You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello, out louders. It's a public holiday today, so we're bringing you something a little bit different than your usual Monday Mamma maya out loud episode.
Did you know that January is widely considered divorce month?
Have you got an announcement?
Jesse, No, I don't do you Holly can't get.
Divorced because she's not married, because she's a hoe and not the gardening type. There was a piece written for Mamma mea a title January is Divorce Month, and it talks about why relationships particularly fall apart at this time of year. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to get an appointment with a marriage counselor or any kind of therapist in January or February.
Very tricky. For speaking from.
Experience, they say it's They think it's probably a combination of holiday financial pressure, spending too much time together and maybe with family and in laws too when you're just like I'm done with that, or conflicting parenting styles over the school holidays. Whatever it is, all bad in.
Changular, there are likely many out louders who are nodding in recognition or have someone in their life who is going through it. So we thought today we would share a chat that could come in handy. In this episode, we unpack some words from a celebrity who has gone through a divorce.
It's actually a subscriber episode, but we thought because these are serious times, we might bring it out from behind the paywall in case it helps any out louders who are listening and maybe going through it.
Enjoy out Louders.
I'm going to bring up a name we haven't mentioned for a while, and some of you might go, oh, no, they're going to talk about her again, But she's one of our out loud family, one of our extended family of hyperfixation celebrities.
Hi, guys, it's Emily Radikowski.
Em Rada as she has always known here, model, prominent feminist.
Or.
She nemesis of mine.
She has no idea that she's me as nemesis, but you know, anyway, she gave a big interview in Vogue recently or did she do the interview? I can't remember. Anyway, it was like her and an author and they were doing a conversation and it was all about divorce. And the reason I'm bringing it is because I think that she said something that is actually very relatable.
Does she need our help because she's done a segment?
It's like that, right, So A you might remember that a while she got divorced in twenty twenty two, she had been married to this guy with a silly name. No offense to anyone who's listening to this, who's called Sebastian Bear McClard. Your name isn't silly, but this man's is silly. And they got divorced in twenty twenty two after four years of marriage. And they share a son.
And then Emrada posted her diamond rings that she'd repurposed post divorce to say power, etc. Anyway, she's talking about this divorce in this interview in Vogue, and I think this is something that a lot of women feel. She said, I felt marriage was a romantic thing. I thought it would ultimately be a partnership. I didn't think about shared labor. Because, in the immortal words of Cardi b I don't cook, I don't clean. Let me show you how I got
this ring. That is a line from Acardi, these song friends. But what she means is she didn't cook. She didn't, But after having a child, I found myself accepting what was happening. I never cooked, and suddenly I was not just cooking but also being the breadwinner while simultaneously organizing our social schedule and being the primary caretaker of our child.
I'm really interested in the decisions we make in our lives, particularly as women, because by the end of my marriage, my world was suddenly extremely small and less important, less valuable. It was a slow devolution from oh, we're partners and this person respects all that I'm doing, to feeling like a possession. I think Emrada speaks the truth there, and a lot of women would relate.
I agree, she's one of us. I've always that's one of us.
I knew it.
She's absolutely one of us. I liked how she talked about almost how invisibly that transition took place, the transition from wife to mother. There was a question in there about what the patriarchy has more of a hold over, like whether it's actually the transition to wife that is what makes you submissive. But I think that she was right in saying no, no, no, it's the transition to mother that totally undoes you. And that she was saying
as well, she was still making all the money. It's not like she was the person who was reliant on her husband for income, but someone had to cook for the child, and so she did. It reminded me of this episode. I listened to of the Diary of a CEO recently with gender expert doctor Richard Reeves, and he said this about marriage and child rearing.
My wife and I had this rule. Well, first of all, we said we're gonna have kids, We're going to raise them ourselves. We're not going to have kids, and then literally have full time nanny from nannies and night nanny's and really, but we also both want to pursue careers. And so what that meant was we had a rule, which is, you can't have two big jobs at the same time. Now, a big job in our case wasn't necessarily a high earning job. It was a demanding job.
It was a job that would be difficult for you to just say I got to go my kids sick or I need to stay home today or whatever job that would make that hard. So, for example, when I was in government, in the UK, I was working number ten. That was a big job. It was not a big salary, but it was a big job. And so my wife did a more much more flexible job so that she could be the one who could stay at home kind of et cetera. And then when she was a partner
at a major consultancy, I was at home. I was writing, and I was doing all that. And so you have to have one of you that's like, I got it, I got the kids. I'm primary person with the kids because otherwise trying to both have big jobs and raise the kids.
Firstly, at the little giggle that he gave when he said having someone else to reach out children, that broke my heart. I really didn't like that.
The man without kids and the man whose wife stayed home and looked after his kids.
Imagine someone to look after your kids.
