Role Overload: Working Mothers

Continuing the conversation on role overload, E&B interview author Tiffany Dufu on working parenthood - and how she’s learned to “drop the ball” on parenting perfection.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and this is and you're listening
to stuff mom never told you. Today, we are continuing
the conversation on role overload you may have heard the

(00:25):
other week from our friends and author Liz O'Donnell talking
through the major conflicts and challenges that can be a
result of being both a working professional and a daughter
caring for aging parents. Today, we're continuing the conversation on
the same theme around roll overload and roll conflict, which,

(00:48):
as a reminder, those are the feelings of wearing too
many hats, or trying to be everything to everyone, or
that feeling that the roles you're playing are constantly competing,
constantly competing. We're in you can't a good daughter if
you're also a good mother. You can't be a good
employee if you're also being a good wife, exactly, and
that's why we're so excited to really hone in today

(01:10):
on the conflicts that can emerge for working parents and
specifically for working mothers. Today we are excited to be
joined by our incredible friend and author Tiffany Doofu, who
you may know from her amazing book called Drop the Ball.
Tiffany Doofu is a catalyst at large in the world

(01:33):
of women's leadership. She's the author of Drop the Ball,
a memoir and a manifesto that shows women how to
cultivate the single skill they really need in order to thrive.
The Ability to let Go. Named a Fast Companies League
of Extraordinary Women, Tiffany was a launch team member to
Lean In and his chief leadership officer to Lavo, one

(01:56):
of the fastest growing millennial professional networks are to that,
Tiffany served as the president of the White House Project,
as a major Gifts officer at Simmons College in Boston,
and as Associate Director of Development Seattle Girls School, an
institution committed to giving all girls the power to be innovative, confident,
critical thinkers. Tiffany, you've long said that your life's work

(02:21):
is helping empower women and girls. I'm so excited for
you to join us here at stuff. Mom never told
you where we share that goal. Oh that's fabulous, and
thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
We're so happy to have you here, Tiffany. So, Tiffany,
you pretty much do it all. It sounds like, how
did you get into this work? So I will first,

(02:43):
I would say that I do believe that I have
it all, um, And what that means to me is
that I have a really healthy partnership, and I have
kids who were pretty much on track to be conscious
global citizens, and I have a career that is really
all about out my past and my purpose. And on
most days I'm pretty healthy and fit and joyful. Um.

(03:04):
But I don't do it all in order to have
it all, um, which is I know that which we're
going to talk about. And I got started really because
of my relationship with my mom, which I know that
we're talking about today. She you know, found out that
she was pregnant with me when she was nineteen, and
she was what I call a nonpaid working mom, because

(03:26):
all moms are working moms, but she chose to work
inside of the home and she didn't get compensated for
her labor. And when my parents got divorced when I
was sixteen, I saw the impact of that decision on
my mom's life. She really struggled after the divorce, and
so I became quite committed to getting to as many
women as possible and really supporting them in understanding that

(03:50):
they were the most powerful change agents in their own
journey because I saw the challenges that my mom had
after the divorce. So that's the root of why I
do what I do. I love how you explain that,
because for all the things we want to cover today,
when it comes to the role conflict, that can really
be an issue for women who both identify as mothers

(04:12):
and as those who are working in the paid labor force.
We do not want to wade into the mommy wars. Right,
we're often sort of pigeonholed as feminists, especially that the
discussion of women and work sometimes leads us down that
road to feeling like it's mothers who are compensated for
their labor in the paid labor force and versus mothers

(04:34):
who stay at home. And that's certainly not what we're
trying to do today. Totally definitely not, And it's so unfair.
It's just another way to pit women's experiences against each
other and sort of turn it into this unnecessary competition.
I don't think it has to be that way at all.
I love the way that you highlight that, Tiffany and
you in your mom's own experiences and talking about that, Oh, absolutely,

(04:55):
because you know we're there's only one egosyystem and and
really in order for us to do what I would
love us to do, which is get more women into
the highest levels of leadership, we do need women who
are really clear about the choices that they're making. And
there's no way, to be honest that I would be
able to do what I do every day if it

(05:16):
wasn't for the mothers who knew what was going on
at my kids school, who I was texting under the
table asking them to go pick up my kid when
they're picking up there. Is because I'm stuck in a meeting.
I mean, I actually wouldn't be where I am without
um my nonpaid working moms that are a part of
my village. So that's part of the reason why I
think the mommy wars are over and dead is because

(05:36):
we all need each other. Yeah, I mean, it's a
it's an ecosystem. Just like you said, it's a village.
It's all of these different kinds of women with all
of these different kinds of backgrounds and experiences coming together
for one shared goal. That's so beautiful. I would love
to see that be the narrative of how we talked
about these roles exactly the ecosystem of women crushing it,
love it. And I think what you underscore, Tiffany, is

(05:58):
that idea of women having choice in the matter right
because I think the way that our country works right
now makes those choices for a lot of us feel
pretty constrained. And so the whole concept of role overload.
When we first started talking about this last week with
Liz O'Donnell, there was some contrary evidence that we uncovered

(06:21):
where people are saying, Oh, you're feeling conflicted between the
multiple roles you're playing women, Why don't you just not
playing that many roles? And I'm curious because we're going
to come back to your underlying message of dropped the ball.
But this message of you know, women should stay at
home or be forced into that kind of a role,

(06:42):
or women should be forced into, you know, seeking professional
advancement and not having children, those binaries seem so ludicrous
to me, because it's all about making sure women actually
have control, making sure women actually are able to make
those choices and in less of a constrained way than
they feel right now. And so actually, one of the
pieces of data that I wanted to highlight here is

(07:04):
that in the Huffington's post, Lisa Belkin wrote, and yet
another study finds working moms are happier and healthier. She
underscores that you know, Gallop found stay at home mothers
were more likely to experience stress, worry, anger, and sadness
than those who held paying jobs. A few days earlier,
the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reported that

