Today we’re taking our podcast up north to Vancouver, British Columbia in CANADA!
We’ve all heard the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” But what if you LIVED in an intentional community that mimicked this village mindset? I got in touch with Jo and Kim, both moms from Little Mountain Cohousing. Jo and Kim are both moms who sought out cohousing early on in their momming journey for the support and familial community offered by cohousing. You will hear about their living setup centered around common meals, communal spaces that include an outdoor courtyard, music rooms, car-sharing and a school bus for kids AND…built in babysitting and after school care! Both Kim and Jo also work outside of the house, and they will give us a glimpse of the Canadian parental leave system that will truly make you rethink how we possibly are OK with the paltry system we have in place here in the United States.
You can learn more about Little Mountain Cohousing on their website
Cashing our Trillions is Hosted and Produced by Common Solutions Media and Yvonne So. You can connect with me on Instagram @yso_mom, LinkedIn @yvonnecot, or e-mail me at cashingourtrillions@gmail.com
Sound Engineering by Tiezheng Shen. You can reach him at dacapopresents@gmail.com
Cover artwork graphic design by Jessie Li. You can reach her at jessieli.pers@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi, their family. Welcome back to Cashing our trillions. I'm
your host, Yvon So. I'm a full time Saint Home
mom of three boys, and this podcast is a space
to value the trillion dollar economy of unpaid labor shouldered
by moms. Today we're taking our podcasts up north to Vancouver,
(00:29):
British Columbia in Canada. You may not know this, but
I was born in Europe to Canadian parents. So that
means for the first twenty one years of my life,
until I was naturalized as an American citizen, I held
a Canadian passport. With all the social and political unrest
swirling around us, I'm hearing a lot of the can
(00:51):
we just move to Canada refrain?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The search phrase how to become a Canadian citizen spiked
five hundred fifty percent in the hours after the Supreme
Court overturned Row versus Wade, and during our twenty sixteen election,
so many Americans were researching how to move up north
that the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration website actually crashed. So
(01:18):
I spent most of my childhood summers in Vancouver, and
I can tell you the appeal is obvious. The natural
beauty of the land, affordable higher education, publicly funded healthcare,
and overall lower crime rates. Canadian women also have higher
employment rates than US, and the gender gap and participation
(01:39):
rates declined faster in Canada than here in the US.
So we've all heard the saying it takes a village
to raise a child, But what have you lived in
an intentional community that mimicked this village mindset? So my
dad is a voracious consumer of global news, and during
the pandemic, he sent me an article from the Canadian paper,
(02:01):
The Global Mail, featuring Little Mountain co housing in Vancouver, Canada.
So the article was essentially about how co housing was
another avenue for seniors to live independent and socially fulfilling lives,
especially during the COVID lockdowns. But my initial reaction was,
how did these same benefits apply to moms? So many
(02:24):
questions and ideas fled in my mind, but they all
boiled down to one core idea, how does co housing
ease the load of modern motherhood? When I googled Little
Mountain and read the description returned to the best of
small town communities, I was hooked so much so I
(02:47):
cold email the management company who passed along my email
and got me in touch with Joe and Kim, both
moms from Little Mountain co Housing. Joe and Kim are
both moms who sought out co housing early on in
their momming journey for the support and familial community offered
by co housing. In the next half hour, you'll hear
about their living setup centered around common meals, communal spaces
(03:10):
that include an outdoor courtyard, music rooms, car sharing, and
a school bus for kids. And I know this next
perk will make the Heaven's par And you'll hear angels sing,
built in babysitting and after school care. Oh. Both Kim
and Joe also work outside the house, and they will
(03:34):
give you a glimpse of the Canadian parental leave system
that will truly make you rethink how we possibly are
okay with a paltry system we have in place here
in the US. Little Mountain is also community. We're caring
for each other means caring for each other's pets. Mm hmm.
The pets Little Mountain have their own Slack channel, which
(03:56):
includes a cameo from a talking cat.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
My name is Kim and we lived at Little Mountain
in Vancouver. So I live with my husband and our
two children, who are three and six and a half,
and we also have a dog. I work from home.
I'm self employed. I'm a fundraising consultant, So I spend
like ninety percent of my life in this building, I
(04:24):
would say, just.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Because I work from home, so I'm here all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I'm Joe. I am a single mom of an eight
month old boy, I like him right now. Am in
this building ninety percent of the time. Before I had Luke,
I was a physio working in a hospital. Now life
is in the co housing a lot of the time
with this little guy.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And then do one of you guys want to start
just by like defining co housing and maybe what drew
you both to this concept.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Co housing has been around for many decades all over
the world, and it is i form of communal living
where everybody has their own private space that they own,
but there are also communal elements to it. So there's
often some common house and other common space, amenity rooms,
(05:14):
and things like workshops and music rooms which we have here.
We all work together to keep the building running and
to keep our community happy.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I actually like sought out a cohousing because at that
point I was thinking, oh, I might be having a
kid on my own, and if I do that, I
would love to have sort of a built in community.
Timing actually worked out really well in the sense that
it took a long time to build this place. Six
months after we moved in that I had Luke, So yeah,
(05:44):
the timing was great.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Some of my friends are kind of funny they call it.
They're like, oh, you live in a commune, and I'm like, no,
it's communal, but it's not a commune.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Like what initially brought you to co housing.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
My oldest was under a year we joined the group,
and so actually I was just going back to work.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I was feeling it, like the normal sort of like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Guilt and anxiety and everything about going back to work.
And I remember like sitting in a coffee shop one day,
trying to sort of make myself feel better and flipping
through one of the free newspapers that we have in
town and they were talking about Little Mountain. And that's
how I found out about the project, was that moment.
There wasn't a lot of information about the community at all,
(06:27):
but I knew I knew about co housing, and I
also knew how rare it was to happen. In Canada
even so I went home and I was like, we
gotta go, We got to do this.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
There's twenty five different families that live in this co housing.
We were all part of the whole building process. So
there was a core group that started six years ago.
