The Working Family Has Changed. Why Hasn't the Workplace?

those changes. So those statistics I quoted at the top of the show are from an interesting Pew report that talked all about the changing family in America, and the exact statistic is that of all families have two working parents, and that's up from thirty in nineteen seventy. And then at the same time, the share of families with a stay at home mom and a working dad is on

the decline. So it used to be that most of the workforce was men who worked with wives at home to take care of the kids, and that is not the case anymore. I'm actually kind of surprised that it's only around a fifty split, and popular culture you see a lot of representations of two working parents well, interestingly, also on the increase is single parents. I mean, divorce became more prominent and socially acceptable, so that's also on the increase. So there are all these different ways that

the family looks. And also in that report, the parents all talked about how stressed out they were all the time and how they didn't feel like they had enough time for their kids or their careers. So clearly there is some disconnect with the way that our society is set up, specifically the workplace, that is leading to these unhappy people in the new family structure. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about why the modern workplace isn't set

up for anything but that super traditional family structure. So I think one big thing is just the schedule of like nine to five, And I mean, I think you can speak to this specifically, but that, like I said, made a lot of sense when someone was at home to deal with anything child related or I don't have a family, but doing anything that needs to happen during business hours is impossible. I've been trying to go to the post office all week and I just can't write.

Some might argue that if you have two working parents, you've got more income that you can use to cover childcare. But as you said, like childcare doesn't exactly solve all of those problems. You know, my husband and I both have to get up and get to work and negotiate dropping our son off at daycare and picking him up,

and it kind of recks our mornings and afternoons. I mean, we've we've we figured it out, but it would be much easier and yes, much less stressful if I knew that I could stay a half hour later at work and it wouldn't blow up my whole family schedule. Yeah, and you and you believe at five pm exactly or try to and are lucky enough to work a job where you can do that, and not everyone is that lucky.

And yeah, these schedules are particularly hard on women basically because, as the Pews Right also found, they tend to still take on more of the childcare duties even if they're the ones working. I will plead the fifth on discussing that at length, but I definitely identify. And another thing besides the schedule is something that we've talked about on the show before, but the non existence of parental leave.

Since there's so many more working women now, the reality is is that a lot of them are probably going to have children and need to work that into their working lives, but most companies still don't offer it. And I wrote this story recently about how the rise of parental leave policies is limited to a few high profile companies.

So you saw places like Netflix and Amazon offering really generous paid leave packages, but some research showed that this wasn't a national trend and that most parental leave policies

are actually getting worse. I believe that I've heard about a lot of people I know who are at well known, high profile companies that have kind of shockingly bad maternity leave policies, And but we've also talked about how it's not just about even for the companies that do offer a significant amount of paid time off, that's almost not enough, Like there are ways in which your career can be

stalled just by taking that time. And reintegrating back into the workforce is something everyone sort of expects you to be able to just do without any help or not even that when you do reintegrate back into the workforce, there's all this judgment even though it's it's the norm. So many people are doing it and still there's this motherhood penalty that women have for having children because they're

judged as just not as competent workers. Yeah. I don't remember if I told you this anecdote when we did our episode on parental leave a while back, but a colleague once talking to me about another colleague who had taken maternity leave said, sort of conspiratorially, like, can you believe that she didn't call once to check in with her team? Is like, yeah, I can't believe it. She

was really busy. Yeah, it's just the workplace still assumes that people don't have families at home to deal with, yeah, and that that's not its own huge responsibility and job rivaling paid work in scope. And so since there are these two working parent families, a lot of the child care might also fall on men now, which is something the workplace also isn't set up for. So hopefully, if two people are both working, then they're also both shouldering

the same child care responsibilities. But obviously that doesn't happen. And one reason also is because fraternity leave is not offered or acceptable. So I was writing a story about women at Adobe who took maternity leave, and multiple women told me that their husbands had the option to have paternity leave and just didn't take it because it's culturally unacceptable because of decades of that just not being the case. Yeah, so even and I know we have male colleagues here

who didn't take their full paternity leave. And I've also heard men say to me, now, there's not that much for the dad to do in the very beginning, and I'm just thinking, uh, yeah, there's plenty there, there's plenty you can do. Yeah, Okay, So if our work culture is still basically organized around the idea of working dad's and stay at home moms, is the solution then for us to return to that era for moms to just be staying home, I know, you know what I mean that.