(07:28):
stay at home women were more likely to experience challenges
with their health than those who juggled children and a
steady relationship in a paycheck. In this particular instance, they
actually found a correlation between obesity and staying at home.
And so I guess the question boils down to, for me,

(07:49):
what is the challenge that we're running up against with
role conflict? Do you hear about these challenges for women?
It sounds so much like what you were talking about
in our previous iteration of this episode. How you know
you have a specific relationship with the people who are
your clients, who you who are paying for your services,
but then when it comes to your parents, when you
go home for Thanksgiving or for the holidays, you get

(08:10):
a little stressed out. And I think this is the
same kind of thing where when you're dealing with something
that is your work, perhaps it's easier to be like,
this is my job. I'm not personalizing it. I don't
have the same kind of emotional investment as I do
with managing all the different things that happened at home
with your kids, who you have a different, you know,
emotional relationship with. Yeah, is that what you're hearing from women, Tiffany,

(08:31):
When you were on the journey of writing this book
and compiling all of the research and all the women
you worked with to make drop the Ball of Reality?
What what were the kinds of challenges that you were
hearing from women both who work for pay and who
work at home. Well, some of the challenges that I
hear consistently are some of the ones that you're mentioning,
Largely that I'm stressed and then I've overwhelmed because i

(08:55):
have a lot of things on my plate and I'm
not sure how to prioritize all of the things that
I've committed to. I'm not even sure if all the
things I've committed to are all the things that I
want to do, but I certainly am feeling the pressure.
I would argue that we have less of a challenge
around role conflict and more of a challenge around role definition.

(09:16):
So most of us enter our lives fulfilling particular roles.
If we're a woman, the first role is usually daughter.
If we become a sibling, then a sister, certainly a friend,
a student, at some point workers we eventually some of
us become wives and mothers. And what I've discovered in

(09:38):
connecting with so many women as it, even though we're
born in different parts of the world, to different families,
different cultures, different values, somehow we've all ended up with
very similar job descriptions for what it means to be
a good anything. And if you are ambitious, then you
by default put the word good in front of all
of your roles. So it's not sufficient to be a mom.

(10:00):
You want to be a good mom, not just a student.
You want to be a good student. And the job
description around what it means to be a good mother,
because I know that's what we're focused on today, has
a number of lines in it that are problematic and
are unrealistic. For example, one of the lines and the
good mom job description says that you need to be

(10:22):
physically present when your child takes their first steps. I
cannot tell you the number of women who I've set
across from who are really stressed because they have a
work event that they need to travel for and they
know that as soon as that flight takes off, their
child who is about a year old, is going to
start walking and it will have meant that they were
the worst mother on the planet. Now, this is despite

(10:45):
the fact that there's not one woman who could tell
me that she remembers who was there when she took
her first steps. Yet this is apparently a really important
moment as occasion in life of a child that if
you missed, means you're you're really terrible. My drop the
ball journey was more about me questioning why it is

(11:07):
all of these things are on my job description to
begin with, and how I can get really clear about
what matters most to me and what my highest and
best use is in fulfilling them, so that I can
redefine what that job description is altogether. And when you
have agency over what it means for you to be

(11:29):
a good mom, or what it means for you to
be a good student or a good work or any
of the roles that you play, then you can curate
your life in such a way that it is possible
to be an extraordinary mother and a wonderful professional and
an amazing wife and sister all at the same time.
It's just that it's very difficult when we're living default mechanisms,

(11:53):
default molds that tell us who we should be and
what we should be. And so that's really, to me,
at the heart of dropping the ball, it's dropping these
unrealistic expectations about who we're supposed to be. To begin with, Tiffany,
I love that. So we're vigorously nodding our heads over
here at what you have to say. I just have
to say, Um, your anecdote about the kid taking up

(12:15):
her steps reminds me so much. I have a friend
who works in a daycare with very young children, and
she has a young child herself, and the other daycare
workers have this kind of coded way of talking to
the moms who leave their kids there when their kids
start walking. So if the mom comes, I'll say, is
your kid taking steps at home? And that's sort of

(12:36):
a coded way of being like, your kid has taken
it's his first steps. You weren't here for it, but
it's not a big deal. You don't need to make
it you know, a big thing because it happens so often,
and if you frame it as guess what you missed today?
You missed your kid taking his first steps and you
were at a business meeting, you horrible mom, the mom
that's awful. And they've actually honed this way of talking
about it, in this coded term that says, hey, it's

(12:58):
actually but how ben it isn't that big of a deal.
Just so you know, you know your kid is taking
steps here, but you're not a bad mom because you
weren't here for it. That's beautiful, it really is. I'm
I was like tearing up over here as the mom
of a four legged fur baby. I'm like, I already
have internalized the guilt that comes with this idea, this

(13:21):
ambiguous sense of missing out, And that is so connected,
I think to what you were saying about role definition,
because it is a very generalized kind of anxiety that
that that comes with roll overload or role conflict. When
you are unsure about what parts of being a good
mom are important to you, it just leaves you feeling

(13:43):
like you're constantly digging in quicksand tiffany Where do you
think those roles come from? Do you think we internalized
messages in society, or we get handed these roles from
sort of the women who came before us. Oh all
of it, and and and we get them, um, you know,
when we were growing up, whichever women we modeled ourselves after.

(14:05):
I personally modeled a lot of my behavior after my mother,
who remember, as I you know, started off shared, um,
didn't work outside of the home. She worked inside of
the home. I should also add that she did not
have a smartphone, she did not have email, she did
not have to nearly a lot of the pressures. And
yet I still expected my home to look as spotless

(14:26):
as the home that I grew up in. And so
we certainly get them from there. For me. I got
them also for women in the church, because I grew
up in the church. We get them from popular culture.
I grew up on The Cosby Show, which was like
the Claire Huxtable, meaning that I was going to have
perfectly feathered hair, had perfect makeup, and my house was

(14:48):
always going to be clean, and I would have five
perfectly well behaved children who were all college bound. And
in the second season of my life, I would make
partner at a law firm, which is kind of ridiculous
when you think about it, but of course as an
adolescent growing up, I did have those visions. It comes
from billboards telling us you know who we should be.

