Broadlines
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Broadlines
The biggest lie we tell mothers | Neha Ruch
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if stepping away from your career wasn’t falling behind, but actually getting ahead?
Motherhood hasn’t caught up to reality. Women are still pushed into extremes: all in at work or all in at home, with very little space in between.
In this episode of Broadlines, Natalie and Rae sit down with Neha Ruch, author of The Power Pause, to challenge everything we’ve been told about ambition, motherhood, and success.
The system wasn’t built to support women, and yet women are still expected to make it work. 1 in 4 American women return to work just two weeks after giving birth and many don’t even qualify for paid leave. Neha offers a different perspective. A career pause isn’t a setback, it’s a strategic chapter.
EPISODE CREDITS...
Hosted by Natalie Lizarraga and Rae Williams
Directed by Lauren Ames
Executive Produced by Sydney Kramer and Rachel Apirian
Produced by Lauren Ames, Rae Williams, and Natalie Lizarraga
Edited by Davielle Waldner
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Broadlines is a production of The Female Quotient and recorded in Los Angeles, California.
One in four American women are back to work two weeks after giving birth. I had a baby and in two weeks I didn't even remember my name. In today's episode, we are gonna change how you think about ambition. What if pausing your career wasn't giving up your ambition, but actually doubling down on it? Today we're talking to Neha Roosh, the author of The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger Than Ever, also named one of Oprah's daily top self-help books of 2025.
SPEAKER_02As soon as I said I wanted to take my foot off the gas, in their minds, I teleported back to the 1950s. I think a lot of women almost fear that. We've undervalued childcare. So we've diminished it down to diapers and laundering, made it very easy to think of as outsourceable.
SPEAKER_01Why does it feel like there's no right choice for women when it comes to work and motherhood?
SPEAKER_02It's never really been about the kids. It's really about owning our choice for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Broadlines, a weekly video podcast by the female quotient.
SPEAKER_00Where real headlines meet real conversation.
SPEAKER_01I'm Natalie Lazaraga, journalist and former news anchor. And I'm Ray Williams, an entertainment lifestyle and culture journalist. And in today's episode, we are gonna change how you think about ambition. I do have a stat for you because that's how we like to start everything, giving you the facts. This one though, Ray, it might stop you right in your tracks. All right. Stop me, let's see. 40% of women in the US don't qualify for the 12 weeks of unpaid family leave that is guaranteed by the federal law, which I would like you to sit with just the one part that I said, which was unpaid. What ends up happening here though, which is the big deal, is that one in four American women, which is 25% of us, are back to work two weeks after giving birth. Two weeks. I had a baby and two weeks I didn't even remember my name. There's a study out of Hong Kong actually that found that extending maternity leave by just four weeks. So we're talking about just an extra month for women, actually reduced postpartum depression in cases by 22%.
SPEAKER_00I feel like 22% is a lot of percent. Like no matter what, hell of a lot of percentage. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Today we were talking to Neha Roosh, the author of The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger Than Ever. Naha, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me. This is like the perfect place to be on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_01I was pregnant and postpartum, you sent me your book. And I remember getting it and being like, at some point I have to get to this. But as you know, when you have a kid, everything is so chaotic in the beginning. And I finally, after she was old enough and I could really get the sense of what was going on in my life, I read the book and now I'm here. I made a career shift. So I want to thank you for all of your knowledge first.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, congratulations. I feel like the knowledge is supportive, but in the end, it's your own intuition and your own judgment and being able to make the best right choice for you and your family, whether that's a pause or a downshift. I think it's a bold choice to be able to make room for family life for a chapter.
SPEAKER_01When you were deciding after you had your child to maybe downshift or pause your career, I know there were a lot of people that maybe were like, What are you talking about? Because you had such a powerful position, such a great job, and everything was going well, but you decided that you wanted to take a step back. Even your husband was like, ma'am, what what's going on here? What did that feel like?
