Role Overload: Single Ladies

Single women aren’t always included in conversations about role overload. B&E talk with writer Julia Carpenter about what this looks like for all the single ladies. Learn more about today's interview guest, Julia Carpenter, at https://www.juliaccarpenter.com/.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to stuff mom
never told you. Today, we're continuing the conversation around role overload,
that feeling of wearing too many hats, of trying to

(00:26):
be everything to everyone, that psychological experience that can really
easily lead to overwhelm, burnout, disengagement, and stress. We've talked
through this work life balanced kind of conversation by unpacking
role overload from a variety of angles Already. We've talked
with Tiffany Doofu about working motherhood. We've talked with Liz

(00:48):
O'Donnell about being a working daughter with aging parents to
care for. And today we want to give a shout
out to all the single ladies. We're two single ladies,
are selves were childless and marriage less, and we Heathen's
want work life balance too. Gosh darn it. Yeah, I
always hate how work life balance is sort of presented.

(01:10):
First of all, just it's a thing for women, but
also a thing for women who have families. Just because
I don't have kids, or a spouse or a husband
doesn't actually mean that these things aren't important to me,
that I don't have things in my life that I
need to prioritize and balance. It's because I'm a single
woman doesn't mean that these things don't show up in
my life exactly. And I think we often leave single

(01:30):
women out of this conversation because the struggle is real
for working parents, and the struggle is real for workers
with aging parents to care for. Caretaking is no easy feet.
But being childless or child free in the United States
still comes with different roles and responsibilities that we play
to others in our lives. So it doesn't mean you

(01:51):
can't experience role conflict if you don't have familial obligations
and those sort of traditional markers of womanhood to contend with.
But that's the thing, even if you don't have children,
you still have familial relationships, right, Like, Yeah, I still
focus on being a good sister, a good daughter, All
these family responsibilities still show up in my life. Just

(02:12):
because I don't have a kid, the mix doesn't mean
that I don't still have a lot of obligations, you know,
involving my family. You mean you have a life outside
of work. I do have a life outside of how
dare you bridget how audacious? So it's real, And I
would argue that if we make family leave or workplace

(02:32):
flexibility only available to women who are moms, are only
available to those with aging parents or those with caretaking responsibilities.
We actually sidetrack those workers, and we do us all
of this service. We should make that the norm. And
here in the United States, we've had kind of a
long fraught relationship with the concept of being a woman

(02:55):
who is child free. Not wanting children has slow we
become more recognized as a legitimate choice, but it wasn't
always Quite frankly, there used to be a lot more
shade and judgment brought to that choice in someone's life.
And I would say, there's still a lot of judgment. Yeah.
I was just gonna say, maybe we've gotten better at
this and made some progress in terms of how we

(03:16):
think about people who are childless by choice. But I
don't think that we're there yet at all. I have
plenty of friends, most of whom are female, who say,
you know, I don't want kids. I'm child free by choice,
which is not my thing. And all the time they
talk about how everyone says you'll change your mind one day,
wait till you get to be a certain age, blah
blah blah. I actually have a friend who's documented her

(03:38):
attempts to get her tubes side so that she could
not have children, and so many doctors out there flat
out refused to do this procedure for her because they say, oh,
I don't want to do this now when you're young,
when you're in your thirties, because you're gonna come back
to me in two years and change your mind. And
she's like, no, I'm not. I've made a choice. Nobody
seems to believe that she has made a life choice

(03:59):
to be childless on her on her own accord. Yeah,
it's a very weird relationship that our society has with that.
And honestly, this conversation around being a single woman and
wanting work life balance applies to women who eventually want
children as well as those who've made that choice that
children isn't just not for them. Laura Carol writes in

(04:19):
Fortune magazine, people don't have children for many reasons. People
want children and are childless because they're waiting to find
the right relationship before having them. Others are in a
relationship and childless due to fertility issues. Still, others end
up with no children after saying no to another round
of IVF or adoption, whether child free or childless, we

(04:41):
still have a ways to go when it comes to
society accepting those with no children without judgment or stigma.
And this lack of acceptance, she says, has played out
in the workplace. Well, that's unquestionably true. I also love
that she actually unpacks the various reasons that someone would
be childless. Some people have made a choice to be
child read and that's their thing. Some people want children

(05:02):
but having trouble, you know, conceiving. Basically, it's one of
those things where we assume we know what the situation is,
but it can be any number of situations. And whatever
that situation is, we need to have workplace principles that
allow for folks who don't have children to still have
the flexibility they need. Exactly, and we've actually seen childlessness

(05:23):
rise steeply from the nineteen seventies to about two thousand
and five. Thank you birth control. Okay, shout out to
birth control. It's since declined again since two thousand and five,
and Ohio State University sociologist Sarah Hayford found that a
decline in marriage rates contributed most to the rise in childlessness.

(05:45):
She writes, quote, getting married can change people's minds about
having kids. To some marriage means having children, so I'm
entering this married world and taking on other things that
go along with it. In fact, they cited a reader
who said, I've always said that I never knew I
wanted children until I knew I wanted children with him.
Her experience seems to really reflect some other women out there.

