When Eve Rodsky realized her marriage was becoming more of a labor than a joy, instead of giving up on it, she put her experience with organizational management and mediation to use to determine a better way for couples to manage their lives together. Fair Play is that system--a gamified approach to housework, relationships and family life that allows couples to split responsibilities equitably. This cooperative management approach offers a solution to the contemporary conversation around emotional labor and invisible work in marriages and relationships. By emphasizing fairness, it helps reclaim and redistribute time. It provides a script for evaluating and having uncomfortable conversations about domestic tasks, and ultimately allows individuals to regain their "unicorn time"--the space everyone needs to maintain their passions and their sense of themselves.
Rodsky's highly empathetic personal narratives, bolstered by interviews with more than 500 couples in the U.S., universalizes the problem of invisible work in families and provides field-tested solutions. For instance, Rodsky suggests identifying every aspect of a task, deciding what the minimum standards are for completion and agreeing on what complete responsibility means--together. No longer is the agony of an unbalanced household a personal failure; it is something that can be approached, strategized about and solved through teamwork.
Fair Play is a helpful tool that lets couples explore not only how their relationships work, but also how each party works within it, and how everyone can find ways to make the relationship work better. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer