00:03:12.780Yeah. And the reason is, is that we are kind of making something different.
00:03:16.840But our model has changed from you're just keeping a person alive to you are building their human capital, which is what economists refer to for the sum total of their know-how and ability that they're going to use to be able to get a job, to survive in this rapidly changing world, to compete on a career ladder in a society that's more unequal than ever before.
00:03:41.660And so we are no longer just protecting, we are parenting, we are creating, we are investing.
00:03:51.320And that is expensive in both money, of course, that's what we're going to talk about, but also time.
00:03:56.560Right. And time and money are so closely connected, right?
00:04:25.020And so if you don't know that infancy and toddlerhood are shaping your child's later cognitive outcomes, if you don't have the studies showing that the more words that you speak to your child, the more they're going to earn as an adult.
00:04:39.920And in fact, we have, say, showing like, you know, what you do while they're in utero matters, like the health and well-being of the mother matters again, how much they earn later on in life.
00:04:48.680So if you don't know that, you know, those inputs result in certain outputs, that there's that connection, then we don't think that those inputs matter.
00:04:55.020You know, if you go back to the 1980s or 70s or 80s, it was like perfectly acceptable to just like pop the infant in the playpen, right?
00:05:04.820And then that also gets into not just parenting time, but costs.
00:05:08.280Because if you were to visit a daycare, 30 cribs, infant in each crib, not being held, not being talked to, way cheaper to provide that care model than it is to have what we have right now, which is a four to one infant to caregiver ratio.
00:05:22.040Yeah. Let's talk about two income households and how this kind of fits in there.
00:05:26.120Women started working in part to protect themselves from like easier divorce and the fact that women had to kind of have a backup plan if their marriage kind of didn't work out long term.1.00
00:05:36.700And that was one of the big reasons why women entered the labor force.1.00
00:05:39.680And then I think you have those two income households before child care costs and intensive parenting explode.
00:05:47.840And to show you that I don't think, like, the connection isn't as strong about whether women work and how much time they spend with their kids.
00:05:54.000Working moms today spend more time with their kids than stay-at-home moms in the 1970s, right, in the 1980s.
00:06:01.120So you have the rise of the two-income households, and then it's starting in the 1990s where parenting time explodes and where child care costs start to explode.0.76
00:06:09.080And that's where I think labor force participation and women's wages have stagnated because then you end up on this kind of treadmill that you can't keep up with.
00:06:16.080Yes. Because now, well, you're trying to invest in your career, but you also have to invest in
00:06:20.980your children's human capital. So you're falling behind your male colleagues. You're not able to
00:06:24.620close that gender gap. Whereas meanwhile, like men are still able to invest because they're not
00:06:30.320doing as much investment at home, although their time has increased to men's parenting time has0.91
00:06:33.920increased, but still just completely dwarfed by women. And then what you are earning, you feel0.95
00:06:39.240like it's going straight to child care. And so then that's leading some women to say, well,0.98
00:06:42.960is this really worth it? And for them to decide to stay home or to have, you know, only part-time0.98
00:06:47.920labor supply. And so we see women's labor force participation really start to level off.
00:06:52.840There are some things about that that are a little bit short-sighted when it comes to
00:06:56.420building and investing in women's careers. Yeah. And can we talk about that being short-sighted?0.95
00:07:01.320You know, this is arguably a very short period of time that your child is requiring so much
00:07:08.200intensive care. But as you've written in your book, it also happens at that exact moment where
00:07:13.840most women and men's careers are taking off. And so that creates really kind of a catastrophe in
00:07:19.560some ways. Exactly. And this is a period of life that I call the squeeze. And I use a data set
00:07:24.100called the American Time Use Survey to actually track time use over the life cycle. And I show
00:07:27.880that there's this period where there's this big mountain of childcare and housework time.
00:07:31.700And oh, by the way, it's this period where your career still requires investment and your income
00:07:35.560is still growing. And then because your income is still growing, those investments haven't paid off
00:07:39.080yet. You can't just throw money at the problem. So what women sometimes do is they say like,
00:07:43.700OK, maybe it's not worth it. Right. And maybe I should step out of my career. But the problem is,1.00
00:07:48.940is, you know, thinking about the dynamics of that situation, that because careers are things that
00:07:53.600grow when you invest in them, you can't compare the cost of a year of child care to your salary
00:07:59.880right now. Right. The question is, if I'm investing in my career, what is the total increase in my
00:08:05.480lifetime earnings I'm able to get from that through getting through this period where I
00:08:10.180need to actually spend on child care, because that's short. You've got three years where you're
00:08:14.040paying for private child care. This is not forever. No. Do you think that families should
00:08:19.400be more strategic? I think that that's always a hard question. Like money is obviously impacts
00:08:24.620raising a family, but nobody wants to be like, maybe you should space your kids out every three
00:08:29.380years versus like having them all at one time when you're going to be paying more.
00:08:34.460Well, I thought you were going to ask something else, which is what I am in favor of being
00:08:37.840strategic on is that like once I saw that data and I saw that this time and money crunch
00:08:42.120is like for such a limited period of time, I was just like, oh, OK, that changes the
00:08:46.320strategy, which is like just do whatever you can in that period to like make it work.
00:08:51.780Like even if it feels unsustainable because it doesn't have to be sustainable because
00:09:20.740And then I was like, let's just dive headfirst back into it.
00:09:24.120And I don't know if that was the most strategic decision.
00:09:26.060Are there other expenses beyond child care that you feel are impacting families' expenses?
