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Do you want the truth?
Welcome to Do You Want The Truth? where we dive deep into the real raw stories from parents in the trenches of parenthood.
Season 2 is brought to you by Sam Strom and Freelance Journalist Zara Hanawalt, along with guest co-hosts such as Jaime Fisher.
Season 1 is brought to you by Paige Connell & Sam Strom. They bring you candid conversations with parents who share their experiences of parenthood and what they wish they knew before having kids. You'll hear the real stories. The stories that are typically reserved for best friends. The stories with TMI. We believe in the power of truth telling because when someone asks, do you want the truth? We always say yes. Join us as we explore the highs and lows and everything in between so you can feel less alone on your journey.
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Do you want the truth?
The Truth About: Equity in Marriage @SheisaPaigeTurner Part II
In part two of this powerful conversation, Paige Connell returns to share the deeply personal story of what happened after the breaking point—the day of the diaper pail and the dishwasher. What followed wasn’t the end of her marriage, but a hard-won beginning.
We talk about the real work of rebuilding a partnership after years of resentment, mental overload, and feeling like the default parent. Paige opens up about navigating the Fair Play method with her husband, the realities of balancing neurodivergence in a marriage, and the emotional toll of being the one to initiate all the hard conversations.
We also get into the guilt that lingers even in equitable partnerships, how motherhood has shaped her identity, and what it means to unlearn productivity as self-worth. If you’ve ever felt unseen in your relationship, or stuck in the narrative that “it’s just easier if I do it myself,” this conversation is for you.
Paige also shares a personal update about the podcast and what’s next.
🕒 Timeline Summary:
[0:24] – The diaper pail & dishwasher moment: how one cut finger became a breaking point.
[2:00] – Paige lays it all on the table: what she needed from her marriage to stay.
[4:07] – Why the “dishwasher fight” is never really about the dishwasher.
[5:29] – How they implemented the Fair Play method (and made it their own).
[8:00] – Rebuilding trust after burnout, broken promises, and emotional distance.
[13:05] – Neurodivergence, organizational labor, and unlearning the “I’m just better at it” trap.
[19:31] – Working for yourself, fighting guilt, and reclaiming your own time.
[23:01] – Corporate parenting vs. being your own boss: the invisible weight of PTO, holidays, and school breaks.
[30:22] – The myth of the modern “village” and the impossible standards of intensive parenting.
[38:34] – What Paige would tell her best friends before they become parents.
[39:37] – The joy of watching your kids become people—outside of you.
[41:45] – Paige’s heartfelt farewell from the podcast.
🔗 Links & Resources:
Learn more about the Fair Play method by Eve Rodsky: Fair Play Life
Book mentioned: This Is How Your Marriage Ends by Matthew Fray
Follow Paige: @sheisapaigeturner
Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com
Connect with Sam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Hello and welcome back to Do you Want the Truth In today's episode? It's part two of our conversation with Paige Cannell, or, as everybody on here knows her, she is Paige Turner and if you listen to part one, you know this story is really layered. In this episode Paige talks about what came after her breaking point with her husband, what it took to rebuild her marriage, how they navigated the mental load, their real work of finding equity in a modern relationship and what their partnership looks like. Now, a few years after that conversation, We'll get into resentment, default parenting, neurodivergence, what it actually looks like to move on from burnout in a marriage. Be sure to stick around till the end of the episode.
Speaker 1:There's an important update from Paige at around minute 37 that you're going to want to hear. Other than that, enjoy the episode. Welcome back to part two of Paige Connell's story. So we left off in the last part, where you were talking about what finally kind of happened and you didn't really go into the specifics of what changed in your marriage and what kind of was that catalyst? Can you tell us a?
Speaker 2:little bit about that, yeah, so that day, the diaper pail dishwasher day, was kind of my breaking point. I really remember thinking what's the point of doing this with someone else if I feel like I'm kind of doing it alone and that they don't respect me or my time or my efforts? They don't value all the work that I'm doing? And for me I was pretty close to done in the sense that I was really not sure I could continue kind of in my marriage and the way it was existing at that point. But I had been with my husband for I don't know at that time, probably 15 or 16 years, and I knew that my husband loved me. I always knew that. I always knew he wanted me to be happy, but I knew that I wasn't. And so we sat down and I was pretty frank with him about the fact that I was incredibly unhappy and I said to him either we address this truly once and for all, like we really put a plan in place, we really do this, or I'm probably done and that sounds a bit like an ultimatum, and it wasn't meant to be an ultimatum, but it was very much. That was where I was in our relationship and for the prior six months we've been having off and on conversations about me saying I need you to do more and him saying, okay, I will do more, and then doing more for a few weeks and then not doing more and then forgetting the dishwasher, all of these things. And I had brought up the idea of fair play and the fair play method to him and he kept being like we don't need that, we don't need that. And so this was kind of the point where I said it's not really an option at this point. We're either doing this because what we've done so far has not worked or it's going to be a totally different path. And so sat down and we did the fair play game and if you've listened to our episode with Eve Rodsky, you kind of have an idea, but we didn't do it to a T.
