Hi.
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
This episode is airing in mid February of twenty twenty five. Sarah is going to be interviewing Nancy Ready about the good mother myth how we get ideas of what it means to be a good parent or, let's be clear, good mother, since that seems to be a bit more of a pointed idea of what is required. So, Sarah, you know, interviewing Nancy and reading her book, did you ever think about where a lot of the myths of what exactly a good parent is come from?
Yeah?
I don't feel like I gave it nearly enough thought. I feel like it's one of those things where you're so bathed in it that you don't even stop to think that it like probably has external origins, or that some of this is much more subjective and not just sort of a baked into the human experience. And we'll talk about it in the book. But I actually found it really eye opening that there were actual sources for some of these ideas.
Yeah, no, that's gonna be fascinating to hear about. I mean, like, what are some of the myths that or at least the thoughts that you were bathed in that you find yourself repeating.
Oh my gosh. And I would be curious to know if these also resonate with you. But I feel like and some of these came from the book, and some of them were just for me. But like a good mine is sad when she is away from her baby or child for any length of time. A good mother is always dedicated to making sure her kids have what they need and it's specifically her fault if they don't. And how about a good mother always puts her family's needs ahead of her own.
Yeah, which is interesting because her own needs Sometimes that means job too. Write like as if a job is like a fun, cute little thing that a mom has. Here's an interesting thought experiment for our listeners. What if I use the phrase a good mother earns enough money to support her family?
Well, what if I threw that one out there?
Super interesting and then you can always try it with the experiment A good father always earns enough money to support his family. Well, a good father is sad when he is away from his baby or child for any length of time.
So what it is, though, is that we have an idea that you know, in many cases, we do believe that a good father supports his family. We do not believe that a good mother should be supporting her family.
But why not? I mean, it's this, you know, it's the same like you could hold.
The same standard to people, or that somebody might be sad when they're away from their baby. It could be a mother or father, And yet we don't tend to think, like, you know, a father is sad when he's away for any amount of time. So I don't know, I just find that fascinating where we get these different notions and whether they serve us in any.
Way or you know all that I think.
You tend to be more immune to them than me.
Perhaps I don't know, well, I mean, partly it's because the way I've worked, like through the whole of having children, Like there's like zero things I can't do if I wanted to, right, Like I mean having complete control over your schedule. I guess I just don't feel like I need to do everything. I do plenty of things and have scratched that itch. So if I want to be a room parent, I can, and I have. If I want to go volunteer for the kid's Valentine's Day party,
I can, and I have do. I then also want to do four other parties in the course of the year.
Maybe not.
Maybe I feel like I've already done that and don't need to be at everything.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean partly it's also having five kids, so you know you can't be at everything. I mean, this is a line I've had a number of people say to me recently, sort of like the idea of that with the idea of being a good parent, like I need to go to every practice in every game. It's like, Okay, nobody goes to every practice in every game, especially if you have like three kids, because there's something is going to be at the same time, right, So then it's
just a question of what are you missing? And if everybody's missing something, then you know, it's just a degree of how many things you plan to miss and how many other things one could do with.
The cost of time, I mean the opportunity cost of time.
So I don't know, it just seems like less of a harsh trade off.
Than I think a lot of people think it is.
Yes, no, that is one of those true you definitely hear and I feel like, were you looking for a point a cookie A yeah, I don't know, an A.
Plus there's other things too, like I mean, to me, a good mother values her children becoming their own independent selves, right, So that means that you can't do everything for them, and in many cases it is their own responsibility to learn how to say, go advocate for themselves with their school counselor if you need something, and you could coach the kid to do that, but the good mother doesn't actually do it herself.
Yeah, well that's one way to think of it, and yet culturally, I think there's a lot of pressure to feel the other way. So super super interesting. I am so excited for this interview and I do highly recommend her book. It was eye opening to me.
Yeah, all right, well let's see what Nancy Ready has to say.
Well, I am so excited to welcome Nancy Ready to this podcast. Her material was so eye opening to me, and I just feel like she is going to her stuff is going to resonate very well with many of you listeners. So I'm just especially excited for this episode. Nancy wrote the Good Mother myth, and I'll share links to all that, but Nancy, go ahead and introduce yourself.
Hi.
