July 2, 2012 • 16 mins
Why do itsy bitsy bikinis cost so much for so little cloth? Join Cristen and Caroline as they look at the average women's swimsuit price, the life cycle of a swimsuit and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today is another
(00:20):
installment of our Summer Shorts episode. Today we're talking about
bathing suits and why they are so freaking expensive. Because
speaking of shorts, I mean guys might wear more of
a board short style, but for women, the cost of
a bikini, which is not very much fabric, is radically expensive,
(00:45):
especially if you want to buy anything that's even slightly
designer ish or from a department store or something. And
I think this is ridiculous because every year, when it
starts to get warm, I'm like, maybe I should get
an ew bathing suit, a cute, flattering something that hides
a little salting salthing around here. But and then I
see the prices, and I'm like, I guess I'll wait
for the sale in September. Yeah, for next year, I
(01:06):
should just start wearing like a night shirt over. Yeah,
you know, I'll just start wearing just by shirts by
a poncho. That'll work exactly. H There are a few
good reasons though why swimsuits are more expensive, and it
doesn't just have to do with the fabric, which would
include things like Licra and Spandex, but it has to
(01:29):
do with the fact that the labor intensity is about
the same as a shirt, which blows my mind because
how can two little triangles or something that looks like
a tank top with underwear. Well, it's probably all of
the stitching and maybe and maybe because of like if
if you think about a swimsuit top, if it has
(01:49):
lining in it, you know you typically your my t
shirts aren't lined. UM And this is coming from an
article from Daily Finance. Uh, they're talking to Marshall Cohen,
who's the chief industry analyst at the MPG group that
tracks retail spending UM and he says that even though
the labor is about the same as making a shirt,
(02:11):
the fabric is actually not that much less or not
so much less than a typical garment that you could
get some kind of cost savings from it. Yeah, he says,
it's like one yard as opposed to for shirt, so
it's really not that much difference. And it's he says,
it's the lack of ability to commoditize it, or use it,
(02:32):
or use economies of scale excuse me, which basically means
this is kind of a small item that is sold
kind of once a year. People aren't going out in
December really in buying bathing suits, so they've got to
make up some of this cost. Like you know, you
might go out and buy jeans year round, You're not
going to go out and buy a bathing suit every month. Yeah,
that seasonality is one one big reason why you have
(02:54):
those high prices as well. Um, But there are some
designers out there who will defend the cost of not
very much fabric um for instance. I mean, if you
look in a nicer catalog like a J Crew, you
can you can easily drop a hundred and fifty dollars
very quickly on a bikini. But that is nothing compared
(03:15):
to designer Mollia Mills, who was interviewed in the New
York Times in May. Um, who sells designer bikinis for
around three D four. That's like new tires, but she said,
but she says it's worth it. You're buying quality. She
(03:35):
says that you are buying uh suits that are made
in American factories, and she buys small amounts of fabric
from Europe and h so that imported fabric increases the
cost of swimwear as opposed to a mass retailer like
a Target or a Walmart or some other kind of
supercenter that can buy up a ton of swimsuits and
(03:57):
receive the benefit of the discounted cost. And not to
mention performance. Mills talks about how a bikini or a
bathing suit or whatever has to perform because you're using sunscreen,
you're in chlorinated water or salt water. You know, you're
running around the cabana doing who knows what in it.
So it has to have to stand up to all
(04:17):
of these stuff. It has to withstand cabanah hygiene for
an entire summer exactly, or multiple if you're gonna really
invest in a good one and keep it. Yeah, I
mean I gotta say that I I and you can
probably attest to this as well. There is a difference, Caroline,
between a nicer Now, I've never spent three on a bikini,
(04:40):
but I've definitely experienced the you know, the the cheaper, made,
more cheaply made swimwear that all of a sudden you
wear it a couple of times, and there's a whole
versus a nicer one that really does keep its shape
and uh, and really withstands all of those cabana hygiene hijie.
I don't know the less time or if I've ever
been to a cabana necessarily, but you don't know what happens.
