Speaker 1: Welcome to your Stuff Mom Never Told You from How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works Not comed Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristin and I'm Caroline, and this is part three
Speaker 1: of our Stuff Mom Never Told You plus lean In series,
Speaker 1: and today we are kind of stepping outside of the
Speaker 1: workplace to look at life surrounding and intertwining work and
Speaker 1: debunking this idea of work life balance. Yeah. Sandberg focuses
Speaker 1: a lot in her book on just the fact that
Speaker 1: there really is no such thing you. There really is
Speaker 1: in in this day and age, with our smartphones and whatnot,
Speaker 1: there really is kind of a blurred line now between
Speaker 1: our personal lives and our work lives, and we kind
Speaker 1: of shouldn't be expect did and maybe can't be expected
Speaker 1: to be too completely separate people. Yeah, and there's this
Speaker 1: idea that I hadn't thought about before before I read
Speaker 1: Lean In, that really framing it as a work life
Speaker 1: balance and trying to achieve some perfect balance between the
Speaker 1: two often is an exercise and futility that we may
Speaker 1: be wasting a lot of energy on instead of just
Speaker 1: embracing the fact that the two collide and they're going
Speaker 1: to collide and intersect all of the time, and the
Speaker 1: chapters that we're focusing on for this discussion come from
Speaker 1: chapter eight, making your partner a real partner in chapter nine,
Speaker 1: which is the myth of doing it all. Um. So,
Speaker 1: just to kick things off, we are working a bunch,
Speaker 1: especially if you are married with kids. For instance, in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, married middle income parents worked eight and
Speaker 1: a half more hours per week paired to parents in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. But you're still expected to go home
Speaker 1: and do all of the things that parents did in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, on top of probably more work from home. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Twelve survey found that of working adults work after leaving
Speaker 1: the office. I mean, how many times do you get
Speaker 1: emails after hours? Like, I mean, it happens all the
Speaker 1: time because people are still plugged in, and they're expected
Speaker 1: to be plugged in exactly, and especially for moms out there,
Speaker 1: And this is something that we've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: and stuff mom never told you motherhood and career and
Speaker 1: work and how all of those things tie together. Um.
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is, it's so much
Speaker 1: work out there for moms because one analysis found that
Speaker 1: among working parents, moms do forty more childcare and thirty
Speaker 1: percent more housework compared to working dad's and that leads
Speaker 1: to a lot of unequal leisure time. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I know I would be resentful. Um So, a two
Speaker 1: thousand nine survey found that only nine percent of people
Speaker 1: in dual earner marriages say they share housework, childcare, and
Speaker 1: breadwinning evenly. But this isn't to place blame immediately on
Speaker 1: husband's and dad's shoulders, saying you know what, if you
Speaker 1: would just do the dishes more than everything would be fine. No,
Speaker 1: there might be first a need for us to look
Speaker 1: at ourselves. What are we doing? Are we maybe kind
Speaker 1: of claiming that housework in childcare as our own rather
Speaker 1: than taking a more collaborative approach, because, for instance, wives
Speaker 1: to engage in gate keeping behaviors do five more hours
Speaker 1: of family work per week than wives who take a
Speaker 1: more collaborative approach. If you're sitting there like looking over
Speaker 1: your husband's shoulders when he's loading the dishwasher and saying, actually,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna fit there now. And I'm saying this
Speaker 1: as a very anal retentive dishwasher loader for sure, me too.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta let go sometimes or you know,
Speaker 1: do what you're good at. Kristen is good at letting
Speaker 1: the dishwasher. I, for one, rearrange I go behind my
Speaker 1: my dude roommate and rearrange the dishwasher completely because I'm like, why,
Speaker 1: why would you just put a glass in the middle
Speaker 1: like that? Exactly? You've got to line it up on
Speaker 1: the sides. That's my strength. Vacuuming, Oh god, just can
Speaker 1: someone else do the vacuuming? Like I don't mind doing it,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to do it all the time,
Speaker 1: and I don't our apartment living room is so big,
Speaker 1: so it would probably save you and due roommate time
Speaker 1: if you just do the dishes. Do that dishwasher to
Speaker 1: your heart's content. He does the floors right, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: is much better and and actually chooses to pick up
Speaker 1: things off the floor. You know, he might throw my
Speaker 1: shoes in my room. That's fine. I don't take that
Speaker 1: as passive aggressive or anything. But that's his strength. So
Speaker 1: it's it's better to work to your strength and allow
Speaker 1: your partner, spouse, roommate, whoever, to do what they're good at,
Speaker 1: to allow them to take some of that responsibility off
Speaker 1: your shoulders instead of being like, well, no, but I
