Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Your Wife "Can't Go Back To Work Because Of The (School Aged) Kids' Schedules"

Transcript

When Your Wife "Can't Go Back To Work Because Of The (School Aged) Kids' Schedules" · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show, today, I'm going to be talking about the
• 0:10
  situation. A lot of couples find themselves
• 0:12
  in when the woman says that she cannot go back to work because
• 0:17
  of the kids schedules and how this interacts with various
• 0:22
  things such as marital happiness.
• 0:25
  The way that the Mann act, the woman's levels of anxiety, which
• 0:28
  may or may not be recognized and kind of how I see this.
• 0:33
  Go both. The time.
• 0:35
  And then later on in the relationship, when the woman
• 0:39
  retroactively looks back at this, it sometimes is a big
• 0:43
  surprise to the man, how she thinks about it.
• 0:46
  And some of that is revisionist history and some of it is him
• 0:49
  not knowing or listening to how she felt at the time.
• 0:52
  So as with all the podcasts, if you're the sort of person that
• 0:55
  just wants your own way of thinking validated with,
• 0:59
  absolutely, no introspection into the other partner than this
• 1:02
  is not a podcast for you. Because in, although in
• 1:07
  sometimes in my episodes, I do try to explain one person
• 1:11
  primarily to the other. I'm never going to conclude that
• 1:13
  one person is bad and wrong and the other person is good, and
• 1:17
  right? So that is not ever what I
• 1:20
  believe or what I aim to say. So in this podcast as in so
• 1:24
  many, like if you're looking for it, to be the husband's fault,
• 1:27
  in some way, not going to come out like that, but nor, is it
• 1:30
  going to be the wife's fault? Primarily as the man may think
• 1:33
  so, you know. The ones where it's about a
• 1:36
  dynamic or particularly interesting.
• 1:38
  If you're the sort of person that's trying to get a handle
• 1:40
  on, why things are going awry versus somebody who's looking to
• 1:44
  cast, blame or to be a victim. So, before we get into this
• 1:48
  specific Dynamic, and the specific situation though, which
• 1:51
  is a super common one in my practice, I do want to tell you
• 1:54
  to subscribe the most recent subscriber only episode was
• 1:56
  about female arousal and how you may never have seen it.
• 2:00
  You know, if you watch enough poor, you may have thought you
• 2:03
  saw it, but you may not be seeing it in real.
• 2:05
  Real time and we will discuss what that looks like the use of
• 2:08
  lubricants the use of various other sundry things.
• 2:14
  Also foreplay gets a really big role in that podcast episode
• 2:18
  because of how integral it is to female arousal and I can't
• 2:23
  really Hammer that one home enough.
• 2:24
  It seems like I have to do though because people frequently
• 2:28
  continue to misunderstand what desire arousal for play Etc.
• 2:32
  Looks like and through no fault of their own but because Adam
• 2:35
  bombarded through the media with competing examples, which have
• 2:39
  no basis in reality such as through poor anyway.
• 2:44
  So please do subscribe for that one.
• 2:46
  And so now, let us talk about this Dynamic, I see frequently
• 2:50
  where the woman is staying home and not going back to her job
• 2:55
  because what she says is, there's so many days, the kids
• 2:58
  have off of school and they always get sick.
• 3:02
  So obviously at first glance what the man usually tries to do
• 3:07
  and we'll get to why he may want her to go back to work and in a
• 3:10
  bit. But what he may try to do is to
• 3:13
  tell her that rationally and reasonably.
• 3:16
  What she saying, doesn't make sense because the kids only get
• 3:18
  sick a couple days per year. And in reality, any job would
• 3:22
  have vacation days. And then he may even say that he
• 3:25
  would split the days off himself.
• 3:28
  If she were to go back to work such that they each had half of
• 3:31
  the Days or what have you. And then, he may also point out
• 3:37
  that the entire schedule for the year set right in advance.
• 3:41
  So she would know, you know, like how I know and I have to
• 3:45
  move my clients when the kids are off of school, if I want to
• 3:48
  be with them on those days, then then she would know in advance
• 3:53
  for the whole year and could get those days off.