Speaker 2:I always tell people this I'm a strong believer that you can take a method and make it work for you. You don't need to fit into a method if that makes sense. So there's parts of Fair Play that don't work for my family or for other families and I just don't do them. And so my husband and I kind of sat down and had a really open, honest conversation about what we wanted in our relationship, right, like, I asked him what he wanted and what he wanted to achieve.
Speaker 2:He asked me and we talked pretty openly about what that looked like, and then we did the fair play game, and so I think about all of this as a very layered conversation. Right, you can talk about the chores, and your relationship can still feel really unfair if you don't also talk about the mental load, if you don't also talk about, like, the inequities when it comes to who handles sick days or childcare or who buys the mother-in-law birthday present, like all of those things. I think it's really layered. We started the conversation with the domestic labor, so that was our starting point was finding equity there, and then we kind of built on that conversation as we went.
Speaker 1:Okay, and for a reminder from that conversation as we went. Okay, and for a reminder from if it's been a week or two since you've listened. Paige is referring to when she wanted her husband. They agreed to empty the dishwasher, that he would empty the dishwasher and empty the diaper pail and she got cut on her hand while she was trying to deal with the diapers and everything because he hadn't done those and so that was kind of the catalyst. It reminds me so much of Eve's blueberry Blueberry, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think so many women have had one moment that they can look at and be like this is the straw that broke the camel's back. And there's actually another book, if any men are listening, written by a dad and a husband, called this Is how your Marriage Ends, and I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, in the beginning he makes a comment about how his wife divorced him over addition to sink or something like that, or how a lot of people think that's what happened, right, Like my wife divorced me because I didn't put my laundry away, or my wife asked for a divorce because I didn't do this and it's like. Well, it's not about that. It's about the years of built up resentment, the years of built up frustrations, the platitudes, right, all of the things that happen over time. It's never really a bit like.
Speaker 2:For me. It wasn't about the fact that I cut my hand on the diaper pail and that the dishwasher wasn't emptied. It was not the first time, right, that I had gone through something like this. It was just the last time for me to want to deal with something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably more representative of everything coming to a head. It's like they can't even get you to do something.
Speaker 3:so simple, that's going to make my life so much better. Right, it just bubbles over at some point, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's only so much. Somebody said this to me the other day that kind of like boiling frog in a boiling pot of water right, if it's boiling right away they jump out, but if it slowly heats up over time they just boil right. And so it's a little bit like that where none of this happens overnight and it's not just one thing, it's a million little things that add up over time. And so I think within modern marriage and motherhood and the realities of being in a dual income home, these things feel very heavy very quickly and can be really difficult to navigate within a relationship.
Speaker 1:So how long did it take to go from where you guys were bloody hand in a diaper pail to being a little bit more even? I know you talk about being in an equal partnership now, so how long did that process take? And how is it now with the mental load, because so many moms do handle the mental load yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think the reason I like to do it in layers is, or the reason we did, and the reason now I suggest other people do it is because it's a lot. There's so, so much to unpack. This is not an easy conversation to have and I actually think the easiest thing to share is the domestic labor, right? So if that's unfair, that's kind of the easiest place to start, at least I think for most people. Where it's pretty cut and dry, yeah, you can write it down Exactly. It's like okay, did you fold the laundry or not? Right, it's tangible, you can see it. And so if we're starting small, that stuff is easy to start with. So we started there and I wouldn't say that that took very long. That part didn't take very long.
Speaker 2:The mental load portion, I think, takes longer because it's not easy to hand over the mental load, because oftentimes, if you were to ask me today what is the mental load associated with swim lessons, for example, I could probably give you the first things off the top of my mind. But then when we go to swim lessons, I'll be like oh, and this and this, and this and this and this, right, and then I remember them. So the mental load. Part of these things was a little bit harder to hand over at first, because I think sometimes the mental load is this kind of always present to-do list in your brain but it's hard to think of every single thing on that list that will ever need to be handed over until you're in the moment. So for us that took a little bit longer. I would say when I tell people about this I say it took about 18 months for us to get back to where we were before all of this. That 18 months wasn't all domestic labor and mental load. That part was probably three to six months. Really hitting our groove at nine to 12 months it took us about a year.