(15:10):
Everyone can repeat, you know, the phrase choosing moms, choose jif.
So we're constantly told you know who we should be
and what we should be, and I think that that
is an important part. Certainly, it was a difficult part
for me because I always thought of myself as being
very ambitious, very modern, very much in the change in

(15:32):
the driver's seat of my own life. So to come
to a point where it was very clear to me
that what I thought were choices weren't actually choices. They
were just default norms and expectations that I was living
out That literally, I was living someone else's story was
a pretty daunting, overwhelming and humbling realization. But it also

(15:54):
gave me the agency and the power to learn how
to write my own story and how to live that instead.
Was there a moment for you where that became very
clear or was it just an over a certain amount
of time, or was there a crystallizing time or you
were like, man, I am I'm living someone else's version
of what it means to be a good mom. Well,

(16:14):
there were certainly moments when I felt so overwhelmed that
I knew something had to change, that the status quo
was not sufficient. One of those moments was my first
day back after my first maternity leave. I left that
day really excited about my new job. I felt that

(16:35):
I was going to be this powerhouse, you know, working
mommy that had it all and did it all. And
I had negotiated for a place to pump milk at
the office, so I just thought everything was all sick.
But the day was such a whirlwind that I ended
up going from meeting to meeting on that first day
back and honestly forgetting to pump milk until my breast

(16:57):
was so engorged that milk was like seeping, you know,
through my blouse into my jacket, and long story short,
I ended up having to express milk into a toilet
um and just was on a bathroom floor on the
first day back of my maternity leave, literally a hot,
milk and teary mess. And that day was just kind

(17:19):
of a daunting day of realizing, wait a minute, if
I can't I think to do something as simple as
pump milk for my baby, what are the other things
now that are going to fall through the cracks? How
am I going to manage all of this? And why
isn't it that when my husband went on his first
day back after we had you know, after he also
had had a child, that he didn't have the same

(17:40):
kind of pressure. So I had a lot of pressure
points and a lot of feelings of overwhelming That caused
me to come to a place where I realized, I'm
going to have to do something about this. And it's
like my parents taught me, if you want something that
you've never had before, you're going to have to do
something that you've never done before in order to achieve
it or publish it. So what am I going to

(18:01):
do that's different in order to really manage this stress?
That is so real? I know, I'm like, I'm like,
you must have just caught me on a very stressed
out day because I'm like so identifying with the that
feeling of oh man, this is too much, this is
not going to work, and that you know, something has
gotta give, like something like this can't go on forever.

(18:23):
Something's gotta change for this to work. It's not sustainable.
But it's so easy to internalize that as a personal failure, right,
instead of to externalize it and say, Okay, what do
I need to do differently, which is how you just
framed it, Tiffany, which is already relieving me stress because
it's not you. It's like, Okay, what am I going
to do? And I think to your point about having

(18:43):
it be an external thing, just like Tiffany was saying
this idea that we get these signals of what it
looks like to be crushing it, whether it's from our
own mom, from the church, from you know, moms on TV,
whatever it is, and that we need to understand that
no one can do that. This is that's not always
realistic or attainable, and that if we hold ourselves up
to this the standard, we're setting ourselves up for failure

(19:07):
and overwork and burnout and roll conflict at all of that. Yeah,
And I wonder if it's the burden is extra for
women of color. You mentioned the Cosby Show, which I
think was such an illuminating moment of in pop culture
of the new black elite, almost right like black excellence
on the small screen, which inspired a lot of Americans.

(19:31):
And I wonder if that extra pressure of having to
prove a stereotype wrong, or to live up to high
expectations and show that you can, you know, be twice
as good in this world, even if the world won't
always appreciate you and it isn't a fair and just
in perfectly equitable place. Do you feel like for working

(19:54):
moms of color, and particular Tiffany, that this is an
added burden. I would say that for me it was
um for a couple of different reasons. One is that
I was racially socialized, meaning that my parents did not
pretend or believe in a color blind world. They told
me that I was black. They told me that because

(20:16):
I was black, people were going to perceive me in
a certain way. They did tell me that I would
have to work really hard in order to overcome those perceptions.
They made it very clear that those perceptions weren't true.
They told me every day that I was smart, and
then I was beautiful, and that I was loved. But
my consciousness around my racial identity did um serve as

(20:38):
a motivation, and that, you know, I felt an enormous
sense of responsibility because I saw myself in this context
of history and people who would come before me. So
there's a sense of gratitude, but there's also a sense
of if I mess up, it's going to be a
ding on the entire Black race. And that might seem
a bit dramatic, but that's actually how I felt, in

(21:00):
some ways still feel about failure. And so yes, there's
this added pressure to do well and to be well
and to perform because one, there are a lot of
people who were depending on you, but also because you
represent something that that means a lot. So being communally
minded does have its added pressures, and I imagine that

(21:23):
there are other cultures in that that also have that experience.
I could not identify with that more as a black woman.
You know, I watched my mom and my dad's mom
and my aunt's all be these strong Black women who
I feel like often felt like they had to carry
on these intense burdens, mostly silently. That as black women,

(21:44):
there's this stereotype that you have to be superwoman and
do it all. They've actually done academic research on this.
We found a study from University of North Carolina that
actually indicates that black women have more physical symptoms of
stress associated with this idea being superwoman, that they have
to carry all these mental and emotional and sometimes physical

(22:05):
burdens and not really talk about it, and they feel
like we can't actually, you know, drop the ball. We don't.
We don't feel like we necessarily have that ability, and
we are suffering a lot of time. It's because no
one can be superwoman all the time. Even if you're
my mom, who seems like she can do everything and
you know, never dropped the ball. Ever, no one can
do it all the time. And I think this idea

(22:26):
that as people of color, we often do feel like
we have this added burden of being perfect and killing
it all the time because we have to make up
for the fact that our ancestors before us work so
hard and didn't have the advantages that we have. And
it's just it's just a lot. It is a lot,
and I think it's really important that we allow young women,

