How To Stop Doing It All (Revisit)

0:00 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 your unicorn space about something all moms need to hear all moms here it is you do not need to do it all

0:31 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 a 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 re-share this special episode with you

1:02 the thing that's been keeping me up at night is the statistic that 70 of the one percent in this country right the uh people that make our policies and governments 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 uh the world still is especially for parents and caregivers um I'm seeing a huge disconnect between

1:33 what people want in terms of their workers and what workers uh are telling me they can give because they also need to be caregivers so I'd say that's 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

1:59 um I got to go to Davos which was actually really amazing right before the pandemic to talk about uh the fact that I had been doing research for 10 years which started with my own marriage into the fact that I did not have the career marriage combo I thought I was going to have right and um 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

2:21 home and so over 10 years as I started to research these issues around what is called the gender division of labor um definitely did not in my third grade trade science project or am I like what do you want to be in your grow-up Journal uh Becky didn't 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

2:45 and I just written fair play and I was trying to convince a room of Executives that flexibility that parenting out loud that's centering a care the caregiver the humanity in US is actually really important for the workplace 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 want to see you on zooms being

3:13 um or whatever it was back then you know 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

3:37 later we're all the BBC Dad we're all you know of course there's essential workers who can 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

4:03 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 I'm into the tens of thousands of interviews was just that 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

4:30 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 I can't take that extra

4:57 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 this 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 I think about all the time

5:24 because again the same way I didn't want to be a gender division of labor specialist I did not think I'd be writing or thinking about women's Collective identity um 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

5:47 2011 or 2012. and they all look like you right I mean they were smart not look like you physically but like they all they all were like you and that they were very powerful in their own rights um they were using their voices for the greater good in many cases there was an oscar-winning producer there and CEO of a non-profit and she's really really wonderful morning I remember we were all covered in like pink glitter and we were

6:14 sort of marching and we were about to have lunch in downtown L.A 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 we started getting inundated with phone

6:42 calls and texts from our partners all of us except for one as married to a man um with things like I'm done right I'm done it was noon already like when are you coming home where's Hudson's soccer bag uh 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 um what

7:07 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 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

7:29 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 the 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

7:53 of mess up systems like we started the podcast with but it was asking these women okay if you're not 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

8:19 Becky because it you know we think we're fighting over Hudson's soccer bag but ultimately this is about years and years and lifetimes of society building itself our foundation of our house of the House of our society has been built on the unpaid labor of women and when we uh Outsource quote unquote that was always a very sort of white feminist thing to say well I can if you Outsource but then it's the undervalued labor of women of

8:48 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 a Kate's husband for asking if her kids need to eat lunch really what was happening was it to me it was that my eyes were opening to the fact that we

9:12 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 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

9:39 like what happens to us as women when we get a text about our partners discomfort and 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

10:11 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

10:40 your partner's gonna say him for now because 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

11:09 many transfers of emotion and 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

11:36 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 you why are you so emotional about this little thing right and really it's the last number of things or like it's the last it's the hundreds of years of

12:05 this [ __ ] right that's been inherited absolutely and I'll add so that's the which is cauldron so we'll call that sort of the um The Cauldron that you just uh 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 um when we're complicit in our own

12:34 oppression and when we're also what we can do about it but the last thing I'll add to that which is cauldron is just we have an identity before that we can remember so to me the the witch is cauldron after all that rage and resentment is also remembering that at one point in my life there was a spark in fire in me that was about me um I and I talked I was on this um amazing uh author talk with a uh author

12:58 named Rachel Yoder who wrote a book called night [ __ ] it's a fictionalized book of a woman who turns into a dog because of her uh anger and resentment over her choices of becoming what I call an accidental traditionalist but um 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 [ __ ] again you have to remember the

13:23 spark inside of you like she was saying when she was 17 she could do anything a hundred percent 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

13:53 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

14:19 a gaslighting term I mean it's a part that has access to self which is like not that's 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 oh 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

14:48 that you go girl like go do that 100 but if that feels like yeah that might be a little too far why 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 to refund on this item there's