But also and that Pew study there was the note that families with two working parents make a lot more money, obviously, and it's money that they need because life is expensive. And that also as more moms have entered the labor force, more of them have become the primary breadwinners and their families, so they're actually bringing in more of the money, so it would make more sense for them to stay in the workplace. So we're not going back, We're not turning

this back. No, okay, So the working woman is obviously here to stay, and as you say, in a lot of cases, women are out earning their male partners. Yeah, and our guest today is going to talk more about how the world is not set up for that phenomenon. Ashley Ford is a senior features writer at Refinery twenty nine, where she wrote an article about being a female breadwinner. She interviewed one hundred and thirty women about how they

feel about making more than their partners. Thanks for coming on, Ashley, Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this. You guys look fun. Thanks. So you wrote this great article about female breadwinners and for a Refinery twenty nine, and I want to know what made you decide to take an anthropological dive into that phenomenon. Um. I mean the same thing that makes me want to write about anything myself. I am of the breadwinner in my relationship.

I am a female breadwinner, and I knew my personal feelings about it. But I also knew that I kept having these interactions with women, even women who like talking about money, that once we got to the part where I talked about being the breadwinner, they would start asking me these questions like, well, how does that make you feel? Or you know, does it bother you to be with

someone who's less ambitious than you are? You know, like these questions that felt sort of like they were trying to figure out, um, what to ask to make me admit that I wasn't okay with it. So then I started thinking, man, like, maybe there's something to this, Maybe there are more women who are in this position who aren't okay with it, you know, But I didn't know, because all I know is my experience, and so I really just wanted to find out. I was shocked by

the results. I thought there would be a lot more women who were just like no, why who cares? Um? And that wasn't the case. So you you ended up serving a lot of your peers. But before we get into that, can you just talk about how you how you did feel about being the redwinner? Oh? Yeah, I've

I mean I felt pretty fine with it. It was I mean, it was my decision in a lot of ways, UM, to not just be the breadwinner, but also to combine our finances in such a way that, um, I was the obvious breadwinner and we shared all of the money, all of the to me, all the money is our money, UM. And I think part of that is because when we started doing this, noight, we were both broken ship, Like

neither of us had anything when we got together. And I feel like so much of the success that I've had, um, you know my definition of success, but so much of what I've had, I see this direct line to my

relationship with Kelly, with my partner. I I feel like so much of what I do I am able to do, and I feel empowered to do because I have this like safety net in a person, you know, and also because I know that if today I hated my job and wanted to quit, Kelly would say, all right, let's figure out how I can bring in more money so that you can do what you want to do. So you mentioned that you were both broke and then there was this moment where you became the breadwinner. What was

that conversation? Like, UM, I don't know that we really had a conversation about me being a breadwinner. I have always made at least a little more money than Kelly. That has been true, like I've I've we've never like been in a situation where he out earned me. UM. Part of that is I'm a little older than him, I'm three years older than him. Part of that is the sort of work that I do. When you get to a certain point, you can make good money from it, and the kind of work that he does that's pretty

much not the case. Like he works at a bookstore. He's a bookseller, he's a shift leader. He is also a poet. You know, we're both writers. But I don't know if you know this. There's no money in poetry. Nobody's getting like, nobody's getting paid a ton of money to come be the resident poet at refinery to at night. Like I'm sorry, Like that's not gonna happen. Um. So I always knew that there was a lot of stuff he was still figuring out, and also that I just wanted him to be happy as much as he has

always wanted me to be happy. And I also feel like my breadwinner status is sort of this, Like, yes, I wanted to make more money. I wanted you know, I want to have certain things available to me by way of making more money. But I also don't have to do anything I don't want to do to be able to make more money. Like I don't I'm not at a job I hate I'm not you know, trying to get a promotion so that we can you know, pay off a house or so, you know what I mean. Like,

it's that's not what our lives are like. It's like it's really almost like I just happen to make more money and I'm proud of that, you know, and negotiate it. I did my due diligence to get what I thought i'd deserved. But at the same time, it's just I guess it's just not super important to me that I make more money than him. So you're touching on a lot of the feelings that people mentioned in the survey, and some people had that attitude, but some people didn't.