SPEAKER_02To go back, that was 10 years ago, right? And that was the height of the lean-in movement, the height of the girl boss era. And, you know, up until that point, the only association my family, my husband included, my friends, had with me was hardworking in my career, right? Like that was so much a big part of my identity that I think that the people who had the harshest judgments were the ones closest to me, not out of a place of disdain, but a genuine curiosity about how I was going to spend my day. And I think that that was the disconnect that I that I was facing was they, you know, whether it was a friend or whether it was my husband who were, you know, really concerned about my boredom or my sense of feeling like I was giving up. And meanwhile, it was in such harsh contrast to like, you know, those early months, yes, they're they're hard and they're intense, but they're demanding in a new way. They challenge you to get curious about how a little brain is growing. And I did. I found it really interesting. And also, you know, there was a part of me that felt confident that it was actually gonna open up a new sense of self and a new sense of perspective. And I was excited about it. But, you know, holding their judgments and my reality was really what sparked this.
SPEAKER_01When you talk about people asking you, what is your what are you gonna do all day? Aren't you gonna be bored? What do you think society's biggest misconception is about stay-at-home moms?
SPEAKER_02I now know because of the data. I could tell you then that it felt like they were perceiving me as an apron-clad character. Like I felt like when I as soon as I said I wanted to take my foot off the gas in their minds, I teleported back to the 1950s, right? And and, you know, I was really getting curious about this because I was meeting so many women who were not apron-clad. They were very educated, they had really interesting careers up until that point. Um, they weren't serving their husbands' cocktails at the end of the day, right? There was a mismatch between the perception that I was hearing and the reality of women I was meeting. But 10 years later, or maybe seven years later, I commissioned a survey called the American Mothers on Pause survey as I started writing the book. And the first question I wanted to know was when you think of a stay-at-home mom, who do you think of? And when you think of a working mom, who do you think of? When they think of a stay-at-home mom, they still say June Cleaver, which is a character from the 1950s show, Leave It to Beaver. When you ask, who do you think of as a working mother, they'll still say Cheryl Sandberg, Michelle Obama, and Beyonce. That is a power chasm that is far too extreme for the reality of modern women, right? One is antiquated, one is modern, one is fiction, one is fact, one starts across stages, one bakes at home. And so I think what it demonstrates is this real reality that we never caught up the caricature or the portrait of women choosing to shift their career for family life to the reality of modern women today.
SPEAKER_00What is the distinction exactly between a career gap and a power pause? Because I think some people think of it still, and like this probably plays into the caricatures, uh, that a career gap is something that's gonna be on your resume. You stop working, you obviously are gonna have this long break where you're not doing anything, which is what people think that you're doing when you're sitting at home with your kid. So, what is the difference there? It's such a great question.
SPEAKER_02Because I think the ultimate goal, right, is that we have employers who aren't looking at it as a career or a gap, they're actually looking at it at it as a chapter of non-traditional experience that an employee layered on to all of their incredible experience that came before. So, you know, when I present the definition of the power pause, what it really relies on is that when a woman or a man shifts time or energy or focus away from their paid work for a chapter, they're actually also making room for themselves to expand their network, their interests, their skills, and actually their sense of self. So when they're coming back, they're coming back even sharper than prior. And I think a lot of the book lays out not just a redefinition of ambition and feminism and financial um dignity, but then really how do you take the stage of life and really be able to unlock the possibility in it? You know, when we've historically thought of career pauses or career breaks, the assumption was that you're in full service to another priority and there's limited growth for yourself. And the power pause really relies on the assumption and belief that when you shift energy for away from paid work for other priorities, whether that's elder care, health care, um, childcare, you're actually also expanding your network, your interests, your skills, and you're actively investing in your own growth alongside.
SPEAKER_01So in your book, I mean, we're talking about career gaps. Let's say we go to an interview, right? And they see this, they see this gap. I think it's this you talk a lot about like there's a lot of work that we're doing that maybe won't isn't part of our career, but these invisible work or other stuff we're doing in this time. How is it? How do we most efficiently use our time that we're saying, hey, I'm gonna take a break? And then you're like, great, I'm just not gonna do anything, but you're there, there are other skill sets that we can hone. Can you talk towards that about what this actually is doing when we're taking this pause, the steps we need to do to elevate our career when we come back?
