November 29, 2018 • 44 mins
Joshua David Stein and co-host Krishna Andavolu chat about the difficulties of establishing a healthy life-work balance with author and commentator Amy Westervelt, who drops some truth bombs about what it means to do unpaid labor and the barriers to happiness in corporatized America.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to the Fatherly Podcast. I'm your host Joshua
david Stein, joined by Krishna at Volu. Joshua our guest
today's Amie Westervelt, a journalist and author whose new book
is Forget Having It All. How America messed up motherhood
and how to fix it. America's biggest problem is actually
the thing that we talk about as our biggest strength,
which is our like obsession with individual success. Amy joins
(00:27):
us to chat about the role that father's play in
this challenging parenting environment and what we can do. It's
literally the people that calls the problem to help fix it.
We're gonna hear him Amy in a moment, But first
I'd like to catch up with Krishna, who I haven't
seen in a little while. Welcome ter Fogy Podcast. I
(00:50):
hope you're doing this show. What's been going on a
lot a little? I mean based human suffering not as much, Luckily,
I'm doing sort of more tech and future focused stories
which have their downsides obviously, or rather the peril and
dread of the sort of AI empowered apocalypse of human
(01:17):
the death of humanity, the death of humanities, the death
of Comiti. Yeah, we enlighten it, and reasoning no longer
being the guiding force of our lives. You know, nothing
have its time, though, I mean, let's be honest. Well,
I mean you can probably interrogate those values as well.
But no, it's been good because I can talk to
my kid about the stories. I can talk to him
(01:37):
about trucks, I can talk to him about robots and
rocket ships and stuff like loves them. He yeah, he
think once once he had this sort of you know,
waking dream fantasy where he was he talks through it,
and he was talking about how like we'd get another
we get a robot, and the robot would be like
(01:57):
sort of like Papa and sort of like Mama, and
then we get like a robot dog, a robot Leela,
the name of our dog. And so he has a
you know, he has a desire for robots to be around. Yeah,
and I think that desire is gonna be fulfilled in time. Yeah.
I mean it can be his robot girlfriend, maybe robot dad, yeah, well,
or a robot boyfriend. I don't want to be presumptuous whatsoever. Well,
(02:20):
in other case, like, so, what I've been finding in
my recent work life and the stuff that I've been
covering recently is that it's much more easy to sort
of communicate with him about what it's about, why I'm
doing it, why I'm away. Frankly, but you your kid
cares why you're away. No, he didn't before. And maybe
I find it like necessary to tell him why, to
(02:40):
justify it such that he doesn't just think of it
as the natural course of human events. On the other hand,
the danger there is he's like, Dad, why are you away? Oh?
I was researching robots. Robots are more important than me. Yeah,
it's like, hey, Dad, why are you away? I choose
to be, which is like, I mean, I choose to be. Yes,
because I choose, I'm luckily and lucky enough to sort
(03:02):
of choose what I want to do. But for the
most part, which will interrogate with Amy, Yes, that's right,
that's right, And exactly so in my mind, where where
I'm at as a as a father is I'm more
able to share. He's more able, he's for so, he's
just like this massive sponge and he gets certain things
that he didn't get before. Um, and he's curious about
(03:25):
where I've been and what I've been doing. I will
say that before I joined Father Lee, I was mostly
a restaurant critically. Yeah you know that I didn't. Yes,
I was a restaurant critic for The New York Observer,
and then when they endorsed Trump, I quit and made
a big stink about it, and good for you. It
was great. And I still write about food. I'm writing
a couple of cookbooks now. It's still like a big
(03:46):
part of my life. But one of the things that
after I had kids, Um, I was out every night.
I mean, that's what I did, and I couldn't share
any of that with them because they don't care, because
fine dining is not something they really care about. I
will say that the first kid's book I wrote, Can
I Eat? That was an outgrowth of conversations I had
(04:07):
with Achilles where he doesn't eat anything, so we would
just fight about food. And I love food is part
of my it was my profession at the time. I
think it's like dramatic irony or something, right that it
was that and every conversation we had was a fight.
So I wanted to create a book that was not
about my telling him to eat something or a lot
(04:28):
of books are either like that or they're like eat
your vegetable and vegetables are delicious. Whatever. It was just
like if I eat jelly and I eat fish, can
I eat jellyfish? You know, like kind of word play
and just a chance to connect over them. Now that
I work at Fatherly, I have I'm in a similar
situation as you where I can come home and I
(04:49):
can talk to intelligently about the new Paul Patrol or
my carnimals or or even I think the thing that
I value most is what I most. We have a
lot of parenting experts or whatever. I'm terrible at many
things as a parent, and one of them is discipline.
And it was working at Fatherly and understanding how discipline
(05:11):
works and how to actually discipline your kid. Um, it's
a ct for anyone who cares. You acknowledge, you connect
and then you teach, so instead of just yelling, which
is what I used to do. You say, Achilles, I
can see that you're very upset that we're not going
to eat Indian food, like the place is closed. Um,
(05:33):
that's an acknowledgement. Yeah, I can tell that you're upset.
I can see that you're very upset. I'm holding his
hand or I'm looking in his eyes. So I'm connecting,
but having but a tantrum isn't an appropriate reaction, and
you know, hitting Aggie isn't an appropriate reaction. So like
I acknowledge, I connect and I teach. I think I've
learned something. Yes, this is I've worked at Fatherly for
(05:54):
two years. That was the thing. But the other aspect
of it is that working at Fatherly, and I don't
know if you feel this way in your own works,
surrounding myself with the role as a father, like what
it means to be a father. I'm a workaholic, so
if I was writing about food, I'm out every night.
It's all I think about. That's what I do. I
cannibalize my personal life for my professional I finally I
found something to write about that that benefits my family
(06:17):
as well as opposed to just taking me out. But
being able to come home and talk to your kids
about what you do in a way that they understand
is really important. And and the curiosity is something that
I think gives our relationship, Like we're actually both pretty
curious people, so like we're finding something in common, which
is I love what I do, but I also work
a lot. And it also has a lot of knock
(06:40):
on effects for family in terms of uncompetated labor by
my wife and our own relationship, which is um for
another show. Um. That's one of the reasons I'm so
excited to talk to Amy because people have been thinking
about how does motherhood and by extension, fatherhood function in
a society where in order to survive, you I understand
(07:03):
you got to make money. You've got to make money.
In order to make money, you have to work in
an inordinate number of hours. Amy, thank you so much
for being on the show. Thanks for having me. You
have a new book called Forget Having It All. How
(07:24):
America Messed Up Motherhood and How to Fix It, which
is out this November. Maybe you could put in yours,
but it seems like the systemic challenges facing mothers and
the pablum they've been force fed and made to feel
bad about about having it all and leaning in. Yeah,
I I describe it as like a historical look at
how um, how America has always kind of conceived of
(07:48):
the idea of mother's and like how those ideas impact
what mothers get to do or not. But I feel
like it could equally have been called how America messed
up parenthood because you guys are in there too. Yeah,
I mean that's one of the things that I think
we wanted to talk about is how much of it also,
um can apply to fathers and as dad's, like what
(08:12):
we can do to ameliorate the situation, because it feels
like dad's were just now sort of like almost recently,
have been full parents who are you know, supposed to
be emotionally part of your kid's life that maybe wasn't
the hope, that wasn't the case for quite some time,
making it fall on the mother. Yeah, it's interesting. I
(08:33):
was thinking about this either day that I feel like, um,
that what's happening to dad's right now, like is kind
of what happened to moms in the nineties, you know,
like but in the reverse, Like I don't know, and
there's there's so much more info out there, UM and
just chatter in general around um, mothers getting into the workplace,
(08:55):
but not so much around father's getting into parenthood. UM.
And you know, really like both parents have to manage
and balance both things. Now I think we're I don't know,
both both parents are expected to sort of be doing
both things at a pretty high level. Um. So, yeah,
(09:15):
I don't. I don't at all think it just applies
to two mothers, although of course, like there's different things
that apply to society's expectations of men and women in general. Yeah,
I think, Like I was just thinking about it today
because I have two sons, um, and the five year
old Aggie has pneumonia or I don't know that's what
Tribeka pediatric sense. But yeah, right, they're always kind like
(09:36):
he might have it or he might not. Let's just
treat um anyway. So, uh, you know, I had to
take him to he's been sick for the past couple
of days, and like, um, the other day, I had
to take him to a meeting with my boss. Um,
and I just plugged him in to play Toca Boca.
