Humanity of Fame

Beyond Tradition: Redefining Family Roles with Margaret and Byron McKie

August 12, 2024 • Kali Girl • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Margaret and Byron McKie are the hosts of the "Beyond I Do" podcast, where they share their experiences and insights from over 26 years of marriage. They are enthusiastic advocates for love and aim to inspire and uplift others by discussing their personal stories of love, joy, and the challenges of marriage.

In this episode of "Humanity of Fame," host Kali explores the topic of traditional family roles with Margaret and Byron McKie. The conversation touches on the societal pressures and judgments faced by stay-at-home parents, the evolving dynamics of household responsibilities, and the importance of partnership in marriage.


References and Links:


Potential Listener Questions:

  1. How do you navigate societal judgments about your family dynamics?
  2. What strategies do you use to maintain balance and communication in your marriage?
  3. Have you ever felt pressured by societal expectations to conform to traditional gender roles?
  4. How do you handle criticism or envy from others regarding your family's choices?

Key Topics:

  • Societal judgments and misconceptions about stay-at-home moms and dads
  • The role of envy in the criticism of different family dynamics
  • The impact of cultural expectations on family roles
  • The concept of partnership in marriage, transcending traditional gender roles
  • Strategies for managing household responsibilities while maintaining balance and communication

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

So it's like, you know, we're judging these people on one or two years of their life or five years of their life, right? It was just that woman or that man can't decide. Hey, you know, the kids are older, they don't want to find me something. Hi, welcome to Humanity of Fame. I'm your girl Callie. Thank you for joining me here at Humanity of Fame. I take the topics out of the headlines where the news tries to divide us and I shine a spotlight on how we are more alike than we are different. Okay. So speaking about how we are more alike than different recently, NFL player, Jason Kelsey had to clarify his family dynamic after an, after an online troll called his wife, Kylie Kelsey, a homemaker. So let's get to the article. Okay. This is on ABC seven. And it says here, our marriage is a partnership. Jason Kelsey defends his wife after she's called a homemaker. This was in May of this year. All right. So the troll said, quote, and your wife is a homemaker whose home is a mess. Sorry, but it's dirty and messy on television. All right. So in defense, Kelsey came back and said, I don't think of Kylie as a homemaker. I think of her as my wife. I think of her as a mother. She has an occupation as I do. And we keep our house the best we can. Our marriage is a partnership. All right. So that being said, he's basically getting flack or his wife is basically getting flack for being a homemaker and the home being a mess. And the thing about it today is why, why are people still having something to say or have an issue with somebody else's family dynamic? If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. All right. But we see people in chapters, right? Pages turn. We don't know the house could be clean, you know, two hours later, who knows who cares? Right. But that's what we're going to talk about today, because it seems to me that everybody has an opinion as if their home is spick and span at all times. I mean, if there, if it was a such thing as a home being spick and span all the time, there would not be a reason for the word clean up. All right. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We are going to talk about beyond tradition home by choice shatters family role stereotypes. All right. And we have our guest with us. Okay. Byron and Margaret McKee. Thank you so much for joining me, you guys. Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. Yes, yes, yes. And let me go ahead and tell it, tell the audience a little bit about you. So together they host the beyond I do podcast where they share their experiences and insights from over 26 years of marriage as enthusiastic advocates for love. They aim to inspire and uplift others by discussing their personal stories of love, joy, and challenges. All right. So again, thank you for joining me and let's dive right in. All right, let's start with this first question. You heard what they said about Jason Kelsey's wife, right? Why do you think stay at home moms and dads are still mocked or undervalued today? Why do you think that is? Well, I just, I do want to give kudos to how he handled the response because he, he maintained that respect for his wife while at the same time, still protecting her. I do like how he responded to that. But I think that one of the reasons we still struggle with those roles, it's because you don't understand something that you're not a part of for one. And then I think sometimes there's a level of envy that comes to play. So maybe I'm not able to stay home for whatever reason. So when I see other people, I assume that there's privilege involved in them being able to stay home. Yes. I think that at the root of all of it is you're not happy with self or something to be able to, you know, have that level of upset and anger at people you don't know. You know, that's interesting that you said envy, right? I never pulled that. And I just thought of, you know, people being judgmental, but envy can definitely play a part in always having envy is a, I will say, I won't say a symptom, but the judgment is a symptom could be from envy, right? Right. Well, situation like that, like I said, you know, we don't know, like you said, their house two hours later could be clean. They, their house two hours later could be clean because the housekeeper comes to clean up. Like we don't know the situation, but I think the idea