Speaker 1: want to change all the diapers, and I'm better at
Speaker 1: putting the trash bag in the trash can, and well know,
Speaker 1: but I vacuum better, Like instead of claiming all of that,
Speaker 1: give some of it up exactly, and also find a
Speaker 1: partner who is cool with accepting the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want to give up. This was something that I really
Speaker 1: appreciated Sandberg bringing up in the book, which is the
Speaker 1: importance of choosing a partner. Wisely, she writes, I truly
Speaker 1: believe that the single most important career decision that a
Speaker 1: woman makes is whether she will have a life partner
Speaker 1: and who that partner is. Right, And she even urges
Speaker 1: people to date all of the wrong people. I mean,
Speaker 1: she says that her advice is to date the bad boys,
Speaker 1: the cool boys, the conmitven phobic boys, the crazy boys,
Speaker 1: but don't marry them. The things that may the bad
Speaker 1: boys sexy don't make them good husbands. And I can
Speaker 1: totally see what she's saying, because it's not so much Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you can't marry somebody who's cool or whatever, but like,
Speaker 1: you just want somebody who will support you in your decisions,
Speaker 1: whether that's to work seventy hours a week or whether
Speaker 1: that's to work from home. Yeah, and that's such a
Speaker 1: crucial starting point because I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: the research focuses on where women are by middle age,
Speaker 1: they're probably married, they probably have kids, and talking about
Speaker 1: the whole juggling act of all of those things. But
Speaker 1: it's so important and worthwhile to take it a few
Speaker 1: steps back and say, Okay, why don't we start from
Speaker 1: square one, which is all right, if we want to
Speaker 1: partner up with somebody, let's think more about who we
Speaker 1: partner up with. Is that some someone going to be
Speaker 1: able to support our ambition in our career? Right? And
Speaker 1: then once you've gotten to that point, she stresses how
Speaker 1: how important communication is. Yeah, actively communicating with your partner
Speaker 1: about going fifty fifty is obviously a really good thing
Speaker 1: to do. Of saying, you know what you do this,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. Let's play to our strengths. And that's
Speaker 1: one way that you can practice the consciousness that Glorious
Speaker 1: Synem talks about when she says it's not about biology
Speaker 1: but about consciousness. Right, going ahead, like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: like establishing what your strengths are and what your partner
Speaker 1: strengths are and working from there instead of going ahead
Speaker 1: and establishing early in the relationship or early in the
Speaker 1: marriage that you are gonna be the one shouldering both
Speaker 1: work and all of the home life. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you adopt the roles of say, cook and caregiver first thing,
Speaker 1: whether you have you know, a prince or a toad,
Speaker 1: he's probably just gonna be okay with it, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of by no fault of his own and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, okay, well, sure you can dinner. That's
Speaker 1: totally fine. And when I was reading this, it totally
Speaker 1: resonated with me because I have had to take a
Speaker 1: step back from cooking all of the time, doing grocery,
Speaker 1: shopping all the time, doing although my boyfriend is very
Speaker 1: adamant that he does his own laundry, which I'm fine about.
Speaker 1: But but I realized, and it wasn't before I read this,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I realized that I had just taken
Speaker 1: on all of these roles. I was doing everything and
Speaker 1: it wasn't that he didn't want to. It was that
Speaker 1: I wasn't giving him a chance to. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was the same thing with dude roommate, Like I
Speaker 1: was feeling so resentful because I was doing everything to
Speaker 1: clean up this freaking apartment. And finally I just told him,
Speaker 1: I was like, you're driving You're driving me crazy, like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end up, like I don't know, setting all
Speaker 1: your shoes on fire or something, and he finally was okay.
Speaker 1: He finally chipped in and started doing some of the
Speaker 1: counter wiping down and some of the vacuuming. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and that's why Sandbergy talks about how if you want,
Speaker 1: you gotta ask for it first of all, and then
Speaker 1: crucially step back enough to let it actually happen. And
Speaker 1: I still have to stop myself, and it especially comes
Speaker 1: up with the dishwashing things, which makes me, once I
Speaker 1: realized that I'm doing it, I feel a little bit
Speaker 1: crazy because, you know, like thinking about like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not one of those women who stands over boyfriend's shoulder
Speaker 1: tissing while he incorrectly, you know, washes the tupper where
Speaker 1: but I totally do it. I totally do it. So
Speaker 1: I just have to step back, just like no, actually,
Speaker 1: you're I'm going to go in the other room and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read and relax, and it's totally fine. But
Speaker 1: it's all about just raising some awareness with yourself to
Speaker 1: begin with, but also recognizing like what your psychosis are.
