Good Inside with Dr. Becky - You Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Work and Motherhood With Reshma Saujani

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Working moms are burnt out. And it’s not our fault. After two years of juggling Zoom calls, homeschooling, childcare, household chores, and chronic stress, it’s never been more clear that our system just wasn’t built to support caregivers. Reshma Saujani is ready to change that. This week, Reshma—mom of two, CEO and founder of GirlsWhoCode, activist, and author—joins Dr. Becky to talk about what recovery from a pandemic really looks like for families and why it’s on employers to “pay up.” The two not only get vulnerable about their own struggles as working moms, but also discuss practical calls-to-action for companies. Their conversation is an ultimate two-things-are-true moment: You can have a family and a career. Let’s fight for a system that makes room for both parts of us. For more, check out Reshma’s latest book, “Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It's Different Than You Think)”. Join Good Inside Membership: https://bit.ly/3cqgG2A Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside Sign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletter Order Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books. For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcast

You're listening to Good Inside with Dr. Becky. Today's episode is one you're not going to want to miss. Right after a word from our sponsor. Hey Sabrina. Hey. So I've been thinking about toys recently. I don't want the toy to do that much of the work. I want the toy to inspire my kid to do the work.

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I feel like we have this ice cream scooper thing that my kids use when they were two. And then they used again when they were developing better fine motor skills. And then for my kind of four year old, my seven year old still using it in imaginative play. I really only like talking about items and brands that we actually use in our own home and Melissa and Doug. I just don't know if there's any other brand I feel so good about naming the way that their toys actually inspire creativity and open-ended, screen-free child-led play.

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I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can. With the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain good inside. I have Rashma Sojani on the podcast today and I am so excited for you all to hear

this conversation. Reshma is the CEO and founder of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology. She's also the author of a new book, Pay Up, The Future of Women and Work. About a year ago, I reached out and DMed Reshma to introduce myself.

And from there, we couldn't stop talking about all things, motherhood, work, taking up space, and policy. In today's episode, Rashma and I discuss the current state of the workplace for women and mothers, and her plan to help more mothers be both in the workforce and involve caregivers. Hey, two things can be true, right? With all that in mind, let's jump in. Hi, Rashma. So good to see you today. So great to see you. I would love to begin for you just first to introduce yourself to the listeners. I'm sure many of our listeners know who you are, have read some of your work, but for those who haven't or need a refresh, tell us about

you and the things you're interested in. Well, I guess first I am a mom of two, two and seven, and a dog mom, Stanley, can never forget her. I've spent the past 10 years building a nonprofit called Girls Who Code, which I founded in gosh, 2012. I written a couple of books. My newest book is out shortly called Pay Up, The Future of Women in Work, and Why It's Different than You Think. And it was inspired by my next movement

that I'm building the Marshall Plan for Moms, which is trying to make sure that we have the right public and private strategies to make sure that women recover from the economic crisis. So just a lot of stuff. Yeah, just like, you know, the average, you know, kind of walk in the park, you know. No, you really kind of always, I feel like hit the nail on the head and say it how it is and you're such a powerful spokesperson for change, for women. And I feel really grateful that our paths crossed a little while ago and that I could rope you into coming on this podcast. Yeah, I'm so, I was so funny when you,

when we started DMA on Instagram, that weekend, like I was with a girlfriend, talking about- I slid into your DMs, right? You slid in my DMs. You slid in my DMs. And I was probably complaining about like, my husband and the unpaid labor and the kids

and she was like, do you know this woman, Dr. Becky? And I remember playing out my phone, and they're like, oh my God, she's following me. And it was just so, it was, but it was so crazy. And then you emailed me. And so it was like this was meant to be. Kissment. We're meant to be here.

100%. So what's on your mind today? I kind of trust that that's going to lead us in a really good place. Gosh. You know, I think what's in my mind right now is workplaces. And, you know, we just got the notification

that masks are coming off as schools and in restaurants. And it's interesting because in some ways, I feel like schools are going to be ahead of workplaces. It feels like we're like turning a corner in this pandemic. But every working mom I know is just burnt out and exhausted and broken and struggling With you know her mental health her time what's happened to her kids and so I'm really thinking about recovery post-COVID and and and think about like what are workplaces gonna look like what are our lives?