And the second thing I thought is how idealistic to think we can't both have big jobs dot dot dot at the same time. It's such a gas lighty way to keep someone going. Yours can be flexible for the
moment while. And I'm not saying that he's necessarily doing this, but what's really difficult for women is that when the kids are little and you've maybe taken some maternity leave, or you're maybe making decisions not what's best for you, but what's best for the family, and the husband or the man is going and staying at his kind of not so flexible job. How often does that really switch? Yeah, And how hard is it to look at each other and go, hey, you know how you've climbed the latter
seven spots and I've gone down four. Here's an idea, here's my turn. I'm going to make one third of the money you do so that you can work in a completely different It doesn't happen.
It can't happen one hundred percent, right, because this theory has been around a long time. It's about having a lead parent. You know, you're both pretty equal, but one of you is the lead parent at home, and the idea being that the person who's not the lead parent can lean into the career, and then the batch on can be passed and the lead parent can lean into their career. Now, in an ideal world, it's a bloody great idea, but as you've already pointed out, Jesse, how
often that actually happen in practice? Because the problem is is you earn a certain amount of money that pays for your life, your house, your mortgage, all that stuff, and then if you suddenly switch it, how does that work? And then also as another hard done by supermodel found out Giselle, remember how when she broke up with Tom Brady and they'd had their kids, she said, I kept waiting for my turn because he kept saying, don't worry, darling, I'm going to retire soon and then you can get
back into your career full bore. And she was like, funnily enough, my turn never came.
Remember here retired, and then like two months later he's like, I'm making a comeback and she left him.
And the stats as well about if a woman even does go back, let's say she is doing the big job, she's more than likely also doing the other jobs, the other stuff, for the cleaning and the social schedules and the cooking and all of that stuff.
I did. But I'm not the lead parent. Brent's the lead parent, has he always been most of the time. So I agree for ordinary people, you know, and a lot of these people talking in Vogue and everything, they're not necessarily ordinary people. I agree with the statement that you can't both have really big jobs and still be hands on at home. Well, not for most ordinary people, because it wouldn't have worked.
In math, doesn't work in my house.
It wouldn't have worked if we both had had big jobs. I mean big job sounds, but you know I had more of a demanding job, let's say, and as he puts it, I think that's a really good description of it. It's not necessarily about the money, although it usually is too. But the job that isn't like I can work from home for three hours this afternoon, I can call him sick,
or I don't have to travel or like. The job that's more flexible is the job that lends itself more to being lead parent, and in our house, that's always been Brent's role, right. I think if Brent had also been trying to do a really full on job, we wouldn't have been able to do it.
No, I've been saying to Luca for a year, you can't have to full on massive jobs. And he says, yes, you can. Look at my parents maya, can you help shit?
Yeah, but I reckon there's a and putting this to Mia obviously for her conversation. They're the bosses.
It's different, so different. So like I remember when I first.
Came to work at Mama Mia a long time ago. Mia left the office at two every day she'd work again. Yeah, yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you lazier. I just sounds like it was great, not that it would not that it would be lazy if you have said that. But I remember because I was looking, obviously looking for models of how things worked. Mia was in early news conference because in those days it was Mia was writing
for the website, doing all that stuff. She would leave it too, kid, pick up, sort things out at home, and then she'd be back online it was Skype or whatever in those days, like later in the afternoon. You were able to do that because you're the boss.
Yep.
So this is why women will often sacrifice money for flexibility, because even if you work more hours, if they are your hours to decide when you work them, it gives you a degree of freedom and less stress.
Right.
What I find really hard to untangle about this. The default thing is to blame men and go it's not fair. Why won't men do more? Having employed literally hundreds of women and worked with probably a thousand women over my career. This is a generalization, but it has been the case in the majority of situations I've seen. The men don't necessarily want to work part time, but the women do so. Whether it's because we genuinely want to be with our kids more, and this is what I can't untangle even
in myself. How much is that we have a desire to be with our kids more, and how much is that we know that society and we've internalized society's expectations that we should be with our kids.
More, choices made them so we feel less, we feel less guilty.
A few things going on the part time prefer Maybe that's because of the amount of labor going on in your personal life that bleeds. That's like, if you are cooking and picking up and doctor's appointments, cleaning and all of the things, then it is very difficult to fit a full time job around that.
Yeah, but me is saying that could be a man doing that.
Yes, I know, But if the woman is already doing those things, whether or not she's working full time or part time, I think that she's then making that sacrifice because of what she's already got on during the week, If that makes sense. You know.
