Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - January 23, 2025


The Myth of the Good Mother

Surviving Shame The Cult-Like Tactics of Marketers and Influencers with Mara Einstein

Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

179.87

Word count

7,314

Sentence count

228

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

29

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey y'all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence. Today we are talking
00:00:13.300 about one of my favorite things to talk about, being a good mother. There are days when I
00:00:27.000 feel like I'm the worst mom on the planet. That I just suck, okay? That I am just failing at it 0.99
00:00:35.640 all. All of it. You know, there's days where the kids are like, I hate you, mommy. Although they
00:00:42.940 tell Nick they hate him more, which just makes me feel good. I know it shouldn't, but it does.
00:00:49.020 Sometimes I like it. I do. And maybe that makes me a bad wife. But I also don't really care.
00:00:55.720 I don't. The idea of a good mother is such a modern and bullshit construct. And we talk about 0.99
00:01:06.080 this all the time. Social media makes it so much worse because all we see are people being good
00:01:12.280 mothers because you can't really broadcast yourself being a bad mother unless you want
00:01:18.960 people to hate you and criticize you and call the authorities on you, to be honest. And I'm not
00:01:24.820 talking about bad mothers like Ruby Frankie bad mothers. I'm talking about bad mothers who lock 0.96
00:01:29.820 the door when they're taking a poop. Yeah, yeah, I've started locking the door. Otherwise, I would 1.00
00:01:35.280 never poop alone. And I want to put, I deserve, no, it's not that I want, I deserve to poop alone.
00:01:42.020 I want to, I'm going to put that on a mug. In fact, that's great merch. That is great merch
00:01:47.160 for everyone is lying to you. When people pre-order, everyone is lying to you. I should
00:01:51.520 have mugs made that say, I deserve to poop alone, because you do, and I do too. And that is why I
00:01:56.940 was a bad mother today, because I went in the bathroom and I locked the door, and my five-year-old
00:02:01.560 banged on that door and hurled their body on the floor until I unlocked it and let them stand there 0.99
00:02:09.640 while I went to the bathroom. Okay? Yeah. That's my confession for today. Mm-hmm. Today's guest
00:02:17.500 has been diving into what it means to be a good mother. When Nancy Reddy had her first child,
00:02:24.660 she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of the perfect mother. And this ideal,
00:02:30.120 you all know what it is, right? It's the woman who's constantly available, endlessly patient,
00:02:35.460 very, very intensely invested in her child to the exclusion of everything else. And frankly,
00:02:42.140 I don't think it's very good for kids. And yet, we all want to be it. We all want to aspire
00:02:47.320 to it. Nancy wanted answers. And when she started digging into the social science of it all,
00:02:53.720 she discovered that the good mother is a total fucking myth. All right. She's been able to 0.99
00:02:59.140 debunk all of these flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and just straight up misogyny of 0.99
00:03:06.420 researchers on motherhood. I'm excited to talk to her today because I think she's going to break 0.59
00:03:10.960 our brains wide open about exactly why the idea of the good mother is truly a myth.
00:03:24.800 Hey, Nancy, how you doing? I'm great. I'm so excited to talk.
00:03:29.220 Me too. I want to start out today's interview by asking you,
00:03:34.080 what did you think a good mother was before you actually became a mother?
00:03:39.720 I mean, I had this like kind of bonkers, dreamy idea that now just sounds totally laughable.
00:03:45.780 But, you know, I had this idea that like a good mother would be, you know, totally devoted to her kids, like would be able to, I was talking about babies, you know, like would know what was wrong with her kid, would be able to comfort them, soothe them, etc.