Gonna look like I don't know what you back up, but I've had moments of reflection and who do I wanna be when I get out of this? And am I gonna hear myself? Am I gonna be that person? So that's what's on my mind. I totally hear that, that really, really resonates. And that word just recovery, right?

Yeah, we've been in two years of this chronic stress, chronic uncertainty, chronic, that didn't go the way I wanted it to go and so many hours of caring for our children, right? I always feel like as parents, of course, we care for our children, but when they get to a certain age, you've kind of mentally prepared for a certain number of hours a week, being away from your kids. That's kind of been built into expectations in parenting, at least here in America. Right. And then all of a sudden, parents have parented their kids for so many more hours than they

used to. I mean, right? Yes. This is one of the things I read in my book, Pay Up. I learned that we spend more time with our kids than single moms did in the 1970s. And so we have this clash. I mean, you wonder why this burnout is happening because we have this clash of being an ideal mother and an ideal worker in the age of intensive parenting and it's colliding and it's

crashing and we're feeling it. And COVID really broke that open for like the whole world to see. I want to go into that further. So let's take those two buckets, right? You and I both kind of have our hands out for everyone here to visualize. I like one on our right side, one on our left, and we have the ideal worker and the ideal mother. And I would love to kind of get a little bit into the qualities

of each. My guess is there's not a ton of overlap, but I think it speaks to why probably so much of this is so overwhelming. All of these qualities were supposed to be accessing at once. So let's talk about the ideal worker, right? And I mean, book I took a little bit about the history. It's like women were never meant to be in workplaces. The only reason why we got in was like World War II, the men were off to war, they kind of had to let us in, right, so the country could function. And then when the men came back,

they tried to like push us out again and like sell us Tupperware and appliances to like, you know what I mean, to make us feel, quote, fulfilled. And so we have always been battling to be in workplaces and also to be mothers in workplaces. That's why you have, you know, pregnancy discrimination act, equal pay at all these laws that were put into place to essentially allow working women

to work. And so, you know, we learned very early on, right? That like we had to hide our motherhood, that to basically have a place in the workplace, we had to pretend we weren't mothers. And so we never put pictures of our kids up on our desks. We apologize when we had to leave when our kids were sick. You know, we missed every soccer game, every recital, every everything.

You know, I think about myself, you know, I talk about, you know, it's like what I call the big lie of corporate feminism. It's like we're told that if we just, you know, girl Boston leaned in our way, we'd get that corner expressed train to the corner office. And I bought into that lie. And when I think about, you know,

I finally had my first child, Sean, after more miscarriages than I can count, I missed him crawling. I didn't see him walk. I didn't hear his first words. I was on two to three planes a week. I spent 30 minutes with him a day, maximum. And I really thought that that's what it was going to take

to build girls' coat and to build this movement. In Obecki, and I would get annoyed when I was speaking to groups of young women, and they'd say, Mr. Johnny, Mr. Johnny, how do you balance work and motherhood? And I would literally wave them off. Don't ask me that question. And so, because I really believed

that you could just, you know, color culture calendar, you know, get your mentor and sponsor in like, you could make it. And like, motherhood was, I would have called it, it was gonna be something that was just happening in the background, right? Were you gonna say inconvenience or no? I was, I was gonna say inconvenience,

but I struggle with this Becky because I always wanted to be a mom. And I've always been like, had high ambition for social change. And so this conflict that I had was very much, I mean, you're nodding your head because probably you did choose, very front and center of every decision that I made leading up to this point. I was going to marry the right person. I was going to marry a feminist. I was going to make sure we had all of those conversations beforehand. Like I wasn't going to let the kids that I desperately wanted get in the way of the change that I wanted to make. And COVID threw me for a loop. Can you can you say more? Well, because you know, I I

woke up January 2020. Girls Dakota was super bad. I was going to have a newborn baby via surrogate and I was really, you know, I have autoimmune issues and so I couldn't carry my second child and I was feeling the pain of that Meaning like I was really looking forward because I didn't have him in the womb I didn't have baby sign my womb that wanted to spend this time and everything planned out right? my materially laid out and COVID-19 happened and I found myself having to go back to work when side was a couple weeks old after I had got him home in the middle of a pandemic. And I was running a Women and Girls organization.

