Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Parenting in America with Jessica Grose and Yael Schonbrun

Transcript

Parenting in America with Jessica Grose and Yael Schonbrun · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to parent Data by Emily Oster. This is Emily.
0:04
Speaker 1: I'm a professor of economics at Brown University and a
0:07
Speaker 1: mom of two. I write a newsletter called parent Data,
0:10
Speaker 1: and on this podcast, i'll read it to you. If
0:13
Speaker 1: you want to read the newsletter yourself and see more
0:16
Speaker 1: of my writing on parenting and pregnancy, you can sign
0:18
Speaker 1: up for free at www dot parentdata dot org. You'll
0:23
Speaker 1: get reader stories, Q and as and other special features
0:26
Speaker 1: in your inbox that I don't share here. And now
0:28
Speaker 1: for today's newsletter.
0:33
Speaker 2: Thank you jess Aniel for joining me.
0:36
Speaker 3: I'm really excited about this conversation and I want to
0:39
Speaker 3: start by having each of.
0:41
Speaker 2: You give me your hitch for your book. Who are you?
0:45
Speaker 2: Why did you write this book? And why should people
0:48
Speaker 2: read it? And jess I'm going to start with you.
0:50
Speaker 4: I'm Jessica Gross.
0:51
Speaker 5: I am an opinion writer at the New York Times,
0:54
Speaker 5: where I have a newsletter that focuses on parenting and
0:57
Speaker 5: family issues in the United States. Book is called Screaming
1:01
Speaker 5: on the Inside the Unsustainability of American Motherhood, and I
1:04
Speaker 5: have been reporting on family policy and how distinctly ungenerous
1:09
Speaker 5: it is in the United States compared to other nations
1:12
Speaker 5: as wealthy as we are. We don't have paid leave,
1:14
Speaker 5: we don't have paid sick days, we don't have universal
1:17
Speaker 5: health care, we don't have a culture that is welcoming
1:20
Speaker 5: towards parents or children in basically any way. And I've
1:24
Speaker 5: been writing about this for years. I realized it in
1:28
Speaker 5: my own life when I had a really difficult pregnancy
1:30
Speaker 5: with my older daughter and ended up having to quit
1:32
Speaker 5: a new.
1:33
Speaker 4: Job because I just couldn't hang.
1:35
Speaker 5: And then during the pandemic, I think way more people
1:39
Speaker 5: realize that the way we do parenthood, but especially the
1:42
Speaker 5: way we do motherhood in the United States, is not
1:45
Speaker 5: serving most people. And so my book goes into all
1:50
Speaker 5: of the unreasonable expectations and ideals that are put on
1:54
Speaker 5: American mothers, how many of them are contradictory. It tries
1:58
Speaker 5: to trace where many of them came from. It tells
2:00
Speaker 5: a little bit of my personal story, but I also
2:02
Speaker 5: interviewed about one hundred contemporary American moms. I talk to historians,
2:07
Speaker 5: I talked to sociologists, I talked to economists, and try
2:10
Speaker 5: to paint the full picture of what American motherhood looks
2:13
Speaker 5: like today and what we can do to make it
2:15
Speaker 5: a little better amazing.
2:17
Speaker 6: First of all, I just want to say I love
2:18
Speaker 6: Jess's book, and I think that our two books are
2:21
Speaker 6: pretty different but actually really complementary. So my book is
2:24
Speaker 6: called Work Parent Thrive Twelve science backed strategies to ditch guilt, manage, overwhelm,
2:29
Speaker 6: and grow connection when everything feels like too much.
2:32
Speaker 4: So it's specifically.
2:33
Speaker 6: Focused on working parenthood. Addresses a lot of the issues
2:37
Speaker 6: that Jess raises in her book, but from a pretty
2:39
Speaker 6: different perspective. So I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm an assistant
2:42
Speaker 6: professor at Brown University in the Department of Psychiatry. I
2:46
Speaker 6: actually specialize in relationship therapy, so relationship in marriage, but
2:50
Speaker 6: also between parents and kids, and so I think about
2:52
Speaker 6: things from a psychological point of view and from a
2:54
Speaker 6: relational point of view, and so I also think about
2:56
Speaker 6: roles from a relationship point of view. A mom of three,
3:01
Speaker 6: I think of this book as a little bit parallel
3:03
Speaker 6: to how positive psychology fits into the field of mental health.
3:07
Speaker 6: So we need, of course to be doing work to
3:09
Speaker 6: reduce the kinds of problems in working parenthood that Just
3:12
Speaker 6: talks about in her book. Many of them exists at
3:14
Speaker 6: the social policy level in our workplaces, even in our marriages.
3:18
Speaker 6: But we also need to be raising up right, So
3:21
Speaker 6: we need to be reducing the negative and increasing the positive.