SPEAKER_02The reality is you can still have goals in this stage of life. And and I think getting really prescriptive about that, I always say, write your ideal day in five years, right? So, not because that's gonna be who you're gonna be tomorrow, but maybe you see yourself having a podcast network and you're like, okay, what's something measurable I can do this year that moves me that much closer. So maybe I only have naps and night times, and that's gonna be listening to a podcast or like reaching out every Wednesday to a podcaster I admire, right? Or maybe I have a whole day and I might try my hand at running my own via Substack. Moving yourself forward towards those goals also empowers you to say, well, how might I now think about how much time I need available? And because I think a big myth is you don't need breaks if you're on a career break. And the reality is that no one should work 24-7 without breaks. And to be able to invest in time in yourself, you need that time. And so maybe that's negotiating with your partner that they do mornings and evenings. Maybe that's investing in 15 hours of childcare, but knowing you have time set aside for that investment in yourself is huge. And then I think the two other pieces that are so often diminished or underappreciated about this stage of life is that actually your network, which you think is confined to the professional spaces, can expand in so many interesting ways just through the nature of parenthood, right? Like playgrounds, play spaces, PTA groups. In the end, networking is relationships. And the number one bridge back mothers report to the paid workforce are other moms. And I think the other piece is that like there's an incredible amount of self-study that can happen in this chapter for so long, you know, in the traditional workplace. Your interests have probably been prescribed to you. And one thing I tell everyone is open an iPhone note and just start writing down bullets of things that light you up, a conversation you had, an interview you read, something that made you feel proud. Those dots can seem so disparate. But I'll give you the example of how this fits back into a resume. There was a woman I interviewed down in North Carolina. She had the iPhone note. She, one of those bullets was that she helped reorganize her kids' bus route. Like it was just inefficient. She figured it out as like moms do. And when she was looking back at the sort of list of bullets from the last year, it did two things. One, it gave her clarity that, like, oh wow, project management is actually the part of my work that I really love. I want to double down on that. So she followed that curiosity a bit. And then when she went to apply, when we think about our resumes, not as career gaps, but career portfolios, right? And so she took all her incredible experience before, and then she layered on career sabbatical for family life. And under there, she used these bullets. And one of her best bullets was implemented highly technical infrastructure change for local organization, right? That was her bus route. And so you can see how whether it's goal setting or making an investment in babysitting so that you have the actual time, it allows you to plant seeds that do fill in that portfolio of work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do want to ask you about asking for help.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, we all try to do it all. And the importance of, hey, listen, I do want to move forward and I do want to strive at this. And like you said, the most relatable thing is naps at nighttime. I do so much work in that two hour span and then two hours at night because that's the most like my brain is fully focused on something else. But asking for help for women and moms because we just feel like this societal thing, like we have to do it all. If I'm not doing it all, I'm not doing it right. So just the importance of saying, hey, I need time for this, and it's important to me.
SPEAKER_0229% of women on career pauses or downshifted careers in this country right now don't have a lick of help, including family assistance. So no grandparents, nothing. That means one in three basically are trying to do this all on their own 24-7. And the reality is that isn't we we talked about what's healthy for children, like modeling a supported parent is an incredibly important piece of this. And I think part of this is because we have undervalued childcare, right? And so this goes back to the financial piece when I talked a lot about planning and planning in a two-parent household relies on the partner who's working out of the home. Recognizing, yes, that you may depend on their income for this chapter, but they depend on you for the security blanket that is the childcare and the emotional labor and the intellectual labor. The you know, my husband made the mistake and he always says he deserves a byline on the book. He said to me, like, oh, it's a luxury to be at home. And I said, No, it's a luxury for you to get on that flight to California and not think about what's going to happen at home. So my work at home allowed him to single task in the workforce. And the reason that's important, especially in the construct of childcare, is once you establish that, then the joint household income is truly joint. And when you're budgeting, you're budgeting for anything that supports the whole family to function well. And so I think part of the block on childcare is we think we have to earn it. So if you don't deserve paid, if you're not doing paid work, you don't deserve paid help is the myth. When in reality your work is unpaid right now, but you definitely deserve support and the family deserves to be supported. So how much do you need to budget out of the household income to invest in the whole family?
SPEAKER_01That really hits.