So when pandemic said or global crisis, they said it's the first resources to go or to women and girls, my entire leadership team were mostly moms of young children. And so we were just done. Every day I was just broken. And again, and I had resources. And for a lot of us, we were saying, I remember saying this, we're trying about what our KPIs were gonna be

and whether we were gonna meet some goals. And we said, you know what, we can't deal with this now because we're Zoom School in all our kids. When September happens and the schools open, we'll make these decisions. You're shaped right with your company. Oh my goodness. I didn't think my friends and I always joke. Like if someone back in March was like, here's how like long this is going to be.

Here's how many points, you know, you're going to think it's over and it's not. We would just, you literally put an adult with it. So like you had to go. It's like when I used to run and I used to say, I'm only running to there and then I'd like give myself the next point. That's all I could do. Yeah, it was wow, but we really thought that. And so you kind of let it get trudging along, trudging along, exhausted, broken, all these things.

And then I remember September, my son goes to public school here in New York City, you get that note being like, guess what? We've launched hybrid learning. Where you're gonna get to log on your kid, at nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, all the while you maintain your full-time job. And, you know, Becky, I need naively thought,

was like, what? You're not gonna ask me if I got time? Because at this point, right? Of course, the man had to come up with hybrid learning. But they knew who was doing the homeschooling between March. They knew it was us, and they knew what was going to happen to us. Can you speak to that just because I know from your book which I got to

read early and so much of your other work, just some number, some statistics. But everyone here might be like, well, yeah, what do we know? What did happen to women? Yeah. So 11 million women left the workforce from the beginning of the pandemic till now at some point You've had the largest exodus of women leaving the labor market in the history of our nation And Jan you December of 2020, right? Like literally all the jobs lost were women and the latest jobs report that just came out a few weeks ago Men have entered the workforce at 27 times that of women. There's still 1.1 million women missing in the labor force. That doesn't count the amount of us who are

probably the same as call that have downshifted their career, changed their career, moved from full time to consulting, right, treated in their dreams, right? It doesn't account for any of that. And so because we were doing the unpaid labor at home, the cooking and the cleaning, the caretaking, and because daycare centers were shut down, grandparents couldn't come in and take care of our kids, we had to balance what we always do with two and a half jobs, the job that we were doing at home,

and the one that was over there. In the middle of just trying to keep ourselves and our children alive. And what we forget, we need to remember, is that the beginning of the pandemic, the first time in the history of our nation, women were the 51% of the labor force. We were like poppin' champagne,

celebrating as feminists. We had gotten there. And then in nine months, we had rolled back, almost like 20 years of progress. Gone. Yeah. Those numbers are just staggering. I mean, they really, really are in terms of the magnitude

of that. And like you said, how long it's taken for women to take up space in that world. And then the pandemic hits and the demands of taking care of children during a pandemic are demands that you can't say no to. Like somebody has to be doing it. Somebody has to be there.

And now here we are two years later. And you know, it's interesting. I feel like there's a number of parents, I should just say. I know who maybe have downshifted their job or no longer in the workforce who feel like they've had in a ha moment during it, that that's what they are choosing. That's what they're wanting.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, well, I don't see it in such a negative way for me. I know, I speak for me and Rashma saying there's no there's no one right way to be a parent or be an adult and there's a lot of Parents and a lot of women who felt like I had no choice. Yeah, I had no choice and here I am Well, that's that's the future right the future is to be able to go in and out of the workforce without penalty To say you know what COVID actually gave me an opportunity to, you know, to quit that job I hated, to spend time with my kids, and I love it. And maybe I want to go back in a couple years.

But when I go back, I don't want to be penalized. You know what I mean? For the time that I spent out of the workforce. That's what screwed up right about the current system. It never gave women freedom to move in and out without penalty. And so that's what's so gut-wrenching right about this moment. You lose, do you know back of you, you lose 40% of your salary if you miss more than one year of work? 40%. Wow. I think that we have a once in a lifetime opportunity here.