A few more people were sort of added on over
the first couple of years, and then I would say
the last three to four years, we were all in
it together making all the decisions. When I joined, which
was only a few months before you, I think cam,
(06:59):
they'd already reached several big milestones to build in Vancouver,
and yet it was still another five and a half
years after that before it was completed.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, so as a group, we had a long time
to get to know each other. We had monthly meetings
and then committee meetings in between then and then all
of the sort of ups and downs and challenges that
came along with developing a property a building. So we
all know each other fairly well, and so by the
time we moved in, we were just like everybody kind
(07:29):
of knew everybody already, and we kind of fell right
into the groove of cohousing, which involves common meals, working together,
taking care of each other, in various ways.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Taking care of each other means gathering for three common
meals a week, having communal worker bees, which entails getting
together once a month to clean common areas, and signing
up for various committees to run the gamut from conflict
resolution to building maintenance to planning social functions for.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Joe and Kim.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
All these shared responsibilities help ease the workload of all
the unpaid labor tasks and responsibilities that eat away at
our free time as moms, well also giving them the
flexibility to pay and choose which common chores they feel
best suited for and most enjoyed doing. Mind blowing right,
(08:20):
I feel like just this part of their living arrangement
would settle the majority of the fights that happened.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
In my house.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
We have a common dining room and kitchen, and we
have a sort of website that we go on to
plan what the meals are going to be. Sign up
for the meals, so whoever's cooking kind of has an
idea of how many people are going to be attending
that meal. So when you sign up, you're going to
be paying five dollars for your meal, and then that way,
(08:48):
the lead chef has an idea of how much money
they have to work with. Each meal has sort of
a head chef and then two assistant cooks to help
prepare the meal, and then after we have three people
that help do the cleanup. The idea is that everyone
in the co housing should sign up for two shifts
(09:09):
a month and then the rest of the time you
can just show up to the meal oh for cooking
or cooking for cooking or cleaning. Like, if you're not
a cook, then you might want to sign up for
the cleaning.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, I got it because I was like, I'm sure
you guys have favorite cooks too. In I'm sure there
are people who are more popular than others.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Definitely. Yeah, Kim's husband's number one there. As soon as
we see that he's posted, we're.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Like, oh God, sign up going to that dinner.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah. So after common meals, we have to do the
laundry of tablecloths and whatnot, and you just sort of
know that it'll just naturally get done without having to
have an organized plan. So someone will just take the
laundry to the laundry machine and then maybe an hour
and a half later, someone sees it in there and
they're like, oh, Okay, I'll just put it in the dryer,
and then as soon as it's done in the dryer,
(10:01):
someone else will walk in and be like, oh great,
I'll fold it and I'll put it back in the
kitchen and all just kind of just naturally gets done
without having to communicate about it, which is really nice.
Like I feel like people have that mentality of what
can I do to make this community better? Not oh
I did that last week, I don't want to have
(10:22):
to do it again this week. And because so many
people have this good mentality, it just runs so beautifully.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I feel like I need to enact that in my
own house because it's always to.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Me, like, can so many help me wash the dishes?
Somebody help me come full with the laundry.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
For all you moms who are like me and spend
a three pm onwards in your minivan in school pickup
lines and sports and after school drop offs, this is
a perk of Little Mountain you will swoon over. They
have their own school bus system where all the children
who attend the same school get dropped off and picked
up and do after school care together.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
During the school year. We have school bus a lot
of them go to our neighborhood school, and so we
have volunteers walk them in the morning, and then we
have a group of them that play after school together.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, like the parents either rotate. And then also we
have some retirees that are happy to drop them off
at school or pick them up and spend a few
hours with them in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Joe and Kim also reflect on the division of labor
at Little Mountain. According to a report from Statistics Canada,
the economic value of unpaid housework in Canada was over
eight hundred and sixty billion dollars in twenty nineteen, so
not in the unenviable trillions club that US American women
are in, but still equivalent to over thirty seven percent
(11:49):
of the country's GDP. In Canada, women perform sixty percent
of unpaid housework and sixty eight percent of unpaid childcare work,
equally just about three point nine hours per day. These
numbers are very similar here in the US. At Little Mountain,
since all the communal chores are split up between the residents,
(12:09):
everyone gets to choose how they'll contribute to the smooth
functioning of the community, yielding a more equitable outcome.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Cohousing in general, as I have observed. I couldn't say
this for sure, but attracts sort of more progressive crowd
in terms of thoughts on division of labor and things
like that. I see people are trying, like to really
do their part and not worry about like whether this
is sort of a traditionally male to ask versus female,
but it kind of falls that way whether you try
(12:38):
or not.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
For example, like the people who do kind of like
all the fixing and the building are largely men in
the community, and like a lot of childcare, the women
take care of it because everything sort of split up.
I kind of put my time and energy towards the
things that I really am able to kind of excel at.
If you own your own like it's all on you, right,
(13:01):
So it's like, well, you do have to be an
expert and understand like your gutter system and things like that,
where that would probably drain me more.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I would love not to care about landscaping.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
I would say overall, I feel like I have less
work to do in the sense that three meals a week,
I don't have to cook unless I'm the one that's
in charge for that meal, and that I feel takes
a huge weight off. It's so lovely to just show up, eat,
walk away and not have to do any cleaning. That's
a real, real treat.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And how are all these functions coordinated through a Slack
of course, Well.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
We're just constantly on Slack asking each other for things
and sharing little stories and talking about groom meals, and
there's you know, one hundred conversations every week happening on Slack.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We have a channel for the pets.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so one of our neighbors is going away and
she needed somebody to look after her cat, and instead
of just asking, she posted a video and then she
made the cat talk with her voice, seeing if somebody
could look after him, and it was just so funny
and quirky.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
And then my kid just watched it like three times,
this cat video, and.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Just shows sort of like the culture of our community,
Like we just we like each other and we're some
kind of chumming and joking with each other, you know,
but at the same time we hate things like being
inclusive very seriously and making sure that we're fair and
that we really think through decisions to make sure we're
all benefiting and thinking about other people when we make
(14:35):
those decisions.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
So does somebody take your cat?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
There's very likely somebody to look after the talking.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Cat you're listening to cashing our trillions. Momming, especially in
our modern world, has vast stretches of isolation and loneliness.
