Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2: And who says?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
Speaker 1: to question everything. Hello, my friends, I hope you're having
Speaker 1: a beautiful week. I am recording this from Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 1: I met Kenyon Ranch for a three day respit. I
Speaker 1: am getting massages and relaxing and trying to recover. I
Speaker 1: know you can probably hear in my voice that I'm
Speaker 1: still a little under the weather. And then I've had
Speaker 1: a straight to New York for Tribeca. So next week
Speaker 1: I'll keep you posted on how all of that was.
Speaker 1: Last time I was there, I got to interview Robert
Speaker 1: de Niro, which was spontaneous and so fun. He started Tribeca.
Speaker 1: He co founded it, which is a fun fact I
Speaker 1: didn't know years ago when I started going. Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to jump into today's episode because it well, it
Speaker 1: blew my mind. My therapist said something to me recently
Speaker 1: that I have not been able to stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: She said, Danielle, you are not the problem. You just
Speaker 1: want to date like a man in a society where
Speaker 1: you're a woman.
Speaker 2: Stay with me.
Speaker 1: You all know I'm obsessed with my work, and I've
Speaker 1: always been obsessed with my time. I guard my calendar
Speaker 1: like it's Fort Knox. I travel constantly, I disappear into projects, and.
Speaker 2: I want a big career. I want to build things.
Speaker 1: I want autonomy, I want purpose, and I also want
Speaker 1: to be married with kids. And every once in a
Speaker 1: while I find myself thinking, oh my god, I'd make
Speaker 1: a great husband. And not because those are male qualities.
Speaker 2: They're not.
Speaker 1: But historically, the person who got to organize their life
Speaker 1: around ambition and independence was usually the man. Someone else
Speaker 1: was often absorbing the invisible work, the scheduling, the remembering,
Speaker 1: the emotional labor, the listening, the birthday gifts, the childcare,
Speaker 1: the grocery list, the doctor's appointments, the making life actually work.
Speaker 2: I don't have to list it off.
Speaker 1: I know every single person listening knows what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: and That's where today's conversation begins, because one of the
Speaker 1: biggest lies that women have been sold is that equality happened,
Speaker 1: that it already happened. We entered the workforce, we got degrees,
Speaker 1: we started companies, some of us became breadwinners. But at home,
Speaker 1: the social contract didn't evolve nearly as fast. Women still
Speaker 1: perform trillions of dollars worth of unpaid labor every year.
Speaker 1: And I know, unpaid labor sounds like one of those
Speaker 1: buzzy academic phrases, and everybody sort of like nods along
Speaker 1: without really understanding, or at least I do, But I
Speaker 1: want to make it tangible.
Speaker 2: Most studies suggest.
Speaker 1: That men enjoy nearly four hundred more hours of leisure
Speaker 1: time every year than a woman. That's ten extra forty
Speaker 1: hour work weeks ten weeks. Imagine someone handed you ten
Speaker 1: additional weeks of your life every year.
Speaker 2: What would you do with them?
Speaker 1: Build a business, write a book, sleep, exercise, knit, stare
Speaker 1: into space. I mean, lots of us aren't even imagining
Speaker 1: what we would do with those hours because many women
Speaker 1: are already spending them. We're just spending them on care,
Speaker 1: which means many women aren't working one job they're working two, three,
Speaker 1: or four and they're trying to do all of them
Speaker 1: exceptionally well. But what changes this dynamic, Well, if you're
Speaker 1: married a true partner.
Speaker 3: You're not just shopping for sexy, because sexy is going
Speaker 3: to wear off when you're cleaning his toothpaste off bathroom sink,
Speaker 3: like he's not going to be sexy in the same
Speaker 3: way anymore. And what's going to be sexy is somebody
Speaker 3: lightening your load so that you can be a full person.
Speaker 1: And that's where our guest today comes in. Karin Low
Speaker 1: is an economist, professor, and author whose work explores what
Speaker 1: she calls the economics of being a woman. Her book
Speaker 1: Having It All, What Data tells Us about Women's lives
Speaker 1: and Getting the Most out of Yours reveals something that
Speaker 1: many women feel every day but really struggle to explain.
Speaker 1: We're doing more than ever before, and yet somehow still
Speaker 1: feel like we're falling behind. Karin says, it's the trap.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, your marriage cannot be happy if both people are
Speaker 3: not self actualized, because if somebody doesn't feel like this
Speaker 3: partnership supports them and becoming the person that they want
Speaker 3: to be, then ultimately it is really hard to sustain
Speaker 3: that love and affection to that person who's actually kind
Speaker 3: of become the headwind or the forest that's holding you back.
Speaker 1: My mind was blown when she said that, because we've
Speaker 1: had conversations about invisible labor on the pod before, and
Speaker 1: I always feel really connected to them, but also like
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of data where it can feel man
Speaker 1: hatary or anti marriage or complaining, and I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be any of that. And Karin put into
Speaker 1: words what I've been searching for. It's really about being
Speaker 1: able to become. And whether you agree with her or not,
Speaker 1: our conversation today centers on a question that I think
Speaker 1: only you can answer for you. What does becoming and
Speaker 1: having it all look like for you? And what are
Speaker 1: you willing to trade for it? Because every life has
Speaker 1: a series of trades, and sometimes, whether we realize it
Speaker 1: or not, women are making trades inside a social contract.
Speaker 2: That we never actually agreed to.
Speaker 1: So today we are talking about the economics of being
Speaker 1: a woman. It's time to question everything with carinla Courin.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to have you here today.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, can't wait to dive in with you.
Speaker 1: Well, you and your work really embody the idea of
Speaker 1: questioning everything. You're turning so many of our societal norms
Speaker 1: on its head, and you're using economics to do it.
Speaker 1: And I became particularly interested in this book because you
Speaker 1: and I met at a Gloria steinem event. But I
Speaker 1: threw a separate event with this woman, Susie Welch, who's
Speaker 1: a professor at NYU, and you know her.
Speaker 2: She has this class by Becoming You.
Speaker 1: So I love the class so much that Susie and
Speaker 1: I threw an event together for a bunch of New
Speaker 1: York influencers to experience. It was one day and there
Speaker 1: was probably ninety people there. And one of the questions
Speaker 1: that Susie asks is sort of a pun or a
Speaker 1: play on whose line is it anyways?
Speaker 2: And it's whose life do you want? Anyways?
Speaker 1: And you pick people whose lives look interesting to you,
Speaker 1: and you have two columns you say, here's what I
Speaker 1: like about their life and here's what I don't I
Speaker 1: don't find interesting or want about their lives. So, just
Speaker 1: for an example, I said Hillary Clinton as one of mine,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, she was a question asker,
Speaker 1: a culture changer. She pushed for change with her intellect,
Speaker 1: she wanted to spread good ideas, And then in the
Speaker 1: column of what I didn't want was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to marry a politician. I don't want scandal if
Speaker 1: I can help it, you know. So I have a
Speaker 1: whole list of what I do like and what I
Speaker 1: don't like. And out of the ninety women there, who
Speaker 1: were all ages, all races, all ethnicities, all religions, I
Speaker 1: would say seventy five of them had Emma Greed's name
Speaker 1: written down on whose life they wanted.
Speaker 2: Oh and here's what I found so interesting.
Speaker 1: The reason that they had Emma Greed's name was an
Speaker 1: assortment of reasons. Some people said, she has this big
Speaker 1: career or a husband or kids, but ultimately it.
Speaker 2: Came down to she had it all.
Speaker 1: She had the big career and a husband who she
Speaker 1: seemingly loves, and children, and she looks glam doing it,
Speaker 1: and she has a nice house with art on her walls,
Speaker 1: and she's traveling and seemingly healthy and has friends, etc.
Speaker 1: And your work indicates that having it all is basically
Speaker 1: a trap.
Speaker 2: So I have to dig into it with you.
Speaker 1: Before you wrote this book, were you striving to have
Speaker 1: it all?
Speaker 3: I mean absolutely, I was striving for a life it
Speaker 3: didn't have trade offs because I didn't think when I
Speaker 3: looked to my male colleagues or when I looked to
Speaker 3: successful people, and I didn't think of myself just as
Speaker 3: a woman. I thought of myself as someone who could
Speaker 3: be successful in my own terms, and I didn't see
Speaker 3: that you had to have these intense trade offs, you know,
Speaker 3: between investments in your career, investments and family. So I
Speaker 3: wanted a life where I got to go shopping in
Speaker 3: the grocery store for the career that I wanted, a
Speaker 3: family life. I wanted the relationship that I wanted, right,
Speaker 3: And I think one of the things that really like
Speaker 3: in the case of Emma Grade's life, really masks a
Speaker 3: lot of those trade offs is a tremendous amount of wealth.
