I think part of the issue is that Sandberg was ALREADY at the executive level in her career when she had her children. She had already worked her way to the top without the burden of children and once she had children, had plenty of money to pay for the best childcare money can buy. Her mother is a college professor and her father is a doctor, she went to Harvard for both undergrad and grad school. Of course she's a very talanted and accomplished and driven woman, but she also started on third base. Unless you have those same advantages, what she is saying is rather unrealistic for the "normal" folks that are trying to work their way up from the mailroom. Yes, the time you take away from your kids to keep working might eventually be returned as higher income, but you can't pay a nanny in your future salary. I doubt she was the one getting a call in the middle of the afternoon to come and pick up her kid because they were vomiting in third period.
I LOVE this bookclub series! The three of you have such informed, well-prepared discussions. I wish book-clubs were like this in real life! You are a group of professionals, and we appreciate you!
They made such a good point about picking the right partner as being the most critical decision for a woman who wants to have a successful career and children.
Picking the right partner I think is the most important choice someone, especially a woman, can make full stop. I’m married but I truly believe that it’s better to be single than with the wrong person, and more people need to find someone whose vision for a shared life lines up with yours and not ignore when you have different goals.
THIS!!!!! A single income household, no matter who works outside the home and who works inside the home, is obtainable by only the top income/inheritance levels! There is NO choice involved in most women's working motherhood. What a joke in this day and age. And it's true! Everyone has to work but the kids increasingly feel like the luxury "choice" (if it was a choice in the first place)
As a working mother there’s a lot of very true takeaways. I have to add when this book came out it was eye opening. NO ONE. I repeat NO ONE talked about this. Challenges working women faced. It was revolutionary.
There are women who talk about these issues, and have done so for a long time, but people like to denigrate and ignore feminists. I was radicalized by the 1971 essay, "I Want a Wife," by Judy Brady Syfers, when I read it as a teenager. They've been talking forever about how "having it all" at the same time is impossible without a supportive team/community. Whether paid or community (family & friends), the help is typically poorer women's labor. Melissa Harris Perry pushed back hard on Gloria Steinem on tv and made many points that relate to the lived experiences of ordinary women, not corporate executives.
@@ifetayodavidson-cade5613 every type of career means you need other people to do other stuff for you. If you are a top-notch doctor, you won't farm your own food and build your own house. It is just division of labour. Men can do childcare and housework as well. This envy-driven debate, putting women against each other is not helping feminism.
The WSJ covered the childcare piece - the logic is that you lose years of pay increases and lose retirement contributions. It's not that daycare costs are only a few years, because while that's true, after school costs abd camps continue. It's the lost years that really impact your overall earnings
This is why you shouldn't be a stay at home without talking through a pre- or post-nup. Unsurprisingly after a divorce people will fight against providing permanent maintenance. Because neither party usually considers that if you take 5 years off in your 30s you are not giving up 5 years of your $50k (or whatever) salary. You are sacrificing your LAST 5, highest-earning years at $100k or whatever. There simply isn't enough money to go around.
I agree with Chelsea's take on working women having children. What gets left out of the children conversation is that children aren't little forever. The children discussion always centers around having young children. What about having teenagers? What about having adult children? Having young children is intense, but having older children is a different level of intensity. I find women who don't have children often fall into this way of thinking. I'm glad one of the panelist addresses this.
Older children may not want to hang out with you, but still have a lot of care requirements--heavy school work loads, test prep for college, tutoring, transportation to extracurriculars, bigger problems like drugs, sex and friendships to navigate, emotional challenges, and on and on. It's not like once they're 8 you just keep them under your roof for legal reasons. They're still children and still developing and still need a parent figure to guide them.
Many childfree people understand that not everyone has an "easy" child, and understand that parenting older children is difficulty in a way different from that of small children. Some would be willing to skip the younger years if they could, while others are 100% uninterested.
@@leahmanderson298 I was a “self sufficient” kid since 7, who came home from school alone, heated food and did homework before parents came from work. To be honest, it was not something to glorify, preteens and teenagers need active and present parents almost as much as younger ones too. I can say that from my and many of my friends’ experience.
What is the endgame of this high flying career woman? Adult children AND younger coworkers will not respect you to the level you want them too. At least adult children will come around to the fact that you have something to offer. All this career as salvation stuff is never preached by 70 year old women that have seen the entire arc. It always an MLM scam sold by those in the middle of the story arc.
So many successful, senior women with children I met over the last few years have husbands that stay at home. This is interesting to consider and rarely seems to come up in these types of conversations.
This is my husband and I's arrangement and it's great. He had a dead-end job that he hated and he wanted to be a stay at home dad, and I wanted to build a career in my field but wasn't interested in being a stay at home parent. He thinks men that feel emasculated about being out-earned by their female partners are crazy because our arrangement meets both of our desires well. I will probably always get the side-eye from others for not being "there for my kid" (ie: a PTA mom), and he will probably always get a similar side-eye for not "providing for the family," but fuck 'em, we figured out what works best for our family AND my daughter gets to see that dads who keep a clean house and put dinner on the table for their working wives are perfectly normal.
While I agree with a lot discussed here and how this does not apply to many women nowadays, this was published in 2013 and reflected her journey years prior. My point is that the reality for women in the corporate world/science/ and many other areas has changed drastically and continues to do so at a breakneck pace. I think this book told women that having different aspirations and goals was also ok, which wouldn’t mean being a bad mother. I disagree she didn’t want to be a mother. But maybe there are various ways to parent, which should be okay, too. Of course, we can’t generalize this book to most of our realities; a tiny portion of women could relate to her. However, I can say that when I read it ~10 years ago, when I was making many career decisions, in my case, as a woman in medicine, this book was a positive influence. What I took out of it was that it was also valid to be entirely in love with your demanding career, and that did not negate the fact that you could also be a good mother/partner, etc. I agree with you that NOW, we see that the reality for women who chose their careers is far from easy (I'm not saying stay-at-home moms have it easy either). We probably romanticized this idea, and we are burning out badly. I agree we need to continue the discussion of sharing the load with partners, leaning more on our communities, and changing stereotypes and expectations. I am grateful for channels like yours that encourage these conversations. P.S.: English is not my first language. I hope I am understandably expressing my thoughts 😅
An interesting discussion, but props to the speaker who adds a little context and perspective to the conversation. When she asks directly about the advice about selecting the kind of husband that supports and shares the heavy lifting at home and says, 'what would your alternative to that advice be?', and later notes the book was for a small subset of women in specific situations and not for all working women, I think we have a little balance brought in. Does anyone (can anyone?) write something that is going 'fit' all people/women or contexts? It's fine to point out where it fails some populations without understanding, in its time, it may have also provided clarity and conversation for those it did fit. JMHO.