(06:07):
Of women never have kids, but most of us start
out agnostic. They say, oh, I don't know if I
want kids. I haven't met the right guy who knows.
We'll see. I think that really shows how kids are.
The choice to have kids or not can really play
out in women's lives. And I feel like the LGBTQ
community that whole conversation has changed dramatically to the passage

(06:27):
of marriage equality, and it's still not very easy for
gay couphols to have kids, right. We still don't make
it as easy as it should be for all folks
to have access to adoption or to whatever solution is
right for them. Um. And so it's just I think
it's important to keep in mind that whether you're choosing
or not really choosing to not have children or to

(06:51):
not pursue marriage. UM. That shouldn't dictate how the workplace
sees and values your time, your talents, and your life
outside of work. Absolutely, when I was teaching, I used
to have this little fantasy. So when you're teaching at college,
you don't often have the best schedules. And I sort
of got the vibe that if you were a parent,
then you were always given the best schedules. You know,

(07:12):
you were in them. You were there in the mornings
and you were gone by the afternoon. And as a
childless heathen, I always got the classes that were like
meeting at seven to nine, like late night classes. And
I started to think, if I invented a kid, if
I was like, oh, you guys missed that I had
had a child, like I gotta get home when my
schedule improved. And so I used to have this fantasy,

(07:33):
right joyd with the idea of inventing a child just
so I could see if I would get a better
teaching schedule. Totally that Fortune article I referenced earlier, The
author goes on to say that, you know, typically what
non parents do with their personal time has been viewed
as not to quote important as parent time. And there's
also this common assumption she writes that with no kids,

(07:54):
people must have a lot of free personal time, and
the work life balance conversation doesn't really apply to them.
As Melanie Nakin, author of other Hood, Modern Women Finding
a New Kind of Happiness puts it, quote, it's rare
that childless workers are thought to have a life outside
of work. So what's balanced? Some may think, yeah, I
mean not to keep bringing up this experience, But never

(08:16):
in my life have I ever felt so acutely aware
of how true that is. And when I was teaching,
most of the folks I was teaching with were a
bit older than me, so a lot of them did
have husband's wives and kids. And at the time I
was still sort of figuring out my life. I was
teaching and also studying at night for the els ATS.
I had a lot going on, But it was just
assume that all I was doing with my time was

(08:38):
going to the bar with my friends and like living
this you know, frivolous life of Netflix and Cosmopolitans or whatever.
Not that there's anything wrong with a life like that.
It actually sounds awesome. But I was grinding, I was hustling,
I was busy, I was taking night classes. I was teaching,
I was doing a lot. I just felt like what
I was doing never got the same recognition because I
didn't have kids in the mix. Yeah, I almost think

(08:59):
like it's important to acknowl Let you know what, my
yoga class at six pm is important to me and
your dinner at home with the fam is important to you.
Can we mutually respect that? Can we be okay with
not expecting single, childless women to pick up the slack
because we are assumed to not have obligations or important
things to do with our life outside of work. Absolutely,
I think it really goes back to this idea of

(09:20):
what our lives at home are assumed to look like.
Just like an excuse for paying women less is that
they have a husband at home who can take care
of them, and they're just working for extra money to
buy hats and lipsticks or something. These ideas that we
put on other people based on their gender for no
reason that have no bearing on how their lives actually are.
Absolutely well, I'm really excited to dive deeper into this

(09:41):
conversation with you, bridget We also have an incredible guest.
I can't wait to introduce you all too. After a
quick break and a word from our sponsors, and we
are back sminthy listeners, and we are talking through role

(10:03):
conflict and role overload as it pertains to single ladies.
What does it look like for us childless partner lists,
you know, marriageless folks to also dare to pursue that
elusive thing called work life balance. And today to talk
through this issue with us, we are so lucky to

(10:23):
be joined by Julia Carpenter, a journalist and writer who
you might know from her extensive writing on women and
money for CNN Money, and like Bridget and I, she's
a single, childless gal who's been writing a lot lately
about sexual harassment in the workplace. That is a topic
Bridget you know, is all too near and dear oh,

(10:43):
we get into it especially on this podcast. And actually
currently you should know that Julia is collecting stories about
how conversations are changing around harassment in the workplace and
how mothers and daughters have found ways to share their
experiences with one another. So we're really thrilled to have you,
Julie here, as a fellow woman in the workplace type expert,

(11:04):
to join us and talking through this uh, this topic today.
Thanks so much for being here, Thanks for having me.
So we've been unpacking some of the ways in which
single women can feel left out of the work life
balance conversation. How have you seen that come up in
your work? Yeah, I think I think one of the

(11:25):
issues is just the phrase work life balance is so loaded. Uh,
it comes with so many stereotypes as well as misconceptions.
You know, you can't ever really balance the two, and
it makes them sound like they're totally separate entities. And
there's so many different times where one takes press in
over the other other becomes more important, etcetera, etcetera. But