(22:51):
particularly young women of color, to see us as human.
I had an experience months ago. I had signed my
daughter up she's eight years old, for a girl's leadership program.
And one of the things that I love about girls
Leadership is that it requires that a caregiver, ideally a parent,
attend the program with them. And so during one of

(23:11):
the sessions, my daughter overheard me share in one of
the groups that I had once felt really sad because
I had been left out of a friendship group. And
later she asked me about it because she was surprised
that I had ever felt sad for being left out
of a friendship group. And I said, and she asked
me if it had happened when I was a little girl,
and I said, no, honey, it actually happened recently. But

(23:32):
I felt sad that I was left out of a group.
And she said, well, I just don't believe you. And
I said, well, why don't you believe me? And she says, Mommy,
when I'm left out of a friendship group, I feel
so sad that it makes me cry. She says, but
I've never seen you cry ever. And it really took
me back, you know, by surprise, because certainly in the
past eight years I have cried on more than occasion.

(23:56):
Realized in her communicating that that my children and had
never seen me cry. And I think it's because if
I felt tears coming on, I would likely excuse myself
from being in the room with them to go into
another room to cry. Maybe I would prefer to protect
them from whatever was happening in my adult life or world,

(24:16):
so they wouldn't have to worry. But I recognized in
that moment that I was doing my daughter a disservice
that if my daughter didn't see in real practical terms,
that mommy also struggles, that mommy has a bat that
has a hard time, that mommy cries, that she would
likely grow up with the same sense that you're talking about,
that she's got a mommy who has it all and
does it at all and it's perfect, and that one

(24:38):
day this child is going to need my book drop
the ball. Yes, that's so real. I mean this. I
I probably have never seen my mom cry. I've never
My mom has never illustrated anything other than unflappable poise,
and it's only ever demonstrated like crushing it and killing it.
And I don't think I've ever seen my own mom.
Isn't there sort of this true hope around watching like

(25:02):
seeing your own mother cry makes people freak out right,
like no, like, don't cry mom, what's the matter mom?
Everyone wants to like instantly have this really panicked freak
out over it, And we actually at bossed up came
up with a norm at our in person programs which
we call talk through the tears, which is to say
we've been so socialized, especially as women, although I would

(25:23):
say as men even more so, to stop talking and
work on suppressing your own tears. If God forbid, you
should tear up in public. And that has taught us,
trained us to excuse ourselves, to apologize. I'm so sorry,
I need a minute. I can't believe I'm being so
emotionally here, as I may or may out have already
said once today because I had a very rough day

(25:45):
of travel today as I cried in front of a
couple of t s a Asians about not having the
right boarding past at the right time. And we all
we always say at bossed up like talk through the tears,
like no one's gonna make you apologize for crying. We
want to see, we want to hear what you have
to say, So don't let the onset of tears make

(26:05):
you feel like you need to shut down and shut up.
And it goes back to what you were just saying
to me, which is allowing yourself to be seen as
the flawed, imperfect, and sometimes hurt human being that we
all can be, can actually enable others to feel permission
to do the same. I love that so much. Um.
One of my favorite reality TV characters Kelly Cotrone. You

(26:28):
ever watched The Hill. The name of her autobiography is
called if you have to Cry, Go outside. Oh no, Yeah,
It's like I remember thinking that, like tough girls, girls
who can really hack it, you know, they don't cry.
There's no crying in baseball. Like that was something that
I definitely internalized. So if I if I were to cry,
even to like a coworker that I'm close with, it

(26:50):
would be all apologies would be oh my god, I'm
so sorry. I'm so sorry that you're seeing this as
if I was doing something totally inappropriate. Yeah, well, I
have to say today my two lovely t s A
agents who witnessed Emily Aries publicly crowing in an airport,
we're so kind and saying like it's okay, you're having
a bad days to cry in public. All right, we're

(27:14):
gonna take a quick break. Tiffany, hang on, we'll be
right back. We are excited to continue this conversation with
Tiffany Doufu, author of Drop the Ball, and when we
come back, I want to break down what that really means,
What it means to drop the ball, and we're back, Tiffany.

(27:37):
We are so so fortunate to have you joining us
on the podcast today, and I want to get into
some of these solutions. So we talked about the challenges
that come with role overload, role conflict, or a total
lack of role definition, which, as you said at the
top of the podcast, can leave women, especially and working mothers,
feeling this ambiguous sense of getting someone down or guilt

(28:01):
or the stress that comes with that. So you've written
an entire book about how to proactively prioritize, how to
really define the roles for ourselves instead of becoming sort
of victims to societal pressures and the roles we've internalized elsewhere.
Can you tell us what it really means to drop

(28:21):
the ball? Sure, I can tell you what it means
for me. I mean, drop the Ball is largely a
memoir and a romantic comedy. Um. I respect women way
too much to tell them what to do, but certainly
if my story can support women in their journey, I
put it all out onto the table. I think that
the first step to dropping the ball is really getting

(28:42):
clear about what matters most to us as opposed to
what matters to other people, And in my drop the
Ball journey, it became very clear that what mattered most
to me was advancing women and girls surprise surprise, um,
really nurturing a healthy relationship if my partner with my husband,
and raising conscious global citizens. What matters most to you

(29:06):
is usually the first question that I ask women when
I connect with them. Most of the time, we start
by rattling off areas of our life. So all my
career is important, my family is important, my dog is important.
But what I really try to coach women toward is
achieving clarity about what you hope to achieve in relationship

(29:26):
to these areas of your life, because it's really that
starting point that you need in order to do the
second step, which is really getting clear about your highest
and best use in achieving what matters most to you.
So I used to be someone who was kind of
obsessed with just making a bunch of lists, and I
would have them organized via all kinds of different apps,

(29:50):
until I got to a point where it was clear
to me that what you do is far less important
than the difference you make. So I had to move
from constantly making lists and just trying to check them
off to really figuring out and when I talk about
my highest and best use, what are the things that
I can do really well with very little effort, probably