3:24
Speaker 6: And so this book is really focused on building more
3:28
Speaker 6: of the positive. And one of the very cool things
3:30
Speaker 6: that I found through the research that I did, and
3:32
Speaker 6: I also did a lot of interviews, including with researchers
3:35
Speaker 6: as well as working parents from a whole host of backgrounds,
3:39
Speaker 6: family situations, professional disciplines, that part of the ways that
3:44
Speaker 6: our roles exist in tension with each other. We can
3:47
Speaker 6: actually understand it from a conflict point of view or
3:50
Speaker 6: from an enrichment point of view. So it is uncomfortable
3:52
Speaker 6: when we're pulled between multiple demanding roles, but there's all
3:56
Speaker 6: sorts of really interesting ways that tension can actually serve
3:59
Speaker 6: us contagiously, and with social science and clinical practices in hand,
4:04
Speaker 6: we can actually take advantage of the way that tension
4:07
Speaker 6: naturally exists in positive ways. So again, it's like trying
4:11
Speaker 6: to increase the positive in order so that we can
4:14
Speaker 6: keep fighting the good fight to make progress in the
4:16
Speaker 6: world outside of our homes and and our personal lives.
4:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I want to say I love both of
4:23
Speaker 3: these books, and I like them both for their articulations
4:28
Speaker 3: of the problems, and there are articulations of the solutions,
4:31
Speaker 3: and the sort of balance across problems versus solution is
4:34
Speaker 3: a little.
4:35
Speaker 2: Different in the two books. I think they're sort of
4:37
Speaker 2: a good read together.
4:39
Speaker 3: So that's how I like to structure this conversation to
4:41
Speaker 3: sort of start by talking about the problems.
4:43
Speaker 2: And so I'm curious. I have a sentence in my mind,
4:46
Speaker 2: but I'm going to call on you guys first. If
4:48
Speaker 2: you had to articulate the problem that parents are facing
4:53
Speaker 2: now in one sentence, what would it be.
4:58
Speaker 6: I think that we we see the discomfort as something
5:02
Speaker 6: that can and should be eradicated completely, instead of thinking
5:06
Speaker 6: about how we can tolerate it in more skillful, strategic ways.
5:11
Speaker 6: I almost think that we have our eye on the
5:13
Speaker 6: wrong goalpost, if that makes sense. And I think that's
5:17
Speaker 6: where psychology can be really helpful, because there are things
5:20
Speaker 6: that absolutely need to be changed, and then there's some
5:22
Speaker 6: things that you know aren't worth fighting for because they're
5:25
Speaker 6: almost like inherent to just being human. And so if
5:27
Speaker 6: we can put our attention on the right things, the
5:30
Speaker 6: more effective things to be fighting for, then we'll have
5:34
Speaker 6: more strength to fight well. And more skill to do
5:37
Speaker 6: it with.
5:38
Speaker 5: I would say there is too much that American parents
5:42
Speaker 5: are expected to do, and there is not enough time, money,
5:45
Speaker 5: or social support to do most of them for most people.
5:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think my sentence would be some combination of those, actually,
5:53
Speaker 3: something like, you know, we're expecting too much of people,
5:56
Speaker 3: and people are expecting too much of themselves, and we
5:59
Speaker 3: sort of have this idea that you should be everything
6:02
Speaker 3: at all moments.
6:03
Speaker 2: I always think about the Amory slaughter you can't have
6:06
Speaker 2: it all.
6:07
Speaker 3: As it kind of well, you can have it all,
6:09
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure that we should be making people
6:11
Speaker 3: try to have it all in quite the way that
6:13
Speaker 3: is intended.
6:14
Speaker 5: We've created a situation in which most people cannot afford
6:19
Speaker 5: to not work, except the American workplace is completely unforgiving
6:25
Speaker 5: of people having a life outside of work, so most
6:28
Speaker 5: people don't have flexibility. Most people's health insurance is tied
6:31
Speaker 5: to their work, so if they would like to reduce hours,
6:34
Speaker 5: they probably can't do that because then their family might
6:37
Speaker 5: not have health insurance. And the school calendar doesn't match
6:41
Speaker 5: up to the work calendar for most people, and so
6:44
Speaker 5: even absent all of the sort of expectations which we
6:48
Speaker 5: can talk about separately. Just the actual math problem does
6:52
Speaker 5: not add up in terms of the number of hours
6:56
Speaker 5: in the day, the numbers of our children need care,
6:58
Speaker 5: the number of hours that's in system, and the number
7:03
Speaker 5: of hours you need to work to pay your mortgage
7:05
Speaker 5: and survive in most American cities. So to me, we
7:08
Speaker 5: can't even talk about the sort of emotional and the
7:12
Speaker 5: guilt and all of the other sort of expectations on
7:14
Speaker 5: us when just even the math of day to day
7:18
Speaker 5: living just as absolutely not adding up. I did a
7:22
Speaker 5: story last week about elder care, and the story that
7:27
Speaker 5: stuck with me was a woman talking about her mother
7:30
Speaker 5: who had stayed home with the kids as long as
7:32
Speaker 5: she could and then took a job as a high
7:36
Speaker 5: school secretary so she could keep a close eye on
7:39
Speaker 5: her kids, still make money, have her schedule work with
7:42
Speaker 5: the kids. She worked up until the day she was
7:44
Speaker 5: diagnosed with early onset dementia and her family realized like
7:49
Speaker 5: there was no safety.
