Right now, we have three kids under the age of 4, so I operate on a very basic level. I don't have time to think about complex issues. I think about ideas like: Don't jump off the couch because you could break your head. There's a kind of a low-level anxiety you have all through the day. If you're at work, you get the peace of your commute, or you get to have lunch; you have time to not be on call. When you're home with the kids, you're always on. That is until you turn the TV on. Before we had kids I thought it would be better to avoid the television. Now the TV is our peacemaker. But to spend two hours a day watching TV, like my children do, is shaving a little off their lives, I think. I feel a little guilty.
When my kids and I go to the playground, I'm always the odd man out. There's something awkward about a man approaching a woman at the playground and saying: "Hey, you know, our kids are getting along. Want to make a play date?" Even though that's all it is, that's all you want to do, there's an awkwardness. For the first two years that I stayed home, women would come up to me in the grocery store and give me advice and tell me what to do. It's been a while since that happened. I think I look more no-nonsense now.
(Benjamin C. Tankersley)
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Both my wife and I went to law school, and we knew she had the opportunity to get the higher income. She was on law review, and I wasn't. That was one clue. I was working for the city of New York the summer before we graduated. She was working for a high-powered firm, so her salary was roughly twice mine. That was another clue. We didn't really have preset notions of what she ought to be doing and what I ought to be doing. So we decided to do it this way. Is there regret? Well, you can't do everything. My wife has regrets even though she's successful professionally. I have regrets even though I'm doing very well with the kids. Law school cost over a hundred thousand dollars. That's probably more of a regret than anything else.
-Interview by Tyler Currie
