Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello, out louders. It's
Speaker 2: a public holiday today, so we're bringing you something a
Speaker 2: little bit different than your usual Monday Mamma maya out
Speaker 2: loud episode.
Speaker 3: Did you know that January is widely considered divorce month?
Speaker 4: Have you got an announcement?
Speaker 3: Jesse, No, I don't do you Holly can't get.
Speaker 1: Divorced because she's not married, because she's a hoe and
Speaker 1: not the gardening type. There was a piece written for
Speaker 1: Mamma mea a title January is Divorce Month, and it
Speaker 1: talks about why relationships particularly fall apart at this time
Speaker 1: of year. I don't know if anyone has ever tried
Speaker 1: to get an appointment with a marriage counselor or any
Speaker 1: kind of therapist in January or February.
Speaker 4: Very tricky. For speaking from.
Speaker 2: Experience, they say it's They think it's probably a combination
Speaker 2: of holiday financial pressure, spending too much time together and
Speaker 2: maybe with family and in laws too when you're just
Speaker 2: like I'm done with that, or conflicting parenting styles over
Speaker 2: the school holidays. Whatever it is, all bad in.
Speaker 3: Changular, there are likely many out louders who are nodding
Speaker 3: in recognition or have someone in their life who is
Speaker 3: going through it. So we thought today we would share
Speaker 3: a chat that could come in handy. In this episode,
Speaker 3: we unpack some words from a celebrity who has gone
Speaker 3: through a divorce.
Speaker 1: It's actually a subscriber episode, but we thought because these
Speaker 1: are serious times, we might bring it out from behind
Speaker 1: the paywall in case it helps any out louders who
Speaker 1: are listening and maybe going through it.
Speaker 4: Enjoy out Louders.
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring up a name we haven't mentioned
Speaker 2: for a while, and some of you might go, oh, no,
Speaker 2: they're going to talk about her again, But she's one
Speaker 2: of our out loud family, one of our extended family
Speaker 2: of hyperfixation celebrities.
Speaker 1: Hi, guys, it's Emily Radikowski.
Speaker 2: Em Rada as she has always known here, model, prominent feminist.
Speaker 1: Or.
Speaker 4: She nemesis of mine.
Speaker 2: She has no idea that she's me as nemesis, but
Speaker 2: you know, anyway, she gave a big interview in Vogue
Speaker 2: recently or did she do the interview? I can't remember. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it was like her and an author and they were
Speaker 2: doing a conversation and it was all about divorce. And
Speaker 2: the reason I'm bringing it is because I think that
Speaker 2: she said something that is actually very relatable.
Speaker 4: Does she need our help because she's done a segment?
Speaker 2: It's like that, right, So A you might remember that
Speaker 2: a while she got divorced in twenty twenty two, she
Speaker 2: had been married to this guy with a silly name.
Speaker 2: No offense to anyone who's listening to this, who's called
Speaker 2: Sebastian Bear McClard. Your name isn't silly, but this man's
Speaker 2: is silly. And they got divorced in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: after four years of marriage. And they share a son.
Speaker 2: And then Emrada posted her diamond rings that she'd repurposed
Speaker 2: post divorce to say power, etc. Anyway, she's talking about
Speaker 2: this divorce in this interview in Vogue, and I think
Speaker 2: this is something that a lot of women feel. She said,
Speaker 2: I felt marriage was a romantic thing. I thought it
Speaker 2: would ultimately be a partnership. I didn't think about shared labor. Because,
Speaker 2: in the immortal words of Cardi b I don't cook,
Speaker 2: I don't clean. Let me show you how I got
Speaker 2: this ring. That is a line from Acardi, these song friends.
Speaker 2: But what she means is she didn't cook. She didn't,
Speaker 2: But after having a child, I found myself accepting what
Speaker 2: was happening. I never cooked, and suddenly I was not
Speaker 2: just cooking but also being the breadwinner while simultaneously organizing
Speaker 2: our social schedule and being the primary caretaker of our child.