7:50
Speaker 4: Net for her mother at the end of this road.
7:54
Speaker 5: You know where she had done everything quote unquote in
7:57
Speaker 5: the ideal way, right like in terms of prioritizing her
7:59
Speaker 5: family over work and all of that.
8:02
Speaker 4: So, yeah, that.
8:02
Speaker 5: Situation is the facts on the ground for a lot
8:06
Speaker 5: of people.
8:08
Speaker 6: I was just thinking about this Buddhist allegory of the
8:10
Speaker 6: First era versus the Second arrow, and I think Jesse,
8:13
Speaker 6: your book talks a lot about the first era of
8:15
Speaker 6: things like the things that we have no control over
8:17
Speaker 6: that are really cutting deeply into us. And I think
8:20
Speaker 6: my book is really about the second arrow, stuff that
8:22
Speaker 6: we sometimes do to ourselves, where we think to ourselves, well,
8:24
Speaker 6: I'm a bad parent because I'm putting my kid in childcare,
8:28
Speaker 6: or because I'm grumpy, or because I'm struggling with health
8:32
Speaker 6: and I can't pay as much attention to them as
8:34
Speaker 6: they deserve. And that's the stuff that if we conserve
8:37
Speaker 6: our energy and be a little gentler with ourselves and
8:40
Speaker 6: be appreciative of the community rather than damning ourselves for
8:44
Speaker 6: not being everything to our children, if we could let
8:47
Speaker 6: go of social comparison, get off social media and buying
8:51
Speaker 6: into these perfect pictures that don't really exist for anybody,
8:54
Speaker 6: then it's not like we would undo the original problem,
8:58
Speaker 6: but we wouldn't be adding insult in injury, shooting ourselves
9:01
Speaker 6: with a second arrow into the wound that's already been opened.
9:03
Speaker 6: And so I think again that you know, we really
9:06
Speaker 6: do need to be fighting these battles. But where we
9:09
Speaker 6: can be very deliberate about spending less attention is sort
9:13
Speaker 6: of this self judgment or social comparison or guilt, Like
9:17
Speaker 6: guilt is so toxic and it very rarely helps us,
9:19
Speaker 6: and instead to pay attention to where we need to
9:22
Speaker 6: be making social progress in more deliberate ways.
9:26
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Jess, you.
9:28
Speaker 3: Talk to a lot of people in the book, Which
9:30
Speaker 3: is one of the really wonderful things about the book
9:32
Speaker 3: is it's so many people's experiences. How much of this
9:38
Speaker 3: is this sort of first arrow being seen through the
9:41
Speaker 3: lens of the second arrow. In Yelle's words, that like,
9:44
Speaker 3: the math problem is harder because my expectations for what
9:49
Speaker 3: I will achieve are bigger, are influenced by society or
9:53
Speaker 3: influenced by whatever, and so of course I can't make
9:55
Speaker 3: the math work because I want to be both killing
9:58
Speaker 3: it at my job and also be the parent who
10:01
Speaker 3: makes the cupcakes.
10:03
Speaker 2: I'm curious about how important you think that is.
10:06
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's tremendously important because it colors
10:10
Speaker 5: the time that we actually do get to spend with
10:12
Speaker 5: our children. Like I was ranting, I hate elf on
10:15
Speaker 5: the shelf. I first of all, I'm a Jew. No,
10:18
Speaker 5: I'm not doing alf on the health. I don't want
10:20
Speaker 5: to hear about elf on the shelf. Get out of here,
10:22
Speaker 5: Like this is a new thing that I have to
10:24
Speaker 5: do a month before a holiday that I don't even celebrate.
10:28
Speaker 5: So like, and I was talking to a friend about
10:30
Speaker 5: a very old friend who I've known since we were
10:33
Speaker 5: in elementary school together. She was saying, wouldn't that time
10:37
Speaker 5: be spent better spent like just hanging out.
10:41
Speaker 4: With my kid?
10:42
Speaker 5: Like I had the best conversation with my older daughter
10:45
Speaker 5: just on the subway together recently, and like, I would
10:49
Speaker 5: prefer to spend my time just like hanging out rather
10:54
Speaker 5: than creating an elaborate ELF based shame.
10:58
Speaker 4: System in my house.
11:00
Speaker 5: Right, So, like, I don't feel the guilt about that,
11:03
Speaker 5: But Mike, I think the.
11:05
Speaker 4: Sort of your kids do it to you.
11:07
Speaker 5: I once wrote a piece about how like older daughter
11:10
Speaker 5: was upset that like I wasn't handmaking her Halloween costume,
11:14
Speaker 5: and I was like, first of all, you don't want.
11:15
Speaker 4: That, you would not like the result.