SPEAKER_02And if you can't get paid help, then you have to lower the expectations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because I think the other piece of this is not only have we thought we have to do this all alone, but we think we have to do all the things. So I've heard I interviewed this woman in Ohio who said, you know, I just felt like once I decided to take a beat from work, I suddenly needed like a gold star from the nebulous good parenting committee. So she was like volunteering, she was baking cookies, she was doing crafts, she was cleaning the house. And the reality is then the whole day becomes in service to that. And there's very little time to actually be the whole and present parent that you wanted to be, right? And so if you're not getting those breaks from a paid babysitter or caregiver or from a partner, then how can you reduce the load so you do free up naps at nighttime? So for two years I didn't have um paid child care. And during that time, I told my husband, like, you're gonna, when you come home, the house is going to be a mess. We are going to be cleaning the house together at five o'clock. And by the way, during la like, instead of cooking the elaborate meals that I probably should have, and my child would be a less picky eater now if I had, I did a lot of frozen foods. So I actively made trades to be able to use those naps at nighttimes, right? And so I think this idea that, you know, to be a stay-at-home mom, you have to be a super mom. And then by the way, you have to work 20, if you're not doing paid work, you don't deserve paid support. Well, if we dismantle those two myths, we've moved ourselves forward in a huge way.
SPEAKER_00I think one of the things that people wonder, and I know even for me, this has been something that's come up in terms of when I have kids, is how do you do that? How do you take that pause without losing your ambition and your identity? Because I think especially for me as a reporter, you know, it's kind of one in the same. Your identity is so tied into that career that when you take a break sometimes, and even if it's not a break to to have a kid or to do anything else, sometimes if you just go on pause for a month, it feels like you're losing a piece of who you are and you're not, you know, like you're not tied into the community as much. Um, and so I think a lot of women almost fear that. And that's the reason that they maybe push back having kids. So how do you kind of still keep your ambition and your your drive, if you will, while doing that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think there's a couple of things. Natalie, when you said former news anchor, right? I I paused a little bit because you're still a news anchor, those skills and interest and network go with you, right? So your identity in whatever industry you connect to are still a part of who you are. Now you're layering on another set of experiences. I think the other piece is that ambition by dictionary definition is actually the determination to do. That's it. And we're gonna do a great many things over the long game of life, and I think being able to hold it more broadly in that way allows us to think, well, what else do I want to move along during this chapter? And how might I move those interests along in small, concrete ways, right? And so you might say, I want to actually try my hand at podcasting and learn a new medium. And I'm going to freelance for one station every single or one network every single month. And I want to work on my patience. I'm going to um listen to a podcast on regulation and emotion and communication, right? So we can think about, well, what else do I want to move toward and start to add those really interesting skills to the portfolio of work that we that we are still developing?
SPEAKER_00I think there's kind of two almost schools of women, those that kind of discover this after they've had the baby and they're, you know, kind of reevaluating and figuring it out. And there are those of us who are pre-child thinking about it and like wondering if this is something that we can really do and if this is something that's for us. And even as we looked at the maternity leave status, uh, the you know, status in this country earlier, we kind of think like, okay, well, how does this even work with maternity leave? And do we really, you know, need this much time? What is the data on maternity leave tell us, in your opinion?
SPEAKER_02The ideal maternity leave based on international data and other research, including from my friend Lauren Smith Brody, is that six months is the ideal. And we're obviously severely lacking. And you you see women just having to then make really complicated choices. And by the way, not just women, one in five at-home parents right now are dads. And so I think you're looking at families who are not just considering their maternity leaves, but also, you know, affordable childcare and access to quality childcare to make uh the best right decisions for them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's like the follow-up question I have for that is in your opinion, what is the lack of leave actually costing women when it comes to finances professionally, mentally? What is the cost? What is the tax on us because of that?
SPEAKER_02I think the lack of leave really costs us our health. You know, I think before we get to the economic piece, I I think we are all we all deserve to be healthy and supported human beings. That's how we raise healthy and supported families. And time allows us to heal, both physically and mentally. And there's no there's no cost on that beyond the cost on our on our healthcare system and our longevity and our ability to raise families. So I'll start there. And then the second piece is we make more empowered decisions when we have more data. And to be able to decide, yes, I want to return, and or I want to return part-time and I need time to get the best childcare possible, andor negotiate a part-time schedule that works better for me, andor a pause, whatever women decide, more time allows them to be able to make the best choice.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the data says that the exactly what you said, but that also that paid leave is proven to improve retention and performance. So why do you think that more companies themselves, because it's one thing for me to decide, okay, I want to take a pause and I want to, you know, extend my leave and I want to, you know, walk away from a career for a little bit, maybe to reevaluate or come back. But why do you think more companies themselves don't offer women the opportunity to actually take that leave built into their professions? Because I'm I'm not gonna get the two weeks is crazy. And I'm not from the US originally, I'm from Jamaica. And so our system works a little bit differently. So that is one of the things about you know, healthcare hair and just even companies' hair that blows my mind. But what like what's the real reason, in your opinion? Like who is benefiting from us not being able to take that time?