(11:46):
the thing I thought was so interesting when I started
researching this is that it's a phrase that's becoming even
more important to younger women exactly. That's why we've loved
breaking this down from the angle of role overload and
looking at how the different hats that we wear as
women and as people in our lives and at work
can sometimes leave us feeling conflicted and pulled in a

(12:07):
lot of different directions. But I guess the conflict comes
when you don't have the traditional roles that women are
expected to have, right. Yeah, that's one of the issues
when we say work in life balance because work is life.
Life does come to work. There's no like clear way
to compartmentalize all of these things, or at least the

(12:29):
vast majority of people have a hard time to finding
it that way. And I think that's so right, because
life and work are one and the same. You don't
when you go into the office. You don't like leave
your life at the office door. It shows up. You know,
you're talking to your mom, you're talking to your kid, whatever,
whatever the case may be. I think we push this
narrative that when you go into your workplace you're leaving
who you actually are at the door, and that's never

(12:50):
been the case, and we shouldn't have workplace policies that
seem to suggest that employees are these robots that don't
have feelings and lives outside of work, and worries and
stress or and hobbies and all of that that also
come into the workplace with them totally. And I think
this is especially a challenge for younger women who are
first entering the workforce, so their first job really sets
their expectations for what work life balance, if we're going

(13:14):
to call it that even looks like, or what a
typical workday looks like or what even you know workplace
culture is. So I think when we talk to younger
women about this too, and you you hear all these
pieces of advice like, you know, leave personal life at
the door, or don't talk about work over cocktails, like
those aren't really realistic expectations exactly. And also the modern

(13:37):
workplace feels much more hyper connected and fluid than ever before.
And I don't know about y'all, but when I graduated,
I had mastered the domain of how to get an
A and how to perform with a rubric and how
to you know, there was some kind of a feedback
loop at the end of a semester in which people
were gonna maybe not I never went to class, so

(13:57):
I I don't. I don't even know what you're getting
through based great a familiar but this idea of like
having a zyllables that says, here's how to perform and
get rewarded. And then you went to the workplace and
it's this amorphous like array of competing biased perceptions that
will dictate your rise or lack thereof. And no one

(14:20):
knows when it's done, when, when when is enough enough?
And for single people who aren't forced to have hard
boundaries that they've put down on behalf of a child,
or on behalf of a caring for a parent, or
obligations for other people. I think women especially have trouble
drawing healthy boundaries just because they deserve them. I was saying,

(14:42):
yeah so much, just because I was connecting so much
with what you were saying, and also because anecdotally, I've
heard so much from younger women that there is this
expectation when you get to the workplace that it will
it will mirror a clear roadmap that especially in corporate workplaces.
You know, you have your an into five, you have
your boss and then her manager, and you look at

(15:04):
the hierarchy and you have your check ins and your
monthly reports, like there are all these different goals that
you expect to check off the list. But there's a
really good book by uh I'm forgetting the author's name
at the moment, but I'll send it to you. Guys.
There's this really good book called Hiding in the Bathroom.
It's about being an introvert at work also and talking
about how for introverts work life bounds looks different. Maybe

(15:27):
you need a work from home day, or you need
to not go to the company cocktail party or whatever. Like,
there are all these different ways to set those boundaries
for you. That it becomes even harder when you're a woman,
and there's so much pressure to be seen as likable.
Like one of the things I've been finding in my
research about women and work is that likability is so

(15:47):
important for women when it comes to negotiating raises, talking
about promotions. There's this pressure to be seen as the
ideal employee or to be liked by everyone, and that
can really lead to you, you know, working yourself into
into a nine pm leave time when maybe that's the
expectation that you put on yourself. Yes, and I I
think we've been socialized as girls and women to perfect

(16:10):
perform and please everyone else around us, and praising everyone
else around you is actually not what's going to yield
that executive presence impression. It's not going to yield like, oh,
I think she's a boss, or I think she can
leave this project. Sometimes being assertive and this is me
getting on my bossed up soapbox because this is what
I do, but it really is like being assertive means

(16:34):
protecting boundaries with empathy but also standing up for yourself
and that is part of being a leader. But as
women were not told that having boundaries is okay. If
you try to boundaries, people guilt you. People make it
seem like you're a you know, not a nice person.
But actually it just shows the way that we've been
kind of trained and socialized to think about everybody else's

(16:56):
concerns over our own, especially as single women. Well, and
there are also negative consequences to setting boundaries, like we
can't ignore that, you know, there are perceptions of women
in the workforce that say, you know, women who ask
for more time off or ask for more flexible work
hours are penalized. There was one study particularly that was

(17:17):
looking at leave time that again I think is so
important because it's something younger women especially struggle with so much.
You know, when it's okay to leave the office, When
is okay to leave? And I look like I've worked
hard enough for you know, I've proven my worth at
being able to leave at five thirty instead of at seven.
But there was one study that showed that even when
women left earlier in the day as opposed to men
leaving earlier in the day, they were seen as not