00:03:58.680 um would probably like make all of their own homemade food um you know would also like be
00:04:06.600 super ambitious and like killing it at work um and kind of like be able to do all of that stuff
00:04:14.260 on their own it's interesting to me that your your idea your concept of a good mother
00:04:22.480 included work like do you think that's because you were originally a child of the 80s
00:04:28.440 i mean i think so right like my mom was a like single working mom in my childhood and that was
00:04:34.540 really important to me like um you know like riding the bus into town to the like driving
00:04:41.180 to the park and ride and commuting in her like sneakers and pantyhose carrying her briefcase
00:04:45.940 um that's speaker sneakers and pantyhose is a really distinct isn't it carrying like
00:04:53.080 a takeout cup like container of diet coke maybe too yes yes yeah she kept her heels she kept like 0.99
00:05:00.800 a couple of different pairs of heels like under her desk at work because i think there probably 1.00
00:05:04.280 were like black ones and navy ones depending on what she was wearing yeah and some different maybe 1.00
00:05:08.780 some different tights too some different pantyhose oh no you gotta have backup pantyhose right yeah
00:05:12.460 you gotta run your pantyhose yeah you're you're done for the day um yeah and i think that like i
00:05:17.800 really admired that like I always understood her to be both like super hard working and accomplished
00:05:25.620 and also really engaged as a mother so I think that like I thought I could basically just do 0.94
00:05:31.080 that and do like everything more on top of it I would like also um breastfeed and cloth diaper
00:05:36.900 and make all of my own baby food and I don't know what like everything more you know it's like
00:05:43.660 everything all at once yeah just just a hundred percent all of the time right yeah yeah yeah
00:05:53.300 like just doing every doing every part of my life at the most at the most is what I just thought I
00:06:01.800 would be able to do that's kind of how I thought it worked and so you became a mother and how did 0.98
00:06:07.100 that shit blow up I mean you know right like it did not take long um I had this like great 0.98
00:06:12.800 had a great birth like long hard labor but like felt really great about it and um you know like 0.99
00:06:19.380 started nursing in the hospital and the like lactation specialists come around they're like
00:06:23.640 you're doing so great i think you're gonna do great i was like yeah i'm doing great um and
00:06:28.720 then we got home and basically immediately it fell apart like he just like screamed for hours
00:06:35.500 like it just it wasn't like at all this kind of dreamy experience that I had thought it would be
00:06:43.140 and you know kind of immediately I was just exhausted like physically a wreck um and also
00:06:50.860 just really overwhelmed like it turns out that when you have a new baby they need you like
00:06:55.840 all the time like all the time and that was super hard for me
00:07:00.040 yeah i i too thought that i would be very very good at this and i i too had ridiculous ideas
00:07:10.760 about what a mother was and did and yeah i mean for me it just all blew the hell up after i had
00:07:19.680 my first kid and then again after my second i mean by the time the third rolled around
00:07:23.880 I was pretty numb pretty pretty well broken and just rode hard put away wet and I knew what I was
00:07:32.540 in for but I I think there's a reason for this and that reason to me is that culture has fed us a lot
00:07:41.860 of crap about what motherhood is like and that's something that you realized right yeah absolutely
00:07:50.780 I mean, I feel like I, like I, my first kid was born in 2013 and I feel like, you know, the cultural conversation changes, but, you know, I had really absorbed like all of this kind of dreamy stuff about natural parenting and, you know, like very attachment parenting influenced and that that, like, if you did it right, if you naturally parented the right way, it would be like easy. 0.85
00:08:16.240 and you know the conversation has changed about how you're supposed to do it i feel like now
00:08:22.660 there's this real like gentle parenting kind of a thing which is like intense in its own way
00:08:28.680 um my god i actually i i think parenting is for the freaking birds okay to a therapist who was
00:08:36.240 like like a therapist who works with new moms and she was like basically like gentle parenting
00:08:40.740 attachment parenting it actually is all like intensive and it makes people crazy like it's
00:08:45.860 just you know because it's like you not only do you have to like deal with all of your kids needs
00:08:49.880 you also have to like memorize these things that you're supposed to say and not say and you know
00:08:56.660 i just feel like i don't know i also just think how hard my own kids would laugh if i tried um
00:09:01.780 any of those scripts with them you know my children actively mock me okay i have tried
00:09:07.940 the gentle parenting word and look also i'm gonna say if it works for you yay
00:09:12.540 absolutely anything that works i am all for i just think any system that is very rigid that's
00:09:19.360 like you must be this yeah is dumb for for parents but yeah i i did try some of the
00:09:25.380 gentle parenting things and my kids just just just left and left one of them they were like 0.97
00:09:30.480 that's not you like you know bring one of them mooned me
00:09:35.020 i'm like i don't know was that your third baby was that the like kind of wild child
00:09:41.460 She will. She will. OK, this is my life and this is my house and these are my children and I accept it. And they accept me for who I am. And that is not a gentle mom. That is not the oh, my gosh, just feel it all right now. It's more like, can we just get this shit done? We got stuff to do.
00:09:59.500 I feel like all of these things really reflect how desperate we are for help. The way that we have parenting set up in this country is so just crazy. And I think we're all desperate for ways to make it easier or better.
00:10:19.460 And I think that that opens the door to, you know, all of these experts who have promises when really what we actually need is like support.
00:10:28.600 Like we actually need like a friend who will come hang out with us and like cook dinner together or we need to like, you know, go for a walk and get out of the house.
00:10:36.500 And instead we're like, well, I don't know, this lady on Instagram said this.
00:10:39.340 I'm going to try it.
00:10:40.880 Exactly.
