How 2 Litigators Decided Dad Would Stay Home With The Kids
By Jennifer Hoekstra (August 20, 2024)
One of my clearest memories from the haze of early parenthood — and the height of my early litigation career — is sitting at dinner with an expert witness and my husband, Sri, while more than 14 weeks pregnant with my son.
After practicing exclusively in mass torts for over eight years, I didn't often miscalculate trial calendars, but I had anticipated this first Pinnacle Hip multidistrict litigation bellwether trial would only last four weeks — yet we were still presenting the plaintiff's case nearly eight weeks into our 12-week trial window.
Our daughter was asleep upstairs in the hotel with a nanny, just down the hall from our trial war room, and the core trial team was debating whether this expert was going to take the stand the next morning.
As often happened, my husband and I, both litigators on the same case, were pressed into dual service as entertainment, distraction and witness preparation.
From the outside it appears we effortlessly managed the logistics for our kids for the past 10 years. But there were some hard discussions in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 that led my husband to stop his career as a litigator, becoming first the primary parent, then a stay-at-home dad and then, eventually, the primary parent and a consultant on electronically stored information.
A lot of effort went into balancing those roles — especially with maintaining him as the primary parent.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis in August 2023, 18% of stay-at-home parents in the U.S. are dads, which is roughly 1 in 5. This is a 7 percentage point increase from 1989, when the percentage was around 11%.
Experts attribute the increased number of stay-at-home dads to changes in economic conditions for families. And, the latest readings from the U.S. Census Bureau show that in 2023, the proportion of children in two-parent households increased to 71%.
My husband and I practiced law almost exclusively in federal courts[1] around the country on behalf of individuals harmed by defective products, medical devices or pharmaceuticals. Since 2019, I've been litigating the Combat Arms Earplug MDL, against 3M Co., which resolved over 250,000 plaintiffs personal injury claims — the largest MDL in history.
Being a lawyer has unique challenges regardless of the type of law involved — public accessibility to your clients, long hours, immovable deadlines and your schedule often at the whim of the court calendar/docket instead of a school calendar or sick children.
My husband and I compounded that with active litigation against multinational Fortune 500 companies with offices and employees worldwide, and product liability claims in federal courts dotted throughout the country. We know the statistics of this practice inside and out — which made us pause long and hard to focus on the options presented by a growing
number of stay-at-home dads — especially from two-parent families in our same socioeconomic situation.
Twelve months before the hotel war room scene, our daughter was born, and a few days later Sri flew to the West Coast to take an expert deposition for an upcoming trial. And when he got back from that trip, he cried.
Our daughter had changed in the two days he'd been gone and he was heartbroken that he'd missed it. That moment was the start of the shift in the discussion to change our work and parenting lives. Sri wanted to spend every single day watching her — and eventually our son — become the people we created and nurtured and breathed life into. The good and the bad.
When our kids were entering the preschool phase, my husband Sri and I were coming off a half dozen back-to-back, eight-week-long bellwether trials across a handful of MDLs.
Our toddlers had spent more time in hotels than they had in our home in Louisiana. We had bounced between a variety of childcare options: travel nannies, grandparents and daycare.
We registered and paid for 24-hour daycare options in three cities we traveled to on a regular basis for work, plus paid for a monthly service where we lived in Louisiana — and in order to keep our kids' placement, we paid for their spaces even when off at trial.
Our kids learned how to count to 20 in elevators — and trust me — explaining to a pediatrician that the kids aren't developmentally delayed but they really don't understand that 13 is a real number because it's not on the elevator is not something that most people have to do.
My husband and I were using all the skills and resources at our disposal to work our situation without making any major life changes — until suddenly we were done with what felt like a never-ending series of temporary solutions to parenting.
Suddenly we were having real discussions about how we had limited time to raise our children, and perhaps had wasted three to four years of the 18 years we may be allocated. What changes were we each willing to make to make our children, and not the next trial, our priority?
Some of the considerations we discussed included:
How much we love our children;
Our belief that happy parents make for happier children;
What practice of law or personal interests would make us happier adults;
Individual stress levels and ability to thrive on stress;
Our need for sleep on a daily or weekly basis;
Budget for the next six months, one year and/or five years;
The children's ability to develop their own friends and activities and experiences without being tied to our schedules;
The parenting village we were missing out on due to our trial and work schedules;
The lifestyle we wanted for our children through middle school and high school —including at least one parent who participated in school activities, after-school events, carpools, homework, and family events or vacation planning;
A focus on experiences rather than possessions;
The need for our children to be well-traveled and experience life outside the South;
Trying to not raise entitled and/or spoiled brats; and
Exposure to both their parents' cultures.
