Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
52. Who Supports Whom? Breadwinner vs. Stay-at-Home Parent
Financial autonomy for stay-at-home parents means having options and being able to exercise them without justification or permission, even when you're not collecting a paycheck. We examine how historical patterns like the law of coverture have evolved into modern expectations that devalue domestic labor while romanticizing the stay-at-home parent role.
• Economists estimate the unpaid labor of stay-at-home parents is worth over $100,000 annually
• The narrative of who's "supporting" whom needs to be flipped - the stay-at-home parent enables the working parent's career
• Financial autonomy doesn't undermine partnership but strengthens it by creating equality
• Access to separate accounts, having your own money, and retirement savings are practical steps toward autonomy
• Teaching financial literacy to children, especially daughters, helps break intergenerational patterns
• Both spouses deserve financial autonomy regardless of who's bringing home a paycheck
• Feeling resentful about finances often signals a boundary violation that needs addressing
Your work is valuable, and your contribution is real whether you're getting a paycheck or not. Share your thoughts on social media, and join us next time as we discuss what to do when your partner won't play fair.
Links
The Way We Never Were American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
Domestic Dialogue: Flipping the Labor Script
Notes on Project 2025 by Rachel Hurley
End the Dysfunctional Cycles in Your Relationship and Stay in Love for Life (Terry Real)
If we empower women to work outside the house without expecting men to work inside the house…
The Fair Play Book | Fair Play Life by Eve Rodsky
The Documentary | Fair Play Life
THE EMOTIONAL LABOR SERIES: Let's Talk Emotional Labor and Mental Load - Bare Marriage
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This is Rebecca and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 2:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 1:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 2:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered Life Beyond. Hello everyone, Welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond. This is Naomi and this is Rebecca.
Speaker 2:So here we are, bright and early. It is kind of early this time. Change is just. It's always just a gift that you kind of want to give back. I refuse.
Speaker 1:I refuse. I'm lucky that it fell at the beginning of my spring break, oh yeah, you know. So it hasn't been hitting me as hard and I still need to change a few clocks around the house.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we'll get there I get it.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking we haven't really paid attention to all our stats. We haven't talked about reviews and ratings and that kind of thing very much on the podcast. So I was surprised a little while ago to find that we had this incredibly generous review on Apple Podcasts. This is months ago. So whoever that was, thank you so much. And also I saw on Spotify, where you can't do reviews but just ratings, that I think we have like five, five star ratings. Really, I didn't know this.
Speaker 1:I was so tickled. So thank you. Clearly. They love us Clearly, obviously. And the haters haven't found us yet.
Speaker 2:So Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky to have like this collection of people who love me and now they found me us on the podcast. So that's kind of cool. It's like this collection just grows and it's humbling.
Speaker 1:It is. It is when I look at the locations where our podcast is being downloaded and I see those, some of those towns, the cities, again and again, episode after episode. That's a good feeling to know that it's not just a one-off, but that it feels, even though the conversation is still one-sided, it shows some kind of connection and that connection is what really really makes it meaningful. And I just wanted to give a shout out to a few folks Itai and Pat in Oklahoma. Thank you for listening and thank you so much for your encouraging messages.
Speaker 2:And then we have Beth in Idaho and we always love hearing from you.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love her emails. I know I would love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her. I think we could talk for hours. And then there's Ruth, an old friend who discovered our podcast not too long ago, and Dorothy in Dorcas, in.
Speaker 2:Pennsylvania, and then we have my dear friend Tricia in Ohio.
Speaker 1:And then there are a couple of downloads from Missouri and I'm pretty sure that's Caroline and Jackie, and shout out to both of you Hope you're doing well. So we love you guys, and your encouragement, your feedback, is what keeps us going.
Speaker 2:It's such an honor that, out of all the options out there, you all choose to tune in and we value that, we appreciate that and trust me when I say every message of feedback, encouragement, ideas're kind of talking about financial freedom maybe not in the way that that term is often used, and we're talking more about financial autonomy, I think. I think so too.
Speaker 1:We're talking about the value of a stay-at-home parent. Often, this role is one that gets romanticized. We hear people say they feel lucky to be a stay-at-home parent. We hear the stay-at-home parent being spoken of as supported by the working parent. We say that no, they don't work, even though they're probably working 18-hour days, and this can make it really difficult for that stay-at-home parent to have financial autonomy. And we want to talk about some other ways of looking at this situation and talk about whether financial autonomy is possible for stay-at-home parents, who are typically women. And we want to talk about why it's even a thing, or why the stay-at-home parents who are typically women. And we want to talk about why it's even a thing, or why the stay-at-home parent expectation is a thing, and why it's important to be thinking about a person's financial autonomy, especially now. What do you think of when you think of financial autonomy? What does that term mean to you, rebecca?