So you have the great resignation. As we know, millions and millions of people quit every month. What's interesting is that more women are quitting than men. And they're quitting. Sometimes they're quitting because they don't have childcare. And they're down shifting. They can't have a job. Sometimes they're quitting because I hated that job. And I want quitting because like, I hated that job and I want something else. I want to work at a place that's not saying,

come back to work now, that's actually offering me flexibility and the ability to like pick my kids up from school, you know, with, again, without penalty. And that's happening at the moment that we have this massive talent war where we are short, you know, I mean retail workers, nurses, teachers, you name it, engineers. And so I think that working women have a lot of leverage right now if we see it that way.

And so when we think about all the reasons why we pushed out of the workforce, can we now have workplaces that provide those things to us? So I talk about nine things in my book, right? That I think that employers should start providing and we should start asking for. And I'll just talk about three. So the first thing is subsidizing childcare. So most parents pay more for childcare

than they pay for their mortgage. It is the most expensive line item that a family has. And the way we have historically talked about Chalker is like, this is your personal problem for you to solve. But what we must understand from this pandemic is that it is an economic issue. It is really interesting. You got a job and you're like, well, it's going to go to my job.

So who's going to watch my kids? Like, oh, right? Like, I need to figure that out. We've always talked about Chalker as your personal problem that you have to solve. But we know now that it is an economic problem that the government or your employer has to help provide. It is like healthcare. Yes. And we have to start talking about it like it's like healthcare.

And I think we actually have a my goal Becky is to literally right now 10% of companies subsidize some form of childcare. I want to get to 100% and I don't think it's crazy. Moms who are kind of again able to kind of move with their feet from where they want to work should be saying hey so what are your And I don't think it's crazy. Moms who are kind of, again, able to kind of move with their feet or where they want to work should be saying, hey, so what are your child care benefits? I hear that and this is such a nice intersection right between our work where someone's saying,

oh, like I could ask for that or I could say I need that, right? Because there's a lot of women listening here. I'm guessing and men, there's a ton of listeners here who probably are wondering, huh, that has been something that's held me back. And I have gotten to that point and then just figured, because this is something I hear a lot. It basically costs me as much in childcare as I would get paid in the job. Or it's just a little bit of a difference, quote, it's not worth it, right? And it's a reason so many women are out of the workforce. Yep.

I hear that Ellie's anecdotally, right? So what do you say to women who said, like, oh, I can, I can ask that or like, is that something I could do? Yes, you can. And we have to ask for it together. Men have to ask for that. You know what I mean? Childless women have to ask for that. You know I mean, childless women have to ask for that.

Yeah, we have the lowest birth rate we've had in the history of our nations, because young women look at us and they say, no, thank you. Right? No, thank you. That looks hard. That looks hard. And what I say to them is, like, don't let them take your choice away from you. Don't let them take your, if you don't want to be a mother, fine. You choose, though.

Don't let them choose for you. And so I do think it's something that we can start asking for. And from a public policy perspective, we have to start saying to company, this is something that you have to start providing. You know, this is something that you, because we also know it's like, it's like pre-cadrication, that early investment, you know what I mean? Making sure that kids have, you know, good childcare is good for society.

So it makes sense. Yeah, good childcare is good for society. So it makes sense. Yeah, it's so good for society. And, right, I, right, kind of grew my new business, good inside during the pandemic, right? It started during the pandemic and same thing here. We're right now, we're a team of 12, right, full time. And me and my co-founder and a lot of the other senior people here are moms, right?

And a lot of us actually weren't working full time before the pandemic. So we did the opposite. We all, like, you know, really, really ramped up are working hours. And the truth is, without childcare, you can't be the present employee, the motivated employee, because you are overwhelmed in a state of threat. Like, where's my kid? What do I need to do? You're spinning.