(05:03):
Anything can happen. But you mentioned Target, and in that
same New York Times article, Target spokesman Joshua Thomas was
quoted as saying that a company like Target, with one thousand,
seven forty stores in forty states can negotiate better prices
for the fabric that we use. And that's the benefit
of mass production over someone like Mollia Mills, who's doing
(05:23):
something on a smaller scale, more intricate, delicate work. But
then again, just to offer one more argument, possibly uh
in favor of those nicer suits, is that if we're
talking about swimwear and the female body in particular, you know,
the she says that the designer, Molly Mills says that,
(05:46):
you know, if you're making something that's going to flatter
your body, you wanted to camouflage, something you wanted to support, Uh,
then you might need to go up a little bit,
especially for the support issue. Well they argue, Yeah, advocates
of nice serve you know, higher price swimsuits might argue
that once a woman puts on a really nice fitting,
supportive swimsuits, she might be like, oh, well this is
(06:09):
worth it. So I mean, I guess it just depends
on what you're looking for. Well, that's because, in the
words of the New York Times, this, uh, the newer
fabrics that are coming out for swimwear and the designs
that go along with it are allowed to quote hold
the wear in place like a girdle. They're just they're
just the poolside girdles. Sounds uncomfortable, But yeah, they talk
(06:31):
about other things that affect the price. And that's the
whole advent of mix and match swimsuits, which I think
is great because somebody might be bigger on top, smaller
on the bottom, or vice versa, and so you might
not be a small on top and bottom, you know.
So it's great to be able to mix and match.
But then that leaves kind of an over abundance of
maybe one size at the end of the season. Um,
(06:52):
and they can charge more for this mix and match.
They can because I I never thought of this either.
But if you have two separates, you're not just putting
one tag and using one hanger and whatever on one swimsuit.
You have to tag both of that of the packaging
or packaging. But we we mentioned three or four hundred
dollars for a swimsuit. Uh. Since the Summer Olympics are
(07:14):
happening in London very soon, we should probably mention to
the even though they won't be wearing designer bikinis of course,
but the Team USA, we'll be wearing some very pricing
and specially designed suits. Um. In the previous Summer Olympics,
they wore a six hundred dollars Speedo laser racer suit,
(07:35):
which has since been banned because it was just two
darn fast. It was breaking all sorts of records. But
they went back to the drawing boards and for Olympics again,
it's sponsored by Speedo. It's called fast Skin three and
it's gonna cost around five hundred dollars a pop. And
it's and it costs so much, not just because of
the fabric but also the way that they make it
(07:58):
to in order to make the body is aerodynamic as
possible I guess or hydro dynamic as possible. The material
is made with higher thread counts in specific places I
guess to keep the water like woking past you at
optimal speeds. Interesting, But it's zipper free. There no zippers
on the U S Olympic swimwhere totally slow you down. No, well,
(08:19):
they're against regulation, which doesn't make sense because yea, it
does seem like if you had a zipper then you'd
just be hurting yourself. But I don't know. Okay, Well,
coming way down from a five hundred or six hundred
dollar Olympic swimsuit um for the year ending marche the
average price for a two piece swimsuit, which goes against
(08:40):
every day we were just saying, yeah, we're just asking
why they're so expensive, but the average But they seem
so expensive? Is it just the ones that we see?
I think they seem so expensive because I read too
many women's magazines. In reality, Walmart holds of the market,
and other discount retailers like Target, t J Max, Marshals
count for an additional in sales, so that makes sense.
(09:04):
It there are a lot of nice swimsuits that you
and I might be perusing, and catalogs are online that
seemed really expensive, but maybe we're not just going We're
just not going to wal Mart, and that's where a
lot of people are buying our swimsuits. Yeah, there were
retail analysts explaining how there is a definite trickle down
effect of swimwear because it is seasonal and retailers aren't
(09:25):
gonna sell out their entire stock, especially if it's regularly
um marked. Everybody knows that once the cold temperatures roll around,
the swimsuit prices are gonna fall, and then you start
the snowball of them getting marked down more and more
and more, even switching hands exactly back to the manufacturer
than back to a discounted retailer than back to manufacturer,
(09:48):
and that, yeah, the manufacturer has to eat the cost
of shipping every time. And yeah, and then it eventually
ends up in like some little cabana beach store and
Bali somewhere, and when you're on some ritzy vacation you're like, oh,
look at two dollar swimsuit. Oh adorable. We're back to
our hijinks around the cabana. That's when you can go
buy a discounted suit and just for an idea of
how all of this price or discounted swimwear adds up.