00:10:41.520 Exactly.
00:10:42.080 I mean, we were just never we were never meant to parent like this.
00:10:45.780 We were meant to parent with more support.
00:10:48.020 um and also without what instagram does to us which is just give us every person who's ever
00:10:56.180 had a thought about parenting um they can just view their advice and then we're drowning in it
00:11:01.640 uh and that's not helpful either yeah i mean i think that's such a i i had my first kid when
00:11:07.500 instagram was like pretty new so i was seeing same same yeah okay okay yeah so i feel like i saw a lot
00:11:14.820 of like i don't know it's like but it's like the the unrealistic ideas i was absorbing were at least
00:11:19.960 like the the kind of beautiful newborn photos of people that i knew but it wasn't strangers so i 0.57
00:11:26.600 would see like my friend's beautiful photo i'm feeling like fuck like you know she's doing such 0.80
00:11:31.100 a great job but i also had texts from her where she was like telling me like okay this is what's 0.55
00:11:34.980 actually going on you know and like we don't have that now i don't think because so often we're just
00:11:40.340 seeing like the lives of strangers um and i think we're curating our own lives that much more
00:11:45.920 intensively yeah we're seeing the fake lives of strangers to be honest exactly exactly exactly
00:11:50.560 and when it was just your one friend and you can be like well that's just the way she is okay
00:11:54.860 she's always been like this uh you know she was the one who like always got the manicures in
00:12:00.280 college when you didn't didn't even know that was an option for you uh and she had the real
00:12:05.960 Prada bag and you had the one from Chinatown like yeah I get it but now it's all these people we
00:12:11.220 don't know these strangers who were never supposed to be in our faces yeah well and it's just I mean
00:12:16.480 it's just it's so I don't know I just think about the time that we spend like all and I know that
00:12:21.880 you're thinking about this too like staring at our phones when what we actually need to be doing is
00:12:26.820 like interacting with other people but it's a lot more comfortable to be like uh maybe some maybe
00:12:31.300 some you know expert online somewhere will tell me what to do than it is to like ask a neighbor
00:12:36.060 um you know to watch your kids for a little bit of time after school or whatever you need
00:12:40.440 exactly exactly all right we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back i want to talk
00:12:46.340 about your new book the good mother myth and what you learned along the way while writing it great
00:12:51.360 okay we are back now you have a new book called the good mother myth great title great title
00:13:08.280 i love it thank you i want to dig into this a little bit what first off why'd you want to write
00:13:14.580 it oh god i mean i wanted to write this book because i was like what happened to me you know
00:13:22.580 because i felt like i had had these ideas that were just so deeply ingrained in me and then
00:13:30.220 you know actually being a mom was kind of nothing like i thought it had been i mean it really like
00:13:37.000 undid my sense of self in these dramatic ways and uh so then the book was really a project
00:13:44.360 of like figuring out why that was um and so it uses you know memoir it uses my own story
00:13:52.040 you know which is a pretty i mean it's not because it's like oh a remarkable story i think it's a
00:13:56.640 pretty ordinary kind of a hard time and then uses a lot of research to try to figure out like why
00:14:03.820 why is this so hard like where have we gone wrong um in like american culture and policy
00:14:10.840 that we've made like already a hard thing we've made it that much harder in our in our culture
00:14:18.660 so what did you learn why like how how did we get to this point of of making it so much worse
00:14:27.260 than i think it really has yeah yeah i mean i really look i really locate a lot of it like i
00:14:32.880 in the book i look at the kind of mid-century and post-war science and psychology that in a lot of
00:14:39.580 ways is still really with us. I mean, I think like if we think about like the idea of like
00:14:43.480 the trad wife or like, you know, traditional families that we're all kind of looking back
00:14:49.440 at this mythology of the 1950s and this idea of like the mom happy at home and the kids
00:14:56.980 eating chocolate chip cookies after school and the dad whose job like plays plenty of
00:15:01.500 money for them to, you know, afford that lifestyle. And we think that that's traditional and
00:15:08.460 we think that that's what we should be able to do and like that's not the case like that's a blip
00:15:13.900 of our history and it's a life that was really only ever available to like a sliver um you know
00:15:21.980 of the white middle class and so i look at really like the science um i don't know the scientists
00:15:28.100 whose whose research bolstered that uh mythology 0.96
00:15:33.420 was there any one study that you were like holy shit why haven't i heard about this before
00:15:41.420 i mean there are so many of them what's really interesting i think is that some of these are
00:15:45.360 things that probably like a lot of people have heard of and i think anyone who took probably
00:15:49.560 an intro psych class in college still has an image in their mind somewhere of uh harry harlow's
00:15:54.680 cloth mother studies there are these studies i do not oh really oh man i mean they're like
00:16:00.020 haunting. Once you've seen the pictures, they'll be in your brain forever because they're so
00:16:04.300 haunting. So he did this. He was a researcher and he was the one that I started with.