@@deedsh6280 also, she can only share about the life she herself lived. It might not fit everyone, but it was her story, she was getting what she wanted in relation to her peers and she told want she did to get there. Of course it is not for everyone, but that is like saying "Chelseas videos don't help women in Afghanistan"
Agree so much. I feel that people without kids do not get that you can want and love your kids, but still want a career, hobbies, time to yourself etc.
@@mariailyukhina405 I feel like this kind of misses the point of what they were saying. They’re saying if you want to work LIKE Sandberg, there’s a serious question of why you want to be a mom when you basically have to outsource all the raising of your child to make it work. They aren’t saying working moms shouldn’t exist at all, just questioning whether or not women like Sandberg do it out of a genuine desire to be a parent or some other social conditioning
@@christinab5778yes, but to your point, I think there are many ways of parenting and some women want both, the career and a family. I think this should start a different conversation and would love to see a working mother (i.e in the corporate world/an entrepreneur/academic medicine,etc) discuss the challenges and how to overcome them. This was a book that at the time did encourage woman to pursue their careers. I think what we are seeing now is a big number of women that did it without the adequate partner/leadership/community support and we should talk more about it.
I suspect that divorce is higher when women out earn their husbands, because she doesn’t have to settle for someone who sucks just to keep a roof over her head. It’s a lot easier to leave a shitty person when you aren’t risking your livelihood to do so.
I think it would be a really interesting contrast to see you read The Barefoot Investor. I don't know if that's feasible since it's an Australian book and not all the terminology will translate directly to the US but (in my opinion) it provides much more grounded, accessible advice on managing your finances. When you said most of the financial books targeted toward men hardly mentioned their kids, it made me immediately think of how The Barefoot Investor constantly talks about his kids. And he even includes suggestions on how to get your partner on board when they're not quite on the same page as you financially.
Wanted to leave a comment on this. As one of the women exactly in the target audience, what I appreciate is the sub-text of “don’t be afraid to act how men act.” With all the caveats that you have correctly pointed out over the two episodes, I’m honestly glad that I read a book in college that told me to 1) be unapologetic about who you are and what you want 2) don’t belittle yourself or your contribution because you are or were or intend to be pregnant / on mat leave / taking pumping breaks 3) advocate for yourself because no one else will This book was a breath of fresh air during the early 2010s when a ton of other advice for women focused on how to dress well, how to be well-liked, and how to gracefully put up with sexual harassment so your powerful bosses don’t retaliate against you. It gave me a ton of confidence, and to be honest, over 10 years later I still use many of the “mantras” and examples in the book as a sort of mental armour. I also put serious effort into my partner choice after reading the book and realizing - as you said - that my future husband will have a big impact on how my life unfolds. Maybe not the most progressive advice, but she’s right to give it. So to quote one of you - I think it does what it intends to do very well, within the scope that it sets out.
As a man who is a parent and also have a flourishing career, i can tell you that i don't "have it all". My career progression has come at the expense of being less present as a Dad, and my child's mom has been the primary parent. Yes, the financial benefits of my career benefits us all, but imo does not make me an "equal" parent. So let's stop idolizing people like me and falsely qualifying us as "having it all" because we don't. The compromise we make is just normalized by society, and there's an emotional toll to this compromise. It kills me not being as present in my kids life as I will love, but we need that money. The only men that think this is having it all, are those who've normalized an inferior direct interpersonal involvement with their kids.
I hate the "Why do women have children even though they want to work/have a career?". Kids are for life, they are not just a year of babycare. Nobody says this to men with a career.
Having children is overly glorified, the downsides are not talked enough. Kids are for life, both positive and negative, they can be a burden for life, headaches for life. I see the point of cautioning women not to get doped to have kids when they are not ready.
@@hannahhensley8497it actually someone being honest about how they feel about being told about having children 🤔 although the choice of vocabulary may not have been what I would have use, what she is saying is what a lot women and men are feeling when it comes to having children. Children are precious and can be a handful at the same time it just goes with being a parent.😊 Not enough people are counseled or given advice about parenting before having children. And when women in particular are having children and wanting a career it becomes even less because the role of mother most of the time comes first and foremost. 🤗
But there is truth to it though. It should apply to both parents, not neither. Having distant workaholic parents of either gender can be seriously damaging for a child. Some people simply don't actually want children and they just didn't realize that was an option. If both parents can choose to work reasonable hours and have work life balance bc they are financially stable and established in their career and they opt to still never be home, spending all their waking hours working, the question is, why did they even want kids. I wouldn't want to raise them with someone who wants kids like a child wants a dog. Similarly, I'd probably rather be outside than changing diapers, but that's why, if that continues, I won't have them bc we don't need to bring up another neglected child into the world. Just because they are rich and their kids have all the schools and nannies doesn't mean they can't resent their parents preferring emailing over talking to them.
Is it just me, or does everything feel insane? When the girl says you need to do the thing so you can get the man so you can be the mom at the soccer game, or whatever she said, i feel like that is all of society. I feel like my life is like that. And i just want everything to stop and i want to do the things that simply bring joy, but even that is couched in this idea that you can't bring yourself fully to your job without getting enough rest.
