the bossbabe podcast - 419: CEO Mama: Why Mom Guilt is a Myth with Natalie + Lindsay

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

In this CEO Mama episode, Natalie and Lindsay explore the topic of “mom guilt” + if it's a myth or if there’s some truth to it. Join them in this conversation as they navigate what’s biologically ingrained in us as women – especially as ambitious mamas who want to stay home with our children but also want to pursue our ambitions. You won’t want to miss this conversation as Natalie and Lindsay discuss navigating the modern day world as a mama and reframing how we define “mom guilt.”  TIMESTAMPS 00:1:00 - Questioning “Mom Guilt” As A Myth Or Not 00:04:30 - Navigating Childcare As A Working Mama 00:07:05 - How The Nervous System Fit Into This Conversation 00:09:30 - The Comparison Factor For Women + Mamas 00:21:11 - The Downfalls Of Being Contactable 24/7 RESOURCES + LINKS Click Here to Register for our Free Training to Create a Profitable, Predictable, and Repeatable Business – even if you’re unsure of your offer, have zero followers, and get a headache from the tech – this is for you! https://bossbabe.com/training  Download Your Free Workbook: The 4-Part Framework to Create An Irresistible Offer that Sells on Repeat: https://bossbabe.com/irresistible  Get on the Waitlist for Freedom Fast Track, Our 8-week Accelerator For Businesses That Want More Buyers to Be First To Hear When We Open Doors for Enrollment: https://bossbabe.com/fft-waitlist  Join The Société: Our Exclusive Membership To Help You Build A Freedom-Based Business: https://bossbabe.com/membership  Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More: https://programs.bossbabe.com/the-bossbabe-edit  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997): https://bossbabe2.typeform.com/to/KFVPAiMy  Apply to join us in CEO Mama: https://ceomama.com/  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

I think a lot of us put the label mom guilt on what are real biological influences. I think our human nature is wanting to name it. So we named it guilt. It's only been a few hundred years since we've even had the, not even a hundred years, since we've really had the ability to be away from our kids in any long distance as a normal thing. long distance as a normal thing when really it's very complex biological feelings we're feeling around wanting to have self-actualized identity and not wanting to be away from our children. Welcome to the Boss With Podcast. This is one of our ceo mama episodes and i wanted to title this

one the myth of mom guilt because here's how i feel i'm going to explain to you how i feel lindsey and i would like for you to say how you feel and see if what i really think is a myth is a myth or if we're going to have an argument about it who knows a little bit of healthy discourse because I do think in motherhood there are so many nuances and there's a lot of things that maybe go unsaid that I think just having conversations about it's actually so important because we get to figure out and form our own thoughts around it so okay so before I had Noemi, give you a bit of context to why I feel the way I feel.

So before I had Noemi, I definitely felt like having a baby, yes, I knew it would change my life, but I didn't necessarily think it would change my life in the ways that it did. And I definitely didn't think it would change my career so much. So I obviously knew having a baby would mean I'd

have to change the way I was doing certain things. I just didn't expect to the level of which it did. One belief I had was I work full-time right now. When I have a baby, I'll bring in full-time childcare. So my actual working hours won't necessarily change I'll still be able to get as much done as I previously did because I'll have child care but it's just really my time outside of work that's going to shift what has ended up happening having Noemi and I thought it was mum guilt and I've been back and forth on what it is what I actually believe is I think a lot of us put the label mum guilt on what are real biological influences and it's our body and brain screaming at us to do something other than what

we are doing and what we are doing is counterintuitive to our actual primitive behavior so an example and this is not to make anyone right or wrong by the way but an example is having a baby it hasn't been as easy as getting full-time child care and working nine to five because when i am work i am thinking so often about being with my baby and not all the time but when i'm at work i often don't want to work so much because I want to spend more time with her and I found myself turning down so many opportunities to travel to speak like really exciting opportunities because being away from her isn't worth it and I didn't expect this coming into motherhood and I've at times labeled it guilt being away from her you

know the guilt that would pop in is like am I ruining my relationship with her am I traumatizing her you know am I creating distance between us am I making the wrong choices a mom all of that stuff has come up that I could label as mom guilt but as I dig into it I'm like actually this is really just my body and my brain telling me I'd prefer to be with my daughter most of the time and I do think that changes as your kids get older I definitely feel now like I do want a little bit I do want to work a bit more than I did when she was younger but to just label it as mum guilt I think would would be doing me, I think it would be doing moms a disservice because I think it goes so much deeper than that. I'm curious what your take on

