Revisit - How To Stop Doing It All

I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm a mom of three and I'm on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. In case you missed it the first time, this is an episode you need to hear. I talk with Eve Rodsky, the best selling author of Fair Play and find you'd unicorn space about something all moms need to hear. All moms. Here it is. You do not need to do it all. I'm going to say that again.

It's that important.

You do not need to do it all.

Anyway, we're going to be talking about.

How rebalancing domestic labor in your home can change your relationship not only with yourself, but with the rest of your family and even with society. We're going to talk about reducing resentment and letting go of mom guilt.

So many important things.

I'm so, so excited to reshare this special episode with you right after this.

The thing that's been keeping me up at night is the statistic that 70% of the 1% in this country, right. The people that make our policies in government and in our corporations are white men with stay at home wives. And so what's keeping me up at night is just as people are starting to navigate back to in office work and just how not normal, quote unquote, the world still is, especially for parents and caregivers. I'm seeing a huge disconnect between what people want in terms of their workers and what workers are telling me they can give because they also need to be caregivers. So I'd say that's the thing that's keeping me up at night.

Tell me a little bit more about that. Let's jump into some specifics about whether it's people's stories or what you're seeing even around you or hearing in terms of this disconnect.

Yeah, I'll give you a little story. I remember when I was in I got to go to Davos, which was actually really amazing right before the pandemic to talk about the fact that I had been doing research for 10 years, which started with my own marriage and into the fact that I did not have the career marriage combo I thought I was going to have.

Right.

And I was losing my identity in my marriage and I was watching so many powerful women not being able to use their voice in the home. And so over 10 years, as I started to research these issues around what is called the gender division of labor, definitely did not in my third grade science project or my like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Journal. Becky did not think being a gender division of labor advocate was on my list of things I wanted to do with my life. But that's where I found myself in Davos in 2019 and I just written Fair Play. And I was trying to convince a room of executives that flexibility, that parenting out loud, that centering the caregiver, the humanity in us, is actually really important for the workplace because. Because half of our population was going to drop out if we had one more crisis. And I remember one man said to me, well, what can we do? I said, just be the BBC dad. I wanna see you on zooms being or whatever it was back then on camera, being interrupted by your kids in a walker and not pushing them out of the room and hiding them, but parenting out loud, not making your workers have to hide when they have to go take their kids to a doctor's appointment. Just understand that our humanity is in our caregiving. And so I said, I wish for you that you will all become the BBC dad. And then ironically, right, we have a month later, we're all the BBC dad. We're all, you know, of course there's essential workers who couldn't afford the privilege of being home, but over 20 million workers were in their homes. And so I think a lot about what I saw in those parents before, including myself, especially women. We hold two thirds or more of what it takes to run a home and family. That was the statistic. I was undeniably living for 10 years before I even understood that it was happening to me. I was the default parent for literally every single household and domestic task for my family. I call that the she fault parent. And so I think it is. Understanding that even before the pandemic, what I saw in thousands of interviews, now I'm into the tens of thousands of interviews, was just the physical toll of being told our whole lives that having it all means doing it all and watching women and myself not only lose our identity, but lose our mental health, our physical health, to this idea of not believing that we have a permission to be unavailable from our roles. So that was the number one thing women told me that was holding them back in their life, that they didn't believe they had a permission to be unavailable from their roles as a parent, a partner and a professional.

But what you're saying is so many of the women that you've talked to feel like I can't take that extra space for myself, Is that what you're saying? And I know, correct, and I love your term. You'll correct me if you would say it differently, like, unicorn space. This idea of, like, I can step out of my role as a parent not just to do something, quote, productive or to take the trash out or to pay taxes, but. But for something else, right?