Speaker 2:For me, financial autonomy means having access to funds and I kind of joke that every good housewife should have and I joke saying housewife, but probably every person.
Speaker 1:Ironically, yeah, oh, okay yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Should have access to $200 or $300 cash that no one else knows about, and to me that has always been really important. Probably part of it offers a measure of security for me, but it also gives me a sense of I'm not sure if option is the right word.
Speaker 1:That's the word that comes to my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gives me options.
Speaker 1:Cash gives you options. Cash gives you mobility, and it can give you mobility, can get you out of a bad situation, or it can get you to someone who needs you, or you can give it to someone who needs it. Right, exactly, there's options there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Which is where that autonomy piece comes in, doesn't it? Autonomy is about not only having options, but being able to exercise them.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of this conversation is going to boil down to this notion of are you a team in your relationship or is there a hierarchy? And I think so often when I think about the marriage books that I used to read. It almost dumbs the female down to the role of a child who just works really, really hard.
Speaker 1:And I think some of the extreme patriarchal voices say the quiet part out loud and say that a wife is the first among his daughters.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 2:So I think we need to be very careful about those voices and even what it does to us on a subconscious level. It took me a really long time to understand that, regardless of what Matt and my relationship looked like, I had a lot of these messages. He had a lot of these messages that we had never taken the time to look at, and I think sometimes we just run on what we know without pausing to decide if that's really something that we want to own Right, and this in no way is to shame a stay-at-home parent or to shame a working parent oh no. In any way.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, is this set up to be a team effort with equal value, or is there going to be this sense of hierarchy and this sense of indebtedness because you're working off of his paycheck?
Speaker 1:Right, right, and this is totally off topic, but just this weekend I listened to an audio book by someone called Terry Real and I hope we can talk more about it later, but what I loved about his. So his book is about relationships and I love how he gave practical ways to deal with that hierarchy in relationships in a nuanced and liberating way that's respectful to everybody involved. Fierce Intimacy is the name of his book. If anybody is interested it's on Hoopla. But he gets at what it looks like to shift a relationship from hierarchy to team and I think that's huge.
Speaker 2:And I think it would really behoove us to take this seriously and to really think about it, because I think our best form of resistance comes when we can teach our kids to be different. Teach our kids to be different, to show up differently. What expectations do I have for my son versus my daughters? Or what kind of financial autonomy am I giving them? Is that something that they expect and is normal to them? And if they were in a relationship where it was removed, they would be like, well, that's weird and that's not okay, or would that just be the normal mode of operation for them? And so I think, when we start changing things and creating a new experience for our kids, I just think that is the most redemptive way to make changes and to resist the hierarchy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to break that cycle, and I think modeling it is such an important part of that teaching, you know. I think looking at these dynamics in a broader historical context can be really helpful. Back in. I don't know when these laws were made exactly, but I'm thinking around the Industrial Revolution or maybe the beginning of it, but certainly in Europe hundreds of years ago, women had no financial independence.
Speaker 1:The law of coverture in Britain said that when a woman got married, she essentially had no legal personhood, and this was so that she couldn't be forced to testify against her husband in court.
Speaker 1:But what this also meant then was like when she got married, all her assets like she couldn't have assets in her name they went to her husband.
Speaker 1:And we know about all the havoc this system wreaked on families, from the Jane Austen books, the Bronte sisters books, jane Eyre, even in Bridgerton, which is a modern retelling. But there you see how that put intense pressure on young women to marry to marry people that were disgusting to them. But if they didn't, they had no money to their name because everything that their dad owned was going to the next male relative, and that then, of course, was brought over to American law, because American law was generally based on British law, common law, and so we see this shifting, because back at the time of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, the stories we read are generally of people who were in the upper echelons of British society, where everybody else worked Women unless they were wealthy, everybody in the family worked women, children and men and then American society reflected that as well. But then, rebecca, you've pointed out that that changed after slavery was abolished. And what changed?
Speaker 2:Well, the biggest change after slavery was abolished was they didn't have anyone to do their housework for free, and I think we really need to pay attention to how much wealth is built off the backs of people who are working for peanuts Unpaid, yeah, underpaid labor, yeah, and if that is what a society is built on.
