Elizabeth Bogdanovich (39) and Dewey Smith (35) have been married five years and are the parents of Olivia (5). Since having Olivia, they have devised various work and caregiving arrangements but for the most part have kept opposite work schedules and swapped caregiving accordingly. Although they're "unconventional" at heart, Dewey currently holds the full time job with healthcare benefits, and Elizabeth takes on the bulk of the childcare at home and works part-time at night and on the weekends.

In August 2005, I talked to Elizabeth and Dewey about their lives as parents. Here's a bit of what we talked about.
-Sheri Reed

mamazine.com: So what was the work situation when you were together and then got married? Were you both working full time? Part time?

Elizabeth: We were both working full time.

Dewey: Were you working full time?

Elizabeth: Well, yeah, I was working three days a week at a law firm, and I was doing photography for weddings and events and people's portraits in the other space during the week. I was studying and playing harp at events as well. So I was just always busy. So that's where I was at. You were working full time.

Dewey: I was working retail so I was kind of working odd hours. There was awhile there that I was working two jobs. In fact, a lot of the time we've been together, I've had two jobs.

mamazine.com: So then when you found out you were pregnant with Olivia, did that shift? Stay the same?

Elizabeth: Everything stayed the same until she was born. Well, I really couldn't do much heavy-duty photography stuff after six months. I just couldn't do it. I would do portraits and stuff like that, but I couldn't do the weddings anymore. It's very physically demanding. And I couldn't work in the darkroom anymore, so some of that work ended.

mamazine.com: So then after she was born, then you stayed at the law firm and did some side photography stuff?

Elizabeth: Yeah, after she was born, everything just came to a screeching halt. I just had this impression that my life would go on just the same as before, and I would just get a baby Bjorn and I would do the same things as I was doing before. And if she wasn't in the Bjorn, she'd be in a little infant carrier next to me, and I would just go on about my life.

I was going to take four months maternity leave from the law firm, and I was all set up to do that, and I thought during that time it will be fantastic because I'll have three extra days a week that I didn't have before to really get my photography business clients up and going.

You could not have prepared me for the first four to six months of being a mom. Just being drained constantly and not being able to think about anything else. It's a little overwhelming.

She did sleep pretty well. She, very soon in her life, was into a routine of sleeping and three hours at a time. She was pretty good. I did wake up every one and a half to three hours during the night and nursed her and so the inconsistency in sleep really got to me. But she never really took long naps during the day. She wanted to be entertained constantly.

So I went back to work when she was four months old at the law firm. We had a friend who agreed to be our nanny. We employed her to come take care of Olivia while I was gone. But I just found I could not do a workday in that kind of an environment. I was so drained every time I got home that I wasn't interested in her. Between pumping every couple of hours and the bus ride there and the bus ride back, I was just gone for so long, and I was exhausted. I couldn't do it.

mamazine.com: Before you had Olivia, how did you think you'd split the responsibilities involved in caring for a baby and what role does gender play in your decisions about caregiving?

Elizabeth: You know, I don't really know if we thought about it much. We didn't really have any close friends who had babies at that time in our lives. And I just think we had this idea that it wasn't that hard to raise and we'd figure it out when we got there. In my mind, I thought we'd share everything. We did share, pretty much, home responsibilities. I mean we switched of making dinners. Well, I did more of the housekeeping.

Dewey: Did…

Elizabeth: Before her.

Dewey: I think it turned things around a little bit in that she obviously wasn't working so many hours, and so I was probably working more hours for at least a little while.

Being that we were in L.A. and it's so expensive there, I think shortly after she was born, we decided it would be better to just leave and come up here where we are now in Sacramento. It's because it's cheaper and I had an opportunity to transfer up here completely paid. Our whole move was paid for and everything. So that was kind of nice, and housing was so much less expensive. At the time you could buy a house for just under $200,000 and still not be in a bad neighborhood.

Elizabeth: And we have a lot of family up here too. That's not a small factor in our decision. I think we made a trip up here when Olivia was two months old, around Thanksgiving time and toured around, talked to family, and stuff. We thought being up here where our families were, we'd get support.

Dewey: It's hard to say. I think in the beginning, we probably did think it would be completely split right down the middle. As much as it can be, we've tried to do that.

Elizabeth: I was nursing when she was an infant so obviously I did the feeding. You know, diaper changing was (evenly split) and actually getting up in the middle of the night, we divided it pretty well. If I needed a night off, I would just pump a bunch of milk and Dewey would feed her so I could sleep. We just worked it out. I wouldn't say you could ever say it was 50/50 or 40/60 or anything like that, but we both just pitched in with that.