I don't know if your kid plays, they're like actually
(09:58):
really great games. Um. I say that, but only to
make myself feel less guilty. Um. So, like he came
to a meeting with me, and it is true that
my boss, Yeah I write, I write and work for
a CYC called Fatherly, so he wouldn't be like way
too hypocritical to call me out on it. But it
was a little bit awkward and then you know, I
skipped a bunch of meetings today to take him to
(10:19):
the doctor. And and that was after a long period
of fighting with my wife about like who misses what
meetings and increation. I know you travel all the time,
it's the same for you. These are these are struggles
that I think every unless God bless him, I mean
the wealthy. But unless you have the means to to
(10:42):
not think about this stuff, this is really rubber meets
the road stuff of of Okay, like you write in
your book about the patriarchy my favorite thing to dismantle,
but it's like because it's for men too. I mean,
it's not good for anybody. But like, at what point
(11:03):
do I say, Okay, well, yeah, I think the patriarchy
also sucks. Part of the patriarchy is I get paid
more money per hour pretty much than you do. That's
a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, right, But
that plays out on the day to day of Okay, well,
I can't miss this meeting. If I lose my job,
(11:25):
we can't live. If you lose your job, it'll be terrible,
but it'll be easier for us to live, you know what,
ye totally yes, Well, which is to say that the
man oftentimes is the first earner and the woman, the
mother is the first parent and so like that that
those are roles that are the expected roles. Amy, can
(11:47):
you take me through? And this is a stupid question maybe,
but like how did that come to be? Like what's
the history I suppose of how we've ended up in
this conundrum? A lot of that is I mean, you know,
there's there's the sort of you know, two hundred years
ago history, which is that you know, Actually, the really
interesting thing to me when I was doing some of
the historical research was that in the UM the sort
(12:09):
of like Puritan days a couple hundred years ago, UM,
women were considered really like not up to the task
of being the primary parent UM because they thought women
were women. Yeah, Yeah, there was like, well women are
weak willed and like can't apply strict discipline. So actually
(12:30):
fathers were more involved in like the colonial days than
UM than maybe in the fifties UM, because yeah, because
they were considered really to be like in charge of
everyone in the households like spiritual well being and general
knowledge and ability to be productive citizens, including their wives.
(12:51):
Like they were in charge of their wives too, but
um but yeah, um and then also yeah, and then
also like everyone was living a pretty like a greer
in you know, uh life, so no one was really
like leaving the house to work that much. Um. So
there were then came the industrial and then came the
industrial revolutions exactly. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and for
(13:13):
the most part it was men who left to go
to work and women were at home and became that's
kind of when you start to see this really like
gender division of labor come about. Um. And then actually
like the whole way our labor laws evolved kind of
just reinforced this too. So like there was I think
(13:33):
it was in the early nineteen hundreds to to like
nineteen fifteen sixteen era, somewhere in there. Somewhere in there,
the Industrial Revolution had begun. But you know it was
it was like at its earliest days. Um. Anyway, Yeah,
there was there was like a big case in Oregon
where um, a judge ruled that, um, women should have
(13:59):
a limit to their work day. And this was a
thing that actually, like all the labor unions had been
fighting for. They wanted to have the workday capped at
ten hours. But um, whenever the mail led unions would
propose this, it would always get struck down. In this case,
it was around um, women workers, and the women workers
actually didn't want the shorter day. Um, it was like
(14:22):
their male counterparts that were suggesting it. And the judge
ruled that women were a special class of worker and
that they needed to conserve their energy towards not just childbearing,
but like producing quality children. This is like an obsession
throughout the early nineteen hundreds, was like diverting women's energies
from child bearing would result in like low quality children. Um.
(14:46):
So anyway, Yeah, so this protective labor law came into being,
and um, you know, ostensibly to protect women and especially mothers,
but actually what it did was allow companies to pay
women less, um because they were going to work class.
We'll be right back after a brief word from our sponsors.
(15:15):
Can I jump in just to note something that makes
me feel like profoundly uneasy. It almost seems that that
the equality that was was being fought for was the
equality to be equally x, to be equally exploited, you know,
like it was it was, which is so messed up.
But this is what happens. Yes, that's very fucked up. Yeah, yeah,
(15:39):
it was. Actually there's like a whole that's a whole
other tangle to the whole capitalism patriarchy not is an
interesting one. I mean for me, that's the one that
I feel totally caught up in. Like that, to me,
I'm trying to raise good kids who have opportunity, and
I'm trying to provide for them, and that is and
(16:02):
and there's no way that I feel like I can
do it without playing into this systemic inequality. And worst
although worst for my wife for sure, but worse as
well for the victimizer, is that I am part of
that patriot. I am perpetuating the system that I don't
want to perpetuate. It's like, okay, but how how do
I get out of there? Right? Like? How do you
(16:23):
just push pause when like that's the system that governs everything,
you know? And I mean, I think honestly, like the
answer is that, um, it's very long and slow change. Yeah.
And also, yeah, if I can be sort of the
unwoke dude in the womb. Just for a second, I
said womb, I meant room, but I said, if I
(16:45):
can be the unwoke guy in exactly, I just I
couldn't even do it right. But okay, so the the
idea of biology as uh a determinate that determines relationships
in some fashion. Of course, uh of woman birds the child.
Of course, a woman has the biology to feed a
child for its first few months. So you know, I
(17:07):
can uncouple biology and social structures in my mind because
I went someone told me about it once. Yeah, let's
do it right now. Um, But I mean, you know,
at what point where was sort of the biological the
understanding of what sort of the human body was, how
reproduction happened, What where was the science and what science
(17:28):
used as a way to undergird these sort of structural problems.
Tell me all about that, because like that's the part
where I still have there's like a little piece of
me that's like yeah, yeah, you know, well well that's
the thing is like I don't think I this is
where I feel like, um, feminism has jumped the shark
in some ways too, is that like we don't have
to deny how women's bodies work in order to create um,
(17:53):
more equality or or a more egalitarian society. Like, um,
I think that's ridiculous. Although like on the I think
we just need to sort of like be careful about
how we do it. So I'll give you an example.
I have a um a guy that I interviewed for
the book about UM's. He's done a lot of like
thinking and work around how to craft parental leave policies
(18:14):
that don't automatically disadvantage women, because the tendency is to say, oh,
let's give moms more time off because they need it,
and therefore they just become inherently more expensive and less
reliable from a workplace perspective, right, So, like it just
feeds into this ability to pay them less. And you know,
all of that, which is correct? Which is correct? I
(18:36):
mean I hate to say, but that's correct in the
system if you follow the logic of the system of capitalism.
There's no way around that. No, there's no way exactly.
So so his take is like, Okay, what you have
to do is like you give equal leave, but you
you split it up differently. So like the woman, like
the mother takes off a longer period of time UM,
(18:57):
like following the birth because she physically has to recover
from childbirth. And then you do um sort of an
even split between moms and dad's over the next twelve months,
and he has like various ideas about who pays for
that and whatever. But the but like the main thrust
for him is like, you know, you provide equal leaves
so that neither parent is you know, necessarily more expensive
(19:19):
to the company. But you also do it in a
way that requires that both parents have stints of solo parenting,
so both parents like really get to know like the
deal because otherwise, like I talked to this one woman
who you know, she had worked at a law firm.
They had great maternity leaves. She took off six months
for each of her kids, and her husband took off
a week. So she's like, so of course, like I'm
(19:41):
going to be the person who knows the knap schedule
and how like what the kid likes to eat and
like all that stuff. Um, which is a labor. It's
a it's a knowledge base and it's also a labor
actual yes, yes. And that's the other thing too, is
that like this idea that's kind of cropped up a
few times over history of how you compensate for that
(20:02):
labor because we do this thing where we constantly say
that that has value and then we don't actually attribute
value to it in any way. Um, we say it,
but like you know that even and even when we
outsource that labor, it's underpaid, you know, like so um
so at the same time that that like society and
(20:23):
the government and everything else is constantly going on about
family values, and you know, Paul Ryan is wringing his
hands about the birth rate like every month. Um, we
don't actually, we don't actually do anything to show that
that has value or to support it in a way
that that would make it seem valuable, which could which
like relates to the gender thing too, because like why
(20:44):
would someone who is getting highly valued in this one
sphere volunteer to be undervalued in this other sphere? You know,
like psically that there's no there's no constituency or non
grown lobbying group for the child for family, right, the
(21:05):
idea is that there's no lobbying group or that's not
gross and ideological for the health of the child and
the family. And yes, we assume of course that two
parents sharing the burden as a two parent household, understanding
that raising a child is work that needs to be
shared economically equally between parents. Is there any data that
(21:26):
that sort of supports that that is actually better for
the child. Yes, there is, actually, like there's a ton
of thank god, there is, there is. Yeah, there's a
ton of data around, um around like how I mean,
it's unfortunate, and I'm not trying to um to you know,
slam single parents by any stretch, because like I mean,
(21:50):
it's it's incredibly hard, But there's a bunch of data
around just like like worse outcomes on every metric for
children of single parents, Which is not to say that
like you know, if you have like an abusive partnership
that's better than being a single parent or if you
you know, like of course, like there's also a bunch
of data around kids growing up in homes where like
(22:12):
the two parents are problematic and like all the the
issues of that causes, you know, But but yeah, there
there are there are a lot of studies out there
that backups that, you know, kids that have and it's
really just like having more involvement. This is the thing
I get into in the book too, is like it
doesn't actually have to be to biological parents. It just
has to be like two or more adults who are
(22:33):
involved in the well being of that child. And like
that's a thing I think that we should think more
about because you know, like a lot there's like I
think it's more than thirty percent of families are single
parent families, and we're we do not support them in
any way. What is your life situation? Um? Okay, So
(22:54):
I had this very interesting period of time where where
I was actually the um, the primary breadwinner, and my
my husband and I actually switched that. So like when
my first kid was born, he was the primary breadwinner.
