Finding balance with your partner can be difficult even in the most well-meaning and communicative of spouses. All too often, responsibility for the children, the kitchen, and the house falls hard on the mom (who usually also has a full time job) and leaves her stressed, overwhelmed, and resentful. But Sarah Biggers-Stewart, who posts on TikTok as @thebiggersthebetter, has found a way to manage the demands of kids and a household with her husband, Tucker, by having a “morning parent” and a “night parent.”
“It’s really as simple as it sounds,” she begins. “I’m the morning parent, so around 6:30 in the morning I am up with the kids I’m doing breakfast, brushing their teeth, getting them dressed, doing their hair, packing any bags that need to be packed, that’s the same, pretty much every day, except for one day where we flip.”
Her husband usually wakes up about an hour later, which is especially good since he’s recovering from end-stage kidney failure and the rest does him good. He takes over to give her time to get ready for work and school drop off.
Around 6 o’clock at night, however, after dinner and playing, it’s her husband’s turn.
“My husband takes the kids upstairs for bedtime. He does playing, he reads books, he does the bath, their brushed teeth, their jammies, and puts them to bed.”
While he’s doing that, she puts on an audiobook and “power-cleans” the house.
The aforementioned “flip” comes in on the weekends. On Saturday she sleeps in however late she wants (usually 9 or 10) and then does bedtime duty, and on Sunday her husband does the same. Then they pick back up with the regular “morning/night” schedule.
“This is so nice because psychologically the hardest part about being a sleep deprived, exhausted parent is not that you’re actually sleep deprived and tired, it’s not knowing when you’re going to be able to catch back up,” she says, and, yes, we feel that. It’s not the exhaustion (well, it’s not just the exhaustion); it’s the fact that you can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. “So just knowing that you have this day waiting for you is so nice.”
Biggers-Stewart goes on to say that she also appreciates that the schedule is adjustable (if morning parent is super tired or night parent is super burned out at 6 p.m. they just switch) and that since it’s so consistent it’s easy to know what’s expected — that goes for parents and children.
But perhaps best of all, it allows both she and her husband time to focus on just one thing at a time.
“Do you know how rare that is as a parent?!” she marvels. “That you just get to think about one thing? It’s so good for the mental health.”
And, of course, let us not gloss over the thrilling joy of an untimed sleep-in day. As someone who did that for years I can assure you that it’s genuinely miraculous.
This may not be a system that works for everybody for any number of reasons, but it definitely might be worth checking out if it works for you.
