Hey bessies, Hello Sunshine.
Today on the bright Side, we're changing the way we talk about being a stay at home mom. Founder and CEO of Mother Untitled, Neha Rouche is back on the bright side and her new book, The Power Pause is out now. She's flipping the script on parenthood and pausing your career. She's here to give us fresh tools, empowering language, and a whole new way to think about this transformative phase of life. It's Tuesday, January twenty eighth. I'm Danielle Robe.
And I'm Simone Boyce, and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, Simone.
I am truly grateful to be in conversation with Neha Rush again. She was your friend that you brought on the show, and I just fell in love with her when she joined us last time. I felt like we just scratched the surface about how challenging it can be for moms to determine whether or not to stay at
home to raise their children or invest in childcare. I mean, we talked about how some women fear that starting a family could be a career ender even and she really shed light on some of the false beliefs of stay at home parenthood.
It was such an enlightening conversation.
It always is an enlightening conversation when Neha Rush is involved, and I feel like Danielle, we have to kind of start by giving some context as to why you're not going to hear my voice in this interview. This is an interview I've been looking forward to for forever, because, as you mentioned, she's a friend of mine and I have been cheering her on behind the scenes as she's
been working on this book. I know that she has poured her heart and soul into The Power Pause, and I know that she really believes that can help an entire generation of women break through from some of these false beliefs that I think we've inherited from our own mothers. Unfortunately, there was a fire near my house. I'm sure you guys are aware of bright Side besties of what's been going on in LA with all these fires, and just had to make the decision to keep my family safe
and get everybody out of the house. So unfortunately I missed this interview, but I had spent so much time highlighting her book, and there's so many things I want to talk about and ask about. But I know that I know that you guys had an electrifying conversation Danielle, and I cannot wait to hear it.
We also got to ask some of your questions, so I don't want you to be you do, said yeah, and we credited you would they everyone will know that they're yours.
I don't care about that.
I just the reason why I did that is because this book is so interactive and it truly is comprehensive. Like she's got exercises in there to help you, you know, disentangle your identity from your work. She's got sample schedules from mothers who are navigating some similar challenges that you
might be walking through. So yeah, I just want to honor how incredibly thorough this this book is, and to be honest, Danielle, like, this is the kind of book that I wish was available not just when I decided to pause my own.
Career, but I wish it was available.
As I was thinking about building a family, because I get so many young women reaching out to me asking me about how to navigate, you know, breaks in your career, especially like in broadcast journalism. And now not only can I point to my experience and say, hey, look what's possible, look how robust your career can be on the other side of motherhood. But also I have this incredible guide Naha's book to point them to.
Now it's interesting you say that.
As I was talking to her, I was thinking, I'm so glad that I'm learning about this before parenthood. I really think that this is a book that applies to almost any phase of life that you're in. If you're thinking about becoming a mom, it's interesting. If you are a mom, it's fascinating, And if you're not wanting to be a mom, it's also interesting to learn about the language that we're using as a culture around stay at home parenthood.
Another thing that really stood out to me in Naha's book. She talks about the transition itself, like what it's like to put your career on pause and what it's like to navigate the financial aspect of that. But she also talks about the return, and she's encouraging parents to really prepare yourselves for what it's like when you do return to work. So that's a fresh perspective that I feel like is not talked about enough in this conversation.
Absolutely, we touch on that and so much more.
Here's our conversation with neh Uche.
Okay, nay, how welcome back to the bright side.
Thank you, it's so nice to see your face. I'm so happy to see you. Congratulations on Power Pause. This is not just a beautiful cover, but truly a beautiful book. So this book is already resonating with parents around the country very deeply. I want to start with the language. What is a power pause? The power pause is the antidote to this idea that if you part with your career for a chapter, that you're somehow a shut in trope that has long since been associated with a stay
at home mother. And instead it's this reclaiming of language that speaks to shifting priorities away from our paid work for a chapter for family life, for mental health, for elder care, for a variety of different priorities, and in making room for that, allowing ourselves to discover new interests, new skills, and ultimately be able to add that all
back to such a robust career portfolio. One thing I've heard you say a lot about is that motherhood gets bad pr Why is it important to you to provide a different and possibly even more accurate view we've.