100%. And I think that is something that I think about all the time, because, again, the same way I didn't want to be a gender division of labor specialists, I did not think I'd be writing or thinking about women's collective identity, especially in America. But I'll tell you about this breast cancer march I was on that I write about in Fair Play, because it sort of gets to the heart of what we're talking about here. It was nine women. We were honoring a friend who had been diagnosed. This was 10 years ago, 2011 or 2012. And they all look like you, right? I mean, they were smart. Not look like you physically, but they all were like you in that they were very powerful in their own right. They were using their voices for the greater good in many cases. There was an Oscar winning producer there and CEO of a nonprofit. And this is really, really wonderful morning. I remember we were all covered in, like, pink glitter and we were sort of marching, and we were about to have lunch in downtown la. And what happened to us was this was after I was already becoming aware in my own marriage that things were starting to feel really unfair after my second son, Ben, was born, which was exactly around the same time. But at this march, around noon, we literally became like the reverse of Cinderella. I don't know, maybe pumpkins we turned into pumpkins. Or we started getting inundated with phone calls and texts from our partners. All of us, except for one, is married to a man with things like, I'm done, right? I'm done. It was noon already. Like, when are you coming home? Where is Hudson's soccer bag? Where'd you leave me the gift? And what's the address of the birthday party? My favorite was my friend Kate's husband, who texted her, do the kids need to eat lunch? That was a good one. But what disturbed me the most about that day, I think was just. And again, this was pre consciousness, right? This is before I knew that this was happening to me. Obviously, this is way before fair Play. But what I was recognizing was the shocking thing was that not one of the other women said to me, okay, Eve, let's just go to our lunch and shut off our phones. Every single one of those women said to me, I left my partner with too much to do, and they literally ran. They ran home to find Hudson's soccer bag, to bring a perfectly wrapped gift to a birthday party, and to feed their kids lunch. And that day, my act of resistance that day, because I started to resist this, I was like, I don't want to live like this anymore. And this gets to what we're going to talk about, how you can be a game changer in your own life, in your own marriage, even in the midst of messed up systems like we started the podcast with. But it was asking these women, okay, if you're gonna, like, ghost me for lunch, then at least help me count up how many phone calls and texts we've received. And we had 30 phone calls and 46 texts for 10 women over 30 minutes. And that's the day when I realized that this, you know, private lives are public issues. That the home is super dangerous, Becky. Because it, you know, we think we're fighting over Hudson soccer bag. But ultimately, this is about years and years and lifetimes of society building itself. Our foundation of our house, the house of our society has been built on the unpaid labor of women. And when we outsource, quote, unquote, that was always a very sort of white feminist thing to say. Well, if you outsource, but then it's the undervalued labor of women of color. So I keep coming back to the bigger issues too, because while I was learning about this in my marriage and feeling such rage and resentment over the fact that Seth was texting me that day, asking me where my kids pants were to get them out of the house. And such rage at Kate's husband for asking if her kids need to eat lunch. Really, what was happening was, to me, it was that my eyes were opening to the fact that we can no longer live this way, where women are the default, the she fault for literally every single household and domestic task, in addition to being a breadwinner in many households for their families. So that's the full circle. That's the story that sort of started me on this journey to understanding that when you can start changing the dynamics in every individual marriage, you're also changing the politics and assumptions of our society.

And it makes me think about, like, what happens to us as women when we get a text about our partner's discomfort in child caring. Yeah, yeah, my partner's taking care of the kids. I'm at a breast cancer walk or something. That even seems less noble. My partner is taking the kids, and I am getting a manicure. Or I am sleeping in. Right? I am not doing good. I'm not walking for. I'm just doing something for myself because that's the baseline. And I get the text of, where's Hudson's soccer bag? Or you didn't leave me the right food for lunch. Maybe my partner knows that they should have lunch. But then, right. What happens for me on an individual level. And one of the things I see in women over and over and over is that my partner's distress becomes my guilt. But what happens where my partner is uncomfortable taking care of my kid? The two kids figuring out lunch.

Okay.

And my partner's male. I know your partner's male. So I'm just say him for now. Cause that's our lives. He's uncomfortable. I was doing something that I found enjoyable. And all of a sudden, his distress becomes my guilt. And then I'm going back to that story of what happened on the breast cancer walk. That guilt now motivates me to change my behavior to assuage my guilt. But really, now I'm doing something. I'm going back home to make my kids lunch, to take care of my partner's discomfort. There's so many trauma transfers of emotion, his.

And then the rage. I love that you always talk about how that ends up leading to that. Resentment leads to rage, right?

It's that circle a hundred percent. Because when we take on other people's feelings in that way and then also take on actions and change to take care of someone else's feelings, our body knows we're not really doing that for us. Our body knows we just missed out on something else. Right? And in the short term, we can manage our guilt, Right? But in the long term, the resentment builds up, and it just is going to take one tiny thing for the entire vat of resentment to come out and, you know, exactly look like rage. And then in those moments, it's like, whoa, why. Why are you so emotional about this little thing?