(17:39):
working as hard as the men. Yeah, that's it's it's
so depressing, but it's not surprising, Like it just shows
that these fears that we have are somewhat grunted in
a reality. Um. One of the things I did want
to mention, just because I think it's so salient to
our conversation, is that I totally agree with you Emily,

(18:00):
like talking about this more, being more aware of it
is key to even being able to recognize what works
for you and what makes you a better employee. And
there's all kinds of conversations women can have with their
bosses or their managers to say, flexible work hours work
for me in X, y Z ways, I'm more productive
in these ways, you know, look at my results on
this way. But one of the things I thought was

(18:20):
so interesting in that same study I mentioned that said, uh,
younger women are valuing work life balance more and more
and talking about it more and more, is that when
women were asked does does your work life significantly interfere
with your personal life? It went down for women the
more they progressed in their careers, So women at the

(18:43):
start of their careers were actually more likely to say, yes,
my work life definitely interferes with my personal life than
women who are already established in their careers, which is
kind of contrary to what we were talking about. You know,
people see single women, young women, women just starting out
on their jobs as perfectly balancing those two things because
they don't have a partner at home or they don't
have a family at home. But it's actually the opposite, Like,

(19:05):
as women become more established in their careers, they're better
able to define those boundaries, are better able to set
up those conversations about what works for them. Let's talk
about that, because there's actually a case to be made,
um that a couple of different articles that we've uncovered
throughout this research have been making that single women workers

(19:27):
have it harder. You know, there's a quote here in
the Wall Street Journal that says, without a partner to help,
singles must get the laundry done, get to the gym,
by groceries, and get to the job. And so as
more young adults are delaying marriage into their thirties like
all of us here, and not to predict when any
of that's happening, um, but career demands are intensifying. Many

(19:52):
increasingly feel overloaded and set high expectations for themselves. I
have to admit when I was reading this, Oh, poor
single people, p like we have it so tough, I
was kind of laughing out loud a little bit because
I don't think being single and have to make your
own rama noodles is harder than being a parent. Okay,
So I actually read that and was like, oh, that's

(20:15):
my life, right. I mean, I get it. I'm sure
a lot of parents out there saying, bridget come on, like,
your single life is not the same as my life
trying to keep a tiny human alive. All. I get
that that's fair, But think about this, right, most of
my life, I'm a single woman. For most of my life,
I've been pretty much on my own right. I'm also
a queer woman, and so I think that we have

(20:36):
an entire different understanding of partnerships and marriage and being
you know, booed up for life and all of that.
And I read that and that really resonated with me
because listen, when the cable person comes from Comcast, I'm
the one who has to be there to let them in,
right when the landlord has to fix something in the apartment.
I have to be there when my apartment is a mess,

(20:57):
and I'm on my own. I can't just count on
the fact that someone is going to say, oh, she's
having a rough time, let me clean for her. All
of that stuff. In my life, I have outsourced the
out of between seamless, Postmates, handy Book to have my
apartment clean. I'm actually paying. I mean, part of it
is like I have the privilege to be able to
do these things, but my life only makes sense when

(21:18):
I'm on my own because I have enough capital to
be able to outsource a lot of things that I
think boot up. People who have husbands or wives or
spouses can sort of sort out themselves domestically. That makes sense, Yeah,
it does. I'm curious to hear what you think, Julia,
where do you want? Yeah? No, I'm so torn because
on the one hand, I've never had a screaming baby
at home, and I can't imagine what it's like to

(21:39):
have an entire human life dependent on you outside of
your work life. But on the other hand, it's undeniable
that having a partner, being able to rely on a
partner for those things, and being able to talk about
your family with your job makes it feel easier to
take that time, especially when we see single women talking
to their bosses or their managers about what they need,

(22:01):
you know, whether it be flex will work hours, more
paid time off, like all of these things are. They
make a less convincing argument because we've been socialized to
think that work life balance means more time for your family.
If you don't have a family, you don't need more time,
and that I agree with completely. I think from a
perception standpoint, it's a much easier case to draw boundaries
when you can say this is, you know, for my kids,

(22:23):
or this is for my maybe aging parent. I don't know.
I think Liz O'Donnell really um on that episode really
made me think twice about whether our society even feels
like that's a valid reason to take time off. But
I mean, I don't think society is down with women
taking care of themselves. No, definitely, definitely not. Um. A
side note, one of the reasons I'm really excited to

(22:43):
one day have a kid is to have a ready
made excuse to get out of everything, because if you're like, oh,
my kid's got a fang, it's like everyone's like, uply,
we get it, we get it right, like, particularly for men,
I think, um and so the idea of being able
to say, oh, I can't come to your boring play
because my kid has a thing and hadn't be accepted.
I'm looking forward that. I just feel like the trade

(23:03):
offs that women with kids have to contend with are
in some ways harder because the perception of any mother
at work is that she's distracted and less deducuating and
put on the mommy track. So I feel like it
did it actually doesn't serve us to say, like, whose
work life balance is more valid? You know. I think
if we can actually have this conversation around guess what