11:17
Speaker 5: And secondly, like it just like, I'm not that's not
11:20
Speaker 5: the kind of mom you got. I know Ali his
11:22
Speaker 5: mom does it, and Ali's mom is super crafty and like,
11:25
Speaker 5: God bless her, and it is really hard to say
11:28
Speaker 5: I'm not doing any of that and I don't care,
11:30
Speaker 5: especially when it's not just the pressure from other social comparison.
11:35
Speaker 5: As you say, yeah, it's also like your kids remember
11:38
Speaker 5: that you weren't the one that made the cupcakes, so
11:40
Speaker 5: they're going to give you some guilt too.
11:41
Speaker 4: And it's like.
11:43
Speaker 5: Alf on the shelf is one that I can easily dismiss,
11:45
Speaker 5: but there's ones all the time that like, oh, I'm
11:47
Speaker 5: not volunteering at the school whatever.
11:49
Speaker 4: I would love to help the school, it's.
11:50
Speaker 5: Just not like it's a very intense time for me
11:53
Speaker 5: at work and it's just not going to happen.
11:55
Speaker 3: But yeah, this is this is like the core of
11:57
Speaker 3: your book is like, how do I fix my own
11:59
Speaker 3: person problems with us?
12:01
Speaker 6: Well, I think yeah, And I think a lot of
12:02
Speaker 6: it has to do with mindset. And I think what
12:04
Speaker 6: you both are pointing to is that our mindset can
12:07
Speaker 6: be really formed by the society that we live in,
12:10
Speaker 6: the cultures that we come from, and the cues that
12:13
Speaker 6: we get all around us. There's an interesting study that
12:15
Speaker 6: I recently read on low wage workers in the first
12:18
Speaker 6: years of becoming a parent. And one of the analyzes
12:21
Speaker 6: that they did they looked at African American mothers versus
12:24
Speaker 6: Latina mothers, and they asked them about what their beliefs
12:28
Speaker 6: were about the impact of their job on their kids.
12:31
Speaker 6: And this is, of course, the statistical findings is it's
12:33
Speaker 6: not going to be true across the board, but on average,
12:35
Speaker 6: African American moms were more likely to think that their
12:38
Speaker 6: work was a net benefit, like good for them and
12:40
Speaker 6: good for their family and something to be really proud of,
12:43
Speaker 6: whereas Latina moms were more likely to endorse beliefs that
12:47
Speaker 6: their jobs would cause irreparable damage to their kids. And
12:51
Speaker 6: what they found was that those beliefs were associated with
12:55
Speaker 6: depression symptoms, controlling for lots of factors including work circu dances,
12:59
Speaker 6: supervisors hours, and those depression symptoms were associated with how
13:05
Speaker 6: parents engage with their kids. So what we think about
13:08
Speaker 6: our circumstances and how proud we are and how much
13:10
Speaker 6: we buy into positive ideas about how we're doing versus
13:14
Speaker 6: negative ideas about how we're doing has real big impact
13:17
Speaker 6: on our well being, and our well being of course
13:18
Speaker 6: has a huge impact on how we engage in family life.
13:22
Speaker 6: And so part of what I argue for in the
13:23
Speaker 6: book is to kind of shift from a mindset of
13:28
Speaker 6: I call it kind of a work family conflict mindset
13:30
Speaker 6: to a work family enrichment mindset. But what I mean
13:32
Speaker 6: more generally is to move from a fixed mindset about
13:35
Speaker 6: our circumstances to a growth mindset about our circumstances. That
13:38
Speaker 6: where we start is not where we have to end.
13:42
Speaker 6: And as long as we're curious and creative and resourceful
13:46
Speaker 6: and willing to sort of pursue a better world for
13:49
Speaker 6: ourselves and our families, that we can get to a
13:52
Speaker 6: better place.
13:53
Speaker 4: We just need to be strategic about it.
13:55
Speaker 6: And to believe that the challenges aren't going to stop,
14:00
Speaker 6: but instead are going to teach us. I think is
14:02
Speaker 6: really critical in that, and I think that's why books
14:04
Speaker 6: like Justice Book are so powerful, because it's sort of
14:07
Speaker 6: an opportunity to zoom out and say, Okay, what's going
14:11
Speaker 6: wrong here? How do we take a different stance and
14:13
Speaker 6: how do we get more effective? And then, of course
14:15
Speaker 6: in my book, I sort of go more from the
14:18
Speaker 6: like in your house, day to day choices that you
14:20
Speaker 6: make with how you engage as a parent, what kind
14:23
Speaker 6: of support system you build?
14:25
Speaker 3: There is this really interesting interplay between the kind of
14:28
Speaker 3: structural things we need to change and almost saying like, well,
14:33
Speaker 3: this is the structure I find myself in, Like how
14:35
Speaker 3: can I optimize inside the structure? That's an economics word,
14:39
Speaker 3: but how can I optimize within the structure that I have?
14:42
Speaker 3: And then there's the sort of just more of justice question,
14:44
Speaker 3: which is how can we stick some of these things?