Speaker 2:I think we need to be really careful, yeah. And if that is what a society is built on, I think we need to be really careful. Yeah, but families now didn't have their free black labor, so magically they turned to the women.
Speaker 1:So what we see happening after that, then, is that women staying home and keeping house became sentimentalized and valorized in a way that it hadn't before. Now also, what was going on around this time, I mean, I think it, without going into the weeds too much, my sense is that it crept downward on the socioeconomic scale, and so now you have middle-class women aspiring to live the stay at home life and appear to live the lives of ease of the upper classes, but of course, the working class everybody in the family was working in the working class still, of course.
Speaker 2:Isn't this also when the church kind of started buying into biblical manhood and biblical womanhood?
Speaker 1:Jesus and John Wayne.
Speaker 2:Jesus and John Wayne would be a good.
Speaker 1:Yes, another book that I'm sure she consulted was the Way we Never Were American Families and Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Kuntz. This was published years ago, but, oh man, she does such a fantastic job looking at the myths we tell about the American family and looking at the reality of it and the data behind it. And then, yeah, jesus and John Wayne. The point here is not to give a play-by-play of the history lesson, but to point out that there is a broader historical context and that we understand that the rights women have today, or have had until recently, were hard won and have been fought for for centuries, for centuries. And also we need to think about the ways that, because of these conventions, because of these longstanding traditions, that just because something is legal doesn't mean that everyone is exercising that legal right and has that financial autonomy.
Speaker 1:Just in our last episode, we talked about the reactions we've had when we went to open a bank account as a single married woman, and a married woman alone, and so I think that shows that this is an ongoing struggle. The thing that makes it more salient than ever to me is something that I've heard, and I'm going to be clear. I was not able to find the receipts on this. So on one hand, it's speculative. On the other hand, the reason I'm mentioning it, the reason I thought it was important to talk about, is because it tracks with everything we know about these hyper-conservative, patriarchal movements. And it's been said that in Project 2025, in the first 17 drafts, they laid out a way to strip women of any financial control that money in our bank accounts would be switched over to the nearest male relative, accounts would be switched over to the nearest male relative, that our property would be signed over to our nearest male relative. And what is the policy that would effectively eliminate married women from voting?
Speaker 2:They're trying to change it so that, in order to vote, your ID has to match your birth certificate. So most of us, when we get married, take on our husband's last name, and when we do that, obviously your name doesn't match the birth certificate. And no one I shouldn't say no one very few people ever get their birth certificate changed to reflect that, so it's putting up roadblocks to be able to vote.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important to look at the way that many of our popular narratives, our conventional narratives, facilitate these kinds of changes, because there are people in power who are fantasizing about this and it seems unthinkable, it seems ridiculous to even think that this could be a thing. But you know what Margaret Atwood was right? She has been right about so many other things, even Tia Leavings talks about how this was a long-term goal.
Speaker 2:This is something Gothard was talking about for years. He wasn't kidding when he talked about raising your kids to be an army for God and to get into the government.
Speaker 1:I mean, this has been something that I've heard growing up, yeah, oh yeah, it's been in the works for a long time, yeah. Growing up, yeah, oh yeah, it's been in the works for a long time, yeah, and it's about a reversion back to back to hundreds of years ago, the good old days. The good old days, yeah. And and I think it's important to talk about why stay at home moms are especially vulnerable because in a scenario like that, you know, even if someone best case scenario, say someone, a stay-at-home mom has inherited money and is independently wealthy and has that financial autonomy, now a few people are in that situation but even in best case scenario like that, if this kind of policies, if these kinds of policies were put in place, that person would lose access to all that. I mean, like how is that anything but a way of disempowering women and trapping women in impossible situations and limiting their options? So I think, while I acknowledge that, yes, those ideas were, you know, have either been dismissed or been taken out on the most current version, the fact that they were hanging out in those first 17 drafts, or the claim, suggests a lot about the intentions of the writers. And, like you said, tia Leavings told us all about it and I want to be clear we're not talking conspiracy theory here. We're not talking conspiracy theory here.
Speaker 1:A conspiracy theory is where we make up stories to explain things that are going on in the world, confusing things, but when the evidence is right in front of your eyes, that's not a conspiracy. And looking at the evidence that people like Tia Living's, like these writers we've talked about and put before our eyes, like the Project 2025 folks have said, tell us everything we need to know. This is not a conspiracy. We're addressing what's right in front of us. So I think, approaching this from the perspective of radical acceptance accepting what it is and not pretending it's otherwise, thinking about what does it mean, then, to address the situation with values, aligned action. What does it mean to deal with this situation in a way that protects our children, protects our daughters, and how do we do it? We're not rolling in tons of money or tons of time. How do we do this? So I don't think we have an answer to that exactly, but the first step is to address this question of who is supporting who.