(23:26):
we all deserve life outside of work, we all will
be better and more efficient. If we can have systems
and structures that make flexibility and autonomy and and leave
accessible and practically usable by all workers, then it doesn't
become an anomaly when a parent has to use their
time off. It doesn't become a mommy thing. It's funny

(23:49):
because I was researching the story not too long ago
about the benefits women most want in a workplace. So
I was looking at benefits and perks especially, and because
so many perks have this like glitzia lore, you know,
like sexy Silicon Valley workplaces have flying nanny's or you know,
free cafeterias or like all extensive side everything flying nannying. No,

(24:14):
it's a real it's a real phenomenon where they will
have nanny's on call and they're called flying nanny's. I know,
is this like Mary Poppins branded, because I like, you
see the app already was just umbrella and descending across
your iPhones. Yeah, it's like Mary Poppins. No, literally, yes,
I'm sure that that illusion was at the forefront of

(24:36):
their minds. Um, but I was. But I was looking
into this, and I was expecting those to be really
highly rated, and it's kind of not surprising to see
that what women rated most highly instead was number one
respect from their colleagues, which is like such low hanging fruit,
but is the thing they most highly prized Number two
pay parity. You know, they really just want to be

(24:56):
paid the same as their milk colleagues. But then flexibility
kept coming up again and again, like women would rather
have more paid time off and more flexible work hours
than any of these other perks or benefits we think
are so important. I think that's such a good point,
and it's really hilarious sardonic, sarcastic article that Cassie Murdoch
wrote for Jezebel titled work life balance Isn't just for

(25:18):
Mom's all the single ladies wanted to and it. She writes,
I know this is very difficult to understand, but according
to the Wall Street Journal, even people without children enjoy
time away from work. Yeah, it's weird, right. They get
sick of slaving away for endless hours at work to
the exclusion of all social activities. They don't even have

(25:39):
enough time to get their dishes done or cook themselves
proper meals. In the words of Anne Marie Bowler, a
lawyer who quit a draining job at a big law
firm and started her own firm with a friend, quote,
I wanted to have a life, a full life, which
just meant not always working. Bowler is thirty six and single,
and frankly, it sounds like she's still working in an

(25:59):
awful it's just on her own terms, which makes a difference.
That your own terms part. I think is so important. Like,
as more women talk about work life balance too, I
think what we're really wanting to talk about is control.
Because I've already talked about how I think that phrase
is so problematic on so many levels. Blah blah blah.
But what we what we really want is control. Like

(26:21):
when we're saying work life balance, we want work life balance,
we want work life fit, we want work life integration.
We really just want to have a little bit more
of a hold on how these two things dominate our lives.
I love how you use control to frame that, because
in a lot of these conversations it sounds like flexible
work hours and all of that. It's like a gift
that your employer is giving you rather than this you know,

(26:43):
established cultural norm that makes everything better in the workplace, right, yeah, right,
And I think, yeah, it's about control. I don't want
to have to feel like I have to grovel to
my boss to get flexible time, to take care of
the stuff I need to in my life, just to
be just to show up as a happy, functional employee.
And I think framing it as oh, you have to
go to your boss and ask for this thing, as

(27:03):
opposed to saying no. You should be able to take
control over both your personal life and your work life,
and that should just be the norm of how you
show up as employees. It's almost as though y'all predicted
the findings in a recent Mackenzie and Company study of
sixty companies that they did for The Wall Street Journal,
And what was most interesting is that amongst women who
were planning to leave their companies in the next few years,

(27:27):
they found really similar reasons cited by both mothers and
non mothers, and it was a desire to gain more
control over their personal schedules and needs. So I think
you hit the nail on the head. Let's take a
quick break, and when we come back, we're going to
dive into how this actually plays out at organizations across

(27:48):
the country and what we can do to make sure
that single women aren't left out of this conversation moving forward.
We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors,
and we are back, and we are having way too
much fun with Julia Carpenter here, a writer you might

(28:11):
know from her excellent pieces for CNN Money breaking down
all things women, work and finance. And so we wanted
to continue this conversation about do single women have it tough?
Like do single women really struggle with work life balance
or work life integration or fit or all the other
better ways to talk about it? Um as we've been

(28:32):
really framing this around role conflict and roll overload, and
we were just getting into a little debate on the
break here about what we think our mother listeners, the
folks who are listening to this podcast with a baby
in our arms right now, might think about a bunch
of single, childless women whining about not having a baby

(28:53):
card to play to flake on our obligation. Hey, that's
my personal thing. Listen, everyone who knows me knows them
an notorious flake on social plans. All I'm saying is
that when I say I'm not going to your party
because I'm under a blanket watching Netflix, all I get
is shady text. If I said I'm not going to
your party because I have a child, I'm not saying

(29:14):
going to help me up my flaking and saying what
do you think about that, Julia? No, I mean I
I was just thinking while we were talking about that earlier,
like I'm going to listen to this when I am
a mom and you know, kind of kind of shake
my head, like I can see my mom shaking her
head at me all the time, where she's just like,
you don't know, get ready, like the world is coming,

(29:37):
but you know, it was telling that research who referenced
earlier Julia that over the course of women's careers, the
sense of autonomy does seem to increase. And I've got
two series. I want to pose it for that and
hear what y'all think. One I actually heard this message
from Joanna Coles, the former editor in chief of Glamour magazine.
UM say one time that as your career grows, as

(29:59):
you or power grows, your power over your own work
life increases. And so we shouldn't tell women to not
pursue ambitious career paths because it means you'll be overwhelmed.
We should say, pursue an ambitious career path because you'll
have power over how you work. So that's that's one theory.