This comes up often but is rarely discussed deeper. If the system is rigged, but the mentality of finessing the rigged system to your benefit is wrong, what do we expect people to actually do? I can’t control the world or others around me. I can only control my own actions. Practical, actionable advice is always going have a greater, more direct and immediate impact on someone’s live than vague musings of revolution.
Yeah I was wondering that too, but the implied assumption seems to be "be an activist and start a revolution". I understand why they're saying finessing the system isn't really good (it doesn't get rid of the exploitation, racism, misogyny, and etc), but many people aren't looking to start a revolution or waiting for things to get better. I think that's a big blindspot as to why this book was popular. It wasn't about being "relatable" , it was about giving women a way to control their destiny in the corrupt system without having to change the system.
Very rich discussion, but also depressing (at the subject matter, not you guys of course). ALL THIS MENTAL ENERGY that women have to deal with "should I have kids? should I be a stay at home mom? should i work at the same time? when should i go back to work? what will this do to my career/earning potential in the longterm?" And do men ever think about these things? NO. Like its not even a thought, its just a given they will always work, at most take a couple of weeks of when the baby is born. The men that think about it, its because the woman brings it up. I agree with the sentiment that as feminists, we shouldnt aspire to be like men to be liberated (aka work 24/7 and not see our kids). But my god, I also cant help but really resent men for pulling this behaviour over and over with zero criticism. A guy is still a stand up dude if he works his ass off and pays the bills for his family to live comfortably, even if he's absent. Even though this isnt great behaviour for any parent (regardless of gender), I cant help but feel "so what if a woman wants to work her ass off and not see her kids? why cant she prioritise herself and career? Why do we treat her like a demon if she admits to wanting to spend less time with the kids"
I feel like a lot of these ideas about how you’ll just somehow have childcare are also so unrealistic. You might have childcare, but it might suck. Your child might be miserable in it for any number of reasons - maybe the teacher isn’t empathetic enough, or they hate the food provided, or it turns out they’re neurodivergent and everyone is grappling with how to understand and support their needs, etc. Maybe grandparents were your childcare, but then Grandma has to move to another state to look after her sister after a tragic accident. Like, you literally don’t know how all these factors will come into play - most importantly the fact that your child will be an individual with their own wants and needs and you will have to take that into account, one way or another. I never planned to be a stay at home mom, and I don’t intend to be forever, but pandemic/layoffs kind of made that decision for me. Everything is always more complicated than you anticipate. And I also think that most new parents have no idea how quickly labour can become unevenly divided when one parent is on leave and the other isn’t.
Children are happier when their moms are not following them around all the time, kids should play among themselves. Life of childless women are much easier even with all the social pressure and judgement.
I appreciated this and the prior discussion, and, there were points where I wish the unconscious bias in the conversation was called out and fixed. Ex. when discussing "if you're a woman, why would you want to have kids if you're working 80-90 hours" -- would love to have heard that reframed as "if you're anyone, why would you want to (...)" because, as was pointed out later, BOTH parents should have to have that thought, not just the woman. I also really did not like the non-reclaimed usage of the b-word to refer to a woman. If you want to refer to yourself as a bad b-, go for it. But why are you putting down another woman with that?
If parents of adult children want to have grandchildren, we have to make that possible for our kids. We're the ones who own our own homes and are thinking about retiring anyway - we can support our kids' finances and also be the parent at home with the grandkids and housework while the young adults are out developing their careers. We just have to stay really clear about levels of authority and who's really in charge, because that's not us. It's absolutely critical to our whole relationship with our adult children to remember that we raised them to be adults, and now they are adults.
i guess at some point it's still like what's the point of having kids? i had mine, moved to part time work and anticipate moving to more work when they are both in school. i value having time with them. also if you have 2-3 kids it can be A LONG TIME while you need child care, so even if over decades you're going to be making more money it's setting you up for an extra crueling 10-15 years. for a little more money that's not necessarily worth it for everyone. and i need to add that if this book is really for such a small slice of women, it is really harmful to put this book out there in the culture as a work that can help women as a whole.
But it is still super sexist to only ask of mothers "why have kids then?" While you never hear that directed at men. If they have a husband as primary parent at home, why shouldn't they want kids and a career?
I mean I apply that to both - why do these families have so many kids when all.either parent wants to do is work? And in a lot of the couples I know it is the woman who is pushing either having kids or having a second, third etc. Not always, but in the families I know.
My partner and I work in fulfilling active careers and are parents to young children. We have a nanny. My husband and I definitely put in the work so we can both balance our careers but nanny’s don’t raise kids. You are still the primary person, the person in the middle of the night and weekends. Your nanny still goes home and turns off where you as a parent turn off your work and focus on childrearing. I do think children are humbling and we’re certainly less ambitious, but work is intellectually stimulating in a way that parenting just does not match. Some people want and can have both.
Thanks for featuring Katherine Ann McGrath in one of your videos. I took your advice and contacted her for investment and budgeting opportunities. The results have been incredible. Started with slightly less than $40k, and now I’ve paid off my $529k loan in 6 months. Now totally debt free with 2 paid off rentals, having no debt for the last 12 months. Thank you Katherine Ann McGrath!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have as well come across Katherine Ann McGrath, she’s an exceptional person and great in her field of financial services.
Part about the husband is so true. It's 11pm. I'm (husband) cleaning the kitchen so it doesn't stink like cauliflower in the AM. I make 2.5x what she does and work from home. She's growing her new career after being home with the kids.
I’m not sure it’s fair to ask why Sandlerg and her husband wanted kids. People have kids for their own reasons. I do think it’s fair to ask why they lionize corporate cultures that are hostile to families.
My high school guidance counselor encouraged all the girls to get careers that she felt were better suited for “following your husband and raising kids” like nurse or teacher. I think that is an example of leaning out early unless you happened to want that career anyway.
It will be fascinating to hear from you when Sandberg’s kids wrote a book about her approach? I think they might be resentful of being another employee being watched by a middle manager haha.