all of this is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's interesting that the nuance on it too, because wanting childcare, but still wanting her to be around, like you and I have talked about this too around the guilt of like, well, I want childcare because I don't want to be around. Like you and I have talked about this too around the guilt of like, well, I want childcare because I don't want to be the only care provider. I want someone here to help me, which I also think is biological because we were never meant to do this like home alone in a home by ourselves with a baby. Like in the animal kingdom, you're not safe alone with a baby. Like that's why when animals go off to have their, they leave to go have the baby because it makes them vulnerable. And then they come back to the

herd as soon as they can or back to the family, right? Like for protection. And so like, we're not meant to be alone with our babies. And I think there's guilt around that where it's like, I don't actually like this feeling of being here alone. So I want some care. I want help either from a partner or a nannyanny or some or like wanting help isn't necessarily the problem it's like when you're when you have help and you want to be around them and then you're making every decision based on like weighing weighing it against being with them you know and and I've found myself in that a lot where I'm like well I have a lot of help but I don't I still don't want to be out of the home or I don't like, yeah, I, my kids have been in daycare some, they've had

nannies and I much prefer having them home, even if I have full-time care, um, because it feels like I can choose more how I want to navigate the day where I'm like, I want to be with them. They're sick. Or I just, I'm feeling wanting to be with them versus like today I really want to work. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think guilt is just a label that we've put on it in the last few years because, or a few decades maybe, because it's been like, now we actually have choice between being home with our kids or being out working. And that wasn't always, you know, that's only been the last, I want to say 50 years since the 50s, but it's actually 2024, so it's 70 years. My brain doesn't do that math.

Mine doesn't. You know, really, it's like our parents' generation or my parents' generation, like the boomer generation was really the first one. And maybe their parents were the first ones where women were working outside of the home at all. And so I think like we had to name that feeling of, of wanting to do both things before that biology just was what we did. Right. And so I think our human nature is wanting to name it. So we named it guilt because that's the word that describes the feeling of like, when you're doing one thing, you feel bad about not being able to do the other thing. When I think the more

accurate description for it is like, I, I want two things at once. Like I want to be good at both of these things. And there's mental load created by wanting to do multiple things at the same time. And I, you know, the nervous system piece of all of this, too, I think is interesting because there's we are primarily wired to want to be like, like I said this to you getting on an airplane to come here. I'm like, it never feels good to me. Even at this point, it has nothing to do with the age of my kids or leaving my kids. It never feels good to get on an airplane and fly away from my kids. It's so unnatural to be leaving

Denver in the turbulence. And I'm always like, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing this? You know, I have the moment of like total primal biology being like, get off this airplane and go home to your kids. What are you doing? So I think we're also always dealing with this nervous system orientation of like any distance from your child, even like them at daycare and you at your home or you at your workplace is at some level unnatural. And so I don't know. I always default back to the nervous system and being like, it's only been a few hundred years since we've even had the, not even a hundred years, since we've really had the ability to be away from our kids in any long distance as a normal

thing. You know, like it was not normal to fly away from your kids until like less than a hundred years ago, you know? So I think a lot of things we grapple with as modern women, modern entrepreneurship are circumstantial biological things and brain neurobiology things where like there's no precedent in human history for those feelings. So we just label it as guilt when really it's very complex biological feelings we're feeling around wanting to have self-actualized identity and not wanting to be away from our children. I agree. And I also think too, as women, the way that we are biologically made up and the way our brains have evolved, going back to tribes, I don't know what it is about women, but we are very good

at comparing ourselves to other women. Very, very good good at that i don't know why we've evolved that way like there has to be a reason do you think i do yeah i mean i i'm not an expert i feel like i'm gonna test that can you do a quick research and chat to find out like why are women biologically wired to be more comparative to other women because what i notice and I don't say this in Steven but what I notice with with myself is I will often get guilty if I compare myself to what another mom is doing and it's so interesting because I generally I'm not super like I don't necessarily do it in business it's it's been you think because like do you think it's because the kid is having a better experience and you you feel badly because you're like

depriving Noemi of something or because the mom is having a better experience and she she loves she feels she seems more fulfilled and more happy than you like is it about Noemi's well-being or your well-being when you're comparing more so if i'm comparing like a stay-at-home mom and me as a working mom i will often compare and more from a place of curiosity and inquiry i often find myself comparing saying you know am i doing the wrong thing is this is this wrong that i'm a working mom is this not the best thing for her and so it's really interesting and I can I can mainly go into it with a very curious mind because I know I can logic my way through these arguments but the fact that it comes up I think is always really important to notice

because I'm like there's clearly still something there and I again I just feel like did you did you find anything yeah yeah okay you want to hear it yeah the tendency for women to compare themselves to other women let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi you know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year.

