Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Motherhood Can’t Wait. Put Your Career On Hold.” - With Author Suzanne Venker

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Learn when to prioritize marriage and family and when to prioritize career, how to embrace a slower paced life, and change your view of work-life balance. One of our most popular guests, author Suzanne Venker, is back with another culture shifting episode to talk about her new book: How to Build a Better Life. She describes it as “the antidote women need to discover who they really are at their core and feel empowered to embrace it.” Suzanne courageously debunks popular life advice that young women are almost always given. Connect with Suzanne Venker @suzannevenkerauthor Purchase her book, How to Build a Better Life on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Website | https://www.suzannevenker.com/ Instagram | https://www.suzannevenker.com/ Facebook |   / suzannevenkerauthor   YouTube |    / @suzannevenkerauthor   . Get ticket details for Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit at https://ywls2024.com and use code ALEX for 25% off admission! Interested in making a tax deductible donation to support The Spillover? ☕️ Visit https://donate.tpusa.com/donate to contribute to guest travel, set needs and more! . Get 100% Organic tampons & now PADS! Try GARNUU today at https://garnuu.com/ and use code ALEX for 15% off. Support American farms and shop GOOD RANCHERS. Use code CLARL and get FREE chicken wings for a year valued at $150! https://www.goodranchers.com/ Ditch artificial fragrances for your family by switching to ALEAVIA organic prebiotic body wash and use code: ALEX15 for 15% off. https://www.aleavia.com/ Elevate your skincare routine with NIMI SKINCARE! Go to https://www.nimiskincare.com/ and use promo code ALEXCLARK to get 10% off your order. . Looking for like-minded friends? Join the Cuteservative Facebook group: ⁠  / 1234544066933796  ⁠  Interested in making a tax deductible donation to support The Spillover? ☕️✨ Visit ⁠https://donate.tpusa.com/donate⁠ to contribute to guest travel, set needs and more! Listen at 6 PM PST/ 9 PM EST every Thursday by subscribing to ‘The Spillover’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify ☕️✨ AlexClark Instagram | ⁠  / realalexclark  ⁠ Instagram | ⁠  / poplitics  ⁠  X | ⁠https://x.com/yoalexrapz⁠  Spotify |⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7M0C7cl...⁠  Shop Real Alex Clark Merch! https://tpusamerch.com/collections/real-alex-clark

This episode is the perfect embodiment of what to expect topic-wise at the Young Women's Leadership Summit this year. What is that? Oh, well, only the biggest conference for conservative women in the country. It's June 7th through 9th in San Antonio, Texas. The theme is back to our roots. Think Prairie Corps, okay? This is the flowy dress braid moment that you've been waiting for. Hear from your favorite guests that have been on the spillover in the past year.

Amazing pioneers in the conservative movement and even non-toxic living. and health and wellness experts. One of my favorite surprises is a speaker whose specialty is crimes against children. It is going to be so powerful. But that's the only hints I can give for now. Speakers announced soon and seats are already going fast as we have a limited capacity.

All ages are welcome. Come alone. Come with your baby, your teen daughter, or your mom friends. Go to YWLS24.com and use code Alex for 25% off. YWLS24.com with code Alex for 25% off. Think earth tones and pastels, by the way. It was news to me, so I'm betting it's news to you.

Millennial ladies, there was some really important information that was conveniently left out of the many conversations we had growing up with our parents, teachers, and school counselors. Gen Z women, you are at a pivotal moment in life where you have a chance to not make the same mistakes we did. This episode is about when to prioritize marriage and family and when to do. to prioritize career, how to embrace a slower-paced life, and change your view of a work-life balance. Wherever you are in your journey of life, being married with kids, newly married, or even single

in wanting marriage now or someday, you will learn the power of your femininity and how to accept things as they are rather than how you wish them to be. This is the second interview I've done with this guest, the first one being one of my most popular episodes ever. It was called It's Not Mom Shaming, You're Just Convicted, and it was the first episode on the topic of daycare I ever did. She's a relationship coach, Phyllis Shafley's niece, which I just think is a cool fun fact to throw out, and bestselling author. Her latest book, which we're discussing today, is called How to Build a Better Life. She describes it as the antidote you need to discover who you really are at your core as a woman and feel empowered to embrace it. It's about unpacking the lies that we were

fed on career and motherhood timelines, biological clocks, daycare, and how to stop feeling trapped in a culture that is resistant to our deepest desires as well. a woman. This is a culture-shifting episode that is made possible with donations from cute servatives like you. This show is produced by Turning Point USA, which is a 501c3 nonprofit. Your tax-ded-tue donations are what allow us to film this show, film it in person, edit it, and post it. Everyone say hi on the set. Hey! To become a financial supporter one time or continually, find the link in the show notes.

If you can at this time, a five-star review sure does make a difference. You can watch this interview by subscribing to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. Please welcome the legendary Suzanne Benker to the spillover. Suzanne, I first had you on the spillover in July of 2023. We discussed daycare. That was the first time I had ever talked about this with my audience. It was the first time, to my knowledge, anyone in recent memory in the conservative movement has covered it.

I know what the feedback was on my end, but I have been dying for months to hear what happened for you after that interview. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. So after we did our conversation, I did a follow-up video about our conversation. And that kind of went crazy on my YouTube channel. Ever since then, I have found or I have felt as though I should say I've tapped into something that I should have known. I mean, I really should have known, but just got so sidetracked with other things that I've

been doing, really kind of forgot about. So I first started talking about this 20 years ago, this topic. And I'd kind of like been there, done that. And it was out of my brain for a while. I'm into the relationship and marriage space. And I'm kind of focused there. And so I didn't think a lot of it when we first spoke. And then I just got slammed with,

well, I've never heard this before. What are you talking about? Like, what? What? And asking all these questions. And I realized then, holy crap, these people. who were responding, I think, were babies when I first was writing about it 20 years ago.

And now they're all grown up. And they've never heard the realities of the early years and specifically, not just daycare, but really what goes on in those early years and why they're so crucial. What were some of the common themes and the messages and comments that you were receiving? When you grow up having something becomes so normalized, it sort of stops you from thinking deeply about it. just kind of do it because that's what everybody does. So once we got into the specifics of attachment and talked about what goes on in those early years and the minutia of what a mom at home is doing relative to what goes on in daycare because you're in a group, you're in a group setting and you

don't have that one-on-one that you need, it was sort of like a life-bulled moment because they have been taught that daycare is actually a step that preschool in daycare let's lump them, really the first three to four years, that children need this to get a leg up in life. And the socialization thing is huge. We'll come back to that because that was, I'd say that's the biggest thing like, what? How else are they going to get socialized if you don't put them in with a bunch of kids right away? And you're like, no, no, no, that's not at all how it works. That comes later. And so think that was the biggest shock. They've just never heard anybody say that. I don't know if anyone told you this, but I had multiple. And I mean, it would be shocking and

amazing if even just one, but multiple women tell me that they were going down to part-time in their careers after our episode, that they were quitting their jobs altogether, that they were downsizing their home, that they were moving states to live closer to family so that they would have extra help and be able to stay home with their kids. that episode, Suzanne, I'm telling you, in my looking forward, in my legacy of like, what was my any impact, what was your impact? I think that interview that we did together will be one that we can look back and say, that episode really helped change culture.

So I'm so excited for what we're going to do today. Awesome. Well, I hope so because I've definitely gotten those emails myself and my heart just warms. And I'm just like, thank you, thank you, thank you. And of course, how could they have even known to make those changes if they didn't first become educated on what the truth really is? Why do millennial and Gen Z women deserve an apology? This particular topic is a perfect example.

How can you know what you don't know? If you weren't raised with an education, just let's stick with what we're talking about, about the early years and what goes on in those years and why your presence at home is so important, I'm on the receiving end of seeing and hearing about these stories and reading about them. You can see it all over social media. You can as well where they don't understand, for example, why their children are behaving a certain way, why their babies aren't sleeping.

There's not such thing as daycare sleep. Babies don't sleep in daycare. Sleep is when your brain grows. Sleep is the most important thing in the early years of life. It's almost on par with attachment. You know, in the process of attaching to your mom, you also need a crap ton of sleep. Like to the point where you as a mom, your life's going to stop and you're going to be homebound just to get that baby the sleep here she needs.

