Raising Parents with Emily Oster - Episode Feature: ‘My So-Called Midlife’

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

We have a special bonus episode for the Raising Parents feed. It’s an episode of “My So-Called Midlife” by Reshma Saujani and Lemonada Media.  Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code. She’s written several books, including Girls Who Code, Pay Up, and Brave, Not Perfect. And now she is sharing her insights from midlife on mic. Reshma Saujani sits down with Emily Oster to discuss midlife, from scheduling sex to career pivots to parenting struggles to pregnancy and parenting myths. We want to play that episode for you today. You can check out “My So-Called Midlife.”

Hi, all. Emily Oster here. We have a bonus episode for the Raising Parents feed that we want to play for you. It's an episode of My So-Called Midlife by Reshma Sojani and Lamanata Media. And the interviewee is, well, it's me. Reshma Sojani is the founder of Girls Who Code. She's written books like Girls Who Code, Pay Up, and Brave, Not Perfect.

And now she is sharing her insights from midlife on Mike. In this episode, Reshma and I unpack the highs and lows of this really weird time. Like scheduling everything, even sex, career pivots, parenting struggles, the urge to compare your life to others, the monotony of midlife, and why people totally blow up their lives as a result.

We debunk pregnancy and parenting myths, and we discuss perimenopause and how women's bodies change over time. We want to play that episode for you today, and you can check out my so-called midlife. We'll link it in the show notes. A quick break, and we'll be right back with Reshma Sojani. Stay with us. Should I tell them to leave?

Are they that? You can hear it, right? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Hey! Hey, guys. Hey. I'm trying to take my podcast. I need you to go or be quiet. I know. I need you to be quiet or be quiet.

Shh. Shh. Welcome to My So-Called Midlife, a podcast where we figure out how to stop just getting through it and start actually living it. I'm Reshma Sojani. So our guest today has saved parents countless hours of internet sleuthing.

She synthesizes data about parenting, pregnancy, and our bodies like no one. And she's basically a rock star. Like, I have been in a room with her with parents and she's like mob like Taylor Swift at a Swiftie convention. And now in her latest newsletter, she's digging into hormones in midlife.

Emily Oster is an economist, an award-winning author, and specifically, now this is my favorite, she refers to herself as the vagina economist. I love that. Her breakout book, Expecting Better, sold over a million copies, and since then she's written three data-driven books to help parents make these hard decisions,

and she's created a community through her website, Parent Data. But like more than that and she's created a community through her website ParentData. But like more than that, she's on top of her shit in a way that is so foreign to me. I want to study it under a microscope. For example, she sends out a weekly email to her husband, kids, and nanny every single week. It outlines the entire run of show for every day.

Everyone is expected to read it and send questions. And on top of that, her husband's in charge of the weekend plans. He sends out an email that outlines what their family's going to do and when the downtime is going to happen. I mean, even the fun is scheduled. But here's the thing, that's how they avoid conflict, she says. So I can't wait to talk to her about that because, as you can tell, I don't do that with my family. I mean, not even close.

Emily Oster, welcome to the show. Hello, I'm so happy to be here. So what happened to you this week that felt very midlife? I feel like most of my day feels very 40s, but I would say the thing that feels 40s every morning is when I get up and I feel like I like limp to the bathroom. I don't know, there's just something about the soreness of like just like the morning, you know, when you just feel old. I feel old in the morning and I, that's, that's new.

Yes. I walk around with my little, what's my little Theragun? You know what I mean? That's like my little best friend. Oh, sure. Yes. Okay. So, but have you discovered anything to solve the aches and pains?

Like, do you do a heating pad? I started doing that. It helps. I have a foam roller. Oh, me too. Do you have a foam roller? A very ugly blue one in the corner of my house. Yeah. Mine's like, mine's like the Amazon basics one. I started doing that, it helps. I have a foam roller. Oh, you do? Do you have a foam roller? A very ugly blue one in the corner of my house.

Yeah, mine's like the Amazon basics one. It's like the only thing that pattern available was like speckled. I have like a speckled dotted foam roller that lives just like around my house. Foam rollers are a game changer. But it's also like when I was like, is everybody that tight?