00:16:08.600 He had spent his career at the University of Wisconsin, where I was a graduate student when
00:16:12.340 my kids were born. And he wanted to study, he did primate research and he started out studying
00:16:20.740 maternal attachment. He was trying to figure out basically like, you know, how, what do babies need
00:16:25.000 from a mother. And to study that, he took, first of all, he took these monkeys away from their
00:16:31.340 actual monkey mothers, which is like a wild thing that just gets skipped over. So he takes them away
00:16:36.840 from their actual monkey mothers and creates this lab experiment where they're raised in cages. And 0.95
00:16:42.800 you know, there's a couple of different, you know, experimental setups, but they have these
00:16:47.720 surrogate mothers who raise them, who feed them. And in some cages, it's just the wire mother that 0.95
00:16:53.800 has the um you know kind of formula in the bottle and other cages there's a cloth mother so there's 0.54
00:16:59.120 like terry cloth and it's warm and uh what they found is that the baby monkeys would just like
00:17:07.660 they got obsessed with the cloth mothers and they would cling to them for hours a day and even if
00:17:12.920 the food was actually in the wire mother they would like you know sip real quick and then go
00:17:17.300 back to the cloth mother and so what harlow i mean he titled the first talk that he gave about
00:17:25.180 that research the nature of love like he really believed that he was studying love wow it's right
00:17:34.380 i mean in a way it's like actually very moving i think that this like very stodgy um you know
00:17:40.800 kind of old school old white man oh old white man charts and graphs like um you know he was a
00:17:47.440 terrible stutterer like he's a weird guy um and he he included like these um like little limericks
00:17:53.820 in his talk at the american psychological association he's an oddball but um he really
00:17:59.960 believed that he had discovered love in a way that i think is pretty touching and it's i mean
00:18:09.020 it was important because it means, for example, like it changed a lot of hospital policies. Like
00:18:13.520 if prior to that, oftentimes if your kid went into the hospital for a surgery or had a long
00:18:18.500 illness, you just wouldn't be allowed to visit them. There's a lot of concerns about germs.
00:18:23.560 And so his research, among other things, showed that, you know, kids and babies actually really
00:18:27.640 need that contact comfort, which is really powerful. But I think the image that really
00:18:35.100 got picked up by the media and by some other scientists is this image of this baby monkey
00:18:42.080 clinging to his mother. And that became a kind of image of what a good human mother would look like
00:18:48.580 too. He says something like that they're soft, warm, tender, and patient, available 24 hours a
00:18:56.520 day. And I think the idea then they got picked up was that that was what a human mother should be
00:19:02.420 too right and i i have a lot of thoughts about this study look i love this because you know
00:19:08.980 changing ideas about the fact that you know kids do need love and affection
00:19:12.600 winning uh but also i think that you know primates and mammals just kind of like soft
00:19:21.940 things instead of coat hangers uh you're making some big leaps here yes yeah huge leaps i mean
00:19:29.860 It's like, do you want to hug a stuffed animal or a coat hanger?
00:19:34.460 That actually tells me nothing about motherhood.
00:19:37.300 I mean, it is so interesting, right?
00:19:39.480 Because, you know, he has a PhD.
00:19:42.540 He works at a university.
00:19:44.660 You know, he's doing science.
00:19:46.100 He has all these charts and graphs.
00:19:48.300 And so it looks like evidence in a way that if you, you know, as you're doing, kind of step back and say, like, wait, what?
00:19:54.620 Is that really telling us anything?
00:19:58.160 I think it might not.
00:19:59.960 I mean, one thing that I would say that is kind of fascinating in his research, though it didn't get picked up, everyone kind of ignored it.
00:20:08.780 But he has this line towards the very end of the talk where he says basically, like, if nursing isn't the thing that matters, right, like if it isn't actually the dispensing of milk that matters, then fathers are just as well equipped to care for babies as mothers are.
00:20:27.120 Oh, wow. That seems to have gotten lost.
00:20:29.660 I mean, there's this like wild, like could have, you know, like could have changed the world, radical potential that kind of no one talks about after that.
00:20:41.580 But, I mean, and Harlow, like, did very little parenting of his own kids.
00:20:48.500 So I think he was also.
00:20:49.940 Yeah, right.
00:20:50.700 I mean, so I think that he, you know, he was not inclined to really, like, make a case for that.