(10:13):
The market is valued it around seventeen point six billion
dollars projected for because the market is actually on its
way up because of and this is from global industry
analysts who say that there's a growing interest in body care,
social mobility, relaxed dress codes, improved performance of textiles, and
(10:34):
the escalation of beauty and spat industry. And along with that,
it's not just women who are apparently becoming more conscious
of how they look in a swimsuit and the kinds
of swimsuit variety they have. And apparently and I have
seen this, it says relaxed stress codes. I have seen
trend like fashion trend reports talking about wearing integrating swimwear
(10:56):
into your fashionable summer get ups and even afterwards if
you have a one piece tank of you know, wearing
that under some gallucio pants. I don't know, never take
fashion advice for me. I'm just saying that I've seen it. Okay, Well,
we mentioned earlier that you know, bathing scenes aren't really
(11:18):
a year round item, but there is this whole cruise
line that some designers have, like cruise period of the
year where it might still be chilly up in Connecticut
or something, but if you're taking a cruise in the Caribbean,
it's pretty warm and you need your your cruise wear bikini.
That's also what I wear at home, just cruisewear. I
picture lots of flowing linen, all strong, all the time.
(11:43):
But before we wrap up this episode, since we're talking
about swimwear and price, would you care to inform our
dear listeners out there about the world's most expensive bikini?
Do it? It's sparkly, and it's sparkly. It costs thirty
million dollars, just thirty um. It was featured, not so
(12:03):
surprisingly in these Sports Illustrated swimsuits center fold of two
thousand six. Molly Sims was wearing it, and by it,
I mean a hundred and fifty carrots of d flawless
diamonds plus a fifty one carrot flawless pear shape diamond
and yes, the pear shape down that was on the
(12:25):
bottom covering her her bulba. And I just giggled at that,
and uh yeah, essentially it was a bunch of diamonds
covering her nipples, not much more in her bulba, not
much more, and thirty million dollars that probably wouldn't do
well going back to the manufacturer and back to a
(12:46):
discount retailer, and then back to the manufacturer, and then
to send small shopping boy down at Walmart. Now, Molly
Sims would say that when they brought out the bikini
for her to put on, she broke out in hot sweats. Shoot,
being around all those all that glitz and glitzy, I
bet they would scratch. I'm just saying, so, there you
(13:07):
have it. The reason why swimsuits are typically so expensive
is because they're labor intensive, and there's seasonal and you
have body specific tailoring that might, you know, force you
to want to mix and match all that additional labels.
So I think it's like any other good piece of
clothing really. I mean, if you want to invest in
something that's going to last and hold up to multiple
(13:30):
summers of use, then sure, maybe spin a little bit more.
But if you don't go swimming that often, if you're
not really a beach person, I think you'd be fine
going to a discount retailer. Yeah. I would have to say,
do what's best for you, and we don't want to
pressure you. That's not what we're here. For So that's
all we have today for our summer short except for
(13:52):
a little bit of listener email. This email is from
Allison about our stay at home versus Working Mom's episode.
She said that I wanted to weigh in on the
working mom's episode with my own experiences as the daughter
of a stay at home mom. One thing that irritates
me about this quote unquote debate is the overwhelming focus
(14:14):
on mom's immediate happiness while their kids are still kids,
without real consideration for the second half of their adult
lives once the urchins have grown up and flown the coop.
My mom loved being at home with my sister and
me while we were young, and I think it was
an awesome decision for her personally. We were lucky enough
to be able to live on my dad's income, and
she relished intensive parenting in the hippie mother kind of way. However,
(14:36):
now that my sister and I have grown up, I
see mom having a much more difficult time than my
friend's working parents. Transitioning back to a life that doesn't
revolve around children. Breaking into the workplace is proving super
difficult since she's older and unwilling to take miserable job,
and I get the sense that she's struggling without a
satisfying intellectual pursuit to throw her efforts behind. It takes
time to build careers. I think moms need to weigh
(14:57):
the fact that once they jump off that train, they
may not be able to catch it again. As much
as we love our babies, life doesn't end it fifty.
Sometimes I wonder if there could have been a happy medium,
and if she might have benefited from working a part
time job once my sister and I got older, allowing
some professional development before we left the house altogether. Of course,
what I would have preferred as a kid would have
(15:18):
been both of my parents working part time, especially as
a teenager, got too much time with mom and not
enough with dad. Thanks Alison, Yes, and thanks to everyone
who has waited on that episode about whether working mothers
are happy. We've gotten a lot of great feedback. And
of course, if you want to share your thoughts about
any of our episodes, Today's or otherwise, you can email us.