Like is everybody in that much pain? And like, am I going to have to get a hip replacement soon? Like, what's the deal? I don't know. This is not my specialty. I do think that my sense from other people who run is that you definitely do get more, that stretching is a priority as one ages. I want to talk about your tools for managing the household. And I'm going to admit, I don't do any of the things you say to do, like I should do.

All right. So like, I'm the parent that when my son brings home his backpack, like, I don't open it up. I don't take out the homework or fill out the forms. And I normally need to be reminded by the teacher, like, five times. So I'm not proud of it. I'm just being honest. Like, that's my deal. Because it's hard to be a parent when you like five times, so I'm not proud of it. I'm just being honest. Like that's my deal. Because it's hard to be a parent when you're managing your job, you're managing, but then

you got to manage the kids, the fridge, the shoes, the healthcare, the whole thing, right? And what I love about what you do, and I hope to take that advice one day, is like here's some real concrete ways that like you can ease the burden. And you know, I want to talk about how you and your husband do it because you have a very specific way of keeping stuff on track and you use emails with your husband and your nanny. Tell me your flow. Like walk us through your your Sunday email. Okay, so let me just stack back. The key issue for us is that nobody in my family, in particular my husband and I, but also our kids, like to be surprised. And we're all busy, and my

husband and I in particular, when it's like I plan to do X and instead I need to do this with the kids, it makes us really mad. It's like upsetting. We're both routine driven people. So like when you're supposed to go to basketball and you're like, fuck it, let's go to ice cream, that throws everybody off. No, no that we would never do that No, that's my house. It's more like if if like I wasn't warned I needed to pick up like right now I'm it kind of cranky because the school initially told us that pick up from like the school trip drop-off today was at 330 and then and we planned for it to be 330 and then and then like two days ago they were like oh it's 2.30. That's annoying. I think that's the kind of

thing that like drives our family nuts. Okay. So the cornerstone of this sort of keeping this thing together is these emails and so like on the weekend I will send an email that just says it's super simple actually it's just like here's what's happening Monday here's what's happening Tuesday and mostly it's like simple, actually it's just like, here's what's happening Monday, here's what's happening Tuesday. And mostly it's like, on Monday, the kids are going to school, here's what's happening at the end of the day. Like on Tuesday, kids are going to school, here's what's happening at the end of the day.

But it's a way to kind of call out like, here's where somebody has to be, you know, here's the driving that needs to happen. Yeah. It gives people like, they can make plans because they know what's happening. So people can make plans. And my husband works in Boston and so he's like on a train three days a week. And so there's sort of some logistics. But like so much of our family structure just relies on this idea of like planning in advance

so we don't fight later. And your husband's an economist too, right? He's an economist. So like both of your brains are going to be, clearly your kids are going to be economists because everybody- No, oh my gosh. I hope not. You don't think so?

I don't think so. No. One of them is planning to have a YouTube channel, Reshma, so we're going in for a growth area of the economy. Yeah. Okay. I have two thoughts from what you just told me. One, are you the manager of this?

Yes. I do the weekly email. My husband does the weekend email. Okay. Does that create more or less emotional labor for you? I think it's pretty clear. I think he would agree with this, that I am the sort of primary parent and holder of the emotional labor in the household, it definitely improves that.

Writing this email lessens that emotional labor in part because it means that everyone else has an opportunity to like weigh in on mistakes that I have made and fix things. So it's not like I was the person responsible for this and then I messed it up. It's like if something gets messed up, we kind of all messed it up.

So I think that's a helpful aspect of it. Have you ever like said, I'm done. I'm not doing this week email. You got to do it. It's like this is like me in my house about the trash. Oh, no. I don't think he would be good at the week email. So that's why you do it. I don't know. I guess it just feels, to me it feels like it feels fairly evenly split. Like the weekend email is also kind of annoying.

So. So you feel like it's fair? Yeah, I feel like that aspect is fair. My beef with midlife is like every day is freaking Groundhog's Day. Yeah. Like every day is the same and there's no excitement. Like there's no and I think that's why people blow up their life. Whether they have an affair, whether...