behind it is your husband is off making tons of money and you can't even clean up the house, which meant, but then your husband is able to go out and make this much money. I can't go out and do that. That's the least you could do. So we have the envy come in. Right. Right. Learned a long time ago that a lot of times people who don't have children, they're very judgmental have children. So, you know, if I'm a single person who doesn't have kids, I come to someone's home who has three or four little ones. They don't understand that. Yeah, I can pick that up right now, but it's going to be back down on the ground. I even bother, you know, right. How many times are you going to go behind the kid throughout the day? At some point you have to realize who's boss with some things and you, you know, you pick your battles. Right. Right. Right. Do you think that society and culture plays a role into the standard design of family or even we'll start the, I'll stop there and then I'll get into the career woman. But how do you think society and culture even plays a role in that? I would say definitely, you know, if for most of us, our examples came off of our favorite TV shows, if not from home, but most of the time was our favorite TV shows. A lot of our favorite TV shows. If you grew up in the fifties, you saw the man, you know, uh, go out to work, come home and the wife was the homemaker. Then when you get to more modern style TV shows, you saw the woman and the man work. So I guess it's just that, you know, different dynamic depending on how, and also how you were raised and saw growing up. Yeah. And it's, it's funny because, um, he mentioned the fifties, like we were alive then, but I was just listening. I took your word for it. I was really thinking about Leading the Beaver, Donna Reed. That idea has, like, that has maintained throughout time, even though society has changed so much. So we still, when you think of nuclear family, immediately in your head, it's the father, the mother is kids. And oftentimes, even if the mother works outside the home, you still think of the mother as the nurturer and the home taker or the home care person and father is the provider. But it's funny that we've maintained that even though society has changed so much. I know, I know. Um, and even though society has changed a lot, I think people pick and choose. Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah. They definitely pick and choose what they want to hold on to. So in your 26 years of marriage, has there ever been a time where one of you were at home and one was the, you know, out working and then vice versa, like, uh, Byron, have you ever experienced staying home while Marjorie went off to work or did you guys like that? Well, the dynamic of us is I work in a paper mill and I've been working there for 23 years. And, uh, so I think the entire time that we've been married, I pretty much worked shift work, some form of fashion. So a lot of times I'm off during the week. Um, so as the kids were growing up, um, it was just a part of it, you know, homes needed to be washed. They got washed. I did it, you know, underneath, I said, close food needed to be cooked, you know, cause it's like, you know, preparing the kids or if they were at school at the time, I would try to have dinner ready, you know, at some point in time before, you know, they got home from school, which I mean, those days was hamburger helper. It was a shift, but you know, it would happen to me and I would try to, you know, branch out and do some things. Most of the time it was hamburger helper. And that was, that was fine. That was safe. That was, as we were going through the questions, the articles, we were discussing things. I told him, I said, you know, you have experienced that at some point because now when the kids were younger, I did stay home for a few years with each of them. Um, but as they got older, they started school. I went to work. He would go on field trips. He was like the classroom dad. Okay. He would go on field trips. He would go and volunteer and read stories in the classroom because he could do those things. And I couldn't. And I said, you know, you've experienced some of that, but even that, I think that the way that we see it is, okay. He's, he still works and he's still provider. That's just extra. And he's doing that. And so we'll put him on a pedestal father who are there caretakers for the kids in the home 24 seven. Then we, we emasculate him. Like why are you staying at home? Right. Yeah. Which leads to my next question. And that's why I asked, you know, have I'm in the 26 years of marriage. Have you guys exchanged the, I won't say the roles, but the experience, I guess you can say of one staying home at for some, for, for a reason versus another. So my next question is, have you been regarded as less than intelligent? You know, for example, even though it wasn't stated to Jason Kelsey's wife, oh, she's a homemaker and the house is messy. There's several other bells and whistles of implications that go off in my head when I homemaker. So what are you saying? And, right. So have you ever experienced somebody sort of subtly implying that less than or less intelligent or something like that for choosing to stay home? So with our son and we, it wasn't the date, get engaged, get married and have a child. We, we kind of did all of that in one year. And so we got married on the 13th, had our son on the 20th. So not intentional. We were very young and I, neither of us had finished school. And so we sat down, we looked at things and I was like, I have, I only have two years left. And so we decided that I would go back to school. And so when our son was an infant, I went back to school and afterwards when I graduated, I went to work briefly, but then I ended up, I got pregnant again and it wasn't, it didn't make sense cost-wise to pay daycare to kids. And so at that point it was, okay, you're wasting your degree. Why did you go to school