But what happens then, and this is what Emrad is talking about, right, and I remember writing about this and I give the marriage a year, is that This is how it plays out in a lot of ordinary houses. Baby comes, you take maternity leave. It might be six months, it might be a year, it might be whatever. During that time, you are the lead parent, and you are also cooking dinner and whatever for maybe the first time ever, maybe up until that day when you went on matt leave,
he was cooking dinner. Some nights you were cooking dinner. Some nights he was doing the washing. Some days are doing the washing, some days equal split, like Emrada says. Then you're at home, so it's like I'm looking after the baby and I'm doing the housy things. And then what often happens is you go back to work and
somehow all those jobs still stick to you. While I was cooking dinner and I know how to do it, and I know what the kid's going to eat, and I know how to do that, and I've organized those things, so it's just and then somehow you keep doing them, keep doing them, keep doing them. But then you've also got your job, and it's like an insidious and insidious sounds too sinister, because whenever you talk about this, I want to make it really clear that I know what
a privilege it is to look after kids. I'm not saying that, but I'm just talking about doing the two jobs, the three jobs, the four jobs.
That a privilege?
Well, I think it is if you you know it is for many.
It is and I think it's twofold right with the privilege every day.
But when you end up doing all the things and that creep happens. That is what Emrada is talking about, where suddenly you're like, hold on, I'm back at work, but I'm still doing all the things that we And the thing is if you have a baby and then you have a gap, and then you have another baby, whatever, then that can be a period of a few years where you were lead parent by default, and then it's very hard to undo it, just like it's very hard
to undo this job. Flip that, and is this of a CEO thing.
That happens with battles, right, And I've I've had this where I've laid in bed at night and gone, do I fight this battle? Do I fight this battle? And there are eight hundred of the battles that you kind of go. How did this fall on my plate? How did this? I remember saying to a friend early on. She said to me a few months in, I was expressing some frustration and she said, has your husband ever folded a onesie? And I was like, oh wow, the things that defaulted to the woman, Like why would that
default to me? And that's not saying and this was coming from us. I yeah, exactly, how does he think the clothes and wherever bored or the.
Every time she grows out of clothes, has he ever gone or she needs?
Yeah?
So there's just strange jobs where like, you know, I've been with women and we've looked at each other and gone, oh, so you're going away next week? Has he started packing the sick case? Like just very very specific gender jobs that you go This isn't our dynamic, so.
Pack the suitcase for who the bad baby?
Oh?
So it's sort of like the man and this is I was literally having this conversation on the weekend. This argument happens in all heterosexual couples. They're going away and the man tries to convince a family that they can go away with a carry on bag, and you look at the man and go, You've never ever packed a bag for a baby.
You had a period.
Well, I don't understand what needs to go three clothes, and so I think that you lay They're going to fight this fight? Do I fight this fight?
Do I? You have to fight the fight's Jesse, you have to fight the fucking fights or you are packing all the bags for the next twenty years. Is that what you want?
But then society do you divide and conquer? And I want to say back to me and Jason for a second. The other difference is in the first part of our relationship when we just had one child, I was working in a big job. I was employed in magazines and Jason had his own business, and that was really challenging because we were pulling in different directions. So it was always a competition for whose job and whose time was
more important, and also who was the most tired. I mean, the title in picks is something that you have always. It's like who's the most tired. The reason also that we were able to do it in the last seventeen years of having kids, which is really our last two kids and most of our eldest child's life was because we were working together, so we were pulling in the
same direction. And would we've ever been able to build Mama Maya just one of us while the other one had a big job, or while the other one was building another business. Absolutely not. So we have very much divided and conquered. And I've often said, like so much of the mental load in our life is taken by jas, like really traditional splits, right. And also he's always done like dentists and haircuts. I don't know why, and I've done medical things with the kids, but I do the
emotional a lot of the emotional stuff. But even now, like we've got teenagers, it's very split.
It's really split.
But it also can be because we work together and we're in charge of our own now.
The other thing that I noticed about what am writer, because we can't talk about her without me picking out something that I didn't like about what she said, there was a quote about divorce as liberation, and that's what they were sort of talking about, and I just I've been reading a lot about how divorces liberation is a bit of a luxury belief, is a bit of a luxury idea that for someone like m writer who has
the means and who divorce won't financially cripple her. That is very different to you know, millions and millions of Americans who the decision to divorce and Australians who the decision to divorce has you know, financial consequences or a woman can't do that. So I even the book that they were talking about, and there's all this literature coming out which is really about empowering women to divorce, and I know that is a solution to some of this, and we talk about.
But Jesse, don't you think it comes down to the man you are divorcing and the dynamic here are divorcing because if I got a divorce, my life would be so much harder. But Amrita's point, and I've got friends who've also said, my life is so much easier and it was liberating because they were with someone, but they were still doing all.