So yeah, to back up, can you tell us about some of the results of talking to all these women. The results were basically, um, came down to most of the women felt complicated about their bread winter status, and the complication came from not necessarily feeling like it was the man's job to have the job and like provide for everybody. Like they didn't feel that, like it didn't go back to like that traditional Um, that's that's what I got married for, was for someone to take care

of me. You know, it wasn't that. The complication that they felt really came from things like, you know, they feel like they're walking a fine line between being a breadwinner and also trying to make sure, you know, manage the emotions of the men in their lives so that they didn't feel emasculated. Um, they were also in a lot of cases still coming home and doing the majority

of housework and anything that had to do with children. Uh. And there's also the fact that you know, there's this societal expectation like it just it still means something for a man to say, my wife doesn't have to work, and that says something about his ability to provide, and it is a It could be a point of pride for a man, even if it's not a big deal to him, it can still be a point of pride, and society is not going to punish him in any

way for that being the case. However, when you're a woman, if you walk into that, you know, my husband doesn't have to work. He doesn't work because he doesn't have to. I make enough for both of us. I'm make enough to support our whole family, So why should he work? Like people look at you like you're being duped and you're being taken advantage of. And so these women don't necessarily have the societal perk. They don't have the point of pride that comes usually from society's reaction to being

a breadwinner, because that perk is reserved for men. It's not accessible to them. You make kind of a subtle distinction between the feelings that some women have about making more money than their partners and the feelings that they have about talking about it. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, Um, I think well, from the data that I got, from the comments that I saw from these women, um, none of them really inherently felt

bad about making more money. None of them inherently felt like there was something wrong with the fact that they were making more money. Even if that was their initial reaction, they would stop and sort of reflect on it and be like, wait a minute, I guess this. You know, it's okay, it's not such a big deal. When it started to feel like a big deal. Is sort of like the reactions like, the world does not adjust for women who are breadwinners. It just doesn't. It also doesn't

adjust for men who become like stay at home. Um, husbands or you know, like or work with the kids all day. It's like, we still have all these systems in place where these women um feel even though they might feel pride and being a breadwinner, to express it is to invite other people's perceptions of your relationship into your life. And so when you do express it and

people give you those perceptions, they throw them at you. Um, you absolutely end up taking some of that on and you end up it ends up becoming a thing that you know, if you don't want to talk about it, it's not necessarily because you're embarrassed or ashamed. Sometimes it's you don't want to talk about it for a lot of these women because you just don't want to have

to defend it all the time. You don't want to have to constantly be telling people that is not my experience, That is not our experience of being in a relationship where I'm a breadwinner for us, it is working. I mean it's exhausting. It is exhausting to do something non traditional and have to explain to people all the time that you're not failing because of it. It's interesting because I think of earning money as liberation. Well, I mean

a lot of women think of it that way. But reading your story, a lot of these women felt caged in and away. But can you talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it's the responsibility factor, to be perfectly honest, it's the feeling caged in. Is not so much about the actual um money. It's about the idea, uh that, oh, I am responsible for supporting another person. In some cases, if you're a sole earner and also the breadwinner, absolutely I am not. I am My salary is no longer

responsible for just taking care of me. It is also responsible for taking care of another person. So shouldn't I be going for that promotion that I don't even want because it means more money, or shouldn't I be arguing for a raise that, you know whatever? Like, it's this idea for these women that um that they are stuck in the position of breadwinner. And I imagine anybody who

is the breadwinner would would have those feelings. It's just that, you know, male or female, if you're the person supporting your family, you're gonna maybe feel trapped by that. But are there different ways that women like process that feeling of responsibility or given different messages about it? I think part of it is that we don't really have a

template for the conversation. Now what this piece went up, a lot of men tweeted me or emailed me or messaged me, and there were a lot of men saying they had been talking with their friends about the fact that they totally expected to have to support a family someday, like off and on, you know, in different ways, Like maybe they weren't talking about expectably, they were always under the impression that at some point in their lives they

were going to have to support a family. They started talking about these things that like eighteen seventeen, sixteen, you know what I mean, Like, yeah, well one day when I you know, I'm gonna get married and you know, my wife, and I want to make sure my wife could stay home with the kids if she wants to.

