The author (left) runs a business with her husband.
Courtesy of Elaine Shi
Just 21 days after my third child was born, I was taking VC calls. We were mid-Series A, and a fundraise does not pause for a newborn. The investor I pitched that day ended up leading our round.I'm not telling you this to inspire you. I tell you this so you know I'm speaking from experience when I say: work-life balance is fake.My husband Roy and I are the co-founders of BodySpec, a 125-person healthcare company that makes DEXA scans affordable. If you're on a GLP-1 and want to know whether you're losing fat or muscle, that's what we track.We've been busy these last couple of years. We're also raising three children: ages 7, 5, and 3. This is not the life I expected.As a millennial, I thought my marriage would be 50/50I went to a blue-stocking all-girls private school in Manhattan that raised us on feminist ideas. Senior year, as we prepared for college, alumni came back to tell us what it was like to take classes with insufferable boys who loved to hear themselves talk.Six months later, at Harvard, I was dating one.As we approached adulthood together, I was certain our marriage would be 50/50. I had read "Lean In." I knew that doing your boyfriend's laundry in college was a gateway drug to doing everything, forever. But that wouldn't happen to me, I thought. I would have my own career, supported by an aligned partner who was equally competent at changing diapers, making lunches, and getting children through bedtime.For the record, Roy is that partner. He moves the kids through their schedules faster than I can.But as co-founders, our lives are not 50/50. We discovered years ago that 50/50 is a lie.