Speaker 2:I think something else that might be important to note is what kind of a relationship is it if it's built on this notion that there is no out, like if I would know that my husband is unhappy with me and would like to leave, but feels obligated to stay? What kind of a relationship is that? And so, when marriages are set up so that the woman has no choice but to stay, what kind of relationship is that? Is that what we really want?
Speaker 1:You know, and even though that kind of thing has been celebrated by so many people, that's also the basis for citizenship in North Korea, soviet Russia, all these other places you know. So prison, that's how prison works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that doesn't work in government. That doesn't work. And it doesn't work in marriages. That's not a healthy marriage.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't work in marriages. That's not a healthy marriage. Choosing to stay is one thing, but being forced to stay is an absolute other conversation. And it you've been a stay-at-home mom for well, I guess, depending on how you look at it, by some definitions you've always been or you've long been a stay-at-home parent, but then in other ways not.
Speaker 2:But you know what? I think? That that's representative of a lot of women. Yes, it's not just the thing of coordinating everything at home. Oftentimes it's also looking for ways to provide extra income. It's looking for ways to make money. So, oftentimes the stay-at-home parent has to coordinate everything but then also runs a business, works outside the home. What have you? And I don't think that gets talked about very much.
Speaker 1:No, but that reminds me of a study that I read about some time ago that said that it was talking about that this whole idea of stay-at-home mom versus working mom divide, this mommy wars, as it's been called, but it's it's more trumped up into being a thing than it actually is, because the line between women who are, have, have children and maybe cut back somewhat on work, and then women who are quote unquote staying home but are doing something on the side, really makes that line very fuzzy in reality. So I agree, but let's imagine a world where stay at home moms got a paycheck every two weeks. What would you say? Your stay at home salary would have been just based on you know what you were doing day to day, especially when the kids were younger. How much do you think that paycheck would be for yourself? How do you, do you estimate that?
Speaker 2:Well, isn't? The only way to break that down is if you think about okay, so how much would it cost to hire a housekeeper? How much would it cost to hire a cook? How much would it cost to hire a caseworker? How much would it cost to hire?
Speaker 1:a personal secretary. A personal secretary, I think you're making such an important point that, while we might have a hard time putting a dollar value on our own labor when we think about hiring someone to do it, for us to take these things off our plate, suddenly that seems crazy expensive. And I think it's so interesting how easy it is to assume that when women are in the home, women are just going to take care of things. And I mean, I've been in a situation where I was preparing a meal and I asked someone if they would come make the iced tea while I was finishing up the meal and I was told why can't you do it? You're already out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a situation where I was also working and going to school and what was hurtful to me about that response was that it suggested that it undervalued, it undermined the effort that I was putting into making that meal. It it was really dismissive of all that and it didn't. It was it's one thing to say oh, I, oh, I'm not good enough you know that weaponized incompetence but to say you can do it. And this is this is from the person to whom iced tea was important.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes those conversations has less to do about what is actually said. Has less to do about what is actually said and more to do about how it reflects the perceived value or the perceived role that you're playing or that you're supposed to play.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. When economists break down the real costs for hiring professionals to do these stay-at-home jobs so like the ones you listed nanny, childcare, housekeeper, personal chef it comes to $100,000 a year, even over, over, over. And let's be clear this is not just the family, the private sphere, as it were, that is benefiting from that unpaid labor, but the employer that can depend on a spouse who is going to show up at work every day without any concerns about what's going on at home, as if the family does not exist. That is happening because somebody is at home working for free. So I think this is where we come to the question of who is supporting who, and the way it's talked about is that the stay-at-home parent is being supported by this hardworking breadwinner, and we want to challenge that.
Speaker 1:What we see is that the stay-at-home parent is supporting their partner. The reason that partner has a full-time career is because the other is taking on all that unpaid labor at home, and this situation really puts women in a double bind. So on one hand, women are often demonized for putting their career ahead of their children when they do work outside the home for pay, but then what we're seeing here with the stay-at-home situation is that they are penalized. Society is not compensating them for that work. And I have personally seen where someone applies.