14:47
Speaker 3: So before we get to the sort of subtracting and
14:49
Speaker 3: optimizing within in the space of writing the book, just
14:53
Speaker 3: is there one or two things you would have said
14:57
Speaker 3: structurally that are the most important problems or the most
15:03
Speaker 3: fixable problems you from a kind of social standpoint.
15:07
Speaker 5: I do think that paid leave will happen in the
15:11
Speaker 5: next let's say twenty years.
15:13
Speaker 4: Come back in twenty years, and now see.
15:15
Speaker 2: It's super obous. I think you were going to be
15:18
Speaker 2: like during the next four years.
15:21
Speaker 4: But you didn't say that, No for four years, absolutely not.
15:25
Speaker 5: However, like of like the big structural federal money things
15:30
Speaker 5: that seems like the least expensive, the most popular. I mean,
15:35
Speaker 5: ask any American basically any political persuasion, do you think
15:41
Speaker 5: it's cool for moms who just gave birth to go
15:44
Speaker 5: back to work two weeks after they have taken.
15:48
Speaker 4: A baby out of their body.
15:49
Speaker 5: I would I think most of them will say that
15:51
Speaker 5: sounds like a terrible idea.
15:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you can get most people on board
15:55
Speaker 4: with that.
15:55
Speaker 5: It is very popular all of the polling and even
15:58
Speaker 5: in the course of my writing the book. I want
16:00
Speaker 5: to say I started writing at July twenty twenty. By
16:03
Speaker 5: the time the last edits were being done in January
16:06
Speaker 5: twenty two, I think three more states had passed paid leave.
16:10
Speaker 5: So it's happening like it's we don't hear like oh
16:13
Speaker 5: Maryland past paid leave isn't a national story, but it
16:16
Speaker 5: is happening incrementally, and so I'm confident about that, and
16:20
Speaker 5: that will just take a profound burden offul lot of people,
16:24
Speaker 5: because it's not just like the physical burden that you're
16:27
Speaker 5: exhausted and you're having to go back to work. It's
16:30
Speaker 5: also an emotional burden of who am I going to
16:33
Speaker 5: leave my baby with. I can't believe I have to
16:35
Speaker 5: be away from my baby, so like I want to
16:37
Speaker 5: bond with this child. There's so much there. So I
16:39
Speaker 5: think that's an eminently fixable problem and that will happen.
16:43
Speaker 2: In the next twenty years in time for our.
16:45
Speaker 4: Children is exactly hopefully fingers crossable.
16:48
Speaker 5: I really think another thing that needs to happen is
16:53
Speaker 5: to create a child childcare industry structure.
16:57
Speaker 4: I mean there's really not one.
16:58
Speaker 5: We pretend that there is one because there's all these
17:00
Speaker 5: independent childcare and there is some block grants that go
17:03
Speaker 5: to states, but like it doesn't exist. So like there
17:06
Speaker 5: needs to be a childcare infrastructure that I am much
17:09
Speaker 5: less confident about happening. And then I mean, this isn't
17:12
Speaker 5: this is a sort of workplace by workplace, but like
17:14
Speaker 5: the culture of work needs to change, not just for parents,
17:17
Speaker 5: and I think one of the big problems is that
17:19
Speaker 5: it is still associated with parents, and then it just
17:22
Speaker 5: gets associated with mothers and no one gives a shit
17:24
Speaker 5: because they're like, oh, moms, it's just mom's stuff.
17:26
Speaker 2: Do you think that the pandemic has improved that in
17:29
Speaker 2: some clearly not across the entire distribution, but in parts
17:33
Speaker 2: of the distribution it hasn't.
17:36
Speaker 4: It hasn't.
17:36
Speaker 5: I mean because today, literally today you saw Elon Musk
17:39
Speaker 5: saying every Twitter employee has to stop remote work and
17:42
Speaker 5: go into that like, obviously that's a specific scenario.
17:46
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things today. I wasn't able to
17:47
Speaker 2: keep one hundred percent of them, but okay, that.
17:50
Speaker 4: Was one of them. That was one of them.
17:51
Speaker 5: So I think more what will change workplaces is when
17:57
Speaker 5: younger gen X and millennials become because I think they
18:02
Speaker 5: had young children during the pandemic, and even people who didn't,
18:07
Speaker 5: you know, were sort of executive level and weren't used
18:10
Speaker 5: to taking care of their children had to do it,
18:13
Speaker 5: and so they were like, oh, now I understand what
18:16
Speaker 5: this is like day to day. And I also think
18:18
Speaker 5: that there's more and more sort of like acceptance of
18:21
Speaker 5: having a life because the reason that I think it
18:23
Speaker 5: shouldn't be associated with parents is because almost every human
18:27
Speaker 5: will have to caretake for somebody at some point in
18:30
Speaker 5: their lives, whether it's your parents, family members, sister or brother,
18:34
Speaker 5: who who's there's somebody. There's very few people who get
18:37
Speaker 5: through life without ever having to caregive for anyone, and
18:41
Speaker 5: really intense caregiving at the beginning and end of the
18:44
Speaker 5: life spectrum are huge time commitments and very expensive.