And that's a tall order for a culture, a generation, I should say, that lives in a culture of go, go, go, and not being homebound. That's what makes motherhood so hard right now, I think, harder than it ever was before. And it's always been hard. but it was easier when you had a culture that respected it, honored it, supported it, when you had families around to help each other. You know, now we're much more transient. And you have these women raising children in a vacuum, really.

They're babies and they're alone in the house all the time with no help. That's not good. But there's no question that you have to be homebound in those early years to get the baby what he or she needs. That's an example of, wait, why did nobody tell me this? Now I have to rearrange my life. I mean, this goes to the choice of career you choose, right? It might even have to do with the choice of spouse you chose because you want to make sure that you're on the same page

with how you're going to raise a family with the person that you married. I'm getting a little off track here, but it's so far reaching to not have the information early on, which is why in my new book, I mean, that's what it's for. You were the first person that I ever heard say that we need to be planning our career around our lives and what we want our future to look like versus

planning our lives around our career. And really, that has to take place when we're teenagers deciding to go into college, what we're going to study in college, if we even go to college, that so many life decisions take place before the age of 30. And a lot of us were told to make the wrong decisions

or not thoughtfully make the right ones. That's it in a nutshell, which goes back. to what you ask me about why they're owed an apology, because that simple approach to life has had so many negative consequences. And I'm saying, all you have to do is just turn that on its head and understand that, well, there's two main themes,

for example, that I want to get across. The first is that who you marry and how that marriage fares is going to have the most effect on your happiness and well-being than anything else you do. Your career, your job, you can change that. You can't just swap out your spouse. I mean, people try all the time.

But statistically, if kids are involved, you actually have more chance of a divorce with each ensuing marriage. So that one decision colors so many of the other decisions that you'll have to make, geographically, career-wise, and all of that. So knowing that, that's one thing, and knowing the fact that you as a woman, that your priorities are going to change dramatically when you're, 30, around the age of 30, than they were when you were 20. How so? Well, your career is going to become much less important, and all of a sudden, marriage and family is going to take center stage. Not just because biologically, your body is calling you to do that and saying, well, hurry

up, you're losing time here. But because it's just natural, and that's how women are made. And if you know that, if you had just someone telling you, hey, this isn't going to be as important to you later as it is now. So let's play the long game. Let's look out 10, 15, 20, 25 years. Instead of saying, what do you want to do and spending so much focus on your career, what kind of life do you want?

How do you want to live it? What do you want your day-to-day life to look like? That's what we should be asking young women. Yes, what do you want? It's a big question, but it's a crucial question. What do you want? But this is the problem. So many young women, teens, early 20s, the answer to that question is, well, I don't know yet.

Do I want to have kids? I'm not sure. Do I want to get married? I'm not sure. That is true. And I always say, err on the side that you will want to get married and have children, not that you won't. Because if you set up a life with that assumption in mind, things will fall into place more easily or the way, I mean, ideally, nothing's perfect. But you'll have a greater chance of things falling into place down the line than if you do the reverse. So why not just err on the side of caution, right? Eliminating parabins and phallates in your personal care products can turn off over 70% of known cancer cells within a month, according to a 22 study. Thalates, by the way, are artificial fragrance, which is also a huge contributor to the fertility crisis we're experiencing. Knowing all of this, why would you still chance putting products inside of you with these chemicals?

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in Nepal, there's just not a better brand out there for women and girls. Go to garnu.com to get 100% organic cotton period products and period cups. Use code Alex for 15% off. That's G-A-R-N-U.com with code Alex for 15% off or find the link in the show notes. Explain the difference between an examined life and an unexamined life. An unexamined life is when you move through the world just kind of doing whatever everyone else around you is doing. Whatever the culture says is the thing to do, you just do it. You're not really. thinking about why you're doing it, or even if you want to be doing it, you just do it. And unfortunately, that is, that's a big, that's a big aspect of human nature that's, it's natural.

I mean, people want to be confirmed by the society in which they live. They want to be doing things that people around them are doing. So that's why the culture is so huge and so crucial that we're supporting and encouraging the right things because we know that people are so susceptible to wanting to do what people around them are doing. It's much harder to build a countercultural life, but to live an examined life is to live a life according to what you want and what you believe is the right thing to do

and the things that are going to make you the most happy. And that will require kind of zoning out the information that's coming at you if it's not in accordance with what you want. And it's very difficult to do, no question. But it is order number one. If you want a happy life, you have to be countercultural.

30, 40 years ago, maybe not. But today, be weird. Be different. That's the only way to be successful. Do everything opposite of what you're told to do and you'll probably be successful. So what would be being weird, being opposite, and being countercultural today?

Great. So number one, play the long game. Quit thinking about tomorrow or today. Think where you want to be 10, 15 years from now and what you want your life to look like. If you really don't know, you must know somebody who's, life, you kind of, you know them and you're like, I like that. That looks like something I would like.

I admire that. Think about people like that. Dating. Let's just start with dating. That's probably the biggest. That's what I need. That's the biggest. If you date the way the culture is teaching you to date, you will fail. That's why so many people are failing. Date for marriage. Date with purpose. Do not just date around for fun because you're focused on your career and you'll worry about that later. That is the absolute wrong way to go about dating. I want to just jump in and say this. When people talk about, well, don't just date for fun, date for marriage. And I think 20, 21 year old, Alex, I knew what that meant, but I don't think I totally understood. So to me, I would say, like, I, you know, I really want to get married one day. That was always something that I would bring up.

You know, I'm dating for marriage, whatever. But the dating for fun aspect for me came in without me knowing I would enter long-term relationships with people that held values that I knew, I knew better that those would not be conducive to marriage later. What I mean by that is different political views that mean a lot to me, different religious views that mean a lot to me. And it was always, well, with time, maybe he'll come around. With time, maybe this can be tweaked. And in what you're saying, that wasted time.

That wasted time for me to be in a relationship for a year and a half, two years. years with multiple people that I knew were not showing that this is going to be somebody that could be marriage material within six months. That's a mistake. So that would be, I didn't think I was dating for fun, but when you continue to, when you stay in a relationship like that, that you know doesn't have legs for what you envision for your life, it's dating for fun. So that was my mistake. And maybe fun isn't the right word because I did worse than that. I married him. I married my first husband knowing that our values were not aligned, hoping I could change them. That's what women do. We'll just love them into another way of life, right? Into thinking differently or he'll change or whatever.

Fun maybe is too hard of a word. Maybe it's more like don't invest your time and energy where you know today it's not a match in hopes that it will be a match later. Yes. Maybe that's a better way of saying it because we don't rewrite. We're not dating for specifically for fun. I'm just saying to date with purpose so that you're looking for those things right away and you're ruling them out. If it's not a match, you can get out quickly. Yeah. So that you don't waste time. See, for me, and I know what you mean by dating for fun, but I'm just saying that looking back when I heard that term, I was like, oh, well, I don't do that. Yeah. Because I do talk about what I want and that I don't want to date for long. I want to get engaged, you know, all these things. But yeah, it was investing time

in the wrong person. Yeah, that's what, and that's probably women's biggest stumbling block to getting what they want, ultimately, which is, you know, most women want to get married and have kids eventually, no matter, even if they don't know when, they typically do. And that is, if we could tap into just how to avoid the wrong man, right? Or how to not waste time with the wrong man, it would be a game changer. Give me your best dating rules that are tried and true for every generation. The first one I put in the book was to not pursue him and let him pursue you. That's kind of a tricky one today because there are far fewer men actually pursuing than there used to be.

And so that that's a fair comeback. But I still argue that at the end of the day, you want someone who has sought you out because you want a man who is able to see what he wants and goes after it, you know, and who can lead and who can make something happen. And if you're pulling at him or you're being the one to go after him, it's never going to feel good. It's never going to be the way you ultimately want it to be. That does require probably a bigger conversation that we're going to have right now because of what I said before. That men are stepping back. I would encourage men not to step back. So that's that conversation.

A big one that I talk about is never have more than two drinks on a date. Why? I mean, this seems so obvious. I mean, first of all, this goes hand in hand with dating with purpose. Remember, we're not out to just have fun. We're going to date with purpose. We're like, dating has to have an end goal. Are you a match?