and get it anyways, if you're just going to stay home? So it was like, I had wasted time and money on a degree. At least that's how it was viewed with our family. And, and we got, we got flagged for that with, and I'm a close family with our mothers, my father. So that was something that we had to decide together as a team and we didn't stick to it as a team because we had outside influences coming against it. We even heard, you know, it's stated by our relative that, you know, even if she goes to work and after she gets paid and y'all break down the bills and y'all have $50 left and that's $50 to the good. And I'm like, that doesn't make no sense to me. No, I cannot just save the gas, save the time and we, you know, we'll do, we'll make do. So that's what we decided to do. We listened to, you know, people's input and we just made a decision. I said, well, I'm working and we'll finish school. Now, had we listened to some of those family members and friends, what situation would we be in? So it was like, it worked out for us. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that people, I mean, I clearly got it. It's cost effective. It doesn't make sense, right? It's not, it's not saying that it was preferred, it was planned, but this is where we are. Okay. So to make it work and if I can save and it's more cost effective, effective rather than us both working exhausted kids and daycare, just to say pretty much just to satisfy outside perception or expectations that, well, you went to school, so, you know, that school for it, not understanding that. Okay. But the situation is what it is right now. And everything it's, I call everything chapters. It's just a chapter. We're making it work for now. Right. And at some point we have to step back and we have to let people do what they're going to do. We have to, we have to stay out of other people's business. It's like the gentleman that had a comment to say in that article that has nothing to do with you. They're the cleanliness of their home doesn't affect your day-to-day life. And so for us, I know that, and I know with us, it was family members. And like I said, our parents and things, so they're thinking, no, y'all need to be able to take care of yourself. So I don't have to take care of you. We have things in a situation where we can handle things and it just didn't make sense. Not to mention with our kids, we felt that was the best decision for our kids. Our son had some health problems when he was younger. So even when I was in school, he didn't go to daycare. He went to a family friend who took care of them. So those types of things came into play. And quite honestly, when it was time to explain our choices to others, we didn't go into all of those details because why would we? This is what we've decided. And on the flip side of that, if a lot of working moms, they know that they did send their kids to daycare, they stayed sick half the time. That's very true. You send them home well, they come home sick. I had worked in daycare, so I knew even with me, I was sick. Yeah. Yeah. So even if you weren't working, you'd have to be at home. I don't know. My child's even got me sick. Right. So let's talk a little bit about this tidy home situation since it was mentioned, the nerve, right? So how did you manage expectations about maintaining a perfectly tidy home while juggling other responsibilities? Some people have schedules like, I'm going to wait till the kids are down because again, they're constantly in stuff. And then once they're down, I'll get to it. Or was it as you go throughout the day? How did you juggle that? We never set a schedule. I struggled with trying to keep a schedule, but I had to get to the point where I don't, there were different, this was of course, years ago, the internet is just getting popular. And you had these Yahoo groups, one cleaning group called Fly Ladies Cleaning. And there was this cleaning schedule and you just do 15 minutes a day. And I tried my best and I would revisit it, try that. And it got to the point where I'm like, I'm stressing myself. And you just heard what he said. So there was no noticeable changes. And I'm like, you know what, if something is messed up, it needs cleaning up, we'll clean it up. And Simon gets messed up. We had designated spots for toys. To this day, I love baskets and bins because at that point I realized that I don't really have to stack them nice and neat. I can get a big bin and put them in. And it's early and they're ready to play. They dump it out. And I'm okay with that because when it's time to put it up, I'm just going to put it back up. So I struggled with trying to schedule things to maintain this tidy, clean home until I realized that this is more stress than it should be. Yeah. And, you know, I know for me, it was like, you know, I was never the type to like, you know, I expect this house to be clean when I come home from work. You know, I was just like, well, the toilet needs cleaning, I'll clean it, you know, or clothes need to be picked up, I'll pick it up, you know, or kids got old enough, I'd call them in and say, Hey, right. Right. As far as like a clean schedule, that never happened. It was just like nine times out of 10, you know, growing up, you know, especially in the South, you know, coming from a black home, you know, Saturday was clean up day. Yes it was. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, it was like, you know, growing up, I said, I'm not going to try to maintain any type of schedule. It's just, you know, and nine times out of 10, wasn't nobody coming to visit us anyway. Right. If somebody comes to the house, yeah, we'll pick up, we'll tidy up with everybody. Other than that. If you drop by unexpectedly, you might have to step over and say, it depends on when you stop by. Right. Once they got to a certain age to where, you know, they get to that age where their room is their dungeon. I just closed the door. If you're good with filth, have at it. We would go in and usually it would be around the holidays. At Christmas break, I'd make them go in. Okay. If you plan on getting things for Christmas, you need to start picking this stuff up. And that would be motivation for them to kind of tidy their room up. We never, we never forced that on them. And then as they got older and kids were coming over to stay the night with them, I would tell them, you might want to clean your room and bathroom. If you're going to have company over, they might not want to come back. If you're filthy. That was, you know, that was how we dealt with it. But we tried to focus on the important things. And that was our kids are adults now. And to this day, they'll come to us. And sometimes they're way too open with us. I don't want to hear what you're saying. I understand that that level of comfort when they were younger. And instead of focusing on maintaining this house that only lives in magazines and TV. Right. That we would maintain a livable, comfortable home where my kids feel safe and feel loved and feel heard. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this, this thing on you see a lot of TikToks, a lot of shorts where, you know, um, there's different influencers of all, you know, of, of all kinds, but the, the, the clean, the organizer, the organized clean, I don't know what you would call this type of influence, but all of the different gadgets, all of the different, and you're looking at it and you're like, why? I don't know how many I've looked at. I'm like, wow. Like, oh my gosh, is this realistic? All these people overwhelm me. Man, the heck I could do that in my, in my pantry where everything is clean, you know what I'm saying? This is here. This is there, you know, as long as it's there and I can reach it and I can see it, that's cool. A friend who, she watches those. She, she loves to clean. Okay. There's something for everyone. Cause that is not my ministry. I don't get it. I don't understand that. That's what she loves to do. And for me, I just don't, I don't feel like, like that. Like I said, that's not my menu. That's my, not my thing. And so like he says, I watch things like that and I get overwhelmed. I'm like, really? I need all of that just to clean. No wonder I don't like doing it. It's interesting because things like that, I've seen people make comments and make videos about the, those type of influencers and say, you know, wait a minute. It almost puts you in a head space. You get caught up in it almost puts you in the head space. Like I'm not clean enough or I'm not doing enough. And, and then, and then some people, they, they like that comment that was made to Jason Kelce's wife. It's almost like they're making a character assassination because your house was messy. Right. It's the same thing when you look at models and celebrities and you're looking at their figure and we need to compare ourselves to those individuals, but we don't have someone cooking a balanced meal for us three times a day. We don't have personal trainer that works out with us. So we're comparing ourselves, but we don't have the same tools going into it. And like I said, for us, we, we learned early in that we have to do what works for us. And for us, we don't do gender roles. There are certain tasks that he does just because those are the things that he does. There's certain things that I do. But all in all, if something needs to be done, it gets done. So that, that's been the focus throughout our marriage. Good example of that is she never liked vacuuming. I love vacuuming and seeing little lions in the car. So I mean, you know, that's what I do. And that's why it needs to be done. Take care of this little problem. Right. Right. It sounds like what you guys have is almost what Jason is almost like what Jason Kelce described. It's a partnership. It's not just roles. No one is less intelligent. Like you said, Byron, you come home, the, the, the toilet needs cleaning. The food needs cooking. Something needs picked up. You do it. You don't delegate. Right. Right. And there's communication that creates a balance. So there's no, you're better and more intelligent because you're the breadwinner versus I'm staying at home. Or I'm the dad that goes to the school field trips and have the ability to be there with the kid while my wife is working. I'm not less of a man and more of a woman and vice versa. Right. Absolutely. And that was when we read through that, that article, I was like, yeah, I, you know, that's, that's how it should be. And you have someone who is, you know, bringing home much more income than, than I could imagine who says that, but that's, that's the thing. It's a partnership. This is our home. This is our family. We do what's to maintain and take care of. And as a matter of fact, we had a neighbor who was a stay-at-home dad. His wife was, she was in the military. She had a pretty high rank in the military. And he was a stay-at-home dad. I would see him getting the kids off the bus and getting them on the bus in the morning. We stand out there and talk. Nice fella. Very, nothing. I mean, we talked about work and stuff like that. And we said, well, once the girls get older and they get, you know, situated, I probably will start, you know, get my business going. So it's like, you know, we're judging these people on one or two years of their life or five years of their life. That woman or that man can't decide, well, hey, you know, the kids are older, they gone. I'm going to find me something to do. We have to understand that everybody's different. Your dynamic works for you. Let their dynamic work for them. That being said, thank you so much for joining me, you guys. You guys can also follow Margaret and Byron on the website or Facebook. I'm sorry. That's listed below as well as the website that's also listed. And for all of you who are joining me, you all have a good rest of your day. Thank you so much. This is Kali with Humanity of Fame. Peace and blessings.