I'm so happy to be here. This is kind of kind of my dream to be on a podcast that talks about both like parenting and work, and those things are both really important. So I'm a writer and a writing teacher. I have two kids who are nine and eleven. I feel like we're in like the opposite of peak. We're in like the valley of the winter cold grossness. So they're both at school right now, but they've been alternating all kinds of horrible illnesses for the last couple
of weeks. So yeah, that's me so excited.
Oh and interesting they're nine to eleven because I have questions related to some older kids later, so that is perfect. Mine are seven eleven and thirteen for.
Rect Oh wow, yeah, interesting.
So what brought you the inspiration? I think I know with some of it because of all the personal stories shared in the book, But like what ultimately inspired you to write The Good Mother Myth?
I mean, it really was just this personal personal journey a lot of ways. I had my two kids when I was in graduate school, and I had, as I share in the book, like all of these ideas that
were so deeply ingrained. I don't think I really could have even articulated them, but I had these really just intense ideas about what it would mean to be a good mom and that it was both possible to do it right and like if I did it a certain natural way, that would all be like easy and blissful and joyful and spoiler alert, that is not quite how things went. And we had a wild couple of years.
I had two kids pretty close together. We moved when they are really little for my job, and I kind of came up a couple of years later, like kind of came up for air when they were three and five and felt like what just happened to me? Like what was that? And this book is really the product of a many year investigation of that question, and.
You asked the right questions because in what you even just said, like not only was I struggling, but I was like struggling a second time because it was supposed to be good, So obviously I'm wrong. It's like that second sting you were having. I don't think many of us and having you know, been in those shoes, especially when my kids were younger. I think we shared some
similar struggles like the pump and things like that. I never really thought to ask the question that you did so eloquently and explored so well, like why why do we feel like failures? Where did we get the image of what right actually looks like? Is it valid? Who came up with it?
Like?
I guess there's a little bit more of it now, But what got you to like go all the way back to the beginning? Did you kind of just keep following threads?
Yeah, I mean there was a while where this project was like really it was like a wild, wild project. I got really into primates for a long time. I was doing a lot of research. I'm kind of like the trying to understand like the hormonal and like neurobiological like mechanisms behind postpart and mood and anxiety disorders. In the final version of the project is much more focused than that, which is good, and I ended up really focusing on the science and scientists that emerged in the
kind of post war period. And certainly there's a long history of ideals around motherhood, like that goes back as long as there have been people and families, probably, but I really focus on that time period because I think it's this moment when a lot of our ideas about how important mothers are and how they're like the whole world for their baby and they're supposed to do all this work on their own and not get paid for
it because it's a labor of love. Like it's a moment when a lot of those ideas really crystallized, and when there was all of this research that I think made it seem like it's not just a good idea, but it's also like science says that your baby needs to be there every minute and if you go to work or have other interests, that it's going to damage your kid. And I think those ideas are still really with us, and it turns out that the science beneath them is pretty bad.
Yeah, So one of the mic drop moments in your book was when you said, and I think this was referring to like Ainsworth or you'll tell me which expert, the only thing your child needs to thrive is your emotional availability and responsiveness. And you wrote the only thing.
I mean, it's this, but I think it's really true, and I think you can still see this, I mean definitely on social media, this idea that like, oh Mama, it's so like natural and like the only thing your baby needs is your love, like you can do that. And I don't know, I just think it's a message and I think makes moms oftentimes feel really bad in a sneaky way, in part because like if the mom is giving this like endless love and care.
Like who's caring for her?
You know, And we don't do a good job of that, I think, especially with really new moms.
Yeah, like we're not allowed to want to break, or if we do, then that's definitely either something wrong with us, like because yeah, there's always like two layers of this, right, it's what you're doing, and then it's also how you feel about what you're doing, and then it's also how you feel about failing. Like I don't know, it's multi multi, multi layers, and.
So often now I think there's also this level of performance about how you feel about how you're doing, Like you're both supposed to I think, like love every minute with your baby, or you're supposed to do all of the care. You're supposed to love getting to do all of that care, and you're supposed to have this like kind of social media presence of like, look at how much I love getting to be the twenty four to seven caretaker for this tiny, needy person.
You know, yes, And we'll get into social media in a minute. I think both of us are lucky enough that our kids were babies a little bit before there was like an avalanche of that, although my youngest I think we were starting to get there. Funnily enough, I quit all social media a couple of years after that. So smart, But what are some of your favorite myths? Like, let's just like take a couple of your top three if you had to come up with them.