Now that moms are talking more openly about postpartum depression,
we're more tuned to the reality that so much of
the early postpartum days are character rise by mixed emotions
(15:02):
that range from bliss and happiness to sheer isolation and dread.
For many of us living the suburban mom life, we
can go an entire day with no adult interaction. A
twenty twenty survey conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of
Education found that one third of Americans described themselves as
(15:23):
seriously lonely. That's up from one fifth before the COVID pandemic,
And according to this same study, moms of small children
are among the loneliest of Americans.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think when you're a parent, and like especially in
my case too, because I work from home, so I'm
just like always always in my house, just having that informal,
unscheduled opportunity to step out the door and have that
time to talk to another adult, Like if you wanted
to even you can to take your laundry to go
(15:57):
full downstairs and you know their vp people walking by,
and just to have that time to chat. I find
it takes a mental load off, Like it really helps
with your mental health and you just don't.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Feel so isolated.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So where we were living before, like it was a
completely lovely place and we had lots of wonderful neighbors
around us as well, but there were times where you
would just go for so long without seeing anybody but
the person or the people in your family. So I
think that's that's the biggest thing here. There's just always
like a really good level of social interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Kim and Joe talk about the perks of having built
in social interaction in their community, which spans having people
literally outside your door to socialize and interact with to
also creating an environment that makes you more willing to
ask for help, because, let's face it, a lot of
our battle as moms is not wanting to burden others
(16:51):
with what we perceive as our own problems.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I live in a community where people knock on my
door asking if they can take Luca for a walk
to give me a break. Which I know would never
have happened if I lived anywhere else.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Volunteer come over like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
I'm going to go and do I'm going to walk
down the street to the bank. Can I take Luke
with me? Or I'm going to head over to the library.
Can I take him?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
If I have a.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Physio appointment or something that I have to go to.
There's at least five or six people that I can
reach out and say, hey, are you free on this
day at this time, And so far in the eight
months of Luke's existence, someone out of that group has
been able to cover any appointment that I've wanted to
go to. In my old apartment. Before I moved here,
I would have had very little support to live in
(17:39):
a community where if I'm kind of going nuts just
being with an infant all day, I know I can
just go at my back door and instantly see all
sorts of different human beings I can chat with or
hang out with. We had a party here on Saturday night,
and I put him up to bed, had the camera
on my phone, and I was just able to go
back out and socialize with people in the backyard, knowing
(18:01):
that he was safe up there and I could see
what he was doing. From that point of view, I
feel very lucky. It's wonderful. Yeah, I really think I
live in the best place imaginable.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean I would echo that to. Having support
is one thing, but having it right outside your door,
it just makes it all the more convenient, and you're
also more willing to sort of reach out and be like, oh,
I need a cup of sugar and egg or whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
It is that you need.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
These benefits a greater exposure to diverse people and living
in a multi generational unit also has benefits for the
development of the children in the community. Kim especially highlights
cohousing's influence on instilling independence in her kids at a
young age and creating a safe space for them to
interact with different types of adults while learning to advocate
(18:48):
for themselves and verbalize theirs.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It's almost kind of like having a building full of
built in aunts and uncles and cousins. I'm perfectly fine
with them kind of going down to the courtyard by themselves,
or going over to a neighbors by themselves, or doing
just a lot of things that I don't think I'd
be able to do if we were just living on
our own in a house, even if we are your neighbors.
Really well, even those little tiny pockets of time, it
(19:14):
really takes a lot of pressure off being a parent.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Oh yeah, it's huge, because, like you don't have to
keep your eye on them all looked. If my kids
are quiet, I'm like, oh, no, something's probably wrong, right,
And you're like, oh, they're probably just in the courtyard
playing or at a neighbor's house.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, there's less panic.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Like the kids will kind of, you know, wander off
sometimes and we're like, oh, I wonder where they are.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah, And that's the nice thing too, is I think
there's a lot of sort of impromptu hangouts for the kids.
It's not like you have to organize these play dates
on such and such a day, at such and such
a time. They kind of meet each other downstairs and
then end up hanging out for fifteen to twenty minutes,
or you know, after we've had one of the common meals,
they're all just naturally just playing in the backyard for
(19:55):
another hour, which is nice when it doesn't always have
to be so scared.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
All this does come at a cost, as Kim explains,
the tight personal living.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Quarters so our apartment with four people we've got. It's
a two bedroom and it's seven hundred and fifty square feet.
So right now I'm sitting in my office, which is
my office during the day, but it's also our bedroom
because the wall, like the bed goes up, so there's
a lot of accommodations we need to make. And I
guess I worry sometimes I'm like, okay, because growing up
(20:28):
I had like, you know, like the basement where the
kids could just hang out, and like the big backyard
and this and that, and like, my kids aren't going
to have that, Like they'll be sharing a room until
you know, we can't take it any more sort of thing.
We'll just kind of deal with it and roll with it.
Like we're quite happy in the space right now. We've
made it work for us.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It's a fact that American mom are overwhelmed with our
day to day lives, and most of the times we're
inundated with life hacks and inspos of the day, when frankly,
we need to evaluate our system and push for structural
institutional change like better leaf policies and universal childcare. These
(21:19):
are also key differences on our system versus our Northern neighbors.
Since March of twenty twenty two, all the provinces and
territories in Canada now have a deal with their federal
government for ten dollars a day childcare. Yeah you heard
me right, ten bucks. British Columbia, the province where Joe
and Kim live, reached this agreement last year and have
(21:42):
plans to have this in action by twenty twenty seven.
Canadian prins of Leaf policies are just as generous. Kim
took eleven months off for both our pregnancies and Joe
is in the middle of an eighteen month leave, and
as you'll hear in our conversation, both are very mad
fact about the time there afforded to make this big
(22:03):
life transition Cam reflex on her maternity leave, I.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Was working at our local science center at the time,
and so it was kind of like a traditional working environment.
