00:00:00.000So being a mom means feeling like you've failed at something at least once a day. Maybe more,
00:00:13.540maybe more. Sometimes it's other people who want to tell you that you've failed at something,
00:00:19.100that you're not doing something correctly, or that you're ruining your kids forever.
00:00:23.800I distinctly remember mixing my first kid a bottle of formula at a coffee shop in San Francisco.
00:00:33.120He was not little. He was not like a baby baby. He was probably a little older than one years old.
00:00:39.760And just for reference, he had teeth. Like he could chew a steak if he needed to. And so I
00:00:46.700was mixing up this powder, was drinking my coffee, and this woman leans over and says,0.99
00:00:53.040I would have never given my baby that poison. That poison she was referring to was not my coffee,
00:01:00.180but was the formula that I was mixing up to feed him. I wanted to dissolve into a puddle
00:01:08.700of shame and misery. Right there, right there in that overpriced coffee shop that was serving like
00:01:15.720$12 avocado toast. I wanted to scream and yell and cry, but I also didn't have the words to
00:01:25.160respond to this. I hardly remember what I did next. It's a total black hole. I think I just
00:01:34.020left. I think I just packed up my powder and my baby and I left there because what do you do in
00:01:42.920the face of that kind of judgment. I mean, since then, since the beginning of all of this, I've had
00:01:48.980very confusing and mixed feelings about everything that I do as a mom. I'm always worried that I'm
00:01:55.440doing something wrong. But this, this moment, this seemed like confirmation that I was, that I was
00:02:02.000doing it wrong. Looking back, I now know that that woman probably had her own stuff going on.0.97
00:02:09.660It probably wasn't me. It really wasn't. And I've been judged plenty in the years since,
00:02:16.740sometimes by my husband, who is not right. He's not right. Most of us have. Most of us have
00:02:21.440experienced mom shame. And that is what we're going to talk about today. Mom shame. We're
00:02:28.040going to talk about why it happens, how we deal with it, whether or not social media makes it
00:02:32.420so much worse. And joining me, I have the one expert who helped me get over a lot of my own
00:02:38.740mom shame and guilt. Today we're talking to none other than Emily Oster. Emily is a professor of
00:02:45.440economics at Brown University, and she's the author of three incredible books that you should
00:02:50.260definitely get for any new parent in your life, Expecting Better, Crib Sheet, and The Family Firm.
00:02:56.720Her website and podcast, both called Parent Data, are guides for parents that give you numbers and
00:03:01.720decision-making tools to just feel more empowered about the decisions you make as a parent,
00:03:06.660all of which are hard. They are. Now, here's a warning before I start this interview. I'm a
00:03:14.040weirdo fangirl of Emily Oster, and it totally comes off that way. But I'm just, you know what?
00:03:19.440I feel no shame. No shame here. No shame anymore, my friends.
00:03:23.220you are the human being who made me feel less mom shame over the raising of my now
00:03:36.980three children that makes me so happy i i was an economics major in undergrad at penn
00:03:44.860which you know makes me completely unqualified to do anything with economics but i just love
00:03:52.520the very rational and reasonable approach that you take to all parenting data, which can be a
00:03:59.620disaster dumpster fire of misery for new parents to wade through. So again, that's a massive thing.
00:04:05.140Just my big thank you at the top of this episode. Well, that is so nice. And it's such a privilege
00:04:11.260to get to do this. And I feel incredibly lucky to find myself here. So yay. Thank you.
00:04:18.060And yay for yay. I mean, also, I started out reading you when when you wrote your first book. But now with social media and how we consume content, I think it's pretty awesome that this information gets to be disseminated in so much so many different ways to reach people where they're at.