Speaker 3: And you know that wealth like can lessen some of
Speaker 3: those feelings of trade offfs some of those feelings of
Speaker 3: like the squeeze, right that I talk about in my
Speaker 3: work about how we often feel squeezed and that we
Speaker 3: can't put time into everything that we want. So, yes,
Speaker 3: I think that that's really interesting because I absolutely think
Speaker 3: that that's something that she's been projecting, is that there
Speaker 3: don't have to be trade offs. Like when she goes
Speaker 3: around on interviews, she's saying, well, women just can't sit
Speaker 3: in their living rooms. They've got to get out to
Speaker 3: the office, and you know, they've got to just work
Speaker 3: harder to be successful. And then you can be like me.
Speaker 3: And it's like, but we can't, Emma, because people are
Speaker 3: struggling to afford childcare. You know, people maybe like need
Speaker 3: to be spending that amount of time with their kids,
Speaker 3: and you know, they are facing these trade offs they
Speaker 3: don't maybe have the support of a partner. And then
Speaker 3: she's also you know, I've been going by about this
Speaker 3: three hour parent thing, saying, you know, she only wants
Speaker 3: to spend three hours with her kids on the weekends.
Speaker 3: And there is a place where you know, I always
Speaker 3: caution to people that you have to understand the values
Speaker 3: behind the life that somebody is living. And so for me,
Speaker 3: that's not consistent with my values, like I want to
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time with my kids. I want
Speaker 3: to spend much more than three hours with them on
Speaker 3: the weekend, and that is going to create trade offs
Speaker 3: in other areas of my life. That that is time.
Speaker 3: Time is a limited asset, the same as money. I
Speaker 3: can only invest in so many places, and so if
Speaker 3: I'm making that choice that that's time that I value,
Speaker 3: then I'm not spending my time budget someplace else. So
Speaker 3: I think she really is going on this press tour
Speaker 3: that's saying there doesn't have to be trade offs, and
Speaker 3: so I'm not surprised that it's aspirational. But I love
Speaker 3: your answer, Hillary Clinton, because I think basing that aspiration
Speaker 3: around someone who's beautiful and rich and everything feels seamless
Speaker 3: and without trade offs is like continuing to sell that
Speaker 3: lie to women and ultimately making it harder for us
Speaker 3: to have our version of it all.
Speaker 1: You know where I get stuck, and I think so
Speaker 1: many women get stuck based on that room that I
Speaker 1: was in, was I know it's a trap, Like I
Speaker 1: totally recognize that it's a trap, and I still want
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 3: But what you want is to be happy, right yeah,
Speaker 3: because I do, Like, for example, my life doesn't look
Speaker 3: anything like Emma Greeds, right this idea, and Emma Greed's
Speaker 3: life does not look anything like Emma Greed's. Okay, her
Speaker 3: real life behind the camera is not on Instagram, does
Speaker 3: not look anything like what you see. And so first
Speaker 3: let's start there. Anytime you're comparing your whole, messy reality
Speaker 3: to somebody else's highlights, right, you're gonna feel this dissonance
Speaker 3: of like, well, I just wish I was in cute
Speaker 3: outfits all the time. It's like she's not in Q
Speaker 3: outfits all the time. Right places in her house where
Speaker 3: there's a mess, or there's a housekeeper who she's able
Speaker 3: to afford full time who just cleaned it up, and
Speaker 3: her and her husband fight, right, and some times her
Speaker 3: kids have meltdowns, and none of that is on the GRAM.
Speaker 3: But totally, my life doesn't look anything like Emma Greeds.
Speaker 3: I'm not effortlessly perfectly rich, thin, glamorous. I constantly feel
Speaker 3: like my house is too messy. I'm like struggling so
Speaker 3: hard to like me and my wife together, trying to
Speaker 3: like landscape our backyard, and it just is like such
Speaker 3: a like and I'm sure like she would snap her
Speaker 3: fingers and like somebody would be there and it would
Speaker 3: already be done right, So like, my life doesn't look
Speaker 3: anything like Emmagreeds. And my life is rich and happy
Speaker 3: and full with a career that I love where I
Speaker 3: get to do work that I feel like is really
Speaker 3: high impact with kids that I get to spend time
Speaker 3: with and raise the way that I want to with
Speaker 3: a partner who I love and have a great relationship with,
Speaker 3: which is all hard one. If you read the book,
Speaker 3: it's like, how did we get here? It's like a
Speaker 3: very long journey, right, Yes, But I think for your
Speaker 3: life to be happy and full and for you to
Speaker 3: have that like it all of like a successful career
Speaker 3: and a successful family life, it still doesn't have to
Speaker 3: look like Greeds and I just totally by holding ourselves
Speaker 3: up to that standard, we're offering our own unhappiness. In
Speaker 3: the same way that I think all of this stuff
Speaker 3: that we're chasing of again really wealth, like the consumer goods.
Speaker 3: It's like that I've got to have her wardrobe and
Speaker 3: handbags and my house has to look like that. Like
Speaker 3: all of that is eating away at the joy that
Speaker 3: we can experience from like the real life that's right
Speaker 3: in front of us.
Speaker 1: So I want to go backwards because you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you have this beautiful life built on the values that
Speaker 1: you hold true, but you didn't always have that. You
Speaker 1: start the book in the bathroom of an Amtrak train, pumping,
Speaker 1: crying and realizing that you won't make it home in
Speaker 1: time to put your son to bed, and you have
Speaker 1: sort of like a version of an adult meltdown.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so can you tell me about that?
Speaker 3: Yes, So I told you I had dreamed of this
Speaker 3: life for myself that didn't have these trade offs, and
Speaker 3: I just found this idea deeply unfair and I still
Speaker 3: do find it deeply on But like you know, I
Speaker 3: was the twelve year old feminist who was signing petitions
Speaker 3: to say that girls and boys shouldn't be treated differently,
Speaker 3: and so, in my view, like I was going to
Speaker 3: have the career that I wanted, and I didn't really
Speaker 3: think about how a partnership intersected and a marriage intersected
Speaker 3: with that. I just kind of took each decision as
Speaker 3: it came. It was like this guy's nice, and I
Speaker 3: married him, and you know that was like, okay, and
Speaker 3: now I kind of want a baby. Let's have a baby,
Speaker 3: and we'll make it work because our lives are working
Speaker 3: so far. And you know, I say gave birth to
Speaker 3: my son, and I gave birth to a midlife crisis
Speaker 3: because everything that was working, which was me commuting from
Speaker 3: New York City to Philadelphia for my job and being
Speaker 3: on the tenure track at Wharton, which means you have
Speaker 3: to publish a certain number of papers before you come
Speaker 3: up for this tenure review or you literally get fired,
Speaker 3: right you have to find a new job. So all
Speaker 3: of that stuff that was working and my marriage stopped working,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I was falling behind my male
Speaker 3: colleagues at work. I felt like my home life didn't
Speaker 3: look anything like what I wanted it to look like.
Speaker 3: It wasn't effortless, it wasn't perfect. We were, you know,
Speaker 3: struggling for money because we both had good jobs at
Speaker 3: the time. He later left his job, adding to the strain.
Speaker 3: But even when we both had good jobs, you know,
Speaker 3: we were in New York City where you know, you're
Speaker 3: constantly kind of struggling to keep up with the joneses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and just the basic cost of living. But what does
Speaker 3: it cost to have an apartment and to have you know,
Speaker 3: childcare and all of those things. And I was surprised
Speaker 3: by my when I talk with those values, like I,
Speaker 3: as this staunch feminist, never thought I would be the
Speaker 3: mom crying because I'm not going to make it home
Speaker 3: to bedtime. I never thought I would be the mom
Speaker 3: pumping on the Amtrak bathroom because I was that committed
Speaker 3: to breastfeeding and to making that work even after going
Speaker 3: back to work, and I had to go back to
Speaker 3: teaching classes like a couple months after my son was born,
Speaker 3: because of course, we don't have real family life in America, right,
Speaker 3: So I just never thought that that was going to
Speaker 3: be me. I never thought those trade offs were going
Speaker 3: to be so big, And then I felt all of
Speaker 3: them kind of crushing down upon me at the same time,
Speaker 3: and I started to question everything, maybe more so than
Speaker 3: some other people, you know, using the tools of my discipline,
Speaker 3: saying why is this so unfair? Why is this not
Speaker 3: adding up for me? And I started looking at women's
Speaker 3: time use and finding that as women were taking on
Speaker 3: more at work, men weren't taking on more at home,
Speaker 3: and so there was kind of like no place for
Speaker 3: you know, there's no pressure release valve on everything that
Speaker 3: we were kind of adding to our lives. We were
Speaker 3: just trying to do more, and parenting had become much
Speaker 3: more intensive from the time when I was a kid, when,
Speaker 3: like I joke, my bedtime routine was go to bed.
Speaker 3: It was like there wasn't this like elaborate ritual of
Speaker 3: every part of parenting, so you're expected to be there
Speaker 3: for your kid more than ever. Working moms today spend
Speaker 3: more time with our kids then stay at home moms
Speaker 3: a generation ago. You're expected to be there more than ever.
