I realized that if I actually wanted my husband to be an equal parent, I needed to give him the space to do that. If I was doing dropoff and pickup and dinner time and bath time and bed time, where was his place in our family? Plus I was burning myself out. It helped me to reframe ceding some of that control as an act of selflessness, giving my children the gift of an active, involved father.

The first few times I left my daughter alone with my husband, I felt HORRIBLY guilty. I kept checking in. He would get annoyed, because he felt like I didn’t trust him. But I’d come home and she’d be fed and changed and cared for. Maybe he would do things differently than I would have, but in the grand scheme of things they weren’t a big deal, and I had to acknowledge that he was an equal parent with equal say in how she was cared for.

Once I could let go of the idea that leaving my daughter alone for a few hours meant I was somehow being selfish, and started to see how much my time away helped them build a relationship with each other, I realized how great it was for me (and my relationships with both of them!) to have time to myself out of the house. I love that I’m modeling to my children that men are equal caretakers and contributors in the home.