And I left my job I think two weeks before
my due date and then was on maternity leave until
eleven months, and it was just the way the daycare
situation worked out. And then went back to work and
(22:29):
then work right until my next pregnancy, and then took
another matt leave and then went back to work again,
and then I decided to leave my job I think
a year after I went back.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Okay, so I think this is like mind blowing for
American women that you took two weeks off before your
maternity leave and then took eleven months off. Like logistically,
how does that go? Do you check in with work
at that time? Like during those eleven months or like
when you're out, you're out.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh you're gone.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
When you're out, you're out. I was even actually thinking like, oh,
I should have written down all my passwords and stuff
because I'm not going to remember how to log into
anything when I go back to work. Yeah. No, I've
totally I've checked out and I am not checking back
in until the day I walk back into that hospital.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Like as much as the as Americans I think are
shocked that we have a twelve to eighteen month MATT leave,
it shocks me to think that people would go back
to work after two weeks or not even get any
time off.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
To think of how it would have been different having
three months or two week MATT leave.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Just even physically being able to go back to work
would have been difficult to do. So it's tough to
imagine otherwise, really, and my heart really goes out to
people who don't have that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
According to a Pew Research study, the US is the
only country among forty one nations that does not mandate
any paid leave for new parents. This is despite the
fact that seventy percent of Americans support the idea a
paid parental leave. These are also key differences in our
system versus our northern neighbor. The reason why more Canadian
(24:06):
women are employed and participating in their workforce is their
extensive printal leave policies, which include a twelve and eighteen
month option. Think of all those milestones you won't miss
your baby's first roll, the baby's sitting up, the first steps,
and perhaps even the first words. How does the Canadian
(24:27):
government offer such generous print to leave policies through short
term maternity leave replacement contracts. Kim explains it all.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, there's a lot of matt leave replacement contracts out there.
So often they'll be like, oh, this is a twelve
month contract, this is an eighteen month contract, and you
know it's a Matt Lee replacement.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
So I work at the hospital, I'm a physiotherapist, and yeah,
when I basically told work, I'm pregnant, I'm due on
such and such a date I'm going to take, I'm
going to leave work two weeks beforehand, And so they
were able to post a position, a matt leave position
for eighteen months. So someone kind of slotted into my
(25:09):
spot while while I'm off, and then when I go back,
they'll post into a different position.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We can't cash our trillions or start to get paid
for the unpaid labor we do until we fix the system.
If we're on this constant hamster wheel of chor's family work, chores,
family work, you know, when are we going to create
the time to advocate for structural change. Also, perhaps it
takes some reframing on our part. Maybe the companies we
(25:37):
work for and us as a society need to think
of retaining professional employees who take maternity or paternity leave
as part of a comprehensive strategy for developing, retaining, and engaging.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
Their best talent.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And you know what, the research backs this up. According
to a web pro News article, well, reintegrating experience employees
reduces organizational costs for recruitment and onboarding and training new employees.
The average cost of replacing employees is about forty percent
of the annual salary, and this is for entry level employees,
(26:16):
So for mid level employees that's one hundred and fifty
percent and for specialized high level employees it's four hundred percent.
While eighteen months of maternity they leave sounds amazing in theory,
it does come out of financial costs and requires some budgeting,
especially for Joe who is a single mom by choice
and can only rely on our own income. Joe breaks
(26:39):
down the numbers for us.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Three years ago, you only got twelve months. They've now
extended it to eighteen months. So we're when you're working
for a company, you're paying into what we call EI,
and then when you go off on a mat leave,
then the government is paying you EI while you're off.
So for me right now, I get about one thousand
dollars every two weeks, So that's what I get for
(27:01):
one year of mat leaf. If I wanted to be
off for eighteen months, then they'll take that same amount
of money, but they'll divide it over eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You have to declare at the beginning of your leave
whether you're how long you're going to take, and then
that way the government can determine how much EI you're
going to receive, and so if you tell them I'm
going to take eighteen months, then they'll the amounts will
be lower each month.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And then some companies also offer a top up for
a certain amount of time. So the first four months
that I was off, I got paid that EI, and
then my work topped me up to eighty five percent
of what I would normally be getting paid. So that
happened for four months. Then that top up ends, but
you then get the EI for the rest of the
(27:47):
time that you're off on that leaf. So two thousand
dollars a month is that? Are you able to live
on that? And that's a bit it's definitely a bit tight.
So knowing that I was saving some money beforehand, just
because I really wanted to have that eighteen months off.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
For Joe, who was able to plan for much of
her pregnancy and her subsequent maternity leave. The only hiccup
in the whole process was a complete freak accident at
the end. And to bring this whole story back home,
thank goodness for co housing.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I think the only kind of major wrench that happened
during my pregnancy is right at the end. Two weeks
before Luke was born, I did manage to break my
ankle on the right and my leg on the left,
so I was basically useless and about to have a baby.
But once again, thank goodness for co housing, had all
(28:39):
my neighbor's support, which was wonderful, and my mom came
out here and helped, and yeah, meals were brought to
my back door. And got through it. And at this
point it's kind of a funny story to be told,
but at the moment it was definitely, definitely quite stressful.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Oh and I have to ask you my last question,
how will you cash your trillions?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
As a hobby?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And this is not even recently, but like back in
the day when I had a little bit more time
on my hands as a hobby, I really like sewing things.
And there's like this workshop in New York State that
you could fly to and it's basically like a camp
for adults, and you go and you spend all weekend
like sewing a jacket for yourself. Many stay in like
cabins and all that stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It is probably an upstate New York then yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I'm on the email list for it, and I'm always like, oh,
that would be so much fun.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
I would love to do.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That and just like buy myself and go and like
make something over the course of like three or four days.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's what I would do.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Awesome, Kim. How about you, Joe?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
If it was millions of dollars, I would buy a
trillions Joe brillions.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Okay, brilliance.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Brillions. Man, Kim, you could go on a lot of
those retreats.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
I'm thinking to bring your girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
I would love to buy a cottage on an island
here called Hornby Island. We have a little summer escape.
That would be a dream come true.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Would that be a co housing situation?