It's like they start thinking about those things and having those conversations so early, and that expectation is put on them so early that it's just sort of like in their minds, this natural thing of being a man right now out Women are basically raised with the expectation, the expectation that they will never make more than their husbands or that it'll be equitable. But not that they would make significantly more than their husbands, So there's no set

up for like, how do we talk about that? How do we talk about the fact that I make more? If I make more, does that mean that I need to make more of the financial decisions? If I make more, does that mean I'm in charge of the money completely? You know, like a lot of women just don't know

how to have those conversations with their partners. They don't know how to have those conversations with their friends, they don't know how to have those conversations with family members, because nothing in the media, nothing you know, in the conversations we have as young women, set us up to

believe that that could even be a possibility. So I think it's just this lack of resources and this lack of you know, conversation that really contribute for these women to the idea that there is something off or wrong or shameful or embarrassing, or something that should be hidden or at least you shouldn't talk about it when you

earn more than a male partner or spouse. I'm wondering if hearing from all these women and then men afterwards, did that change your perspective on being a breadwinner at all.

It definitely made me stop and really think, like because in my mind, like I kept thinking about why I didn't feel the same way, and the thing that I kept coming to is I must not feel as complicated about it, because I know my partner, if I didn't want to be doing what I was doing that made more money, that he would step up and he would help me figure out how we were gonna either downsize our lifestyle so that I could do what I wanted to do, or he would help me figure out how

he was going to make more money so that we could, you know, keep our lives up, you know, like whatever. Like I knew that he was not more committed to the lifestyle than he was to me. We would figure this out, and that might mean that he would be the breadwinner at some point or it might not, you know, But I just knew that we would figure it out together.

But when I really stopped and thought about it, I was like, wait, how do I know that, Like we haven't really had that conversation, Like that's not something we've actually ever talked about. That's my assumption, Like I'm just assuming, like a lot of these women are assuming that their partners would not be helpful or would not want that to happen, or you know, or that they would be stuck.

I'm just assuming I wouldn't be stuck. So it definitely made me go home and have that conversation with my boyfriend where I was like, hey, so, say I really hated my job, and or maybe I wanted to take some time off, or maybe I wanted to take a job that you know, made less money because that would make me happier. You know, how would you feel about that? And he was like, well, we couldn't stay in this apartment probably, you know. He was like, but I mean

I can do jobs that make more money. I could have two jobs, like, I could do a lot of things, you know. Like he was like, like, I don't want you to be unhappy, you know, because my thing has always been I don't want to come home to a miserable man. I don't care how much money he makes because miserable. Here's the thing, and y'all know this is true.

Miserable men need everybody else around them to be miserable. Yeah, they need that, but yeah, that that was one thing I really liked from your article was that you were like, this wasn't really about money. It's about relationships. It is about relationships, It's about communication. The crux of every single one of the problems that those women had who I surveyed or spoke to was that they either had never really talked about the fact that they were the breadwinner

with a partner. Even though they had all these internal questions, they never asked them, Like, they never actually asked the person they were with, like do you feel emasculated? Do you feel like you could do more around the house? Do you feel like me making more money makes me less feminine? Do you feel like They had all these ideas and all these worries about how being the breadwinner would and could affect their relationship, and they never actually

asked their partner. Well, hopefully that's conversation inspires some difficult conversations about money. I'm sure all of my friends listen

to this podcast demand we talk about money. Um, thank you so much for coming on this interest having me so on the face of it, a lot of the women that actually spoke to have kind of achieved the feminist idea like not only are they working and they have working partners who are supportive, and yet they still had all of these negative feelings about it, and we're kind of weighed down by the cultural associations or what

they believed to be other people judging them about their choices. Yeah, it seems like even if you as an individual do the things that you want to do, it doesn't really matter if you're still stuck in the old system. And it reminded me of the story that I wrote recently about Adobe and how they had offered flexible schedules for all their employees, but nobody was really taking them, and

that was because they didn't really make it explicit. And so they have this new mandatory program where if you come back from eternity leave or paternity leave or any long leave, you have to meet with your manager and talk about that these flexible schedules exist. So it's it's kind of like we need to explicitly say this system has changed and we are going to let people do it, or else the cultural norms will just stick around. Right.