Dewey: Well, there were nights that we would wake [Olivia] up at a certain time to eat. I would get her up and give her to Elizabeth, Elizabeth would feed her, and then I would put her back to bed.

mamazine.com: Cause that's always the hardest part, getting up.

Dewey: Of course, it didn't always happen that way, but…

mamazine.com: So there was a conscious effort to share as much as possible?

Elizabeth: Actually yeah.

Dewey: Definitely.

mamazine.com: And do you have any comments on gender [roles]?

Elizabeth: It just comes out, I think. When she was a baby, I don't think it was as big of an issue as it is now—by virtue of the fact that I was home with her and Dewey was not, obviously I was taking care of her more often. But he didn't have any reservations about jumping in as soon as he got home from work. I don't think we ever had an argument about who was taking care of her more really. Not about Olivia.

Dewey: Not that I recall.

Elizabeth: I don't think so, and we've always thought of ourselves as really unconventional. So I'm not sure we started out with a "he's the guy and I'm the girl and so he's going to work and I'm going to take care of the child" kind of program.

mamazine.com: Was it more a decision based on what his job was versus what your job was? You had more flexibility?

Elizabeth: Yes, it's really just evolved. As it turned out, we decided to make the leap and move to Sacramento and because it was my spouse getting transferred, it gave me unemployment. I was able to stay home with Olivia for the next six months and still have some income coming in. It all just sort of fell into place. So he was out at work, and I was at home with her. That's just how it happened. Our lives have just evolved. It's never been a conscious decision to have [Dewey] at work and me at home.

Dewey: Yeah, you have to keep in mind that we were trying to avoid any sort of childcare.

Elizabeth: We made a conscious decision to avoid sending her to somebody else for childcare. Primarily it was because we wanted to raise her and didn't want to go out to make the money to pay somebody else to raise her.

Dewey: It felt like if [Elizabeth's] working to try to make money to try to pay a babysitter, that's just so ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that we wanted her to be raised under our care or family or good friends. So that's part of why Elizabeth has ended up staying home most of the time. Just because I've always been the one with the 9 to 5 or whatever hours it was, working 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week, and so it's just remained that way.

mamazine.com: So currently speaking, how is paid and unpaid work balanced in your household and what creative ways have you come up with for sharing or breaking up the responsibilities of both?

Dewey: Well, I do most everything around the house (laughs). It's out of balance.

Elizabeth: I think we have drifted into a more conventional situation than we ever anticipated, than we ever really wanted to. You know, where Dewey's working the full time job and providing the health insurance too. That becomes such an issue. Someone has to working at a job where they're getting health insurance.

Dewey: That's the main thing that holds everybody back is the health insurance.

Elizabeth: That is such a huge factor in the creation of our lives.

Dewey: You know, Elizabeth had somebody she worked with at the law firm, and he said part of the reason he was moving back to his home country…

Elizabeth: He moved back to England.

Dewey: He said, "You know the one thing about this country that holds everybody back is everybody's tied to their health insurance." He said, "Where I'm from, people do whatever [job] they want to do, not what they feel like they have to do to protect themselves and their families." Here, you're tied to your job because of your health insurance. It's the whole "what if?" factor.

Elizabeth: You have to have health insurance somehow, and you have to have a job that pays health insurance.

Dewey: And it paid off. When Olivia was born, that was a $25,000 bill that we managed to not have to deal with.

Elizabeth: She was in the hospital. Yeah, that was good.

So [Dewey's] doing the 40-hour a week job, and sometimes it's more cause now he has to travel during the week some times. This year's different than any other year. I've been doing the catering and all that.

But in terms of caring for Olivia and the household responsibilities, it's just gotten so much more conventional because he's gone a lot physically and I'm here. And I think that what happens is that the person who's at home more… You know, I'm sure it's the same if the man is at home more, but it just seems to be the dominion of the person who is at home. You know, like Dewey comes back and is like, "Okay, what do you want me to do?"

Dewey: [My role's] more like subordinate than anything.

Elizabeth: "Well, I need you to put the dishes away. Can you take Olivia out so I can have some time to myself?" Whatever. It's like I'm the supervisor of the household, and I don't love that position, but it sort of seems to be what we've drifted into.

Dewey: Yeah, I can't just walk into the house and say, "Hey, let's go get ice cream!" cause for all I know she had ice cream ten minutes ago.