Speaker 2:But that 18 months, when I talk about that, that is rebuilding our relationship. That is rebuilding trust within our relationship. That is letting go of the resentment. That is the part that is the hardest to truly come back from, I think, because when you get to a point where you are so resentful and you feel taken advantage of and you feel like you can't trust your partner because that is what often happens in these scenarios is these small little moments where our partners break our trust and then that sounds big to say, not following through on emptying the dishwasher is breaking my trust, but it is. If you say you're going to do something and you don't do it, no matter how small it is, that does break your partner's trust. That is hard to come back from right. You really have to rebuild what that looks like, and so I'm sure it's not dissimilar to people who've gone through infidelity or something like that.
Speaker 2:Right, it takes a very long time to come back from these things, to rebuild relationships, to kind of forgive and forget, and, to be honest, you never forget right. You might forgive, but you don't forget. That's what took the longest, right, and that took me going to therapy and him working on himself and us working together. And, yes, of course, following through on all the other things helped and mattered and it gave us more time and energy to spend together, to spend with our kids, to spend on ourselves. If we hadn't done the domestic labor and the mental load portion of it, I would still be in a position with very little time or energy to care about anything other than surviving the day essentially, and so when we had that time, we were actually able to rebuild our relationship.
Speaker 3:That's so lovely. Yeah, I think it's also what people miss from this is I did the work of bringing this topic to the table. I walked all the way over the line to have us even initiate this conversation and to tell you what I'm feeling and to tell you what I need. And on top of that, if you're not doing your piece, I've just done all this work on top of everything else I'm doing for nothing. I think that's what people don't realize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And here's the thing this conversation and this process is not an easy one, and a lot of people try it and it doesn't work out. I think part of it is at the core of it. You have to have two people who are willing and able to put in a lot of hard work and to have a lot of conversations and to evolve within your relationship and to break away from societal norms and expectations to push back against systemic issues.
Speaker 2:I think this work within our homes is so connected to just the lived experience of being a parent and being in a modern marriage, and we live in a time that is really complicated, with a lot of conflicting narratives around traditional relationships and modern relationships and what actually works and what doesn't, and we're being fed all different types of messaging, both men and women, right, and so at the end of the day, I tell people all the time you have to have a partner that is willing and able to participate in this work, because if you don't, you're just spinning tires, you're not getting anywhere. You can have as many conversations as you want, but if your partner is not willing to put in that work with you, you don't get anywhere, and so that is a big part of this and unfortunately there are people out there that don't have partners who want to engage in this work and ultimately, you know that can lead to the dissolution of a marriage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that we have this narrative too, especially on social media, that you're either, as they say, married, single mom, or you have an equal partnership, and few people really take stock of how much work it takes to cultivate an equal partnership and how much of a work in progress it is all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also, I don't even think it's always equal, right, I say equitable a lot because I don't think it can be equal at all times. Right, this is a silly example, but my husband has had shingles so he's been very sick, I know, but he's miserable Poor guy. So I'm doing most stuff. He was on the couch laid up for days and I'm not resentful about that, because most days he's a very active partner, right. Most days he's a very active partner, right, but there's sometimes where he can't be. But also, on the flip side of that, I am traveling eight out of the next 14 days and so he's going to be doing way more than I am. It's never 50-50. It just can't be.
Speaker 2:And I think we get really hung up on that idea in relationships that it has to be equal, equal, equal, it has to feel fair is what I think it's not about. It being equal and, to your point, those are. In order to even be fair, that's a lot of work and it takes constant communication. But I think the difference between the communication we're having today, which oftentimes is more logistical, is that it's no longer weighted and no longer feels so heavy and no longer feels representative of our relationship as a whole, whereas three years ago it did right. So three years ago if he didn't empty the dishwasher, it felt like it was a personal attack on me because it was compounding things.
Speaker 2:Now if he forgets the dishwasher, it really just feels like he forgot something. It's not intentional. He didn't mean to do something to hurt my feelings, it just happened and that's okay. We all drop the ball sometimes. There's things I do sometimes and so I might forget the blueberries right, and the grocery list. These things happen. We have so much more tolerance for it because we have an equitable partnership, because we put in the constant work, because we're constantly communicating with each other. And now when my husband does forget the dishwasher or does something like that, I get the text. That's like I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave that to you. Feel free to let it go, I'll get it when I get home. So I think there's now he understands, whereas before it was like I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of this dishwasher.
Speaker 1:Was it really helpful for him to see how many cards you were holding versus how many he had?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think it made him feel bad, which was not the intention obviously. I think Eve makes that very clear. It's not supposed to be like. This is the shit I do list, even though that's what it is. But I think it put into perspective for him how much I do and we're in a relationship Sam and I have talked about this a lot my husband's neurodivergent.