• 3:56
  Accordingly, Etc. He would say all of this
• 3:59
  probably because this is what the majority of men.
• 4:02
  I'm saying this is also eminently reasonable, right?
• 4:05
  I mean this is certainly how people swing it when they want
• 4:08
  unconflicted to go back to work. And so usually this meets with
• 4:14
  resistance because the woman says well what I know is that
• 4:18
  it's always going to end up being me taking off and there's
• 4:21
  no job that would give them an education.
• 4:23
  And what about the fact that they get up they get off before
• 4:27
  my job would get out and would have to drive to my job and you
• 4:32
  know, I I want them in before carer Aftercare and they have to
• 4:35
  do this. You know what I mean, you've
• 4:36
  done this and they have to do this this this this this.
• 4:39
  So two things here. Generally people that only see
• 4:43
  the bad side or suffering from anxiety or depression symptoms.
• 4:47
  If not, the diagnosis itself certainly symptoms because a
• 4:50
  negative worldview is symptomatic of either one of
• 4:53
  those issues and probably with something that you grew up with
• 4:56
  this whole idea that the worst will always happen.
• 5:00
  So you'll have your three kids a little bit Sick at the same time
• 5:03
  that's when your husband happens to be on a business trip.
• 5:05
  And it's when your work was having the most important
• 5:08
  Conference of the year at which you were presenting and you will
• 5:11
  be humiliated, you will not be able to get alternate childcare
• 5:14
  and you will conclude that the entire return to work was a
• 5:17
  fiasco. So if that characterizes, you
• 5:22
  know, even an extreme version of your general worldview, then it
• 5:25
  is important to refer back to my podcast on when people can admit
• 5:31
  that they're anxious. See, you know, because I see
• 5:33
  that a lot this rigid worldview. It's only going to go this way.
• 5:37
  This way is bad. The way that it goes will
• 5:39
  prevent me from doing other things that are valuable to me
• 5:42
  at cetera. And then of course, there may be
• 5:47
  truth to it in a certain regard such as that the husband has
• 5:52
  never previously, let's say been flexible with his work schedule
• 5:56
  and would not in fact or may not even if asked say that he would
• 6:00
  take off for the a woman to go to work if the kids were sick
• 6:05
  and usually what he's saying in this regard as I make more money
• 6:08
  and even in this hypothetical job that you are going to have I
• 6:11
  would still be outer and you buy, you know, x amount.
• 6:14
  So thus we need my job for the mortgage.
• 6:15
  My job is, you know the more important job which it's
• 6:20
  interesting because when women have the higher earning job,
• 6:23
  this stuff is just said, you know, like it's just kind of set
• 6:25
  out right in many households but then when the man has the higher
• 6:29
  earning job, it's like an not Thing to say so frequently, he
• 6:36
  ends up trying to say it without saying it somehow.
• 6:38
  So it's like, well, you know, my job is more strict about, you
• 6:45
  know, and because you're like, not allowed to say, if I lose my
• 6:48
  job, we can't pay the bills, which I don't understand why
• 6:51
  not. And I think that as women become
• 6:53
  more and more primary Breadwinners, currently, 30
• 6:55
  percent of women are primary Breadwinners.
• 6:57
  I just read that statistic and that was even dated by a couple
• 7:00
  of years, so it's probably more. Now, now, I believe that these
• 7:04
  conversations will be able to be held more pragmatically, but
• 7:07
  currently, the millia is such that if you say the higher
• 7:12
  earning job ought to take precedence that if it's the
• 7:15
  man's higher earning job, this is thought to be bad.
• 7:18
  So it doesn't appeal to people who are more numbers people, but
• 7:24
  it kind of doesn't matter. I mean like if you are listening
• 7:28
  to me, say this obviously I think that any relationship.
• 7:32
  Benefit from being able to speak these things allowed.
• 7:35
  But if you are listening to this alone and not with your partner
• 7:38
  is, the majority of people are, you may already have seen that
• 7:42
  leading with that as a non-starter.
• 7:44
  So, so leave it as a non-starter and hopefully, you can
• 7:47
  understand your wife better by the end of this.
• 7:51
  But, but and of course, otherwise couples counseling
• 7:53
  etc. Etc.