Done such incredible work, only in the recent years of finally starting to think about, well, is there value to unpaid labor, dignifying that work, and really starting to elevate it from the mems of divers and laundry, and really think about the onspiring work that happens behind the scenes, right you know, the women advocating for their child's care to insurance companies, or navigating really complicated education systems to get their kids the best possible structures and systems to
help them grow and learn. That's the work behind the scenes. And when we shine a light on that, then we do two things. We better understand why people might want more room and time with their kids or for their kids, and we also start to understand that, you know, women's brains don't go and die if they take a break from the paid workforce. Actually, it can expand in all sorts of new directions. You're taking this on in a very granular sense. In each chapter you outline a false
belief and then a new narrative to correct it. What is the first false belief that you had to unlearn in your own power?
Pause?
When I had my first child and I decided I wanted to downshift my career. I switched to part time so that I could be two days at the workplace and then the rest of the week at home. In twenty sixteen, it was the height of the leaning era, the height of the girl boss era, and you know, in some ways we had reached the pinnacle of that
second wave of feminism. In what we had to do was rethink, well, if I have clocked in a decade plus in my career and I don't serve my husband cocktails at the end of the day, right, these are dads who are three times as involved with their kids versus any generation prior. And I have all this access to tools and technology, so I know I'm going to continue to grow. Then how can I re architect my
sense of playing the long game. I'm actually pausing, and this isn't a career ender, and actually this is going to be one stage in my life. The idea of ambition, specifically is the determination to do things with care, and the reality is we're going to care about a lot of things over the long game life.
I have a good friend who just had a baby, and pre baby was very career focused. Post baby, she's really considering a career pause. Now, for someone like her, what's the first place to start? What questions should she be asking herself or asking her partner? Well, I think the first place is, you know, have I explored all the options to make room for family? Because there are more than the black and white idea of pausing or staying full time right, there's such a vast in between
of stay at women working. The second question is do I need to stay connected to this particular role to preserve my options? And if the answer still feels like yes, then you know, is there a part time or flexible
arrangement that feels available to me? And if the answer is no, then you might say, okay, Well, if I pause, what are ways in which I can think about strategically navigating my exit so that I'm going to feel empowered, so that I can know that I have a study on ramp if I want to come back.
To that particular work.
But I think the other piece is if I am pausing or me and my partner aligned on this being a joint household decision. If you are wanting to shift, that decision needs to be made together with the foundational understanding that even if you pause, your paid work, you are still contributing, So the partner working out of the home is equally dependent on the work you're doing in the home and the intellectual and emotional labor you're going
to be contributing, so they can single task. And deciding that budgeting for that allows you the ability to then walk through this stage of life knowing you both deserve to be whole and healthy and that you feel respected as you navigate the next chapter.
That part feels so important because you could make a decision and your partner, it says they're on the same page, they're not.
That's that, I think is what scares.
A lot of women one hundred percent because even if this is a financial no brainer, this idea of parting with our financial independence, this idea of dependent has just felt so scary for so long, and so being able to challenge that and think of yourselves as a business organization like depersonalize it for a little bit. In say, household income in, household income out, we're making an adjustment
together to the household's income. Right. I've heard of couples making big, bold moves from San Francisco to Virginia for lower cost of living I've seen other couples say, you know what, We're going to turn down travel opportunities for this year because that's the sort of wig overom we
need to part with income. If you start to feel that, wait a second, I don't feel like I'm going to have equal access to this household income or the mindset of both being interdependent on one another is getting harder to come by in this conversation. Bring in a mayoral counselor bring in a fair play facility tator, bring in a financial planner, because the reality is if you don't feel secure in that, then stepping into this is a risk. If you are in a rocky marriage, this is not
the time to be parting with your income. If you need to pause or make more room, consider ways in which you can stay connected to income. Right.
Is there anything specifically that you did with your husband that you think helped make your pause successful.
We did bouts, a couple's therapy. I think we did one thing really well, which is we had started looking at our budget in our forecast well before we had children, so we had an established cadence of meeting every January and having a financial planning session for the year. Assigning ourselves budgets, so it didn't feel prescriptive. Then when we were doing it with kids, that was an exercise we'd been doing year over year. You know, that was already
built into our vernacular. But we kept it up. And I think this idea of a team of mentality serves you later on because if you foundationally believe that you both are contributing, you both are doing work of value, you both deserve to be healthy and whole. Then on the weekends when you have downtime, it's not you know, the person working out of the home who needs a break.