I understand not wanting to go home and do story time with a child… which is why I don’t have any. I don’t understand why men want kids if they don’t actually want to be a parent to them.
Can anyone address that the Trad Wife thing looks like a fantasy to this working mom? Or the trad husband for that matter? I would love to have "just" one job (aka "just" running the house and raising the kids, or just going to work (frankly a holiday because you can pee alone) and coming home without knowing you have 6-8 more hours of work to fit into 4 hours when you are supposed to be "playing" with your kids.....It honestly seems like a lifestyle that can only be afforded by the very rich if you want to live like an IG family, or is the way less glamorous default for working class/poor families...
Great point that it is just a fiven and assumed that the man will prioritize his careers. Women with kids have to choose between being the stressed out working mom + default parent handling things at home and for the kids or the financially dependent partner fully expected to do 100% of the home tasks without reasonably expecting a break. No where is it ever assumed the man could do more at home yes perhaps at the expense of his careers. Chelsea is right that so many men dont even want to spend time with their kids, they are just a step on the path of life and status symbol. How many retired men are bored and go back to work. I doubt they do any housework.
I will never understand society. I want no part of having children (I’ve been a caregiver my entire life already) I also want no part of hustle/girl boss/ climb the ladder/ slay that job hunny culture. Like, if your worth is based on any title:mom, wife, boss, insert whatever title people give clout to like lawyer or doctor I feel sorry for you. Life is not in our control. Death, job loss, layoffs-none of these out in our control and any one of those titles can be ripped away without notice at any given time.
17:40 not just what Facebook practices, even when SS was at FB, there were reports were women and people of color being underpaid, apparently she was embarrassed when these reports were public. Because what you preach to others is not how you actually work
Weirdly enough the short guy/tall girl combo seemed much more prevalent in France. That’s from my own anecdotal experience but I’d be curious to see if there’s a difference in that stat among all western countries.
My best friend likes to laugh about how she started "encouraging" her then boyfriend to pee sitting down. They are now married and now am the one telling her to do more around the house lol. Like it has to be equal and she's not pulling her weight around the house. She's lucky he was always the clean one in the relationship and has never expressed to her that she needs to do more. She does earn more and he is the unicorn man that cannot wait to stay home with the baby. When you find a guy like that, at least wipe the counter 😂
There could be a narrow middle ground. It is having children before you are done training for a high powered professional job like law school or getting a PhD. Works best if education is free though but then your children will be in middle school by the time you're ready to compete. You will need a supportive spouse or familial support failing that. Any advice ignoring systemic issues is disingenuous.
The training for a high powered job is also, often, high powered and requires a lot out of the student/trainee. I’ve had peers who became parents during graduate school and one of the parents (always the woman 🙄) has to drop out because raising a child is expensive and grad school pay is at or below minimum wage in most cases. (Edited for grammar)
Love this series! My only suggestion is to stop using the word “like” so much. Your points are important and valid and hearing “ like” over and over turns the conversation into a giant simile. Thank you and keep up the great conversations not many people are having!
A couple of observations. It’s interesting that the main issue raised about these books when it comes to children is the feminist issue that women can only live Cheryl’s career if they have good childcare or the lament that they are strapped with children. There’s little discussion about the American values around raising children and how our values affect children’s lives. Second, where did these two women get their accents? Can’t they just speak normally without having to sound like snobby upper east siders or something. They are intelligent but I couldn’t follow them. They are too put on.
Making money is an action, keeping money is a behaviour, growing money is knowledge. To everyone who sees this comment, keep pushing in life and never give up. Can't wait to see you successful one day and may God bless you!!!
Let's be honest, these women aren't that great with their kids, either. So it's a culture of people who are don't like kids, having kids and making money for other people to raise them.
What does this have to do with a woman’s feelings in the moment when she’s riding in the ambulance with her husband? She was writing about her feelings of frustration with obstacles in her way when driving to the hospital, not sharing a treatise about the supremacy of driving. Like what even is this comment?
No suprise but also no discussion of collective solutions to make life easier for women like nationalized health care like they have in much of Scandinavia.
I wonder if they rewatch this & cringe at how much they use that bad word. For intelligent professional women, saying 'like' every other word decreases that intelligence by several rungs....
I think part of the issue is that Sandberg was ALREADY at the executive level in her career when she had her children. She had already worked her way to the top without the burden of children and once she had children, had plenty of money to pay for the best childcare money can buy. Her mother is a college professor and her father is a doctor, she went to Harvard for both undergrad and grad school. Of course she's a very talanted and accomplished and driven woman, but she also started on third base. Unless you have those same advantages, what she is saying is rather unrealistic for the "normal" folks that are trying to work their way up from the mailroom. Yes, the time you take away from your kids to keep working might eventually be returned as higher income, but you can't pay a nanny in your future salary. I doubt she was the one getting a call in the middle of the afternoon to come and pick up her kid because they were vomiting in third period.
Exactly. She was so out of touch. Her book made me physically ill.
I LOVE this bookclub series! The three of you have such informed, well-prepared discussions. I wish book-clubs were like this in real life! You are a group of professionals, and we appreciate you!
They made such a good point about picking the right partner as being the most critical decision for a woman who wants to have a successful career and children.
Picking the right partner I think is the most important choice someone, especially a woman, can make full stop.
I’m married but I truly believe that it’s better to be single than with the wrong person, and more people need to find someone whose vision for a shared life lines up with yours and not ignore when you have different goals.
And that 'right partner' probably isn't a man.
So over the idea of people “wanting careers”.
People NEED to make money.
But you don't need kids or a child husband...
A career and a job aren’t the same. Almost everyone has a job, I wouldn’t say almost everyone had a career.
THIS!!!!! A single income household, no matter who works outside the home and who works inside the home, is obtainable by only the top income/inheritance levels! There is NO choice involved in most women's working motherhood. What a joke in this day and age. And it's true! Everyone has to work but the kids increasingly feel like the luxury "choice" (if it was a choice in the first place)
Exactly. Here they obviously mean a big career like Sandberg has.