If something is what's expected of you, you can't expect to do all of the work of seeking out these resources or putting themselves on the line to try and do something differently than all their peers. Are doing it. Yeah, and now it's time for half big takes, half baked takes. You can call in with your own half bag take, or whatever else you want to tell us at two

on two six seven zero one six six. This week's listener half bag take comes from Marissa Homer, who tweeted at me my half bag take is that non coffee drinkers deserves some sort of equivalent drink option in the office hashtag soda, hashtag crystal life. My response to her was that at Bloomberg we have at least thirty five

other drink options and we're spoiled. I feel like I need a little bit more information about this half big take, because I want to know if she means other caffeinated beverages, like if you're if you're someone who still needs a caffeine kick, but you just coffee is not your thing, or if she works in an office where there's only coffee and like water and gets that that's a drag you should have fresca or something. Yeah, agreed, good, hapt

big take. All right, Francesca, what is your not fully formed idea that you'd like to share with the world. I would like to talk about the vexing office etiquette around free office food. It feels like we just came to the end of girl Scout cookie season, which was like roughly eight months long. I don't know what happened where Girl Scout cookies are now available constantly, um, but

there were within mints everywhere. And our office is very big and spread out, and there's a lot of parts of the office where like you might not know anybody that works in those few rows, but you'd be walking

by those rows. There'd be a little bit, you know, some cookies, some whatever, saltwater taffy somebody brought back from like Virginia Beach, and it's sitting out there, and you want to take it because free food is more delicious, But then you have to you have to slow down and kind of fiddle with the rapper and get it out and eat it, and you start to feel really conscious that you don't know who put the food there. Anyway,

I don't really have a solution for this. I think that whoever provides the food should be sure to add a sign that says please take maybe please take comma anyone, or plut the cookies out on a plate so you don't feel like a thief. I think that's your problem.

You feel like you're doing something wrong when that food is make them more accessible, and as the taker, to be fair, I do think that you should hold yourself to a standard where you should at least know the name of the person or the occasion for which, like you should know it was someone's birthday, and maybe the name of the person's birthday. You don't know, wish them happy birthday, but at least know whose birthday was. Definitely take from an area of the office. I don't even

know what they do over there. I try to sort of say, like, oh, whose birthday is it? And if nobody answers, I just describe it anyway, Becca, what is your heath day? Take this week minus so underdone but not really related at all. But it just happened recently and really got me going. Was that do not feed the pigeons. Pigeons anywhere anywhere, maybe like a pigeon. Don't feed birds at all. But you're okay the pigeons. You're feeding them. You're like having them come together in an army. Yeah,

you can't even straight face because it's so silly. I'm with you. Girls, don't give those pigeons, the strength of numbers. It's act like you're corralling them, You're giving them strength. Literally, Yeah, they can do anything, so they can then attack you and poo on you. Yeah. I hate pigeons and I don't think that's controversial. Please let us know listeners if you disagree. And this has been half big takes, half baked takes. Thanks for listening to another episode of Game Plan.

You can find me on Twitter. I'm at rs Greenfield and I'm at Francesca Today. You can tweet at us with your half bag takes or any other thoughts you have about the show. You can also call us at two one to six one seven zero one six and leave as a voicemail. We might play it on the podcast. If you like our show, head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and rate and review and subscribe. The last review we got really great.

It said that Rebecca was an articulate valley girl, which is a great label. So if you have a label for me, please put it in a review. We would love to hear it. Another cool thing you can check out as Bloomberg lens. It's this new io s app and Chrome extension that gives you all sorts of relevant financial information alongside your news check it out. Game Plan is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henderson. Head of podcast is Alec McCain. We'll see you next week. Bye bye.

As a child, I literally ate like I love those of salt as a snack