(30:20):
I don't know, do you What do y'all think of that?
I don't know about that. I like the idea in theory,
I guess I don't feel like we should necessarily be
telling women to look for any one kind of career
if it's not what they want, right, Like, not every
woman wants in a sort of high octane career path.
And I think that if we tell women that one
pathway to having more control over your work and your life,

(30:44):
and how they intersect is by going out there and
striving for a high octane career that might not do everybody.
So I think it's probably true, but I just want
to posit that it's true for something. Maybe it's just
one tool in the toolbox of how we reach something
that frankly should be a norm for all of us.
Wouldn't it be better if it were an expected norm?
Like my mom's a labor and delivery nurse who works

(31:04):
shift work, right, twelve hour shifts at the time at
a hospital, and she has very little control over when
she works. She has very little control over when she
gets vacation. And so there's definitely a class component to this,
which is maybe retail workers should have the same right
to autonomy over their schedule as podcasters, you know what

(31:24):
I mean? Like, if we all could feel like that
was an expected norm, then we wouldn't have to tell
women pursue the most powerful career path possible. Well. Absolutely.
That takes me back to a Netflix announced this really
great family leave policy for their employees, and everybody was like, great,
that's awesome, and I was one of them, but then
somebody was like, wait, this is include people who aren't

(31:45):
like your warehouse workers, people who aren't your executives. And
I think it can be very tempting, because you know,
we all have blind spots. I have them, you have them,
we all have them. It can be very tempting to
leave all different kinds of employees, from high level executives
down to low age workers, to leave them, to leave
certain people out of a conversation. The other thing I
think is really important here too, and you mentioned it earlier, Emily,

(32:11):
is how even when you get to the upper echelons
of your industry, when you have all of that control,
it's you. You really have to struggle to get there.
So we talked about how, you know, in so many
different professions, women are still stereotyped as busy moms. They're
seeing they're passed over for promotions, They're seen as uh,
you know, not as not as committed as male workers.

(32:33):
They're not as committed as people who don't have families.
There's kind of that hanging question, the air of you know, well,
what if she gets pregnant, what if she does this?
Sheryl Sandberg talked about this infamously, so that you kind
of have to play a lot of games to get
to those uh, those upper echelons sometimes to get the control.
Like it's it's a weirdly like a it's not a

(32:53):
self fulfilling prophecy. What am I trying to say? It's
like you have to not have boundaries to be able
to set boundary or catch twenty two is exactly what
I'm looking for. Yeah, so it can play in multiple ways.
I think t LDR like everything that we're saying is
that we just kind of need to eliminate the stigma
from talking about this stuff that you know, we need

(33:15):
to eliminate the idea that always volunteering to work extra shifts,
always pretending like you don't have a personal life, isn't sustainable. Yeah.
And I think the other theory behind why this might
be easier as you go on in your career is
because you start to recognize that nobody's going to set
those boundaries but you. Yeah. So the the beginning, I

(33:39):
think right entered the workforce, I was sort of waiting
for permission to go home. I was sort of waiting
for the end of a semester that was never going
to arrive. And it made me realize that, oh, if
I want to sleep eight arrows the night. If I
want lunch, I'm the one who has to make that happen.
Like nobody's going to give me the you've done enough

(34:00):
for the day kid, you know, slap on the back
and say, you know, keep keep truck and champ take it,
take a load off. I would even go further and say,
if you're a smucky company, it's in your best interests
to have your employees feel that way and then never
give them that perdition. If your employees feel like I
have to ask when it's okay to go home, I
have to ask when I can go to lunch, I

(34:20):
have to ask when I can go to the bathroom,
all of that. If you're a schmucky company who doesn't
give a crap about your employees, it's in your best
interest to have them feel that way and have them
feel really trapped and like with a complete lack of
control over their own day. It's not in their best
interests when it comes to employee retention though, And that's
the other piece of this that I think is super important.