• 7:54
  As I always say. But anyway, so if you are a man
• 7:59
  in the situation that you really want your wife to work, but but
• 8:03
  you would never ever be flexible for her job.
• 8:05
  Well, then you're putting her in a no-win situation, unless you
• 8:08
  also can provide live-in, help which, of course, her job, would
• 8:12
  to make sense have to pay more than the live-in, help or the
• 8:16
  on-call help, or whatever the hell or even if it's just on,
• 8:19
  call help, you know, they're not going to come if your kids have
• 8:21
  covid or whatever. So, you know, you would have to
• 8:23
  have some systems in place here such that she didn't always have
• 8:27
  to not go in, in case a kid was sick but of course she is likely
• 8:31
  if Anxious over estimating the number of times per year that
• 8:34
  the kids get sick and have to stay home.
• 8:36
  So that's just is how it is. And of course, I'm sure that you
• 8:40
  know, any empathy will not be wasted in this situation.
• 8:44
  As any situation, the more empathic you are like, wow, I
• 8:48
  can see you're really nervous about that.
• 8:49
  I guess we have to figure out a way that if you went back that
• 8:53
  we could figure out child care in the event that I couldn't
• 8:56
  stay home. Because let's say, I had an
• 8:57
  extremely important meeting. I would still try to stay home
• 9:01
  but, you know, No, if I can somehow then we would need to
• 9:05
  have somebody on call, maybe my mom, maybe your mom may be
• 9:08
  robbed of all. Maybe Nanny agency has a
• 9:11
  suggestion for getting emergency here, whatever be this as it may
• 9:17
  your anybody who kind of fights against this so much is
• 9:21
  obviously ambivalent about going back to work and I talked about
• 9:24
  this in the toxic workplace has podcast that people who are
• 9:27
  always finding something wrong with the workplace are also
• 9:29
  ambivalent about going back to work.
• 9:30
  So frequently what? It is when the woman says that
• 9:34
  the only reason she's not going back to work.
• 9:36
  Is that the school age kids really need her?
• 9:40
  It's a couple of things. It's mostly anxiety.
• 9:43
  Is what I see. It's a little bit, especially if
• 9:46
  the guys super selfish, then it's a it's more about that.
• 9:50
  She doesn't think she's going to get any support, you know, but
• 9:53
  frequently it's about anxiety. It's about having been gone from
• 9:55
  the workforce for a long time. Not thinking that you kind of
• 9:59
  know what's going on anymore. Not thinking that it would be
• 10:02
  You know, easy or even possible to rejoin the workforce and not,
• 10:09
  embarrass yourself with how little, you know, or how many
• 10:12
  years you've been gone or whatever, for people with
• 10:14
  anxiety, this is extremely anxiety producing, you know, and
• 10:19
  also the idea of not having downtime during the day, to do
• 10:23
  whatever you want. Which is what you can do.
• 10:25
  In the kids are at school is is upsetting to many women who are
• 10:29
  very sensitive and usually, who struggle with anxiety?
• 10:32
  The end or depression because this downtime where they could
• 10:35
  theoretically take a nap or do whatever they want.
• 10:38
  Is because it has, you know, gotten itself on a pedestal such
• 10:42
  that they think they can't really live without it.
• 10:44
  They become kind of dependent on the idea of the downtime when
• 10:47
  the kids are in school you know. And this is kind of like how
• 10:51
  moms are very young kids become dependent on the nap time as
• 10:55
  their time when they can relax. Well, women who are older and
• 10:58
  therefore have had more years of depression anxiety to Build
• 11:02
  become dependent on like the six hours that the kids aren't
• 11:05
  around, you know, as potential not that they don't do anything,
• 11:09
  they do a lot of stuff. But this stuff is generally on
• 11:11
  their schedule and can be not done, which is the entire
• 11:14
  premise of, you know, what they are saying about work is that
• 11:18
  that would be an essential thing that they have to get to in the
• 11:20
  pressure of that is very hard for somebody who struggles with
• 11:24
  anxiety and with low self-esteem and low self-efficacy
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  self-efficacy is the eye is being able to feeling like you
• 11:30
  can do things. Efficiently and effectively such
• 11:34
  as a job. So anyway, why do the guys want
• 11:36
  the women to go back to work so bad in this scenario?