(15:40):
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is our email address,
and you can also find us on Facebook, leave us
a comment there, like us, follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast, and If you'd like to learn more
about how to have some summer fun, you should head
over to our website, It's how Stuff Works dot com
um for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:03):
Does it How stuff works dot com brought to you
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today is another
(00:20):
installment of our Summer Shorts episode. Today we're talking about
bathing suits and why they are so freaking expensive. Because
speaking of shorts, I mean guys might wear more of
a board short style, but for women, the cost of
a bikini, which is not very much fabric, is radically expensive,
(00:45):
especially if you want to buy anything that's even slightly
designer ish or from a department store or something. And
I think this is ridiculous because every year, when it
starts to get warm, I'm like, maybe I should get
an ew bathing suit, a cute, flattering something that hides
a little salting salthing around here. But and then I
see the prices, and I'm like, I guess I'll wait
for the sale in September. Yeah, for next year, I
(01:06):
should just start wearing like a night shirt over. Yeah,
you know, I'll just start wearing just by shirts by
a poncho. That'll work exactly. H There are a few
good reasons though why swimsuits are more expensive, and it
doesn't just have to do with the fabric, which would
include things like Licra and Spandex, but it has to
(01:29):
do with the fact that the labor intensity is about
the same as a shirt, which blows my mind because
how can two little triangles or something that looks like
a tank top with underwear. Well, it's probably all of
the stitching and maybe and maybe because of like if
if you think about a swimsuit top, if it has
(01:49):
lining in it, you know you typically your my t
shirts aren't lined. UM And this is coming from an
article from Daily Finance. Uh, they're talking to Marshall Cohen,
who's the chief industry analyst at the MPG group that
tracks retail spending UM and he says that even though
the labor is about the same as making a shirt,
(02:11):
the fabric is actually not that much less or not
so much less than a typical garment that you could
get some kind of cost savings from it. Yeah, he says,
it's like one yard as opposed to for shirt, so
it's really not that much difference. And it's he says,
it's the lack of ability to commoditize it, or use it,
(02:32):
or use economies of scale excuse me, which basically means
this is kind of a small item that is sold
kind of once a year. People aren't going out in
December really in buying bathing suits, so they've got to
make up some of this cost. Like you know, you
might go out and buy jeans year round, You're not
going to go out and buy a bathing suit every month. Yeah,
that seasonality is one one big reason why you have
(02:54):
those high prices as well. Um, But there are some
designers out there who will defend the cost of not
very much fabric um for instance. I mean, if you
look in a nicer catalog like a J Crew, you
can you can easily drop a hundred and fifty dollars
very quickly on a bikini. But that is nothing compared
(03:15):
to designer Mollia Mills, who was interviewed in the New
York Times in May. Um, who sells designer bikinis for
around three D four. That's like new tires, but she said,
but she says it's worth it. You're buying quality. She
(03:35):
says that you are buying uh suits that are made
in American factories, and she buys small amounts of fabric
from Europe and h so that imported fabric increases the
cost of swimwear as opposed to a mass retailer like
a Target or a Walmart or some other kind of
supercenter that can buy up a ton of swimsuits and
(03:57):
receive the benefit of the discounted cost. And not to
mention performance. Mills talks about how a bikini or a
bathing suit or whatever has to perform because you're using sunscreen,
you're in chlorinated water or salt water. You know, you're
running around the cabana doing who knows what in it.
So it has to have to stand up to all
(04:17):
of these stuff. It has to withstand cabanah hygiene for
an entire summer exactly, or multiple if you're gonna really
invest in a good one and keep it. Yeah, I
mean I gotta say that I I and you can
probably attest to this as well. There is a difference, Caroline,
between a nicer Now, I've never spent three on a bikini,
(04:40):
but I've definitely experienced the you know, the the cheaper, made,
more cheaply made swimwear that all of a sudden you
wear it a couple of times, and there's a whole
versus a nicer one that really does keep its shape
and uh, and really withstands all of those cabana hygiene hijie.
I don't know the less time or if I've ever
been to a cabana necessarily, but you don't know what happens.