I like took some time off and then went back
to work, but my income was definitely not like the
income that was necessary to survival. And then when I
(23:18):
got pregnant with my second kid, which was like a
huge oops, because my husband was not working and like I,
he was trying to start a company, you know, and
so I was the start up. Yeah. I was a
start up. Yeah. And so I was like the the
sole breadwinner and I'm self employed, so I had no
maternity leave. Um, and so I did. I like, I
(23:42):
took an afternoon off to have a kid. Most of
the people that I worked with didn't even know I
was pregnant. And you were saying that that was one
of the origins of this book because you realized wait,
why am I fucking proud of this? Yes? I was.
And I found myself, Yes, I found myself feeling like
kind of like I'm a at ass. And then I
was like gross, like what what is this feeling? Um?
(24:05):
So yeah, like there's nothing I wouldn't distrust that feeling entirely, right,
you were about us? Yeah, but the bad as for
an exploitative system. But so here's the thing. Okay, So
I'm gonna come in and sort of with a bit
of biographical information for me, Like I travel all the time,
and I have a four year old, and as we speak,
(24:27):
my wife is feeding my four year old and we'll
put him to bed this evening and then I'll come
home after a day's work. And you know, that's that.
When my wife and I got together, we were, you know,
fresh out of college. As we sort of got married
and decided to have kids, I was basically a stay
at home writer. Um. But then I started covering stuff
on in the field, and so that started working, and
(24:50):
without having a conversation, it was it became ossified into
our routines that I was the one who was gone
and she was the one who had to hold onto
every thing and hold it together and trust me, it
had Like we're like processing through that decision a lot
these days. But we didn't make a firm We didn't
(25:10):
make any conscious commitment to make like replicating the structure
is of patriarchy and whatever. But we just fell into it.
And like that's the crops, right, Like you're you're offered
these models and then you end up doing them, and
so like where is you know, how do you intervene?
Like where's the intervention? Is it a contract before you
(25:31):
have a kid? Is it? Like kind of I don't know.
I mean that's the thing, is like there's all these
so I find that like we we do all these
things because it's sort of custom and routine. And then, um,
and then when you suggest like doing something like you know,
having a really detailed conversation about it and writing up
a contract or whatever, like that sounds insane. You know,
like it sounds silly and it sounds ridiculous and it
(25:53):
sounds just like over the top. But you kind of
have to do those things to do something really really different.
So like I surveyed um two hundred different parents, all
different backgrounds, like socioeconomic backgrounds, racial, ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, everything.
And I asked them all, um, whether they had talked
(26:14):
just talked about how they would divide labor in the
home once they had a kid, and like, you know
what that what that labor might look like and how
they would divide it, and like seven percent either said
not at all or not really. So so I'm like, Okay,
I'm surprised even talked about it, I know, you know,
but yeah, and I me, it's the same like my husband,
(26:36):
I think like a week before I went into labor,
my husband was sort of like like sort of jokingly
was like, I mean, we didn't really talk about it,
but I sort of just assumed that, like you'd stay
home with the baby for a while, you know, And
I think that's how most couples do it, you know.
But then there were so many things that could have
been avoided from even just like a one hour conversation
um about it. And the danger is the danger I think,
(26:59):
I mean, and this is from my experience in my like,
I'm in the same boat as creation. I'm gonna walk
home and my wife will have taken care of the
kids except for the August doctor appointment today, which I care.
I mean, I don't. I don't even want to be
congratulating because as part of my duty and I'm not
looking for you know, it was a facetious congratulations. Well
(27:20):
thank you anyway, But I'm gonna like just to say
it's a very live, influent situation in my house. This
is uh an issue which is litigated on a day
to day basis, hour to our basis and um with
no small amount of bitter recrimination in tears. So it's
(27:42):
the issue with talking about it a little bit is
it's so on its face unjust. As soon as you're
mindful of how unjust it is, action is demanded. And
if you don't make that action, if you don't take
that action, which actually has pretty big effects on your
life and feels drama addict, especially as a man, especially
as part of the patriarchy. Um, I'm the one who
(28:08):
feels entitled and feels like what I'm entitled to is
being asked of me to be taken away from me.
And look, I know this is off topic, but like
we all watch Britt Havan, all right, yes, like who
I'm sorry, who's sorr? Like that anger at being questioned
(28:30):
or asked or to recognize your own privilege as as
big is my w n YC tote and my New
Yorker and no matter how many female candidates I like,
support it. Like I'm doing this podcast about dismantling whatever
all that stuff. I'm sorry, this podcast is about dismantling
(28:50):
the patriarchy. No, no, it's just about the patriarchy. Don't
worry about it. It's about biological essentialism. Biology is destiny,
all of that stuff. When the rubber hits the road
and I have to make the decision, Like, am I
gonna tell Andrew Berman my boss, who's listening to this now? Dude,
I'm sorry, I can't come to work today. Aggie's sick.
(29:12):
I can't do this meeting. Look, I'm a journalist. We're
all journalists, uh. As journalists, you know, you don't set
up all your meetings. It's not like you are in
the position of power with the source. So you're in
a position of power with the PR firm or whatever.
You are at their mercy. And at the same time,
none of that absolves you from the fact that you
are recreating these dynamics. So yeah, talk about it for
(29:34):
an hour, but once that gets raised, once that spark
of changes out, you can't put it away. And and
I think that's been my struggle throughout having you know,
through I have a five, I have a six, and wait,
I have a five and six year olds. I'm actually fourteen, um,
(29:58):
but you know what I mean. But yeah, that's been
the struggle. Is I Christian? You said something that made
me think it's like, with my muscles, I'm trying to
dismantle the patriarchy. With my bones, I'm supporting it. And
it's a tough spot to be in. Yeah. So I
want to say this carefully, but do I welcome here? No,
(30:18):
I'll say very honestly, I don't welcome the potentiality of
having to put my career on the shelf, right, you know,
like that it sounds kind of cool in a sense,
but like, you know, I took a maybe between after
the last season and we kid, I took all time
where I wasn't traveling and I was itching baby, you know,
like I was, I was doing father's stuff. I was
having the best time my kid, but like I sort
(30:41):
of I was itching. And so like there's you know,
and then and then oh here's the other part. That
was that kind of a uh self negotiation where I
was like, well, this itch, this desire to always go
and do to the expense of the family, and and
and my partner will be a good example that I'm
showing my son because it shows that, like, I'm passionate
(31:02):
about this thing, and it is lies successful lies, successful
parents tell themselves. Well sure, but I mean, I don't
know if I'm exactly wrong, that's the part. No, No,
I'm I'm I'm in the same boat as you. But
I also recognize and I will then be creating little means.
