Le Cheat Sheet
What Parents Can Learn From Melinda and Bill Gates
Everyone is talking about "The Moment of Lift," Melinda's just published empowerment guide. One of the big take-aways? An equal partnership is within reach. In other words, if Bill Gates can do school drop-off, so can your partner.
- Written By
- Liz McDaniel
As any parent knows, true, life-affirming balance can be as elusive as the vegetables in your toddler's diet. In her illuminating new memoir, “The Moment of Lift,” philanthropist, businesswoman and mother of three, Melinda Gates, pulls back the curtain on one of the world’s most high-profile—and productive—marriages. Even if your joint to-do list is less “Change the world as we know it,” and more “Get the four-year-old to Pre-K in one piece with a nut-free lunch in tow,” here are a few things we can all take away from Melinda and Bill’s journey towards equal partnership.
Communication Is Key
We’ve heard this before, of course, but we tend to think of communication as something that goes on between parents. For Melinda, it is also an outward-facing skill. When Melinda was doing most of the behind the scenes work at their foundation and the press was consistently referring to it as “Bill’s foundation,” she realized how important it was to communicate the balance of their roles externally. Similarly, people are quick to make assumptions about the inner workings of a family. So maybe it’s as simple as telling the teacher who emails only you, “Hey, can you please add my partner?” or switching it up at drop off, as when Bill volunteered to drive the couple’s eldest daughter, Jenn, to school twice a week. As one mom told Melinda, “When we saw Bill driving, we went home and said to our husbands, ‘Bill Gates is driving his kid to school; you can, too.”’
Work Together, Not in Tandem
Just as Melinda and Bill began staffing their foundation, there was some talk of splitting the issues between them, but the two rejected the idea. “If we had split our roles, we’d be working in separate worlds, and the two would rarely meet,” Melinda writes. And while it’s tempting to develop lanes in parenting, as in “I handle the doctor’s appointments and you get the birthday gifts,” just remember that too much of the divide-and-conquer strategy can mean that what you have is less like an equal partnership and more like parallel play.
Share the Unpleasant Roles
For years, Melinda self-identified as the family “time cop,” making sure everything in the house got done, the kids made it to school, etc. But as their children grew and took on more responsibility and she and Bill got closer to an equal partnership, that started to shift. “We try not to have anybody be the time cop for somebody else,” she quotes Bill as saying. “We never want to have something where one of us is cast in the carefree role and the other is in the bothersome role. Better to have it as a mutual challenge.”
Pick Your Battles
When Melinda felt she needed more of a voice in Bill’s annual letter for the foundation, she had to ask herself, “Do I want to make an issue of this?” We’ve all been at a similar crossroads. If something’s important to you, push for it. If not, channel the wisdom of that ubiquitous Disney princess and let it go.
Remember the Big Picture
It’s easy to get bogged down by the daily score card of who changed the last diaper or who rushed home to relieve the babysitter for the third night in a row. But how often do we slow down and consider the larger, guiding principle? Come to think of it, do we even have a guiding principle? Bill and Melinda do. “The premise that all lives have equal value,” Melinda writes. “It animates everything.” That’ll put those dirty dishes into perspective.
Introducing Le Cheat Sheet, wherein we find all the best books so you don't have to: amazon
Communication Is Key
We’ve heard this before, of course, but we tend to think of communication as something that goes on between parents. For Melinda, it is also an outward-facing skill. When Melinda was doing most of the behind the scenes work at their foundation and the press was consistently referring to it as “Bill’s foundation,” she realized how important it was to communicate the balance of their roles externally. Similarly, people are quick to make assumptions about the inner workings of a family. So maybe it’s as simple as telling the teacher who emails only you, “Hey, can you please add my partner?” or switching it up at drop off, as when Bill volunteered to drive the couple’s eldest daughter, Jenn, to school twice a week. As one mom told Melinda, “When we saw Bill driving, we went home and said to our husbands, ‘Bill Gates is driving his kid to school; you can, too.”’
Work Together, Not in Tandem
Just as Melinda and Bill began staffing their foundation, there was some talk of splitting the issues between them, but the two rejected the idea. “If we had split our roles, we’d be working in separate worlds, and the two would rarely meet,” Melinda writes. And while it’s tempting to develop lanes in parenting, as in “I handle the doctor’s appointments and you get the birthday gifts,” just remember that too much of the divide-and-conquer strategy can mean that what you have is less like an equal partnership and more like parallel play.
Share the Unpleasant Roles
For years, Melinda self-identified as the family “time cop,” making sure everything in the house got done, the kids made it to school, etc. But as their children grew and took on more responsibility and she and Bill got closer to an equal partnership, that started to shift. “We try not to have anybody be the time cop for somebody else,” she quotes Bill as saying. “We never want to have something where one of us is cast in the carefree role and the other is in the bothersome role. Better to have it as a mutual challenge.”
Pick Your Battles
When Melinda felt she needed more of a voice in Bill’s annual letter for the foundation, she had to ask herself, “Do I want to make an issue of this?” We’ve all been at a similar crossroads. If something’s important to you, push for it. If not, channel the wisdom of that ubiquitous Disney princess and let it go.
Remember the Big Picture
It’s easy to get bogged down by the daily score card of who changed the last diaper or who rushed home to relieve the babysitter for the third night in a row. But how often do we slow down and consider the larger, guiding principle? Come to think of it, do we even have a guiding principle? Bill and Melinda do. “The premise that all lives have equal value,” Melinda writes. “It animates everything.” That’ll put those dirty dishes into perspective.
Introducing Le Cheat Sheet, wherein we find all the best books so you don't have to: amazon