Are we a match? Well, how the hell are you going to figure that out if you're drunk? I mean, there's no way. So one of the things I say in there is just stop it too. Nothing good happens after the second drink. Here's the good news. Gen Z, you know that it's really trendy. to go zero alcohol.

Like everybody's doing mocktails. And that's great. They are giving up drinking. So that's really good news. This should be easier for Gen Z than it was for millennials or is for millennials. Awesome. All the rules that I want you to follow

like not having sex and letting him pursue you and dressing a certain way, dressing with class instead of, you know, all hanging out there. All this stuff is easier to do when you're sober. And you should be sober on a date. Bottom line, you should be sober on a date.

You can have a drink. You can have two. depends what it is. If it's a stiff martini, no, you stop at one and you drink it very, very slowly over the entire course of the evening. A couple of beers, sure. But that's it. You just can't get yourself to another state or you're not going to be able to assess whether or not it's a match. Plus, it turns into just silliness instead of what you're really there for. You can enjoy yourself without being dry. I hope so. Okay, so that's one, the way you carry yourself and the way you dress. This is what I find so fascinating. You're supposed to be body positive and,

be able to put anything out there, right? And no one's supposed to, like, I can put it out there, but you can't look at it. I can't figure that out. Like, if you're showing it, that's where my eyes are going, male or female, actually. So if you want a man to love you and be interested in you for what's here, why are you showing what's there? Why? Why would you do that? I want to talk to you. I want to engage with you. And you can't, a man can't engage if you're, how? Like, It's just so common sense to me. I don't understand how that's not understood. What is the best non-religious argument for why you should never live with somebody before getting married?

When you decide to do that, which invariably, every time I ask somebody why they do that, it's always either, I was just sleeping over at their house anyway every night. It just seemed silly. Why have two apartments when we're always over at each other's apartment? So we're just going to be practical and have one payment. Well, first of all, you shouldn't be making any financial decisions with somebody that you're not married to. at all. So that's not a reason. But second of all, what ends up happening is half of those people don't end up getting married, more than half. If you do, you end up sliding into marriage because you never really made a decision. So you want to have your own separate space all the way up to the

point of deciding, yes, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because that allows you the objectivity to make that decision free of any interference. of, well, we're here anyway. It's just too complicated to split up now. It's easier to just might as well. It's the next step. Like, these are not reasons to get married at all. So invariably, you're going to end up marrying really for the wrong reasons.

Okay. So when it comes to when we talked about living counterculturally, what's going to be weird in today's culture? So it's dating with intention, dating to marry, not just dating to date. Playing the long game. Playing the long game. choosing a career that is flexible and that works well with motherhood, not the other way around where the focus is, what's this big career I'm going to have that's going to be the focus of my life,

and then I'm going to try to fit marriage and motherhood in around that. Reverse that. Find a career that you can move in and out of more easily, or that's flexible or that can be done part-time or that can be done from home. I mean, there's just a whole litany of ways to talk about how to pick a career that is family friendly and to stay away from the ones that aren't if your goal is to have a family-focused life,

which you can imagine how provocative that is, right? Are you telling women that they can't pursue their dream career? So, of course not. You can do anything you want to do. You're a grown woman. You do whatever you like. What I'm saying is these are the trade-offs, and that's a choice that you're making.

And here's what you won't get if you choose this. This idea that you can have it all and be it all and do it all is really, ridiculous. And that's what they've been raised to think. There's no discussion about the details of what will that really look like down the line, which, by the way, is why you have women going into the medical fields and the law fields and then backing out 10 years down. You actually have more women than men in those fields initially, but then fewer of them stay down the road. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah. Or they go into more female-friendly medical, you know, like a family physician as opposed

to a surgeon, you know, something like that. There are actually ways to do law and medicine that are more family-friendly. I don't know a lot about it, but I know that they exist and it can be done. All I'm saying is it's not right to raise girls the same way we raise boys. When you are a parent and you're teaching them to basically construct the same kind of lives where basically it's all about school education, get as much education as you want, go into debt to do it, focus on your career, figure all that out, and there's no discussion of what really is going to ultimately matter in their lives, which is love and family, with no discussion of the fact that the daughters, for one thing, their bodies do something that the sons don't, right? That's one thing.

But also that men and women are not the same, that males and females are not the same. And this is going to play out throughout their lives. And that's okay. That's a good thing. That's something to celebrate. There's no discussion of that. We raise girls the way we raise boys, we're taught by culture that that's what we're supposed to do because that's how you prove we're equal, which is complete so that's the lying from the get-go. You started this by asking, why do we owe them an apology? Because we've been lying to them since the day they were born, all in the name of politics, all in the name of what looks good, all in the name of following the status quo, because you're supposed to say this because it makes you look that you believe, you know,

men and women are equal or the same or valuable. Well, whoever said that they weren't. You know, that's one of the biggest lies that's been fed from the get-go is this idea that because women and men are made differently, that they're somehow unequal. Nobody ever said that. They're equal and worth, but we are not meant to be equal in how we tackle life. How we move through the world, the choices we make, how we think, how we behave, that we're different. And it's a good thing. Who wants to be the same? I mean, how boring. But we are taught that we're interchangeable. And so there's no discussion of the fact that your body is going to do something different from a man's body. And so, for example, when you have a baby, your response

to that baby is going to be different from a man's. And this is really, really crucial and again, provocative because nobody wants to say this. But your natural instinctive reaction when you have a baby is to care for your baby emotionally and physically care for it. That's human nature, female nature. A man's is different. A man's is, oh my God, got to go into providing mode big time so that these people, my wife and child, can be cared for. Who else is going to do that? So his providing and protecting instinct kicks into high gear when he becomes a father. Yours goes into caregiving mode. See, that sexist and misogynist to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So frustrating for me. Such little courage. on the part of parents today. And I was very fortunate because I was raised by parents from the greatest generation. They were born in 1920 and 1932 and 1930, respectively.

They're gone now. And they could give a flying hoot about what is the thing to do. You know, they just are practical, practical, practical people. And I heard all this stuff my whole life. And so to me, it's normal to just tell the truth, even if it's not popular. but I've learned over the years that it's a very rare thing. I don't know if it used to be less rare or back in the day, but today it's like, come on, people.

I don't know that it was more popular to tell the truth then than now. I think it's just that we have become way more emotional and overly sensitive now. True. Because we're living with Gen Z and millennials. Gen Z, especially millennials, have a little bit of that. But, you know, it's very normalized to,

not feel a wide range of emotions. Uncomfortable. Nothing uncomfortable. Everybody, you have to be comfortable. If you're uncomfortable, then that isn't right. That's not okay. No high highs, no low lows. You can never be challenged in anything. You know, nobody can be made to feel bad, even though that we've talked about this before in the previous episode is that that guilt, you know, quote unquote guilt or whatever, might be in intuition telling you something isn't right so that you need to change something. You know what I mean? That's our bodies, response to like, hey, something isn't right here. It's a good thing to have a little bit of guilt on something. You should examine it. You should look closer on that. But now everybody's so

medicated and nobody wants to feel anything sad, anything super happy, no immense joy. It's very unnerving because you, I mean, I mean, there's no growth there. It's just going back to examine versus non-examined life. That's how you live an unexamined life by never feeling, by never facing hard things, by never being uncomfortable. If you can't hear the truth, you can't fix anything. You can't change your relationship. You can't grow as a person. Self-awareness is half the battle.