You both need breaks. And then you're both figuring out ways in which you can give yourselves that, whether that's outsourcing you know, to a date night babysitter, or you're trading off hours on the weekend. I would say we really succeeded in seeing it as a partnership, and when we hit troubles along the way. I remember the first time he called it a luxury to stay home, and he was like, well, it's a luxury, and I was said, what, listen, have you ever been at home with two children? There's
nothing luxurious about those. We went to therapyge and just you know, and so much of that was working through the language, and we really had, you know, our values were aligned, but we did have to sort of shift our mindsets around value. Were you I rate when he said that I rate bananas? I remember when he said that. I couldn't quite get my head around why it was so bothersome. And then I did the digging and I realized,
wait a second. We have associated stay at home motherhood with luxury for so long in this country, and the problem with that is as soon as you associate one side with luxury, you decide it's not work of value, and or you deem it not worthy of support. One in three women feel forced to make this choice because of the cost of childcare. The privilege I have is to get to choose, and the privilege my husband and I had was to.
Get to choose.
But that was a privilege that we both shared. So there was a nice lot talking too, But luckily it helped fill up an entire chapter of the book.
Speaking of the book, before it even begins, you have a page that says how to use this book, which I love. You write that this book is for women who have the privilege to pause their careers. According to your American Mothers on Pause survey, over forty percent of women say they worry about money after stepping back from work, even though they also say it was totally worth it.
Is there anything specific, aside from aligning on budgets with your spouse that you think can set you up for financial success in the transition.
There's some tactical pieces like planning six months ahead ideally and having at least three months of reserves in the bank. And most people don't know, but you can be getting a spousal IRA, so your spouse can be contributing to your IRA even when you're not.
Working for pay.
There are some of those technical pieces that just take planning, and I think that's the foundational piece, is planning and making sure we don't like trip and fall into this decision and then realize you don't have a plan. I think the other piece that was interesting was some of the creative ways people practiced and budgeting. Some said like, Okay, we're going to go through six months having cut the costs that were predicting cutting, and we're going to see
how that feels before we come in to it. I heard of someone else trialing living on one income. So they contributed all of.
Her Oh that's interesting her salary into her four to one k, so that she a had that later on, but b that they were able to practice living on one income. And so there are some really creative and interesting ways to do that. And again, I think it just takes that forward thought and the joint team thinking
around money. Simon was sharing in preparation for this that she felt there was also a little bit of a mental battle here too, because a lot of women feel pride around being independent, funding their own lives without having to rely on a partner. Do you think there's ways that we can reframe and feel empowered by the decision.
If an at home parent was compensated, it would be one hundred and eighty four thousand dollars a yere, no one is paying you that. However, I do think having some of that backpocket data is helpful in reframing that this is not work anyone would do without help. If your friend was getting paid, that they would be considered having a big job. All of that data doesn't even include the emotional and intellectual labor that we keep talking about.
It talks about stuffurring, it talks about cooking and talks about nutrition, but it doesn't really speak to the stuff you can't outsource.
We have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with Neha Rush And we're back with Neha Roush. I've tried to figure out a way to reframe the question what you do, because I've noticed I'll ask people and sometimes stay at home mothers, I can feel they're like, oh, I just I must stay at home mom, or they qualify I'm just to stay at home mom, And in my mind, I'm like, it's not just.
But there's no great way to ask that question.
And I think that in reading your book, one of the things that I was really learning is this struggle with identity.
In the moment of career pause.
First of all, what do you do? It is such a universal stumbling block. The phrase has just come to stand in for who are you? And when you rely on your professional title to sum up the things you care about. There was a woman I interviewed.
And she.