Right?

And really, it's the last number of things. Or like you said, it's the last is the hundreds of years of this shit, right? That's been inherited.

Absolutely. And I'll add, so that's the witch's cauldron. So we'll call that sort of the cauldron that you just built, which is so beautiful. And that analogy is so beautiful. And again, why do I love talking to you is because I think the combination of sociology and the individual psychology, the way you break it down, is so impactful because it allows us to recognize when we're complicit in our own oppression and when we're also what we can do about it. But the last thing I'll add to that witches cauldron is just we have an identity before that we can remember. So to me, the witch's cauldron, after all that rage and resentment, is also remembering that at one point in my life, there was a spark and fire in me that was about me. And I talked, I was on this amazing author talk with an author named Rachel Yoder, who wrote a book called Night Bitch. It's a fictionalized book of a woman who turns into a because of her anger and resentment over her choices of becoming what I call an accidental traditionalist, but a stay at home mom due to the choices of her, of her life. And so it's so fascinating because we both were talking about the fact that to become a night bitch again, you have to remember the spark inside of you. Like she was saying when she was 17, she could do anything, 100%. Where is she?

When's the last time she came out? When and where? And how did she learn that it was really dangerous to keep being seen? Where were those lessons? And where can I make contact with her now? Because for everyone listening, and I do think there's people listening who would say, yeah, I don't know if I ever really knew that girl, like right from the start, I was the good complicit. What do people want of me, child? But what I know and what I think about so often with all the different people I've even worked with in the therapy setting, who I've gotten to know in such deep ways, that part of us, it's there for everybody because that part is the most in touch with our individual wants for ourselves. It's been named as selfish by other people. That is a gaslighting term. I mean, it's a part that has access to self, which is like not the same thing as selfish.

That's pretty solid, right?

Like access to self.

That seems like life sustaining. Right?

But that literally does exist for everyone. And actually I think just even before we say, ooh, after this podcast, I'm gonna tell my partner that I'm going to get a full time job after being a stay at home parent. If you want to do that, you go girl, like, go do that a hundred percent. But if that feels like, yeah, that might be a little too far. What is something really small every one of us can do that gets us back in touch with that. I'm going to be president and it might be dancing in the shower, it might be doing a cartwheel. It might be, you know, saying to the person at the store, no, I really do want a refund on this item. There's all these moments we don't have to go from, you know, zero to a hundred and actually pressing for a refund or doing a dance and kind of letting your body be loose and have fun in the privacy of your own home. Those actually are stepping stones to speaking up for the other wants and needs you have in your relationship. So let's make this actionable. So give me your quickest, most to the point definition of unicorn space. So someone's listening. They're like, that sounds amazing, but what's Unicorn Space? By Eve Rodsky?

It is the answer to this question, which is gonna still sound a little bit esoteric, and then we'll break it down. It's the answer to the question, what makes you you? And how you share that with the world.

It is.

What are you curious about? What community do you have to share that with? And how do you complete something? The curiosity. Many women do have curiosities. Many women do have communities that they feel like they could share with. But a lot of times we get stuck in the completion phase because of perfection. I'm sure you have lots of things to say about that, but that completion phase of not living in unfulfilled dreams. But if you have a curiosity, if you have a community, a connection to somebody externally, and then you have some completion, that's all you really need. And it doesn't have to be hard. It could be literally making one pottery wheel and like, Color me Mine with your child. It could be learning your old piano song one more time for me, I start to dance again. At the end of the day, it requires you to believe that you have permission to be unavailable from your roles to carve out that time. And the last thing I will say, it is not soul cycle. Self care is important, but what we see in Eudaimonia, Eudaimonic wellbeing, which is what this is about, that's linked to mental health and longevity. It's not the personal pursuits, it's the sharing with the world. Christina Tosi, you know, of Milk Bar, I was watching her in a documentary and I was like, yes, she has it. Because she said the first thing that made her want to bake was not how good her cake was, it was what it felt like to share it with a neighbor.

You know, people give me all types of feedback on my Instagram or You know, now I run to people on the street, and you know, what feels best to me, this is totally true. Is when people say, you know, maybe I read something and like, here's what happened in my home, or here's what that felt. Felt like to me versus comments that are more like, oh, Dr. Becky, you're. You're amazing, or that's such a smart idea. And to watch us put things out there and then watch what that does, Watch. Watch impact, or watch someone else access something in them is just. It's the most amazing feeling in the world. And that. That really.