If you lack that, that's very problematic. Are we living today in extended adolescence? Do you ever look back at those old movies and you see them in their 20s and you say, oh my God, they look like they're 20 years older than the young people today? They're in suits and dresses and that way they carry themselves and the way they talk, it's like, holy crap, how could they only be 23? So I sound like they're 43 by today's standards. It's a big deal. I mean that, and part of that maturity, a lack of maturity that we're dealing with today is a lack of sacrifice, understanding what sacrifice is. Because those people back then,

of course, they had wars and depressions to deal with and really big stuff that really young people haven't had to. And when you're not asked to make sacrifices, and hell, we don't even talk about this topic, you're not supposed to even sacrifice for your baby. You don't grow and you don't mature. It's impossible to move forward if you never have to make sacrifices. You're always just fulfilling your own needs, which is why family, marriage and family is so crucial to be able to reach that level of maturity, I think. I was at Trader Joe's yesterday. The cutest thing happened. There was a French couple who was taking pictures in front of the sign like it was a tourist attraction. I don't know if

Europeans think that Trader Joe's is some kind of special American luxury or what, but it did make me laugh. I like the store a lot. One thing I noticed was there was a lot of meat there labeled all natural. And I was like, well, what does that even mean? I mean, it has green labels. It says all natural. So I guess that's supposed to make you feel like, well, I'm making a healthier choice. But that is some greenwashed mumbo-jumbo if I ever saw any. That doesn't mean anything. buying meat from a local rancher you know personally is ideal. That is the only way to truly know what is in the meat. But not everyone is in a position to be able to do that or know somebody

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Yeah, you have to understand that there was a political agenda behind the world you know today. And you had to have really almost lived back then or at least studied it to understand how this affects you. All the people that you hear from in the media. Well, for one thing, we know that the media is heavily left. We already know that. So, I mean, I hope people today know know that. so that the message that's coming at you is serving what they think and believe in their worldview, not yours.

So if you're just a regular person who likes men, who wants to get married and have kids, who doesn't believe in hookup culture, which is not a normal thing to believe in, like, who wants to do that? If you are that person and then you're hearing this messaging, you have to understand that that, There's a political agenda there that started in the 70s that had to do with this idea of getting women out of the home and into the workforce.

Because they wanted more bodies doing their bidding. It wasn't about we want to give women all this freedom. And that's where women on the left, they have this totally wrong. The feminist movement conge you. conge you. You know, for a long time, I was, I was hell-bent on trying to get young women in particular to understand that. Now I feel like we've moved beyond that almost because it's so much a part of the culture now, 20 years later, that it's almost like people don't even think about that word. They don't even think about, they don't even think of themselves as feminist, but they've absorbed all of that messaging, unbeknownst to them, that serves an agenda, but it doesn't serve you. So that when you wake up and you're 35 and you're like, what the hell? Why can I, why is this hard to find? find a guy. What did I do wrong in the, you know, dating department? Why, um, I'm having fertility problems? All these things that could have been avoided got in your way because of a political agenda that you've been raised with in the media, in the schools, and in Hollywood.

I go, those are the three main areas. And that's coming at you left and right all the time. So unless you had parents who specifically taught you counterculturally, you're, you're kind of at a loss, which is why when people come to me, it sounds so new. It's almost like I want, because I was raised so counterculturally, it's like I want to give my mother and father, mostly my mother. She's the one who gave me so many of this messaging because she's a woman. I want to like give her advice to the world so that they can benefit in a way that I did. And part of the detox program that you think millennials need to go through also has to do with purposefully choosing new people to hang out with and spend time around. How does that affect you?

That's hard. And it is, I mean, it's hard. but we are so much who we spend time with. We are heavily influenced by the people around us. And if you're hanging out with people whose views don't match yours, you're going to be influenced by them. It's very hard to just sort of say and do what you want when you're surrounded by people who do it differently.

So it might mean finding, you can't really get a new family, but you can maybe distance yourself a little bit. But you can add friends to the equation if you can't get rid of the old ones. This statistic freaked me out. 88% of all of our life's decisions happened before the age of 30. Yeah. So that came from Dr. Meg J. Who wrote The Defining Decade.

It's about 10 years ago, maybe a little more now even. Great book. It's such a different and refreshing take on the 20s. Because what is your generation here? What have you heard from day one? Live it up. Live your best life. Don't worry about getting married.

Don't worry about love. Don't worry about marriage. That's, eh. Yeah, family is late 30s or early 40s. Okay, so let's look at that for a second. First of all, my biggest beef with that messaging is this. So let's say I'm not supposed to think about that until I'm in my mid-30s. How are you supposed to navigate the dating world or your love life in the meantime?

Like, how do you just move in and out of all these relationships happily and have sex with them, live with them, like, this is supposed to do what? This is, this is creating a horrendous mess for women who, when they eventually do decide to settle down, have this huge history that is basically the form of baggage that you're bringing into your relationship, your final supposedly final relationship, and it was supposed to set you up to have some great marriage, right? Because you have all this experience. No, does not work that way. It is baggage. and it is very difficult to, there's a lot of reasons why that's problematic, but the idea that that sets you up for a good marriage is, is crap.

I mean, all that does is set you up for how to be a really good ender of your relationships, right? You're just going to end them. You're getting really proficient in how to end a relationship and move on to the next one. But it's not going to set you up for how to have a good and strong marriage. So that's the biggest problem with that message is like the worry about it later is, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? This is the question I like to pose. All of these messages that are ingrained in women in our teens and in our early 20s

when we're starting out our life of, you know, you should really put, have a family later, have a career first. Ask yourself the question, who doesn't stand to benefit financially? Because how much money is big fertility making off of these women choosing to purposefully put their career first in their 20s and then have a family later? when your fertility is declining in your 30s and your early 40s. It's mind-blowing. That is a biological fact.

Who stands to gain? Every message that we are told, who stands to gain from this? When I figure that out, it frees me out. And obviously, I'm not talking about people that it just, I mean, I'm in that camp of it just hasn't happened yet. I'm speaking specifically to people who purposefully put it off. Yeah, that's the issue. Because people get all bent out of shape. Well, like, so what?

I'm worthless because I, you know, can't get pregnant? No. We're not talking about that. We're talking about women who fall for this trap of you always have an option. The sad reality is, that's not guaranteed. That's not guaranteed that IVF is going to work for you. It's not guaranteed that you're going to be able to find the right surrogate. Or that you can afford it.

Or that you'd even want to go that route. Why would you choose to go that route? You wouldn't, nobody would choose to. I mean, you have to, you have to. But you don't encourage it and support it. Well, you support it. But you don't encourage it when it doesn't have to be that way. There's just, I guess the point is, there's a whole other way that women can do life.

The other way is the way that's going to have far more chance of you're being successful. And that is to think about marriage and family and career differently from the get-go. Reverse those priorities. Make the most important decision you'll ever make in your life is who you marry. That's the hands down. There is no more important decision you can make. Nobody says that. Nobody says that.

if we know that to be true, why on earth are we not putting it at the top? If you said that about something else, wouldn't that you know it's the most important thing? Wouldn't it go at the top? But it goes to the bottom. And then you get stuck later on because you've focused on something else and then you're trying to throw this in at the end when it actually should have been on the top.

And then you struggle because nobody's teaching you how to get married. You know, I posted something on Instagram earlier today and someone said it was about mothers going back to work because it's easier. I think I'd said something about that than being home with a baby, which or two, which it is. And someone chimed in very wisely and said, well, I don't know anything about being a mom. I wasn't raised to have any idea what to do in those earlier. So of course, going back to work is going to be natural and easier. So that's an example of what I mean.

With no compass, no education, no encouragement, no truth-telling, you get stuck later on. And it gets harder to sort of restructure your life at that point. A lot of college grads today think that they're going to graduate. They're going to get a job that they love. They're going to make a ton of money. They're going to hang out with their same group of friends all the time. There's always going to be friend time throughout the week. The reality is you barely get time to see your friend.

you lose touch with most of the people that you hung out with in college. The average American is making around $60,000 or less at the height of their career and they're not working jobs that they love. But the problem is grads think

that all of those things, that's the rule and that, you know, that's what's going to happen to them, especially the women. And then what we're seeing now on social media are all of these Gen Z women

going viral, crying, and being angry like I was duped. I just went so in debt to get this college degree. This sucks. This, you know, getting up at 5 a.m. to get to work on time by 8 to then be in the car for a few hours at the end, get home, eat, do it all over again. Like, they're like, this is a horrible cycle. I'm not happy.

I never see friends. I've no time to work out. No time for myself. How am I supposed to date amongst all of this? Reality is hitting them. And I think Gen Z is quickly realizing, hold on a minute. Why didn't the millennials warn us? I agree with that.

I agree that they're starting to wake up and see this. Wait, wait, wait, rewind. We've got to do life differently. I'm glad you brought up college. You did bring up student debt, didn't you, a second ago? I think you did. I'm glad you did. If you didn't, I'm going to.