The work and often they're looking after the guy too and felt resentful exactly. And so the other piece about that is these two ideas are linked because you're very right that divorces a liberation is a luxury belief, because divorce is actually statistically very bad for women in terms of money. But one of the ways in which you get more freedom to live the life you want is to be financially independent, and that is probably the most
important kind of independence you can have. And you are not financially independent if you have given up your career to fold onesies. And I know it's saying that is like a controversial thing to say, and I know exactly who's out there in the world who's going to be writing me and angry now tomorrow, because I know that
parenting is much more complicated than that. The decisions you make in your life, as time goes on, you can look back at them with some distance and you can go there were things about that that were great, and there were things about that that weren't. And I'm certainly at that point now with my kids in that they're
both getting into that more independent teenage time. And I'm like, you know what, I was always at work in those early years and it was very stressful for us all, and maybe I should have made some different choices blah blah blah. But the truth of it is, these days life is expensive. Everybody I know needs two incomes pretty much, and you have so fewer choices. If you don't have money of your own. And so if your marriage is miserable, and if you're looking after somebody, you know they're just
another person you're looking after every day. Someone don't give up your money.
Marriage is liberation. But I don't think marriage is a prison for everybody.
Marriage is certainly not a prison for everybody, and divorce isn't liberation for everybody. It's absolutely misery inducing for lots of people. But if your marriage is unhappy, it's liberation, right.
I wondered just on the you know, women choosing part time as well, And I don't quite know how to articulate this, but just anecdotally, when I look at some of the women around me and I look at the decisions that they're making and why they're making those decisions, I see women asking what is the best thing for this family? So I have a friend who doesn't want their child in daycare five days a week. Right, husband happily have the child in daycare five days a week.
So what's a solution, Well, she can only work three days.
But isn't the solution Because this is the thing is that.
When I say solution, I mean that's what their family then chooses yeah, yeah, Like.
Brende Brown talks about this is like, and I'm very guilty of it in all the conversations we've just had. Is we kind of putting the parents against each other when healthy families make decisions that are good for the family. Right, So the thing that's good for the family in that case, if he feels that strongly about it, is he should work four days and she should work four days. Do you know what I mean?
Like he doesn't feel strongly about it.
But he does. He feels strongly that the kids should be in daycare five no no, no, no, no no, And she's saying I don't, isn't there's a common in that position.
What I think you're taking away from that, which is that he thinks they should.
It's more like if they they are or they're not, I don't care.
Yep, it doesn't he care about what she thinks and what she wants. Like, this is what I mean about making a decision for the family, Like, why are we so binary about it? It's like, well, one of us does three days and one of us does five. One of the reasons why when you said me a before, like why do all the women I work with want
to work part time. That is such a deep, culturally entrenched position that I don't think it's fair to characterize it as because they want to, Because some do, definitely, and what an amazing choice if you can, But so do some men. But it's just that they don't have any cultural context, or very little even now in twenty twenty four, of going into their boss and saying, what does flexibility look like for me? Is it possible I
could do? Because two parents working four days might solve that problem better than her having to then, because then there's bitterness, resentment, she's taken a financial hit, Like how is that good for the family as a whole? Like isn't the ideal that you're making decisions for the family as a whole if you can.
There's also the jobs. I'm having this discussion with my sister at the moment about solids, right, Like when you introduce food to a baby, you're thinking end to end, right Like, I know for a week what my baby needs to eat, and I know that there needs to be allergens, and I know what needs to be prepared, and I know that this breakfast needs to be different to this breakfast and blah, blah blah, and then you know, she might turn to a partner and say, can you
do breakfast? And he'll do one spoonful of yogurt and then she'll you know, spit it out, and he'll abort breakfast because he thinks they don't need it anymore. That's what the mental load is, right, because it's like it's not just delegating tasks to people in the family, it's like having the whole helicopter job of that. And I'm not quite sure how you shift that.
Sometimes I reckon and again, I know I sound like I'm like very lectury on this, but you know it's one of my specialist areas. We've talked about this jesse h check in times right, because there is no question that of course right now you your sister, whoever knows
more about what the baby should be. But you know how I was talking before about the creep and suddenly the baby will be six and yet it's still all on your plate what the baby's eating, and he's still going, what do you mean the baby doesn't like bananas?
Like?
And there's been six years in which he could have let that. So what's more realistic, perhaps is you go lead parent check in period. So you go, Okay, you know how I've been doing this labor intensive whatever I'm leading in for a year. But you don't set and forget, you check back in like because it's the set and forget that will build you into a position that you may or may not want. It's just like, well, this is just how it ended up, all on my plate, yeah,
do you know what I mean? Whereas maybe that won't be the case in another six months when the baby's eating needs aren't so complicated, but somehow it still ends up with you, do you know what I mean?
Yeah? And they never understand the full scope of the job.
That's the issue.
If you've worked in an office or you've worked a full time job, you understand what the full time job consist of. But if you've been the full time parent and the other person hasn't, then there's no way to ever communicate what a day looks like.