Speaker 4 (30:10):
We have actually all thought about should we all go
in and buy a cabin together? But yeah, we're still
kind of getting used to just living. We've only been
living here in this building for a year, so I
think we need to give it a bit of time.
But maybe maybe down the road.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
This episode was produced by Me and sound edited by
schen Cashing our Trillions is part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a story to share,
please email us at Cachingourtrillions at gmail dot com. Make
sure you subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
(30:49):
or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you liked
what you heard, please take a moment to rate and
review it. It would really mean so much to me.
Thank you for listening. Didn't have limited
Hi, their family. Welcome back to Cashing our trillions. I'm
your host, Yvon So. I'm a full time Saint Home
mom of three boys, and this podcast is a space
to value the trillion dollar economy of unpaid labor shouldered
by moms. Today we're taking our podcasts up north to Vancouver,
(00:29):
British Columbia in Canada. You may not know this, but
I was born in Europe to Canadian parents. So that
means for the first twenty one years of my life,
until I was naturalized as an American citizen, I held
a Canadian passport. With all the social and political unrest
swirling around us, I'm hearing a lot of the can
(00:51):
we just move to Canada refrain?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The search phrase how to become a Canadian citizen spiked
five hundred fifty percent in the hours after the Supreme
Court overturned Row versus Wade, and during our twenty sixteen election,
so many Americans were researching how to move up north
that the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration website actually crashed. So
(01:18):
I spent most of my childhood summers in Vancouver, and
I can tell you the appeal is obvious. The natural
beauty of the land, affordable higher education, publicly funded healthcare,
and overall lower crime rates. Canadian women also have higher
employment rates than US, and the gender gap and participation
(01:39):
rates declined faster in Canada than here in the US.
So we've all heard the saying it takes a village
to raise a child, But what have you lived in
an intentional community that mimicked this village mindset? So my
dad is a voracious consumer of global news, and during
the pandemic, he sent me an article from the Canadian paper,
(02:01):
The Global Mail, featuring Little Mountain co housing in Vancouver, Canada.
So the article was essentially about how co housing was
another avenue for seniors to live independent and socially fulfilling lives,
especially during the COVID lockdowns. But my initial reaction was,
how did these same benefits apply to moms? So many
(02:24):
questions and ideas fled in my mind, but they all
boiled down to one core idea, how does co housing
ease the load of modern motherhood? When I googled Little
Mountain and read the description returned to the best of
small town communities, I was hooked so much so I
(02:47):
cold email the management company who passed along my email
and got me in touch with Joe and Kim, both
moms from Little Mountain co Housing. Joe and Kim are
both moms who sought out co housing early on in
their momming journey for the support and familial community offered
by co housing. In the next half hour, you'll hear
about their living setup centered around common meals, communal spaces
(03:10):
that include an outdoor courtyard, music rooms, car sharing, and
a school bus for kids. And I know this next
perk will make the Heaven's par And you'll hear angels sing,
built in babysitting and after school care. Oh. Both Kim
and Joe also work outside the house, and they will
(03:34):
give you a glimpse of the Canadian parental leave system
that will truly make you rethink how we possibly are
okay with a paltry system we have in place here
in the US. Little Mountain is also community. We're caring
for each other means caring for each other's pets. Mm hmm.
The pets Little Mountain have their own Slack channel, which
(03:56):
includes a cameo from a talking cat.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
My name is Kim and we lived at Little Mountain
in Vancouver. So I live with my husband and our
two children, who are three and six and a half,
and we also have a dog. I work from home.
I'm self employed. I'm a fundraising consultant, So I spend
like ninety percent of my life in this building, I
(04:24):
would say, just.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Because I work from home, so I'm here all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I'm Joe. I am a single mom of an eight
month old boy, I like him right now. Am in
this building ninety percent of the time. Before I had Luke,
I was a physio working in a hospital. Now life
is in the co housing a lot of the time
with this little guy.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And then do one of you guys want to start
just by like defining co housing and maybe what drew
you both to this concept.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Co housing has been around for many decades all over
the world, and it is i form of communal living
where everybody has their own private space that they own,
but there are also communal elements to it. So there's
often some common house and other common space, amenity rooms,
(05:14):
and things like workshops and music rooms which we have here.
We all work together to keep the building running and
to keep our community happy.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I actually like sought out a cohousing because at that
point I was thinking, oh, I might be having a
kid on my own, and if I do that, I
would love to have sort of a built in community.
Timing actually worked out really well in the sense that
it took a long time to build this place. Six
months after we moved in that I had Luke, So yeah,
(05:44):
the timing was great.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Some of my friends are kind of funny they call it.
They're like, oh, you live in a commune, and I'm like, no,
it's communal, but it's not a commune.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Like what initially brought you to co housing.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
My oldest was under a year we joined the group,
and so actually I was just going back to work.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I was feeling it, like the normal sort of like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Guilt and anxiety and everything about going back to work.
And I remember like sitting in a coffee shop one day,
trying to sort of make myself feel better and flipping
through one of the free newspapers that we have in
town and they were talking about Little Mountain. And that's
how I found out about the project, was that moment.
There wasn't a lot of information about the community at all,
(06:27):
but I knew I knew about co housing, and I
also knew how rare it was to happen. In Canada
even so I went home and I was like, we
gotta go, We got to do this.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
There's twenty five different families that live in this co housing.
We were all part of the whole building process. So
there was a core group that started six years ago.