00:04:37.540yeah it's been really interesting to think about all those different ways because you know i came
00:04:43.840into this with writing books and writing books has a particular cadence and a particular way
00:04:48.860that people consume them but in the last few years i've between the newsletter and podcasts and
00:04:54.480instagram you get to figure out like what are other ways that you can put out the same information or
00:05:00.960variants on the information and what's the best way to communicate in these different mediums and
00:05:05.600that's interesting and fun. And I think you're right, reaches different, in some ways, quite
00:05:10.640different audiences or can reach bigger, different audiences. Totally, totally. I do think that it
00:05:16.400just finds people where they're at when they're at a certain place. We can't all pick up a book,
00:05:22.180especially when you're, you know, breastfeeding a newborn for the first time. So you've done0.97
00:05:27.760really beautifully navigating this weird content world that we now live in. It's a weird place,
00:05:34.800the content creation world and it's so strange but thank god because if it weren't i wouldn't
00:05:40.600have a podcast to talk about it so there you go yeah we all benefit um so now that i've fangirled
00:05:46.440completely and weirdly and i don't think i've fangirled that hard since i met meryl street
00:05:50.680at one of the mama mia premieres many many moons ago when i was much more fun she's so cool though
00:05:57.000right? I mean, just, just the coolest. Just, I mean, yeah. Yeah. So you, it's you and Meryl
00:06:04.660Streep. Me and Meryl. Okay. That is, that is high, that is high praise. I'll bet you Meryl would
00:06:10.480feel the same way. I do. Okay. Let's just say that. Let's just imagine that. Let's just imagine
00:06:16.300that. That's a nice thing. But I do, so today I want to talk about mom shame and your thoughts
00:06:22.960on mom shame, if there's any data or research that we can mine on mom shame, and why you think
00:06:29.780it is so prevalent for moms to be shamed on social media. Let's start with what kinds of
00:06:38.700things do you see moms being shamed for the most in the media that you look at?
00:06:44.620i think that the amount of shame is pretty proportional to
00:06:52.480how important the decision feels and how hard it is so i think the places you see the most
00:07:02.400shame particularly we're talking about moms of little kids are things like sleep and how you
00:07:09.200feed your kid. And as you get bigger kids, you also get how you feed your kid and you get0.99
00:07:15.720behavior. And these are all kind of characteristics or decisions or approaches that the choices you
00:07:24.360make about them are going to really, really determine how your life looks. And some of
00:07:29.960those choices are going to be very hard to implement. I mean, all choices are hard to
00:07:37.240implement, but some things are something where it just really takes a lot to follow through on
00:07:42.540something. And those are the places where I think we tend to shame people when they make different
00:07:48.900choices. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that there's two kind of elements of mom shame. There's
00:07:55.460the shame that we get from other people, and then there's the shame we feel ourselves, which is more
00:07:59.660the guilt. Did I make the right choice? Because when there's so many choices, it's so hard to
00:08:06.460figure out and it's basically impossible so i think those are those are sort of two i like that
00:08:12.280separation i think it's complicated sometimes to ask the shame we put on ourselves or the guilt
00:08:20.720piece how much of that is because of the expectations or because of things we hear
00:08:24.820elsewhere if we lived in a vacuum where no one ever expressed a preference about or a feeling
00:08:30.700about what we're doing would we be able to just choose the thing that felt right i'm not i'm not
00:08:36.880sure but in the world that we live in there is absolutely the like external shame and then the
00:08:42.440internal guilt shame guilt oh my god i would love i'm so curious about that vacuum i'm so curious
00:08:49.600if it were possible right in a magical experimental world do you think about this sometimes you're
00:08:54.020like what if i could run this experiment that is completely impossible i always think about
00:08:59.520running experiments that are completely impossible it's just like what if I had a virtual world
00:09:03.940where I could like manipulate my exactly exactly yeah I mean in a world where from the moment that
00:09:11.800you become a mother find out that that a baby is coming there's no judgment for various reasons
00:09:19.180that's impossible but but one reason is I think because having a baby is so new the first time
00:09:27.300you do it and there are so many it's so it's crazy you know i mean remember when you first
00:09:32.960have your kid and then you go home with them she's like oh my gosh i can't believe they let
00:09:37.100me leave with this you know like when you leave with a puppy you have to fill out all these forms
00:09:41.300yes like when you get a puppy you have to fill out all the forms say you're going to do all this
00:09:44.860other baby they're just like did you get your car seat installed right okay bye and it's and so
00:09:50.700inevitably people will have questions that they will ask to others who have been there before
00:09:56.220And I think it's impossible to imagine a world in which we don't ask those questions. And once you're asking the question, then something's going to come back, a set of expectations, a set of beliefs from someone, a set of advice from someone about this is the way I did it or this is what worked for me.
