Now that the whole family is staying home, have you and your spouse had the Battle of the Home Office or the Clash of the Chores?
British academic Jennifer Petriglieri, 43, is here to help couples traverse the fault lines in their closest relationships as millions around the world hunker down to weather the coronavirus.
“Space – who gets to work where – is a big source of tension because what that often means is having uninterrupted time.
“If you’re in the home office with the door closed, you tend not to get interrupted. If you’re working on the kitchen table, that’s not comfortable,” says Dr Petriglieri on a video call with The Sunday Times from France, where she is based.
The associate professor of organisational behaviour at Insead business school in Fontainebleau, France, has been in her own circuit breaker mode with her husband and two children for four weeks.
She has launched a free Web series to help couples, with or without children, through the pandemic. It is called Couples That Work @ Home: The Survival Series.
In the ongoing series, she applies research and principles from her book, Couples That Work: How To Thrive In Love And At Work, which was published last October.
She offers The Sunday Times some tips on how couples can have “deliberate conversations” that will help their careers and families thrive under lockdown.