Yeah. Right? And so, yes, huge long-term benefit. Especially right now. So I got, you know, my son Sean 7. And this pandemic has created a lot of anxiety for him. Constantly eating his clothes, right? My second son, son, son, sigh, two years old. The only word he could say is mama. I got to speech the therapist and he's like, you know, negative percent and wait. And I got to take him to like a gastrologist. So my point is, is like, that's COVID. And a lot of us, our kids are a little broken and need our time.

And I want to give them my time and I shouldn't have to choose between my job and my kid. If we're really talking about COVID recovery, we need to talk about this. And we know that the ones that are going to be making the speech appointment, seeing what happens, doing the gastrologist, talking about things that are moms. And that's cool, right? And we want we want to dance and start doing more and they will start doing more. But in the interim, while we're getting to gender equality and caretaking, we got to provide support to moms, you know what I mean, in doing this.

And that is a responsibility. It is unfair to say employers just say, well, just come back to work. Right. Come back to work five days a week. It's like you're just not acknowledging the trauma that moms have been through and that our children have been through. Yeah. So that's point one.

I know you're gonna give us some more points. So. My second big favorite thing is incentivizing men to take paid leave. You know, there's still companies like Apple that doesn't have gender-neutral paid leave. And when they do offer paid leave, they gaslight men for taking it. And here's the thing, dads want to take care of their kids. I know so many dads who are like, part of the reason why they quit is because their

company wasn't offering flexibility and they wanted to take to walk their kids to school. And so we have in these past few years, I think men are doing more caretaking. And so, and it's leading to Lord diabetes, less heart attacks, you know, better health outcomes for men. So how are we changing that and getting more men to take payfully? Like I know in my marriage, you know, my husband, all, feminist, we've got married, you know, he was cooking and cleaning and doing everything. And then we had a baby. And I took leave and he didn't take as much leave. My to-do list went like this. He was one like this. And we are literally in couples to be, after that forever to just resolve

what started from paidly. And I know a lot of couples like this. So if we are creating corporate policies that are exacerbating gender equality at home, we gotta change that. And we got to acknowledge a corporation's play a role in the gender ratio of unpaid labor at home. If more men were home for those first number of weeks living and breathing by the SNAP

schedule or the feeding or the eczema or the diaper changes, right? Fast forward to when the kid is six months or nine months, they're probably not asking the questions because it's also woven into their fabric of being a father. 100%. Like my sister had her first child when both her and her husband were residents. He took time, took care of the baby,

then she took time. So he and now it's like, they do have, you know, 50-50 in terms of like how they care-taking, because like you said, it was first hand knowledge for him. He did it. Yeah, yeah. And so he didn't have to ask questions. Right.

You know, it's something I say to parents a lot about how kids learn regulation, how do they learn to stay calm when they're really, really upset, or at least not to throw blocks when they're really, really upset as a starting point. throw blocks when they're really really upset as a starting point? And I always say it's coming up from me now. Kids don't learn from lecture or from words. Kids learn from experience. You have to experience something to know it because knowing is inside our own body. No one can put that into you. And

that's coming up from me and what you're really talking about to have that into you. And that's coming up from me and what you're really talking about to have men really more involved in so much of this kind of at-home labor. Essentially, they have to experience it. You can't really sit down with a partner, even a well-meaning partner, and say, here's the nap schedule. Here's the feeding schedule. This is what they eat. If it's just on a list, it would be like my friend who's I don't know a radiologist, you know Walking me through an outline of how to read a mammogram. I'd be like, okay I still don't know how to do it like you seem to be really trying to explain it But I still don't know but if I had gone through

Residency, I I would know how to do it, right? And I think Just for again like this community here, and I know so many people are probably nodding their heads, like, yes, that is so my experience, my partnership. Right, we have to get our partners to try things, to experiment things, and I know in my case, freshman, I don't know you, for me, I have the best outcomes with that when I then leave.