00:10:12.380And I think that sets expectations. That's unavoidable. The piece we can avoid both when we give this advice and when we take the advice is the assumption that what somebody else did is going to be the right thing for me or what I did is going to be the right thing for someone else.
00:10:29.680Because when we get into those feelings, that's where I think we get much more in the direction of feeling like we did it wrong or other people are doing it wrong or and those are the the doing it wrong is the is the underlying shame spiral.
00:10:48.140Right, exactly. And I really enjoy your messaging of the best way for you is probably the best way to do it. What ends up working for your family, for your family firm, for your family unit, given all the information we have, is probably good for you.
00:11:08.460Yes. And I think that message is really important, which is why I say it in all of these different mediums that we try to try to give it out. But what is very challenging about implementing that is that. I can evaluate what's feels like it's the right choice for me.
00:11:26.560you know ex-ante like before i make the choice but i can never know if it was the right choice
00:11:33.920right i'll never know if things would have gone better if i made a different choice or if i sleep
00:11:42.500trained in a different way or if i breastfed more or less i'm never going to know that and so we're
00:11:47.480we're kind of never going to find out if we were right and i think that's hard i mean it's like
00:11:52.800in some ways it's liberating right like you're you're never going to know if you did it wrong
00:11:57.240really uh but then you're always going to wonder you know my kid got an 80 on his math test is that
00:12:02.100because because you didn't sleep train something i did yeah because i didn't sleep train i let her
00:12:06.920wear mittens like who knows you know it's probably something yeah and definitely well and so often
00:12:12.780it's definitely usually something that the mom did that the choice that the mom made um instead
00:12:17.820of both parents, because I think that moms get this shame much, very unequally to dads.
00:12:25.720Yes, moms get more shame and they get less credit, right? If you sort of think about
00:12:32.440the starkest example for me is when you fly with a child and when mom flies alone with a baby versus
00:12:40.480dad flying alone with a baby and mom flying alone with a baby, people are like,
00:12:44.240why is your baby crying you know what you just like i'm trying to work and dad flying alone
00:12:50.300with the baby people are like oh my gosh what an amazing dad being alone it's so nice of you to
00:12:55.800take care of your baby yeah my husband did it do you need help yeah he did he did he flew for the
00:13:02.000first time alone with all no he only had two of them he had two the other one what the other one0.99
00:13:07.300wasn't wasn't here yet um people kept bringing him shit they just kept like they'd buy him coffee0.97
00:14:01.760Time for a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about whether or not social media has made this mom shame and mom guilt even worse.
00:14:11.940and we are back with emily oster economist podcaster best-selling author please pick up
00:14:28.340all of her books and listen to her podcast parent data now we've spent the beginning of
00:14:33.220this episode defining and talking about mom shame what i want to know is whether or not social media
00:14:39.000has made it worse. I feel very mixed about the impacts of social media on, you know, particularly
00:14:47.660new moms, because I think it's it can be a place of tremendous connection and tremendous feeling
00:14:53.660of like the things that are hard I'm going through. And someone's there to say like, hey,
00:14:59.980this was also hard for me or like I had a tough I had a tough day or not. You know, the holiday
00:15:05.500season is a just a disaster and like also for me it's you know so i think there's a sense of
00:15:11.580connection there that's really valuable and it's a connection that's available right there in the
00:15:15.520moment um when you're feeling that you have to hide in the bathroom there are other people
00:15:20.900hiding in the bathroom so i think that's all we're all in the bathroom together all in the
00:15:25.140bathroom pretending to poop um or you know really pooping you never know yeah uh but i think on the
00:15:31.460flip side there is a curated aspect of some of the parenting advice on social media uh which
00:15:41.140can lead to shame and certainly there are extreme forms of this you know there was a
00:15:47.100few weeks ago everyone was sending me this reel where people where someone said if you said this
00:15:54.300is a quote when you know what happens when you drop your child off at daycare they think you died
00:16:01.180no no no no it went on there was more in the quote but it wasn't like just kidding you know
00:16:08.600it was like it went on from there to like more things and and people were like oh my god my baby
00:16:13.100thinks they died you know it's like first of all how would you even know that but like let's put
00:16:17.780aside you know and i sort of did some stuff about that but that that kind of thing which comes across
00:16:22.340i think can really get into our get into our head um and it's yeah and i still think there's
00:16:33.900there's a there are good and bad things about this much like parenting there are good and bad
00:16:39.060things about parenting yes yeah totally um i love that you said that because i think the best
00:16:45.240takeaway that i've had in the six years that i've been both i mean both on social media like i wasn't
00:16:49.720really on instagram before like six or seven years ago and also been having small people in
00:16:55.100my house is that the best thing we can do is to curate our feed to not feel like shit there's0.72
00:16:59.760awesome people out there giving good legitimate advice but also other moms they're just like0.98
00:17:05.840i'm in the shit too and i see your shit and we're all in it together and like yes yeah that's amazing0.98
00:17:12.980you have to find the way to make it work for you or think you know what sometimes you need a break1.00
00:17:19.060And I think there's a there's a moment of saying, like, selling a break from social media.