15:12 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 decisionable so give me your quickest most to the point definition of unicorn

15:42 space so someone's listening to like that sounds amazing but what's unicorn Space by evrodsky it is the answer to this question which is going to 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

16:06 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

16:32 be hard it could be literally making one pottery wheel I like Color Me Mine with your child um 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

16:56 see in unimania unemonic well-being 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 tocino 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

17:20 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 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

17:46 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 maybe what you're saying for so many women that the hardest part is the completion like okay this is this is gonna put it out there is the idea of

18:12 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 I don't even really notice how people 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 I kind of know inside me like

18:39 that felt greater oh 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 what do I think meaning really that'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

19:06 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 you 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 a

19:31 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 as 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 going to keep doing this even though I may not be as good of a dancer

19:53 I can't turn on my left foot because I have a bunion a bone spur like a million calluses but I I signed up for a dance class again it was Outdoors like I could follow the choreography like I was so proud of myself and so it said I may not be the same as I was at 17 but I feel that light a couple questions because I hear especially some women's questions in my head I don't make money and I feel

20:15 like my partner would say to me oh you need time kind of to yourself like what like isn't that what you get is 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 um it was this idea that I make my

20:43 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

21:11 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 times 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 um you do all these unnecessary things

21:41 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 um then we start internalizing it and we become complicit in our own oppression 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

22:04 money than me this happens in lgbtqia relationships as well or you say things like uh in the time it takes me to tell him her were they what to do I should do it myself or you start saying things you rationalized 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 is better at doing one thing at

22:26 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 right we can't find time we can't [ __ ] 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 yes your partner does not make your life by

22:49 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 we people get scared of that message but we can do that individually um and so yeah so what I like to say is all those messages if you say them to

23:10 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 it ends up leading to is multitasking stress forgetfulness not having any time for yourself and then guilt and shame

23:36 over your partner look 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

23:58 Becky and 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 uh 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

24:27 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 tight Choice as much time Choice over how I use my days my husband has that was a huge aha moment for me so that's a long answer to say that the

24:50 unlearning is why you're here that's exactly right so I'm going to ask you for people listening where do you tell people like the first couple places they can start what what are a couple things people can do to start you know feeling more in touch with themselves lighting themselves up um 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

25:14 Beck you know like what's is it are you pausing on um 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 that um so I would say the first thing I would ask is what's the hurdle then and all I can tell you are what the most common three were for for women at least I interviewed men as well and non-binary

25:38 individuals but for women it was so I'd ask you to say you know is do I feel like most connected to the boundary issue of domestic encroachment meaning like 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

26:03 those feelings are coming up from our past so you're like set you know your 20 year old self where that helped you is now hurting you or is it that you um don't believe you have a permission to ask for what you need I think I was 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

26:26 with somebody else to 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 going to write together in a cafe I can't disappoint Becky by showing up so then I get to transfer my guilt to somebody else you know but at least it's still there but at least it's for my I know you're my accountability partner if it's

26:47 a guilt and shame issue one quick thing that I started to do and this came from Dr Cheryl gonzaleziegler A friend of mine who years ago helped me reframe guilt by saying I feel guilty I didn't put out a bed she just said you know what you're going to start saying I made the choice not to put Adam to bed because I love that I just want to like highlight that for everyone right uh I feel so guilty that I went out to dinner

27:12 with my friends and my daughter ended up having such a hard night when my partner but my daughter that's the guilt interpretation and and really there's such power is like oh hi Gail you're going to be with me a while so I can just write all the lists you have probably 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

27:31 made the choice to go out dinner with my friends I don't know about for UE 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 and 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 many thank you so

27:55 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 thank you thanks for listening to share a story or ask me a question go to goodinsside.com

28:21 podcast you could also write me at podcast good inside.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

28:52 with Dr Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at magnificent noise our production staff includes Sabrina farhi julianat and Kristen Muller I would also like to thank Erica belski 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

29:23 even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside I remain good inside