For Emmy Rossum and Sam Esmail, dividing life with two young children has become a little more organized—with help from a deck of cards.

Rossum, 39, has opened up about how she and her husband are navigating the constant responsibilities that come with raising their 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. Rather than leaving household duties unspoken or assuming one parent will handle them, the couple recently began experimenting with a system called The Fair Play Deck, which helps partners assign and divide domestic and parenting tasks.

And at the moment, Esmail has drawn one particularly exhausting responsibility: middle-of-the-night care.

That assignment was put to the test when the couple’s young son recently woke up four times in a single night. According to Rossum, Esmail got up every time, making sure their child had whatever he needed.

For Rossum, moments like that reveal something much bigger than a household arrangement.

She describes Esmail, 48, as deeply involved with both of their children and says she is continually struck by the contrast between the enormous professional responsibilities he can manage and the tenderness he brings home.

Esmail is known as the creator of Mr. Robot and has built a career as a writer, director and producer. Rossum marvels at the fact that someone capable of overseeing a production involving hundreds of people can also be a caring, attentive father.

To her, his kindness matters just as much as his competence.

She feels “really, really lucky,” Rossum says.

A Different Kind of Childhood

Rossum’s appreciation for the father Esmail has become carries an especially personal meaning because her own childhood was very different.

The Shameless star was raised by her mother, photographer Cheryl Rossum, after her parents separated before she was born.

Her relationship with her father was extremely limited. Rossum first met him when she was 4 years old. She saw him again at 8, and then did not see him again until she was in her 20s.

That absence left questions and pain that followed her into adulthood.

Rossum recognizes that her experience is hardly unique. Many children grow up with one parent absent from their lives, and she understands the fundamental desire a child can have to receive love from both parents.

She had the deep love of her mother, something for which she remains grateful. But she also acknowledges that another part of her childhood may never feel completely resolved.

Age, however, has changed the emotional weight of it.

As an adult, Rossum says she has come to understand that people can disappoint those around them even while doing what they believe is their best. That perspective does not erase the hurt of being a child who wanted a parent’s love and did not receive it, but the experience no longer carries quite the same emotional charge for her.

Now she sees something different unfolding in her own home.

Watching Esmail interact with their children—particularly their daughter—has become unexpectedly meaningful.

Rossum gets to witness her daughter receive the kind of relationship with a father that she herself did not experience growing up. There is something quietly healing about that contrast.

She cannot rewrite her own childhood, but she can watch her daughter have something different.

For now, Rossum says, that feels like enough.

Building Their Family in New York

Rossum and Esmail’s relationship began far from the home life they have created today.

The two met while working on the 2014 movie Comet in Los Angeles. Their connection developed on the set, but both ultimately wanted to return to the East Coast.

They have since established their family life in New York City, Rossum’s hometown, where they have tried to give their children a grounded upbringing despite both parents working in entertainment.

Their children, whose names the couple has kept private, have some awareness of what their parents do professionally—but their understanding of a film or television set remains charmingly childlike.

According to Rossum, the kids largely associate sets with lollipops and an abundance of chairs.

Behind that innocence is a balancing act familiar to many working parents: figuring out how to pursue demanding careers while protecting time with young children.

Motherhood has not made Rossum less ambitious.

It has, however, made her more selective.

She says a project now has to truly captivate her before she is willing to spend significant time away from her children. The desire to work remains strong, but the threshold for saying yes has changed.

The Role Worth Leaving Home For

One project that cleared that higher bar is Furious, the Hulu crime drama in which Rossum plays Alice, an FBI agent carrying a traumatic history while pursuing a female serial killer.

The character fits a pattern in Rossum’s career.

She has long been drawn to complicated women rather than straightforward heroes. Her best-known role, Fiona Gallagher on Showtime’s Shameless, was similarly messy, fiercely devoted and frequently forced into morally complicated situations.

Rossum says characters living in moral gray areas interest her because discomfort can be revealing. Stories that frighten or unsettle her often push her to examine something more deeply, whether about herself or the society around her.

That appetite for darker, richer material is also shaping the way she thinks about getting older.

Rossum will turn 40 on Sept. 12, and rather than approaching the milestone with anxiety, she appears energized by what may come next.

She plans to celebrate with a murder-mystery scavenger hunt, an appropriately theatrical choice for an actress currently immersed in a crime drama.

Professionally, she wants to keep writing and creating, but she is deliberately leaving room for the unexpected.

There is also something liberating, in her view, about moving beyond the stage of a career when actresses are expected to play the young ingénue. With age, she sees the possibility of more complicated characters—roles that can become darker, stranger and more substantial.

Those are exactly the kinds of parts where Rossum believes she thrives.

Finding Balance Without Having Every Answer

At home, meanwhile, the balancing continues.

A card deck cannot eliminate sleepless nights, competing schedules or the endless list of responsibilities involved in raising two children. But for Rossum and Esmail, it offers a practical way to make those responsibilities visible and share them more deliberately.

On one recent night, that meant Esmail getting out of bed four separate times for their son.

For Rossum, however, those ordinary parenting moments carry extraordinary emotional weight.

She grew up knowing what it felt like to wonder about an absent parent. Now, decades later, she watches her husband show up repeatedly for their children—in the middle of the night, in everyday family life and in the relationship he is building with their daughter.

Her past may never have a perfectly satisfying resolution.

But the family Rossum is creating with Esmail has given her another perspective on that history: she can see her children receiving the presence, care and consistency she once wished for herself.

And as she approaches a new decade of her own life, Rossum seems increasingly comfortable with not knowing exactly what comes next—whether in her career, her creative work or the complicated experience of parenthood.

For someone drawn to imperfect characters and uncertain territory, perhaps that unpredictability is exactly where she wants to be.