Elizabeth: Just by virtue of not being here, it makes the dynamic like that. Cause I know what she's eaten all day, if she has or hasn't taken a nap. I know what food is in the refrigerator, what there is or isn't there to make for dinner. If Dewey were to try to come home and just take over, he'd have to start from scratch with all that stuff, and you already know it cause you've been at home all day.

It drives me crazy. So we haven't come up with any creative solutions to get around that so far. That is something that is still challenging cause it does, it makes you feel like you're alone. I don't want to be the fifties mom. I still have a vision of myself as a woman with a career and a work path and interests that I need to pursue, and I get frustrated because I feel like I'm always taking care of the house.

It makes sense if one person can work out of their home in some capacity and one person is off making the consistent money and the health insurance.

mamazine.com: I wish there was a way so that both [parents] had the opportunities for both [work and caring for the child], especially in the early years. It does feel like nowadays one [parent] is working soooo much and they're both feeling torn.

Elizabeth: Whatever role you're doing you start building up resentment cause the other person isn't helping.

Dewey: For me, I got to a point where I became somewhat callous to the idea that I wasn't home getting to take part in the raising of Olivia as much as I would have liked. After awhile, it's like, "Well, I have to work. I have to be there." So after awhile you just begin to shut out the idea that you're missing something. You just kind of press forward and deal with it as best you can.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it's a painful thing. It's not even just the work involved. It's that this is a project that you both had anticipated doing together and that you wanted to do together—if you can talk about parenting in that way. And suddenly, you find that you're living in two separate worlds and not doing this together the way you wanted to. That's really hard.

Dewey: I guess knowing that it is [Elizabeth] that's at home with [Olivia] is what makes it really doable. And we make a lot of sacrifices by doing that. It's not like we have a whole lot of money rolling in. I don't make a whole lot of money. I just make enough to cover most of the bills. She keeps us from eating macaroni and cheese every week.

Elizabeth: I do most of my shopping in my friends' Goodwill bags. Luckily, Dewey's work provides him with shirts.

Dewey: That's right. I have like a hundred T-shirts, but they all say [my company name] on them.

Elizabeth: We've got a lot of working people in our family, and they love to buy clothes for Olivia. We've really kind of skated along.

mamazine.com: So [Elizabeth], you've been working, so how do you guys [both work] without getting childcare? And has access to childcare been an issue for you at all?

Elizabeth: Well, in the past few years, I've been doing a few different things. [Dewey's mother] has basically been available for childcare almost every Wednesday. So I know I can work on Wednesdays, and for the most part for the past few years, I've known I can work evenings and weekends when Dewey's home. I've been doing catering jobs for several different catering companies. You know, I'm an on-call person. Most the time, I take it, and then I arrange childcare.

I have also traded with friends. One friend and I have helped each other watch [the kids] when we have that need. After we moved into this neighborhood, we also made a lot of friends in this community and we were able to ship Olivia off to a neighbor's house here and there. In the intervening years, my parents have moved to town. So we've been extremely fortunate that we've been able to patch it together and not have to pay for a babysitter while one of us goes to work, which is just the most frustrating thing.

Dewey: We've been lucky in that most of the people in Olivia's life have not had children or they've had children and they're grown up. So to have Olivia in their lives, it's just a benefit to them, as well as us.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we've had a lot of open arms in our lives. We're very, very fortunate with that. It's all just good. We've had really good luck.

mamazine.com: How do you share the work of caring for your home?

Elizabeth: It's not like Dewey doesn't do anything, but it still seems to be that it's my responsibility whether I do it or I delegate it. So that's a problem because I don't enjoy that role.

Dewey: I'm aware of that, but doing something about it is a little different.

Elizabeth: I think there's this assumption that because you're home all day that, "You're there. Just go ahead and clean the house."

Dewey: It's not necessarily that. It's just when I get home from work, I am just so tired because a lot of times I go to bed at 10 and get up at 4:30 or 5 or whatever time I'm working the next day. Then to come home… Not a whole lot of people are willing to come home and start cleaning the house. Probably 90 to 95 percent of the time I'm off on weekends.

Elizabeth: But then again, I had been working most weekends so it's not like there's a consistency of two people home at the same time.

Dewey: So we're never together.

Elizabeth: It is [hard]. I have this argument with my mom all the time, my mom who had five kids and didn't have a need to bring in any income, and it was a different world.

I will call [my mom] and say, "Can you take Olivia for the day? I have some stuff I need to get done."