SPEAKER_02We've undervalued childcare. So we've diminished it down to diapers line laundering, made it very easy to think of as outsourceable. And so, in not recognizing that this is real work that has real impact on our families, uh, companies have never been under the pressure to create pay policies and our government hasn't pushed it. And so I think we're finally making headway in the next in the next sort of three to five years, but there hasn't been a level of discourse before the last five to ten that have really has really put pressure to change policy.
SPEAKER_01What do you think the hardest truths women tell you about going back to work after they've had a child?
SPEAKER_02Less time with their child. If you look at the research, right, the reasons women are compelled to pause or downshift is one, the very valid want for more time with their family. And then second to that is less stress in the home. I think that there's like a huge logistical burden for families in just managing the care and operations of running a family. And with two parents working out of the home, you see that stress at uptick. And then the third reason families make the decision. For one parent deposit is the cost of childcare. So, you know, sometimes you see, especially depending on the profession, you see people do the math of, wait a second, I'm paying how much for childcare and how much am I making? And so you see that math, which we can certainly get into. But I would say the hardest sort of emotional challenge is probably tied to the data, which is just a sheer want for more time.
SPEAKER_01What's the most important thing for women to do for other women in the workplace, planning this career pause or maybe returning from one?
SPEAKER_02I think that the women have this huge opportunity right now to create a brain trust amongst ourselves. And what I mean by that is, you know, when I wrote this book, I never wanted women to say pausing is the right choice or the only choice. It's really to say we just need more valid options on the table. And to get more options on the table, that also includes the vast in-between of part-time fractional freelance roles that allow flexibility for work that actually works for women. And so, you know, when I was on tour, one of the most interesting conversations I had was a woman down in Dallas who said her, she had negotiated a two-day a week work week at HSBC. And I was shocked because financial institutions historically have been some of the harder ones to crack. And I said, Well, how did you do it? And she said, I called a friend who had a friend who had figured out a two-day week work week at JP Morgan. And I asked for her template to present to my manager. And when I heard that, I thought that's how we move it forward. We trade templates. We get really honest with each other about how we made things work at different times. And sometimes that's a reduced work schedule. Sometimes it's terminology, sometimes it's templates, sometimes it's our childcare nuances. But I think that radical honesty about how we're making it work helps.
SPEAKER_01Radical honesty. That's kind of right into my next question. What do you think something is women are afraid to say when it comes to the relationship between motherhood and work that they're afraid to say out loud? I remember thinking when I was pregnant, I don't know why people do this, but if I was pregnant, you could see my belly like, what are you gonna do? What's your plan? Are you gonna continue working? Everybody asked me that question. And I was like, She's healthy, she's fine. Thanks. Like it was like, what are you gonna? Why are you are you gonna stop working? Are you gonna keep working? And in my mind, as an ambitious person, I was like, Yes, I said yes every time. I'm gonna keep working, I'm gonna keep, I can't wait to get back to work. Not knowing what it was like to have a human child in my life and be like, wait, I want to spend all the time in the world with you. So, and even going back to work, it was like something I was afraid to say that I wanted to stay, like I want to stay home with her because it's like kind of people look at it funny, like it's shameful, like you don't want to go back to work. And I think a lot of women are afraid to say that out loud. So is there anything you've come across in your conversations that women are really uh afraid to express when it comes to motherhood and work?