That.

That's definitely one of the things that drives me in my unicorn space. The other thing, and I think it relates to. To maybe what you're saying for so many women that the hardest part is the completion. Like, okay, this is good. I'm gonna put it out there.

Is the idea of, am I looking.

For someone to give me approval or good enoughness or am I in touch with or learning to be in touch with the feeling of, like, this lights me up. When I talk about parenting ideas, it lights me up. I don't even really notice how people really react. Like, it's a icing on the cake. If they're like, that was a great talk, but it's just icing on the cake. Like, I kind of know inside me, like, that felt great, or, ooh, that part needs tweaking. That didn't feel as great. And it makes me think about how often women are raised to gaze out first. What does everybody think? And we really have to build the muscle of gazing in. What do I think? Meaning, really, it's not really so much about thoughts, but what does this feel like to me? That, oh, I'm creating something. This is fun. This is creative. And I really feel like that feeling is maybe one of the things you're talking about. When you're in that feeling, you might be in that unicorn space that could be its own guide.

You said it lights you up.

Yes.

That's that. That's that girl. That's your girl again. You may not have known her earlier, or I don't know how you were raised, but for me, when I was that, that lighting up again is my connection to my past. It's my own transitional object. I wear a ring that reminds me of my grandmother, and she never sold a diamond ring that she took with her through the depression, And I wear it. It's my transitional object to her and the women behind me. But my transitional object back to myself, is exactly that feeling. It's recognizing that I remember what it felt like to be in a flow state and to say that, you know what? I'm gonna keep doing this. Even though I may not be as good of a dancer. I can't turn on my left foot. Cause I have a bunion, a bone spur, like a million calluses. But I signed up for dance class again. It was outdoors. Like I could follow the choreography. Like I was so proud of myself. And so it's that I may not be the same as I was at 17, but I feel that light.

A couple of questions, because I hear especially some women's questions in my head. I don't make money. And I feel like my partner would say to me, oh, you need time. Kind of to yourself, like what? Like, isn't that what you get? Isn't that what you get all day? Or isn't that what you get when the kids are in preschool? Right? Like these moments that I think can shut down. This desire to reclaim space. What are your thoughts on that?

That was a very big part of the resistance to my work fair play. It was this idea that I make my wife's life. Like, what does she have to complain about? What does she do all day? If you're so overwhelmed, just get help, right? All these messages that are actually really gaslighting because what they do is they perpetuate a stereotype that women's time is infinite like sand, and men's time is finite like diamonds. So what do I mean by that? Practically, what that means is that if we're a society that doesn't value women's time, we're going to do things like when women enter male profession, salaries will automatically come down. Which always happens throughout history. If women enter a male profession, salaries automatically go down. We will say things to women in our society, such things as breastfeeding is free, when literally it's 1800 hours of our time. It's an actual full time job. But I think the hardest part was what we hear about our time ourselves, right? The what did you do all day? You do all these unnecessary things. You could free up your time if you stopped doing unnecessary things. I make your life. I'm the one who puts a roof over our head. Then we start internalizing it and we could become complicit in our own depression. And I know this from the sociology and you can probably analyze this a lot from internally. But we start saying things to ourselves like, well, of course I should do it because my husband makes more money than me or my partner makes. More money than me. This happens in LGBTQIA relationships as well. Or you say things like, in the time it takes me to tell him her they what to do, I should do it myself. Or you start saying things, you rationalize yourself, well, I'm just a better multitasker. I'm wired differently for this task. Or you say, yeah, we're both colorectal surgeons, but I should just handle the school forms because my partner's better at doing one thing at a time and I can find the time. And so if you keep saying you can find the time, you can find the time, right? We have to recognize we're not Albert Einstein. We can't find time. We can't fuck with the space time continuum. We have limited time, 24 hours in a day, and the unpaid labor, what we often call chores and housework, but I call our humanity, Those are a full time job. Your partner does not make your life by putting a roof over your head. You make their lives by having a family. For why they would even put a roof over their head in the first place. It is just a different way to view and value women's time. If we start to protect and guard our time, then society starts changing. So people get scared of that message. But we can do that individually. And so, yes. So what I like to say is all those messages, you say them to yourselves, of course, yes, you will probably end up doing more unpaid labor in your home if your partner works outside the home. But you have to insist that you don't do it all, because that is more than a full time job. We know the time diaries. It is more than 24 hours in a day and you actually don't have it. And so what it ends up leading to is multitasking, stress, forgetfulness, not having any time for yourself, and then guilt and shame over your partner looking at you and saying, what is wrong with you? Like, why are you so stressed? And then on top of that, God forbid you decide you want to leave your relationship and that person leaves with their degree, their job, and then you're there, what, begging for alimony? The dynamics in our culture are really messed up. So what I'm here to say is you can start so small by just saying, you know what? My time is diamonds for me, Becky, in my own household, I had so much rage and resentment. I write about that in Fair Play over Seth. I was just raging and raging at him until I finally had that aha moment that, oh my God, when Seth has four hours after our kids go to bed to Work on his career, to work out, to watch some sports center. Whereas literally, literally I'm doing things in service of our household until my head hits the pillow after midnight. So much so that I would start banging around because I was doing things. And he's like, you're making too much noise at night. And so when I realized that, oh my God, this is an issue around time choice. I get 24 hours in a day just like Seth does. And I deserve equal time choice as much time choice over how I use my day as my husband has. That was a huge aha moment for me. So that's a long answer to say that the unlearning is why you're here.