(30:13):
because I've done them a lot, combined with what are
the things that only I can do? So, for example,
as a mother, because that's what we're talking about here,
one of the things that I do really well with
very little effort is helping other people to achieve clarity
through guidance and encouragement. Some people would say, you just
make a good coach. One of the things that only

(30:35):
I can do in relationship to my kids is instill
values in them. It's very hard to outsource the installation
of values in people, and so my highest and best
use in raising conscious global citizens is engaging my kids
in meaningful conversations each and every day. What kind of
day did you create for yourself today? Who did you

(30:57):
laugh with today? If and Aly in spaceship came down
and abducted someone from your school today, who would they
have abducted? Why would they have abducted that person? And
in that way I can help my kids develop a
positive relationship with themselves, with their teachers, their peers, their community.
Hopefully the world now does that mean that there wasn't

(31:18):
some Halloween outfit I was supposed to have made, you know,
for them, or there wasn't something else that was due. Sure,
but I know that I can drop the ball on
any one of those things. Those are not on my
good mom job description, and that I'm an extraordinary mother
if no matter where I am in the world, on
my travels, over Skype or FaceTime or Google hang out,

(31:39):
I have this meaningful conversation with my child. So and
for every area of our lives, I think it's really
important that we're really clear about what should we be
doing so that when other people, because that's really the challenge,
when other people impose their behaviors onto our values, you
can say, actually, I know that from your perspect did

(32:00):
me attending my daughter's piano lesson is something that I
should be doing as a good mom, But I've actually
decided that that behavior isn't on my job description. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna engage in the meaningful conversations. And
I think the third step to dropping the ball is
really about how you engage other people in your leadership journey.
You know, we often act as if our leadership journey

(32:23):
as a solo endeavor, but really it's a team sport.
And you know, there are a lot of people in
our lives who want us to create lives we're passionate about,
who really do love us, but we often suck at
communicating effectively with them. And so I personally took a
big page from my effectiveness as a communicator at work

(32:45):
and started bringing some of those skills home in order
to really meaningfully engage people in ways that I hadn't before.
Oh wow, Tiffany, I know I've been talking about my
mom a lot. Maybe that's because I'm not a parent myself,
but something you just said just reminded me of this
powerful thing from my my childhood. So my mom, I
think i've mentioned total badass doctor, a top medicine while

(33:08):
I was growing up, seemingly did it all, but we
know that's not you know, looks can be deceiving, but um,
she was a working mom, and she worked a lot.
She she cared so much about her her job. When
I was in school, I remember a lot of the
kids always had these meticulously packed school lunches, and I
would sit at lunchtime and they would open their lunch
box and it would be like crinkle cut carrots and

(33:29):
just very lovingly like, oh, my mom put a note
on my napkin every day and things like that. And
I always had to buy hot lunch, and so people
will be like, oh, you know hot lunch, Like your
mom doesn't make your lunch, and I would be like, no,
she doesn't. And I remember, as a kid feeling like
I was supposed to feel sad about that. But what
my classmates didn't see is that almost every single day

(33:50):
when I came home, my mom would make dinner and
I would sit on the kitchen counter and like talk
about my day with her, and she would just ask
me questions about my day. And so for me, it
was clear that for her, maybe she wasn't the kind
of mom who could be cutting up carrots and writing
notes on a on a napkin every day for lunch,
but that for her, what was important for her kid
was to make dinner and have that special time together.

(34:13):
Even if nobody else in the school saw that. And
so even if my classmates thought like, oh, gee, your
mom doesn't make you a meticulously packed lunch every day,
what is she a bad mom? My mom knew I
can my kid can buy a lunch and it's fine.
But my kid can't do is have this special time
with her mom, right, And I said, the operative word
in your narrative is that it wasn't that she couldn't

(34:36):
make you a lunch. It's that she chose not to
make you a lunch because there were other things that
she chose to do with her time that amounted to
you being the fabulous person that you are now see her.
That was like just what I needed to hear. You're
like mothering us in real time on this podcast. Can

(34:57):
you call us every night and ask that those same
questions kid space spaceship one in particular, I think would
be a good question. Um No, I I love that,
and I that triggers some issues for me around class,
to be quite honest, Bridget, because your example reminded me
of how jealous I was of the kids who got
to buy a hot lunch. What yeah, Oh, you're kidding me. I.

(35:20):
I was the kid with the PBNJ every day, and
I took for granted the labor that went into my
mother making my lunches, or my lovely leadership training that
was making my own damn lunch for most of my
school years, and I just wonder, like, what does it
look like to drop the ball when you don't have

(35:40):
the financial resources to outsource or to pay for school
lunch every day? You know, what does it really mean
in this world where And we're going to dive into
in a future episode about roll overload how our government
could maybe make this a little easier on all of us.
But what does it look like to drop the ball
when you can't financially outsource? Yeah, I think I think

(36:01):
that's a great question, and it's one of the biggest
reasons why I began to drop the ball narrative in
the book, UM, going back to a time in my
own life, UM, and my family's life when we did
not have the monetary resources to just outsource domestic labor.
That's the band aid that a lot of professional families

(36:23):
engage in. But we couldn't do that. And that's part
of the reason why I don't start this drop the
Ball narrative or even philosophy with you shouldn't do specifically this,
or you shouldn't do specifically that. I started with what's
important to you? And how can you really redefine what
it means to be a good anything, you know. I um,

(36:47):
early in my career had a sitter who in her
journey had to at one point leave her kids um
on an island and come to the US as an
immigrant on her own, and the hopes of earning enough
money to eventually send for her kids. So there was,
you know, in the good mom job description, you know,

(37:08):
there's this line around just being physically present. It's like
this antipotent you know, pressure that if you're not physically there,
you're not a good mom. And just in thinking about
her story and her narrative, I mean, I don't think
there's anyone who would say that a mother who's had
to immigrant, you know, immigrant to the country and is
doing the best that she can't earning money and sending