Was a teacher, and she got great prating from saying she was a teacher, because it immediately communicated that she was empathetic, that she might have been calm, that she was a communicator that she was intellectually curious, and it communicated so much about her without that many words, And when you part with that, you don't have that language as easily available to you. So you have to figure out, well,
what belongs to me without that. If you are a teacher, or if you're a brand marketer, or if you were in the media, or if you were a lawyer, that skill and experience doesn't evautrate just because you're not practicing right, So if you want to identify with that, still go right ahead. There's something interesting about the opportunity of reflecting on, well, what parts of that identity go with me? What do I get to take from In my example, from that
decade in brand marketing, I'm creative. I'm so curious about how women work and stories and all of that gets to go with me, And I wonder what else I can now explore in this stage of life. I've heard this anecdotally that women working out of the home me not want to ask a woman who they perceive as a stay at home mom. They might not want to ask them what to do because they don't want to
make them uncomfortable. And I think that there is this fear of we're going to make them uncomfortable, but that's on them to work through. It's our job to include them in the conversation. And worse than being asked what you do is not being asked right because then you are automatically content out of the conversation. So another way to ask might be what are you up to for the rest of the day. It gives you a chance
to talk about how you're actually spending your time. Right on the inverse, the real language that served me was right now, because it's a chapter in life. This is one part of my story. I get to be with my kids. That's what I'm actually doing with my time. We'll see what comes next.
I love that so much because at the core of that question is someone just trying to understand what your interests are and how you spend your time. And so you're just reframing that.
And I think there's a relief that we give ourselves that we don't have to be fixed into this decision forever. But we can own the power or the privilege to get to choose this and stand in the power of that. If you didn't choose, you can say I'm spending time with my kids right now.
That's it.
There's a lot of feelings I imagine that come up after deciding to take a career pause. What are some of those usual feelings. There's a real fear around becoming irrelevant. It's sort of the third myth that we try and dismantle in the book is this idea that your career pause is your career ender. For the reasons we just talked about, all of that experience goes with you, right and I wish I had done a better job of this,
so I spent time with it on the book. When you're resigning, you're actually networking on your way out to essentially build the bridge back for yourself. You're taking a mentor out for coffee, or you're taking the administrative assistant who you had such a nice connection with out to a drink, because you want to be able to nurture that network that may serve you really well. And the nice thing about what the era we're living in right
now is that we can stay connected. It takes thirty minutes a week maybe to scroll your LinkedIn feed and be able to engage with former employers, former colleagues, content and know that.
That web still exists.
The other thing I wish I'd done was take stock of my experience when I left. You know, you forget those little moments that lit you up, that those big wins that are sort of tangible and easy to communicate, and you want those intact and I think being able to sort of dignify what you did before reminds you that those skills are still there for you to draw on.
The other piece is this idea of like, you can also update your LinkedIn headline to say ten your market or something interesting about you that makes you nance right, curious about women currently volunteering, were currently on sabbatical, something that just speaks to where you are without shutting yourself off. And then there's a fear of feeling stuck and not growling and not knowing what comes next. That's my favorite part to talk about because that's actually where.
You can use this.
Stage of life to get really intentional, and I think that's the part that's lesser talked about.
My mom told me she took I think four years off when she had my brother and I we were two years apart, and she said those were some of the hardest years of her life.
She really enjoyed working.
And she felt that sense of stuckness for a person like that who takes a career pause and then thought, maybe this isn't for me.
What does somebody do?
Then you're allowed to reevaluate your decision at any time. First of all, it's normal to feel a little bit of grief as your trait and discomfort as your transition. Even if this was your choice, it's going to going to feel uncomfortable. And I think that the part around that is really starts with giving yourself permission that this stage of life you might have chosen or not chosen to, but it happened that you're making room to raise your kids,
but you can actually make room to grow alongside. When we reframe that as yes, we are here in this moment in this chapter to focus on our family life and to thrive in family life, and for our family to thrive, they deserve a healthy and whole parent. What can I do now to plant seeds for my future vision state? You know, I think a lot about how when I was in the workforce, I know many women
were this way. You know, you go at the end of your year end review and you kind of say the things you have to say to get a promotion or a salary bump. This is actually the only time where you're reporting only to yourself. And when you're reporting to yourself, what are those metrics? Right? And if you aren't going to get a promotion and you aren't going to get a salary, how else can you measure success?