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in the decisions we make in our lives,
Speaker 2: particularly as women, because by the end of my marriage,
Speaker 2: my world was suddenly extremely small and less important, less valuable.
Speaker 2: It was a slow devolution from oh, we're partners and
Speaker 2: this person respects all that I'm doing, to feeling like
Speaker 2: a possession. I think Emrada speaks the truth there, and
Speaker 2: a lot of women would relate.
Speaker 3: I agree, she's one of us. I've always that's one
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 1: I knew it.
Speaker 3: She's absolutely one of us. I liked how she talked
Speaker 3: about almost how invisibly that transition took place, the transition
Speaker 3: from wife to mother. There was a question in there
Speaker 3: about what the patriarchy has more of a hold over,
Speaker 3: like whether it's actually the transition to wife that is
Speaker 3: what makes you submissive. But I think that she was
Speaker 3: right in saying no, no, no, it's the transition to
Speaker 3: mother that totally undoes you. And that she was saying
Speaker 3: as well, she was still making all the money. It's
Speaker 3: not like she was the person who was reliant on
Speaker 3: her husband for income, but someone had to cook for
Speaker 3: the child, and so she did. It reminded me of
Speaker 3: this episode. I listened to of the Diary of a
Speaker 3: CEO recently with gender expert doctor Richard Reeves, and he
Speaker 3: said this about marriage and child rearing.
Speaker 5: My wife and I had this rule. Well, first of all,
Speaker 5: we said we're gonna have kids, We're going to raise
Speaker 5: them ourselves. We're not going to have kids, and then
Speaker 5: literally have full time nanny from nannies and night nanny's
Speaker 5: and really, but we also both want to pursue careers.
Speaker 5: And so what that meant was we had a rule,
Speaker 5: which is, you can't have two big jobs at the
Speaker 5: same time. Now, a big job in our case wasn't
Speaker 5: necessarily a high earning job. It was a demanding job.
Speaker 5: It was a job that would be difficult for you
Speaker 5: to just say I got to go my kids sick
Speaker 5: or I need to stay home today or whatever job
Speaker 5: that would make that hard. So, for example, when I
Speaker 5: was in government, in the UK, I was working number ten.
Speaker 5: That was a big job. It was not a big salary,
Speaker 5: but it was a big job. And so my wife
Speaker 5: did a more much more flexible job so that she
Speaker 5: could be the one who could stay at home kind
Speaker 5: of et cetera. And then when she was a partner
Speaker 5: at a major consultancy, I was at home. I was writing,
Speaker 5: and I was doing all that. And so you have
Speaker 5: to have one of you that's like, I got it,
Speaker 5: I got the kids. I'm primary person with the kids
Speaker 5: because otherwise trying to both have big jobs and raise
Speaker 5: the kids.
Speaker 3: Firstly, at the little giggle that he gave when he
Speaker 3: said having someone else to reach out children, that broke
Speaker 3: my heart. I really didn't like that.
Speaker 1: The man without kids and the man whose wife stayed
Speaker 1: home and looked after his kids.
Speaker 4: Imagine someone to look after your kids.
Speaker 3: And the second thing I thought is how idealistic to
Speaker 3: think we can't both have big jobs dot dot dot
Speaker 3: at the same time. It's such a gas lighty way
Speaker 3: to keep someone going. Yours can be flexible for the
Speaker 3: moment while. And I'm not saying that he's necessarily doing this,
Speaker 3: but what's really difficult for women is that when the
Speaker 3: kids are little and you've maybe taken some maternity leave,
Speaker 3: or you're maybe making decisions not what's best for you,
Speaker 3: but what's best for the family, and the husband or
Speaker 3: the man is going and staying at his kind of
Speaker 3: not so flexible job. How often does that really switch? Yeah,
Speaker 3: And how hard is it to look at each other
Speaker 3: and go, hey, you know how you've climbed the latter
Speaker 3: seven spots and I've gone down four. Here's an idea,
Speaker 3: here's my turn. I'm going to make one third of
Speaker 3: the money you do so that you can work in
Speaker 3: a completely different It doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: It can't happen one hundred percent, right, because this theory
Speaker 2: has been around a long time. It's about having a
Speaker 2: lead parent. You know, you're both pretty equal, but one
Speaker 2: of you is the lead parent at home, and the
Speaker 2: idea being that the person who's not the lead parent
Speaker 2: can lean into the career, and then the batch on
Speaker 2: can be passed and the lead parent can lean into
Speaker 2: their career. Now, in an ideal world, it's a bloody
Speaker 2: great idea, but as you've already pointed out, Jesse, how
Speaker 2: often that actually happen in practice? Because the problem is
Speaker 2: is you earn a certain amount of money that pays
Speaker 2: for your life, your house, your mortgage, all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and then if you suddenly switch it, how does that work?