Speaker 1: For instance, like my my roommate, and I've mentioned this
Speaker 1: before on the podcast, like he is super psychotic about stuff.
Speaker 1: He isn't so much like a clean freak as he
Speaker 1: is a neat freak. I'm the other way around. I
Speaker 1: don't care if stuff is spread out all over the
Speaker 1: apartment as long as it's not grimy. And so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I will come out of my room or
Speaker 1: you know, come home and he will have cleaned and
Speaker 1: like things are stacked in like a really weird place,
Speaker 1: and he's like moved all of my personal belongings in
Speaker 1: front of my door. And it's like, okay, let go.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't clean like this, but this is how he cleans.
Speaker 1: And he just sees these things as like interlopers in
Speaker 1: the living room space and they need to be removed.
Speaker 1: So that's how he does it. I've got to let
Speaker 1: it go. Yeah, Yeah, I've had to relinquish some of
Speaker 1: my neat freakness as well. I'm just saying, okay, cleanliness
Speaker 1: often resides on a spectrum. I'm more of the end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. And my boyfriend is more middling. He's
Speaker 1: not low, but middling, and he can at least. It's
Speaker 1: not that he wants to live in a pig sty,
Speaker 1: but it's that dishes can sit in the sink for
Speaker 1: a while, or the floor can look a little bit
Speaker 1: dirty for a while, and it's not going to be
Speaker 1: the end of the world. I want to clean when
Speaker 1: I come home. Well, you have a lot of floor
Speaker 1: space in your apartment. I do have a lot of
Speaker 1: floor space, so hashtag bless Well, No, I'm just talking
Speaker 1: about the amount of sweeping. Yeah, it's a lot of sweeping.
Speaker 1: And I know that these kinds of things, talking about
Speaker 1: dishes and cleaning, et cetera, seems so negligible and maybe
Speaker 1: seem like minor points if we're talking about career in
Speaker 1: capital C career. But it's time, and it's time that
Speaker 1: either takes away from our work or contributes to stress
Speaker 1: all around. And I do think that it makes a
Speaker 1: major difference for sure. I mean, yeah, if you feel
Speaker 1: like you have to work eight, nine, ten hours a
Speaker 1: day and then come home and continue working, but that
Speaker 1: work is sweeping and doing dishes like it's crazy making Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it just gives you. It gives you no extra time,
Speaker 1: and the benefits of fifty fifty partnerships, not just at
Speaker 1: home but also in the workplace, have very real results.
Speaker 1: There was a finding that Sandberg talks about in the book,
Speaker 1: which is that the risk of divorce reduces by about
Speaker 1: half when a wife earns half the income and a
Speaker 1: husband does half the housework. Yeah, that would be that
Speaker 1: would be nice to I know my mother, Well, I
Speaker 1: just like, look at my parents, you know, they've been
Speaker 1: married for so long, and my mother's like, I would
Speaker 1: just really love it if he would chip in. I'm like,
Speaker 1: how long have you been married? You know? And my
Speaker 1: dad does he If you look at it more objectively,
Speaker 1: my dad does do a lot. He does everything outside.
Speaker 1: He does all the bill paying, all the financial stuff.
Speaker 1: My mom is the one who does more of the
Speaker 1: like cooking and cleaning and laundry and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's like, as an outside or who lives thirty
Speaker 1: minutes away from them. Thankfully, um, I can I can
Speaker 1: see that they do a lot of equal work. It's
Speaker 1: just that when you feel like you're the one who's
Speaker 1: putting in all of the time doing something, you know
Speaker 1: that can put a strain on things absolutely, um and
Speaker 1: one thing that we might want to liberate ourselves from
Speaker 1: two that can put a strain on us mentally and
Speaker 1: make those differences feel even bigger than they are, is
Speaker 1: just abandoning this notion of having it all. This is
Speaker 1: a phrase. I feel like it's been coming up ad
Speaker 1: nauseam in magazine articles focused on women. It's always focused
Speaker 1: on women. It's blog posts, it's tweets, it's everything talking
Speaker 1: about can we have it all? Oh, we can't have
Speaker 1: it all? No, maybe we should. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, Let's just forget about those words. Yeah, period, Yeah,
Speaker 1: forget about them. I mean Samberg calls it the trap,
Speaker 1: biggest trap ever set for women. Um, and I would,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would kind of agree. I think it's
Speaker 1: more important to this is gonna sound totally hippy dippy.