Because that is one of the lies. That goes back to what you were saying about needing to apologize. First of all, it was never written anywhere that everybody needs to go to college. So let's just start with that. the people that did go to college could afford to do it, and it was a very small segment of the population. Then all of a sudden we said, you're nothing if you don't go to college, which is crap.

So everybody needs to go to college. And, oh, by the way, you can't afford it. That's okay. Here's hundreds of $1,000. We'll get you through, and you're going to be able to pay that back later. Biggest lie ever. And it was done in the name of what? Well, politics again, because, number one,

of course everybody has to go to college. I think it was Obama or somebody. This is going back like 10 years. You know, who you everybody deserves a college education. Everybody has to go. If you don't go, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but that it's a lesser life. And the student debt crisis is 100% related to what we're talking about. Because if you go into debt, one of my messages, the main messages, I want to help women who want to prioritize marriage and family, or who want a life that kind of revolves around that at the core, make smart, relational, professional, and financial decisions that allow them to achieve that goal. Well, the financial one is obvious. That's what we're talking about. You should never have gone into debt to get a degree. You were lied to when you were told that you're going to easily be able to pay that back because that's crap. We see how that's playing out. And it's causing those, that's an example of a decision that you make in your 20s that you're stuck with later and that is connected to why you think you can't get married because you're, you're poor. You think you have to

be out of debt to get married. I mean, it's a show, really. That's part of this lying to them from day one and not piecing together how all this is going to affect you 10 years down the road. I skipped college, started my career when I was 18, and I'm looking back at all of my job interviews. I've never once been asked about having a college degree. Never once. Never once. Or what your GPA was. Never. It has all been work experience, who I know. 100%. That's it.

100%. If who you marry is the greatest predictor of your success, what happens now for the women who know that they married wrong, but they don't believe in divorce, so now they need to work with the cards that they've been dealt? Well, that's a problem if you fundamentally don't agree on a lot of things. Obviously, you have to have the same values and you have to have the same goals. you have to work together financially in particular to get where you're going or you're going to be fighting an uphill battle.

Everybody's marriage is different. You know, this is what I've done in coaching for the past five years. And I've seen relationships that are on the brink of divorce or actually sometimes I'll sometimes even separated come back together by getting on the same page, even if they weren't before. And I've seen ones that, you know, you're not going to be able to and you just kind of have to. to muddle through with the decisions that you've made and maybe they stay together for the sake of the kids, maybe they split. But, you know, I'm not in the business of, you know, helping people split. I think that it's harder later if you made a bunch of decisions in your 20s that didn't get set you up. I can't simultaneously say the decisions that you make in your 20s are important and then say,

well, don't worry about that when you're, you know, if you're in your 30s. It is going to make your life harder if you made a lot of of, I guess we say wrong decisions or not so smart decisions in your 20s. But I'm an optimist, and I believe that anything is possible. I believe that you have to accept that it's going to be a lot harder and that you're going to have a lot of sacrifices and that if you're choosing this, you automatically don't get that. Like, that's really, I think that's a hard pill for people, both men and women, to understand, is that a choice is a choice and it's a tradeoff. And you can't have both things. So you've got to stay focused on what's the most important thing. And then how do I fix that? How do I, you know, what are the steps that I take to make that work

and kind of not focus on the things I'm not going to be able to have because of this boat that I landed in? And that's really hard in social media, as you know, when you're confronted with all this fake crap every day that makes people think that they're doing their lives wrong or whatever. It's terrible. It's really awful. I feel really badly for young people who grew up with it. I don't know. I don't know what to say. I just want to say turn it off, but I know that's easier said than done. My ideal Saturday night. Prop my phone on its side. Pick a good docu-series. Right now it's the Nickelodeon one. Set it on the corner of my tub. Grab my Epsom salts, my Alevia organic prebiotic body wash. Turn the water on the hottest. It will go. This is what women want. Take notes, men.

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Because this immediately sounds very gold diggy. Oh, that's so ridiculous. Okay. Oh, my gosh. It used to be normal, par for the course, everyday advice for women to tell their daughter. parents really to tell their daughters, you need to marry a man who has purpose, drive, steady income. Don't bring me home. Someone who, you know, I've got to make sure he passes the mustard can take care of you. Young people think that that went away now that women make their own money in droves and are even surpassing men in some cases.

They think that that negates the need for that to ever be said. It does not. because no matter what era we're in, this goes back to what I said at the beginning. At some point, your priority is going to change. And if you did not think about a man's earning potential, because, you know, equality and all that, and I'm going to take care of myself for the rest of my life, you're going to end up in a pickle when you have a baby and you literally don't have a choice but to go back to work. And because you've created a life that demands two incomes, maybe you bought a house together that create that, that, with the assumption that you'd always have two incomes. Or you married a man who makes half of a quarter of what you make. And that's going to be a really rude awakening when it comes to making your choice later. Sometimes you won't have a choice. Sometimes you will, but the choice will be like, well, this isn't the life I envisioned.

But that's because no one told you just because you're a liberated woman and you're equal to man and you can make all your own money, doesn't mean you're always going to want to. Being able to do something and choosing it are not quite the same thing. The advice that you're giving young women is you need to prioritize marrying a man that makes a lot of money,

not because of material things. Like I just, you know, I want to be able to buy every handbag that I want or every pair of shoes that I want, because more than likely you're going to want to be a stay-at-home mom. Statistically, you're probably going to want to stay home with your kids and he's got to be able to provide, right? Yes to everything except where you said a lot of money.

I never said Mary Amanda makes a lot of money. I said marry a man who knows where he's going. He's figured it out. He has a steady job. And he's going to continue to. Okay. So maybe not make a lot of money, but he has a consistent income he can rely on.

So in other words, if you marry somebody before he's figured out who he is and where he's going professionally. Yeah, like he's like, I want to start a band. It's like not a steady income. It's not a income you can rely on. Correct. That's what I'm trying to say.

Okay. I did have a sentence in one, I mean, a chapter in one of my books said, Mary the accountant, not the artist. And all I meant was that. I never said he has to make a lot. In fact, I've gone on the record to say he does not need to make a lot of money per se, and depending on what a lot is and what part of the country you live in and what kind of life you want. Like, that's a whole other conversation. I'm just saying, don't think because you make twice what he makes that that's all good and dandy because you're just going to work your whole life because you're not going to have any choices down the road if you go that route. That's all I'm saying. And so that message,

of marrying a man you can depend on for X amount of years, for a season, a season of your life, the baby season, really, is just as good advice today as it was 40 years ago. Because it's not, it's not about whether you can take care of yourself. It's about whether you're going to want to when you have a baby. And you give yourself options when you still look at a man's earning potential and his purpose and drive. What advice do you have for the work-a-home? You have to really throw yourself into a different way of life to see the benefits from it. You're not going to be able to talk yourself into it. So the more you surround yourself with people who are doing what you're doing if you wanted to stay home, for example, and all you've ever known

is work, and it's especially hard if you had parents who were steering you toward work. I cannot even imagine that. And I'm just going to tell you a little story here because this will be interesting. My mother was, she had an MBA from Radcliffe. She was a stockbroker. My father was a CPA. And she didn't have me until she was 38. This is in the 1960s. I was born in 1968.

She was not in any way the norm for her day, as you can imagine. All of the women she knew were home, got married and, you know, got their MRS degree, as I like to say, back in the 50s. And she went on to school and worked in a very male-dominated field for X amount of years. And she tried to go back when my sister and I were five when we were born. And then she finally quit when we were. were when I was three and stayed home and never went back. And I grew up hearing all the things I've told you about from her knowing that you can do anything. But here's the other side of the equation to that choice. Your kids need you at home. Nobody can do it all. She was especially

sad that she didn't come home earlier. My point being that she was, she was, especially sad that she all she knew was work and she did it because she quit because she knew it wasn't right. It wasn't the right thing to do at home to not be there. And she struggled through it and then ended up happily doing so. So my perspective on this doesn't come from a sort of Pollyanna view of motherhood. I'm just trying to show that there is another way and you just have to believe in it, throw yourself into it and surround yourself with people who are. were doing it. It's going to be difficult if all you ever know is achievement. And you've been that's why I brought it up because I wasn't raised to achieve, achieve, achieve. That's not what I got.