As a working mother there’s a lot of very true takeaways. I have to add when this book came out it was eye opening. NO ONE. I repeat NO ONE talked about this. Challenges working women faced. It was revolutionary.
There are women who talk about these issues, and have done so for a long time, but people like to denigrate and ignore feminists. I was radicalized by the 1971 essay, "I Want a Wife," by Judy Brady Syfers, when I read it as a teenager. They've been talking forever about how "having it all" at the same time is impossible without a supportive team/community. Whether paid or community (family & friends), the help is typically poorer women's labor. Melissa Harris Perry pushed back hard on Gloria Steinem on tv and made many points that relate to the lived experiences of ordinary women, not corporate executives.
@@ifetayodavidson-cade5613 every type of career means you need other people to do other stuff for you. If you are a top-notch doctor, you won't farm your own food and build your own house. It is just division of labour. Men can do childcare and housework as well. This envy-driven debate, putting women against each other is not helping feminism.
I agree - they don’t get that while imperfect this was the only business book at the time that spent anytime at all discussing being a working mom.
The WSJ covered the childcare piece - the logic is that you lose years of pay increases and lose retirement contributions. It's not that daycare costs are only a few years, because while that's true, after school costs abd camps continue. It's the lost years that really impact your overall earnings
This is why you shouldn't be a stay at home without talking through a pre- or post-nup. Unsurprisingly after a divorce people will fight against providing permanent maintenance.
Because neither party usually considers that if you take 5 years off in your 30s you are not giving up 5 years of your $50k (or whatever) salary. You are sacrificing your LAST 5, highest-earning years at $100k or whatever. There simply isn't enough money to go around.
I agree with Chelsea's take on working women having children. What gets left out of the children conversation is that children aren't little forever. The children discussion always centers around having young children. What about having teenagers? What about having adult children? Having young children is intense, but having older children is a different level of intensity. I find women who don't have children often fall into this way of thinking. I'm glad one of the panelist addresses this.
Older children may not want to hang out with you, but still have a lot of care requirements--heavy school work loads, test prep for college, tutoring, transportation to extracurriculars, bigger problems like drugs, sex and friendships to navigate, emotional challenges, and on and on. It's not like once they're 8 you just keep them under your roof for legal reasons. They're still children and still developing and still need a parent figure to guide them.
Many childfree people understand that not everyone has an "easy" child, and understand that parenting older children is difficulty in a way different from that of small children. Some would be willing to skip the younger years if they could, while others are 100% uninterested.
@@leahmanderson298 I was a “self sufficient” kid since 7, who came home from school alone, heated food and did homework before parents came from work. To be honest, it was not something to glorify, preteens and teenagers need active and present parents almost as much as younger ones too. I can say that from my and many of my friends’ experience.
right because I wanted to say that neglecting your teenager may have even worse consequences than ignoring your baby.
What is the endgame of this high flying career woman?
Adult children AND younger coworkers will not respect you to the level you want them too. At least adult children will come around to the fact that you have something to offer.
All this career as salvation stuff is never preached by 70 year old women that have seen the entire arc. It always an MLM scam sold by those in the middle of the story arc.
So many successful, senior women with children I met over the last few years have husbands that stay at home. This is interesting to consider and rarely seems to come up in these types of conversations.
This is my husband and I's arrangement and it's great. He had a dead-end job that he hated and he wanted to be a stay at home dad, and I wanted to build a career in my field but wasn't interested in being a stay at home parent. He thinks men that feel emasculated about being out-earned by their female partners are crazy because our arrangement meets both of our desires well.
I will probably always get the side-eye from others for not being "there for my kid" (ie: a PTA mom), and he will probably always get a similar side-eye for not "providing for the family," but fuck 'em, we figured out what works best for our family AND my daughter gets to see that dads who keep a clean house and put dinner on the table for their working wives are perfectly normal.
While I agree with a lot discussed here and how this does not apply to many women nowadays, this was published in 2013 and reflected her journey years prior. My point is that the reality for women in the corporate world/science/ and many other areas has changed drastically and continues to do so at a breakneck pace. I think this book told women that having different aspirations and goals was also ok, which wouldn’t mean being a bad mother. I disagree she didn’t want to be a mother. But maybe there are various ways to parent, which should be okay, too. Of course, we can’t generalize this book to most of our realities; a tiny portion of women could relate to her. However, I can say that when I read it ~10 years ago, when I was making many career decisions, in my case, as a woman in medicine, this book was a positive influence. What I took out of it was that it was also valid to be entirely in love with your demanding career, and that did not negate the fact that you could also be a good mother/partner, etc.
I agree with you that NOW, we see that the reality for women who chose their careers is far from easy (I'm not saying stay-at-home moms have it easy either). We probably romanticized this idea, and we are burning out badly. I agree we need to continue the discussion of sharing the load with partners, leaning more on our communities, and changing stereotypes and expectations. I am grateful for channels like yours that encourage these conversations.
P.S.: English is not my first language. I hope I am understandably expressing my thoughts 😅
An interesting discussion, but props to the speaker who adds a little context and perspective to the conversation. When she asks directly about the advice about selecting the kind of husband that supports and shares the heavy lifting at home and says, 'what would your alternative to that advice be?', and later notes the book was for a small subset of women in specific situations and not for all working women, I think we have a little balance brought in. Does anyone (can anyone?) write something that is going 'fit' all people/women or contexts? It's fine to point out where it fails some populations without understanding, in its time, it may have also provided clarity and conversation for those it did fit. JMHO.
@@deedsh6280 also, she can only share about the life she herself lived. It might not fit everyone, but it was her story, she was getting what she wanted in relation to her peers and she told want she did to get there.
Of course it is not for everyone, but that is like saying "Chelseas videos don't help women in Afghanistan"
If the book was heavily marketed this way, only to the audience it applies to, that would drastically reduce sales.
It would be helpful to have this conversation with an actual working mother present.