• 11:38
  Well, there's multiple reasons. Obviously, the income is a big
• 11:43
  one so men that are not hugely wealthy are frequently yearn for
• 11:50
  splitting the primary breadwinning, you know, burden
• 11:56
  with somebody else, they don't really want to be the primary
• 11:59
  Breadwinner and the way that men thought it was part of Their
• 12:02
  masculinity and previous generations, most men really,
• 12:06
  although some men may still like being Primary in some way,
• 12:09
  especially if they're insecure. They usually the ones that I
• 12:12
  talked to really just want more disposable income, you know,
• 12:15
  save for the kids college has go go on vacation.
• 12:18
  Perhaps they could both retire earlier, you know, I mean, it's
• 12:21
  it's pretty pragmatic and obvious to see why somebody
• 12:24
  would want their wife to go back to work in that sense, in the
• 12:27
  financial sense. Now, if the guy is making an
• 12:30
  extremely comfortable living, Is no possible.
• 12:33
  Financial reason, for his wife to go back to work.
• 12:35
  Why am I he say it? Done.
• 12:36
  Well, then we go back to the depression anxiety.
• 12:38
  So frequently when the woman is feeling anxious or like she has
• 12:43
  no purpose or she's upset about the children, going getting
• 12:47
  older, which is real common for all moms and I've written about
• 12:50
  that. Why women get so sad that their
• 12:52
  kids are growing up? The woman frequently, yearns her
• 12:57
  some greater meaning and frequently herself says
• 13:00
  something like oh I wish I could.
• 13:02
  I could go back to my job. I shouldn't have taken off,
• 13:04
  maybe I should go back to school so she says it herself in many,
• 13:08
  many cases and the man is jumping on that parade thinking.
• 13:11
  Okay, I could see that. Maybe if she goes back to work,
• 13:14
  she'll feel more like herself. She's always crying.
• 13:16
  She's unhappy, she's so tired. Maybe if she had a routine men,
• 13:20
  say these exact things in my office, right?
• 13:22
  So this is they're really doing it because they are jumping on
• 13:25
  the bandwagon that the woman has set.
• 13:27
  Sometimes woman hasn't said it but the man thinks.
• 13:29
  All right. What works for me?
• 13:31
  When I'm Lying down and kind of like, I have no meaning, is I
• 13:35
  throw myself back again into my career.
• 13:38
  And if I have some achievements and accolades they are, and if I
• 13:40
  help people or or build my business, or make a client, very
• 13:44
  happy, or what have you or just really, just make money to
• 13:48
  support my family. It is a source of great
• 13:50
  self-esteem and pride for me and thus it follows that it would be
• 13:54
  the same for her. Right.
• 13:55
  So I should suggest this, you know, because I see that she's
• 13:58
  kind of flailing here and frequently is saying things
• 14:01
  about being up, Upset in one capacity or another, and this
• 14:04
  could give some, you know, structure to heard a make her
• 14:07
  feel good about herself. She used to be good at her
• 14:09
  career and I can't see why somebody so smart, wouldn't go
• 14:12
  back. This is like stuff that men say
• 14:15
  you know. So it's not my you know this
• 14:18
  isn't me just making shit up. This is these are sentences I
• 14:21
  hear frequently in couples counseling.
• 14:23
  So so okay. So so then if the man is really
• 14:28
  very supportive of the woman going back, it is incumbent upon
• 14:32
  Him to make clear that he will deal with half of the sickness
• 14:39
  related absences, which in today's day and age is pretty
• 14:44
  possible. Workplaces are getting a lot
• 14:46
  different and it's becoming much more respectable.
• 14:49
  Thankfully for a man to take off to be with his kids, you know?
• 14:53
  I mean, that's like my kids are sick, I have to be at home.
• 14:56
  You should be something that a man would never say, unless he
• 14:58
  was in some kind of crazy situation where he was like a
• 15:01
  widower you No, even then, he would probably drop them by the
• 15:04
  neighbor, you know. But now it's something that men
• 15:06
  say frequently, I'll have to go to my kids doctor's appointment.