And I honestly think the last thing the world needs
(31:23):
is more jds. And you know what I mean, Like,
I don't they don't need more little entitled dudes thinking well,
I wanted and I'm good at it. I'm passionate. I'm
gonna do it everyone, um amy, But I did want
to bring something up. You know, of your work in
the past, you form Climate Confidential, which is a collective
(31:45):
collective of six female journalists writing about climate issues. How
do you think that that sort of systems thinking, which
is part of climate What if that did you bring
to writing about motherhood? Yeah? Yeah, I actually, like I've
had this kind of obsession for a long time about like,
(32:07):
my theory is that America's biggest problem is actually the
thing that we talk about as our biggest strength, which
is our like obsession with individual success. Um. And you know,
it's done really great things. But I think a lot
of this I see a lot of the problems that
we're grappling with now as being the sort of ultimate
end of of putting the individual above the common good, um,
(32:31):
which is our default. Like that's what we do all
the time, um. And so I think that was part
of it. I was like, how do we shift this
from you know, what any one particular parent is dealing
with too, thinking about like how the system works and
how we might be able to change the system. I
did this like like uh, this incredibly nerdy and weird
(32:54):
thing with my husband where we like, um, we did
like a data project for a year where and as
I'm saying this, I can't believe I didn't include this
in the book because it's totally I didn't know we
were doing bedroom talk. It was data. Um, what do
you call me data? Call me data? No, I'm just kidding,
um no, wet yeah, yeah, we literally can we have
(33:22):
an air horn Jamaican air argamat um so yeah, we
did this whole thing where we we tracked like how
much time we were each spending doing different things, and
and then we tracked like how much money we were
spending on different things, and we also um kind of
tried to correlate that with like overall life satisfaction, right,
(33:46):
So we it was actually super helpful because it was
like we were able to take the emotion and like
entitlement out of a lot of conversations because it was like, Okay, clearly,
like I'm doing ten times as many as much housework
as you you know, so like you know, he would
sort of be like okay, like I'll do the laundry
you know, this on like a Google drive my entire
(34:12):
relationship and getting mad about it. Yes, it was a
Google sheet. And we also had like a giant white
board in our room. Um, but your bedroom in our bedroom. Yes, yes,
this is so yeah, we keeps going to bedroom a
white board in the bedroom with all your data sas
(34:35):
we did. We did, um, but it was it was
actually really it was helpful because it's sort of I
don't know, it gave us a way to have like
more of like systems approach to our own lives, and
it forced us to do this thing which I feel
like people just don't do, which is to actually like
pause and evaluate your life and make decisions. Like we
(34:56):
don't make decisions. We just like let our lives happen
to us so often, and as like extremely privileged people,
all three of us, I will say, like we have
the luxury of making decisions. We should take that opportunity
whenever we can and not just be like, oh oops,
here I am in this position again. You know, like
maybe this sounds like an app to me, Like you
(35:17):
know there's like mint or other things for like personal finances.
What we actually that was the startup that my husband
and that is why you had a second child. Now wonderful.
It's still it never really like it never really got
off the ground, but I still I still think it
could be at at some point because big data, big data.
(35:42):
It was called gung ho because it was the whole
process that we lived, or the whole process that we
used was taken from my husband worked in the automotive industry.
I love that movie. That is my I was literally
talking about the movie today. It's so good. Here's another
(36:06):
brief word from our sponsors. What was the thing that
jumped out at you from that expanse from that year
of analytical thinking. Well, we actually we had radically changed
(36:26):
our lives. We know. We we realized that, like, um,
we were living in the Bay Area at the time,
which is a very expensive place, and we realized that
to have more equity in our marriage and to be
able to like kind of pursue some of the stuff
that we wanted to both of us work wise, we
had to cut our living expenses by like or more,
(36:49):
and so we sold our house, my husband quit his job,
and we moved to a small mountain town that was
like in California. In California, Yeah, that was like much
less expensive but like close enough to everything that we
could sort of maintain a lot of the same income
that we had, um, but like reduced we reduced our
(37:11):
cost of living by like si UM. That enabled us
to actually like you know, like he like, we would
trade off working a fewer hours week to week so
that we could take turns with the kids stuff, and
we were able to sort of like I don't know,
like both of us travel for work, but we would
(37:31):
do it, you know, we would kind of like see
saw back and forth and um, and we've kind of
done that like over long stretches of time to like
he was really kind of the primary parent for a
couple of years, and now I'm more the the primary parents.
So I'm like working slightly less but but still like
able to pursue enough things that I don't feel like
(37:52):
I'm you know, I don't feel that like that itch
to do other stuff, although definitely sometimes, especially as a journalist,
I like, I don't know, like every week there's some
fellowship that like comes my way that I'm like, oh, man,
if only, like if only they offered childcare in addition
to like lodging and travel expenses or whatever. Yeah, from
(38:14):
my from I do, I do the same thing, but
I'm not at the fellowship level. I'm more than like,
oh my god, this is a great story. I should
pitch it, and then thinking okay, well that's one more
deadline and like four more hours I'll be away, and
you know, for for for a little while, I was
thinking of maybe trying to pitch a show where like
I like wear my son in ergo on my backpack,
(38:35):
like on my back through the show and like that's
kind of you know, the father or in the world
who knows, but like, yeah, I'd watch it. Yeah, well yeah,
good so that we got one. Maybe you're in um
what I that your whiteboard experiment um is endlessly interesting
to me. One of the questions I have about it
(38:57):
is did you and your husband have similar happiness levels? Uh? No,
Actually I feel like there were times where And also
this is a funny one, like, so we had a
scale right of like one to ten for the happiness level,
and then we had little like descriptors for why and
one of the descriptors, because it had to fit in
like a Google doc, one of the descriptors was relationship,
(39:21):
bad feeling, relationship. The scale wasn't good. That's the normal. Yeah,
it sounds like a translation from a German word. English
is our first language. Why is this? Like why is
this here? But um, but anyway, yeah, and so that
(39:43):
became a thing too, where it's like, you know, I
was consistently posting like low scores because of relationship bad feeling,
and he was like he would have like a low
score related to work, you know, and so but actually,
like then that prompted some conversations about like why is
having so many bad feelings about this? Relationship, and like
you know, it was mostly like you know, I don't know,
(40:06):
it was mostly this like expectation that you know, I
would always be the lead parent UM and and like
the person that UM knows all the doctor's numbers and
like all the little extra things that you know, Amy,
did you have that that UM expectation of yourself that
you would be the lead parent? Is that something you
(40:27):
want to go aga? Was that something that ended up
upon you? Yeah? No, not really, I UM. I was
sort of like ambivalent about having children actually, which I'm
sure played into some of it too. I was sort
of like, you know, I'm good either way, which I think, Mike.
I'm always envious of the people that like really hardcore
(40:48):
knew UM before they went into having kids, that you
know that they definitely wanted to do it, And like
you know, I think mostly for me also, I just
didn't have any idea what it would be like, So
it was hard to know really like one way or
the other, what what role I would take on and
and all of that. UM. That's actually another thing that
(41:09):
I'm suggesting in the book is that like we UM
is that we I don't know, like that we basically
do like a better job of like family planning, but
like more realistically, you know, like we talked to people
about like like what kind of family do you want,
if you want any at all, what kind of like
adult life do you want? And what does it take
to support that, you know, because right now it's like
(41:31):
we barely have sex aid and if we do, it's
mostly like the mechanics of sex and like how to
not get pregnant or not get an STD. We don't actually,
you know, to your point earlier about like you know,
supporting families and actually thinking about like advocating for the
health of children and families, like we we don't. That's
why we need a matriarchal dictator. Yeah, like a philosophy.
(41:55):
I wanted to call my book Rise of the Matriarchy,
and the sales people were like no they where they well,
I mean not that forget having it all is is.
Actually that's pretty good too, isn't it. It's good, although
it makes me wonder like what do you remember, like, okay,
forget that, and then what do you replace it with?
(42:18):
I think you replace it with you know, rise up. Yeah, Well,
I mean I think I don't know. To me, the
whole having it all thing again kind of goes to
that individual thing, right. It's like one actually, like one
person can't do it all. Um, you just can't. But
(42:39):
it takes. Yes, It's true, damn it. Hillary well Amy,
thank you so much for chatting with us and being
our first guest on season three of the Finally podcast.
The book is Forget Having It All. Subtitle is also
good How America Messed up Motherhood and how to fix it?
(42:59):
And you should buy it everywhere all the time. I'm
your host Joshua David Stein, joined to buy my co
host and friend Krishna and Devolu. As always, if you
have any questions about the podcast or about being a dad,
please don't hesitate to reach out via the hotline at
seven three two four five seven one. That's seven three
(43:22):
two four one, six four or five seven one. And
if you like what you heard, subscribe to the Fatherly
podcast on I Heart Radio. This podcast was produced by
Max Savage Levinson and me Joshua David Stime. It was
engineered by Deco Shtorma, our executive producers Andrew Berman. See
you next time when magician Alan Kransick, as well as
Professor Barnett Kellman. He's literally a doctor of comedy. Explained
(43:47):
to me why exactly my kids don't think I'm funny
and how I can change that. Thanks for listening, Stay cool,
Dad's trying it out. Still gonna keep on saying that.