00:20:58.720 But it is interesting that this research that, in some ways, is at the heart of, like, it's at the heart of attachment theory.
00:21:05.400 and these ideas that we have about what babies need from their mothers,
00:21:09.960 like, doesn't actually say at all that the mother is the one who needs to provide that care. 0.56
00:21:15.560 Right, right.
00:21:16.440 I mean, really, just, you could go to Build-A-Bear up here. 0.97
00:21:21.940 But put some nice nipples on a Build-A-Bear, and you should be doing it. 0.95
00:21:25.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99
00:21:26.380 Yeah, just, like, warm, warm body.
00:21:28.740 You're in good shape.
00:21:29.100 And, of course, it turns out that, like, these babies did really well originally,
00:21:34.000 or like initially um but they're but they turn out to be very disturbed socially because they
00:21:40.100 didn't have you know it turns out you actually can't be raised by an inanimate object and turn
00:21:44.280 out okay right yeah right like that's the thing really come on man you thought that that was going
00:21:49.380 to um work and they find in a later study that you know if you have to choose between a monkey 0.58
00:21:59.300 raised by one of these perfect cloth mothers and a monkey raised only with peers well only with 0.62
00:22:06.600 peers other baby monkeys to play with that the friends they do better with friends oh wow 0.95
00:22:12.700 like a kind of lesson for parenting right but our kids maybe maybe they need less
00:22:18.180 of us in particular and more like social interaction overall I mean my kids aren't
00:22:26.320 monkeys either exactly but but i think there's something really interesting in that uh that runs
00:22:32.700 really counter to the idea of like being a good mom means you're there all the time yeah well
00:22:38.400 because somehow along the way that has translated into you're your child's soulmate and best
00:22:45.500 which i think is gross i'm just like i i want us to be friends i want us to have a good relationship
00:22:52.420 when we're older, but right now I'm your mom and I also don't want to be the only one you play with.
00:22:58.480 That feels really unhealthy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like kids need lots of interaction.
00:23:08.180 I mean, one of the people who I ended up reading a lot about in the book or reading a lot about for
00:23:11.860 the book was the anthropologist Margaret Mead. And she, you know, when she did her research,
00:23:17.300 she actually was going to communities and spending a lot of time there and learning the language and
00:23:21.640 observing how they actually raise their kids. And she came back from that. She's a problematic
00:23:27.780 white lady for day, but she did come back from that with ideas that were really different about
00:23:34.700 how she was going to raise her daughter. She really discovered that basically nowhere in the
00:23:40.280 world, except these parts of Western Europe and the US, do we say that moms are the only ones who
00:23:47.620 matter you know she said what babies really need what children really need is many warm friendly
00:23:53.360 people um and she always built these like really intentional kind of beautiful she called it a
00:23:59.900 composite household where they always lived with other families and always shared caregiving
00:24:04.420 oh which to me is the dream to be honest i mean it really is it really is it's the reason that i
00:24:12.880 moved home one of the many reasons I moved home to Philadelphia the greatest city in America
00:24:17.580 because I'm in a neighborhood with a lot of my girlfriends from college whose kids are the same
00:24:23.300 age and it is this close-knit community we're really I mean our kids are in and out of each
00:24:29.060 other's houses yeah yeah yeah just feels healthy for them exactly well some of it also I mean I
00:24:36.080 think a lot I'm kind of obsessed with like how neighborhoods are built um and I think you know
00:24:41.880 I live in, well, you, I live in a little town in South Jersey and it's like very, there's lots of
00:24:46.480 sidewalks. My kids can walk places. And similarly, like they are always, you know, half the time
00:24:50.580 there's like four kids in my house or there's no kids cause they're down the street. And, and so I
00:24:55.680 think like there's a really important dimension to the actual built environment around us in terms
00:25:04.400 of if that's possible or not. And I think that there's a way that it runs really counter, you
00:25:08.380 know my house is not big or fancy um and we made that choice on purpose but i think the ideals
00:25:15.060 again like online or wherever else would be like you know buy a big house have a you know fancy
00:25:20.820 laundry room etc all those kinds of things and i think that actually like living someplace smaller
00:25:26.000 and less fancy and close to your friends is probably going to do a lot more to increase your
00:25:31.580 happiness and quality of life i totally agree i totally agree again not for everybody you know
00:25:38.000 sure everyone there's a lid for every pot and a neighborhood for every weirdo but yeah i mean
00:25:44.840 for me walkability being in the city these are huge things and being able to be really close
00:25:50.020 and know our neighbors um i like that yeah well i just think any kind of i mean i guess the thing
00:25:57.080 that is generalizable i think is having a having community and feeling like there are ways that
00:26:04.860 you can show up and kind of be yourself that you don't have to be the most polished put together
00:26:11.300 good version of yourself at all times to be to be loved or to show up in a space and I think the
00:26:16.520 more that we are willing to be honest with each other about like what our homes look like what's
00:26:22.680 going on with our families etc the more we can actually support each other yeah I couldn't agree
00:26:28.220 more all right let's take one more quick break and when we get back I want to talk about solutions 0.98
00:26:31.520 because I can rant about the goddamn patriarchy and how he talked to us all day long. 0.86
00:26:36.500 But I'm trying to be better about saying, all right, how do we fix it? 0.99
00:26:49.280 Okay, we're back.