Speaker 1: So working moms today spend more time with their kids
Speaker 1: now than stay at home moms did in the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yes, wow, yeah. And so when you're feeling like it
Speaker 3: doesn't add up and you're like, but wait, even if
Speaker 3: you had a working mom, you're like, but my mom
Speaker 3: was a working mom. She made it work. Am I
Speaker 3: just a failure? No, Like what it all is has
Speaker 3: changed and it's just misfailing and it's become really unsustainable.
Speaker 3: So my questioning everything included my marriage and I ultimately
Speaker 3: ended up getting divorced, moving to Philadelphia, eventually getting remarried
Speaker 3: to a woman because by part of how I decided
Speaker 3: I was going to make it all that up was
Speaker 3: get those gender roles out of my life, of this
Speaker 3: expectation that I was going to do more just because
Speaker 3: I was the female partner.
Speaker 1: And wait, Kurin, were you bisexual or lesbian before this
Speaker 1: or did you marry a domestic partner?
Speaker 3: So I I was identified as not I was not
Speaker 3: queer because I think I sort of defaulted into heterosexuality
Speaker 3: because we don't question enough things in our life, right,
Speaker 3: I think I sort of had defaulted to be pterosexual.
Speaker 3: And like I said, I had crushes on boys, assumed
Speaker 3: that I liked men, and then gradually, like over the
Speaker 3: course of my marriage, I think the unfairness of the
Speaker 3: gender roles actually started to impact my attraction. And so
Speaker 3: when I had this like that people talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: when you know your marriage is over, it's like when
Speaker 3: you start really thinking about like life after marriage, you
Speaker 3: start thinking about other people. Right, all of my crushes
Speaker 3: were on women, Like I could not picture being attracted
Speaker 3: to a man like it was just that it was
Speaker 3: dead to me. So like I guess I was always
Speaker 3: a little bit in the middle of the spectrum, but
Speaker 3: kind of pushed more to one side by that experience.
Speaker 3: So once I got separated, I only dated women. And yes, no,
Speaker 3: my wife and I are very much in love have
Speaker 3: a full relationship. But that's what If you were asking
Speaker 3: if it's like every like you know, just like co
Speaker 3: parents and friends.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I didn't know if you were in a
Speaker 1: romantic partnership or if you like based on the analysis
Speaker 1: of your time, decided Okay, I'm gonna be in a
Speaker 1: domestic partnership.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, So I will say that, I mean was conveniently,
Speaker 3: but it's actually attracted, right, because I think I've heard
Speaker 3: a lot of women say like, oh my god, I
Speaker 3: wish I could do that, which, let me just say, ladies,
Speaker 3: like at least go on a date with a woman
Speaker 3: at some point in your life, like as part of
Speaker 3: this like you know, idea of like upending the defaults.
Speaker 3: We fall into these defaults too much, and it's like,
Speaker 3: why not, why not try that and see you know,
Speaker 3: and I never did until after I got divorced. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was, albeit, I admit, an extreme solution and one
Speaker 3: that's not available to everybody.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what's funny about that Current is a
Speaker 1: friend of mine heard you speak in person at she
Speaker 1: works at the Milinda.
Speaker 3: Gates at Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so she texted me after because she knew
Speaker 1: we had met at the Gloria event and she was like,
Speaker 1: Current showed us a bunch of charts and research that
Speaker 1: she'd done and basically the economic impacts on a hetero
Speaker 1: sexual relationship, a gay and lesbian relationship and she was like,
Speaker 1: it made.
Speaker 2: Me think I should be with a woman.
Speaker 1: So the stats are actually quite convincing, I would say,
Speaker 1: But I think what is so moving about the way
Speaker 1: you write that first chapter is that there's so much
Speaker 1: grief there, and there's so much what's the word burnout
Speaker 1: that you feel when you're writing it. That's a very relatable.
Speaker 1: But be what I think was so interesting is you
Speaker 1: decided this wasn't a scheduling issue, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people would think it was. How did you
Speaker 1: decide this was more than a scheduling issue?
Speaker 3: Well, I think my first instinct was to try to
Speaker 3: make those like little tweaks and corrections and try to
Speaker 3: be like, Okay, let me make a chart and like
Speaker 3: you're going to do this stuff, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: do this stuff, or you know, try to correct those things.
Speaker 3: And it was only after a lot of trying to
Speaker 3: make it work and make those corrections that I realized
Speaker 3: that there was something more fundamentally amiss. And I am
Speaker 3: not at all saying that, like know, hoterosexual marriage can work,
Speaker 3: but I think what I found is that ultimately my
Speaker 3: acts who you know, I co parent my son with
Speaker 3: and he's a great co parent now that we're divorced.
Speaker 3: But he wasn't willing to reconsider his gender role within
Speaker 3: the marriage, and that wasn't going to work for me
Speaker 3: as somebody who was in some ways violating gender roles
Speaker 3: by having a big career, being on the tenure track
Speaker 3: at Wharton, being the breadwinner. And at that point, by
Speaker 3: the time I finally left my marriage, I was the
Speaker 3: sole breadwinner, so my you know, paycheck was covering all
Speaker 3: of our bills. And he really wasn't willing to reconsider
Speaker 3: his role, and so ultimately that didn't leave space for
Speaker 3: the adjustments that needed to be made. And that's not
Speaker 3: going to be everybody's reality. And I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of men who would, you know, maybe things aren't
Speaker 3: working right now. And statistically, for a lot of women,
Speaker 3: the division of housework it is unfair and a lot
Speaker 3: of hetero sexual relationships. But I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of men that can like get on board with having
Speaker 3: that conversation and trying to go deep on themselves and
Speaker 3: question their own gender role in the relationship.
Speaker 1: So there was an alarming statistic in your book about
Speaker 1: women who are breadwinners, and you say that the imbalance
Speaker 1: is not naturally curing. We have to do something at it.
Speaker 1: But will you share what that statistic is?
Speaker 3: Yes? So I think this is when we met at
Speaker 3: this event, right, Eve Rovsky has all of this work
Speaker 3: on the imbalance and how much more women are doing.
Speaker 3: And Eve was like, I can say that like this
Speaker 3: is imbalance, but like there's always going to be somebody
Speaker 3: who's going to say, well, like it makes sense because
Speaker 3: he earns more money, so she's doing more with the kids,
Speaker 3: or she's doing more at home. Right, And the key
Speaker 3: thing with my research is that I show that even women,
Speaker 3: women are the breadwinner, they still do dramatically more, dramatically more,
Speaker 3: And so I can look at couples and their division
Speaker 3: of earnings and I can go from you know, he
Speaker 3: earns eighty percent of the household income, and that's when
Speaker 3: you're going to be like, you know, the man's planner
Speaker 3: is gonna be like, it makes sense that she's doing more.
Speaker 3: He's earning eighty percent of the household income. He's doing
Speaker 3: about this much housework. And then I can go, okay,
Speaker 3: here in seventy sixty fifty forty thirty twenty percent literally
Speaker 3: the amount of housework he does at home doesn't change.
Speaker 3: He does the same amount of housework no matter how
Speaker 3: much he's earning, what percent of the household income he's earning.
Speaker 1: So in the book, you say that women who are
Speaker 1: the primary breadwinners do almost twice as much cooking and
Speaker 1: cleaning as their male spouses. And I've seen other studies
Speaker 1: about how even if men are laid off, they don't
Speaker 1: do the dishes, they don't pick up more housework generally,
Speaker 1: so there's a huge imbalance.
Speaker 3: Yes, so often if men are laid off, we see
Speaker 3: them do more childcare. It might be easier to kind
Speaker 3: of lean into that role of dad. But then it's
Speaker 3: the housework. It's the routine, on glamorous work of keeping
Speaker 3: a household, you know, cooking and cleaning that we see,
Speaker 3: you know, women still hold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: You talk about women's time constraints throughout the book too,
Speaker 1: and you say that they're just fundamentally different than men's.
Speaker 2: There's no amount of leaning in that can fix this.
Speaker 1: I do want to talk to you about lean in after,
Speaker 1: but tell me about some of the time constraints and
Speaker 1: the economic differences between being a man and being a woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I charted this. This is part of the
Speaker 3: research that I did for the book was looking at
Speaker 3: time use across the life cycle, and I literally made
Speaker 3: a graph that was women's minutes per day minus men's
Speaker 3: minutes per day. Okay, so how much more time are
Speaker 3: women spending than men on four categories housework, childcare, work,
Speaker 3: and leisure. And this graph shows that over the life cycle,
Speaker 3: women are spending way more time on housework and childcare,
Speaker 3: and it peaks during this period of called the squeeze
Speaker 3: when your kids are young and they're spending way less
Speaker 3: time on work and leisure. So then, if you picture
Speaker 3: a woman who's an executive, that female breadwinner, right, if
Speaker 3: you have a man in her position, that man probably
Speaker 3: has a stay at home wife. And if he has
Speaker 3: somebody whose career is a second priority and she's doing
Speaker 3: the majority of the household work. If you have a
Speaker 3: woman who's a female executive or high powered career, her
Speaker 3: husband's career is probably equally important or treated with equal
Speaker 3: importance in the household, and guaranteed she is doing more
Speaker 3: at home. And that creates a real imbalance in how
Speaker 3: we can invest our time at work because on the margins, right,
Speaker 3: are you going to say yes to the work trip.