SPEAKER_02I think that sense of I'm not going to be able to keep exactly who I was before is really daunting, right? I was at a 40th birthday last night and we were reflecting on this same friend had a 30th birthday where I had gone 10 weeks postpartum. And she was like, Why had you, why had you come to Nashville for that? And I was like, Well, I was so committed to being the exact same person. And what we need to know is that we are going to evolve. We just like we change from age five to 15 and 15 to 25. We're always changing. And so I think that question, well, what are you gonna do? I think the like saying I don't know is really daunting. Uh, I think the piece that women really struggle talking about beyond like, how am I making this work is the health equation. And I think we have really shamed women for we're expected to be at work and continue it on this exact same trajectory as we were, and parent, and somehow not be able to do all that with that we're supposed to do that all by ourselves. And you know, when we think about social media and how we like how that influences our perception, no one's posting their pictures or their childcare or their food delivery service. And so there's this invisible aspect to the support systems. And when I was talking about radical honesty, I think it's the singular biggest thing that could help women be able to step into confidence in whatever permutation they're in is to know that exactly how much support you need to be able to work at this capacity or her capacity, because we're comparing each other to ourselves to each other without full context as to what the trade is. That's true.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think in that same vein, I think a lot of people, and even when, you know, I've I've spoken to a lot a lot of the other, you know, kind of what you would call quote unquote ambitious women that have kids, I think the comment that a lot of people have is, well, you have all of this help and you have a staff and you have an army and you're able to afford and you're able to do all of that. So what would you say to some of the women who maybe want to kind of consider a downshift or consider a flat out pause, but don't necessarily have the means to afford it and kind of consider, you know, some of the kind of perks that go with being able to pause a privilege that they don't have yet.
SPEAKER_02Well, so it's interesting. I'm so glad you said privilege. I I do have to call this out that I think for so long, some of the tropes that have that have surrounded stay-at-home um, Natalie, you said yourself, it's very, it's very nerve-wracking to say I want to be on a career pause for a while, or I want to pause my career or I want to shift attention from from work to family for a bit because of the tropes that that haunt stay-at-home motherhood. One of those being that it's a luxury. And the reality in this country is that 60% of women choose to pause their career because of the cost of child care, or at least because of financial consideration. One of three feel forced. And so when you think about it that way, it's not to say that working out of the home is a luxury or existing in between is a luxury. It's the privilege is to get to choose. And then, you know, once we say, okay, that, you know, that is the case, then we start thinking about, well, what about for the families where they're somewhere in the middle? Like the math still has to math, careful planning done at least six months ahead of time, where both partners, in a case of a two-parent household, are putting their expenses and their income together and saying, well, what puzzle pieces and budget line items do we move around based on what our values are this year and the next year? Um I think the other piece to know is if you can't fully pause, there are so many options in the in-between. And I think looking to each other, looking to that brain trust to say, well, how might I make room for family life and optimize for whatever I'm looking for? Whether it's less stress, whether it's more time, how can I come up with permutations within my existing role that allow that?
SPEAKER_00And one of the things you said earlier that I wanted you to kind of elaborate on is that you said that the pause isn't just when you first have a baby. It can come later on, you know, maybe your second child, maybe your third, maybe when your child is in third grade, maybe when your child is in high school. I can imagine teen angst might also be if you were so what are those, what are some of the other times that, you know, like a power pause can be something that can be considered other than first child?
SPEAKER_02So uh we were talking about this in the context before of the book cover because there's a stroll on the front. And wow, that embodies motherhood. There's so much more to parenting, right? And just like we talk about work is a long game, parenting is a long game. And I had one book tour stop where someone came up to me and said, I'm on my third pause. And I was, and I, and when I asked for clarification, she said, Well, I took time off after my second. That's very common, right? Uh, when you add a multiple, it changes the strain in the family, whether it were from a childcare or a family stress perspective. Uh then she said, We sh one of her children had a uh diagnosis around third grade for a learning difference. So you see that oftentimes, right? Where there's more needs at home, especially around the homework after school time. And then I had a woman at a completely different torso say, you know, I I'm actually have clocked in 25 years at Chanel and I'm I'm finally taking a beat because I'm in the last couple of years of my child's high school and I realized I I really want to savor that time with her. Right. And and I just thought, well, isn't that isn't that the reality of parenthood that you can have um yeah, every every family is so unique in in what they need and want and what the rhythms call for. And I think it's really important that we acknowledge that there's no one straight line.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's these pauses that are happening. And also I think just being open to that, that this is you flexibility that maybe you can take a pause and being real with yourself. Like, I need to shift my priorities if I really, if I want to focus on my family, or the other way, if you're like sometimes I look at my daughter and I go, everything's pretty set here. Like I can do more work and I can and I can lean into other things. So it could, I feel like it could go both ways where you're like, like you said, foot on the gas on one thing when you're like, okay, but then I also think of adding another child, and then I'm like, that's gonna blow up my entire world. And so like for just a little bit. For just a little bit. I think a lot of women find themselves though in this like damned if you do, damned if you don't. Like I go and I have a career that I've worked hard for, but if I have a baby and paws for my family, all my hard work just goes to the wash, right? Or if I stay at home, you know, it's like you're you, if you go to work, you're missing out on childhood memories. If you stay at home, you're ashamed of that, or maybe you feel some type of way about like the 1950s trope. So women are feel like they're always stuck with like either or. Why does it feel like there's no right choice for women when it comes to work and motherhood?