Two
Welcome back to the Fatherly Podcast. I'm your host Joshua
david Stein, joined by Krishna at Volu. Joshua our guest
today's Amie Westervelt, a journalist and author whose new book
is Forget Having It All. How America messed up motherhood
and how to fix it. America's biggest problem is actually
the thing that we talk about as our biggest strength,
which is our like obsession with individual success. Amy joins
(00:27):
us to chat about the role that father's play in
this challenging parenting environment and what we can do. It's
literally the people that calls the problem to help fix it.
We're gonna hear him Amy in a moment, But first
I'd like to catch up with Krishna, who I haven't
seen in a little while. Welcome ter Fogy Podcast. I
(00:50):
hope you're doing this show. What's been going on a
lot a little? I mean based human suffering not as much, Luckily,
I'm doing sort of more tech and future focused stories
which have their downsides obviously, or rather the peril and
dread of the sort of AI empowered apocalypse of human
(01:17):
the death of humanity, the death of humanities, the death
of Comiti. Yeah, we enlighten it, and reasoning no longer
being the guiding force of our lives. You know, nothing
have its time, though, I mean, let's be honest. Well,
I mean you can probably interrogate those values as well.
But no, it's been good because I can talk to
my kid about the stories. I can talk to him
(01:37):
about trucks, I can talk to him about robots and
rocket ships and stuff like loves them. He yeah, he
think once once he had this sort of you know,
waking dream fantasy where he was he talks through it,
and he was talking about how like we'd get another
we get a robot, and the robot would be like
(01:57):
sort of like Papa and sort of like Mama, and
then we get like a robot dog, a robot Leela,
the name of our dog. And so he has a
you know, he has a desire for robots to be around. Yeah,
and I think that desire is gonna be fulfilled in time. Yeah.
I mean it can be his robot girlfriend, maybe robot dad, yeah, well,
or a robot boyfriend. I don't want to be presumptuous whatsoever. Well,
(02:20):
in other case, like, so, what I've been finding in
my recent work life and the stuff that I've been
covering recently is that it's much more easy to sort
of communicate with him about what it's about, why I'm
doing it, why I'm away. Frankly, but you your kid
cares why you're away. No, he didn't before. And maybe
I find it like necessary to tell him why, to
(02:40):
justify it such that he doesn't just think of it
as the natural course of human events. On the other hand,
the danger there is he's like, Dad, why are you away? Oh?
I was researching robots. Robots are more important than me. Yeah,
it's like, hey, Dad, why are you away? I choose
to be, which is like, I mean, I choose to be. Yes,
because I choose, I'm luckily and lucky enough to sort
(03:02):
of choose what I want to do. But for the
most part, which will interrogate with Amy, Yes, that's right,
that's right, And exactly so in my mind, where where
I'm at as a as a father is I'm more
able to share. He's more able, he's for so, he's
just like this massive sponge and he gets certain things
that he didn't get before. Um, and he's curious about
(03:25):
where I've been and what I've been doing. I will
say that before I joined Father Lee, I was mostly
a restaurant critically. Yeah you know that I didn't. Yes,
I was a restaurant critic for The New York Observer,
and then when they endorsed Trump, I quit and made
a big stink about it, and good for you. It
was great. And I still write about food. I'm writing
a couple of cookbooks now. It's still like a big
(03:46):
part of my life. But one of the things that
after I had kids, Um, I was out every night.
I mean, that's what I did, and I couldn't share
any of that with them because they don't care, because
fine dining is not something they really care about. I
will say that the first kid's book I wrote, Can
I Eat? That was an outgrowth of conversations I had
(04:07):
with Achilles where he doesn't eat anything, so we would
just fight about food. And I love food is part
of my it was my profession at the time. I
think it's like dramatic irony or something, right that it
was that and every conversation we had was a fight.
So I wanted to create a book that was not
about my telling him to eat something or a lot
(04:28):
of books are either like that or they're like eat
your vegetable and vegetables are delicious. Whatever. It was just
like if I eat jelly and I eat fish, can
I eat jellyfish? You know, like kind of word play
and just a chance to connect over them. Now that
I work at Fatherly, I have I'm in a similar
situation as you where I can come home and I
(04:49):
can talk to intelligently about the new Paul Patrol or
my carnimals or or even I think the thing that
I value most is what I most. We have a
lot of parenting experts or whatever. I'm terrible at many
things as a parent, and one of them is discipline.
And it was working at Fatherly and understanding how discipline
(05:11):
works and how to actually discipline your kid. Um, it's
a ct for anyone who cares. You acknowledge, you connect
and then you teach, so instead of just yelling, which
is what I used to do. You say, Achilles, I
can see that you're very upset that we're not going
to eat Indian food, like the place is closed. Um,
(05:33):
that's an acknowledgement. Yeah, I can tell that you're upset.
I can see that you're very upset. I'm holding his
hand or I'm looking in his eyes. So I'm connecting,
but having but a tantrum isn't an appropriate reaction, and
you know, hitting Aggie isn't an appropriate reaction. So like
I acknowledge, I connect and I teach. I think I've
learned something. Yes, this is I've worked at Fatherly for
(05:54):
two years. That was the thing. But the other aspect
of it is that working at Fatherly, and I don't
know if you feel this way in your own works,
surrounding myself with the role as a father, like what
it means to be a father. I'm a workaholic, so
if I was writing about food, I'm out every night.
It's all I think about. That's what I do. I
cannibalize my personal life for my professional I finally I
found something to write about that that benefits my family
(06:17):
as well as opposed to just taking me out. But
being able to come home and talk to your kids
about what you do in a way that they understand
is really important. And and the curiosity is something that
I think gives our relationship, Like we're actually both pretty
curious people, so like we're finding something in common, which
is I love what I do, but I also work
a lot. And it also has a lot of knock
(06:40):
on effects for family in terms of uncompetated labor by
my wife and our own relationship, which is um for
another show. Um. That's one of the reasons I'm so
excited to talk to Amy because people have been thinking
about how does motherhood and by extension, fatherhood function in
a society where in order to survive, you I understand
(07:03):
you got to make money. You've got to make money.
In order to make money, you have to work in
an inordinate number of hours. Amy, thank you so much
for being on the show. Thanks for having me. You
have a new book called Forget Having It All. How
(07:24):
America Messed Up Motherhood and How to Fix It, which
is out this November. Maybe you could put in yours,
but it seems like the systemic challenges facing mothers and
the pablum they've been force fed and made to feel
bad about about having it all and leaning in. Yeah,
I I describe it as like a historical look at
how um, how America has always kind of conceived of
(07:48):
the idea of mother's and like how those ideas impact
what mothers get to do or not. But I feel
like it could equally have been called how America messed
up parenthood because you guys are in there too. Yeah,
I mean that's one of the things that I think
we wanted to talk about is how much of it also,
um can apply to fathers and as dad's, like what
(08:12):
we can do to ameliorate the situation, because it feels
like dad's were just now sort of like almost recently,
have been full parents who are you know, supposed to
be emotionally part of your kid's life that maybe wasn't
the hope, that wasn't the case for quite some time,
making it fall on the mother. Yeah, it's interesting. I
(08:33):
was thinking about this either day that I feel like, um,
that what's happening to dad's right now, like is kind
of what happened to moms in the nineties, you know,
like but in the reverse, Like I don't know, and
there's there's so much more info out there, UM and
just chatter in general around um, mothers getting into the workplace,
(08:55):
but not so much around father's getting into parenthood. UM.
And you know, really like both parents have to manage
and balance both things. Now I think we're I don't know,
both both parents are expected to sort of be doing
both things at a pretty high level. Um. So, yeah,
(09:15):
I don't. I don't at all think it just applies
to two mothers, although of course, like there's different things
that apply to society's expectations of men and women in general. Yeah,
I think, Like I was just thinking about it today
because I have two sons, um, and the five year
old Aggie has pneumonia or I don't know that's what
Tribeka pediatric sense. But yeah, right, they're always kind like
(09:36):
he might have it or he might not. Let's just
treat um anyway. So, uh, you know, I had to
take him to he's been sick for the past couple
of days, and like, um, the other day, I had
to take him to a meeting with my boss. Um,
and I just plugged him in to play Toca Boca.