Oh sure, I mean the biggest thing, I think, the one that's like at the center of the whole tower of mythology, is just the idea that like a good
mom can do it all on her own. And I think we have this like super mom mythology and our culture, and I think underneath that is the idea that like as soon as you have a baby, you'll be transformed, like pregnancy and birth will like turn you into this superhuman person who can just do all of the care, do all of the nursing, do all of the feeding, all of the laundry, like so much laundry with a little baby, and I won't mind, right, because you're just
powered by love. And I think for me, like the love is very real, like that's you know, like the love that I feel for my kids has changed my life and I'm so grateful for that. But the expectation that like motherhood and parenting is also a lot of labor, right, and that you never mind that labor because of the love, Like that's a pretty unfair expectation, and I think that
makes a lot of moms feel bad. If you're like, hey, man, like I love this baby and I don't want to see him every forty five minutes in the middle of the night, Like you know, that is not it's okay to not be having a good time. I think in some parts of.
It, or on the flip side, I think another myth is that you're not supposed to like enjoy your work or time away from the baby. Can you address that?
Oh, my goodness, absolutely. And I would say I feel very lucky that I was raised by a working mom who worked really hard in her career and who was also really present for me and my sister. She was a single mom for a lot of my childhood, and I know that that was hard in terms of balancing, like she worked a very conventional office job, but she created this model I think for me and my sister where it just was normal to both work and have kids.
And I'm really grateful for that. And I just I mean in part because I had such a tough time with my first baby, Like it was very clear to me that like I think some moms feel like, oh, I'm the special one. I'm the only one who knows how to do whatever, And I was like, I do not know what I am doing here, Like this baby does not seem to you know, I'm not a magic person for him. At least they didn't feel that way at first, and so in a way, it made it
much easier to send him to daycare. He started going to it. We had like a babysitter when he was when he was little, and he started going to daycare when he was six months old, this like little very
unfancy in home place. That was so sweet and I mean that was such a joy, Like to get to send him to daycare, to know that he would be really well cared for, he'd be around other kids, and my husband and I both got to work like that was such a I mean really for me, like unmixed blessing, Like there was no part of me that felt ambivalent or bad about that.
And probably the only part that would feel bad is that you felt bad that you didn't feel bad. Perhaps well you didn't you're.
Making kids, didn't, I know, I mean it was just like kind of I don't just like always it is very hard for me to have an unmixed feeling, but I feel like daycare and we were lucky that we had, you know, we were able at theos stage to find daycare that we felt good about. It was always like very unfancy, like they were eating you know, like hot
dogs and spaghetti, you know, in this lady's house. And to be totally honest, like by the time we moved to New Jersey, and had two kids, like it was that was expensive, Like it would definitely push us financially. Maybe that's the only thing that I have a reservation about around daycare. Right. We were lucky to find daycare where we felt like our kids it was of a
quality where our kids felt safe. But I think it was very obvious to me from my own experiences as a kid and then from my experiences as a mother that like, it is actually great for kids to be cared for by lots of people, right, that it's not it doesn't have to be just the mom or the mom and the dad or co parent and doing it all totally.
And I love daycare too. I just always felt like there was this cultural zeitgeist that like admitting that out loud was bad. And I actually had a mentor who was lovely. I'm a physic, Like I do this podcasting thing, but I'm also a physician, so you know, I was in my fellowship training and this mentor who was like a good researcher and now she's like a division chief. She said very cheerfully to me one day, She's like, I love daycare. I love and she had three kids.
She's like, I love coming to work. And I remember hearing that as like, oh my gosh, Like I respect her, she loves daycare. I'm allowed to love daycare. Like I can enjoy that I get to use my brain and be free during the day and like have non baby related thoughts and that's not a bad thing. And the fact that like I needed that like reassurance in order to like give myself.
Permission, yeah, is wild.
And it all comes down to, like the stuff that you talk about, like what are these cultural currents that, yeah, unfortunately kind of conspire to make people feel a certain way a lot of the time.