• 15:09
  Like this would never have happened, even just 10 years ago
• 15:12
  and I frequently talked about the change in, you know, in the
• 15:18
  cultural shifts and even I started in practice in 2009, is
• 15:23
  men are going to all these doctors appointments and their
• 15:26
  go into a baby activities and they're going to the kid things
• 15:29
  and they're at pickup and this is all great.
• 15:32
  You know, so if you're a guy who thinks you can't do this, you
• 15:34
  should probably look around you at the guys a couple years
• 15:36
  younger and see how they are doing it.
• 15:38
  And then you will probably recognize that you're not going
• 15:40
  to get fired if you take off for a kid being sick and this is
• 15:44
  only in the situation, by the way, where it actually came to
• 15:46
  pass that your wife got a job where she did not herself want
• 15:50
  to call in because frequently women do want to call in, and to
• 15:54
  be the woman who stays at home with a sick kids because they
• 15:57
  prioritize being a quote good mother in that regard.
• 16:00
  So you're only talking Probably about less than half of the
• 16:04
  eventual kid absences that you would need to deal with.
• 16:07
  And unless the kids are very, very ill, which in which case
• 16:10
  that is not the situation I'm talking about where you have,
• 16:12
  God forbid, a terminally ill child or something.
• 16:15
  Then then it may be many fewer days and certainly within the
• 16:20
  bounds of the sick or vacation leave that you get.
• 16:23
  So it's incumbent upon you to make that extremely clear to
• 16:25
  your wife. Second of all you need to have.
• 16:28
  If you are the woman listening to this, you need to have like a
• 16:31
  real deep. Dive introspective therapy
• 16:34
  session or journaling session or something.
• 16:37
  If you don't have a therapist about, do you really want to go
• 16:40
  back to work? If you do, is your anxiety
• 16:44
  getting in the way, as it gets in the way of probably Myriad
• 16:48
  things in your life and or do you not want to go back to work,
• 16:53
  but you just keep positing it, as throwing it out as an option
• 16:56
  because it seems like something that you ought to want, and then
• 17:00
  your husband is running with it because it's Thing you say that
• 17:02
  you want, you know, and instead maybe what you really mean to
• 17:06
  say is I feel very depressed and at Loose Ends since the kids
• 17:09
  have gone to school and I want to you know go into therapy or I
• 17:15
  want to start exercising more or I want to engage in this or that
• 17:19
  hobby or volunteer activity or what have you.
• 17:22
  So it may be the case that you are are not going back to work
• 17:26
  because you don't want to go back to work you know which
• 17:29
  would be reasonable. So either way, If you are a
• 17:32
  couple in this situation, you have to try to parse out what is
• 17:37
  due to anxiety, and what is due to a real lack of trust that
• 17:42
  you, the husband will support her if her job requires any sort
• 17:47
  of extra hours or not being there, when the kids are sick
• 17:51
  Etc. And this should be really
• 17:55
  ideally coupled with a really straight honest.
• 18:02
  This discussion about the relative importance of each job,
• 18:05
  not just in a self-fulfillment sort of way, but in a real, we
• 18:10
  have to pay x amount of bills kind of way.
• 18:13
  So whose job then maybe ought to be prioritized, right?
• 18:19
  Because again, when women are the primary Breadwinner, I see
• 18:23
  that they are very clear about. Well, I pay the bills.
• 18:27
  So thus I cannot take off as many days as you can, because
• 18:31
  I'm paying Bill's more and if men were able to see that, not
• 18:35
  in jockeying for power, sort of way, but more of not being
• 18:40
  scared to be labeled a bad feminist, but just to literally
• 18:42
  be saying a numbers thing sort of way than these conversations
• 18:46
  could be a lot clearer also though on the man's and if he
• 18:51
  were T2 has to do a deep dive and say he's my job really as
• 18:55
  inflexible as I think that it is or, you know, am I just saying
• 19:01
  that? I will never be able to take a
• 19:03
  day off because I don't actually want to take a day off.
• 19:06
  And in fact my job would be okay with these few sick days which
• 19:11
  we would have or vacation days, or what have you, I would be
• 19:14
  able to figure something out and or work from home or whatever.