(05:03):
Anything can happen. But you mentioned Target, and in that
same New York Times article, Target spokesman Joshua Thomas was
quoted as saying that a company like Target, with one thousand,
seven forty stores in forty states can negotiate better prices
for the fabric that we use. And that's the benefit
of mass production over someone like Mollia Mills, who's doing
(05:23):
something on a smaller scale, more intricate, delicate work. But
then again, just to offer one more argument, possibly uh
in favor of those nicer suits, is that if we're
talking about swimwear and the female body in particular, you know,
the she says that the designer, Molly Mills says that,
(05:46):
you know, if you're making something that's going to flatter
your body, you wanted to camouflage, something you wanted to support, Uh,
then you might need to go up a little bit,
especially for the support issue. Well they argue, Yeah, advocates
of nice serve you know, higher price swimsuits might argue
that once a woman puts on a really nice fitting,
supportive swimsuits, she might be like, oh, well this is
(06:09):
worth it. So I mean, I guess it just depends
on what you're looking for. Well, that's because, in the
words of the New York Times, this, uh, the newer
fabrics that are coming out for swimwear and the designs
that go along with it are allowed to quote hold
the wear in place like a girdle. They're just they're
just the poolside girdles. Sounds uncomfortable, But yeah, they talk
(06:31):
about other things that affect the price. And that's the
whole advent of mix and match swimsuits, which I think
is great because somebody might be bigger on top, smaller
on the bottom, or vice versa, and so you might
not be a small on top and bottom, you know.
So it's great to be able to mix and match.
But then that leaves kind of an over abundance of
maybe one size at the end of the season. Um,
(06:52):
and they can charge more for this mix and match.
They can because I I never thought of this either.
But if you have two separates, you're not just putting
one tag and using one hanger and whatever on one swimsuit.
You have to tag both of that of the packaging
or packaging. But we we mentioned three or four hundred
dollars for a swimsuit. Uh. Since the Summer Olympics are
(07:14):
happening in London very soon, we should probably mention to
the even though they won't be wearing designer bikinis of course,
but the Team USA, we'll be wearing some very pricing
and specially designed suits. Um. In the previous Summer Olympics,
they wore a six hundred dollars Speedo laser racer suit,
(07:35):
which has since been banned because it was just two
darn fast. It was breaking all sorts of records. But
they went back to the drawing boards and for Olympics again,
it's sponsored by Speedo. It's called fast Skin three and
it's gonna cost around five hundred dollars a pop. And
it's and it costs so much, not just because of
the fabric but also the way that they make it
(07:58):
to in order to make the body is aerodynamic as
possible I guess or hydro dynamic as possible. The material
is made with higher thread counts in specific places I
guess to keep the water like woking past you at
optimal speeds. Interesting, But it's zipper free. There no zippers
on the U S Olympic swimwhere totally slow you down. No, well,
(08:19):
they're against regulation, which doesn't make sense because yea, it
does seem like if you had a zipper then you'd
just be hurting yourself. But I don't know. Okay, Well,
coming way down from a five hundred or six hundred
dollar Olympic swimsuit um for the year ending marche the
average price for a two piece swimsuit, which goes against
(08:40):
every day we were just saying, yeah, we're just asking
why they're so expensive, but the average But they seem
so expensive? Is it just the ones that we see?
I think they seem so expensive because I read too
many women's magazines. In reality, Walmart holds of the market,
and other discount retailers like Target, t J Max, Marshals
count for an additional in sales, so that makes sense.
(09:04):
It there are a lot of nice swimsuits that you
and I might be perusing, and catalogs are online that
seemed really expensive, but maybe we're not just going We're
just not going to wal Mart, and that's where a
lot of people are buying our swimsuits. Yeah, there were
retail analysts explaining how there is a definite trickle down
effect of swimwear because it is seasonal and retailers aren't
(09:25):
gonna sell out their entire stock, especially if it's regularly
um marked. Everybody knows that once the cold temperatures roll around,
the swimsuit prices are gonna fall, and then you start
the snowball of them getting marked down more and more
and more, even switching hands exactly back to the manufacturer
than back to a discounted retailer than back to manufacturer,
(09:48):
and that, yeah, the manufacturer has to eat the cost
of shipping every time. And yeah, and then it eventually
ends up in like some little cabana beach store and
Bali somewhere, and when you're on some ritzy vacation you're like, oh,
look at two dollar swimsuit. Oh adorable. We're back to
our hijinks around the cabana. That's when you can go
buy a discounted suit and just for an idea of
how all of this price or discounted swimwear adds up.