A few more people were sort of added on over
the first couple of years, and then I would say
the last three to four years, we were all in
it together making all the decisions. When I joined, which
was only a few months before you, I think cam,
(06:59):
they'd already reached several big milestones to build in Vancouver,
and yet it was still another five and a half
years after that before it was completed.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, so as a group, we had a long time
to get to know each other. We had monthly meetings
and then committee meetings in between then and then all
of the sort of ups and downs and challenges that
came along with developing a property a building. So we
all know each other fairly well, and so by the
time we moved in, we were just like everybody kind
(07:29):
of knew everybody already, and we kind of fell right
into the groove of cohousing, which involves common meals, working together,
taking care of each other, in various ways.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Taking care of each other means gathering for three common
meals a week, having communal worker bees, which entails getting
together once a month to clean common areas, and signing
up for various committees to run the gamut from conflict
resolution to building maintenance to planning social functions for.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Joe and Kim.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
All these shared responsibilities help ease the workload of all
the unpaid labor tasks and responsibilities that eat away at
our free time as moms, well also giving them the
flexibility to pay and choose which common chores they feel
best suited for and most enjoyed doing. Mind blowing right,
(08:20):
I feel like just this part of their living arrangement
would settle the majority of the fights that happened.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
In my house.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
We have a common dining room and kitchen, and we
have a sort of website that we go on to
plan what the meals are going to be. Sign up
for the meals, so whoever's cooking kind of has an
idea of how many people are going to be attending
that meal. So when you sign up, you're going to
be paying five dollars for your meal, and then that way,
(08:48):
the lead chef has an idea of how much money
they have to work with. Each meal has sort of
a head chef and then two assistant cooks to help
prepare the meal, and then after we have three people
that help do the cleanup. The idea is that everyone
in the co housing should sign up for two shifts
(09:09):
a month and then the rest of the time you
can just show up to the meal oh for cooking
or cooking for cooking or cleaning. Like, if you're not
a cook, then you might want to sign up for
the cleaning.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, I got it because I was like, I'm sure
you guys have favorite cooks too. In I'm sure there
are people who are more popular than others.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Definitely. Yeah, Kim's husband's number one there. As soon as
we see that he's posted, we're.
Speaker 5 (09:36):
Like, oh God, sign up going to that dinner.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah. So after common meals, we have to do the
laundry of tablecloths and whatnot, and you just sort of
know that it'll just naturally get done without having to
have an organized plan. So someone will just take the
laundry to the laundry machine and then maybe an hour
and a half later, someone sees it in there and
they're like, oh, Okay, I'll just put it in the dryer,
and then as soon as it's done in the dryer,
(10:01):
someone else will walk in and be like, oh great,
I'll fold it and I'll put it back in the
kitchen and all just kind of just naturally gets done
without having to communicate about it, which is really nice.
Like I feel like people have that mentality of what
can I do to make this community better? Not oh
I did that last week, I don't want to have
(10:22):
to do it again this week. And because so many
people have this good mentality, it just runs so beautifully.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I feel like I need to enact that in my
own house because it's always to.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Me, like, can so many help me wash the dishes?
Somebody help me come full with the laundry.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
For all you moms who are like me and spend
a three pm onwards in your minivan in school pickup
lines and sports and after school drop offs, this is
a perk of Little Mountain you will swoon over. They
have their own school bus system where all the children
who attend the same school get dropped off and picked
up and do after school care together.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
During the school year. We have school bus a lot
of them go to our neighborhood school, and so we
have volunteers walk them in the morning, and then we
have a group of them that play after school together.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, like the parents either rotate. And then also we
have some retirees that are happy to drop them off
at school or pick them up and spend a few
hours with them in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Joe and Kim also reflect on the division of labor
at Little Mountain. According to a report from Statistics Canada,
the economic value of unpaid housework in Canada was over
eight hundred and sixty billion dollars in twenty nineteen, so
not in the unenviable trillions club that US American women
are in, but still equivalent to over thirty seven percent
(11:49):
of the country's GDP. In Canada, women perform sixty percent
of unpaid housework and sixty eight percent of unpaid childcare work,
equally just about three point nine hours per day. These
numbers are very similar here in the US. At Little Mountain,
since all the communal chores are split up between the residents,
(12:09):
everyone gets to choose how they'll contribute to the smooth
functioning of the community, yielding a more equitable outcome.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Cohousing in general, as I have observed. I couldn't say
this for sure, but attracts sort of more progressive crowd
in terms of thoughts on division of labor and things
like that. I see people are trying, like to really
do their part and not worry about like whether this
is sort of a traditionally male to ask versus female,
but it kind of falls that way whether you try
(12:38):
or not.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
For example, like the people who do kind of like
all the fixing and the building are largely men in
the community, and like a lot of childcare, the women
take care of it because everything sort of split up.
I kind of put my time and energy towards the
things that I really am able to kind of excel at.
If you own your own like it's all on you, right,
(13:01):
So it's like, well, you do have to be an
expert and understand like your gutter system and things like that,
where that would probably drain me more.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I would love not to care about landscaping.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
I would say overall, I feel like I have less
work to do in the sense that three meals a week,
I don't have to cook unless I'm the one that's
in charge for that meal, and that I feel takes
a huge weight off. It's so lovely to just show up, eat,
walk away and not have to do any cleaning. That's
a real, real treat.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And how are all these functions coordinated through a Slack
of course, Well.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
We're just constantly on Slack asking each other for things
and sharing little stories and talking about groom meals, and
there's you know, one hundred conversations every week happening on Slack.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We have a channel for the pets.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so one of our neighbors is going away and
she needed somebody to look after her cat, and instead
of just asking, she posted a video and then she
made the cat talk with her voice, seeing if somebody
could look after him, and it was just so funny
and quirky.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
And then my kid just watched it like three times,
this cat video, and.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Just shows sort of like the culture of our community,
Like we just we like each other and we're some
kind of chumming and joking with each other, you know,
but at the same time we hate things like being
inclusive very seriously and making sure that we're fair and
that we really think through decisions to make sure we're
all benefiting and thinking about other people when we make
(14:35):
those decisions.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
So does somebody take your cat?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
There's very likely somebody to look after the talking.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Cat you're listening to cashing our trillions. Momming, especially in
our modern world, has vast stretches of isolation and loneliness.
Now that moms are talking more openly about postpartum depression,
we're more tuned to the reality that so much of
the early postpartum days are character rise by mixed emotions
(15:02):
that range from bliss and happiness to sheer isolation and dread.