So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe so let's reiterate just in case they can't yeah yeah so she basically said it's biological from earlier times where in a tribal culture in smaller communities you're you having right, or perhaps being more desirable would have given

you access to resources. But which makes sense to me primarily and biologically. And like, I always relate it back to animals because that's like, we basically are primates, you know, and we're only a very short amount of evolution away from still operating really in those type of animalistic structures that, you know, human psychology, in my mind, is we're still really primitive, even as smart as we are, and all the resources we have, a lot of how we act with each other is around mating and like wanting to be, wanting to survive. Right. And so it's like, I want my kids to survive because I want them to have the best. I want them to have the best mate. I want them to have the

best resources. And I want to survive. Like I want to have more children or I want to take care of being able to take care of my family. And I think, you know, we live in context now where we don't think about it so, so primitively, like I need food and water to survive. Like most of us have basic access to those things, but it's that tendency we have. And that's why I asked that question of like, is it you thinking about the feelings that come up when you notice you're comparing? Is it like, oh, her kid is going I have those feelings I'm very much I notice myself much more being like well their kid is going to have an advantage that my kids don't have and I just had this conversation with RT the other day of like I will it's not healthy I'm

not advocating this but like I will self-sacrifice to give my children an advantage. Like my kids go to a charter school with no busing, that is a pain in the freaking ass to drive them to every day, there and back there and back in Wesley goes part time. So like, there's two different schedules. And I'm like, I don't care, we'll make it work because I want them to have the advantage of this, this school's type of education. It's a different curriculum structure. And I was like, whoa, when I said it, I was like, whoa, I'm willing to sacrifice my own wellbeing for their advantage. That I think is like very biological. And so that when I'm like, okay, so then when I see other, when I compare myself to other parents that for where their circumstances make that easier,

like there's a lot of stay-at-home moms at our school. And I'm like, Oh, the carpool structure, like the drive must be easier to manage if you don't also have to work, you know? And then I'm like, Oh, interesting. But I never, it's never me being like, Oh, I would be happier if I didn't work. And all I had to do was go do the carpool every day. So, so that's my observation on it, at least with comparison. But I just felt this the other day when our nanny quit, because our nanny quit is like a long story, but is what it is. And I had the momentary thought of like, Wesley's home Tuesdays and Thursdays because he only goes to school Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

I was like, I wish I could just be with him all day Tuesday, Thursday. I was like, is there a way to make that work with my job? And it was a fleeting thought because the reality is that I don't actually want that. It's like that moment of being like, I just don't want him. I don't want to have to put him in a daycare where he's out of the house. And so, you know, I'm solving that problem separately, but it triggered that same feeling of like, oh, I love to work and it wouldn't really work for me at the level of demand my job is for me to have him home Tuesdays and Thursdays.

But I also don't want to lose that time with him that I was planning that he would at least be around the house and someone else would be caring for him. So I think it's interesting to do that inquiry of like, is it you feeling something that you're missing out or like you're not as happy because you're trying to do both things? Or is it about the kid being disadvantaged in some way because his mom or her mom is trying to do two things at once instead of just be a mom? Yeah, I think it's very interesting.

And I always try and play it out on both sides whenever I'm having this inquiry of like, here's how I feel about their circumstance. When they're looking at my circumstance, they're probably saying, Oh, it must be so nice to be able to be financially, uh, you know, financially free, or it must be so nice to be able to provide those opportunities to your kids. Or it must be so nice to go to work and have a break from your kids. Like it must be so nice to have a job that's respected. Like my, I don't feel like mine is like like must be so nice to have a job that's uh respected like my i don't feel like mine is like there must be so much on both sides and i just i just notice it so much come up that this we call it guilt but i truly think it does come back to biology and i think

the more we make ourselves wrong for feeling quote-unquote guilty the more we catch ourselves in these spirals and i also think in motherhood what's interesting it's so funny that you brought up the what if I could just I want to be at home with him these two days I obviously had felt that with Noemi we like overall our child care we had that over the summer and what it taught me was actually I do like to work and I like to have extra support when it comes to child care but it's the choice yeah you want to be able to have the choice and it's such a luxury but that choice is really important but i also think there's another lens of it that most of us are the first generation of women with really big careers and really big opportunities yeah and we don't know how that plays out so when it's that comparison it's like oh oh will those kids have more of an

advantage because they had a stay-at-home mom well we have data to show that present having a present mom is really supportive for a child's development yeah there's not as much data supporting women with huge careers also have that and so it's like it's just us constantly fighting against our biological feelings i think like you say we have more context but it's like, it's just us constantly fighting against our biological feelings. I think, like you say, we have more context, but it's almost like our brains and bodies and nervous systems haven't quite caught up to the world in which we live in. Yeah. I also think there's something around choice, like thinking of my own mom and like this,