00:26:50.980 We have just talked about how many, many studies have been flawed that have examined motherhood,
00:26:58.120 how I truly believe culture has been very bad for motherhood
00:27:05.080 and creating this quote-unquote ideal version of a mother,
00:27:09.420 the good mother myth.
00:27:11.160 But what do we do now?
00:27:12.940 I think that we are at a turning point as mothers
00:27:15.820 where we can say, all right, I'm not going to take it anymore.
00:27:19.260 We're going to change this.
00:27:21.120 Yeah.
00:27:21.680 I mean, I certainly hope so.
00:27:23.020 And it's like, I mean, so my book is not really,
00:27:24.540 I'm interested in policy, but I don't have...
00:27:28.120 I think we know what the policy answers are. Right. Like we need affordable child care. We need parental leave. We need, you know, like better maternal health care, all of those kinds of things.
00:27:38.420 And so that I think like we know those things and I don't know, you know, legislatively, et cetera, like what it takes to get them. It's so wild that we are the only like country in the world that doesn't have them.
00:27:48.900 But I think what we can do and I think sometimes what we forget about when we think about these huge structural things is like actually change our own lives. And some of that is about the ideas and ideals that we have about who we are and what it means to be a parent.
00:28:07.400 You know, I say at one point in the book, like, yes, I needed help, like practical help in lots of ways. But I also needed better ideas. Like I needed to stop believing that it was possible for me to, you know, do everything on my own and be happy with that and not be mad and resentful.
00:28:26.240 and then part of it too is just like I don't know there's this wild way that I think again online I
00:28:33.900 feel like I see so much conversation about domestic labor and the mental load and invisible labor and
00:28:38.960 all of these things and it's like we need to go that extra step and like stop doing so much of
00:28:44.200 it I mean I think it's taken it's taken me a lot of kind of reckoning with myself and then also
00:28:51.960 just some like work in my marriage to be like hey wait like i'm actually not in any way like better
00:28:58.420 at making dinner you know handling the laundry uh doing all of those kinds of things and like
00:29:05.440 i don't know putting down both the bad ideas that i have but also just putting down the work i think
00:29:11.980 that sometimes we just take on too much and we can you know we do we do we all do we all do it
00:29:19.680 And I've only recently been stopping. 0.87
00:29:22.040 I mean, my husband is still looking for a job because the job market sucks. 0.87
00:29:26.100 Oh, yeah.
00:29:26.880 And, you know, while that's been happening, I'm like, you're taking this stuff that despite the fact that I have a big freaking job, I've still been doing.
00:29:36.240 Yeah.
00:29:36.840 And even that has been hard.
00:29:38.280 Yeah.
00:29:39.160 Divesting everything.
00:29:41.320 Yes.
00:29:41.960 So is it hard to put that stuff down?
00:29:43.360 I mean, I feel like you're I don't know.
00:29:44.560 I feel like I've watched you like you are a model and just like doing so much.
