My husband and I are ESP parents, and in fact are one of the couples in the Vachon’s book. The thing I feel compelled to say here is that in my experience ESP really only works if BOTH people really want it. It doesn’t work to persuade your partner, it doesn’t work to nag (anyone, ever, pretty much). So, coming from a place of resentment alone (either as the breadwinner or the caregiver for kids) is often not the main starting place, though it may certainly be a feeling that initiates ESP type conversations.

Those of us that practice ESP do so because we WANT to share equally. We want our partners to have lots of time with our babes, feel expressed in the work world (or feel they are contributing financially, at least), and we want them to have LESS crappy house-chore stuff to do (which may very well be the only reason we do the equal split thing!) and we want them to have time to themselves. We want all that for them because they want it, too – AND we want it for ourselves. So, this is the way to get all that for each person.

In my experience, ESP is simply a way to partner with your spouse/co-parent so that both get the maximum out of of life’s range of experience options.

None of this addresses the question of whether either party finds satisfaction in their labor. A partner who spends fewer actual hours performing an onerous duty will be far less satisfied than a partner who spends greater time engaged in a “labor of love.”

If that happens, they appear to be a less competitive candidate to employers because in their last job they worked