For many of us living the suburban mom life, we
can go an entire day with no adult interaction. A
twenty twenty survey conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of
Education found that one third of Americans described themselves as
(15:23):
seriously lonely. That's up from one fifth before the COVID pandemic,
And according to this same study, moms of small children
are among the loneliest of Americans.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think when you're a parent, and like especially in
my case too, because I work from home, so I'm
just like always always in my house, just having that informal,
unscheduled opportunity to step out the door and have that
time to talk to another adult, Like if you wanted
to even you can to take your laundry to go
(15:57):
full downstairs and you know their vp people walking by,
and just to have that time to chat. I find
it takes a mental load off, Like it really helps
with your mental health and you just don't.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Feel so isolated.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So where we were living before, like it was a
completely lovely place and we had lots of wonderful neighbors
around us as well, but there were times where you
would just go for so long without seeing anybody but
the person or the people in your family. So I
think that's that's the biggest thing here. There's just always
like a really good level of social interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Kim and Joe talk about the perks of having built
in social interaction in their community, which spans having people
literally outside your door to socialize and interact with to
also creating an environment that makes you more willing to
ask for help, because, let's face it, a lot of
our battle as moms is not wanting to burden others
(16:51):
with what we perceive as our own problems.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I live in a community where people knock on my
door asking if they can take Luca for a walk
to give me a break. Which I know would never
have happened if I lived anywhere else.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Volunteer come over like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
I'm going to go and do I'm going to walk
down the street to the bank. Can I take Luke
with me? Or I'm going to head over to the library.
Can I take him?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
If I have a.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Physio appointment or something that I have to go to.
There's at least five or six people that I can
reach out and say, hey, are you free on this
day at this time, And so far in the eight
months of Luke's existence, someone out of that group has
been able to cover any appointment that I've wanted to
go to. In my old apartment. Before I moved here,
I would have had very little support to live in
(17:39):
a community where if I'm kind of going nuts just
being with an infant all day, I know I can
just go at my back door and instantly see all
sorts of different human beings I can chat with or
hang out with. We had a party here on Saturday night,
and I put him up to bed, had the camera
on my phone, and I was just able to go
back out and socialize with people in the backyard, knowing
(18:01):
that he was safe up there and I could see
what he was doing. From that point of view, I
feel very lucky. It's wonderful. Yeah, I really think I
live in the best place imaginable.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean I would echo that to. Having support
is one thing, but having it right outside your door,
it just makes it all the more convenient, and you're
also more willing to sort of reach out and be like, oh,
I need a cup of sugar and egg or whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
It is that you need.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
These benefits a greater exposure to diverse people and living
in a multi generational unit also has benefits for the
development of the children in the community. Kim especially highlights
cohousing's influence on instilling independence in her kids at a
young age and creating a safe space for them to
interact with different types of adults while learning to advocate
(18:48):
for themselves and verbalize theirs.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It's almost kind of like having a building full of
built in aunts and uncles and cousins. I'm perfectly fine
with them kind of going down to the courtyard by themselves,
or going over to a neighbors by themselves, or doing
just a lot of things that I don't think I'd
be able to do if we were just living on
our own in a house, even if we are your neighbors.
Really well, even those little tiny pockets of time, it
(19:14):
really takes a lot of pressure off being a parent.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Oh yeah, it's huge, because, like you don't have to
keep your eye on them all looked. If my kids
are quiet, I'm like, oh, no, something's probably wrong, right,
And you're like, oh, they're probably just in the courtyard
playing or at a neighbor's house.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, there's less panic.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Like the kids will kind of, you know, wander off
sometimes and we're like, oh, I wonder where they are.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah, And that's the nice thing too, is I think
there's a lot of sort of impromptu hangouts for the kids.
It's not like you have to organize these play dates
on such and such a day, at such and such
a time. They kind of meet each other downstairs and
then end up hanging out for fifteen to twenty minutes,
or you know, after we've had one of the common meals,
they're all just naturally just playing in the backyard for
(19:55):
another hour, which is nice when it doesn't always have
to be so scared.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
All this does come at a cost, as Kim explains,
the tight personal living.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Quarters so our apartment with four people we've got. It's
a two bedroom and it's seven hundred and fifty square feet.
So right now I'm sitting in my office, which is
my office during the day, but it's also our bedroom
because the wall, like the bed goes up, so there's
a lot of accommodations we need to make. And I
guess I worry sometimes I'm like, okay, because growing up
(20:28):
I had like, you know, like the basement where the
kids could just hang out, and like the big backyard
and this and that, and like, my kids aren't going
to have that, Like they'll be sharing a room until
you know, we can't take it any more sort of thing.
We'll just kind of deal with it and roll with it.
Like we're quite happy in the space right now. We've
made it work for us.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It's a fact that American mom are overwhelmed with our
day to day lives, and most of the times we're
inundated with life hacks and inspos of the day, when frankly,
we need to evaluate our system and push for structural
institutional change like better leaf policies and universal childcare. These
(21:19):
are also key differences on our system versus our Northern neighbors.
Since March of twenty twenty two, all the provinces and
territories in Canada now have a deal with their federal
government for ten dollars a day childcare. Yeah you heard
me right, ten bucks. British Columbia, the province where Joe
and Kim live, reached this agreement last year and have
(21:42):
plans to have this in action by twenty twenty seven.
Canadian prins of Leaf policies are just as generous. Kim
took eleven months off for both our pregnancies and Joe
is in the middle of an eighteen month leave, and
as you'll hear in our conversation, both are very mad
fact about the time there afforded to make this big
(22:03):
life transition Cam reflex on her maternity leave, I.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Was working at our local science center at the time,
and so it was kind of like a traditional working environment.