(37:29):
it back home and the hopes of bringing her kids
to the US to lead a better life, that she's
a terrible mother. In fact, we would say that she's
probably a really good mother and making an enormous sacrifice,
you know, for her kids. So, you know, I think
that it's really important for us to have the flexibility
and the power to be able to tell the stories
that serve us as opposed to the stories that serve

(37:52):
other people. About who we are and about you know,
what we can do, and quite frankly, a lot of
the moms who I interact with, who come from lower
socio economic backgrounds, who are single moms, for example, have
a lot less luxury to obsess over some of these issues.
Um like you, you privileged women need to get over

(38:14):
it and get on with it. Yeah, do you ever
you know what I'm thinking? Though from our perspective, we're
basically daughters here a musing on a podcast called stuff
Mom Never Told You talking about this issue? Do you
ever worry that what you choose as being most important
to you about your your own job description as mom?
Someday your kids are going to be on a podcast

(38:36):
saying my mom chose the wrong thing, you know, Like,
so it doesn't align with how do you navigate that?
How do you feel? Absolutely not? You know. A few
years ago, I was talking to my sister. I'm the
oldest of four girls, and my sister that I was
speaking to in this case is the one right under me.
So we're only seventy months apart, and we were having

(38:57):
a conversation about our mom and I should share for
the purposes of the story that were estranged from our mom.
I hate that word, but it's the best word to
describe our relationship with her. And my sister was really
angry with her mom about something that she had done.
And I don't know if you've ever been in a
conversation with someone who's upset or frustrated and they want
to enroll you in their frustration or in their anger. Um.

(39:22):
But I wasn't really going there the way that she
needed me to. But because she's my sister, she knows
how to push my buttons, and so she started saying
things like, I don't know why you're not so angry
with mom. You know, your children don't even know their grandmother.
She's never sent them a Christmas gift, she's never sent
them a Birthday gift. And because she's my sister, like,

(39:43):
I almost wanted to burst out in tears, But what
I said to her was Trinity, that's my little sister's name.
I said, That's not the story that I tell about
our mom. The story that I tell is that from
the time she found out she was pregnant with me
until I was sixteen years old, she gave me everything
on other could possibly give a child in order to
set her off on the right path. Every day she

(40:05):
told me that I was smart and I was beautiful,
and that was loved. And as a result of that
early conditioning, I feel that I'm a confident, empowered woman.
And I feel that the greatest gift that she gives
her grandchildren is having a mom who understands why she's
on the planet and has a very clear passion and purpose.
And that that's my story. And my sister, of course goes,

(40:27):
oh my god, you're so pollyannish. But my my Tiffany's
epiphany about that moment had then to do with my
own children, because it occurred to me that here, my
sister and I are two adult women who had virtually
the same childhood experience. I mean, our mom like made
us the same fried chicken and collared greams on Sunday.

(40:48):
She corn wrote our hair in the same direction. Maybe
there were different colored beads, but it was the same
church dress. And yet as adult women, we have two
very different stories that we tell, and that likely to
be the future with my children. My son could very
well grow up to say, I am a feminist man.
I have this amazing, incredible wife who, you know, lived

(41:10):
as her passion and her purpose. Because my mom was
this amazing leader who really cared about making a difference
in the world, and she was such a great role
model for me. My daughter could grow up and say,
I have a lot of difficult times with relationships because
my mother's life's work was advancing women and girls. But
I was the one little girl she never paid enough
attention to. She was writing books, she was always on

(41:33):
planes and trains and automobiles, really living her passion and
her purpose, but not really spending time with me and
finding out what my passion and a purpose was. And
so now I have a difficult time because my mother,
you know, didn't spend enough time with me. She always
talked about how her mother corn wrote her hair. My
mom didn't even know how to corn role. She said
to the Okay, now, both of those stories that my

(41:55):
children might tell wouldn't be true. Neither one of those
stories would have anything to do with me. Okay, I
don't have control over my children's future stories. More importantly,
I don't have a right to them. And so no,
I'm not concerned that the choices or the decisions that
I'm making now are going to impact my children's future

(42:17):
stories because right now, in this moment, every single day,
I'm just doing the best I can. And you want
to know something, I've never met a woman who wasn't
doing the best that she could every single day to
do right by herself, her family, and her community. I
think that's so perfect, right, this idea of stories, the
stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, the

(42:39):
stories that we tell ourselves about others, and how how
they can both sort of be true. But this version
that we choose to tell ourselves, that's what really can
have a lot of power. I think what what you
just said too is is that you have to be
okay with your choices, and that's probably what's going to
set your kids up for their best potential. Anyway. Like,

(42:59):
if you as a mother are making conscious choices that
you are happy with and are living up to the
role that you've defined for yourself, you're setting a role.
You're setting an example for your kids to do the same,
which I think is a really powerful way of thinking
about not conforming to what you think someone else wants
you to be in real time. Easier said than done.

(43:22):
I might add about we're gonna go to a quick
break for a quick word from our sponsors, but let's
keep this conversation going with Tiffany Doofu, author of dropped
the ball. After this quick break, and we're back, and

(43:42):
Bridget and I are nodding along here to the gospel
of Tiffany Doofu, who is laying it down for us
when it comes to being a working mother in today's
world and living up to the job description that you
decide for what that role really means to you. Thank
so much for joining us, Tiffany, Thanks for having me

(44:02):
so Tiffany, something that I've kind of pulled that of
a few of the narratives that you've shared with us today,
is this idea of making the right choices for yourself
and not sort of falling in line with how society
or pop culture or whatever tells us we have to
be as moms as women. So my question is do
you ever deal with other parents or other people in
your orbit giving you, you know, questioning these choices, or

(44:25):
giving you shade or attitude saying oh, well, you didn't
think it was important to come to your your daughter's
piano recital because you thought it was more important to
do blah blah, blah. How can parents out there deal
with it when other parents judge them for these choices
that you're saying that we should all really be making
for ourselves. Yes, so do I experience this? Shore I
experienced this. Sometimes it's in very subtle ways that are