Speaker 2:He is dyslexic. He has never thrived in an organizational setting, type A required work. That's always been me, even in high school. Because we've dated since high school, I would be the one who's like your paper is due tomorrow. I've been doing this since we were 16, where I've been really kind of project managing his life because I was quote unquote better suited to it and so that really played into this dynamic in our relationship where I was always inherently better at this stuff. Oh, paige is so good at this. Even his mom's like oh, I know Paige got the email. Paige is always on her email, right, that's just what people know of me.
Speaker 2:We really had to push back against that because I think everything on that list he could very easily have said well, you're just better at it. Well, that's not a good enough reason it's not a good enough reason. Yeah, how do you think I got better at it? And there's some things he's never going to be great at. And that's some things he's never going to be great at and that's okay. And there's some things I never am going to do. Like I don't mow the lawn. I haven't mowed the lawn. I'm never going to mow the lawn. Probably, if we get divorced or something ever happens to him, I'm probably going to hire somebody to mow the lawn. That's just. It's just not where I'm spending my time. But there are things you can get better at do or figure out a system that works right.
Speaker 2:He cooks dinner. Every night. I'm tired of him asking me what's for dinner. Now we do meal kits. They come, they have ingredients, they have recipes. He cooks it. I don't care. I don't care how you make it happen. Do what you have to do to make it work and I think that's a part of the conversation that is often missing is you get good at it by figuring out systems and ways to make it work. There are certain things you may never be good at, and that's okay, and we can kind of assess our tasks based on what we are best suited for, but there's no excuse or no reason that your partner should ever have three times the amount of cards that you have in that game. There's no world in which that makes sense or that that feels fair.
Speaker 1:Or that it's good for the kids, either because you're showing them how to be, and I see it in my personal life with people who grew up in a very traditional household and a very, you know, religious household. And the way they treat their wives is very different than how we're treated by our partners, and so it's really hard for us to watch that too, because it's like, oh man, this is what happens when this happens. So it's I guess it's a good reminder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's so interesting because I think it happens on a like a spectrum right. There's the traditional high control religion version of this. There's also the version that was probably more indicative of what our relationship looked like, where my husband would always, in front of the kids, be like, thank mom for dinner, even if he cooked it. I'd be like, no, thank dad for dinner, he cooked it. He was always giving appreciation and acknowledgement in the moment of the things that I did.
Speaker 2:Some women don't have that, but even though I had the appreciation and the acknowledgement at times, it didn't take away the weight of the work. It didn't make me feel better doing it and my kids still would have seen that my husband appreciated me and didn't take me for granted and really was thankful for what I was doing. My husband was never ungrateful or he would never tell someone what she does isn't hard. That was not my world right. My husband very much understood how hard it was. Yet he still wasn't participating in a way that felt there and I still felt taken advantage of in that dynamic.
Speaker 2:There are women who are on the other side of it, where they're not getting acknowledgement right. They don't feel valued. They feel taken advantage of. Their children are seeing a man who expects that, that that is a given right, and so this really does happen on a spectrum, and so you can have a partner that is kind and appreciative and quote unquote, hands-on and active and still feel the weight of these things. And so I say that because I think some women are like oh well, I don't have it as bad as the woman in the trad wife situation over here. It can still feel bad, though, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:I think we can still we can have room for kind of the nuance in this conversation. Yeah, and I think what you said about feeling fair is the most important thing, because it's not. I think that's where I got tripped up. I'm like it should be 50, 50. What the fuck? This isn't 50, 50. Yeah, and I think I mean it's easy to do because you're so stressed out. Has this changed for you too? So I know that you are working for yourself now. How has the dynamic changed and how are things going now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've had to rebalance because, I think, with me being home so, for context, we used to have a live-in au pair, and that ended over a year ago, and we did that because we could never get our younger two kids into daycare and we were having trouble with keeping nannies because we didn't need the hours that they wanted all these things. And so we ended up getting an au pair during the pandemic and we did that for two years. That ended last spring and I still had a full-time job. So there was a shift there, right, like who's you know what does that look like now? That took some time to figure out. Then, six months later, I lost my job and so then it was this weird dynamic where I kind of defaulted in my own way, the guilt of like, oh, I don't have the full-time job now and it's like, okay, well, so I was doing the laundry during the day or making the lunches during the day and taking my daughter to speech therapy three times a week and every doctor's appointment. And then I realized hey, no, we need to revisit this conversation and what this looks like. And this is why I say it's a constant conversation, because I think our lives are always changing, right. I might go back to a position where I'm working full time, or we might change our childcare situation, and every time we do that, we need to readjust, we need to be intentional about what this work looks like and how we can make it feel fair, right. And so I think now it's been six months since I got laid off. I feel like we're in a really good group. We know what's going on.