I don't know if your kid plays, they're like actually
(09:58):
really great games. Um. I say that, but only to
make myself feel less guilty. Um. So, like he came
to a meeting with me, and it is true that
my boss, Yeah I write, I write and work for
a CYC called Fatherly, so he wouldn't be like way
too hypocritical to call me out on it. But it
was a little bit awkward and then you know, I
skipped a bunch of meetings today to take him to
(10:19):
the doctor. And and that was after a long period
of fighting with my wife about like who misses what
meetings and increation. I know you travel all the time,
it's the same for you. These are these are struggles
that I think every unless God bless him, I mean
the wealthy. But unless you have the means to to
(10:42):
not think about this stuff, this is really rubber meets
the road stuff of of Okay, like you write in
your book about the patriarchy my favorite thing to dismantle,
but it's like because it's for men too. I mean,
it's not good for anybody. But like, at what point
(11:03):
do I say, Okay, well, yeah, I think the patriarchy
also sucks. Part of the patriarchy is I get paid
more money per hour pretty much than you do. That's
a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, right, But
that plays out on the day to day of Okay, well,
I can't miss this meeting. If I lose my job,
(11:25):
we can't live. If you lose your job, it'll be terrible,
but it'll be easier for us to live, you know what,
ye totally yes, Well, which is to say that the
man oftentimes is the first earner and the woman, the
mother is the first parent and so like that that
those are roles that are the expected roles. Amy, can
(11:47):
you take me through? And this is a stupid question maybe,
but like how did that come to be? Like what's
the history I suppose of how we've ended up in
this conundrum? A lot of that is I mean, you know,
there's there's the sort of you know, two hundred years
ago history, which is that you know, Actually, the really
interesting thing to me when I was doing some of
the historical research was that in the UM the sort
(12:09):
of like Puritan days a couple hundred years ago, UM,
women were considered really like not up to the task
of being the primary parent UM because they thought women
were women. Yeah, Yeah, there was like, well women are
weak willed and like can't apply strict discipline. So actually
(12:30):
fathers were more involved in like the colonial days than
UM than maybe in the fifties UM, because yeah, because
they were considered really to be like in charge of
everyone in the households like spiritual well being and general
knowledge and ability to be productive citizens, including their wives.
(12:51):
Like they were in charge of their wives too, but
um but yeah, um and then also yeah, and then
also like everyone was living a pretty like a greer
in you know, uh life, so no one was really
like leaving the house to work that much. Um. So
there were then came the industrial and then came the
industrial revolutions exactly. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and for
(13:13):
the most part it was men who left to go
to work and women were at home and became that's
kind of when you start to see this really like
gender division of labor come about. Um. And then actually
like the whole way our labor laws evolved kind of
just reinforced this too. So like there was I think
(13:33):
it was in the early nineteen hundreds to to like
nineteen fifteen sixteen era, somewhere in there. Somewhere in there,
the Industrial Revolution had begun. But you know it was
it was like at its earliest days. Um. Anyway, Yeah,
there was there was like a big case in Oregon
where um, a judge ruled that, um, women should have
(13:59):
a limit to their work day. And this was a
thing that actually, like all the labor unions had been
fighting for. They wanted to have the workday capped at
ten hours. But um, whenever the mail led unions would
propose this, it would always get struck down. In this case,
it was around um, women workers, and the women workers
actually didn't want the shorter day. Um, it was like
(14:22):
their male counterparts that were suggesting it. And the judge
ruled that women were a special class of worker and
that they needed to conserve their energy towards not just childbearing,
but like producing quality children. This is like an obsession
throughout the early nineteen hundreds, was like diverting women's energies
from child bearing would result in like low quality children. Um.
(14:46):
So anyway, Yeah, so this protective labor law came into being,
and um, you know, ostensibly to protect women and especially mothers,
but actually what it did was allow companies to pay
women less, um because they were going to work class.
We'll be right back after a brief word from our sponsors.
(15:15):
Can I jump in just to note something that makes
me feel like profoundly uneasy. It almost seems that that
the equality that was was being fought for was the
equality to be equally x, to be equally exploited, you know,
like it was it was, which is so messed up.
But this is what happens. Yes, that's very fucked up. Yeah, yeah,
(15:39):
it was. Actually there's like a whole that's a whole
other tangle to the whole capitalism patriarchy not is an
interesting one. I mean for me, that's the one that
I feel totally caught up in. Like that, to me,
I'm trying to raise good kids who have opportunity, and
I'm trying to provide for them, and that is and
(16:02):
and there's no way that I feel like I can
do it without playing into this systemic inequality. And worst
although worst for my wife for sure, but worse as
well for the victimizer, is that I am part of
that patriot. I am perpetuating the system that I don't
want to perpetuate. It's like, okay, but how how do
I get out of there? Right? Like? How do you
(16:23):
just push pause when like that's the system that governs everything,
you know? And I mean, I think honestly, like the
answer is that, um, it's very long and slow change. Yeah.
And also, yeah, if I can be sort of the
unwoke dude in the womb. Just for a second, I
said womb, I meant room, but I said, if I
(16:45):
can be the unwoke guy in exactly, I just I
couldn't even do it right. But okay, so the the
idea of biology as uh a determinate that determines relationships
in some fashion. Of course, uh of woman birds the child.
Of course, a woman has the biology to feed a
child for its first few months. So you know, I
(17:07):
can uncouple biology and social structures in my mind because
I went someone told me about it once. Yeah, let's
do it right now. Um, But I mean, you know,
at what point where was sort of the biological the
understanding of what sort of the human body was, how
reproduction happened, What where was the science and what science
(17:28):
used as a way to undergird these sort of structural problems.
Tell me all about that, because like that's the part
where I still have there's like a little piece of
me that's like yeah, yeah, you know, well well that's
the thing is like I don't think I this is
where I feel like, um, feminism has jumped the shark
in some ways too, is that like we don't have
to deny how women's bodies work in order to create um,
(17:53):
more equality or or a more egalitarian society. Like, um,
I think that's ridiculous. Although like on the I think
we just need to sort of like be careful about
how we do it. So I'll give you an example.
I have a um a guy that I interviewed for
the book about UM's. He's done a lot of like
thinking and work around how to craft parental leave policies
(18:14):
that don't automatically disadvantage women, because the tendency is to say, oh,
let's give moms more time off because they need it,
and therefore they just become inherently more expensive and less
reliable from a workplace perspective, right, So, like it just
feeds into this ability to pay them less. And you know,
all of that, which is correct? Which is correct? I
(18:36):
mean I hate to say, but that's correct in the
system if you follow the logic of the system of capitalism.
There's no way around that. No, there's no way exactly.
So so his take is like, Okay, what you have
to do is like you give equal leave, but you
you split it up differently. So like the woman, like
the mother takes off a longer period of time UM,
(18:57):
like following the birth because she physically has to recover
from childbirth. And then you do um sort of an
even split between moms and dad's over the next twelve months,
and he has like various ideas about who pays for
that and whatever. But the but like the main thrust
for him is like, you know, you provide equal leaves
so that neither parent is you know, necessarily more expensive
(19:19):
to the company. But you also do it in a
way that requires that both parents have stints of solo parenting,
so both parents like really get to know like the
deal because otherwise, like I talked to this one woman
who you know, she had worked at a law firm.
They had great maternity leaves. She took off six months
for each of her kids, and her husband took off
a week. So she's like, so of course, like I'm
(19:41):
going to be the person who knows the knap schedule
and how like what the kid likes to eat and
like all that stuff. Um, which is a labor. It's
a it's a knowledge base and it's also a labor
actual yes, yes. And that's the other thing too, is
that like this idea that's kind of cropped up a
few times over history of how you compensate for that
(20:02):
labor because we do this thing where we constantly say
that that has value and then we don't actually attribute
value to it in any way. Um, we say it,
but like you know that even and even when we
outsource that labor, it's underpaid, you know, like so um
so at the same time that that like society and
(20:23):
the government and everything else is constantly going on about
family values, and you know, Paul Ryan is wringing his
hands about the birth rate like every month. Um, we
don't actually, we don't actually do anything to show that
that has value or to support it in a way
that that would make it seem valuable, which could which
like relates to the gender thing too, because like why
(20:44):
would someone who is getting highly valued in this one
sphere volunteer to be undervalued in this other sphere? You know,
like psically that there's no there's no constituency or non
grown lobbying group for the child for family, right, the
(21:05):
idea is that there's no lobbying group or that's not
gross and ideological for the health of the child and
the family. And yes, we assume of course that two
parents sharing the burden as a two parent household, understanding
that raising a child is work that needs to be
shared economically equally between parents. Is there any data that
(21:26):
that sort of supports that that is actually better for
the child. Yes, there is, actually, like there's a ton
of thank god, there is, there is. Yeah, there's a
ton of data around, um around like how I mean,
it's unfortunate, and I'm not trying to um to you know,
slam single parents by any stretch, because like I mean,
(21:50):
it's it's incredibly hard, But there's a bunch of data
around just like like worse outcomes on every metric for
children of single parents, Which is not to say that
like you know, if you have like an abusive partnership
that's better than being a single parent or if you
you know, like of course, like there's also a bunch
of data around kids growing up in homes where like
(22:12):
the two parents are problematic and like all the the
issues of that causes, you know, But but yeah, there
there are there are a lot of studies out there
that backups that, you know, kids that have and it's
really just like having more involvement. This is the thing
I get into in the book too, is like it
doesn't actually have to be to biological parents. It just
has to be like two or more adults who are
(22:33):
involved in the well being of that child. And like
that's a thing I think that we should think more
about because you know, like a lot there's like I
think it's more than thirty percent of families are single
parent families, and we're we do not support them in
any way. What is your life situation? Um? Okay, So
(22:54):
I had this very interesting period of time where where
I was actually the um, the primary breadwinner, and my
my husband and I actually switched that. So like when
my first kid was born, he was the primary breadwinner.