But I also feel like this is a lot of what we can do for each other, right, is to like share that message like actually daycare is great, Like actually you can love your work and know that your kids are going to be great. I mean, I remember when I got into this writing. It was like a writing conference. It was ten or twelve days long. It was really long, and my kids were really little, like
three and one. My husband had encouraged me to apply, and then I got in and I got a fellowship so it was paid for, and I think he was a little like, oh, no, what have I done? They'd always got a daycare, and I'd always traveled for conferences, but that was a really long time to be away from them when they were so small, and I felt
like really nervous about it. And I remember talking to a friend of mine who said, it is really good for your kids to see you doing something that matters to you, Like that's valuable, And that was such a gift, like to know like, Okay, like I'm doing this for me, Like this is definitely a valuable thing for me. But also I can still be a good mom, right, Like, even as I'm away from them at this like fancy conference, enjoying my time. That doesn't like invalidate who I am
as a mom. It doesn't make me a bad.
Mom one hundred percent. It doesn't negatively kind of impact their life. In fact, maybe it's more bonding time with dad. Maybe they're getting right.
They developed all of these like little rituals that they I have really sweet pictures of them. They got the habita fang like a little popsicle in in the kitchen together every night. Yeah, and I think it's good. It's good for dads too, right to have that time.
We're gonna take a very quick break We're going to talk about a couple more myths and then maybe what advice you would give yourself, your new mom's self. All right, we're back. Can you think of any well I want to talk about kind of like how these myths are presented to us in today's context. But I guess do you have any one more myth perhaps that you can come up with? So we had like leaving the baby is bad. It's not okay to like childcare or childcare is going to hurt your kid in some way.
I mean, I think the other big one is just this like the idea of the automatic selflessness that like you'll be transformed and you'll just be capable of, I don't know, becoming this person who kind of doesn't have needs. I think we often expect moms to just always put themselves last and not mind and to think that that's a measure of being a good mom, that you're caring
for everyone else first. I mean I talk about this very practically with some friends of mine who are like, oh man, everyone else in my family is up to date on all of their well visits and their eye doctor's appointments and their flu shots and all of that, and like I haven't been to the doctor in six years, and like and sometimes it gets like just practically you know,
it's sometimes people get behind on stuff. But sometimes I feel like there's a way in which it can feel really good to care for other people, which is great, but we also need to care for ourselves and also expect other people in our family to help care for us too, which I think is hard to do for a lot of women.
Yeah, I would say my like thought around or like pet peeve around that is that not around what you said, but like when mothers are like I have to care for myself so I can be a better mom. Like it doesn't always have to be circular, I know, and come back to the kid.
Yeah, Like you are still a person, right, And I think that we I don't, but we're not good about sharing that message, right, Like there's the kind of like put your own oxygen mask on first so that you can care for your kid. And I'm like, I don't know, man, I'm still a person. Like here, I am, I'm still here, you know, I have needs and interests that are actually not about my kids or about being a parent to them.
Yeah. I think the phrase we sometimes use is like we count too, you know, which is so like, but it's useful to say that sometimes we do need to remind ourselves. I think, yes, all right, we'll bringing ourselves into the present and how new moms are currently being bathed in various images. You painted some good pictures of Oh my gosh, all the times you mentioned, like the babies, and like the natural wraps and how comfortable they were.
I mean, I love the Ergo baby. That thing was great, But I never managed those like stretchy things where we had to wrap it around ten times.
It's so long, like watching videos of people doing it. Yeah, I went to classes on baby wearing. I tried so hard with the what do they call it, the Moby Rap Baby.
Oh yeah, the movie that was we have similar age kids, So that was the lot one. I'm sure there's a a new one now, but yeah, tell us about I don't know, like how you feel like the images of the right kind of parenting are affecting women.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, I feel lucky that like the images that I absorbed, I'm mostly absorbed in real life, which I think is kind of increasingly not the case anymore. You know, when my kids are born twenty thirteen twenty fifteen. We lived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is this like crunchy college town, and you know, I felt like every I was like for years kind of like eyeing up the moms around me, kind of trying to be like, what do they do, what does it
look like? How does that work? And you know, I see all these moms, as you said, like in the Moby wrap and like walking, and they just they looked so beautiful and peaceful. It's like this really aspirational image for me, this ideal of what I really would have said at the time, just like natural parenting. I think I would have said that with like no scare quotes, no awareness of like natural it's actually a really complicated concept.