(10:13):
The market is valued it around seventeen point six billion
dollars projected for because the market is actually on its
way up because of and this is from global industry
analysts who say that there's a growing interest in body care,
social mobility, relaxed dress codes, improved performance of textiles, and
(10:34):
the escalation of beauty and spat industry. And along with that,
it's not just women who are apparently becoming more conscious
of how they look in a swimsuit and the kinds
of swimsuit variety they have. And apparently and I have
seen this, it says relaxed stress codes. I have seen
trend like fashion trend reports talking about wearing integrating swimwear
(10:56):
into your fashionable summer get ups and even afterwards if
you have a one piece tank of you know, wearing
that under some gallucio pants. I don't know, never take
fashion advice for me. I'm just saying that I've seen it. Okay, Well,
we mentioned earlier that you know, bathing scenes aren't really
(11:18):
a year round item, but there is this whole cruise
line that some designers have, like cruise period of the
year where it might still be chilly up in Connecticut
or something, but if you're taking a cruise in the Caribbean,
it's pretty warm and you need your your cruise wear bikini.
That's also what I wear at home, just cruisewear. I
picture lots of flowing linen, all strong, all the time.
(11:43):
But before we wrap up this episode, since we're talking
about swimwear and price, would you care to inform our
dear listeners out there about the world's most expensive bikini?
Do it? It's sparkly, and it's sparkly. It costs thirty
million dollars, just thirty um. It was featured, not so
(12:03):
surprisingly in these Sports Illustrated swimsuits center fold of two
thousand six. Molly Sims was wearing it, and by it,
I mean a hundred and fifty carrots of d flawless
diamonds plus a fifty one carrot flawless pear shape diamond
and yes, the pear shape down that was on the
(12:25):
bottom covering her her bulba. And I just giggled at that,
and uh yeah, essentially it was a bunch of diamonds
covering her nipples, not much more in her bulba, not
much more, and thirty million dollars that probably wouldn't do
well going back to the manufacturer and back to a
(12:46):
discount retailer, and then back to the manufacturer, and then
to send small shopping boy down at Walmart. Now, Molly
Sims would say that when they brought out the bikini
for her to put on, she broke out in hot sweats. Shoot,
being around all those all that glitz and glitzy, I
bet they would scratch. I'm just saying, so, there you
(13:07):
have it. The reason why swimsuits are typically so expensive
is because they're labor intensive, and there's seasonal and you
have body specific tailoring that might, you know, force you
to want to mix and match all that additional labels.
So I think it's like any other good piece of
clothing really. I mean, if you want to invest in
something that's going to last and hold up to multiple
(13:30):
summers of use, then sure, maybe spin a little bit more.
But if you don't go swimming that often, if you're
not really a beach person, I think you'd be fine
going to a discount retailer. Yeah. I would have to say,
do what's best for you, and we don't want to
pressure you. That's not what we're here. For So that's
all we have today for our summer short except for
(13:52):
a little bit of listener email. This email is from
Allison about our stay at home versus Working Mom's episode.
She said that I wanted to weigh in on the
working mom's episode with my own experiences as the daughter
of a stay at home mom. One thing that irritates
me about this quote unquote debate is the overwhelming focus
(14:14):
on mom's immediate happiness while their kids are still kids,
without real consideration for the second half of their adult
lives once the urchins have grown up and flown the coop.
My mom loved being at home with my sister and
me while we were young, and I think it was
an awesome decision for her personally. We were lucky enough
to be able to live on my dad's income, and
she relished intensive parenting in the hippie mother kind of way. However,
(14:36):
now that my sister and I have grown up, I
see mom having a much more difficult time than my
friend's working parents. Transitioning back to a life that doesn't
revolve around children. Breaking into the workplace is proving super
difficult since she's older and unwilling to take miserable job,
and I get the sense that she's struggling without a
satisfying intellectual pursuit to throw her efforts behind. It takes
time to build careers. I think moms need to weigh
(14:57):
the fact that once they jump off that train, they
may not be able to catch it again. As much
as we love our babies, life doesn't end it fifty.
Sometimes I wonder if there could have been a happy medium,
and if she might have benefited from working a part
time job once my sister and I got older, allowing
some professional development before we left the house altogether. Of course,
what I would have preferred as a kid would have
(15:18):
been both of my parents working part time, especially as
a teenager, got too much time with mom and not
enough with dad. Thanks Alison, Yes, and thanks to everyone
who has waited on that episode about whether working mothers
are happy. We've gotten a lot of great feedback. And
of course, if you want to share your thoughts about
any of our episodes, Today's or otherwise, you can email us.
(15:40):
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is our email address,
and you can also find us on Facebook, leave us
a comment there, like us, follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast, and If you'd like to learn more
about how to have some summer fun, you should head
over to our website, It's how Stuff Works dot com
um for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:03):
Does it How stuff works dot com brought to you
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