Speaker 3: Are you going to say yes to that you know,
Speaker 3: extra project that you know has a lot of nights
Speaker 3: and weekends. Are you going to say yes to that
Speaker 3: client dinner when you are carrying so much more of
Speaker 3: that load at home. And that's why we see such
Speaker 3: a huge wage gap open up between men and women
Speaker 3: over their careers, and it opens up even for the
Speaker 3: highest performing women. So another study that I point to
Speaker 3: that's not my study, but one of the authors on
Speaker 3: it is Nobel Prize winner Claudia Golden, shows that by
Speaker 3: twelve years after earning their MBAs, the female ninetieth percentile
Speaker 3: of earnings is the same level as the men's mean.
Speaker 3: So the ninetieth percentile of women, which is the top
Speaker 3: ten percent of women, is earning the same as the
Speaker 3: average man the mean for men, and that top ten
Speaker 3: percent of women are the women who are leaning in.
Speaker 3: And that shows you that individual ambition is not going
Speaker 3: to solve this for us, that these are really structural constraints.
Speaker 1: I love the way you say individual ambition will not
Speaker 1: solve this, because there are are always people who feel
Speaker 1: as if I can outwork this issue, or I'm different,
Speaker 1: or you know, people just don't work hard enough, Like
Speaker 1: there's all these excuses that we all make, and it
Speaker 1: truly is a structural problem, and it's I think it's
Speaker 1: hurting people more than we think when I would think
Speaker 1: about equal pay. At one point, I was making sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars less than my male co host at a
Speaker 1: morning show, and I was so upset, but I knew
Speaker 1: it going in, and I was like, I want this job,
Speaker 1: and you know this job is worth more than sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to me. I'll do it for a year
Speaker 1: and then we'll see how it goes. And it's not
Speaker 1: just the sixty grand. It compounds over time, and so
Speaker 1: we're losing out over millions of dollars in a lifetime,
Speaker 1: which is millions of dollars not just that you can
Speaker 1: add to your household or to make your life easier,
Speaker 1: but also to communities right like to philanthropy to it's
Speaker 1: just which women actually do.
Speaker 3: I mean you just about like Pivotal Ventures, and I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about all these amazing female philanthropists, and it's like
Speaker 3: money being in women's hands filters down differently than money
Speaker 3: being in men's hands. And then yes, to that other point,
Speaker 3: we know there's discrimination and so there's a wage gap.
Speaker 3: And so now imagine right that your male co host
Speaker 3: goes home and it's like, well, whose career should be
Speaker 3: the priority? And it's his because he's earning a lot.
Speaker 3: You go home, right, and there's this discrimination disparity between
Speaker 3: you and your male co host, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: whose career should we invest in more? And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you're making less, so maybe you know, the extra hour
Speaker 3: of time should really go towards you know, this hypothetical
Speaker 3: partner's career, right, And I think that's some of the
Speaker 3: times the conversation that's happening in households is that like,
Speaker 3: she's already hitting a glass ceiling because of discrimination at work,
Speaker 3: and then she comes home and she can't get that
Speaker 3: support at home because his career is taking off because
Speaker 3: those same forces aren't holding him back.
Speaker 1: So Jada Pinkett Smith was on the podcast after she
Speaker 1: wrote her book Worthy, and one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: aspects I thought about the book, because it's really interesting
Speaker 1: to watch it play out on a large scale, is
Speaker 1: that she had this career that she was pursuing and
Speaker 1: because they were married and had kids, will Smith was
Speaker 1: becoming an a list actor and his career was blowing up,
Speaker 1: and so she took a back seat, and I don't
Speaker 1: think she ever got over that resentment. Like that was
Speaker 1: one of my takeaways from that interview, and so similar
Speaker 1: to what you shared about your own life.
Speaker 2: That resentment starts to build and build.
Speaker 1: I was looking up all the studies say twenty five
Speaker 1: percent to fifty six percent of divorces stem from chores,
Speaker 1: and they it's a big gap because they can't totally point.
Speaker 2: To one thing or another.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if domestic labor truly was shared, what
Speaker 1: you think would change in partnership.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you've got to listening to Jada's story,
Speaker 3: you have to link that chore gap, which sounds so trivial,
Speaker 3: to a gap in self actualization, because that's what she's
Speaker 3: really pointing to, right, is that he got to become
Speaker 3: to become right, and she did like she was like
Speaker 3: stopped short. She was held back in that process of
Speaker 3: self actualization, and ultimately, your marriage cannot be happy if
Speaker 3: both people are not self actualized, right, And that's where
Speaker 3: you get twenty years down the line and love starts
Speaker 3: to fade no matter how much attraction you started with
Speaker 3: because if somebody doesn't feel like this partnership supports them
Speaker 3: and becoming the person that they want to be, then
Speaker 3: ultimately it is really hard to sustain that love and
Speaker 3: affection to that person who's actually kind of become the
Speaker 3: headwind or the forest that's holding you back.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I got chills when you said that she didn't get
Speaker 1: to become That is exactly it. And everybody just wants
Speaker 1: to become who they are meant to be.
Speaker 2: In the world. Wow.
Speaker 1: So you're a mom of two and you're still right
Speaker 1: in the thick of things, you have two young kids,
Speaker 1: and you've mentioned the squeeze a few time, But will
Speaker 1: you sort of define it for everybody because it's a
Speaker 1: big aspect.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I joke that the research question that started
Speaker 3: the book is why am I so tired all the time?
Speaker 3: Because that pumping in the abstract bathroom bad embodies the squeeze.
Speaker 3: It's where you are trying to make investments in your
Speaker 3: home life and your career at the same time, and
Speaker 3: so you just feel like there's not enough of you
Speaker 3: to go around. And if you don't have generational wealth
Speaker 3: or you didn't you know, marry a hedge funder or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right often you feel the financial squeeze too, because you're
Speaker 3: not at the point in your career where you can
Speaker 3: just say, well, like, forget it, we'll just like hire
Speaker 3: three nannies, or we'll just like you know, have the
Speaker 3: housekeeper do it, or I'm gonna snap my fingers and
Speaker 3: the garden's gonna be landscaped. So I see that in
Speaker 3: the data that basically, while time on childcare and housework
Speaker 3: is at its peak, income is still growing. Your financial
Speaker 3: investments in your career haven't paid off yet, and so
Speaker 3: later on you're gonna have more time and you're gonna
Speaker 3: have more money. But right now you're in this crunch
Speaker 3: and knowing that I think can help women sort of
Speaker 3: prepare if you're in the earlier side right of things,
Speaker 3: and you're not then the squeeze yet and you want
Speaker 3: to have kids, which if you don't, you know, there's
Speaker 3: there might be other things that bring you to that
Speaker 3: crunch period, and career investments can be like that anyway.
Speaker 3: But if you want to have kids, right thinking about
Speaker 3: what can I do now that I'm in my twenties,
Speaker 3: I'm time rich to prepare for that. And one of
Speaker 3: the things I was just thinking because I give a
Speaker 3: lot of relationship advice in the book, and one thing
Speaker 3: is really choosing that partner who is going to support
Speaker 3: you in becoming who you want to be. And so
Speaker 3: not just the partner who laughs at your jokes and
Speaker 3: has good taste in movies right now, right, but the
Speaker 3: partner who says, like, yes, if one of the kids
Speaker 3: is sick, I will be the one to stay home
Speaker 3: because I never want you to feel like you didn't
Speaker 3: get to achieve what you wanted to achieve. Right. It's
Speaker 3: not about like lip service to like you know, oh
Speaker 3: of course women should have careers, right, It's about what
Speaker 3: are you willing to do? And I tell people there's
Speaker 3: a list of questions in the book, but I'll give
Speaker 3: you one of them because it will start a conversation.