I like took some time off and then went back
to work, but my income was definitely not like the
income that was necessary to survival. And then when I
(23:18):
got pregnant with my second kid, which was like a
huge oops, because my husband was not working and like I,
he was trying to start a company, you know, and
so I was the start up. Yeah. I was a
start up. Yeah. And so I was like the the
sole breadwinner and I'm self employed, so I had no
maternity leave. Um, and so I did. I like, I
(23:42):
took an afternoon off to have a kid. Most of
the people that I worked with didn't even know I
was pregnant. And you were saying that that was one
of the origins of this book because you realized wait,
why am I fucking proud of this? Yes? I was.
And I found myself, Yes, I found myself feeling like
kind of like I'm a at ass. And then I
was like gross, like what what is this feeling? Um?
(24:05):
So yeah, like there's nothing I wouldn't distrust that feeling entirely, right,
you were about us? Yeah, but the bad as for
an exploitative system. But so here's the thing. Okay, So
I'm gonna come in and sort of with a bit
of biographical information for me, Like I travel all the time,
and I have a four year old, and as we speak,
(24:27):
my wife is feeding my four year old and we'll
put him to bed this evening and then I'll come
home after a day's work. And you know, that's that.
When my wife and I got together, we were, you know,
fresh out of college. As we sort of got married
and decided to have kids, I was basically a stay
at home writer. Um. But then I started covering stuff
on in the field, and so that started working, and
(24:50):
without having a conversation, it was it became ossified into
our routines that I was the one who was gone
and she was the one who had to hold onto
every thing and hold it together and trust me, it
had Like we're like processing through that decision a lot
these days. But we didn't make a firm We didn't
(25:10):
make any conscious commitment to make like replicating the structure
is of patriarchy and whatever. But we just fell into it.
And like that's the crops, right, Like you're you're offered
these models and then you end up doing them, and
so like where is you know, how do you intervene?
Like where's the intervention? Is it a contract before you
(25:31):
have a kid? Is it? Like kind of I don't know.
I mean that's the thing, is like there's all these
so I find that like we we do all these
things because it's sort of custom and routine. And then, um,
and then when you suggest like doing something like you know,
having a really detailed conversation about it and writing up
a contract or whatever, like that sounds insane. You know,
like it sounds silly and it sounds ridiculous and it
(25:53):
sounds just like over the top. But you kind of
have to do those things to do something really really different.
So like I surveyed um two hundred different parents, all
different backgrounds, like socioeconomic backgrounds, racial, ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, everything.
And I asked them all, um, whether they had talked
(26:14):
just talked about how they would divide labor in the
home once they had a kid, and like, you know
what that what that labor might look like and how
they would divide it, and like seven percent either said
not at all or not really. So so I'm like, Okay,
I'm surprised even talked about it, I know, you know,
but yeah, and I me, it's the same like my husband,
(26:36):
I think like a week before I went into labor,
my husband was sort of like like sort of jokingly
was like, I mean, we didn't really talk about it,
but I sort of just assumed that, like you'd stay
home with the baby for a while, you know, And
I think that's how most couples do it, you know.
But then there were so many things that could have
been avoided from even just like a one hour conversation
um about it. And the danger is the danger I think,
(26:59):
I mean, and this is from my experience in my like,
I'm in the same boat as creation. I'm gonna walk
home and my wife will have taken care of the
kids except for the August doctor appointment today, which I care.
I mean, I don't. I don't even want to be
congratulating because as part of my duty and I'm not
looking for you know, it was a facetious congratulations. Well
(27:20):
thank you anyway, But I'm gonna like just to say
it's a very live, influent situation in my house. This
is uh an issue which is litigated on a day
to day basis, hour to our basis and um with
no small amount of bitter recrimination in tears. So it's
(27:42):
the issue with talking about it a little bit is
it's so on its face unjust. As soon as you're
mindful of how unjust it is, action is demanded. And
if you don't make that action, if you don't take
that action, which actually has pretty big effects on your
life and feels drama addict, especially as a man, especially
as part of the patriarchy. Um, I'm the one who
(28:08):
feels entitled and feels like what I'm entitled to is
being asked of me to be taken away from me.
And look, I know this is off topic, but like
we all watch Britt Havan, all right, yes, like who
I'm sorry, who's sorr? Like that anger at being questioned
(28:30):
or asked or to recognize your own privilege as as
big is my w n YC tote and my New
Yorker and no matter how many female candidates I like,
support it. Like I'm doing this podcast about dismantling whatever
all that stuff. I'm sorry, this podcast is about dismantling
(28:50):
the patriarchy. No, no, it's just about the patriarchy. Don't
worry about it. It's about biological essentialism. Biology is destiny,
all of that stuff. When the rubber hits the road
and I have to make the decision, Like, am I
gonna tell Andrew Berman my boss, who's listening to this now? Dude,
I'm sorry, I can't come to work today. Aggie's sick.
(29:12):
I can't do this meeting. Look, I'm a journalist. We're
all journalists, uh. As journalists, you know, you don't set
up all your meetings. It's not like you are in
the position of power with the source. So you're in
a position of power with the PR firm or whatever.
You are at their mercy. And at the same time,
none of that absolves you from the fact that you
are recreating these dynamics. So yeah, talk about it for
(29:34):
an hour, but once that gets raised, once that spark
of changes out, you can't put it away. And and
I think that's been my struggle throughout having you know,
through I have a five, I have a six, and wait,
I have a five and six year olds. I'm actually fourteen, um,
(29:58):
but you know what I mean. But yeah, that's been
the struggle. Is I Christian? You said something that made
me think it's like, with my muscles, I'm trying to
dismantle the patriarchy. With my bones, I'm supporting it. And
it's a tough spot to be in. Yeah. So I
want to say this carefully, but do I welcome here? No,
(30:18):
I'll say very honestly, I don't welcome the potentiality of
having to put my career on the shelf, right, you know,
like that it sounds kind of cool in a sense,
but like, you know, I took a maybe between after
the last season and we kid, I took all time
where I wasn't traveling and I was itching baby, you know,
like I was, I was doing father's stuff. I was
having the best time my kid, but like I sort
(30:41):
of I was itching. And so like there's you know,
and then and then oh here's the other part. That
was that kind of a uh self negotiation where I
was like, well, this itch, this desire to always go
and do to the expense of the family, and and
and my partner will be a good example that I'm
showing my son because it shows that, like, I'm passionate
(31:02):
about this thing, and it is lies successful lies, successful
parents tell themselves. Well sure, but I mean, I don't
know if I'm exactly wrong, that's the part. No, No,
I'm I'm I'm in the same boat as you. But
I also recognize and I will then be creating little means.