00:29:49.680 it is in the it's getting easier it's getting i mean doing so much in a good way it just seems
00:29:55.400 like you're like um it's getting easier and easier to pass it off um to realize it's not going to be
00:30:01.840 done the way that i do it i you know i still say and i should have nick on to talk about this
00:30:09.580 because we have been having a lot of open conversations about this it's still really
00:30:16.080 annoying to be the micromanager of it all yeah yeah yeah yeah okay which i still am like he
00:30:22.220 to break it down um i'm not i don't really cook that much i i make us lovely lunches during the
00:30:29.700 day but i don't really take on dinner that often i also don't do laundry because it's in our
00:30:35.960 basement and when the idea of me carrying something massive down the stairs like i'll
00:30:40.940 fall on my face okay yeah no the basement laundry is horrible we're in the same spot with that
00:30:45.420 practical applications to these things and yet i'm still the person that's like hey this should
00:30:51.120 be done now did you see that yeah he's not taking over grocery shopping i'm so i'm still like the
00:30:59.860 fridge is fucking empty yeah like well and it's it's that part of it right like the mental law 0.56
00:31:05.900 of all of those things that i think is in some ways like harder to hand over but i think that's 0.98
00:31:12.780 what you have to do like I can't if I'm in charge of laundry like I can't think about laundry if I'm
00:31:17.480 passing off laundry it has to be everything from like the hamper is full to like you started it
00:31:21.680 has to go from the washer to the dryer like it has to be the whole thing or else it doesn't help me
00:31:25.000 yeah yes exactly exactly and so and so yeah I mean he does he does that whole process he can't put
00:31:30.540 clothes away he just simply cannot do it I have accepted this uh he will sort them into piles on
00:31:36.400 the bed and I'm like they're not away it's so close it's so interesting right because on the
00:31:40.700 one hand i think like there i i am annoying in various ways i'm sure to live with and totally
00:31:47.840 i'm the most annoying we all need to give each other a little grace and at the same time sometimes
00:31:52.880 i think we have just like expectations that are too low for our partners and for our kids you know
00:31:58.120 like my kids are 9 11 they are capable in fact of putting their dishes in the dishwasher of folding
00:32:03.180 their laundry etc it takes them longer and like they don't like it but that's part of the process
00:32:08.060 And I think sometimes, you know, there's a cultural narrative about like super moms. 0.89
00:32:13.160 And I think sometimes that becomes a way for women to like hoard this sense of pride, but maybe also superiority.
00:32:20.540 And like there is in some ways a cost to being like, actually, I'm a mom who doesn't make dinner.
00:32:26.180 I'm a mom who like doesn't know when karate is like I can never remember that.
00:32:30.540 You know what I mean?
00:32:31.220 Like there's like you give up a little.
00:32:34.860 I don't.
00:32:35.660 Does that make sense?
00:32:36.380 like the kind of martyr feeling um yeah yeah i don't know it's freeing though but it's freeing
00:32:43.760 and you know i will say for there were just some simple things that like nick could never figure
00:32:49.680 out how to log into the doctor portal oh yeah doctor portal sucks okay all i want is to be 0.85
00:32:57.620 able to call the damn doctor and yes the doctor portal is is the worst interface ever but he would 0.88
00:33:02.960 and i'm like you know i'm like it's annoying for me too it always has to text me a code on my phone 0.97
00:33:07.700 but i just do it yeah yeah yeah yeah so how about you just be annoyed by it well and i'm sure that
00:33:14.680 like he i forget who it was where i got this but like someone was like you know my husband learns
00:33:18.980 new skills at work all the time you know like that is not yeah so like see again like i think
00:33:24.140 that we and it's surely like uh there are men who won't these like there are men who won't step up
00:33:31.260 And that is a like definitely a different scenario that I think what we're talking about.
00:33:36.680 But yeah, I don't know.
00:33:37.700 Like maybe you're going to have to be annoyed about that and deal with it.
00:33:40.160 I do feel like just in terms of practical solutions, though, like getting your husband or partner or co-parent on every piece of communication as much as you can. 0.98
00:33:50.320 The C-C-C. 1.00
00:33:52.440 Oh, my God.
00:33:53.040 But there are so many programs like the communication platform from my kids' schools like only have space for one parent where I'm like, what?
00:34:00.380 what why are we you know i i actually don't want to be on the receiving end of every piece of
00:34:06.480 communication no no i do not no i do not no the looping in and you know i've had not just with
00:34:12.540 because you know i feel like we talk a lot about schools calling moms first etc etc which they all
00:34:19.080 still do despite the fact that i'm like i am not available but yeah things like adding nick to
00:34:26.540 texts when i'm producing a play date uh that one's been huge and he's and he's like hey i don't i
00:34:33.720 didn't know this was happening because i wasn't on the text and i'm like you know didn't even
00:34:36.480 think to add you and i'm annoyed right yeah exactly right like not not kind of hoarding
00:34:40.900 that information yeah yeah we have a we have a good friend down the street who's a single dad
00:34:44.900 and he like he does all that stuff so confidently or i'm like oh he can handle that like let's add
00:34:49.260 Yes, totally. Totally. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I think a lot about why the idea of the good mother has just persisted for so long when the bar for a quote unquote good father is being around for you.
00:35:12.060 just not leaving okay yeah it's he didn't leave he didn't abandon your family yeah he showed up
00:35:19.660 for dinner once and every every once in a while but it was like a dinner that someone else planned
00:35:23.020 and cooked and cleaned up after exactly exactly and so yeah i mean i just i think that we're
00:35:29.840 blowing it up by doing what we're doing right now by by talking about it we we can push for
00:35:35.480 legislation all we want that's not happening in the next four years okay and probably than that
00:35:40.480 Like, for a really long time, to be honest, because we had our chance to pass these laws, and it didn't happen.