And it just looked like glowy and beautiful and easy and peaceful, you know, like if you breastfeed, if you do it in the wrap, if you co sleep, like it's all just so lovely. And I think, I don't know. I mean, it's easy to blame Instagram for everything, and I think there is some sort of maybe some truth
to that. There's so much aspirational content online now, and I think it's so hard when you see an image of someone who seems like they've got it together because you're not seeing like the texts they send to their friends, right like you're not seeing the behind the scenes kind of part of it. I mean, I do like one thing that I do think is really changed, and I be curious your perspective on this is that I do feel like social media, but also other kinds of media
have changed conversations around maternal mental health. I feel like there's a lot more openness and a lot more information available than there was to me when I was first a mom. And so it's not all bad, right, It's not like I think all of social media is bad, but I just think there's a really curated version of motherhood that's kind of of sneaky and how beautiful it makes things seem. What do you think?
Yeah, I agree, I mean you're always seeing highlight reels right like you're not seeing and even when you took your walks. But it's even worse on Instagram. At least on your walks. You might occasionally see a baby cry in the mobi rap, but probably on Insta, Like you would never see a baby cry on the MOBEI rap because they would have cut the film by that point. So I kind of think it lends itself to like because it's sort of promising to show you snippets of
real life, but it's also completely edited. I think it can be particularly sneaky for that kind of thing. I mean, I don't have personal experience of watching those reels I think too much or whatever.
Yeah, but I can.
See how it could be particularly troubling. However, I agree with you that the openness of talking about postpartum depression or the need to get help, and even to some degree they kind of like twenty tens trope of like parentsing's really hard and this sucks. Sometimes that kind of fell out of favor and goes back in and out,
like sometimes that can be helpful. Sometimes there's a side of that, it's like commiseration or just like celebrating the universality of certain struggles that I could see how that could be healthy.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's not at you know, I'm still at Instagram and like, have you know, ambivalent feelings about that, but I think it can be really useful when people are kind of open and vulnerable and sharing things. I also just think, I don't know, I worry sometimes that the way that we are inclined to curate and present our lives on social media, and the way that we often want to like seek out expertise online prevents us from forming the relationships that we need
in person. You know, Like it's a lot easier to like scroll and find someone who's going to like tell you how to get your baby to sleep, and like who knows that that's actually going to work or not, But it's probably what you really need is to like text a friend and be like, I am losing my mind, Like when you come sit with this baby, can I
just complain for a minute. I think like that sometimes that kind of like parasocial online relationship feels like a relationship, And what most of us really need is a lot more community.
Yes, And when you're in those low points and your energy is low and you're tired, you might not make the effort to seek the real community out when that would help you more. Not to mention the fact that many of those sleep influencers are like selling you something exactly exactly.
Oh my goodness. I always think like if you slap like sleep on a product or on a handle or whatever, like there's just desperate parents who are going to pay any amount of money for that.
I did that. I remember sort of like searching the internet like there was going to be an answer.
I know, I know, I think, oh man, which, yeah, I wanted there to be an answer and there's not. I don't know.
Some kids are answer or permission to do crying out or like something some sort of authoritative voice.
Yeah, that's another thing that I will say. And actually I didn't read she's a friend of mine now, but I didn't know at the time. Miranda Rake wrote a beautiful essay I want to say and romp or about cry it out, just like advocating for it. She's like, sleep training change my family's life. It's great. Everyone should do it if you want to write like it's not
the right fit for everyone. But that was really amazing for me to read like a totally unapologetic endorsement of sleep training, which I had done with a lot of ambivalence of the time, and now I'm like, you know what, like that was what we needed. And so that was another thing where I was like, oh man, if there's someone out there saying like you can do this and it's going to be okay, and it's going to get you ready to sleep, doesn't make you a bad mom.
That's worth a lot.
I think we're going to take another break, and then we're going to kind of look back and see how the years of perspective and research might inform how you would counsel your young self. All right, we are back. So as you were talking about sleep training, I'm thinking, like, yeah, it's so funny. I don't even like totally remember which
my kids were sleep trained and which weren't. And like you recognize when your kids are teens that like it was all gonna be okay, but we cannot see that in the moment, like at all.
Yeah.
So, and not only do you have that perspective, but you also have the benefit of like all this research of actually knowing where some of these things come from. So if you're giving yourself a pep talk and you're there with your you're sitting there with the pump and nothing's coming out, just like it was just like had happened all the time, what would you tell yourself?