She's too busy 😂
Agree so much. I feel that people without kids do not get that you can want and love your kids, but still want a career, hobbies, time to yourself etc.
@@mariailyukhina405 I feel like this kind of misses the point of what they were saying. They’re saying if you want to work LIKE Sandberg, there’s a serious question of why you want to be a mom when you basically have to outsource all the raising of your child to make it work. They aren’t saying working moms shouldn’t exist at all, just questioning whether or not women like Sandberg do it out of a genuine desire to be a parent or some other social conditioning
@@christinab5778yes, but to your point, I think there are many ways of parenting and some women want both, the career and a family. I think this should start a different conversation and would love to see a working mother (i.e in the corporate world/an entrepreneur/academic medicine,etc) discuss the challenges and how to overcome them.
This was a book that at the time did encourage woman to pursue their careers. I think what we are seeing now is a big number of women that did it without the adequate partner/leadership/community support and we should talk more about it.
I worked for a large corporation and the chokehold this book had in my workplace was unparalleled.
I suspect that divorce is higher when women out earn their husbands, because she doesn’t have to settle for someone who sucks just to keep a roof over her head. It’s a lot easier to leave a shitty person when you aren’t risking your livelihood to do so.
And frankly men aren’t happy when they don’t feel like I can hold their wives hostage with money
Except a lot of those divorces are initiated by the husband.
I think it would be a really interesting contrast to see you read The Barefoot Investor. I don't know if that's feasible since it's an Australian book and not all the terminology will translate directly to the US but (in my opinion) it provides much more grounded, accessible advice on managing your finances.
When you said most of the financial books targeted toward men hardly mentioned their kids, it made me immediately think of how The Barefoot Investor constantly talks about his kids. And he even includes suggestions on how to get your partner on board when they're not quite on the same page as you financially.
Wanted to leave a comment on this.
As one of the women exactly in the target audience, what I appreciate is the sub-text of “don’t be afraid to act how men act.” With all the caveats that you have correctly pointed out over the two episodes, I’m honestly glad that I read a book in college that told me to
1) be unapologetic about who you are and what you want
2) don’t belittle yourself or your contribution because you are or were or intend to be pregnant / on mat leave / taking pumping breaks
3) advocate for yourself because no one else will
This book was a breath of fresh air during the early 2010s when a ton of other advice for women focused on how to dress well, how to be well-liked, and how to gracefully put up with sexual harassment so your powerful bosses don’t retaliate against you.
It gave me a ton of confidence, and to be honest, over 10 years later I still use many of the “mantras” and examples in the book as a sort of mental armour. I also put serious effort into my partner choice after reading the book and realizing - as you said - that my future husband will have a big impact on how my life unfolds. Maybe not the most progressive advice, but she’s right to give it.
So to quote one of you - I think it does what it intends to do very well, within the scope that it sets out.
As a man who is a parent and also have a flourishing career, i can tell you that i don't "have it all". My career progression has come at the expense of being less present as a Dad, and my child's mom has been the primary parent. Yes, the financial benefits of my career benefits us all, but imo does not make me an "equal" parent. So let's stop idolizing people like me and falsely qualifying us as "having it all" because we don't. The compromise we make is just normalized by society, and there's an emotional toll to this compromise. It kills me not being as present in my kids life as I will love, but we need that money. The only men that think this is having it all, are those who've normalized an inferior direct interpersonal involvement with their kids.
I do hope to see more of this group reading finance books in the future too!
I hate the "Why do women have children even though they want to work/have a career?". Kids are for life, they are not just a year of babycare. Nobody says this to men with a career.
Having children is overly glorified, the downsides are not talked enough. Kids are for life, both positive and negative, they can be a burden for life, headaches for life. I see the point of cautioning women not to get doped to have kids when they are not ready.
@@junxu4438what an interesting way to talk about living breathing human beings.
@@hannahhensley8497 It’s still true
@@hannahhensley8497it actually someone being honest about how they feel about being told about having children 🤔 although the choice of vocabulary may not have been what I would have use, what she is saying is what a lot women and men are feeling when it comes to having children. Children are precious and can be a handful at the same time it just goes with being a parent.😊 Not enough people are counseled or given advice about parenting before having children. And when women in particular are having children and wanting a career it becomes even less because the role of mother most of the time comes first and foremost. 🤗
But there is truth to it though. It should apply to both parents, not neither. Having distant workaholic parents of either gender can be seriously damaging for a child. Some people simply don't actually want children and they just didn't realize that was an option. If both parents can choose to work reasonable hours and have work life balance bc they are financially stable and established in their career and they opt to still never be home, spending all their waking hours working, the question is, why did they even want kids. I wouldn't want to raise them with someone who wants kids like a child wants a dog. Similarly, I'd probably rather be outside than changing diapers, but that's why, if that continues, I won't have them bc we don't need to bring up another neglected child into the world. Just because they are rich and their kids have all the schools and nannies doesn't mean they can't resent their parents preferring emailing over talking to them.
Chelsea, couldn’t help but notice how cute your hair is! Great cut! Thanks for always putting out meaningful content!
You can have it all just not at the same time. And everyone’s “all” is a little bit different.
thank you for this break down and also for having these guests, I have found a new podcast i love
Is it just me, or does everything feel insane?
When the girl says you need to do the thing so you can get the man so you can be the mom at the soccer game, or whatever she said, i feel like that is all of society.
I feel like my life is like that. And i just want everything to stop and i want to do the things that simply bring joy, but even that is couched in this idea that you can't bring yourself fully to your job without getting enough rest.
This comes up often but is rarely discussed deeper. If the system is rigged, but the mentality of finessing the rigged system to your benefit is wrong, what do we expect people to actually do?
I can’t control the world or others around me. I can only control my own actions. Practical, actionable advice is always going have a greater, more direct and immediate impact on someone’s live than vague musings of revolution.