You know what I mean? Do something. Or quit their job. Or like move to an ashram. It's like, they're just bored. You gotta feel that way a little bit, do you? Don't you feel like sometimes just like, writing the wrong thing on your weekly email and saying that like, pick up is at five instead of six

and just throwing the whole family off and just, ooh, like wouldn't that be exciting? That'd be exciting. If we were like, we're not having veggies on Wednesday. On Wednesday there's no veggies at five o'clock and you can all forget it. F off. So look, I actually think that's a very, yes, I think people feel that way very much. And this is, I had a conversation last year with Pooja Lakshmi about her book about self-care, and she makes this point about like sort of self-care being like something where you prioritize yourself. And like, I need something that I'm like trying to do outside of my job. And it has to it can't just be like, I go to yoga for recreation, like I have to be

trying to achieve something or else it like doesn't like work for me in terms of like, helping take my mind off things. And so the thing that I have been doing much more seriously, basically since I turned 40. So I think it's quite quite consistent with your whole thing, is running. And so this weekend, I'm going to a race. And I'm nervous about it. I'm nervous that I won't be able to achieve my stupid goal.

And I understand that- Your great goal. It's not stupid. It's about like, and it's like, I have these goals and they're not important in the sort of grand scheme of my life, but they're important to me. And it's something where it's like it has a cadence that's like almost not the same. It's like, okay, I'm like leading up to this thing that I'm going to try to do and test

myself in various ways. But yeah, I mean, I think most people, you probably want to look for something, I don't know, something different. One of my biggest fears in many ways is that I'm just boring and dull and like I've become you probably want to look for something, I don't know, something different. One of my biggest fears in many ways is that I'm just boring and dull and like I've become lame, right? And I like you often pick goals

that just make me more lame, right? Like it's not going to make you like more fun, more loose, more risky, right? It's actually making you more disciplined. Yeah. Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't that bad? Yes. Aren't we like doing that? Shouldn't we be picking things that actually,

I don't know, mix it up more for us, make us more spontaneous, make us less disciplined? I don't know. Or I don't, I don't, I don't know. Because you don't like those things. I don't like those things. I don't like those things. I like discipline and achievement. I don't like those things. I don't like those things. I don't like those things. I like discipline and achievement. I don't know. The biggest thing for me at running actually

is like people. There's a bunch of like people who I would now consider friends who I get to connect with through this. And that's, that's new. Like the people I've been friends with who I love very much. I like been friends with since college. You know, I met my husband in college. I met my best friend day one of college. And so this is like, there's like, I don't know, there's a thing about this, but I totally agree. Like maybe we should be more, our hobbies should be more interesting. No, but that's good because I think what you're saying is like for me too, like I have to

be more social. Like I think it's like when you look, I think when you're on all the time, it's actually I've become more of an introvert as my career has progressed, when I was always an extrovert, right? And so, and then you read all these things, which is like the most important thing as you're getting older is like friends, and I'm like, oh my God, I don't have any friends. And so it is great that you found something that like helps you get more friends. Yeah, but I agree that the thing I found is boring

and kind of just like, I mean I like it, but it's just like all the other things about me. Yeah, no I get it, I get it, I get it. Maybe this will inspire you to find something that, or both of us to find something that's like in a different way. Painting, should we be painting? No, paintings, no I was thinking more like,

I don't know, late night DJing or something like that, right, something that like messes with your sleep. Okay, okay, yeah, I like to go to sleep, so I didn't, even in college. That's funny, because I was Club Rashma. I could dance all night long. That sounds amazing, I wish I had known. I know, everybody misses Club Rashma.