Oh man, so many things. I mean, I think the biggest thing, this still feels emotional. The biggest thing is just like it's not your fault, like it's not your fault that it feels hard. I think the other thing that was so hard for me to see, especially when my first one was really little, was that like there were real life of really hard times. But also I just said, I have no idea like how much joy was ahead of me, you know, like it really because
that joy and the meaning is so particular. You know, it's like getting to see the things that your kid notices on the walk to school because they are their own particular person.
Like for me, the real.
Joy of parenting is the really particular relationship, like getting to see the person that your kid becomes and what they notice and what they care about and like weird jokes they tell you. And none of that has anything to do with the ideas that I had about being a good mom, you know, like none of that has anything to do with are they eating lunches that like look cute and that I could put on Instagram? Are
they wearing matching socks? Never the pressure so often of the things that I thought I had to do to be good, Like that's not really what's like magical about parenting.
And I'm also hearing in what you're saying and this is actually super timely. We have an episode coming up in a few weeks that's like positive parenting milestones, like things to look forward to. But I guess part of what you're getting at is like this is only one small slice of what it's like to be a mother, and stay tuned because if this part's hard, maybe you like other parts better because they're actually pretty different.
Yeah, I think. I mean, I love my kids obviously when they were babies, but I think that some people and I am one, like that's just not my moment to shine as a parent, right, Like I really struggle with sleep deprivation, Like that was really hard for me. And I also just like I love talking. I love getting to like sit next to each other and read books. I love getting to go places together, you know, all of the things that you can do with kids that are a little bit older.
Yeah, I love that. How do you feel like with your kids being older?
Now?
What are the myths?
Now?
Are they different with big kids? Like here would be one like your kid needs to be in at least for high level activities by fourth grade or you have not done your job as I mean, I don't.
Know, but like, no, the activities are exactly where I was going to go. And I think maybe it's because we've been lucky that both of my kids, like academically are great, they're fine, and don't worry about them in
terms of like school performance. But it's the activities and we've really chosen as a family, and my husband and I like we have an intentional choice to not overload our kids with activities and also to not push them too much to do things they don't want to do, because we really value having like unstructured time together as
a family. But it does mean, you know, sometimes I talk to friends whose kids are doing like two different sports and theater and something else, and that's that's where for me, like that should really kicks in, where I start to feel like, oh, should I be doing this? Should I be doing this? And I'm really tempted right now to like list the things my kids do because I do do activities. But that's not the point.
The point is that there's not a right way.
There's not a right way, and that I think that our art, I think a lot of like kind of mainstream and especially like upper middle class white parent and culture like really pushes families towards doing so much. I mean, and I think sometimes like, man, when do you get to just like hang out with your kids. When do you get to, like, I also hang out with your friends. You know, we were over at friends for dinner last
night and some of those things. It could be so hard to schedule time with other families because it's like, oh, we've got a soccer game, and then we've got a star, and then we've got a basketball game, and then we've got a theater performance, and then we've got whatever, and like that's the right fit for some families. I'm sure. I'm sure there are families that love that and it's really meaningful. But for us, that's not what I want
to be doing. My kids are also just not team sports kids, so that's not the phase that we're in totally.
So that would be like an older kids.
You think, I don't know, maybe I'm just like especially hung up on on activities. I feel like that's the big one. But what do you think about what.
Your trying to think? I mean, And my kids, by the way, for disclaimer, are like I have a club soccer player to tynts and like whatever, right, but it's like a season and joy exactly it's not right, right or wrong. It's like this is where we are right now, and you know what, next year, I actually think we might not be there and like that's great too, like
that it's not a but hmmm. I think a lot of stuff around school prepare like are you doing like extra are you trying to push your kid and like get to their greatest potential at a young age, Like maybe they don't need to be at their greatest potential in fifth grade. Maybe they can just enjoy school doing their work and not through the extra tutoring.
Oh.
One big one that I keep hearing is like I need to have my kid do I was at a birthday party yesterday and this guy was like, we need to have our kids coding because and I'm like, honestly, probably the robots will code better than the humans by the time our kids would be coders. So I'm not even sure that would be like time.
Was Yeah, No, I think I mayn't think anything to a tech right, Like we can't possibly foresee the kind of world that our kids are going into. I also like, my husband is a programmer, and I'm like, you can learn how to do that, right, That's not something it's not like a foreign language that you like are better off learning and when you're super young, like you can learn that at sixteen or twenty or twenty five.