Speaker 2:I will still say I have a hard time with the societal conditioning that has kind of told me that I always need to be doing everything all the time, right. And so, yeah, and yeah, and I still work full time. It's just I work for myself and so I have way more flexibility than I did in my corporate job. But I sometimes feel guilty about the flexibility. And then I'm like, why do I feel guilty about this thing that I created for myself? I'm still getting paid, I still work hard, I still do all these things, and yet I still feel guilty.
Speaker 2:And then I'm like, oh well, I should fill that time with more things. And it's like, no, you don't have to do that. So that's what the hardest thing for me in this new phase of life is every time I'm not sitting here in front of my computer, I'm feeling compelled to clean the kid's closet or like do something instead of oh, actually, I could read that book someone sent me and I don't do that, and that's me. That has nothing to do with my partnership, right, that has to do. And this is why I say this is a conversation that's so layered, because in marriage and motherhood and just the lived experience of being a woman in this world, we're conditioned to constantly be productive, and so I constantly have to have the conversation with myself about, like hey, paige, it's okay to sit here and not clean your daughter's closet out, just because you have an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So when I stopped working, what was that about? Six months ago as well, maybe a little bit longer I have. I mean, I still deal with the same thing where it's like, well, I need to. I don't want to like be dependent on my husband. I'm going to start a reselling business, and now it's like taken over our house where it could have just sat and read a book Maybe that would have been an easier thing for our life, but it is so ingrained in us, especially millennials.
Speaker 1:I think it was a little bit more acceptable for the older generations to know that, yeah, domesticity is okay, but also you're doing both right. You're trying to fill every hour of the day, which is just not good for your nervous system or your health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and the things that I think I have to talk myself out of feeling guilty about, right, going to a midday workout class because I can, and I feel guilty about that. And then I'm like why I worked all morning, I work all afternoon, I work at night. Why am I guilting myself for going to a one-hour workout class when there are? I follow this one dad on social media who is a working dad and every day on his lunch break he shows himself going to the gym at his office. There's a gym at his office and he goes to it every day. I don't think he feels guilty about that, but I do right.
Speaker 1:I feel guilty about that.
Speaker 2:Right. I feel guilty, though, and so many of the men I know in my life have a very specific time of day. They always go to the gym, and I always feel like I could be using that for my family or for my work, and that's what I'm supposed to be doing, not for myself. And so, to your point, I have to reprogram my own brain all of the time to say, actually no, this stuff matters too. You're allowed to go to a midday yoga class Not even allowed. You don't have to be able to just do it, because that's being a person. You can do those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how has family been since you've been laid off? Has there been a change? Is it more fun? Is there a little bit more lightness? Because, paige, you know my thoughts on having a dual income household in corporate America. I'm curious how your life that way has been impacted.
Speaker 2:It's less stressful in the sense that I will say it's still stressful in the sense that I feel like I'm still running around all the time. It's less stressful in the sense that I don't feel like I have to give anybody a reason. I don't have to tell my boss that my kids have a half day, I don't have to beg for forgiveness because my son's doctor's appointment ran long. I no longer feel that right. It's pressure to pretend my family life doesn't exist and to balance that. I think that's the thing that was always so hard. It's like I'm so sorry the kids don't have school because it's Good Friday, Sorry.
Speaker 2:And then having to navigate what that looked like right and and then having to navigate what that looked like right and feeling guilty and feeling like I had to do both, because I think nowadays in corporate America you can work remote, you can do both.
Speaker 2:And so then I felt the pressure to like work while my kids were home and I was always stressed and felt like I was pulled in both directions, Whereas now my kids had Monday off. I didn't even look at my phone, I just blocked my calendar because I'm my own boss now, and answered emails the next day. I don't know it's fine, it's not urgent, but I think when you work in corporate, everything is made to feel urgent and important and more important than your life. Now I still feel so much pressure to do well in my career and to make money and this career itself is really strange and so it has its own unique pressures but I no longer feel that push and pull to pretend like my life doesn't need me right, and I think that's the biggest difference. And so, yeah, I no longer stress out when my kid is sick. I no longer stress out on a school break. They're just parts of my life and we just navigate them. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, how did you navigate it when you were employed full-time? How did you deal with all the random little oh, we have a day off because they're not even going to give you a reason, right, because it's Tuesday. Yeah, because it's Tuesday, you have a half day because it's a Friday. How are you doing that? Because I, having been writing in this industry for 10 years, I still don't know what people do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, combo pack of either PTO or working split days, where I would take the morning off and my husband would do the afternoon, because he gets home at three. So I'd kind of just do a little work during nap time and then run it through when he got home. But a lot of the times, because I worked at a smaller company, I would just work while they were home, which was a nightmare. I was just answering emails all day, taking calls while they were home, and it was terrible. So, yeah, that was what I would do. But there's not enough PTO to cover the amount of days off they have. Right, even in the last three weeks they had last Friday off or a half day. Last Friday they have this entire week off and then next Tuesday they have a full day. So in three weeks we have not had one full week of school. So it's constant, and especially as you have school-age kids, and so, yeah, it was a combination of all different things and I was very lucky to work from home and have a flexible job.