(34:42):
You know, when I was talking earlier about benefits that
women must look for in workplaces, that means that women
will leave workplaces that don't offer those benefits. And again
we are talking about women who have the privilege of
being able to leave their jobs or being able to
change their workplaces. But that's also really important that to
retain employee is like to retain top talent. This is
what employees are expecting and looking for, and this is

(35:05):
what they'll value. Do you think the same is true
for younger employees, not just women? Totally? Totally. I think
you know that same study I referenced earlier talking about
how women were remarking on the ways that their personal
lives and their work lives integrate, zooming out from that
of millennial survey, so that work life balance is something

(35:25):
that matters to them. That's I mean, that's just three
percent HIV Andrew, Yeah, that's crazy. And I mean, and
men report millennial men especially report desiring more work life
balance and men of prior generations. It's it's interesting. And
then we see companies like Amazon notoriously go in the
opposite direction on their company culture and Yahoo. You remember

(35:48):
back in when Marissa Mayer took the helm of Yahoo
and in doing so, eliminated the work from home policies
that they had extending flexible work schedules. UM. That ended
up having a bunch of working moms up in arms.
But it wasn't just a blow dealt to working moms.
That's the thing. We have to acknowledge that this is

(36:08):
not good for working dad's. It's not good for working
people who just want to not work all the time. Again,
I would even go further and say it's it's not
good for anybody. It's not good for the development of
the kids that people who are parents have. It's not
it's not healthy for anybody in the mix exactly. Jenna
McGregor covered this story for The Washington Post, and in
it she points out that the whole work life balance

(36:30):
debate has become so inextricably linked to the mommy track
debates and the glass ceilings around parental policies. UM. And
even though we've replaced the term work family with work
life in practice, family obligations still tend to trump everything else.
Callie William's youth who as an advisor that she cites
in the story, who consults companies on work life balance issues,

(36:54):
tells the story of a young, single employee with no
children who asked his company if he could come in
late on Thursdays so that he could fit in time
for training for a marathon. So this is a childless dude. Okay,
this is not even like a woman who's making this request.
And oh yeah, his manager reportedly told him and I'd
like to ride in a hot air balloon every Monday.

(37:17):
That sarcasm was so disturbing to him he threatened to quit.
And it's just goes to show that that flexible work
policy is not intended to really apply to single people.
But that's the thing. I think it's easy to joke about,
you know, oh I have to get to my yoga
class or my softball game or whatever, But it does
matter if you're single, married, whatever, if you have the
kids you don't. The things that are important to you

(37:39):
in your life are the things that are important to
you in your life, and we should be respecting that.
If you if your thing is training for a marathon,
that should be respected as something that you need to
be flexible around. If that's what you need to show
up as your best self in the job, if it's
gonna be you kicking ask this marathon, I think it's
in your employer's best interest to make sure that's something
that you have time for the same way that you
would for childcare. I don't know. I mean, I think

(38:02):
the challenge you mentioned earlier, Julia is that perception is
still really powerful, and that advocating for that flexibility, while
it should be cool, is not seen as cool all
the time. And so I always advise the women I
work with to use the term appointment pretty liberally. I
have an appointment. I have an appointment. I have to
be somewhere. I have an appointment. Do you need anything

(38:24):
from me before I leave? Do you need anything urgent?
Am I not getting you something? Right? Framing it as
what do you need for me to feel like you've
gotten everything you need right now? Because I've got an appointment.
In fact, I've got a recurring appointment every Thursday morning.
Is that going to be an issue? And then I
get my marathon running in? You know what I mean? Like,
I think sharing what you need to be sustainable is

(38:46):
a luxury not many of us have when it comes
to managing perception in the workplace. I completely agree, Julia.
What do you think I was just about to ask Emily,
where did you learn that? I think I've never heard
that before about the power of the word appointment. Oh,
that's an Emily Ay's original. I've actually I've noticed I've
seen that show up a lot. Like um, when I

(39:07):
used to work at MSNBC, my boss would always say,
have an appointment, and I'd be like, what is this appointment?
And she'd be like, sometimes I'm getting my nails done, Like,
you don't know my business. Yeah, I don't know. I
just I've tested it myself and uh, and my work
follows that. I don't know. I've probably absorbed it from somebody.
But that's something we should write more about, apparently. Yeah.
I find that so interesting because there is this, uh,

(39:29):
this split in how we we set up time away
from work. Like I had a former colleague once tell
me specifically related to Nail's bridget She was I said
something about there was like this manicured deal. I wanted
to take advantage of her something I can't remember, and
it was but it was a weird time, like I
couldn't leave work on time. And what she said was
and I thought this was so uh, such a good

(39:49):
way to put it. She said, well, you never eat
lunch away from your desk And I said yeah, And
she said this is equivalent to you eating lunch away
from your desk, and I thought, oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah,
So it really is all about reframing that perception and saying, yeah,
I think of it this way. This is just me
taking a normal lunch break, even if I do come

(40:10):
back with a fresh manicure, a fresh many study. Right.
Screen breaks. I'm really big about screen breaks, and the
way I think about them all the time is that
I actually usually don't eat lunch away from my desk
because I think that noon is just a time when
I have a lot of stuff going on. But I
take screen breaks, and those I mean it's the same
as somebody taking an hour lunch break or whatever. Like
you take little screen breaks out the day, you go

(40:30):
out for coffee. You add all all of these other things,
and they're equivalent to some of the other more instituted
time breaks we have scheduled into a typical work day. Anyway, Julia,
can I give you a glimpse into where my head
is at. I misheard you. I thought you said scream
breaks like a break during the work day to scream.
I was like, yeah, screen break, Yeah, And it was
like a screen break that makes a lot more sense.