You know.
Ooh, and I have another and oh and I was gonna say about the coding thing, like if they love it. By the way, nobody is not me saying like, don't do it if they love it. Amazing. Another big one is you're supposed to be really upset and worried if your kid leaves you for any amount of time. Okay, my son went on a field trip that was like forty eight hours. He's my middle child, so and he's been to sleep away camp. Yeah, so for me, a forty eight hour field trip with his classroom was just
a joyous, lovely experience. I was thrilled that he was getting to do outdoor activities with his teachers and multiple shepherdes. And I had literally zero worries. None. Yeah, but the chat and then I sort of felt like, oh my god, am I a bad parent because I'm not like, not only am I not having worries, but I'm not like expressing the worries. And then at the end of the trip, oh my gosh, other parents for my school are gonna hear it. But anyway, there was a barrage of like
reunited pictures. I'm like, guys, it was two nights, like hours, I mean, questioning whether again am I doing something wrong by like not being upset about it? And I think this is a trope. It's just a trope like anything else, Like I'm supposed to like yearn for my kid even if they're gone for two days doing something totally awesome and I'm just at work. Yeah, anyway, I mean, I think so much of that is the should, right.
I feel like anytime that word kind of comes into my brain, I try to pause and think, is this something that I really feel or is this something I think I'm supposed to feel, Because I'm sure their parents there who really like desperately miss their kids for forty four hours, although I don't necessary at eleven that seems all. I mean, we also have sent our kids. Our kids have gone asleep boy camp for years and they like it.
At my husband, I love it so But I would say I also have the experience, like a lot of the teaching that I do with first year college students, many of them were wonderful, like I love getting to work with kids at that age, but it does oftentimes give me things to think about in terms of like what do I want my kids to look like when they're at that age, and like I don't want them to be like traumatized being away from me, right, Like
that's actually what we're working towards is that they're going to go you know, they can decide how far they want to go, but they're going to go away. They're going to be independent. They're not going to need me to like check their email and schedule their classes. I feel like we're trying to help them become independent people. And that school trip sounds awesome.
It was awesome, and they did all kind of outdoor stuff, And you're right, I shouldn't invalidate their feelings. Maybe some of them are real, but I wondered if some of them were performative because they saw these other people posting it, and then we're like, oh, if I don't also share my paranoia, I'm not like, yeah, flexing my I'm an involved, attached parent.
That's where I just like back away from the group text, like, you know, back away the time. I think I kind of your other kids were probably so happy too to have like a little bit of time.
One hundred percent. We had some girl time because it was my son.
I was on the chain.
Yeah yeah.
I always think it's kind of fun to have just like one kid when I usually have two. It's nice to have them get it's individual attention.
Yeah yeah, it's not like he wasn't having the time of his life. So well, I have a question, which I think is like kind of illustrative. What do you do for yourself that isn't about your kids?
Oh, I mean I think I read a lot, like a lot, a lot, a lot. And I also and still said it was such a funny thing to say, because like, I'm not a was never a team sports person, was never an athlete. But I also exercise a lot because I just need it for my brain, like I just need to kind of shake things out. So I do. I have a little running group that well, this is how you found me there another runner. I joined a running club through my local bookstore, which I love, So
we run on Sunday mornings. But I was bundled up yesterday when it was like nineteen degrees and went and ran. And there's also like a little exercise studio in my town that's owned it's by one woman who's amazing, and they do great classes there. And that's become both like just from like a physical health standpoint, like at forty two, I think I'm probably stronger than I've ever been and not like a you know, not either a bodybuilding competition. You know, I do feel proud that I can do
a lot of stuff I couldn't do previously. And it's also just like such a source of community for me. There's a lot of people that I see there, some of whom are also like moms at my kids' school, some of whom are just like people that I know around town. And it's been really great to have that space where like every Monday morning I see a lot of the same people for my pilates class. So those are my main things.
I love it. Well, can you share a love of the week for us?
Oh Man? So my current love of the week. We have some good friends who have a toddler, which is so funny just to see like what a two and a half year old is like at this point. She's adorable. And we went over to their house last night for a lunar New Year celebration, which was so much fun, and then I had leftover noodles for lunch today. So my love of the week, I guess, would be like sharing meals with friends, especially when they're delicious and made by someone else.