Speaker 2: And then also as another hard done by supermodel found
Speaker 2: out Giselle, remember how when she broke up with Tom
Speaker 2: Brady and they'd had their kids, she said, I kept
Speaker 2: waiting for my turn because he kept saying, don't worry, darling,
Speaker 2: I'm going to retire soon and then you can get
Speaker 2: back into your career full bore. And she was like,
Speaker 2: funnily enough, my turn never came.
Speaker 1: Remember here retired, and then like two months later he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm making a comeback and she left him.
Speaker 3: And the stats as well about if a woman even
Speaker 3: does go back, let's say she is doing the big job,
Speaker 3: she's more than likely also doing the other jobs, the
Speaker 3: other stuff, for the cleaning and the social schedules and
Speaker 3: the cooking and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: I did. But I'm not the lead parent. Brent's the
Speaker 2: lead parent, has he always been most of the time.
Speaker 2: So I agree for ordinary people, you know, and a
Speaker 2: lot of these people talking in Vogue and everything, they're
Speaker 2: not necessarily ordinary people. I agree with the statement that
Speaker 2: you can't both have really big jobs and still be
Speaker 2: hands on at home. Well, not for most ordinary people,
Speaker 2: because it wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 4: In math, doesn't work in my house.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't have worked if we both had had big jobs.
Speaker 2: I mean big job sounds, but you know I had
Speaker 2: more of a demanding job, let's say, and as he
Speaker 2: puts it, I think that's a really good description of it.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily about the money, although it usually is too.
Speaker 2: But the job that isn't like I can work from
Speaker 2: home for three hours this afternoon, I can call him sick,
Speaker 2: or I don't have to travel or like. The job
Speaker 2: that's more flexible is the job that lends itself more
Speaker 2: to being lead parent, and in our house, that's always
Speaker 2: been Brent's role, right. I think if Brent had also
Speaker 2: been trying to do a really full on job, we
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been able to do it.
Speaker 3: No, I've been saying to Luca for a year, you
Speaker 3: can't have to full on massive jobs. And he says, yes,
Speaker 3: you can. Look at my parents maya, can you help shit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I reckon there's a and putting this to
Speaker 2: Mia obviously for her conversation. They're the bosses.
Speaker 4: It's different, so different. So like I remember when I first.
Speaker 2: Came to work at Mama Mia a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Mia left the office at two every day she'd work again. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you lazier. I
Speaker 2: just sounds like it was great, not that it would
Speaker 2: not that it would be lazy if you have said that.
Speaker 2: But I remember because I was looking, obviously looking for
Speaker 2: models of how things worked. Mia was in early news
Speaker 2: conference because in those days it was Mia was writing
Speaker 2: for the website, doing all that stuff. She would leave
Speaker 2: it too, kid, pick up, sort things out at home,
Speaker 2: and then she'd be back online it was Skype or
Speaker 2: whatever in those days, like later in the afternoon. You
Speaker 2: were able to do that because you're the boss.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So this is why women will often sacrifice money for flexibility,
Speaker 1: because even if you work more hours, if they are
Speaker 1: your hours to decide when you work them, it gives
Speaker 1: you a degree of freedom and less stress.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: What I find really hard to untangle about this. The
Speaker 1: default thing is to blame men and go it's not fair.