I'm especially when my kids are younger, right? Because I'd be like, oh no, don't do the diaper that way. And I was like, wait, Becky, if someone asked me to do more and then they were like on top of me, I'd be pretty disincentivized. So get out, just leave. And leave without instructions. So I went on a girls trip last week and it was funny. So I left and one of my girls trip, I didn't order the groceries before, I didn't make a list,

I didn't pack any bags, I just bounced. You know what I mean? Like, see you later. Have a great time. I needed to train, like you said, in the hall, just doing it on figure it out. But the more you leave the instructions, the more the more they depend on you. And one of the things in COVID, which was really fascinating, is I think for a long time, I told myself,

well, he just doesn't know how much I do. And as they watched us do the laundry in between, again, our meetings, our work, our this and our that, and it didn't change anything, you realized it was not that you don't know what I do. but one, you know that I'm always just going to keep doing it. And two, it's that work is not valued. And that is also what needs to change because I think what's so hard is it goes back to

the head of this performative parenting that you see on Instagram. You know, all of us thought we were buying into these equal marriages. And then when we did it, it was arching our problem. I was just interviewed by, you know, prominent journalist and as I was talking about this, she was like, well, why don't you just tell them to do more? I'm, no, no, no, don't give me one more thing. Yeah, I mean, that I have to do or don't make me feel like I just didn't raise my husband right.

Right? It's not my fault. It's society's fault and it's not my problem to fix. And it's like I love what you say about leaving because I do the same thing. I got to create boundaries. You know me and my good friend have been talking about this idea of just taking up space that if you have a partner and you feel like Well, they take up so much space. They just take up the space and they do their thing, right and in antidote to that a little bit is Not just convincing them why that's not okay Or trying to tell them that you need more space, but actually

Taking up space and that's really uncomfortable for a lot of us, right? And that doesn't have to a lot of us, right? And that doesn't have to be something hostile for everyone listening. It could be actually explaining it to your partner, you know, when I come moment, hey, I've realized I so often don't get to do so many of the things I want to do for myself.

And I then end up feeling overwhelmed. I actually feel resentful. And I've realized that I need to do a better job setting boundaries. And so I'm thinking this weekend, and then whatever it is you want to do that you name, right? Maybe if you're a Rashma, this weekend I'm going away. I'm just leaving.

I'm going on a girls trip, right? Which is amazing. I have one coming up in May, and it's so true when we think we're quote, helping. I'm gonna set you up. I'm gonna plan all the play dates. First of all, I would say, Rashma for both of us, you have to read our friend, Yvra's Facebook.

She will go over that in detail. Why that's not a great setup. But also, we get in someone's way of feeling competent, feeling competent. We actually deprive someone of competence, which is the thing that allows you to take on more and more. When someone kind of knows, essentially, they're kind of just the puppet running the show. The reason why it's so important to dismantle this is that it becomes our individual problem.

And not something systematic that exists. The reason why we don't have gender equality at home is not our problem. Its society has set it up that way. And so to dismantle it, you know, to fix it, right, we have got to demand the structure to change. You know, I mean, don't, you know, don't fix the woman, fix the system. It makes me think about kind of psychology and sociology, right? Psychology looks at an individual and why we are the way we are and how we became that way and how in my mind we can work on shifting things that were put in place at one point

to protect us, but now work against us, right? And we're talking also about these huge sociological factors, right? And right now, at this point, parental leave, right? Women who have babies take parental leave. They take all of it, right? And part of the issue, even around the kind of gender inequality of at-home labor, isn't just a woman's difficulty speaking up to a partner. It's the systemic sociological pattern

of men having a baby and then showing up to work the next. Yeah. Society doesn't want to accept this. It's so funny how we've been talking about, for example, the gender pay gap for so long. There is, and we've been talking about the gender pay gap as the pay gap between men and women. The pay gap is not between men and women.

It's between mothers and fathers. It's the motherhood bias that causes the pay gap. The pay gap isn't between men and women. It's between mothers and fathers. In fact, the largest pay gap is between mothers and childless women. We are penalized. Companies love childless women. Well, again, going back to like,

hey, can I really go ask for childcare? Yeah, you don't know why? Because guess what? They're they're paying you to freeze your eggs. And you're, you know, museum tickets. But that's interesting that women and you spoke about this freshman, that you really wanted to be a mom. Like you knew that,

and you had kind of these other social justice goals as well. And wanting to have a child and care for a child, and the way you become interested in people's stories and their experiences and your relationships, those are our qualities that actually really benefit a workplace. But you're saying when kids become involved, oh, now you're giving some of those traits to your own kids. Now you're sharing me with, you know, distracted. Now your performance is gonna, your performance is gonna suffer because of it. And it's also because you don't see that men doing the same, or when they do that, oh that's so cute, you brought your kids to work.