I'm going to bring her out though for my 50th birthday. We'll invite you to my party. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. What I love about your work, so I'm obsessed with cons, right? Like the con about us feeling like women, we have to like fix ourselves and that we just need a little more confidence really when we've had no structural support. And what I love about you two is like you really also talk about the con. The con about like not exercise when you're pregnant. The con about how much weight you can gain. You know, the con about like not exercise when you're pregnant, the con about how much weight

you can gain, you know, the con about like when your eggs all disappear, and you're not afraid to be confrontational about it. And your work is so much about the debunking of parenting, pregnancy, women's bodies. What do you feel in all of your research is the biggest con women have been sold? So let me give you two answers. So I think in parenting, the biggest con is that little things matter. I think if I could just get people to stop thinking and stop asking me, not because I don't want to answer, but stop getting in their head about tiny stuff because

someone has told them every choice you make is the most important choice and every minute is an opportunity to optimize your kid. I realize in some weird sense maybe some of my work is trying to... But actually, I would just like people to be like, there's like three important things. Love your kid, kids need a stable place to be, try not to yell too much and read to them. That's great. You're done. You're good. And so that's one.

I think for women, I think we sold people a little bit of a bill of goods on having it all. Not that I don't think that it is possible to have a career that you love and a family that you love and be super involved with your kid. Like, we're both trying to do that. I think we have to recognize that there are only 24 hours in the day and sleeping is important for functioning. And it isn't possible to both be a full-time stay-at-home mom and also a full-time employee. Because those are both full-time jobs as the title suggests.

And I kind of think we sometimes give people the impression that like, if you just like worked harder or you thought about it differently or whatever, like you could do both of those things. And I think we can make it easier to balance those things for sure with tools or whatever, different approaches, being more deliberate. I think we can make it easier,

but I do not think that we should expect ourselves to do all those things at the same time. That's right. You had some great advice in your newsletter parent data recently about how we as parents compare ourselves to all the other parents. How we judge ourselves based on what everyone else is doing. You wrote basically that comparison is the thief of joy.

Yeah. And I think, right? Talk to me about that. Yeah, so I think when we look out at other parents, very frequently, it's like, here are the ways in which I'm not doing good enough. The example I was giving there was like, what's in your kid's lunchbox, right? That somebody else's kid's lunchbox, like it's's got it's a bento, it's got the shaped animal rices, whatever it is. But there are so many aspects of that, where we are comparing ourselves

to someone else, and finding ourselves coming up short. And if we could take a deep breath in those moments and be like, I don't really know what is going on with those other people, but I've thought about how the way I want my life to operate and I am implementing that and that is working for me. For me, I find this when I talk to parents whose kids are engaged in a lot of high tech, intensive extracurriculars, which isn't a thing we've really gone in for. Like Russian math? Yeah, Russian math, like geography B, you know, like three different instruments, you know, karate nationals, like just things which like seem great, but you can feel as a parent

when someone's describing like, well, you know, my kid is at debate nationals and now they're going to the karate world championships. You like feel that like, the like rising panic, you know, my kid is at the debate nationals and now they're going to the karate world championships. You like feel that like, the like rising panic, you know, like, oh my god. Yeah, like, like I've ruined my child. Right. It's just the exercise of being like, you know what, like that sounds great for them. Not not the exercise of being like, that's stupid. karate is dumb, because it's not like that might work great for them. But just the exercise of being like, that sounds lovely for them. And it's not what works for my family.

Because of this comparison piece, do you think that that's why so many women in their midlife are unsatisfied and want to blow up their lives? I actually think what you hit on earlier is the biggest thing, which is the feeling of monotony. Kind of the experience of sort of getting out of the ever-changing little kid world, right? Where there's just a lot of chaos. It's hard to be bored with a two-year-old. It's hard to be rested, but it's hard to be bored. And once your kids are, yeah, like a couple kids and they're in elementary, middle school,

they're trucking along, it's pretty consistent and people are in their jobs and usually they're not still trying to climb the ladder in quite the same way that they were before, like you're a little more settled. And you know, it's like, well, what, like, okay, like, is it just this? Is this just it till I die? Sex with the same person, same kind of school, like, I mean, Groundhog Day is the right is the right way to put it. Like, I might go into the same office doing the same thing, seeing the same people eating

the same nine meals every day until just death. Do you feel like that? No, but what I'm doing right now, trying to build parent data, trying to build something where it's different from what I've done before, like yeah, I get the high. Because it's hard. It's like the thing that gets me up is like I don't know what to do. I don't know what the next step is. I'm nervous.