Speaker 1: Why won't men do more? Having employed literally hundreds of
Speaker 1: women and worked with probably a thousand women over my career.
Speaker 1: This is a generalization, but it has been the case
Speaker 1: in the majority of situations I've seen. The men don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to work part time, but the women do so.
Speaker 1: Whether it's because we genuinely want to be with our
Speaker 1: kids more, and this is what I can't untangle even
Speaker 1: in myself. How much is that we have a desire
Speaker 1: to be with our kids more, and how much is
Speaker 1: that we know that society and we've internalized society's expectations
Speaker 1: that we should be with our kids.
Speaker 2: More, choices made them so we feel less, we feel
Speaker 2: less guilty.
Speaker 3: A few things going on the part time prefer Maybe
Speaker 3: that's because of the amount of labor going on in
Speaker 3: your personal life that bleeds. That's like, if you are
Speaker 3: cooking and picking up and doctor's appointments, cleaning and all
Speaker 3: of the things, then it is very difficult to fit
Speaker 3: a full time job around that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but me is saying that could be a man
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 3: Yes, I know, But if the woman is already doing
Speaker 3: those things, whether or not she's working full time or
Speaker 3: part time, I think that she's then making that sacrifice
Speaker 3: because of what she's already got on during the week,
Speaker 3: If that makes sense. You know.
Speaker 2: But what happens then, and this is what Emrad is
Speaker 2: talking about, right, and I remember writing about this and
Speaker 2: I give the marriage a year, is that This is
Speaker 2: how it plays out in a lot of ordinary houses.
Speaker 2: Baby comes, you take maternity leave. It might be six months,
Speaker 2: it might be a year, it might be whatever. During
Speaker 2: that time, you are the lead parent, and you are
Speaker 2: also cooking dinner and whatever for maybe the first time ever,
Speaker 2: maybe up until that day when you went on matt leave,
Speaker 2: he was cooking dinner. Some nights you were cooking dinner.
Speaker 2: Some nights he was doing the washing. Some days are
Speaker 2: doing the washing, some days equal split, like Emrada says.
Speaker 2: Then you're at home, so it's like I'm looking after
Speaker 2: the baby and I'm doing the housy things. And then
Speaker 2: what often happens is you go back to work and
Speaker 2: somehow all those jobs still stick to you. While I
Speaker 2: was cooking dinner and I know how to do it,
Speaker 2: and I know what the kid's going to eat, and
Speaker 2: I know how to do that, and I've organized those things,
Speaker 2: so it's just and then somehow you keep doing them,
Speaker 2: keep doing them, keep doing them. But then you've also
Speaker 2: got your job, and it's like an insidious and insidious
Speaker 2: sounds too sinister, because whenever you talk about this, I
Speaker 2: want to make it really clear that I know what
Speaker 2: a privilege it is to look after kids. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that, but I'm just talking about doing the two jobs,
Speaker 2: the three jobs, the four jobs.
Speaker 4: That a privilege?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it is if you you know it
Speaker 2: is for many.
Speaker 3: It is and I think it's twofold right with the
Speaker 3: privilege every day.
Speaker 2: But when you end up doing all the things and
Speaker 2: that creep happens. That is what Emrada is talking about,
Speaker 2: where suddenly you're like, hold on, I'm back at work,
Speaker 2: but I'm still doing all the things that we And
Speaker 2: the thing is if you have a baby and then
Speaker 2: you have a gap, and then you have another baby, whatever,
Speaker 2: then that can be a period of a few years
Speaker 2: where you were lead parent by default, and then it's
Speaker 2: very hard to undo it, just like it's very hard
Speaker 2: to undo this job. Flip that, and is this of
Speaker 2: a CEO thing.