Right. Right. Right. It's cultural bias. And I think part of it is like we, it's ingrained in us. You know, it's funny. I wanted to tell you a story. It's a, you know, a couple of months ago, my son, Sean, brought home his portfolio.

And so in his portfolio, he has to describe his mother what she does and his father and his father, what she does. Mind you, pre-COVID, I literally would take Sean, you know, I give a speech at a Harvard commencement, they're Sean. You know what I mean? I do the daily shop, they're Sean. I took him everywhere. Part of it is because I wanted him to know that his mom was a badass boss, and that I wanted the other young women in the way I work, or to also know that you don't have to choose. But the past few years, I've been doing all the laundry

and the cooking and the cleaning and all of that, right? And being a boss upstairs in Zoom. And so he takes out his profiles. He's so proud, right? And he writes, my mom does my laundry and takes care of me and my brother. My dad is an engineer. And I open it up and I am like, my heart just sinks.

And I am like, don't say anything. You know, I go to bed at night and I can't say, no mind you, again, this is the middle of the building Marshall Plan for Rom and pay up, right? So I know better. And the next morning I wake up and I'm like, Sean, come here, I need to talk to you. And I sit him down. I said, you know what your mom does, right? He's like, what do you mean mom? I said, you know that your mom hasn't job, right?

What is my job? Say my job. Tell me my job. I'm getting all crazy, right? And he basically, you know, starts like hyperventilating a little, right? And I'm like, okay, Sean, I want you to know that mom fights for women and girls. See you have girls who coach, remember girls who coach, you remember, bring some perfect? And he's like, yes, mommy, yes, mommy, yes, mommy.

And I'm like, okay, you know, and I'm just like hot, right? So I go out, walk the dog. And I come back and my husband has just come back, and Sean is furiously scratching out his portfolio. And my husband's giving me a look like, what did you do? And so he's literally erasing,

tell me mommy what you do again, tell me what you do in it, and I am so ashamed back here. Right? Because that was the girl boss of me, not wanting my son, the value of me should be my CEO-ness, not my motherhood. And it was like, I was like, what have I done? Because to be honest, the proudest title I have is mother. That's what you started with when I asked you to introduce yourself. It's the proudest title I have, is Mother.

That's what you started with when I asked you to introduce yourself. But again, this goes back to how deeply ingrained it is even in us. Yes, yes. And you know, it's interesting, Greshmonds, you tell me that. Thank you for sharing that with me and for all of us. You know, the thing I'm reacting to, and I wonder if this was at all what you reacted to and why it kind of brought up this this angry response, was I feel like you do so much for women around not not having to choose. Like why do we have to choose between being a mom, a perfectly satisfied mom, or a perfectly satisfied girl boss, right?

Why do we have to choose? And I talk a lot about this idea of two things are true. I feel like it's the answer to every difficult question. Of course, then implementing that is tricky, but we don't have to choose between being connected and warm with our kids and also having firm boundaries, right? As soon as you think there's an either or, it's a good time to pause and say, wait, how can I do both?

And your son kind of saw you in one way, right? It was one part of you. And I feel like for you and knowing you, having both parts be there is like very core to who you are. Like almost having just one identified, maybe it would have been a little easier to identify with my mom's a girl boss, right? Kind of part, but having both parts is like so you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the fact that he did that from his father. He said he was an engineer and he takes care of me. Us. So I think that's also what it's like his dad got to be both, but I just had to be one. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of like again, a reflection of society. We are applaud men for being dads and also being, you know, whatever, workers, you know, bosses. But for moms, it's almost like either or it's like when they say you can have a job or a kid but you can't have both. And you bet.