SPEAKER_02Well, we've pitted stay-at-home and working mothers against each other for so long, right? And if you go back to the 1970s, a lot of that cropped up when we were talking about the Juden Cleaver era, right? You were seeing these sort of fictionalized um characters representing stay-at-home motherhood and domesticity at the same time as we were seeing second wave feminism and we were trying to prove our capacity in the workforce. And so media sort of glommed on to one version of the feminist and the working mother. And then media, who loves a cat, but you know, we love a cat fight between women. And so we dubbed it the mommy wars around, I want to say it was the mid-1980s. And women who were working out of the home said, Well, I do this to uh, you know, prove to my daughter that she has opportunity. And then uh we saw women at home say, Well, we stay at home because of secu. Like we want to create secure attachment. Well, we know from the research, and there's an incredible body of work from Stuart Friedman in Harvard Business Review, where he says the measure, it's called How Our Careers Impact Our Children, which is zilch. As long whether you work out of the home or in the home, the kids are totally fine. You have the same outcomes in terms of ambition and the same outcome in terms of health and happiness. Meaning it's never really been about the kids. It's really about owning our choice for ourselves, right? And and I think we were pitted against each other for so long to think one choice was superior to the other. I think so much of it starts with dismantling this idea that one choice is better for the kids. Because when you make things about the kids, immediately your elbows go up. But like, think about if you feel like you're making a bad choice for your children, that's gonna put your defenses up. Versus if you say to me, like, right now I'm actually wanting to stay home because it just, you know, things have been feeling so crazy. I need more less stress in the house. And I said, you know, I'm actually dialing up right now because the kids finally aged into school and I'm feeling excited about that. That's not about proving our ambition to our kids or creating better outcomes. And it suddenly makes the conversation more dynamic and about ourselves. And I think the other piece of this is to also know that I think this old idea of stay at home and working is so black and white and so antiquated. So many of us are in that sort of vast in between and I think getting really nuanced, right? Like you and I could be working the exact same amount of hours. And you might say I'm a working mom, and I might say I'm a stay-at-home mom, but the reality is we're actually probably working similar different permutations. And I think if we part with the weird labels and just go to like, actually, I'm freelancing a bit alongside, or actually I negotiated an 80% role, then it becomes so much more interesting and we can learn from each other and get closer to each other.
SPEAKER_00What gives you hope when you look at the conversation and where this all was, maybe like eight and even actually this go 10 years ago because you you mentioned that that was the height of the girl boss era, and that was kind of the height of like, you know, this kind of perception of we must be so ambitious to the point where we fall to the ground that like I don't even think we brought in conversations about, you know, children and having children and pausing and all of that. So, what gives you hope, you know, in that in that 10 years that you've been kind of doing this work, well, not the 10 years we've been doing this work, but the 10 years um since that girl boss conversation and now it has been 10 years since I've been doing this, actually.