Speaker 2:If I worked shift work or worked in an office, it would have been PTO and or finding someone to care for them, because Monday, for example, is a holiday in Massachusetts, it's Patriot's Day. Nobody else celebrates it but us, paul Revere, you know all the things. Yeah, yes, we had the whole. It's a whole weekend. They have a whole reenactment of all the things, paul Revere, right, it is kind of. It's kind of cool, but also, yeah, but we have the day off, but it's not a federally mandated holiday, right.
Speaker 2:So my husband still had to work. There's no camp, there's no childcare, there's nothing, but it's still technically a day where a lot of people work. Those were the days that would kill me, right, because this is a day where people work but there's literally no child care and the babysitter I would call in is also working because it's not a day off. So that's the thing that I think people don't recognize, that happens so much to working parents and there's no solution. If you don't have grandparents or just a built-in care provider, then you're really in a position where you don't have many options.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And nobody talks about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, at all Nobody. And the other thing too is you start to. So, as we were looking for schools for our son, it's interesting because you can kind of buy your way out of these things and which I know outsourcing, you can do that. But private schools have a lot fewer days off during the year. They have a lot fewer half days. And it's interesting because when you look at people making the policies, their kids don't go to public school, so they're not having to deal with these things, and if they do have a nanny or whatever, it is an outpair or whatever. So that was interesting as we were looking at schools, for us to be like whoa you either have to pay you know a shit ton of money for your kid to go to private school, or you have to have somebody step back, take more flexible gig, which tends to be the mom. Yeah, because men, because men still make more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you can definitely buy your way out of a lot of things, right, and I think that's the whole point of it is even the idea of the perfect stay-at-home mom. Typically that's a woman who sits in a position of privilege where there's money, and that makes it a lot easier when there's a lot of money involved. And so I think the lived experience of many who are either middle-class or not in a position where they have the funds to do this, I think that is the reality of most people, right, they don't have the money to pay for private school. I couldn't pay $50,000 a year for all four of them. That wouldn't be possible. Like, oh, we can't do that.
Speaker 2:Most families can't afford childcare at all, and so the idea that our afterschool alone for the big kids for two kids is about $10,000 a year, just for afterschool alone for the big kids for two kids is about $10,000 a year just for afterschool care. That's two, two and a half hours a day, and so you add on summer breaks and all the. Yeah, I think we spent around $20,000 a year for the two big kids, so $10,000 per kid for care.
Speaker 1:So a third of what daycare is.
Speaker 2:Actually, yeah, depending on where you live. So there's this idea yeah, money can buy you out of some of this struggle, for sure, but that shouldn't be the case. It shouldn't take this much money to be able to work a job and send your kid to school. It shouldn't take this much money and most people work at a job that does not end at three o'clock and that is when the school day ends.
Speaker 2:There's also research done on what they call intensive parenting, this expectation in modern day to be so involved in our kids' lives and so present in their lives. Even this narrative I remember one of my videos that really resonated with people was this idea that we need to stop shaming parents who are on their phone at soccer practice because they're probably answering an email, they're probably ordering groceries, maybe this is the only minute all day they've had just to doom scroll. We are so ingrained in our kids' day-to-day lives we're expected to watch soccer practice. My parents would have dropped me off and left Now my son, who's eight. It literally says this is not a drop-off practice. You have to stay, you have to stay and you have to be there and that's an hour.
Speaker 2:It's probably just legally that they're not like, yeah, but that's the difference between now and the 70s and the 60s, right, there's way more in way of liability and legal repercussions and we now expect parents to constantly be available to our kids and engaged with them. Right, talking to them all the time, sitting down with them when they watch TV, and there's this information overload we get as parents, which we've talked about before, sam, we're just always fed so much constant information about how to be a good parent. But also the expectations are different. Moms in the 70s, who were stay-at-home moms, supposedly spent less time with their children than working mothers do today. Right, we spend more time with our kids today than those women did with their kids, and they were stay-at-home parents.
Speaker 2:It was normal for your five-year-old to take their bike and go ride to their friend's house. If I sent my five-year-old on a bike, somebody would be calling the cops. Right, my son is not allowed off the bus without me at eight years old. I have to be there to get him and it's not like he's walking three houses to get into our house.