I'm anxious that it's not going to work, but super excited about the possibility that it will. That's what gets me up in the morning. So what's the secret to reclaiming your midlife? Entrepreneurship. I think it's finding, I mean, I think it depends, but I think for a lot of people, it's finding something that you want to try for. I mean, I think for me, that's the thing that people often missing.

It's like, I was trying to achieve it. It's trying to get, people are trying to get to something, they're trying to land somewhere, and then they land there with the kids and the partner and the job and then there isn't something that you're trying for. And I think that's where people, you want to figure out like what are you going to try for and you know maybe that's like something that is totally outside of everything else you do. Like being a DJ, late night DJ.

It's like what's your, like for example, what's your goal this weekend for your run? 1930. It's a 5K. My goal is 1930. It's not a realistic goal. My friend Ariel said she would come and we could try to achieve it together. That's amazing. But that's it, right?

A goal, something you want to try for. It could be like your next half marathon. Yeah. It could be like your next half marathon. Yeah, it could be like just, like whatever floats your boat. What's the best? Perimetopause. You've lately been talking a lot about bodies, how they change. You've started a newsletter with Dr. … Gillian Goddard, who's the best. Who's the best, called Hot Flash.

Are you in the pause? Like, and what motivated you? Oh yeah. You're in the pause. I think so. It's not that well defined, Reshma. So we, you know, we started this newsletter partly because it felt like a good topic that a lot of people are interested in. And I will say, in our first conversation,

I was like, it was just like a quote interview in which I just asked her all of the questions about my own personal situation. And I'm 44, I would say I have some early perimenopause symptoms. And it's weird, right? I mean, people talk about menopause and that starts on average at like at 50 and you know takes a couple years but there's an awfully long time of sort of like lead up. Yes. In which things will fluctuate around in ways that are sort

of unexpected. I mean, I'm in it now like I'm sweating right now like profusely, you know, for no reason, even though the air conditioning has turned down to 68. My problem is sleep. I just sleep. But it is interesting because I think about you don't know whether you're blaming everything for it. And the other thing I found really interesting was that so many of my fertility issues were popped back up at this stage

while I'm going through perimenopause. And I think we just don't, we don't like know enough. It's so, it's, it's, and is that a data problem too? So Jillian's an endocrinologist and I think so much of her writing and so much of what's in Hot Flash has helped me understand that the core misunderstanding is about just our understanding of hormones. The answer to like, why are your fertility issues seeming like pyramid? Like that's because it's the same set of hormones sort of combined in different ways. And almost always the answer to something about like, why is this going wrong is like, well, your estrogen is down. Like estrogen turned out to be like super important to making you feel good. And so many of these answers surround the balance of hormones. And this is not something that

we learn a lot about. I don't think it's something that medicine understands that much about. I mean, there aren't that many endocrinologists. Most people will probably never see an endocrinologist or be informed at all about, you know, what is the range of hormone kind of cycles over your life cycle. And it comes up in these times in which the balance of those things are changing a lot. So based on your own experience, what do you wish women knew?

I think it would be great if we could give people a better sense of the range of symptoms that are typical. Because you're absolutely right, there is a little bit of a vacuum where then everything gets attributed to perimenopause or to menopause. It's like, I'm dizzy, my ears hurt, you know, my foot is swelling. A whole range of things people ask like, is this perimenopause? And some of the times like, no, that's not. And so that, like even breasts, right, to sort of say like, cyclical breast pain, which

arises anew at, you know, in your early 40s, that is a very common perimenopause symptom. Consistent pain in one breast, that's not a perimenopause symptom. That's something you should have checked out because that could be something else that you would want to worry about. So even things like that, we're just helping people understand, like, what is going to happen or is likely to happen or could happen and what are things that are outside of this. And sure, they could be related to your hormones, but they are something you should try to understand better.

So you conducted this intimacy survey about women's sex life in their mid-night. Also, side note, I didn't realize that the emoji for sex was a hot pepper, is that what it is? Yes, that's true. Yeah, okay, so I just learned that recently, thanks to you. What are some of the most surprising stuff that you heard from the community about this topic?