18:48
Speaker 4: And so I.
18:49
Speaker 5: Am confident that the work equation will change gradually.
18:53
Speaker 4: But I don't think.
18:55
Speaker 5: I think it's going to be really messy for the
18:57
Speaker 5: next decade or so, and then I think it actually
18:59
Speaker 5: will get a lot.
19:00
Speaker 3: I think it's.
19:00
Speaker 6: Heartening though, that a lot of the research that's being
19:02
Speaker 6: done on workplaces that do support people in taking leave
19:06
Speaker 6: when they have a sick family member or when they
19:08
Speaker 6: need to, you know, pick up a child who's stick
19:11
Speaker 6: from school, that those kind of workplaces get workers that
19:16
Speaker 6: are more devoted and really committed to their jobs. So
19:19
Speaker 6: I think that it's one of those things that it
19:21
Speaker 6: helps families and it ultimately helps workplaces as well, and
19:24
Speaker 6: I think the research on that is pretty clear. So
19:27
Speaker 6: it's I don't know, I have some optimism.
19:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say I'm I find I'm less optimistic
19:33
Speaker 3: about that in the sense that I think economists have
19:36
Speaker 3: where people have been saying for many years there's a
19:38
Speaker 3: real opportunity in women in the sense that you have
19:42
Speaker 3: very high quality, high education, high still people who are leaving,
19:45
Speaker 3: and they're leaving for this period and then you're not
19:48
Speaker 3: bringing them back, and it's like there's an inefficiency. And
19:51
Speaker 3: yet somehow we even though people have been saying that
19:54
Speaker 3: for decades, we haven't like fixed that inefficiency by making
19:57
Speaker 3: it possible.
19:58
Speaker 6: So I don't know, what do you think keeps people
20:01
Speaker 6: from making that change if that's so clear and has
20:04
Speaker 6: been true, you know, evident for a decade.
20:06
Speaker 2: I don't know.
20:07
Speaker 3: I mean, there's an interesting there's a little bit off topic,
20:09
Speaker 3: but there's like an interesting difference across professions in sort
20:13
Speaker 3: of how splittable jobs are.
20:15
Speaker 2: So there's the jobs.
20:16
Speaker 3: Like in medicine, actually even within high we think of
20:19
Speaker 3: like high income, high skilled professions. In medicine, it's much
20:22
Speaker 3: more feasible to work twenty hours a week. And if
20:24
Speaker 3: you work twenty hours a week, wait, you make, you know,
20:26
Speaker 3: about half as much as if you work forty hours
20:29
Speaker 3: a week, whereas in if you're working for a hedge fund,
20:31
Speaker 3: working forty hours a week and working with no one
20:33
Speaker 3: is working twenty hours a week. And so there is
20:37
Speaker 3: something that has happened in some professions and not others
20:40
Speaker 3: that has enabled some of this splitting that I think
20:44
Speaker 3: has made it more possible for those professions to retain
20:48
Speaker 3: a larger share of women with children. I am not
20:52
Speaker 3: sure why those changes have not come to some of
20:55
Speaker 3: the other professions which have been less like that.
20:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so I think we can't know what technological
21:01
Speaker 5: advances are going to happen in the next fifteen years.
21:04
Speaker 5: I mean, just I did not realize till the pandemic
21:08
Speaker 5: how many meetings could be done pretty well over zoom,
21:11
Speaker 5: over Gmail. Like there's so many things we did in
21:13
Speaker 5: person that we realize don't need to be done in
21:16
Speaker 5: person anymore. And I still think I'm not one of
21:18
Speaker 5: those people who's like, oh, we you know, you should
21:20
Speaker 5: never see your coworkers in full remote forever, although that
21:23
Speaker 5: can work sometimes, but I just think that.
21:25
Speaker 4: Like, there's a lot of jobs where there's.
21:28
Speaker 5: Just no reason for people to be in the office
21:31
Speaker 5: every day, and when you try to come up with
21:32
Speaker 5: a reason, it sounds fake because it.
21:35
Speaker 4: Is so like it's it.
21:37
Speaker 2: I think that.
21:38
Speaker 5: There's a lot of inefficiencies in the system right whereas
21:44
Speaker 5: like people could have more flexible jobs and they would
21:47
Speaker 5: get done a lot more efficiently, but we're just not
21:50
Speaker 5: allowing them to have that flexibility. And I think you
21:53
Speaker 5: will seem incrementally more and more of that as the
21:56
Speaker 5: technology gets better, as we realize actually people are more
21:59
Speaker 5: productive when they're allowed more flexibility, which lots of studies show.
22:02
Speaker 5: So I think it's just going to take some time
22:04
Speaker 5: and adjustment.
22:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to have to We sort of went
22:07
Speaker 3: all the way to one of deliveryum, and then we're
22:09
Speaker 3: probably going to have to go a little bit too
22:10
Speaker 3: far in the other direction before we can come back
22:12
Speaker 3: to the middle. Okay, but I want to now, I
22:15
Speaker 3: want to talk a little bit about the kind of
22:17
Speaker 3: optimizing into where we are at the moment. And yeah,
22:19
Speaker 3: can you just tell us about subtracting the rules subtracting
22:22
Speaker 3: for us?