Speaker 1:Someone as a mom who has been in and out of the workforce applies for a job and this is after her children are out of the house and she's no longer responsible for them. But there were those gaps in her work history and that was held against her for a church secretary job a church secretary job. So I think that becoming aware of situations of expectations where women can't win or women are going to be demonized either way, is really important. And oftentimes the question of whether someone should stay home or not is often framed in terms of how much her salary, how her salary compares to the cost of childcare, and it's like well, if and and and, which is a horror show. Like the cost of childcare is a horror show, no question about that.
Speaker 2:It's a whole other conversation that needs to be had.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But the thing is that it's not just about the daycare costs.
Speaker 1:So if, if, if a mom says, well, I'll just stay home rather than give my whole paycheck to the daycare costs.
Speaker 1:So if a mom says, well, I'll just stay home rather than give my whole paycheck to the daycare, I can understand that argument, except that what it's also costing her is prime career building years she's not putting into retirement savings, and you know what matters with retirement savings Time Time is what matters and opportunities for advancement when she does come back to the workforce if she does, you don't just slide right back in, as you know. And so that financial impact doesn't just last when they're at home, but it penalizes them, it follows them for the rest of their working lives. And I think what is so important for us to realize is that we talk about this as a choice. You know well, women make their choices or they choose to stay home or they choose to choose to do, and we ignore the economic and policy forces that limit their choices, that really give them a yucky set of options, and whatever option they choose, somebody's going to be there to tell them they did it wrong.
Speaker 2:And, just to add insult to injury, there's also then this sense of indebtedness if the mom does decide to stay home, because I've so often heard moms say but you know, I am so grateful that I could be a stay at home mom. And I would like to suggest both things can be true. You can be grateful that you had that opportunity because it is true it is a certain privilege and still acknowledge the loss that that involved and drop this notion of being indebted to your husband or to your partner for having that option. I'm trying to figure out how to say this without belittling the spouse or not being appreciative of that option. But you should feel no more indebted to your spouse for being because you were able to be a stay-at-home mom than what your spouse is indebted to you for being that stay-at-home mom and support person, because your spouse literally could not do what they are doing without the role you're playing.
Speaker 1:So it's both Right. Right and I think that's the thing that's the point we're wanting to make here overall is that the hierarchy valuing one of the other is so problematic. So how does the expectations of who's going to do the work at home, whether she is working or a stay-at-home mom? How does that often play out? What have you observed?
Speaker 2:So I remember the twins were four when my son was born.
Speaker 2:The twins were four when my son was born, so I had three kids, four and under. And I remember a friend telling me how she tries to ensure that the first 30 minutes of her husband coming home is a time of, you know, rest and whatever for him so he can decompress and blah. And I just remembered looking at her and saying what exactly does he do on the ride home from work? Like, I don't get a ride home from work. And I think it's so fascinating that that was literally part of the core teaching. That's what the marriage books were telling wives they needed to do, that the king was coming home to his castle and he needed to be, you know, babied for all the hard work he did that day. As if the wife hadn't just done a crazy day of hard work as well, and she didn't get a ride home from work. And this is not to devalue at all what your partner is doing at work all day, but this is to add value to what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And no, I do not have to baby my spouse when he comes home from work.
Speaker 1:Or what if he feels an equal obligation to baby you?
Speaker 1:I like that better, I like that better, and I think that common narrative is that you know, yeah, if he is working a day job, he shouldn't be expected to take on responsibility at home. Anything he's, anything he does is extra and deserves applause. But then when a stay-at-home mother starts working outside the home, statistically he rarely steps up, and in fact, some studies have found that when men lose their jobs or find themselves unexpectedly unemployed, they do even less around the house. Even less around the house. And so we're not talking here about stay-at-home parents. You know where. This is the setup right that a couple intentionally pursues, but when it happens unexpectedly, we find that he actually does less.
Speaker 2:And I think this is a really important point, because so often women are set up to be quote the stay-at-home parent and then they start working 10 hours, 20 hours a week for $12 an hour, just to make extra money, to find that the load at home often isn't split or reduced in any way.
Speaker 2:So, all of a sudden, it's this realization of oh, it's not about hours worked, it's about who's making the most money. And since I've now been a stay-at-home parent for 20 years, I will never be able to match my spouse's pay grade. So therefore, I am always expected to work harder. And I think to your point, it's a narrative, it's an excuse that's often given to keep the female in the trap of working, of working, of working. Because, back to your statistic and I've seen it happen, when men unexpectedly lose their job, you're right, they often end up doing less.