Speaker 3: That happens with battles, right, And I've I've had this
Speaker 3: where I've laid in bed at night and gone, do
Speaker 3: I fight this battle? Do I fight this battle? And
Speaker 3: there are eight hundred of the battles that you kind
Speaker 3: of go. How did this fall on my plate? How
Speaker 3: did this? I remember saying to a friend early on.
Speaker 3: She said to me a few months in, I was
Speaker 3: expressing some frustration and she said, has your husband ever
Speaker 3: folded a onesie? And I was like, oh wow, the
Speaker 3: things that defaulted to the woman, Like why would that
Speaker 3: default to me? And that's not saying and this was
Speaker 3: coming from us. I yeah, exactly, how does he think
Speaker 3: the clothes and wherever bored or the.
Speaker 1: Every time she grows out of clothes, has he ever
Speaker 1: gone or she needs?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So there's just strange jobs where like, you know, I've
Speaker 3: been with women and we've looked at each other and gone, oh,
Speaker 3: so you're going away next week? Has he started packing
Speaker 3: the sick case? Like just very very specific gender jobs
Speaker 3: that you go This isn't our dynamic, so.
Speaker 4: Pack the suitcase for who the bad baby?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: So it's sort of like the man and this is
Speaker 3: I was literally having this conversation on the weekend. This
Speaker 3: argument happens in all heterosexual couples. They're going away and
Speaker 3: the man tries to convince a family that they can
Speaker 3: go away with a carry on bag, and you look
Speaker 3: at the man and go, You've never ever packed a
Speaker 3: bag for a baby.
Speaker 4: You had a period.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't understand what needs to go three clothes,
Speaker 3: and so I think that you lay They're going to
Speaker 3: fight this fight? Do I fight this fight?
Speaker 2: Do I? You have to fight the fight's Jesse, you
Speaker 2: have to fight the fucking fights or you are packing
Speaker 2: all the bags for the next twenty years. Is that
Speaker 2: what you want?
Speaker 1: But then society do you divide and conquer? And I
Speaker 1: want to say back to me and Jason for a second.
Speaker 1: The other difference is in the first part of our
Speaker 1: relationship when we just had one child, I was working
Speaker 1: in a big job. I was employed in magazines and
Speaker 1: Jason had his own business, and that was really challenging
Speaker 1: because we were pulling in different directions. So it was
Speaker 1: always a competition for whose job and whose time was
Speaker 1: more important, and also who was the most tired. I mean,
Speaker 1: the title in picks is something that you have always.
Speaker 1: It's like who's the most tired. The reason also that
Speaker 1: we were able to do it in the last seventeen
Speaker 1: years of having kids, which is really our last two
Speaker 1: kids and most of our eldest child's life was because
Speaker 1: we were working together, so we were pulling in the
Speaker 1: same direction. And would we've ever been able to build
Speaker 1: Mama Maya just one of us while the other one
Speaker 1: had a big job, or while the other one was
Speaker 1: building another business. Absolutely not. So we have very much
Speaker 1: divided and conquered. And I've often said, like so much
Speaker 1: of the mental load in our life is taken by jas,
Speaker 1: like really traditional splits, right. And also he's always done
Speaker 1: like dentists and haircuts. I don't know why, and I've
Speaker 1: done medical things with the kids, but I do the
Speaker 1: emotional a lot of the emotional stuff. But even now,
Speaker 1: like we've got teenagers, it's very split.
Speaker 4: It's really split.
Speaker 1: But it also can be because we work together and
Speaker 1: we're in charge of our own now.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I noticed about what am writer,
Speaker 3: because we can't talk about her without me picking out
Speaker 3: something that I didn't like about what she said, there
Speaker 3: was a quote about divorce as liberation, and that's what
Speaker 3: they were sort of talking about, and I just I've
Speaker 3: been reading a lot about how divorces liberation is a
Speaker 3: bit of a luxury belief, is a bit of a
Speaker 3: luxury idea that for someone like m writer who has
Speaker 3: the means and who divorce won't financially cripple her. That
Speaker 3: is very different to you know, millions and millions of
Speaker 3: Americans who the decision to divorce and Australians who the
Speaker 3: decision to divorce has you know, financial consequences or a
Speaker 3: woman can't do that. So I even the book that
Speaker 3: they were talking about, and there's all this literature coming
Speaker 3: out which is really about empowering women to divorce, and
Speaker 3: I know that is a solution to some of this,
Speaker 3: and we talk about.