Speaker 3: Is if I got a job offer in another city
Speaker 3: that was going to increase my salary by half, right,
Speaker 3: give me a fifty percent raise, but you would have
Speaker 3: to look for new work. How would we decide whether
Speaker 3: to move? Well, so, like, if there really is true
Speaker 3: off because there is, and in the data, we see
Speaker 3: that couples move for men's jobs and they don't move
Speaker 3: for women's jobs, right, how did I end up on
Speaker 3: that train commuting from New York to Philadelphia? Right, So
Speaker 3: have that conversation and choose the partner who is going
Speaker 3: to make investments in you and also make investments in yourself.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I talk about is thinking
Speaker 3: about your career, your job as a money machine. It's
Speaker 3: a way to convert your time into money. And you
Speaker 3: want to spend as much of your effort and time
Speaker 3: as you can upgrading your money machine before you're in
Speaker 3: the squeeze, because once you're in the squeeze, time is
Speaker 3: that much more costly. Right, So what can you do
Speaker 3: to upgrade your money machine and what can you do
Speaker 3: to make financially prudent decisions? And that's where I hate
Speaker 3: the Instagram culture of you know, chasing what the influencers have,
Speaker 3: because I think it encourages us to put money into
Speaker 3: places that ultimately are not going to pay off in
Speaker 3: terms of our happiness. And for a lot of young women,
Speaker 3: that's getting into a lot of consumer debt to kind
Speaker 3: of chase that lifestyle, and then when they enter the squeeze,
Speaker 3: now you don't have some of those you know, financial
Speaker 3: resources because you're paying a credit card debt you're paying
Speaker 3: you know Klarna and after pay, which is just consumer debt, right,
Speaker 3: And so now things that you could have done to
Speaker 3: make your life easier, like you know, pay for a
Speaker 3: meal service or pay for somebody to help clean the house,
Speaker 3: you know that money has been eaten up by these
Speaker 3: earlier financial decisions and purchases that you make. So it's
Speaker 3: like thinking about your life across the life cycle and
Speaker 3: knowing what the data show is kind of being strategic
Speaker 3: at every turn.
Speaker 1: I'm smiling as you're sharing these because I'm single and dating,
Speaker 1: and I personally come up against so much of what
Speaker 1: you talk about in the book when I'm dating. There's
Speaker 1: one story that I'm going to tell you very quickly,
Speaker 1: I tell everyone listening. So as a kid, I felt
Speaker 1: like my time was worth so much, Like I've been
Speaker 1: obsessed with time my whole life. And my dad would
Speaker 1: joke with me like, Danielle, your time is literally worth nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, And he wasn't being rude, but.
Speaker 2: As a kid, he was like, you're not working. It's
Speaker 2: not worth anything.
Speaker 1: And as I got older, he started being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: your time's starting to.
Speaker 2: Be worth something.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's worth something now, but I always felt like
Speaker 1: it was worth something. So fast forward, I'm dating somebody
Speaker 1: and I have probably the most important interview I've ever had,
Speaker 1: and I'm in another state, and the interview meant a
Speaker 1: lot to me. There was a lot on the line.
Speaker 1: I had a gift for the person that I was interviewing,
Speaker 1: and the guy I was dating he had like beautiful taste,
Speaker 1: great aesthetics, And I said, can you please go grab
Speaker 1: a gift box and a card for this? I need
Speaker 1: this hour to study. And he was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like what you'll like. I don't want to get the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. Why don't you just like come with me?
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, anything you pick is fine.
Speaker 1: It's not about the tape, Like I need this hour,
Speaker 1: and He's going back and forth with me, and I
Speaker 1: got so frustrated. I just said, Okay, let's get in
Speaker 1: the car and I got the gift box and I
Speaker 1: didn't have the hour and I was mad the whole
Speaker 1: day and the whole night, and I needed that hour. Anyways,
Speaker 1: after the interview, he came by the hotel I was
Speaker 1: at and said, do you want to like go to dinner?
Speaker 1: And I was like not really, I'm like so angry,
Speaker 1: and he was like, let's go to dinner and talk
Speaker 1: about it. So ultimately he basically says to me, he
Speaker 1: feels that his time is worth more than mine.
Speaker 2: And that's what it came down to. Once I asked
Speaker 2: a million questions, Right, it didn't go there right away.
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't you do this for me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yes, And that's when he lost me. I just could
Speaker 1: never get over that.
Speaker 3: Well, I love your story. I love your story because
Speaker 3: that is actually like why did my marriage end? Because
Speaker 3: that was what my husband was telling me in all
Speaker 3: of the choices he was making that even though I
Speaker 3: was making more money, his time was still worth more
Speaker 3: than mine. Right, Yes, And I think men are endowed
Speaker 3: with this sense that their time is important. And kid,
Speaker 3: you had it right, because as an economist, your time
Speaker 3: is worth something, whether you're making money with it or not,
Speaker 3: because your time can be used to make what economists
Speaker 3: call utility, which is like joy, happiness, fulfillment. Right. So,
Speaker 3: however you spend your time produces value. It's not just
Speaker 3: spending it in the labor market. Right. And if you
Speaker 3: don't have that career you want to have yet, then
Speaker 3: spending that hour investing and trying to get it even
Speaker 3: though you're not getting paid for it. Right, that's valuable too,
Speaker 3: So you are one hundred percent right that your time
Speaker 3: always had value. And I think you've really put your
Speaker 3: finger exactly on the thing that I think is holding
Speaker 3: so many relationships back is that it is an unspoken
Speaker 3: assumption that his time is always worth more, no matter what.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really covert in a lot of
Speaker 1: relationships because men can talk a big game, they can
Speaker 1: say things that are very kind. Of course I don't
Speaker 1: think that, but take all the words away, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: are their actions saying? And I love how you say
Speaker 1: in the book that marriage really hasn't caught up to
Speaker 1: modern life, Like the real issue for women is time.
Speaker 2: It's not about ambition, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess to link it back to what we talked
Speaker 1: about with Emma, because I think it's like a good
Speaker 1: personification of some of these issues is she's saying that
Speaker 1: like you can fix it as being an individual, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It's the system, right, Like do you think
Speaker 1: that when you run a big company the way she
Speaker 1: does that, like she can change the system, or if
Speaker 1: she just saying to all of us, like I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that the game is right, this is just how
Speaker 1: the game is played.
Speaker 3: Well, I would be interested to hear if she is
Speaker 3: trying to fix that system for the company that she runs, right,
Speaker 3: because there are some companies that they worked with where
Speaker 3: you see that like, oh, a woman is in charge
Speaker 3: and they're really trying to make this add up. You mentioned,
Speaker 3: like Pivotal Ventures, And you know, when I went out
Speaker 3: there for that talk, I brought my wife and my
Speaker 3: one year old daughter with me because it was my
Speaker 3: one year old's first birthday. And they were like, well,
Speaker 3: you obviously can't leave her behind, right. That was clearly
Speaker 3: part of the values, right, that they were exhibiting in
Speaker 3: their work. And you know, I think that I don't
Speaker 3: know that those are the values that Emma is exhibiting.
Speaker 3: I mean, and who knows if there's a distance between
Speaker 3: public and personal right, But in her public persona, it's
Speaker 3: women need to be trying harder, you know, And so
Speaker 3: is that what the message is to employees? And sometimes
Speaker 3: you know, you see it where women who had to
Speaker 3: fight an unfair system to get ahead, then sometimes they
Speaker 3: are not allies of the women who come after them
Speaker 3: because they're just like, well, I had to make all
Speaker 3: these sacrifices, so you should too, And it's like, well, no,
Speaker 3: none of us should, actually.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: And then I get confused because I'm like, well, why
Speaker 1: do we expect women to change the strata for not
Speaker 1: expecting it from men?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but really I just want it from everyone. I
Speaker 2: want the system to change.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. And if you are in the
Speaker 3: position of somewhat of power and privilege and you have
Speaker 3: a microphone, which she does, right, she has an enormous microphone,
Speaker 3: then you can use that to change because there are
Speaker 3: other people who are less powerful than you. So yes,
Speaker 3: even though you as a woman, you know, there's ways
Speaker 3: in which men are still having power over you. And
Speaker 3: as a woman of color, right, there's ways in which
Speaker 3: you know, she is marginalized. There's still Right now, you
Speaker 3: have a microphone and you can use that to try
Speaker 3: to break down that system.
Speaker 1: So when you say in the book to optimize for
Speaker 1: joy and for meaning, how do we do that while
Speaker 1: realistically optimizing for achievement and finance as well? Because you
Speaker 1: are still a very ambitious person, how have you personally
Speaker 1: thought about it all?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the key is and this is where
Speaker 3: I'll get into this more kind of technical definition of
Speaker 3: like how do you measure when I said, like my
Speaker 3: values versus Emmagred's values, like how do you measure that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So kind of must have this idea of your utility function,
Speaker 3: which is everything that brings you jolly's. It's everything that
Speaker 3: the end of your life you would give points to.
Speaker 3: You would say, yes, that was a life well lived.
Speaker 3: You would look back on and say, I'm glad that
Speaker 3: I made that decision.
Speaker 2: And does everybody have different utility function?