Speaker 1:I think of this quote that I've seen floating around on Instagram and we'll link it in the show notes. It's attributed to Farida D Author. If we empower women to work outside the house without expecting men to work inside the house, then we aren't empowering women, we're exploiting them Boom. So, while the labor inside the home remains firmly the women's responsibility, in this situation that we're critiquing, who gets ownership of the money that's being earned, and whose money is it? I have heard more men talk about how their divorce just eviscerated them economically, and the reality is, of course. The statistics are very clear. The data are very clear that women, after the dissolution of a marriage, women are or a partnership, economic impact on women is much harsher than it is on men. Women live much closer to the poverty line than men do. I mean? I'm not doubting that it does impact them negatively, but bring out the tiny violins impact them negatively.
Speaker 2:But bring out the tiny violins. But it impacts them negatively because oftentimes in the relationship it is assumed that the money that is there is the males Boom. So all of a sudden, now that money has to be divvied up as it should be and he's just getting his share of it.
Speaker 1:But he feels robbed but he feels robbed. But he feels robbed it was all his. It was all his. I think the point you made a minute ago about that the hours worked doesn't matter as much as the size of the paycheck in terms of who gets priority, I think that reinforces this idea that it's his money. I mean, both ideas, both concepts reinforce each other and I really like the idea that they talk about I believe it's in Fair Play that what if, instead of comparing paychecks or even comparing hours worked, what if we compared free time? What if we tried to make so both partners got relatively equal? You know what if we work toward equity let's put it that way in free time, and I think this is something that Eve Rodsky it really speaks to so well in Fair Play and we'll link to the book in the documentary. But this is also something Bearer Marriage, sheila Gregor talks about on bear marriage, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it is and I think they actually do a really great job talking about it. Um, she has been actually very vocal and, I think, insightful about the mental load, the emotional labor that women often end up doing and how that is damaging to the relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, it looks like the episode you linked is an interview that Eve Rodsky did on bare marriage. Is that right, oh? My word, it is yeah. So what I love about that?
Speaker 2:I want to go funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to go listen to that too now because I'm very familiar with Eve Rodsky. But I'm really interested in hearing that conversation with Sheila.
Speaker 2:What I think is interesting about Sheila and again, this is just my observation. I don't have any evidence, but somehow it seems that she figures out a way to say things that women have been saying for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and she comes up and says it and somehow people pay attention. I'm both impressed and annoyed.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, she speaks evangelical, she speaks Christian culture, she knows that language, she knows the language and she knows how to frame ideas in ways that don't force someone to choose between their religious belief and what they see in front of them, what they know to be true, what they know to be equitable, and I think that's part of the magic of what she does.
Speaker 2:Well, and she also does a great job of doing statistical work to back up.
Speaker 1:Exactly Very data driven To back up what she's teaching.
Speaker 2:And I just found it interesting because they did a study and realized that people who find themselves in these marriages usually have some type of come apart at about between year 15 and 20. I think the average was 17 years. And I know there was a guy who was listening to it and while listening to that conversation he was like, well yeah, I wouldn't want to be in that type of marriage, I wouldn't want to be that female.
Speaker 1:And then the next thought was well, the next thought was well, f*** Because someone close to him was in that position.
Speaker 2:Right and I think the work she's doing is really important and I would encourage people to listen to it. At the same time, I'm going to say there's parts of it that I find triggering, and I realized it was okay, because I think I do struggle a lot with things that I've been saying. Like I've been yelling about how horrible the book Love and Respect is. I've been saying this for 20 years and she comes on and has evidence that it is really, really, really bad and I'm like darn it all. And it's a good thing. It is a good thing. I am celebrating this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But there's a part of me that is like it tells you you can trust your instincts, which I think that's part of what that come apart is that you said often happens in marriages, because I think that's where enough time has gone by that you start to see through the pretense, the society Bullshit, yeah, and you see that the carrots that you've been chasing are plastic and awful and nothing you actually want. So, yeah, another way this problem plays out is that when the money is seen as belonging to the breadwinner, who's usually a man, often the way then women are talked about. You know, when they're talked about as being supported by him, the assumption is that women are a drain on men's bank accounts, and to me, what this does is just further devalues the unpaid labor, the contribution that women make to home and to society, and I think a lot of women then feel that they need to justify their existence. And to be fair, the way things have been talked about in the media often has, for good reason, put stay-at-home moms on the defensive.