So I can't conceive of that, but how hard that must be. What would you say? Do you feel difficult to remove the achievement from the other aspect? I don't personally, but I do hear that from my audience a lot. Yeah, you do. They're scared that they're not going to be good mothers staying home all the time. they're nervous that they're going to be bored. I hear that a lot. Okay, let me address those two things. The first one, nobody is better for your baby than you. This business of thinking that people, daycare or preschool teachers are, you know, because they love children or whatever,

that they're going to be better for them is crap. And they definitely don't automatically love children. That too. But that is complete crap. Everything your baby needs is at home with you. So that's number one. There's nothing to be afraid of there. You just have to throw yourself into it and learn and open yourself up to something that feels very new to you and very foreign to you.

But if you throw yourself into it, you will, it's like anything else. If you haven't exercised a muscle, it's just sitting there. So you have to exercise it to feel good about it. That's number one. The second thing about boredom. First of all, what job doesn't have that aspect to it? every job you do is going to have some boring aspect to it. True. That's number one. Number two is, yeah, so what? It's not there for you. You're not there

for you. You're there for your baby. It's about what he or she needs. It's not about whether you're fulfilled or happy. And that baby doesn't care if you're fulfilled or happy. They just care if you're there. Yeah, I think that's one of those messages that we're told is you have to put yourself first. You have to do what's going to make you happy. And my belief is that once you become a parent, that is out the window. It is, until they leave the house, they're grown adults. It is not about what makes you happy. 100%. There is no choice that is just what has to happen once you become a parent. And instead of thinking of as a negative, actually, why don't you turn that on its head? Because this goes back to the word sacrifice that I said earlier. Sacrifice is a bad word. You're not supposed

to have to sacrifice anything. You're supposed to live your best life and put yourself first at all times because, I don't know, other people are going to hold you back or down or whatever this stuff is. it's actually in the sacrifice that you grow as a human being. So if you never sacrifice, you never grow. It's just a, it's like taking the same thing and just flipping it on its head. That's why I say it's so countercultural. If you want to be successful, just flip everything you're told on its head and you will be. Why is it a mistake to use paying off debt as your main reason for this is why I have to work despite having little kids at home?

First of all, if you waited until you have no debt, you probably wouldn't have, at least today, you wouldn't have a baby at all. You'd like miss the opportunity all together. So that's just one thing. But also, it's about budgeting. Really, debt is about budget. And I'm not, I mean, I'm not a debt person. So I, and the whole student debt thing makes me crazy. And I feel for people who have gotten into it. But it just becomes folded into a budget for those years at home. So I would never tell somebody, don't have a baby because you, or don't stay home with them, because you have debt. Would Dave Ramsey agree with that? No, and I don't get me started on Dave Ramsey

because I love Dave Ramsey. I mean, I listen to that every single day. I mean, thousands now of stories, Collins, I'm actually addicted to those stories. And I agree with 90% of what he says, but when it comes to this stuff about staying home

versus debt, no. In fact, I actively mad at them because they are selling a terrible message for the people who call in and are saying, this doesn't feel right, I want to be with my baby. Sometimes even the husband will be doing it. Whoever is doing it, it's like, yeah, they'll be fine. The kids will be fine. Just debt, debt, get out of debt, get out of debt. First of all, you only have three years. Three years. You're going to have debt for

what, 10 years, depending on how much you've incurred. So that doesn't make any sense. Fold it into your budget and you're going to have to sacrifice and live very simply. And guess what? It works out really well because babies don't do anything for the first three years and you are homebound anyway. Okay. This is, Suzanne. This is like the thing I agree with everything that you're saying about this first three years, who even cares? I'm like, technically, I mean, when they're first born, you don't even need to get them a Christmas present.

These crazy Instagram birthday parties that we see, I'm like, why? They don't remember. They have no idea what's going on. You know what I mean? Like, the baby doesn't know anything. I just, we're doing too much. And I do blame social media for a lot of that because we feel that comparison as millennials of like, if we're not doing that for our kid, then I'm not doing that.

I'm a bad mom. If I'm not throwing them some crazy Pinterest birthday party, I'm a bad mom. Your kid does not care about any of that. I mean, until they start, until like maybe three, four years old, I wouldn't even care about doing birthday parties. No. I mean, maybe a little thing. It's for the adults. It's for the adults. Maybe you have a couple close family friends over, whatever, but just these expensive parties is what I'm saying. It's so unnecessary, especially if you're doing, what you're talking about is staying home, folding your debt into your budget. I mean. And living a very sparse life. I always tell my friends this with kids, I'm always like, get them an avocado for Christmas. Literally, they don't know.

They're going to have more fun with the pots and pans in your kitchen cabinet than anything you can buy them. It's just about, you know, I wish people would start looking at it as, I mean, actually, it's perfect when you think about it. Everybody wants to slow down, right? Everybody, well, I mean, they say they do. I don't know that they actually are capable of doing it. They say they want to. Wow, what an opportunity. What an opportunity to just, what a graceful exit from the marketplace. What to just be able to say, now I can relax. You're not really relaxing at home, but relax from the pressure of providing or earning or having a boss or whatever you want to say and be home. And all I have to do is take care of my baby. there's so much that goes on in that period of time that is so crucial anyway and so much work

that it's a job of its own anyway that once you start doing it, you'll be like, I can't believe I even thought I could ever do anything else but this. And I think that's happening with a lot of people and why they're suffering so much because they have an expectation of this pressure to produce when they just need to be caring for their baby.

And that's probably been the big, biggest tragedy for young women today is that pressure to produce in those early years when they just, all they need to do is just take care of their baby and enjoy that time and also suffer during that time because it's hard as hell. And babies need to come first. And that's an unusual feeling for the average person today. I'd say, I'd say that was hard even 50 years ago. who goes from just living for themselves to having a baby is going to feel that. But it's an opportunity to put someone else before you and to slow down and to enjoy that time so that the hard parts of it actually aren't so taxing because you're not trying to do something

else simultaneously. You can actually use that time to sort of rejuvenate. There have been a lot of repeated reasons and excuses I've gotten from X's in my 20s on why they weren't ready to get married. I would say the most common one that I got was, well, I don't make enough money yet. I can't think about getting married in a couple years because I don't make enough. I have to be making X amount in order to get married. So I think for starters, it's really important to understand the difference between a woman and a man when they're thinking about getting married. when we're talking about the finances. Generally speaking, a man's not going to feel

like he can even go there in his brain until he is situated. It kind of goes back to what I was saying before, which is ironic, because in as much as we should be telling women to look for men who have found their purpose and have a plan and they're gainfully employed and all of that, it's good for the men too. Because they want that as much as you actually want that from them,

even though nobody talks about that. he needs to feel that he's on his way to be able to then bring a wife into the picture. Now, as far as the amount goes, you would be better than me at figuring out, like, what that means today for young people. Because in my day, it wasn't about how much money you made.

It was about what I keep harping on is, are you gainfully employed and you have a path, a career path that's moving forward and that presumably was going to go up over time? Nobody thought about how much you made specifically because the assumptions that you're going to make more as the years go on. So many women because they all earn now when, again, we all earned before, in my day too, everybody was earning before getting married or at least before getting, before having kids. You continue working after you get married, typically. But when you have the kids is when it starts to have you have a different conversation.

If the assumption is that you're going to combine your incomes as it should be in my. opinion, because that's what marriage is. You share everything. Why would you not show your finances? It's the most important piece of the marriage. You are going to get a lot farther together than you are apart. So I deal with this a lot with coaching because this is the number one thing that I see, and I'm sure it won't surprise you at all. People are coming into their marriages with this his and her mentality. I think it's more driven by women. I could be wrong on that, never taken a poll. But generally speaking, there's this idea that you get together and then you get married and you have separate accounts.

I think it comes from just the whole individualistic mindset that now is in our culture where everybody's an individual instead of a unit when you get married, why would you be any different? That gets into a conversation about what marriage is and do you understand how that's supposed to work. But they're bringing this individual mindset like they're more roommates than married people. And this is most evident in the way they're handling their finances. It is a massive mistake, in my opinion, to not have combined finances. To me, you may stay married, but you really aren't married in the true sense of the word, and you're not, you certainly aren't having an intimate marriage.