And she'll say, "Well, I had five kids and I didn't have anybody to help me out."

When we were little kids, things were so different, you know? I was a little kid in 1970. I could walk down the street to my friend's and go play. A phone call to check up and that's all that was needed. It's just a different world.

I like to do things with [Olivia], and I like to take her places and do things with her. I don't just want her to be quiet and watch TV while I clean the house or do whatever I need to do. So it's just a really different situation.

It's hard to say, "No, Olivia, you go play by yourself, and I'll go clean the toilets" or whatever. It's just hard for me to balance that. It's hard for me to do that.

Dewey: She's by herself and you don't just want to leave her alone to her own devices. You want to nurture her somehow.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I always want to be doing something with her so it's hard because we've done this tag team kind of parenting. Now I'm working in the evenings and on the weekends, and Dewey's working during the day. We don't have a lot of time where we're all at home together.

I think we're lucky that we live in a more enlightened time. But with that comes different expectations of ourselves. So you may have more opportunities and more expectations of yourself in terms of being a super mom and being able to raise and nurture a child actively and also keep your relationship going and also keep your career going. It seems like a lot to do.

mamazine.com: It is. How do you both claim time for yourselves among your busy work/family lives? Do you find a way to do that?

Dewey: I get my personal time when Elizabeth leaves town to go to her photography friend's house. That's about it.

Elizabeth: Or when I'm working in the evenings. Well, after Olivia goes to sleep.

Dewey: I'm not really good at taking a step back and saying, "You know, Dewey, you really need some time to yourself cause you're really being a jerk."

Elizabeth: He's really bad about taking time for himself.

Dewey: I'm bad about it. Elizabeth's better at it than I am.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I'm very lucky in that I have good friends who live just far enough away that's it too far to drive there and back in the same day.

Dewey: How convenient. (laughs)

Elizabeth: The one particular friend of mine and I work in her darkroom together. So I've been able to combine making my photographs and kind of getting out of town for the day and spending time with my friends. That, I would say, would be my main lifesaver.

It's been either once a month to twice a month to just recently we were taking a series of workshops together where once a week for three weeks. So (I've had time away) consistently, yes, depending on what we had to work on and what was going on. That's been my sanity right there seriously. Dewey's been really supportive of that, so that's really made a huge difference. And I'm also able to get my time away, and it's not just an escape. It's part of my work life and who I am and what I love to do.

mamazine.com: What advice would you give to a couple expecting their first child?

Dewey: Go out and have fun now.

Elizabeth: Lower your expectations.

Dewey: What advice? That's tough. When someone in your family buys you the latest, greatest Gap outfit, return it and get four of them off the sale rack.

Elizabeth: Noooo… I think the one thing you can always do is, people do it anyway cause they nest, but just simplify your lives.

Dewey: Get rid of the things you don't really need.

Elizabeth: Anyone that is expecting a baby is going to be getting so much advice from so many people that that's the worst part. You're just so confused. Follow your instincts. Do what's right for you. Remember why you wanted to do this in the first place.

Dewey: If it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. Seems like most the time.

Elizabeth: I had to really get over the concept of keeping all the parts to all the toys together. I would spend all this time organizing all her toys and putting the toys back together and you know you could just waste so much time doing that. You have to learn to just let go of a lot of the chaos. If you're used to having everything neat and tidy and picked up, just learn to transcend it. I exhausted myself with trying to keep everything picked up. It's not an activity that gives anything back to you. It could just suck you dry.

mamazine.com: I have this one block set of Clyde's that we lost the red one when he was six months old and for a while, I would not let him play with it until we found it. Then I realized we were never going to find it.

So considering the society and culture we live in as parents today, what one thing would you change that would make parenting easier for you or would make you feel more supported as a parent?

Elizabeth: Well, we already talked about healthcare. That's a huge one. I would think that's the biggest one because that really limits your choices.

A big problem in today's society is isolation. It's worse when you're parenting a child and you're at home. I really don't know what the answer is. If we could organize more into neighborhood-based cooperative childcare. Or if childcare were somehow involved with work where there was a childcare at work so you could work and be part of your child's life at the same time.

Dewey: It's hard to say. There are so many little things that would help. You know what'd be really cool is if there was a Parent Hotline you could call. It'd be nice to know there's a nice Board of really experienced and free-thinking doctors out there who get together and say, "Here is a set of guidelines that we can offer to the general public." It seems like there's a shortage of those basic questions and answers. You can ask one question and get four hundred thousand answers. That's kind of a dream, I guess, to have something like that.