(44:49):
really unintentional, that are just um evidence or just evidence
of a society that isn't quite evolved. So, for example,
my one of the things that I've delegated with joy
to my husband is the management of my kids social calendar.
This is a task that often falls to women, but
that I've discovered should actually be managed by the person

(45:12):
who is the social butterfly in the relationship, and my
husband is a great job. The challenge, though, is that
people don't engage fathers. They engage mothers with kids and
their social calendars. For example, no one ever sends a
birthday party invitation to a child's father. They always send
it to the mom. And for me, that is just

(45:36):
a subtle reminder that in the globe, in the large,
you know, in the world, I'm the one who's expected
to be doing this task. So sometimes I commit what
I would call a little tiny act of defiance, which
is to forward the invitation back to the person and
to say something like, thank you so much for inviting
my daughter to the birthday party. Her father is her

(45:57):
calendar Maven, can you please email him at and then
I give his email address. Okay, then not you will
give other women permission as that. Oh my god, I
can't believe, like why did I only send it to
the moms? Why am I even planning the birthday party?
Like how are you getting to do that? Right? So
you can be disrupted in that way, Sometimes the pressure

(46:20):
is more overt um. You know. Someone will literally say, oh,
you know, all of the other moms are you know,
doing X, Y or z. Sometimes even my children will say, well,
you know, mom, all of the other moms are doing X,
Y or Z. And at any point in time I
might respond because I'm human, Depending up on the situation,
sometimes I become really defensive to be honest, and I'd say, well,

(46:42):
is every mom trying to make a difference in the
world for women and girls? You know? Sometimes I might
respond with humor, you know, and I'll say to my kids,
I saw you showing your friends my YouTube channel. Don't
try to pretend like I am not the coolest momager.
School I love UM. I think that the biggest difference

(47:04):
for me is that once you drop the ball, meaning
once you release these unrealistic expectations of doing it all,
once you love yourself as imperfect, once you stop judging yourself,
it's nearly impossible to judge other people. So most of

(47:24):
the time, especially if it's a person who is a
stranger to me or someone who I don't know very well,
when they impose their expectations, like when my daughter's piano
teacher tells me that I should come to her piano
lessons because the other mothers do, I usually feel an
enormous amount of empathy for them, because what I'm clear
of is that they're still operating according to that job

(47:46):
description that they were handed, and I know that they
haven't gone through an intentional process usually of real really
getting clear about what matters most to them, but what
could potentially matter for other people. And so I usually
I'm just really gracious and I smile, and I don't
say anything unless I'm kind of forced to say something,

(48:07):
and then I might explain, while you know, I'm working
during the day to pay for the piano lessons, so
that's why I'm not able to come. But I sometimes
I even try to avoid that and I just nod
and I smile, because not everyone's ready for the revolution.
I I love those examples, but they also infuriate me
right because they're so exclusionary and patronizing, frankly to men

(48:31):
and fathers, and not to mention same sex couples who
might not have a mom at home. So when that
that that lingo of all the other moms, I just
want to I want that to go away. I'd love
all the other moms as a phrase, to just retire
with shoulder pads. Perhaps you know what I mean. It's
just like it's so passe, and and if we really

(48:52):
want to empower all human beings period to reach our
full potential and lead happy lives at home and at work,
we have to get out of those conditions, which, in
a very small example was I just made the big
adulting move of getting a membership at one of those
big box retailers like Costco. And the person who I

(49:15):
was getting this membership with it was me and my partner.
She could not fathom that he was going to be
the primary account holder. She was like, it should be
the person who's going to do the majority of the
shopping here more often, and because I'm on the road
all the time, and because I'm not really into grocery
shopping at big box stores. That was Brad. That was
Brad the booze role. And she was just like, are

(49:36):
you sure? Like she almost didn't couldn't believe what I
was suggesting about how we divide up work. Well, takeany
Something that you mentioned is that your husband really does
a lot of the social calendar ing for your child.
I'm curious if you're comfortable sort of talking a bit
about what does your romantic relationship look like, how how
are the roles sort of divvied up, and how does

(49:57):
that how does that look like in your household? Well,
we implemented a tool many years ago that we call
a MEL. It's a management Excel list. We call it
MAL for short, and it's kind of like a third
person in our marriage. So every once in a while
when balls literally do drop, will say, oh, we need
to have a conversation with MEL, and I'm like, go, no,

(50:18):
you need to have a conversation with mel um and
but our MEL is really important. It's basically an Excel
spreadsheet that lists everything that's necessary in order for our
home to function smoothly. And I mean every little thing
from people getting haircuts, to the car being maintenance, to

(50:38):
our taxes, two beds being made, to laundry being done,
grocery shopping, our Costco big box you know trip that
we make um every couple of weeks or so, to
watering the plants. And there are basically columns next to
each one. And my husband's got a column, I've got

(50:59):
a column. Now, each one of our kids has a column.
And what we do is we put x is underneath
people's names in order to kind of decide who should
do what. And it's a really incredible list for a
couple of reasons. One is that it's very obvious that
even with two adults and four children living in a

(51:22):
home and a number of x is underneath people's names,
that you still couldn't possibly do everything required in order
for your home to function as smoothly as you would
like it to be inside of your mind. And so
it really gives all of us permission to just say,
you know what, some things are not going to get done.

(51:42):
And the most important column on the sheet is the No.
One column. It's where we put an x next to
what we all agree no one's going to do. So
the car is just going to be dirty for three months.
We're not going to actually fold the clothes. We're just
gonna pull clean socks out of the laundry then, and
it allows us to not develop a sense of resentment
because things aren't happening. But the other reason why that

(52:05):
Excel list and also that No. One column has become
very important for us is because when we do reach
points of overwhelm. There have been times, for example, when
my husband's traveled for long periods of time and out
of parts of the world and a neighbor or friend
or community members says, hey, do you need help with anything?