Speaker 3: Everybody has a different utility function. And so the key
Speaker 3: lesson if people take one thing for my work and
Speaker 3: for my book, is to not think of achievement or
Speaker 3: financial success as ends in themselves, to instead think of
Speaker 3: those things as vehicles to increase your utility. Whatever you
Speaker 3: get utility from. So let's take an example where you
Speaker 3: could be super super successful, right, but you would only
Speaker 3: get three hours a day with your kids, with doing
Speaker 3: what you love, with doing hobbies, of reading a book,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, right, But you would be like amazingly
Speaker 3: financially successful. I would be like for what, right, Like
Speaker 3: what is all that money good for? If I can't
Speaker 3: afford my own time spent? The way that I choose
Speaker 3: to spend it, right, So I reframe, And I think
Speaker 3: it's different for women because we have been trained to
Speaker 3: think to be ambitious and to say like, oh, don't
Speaker 3: hold yourself back and dream big and all of that.
Speaker 3: And yes, sure, but I think always ask for what.
Speaker 3: I reframe a career as, like I said, a vehicle
Speaker 3: to turn your time into money ultimately to buy happiness, right,
Speaker 3: And if it's not buying me happiness, then it's not working.
Speaker 3: So how is whatever my financial goal is, whatever my
Speaker 3: career goal is, how is it supporting what I ultimately want?
Speaker 3: So for you interviewing for this job that you were
Speaker 3: interviewing for example, right, if you get that, it becomes well, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have a better conversion of my time
Speaker 3: into money because I could put the same amount of
Speaker 3: time in get more money back, and then I would
Speaker 3: be able to, you know, instead of having this, I'd
Speaker 3: be able to like pursue this other thing I'm interested in,
Speaker 3: or you know, work on starting the family that I
Speaker 3: want to start. Right, So it's like, how does that success?
Speaker 3: How does meeting that milestone? How does it actually help
Speaker 3: me craft the life that I want to craft? And
Speaker 3: it's staying laser focused on that instead of just on
Speaker 3: success for success sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you make this sharp point about how women used
Speaker 1: to be the release valve, basically like putting the husband
Speaker 1: through school while working as secretaries, and you mentioned that
Speaker 1: your own grandmother did exactly that. And now women are
Speaker 1: making these big early career investments in themselves. Nobody's releasing
Speaker 1: the valve for them. That's part of the squeeze, right.
Speaker 1: And so if marriage is a deal where the data
Speaker 1: says I'll carry the worst end and kids are the
Speaker 1: thing that triggers that squeeze, then like a clear eyed
Speaker 1: woman who actually runs the numbers like you did might rationally.
Speaker 2: Choose me neither.
Speaker 1: And I think that's sort of what we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now in the data. Right there's a lot of women
Speaker 1: in their thirties and forties who are not married, not dating,
Speaker 1: and actually not even looking to That's like what I'm
Speaker 1: seeing all over my TikTok.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I think we have to be careful to
Speaker 3: like say, what is like a true what is a
Speaker 3: true trend versus there's like a of course social media
Speaker 3: phenomenon or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I do think TikTok is not your economic studies.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think that we are seeing like more
Speaker 3: delayed marriage and partnership. We're also seeing a decline in
Speaker 3: teen births, which is part of what's driving the fertility decline.
Speaker 3: But I think ultimately there are some women who are
Speaker 3: saying this deal isn't adding up for me, and I
Speaker 3: think it's more likely to be women. So if you
Speaker 3: are a super ambitious woman, but you're still going to
Speaker 3: actually marry somebody who's like more financially successful than you,
Speaker 3: that could still add up because like, for example, he
Speaker 3: could become like somebody who finances whatever your dream is
Speaker 3: that could support your career right.
Speaker 1: Right, or hire the help that's necessary, rights allowed.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the Emma Gred lifestyle right a
Speaker 3: little bit. So I think the onom who are funny
Speaker 3: it's not adding up is the women who are really
Speaker 3: financially successful themselves, and then they're meeting men who like
Speaker 3: aren't like stratospherically successful, right, They're just kind of doing okay,
Speaker 3: but they expect that to be enough because all their
Speaker 3: lives I've been told all you have to bring to
Speaker 3: the table is a paycheck, and these men are just
Speaker 3: doing the bare minimum. They will not go get in
Speaker 3: god damn gift box, right they've asked them to get
Speaker 3: because they've always been told like, you're just all you
Speaker 3: have to do is provide for the family, that's it.
Speaker 3: And these women are saying, I don't need a paycheck
Speaker 3: from you. I have my own paycheck. I need a
Speaker 3: real full partner, right, And so I think they're saying, like, look,
Speaker 3: this isn't enough, this deal is not working for me anymore.
Speaker 3: And so my work is not about discouraging people from
Speaker 3: getting married or having a family. I mean, I personally,
Speaker 3: I love being a parent and that's such an important
Speaker 3: part of my utility function. Yeah, and I can't imagine
Speaker 3: life without having the kids that I have, including you know,
Speaker 3: marrying the wrong person first, but having an amazing child
Speaker 3: who I couldn't regret a single moment of that. But
Speaker 3: I do think if men are lonely, which like we
Speaker 3: keep hearing about how they are, right, the way to
Speaker 3: overcome that is for men to figure out, like how
Speaker 3: do I give women what they need? Right? How do
Speaker 3: I show up as more of a full partner. And
Speaker 3: so I think the work is not incumbent upon women
Speaker 3: to solve the fertility crisis. It's incumbent upon men to
Speaker 3: figure out, like where are they falling short?
Speaker 2: WHOA I've not heard that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I call it an argument or
Speaker 1: a thought or perspective, but I've not heard that.
Speaker 2: I think I'm very aligned with it.
Speaker 1: How can they become full partners the way women have
Speaker 1: had to become full people in every sense of the.
Speaker 3: Word, every domain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been required of us, and we always sort
Speaker 1: of step up to the plate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was curious about your thoughts on marriage because like
Speaker 1: it could be sort of taken that a ambitious woman
Speaker 1: should go find a traditional nineteen fifties housewife, i e.
Speaker 2: A man who's willing to do all that labor.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that's actually not the answer either, Like
Speaker 1: we are looking for full partners, and how can we
Speaker 1: raise boys to become full partners?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think like if you are, like if
Speaker 3: you're an ambitious woman and you find a guy who
Speaker 3: is ambitious about being a father and ambitious about taking
Speaker 3: care of the household, like that could be an amazing match.
Speaker 3: And there I think there is sometimes you know, I
Speaker 3: talk about the evolutionary impulses in the book that sometimes
Speaker 3: lead us astray. Yeah, And I think one of those
Speaker 3: is that, like our genes are trained to like look
Speaker 3: for the provider, the hunter who's gonna slay the wooly
Speaker 3: mammoth for us or whatever, and that might be maladaptive
Speaker 3: in this world where like what we need is somebody
Speaker 3: who's going to like want to put together, ikea furniture.
Speaker 3: I never like, you know, want to like, you know,
Speaker 3: pack a toddler lunchbox. So I think that women should
Speaker 3: be more expansive in like what traits they're looking for.
Speaker 3: And remember that, like you're not just shopping for sexy,
Speaker 3: because sexy is gonna wear off when you're cleaning his
Speaker 3: toothpaste off the bathroom sink. Like he's not going to
Speaker 3: be sexy in the same way anymore. And what's going
Speaker 3: to be sexy is somebody lightening your load so that
Speaker 3: you can be a full person.
Speaker 1: Right, so that you can become Yes, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a departure. But I was
Speaker 1: so fascinated by this one study that you ran that
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about dating apps. So you
Speaker 1: every year that a woman ages from thirty to forty,
Speaker 1: you found that she has to earn seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: more to be rated equally desirable on dating apps? Can
Speaker 1: you explain what's what's beneath that study.
Speaker 3: So I have a more positive take on it, which
Speaker 3: is what's underneath this study is something that I call
Speaker 3: reproductive capital, and I wanted to show that reproductive capital
Speaker 3: was valuable and it's something that women have and men
Speaker 3: don't have. What do I mean by that? Because you
Speaker 3: might be like, well, it takes a man and no
Speaker 3: woman to make a baby. Think about your single girlfriends
Speaker 3: and think about how real of a possibility it is
Speaker 3: for them that if they don't find the male partner
Speaker 3: they're looking for, they could have a baby on their own. Right.
Speaker 3: And after I got divorced and I was dating women
Speaker 3: but hadn't found like a life partner, I was very
Speaker 3: much thinking about just having the second baby that I
Speaker 3: wanted on my own. Your male friends do not have
Speaker 3: that same option because to have a baby on their
Speaker 3: own would require several hundred thousand dollars because you have
Speaker 3: to replace this incredibly valuable commodity, reproductive capital. It's somebody
Speaker 3: who's going to, you know, spend their eggs, right, so
Speaker 3: you have to pay for egg donation, which is a
Speaker 3: you know, very like long process. It's not like sperm donation.
Speaker 3: Sperm donation takes twenty minutes, right, it's a bunch, you know,
Speaker 3: longer process. It's like a surgery. You have to find
Speaker 3: someone who would be a surrogate to carry that child
Speaker 3: for nine months.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So women contribute so much more reproductively, and so this
Speaker 3: was part of my dissertation that I wanted to prove
Speaker 3: this hypothesis I had that reproductive capital was valuable. And
Speaker 3: so of course if we're going to convince people that
Speaker 3: something's valuable, I have to convince people that men value it.