And I left my job I think two weeks before
my due date and then was on maternity leave until
eleven months, and it was just the way the daycare
situation worked out. And then went back to work and
(22:29):
then work right until my next pregnancy, and then took
another matt leave and then went back to work again,
and then I decided to leave my job I think
a year after I went back.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Okay, so I think this is like mind blowing for
American women that you took two weeks off before your
maternity leave and then took eleven months off. Like logistically,
how does that go? Do you check in with work
at that time? Like during those eleven months or like
when you're out, you're out.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh you're gone.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
When you're out, you're out. I was even actually thinking like, oh,
I should have written down all my passwords and stuff
because I'm not going to remember how to log into
anything when I go back to work. Yeah. No, I've
totally I've checked out and I am not checking back
in until the day I walk back into that hospital.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Like as much as the as Americans I think are
shocked that we have a twelve to eighteen month MATT leave,
it shocks me to think that people would go back
to work after two weeks or not even get any
time off.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
To think of how it would have been different having
three months or two week MATT leave.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Just even physically being able to go back to work
would have been difficult to do. So it's tough to
imagine otherwise, really, and my heart really goes out to
people who don't have that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
According to a Pew Research study, the US is the
only country among forty one nations that does not mandate
any paid leave for new parents. This is despite the
fact that seventy percent of Americans support the idea a
paid parental leave. These are also key differences in our
system versus our northern neighbor. The reason why more Canadian
(24:06):
women are employed and participating in their workforce is their
extensive printal leave policies, which include a twelve and eighteen
month option. Think of all those milestones you won't miss
your baby's first roll, the baby's sitting up, the first steps,
and perhaps even the first words. How does the Canadian
(24:27):
government offer such generous print to leave policies through short
term maternity leave replacement contracts. Kim explains it all.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, there's a lot of matt leave replacement contracts out there.
So often they'll be like, oh, this is a twelve
month contract, this is an eighteen month contract, and you
know it's a Matt Lee replacement.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
So I work at the hospital, I'm a physiotherapist, and yeah,
when I basically told work, I'm pregnant, I'm due on
such and such a date I'm going to take, I'm
going to leave work two weeks beforehand, And so they
were able to post a position, a matt leave position
for eighteen months. So someone kind of slotted into my
(25:09):
spot while while I'm off, and then when I go back,
they'll post into a different position.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We can't cash our trillions or start to get paid
for the unpaid labor we do until we fix the system.
If we're on this constant hamster wheel of chor's family work, chores,
family work, you know, when are we going to create
the time to advocate for structural change. Also, perhaps it
takes some reframing on our part. Maybe the companies we
(25:37):
work for and us as a society need to think
of retaining professional employees who take maternity or paternity leave
as part of a comprehensive strategy for developing, retaining, and engaging.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
Their best talent.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And you know what, the research backs this up. According
to a web pro News article, well, reintegrating experience employees
reduces organizational costs for recruitment and onboarding and training new employees.
The average cost of replacing employees is about forty percent
of the annual salary, and this is for entry level employees,
(26:16):
So for mid level employees that's one hundred and fifty
percent and for specialized high level employees it's four hundred percent.
While eighteen months of maternity they leave sounds amazing in theory,
it does come out of financial costs and requires some budgeting,
especially for Joe who is a single mom by choice
and can only rely on our own income. Joe breaks
(26:39):
down the numbers for us.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Three years ago, you only got twelve months. They've now
extended it to eighteen months. So we're when you're working
for a company, you're paying into what we call EI,
and then when you go off on a mat leave,
then the government is paying you EI while you're off.
So for me right now, I get about one thousand
dollars every two weeks, So that's what I get for
(27:01):
one year of mat leaf. If I wanted to be
off for eighteen months, then they'll take that same amount
of money, but they'll divide it over eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You have to declare at the beginning of your leave
whether you're how long you're going to take, and then
that way the government can determine how much EI you're
going to receive, and so if you tell them I'm
going to take eighteen months, then they'll the amounts will
be lower each month.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And then some companies also offer a top up for
a certain amount of time. So the first four months
that I was off, I got paid that EI, and
then my work topped me up to eighty five percent
of what I would normally be getting paid. So that
happened for four months. Then that top up ends, but
you then get the EI for the rest of the
(27:47):
time that you're off on that leaf. So two thousand
dollars a month is that? Are you able to live
on that? And that's a bit it's definitely a bit tight.
So knowing that I was saving some money beforehand, just
because I really wanted to have that eighteen months off.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
For Joe, who was able to plan for much of
her pregnancy and her subsequent maternity leave. The only hiccup
in the whole process was a complete freak accident at
the end. And to bring this whole story back home,
thank goodness for co housing.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I think the only kind of major wrench that happened
during my pregnancy is right at the end. Two weeks
before Luke was born, I did manage to break my
ankle on the right and my leg on the left,
so I was basically useless and about to have a baby.
But once again, thank goodness for co housing, had all
(28:39):
my neighbor's support, which was wonderful, and my mom came
out here and helped, and yeah, meals were brought to
my back door. And got through it. And at this
point it's kind of a funny story to be told,
but at the moment it was definitely, definitely quite stressful.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Oh and I have to ask you my last question,
how will you cash your trillions?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
As a hobby?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And this is not even recently, but like back in
the day when I had a little bit more time
on my hands as a hobby, I really like sewing things.
And there's like this workshop in New York State that
you could fly to and it's basically like a camp
for adults, and you go and you spend all weekend
like sewing a jacket for yourself. Many stay in like
cabins and all that stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It is probably an upstate New York then yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I'm on the email list for it, and I'm always like, oh,
that would be so much fun.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
I would love to do.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That and just like buy myself and go and like
make something over the course of like three or four days.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's what I would do.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Awesome, Kim. How about you, Joe?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
If it was millions of dollars, I would buy a
trillions Joe brillions.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Okay, brilliance.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Brillions. Man, Kim, you could go on a lot of
those retreats.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
I'm thinking to bring your girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
I would love to buy a cottage on an island
here called Hornby Island. We have a little summer escape.
That would be a dream come true.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Would that be a co housing situation?
Speaker 4 (30:10):
We have actually all thought about should we all go
in and buy a cabin together? But yeah, we're still
kind of getting used to just living. We've only been
living here in this building for a year, so I
think we need to give it a bit of time.
But maybe maybe down the road.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
This episode was produced by Me and sound edited by
schen Cashing our Trillions is part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a story to share,
please email us at Cachingourtrillions at gmail dot com. Make
sure you subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
(30:49):
or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you liked
what you heard, please take a moment to rate and
review it. It would really mean so much to me.
Thank you for listening. Didn't have limited
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