00:35:48.680 Didn't happen.
00:35:49.820 And they're not getting passed under this administration. 0.94
00:35:51.620 So it's up to all of us to change this for ourselves, to push back against social media that's bullshit portrayals of motherhood. 0.94
00:36:02.520 And that's going to be hard, because the social media algorithms love things that look like television ads from the 1950s. 0.96
00:36:09.600 Mm hmm. Yeah, it's so pernicious, like the kind of content that they get so much attention when things that are a lot more like, you know, more substantial. Yeah. Just get just get trapped. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I do. I think it's possible. I think it's possible because we're all having these conversations. I want to want to leave our listeners, you know, with something that you say in this book.
00:36:37.320 First off, I do love that you start out the book by saying, before I had a baby, I was good at things.
00:36:44.600 Thank you.
00:36:45.800 Right?
00:36:46.640 Yes.
00:36:47.600 Yes, exactly.
00:36:49.280 Exactly.
00:36:50.000 I mean, I think so many of us felt that way.
00:36:54.800 But, you know, you also, you really say the underlying problem is that the good mother isn't really a person.
00:37:04.160 She's a subject of capitalism charged with optimizing every aspect of her kid's childhood so she can produce good future workers and consumers.
00:37:16.000 And yeah, I think that really sums it up for me.
00:37:19.860 Yeah, I think it does.
00:37:20.580 And I think if we if we make more space and insist on making more space to actually just be people with our kids and in our homes, like that's one.
00:37:31.880 One space to, I don't know, be happier and also just to find more joy, you know, with our kids and with our families to find find more joy, because that's that's what this all should boil down to at the end of the day.
00:37:45.180 if we want to blow up all of these myths around motherhood, it should be that we can enjoy it more
00:37:51.140 and also create good humans. Because I will say, you know, there's a generation that has had a
00:37:58.360 really hard go of it. A lot of the helicopter parented kids are not necessarily thriving in
00:38:03.620 adulthood at this point. And so we owe this to our children to figure out a better way.
00:38:10.260 Yeah, no, we absolutely do. I mean, I just think, I don't know, as much as I'm so, I'm very critical
00:38:14.700 of the institution of motherhood but actually being a mom like having a relationship with my
00:38:21.180 kids like that's that's among the most joyful and meaningful experiences of my life and i do
00:38:25.900 fame i like it right i like being a mom so much more than i thought and you know sometimes uh
00:38:32.120 you know i i have gotten pushback from from some mothers online saying oh if you don't like having
00:38:38.800 kids if you're going to complain about it all the time why'd you do it shut up okay because
00:38:43.620 i i love my kids i love being a mom i hate the way society views mothers and the way it treats 0.97
00:38:49.460 mothers and i'm a loud bitch about that yeah and i just think like the the more we are more honest
00:38:56.140 about all of those things kind of the better the better off we are and i do think about you know 0.96
00:39:01.400 i'm raising two boys and i just think about like how tender and loving and thoughtful they are
00:39:06.860 oh god i love i love boys i love boys it just i mean it just makes me it makes me very hopeful
00:39:11.720 for the future you know same like my boy is so tender and empathetic and sweet and you know what
00:39:18.400 breaks me sometimes is thinking about how so many young men have had that just just yeah sucked out
00:39:24.880 of them yeah yeah and it's a good reminder that there's nothing like inherently in boys or men
00:39:29.880 that can't be all of those things you know 100 100 exactly exactly oh i love this talk i could
00:39:36.460 do it forever but i've got to go do pickup actually yeah yeah it's coming home any minute
00:39:41.060 now too so i've got three kids in three different schools oh my goodness i know oh i know but i
00:39:49.020 won't complain because i like being a mom yeah exactly don't complain the good mother myth uh
00:39:54.620 is out now uh tell everyone where they can find you and learn more sure um so i'm on instagram
00:40:01.580 nancy.o.ready and i also write a newsletter write more be less careful that is a lot about like
00:40:08.120 making space for writing and creative practice in a busy life. For example, if you're a mom trying
00:40:14.380 to get back to a writing practice. I love it. Thank you for being here today. And thank you
00:40:20.240 to everyone for listening. If you love us, leave us a review in all of the review places. Do all
00:40:25.980 of the things. Buy an early copy of Everyone is Lying to You. Not going to stop. Not going to
00:40:31.880 stop talking about it, my friends. And then, you know, go do something nice for yourself and blow
00:40:37.380 up the good mother myth, because you deserve that.