And too often we see women feel like, well, if I'm going to be taking care of my kids, my metric for success is their behavior the state of my home. But can we reframe this to think for ourselves if we want to measure our own growth, how can we
start to back into what are measures of success? And I mean I talk about a number of different ways, but my favorite one is forecast your ideal day in five ten years, right, great detail where you're spending time with, what are you're spending time on, how do you feel in your body? How do you feel in your mind? Because that will reveal to you, well, what do I really care about moving myself toward? And I think in that way, we reclaim this time for ourselves and we dignify that time with goals.
For another short break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back and we're back with njar roush Okay, going to Your American Mother's on Pause survey, the majority of stay at home moms say they find the process of applying to jobs pretty intimidating.
Where do you think.
The best place to look for the next big job or the next big opportunity is when.
You have been on a career pause. Well, ideally you start that practice kind of right away. There's such an interesting moment of self study, this idea that once you step into a career break, no one's tracking those accomplishments, but you can. Can you write down and make a list in your phone iPhone out We're on a Google doc of what's a moment that sparked your interest, What's something that made you feel proud this week? Any and
all things. And it might seem completely disparate, but when you look back, the dots will connect and they'll do two things. One and I'll use the example of this woman in North Carolina who what jumped out to her and looking back at a year of notes was that one time that she helped her local school system organize a new bus route for her area which was underserved. One it revealed to her that she's actually really interested
in project management. Second thing, when she realized she wanted to go into project management, which was not necessarily like a full pivot, but it was an evolution from where she was. She started to put the bullets under her experience over these last couple of years together, and she was able to fancify that one experience to make it relevant. Game changing suddenly gave her an ability to speak with confidence to number of relevant experiences that she had during
that time away. And I'm not saying brush under the rug that she paused her career to take care of family life, but she has a way in which to speak to how she expanded her skills in like really tangible practical ways.
What are some pitfalls to look out for when you're planning a return to work.
I ran into this and I work for myself. Whatever your shift is that you're stepping into around career and family. When you're entering in a new season, there's re examination between your partner and you, and so we go back to those meetings around how might we think about the
dynamic that's shifting. In this case, it might not be a money conversation, but it might be a roles and responsibilities conversation right, And I think too often we've been so focused on the re entry and our children have grown along side and maybe their needs have changed, but we try and have similar to the money meetings are
pretty consistent back to school. It is a sort of normal inflection point or revisiting period where we've re examined the routines, who's doing pickups, lay out all the cards and the fair play, and reassign them because what we don't want to see is we take on more work outside of the home and we're still holding all of
the cards that we were before. For many women who have been carrying the sort of unpaid intellectual emotional labor for so long, it can very quickly continue to default that way unless you intentionally have that dialogue, and not just with your husband, with your kids too. I got some great wisdom from Tova Klein, who I interviewed for the book, and she said, it's not about working in or out of the home.
Right.
We know that there are equally healthy outcomes for children no matter what. It's about having a present parent when you are there, So how can you redefine intently what that presence is going to look like for you? And maybe I'll give you my example. I now work until four thirty every day, and I return home and I put my phone away on the front console table and I don't pick it up again untill eight. So I know that from an hour's perspective, I'm spending far fewer hours.
But that was what allows me the ability to feel really confident that they're still getting a whole and present parent. The other piece of this is our needs and wants are allowed to shift over time, just like the whole family units.
Nothing makes me feel more loved and cared for than when someone puts their phone away. Oh and so I think your kids must feel that me too. Okay, this is Simone's great question and I want to share it even though she's not here. She said she wants to talk child care. This feels like the biggest barrier for her and most of the moms that she speaks to, and the biggest struggle. So during her pause, it was hard to find help and then pay for it. What are some creative ways to find help?
I think the first piece was that she struggled, and if I remember correctly, with this idea that if I'm not doing paid work, I don't deserve paid help, right, and I think that that sadly, we see reflected in the research that one in three women feel that way. This work is of value, but it's also work, and no one should expect to do that twenty four to
seven without breaks. With that in mind, the next question becomes, Okay, the most readily available person to give you a break is your partner in the case of a two parent household. So how might we have conversations with our partner in the case of especially if we don't have access to paid help, about how we might be able to take the mornings to ourselves, if our partner can wake up with our child, or even rotate mornings so that we can have a dependable hour every morning that we can
work out. You know, we can invest in whatever lights us up and keeps us healthy.