You may get along okay. Actually, some will argue that you get along better because you're avoiding conflict. But by avoiding conflict, going back to that conversation about doing hard things, by avoiding conflict, you're really going to end up, you're definitely going to end up roommates and you're not going to have a very good sex life, and it's going to fall away in terms of what the marriage is supposed to be because you're not coming together to have those difficult and uncomfortable conversations, working your way through, working as a team, and coming out on the other side.

And that's what makes your relationship truly intimate, both financially and relationally. So it's really about having an intimate marriage versus just a roommate-like marriage. You would be floored by this. I would guess that you probably don't. but are you on like Venmo apps like that? So on Venmo, I see it all the time with friends of mine that are married. They will Venmo their spouse for things like Starbucks or, you know, Buffalo Wild Wings last night, things like that. I'm like, why are you Venmoing your spouse, you weirdo?

That is so cringe and weird to me. Cringe and weird and also very telling because you're basically announced into the world that I'm just my husband or my spouse or my wife is my roommate. mate. You don't have a marriage. That's not a marriage. That's just not marriage. Is that what marriage is? Huge red flag. Let's just look at this from a logical standpoint. If you are never discussing anything and you feel like, okay, we have no conflict. It's just, we're just conflict this way. You have your account, I have mine. You can float that way for a while in a seemingly peaceful existence. It always, always will end with some event that comes up that's money related, that you have to then make it a decision about together. And you've been living on separate planets this whole time. And all of a sudden, it's going to blow up. Because now that you have to face it, now you have to make a decision about it. And all that crap that you haven't been talking about is going to be right there on the table. And it's going to be a shit show. Every time I get a facial, my esthetician asks me,

what is your skincare routine like at home? And I love that. When they ask, I can tell her about Nimi's skincare. It opens up this door for me to talk about my beliefs as a Christian and conservative. Meekin skincare is Christian and conservative owned, and they are loud and proud about their beliefs. This is modern skin care with timeless values. Now, the vitamin C line is really ideal for anyone with combination to oily skin who's needing a little extra brightening. You ever see somebody and you're like, oh my gosh, her skin is glowing. I wish I had that.

Vitamin C is one of my favorite secret weapon ingredients in skincare. And I don't leave the house in the morning without Nimi's vitamin C serum. The vitamin C moisturizer from Nimi is another product. that I love telling my oily skin friends about because it basically acts as a moisturizer and matifying makeup primer in one. I love products that give me more for my money and I love brands that put my money towards causes

that share my values. You're only going to get that with Neamy Skincare. Go to NeamySkincare.com, use code Alex Clark for 10% off. That is neemiskincare.com, N-I-M-I-Skare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. Find the link in the show notes. Inevitably, every single time I bring up, you know, mothers wanting to be stay-at-home moms and how this statistically is usually what happens after they have a baby, they want to stay home, there will be men in the comment section that are like, okay, well, that's nice. But, today, today, it's impossible.

You can't live off of one income. We both need to be contributing to the household income equally once we have kids. So how do you convince your husband of the value of being a stay-at-home mom? So that's a big conversation today for sure. There's several components to it. First of all, recognize that what you're really disagreeing about is your value system. Because in the ideal world, you've decided in advance of having the baby. I mean, hopefully before you got married, and at least after you're married, somewhere before you had the baby, what do we want to do when we have a baby?

I mean, presumably you had this conversation about who's going to stay home or are we going to stay home or what have you. So I think it's rare to have a couple, maybe I'm wrong, that never discussed it and then all of a sudden they have a baby and they have to deal with it then. So hopefully that's not most people's stories. The best way to prove to a man in particular about the significance of staying home or what's involved in that

is to leave them alone with the baby and take off for the night. Because there's really no way to explain to anyone male or female who has no experience. If you didn't grow up babysitting, In my day, everybody babysat, took care of babies long before we had babies. That was normal. Like, they don't do that today. So there's a lot of experience there that's natural in my day.

But now, you really just are never going to get it until you have to do it. And so that's, in terms of understanding the value of it, that's the only way to do it. You know, understand what really goes on during that time and how hard that is and how important it is. As far as the finances go, you know, I do deal with this a lot. So I know that it can be done after the fact when one person wants to stay home, even though that's not what they had planned. But it will require an agreement on both people's part

because you're about to embark on a lifestyle that's very different from what you had envisioned. So again, going back to the budget, not to sound like Dave Ramsey and keep coming back to that, but it is all about the budget, and it's all about combining finances. And when you sit down and do that together and show well, you asked about husband in particular,

if you can show him, because men love, you know, you can put it down on paper with, you know, do the math. That'll register a little bit more. That what you're probably paying in daycare costs is offsetting what that second income brings in. So usually, you mean, you'd have to both be making six figures, both of you, to have it come out in the wash from a financial aspect.

Not that I encourage that, because I think you should be home anyway. But if you're talking just the numbers, just the math, you'd really have to both be making six figures to offset daycare costs, in my opinion. That's not most people story. How much are you hearing that people are spending on daycare per year? I think the average now is $2,100 per child.

You know, it's funny. People say, that's so much money. But then you're like, what, you want cheap? You want to, like, if your kid isn't worth. So a decent, a decent day. Not the most expensive, not the average. The average. Gossip girl daycare, but also not the hood daycare.

I mean, I'm not saying it's politically crack. But like a decent one, $2,100 a kid? You're definitely talking several thousand dollars a month, definitely. This is what you write about the costs of daycare. The best way to convince your husband that it's possible for you to stay home is to do a cost-benefit analysis. That's the process used to measure the benefits of a decision or taking a specific action minus the cost associated with taking that action. Now, there are countless hidden financial advantages to your staying home, especially in the early years. The cost of daycare alone, especially these days, almost always offsets the second income.

The average daycare cost is roughly $2,200 per month for a family of four. So that's two kids. So let's say one parent you write earns $90,000 per year, which is $66,000 net, which translates to $5,500 per month. Now, let's say the other parent earns $50,000 a year or $40,000 net. This family will pay $26,400 per year in daycare costs alone, which brings that second paycheck down to only a little over $13,000. That doesn't even factor in the other costs associated with daycare, which is gas, you know, commuting costs, clothing you need for work, eating out,

always is the result of both working, let's face it, coffee is out, whatever it is you do to have that lifestyle of working, it actually costs to go to work when your kids are little, I mean, when your kids are little. You can save money by staying home, believe it or not. Now, that's something you don't really hear, but it's true. Because when it comes down to it, if you are working and putting your kids in daycare as the second income, your husband earns more than you, it's coming down to maybe a couple hundred dollars a month extra. Maybe. Exactly. Exactly. For the average. Now, obviously there's people who have it differently, but they're not the norm. So I'm really concerned with just the average family. And I'm saying take the time to put all that,

to do that math, to put all those numbers on paper and see what you're actually netting per month. And you should at that point see the benefit of not only staying home financially, but all the stress that you're removing from your plate and all the benefits of being there in those early years, not just for the baby, but for your health, because you're going to be eating at home, for example, instead of eating out, having calmer conversations with your spouse because you're not both stressed out and coming home and trying to do everything in an hour's time. I mean, there's so many hidden advantages. I can't even go into them all. That's how many there are. How would you coach a woman who's been primarily in her hard era into being in her soft feminine era?

That's a little more tricky. It's almost a separate conversation because that's a lot of lot of what I have been doing in my coaching, but I don't typically, I will say that it's harder when the kids are little to really get into that because, I mean, it should be easier because you see all that stuff, like the trad wife phenomenon and you see on social media, the happy, smiling women in their dresses, taking care of everything and makes it look super easy. And I think that's sort of like extreme the other direction. Most people are very frazzled when they're at home, taking care of baby's needs. But it is easier to be more feminine and it's easier to think about the kinds of things that make you feel feminine, such as taking care of yourself.