22:23
Speaker 6: So there's this really interesting line of research and a
22:26
Speaker 6: terrific book called subtract by a researcher called light Y Clots.
22:30
Speaker 6: So the human brain, when we're under stress, problem solves, right,
22:34
Speaker 6: and the default of how we problem solve is to
22:36
Speaker 6: like add something new. And this makes sense from an
22:38
Speaker 6: evolutionary perspective. So we think about pre modern times, if
22:41
Speaker 6: you were stressed, it was usually because of lack of calories,
22:43
Speaker 6: lack of social connections, lack of shelter. So what do
22:45
Speaker 6: you do to solve that problem? Is like you add more, right,
22:48
Speaker 6: you get more calories, you get more connections, you get
22:50
Speaker 6: more shelter. But in our modern life, not enough for
22:55
Speaker 6: the most part.
22:56
Speaker 4: Is not the issue.
22:57
Speaker 6: But you know, our culture has advanced more quickly than
23:00
Speaker 6: our brain wiring, and so we still default when we're
23:02
Speaker 6: making these difficult decisions to manage a problem to adding.
23:07
Speaker 6: And when you think about like our busy schedules and
23:11
Speaker 6: our you know, overlay full closets, like always adding is
23:15
Speaker 6: like it's kind of stressful. And what's more is there's
23:17
Speaker 6: this one piece of the study that I just find
23:19
Speaker 6: very insightful where it showed that when we have higher
23:24
Speaker 6: cognitive burden, we're even less likely to subtract than we
23:27
Speaker 6: are under normal circumstances. And so if you think about that,
23:32
Speaker 6: like when you're stressed out and when you're feeling like
23:34
Speaker 6: your schedule is just you know, two packed, and you
23:37
Speaker 6: don't even know how you're going to do one more thing,
23:39
Speaker 6: and somebody asks you and you're just like, okay, yes,
23:41
Speaker 6: I'll do it, like I don't even know what to
23:43
Speaker 6: say anymore. And that's that is sort of the experience
23:46
Speaker 6: that many people have that when we're really overwhelmed, we
23:48
Speaker 6: find ourselves like adding more.
23:49
Speaker 4: It's sort of like when you're going through target.
23:51
Speaker 6: But you're really in a rush, like what do you
23:53
Speaker 6: do you throw in all sorts of crap that you
23:55
Speaker 6: don't need, and so that's even more true when we're overwhelmed.
23:59
Speaker 6: The other thing that I'll say is, you know, I
24:01
Speaker 6: think most can see like more peace and quiet in
24:04
Speaker 6: our homes and our schedules as an optimal outcome, and
24:09
Speaker 6: we think it shouldn't be so hard to get there.
24:10
Speaker 6: And so I think the realization that we don't naturally
24:13
Speaker 6: default to making things simpler helps us to be more
24:17
Speaker 6: deliberate about that and to build that practice into our
24:19
Speaker 6: daily lives. So you could like add a stop doing
24:22
Speaker 6: list next to your to do list, or just make
24:24
Speaker 6: it a practice, like before you add a new thing
24:27
Speaker 6: to your itinerary, like think or your schedule, think about
24:30
Speaker 6: maybe subtracting something.
24:32
Speaker 5: I think a lot of moms in particular also feel
24:34
Speaker 5: a lot of guilt disappointing people. That's usually why I
24:38
Speaker 5: say yes to things when I don't have time to
24:40
Speaker 5: do them. It's not because I think that I can
24:43
Speaker 5: just get them done. It's because I have a horror
24:45
Speaker 5: of disappointing anyone for any reason, which is something I
24:48
Speaker 5: should deal with in therapy.
24:51
Speaker 6: Can I say it? Can I say a few words
24:53
Speaker 6: about guilt?
24:54
Speaker 4: Such a good topic.
24:55
Speaker 6: I think it's a really important topic, and yes, especially
24:57
Speaker 6: for moms. And I think that's because we're socialized in
25:00
Speaker 6: that way to be really focused on relationships. I think
25:02
Speaker 6: that there's probably some genetic component two, but the biggest
25:05
Speaker 6: thing is that we're socialized that way. So guilt is
25:08
Speaker 6: an interpersonal emotion. All of our emotions, you know, by
25:11
Speaker 6: and large are fixed into us for evolutionary reproductive purposes.