00:09:31.900Well, again, I always want to talk about time as well as money, because time literally is money, because if you invest it in your career, then, you know, you earn more money. And so, like, I want to bring up travel sports. That's money as well as time, right? It's all the activities that we're paying for. It's all of the things that we feel, again, we need to invest to, like, make our kid, you know, make their human capital grow, but also make them equal to their peers.
00:09:56.580And this is what some economists call the rugrat race, where it's like a nuclear arms race.0.60
00:10:02.440But because, you know, your neighbor's doing it, then you have to do it, too, because, you know, then their kid is going to have this on their CV when they apply to Harvard, you know.
00:10:10.320And I see that like the 17 year olds with CVs.
00:10:15.560No, I'm all about finding the slacker moms who are not into this.0.99
00:10:19.280Like we're just sending our kids to the local little league.
00:10:22.420the most intense it gets is, you know, the like one weekend where they have playoffs and they
00:10:27.180play two games and not one. And that is so important is like what you just said is like
00:10:31.100choosing your peer group, choosing your community so that you're not constantly comparing yourself
00:10:35.820to something that's not sustainable for you. Because as I said, the time investments when
00:10:39.860you're comparing yourself, if you are a working mom and then your comparison group is all moms
00:10:44.520who work part time or who, you know, do not work at this moment in time. And then you're like,
00:10:48.540Oh, but they're giving this to their kid. They're doing that. The birthday cupcakes are homemade and the baby food is, you know, made in the food processor and all that. Right. And like it's not actually sustainable or possible for you to give your kid that. And so you're driving yourself crazy. So choose your comparison set and understand that like you've got to choose which investments you want to make where the return is actually there.
00:11:10.840You don't have to make every single investment. Right. And the biggest thing for your kids, long term success and well-being is your relationship and your mental health and well-being.
00:11:24.100And so if you don't put on your own oxygen mask first where you're running to those thousand activities or you're trying to make ends meet because you said, yes, yes, yes.
00:11:31.300These things that you can't afford that then you're snapping at the kids and you're so stressed out that you're crying when you get a bill in the mail or whatever.
00:11:38.740That was my mom growing up was like crying when she got a bill in the mail.
00:11:42.180Right. Well, that translates to the kid.
00:11:45.260So by protecting your boundaries around both time and money and being really strategic with those investment choices, then you're able to invest something much more important in your kid, which is really the relationship.
00:11:56.960Is there anything else that you think families should be thinking about when it comes to the cost of kids to like dissuade their own anxieties and encourage them to have kids?
00:12:05.020I think one of the big things that I want to take away when families listen to this podcast is, yes, it's expensive, but it's also pretty great.
00:12:14.780So how do you sort of reconcile these two competing things where it's expensive, but, you know, you want to have kids?
00:12:22.140Well, I think to give ourselves back the agency to say that it's expensive because we are choosing to invest a certain amount in our kids because that's what we want.
00:12:32.440So to put it back in like our choice that there was actually a cheaper way to have kids to like not give them anything that they want.
00:12:39.500Right. And to choose like, you know, like lower quality child care options to like live in a less expensive city.
00:12:45.340You know, I'm an evangelist for that. But like there are cheaper ways to have kids and there's more expensive ways to do it.
00:12:50.560Right. Yeah. And it's the same when people talk about child penalties for moms, you know, that you have kids and then you have this child penalty in your earnings.
00:12:59.240I try to flip it and to say those are child investments, right?
00:13:03.480So that's because instead of investing in her own human capital during that period, she was investing in her child's human capital because she wanted to, right?
00:13:11.020And that puts you back in the driver's seat.
00:13:13.740And so you're saying, like, this isn't a reason not to have kids because, like, you can make choices to make it cheaper and you can decide what that looks like, right?
00:13:22.120And I also think then it's important for us to like maintain when we talk about this, talking about like the joy of parenthood and that there is so much joy that you can embrace.
00:13:32.220And it doesn't all have to be about like getting everything perfect and like putting every possible input into them.
00:13:38.900Because one of the, again, most important inputs is like the time that you spend laughing together.
00:13:43.740Like that's building their human capital, right?
00:17:55.460All that stuff, all of the extra, like so many places to put the baby down.
00:18:00.160Like I have actually Madeline Donahue, who did the cover of my book, we were chatting
00:18:04.900recently because she also had a third not that long ago.
00:18:07.480And she was saying she puts the baby down in her dog beds and she says the dogs never
00:18:12.120use the beds, but like that's the level of, you know, whatever the babies are fine with.
00:18:18.020And yeah, I think it's all the bells and whistles, those socks that tell you how, you know, if the baby's breathing or not, even the snoo, which I used for my third, we really just need a safe place for them to sleep. I don't think you need a change table. I changed my baby literally anywhere. I have diapers and wipes in every corner, every level of the house.
00:18:37.380Yeah, that's you know, that's my change table. And I think you you need a stroller. Right. And I think everything else, borrow it, inherit it, get it on marketplace. But the last thing you need is to spend thousands of dollars on on those extras on all the things. So you have three. And I think on one hand, people say it gets way more expensive when child care is involved. But arguably, it could also be cheaper if you already have this stuff. What's been your experience with it?
00:19:06.900For sure. I, you know, didn't have to really acquire anything going down the line. And also I, I don't know if this is your experience, but I feel I was so lucky. I had so many girlfriends that were pregnant and at different stages. So I never felt like I had to go out and buy stuff. I always had someone that I could borrow, you know, one of those swings from, or we just have this like incredible secondhand rotation going on.
00:19:33.900So I think anything I missed, I could borrow.
00:19:37.420But the child care is, that's the scary one.