Yeah I was wondering that too, but the implied assumption seems to be "be an activist and start a revolution". I understand why they're saying finessing the system isn't really good (it doesn't get rid of the exploitation, racism, misogyny, and etc), but many people aren't looking to start a revolution or waiting for things to get better. I think that's a big blindspot as to why this book was popular. It wasn't about being "relatable" , it was about giving women a way to control their destiny in the corrupt system without having to change the system.
Very rich discussion, but also depressing (at the subject matter, not you guys of course). ALL THIS MENTAL ENERGY that women have to deal with "should I have kids? should I be a stay at home mom? should i work at the same time? when should i go back to work? what will this do to my career/earning potential in the longterm?"
And do men ever think about these things? NO. Like its not even a thought, its just a given they will always work, at most take a couple of weeks of when the baby is born. The men that think about it, its because the woman brings it up.
I agree with the sentiment that as feminists, we shouldnt aspire to be like men to be liberated (aka work 24/7 and not see our kids). But my god, I also cant help but really resent men for pulling this behaviour over and over with zero criticism. A guy is still a stand up dude if he works his ass off and pays the bills for his family to live comfortably, even if he's absent. Even though this isnt great behaviour for any parent (regardless of gender), I cant help but feel "so what if a woman wants to work her ass off and not see her kids? why cant she prioritise herself and career? Why do we treat her like a demon if she admits to wanting to spend less time with the kids"
So do you want the guy to earn a high salary or not? He's not going to be pulling 6 figures being at home 2 days a week.
@@StoneAgeWarfare why does he have to be the high earner? The woman could work full time and he stays home or work part-time
@@NemesiaVicuna Yes, hypothetically. Problem is many men find being a stay-at-home dad difficult for a variety of reasons.
@@StoneAgeWarfare so do women
I love this! More book club series please!
I feel like a lot of these ideas about how you’ll just somehow have childcare are also so unrealistic. You might have childcare, but it might suck. Your child might be miserable in it for any number of reasons - maybe the teacher isn’t empathetic enough, or they hate the food provided, or it turns out they’re neurodivergent and everyone is grappling with how to understand and support their needs, etc. Maybe grandparents were your childcare, but then Grandma has to move to another state to look after her sister after a tragic accident. Like, you literally don’t know how all these factors will come into play - most importantly the fact that your child will be an individual with their own wants and needs and you will have to take that into account, one way or another. I never planned to be a stay at home mom, and I don’t intend to be forever, but pandemic/layoffs kind of made that decision for me. Everything is always more complicated than you anticipate. And I also think that most new parents have no idea how quickly labour can become unevenly divided when one parent is on leave and the other isn’t.
Children are happier when their moms are not following them around all the time, kids should play among themselves. Life of childless women are much easier even with all the social pressure and judgement.
I appreciated this and the prior discussion, and, there were points where I wish the unconscious bias in the conversation was called out and fixed. Ex. when discussing "if you're a woman, why would you want to have kids if you're working 80-90 hours" -- would love to have heard that reframed as "if you're anyone, why would you want to (...)" because, as was pointed out later, BOTH parents should have to have that thought, not just the woman. I also really did not like the non-reclaimed usage of the b-word to refer to a woman. If you want to refer to yourself as a bad b-, go for it. But why are you putting down another woman with that?
Whew!! Thank you for saying it!! Chelsea dropping truth bombs 34:16
Exactly! Men don't do work they find beneath them AKA women's work and childcare
If parents of adult children want to have grandchildren, we have to make that possible for our kids. We're the ones who own our own homes and are thinking about retiring anyway - we can support our kids' finances and also be the parent at home with the grandkids and housework while the young adults are out developing their careers.
We just have to stay really clear about levels of authority and who's really in charge, because that's not us. It's absolutely critical to our whole relationship with our adult children to remember that we raised them to be adults, and now they are adults.
Mad at whoever set up Chelsea's cam.
Maybe it was Scooter Braun, Greenland?
i guess at some point it's still like what's the point of having kids? i had mine, moved to part time work and anticipate moving to more work when they are both in school. i value having time with them.
also if you have 2-3 kids it can be A LONG TIME while you need child care, so even if over decades you're going to be making more money it's setting you up for an extra crueling 10-15 years. for a little more money that's not necessarily worth it for everyone.
and i need to add that if this book is really for such a small slice of women, it is really harmful to put this book out there in the culture as a work that can help women as a whole.
But it is still super sexist to only ask of mothers "why have kids then?" While you never hear that directed at men. If they have a husband as primary parent at home, why shouldn't they want kids and a career?
I mean I apply that to both - why do these families have so many kids when all.either parent wants to do is work? And in a lot of the couples I know it is the woman who is pushing either having kids or having a second, third etc. Not always, but in the families I know.
My partner and I work in fulfilling active careers and are parents to young children. We have a nanny. My husband and I definitely put in the work so we can both balance our careers but nanny’s don’t raise kids. You are still the primary person, the person in the middle of the night and weekends. Your nanny still goes home and turns off where you as a parent turn off your work and focus on childrearing. I do think children are humbling and we’re certainly less ambitious, but work is intellectually stimulating in a way that parenting just does not match. Some people want and can have both.
I am sad the series is over and I will be subscribing to their RUclips because I really love book club.
I love this episode and the glimpse at this other segment.
Such a rich conversation!
Thanks for featuring Katherine Ann McGrath in one of your videos. I took your advice and contacted her for investment and budgeting opportunities. The results have been incredible. Started with slightly less than $40k, and now I’ve paid off my $529k loan in 6 months. Now totally debt free with 2 paid off rentals, having no debt for the last 12 months. Thank you Katherine Ann McGrath!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have as well come across Katherine Ann McGrath, she’s an exceptional person and great in her field of financial services.
"Leaning all the way back" loooool!!
Los Angeles is too expensive for non-repo babies to lean all the way back. Despite its media image, it's a working-class town.
Part about the husband is so true. It's 11pm. I'm (husband) cleaning the kitchen so it doesn't stink like cauliflower in the AM.
I make 2.5x what she does and work from home. She's growing her new career after being home with the kids.