I hope this tracks. It's like, I think my mom and her career was very structured. You know, she's not an entrepreneur. And I think a lot of even women who have had careers and have worked and been moms too in generations before us were like, they weren't entrepreneurs where they had the choice to work all the time. And I think that almost makes it more present in my mind around this question of like, is it guilt or whatever that feeling is where I'm constantly

comparing and thinking about balancing it all. Because I think for my mom, it was like she went to work and she came home. And when she was at work, she was away from us and we had a structure and we were cared for. And then when she was home, she didn't think about work because she didn't have an, she was an entrepreneur. Her work did not come home with her. And didn't have a phone. Didn't have a phone. Where she's being contacted 24 seven. Right. So it's like, she could come home at four o'clock. She's an occupational therapist. She would like go to the hospital work seven to four or eight to four, whatever it was, come home at four. And then like, we would go do all our hobbies. Like we had horses or, you know, she would take us to, it's a whole other story. Cause I, I don't actually remember anything but the horses, but anyway, but like, you know,

like she would get home from work and then we'd go to the barn and it's like, oh, I don't think, like, I don't think she had guilt because we still did like we she had her work day and then we had our activities and she wasn't distracted during kid time you know because there wasn't anything else to do but just like go to the barn with the kids and I'm like oh interesting so even it's not working just straight working and trying to be a mom that sets up this dichotomy it's like the way that we modern women work in that we are constantly connected or we have the opportunity to constantly be connected. And so we are constantly reminded that we could be working right now. You could be working right now. There's people who need your attention right now. There's people you could be selling stuff to right now.

And that nagging dialogue, especially if you're wired as an entrepreneur, I think where you're like, literally every minute you're not working, it's like money on the table. That is, I think what grates at the nervous system around comparison and around guilt and attention going to one thing when you want it to be going to something else. Cause it's not always like it's going to work, but you want it on the kid. Sometimes you are really present with your kid and you're like, oh man, I need to be doing these DMs or I should be paying more attention to this in the business or something's blowing up and I can't focus on it. And you feel guilty that you're neglecting the business, right? So I think there's

a lot of that nuance around how we work right now too. And, and that our generation is the first generation that's ever had to balance how we want to show up as mothers with the demands of a connected work environment. And I don't think it's just entrepreneurs. I think people like, I mean, our team, we just had this conversation where I was like, I work a lot late at night and I Slack people late at night. And like, I don't expect everybody to work like that. So even if you're an employee, sometimes you're getting pinged from work. In our business, we don't expect you to respond after work hours, but like some people do and some businesses do. Right. And so anyway, I think that's the another nuance of the biology that you're getting at where where you might be feeling things that

in a in a other time where you weren't so connected you would have the balance would have felt good and now you can't find balance because you're just constantly hit with input around work oh i think what you just hit on there around that we have the opportunity to work constantly and we are constantly being contacted or contactable is huge. We are the first generation to do that. We're also the last generation that will ever know what it was like to be in a world without social media. And I do think that maybe

unless it all goes away but unlikely i know um it just presents so many unknowns and i think that the the quote-unquote guilt can can come from a lot of those unknowns of at is what i'm doing fucking up my kid because we have no data to show otherwise. And our hope is, you know, for our kids in 20, 30 years time, they can look at us that did have big careers and did choose that and decide, oh, well, I know what it looks like if I have that. And I know what it looks like if I don't have that. Let me make a choice.

But I think that's really powerful. I don't have that let me let me make a choice but I think that's really powerful I I want to end it there because honestly I think though I think you summed it up so perfectly this is such uncharted territory for us as working moms like very uncharted I think for moms across the board I also don't think being a stay-at-home mom has ever been as disrespected as it is now, which also makes me so angry because it's the most important job. Well, and imagine being a stay-at-home mom with the same lens of like, you are constantly hit with information about other things you could be doing.

Totally. And how it would be, it would serve your kids better for you to have your own stuff going on. And you must be sitting there being like, you know, for some people it's a choice and for others it's not a choice. Right.

A hundred percent. Yeah. So yeah, I think all of it is like really looking at the environment that we are all living in and setting ourselves aside from it for a minute and going, what am I, what are my true beliefs and what do I truly feel in my body? And what do I feel in my nervous system when I look at just my life? And then what are, what is the environment around me giving me input in, in all these sensor sensory channels that I'm responding to? And, and how do I become more resilient in putting up walls and filters so that I'm not, I'm not feeling guilt about something that I actually don't feel guilty about. Amen.

We can end it. This was a good conversation. And I really hope the goal of these See Your Mama episodes is that we just get to talk about this stuff. Like the stuff that maybe we keep inside and on having conversations because I feel like if we're feeling it, there has to be more women out there feeling this. So I love that we're doing it. Me too. These are the things you and I talk about all the time like sidebar and we're like we should do these on the pod but they don't always they're not always super present for us when we're podcasting but the ceo mama episodes i think are the perfect place to bring them in so i love more

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