• 19:18
  And maybe I'm just saying, I'm not, because I'm being rigid.
• 19:21
  So, there may be rigidity on both sides of this equation but
• 19:24
  either way, this is a common issue that comes up in
• 19:27
  Counseling. And as I promise you I'll tell
• 19:29
  you now how this ends up going later.
• 19:32
  I see people in, you know, their 50s or 60s, right?
• 19:36
  And frequently the woman looks back and says he stopped me from
• 19:40
  going back to work in the men's like the fuck.
• 19:42
  Are you talking about? I never did that.
• 19:44
  I would support of this that the other.
• 19:47
  So in those cases it's probably somewhere in between, he did not
• 19:52
  bend over backwards to say, I will help you do this on end and
• 19:56
  I will stay home when necessary but she also was ambivalent
• 20:00
  herself. Due to anxiety, likely and in
• 20:05
  retrospect years later the anxiety is no longer.
• 20:08
  So Salient, it doesn't feel like like she can't get ahold of it
• 20:14
  anymore. She can't she can't feel it the
• 20:16
  way that she used to so it doesn't seem that it would have
• 20:19
  been as pressing and as big a factor when anxiety passes
• 20:23
  because for example you're like let's say a 60 year old woman
• 20:25
  that has now not been in the workforce for 20 years and you
• 20:28
  can't really imagine what it would have been like only five
• 20:31
  years. Out of the workforce to have
• 20:33
  been that anxious about returning and really, to have
• 20:36
  been kind of super anxious when you had kids in general because
• 20:40
  having kids in the house, amplifies anxiety.
• 20:42
  So, it's kind of like, you can't even remember how conflicted and
• 20:45
  anxious you were. So you just kind of the human
• 20:48
  brain looks for reasons, and your reason is, well, he's kind
• 20:51
  of a dick. So, I mean must have been that,
• 20:52
  you know, he must have been so selfish and, and, and like, I
• 20:55
  must have thought I would have had no support.
• 20:58
  So it's probably not only that, you know, and it's probably
• 21:01
  also, So not only anxiety, it's probably somewhere in between.
• 21:04
  So if you are a couple who struggles with this issue of
• 21:08
  these endless looping discussions around the
• 21:10
  ambivalence that your wife has about returning to work, which
• 21:13
  has been impart ascribe to her inability to trust, whether you
• 21:17
  would be there for her, in the case that her job turned out to
• 21:20
  be less flexible than she thought.
• 21:23
  Or you're even just a couple that is, you know, has these
• 21:27
  discussions and she says she understands you would be
• 21:30
  supportive but somehow never, Is up going back to work.
• 21:33
  That's also interesting, right? Because then perhaps this is
• 21:36
  untreated anxiety and low self-esteem that she has to work
• 21:40
  on that stopping her and keeping her at home when you have shown
• 21:43
  and she believes that you would be supportive particularly again
• 21:47
  in this climate of male involvement in the home, being
• 21:49
  much more socially approved of and telecommuting being so
• 21:54
  popular. So, this is a very different
• 21:56
  world than it was just a decade ago, or even five years ago or
• 22:00
  even pre-pandemic. All right.
• 22:02
  So hopefully this opens up some interesting conversations again.
• 22:05
  Do not make your spouse listen to this if they don't like to
• 22:08
  listen to me, do not make them. Listen to me, you yourself, can
• 22:11
  start this conversation. Whether you are the woman or the
• 22:14
  man and say, I was thinking more about my /, You're a potential
• 22:17
  return to work, and I wonder if it is something that is related,
• 22:21
  do to, you know, this idea of not thinking that there will be
• 22:25
  support, and or an anxiety, depression, low self-esteem
• 22:29
  thing of not feeling confident enough to return, So this is a
• 22:32
  really interesting issue on, that's discussed a lot in
• 22:34
  couples counseling. So if you can't discuss this
• 22:37
  issue on your own what do I always say?
• 22:39
  Reach out to a couple's counselor like me one of the
• 22:40
  ones in my practice or really anybody else good?
• 22:43
  Okay, talk to you soon. Bye bye.