Please make more of these videos!!!!!!!!!! No one else is addressing the bullshit as well as this series is!!! 🙏🙏🙏
I’m not sure it’s fair to ask why Sandlerg and her husband wanted kids. People have kids for their own reasons. I do think it’s fair to ask why they lionize corporate cultures that are hostile to families.
My high school guidance counselor encouraged all the girls to get careers that she felt were better suited for “following your husband and raising kids” like nurse or teacher. I think that is an example of leaning out early unless you happened to want that career anyway.
It will be fascinating to hear from you when Sandberg’s kids wrote a book about her approach? I think they might be resentful of being another employee being watched by a middle manager haha.
"The Amal Clooney effect" -- I laughed. It is totally a thing for childfree couples, for sure!
I understand not wanting to go home and do story time with a child… which is why I don’t have any. I don’t understand why men want kids if they don’t actually want to be a parent to them.
Can you please cover how the manosphere affects women? Especially average women and girls.
Can anyone address that the Trad Wife thing looks like a fantasy to this working mom? Or the trad husband for that matter? I would love to have "just" one job (aka "just" running the house and raising the kids, or just going to work (frankly a holiday because you can pee alone) and coming home without knowing you have 6-8 more hours of work to fit into 4 hours when you are supposed to be "playing" with your kids.....It honestly seems like a lifestyle that can only be afforded by the very rich if you want to live like an IG family, or is the way less glamorous default for working class/poor families...
"what about the other people?"
Are the other people really people? I mean...really?
Are the new podcasts only available on youtube or spotify? I usually listen on Apple podcasts and these episodes aren't showing up. Thanks!
Great point that it is just a fiven and assumed that the man will prioritize his careers. Women with kids have to choose between being the stressed out working mom + default parent handling things at home and for the kids or the financially dependent partner fully expected to do 100% of the home tasks without reasonably expecting a break. No where is it ever assumed the man could do more at home yes perhaps at the expense of his careers. Chelsea is right that so many men dont even want to spend time with their kids, they are just a step on the path of life and status symbol. How many retired men are bored and go back to work. I doubt they do any housework.
I will never understand society. I want no part of having children (I’ve been a caregiver my entire life already) I also want no part of hustle/girl boss/ climb the ladder/ slay that job hunny culture. Like, if your worth is based on any title:mom, wife, boss, insert whatever title people give clout to like lawyer or doctor I feel sorry for you. Life is not in our control. Death, job loss, layoffs-none of these out in our control and any one of those titles can be ripped away without notice at any given time.
How is being a data broker NOT illegal?
17:40 not just what Facebook practices, even when SS was at FB, there were reports were women and people of color being underpaid, apparently she was embarrassed when these reports were public. Because what you preach to others is not how you actually work
Weirdly enough the short guy/tall girl combo seemed much more prevalent in France. That’s from my own anecdotal experience but I’d be curious to see if there’s a difference in that stat among all western countries.
Maybe the kids had bad vibes 😂
My best friend likes to laugh about how she started "encouraging" her then boyfriend to pee sitting down. They are now married and now am the one telling her to do more around the house lol. Like it has to be equal and she's not pulling her weight around the house. She's lucky he was always the clean one in the relationship and has never expressed to her that she needs to do more. She does earn more and he is the unicorn man that cannot wait to stay home with the baby. When you find a guy like that, at least wipe the counter 😂
There could be a narrow middle ground. It is having children before you are done training for a high powered professional job like law school or getting a PhD. Works best if education is free though but then your children will be in middle school by the time you're ready to compete. You will need a supportive spouse or familial support failing that. Any advice ignoring systemic issues is disingenuous.
The training for a high powered job is also, often, high powered and requires a lot out of the student/trainee. I’ve had peers who became parents during graduate school and one of the parents (always the woman 🙄) has to drop out because raising a child is expensive and grad school pay is at or below minimum wage in most cases. (Edited for grammar)
Love this series! My only suggestion is to stop using the word “like” so much. Your points are important and valid and hearing “ like” over and over turns the conversation into a giant simile. Thank you and keep up the great conversations not many people are having!
Thanks for saying this. I posted a similar comment for part 1. It’s distracting to hear “like” constantly from these intelligent, thoughtful women.
Take a linguistics course and get back to me. Wild to see women subscribing to this channel policing the way other women speak 🙄
My drag name is TradWife
Hello Lean-In. Where's my entire town gone to? Too much bad publicity?
A couple of observations. It’s interesting that the main issue raised about these books when it comes to children is the feminist issue that women can only live Cheryl’s career if they have good childcare or the lament that they are strapped with children. There’s little discussion about the American values around raising children and how our values affect children’s lives.
Second, where did these two women get their accents? Can’t they just speak normally without having to sound like snobby upper east siders or something. They are intelligent but I couldn’t follow them. They are too put on.
Making money is an action, keeping money is a behaviour, growing money is knowledge. To everyone who sees this comment, keep pushing in life and never give up. Can't wait to see you successful one day and may God bless you!!!
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@@JanetDaveYou are right.
But I don't know why people remain poor due to ignorance
ya know, i saw in the comments on a previous video that shorty on the far left was annoying and tbh in this video its super clear to see
Let's be honest, these women aren't that great with their kids, either. So it's a culture of people who are don't like kids, having kids and making money for other people to raise them.
There were too many cars on the road? Decades of research has shown that the only solution to car traffic is viable alternatives to driving.
What does this have to do with a woman’s feelings in the moment when she’s riding in the ambulance with her husband? She was writing about her feelings of frustration with obstacles in her way when driving to the hospital, not sharing a treatise about the supremacy of driving. Like what even is this comment?
No suprise but also no discussion of collective solutions to make life easier for women like nationalized health care like they have in much of Scandinavia.
Like, like ,like, I dunno, like, like
I wonder if they rewatch this & cringe at how much they use that bad word. For intelligent professional women, saying 'like' every other word decreases that intelligence by several rungs....
Take a linguistics course and get back to me
@@christinab5778 That isn't the clever comment you think it is.