Speaker 1: I think it's more important to find your happiness and
Speaker 1: your happy spot, in your sweet spot in life in general,
Speaker 1: more than it is to try to have some like
Speaker 1: magazine created ideal of having it all. Yeah, Because then
Speaker 1: the question is, well, what is all that's going to
Speaker 1: be different to everybody? Right? When I when I hear
Speaker 1: the phrase having it all. I picture a stock shot
Speaker 1: online of a woman in a business suit with a
Speaker 1: briefcase and a baby and a cell phone, and she's
Speaker 1: very slim. I guess she's very slim and has impeccable
Speaker 1: hair somehow. Yeah, I would love impeccable hair, but I
Speaker 1: can't have it all, that's right. Uh Yeah. There was
Speaker 1: a quote from the book. He says, long term success
Speaker 1: at work often depends on not trying to meet every
Speaker 1: demand placed on us. The best way and I highlighted
Speaker 1: those a million times. The best way to make room
Speaker 1: for both life and career is to make choices deliberately,
Speaker 1: to set limits and stick to them, which sounds radically
Speaker 1: different and also radically more manageable than some idea of
Speaker 1: having it all. Well, not only the idea of having
Speaker 1: it all, but the idea of I'm going to feel
Speaker 1: guilty if I don't take it all on, you know,
Speaker 1: that idea of relinquishing that guilt of like, now, I'm human,
Speaker 1: and I need to set these boundaries for myself and
Speaker 1: for you, as the person who's depending on me. If
Speaker 1: I tell you I can deliver X y Z, whether
Speaker 1: you're my partner or my co worker, you know, if
Speaker 1: I tell you that I can do all of this
Speaker 1: stuff and then I have a nervous breakdown, You're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, where's that TPS report? And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't do it right. And and that this resonates not
Speaker 1: just with our TPS reports metaphorically speaking, but also with
Speaker 1: those things at home, of the cooking, including and all
Speaker 1: of the unpaid work of maybe relinquishing some of that,
Speaker 1: letting it get a little messy every now and then,
Speaker 1: and not worrying about it, because the idea of striving
Speaker 1: for having it all is just chasing some made up
Speaker 1: construct exactly, and a lot of other women have realized
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. Um Tina Fey one of our favorites.
Speaker 1: In her book Bossy Pants, she talks about this idea
Speaker 1: of having it all and the fact that you are,
Speaker 1: as a woman so judged for whether you have it
Speaker 1: all and how you got there. She says, what is
Speaker 1: the rudest question you can ask a woman is how
Speaker 1: do you juggle it all? People constantly ask me with
Speaker 1: an accusatory look in their eye. And again, that image
Speaker 1: that you talked about of the well dressed, pants suited
Speaker 1: woman with the briefcase and the baby looking harried but
Speaker 1: also put together at the same time. I feel like
Speaker 1: sums all of that up. But yeah, that idea of
Speaker 1: having it all unless we get like twelve more hours
Speaker 1: in each day somehow, I you know, I mean, but
Speaker 1: then I would use it to sleep, Let's be honest. Um.
Speaker 1: Samberg also sided Dr Lorie glimpse Er, who's the dean
Speaker 1: of the wheel Cornell Medical College, who was talking more
Speaker 1: about balancing career and childcare. But I feel like her
Speaker 1: advice really resonated to women like us who might not
Speaker 1: be married with children. She said, I had to decide
Speaker 1: what mattered and what didn't, and I learned to be
Speaker 1: a perfectionist only in the things that mattered. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is something I struggle with all the time because I
Speaker 1: want I want to do my best. And this goes
Speaker 1: back to our whole self doubting issue that we talked
Speaker 1: about before, Our whole like feeling like a fraud and
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough and I have to put in
Speaker 1: a thousand percent or people are going to think I'm, like,
Speaker 1: you know, terrible at my job or or my life
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. I mean, I also struggle with noe
Speaker 1: pick the things that matter, like the things that are
Speaker 1: really important at work, but also the things in life
Speaker 1: that really make you happy. Pick those things and put
Speaker 1: your energies into him. Don't try to be everything to everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a recipe for anxiety city, for sure. No, trust me,
Speaker 1: it is um. There's also the great Nora Fhron who
Speaker 1: in her Wellesley commencement speech said, it will be a
Speaker 1: little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated,
Speaker 1: but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything
Speaker 1: like what you think it will be like, but surprises
Speaker 1: are good for you, and don't be frightened. You can
Speaker 1: always change your mind. I know I've had four careers
Speaker 1: and three husbands. I think she's totally right. You're looking
Speaker 1: at a girl who went to three colleges and four
Speaker 1: years like I don't. I try to pursue the things
Speaker 1: that make me the happiest. And if that means getting
Speaker 1: a little messy and transferring a lot of times, uh,
Speaker 1: then you've got to do what you've got to do exactly,
Speaker 1: and Sandberg herself says, if I had to embrace a
Speaker 1: definition of success, it would be that success is making
Speaker 1: the best choices we can and accepting, and to me,
Speaker 1: part of that is unbalanced saying this whole work life
Speaker 1: balance notion that we hear over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and I understand why because thinking about it, yeah, like
Speaker 1: it makes sense. But sort of in the same way
Speaker 1: that having it all, maybe he's leading us astray. Focusing
Speaker 1: on work life balance makes it sound like we can
Speaker 1: neatly discriminate between oh, well this is this is my
Speaker 1: work self, this is my life self. Well, I have
Speaker 1: a great real life example. This is not my example.
