Tom Brady says he had to 'check' himself after Gisele wrote him a letter asking for more help at home
As a star quarterback, entrepreneur and author, Tom Brady is one of the highest-paid athletes today, earning $27 million in 2019, according to Forbes.
Though he's seen a lot of professional success on and off the football field, the 42-year-old says he's had to make a few adjustments to his work-life balance approach in order to help his wife, Gisele Bundchen, out at home.
In a recent interview with radio host Howard Stern, Brady says his wife wrote him a letter two years ago detailing her dissatisfaction with their marriage and how she needed him to step up and help with family duties.
"She didn't feel like I was doing my part for our family," he said. "She felt like I would play football all season and she would take care of the house and all of a sudden when the season would end, I would be like, 'Great, let me get into all my other business activities. Let me get into my football training.' And she's sitting there going, 'Well, when are you going to do things for the house? When are you going to take the kids to school and do that?'"
Brady explains that this unequal division of household responsibilities caused a major problem in their marriage. "I had to, like, check myself. Because she's like, 'I have goals and dreams too,'" he said, while admitting that he's missed a few organized team activities in order to be more present with his wife and family.
Bundchen's need for Brady to step up at home is a common problem that many women face. In fact, women, on average, do three times more unpaid care work than men, including taking care of household chores and children, according to a report released by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. This work, according to the report, is valued at $10 trillion per year.
In her book, "The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World," Melinda Gates details her own journey of negotiating equality in her marriage to billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates. In an interview with CNBC Make It's Jenna Goudreau, Melinda shared that when the couple was preparing for their oldest daughter to start kindergarten, she and Bill had agreed on the school she would attend, which was about 45 minutes, round-trip, from their home. After thinking about the time she would spend sitting in traffic and how much that would add up over the years, Melinda said she suggested to Bill that they wait until their daughter was in the third grade before enrolling her in theschool. But, she says, Bill was adamant that she start there immediately.
"What could I do?" she said Bill asked her. "'What could I do to make it easier?' And I said, 'Well, you could drive.'"
From that point on, Melinda says Bill drove their daughter to school two days a week, making the commute less of a burden on her. "What I didn't realize at the time," she said, "was by asking what I needed at home — which is this category we all call 'unpaid work,' and naming what the burdens of that were on me — I allowed him to step in."
As a result, Melinda said she noticed that she and Bill became unintentional role models for other parents in the community as more dads started to help with school drop-offs.
Similar to Melinda's conversation with Bill, Brady explained that Bundchen's letter was a wake-up call for him to step up and offer more help at home. The star quarterback, who recently left the Patriots after 20 seasons to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, also emphasized that the letter forced him to take a step back to ensure that both he and his wife were happy with the direction of their family and marriage.
"You can get caught up in your life where you think a relationship's great, because it only works for you," he said. "And the point of a relationship — it has to work for both. You'd better work on both, 'cause if you don't, then ultimately it's not sustainable."
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