Right.
Part two of that is how might you think about what else you can delegate? It doesn't always have to be childcare, and I have a full robust list at the end of the help chapter. Maybe for you it's not about getting help with the kids, but it is about the stuff that you do want to delegate, like laundry, gift buying, cleaning, in general meals, whatever that might be.
Have that conversation with yourself and in the home about what are stuff that I can either delegate or let go of for this time or lower the bar on, Like we know that we do have to do laundry in a house, but how often do we have to do it? I heard one woman say I just bought ten under It turns out that like getting ten under pats of underwear was just cheaper.
I didn't have to.
Get like a cleaning lady, but I could only have to do laundry once a month, once a week and not made.
Sense for us.
And then the really creative ones were the ones who decided to do like a coworking swap where one takes three kids at a time and then the two others get a break for a few hours each afternoon. It's like a win win, But it does take saying you need help, putting yourself out there with friends, asking what other solutions other people are using. It can be nanny shares, it can be mothers helpers, It can be your partner or family. But everyone deserves those breaks.
Nah has you're doing these community events for your book launch, do you find that women are gravitating towards a chapter or an idea.
In particular, the chapter on reframing our sense of ambition that are in our sense of identity is always you know, I think it sits at the heart of this work because we have been fed this idea that our worth is so tied up to what we do for a living, and if we part with that, who are we? How do we exist? How do we stay relevant? The other piece that people are really interested in when they're in community is when they look around and they realize, wait a second, this is not the stay at home mom
fore yesteryear. I think this sort of stay at home working mother divide has done us no good and we need, we need a lot more together in this for these next few years.
In thinking about the stay at home mother of yesteryear, I was really interested to learn that the term stay at home mom only came into our vernacular in the nineteen nineties, and at the time it was meant to modernize the title housewife or homemaker. And so now in twenty twenty five, your book is out and you've put your stake in the ground, which is the word that you use last time you came on the podcast. How do you see the term and the perception of stay at home mom evolve in the future.
My hope is where you can just blur the edges around it and just get rid of it entirely. I mean, no one replies I'm a working mom. Like if you ask what you do, you don't say I'm a working mom. There's no reason to say I'm a stay at home mom. Right Yeah, the ability to just say and I go back to right now, I get to be with my kids.
We'll see what comes next. One part of a very ongoing story.
So I'm obsessed with book dedications, and I open up your book and it has a beautiful dedication. It says for my father for always honoring my mother's impact in our home and for believing in me and this work too. Can you share more about the dedication.
We immigrated here when I was three, and he always worshiped the ground my mother walked on. I knew that, but I didn't know how fully he credited her for the work that he was able to do until I got a little bit older. And he always made so clear that he was not able to do what he
could do about her. He was building a company at the time where there was a lot of immigrants coming in from India, and she was the one who would settle them into the local community and help line up housing and schools, that she would house them in many cases and they would live with us. I mean, it was really she was his right, She was his head of hr and he paid her such respect that I didn't even fully understand when I took my own career
pods the shaman stigma I was going to feel. My mother did ultimately return to work outside of the home, but they always seemed like such a team. And then that is and maybe is why I talk so much about that mindset going into these kinds of shifts.
Did he support your career pause? Did you consult him about it before you decided?
I did, and he he did. I think, you know, he also put this faith in me that I would be able.
To turn it into something.
I had that belief and confidence pretty early on. And we don't always get those messages when we're young, and we don't always get those messages from the people who raise us or surround us. And I do feel lucky in that way, and it is absolutely because I had him in my corner.
It's so beautiful.
This almost feels like it's been a lifetime of practice and of work. Who are really a culture shifter, And I'm so glad that this book exists in the world, and I'm so glad that you've been leading this charge. So thank you for sharing your time with us today. Thank you. Danielle nehal Ruche is the founder and CEO of Mother Untitled and the author of The Power Pause, which is out.
Now, that's it for today's show. Tomorrow it is Wellness Wednesday, y'all, and we're talking all about financial health and how to use AI to reach our money goals. Here to walk us through it is the self proclaimed Beyonce of personal finance, Melissa Jean Baptiste. Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok Oh, and feel free to tag us at Simone Boyce and at Danielle Robe.
Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.