(40:53):
But screen break is gonna be good too in a
certain workplaces. You know, I wrote a whole thing about crying.
Maybe on that straight to think about screaming. It's a
real thing. Maybe that's the next thing there's I was
just reading some stress research, this concept of like closing
the loop on a stress experience needs some sort of
expulsion of the stress. And it was actually in um

(41:14):
that Become as You Are book she was talking about
orgasms about orgasms, but it also didn't research stress research. Well,
it was she was citing stress research on her book
about orgasms, but she was comparing screaming out loud to
the same kind of release that would come with an orgasm.

(41:37):
She was literally like grab a pillow, or like do
this in a way that you're not going to alarm anybody.
And if you're having a really stressful day, do twenty
push ups or you know, jumping jacks, or scream the
hell out of your pillow. You know what I mean,
Just scream bloody murder into your pillow. So I think
screen breaks and screen breaks are stress research approup. So

(41:58):
to bring this all back to single women and roll
overload rapid fire round for all of us here. What
do you think that we as individuals or as organizations
can do to make personal sustainability accessible to all of us,
single folks included. So I think that the biggest opportunity

(42:19):
here is with managers and bosses when they're thinking about
retaining talent. The research is really clear when it shows
that young people, young women especially really value flexibility. So
thinking about how you can build that into your work processes.
I would go on to say cultural shift. No, wow,
Mine was like maybe a boss can think one time,
And Bridget was like that you could change complete overthrow

(42:42):
of the econonic system and the only thing that will
work burned into the ground, burn into the ground, and money,
ban men, etcetera. No, I think I think it's cultural shift.
I think it's thinking of it as the days that
you come in and say I have an appointment I
need to leave on Thursday, thinking about that as a
tiny little radical win that's going to help shift culture,

(43:04):
and understand that can make it easier for someone else
to do the same thing, and so really owning the
role that we all play in this massive culture shift
project of making it okay to show up as your
best self and to do what you need to do
to make that happen. Yes, And I would close it
out by saying, as someone who advocates for personally taking
charge of your own sustainability, I'm tempted to say, you know,

(43:26):
give yourself permission to ask for what you need and
go for it. But I'm actually gonna go in in a
totally different direction and say we need systematic policy change.
And that is why the final installment in the Role
Overload series is going to be all about what a
national crisis role overload actually is and what we as

(43:47):
a country, what we as a government can do to
level the playing field for all workers so that it
doesn't become a mommy war versus a single person war
all over again, and so that we all can achieve
our full potential personally and professionally. So our final installment
of the Role Overload series, the next episode you'll hear

(44:08):
on this is going to be with author and think
tank policy Wank bridget Shalty all about how we as
a country can be better on this. I really can't
wait for you all to hear that final installment. Juliet,
thank you so much for joining us today. Where can
folks find out more about all the cool things are
up to thank you for having me. I'm on Twitter

(44:29):
at Julia C. Carpenter and I think I'm actually at
Julius C. Carpenter on like everything good, branding awesome, And
can you tell us a little bit more about the
stories you're collecting right now, because I know our listeners
are gonna want to get in on that. Yeah. The
thing that's been coming to mind again and again is
I read all of these stories to come out about
sexual harassment and the moment we're in everything after me too,

(44:51):
and where we're going from here. I keep thinking about
how the way we're talking about this is changing. Just
the conversations we're having with our friends and our coworkers
are so different now than they were, you know, even
ten years ago or going back, you know, even after
Anita Hill, like another seminal moment in this discussion. So
I've been asking people to share those with me. I'll

(45:14):
report on them in future stories or follow up for
further coverage. I am in the process of following up
on a story I wrote where I talked to my
mom about her own experience of sexual harassment, which, again
I just think is another example of how these conversations
have changed. You know, when my mom was my age,
she didn't even know what the word sexual harassment was.

(45:36):
She had no way to talk about it. She didn't
know how to report an instance of it, she didn't
know how to identify it. She just thought that's how
the workplace was. But the other side of this, I
think is so interesting is looking at moms who are
having these conversations with their daughters now, and daughters who
are having these conversations with their mom's, you know, saying mom,
this happened to me, and not asking what I should do,
but saying this happened to me. I want you to know, Well, Julia,

(45:58):
thanks so much for joining us. It's been a blab
Thank you, guys, can't wait to listen. Awesome. It's good
to know that we're not the only single, childless women
who want a life outside of work and sminty listeners.
Those with or without romantic partners, those with or without children.
We want to hear from you, that's right. We want

(46:19):
to hear from all the single ladies, all the single ladies,
all the single ladies. We want to hear from you,
So make sure to continue this conversation with us on
Twitter at mom's Stuff podcast. Show us what work life
balance means to you or what roll overload means to
you as a single person on Instagram at stuff mom
Never Told You, and, as always, send us your emails

(46:42):
at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.