00:17:24.220And I think that's a potentially it's good for us to sometimes take take a little space if we just take a breather, take a breather if we need it.
00:17:33.700Now I have two tangents because we brought up the kid thinks you're dead at daycare.
00:17:38.420Is there any proof behind this? Is there any research that says your kid thinks you're dead?
00:17:43.220No. First of all, I don't know how you would evaluate that.
00:17:46.580actually it's a baby and it was like when he asked them um but then i in sort of in response
00:17:52.080to this i spent a bunch of time writing uh about like what do we actually know about the impacts
00:17:57.720of daycare and they are not certainly not in the space of your baby thinks that you're dead uh and
00:18:02.940in fact any impacts in any direction some which are a little positive some of which are a little
00:18:07.540negative tend to be very just very small right right yeah but as we know and one of the things
00:18:16.980about social media is that the extremes do get you right like that that is an extreme emotional
00:18:22.760pull right there i'm gonna ask my toddler when she gets home actually what she thinks when i
00:18:28.820leave she's like what i so i one of the things that's so interesting about so i've much of many
00:18:35.760Many of the people I speak to and write about it and interact with in social media have
00:18:40.520little kids, you know, like babies, too, just because of the topics and everything.
00:20:22.280She's like, ooh, I can't wait for therapy to just talk about all the ways you fucked me up.0.97
00:20:30.020Oh, God bless her. She's so cute. It is it is funny, though, the way that you change from being a first time mom to then a mom of multiple kids or a mom of just older kids, like when it's just like that baby phase of terror is done.0.94
00:20:42.620Because, yeah, the first time that I left my my now six year old with with the babysitter, I cried and we went to a Tom Petty concert, cried my eyes out like, oh, my gosh, what's happening to him?
00:20:57.000And does he, like, is he terrified with this stranger?
00:26:17.680No. Is there any is there any research or data on whether social media is good or bad for for new moms?
00:26:27.200So actually, most of the research on social media is focused on kids.
00:26:32.980I know. I know. Which I think is so interesting. I mean, yes, very, very, very important.
00:26:37.440I think about it all the time. But then I am also so curious about the impact on us, the people raising those children.
00:26:43.480So there have been a few sort of little experiments where they're like, have people quit Facebook, you know, and they'll like incentivize them not to check Facebook for a while. And yeah, usually that shows some short term positive impact. So, but it's, it's kind of, it's not about new moms. It's not, it's not especially large scale and it's really only about Facebook.
00:27:08.200So I'm not sure we have the data that one would want. Interestingly, I sense that if we had better data about adolescence, particularly about girls, about like, you know, teen girls, probably it's very similar.
00:27:21.440Like, I think that the experience of kind of puberty and the experience of new parenthood both have they they have a lot of similarities.
00:27:31.880And I suspect the ways that people are using social media for both good and bad also overlap a lot, that there's both the sense of connection and the sense of comparison.
00:27:44.400And one is probably good and one is not good.
00:27:47.160And it's likely that it varies across people.
00:27:49.160I would say that's the most compelling result from the social media evidence on kids is that some kids are negatively affected by this and some kids are either positively or neutral.
00:28:02.540And my guess is the same is true for new moms, that for some people this is great or it's fine.
00:28:08.220And for some people it's pretty damaging.