Speaker 1: But Jesse, don't you think it comes down to the
Speaker 1: man you are divorcing and the dynamic here are divorcing
Speaker 1: because if I got a divorce, my life would be
Speaker 1: so much harder. But Amrita's point, and I've got friends
Speaker 1: who've also said, my life is so much easier and
Speaker 1: it was liberating because they were with someone, but they
Speaker 1: were still doing all.
Speaker 2: The work and often they're looking after the guy too
Speaker 2: and felt resentful exactly. And so the other piece about
Speaker 2: that is these two ideas are linked because you're very
Speaker 2: right that divorces a liberation is a luxury belief, because
Speaker 2: divorce is actually statistically very bad for women in terms
Speaker 2: of money. But one of the ways in which you
Speaker 2: get more freedom to live the life you want is
Speaker 2: to be financially independent, and that is probably the most
Speaker 2: important kind of independence you can have. And you are
Speaker 2: not financially independent if you have given up your career
Speaker 2: to fold onesies. And I know it's saying that is
Speaker 2: like a controversial thing to say, and I know exactly
Speaker 2: who's out there in the world who's going to be
Speaker 2: writing me and angry now tomorrow, because I know that
Speaker 2: parenting is much more complicated than that. The decisions you
Speaker 2: make in your life, as time goes on, you can
Speaker 2: look back at them with some distance and you can
Speaker 2: go there were things about that that were great, and
Speaker 2: there were things about that that weren't. And I'm certainly
Speaker 2: at that point now with my kids in that they're
Speaker 2: both getting into that more independent teenage time. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I was always at work in those
Speaker 2: early years and it was very stressful for us all,
Speaker 2: and maybe I should have made some different choices blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. But the truth of it is, these days
Speaker 2: life is expensive. Everybody I know needs two incomes pretty much,
Speaker 2: and you have so fewer choices. If you don't have
Speaker 2: money of your own. And so if your marriage is miserable,
Speaker 2: and if you're looking after somebody, you know they're just
Speaker 2: another person you're looking after every day. Someone don't give
Speaker 2: up your money.
Speaker 1: Marriage is liberation. But I don't think marriage is a
Speaker 1: prison for everybody.
Speaker 2: Marriage is certainly not a prison for everybody, and divorce
Speaker 2: isn't liberation for everybody. It's absolutely misery inducing for lots
Speaker 2: of people. But if your marriage is unhappy, it's liberation, right.
Speaker 3: I wondered just on the you know, women choosing part
Speaker 3: time as well, And I don't quite know how to
Speaker 3: articulate this, but just anecdotally, when I look at some
Speaker 3: of the women around me and I look at the
Speaker 3: decisions that they're making and why they're making those decisions,
Speaker 3: I see women asking what is the best thing for
Speaker 3: this family? So I have a friend who doesn't want
Speaker 3: their child in daycare five days a week. Right, husband
Speaker 3: happily have the child in daycare five days a week.
Speaker 3: So what's a solution, Well, she can only work three days.
Speaker 2: But isn't the solution Because this is the thing is that.
Speaker 3: When I say solution, I mean that's what their family
Speaker 3: then chooses yeah, yeah, Like.
Speaker 2: Brende Brown talks about this is like, and I'm very
Speaker 2: guilty of it in all the conversations we've just had.
Speaker 2: Is we kind of putting the parents against each other
Speaker 2: when healthy families make decisions that are good for the family. Right,
Speaker 2: So the thing that's good for the family in that case,
Speaker 2: if he feels that strongly about it, is he should
Speaker 2: work four days and she should work four days. Do
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like he doesn't feel strongly about it.