Speaker 3:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:But this is the thing, right. We often don't talk about that enough, as it pertains to things like the mental load and the things that make motherhood and parenthood hard. Is this expectation that mostly falls to moms to be so incredibly present in our kids' lives for fear of what our parents, the latchkey kid generation, where they weren't even around? Where were they? Who knows right?
Speaker 3:Like where is mom?
Speaker 2:I don't know, can't call her, she doesn't have a cell phone. I guess we'll find out. It's so different now. Right, it's so different now and I don't think we give enough credit to the fact that that's a big part of this conversation, and why it feels so difficult and why the mental load feels so heavy is because simply just being on your phone at soccer practice is something you're going to be judged for and it's like I'm just trying to do everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And also, if it's so important to you that parents watch their kids play soccer, why are you noticing what other parents are doing? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:It's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you'll sometimes see, obviously, social media take it with a grain of salt, but these things resonate with people and I think when something resonates, I always say to someone if a video got a million views, it's for a reason. Right, people resonated with it enough. It doesn't get a million views without people caring about the topic. There'll be videos of parents being like I was at my son's soccer game and this mom never once looked up from her phone. You should be watching your kid.
Speaker 2:This is important, but what I think that often does is it ignores the fact that, as I was just saying, oftentimes we are juggling multiple things. Right, I'm leaving work early to bring my son to soccer, and so when I'm at soccer, I need to also be working. I'm answering emails, I'm on my Slack, I'm doing those things because I'm still working and I'm there because you booked it at soccer practices at 4 pm. My work day ends at 5. I don't know what you want me to do. So I think this is the juggle that so many mothers in particular experience, where there is this pressure from society and this judgment from society, but also the expectations that we can do it all and that's impossible.
Speaker 3:Right, we should do it all yeah, that we should want to even yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that I was talking to my husband about this, because our HOA board is a nightmare. People are here's what you should be doing, blah, blah, blah. Where's the community? Being like hey, this person, you're not doing something that you're supposed to be doing. We park in our driveway, right? We get a hate note on our car every single time we do it, and instead of coming and knocking on the door and being like, hey, did you forget that you're parked in the driveway Because a lot of times, leo might be sleeping or whatever it it is, there's these just hate notes with full page printed out. This isn't what we're talking about. But instead of just coming in and being like, hey, are you guys okay? Or that mom, being like, hey, like, how's it going? Do you need anything, I feel like there's such a lack of community and compassion between us. Instead, it's you're not doing it right, because we're also dysregulated, instead of just being like hey, that that person clearly needs help. Let me jump in and see how I can help. Yeah, really annoying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, we assume the worst, as opposed to being like, oh, maybe they're doing this or maybe I think we can. To your point, I think there's a real lack of empathy for one another, even though we live the same experiences. Right, we've all had a bad day, we've all had a day where we're just doing too many things and I think we're so quick to judge each other. But I think also a lot of that does come again from those societal expectations, the judgment we feel ourselves. We often kind of put onto other people, even if not intentionally right. So it takes a lot of work to not do that right.
Speaker 2:I think I was just having a conversation with some woman about grandparents and how so many of them are just uninvolved, and I pushed back on them and I was like I don't know that they need to be as involved as we want them to be. And they'll say, well, my grandparents were involved and I'm like again, that was not because they wanted to be, that's just because that's how the system worked and there was nothing else. There was no other option. So, instead of being mad at your mom for not providing you child care, like could we have a conversation about what would work. How do we solve this problem? And maybe like, why doesn't your mom want to do that?
Speaker 2:Right, and I think we often come this awful person and I'm like I don't, that's the whole thing. I didn't think that. I never thought that about him. I didn't feel like he was intentionally taking advantage of my time or intentionally trying to hurt me. I knew he wasn't.
Speaker 2:I knew that I probably could have come from the other perspective that you often hear online like dump his ass, like he's awful he wasn't. He wasn't an awful person. I he wasn't, he wasn't an awful person. I don't think he was doing any of those things. I could also recognize that he had been failed by the system and he hadn't been prepared for all these things. And I don't think we have that. These conversations are nuanced and I don't think that we leave a lot of space for nuance. It's very black and white and I don't think it has to be and I think we can say like, hey, am I annoyed that my mom's not more involved week to week with my kids? Maybe because I'm jealous of the people who have that, but at the same time, when I'm 65, do I want to be doing that Not really Like I live it. I cannot wait for the day where I'm not living by somebody else's schedule and I can just live by at the gym every day.
Speaker 2:She's like I went to this class and I went to this class. She's living her life. Go for it Travels like crazy, and I could be mad that she doesn't provide childcare, or I could think well, what do I want when I'm 65? What do I want?