That's exactly right. So I'm gonna ask you, for people listening, where do you tell people like the first couple places they can start? What are a couple things people can do to start, you know, feeling more in touch with themselves, lighting themselves up?

I think it depends on a lot of where your hurdles lie. So I think that it's important first to ask yourself that checklist. Like when you said earlier, Dr. Becky, you know, like what's is it, Are you pausing on the guilt and shame piece? Is that the one you're pausing on? Is it the permission to be unavailable from your roles? Is it a boundary issue?

Right.

So I would say the first thing I would ask is what's the hurdle? And all I can tell you are what the most common three were. For women at least I interviewed men as well and non binary individuals, but for women it was. So I'd ask you to say, do I feel most connected to the boundary issue of domestic encroachment? Meaning I sit down for my piano lesson and it's 2:40 and I'm like, ah, yes, grandma's picking up, but I might as well go pick up my kids, right? That's a domestic encroachment. That's a boundaries breach. Are you feeling that the guilt and shame, like we said earlier, those feelings are coming up from our past. So you're like your 20 year old self. Where that helped you, is now hurting you, or is it that you don't believe you have a permission to ask for what you need? I think I would look at that because then literally you just book it with someone else. You can book your dance time. It helps a lot for those women to book something with somebody else. Have accountability partner, a success partner. That helps. It goes from 65% to 95% completion if you have a success partner like that. So Becky, you and I are gonna write together in a cafe. I can't disappoint Becky by showing up. So then I get to transfer my guilt to somebody else. But it's still there. But at least it's for my. I know you're my accountability partner. If it's a guilt and shame issue. One quick thing that I started to do, and this came from Dr. Cheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, a friend of mine who years ago helped me reframe guilt by saying, I feel guilty. I didn't put Anna to bed. She just said, you know what you're gonna start saying? I made the choice not to put Anna to bed because I love that.

I just wanna, like, highlight that for everyone.

Right?

Ugh. I feel so guilty that I went out to dinner with my friends and my daughter ended up having such a hard night when my partner brought my daughter. That's the guilt interpretation. And really, there's such power.

It's like, oh, hi, guilt.

You're gonna be with me a while, so just write all the lists. You probably have a long list of things you feel guilty about. This is one. Okay, keep going. Other side is being a little more in touch with myself. I made the choice. I made the choice to go out dinner with my friends. I don't know about for you, Eve, but I love layering because I've taken that. I've heard that from you. And I love that I made the choice to go out to dinner with my friends. In almost always we can add, and I am allowed to make decisions that prioritize myself. Well, you and I have so many more conversations we need to have. So this is kind of one part of making many. Thank you so much for being here. Your work is so important. I've seen it help so many people. I know it's going to help so many more people. So thank you for sharing with all of us. What lights you up? I can tell you it has very much impacted me and my family. And I can't wait for the next time we get to speak.

Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like, valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jessie Baker and Eric Newsome at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Natt and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the good inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.