I want both. Like I want both. Like I want both. I want both too. So I want, and I'm dying to hear your third point because you said you were gonna share three and I've only gotten two so far. I can count. You know, okay?

I want that other one. Well, the third is really like, moms are burned out. Like we're broken, we're traumatized, we're exhausted. And I think companies have to recognize that and value us for more than just our output. Like it's almost like we don't we don't allow moms to be vulnerable in this moment. And I think the whole like I don't know a mom who's gotten a memo from an employer being like

what do you need? We just had this Omnram. Schools are closed or open, now they're open. Like your kids are broke. What do you need? Never got the memo. So it's like this lack of acknowledgement that something has happened to mothers. You know, CDC just released a report a week ago that the two subgroups that are most broken have the most kind of mental health,

you know, issues anxiety, depression are 18 to 24 year olds and moms. Go change the world. Forget that this something has just happened to you. And to moms we're saying continue to do, like be the social safety of America and forget that something has happened to you. It's a sense of like I can't show up authentically

and show and just take a beat. Yeah. That is breaking us and breaking our hearts right now. I think what people want right now are family values. People are quitting in the great reservation not because they don't want to work, they don't want to work for you. And they're literally men and women. All the same show, they want to work at places that allow them to be parents or allow them to take care of their pets or like, you know what I mean? Their mental health or their elderly parents, you know what I mean?

Or themselves and to work. The hustle culture is dead. Now yeah, I think there's going to be, there's resistance to that, right? That's why this like come to work now, come to work now. And you know, we, it's like we have this army you're saying, get out of your pajamas. I'm like, really? Like, but so, but we have to fight against it because it's this again, you know,

pressure to go back to an old system that wasn't working and that none of us will go back to. And it's again, why, like a lot of women are going back to the work and then quitting again. Well, I think I speak for all of us and saying, I really mean this, that we are so fortunate to have you as such a key leader in that change and to lead us. I like to end my episodes by kind of tying things up a little bit or giving people three takeaways, and sometimes I do that on my own, but you're here. So let's do it live. So I'm going to give you one and three and I'm going to take number two.

So what first thing you want someone to kind of leave with or think about after this? I think the first thing is like never waste a good crisis. And you know, ask yourself like how do you want your workplace to start paying up? And I think number two is a little mantra to help you maybe speak up or ask those questions. Some version of, I'm allowed to want things for myself. I'm allowed to take up space. That's something I'd encourage you to say to yourself. You can even try to say it out loud to a mirror. And if you notice panic, if you notice tears, I really mean this, nothing is wrong with you.

That's a sign that you're sending your body a very different message than it's used to being sent. And what I would do with that is say, okay, something powerful is happening, maybe I'll practice again, maybe I'll take one more baby step from there, that's how change takes, something powerful is happening. Maybe I'll practice again. Maybe I'll take one more baby step from there. That's how change takes, but that intense reaction is just such a sign you're doing something new.

And I would say that third thing is you're not alone. And you're not crossing. Like, we have all been dealt a big lie, that if we just leaned in hard enough and we just color coded our cantons, we got a mentor that we'd be like, you know, we get there, we get to a quality and we're not there, we're like, what's wrong with us? Well, we were never going to get there, right? And so, one, you know, give yourself grace and realize you're not alone and, you know, realize that like we have an opportunity, you know opportunity to do it again differently. You and I back here are fortunate because we are social entrepreneurs.

We set the culture of our organizations. We can set our schedules. And I want that for every woman, whether you are working in retail at Walmart or whether you are in the corner office at a law firm, we have a moment right now to change it. Yes. Two things can be true. And what you just said, I think this has to be said again to everyone listening, you are not crazy. You are not making this up.

The system isn't working. It's never worked. It definitely isn't working now. And the system has to shift for those changes to actually result in the larger changes we're looking for. So, Rashma, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Good Inside. I love co-creating episodes with you based on the real life tricky situations in your family. To share what's happening in your home, you can call 646-598-2543, or email a voice note to goodinsidepodcast at gmail.com. There are so many more strategies and tips I want to share with you. Head to goodinside.com and sign up for a good insider, my free weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Dr. Becky at GoodInside for a daily dose of

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