So in the data we got back from people, I think when we did this survey, it was like 26,000 people wrote in and we asked people, how old are your kids and how much sex do you have? And, you know, I think a lot of it is pretty much what you would expect. People have sex less than they did before kids. Very early on, people have less sex, although when their kids are very small and then you kind of return back to something closer to the frequency that you had before. I think the typical was in the range of sort of twice a month, ranging between every other week and every week.

But there's a really wide range. There are couples who say they never have sex. There are couples who say they have sex every day. That was not common, but occasionally there were a few. Do you think people lie about that? About how much sex they have? Yeah. To, on a survey, maybe a bit.

I think, I'm sure they lie more like- To their friends. To their friends. Right. Yeah. But maybe a little. I mean, what was interesting about the survey, maybe more than the data was kind of what people said. There's a lot of like, I like my partner and I'm sad that this isn't a way that we're connecting anymore.

Like, there was more emotion in those answers than maybe I had expected. When I saw it too, it was funny about the older women who had taken their servants, they said basically, don't worry, it gets better when the kids leave the house. I thought that that was super funny. But part of that then, I think shed some light a little bit on why people aren't happy because the spontaneity is gone, right? You almost have to like schedule it when the kids are out of the house. Yeah, you have to schedule when the kids are out of the house.

And you know, people are not, people don't like to schedule sex. Like sort of the, even though many people actually, all these surveys you will see, and you see this in many places in data and in anecdotes, is people say like, I don't know, we schedule, I don't really like the idea of scheduling it, but once we get into it, I like doing it. Right? And sort of like, you know, it's fun. I mean, this is not like- I mean, we have to schedule sex. I mean, do you guys have to schedule sex? Everybody schedules sex.

Yeah. You're like, I'm married to an economist, of course, and schedule sex. Well, that's the other thing I want to get to. So you called yourself boring in this interview, and I think you love that. I think you love the discipline. You love routine. And is loving a boring life the key to being content in midlife? I think it is helpful if you are a person who likes routine and you're absolutely right. I like routine.

I like to do the same thing every day. So since midlife is often quite routine, if you are a person who thrives on that, I think that that can be helpful. But I'm not sure it's the key to being content in the sense that you could mix it up. You don't have to have the same coffee at exactly the same time with exactly the same electrolyte drink every morning to be happy. Although if you're a person who likes that and every morning there's a little spark of joy when you're like, oh, I get to have my electrolyte drink and my graham crackers and

go for a run. That's lucky. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Emily. This was such a fun conversation. and go for a run, like, that's lucky. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Emily. This was such a fun conversation. I love talking to you. I do it forever. I love you.

Okay, here are my takeaways from Emily on how to really live my midlife. Number one, I'm a big fan of the midlife. I'm a big fan of the midlife. Okay, here are my takeaways from Emily on how to really live my midlife. Number one, get comfortable with being boring. Big one. Number two, we don't have to have it all.

In fact, having it all is the con. And three, this is a good one, schedule sex. Everyone does it. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Emily Oster is the author of four bestselling books, including Expecting Better. She's the founder of Parent Data, a data-driven guide through pregnancy,

parenthood, and beyond. Thanks, Emily, for coming on the show. That's it for our show. See you next week. There's more of My So-Called Midlife with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like midlife advice that didn't make it into the show. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Rashma Sajjani. Our producer is Claire Jones.

This series is sound designed by Ivan Kuryaev. Our theme was composed by Ivan Kuryaev and performed by Ryan Jewell, Ivan Kuryaev and Karen Waltuk. Additional music by APM Music. Our senior supervising producer is Kristen Lepore. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neal. Executive producers include me, Reshma Sajjani, Stephanie Whittles-Wax, and Jessica Cordova-Kramer. Series consulting and production support from Katie Cordova. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And let us know how you're doing in Midlife. You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com slash midlife. Follow My So-Called Midlife wherever you get your podcast.

Or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. Thanks for listening. See you next week. Bye.