Speaker 3: So I ran in this study Maris, well, you know,
Speaker 3: reproductive capital is declining between thirty and forty because it's
Speaker 3: becoming harder to have kids. So I randomized ages on
Speaker 3: dating profiles and showed that when randomly, you know, it's
Speaker 3: the same picture, the same profile, but when her age
Speaker 3: is higher, that she's getting rated lower. And I put
Speaker 3: that in monetary terms, you know, in terms of how
Speaker 3: much money more she would have to earn. Because, by
Speaker 3: the way, also men do value women's income. I think
Speaker 3: it's a little bit of a myth that men don't
Speaker 3: want women to earn money. They do want women to
Speaker 3: earn money, they just also want them to do everything
Speaker 3: around the house. So that allowed me to then say, like,
Speaker 3: reproductive capital is valuable, and I could link it specifically
Speaker 3: to fertility, because if the man already had kids from
Speaker 3: a previous relationship, he didn't show this gradient with age,
Speaker 3: he didn't respond to the randomly at the men who
Speaker 3: were kind of looking to have kids.
Speaker 2: Hold on, I want to make sure that I'm understanding this.
Speaker 1: So men who already have kids had no bias against
Speaker 1: women and their age.
Speaker 2: It was just about reproduction for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And because remember the photo was being held constant.
Speaker 3: You may say there's other things that normally change with age,
Speaker 3: but here I'm holding everything constant, right and interesting, there
Speaker 3: wasn't wasn't a relationship if you weren't interested in having kids.
Speaker 3: But the reason, I'll what the positive spend Because there's
Speaker 3: the maddening piece of end I'm like, how women are devalued?
Speaker 3: Does the age and how something I'm forty one, right,
Speaker 3: I am feeling all of these things. But the positive
Speaker 3: spin on it is that you are endowed. Women are
Speaker 3: endowed with this incredibly valuable reproductive capital. And this is
Speaker 3: why queen's historically, even though they didn't work, they didn't
Speaker 3: do anything around the house, but they still were treated
Speaker 3: like royalty, just like kings, because they were contributing their
Speaker 3: reproductive capital. And so you have this, and if you're
Speaker 3: going to make a deal with somebody to share your
Speaker 3: reproductive capital with him, the terms of that deal better
Speaker 3: be very favorable to you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So speaking of deal, this is the one part
Speaker 1: of our conversation where I want to sort of give
Speaker 1: you a to be sure argument because as I was reading,
Speaker 1: I was thinking to myself, Wow, maybe I'm complicit in
Speaker 1: my own oppression. So I'm going to push back, and
Speaker 1: please push back on me. So you say in the
Speaker 1: book for all of us to ask ourselves when we're
Speaker 1: looking at our lives and our marriages, to look at
Speaker 1: them as a deal, a contract, And you write, ask yourself,
Speaker 1: am I getting a good return?
Speaker 2: A job, a relationship? Kids? Am I getting a good deal? Now?
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of.
Speaker 1: People who read that or listen to this conversation are
Speaker 1: going to say, well, you know, love is not really
Speaker 1: the error term, like love is the whole point? What
Speaker 1: if I'm optimizing for love like, what if you CARINLO
Speaker 1: have the equation upside down? What if that's the variable
Speaker 1: that actually matters. What do you say to that?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, I'm not as cynical as I sound. I
Speaker 3: absolutely think that love matters. And I like describe my
Speaker 3: experience of with wearing this analytical hat and trying to
Speaker 3: like date post divorce and being like, this time, I'm
Speaker 3: going to do it right. This time, I'm going to
Speaker 3: have my checklist and I'm going to make sure that
Speaker 3: this person. And then I like met somebody who's amazing,
Speaker 3: was a good friend now who like hit every point
Speaker 3: in the track list, and like I was not attracted
Speaker 3: to them, right, And it's like, oh darn it, Like
Speaker 3: you know, that's actually not how this works, right. So
Speaker 3: what I say is like, attraction and love is a
Speaker 3: necessary condition. You need it to even start the conversation.
Speaker 3: Can we have a relationship, But it's not a sufficient condition.
Speaker 3: It's not the be all and end all, right, And
Speaker 3: I think the mistake that we get is by believing
Speaker 3: these cultural scripts that love should be enough. And I'm
Speaker 3: sure when Jada met Will Smith that she loved him right,
Speaker 3: and later on in that marriage, as you said, there
Speaker 3: was something else there. There was resentment. Right when I
Speaker 3: met my ex husband, I did love him, and I
Speaker 3: followed like my heart. I followed love right, and we
Speaker 3: loved each other so much, and we loved each other,
Speaker 3: and I loved him so much until the point where
Speaker 3: I was getting none of my needs met in the relationship,
Speaker 3: and then that little by little eight away at that
Speaker 3: love until there was nothing left. So I think if
Speaker 3: you want to sustain the love that you start out with, right,
Speaker 3: and you go into every relationship with love, of course
Speaker 3: you should go in with love. But if you want
Speaker 3: to sustain it, you need more there. Right. It has
Speaker 3: to be that both people's needs are getting met. It
Speaker 3: has to be that both people are getting a good deal,
Speaker 3: that both people are getting that chance to self actualize.
Speaker 3: And I think when you put it in those terms
Speaker 3: of its being about self actualization, it's not just about
Speaker 3: the financial contract, right, And it's about becoming your true self.
Speaker 3: Of course, a relationship should support that. And if somebody
Speaker 3: loves you and you love them and you have a
Speaker 3: great sex life, but they won't get you the gift
Speaker 3: box so that you can spend an hour studying, right,
Speaker 3: it's going to turn off your attraction to them, and that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was gone then right, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: did not want to have sex with him? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, and it turns off like a light switch.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yes. And so that, like love and attraction, is thanked
Speaker 3: to actually getting our needs, Matt. And so I want
Speaker 3: you to shop for the partner who, yes, you feel
Speaker 3: that insane chemistry with, but you also are able to
Speaker 3: sustain that chemistry because that partner is your biggest fan
Speaker 3: and your biggest cheerleader and wanted you to ace that
Speaker 3: interview more than you even wanted it.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you for putting it into those terms. I
Speaker 1: think that's really a beautiful way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: And also your idea of thinking about what our own
Speaker 1: values are is so helpful, because if somebody's value is
Speaker 1: like I want to be a stay at home parent
Speaker 1: and I want to be the person like holding down
Speaker 1: the fort, then you're not saying don't do that. If
Speaker 1: that's how you are self actualizing, amazing. But if you
Speaker 1: are going into this relationship wanting other things, you need
Speaker 1: a partner that's going to help facilitate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so poor you where you are, and that's why
Speaker 3: this idea of like finding your own utility function. And
Speaker 3: when you find your own utility function, it's actually going
Speaker 3: to cure that jealousy that we started with this idea
Speaker 3: of wanting somebody else's life, because you're going to look
Speaker 3: at somebody else's life and you're going to say, I
Speaker 3: could have more of that, but that's not my utility function.
Speaker 3: I would have to give up this other thing that
Speaker 3: I want right I could be more successful, I could
Speaker 3: be thinner, I could be richer, but I would have
Speaker 3: to focus on that to the exclusion of other things
Speaker 3: that I value. And I'm who I am. So when
Speaker 3: you really tap into your utility function, you will not
Speaker 3: feel that constant need to want to be someone else.
Speaker 1: I know you shared such a great question earlier about
Speaker 1: like would my partner move if there's somebody listening right now.
Speaker 1: We have listeners who are single, who are married, who
Speaker 1: are career oriented, who are stay at home parents.
Speaker 2: It runs the gamut.
Speaker 1: Is there a question that you think every woman should
Speaker 1: be asking herself right now?
Speaker 3: Hm? I love that question. I think the how am
Speaker 3: I in investing my time? Question of recognizing that your
Speaker 3: time is extremely valuable. Your time is your scarcest asset,
Speaker 3: and so how much are you investing and giving away
Speaker 3: for other people for what serves their utility function? Your
Speaker 3: boss wants to make more money. You know, your kids,
Speaker 3: if you have kids, are always going to want more
Speaker 3: of you. Your partner is going to want this, and
Speaker 3: that your friends are going to want this, Your community
Speaker 3: is going to have these needs. How much are you
Speaker 3: investing your time in everything that everybody else needs versus
Speaker 3: in what you hold most dear? And when I talked
Speaker 3: about your time being intrinsically valuable, that's a reframe I
Speaker 3: want everybody to make that. It's like if you say, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I know what my utility function is, but how do
Speaker 3: I get more of it? Right? Everybody can get more
Speaker 3: utility right now. And there's one thing that you can do.
Speaker 3: Write down the two or three things that bring you
Speaker 3: the most joy, that you feel the most at peace
Speaker 3: when you do that, you feel the most like yourself
Speaker 3: when you do, and then do those things do the more,
Speaker 3: put them on your calendar, carve them out, block them out,
Speaker 3: and recognize that that is a valuable use of your time.