Speaker 3:to do in my life when I'm 65? It's just another way we expect women to be the safety net for everything 100%, yeah, yeah, because it's not grandpa's.
Speaker 2:I know this is like it's not grandpa, it's definitely not, yeah, and so I think that's the thing, right. And I think we've been told we've talked about this before here on this podcast. I thought there'd be a village, and where is the village? But also, what does that mean to your point, sam, of community? It's like, well, you also have to be a villager if you're in a village, and what does that look like? Right, how are you providing care for other people? And a lot of women say, well, I don't have the bandwidth to do that. And it's like, right, we're all struggling, right, and so we need systems and support and we need infrastructure, we need all of these things. But, yeah, I think my hope for most people these days is that they can take that time to step out of their own lived experience when they can, and kind of look at the different angles, to kind of talk about these conversations from, because I don't think they are black and white.
Speaker 3:Yeah, contrary to what we see on social media?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, very contrary to that.
Speaker 1:And I know we only have a few minutes left with you, paige, and you know we always wrap these up with our two final questions. So what advice would you give your best friends if they were coming to you and saying hey, we're going to have kids.
Speaker 2:What advice would you give them? Couple, first and foremost, get on the daycare waitlist. Second, I would definitely tell them to have a conversation with their partner about what equity looks like for their relationship, especially in parenting. I think a lot of people feel like things feel really fair before kids come and they assume they'll remain fair. But I think when we're not intentional about these conversations, things can really tip towards one person, and so I mean my friends know me, so they would just probably look at my Instagram at this point. But that would be my advice that I would give to them is to kind of have these conversations before the kids are here, so you're prepared and not trying to figure it out as you go. But definitely get in the daycare waitlist too, because otherwise it's going to be a lot harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are two really good pieces of advice. And what has brought you unexpected joy from your journey in motherhood so far?
Speaker 2:I don't know that it's unexpected. I mean, motherhood changed my life in every possible way, right, it changed my relationship, it changed my career, it changed everything about my whole life, and I think there's so many things, but I think the things that really bring me the most joy is watching my kids with each other, not even just with each other, but also with other people, watching my kids become people outside of me, because I think part of motherhood that can feel so overwhelming is it feels like we have to pour all of ourselves into our kids. And then you watch your kids pouring into other people and having relationships outside of you, and it's almost a friendly reminder that you're allowed to do that too and you can find joy outside of your kids and they're going to find joy outside of you. I think it can feel so, especially in the early days. It's all or nothing on mom and on this baby to be happy, and I find so much joy in watching them have relationships with people that are not me and that bring them joy outside of me, because I think it's just a friendly reminder that we all need more than one person to be happy and to be fulfilled. And, to your point of community and village. They're building their villages and it's the cutest, sweetest thing to see ever and they have nicknames for each other that I don't even know about and that makes me so happy. Conversations yeah, my God, it's so cute when you watch them.
Speaker 2:My daughter, we had a play date and we drove together and they were in the back seat and me and my girlfriend were in the front seats and they were talking and I said, oh what To my daughter? And she goes we aren't talking to you. And I was like you know what? There's a point in life where they're not talking to us anymore, right, and she's only four. But this is her own relationship, right? This is her best friend, that she has her whole own thing with. That I am not a part of, and I think that is beautiful.
Speaker 1:It is beautiful.
Speaker 2:And then we also have an announcement. You may have noticed a change in some of the content and who has been joining. So this, this point in time, and I'm so sad, but I think the mission of it and the I don't know, I don't want to say the legacy of it carries on with you. But you know, I think these are the most important conversations we could be having about kind of what we can expect in the conversations we don't already have, and about parenting and about relationships, and I've been so thankful to have them with you, sam, over the last year Almost, and I've been so thankful to have them with you, sam, over the last year Almost a full year. And I will still be a friend of the pod and hopefully I can step in whenever you need help, but I will still be around, I'll still be online, I'll still be cheering everybody on over here, but I just won't be involved in a full-time capacity and I'm so grateful to you, paige.
Speaker 1:I don't think this ever would have happened without you and I cannot say how grateful I am to you and you joining this whole endeavor. And we're going to have some guest hosts coming up and we do have a full-time co-host who is here with us. You've heard her voice before. So, zara, do you want to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am so excited to be joining. I feel like I have very big shoes to fill with Paige leaving, but so excited to keep having conversations with you, Sam, and welcome all of our guests and get into all the stuff, all the parenting stuff and the fertility stuff and more.
Speaker 2:It's endless. You'll never not have something to talk about, literally, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you both so much, and I'm sure, paige, hopefully we'll have you back soon, you know, once things lighten up. But we have some fun guests coming that you might be interested in joining us for. So until next week, we will talk to you later. Bye.