Speaker 1:Now here is a woman who is contributing over $100,000 worth of labor every year, and society, instead of recognizing that and honoring it and compensating for it, frame women as being a drain on men's bank accounts. You know because, by the way, I remember a statistic, and this was a number of years ago, that is it 90% of men, american men, make less than $100,000. So you know, what we're saying is, women are contributing way more than men are, but they are still being called a drain, and you know. And it just leads to another one of these double binds where, on one hand, women aren't supposed to let themselves go, they're supposed to pursue youth, they're supposed to look young, but they're supposed to make it, they're supposed to do it effortlessly and are belittled if they do spend money on themselves. And so you know, because that's his money, he worked for it. So I think it's important to see how this ownership of the money filters into the way we see other things too.
Speaker 2:And even how. I mean, there's a million blogs out there, there's a million podcasts out there about how to feed your family on a dime. This is why I think the trad wife thing is so popular, because women are desperately trying to figure out how to make it work, how to buy groceries without being resented for the money they spend, or how to clothe their children and not be resented for that their children and not be resented for that. There's some popular reels that are going around right now and it's an older lady, like she's in her 90s I think, but she's a feisty little person and she talks about how her husband was an idiot. So every time she went to the grocery store she got $50 cash back so that she could clothe her children and he never knew about it.
Speaker 2:But she needed to figure out a way to make it work and both the difficult positions oftentimes the stay-at-home parent is put in but also how incredibly smart we are. We figure this out anyway and I would like to suggest that the more you can lean into the team part of the relationship and understand your value, understand his value and merge that, the more powerful your relationship is going to be. Absolutely the stronger it's going to be. I want to argue that there is space for that and we need to do a better job of finding that Right space for that and we need to do a better job of finding that. But one spouse can't get there on their own. Both spouses need to be engaged into that Right right.
Speaker 1:Both of them have to buy into it. I think it's also important to recognize that this situation that many women, many American women especially, find themselves in is not a personal choice, as it's often framed, but a policy choice, and every other post-industrialized country treats their women way, way better than the US does. Whether it is free healthcare or a big box of supplies after the birth of a baby, whether it is visiting nurses who come by automatically, whether it is subsidized daycare that makes it very affordable, whether it is paid time off In Canada, you get a whole year of paid leave.
Speaker 1:Isn't that amazing you get a whole year of paid leave. Isn't that amazing? And here's the thing In the US, it is illegal to separate a mother dog from her pups if they are under eight weeks old. And yet how many American women have to go back to work because they're going to starve? They're going to lose their housing if they don't go back to work at two weeks. They're going to lose their housing if they don't go back to work at two weeks. So we treat dogs in this country better than we treat women and babies.
Speaker 1:So I think we need to get really clear. Instead of getting angry at the men, let's get angry about a system that is forcing so many of us into no-win situations, and I think the first step toward that change is changing the narrative and reframing the conversation. The way we're talking about today, I mean, I think men should be glad we're only asking for equality and not revenge for all the decades of unpaid labor. And I think some ways we can flip that script is if someone ever refers to you in a way that makes you feel like a burden. You as a stay-at-home parent makes you feel like a burden for not earning a paycheck. Let's flip that script. No one is doing me a favor I'm the reason this household functions, or if you can go to work stress-free, it's because I'm doing the invisible labor at home, and there's so many more.
Speaker 1:In fact, we have a handout of scripts that might be useful in having these kinds of conversations and encourage people to at least think about having them, if not actually venturing into this sticky territory and I think it's important to recognize that some things that we're changing not just the conversation, but it's also practicing having direct conversations, instead of hinting at things passively or kind of implying them, which so many of us are socialized to do. And what I love about this, too, is it's giving us an opportunity to advocate for ourselves with confidence. And even if it's not well-received which good chance it won't be that's okay. This is still really good practice. And if those conversations don't go well, whether that's with a spouse or with a family member, that gives you good data on what situation you are in. That is something to pay attention to and to use as you decide what you want your life to look like. Going forward things, very practical things that you think stay-at-home parents could consider doing, maybe in setting up their finances to be more equitable.
Speaker 2:I think at a minimum both spouses should know about and have access to accounts. When I hear stories about women who are in 15, 20-year-old marriages and do not have access to those accounts or have concerns that possibly their spouse set up accounts under their names that they didn't know about, I'm enraged. And guys, these are good Christian, conservative, mennonite situations. This isn't out there in the world situations. From a practical perspective, both spouses should have access to that, because what if something happens to the one spouse? But even from a sense of equality, this is important. I'm also a huge fan of a woman having her own account. I have my own account.