Speaker 3: That's not laziness, that's not like, oh I didn't feel
Speaker 3: like being productive. That's you being extremely productive making utility
Speaker 3: with your time, which ultimately is what we're here on
Speaker 3: earth to do.
Speaker 1: I tell me if you think this is true, I
Speaker 1: think what partners are like. What coincides with that is
Speaker 1: being willing to let other things fall by the wayside.
Speaker 1: So like I want more time to work out, I
Speaker 1: may not have like the perfect host gift for everywhere
Speaker 1: I go, or the like I may not get birthday
Speaker 1: gifts from my friends.
Speaker 2: You know, Like what am I willing to sort of release.
Speaker 3: When I say block it out on your calendar? It's
Speaker 3: to acknowledge this idea that whatever will fill the available space.
Speaker 3: And what we do as women is we often let
Speaker 3: ourselves claim the scraps, right, So it's the crumbs in
Speaker 3: the bottom of the cookie bag instead of that first
Speaker 3: big bite of a cookie, you know, in a crusty edge, right,
Speaker 3: we get the crumbs that are left over. And so
Speaker 3: what I'm saying is give yourself that first big bite
Speaker 3: for the thing that you value the most, and let
Speaker 3: everything else claim the crumbs, and it will all get done.
Speaker 3: Like the things that are truly important, the things that
Speaker 3: are must us and muskets done this week they will
Speaker 3: get done, and some other things like that email might
Speaker 3: go unanswered, or that you know, perfect hostess gift might
Speaker 3: not get bought, and it might be a bottle of
Speaker 3: wine you know, quickly on the way and SE's regifted.
Speaker 2: I might even gift champagne over and over again.
Speaker 3: Yes, it just is cycling between other people's houses, right,
Speaker 3: and that is okay. Give me and my friends we
Speaker 3: joke that like no one has bought a new gift bag,
Speaker 3: you know, in like years, it's just like the same
Speaker 3: gift bag totally. And that is going to be okay.
Speaker 3: That's going to be enough because you invested your time
Speaker 3: in what was most valuable.
Speaker 2: Yes, wow, so well said.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna ask you some rapid fire questions because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a drain on your time.
Speaker 2: Current.
Speaker 1: What's the most overrated piece of advice ever given to
Speaker 1: working women?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, so many of them. But this idea
Speaker 3: that you have to act like a man to get ahead,
Speaker 3: so you've got to like negotiate harder, be more aggressive.
Speaker 3: There's no evidence to back that up. I have studies
Speaker 3: showing that women are better negotiators than men.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, love that Okay, one thing you tell
Speaker 1: single you that married you had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 3: That the extent of gender roles acting on you and
Speaker 3: your spouse is going to surprise you. And there are
Speaker 3: so many defaults in marriage in parenthood that you have
Speaker 3: to swim upstream against, and so you need to prepare
Speaker 3: for that now by choosing a partner and by negotiating
Speaker 3: the terms of the deal with that partner before those
Speaker 3: defaults kind of sweep you away in their tide.
Speaker 2: Finish this sentence, having it all actually means.
Speaker 3: Having it almost, which is the version that works for you.
Speaker 3: Whatever you know you value most, having that and letting
Speaker 3: the rest be messy and imperfect, because that's life, and
Speaker 3: this isn't Instagram. This is real life. And only in
Speaker 3: real life. Can you actually taste that peach? Can you
Speaker 3: actually hug that child? Can you act actually smell that meadow?
Speaker 3: And let's not miss that the wonderful experience of living
Speaker 3: our full, messy, complicated lives chasing an aesthetic that was
Speaker 3: never real to begin with.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I learned about Girl
Speaker 1: Boss is that a big part of it was aesthetic.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of coming up again in a new way.
Speaker 1: Not to blame, I'm agreed. I think she's a symptom
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: But yes, I totally agree.
Speaker 2: There's this new aesthetic. It's very big, and.
Speaker 3: It's polarized because right now it's like we're torn between
Speaker 3: these two impossible realities of like Emma Greed on one
Speaker 3: hand and then like Ballerina farm on the other, and
Speaker 3: we're like twisting ourselves into a pretzel trying to be
Speaker 3: both and it's just like, no, like just delete Instagram
Speaker 3: off your phone for a couple of weeks and start over.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned just a minute ago about putting certain
Speaker 1: things on your calendar.
Speaker 2: What's something what's a swap that you made?
Speaker 3: So it's more of just the commitment because I don't like,
Speaker 3: I don't feel like the tradeoffs are not that real,
Speaker 3: because the trade off is really like you have less
Speaker 3: time for email, the house is a little bit less clean,
Speaker 3: like or you maybe you have less time to scroll
Speaker 3: your phone at the end of the day because you
Speaker 3: put some of your valued first. But it's like being
Speaker 3: committed to like even when it feels hard and you're like,
Speaker 3: how am I going to make time for yoga or
Speaker 3: right now for me and my wife, like trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how to get time with each other with
Speaker 3: like two very busy careers and two kids. So it's like,
Speaker 3: really that commitment, that practice of being like this is
Speaker 3: not negotiable. This time has to be preserved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's something that every woman should try? Once?
Speaker 3: I said, going on a date with a woman. Just
Speaker 3: try it.
Speaker 2: Just class out, because you know.
Speaker 3: There's just who knows who you're attracted to. And again,
Speaker 3: there's so many defaults, right, So it's not that I'm encouraging,
Speaker 3: and I'm not saying that secretly everybody is, you know, gay,
Speaker 3: or everybody could be a lesbian. I don't think that
Speaker 3: everybody's necessarily flexible, but I do think that we shouldn't
Speaker 3: just let the default drive our decisions. We should explore.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: You know, Ashland Harris basically said the same thing to
Speaker 1: me on the pot. She was like, everyone needs to
Speaker 1: kiss a woman once. Tell me about a book you
Speaker 1: read that changed your life, something that everybody should read.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, first of all, I love fiction, and so
Speaker 3: if you look at what's on my nightstand, it's always
Speaker 3: going to be in a fiction book. And there's so
Speaker 3: many authors that I love because I feel like fiction
Speaker 3: is always about identifying truths within ourselves. But if I'm
Speaker 3: going to be really honest and really nerdy answering this question,
Speaker 3: I would say it was like principles of microeconomics because
Speaker 3: when I was in college, I started taking ECON and
Speaker 3: it became this framework that I used to understand the world.
Speaker 3: And so this idea of utility function, it's like this
Speaker 3: ECON one oh one like way of solving problems and
Speaker 3: understanding like is the consumer going to like buy less
Speaker 3: tomatoes when like the price of tomatoes goes up? Right?
Speaker 3: But it became to me this really amazing metaphor for
Speaker 3: seeking what we most value in life, that we are
Speaker 3: maximizing utility. And so you know, a little bit of economics,
Speaker 3: I feel like, and if people are interested in that,
Speaker 3: I if you follow my sub stack, I feel like
Speaker 3: I try to do that. Is like teach people a
Speaker 3: little bit about basic economics because I think it is
Speaker 3: such a life changing way to view the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: I was a political science major, and every professor I
Speaker 1: had said, if something can feel uses you, and POLY
Speaker 1: say follow the money. So that's right, okay, question everything
Speaker 1: tell me when to stop?
Speaker 3: Noh?
Speaker 2: Okay, what's one thing you are trying to or need
Speaker 2: to let go.
Speaker 3: Of that need for things to be perfect and for
Speaker 3: things to be done right now, because it's so hard, right.
Speaker 3: I think so many women lessening probably relate. It's like
Speaker 3: you're so driven in like your career life, and you
Speaker 3: always have your checklist, and then like you just want
Speaker 3: everything to be done, everything to be perfect. It's like
Speaker 3: you want your house to look amazing all the time,
Speaker 3: and then the clutter is constantly like re emerging. You know,
Speaker 3: I want my flowers to already be planted in the
Speaker 3: backyard now that it's like ninety degrees right, And the
Speaker 3: reality is that, like life is messy, and you're not
Speaker 3: going to really get more joy out of those things
Speaker 3: being done right now, and it's not worth the trade
Speaker 3: off of going to the park or going for a walk.
Speaker 3: So I am constantly trying to let go of needing
Speaker 3: things to be perfect, done, complete, neat all of that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Usually I could end an interview by saying thank you
Speaker 1: for your time, but it means something different in this one,
Speaker 1: so truly thank you for your time and good advice.
Speaker 1: I love that it's rooted in economics, but it really
Speaker 1: does feel like advice.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Danielle and baby Danielle had it write.
Speaker 3: Your time is incredibly valuable, every minute, and I hope
Speaker 3: you find somebody who values it as much as you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's such a beautiful wish. I'm gonna hold that. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what time it is. Today's a good day,
Speaker 1: to have a good day. I'll see you next week.