I love it.
Well, I'm just going to say my love of the weekest daycare, which we haven't had for a while, but which we had when my first was a baby for about a year and a half or so. And I just want to validate anybody else who is loving daycare or having another childcare provider like a nanny, and wants permission to find that a spark of joy in their life. Oh my gosh, Well, where can readers, fine, where can listeners find you?
So I am as I said on Instagram, which is nancyt O dot Ready. I also write a newsletter called write More, Be Less Careful, and that's on substack. It's Nancyready dot substack dot com. And that's really focused on making space for creative work in a busy life. Looking as especially not totally, but looking especially at parents who are trying to keep up a writing practice even as they're doing all the caregiving that we do.
Amazing.
I'm excited to check it out. Thank you so much for coming on.
Thanks much for having me.
Well we are back and I just love that interview. I hope you did as well. So our question comes from a listener who writes in asking how did you find babysitters? I don't understand I'm looking for them. I feel like people talk about it like it's some easy feat to get someone to care for your kids, but it doesn't seem so obvious to me.
Yeah, I mean, well, we've used care dot com a lot, and some of this is just are you in an area that has enough people and enough sort of people who might be in the looking for babysitting jobs demographic that you can find a reasonable number of potential So yeah, care dot com we have used. There's Facebook group called Babysitters of the main Line or something like that, which is a pretty straightforward, like you post what you need,
people can post advertisements of their self. There's very very strict rules on how it operates, too, and so people get banned for doing things they're not supposed to do, so you know, it's at least somewhat got some boundaries around it, like obviously you still have to be careful it's easier if you've got somebody who's recommended from someone else, or someone who, through the nature of their job, might have been through some sort of screening as it were,
like somebody who has worked as a preschool teacher, for instance, has gone through background checks, and it's just the odds are better that there's nothing sort of wrong with their dealing with young kids than say, somebody else. So I don't know, that's one way to look at it.
That is one of my favorite reservoirs of babysitters is to ask around at the school because often they are flexible outside of school hours, which is probably when you'd
want a babysitter anyway. So and often it's great to look maybe not for like the seasoned fifty five year old teacher that's been in the system for many, many years, but like if there's a teacher's assistant or an aid or something, and you know they've been vetted, but they're also younger, they may me more flexible, and they may.
Be interested in that sort of thing.
So we've gotten some of our best babysitters, I would say number one word of mouth, or like the neighbor's babysitter if they're willing to share. Of course, don't don't steal babysitters, but sometimes it can be great. Actually, one that we used for years and years and years was the babysitter for our across the street neighbors, and then they moved to California and we're like, feel free to
contact this person and it worked out super well. And another one that we've used a whole lot was one of my kids teachers, And I would say the key is also keeping them. So if you find someone that you like, the way you're going to grow a portfolio over time and not have to deal with tons of turnover is to be an awesome person to babysit for. So that means paying market rates are above market rates
depending on where you live. Honestly, as a line item, I've never found that one off babysitting broke the bank. I guess maybe we don't go out like that much, but if it's like a once a month event, maybe paying like five or ten dollars an hour more really doesn't add up to that much, but it might not have to a really happy babysitter who's excited to say yes. I also say asking well in advance is really helpful.
And making sure that if you're ordering dinner for the kids, that you offer to get some for them, things like that. Like I think when you make it a pleasure for them to come and want to come, then you're able to have your portfolio gradually grow over time.
Yeah, I mean making sure that you give people enough hours to keep them interested to so tack on something like even if you were just going to like round up on the hours, you know, they're not coming for two hours, which people do not want to do, like it's a you know, three or four hour minimum, or you know, making sure that you don't only reach out
like once a month. I mean, I would say that if you want to keep them interested in you, you should be asking for more than that so that they sort of still build it into their model of their lives, like, oh, this is something I could do.
There's going to be turnover.
But the good news is, eventually, if you have multiple kids, at least one of them gets old enough that they can babysit, and so that's a wonderful thing. We'll talk about parenting milestones in a future episode, but yeah, that's a.
That could be on the horizon eventually.
So we hope this helps.
We hope this helps.
All right, well, this has been best of both worlds. Sarah has been interviewing Nancy Ready about the Good Mother myth. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.