(52:25):
We always have our No. One column to look at
to say, oh, my gosh, our car is really dirty.
Do you think you could take it to get it washed?
Or I haven't really had time to do a costco run,
would you mind doing that for me? Or you know,
it would really be helpful if like someone came and
folded a load of laundry, because we actually are kind
of tired of just pulling the fox, you know, out

(52:46):
of the laundry ben and because we have specific tasks
that we can assign to people. It's allowed us to
build a really robust village of support, and it's extended
our ecosystem. It turns out people want to help, and
when you actually give them something specific to do, it
just encourages them to help you even more. So. There

(53:07):
are lots of things about our relationships and in the
dynamic of our relationship and our friendship and where it
all began, but I think the most important tool for
us has been them out. I love that. I mean, listen,
when my dad was in the hospital, all my friends
were like, what can I do? What can I do?
What can I do? But that's almost another task. And
so if you're overwhelmed someone being like I want to
help you, what can what can I do to help?

(53:28):
That's like, if you're overwhelmed, you can't even like think
to be like, oh I need the towels folded or
I need someone to make dinner or whatever. And so
having that system, it takes the emotional labor off of
the person who's in need exactly exactly, and really a
lot people do want to help, and it makes it
easier for you to help people help you and have

(53:49):
that ecosystem function efficiently. It really reminds me of what
you mentioned briefly earlier on in the episode Tiffany, which
was the experience of single mothers, especially Like, first of all,
nobody exists in without community. No, especially as parents. Like
the community that you create through your children's lives and
through the social uh structures that you begin to partake

(54:13):
in as a parent or just as an active member
of a community. It seems so critically important, especially for
those who don't have a partner while they're while they're
raising children, right, Like, it's just a reminder that none
of us have to go it alone. And I wish
we could see more of that instead of this tired

(54:34):
old bologny narrative around the mommy wars, Like, I wish
we could see more of a communal narrative. And I
think we are seeing more community structures emerging, especially as
millennials try to figure out this parenting thing and millennials
are wading into those waters of what does it look
like to be a member of a household nowadays? Do

(54:56):
you feel like you've seen that sort of communal approach
as being instrumental in your life? Oh? Absolutely, I wouldn't
be here without it. I mean, I'm literally the cumulative
investment of a lot of other people, and that starts
from culture. So you know, it's one of the benefits
of growing up in the black community, as I had

(55:16):
multiple care givers. I had multiple people who could tell
me what to do, um, and at that time could
even want my behind, which I know we don't do anymore. UM,
who could hold me accountable, that's a nicer way putting it.
I loved that reframing of spankings. UM. So I certainly

(55:36):
have this ethos in my mind, in my heart that
children should be raised by villages. And I hope that
as opposed to driving my kids crazy, which they in
the future could say that it did, I hope that
it actually has allowed them to be exposed to different
points of view, different lenses, different perspectives. Because even in

(55:59):
our own home, we have this philosophy that when in Rome,
you do as the Romans do. So you know, when
the kids are with me, for example, there is dancing
on the sofa. You know, no one has to really
eat all of their food. They just only have that
one opportunity to eat, whereas you know, and there's like
no ball throwing. But when their dad they like throw

(56:20):
balls all the time. There's no dancing on the furniture,
and they have to eat all of their food. And
my kids know, when I'm with Mom, this is how
it is. When I'm with Dad, this is how it is.
And I just I feel like we need more people
in the world who can adapt and who can be
flexible to different environments and different experiences. So I hope
that you know we're exposing our kids through all of

(56:42):
the people that are in their village to different ways
of thinking, and that we're increasing their sensitivity around diversity.
But you know, I think that you're right. It's harder,
certainly when you have less people at your disposal. But
I think that it's really important for us to also
keep in mind the narratives that we tell ourselves in

(57:04):
order to potentially access things that we didn't think we're
there before. I mean, if you had a suggested to
me ten years ago that part of the key to
me excelling professionally and living a life that I'm passionate
about and not being overwhelmed and stressed every day was
my husband doing some things around the house. I had

(57:25):
a strong enough marriage that I would have said to
you Oh, I think that's a great idea. I mean,
he's just so amazing. But in my head I would
have been thinking, oh, my gosh, these young girls, they
are clearly not married. Otherwise they would know that husbands
are useless, that that is just a terrible idea and
that's never gonna work. So even though I've had a husband,

(57:47):
right that you would think, oh, well, because she's married,
she has it easier. In my own mind, in my
own narrative, he was not a resource for me. And
I think getting creative about who we have access to
and who are resources are is really important. And one
of the great examples of that to me was a

(58:07):
couple of women that I interviewed for Dropped the Ball
who were single moms. They were both divorced, They both
had sons that were about the same age, and they
decided to become all in partners by moving in together
and they shared household expenses. They collaborated on child's care,
and one of the funniest quips was that when either

(58:28):
one of them would go out on a date, the
one would say to the other, Okay, have fun, girl
would don't go crazy and marry him, don't replace me.
They had this this really great, So I just thought
it was a really creative way, um in a really
meaningful way of them finding a resource and finding partnership
in one another. Tiffany, this has been such a fascinating

(58:49):
conversation and really like almost like a personally clarifying conversation.
If I can be honest with you, where can our
listeners find out more about what you're up to? And
where can they access all your different tool that are
out there? Oh, they can go to Tiffany do food
dot com. And thank you so much for your support
and for having me absolutely, I mean, you are the
coolest mom on YouTube in the block, right, yeah, Tiffany.

(59:13):
If your kids are listening to this, yeah, I hope
you know your mom is a cool mom. Yeah, a
regular mom. She's got Tiffany's epiphany's. You gotta check them out.
I'm a big fan. Well, thank you so much. I
know our listeners are going to have a million follow
up questions for you, and so listeners, sminty listeners, we
really want to hear from you. Let's keep this conversation going.

(59:34):
Hit us up on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Ask
your questions about working motherhood. Roll overload and how you
define what it means to be a good mom on
Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You, And as always,
we love getting your emails at mom's stuff at how
stuff works dot com. Thanks so much again for joining us, Tiffany,

(59:56):
and we can't wait to keep this conversation going. He
stop