SPEAKER_02I launched this first in 2017. So I can tell you that when I first started, it felt very uh contrarian. You know, it felt somewhat antithetical to feminism to even talk about slowing down your career for a chapter. And I think the pandemic really accelerated a moment of re-examination because two things happened. We suddenly couldn't hide our children from our workplaces. So we were seeing like kids in the construct of work, and no one had to ask, like, what does a stay-at-home mom do all day? And then the other pieces we realized wait, there are more options to make work work. Like flexibility might actually be possible. And I think we are waking up to after that this recalibration of, well, maybe it's time, yes, feminism did such great work in the 1970s till now about proving our capacity. But to prove our capacity, were we also trying to bury what we actually needed, right? Ourselves as women. And I think we're only now in the last few years saying, actually, we want to make work work better for us. We do need time to heal. We do actually need nursing rooms, we do uh want flexibility because guess what? Parenting is real work and the school day ends at three o'clock. And suddenly by being louder about our needs, even though we're in this messy middle, I think we're gonna make some progress as to actually getting those needs bet.
SPEAKER_00What is the best thing that a parent can do when it comes to setting an example for a happy child? Because we kind of touched on the fact that, you know, taking it out of the context of the children and in the context of because we there's no difference between if you're working outside or staying in the home in terms of the impact on the ambition of the children later on in life, but in terms of just setting an example for their happiness, uh, what does that look like?
SPEAKER_02I think so much of it relies on having independent success metrics from that child. So often I think as parents, we step into this stage of life and suddenly our success, which used to be salary and which used to be promotions, becomes, well, like our child's growth, our child's eating habits, their behavior. And that's like a surefire way to feel like a failure at times in parenthood. And that's incredible pressure on the child and incredible disappointment for us. And I think this ability to actually use this stage of life to move ourselves forward toward our own goals, whether that's learning a new skill, whether that's developing a part of, you know, our patience or our perspective, our network, that in and of itself challenges us to suddenly make time for ourselves, you know, proactively allow our children to see that the day isn't just about them, that they are now a part of us and growing and moving forward through these days alongside who they are.
SPEAKER_01I think a good takeaway is that if you're a stay-at-home mom, it doesn't mean you don't deserve help when you're trying to do something after this because our kids aren't going to stay little for forever. And if you want to stay home forever, that's great too, because kids need support and it's a full-time job to be a mom. But if you want these little steps forward, it's okay to ask for help and think that you deserve help as a mom. I think that's really eye-opening for a lot of people, you know, to put those two together. Like if we dismantle that, then we've got to step forward if you do want to enter the workforce again.
SPEAKER_00And I think for for me, someone who is considering motherhood and who doesn't yet have kids, I think one of the biggest takeaways for me is how to plan or actually not plan that. And to know that there are more options than stay at home and take care of baby and be that, or be super working mom Beyonce, which I thought that was actually hilarious, that that's what women think of when they think of a working mom. Again, I was like in my head, I was like, who do I think of as a working mom? And like, I definitely like it went straight to celebrity. So it's interesting that um the perception hasn't caught up between what working moms look like and what stay-at-homes home moms look like. That's another takeaway for me. But I think just the fact that there are more options than have baby don't work or have baby rush back to work um is kind of the eye-opener for me.
SPEAKER_01I think that these career pauses are undervalued. Like this is a good time for you to not have the black or white. Like you can start making changes. And what better opportunity than when you're when you're actually forced to pause because you need to stay home to take care of this child to be like, do I really like what I do? Am I really in the best position? And and then at that point you're like, I know a lot of people who have been working at one thing, had a baby and are like total other career. Cause they're like, oh, I actually had a chance to breathe and say, I hate what I do, or this is not for me. And you're right, like writing down what you like and and reevaluating if you're there for the right reasons. I hate saying that, but like if you're there for the right reasons of like maybe I've just always been told I've been good at this and I keep excelling, but it's not really what I want to be doing.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think my favorite part is the women who also say, This gave me a moment to reset because I just was disenchanted, I wasn't interested anymore. I think that radical honesty of it is a complicated decision that by the way happens to hit around midlife for a lot of women. So they've clocked in about 15 to 20 years at something that they've loved for a really long time, but they're different now. They are different and they have different perspectives and they have different needs and different interests. And I think being able to own the nonlinearity of our careers and our and our becoming is such a big part of this because we talk about it in the context certainly of childcare and the finances and certainly all of those pieces, but I think it's also a big piece is womanhood and and our and our growing and our learning alongside this stage of life.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for this conversation. We really, really appreciate it. And thank you for being on Broadlines. Oh, thank you for having me. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Broadlines, a production of the female quotient filmed in Los Angeles.
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