Speaker 1:A bank account.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Matt knows about it and technically has access to it, but he doesn't abuse that access. But it allows me to spend money without having to explain, excuse, justify. I can save money if I want without explaining, justifying what have you Right Sounds like financial autonomy what have you Right Sounds like financial autonomy Exactly I also am a huge advocate for. If your spouse gets a retirement fund through work, you also should be getting an IRA. I don't care if it's $1,000 a year. Set up a freaking IRA, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think we forget.
Speaker 2:You don't need an employer to do that Exactly, and I think we forget how a little bit does make a difference. I don't know. 10 years ago I started just putting $50 a month into certain accounts and it's amazing how that grows and the difference that that makes. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, but I was feeling resentful, and it's weird, but I was feeling resentful that Matt was investing money through his employment and I had none of it, and so I decided to take care of that problem. And again, I think this idea of feeling resentful has been weaponized and we've been told to shut that down. But I think when you start feeling resentful about something, you need to pay attention, because oftentimes it means your boundaries are being violated and often there's a solution for it.
Speaker 1:And it might involve rocking the boat a little bit.
Speaker 2:It might involve rocking the boat, and it might involve being brave and doing something you have no idea about. It might mean talking to a financial advisor and being like I'm not quite sure what I want, but this is what I'm thinking about. I don't know the terms. Tell me the terms. Absolutely it might mean listening to a podcast, but I think every spouse deserves a sense of financial autonomy, even, I was going to say even if only one is providing an income.
Speaker 1:Even if only one is employed in a Correct Is getting a paycheck. Yes, yes, absolutely. Susie Orman, who's a financial plan or financial advisor, kind of like a female Dave Ramsey, without all the religious baggage.
Speaker 1:Nonsense. Yes, and I found an article that she wrote for O Magazine that's Oprah's magazine and this is back in 2011. So it may be a little out of date by now, but it's called Susie Orman's Retirement Plan for Stay-at-Home Moms, and we'll link it. It's a very short article, but I think it's one. If nothing else, it could be a starting point for getting familiar with the vocabulary or finding out, just educating yourself about it. And let me be clear yes, it can be confusing and yes, there is a lot about the financial world and financial instruments, as they're called, that I do not know, and yet I understand what's going on with my money and folks. If you're smart enough to turn on your podcast player, you're smart enough to figure out what's going on with your money too.
Speaker 2:It's not that hard and you know what If you don't understand? If you don't understand, you're not asking enough questions. And if you're asking questions and people are annoyed that you're asking questions, find someone else to ask the questions. To Keep asking questions until you understand.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. If they're annoyed, that's a red flag. Either they don't want you to know, or so they might be hiding something, or they just I don't know.
Speaker 2:If they're annoyed, that means you should just keep asking yes, exactly. That means you're onto something, and I cannot tell you all how important it is to teach your kids about this stuff, especially your daughters. Teach them financial literacy. Let them have a checking account while they're still under your roof. When the twins were sophomores juniors, we got them their own checking account. They had to pay their bills. We made sure the money was there, but we taught them how to pay those bills. I took them in and we opened up a CD. I wanted them and it was just a small CD, but I wanted them to understand how that works. Teach your kids, teach your daughters, how to do this so that they know the terminology, so that they have the experience, so they aren't easily intimidated. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. In conclusion, we want to say your work is valuable. Your contribution, whether you're getting a paycheck for it or not, is real, and we're saying that every stay-at-home parent deserves financial autonomy. So we'd love to hear from our listeners what would you estimate your work is worth If you're someone who has maybe been in a partnership for a while? You look back on your younger self. What advice would you give to your younger self? We'd love if you would share this episode. Share your thoughts on social media. Tag us so that we can reshare your post. And next time we're going to talk about what to do when your partner won't play fair. What happens when you use these scripts? We're going to link in the show notes and you get stonewalled? You get someone who hymns and haws. You get someone who is defensive, who is not engaging in good faith. What then? That's what we're going to talk about next.
Speaker 2:And remember money should be about partnership, not power. So let us know what you think. Your feedback always kind of helps us know what we're missing and what we're getting right, and we always value that.
Speaker 1:Because there are a million and one variations. Every situation is different and I'm sure there's situations we did not think about. That would be important to talk about and we'd love to include that in the conversation. So thank you all. We love you and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom. That's uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom.
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Speaker 1:Until next time stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward.