Speaker 2: But he does. He feels strongly that the kids should
Speaker 2: be in daycare five no no, no, no, no no, And
Speaker 2: she's saying I don't, isn't there's a common in that position.
Speaker 1: What I think you're taking away from that, which is
Speaker 1: that he thinks they should.
Speaker 4: It's more like if they they are or they're not,
Speaker 4: I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yep, it doesn't he care about what she thinks and
Speaker 2: what she wants. Like, this is what I mean about
Speaker 2: making a decision for the family, Like, why are we
Speaker 2: so binary about it? It's like, well, one of us
Speaker 2: does three days and one of us does five. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons why when you said me a before,
Speaker 2: like why do all the women I work with want
Speaker 2: to work part time. That is such a deep, culturally
Speaker 2: entrenched position that I don't think it's fair to characterize
Speaker 2: it as because they want to, Because some do, definitely,
Speaker 2: and what an amazing choice if you can, But so
Speaker 2: do some men. But it's just that they don't have
Speaker 2: any cultural context, or very little even now in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, of going into their boss and saying, what
Speaker 2: does flexibility look like for me? Is it possible I
Speaker 2: could do? Because two parents working four days might solve
Speaker 2: that problem better than her having to then, because then
Speaker 2: there's bitterness, resentment, she's taken a financial hit, Like how
Speaker 2: is that good for the family as a whole? Like
Speaker 2: isn't the ideal that you're making decisions for the family
Speaker 2: as a whole if you can.
Speaker 3: There's also the jobs. I'm having this discussion with my
Speaker 3: sister at the moment about solids, right, Like when you
Speaker 3: introduce food to a baby, you're thinking end to end,
Speaker 3: right Like, I know for a week what my baby
Speaker 3: needs to eat, and I know that there needs to
Speaker 3: be allergens, and I know what needs to be prepared,
Speaker 3: and I know that this breakfast needs to be different
Speaker 3: to this breakfast and blah, blah blah, and then you know,
Speaker 3: she might turn to a partner and say, can you
Speaker 3: do breakfast? And he'll do one spoonful of yogurt and
Speaker 3: then she'll you know, spit it out, and he'll abort
Speaker 3: breakfast because he thinks they don't need it anymore. That's
Speaker 3: what the mental load is, right, because it's like it's
Speaker 3: not just delegating tasks to people in the family, it's
Speaker 3: like having the whole helicopter job of that. And I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure how you shift that.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I reckon and again, I know I sound like
Speaker 2: I'm like very lectury on this, but you know it's
Speaker 2: one of my specialist areas. We've talked about this jesse
Speaker 2: h check in times right, because there is no question
Speaker 2: that of course right now you your sister, whoever knows
Speaker 2: more about what the baby should be. But you know
Speaker 2: how I was talking before about the creep and suddenly
Speaker 2: the baby will be six and yet it's still all
Speaker 2: on your plate what the baby's eating, and he's still going,
Speaker 2: what do you mean the baby doesn't like bananas?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: And there's been six years in which he could have
Speaker 2: let that. So what's more realistic, perhaps is you go
Speaker 2: lead parent check in period. So you go, Okay, you
Speaker 2: know how I've been doing this labor intensive whatever I'm
Speaker 2: leading in for a year. But you don't set and forget,
Speaker 2: you check back in like because it's the set and
Speaker 2: forget that will build you into a position that you
Speaker 2: may or may not want. It's just like, well, this
Speaker 2: is just how it ended up, all on my plate, yeah,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean? Whereas maybe that won't
Speaker 2: be the case in another six months when the baby's
Speaker 2: eating needs aren't so complicated, but somehow it still ends
Speaker 2: up with you, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And they never understand the full scope of the job.
Speaker 2: That's the issue.
Speaker 3: If you've worked in an office or you've worked a
Speaker 3: full time job, you understand what the full time job
Speaker 3: consist of. But if you've been the full time parent
Speaker 3: and the other person hasn't, then there's no way to
Speaker 3: ever communicate what a day looks like.