyle a reality it is often necessary to negotiate limits with employers and to downsize ambitions at different periods during a typical marriage—especially during the intense child-rearing years. In her final chapters, Levey extols the benefits of the Libra lifestyle for everyone involved—especially the children.
If you find yourself constantly stressed and pressured, exhausted, grumpy, and having no energy to invest in your kids or your relationship, consider reading this book. But don’t think this is a plan that you can implement overnight. Levy compares it to steering the QE2. She advises small steps. But she is ultimately optimistic that work can change and we can change too. “One of the things that happen to couples in this model,” Levey says, “is they see the power of standing together. The couple ends up feeling more empowered charting their own course.” Most of all, Levey says, “I found my way to this, and I feel really, really grateful.”
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.