25:15
Speaker 6: So guilt is something that protects our relationships, either from
25:17
Speaker 6: anticipated harm or for actual or from actual harm that's
25:21
Speaker 6: been done. And so it's actually a useful emotion, but
25:25
Speaker 6: it can sort of be triggered in ways that are
25:28
Speaker 6: not necessarily true, if that makes sense. So like, for example,
25:31
Speaker 6: if your kid really wants you to come and chaperone
25:34
Speaker 6: their trip, and you're sorry about disappointing them, and guilt
25:36
Speaker 6: comes up, and you think, oh, well, I don't want
25:38
Speaker 6: to be the bad mom who says no to my
25:40
Speaker 6: kid and disappoints them. But if you sort of take
25:43
Speaker 6: a step back and think about, you know, what is
25:46
Speaker 6: the real harm being done to my child? Because disappointment
25:49
Speaker 6: is not something we should be afraid of. Actually, disappointment
25:52
Speaker 6: is just a normal hope human emotion, that it's actually
25:55
Speaker 6: good for our kids to learn to tolerate and to
25:57
Speaker 6: experience and to learn how to you know, make their
26:00
Speaker 6: way through knowing that you still love them, but you
26:02
Speaker 6: have other obligations. And actually, if you think about the
26:06
Speaker 6: opportunities that are embedded in you not going, them having
26:11
Speaker 6: more independence, them connecting with a different caregiver, them getting
26:15
Speaker 6: to come back and tell you all the exciting things
26:17
Speaker 6: that they did on their own, then it helps you
26:19
Speaker 6: to kind of see it with a different lens. So
26:21
Speaker 6: I think guilt as a relationship protecting emotion is very valuable,
26:25
Speaker 6: but it's useful to sort of pause on it and say,
26:28
Speaker 6: is this actually harming my relationship or is it harming
26:32
Speaker 6: the other person in a way that is sort of
26:35
Speaker 6: problematic in a more serious way, or is it just
26:39
Speaker 6: kind of me, you know, having this impulse to kind
26:41
Speaker 6: of check in, you know, am I doing right by
26:43
Speaker 6: my kid? Am I doing right by my job? Am
26:45
Speaker 6: I doing right by myself? So I think guilt is
26:47
Speaker 6: a useful emotion, but sometimes it's sort of like a pain, like,
26:50
Speaker 6: you know, we have to figure out what to do
26:51
Speaker 6: with it, or if we should just kind of keep
26:54
Speaker 6: walking and let it be.
26:56
Speaker 3: Okay, I feel like we could, we could spend like
26:57
Speaker 3: nine hours on this, but but I want to give
26:59
Speaker 3: you by like a last word. So jess if you
27:02
Speaker 3: had to say sort of like what is the takeaway
27:04
Speaker 3: from your book, either a call to action or just
27:07
Speaker 3: what you will hope people will get out of out
27:09
Speaker 3: of the book.
27:10
Speaker 5: I hope about their own parenting, that they feel less
27:13
Speaker 5: guilt and they feel more ability to figure out what
27:17
Speaker 5: their own values are, not channeling other people's values or
27:21
Speaker 5: what the ideals are, that they can figure out for
27:23
Speaker 5: themselves what is important. And then politically, you might be
27:28
Speaker 5: very tired right now. I assume that lots of people
27:30
Speaker 5: with very young children are going to read this book,
27:32
Speaker 5: and that is okay. You do not have to do
27:35
Speaker 5: anything politically in this moment. But what you can do
27:38
Speaker 5: is remember how this feels, and when you do have
27:41
Speaker 5: the time and energy to be active on these issues,
27:45
Speaker 5: get out there and in this moment, what you can
27:48
Speaker 5: offer yourself and what you can offer the people in
27:50
Speaker 5: your community is grace about their ambivalence, being open to
27:55
Speaker 5: their bad feelings about everything, just being offering practical and
28:00
Speaker 5: emotional support to the people that you love who are
28:03
Speaker 5: going through the same sort of caregiving difficulties that you
28:06
Speaker 5: might be doing.
28:07
Speaker 4: Is something that you can do every day.
28:10
Speaker 5: Just send a text, be there for a friend, offered
28:12
Speaker 5: to babysit, all of those things.
28:14
Speaker 6: So I'm hoping that people take home a mindset shift
28:18
Speaker 6: that they can begin to see the role tension that
28:22
Speaker 6: most parents experience, whether or not you work or just
28:25
Speaker 6: have you know, multiple roles in the community, from a
28:28
Speaker 6: perspective that isn't just about conflict, but that really sees
28:31
Speaker 6: conflict as a part of something where you can take
28:34
Speaker 6: advantage of the tension and creative ways to learn to
28:38
Speaker 6: subtract more effectively, to learn how to rest, take advantage
28:41
Speaker 6: of the tension to rest more, and even to meet
28:44
Speaker 6: your happiness needs more effectively. So I think this mindset
28:48
Speaker 6: shift is really important and that even when we're struggling,
28:53
Speaker 6: that we can find ways to thrive using tools from
28:57
Speaker 6: social science and psychology.
29:00
Speaker 7: With so much the books are Work Parent Thrive by
29:04
Speaker 7: Yell and Screaming on the Inside by Jess and I
29:09
Speaker 7: just really appreciate you being.
29:10
Speaker 2: Here and thank you guys so much.
29:12
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me, Thank you so
29:14
Speaker 6: much for to treat.
29:15
Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks for listening.
29:21
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