Speaker 1: But my friend Brandon Um does Humans of New York
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Maybe you've seen it. He post a lot
Speaker 1: of pictures from New York, obviously, and he took this
Speaker 1: picture of this older gentleman in a park and he
Speaker 1: starts talking to him and they have this conversation that
Speaker 1: Brandon writes about where he's like, you know, what is
Speaker 1: your greatest achievement or what advice would you give to
Speaker 1: a large group of people, And the man starts talking
Speaker 1: about how, you know, he's proud that his children grew
Speaker 1: up to be the great people that they are, the
Speaker 1: successful people that they are, but how filled with regret
Speaker 1: he is that he was so focused Laser focused on,
Speaker 1: you know, climbing the ladder in his career, that that
Speaker 1: was his focus. He was glad he could provide for
Speaker 1: his children, and he was glad they turned out okay.
Speaker 1: So when Brandon said, you know, would you regret it
Speaker 1: if you had given up a few rungs on the
Speaker 1: ladder to have been home more often? And the man said, no,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's that's a person, that's a real
Speaker 1: life person who didn't have whatever balance we are seeking,
Speaker 1: whatever your version of balance is. He and he regretted it.
Speaker 1: But you know, so I I take that that man
Speaker 1: that Brandon spoke with as a great example of like,
Speaker 1: find what makes you happy and find it before it's
Speaker 1: too late. Yeah, And I think one of the first
Speaker 1: steps along the way to doing that is dismissing this
Speaker 1: idea that it's even possible to have it all, that
Speaker 1: that even that that even makes sense in any way whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and that it's not going to you get a little
Speaker 1: messy sometimes along the way. Now, that's totally fine, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, the more we can kind
Speaker 1: of accept that, then that can possibly lead into, i
Speaker 1: don't know, opening up some breathing room in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Day to day as well. So I'm sure that listeners
Speaker 1: have lots of experience with this as well. So I'm
Speaker 1: curious to hear from folks about what they think about
Speaker 1: that idea of work life balance. Do we need to
Speaker 1: unbalance the work life balance? Do we need better language
Speaker 1: or just get rid of it and start fresh? I
Speaker 1: don't know what what do we do about this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I want to I do want to hear how people
Speaker 1: do achieve any sort of balance, or you know, are
Speaker 1: you in a super corporate environment and and you're working
Speaker 1: with maybe your superiors to help achieve some sort of flexibility,
Speaker 1: or you know, do you feel like you're slaving away
Speaker 1: in a in a little box all the time? Let
Speaker 1: us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
Speaker 1: is where you can email us. We also highly encourage
Speaker 1: you to check out what is going on with lean In.
Speaker 1: It's not just a book, it is also a movement,
Speaker 1: so head over to lean in dot org. They also
Speaker 1: have a great Facebook network, not surprisingly since CEO of
Speaker 1: Facebook Cheryl Sandberg is at the helm of this. There
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash lean in, and there you
Speaker 1: can find a lot of women who are sharing their
Speaker 1: experiences and you can share there as well. And next
Speaker 1: week we're gonna tie up our series. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: over Caroline. What are we gonna talk about. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the word bossy and why that is
Speaker 1: a quirrel out of word. So this series we will
Speaker 1: have started square one with negotiation. We're gonna end things
Speaker 1: at the top of the ladder and we're hopefully the boss.
Speaker 1: That's right. So tune in next Friday for the conclusion
Speaker 1: of our four parts series and partnership with main In
Speaker 1: for more on is in thousands of other topics? Is
Speaker 1: it houstof works dot com