And I honestly think the last thing the world needs
(31:23):
is more jds. And you know what I mean, Like,
I don't they don't need more little entitled dudes thinking well,
I wanted and I'm good at it. I'm passionate. I'm
gonna do it everyone, um amy, But I did want
to bring something up. You know, of your work in
the past, you form Climate Confidential, which is a collective
(31:45):
collective of six female journalists writing about climate issues. How
do you think that that sort of systems thinking, which
is part of climate What if that did you bring
to writing about motherhood? Yeah? Yeah, I actually, like I've
had this kind of obsession for a long time about like,
(32:07):
my theory is that America's biggest problem is actually the
thing that we talk about as our biggest strength, which
is our like obsession with individual success. Um. And you know,
it's done really great things. But I think a lot
of this I see a lot of the problems that
we're grappling with now as being the sort of ultimate
end of of putting the individual above the common good, um,
(32:31):
which is our default. Like that's what we do all
the time, um. And so I think that was part
of it. I was like, how do we shift this
from you know, what any one particular parent is dealing
with too, thinking about like how the system works and
how we might be able to change the system. I
did this like like uh, this incredibly nerdy and weird
(32:54):
thing with my husband where we like, um, we did
like a data project for a year where and as
I'm saying this, I can't believe I didn't include this
in the book because it's totally I didn't know we
were doing bedroom talk. It was data. Um, what do
you call me data? Call me data? No, I'm just kidding,
um no, wet yeah, yeah, we literally can we have
(33:22):
an air horn Jamaican air argamat um so yeah, we
did this whole thing where we we tracked like how
much time we were each spending doing different things, and
and then we tracked like how much money we were
spending on different things, and we also um kind of
tried to correlate that with like overall life satisfaction, right,
(33:46):
So we it was actually super helpful because it was
like we were able to take the emotion and like
entitlement out of a lot of conversations because it was like, Okay, clearly,
like I'm doing ten times as many as much housework
as you you know, so like you know, he would
sort of be like okay, like I'll do the laundry
you know, this on like a Google drive my entire
(34:12):
relationship and getting mad about it. Yes, it was a
Google sheet. And we also had like a giant white
board in our room. Um, but your bedroom in our bedroom. Yes, yes,
this is so yeah, we keeps going to bedroom a
white board in the bedroom with all your data sas
(34:35):
we did. We did, um, but it was it was
actually really it was helpful because it's sort of I
don't know, it gave us a way to have like
more of like systems approach to our own lives, and
it forced us to do this thing which I feel
like people just don't do, which is to actually like
pause and evaluate your life and make decisions. Like we
(34:56):
don't make decisions. We just like let our lives happen
to us so often, and as like extremely privileged people,
all three of us, I will say, like we have
the luxury of making decisions. We should take that opportunity
whenever we can and not just be like, oh oops,
here I am in this position again. You know, like
maybe this sounds like an app to me, Like you
(35:17):
know there's like mint or other things for like personal finances.
What we actually that was the startup that my husband
and that is why you had a second child. Now wonderful.
It's still it never really like it never really got
off the ground, but I still I still think it
could be at at some point because big data, big data.
(35:42):
It was called gung ho because it was the whole
process that we lived, or the whole process that we
used was taken from my husband worked in the automotive industry.
I love that movie. That is my I was literally
talking about the movie today. It's so good. Here's another
(36:06):
brief word from our sponsors. What was the thing that
jumped out at you from that expanse from that year
of analytical thinking. Well, we actually we had radically changed
(36:26):
our lives. We know. We we realized that, like, um,
we were living in the Bay Area at the time,
which is a very expensive place, and we realized that
to have more equity in our marriage and to be
able to like kind of pursue some of the stuff
that we wanted to both of us work wise, we
had to cut our living expenses by like or more,
(36:49):
and so we sold our house, my husband quit his job,
and we moved to a small mountain town that was
like in California. In California, Yeah, that was like much
less expensive but like close enough to everything that we
could sort of maintain a lot of the same income
that we had, um, but like reduced we reduced our
(37:11):
cost of living by like si UM. That enabled us
to actually like you know, like he like, we would
trade off working a fewer hours week to week so
that we could take turns with the kids stuff, and
we were able to sort of like I don't know,
like both of us travel for work, but we would
(37:31):
do it, you know, we would kind of like see
saw back and forth and um, and we've kind of
done that like over long stretches of time to like
he was really kind of the primary parent for a
couple of years, and now I'm more the the primary parents.
So I'm like working slightly less but but still like
able to pursue enough things that I don't feel like
(37:52):
I'm you know, I don't feel that like that itch
to do other stuff, although definitely sometimes, especially as a journalist,
I like, I don't know, like every week there's some
fellowship that like comes my way that I'm like, oh, man,
if only, like if only they offered childcare in addition
to like lodging and travel expenses or whatever. Yeah, from
(38:14):
my from I do, I do the same thing, but
I'm not at the fellowship level. I'm more than like,
oh my god, this is a great story. I should
pitch it, and then thinking okay, well that's one more
deadline and like four more hours I'll be away, and
you know, for for for a little while, I was
thinking of maybe trying to pitch a show where like
I like wear my son in ergo on my backpack,
(38:35):
like on my back through the show and like that's
kind of you know, the father or in the world
who knows, but like, yeah, I'd watch it. Yeah, well yeah,
good so that we got one. Maybe you're in um
what I that your whiteboard experiment um is endlessly interesting
to me. One of the questions I have about it
(38:57):
is did you and your husband have similar happiness levels? Uh? No,
Actually I feel like there were times where And also
this is a funny one, like, so we had a
scale right of like one to ten for the happiness level,
and then we had little like descriptors for why and
one of the descriptors, because it had to fit in
like a Google doc, one of the descriptors was relationship,
(39:21):
bad feeling, relationship. The scale wasn't good. That's the normal. Yeah,
it sounds like a translation from a German word. English
is our first language. Why is this? Like why is
this here? But um, but anyway, yeah, and so that
(39:43):
became a thing too, where it's like, you know, I
was consistently posting like low scores because of relationship bad feeling,
and he was like he would have like a low
score related to work, you know, and so but actually,
like then that prompted some conversations about like why is
having so many bad feelings about this? Relationship, and like
you know, it was mostly like you know, I don't know,
(40:06):
it was mostly this like expectation that you know, I
would always be the lead parent UM and and like
the person that UM knows all the doctor's numbers and
like all the little extra things that you know, Amy,
did you have that that UM expectation of yourself that
you would be the lead parent? Is that something you
(40:27):
want to go aga? Was that something that ended up
upon you? Yeah? No, not really, I UM. I was
sort of like ambivalent about having children actually, which I'm
sure played into some of it too. I was sort
of like, you know, I'm good either way, which I think, Mike.
I'm always envious of the people that like really hardcore
(40:48):
knew UM before they went into having kids, that you
know that they definitely wanted to do it, And like
you know, I think mostly for me also, I just
didn't have any idea what it would be like, So
it was hard to know really like one way or
the other, what what role I would take on and
and all of that. UM. That's actually another thing that
(41:09):
I'm suggesting in the book is that like we UM
is that we I don't know, like that we basically
do like a better job of like family planning, but
like more realistically, you know, like we talked to people
about like like what kind of family do you want,
if you want any at all, what kind of like
adult life do you want? And what does it take
to support that, you know, because right now it's like
(41:31):
we barely have sex aid and if we do, it's
mostly like the mechanics of sex and like how to
not get pregnant or not get an STD. We don't actually,
you know, to your point earlier about like you know,
supporting families and actually thinking about like advocating for the
health of children and families, like we we don't. That's
why we need a matriarchal dictator. Yeah, like a philosophy.
(41:55):
I wanted to call my book Rise of the Matriarchy,
and the sales people were like no they where they well,
I mean not that forget having it all is is.
Actually that's pretty good too, isn't it. It's good, although
it makes me wonder like what do you remember, like, okay,
forget that, and then what do you replace it with?
(42:18):
I think you replace it with you know, rise up. Yeah, Well,
I mean I think I don't know. To me, the
whole having it all thing again kind of goes to
that individual thing, right. It's like one actually, like one
person can't do it all. Um, you just can't. But
(42:39):
it takes. Yes, It's true, damn it. Hillary well Amy,
thank you so much for chatting with us and being
our first guest on season three of the Finally podcast.
The book is Forget Having It All. Subtitle is also
good How America Messed up Motherhood and how to fix it?
(42:59):
And you should buy it everywhere all the time. I'm
your host Joshua David Stein, joined to buy my co
host and friend Krishna and Devolu. As always, if you
have any questions about the podcast or about being a dad,
please don't hesitate to reach out via the hotline at
seven three two four five seven one. That's seven three
(43:22):
two four one, six four or five seven one. And
if you like what you heard, subscribe to the Fatherly
podcast on I Heart Radio. This podcast was produced by
Max Savage Levinson and me Joshua David Stime. It was
engineered by Deco Shtorma, our executive producers Andrew Berman. See
you next time when magician Alan Kransick, as well as
Professor Barnett Kellman. He's literally a doctor of comedy. Explained
(43:47):
to me why exactly my kids don't think I'm funny
and how I can change that. Thanks for listening, Stay cool,
Dad's trying it out. Still gonna keep on saying that.
Two
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