Self care is a huge one, having time for that and looking good and feeling good and getting enough rest and not being stressed out and then receiving your husband in a more, in a lighter state and not a stressed state. It's easier to naturally go into that when you are home. because you almost you can't go in it when you're not home because you're basically you're going in a man mode for those years you're you're basically acting exactly like your husband going out to work and trying to deal with a leftover when you get home and you're going to have a different response to that as a woman than as a man which is why you get here all about that chore those chore wars because men aren't doing exactly the same things at home that that women

are and it's not equal and all of that and of course that's a bunch of crap because they're not attached to the home in the same way you are. They don't have the same expectations. And they're men, not women. And so women are natural nesters. So even if you do work outside the home, that doesn't take away your nesting instinct. It just adds to it. And it makes, that's why you're having such a hard time at home because you're trying to do two things half as well. Is it impossible for women to be amazing at both motherhood and career? At the same time? Yes. Anytime you turn toward one thing, you invariably turn away from another. You cannot be in two places at the same time.

You have to choose which one you want to excel at. And the other thing is going to invariably take a back seat. It has to. It has to. So one of my favorite things to do is to flip that, having it all, and I have a chapter in the book that says, change your definition of work-life balance. Again, I'm always tweaking everything. I just, well, it's a big tweak.

It's turning it on its head, really. it's not that you can't have it all, it's that you can't have it all at the same time. So there are seasons to a woman's life. There aren't seasons to a man's life. A man's life is very linear. He doesn't give birth. He doesn't breastfeed.

He doesn't take care of babies naturally in the same way women do. This is generalizing, but it's an absolutely fair generalization. Therefore, when he's mapping at his life, it's very linear. It's like, what's my job? provide protect that's it and a woman's job in her mind i'm talking about what she feels and what she wants

is not the same as his she doesn't want to provide for her husband and her family if she's going to be married with children she doesn't go into providing mode she goes into nesting mode and that's normal that's natural and you you're fighting it instead of welcoming it as if it's some sort of bad thing that you should fight like why would you even want to fight that you're you're Your life has seasons and his doesn't. So you've got to orchestrate around the fact that you are the one who is pregnant for nine months several times over if you're having more than one child and breastfeeding and caring for that baby in those early years. So when you think about work life balance, think about your whole life. It's that long game again. I'm going to be a time for this and a time for that. And when the when the days have come and it's decades have passed, you will have done. I mean, I've had it all over. I'm 56th. today. My version of all, but my version of all isn't, I mean, my aspirations career-wise, you know, aren't necessarily as high as someone else's. So that's not where my priorities lie. So for me, having a family was the most important thing in my life. And it has continued to,

I'm continuing to reap rewards from that today. I love this stage of life. My children are now young adults. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But I'm sitting here with you because I have also carved out a life for myself professionally over the years. Are you suggesting that women who are a decade or so deep into their career need to be willing to step away and maybe come back to it later or just step away completely? I don't know that I'm suggesting so much anything. I'm saying that if you want to, you should and you can. And it's a good thing.

And I want to support you. And here's how we're going to do that. Let's look at the math. Let's look at the this. Let's look at the that. and I sit down with you and help you do it. And that's really the key is there's no support for that. It's why would you do that?

What is the green grass syndrome that a lot of women suffer from? So the green grass syndrome is basically just the looking over at your neighbor's grass because you believe it's greener than what you, it's basically constantly comparing. And this is harder than ever today because of social media. And I feel, again, going back to the social media conversation, I feel, I mean, I didn't grow up with social media. I can't imagine having this in my face all the time. But it is so normal and natural to feel something's missing in your life at different points of your life, right? Because again, it goes back to choice.

When you choose one thing, you move away from another. Well, in order to stay focused on doing that one thing well that you've chosen and that priority, you kind of have to forget about this other thing that you didn't choose. Well, that's really hard to do when you have social media staring at you with people who are choosing to do that. And then you think, oh, should I be doing that? And it's just this endless cycle. You have to not get on that cycle, basically. You basically have to avoid that syndrome if you want to be successful in what you're doing

because you're constantly going to be pulled toward making a comparison that isn't a legit comparison because you're seeing the other thing that you chose not to have, but then you're not seeing what that person chose not to. chose not to have. Exactly. So you're seeing a false, you're making a false comparison. It's smoke and mirrors. It's smoke and mirrors and it's endless. Like it's a, you'll never escape it if you do it. I like that. Stop comparing yourself to somebody else the way that they chose career over motherhood or what have you because they had to sacrifice something that you can't see, just like you're sacrificing something they can't see. That's it. See, you said it better than I did.

Is it true that you have to have a big life to have a valuable life? I think that's been one of the biggest travesties of the last 20, 20, 30 years, well, probably 20 years, is that a big life is a better life. I actually, I feel the complete opposite. I feel that the simpler your life and the more focused you are on building strong relationships at home and the family that you have and building a strong financial life, like all these things go hand in hand. Like, everybody wants, I mean, presumably, most people, I should say, would want to have a relationship that lasts, right, and have a marriage that's strong. They want to build wealth. They want to have happy children. All of these things are a full-time job of its own, by the way. That's a simple

life. If you're constantly needing and wanting to prove something, to achieve something, to travel to where you, you know, to get away from your world, that to me is a false sense of value. Because, and maybe this is the spiritual side of me or, but I'm just a, I just, nothing's going to fill your soul as much as your relationships at home. And if you're missing that, because you're searching for something bigger, you will be unhappy in the end. I believe that. So a big life looks a certain way, but there's a cost for that life. And it's usually your relationships at home. Who is the ideal person for your book, How to Build a Better Life? There is no question that the younger you are when you get a hold of the book,

how to build a better life, you're probably going to build a better life more easily. So, yes, 20, anywhere from 18 to 26 is great. You have the biggest leg up for sure. But, but, big but. That does not mean if you're 28, 32, 36, that you're doomed because you didn't make the these decisions early. I work with people every week who are rearranging their lives for their new priorities. And I truly believe that it's never too late to shift your priorities and change your life. When you make your decision to do that and you accept the sacrifices that have to be made and you sit down and get serious about it, you can rebuild a better life later on. Where can you get your book? Everywhere books are sold, but I mean, I hear that Amazon is the only place to go these days.

Yeah, Amazon's great and you can leave a five-stri- review for Suzanne. I think that this is number one, an absolute must read of 2024. I mean, anytime, but definitely this year. It needs to be a gift for every bride in your life this year, every mother to be in your life, every grad.

College grad. We are coming up on college grads. Yeah, high school. Graduation season in general, this is the book that you have to give them. So definitely get it. Tell everyone also your YouTube channel and what you can find on your YouTube channel because it's great.

Suzanne Venker author? I think is, is that my, I don't know. I think that's what it says. Suzanne Venker author. And yeah, I'm on there weekly and there is just so much information on that channel regarding these topics that we've been talking about. You could be there for days. I just have to tell you, I admire you so much. I have learned so much from you. It is solely because of you that I felt like it was imperative that I bring up the whole daycare debate in the first place. with my audience. It was because I discovered your content. And so I owe so much to you, first of all. But I love talking to you and knowing you because I feel like you are me in another chapter of life. And so just you've so much wisdom to give. And there's not enough women anymore that are looking after the younger women and wanting to give that wisdom. I feel like we need more of that so desperately. And I think that's why you're seeing this influx of millennials. Like, wait a minute, I never,

I never knew this. We have nobody telling us this. You're one of the only voices that are telling us these things. So thank you so much for your courage and bravery in doing that and never batting an eye on doing that. Thank you so much, Suzanne. Thank you, Alex. That's been awesome. I could have spent the entire afternoon with her. There has never been a book more perfectly tailored to my audience. I know that this will be a hit with you. If this is the first time that you've ever heard of Suzanne, you absolutely have to listen to my first interview with her. Just search Suzanne Venker spillover and you're going to find it wherever you're listening to podcasts. Next week's guest is also someone who's been on, but it's been almost three years now. She is

an investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and one of the bravest women I know. And this new book of hers is tackling therapy and how it is hurting a generation of young people not helping. Every episode is posted to Real Alex Clark on YouTube and the best way to connect with fellow fans of the show is the Kut Servatives group on Facebook. The link is in the show notes. We have had matchmaking success. People have gotten married because of that group. We've had friendships made. It's absolutely incredible. It's like a sorority or

sisterhood of just fellow young conservative women. If you loved Suzanne, please leave a five-star review for this episode wherever you listen and share this episode with your followers on social media or at least two friends. Next week's episode comes out. next Thursday night at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern. I'm Alex Clark, and this is the spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.