Our step-by-step discussion very rapidly focused into a plan for me to find a job that fit my litigation skills while allowing the flexibility to achieve the lifestyle we had identified for our children and see what happened next. We had a budget that would allow one or both of us to be unemployed for up to six months easily and a year if we economized greatly.
We set a timetable for a decision to move the children before the next school year.
We decided Sri would continue working while I looked for a job but take over all parenting responsibility to allow me to dedicate my full focus on finding the best career move for our family.
We missed a few important details: how hard it was for my "mommy brain" to disconnect; how much I initially resented not having everything taken care of to my exacting specifications; how differently we fold laundry; and how isolating being a stay-at-home dad is in a world expecting a stay-at-home mom. We adapted.
When I found my new firm it was with lawyers we had both worked with for over a decade.
They respected both of us, our work as lawyers, our family situation and our decision to shift focus from a litigating team.
More importantly, they invited Sri to the interview and informed him about the things he needed to be comfortable with the decision for our family.
They provided him with information about how he would still support the firm as a spouse of a partner — such as through charity events and the three community boards he subsequently joined and that the firm supports financially — while not practicing and having time to focus on the kids and family.
They also provided him with local details on the area to which we would be moving, including social clubs and opportunities for the kids' education, as well as kids' activities such as soccer clubs, tennis, art clubs and skateboard lessons.
Sri spent six months in 2018 as a full-time stay-at-home dad. We hadn't realized how much of our shared life I'd been carrying — in addition to practicing law full time — from the time the kids were born until they were about to enter school.
Although he knew where the kids went to daycare he didn't know the names of their teachers, how much we paid, or if we paid weekly or monthly.
He did background checks on the nannies but didn't know if we paid them bonuses or gave them days off/gifts/etc. He didn't know how to contact our rotation of temporary babysitters or the emergency dogsitters.
He didn't know that I shopped for the kids on a seasonal rotation 2-3 sizes ahead of time and stored the clothes, ready to ship out in case of a growth spurt — it had happened twice during the "trial years" and we'd had them shipped to the hotel we were living out of.
These are things that he's taken over, over time. The shared mental load is actually shared. We're not perfect, but we've adjusted our expectations.
In the fall of 2018, Sri was headhunted by an ESI consulting company. And he turned them down. Repeatedly.
He wasn't looking to restart our juggling act. He didn't want to worry about missing a flight and having to figure out which emergency contact would pick up the kids from aftercare.
He didn't want to have dinner with his wife in the Dallas airport more often than at home — this happened the year before our daughter was born; like ships passing in the night. He wasn't looking to be on the road, assisting with document collection, depositions and trials again.
But finally he considered what he really wanted for his future employment: He wanted to work part-time. He wanted the mental challenge of adult conversation and adult problems — while the kids were in school or after they went to bed.
He didn't want to travel when I was traveling. He didn't want to travel when I was in trial.
He wanted to be involved in our children's daily lives. For him, they change every single day and he wants to be there for all of it. He wanted to be the homeroom parent who volunteered to bring homemade cupcakes instead of paper products for the class parties.
And under no circumstances did he want to work on his wife's litigations or future projects, which stung a bit after working closely together for nearly a decade — but it was what we needed to provide stability for our children. And to ensure that they had some separation from their parents' work lives — distancing it from their home lives.
I think the decision we faced is one that many lawyers face — whether they are married to another lawyer or not. I've made it a goal to ensure that female lawyers who discuss their parenting goals (or adventures) with me are aware of my family's decision process.
Our exact process may not work for everyone — as finances are often the number one determination in having one parent step back from active legal practice in favor of child rearing.
For the two of us, the choice of which parent was made easier because of Sri's emotional attachment to being involved in the day-to-day development of our children and my need to handle the logistical and financial aspects as they grow into adults. It works for us, but we've had to police our boundaries as it applies to which of us is the primary parent.
Schools will always call the mother first unless you specifically indicate an order of priority for contact — and our emergency contact list prioritizes my husband, my assistant, my sister-in-law, a VOIP line that goes to all of us, plus the receptionist at my office, before it goes to me.
Almost no one who has worked with Sri — except possibly some of our closest friends — believes this, but it was his idea to take a step back from the practice of law. Sri's ambition for his career pales in comparison to his ambition for my career, and that has been a cornerstone of our relationship since we met in law school.
There are some who've worked with us together who regret that Sri isn't available to work up an expert or provide insight on a specific legal topic he's handled in the past.
But Sri does not regret the time he spends providing stability in our children's youth. Someday, when they are off to college, he wants to litigate again. Personally, I look forward to that day.
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Jennifer M. Hoekstra is a partner at Aylstock Witkin Kreis & Overholtz PLLC
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employer, its clients, or Portfolio Media Inc., or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.