Women at Work - When We Make All (or Most of) the Money

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

If you’re your family’s chief breadwinner, research suggests that the pressure you’re feeling is different from what men have been dealing with for eons. We talk about the highs and lows of being in this role and examples of support at work and at home that can make it more manageable. Guest: Alyson Byrne. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. This episode, we're talking about what life is like for women who are their family's only or primary financial provider. We're used to men bringing home the financial rewards, but we're not as accustomed to when women do so and maybe how women feel about that. We're starting with the story of a woman

who's been the sole provider for her family of five for her entire career. Julia Henderson has just gotten home after driving an hour from her office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hi! Hi! Hi!

There's her husband, Andy, and their three boys. Silas is 10, Elliot's 7, and Winslow is just a year old. Who's that? Are you going to interview Winslow, too? How could she? She doesn't have any words. Don't you have your sounds? Hi! It's not getting here. Andy's finishing up dinner. I'm going to interview Winslow, too. How could you? He doesn't have any words. Don't you have your sounds?

Hi. It's not getting here. Andy's finishing up dinner. Tonight, it's peas and lasagna. He used to be able to wear Winslow in a sling when he cooked. Now, he kind of knows what's going on. And he's also a little bigger, so he'll reach for things. So now, Andy puts the baby close by.

And then I'll just pull out all the pots and pans that make the best sounds, and he can sit with his drumsticks and bang on them there. One of the tricks of the trait. Andy's been a stay-at-home dad since as long as he and Julia have been parents. I wasn't thinking about a career that could support the whole family. I always thought we would have two incomes, probably two white-collar incomes. But I have to say that my older son really needed, he really needed to have a parent at home. Silas, the 10-year-old, was born with a small jaw,

which, among other issues, woke him up every three minutes because he couldn't breathe. He was going to have to have a lot of surgeries. At the time Julia was working in publishing, Andy hadn't discovered her career path yet, and so they decided that he would stay home with Silas. And then he just was so good at it. So now he's always home with the other guys.

Was that like a conversation that you had, or the way you just talked about it makes it seem like it just sort of happened that way and kind of stuff fell into place but I imagine at the time it didn't quite feel. Oh yeah it didn't feel like it was like a choice and a conversation. I would have loved to be the person who stayed home and cared for our child but I needed to work because we had to have the benefits. Like, it was so expensive, all of those surgeries that he had. The first year with Silas was hard. He'd be in the hospital for a week or two at a time,

and Julia would work from there. Andy also had to cope with bouts of severe depression. I'd feel like a blur. The other thing is that my son was on a oxygen monitor until we gave him the new jaw and, you know, kind of pulled his tongue away from his airway. That oxygen monitor went off every 20 minutes all night long, and we had to adjust his position so that he was breathing better, so that his oxygen went back up to the safe percentage. You know, I already mentioned that my husband was dealing with depression. One of the things that he really

needed was a good night's sleep. So he would be taking something that helped him relax enough to sleep. So all of those 20-minute adjustments were on me. And then I was working. I almost don't know how I did it. Julia's boss offered support by letting her work from home whenever she needed to. And then as soon as I kind of came out of the hardest time, she started pushing me again to strive for more. She was really, really important in my career growth. She probably knew, but the people around you at that company also know that, you know, your whole family is relying on your paycheck, like you're the breadwinner.

I don't think I talked about that part. Everybody knew kind of what was going on, or the people who I worked with knew what was going on with my family, but I don't know that they understood the pressure of being this whole breadwinner. One moment from early in her career sticks in her mind. I had this situation where there was an older woman who I think thought she was helping me, but we had a kind of high pressure situation as much as publishing can be high pressure, right? We had some delivery that we needed to make and it wasn't going well and we needed to have a meeting with some people in the

Denver office. So they were two hours behind us and it it was at like 6 o'clock or 6.30, you know, after normal working hours. And she was like, I'll be on that call. You obviously don't want to be on it because you have a family to come home to. And I had this visceral reaction like, you don't tell me what call I should be on. My whole family is depending on me being reliable at work, being someone who can be counted on, excelling, showing myself to be a leader. I will be on that call. I will do well on that call. My family will be okay for the hour, but my career needs me to show up here. It felt like she was protecting me from

something or this kind of like, you must be disengaged because you have young children right now. You must want to be home with them right now instead of here present at work. But I found a lot of comfort in being present at work and being good at work. Today, Julia leads a team of 19, and a lot of them are young women. It feels like I have an extra pressure to show them what a working mom can be like and what a, you know, what a sole breadwinner woman can be like. So I feel like I have to do it really well, right? So I don't want to show that I'm tired or that things are hard because I want them to feel like they can do it.

It's hard, but it's like such a joy to be able to have these two parts of my life where I'm doing this work kind of problem solving. And my mind is doing something new every day and it feels kind of fresh and exciting, but I'm also getting to go home to a family that runs to me when I walk in the door and gives me huge smiles and tells me they missed me, and then we sit together and we eat. At the dinner table, Elliot tells me about what he thinks his mom does all day at work. I'm imagining she's like dialing letters all the time on a computer and she can do it really fast. She's sometimes having a chat with other people on a meeting and I think that's mostly what she's doing for the day. Then Silas chimes in. I think that I'm privileged to hang out with my dad instead of my mom because

because I watch a lot of cartoons and in most of them the dad goes to work but in this case, the mom does. I find it special that mommy has enough care for us to leave daddy here with us for 11 hours. As the woman, I feel really aware of how difficult it is to be home with three children all day. So when I come home, I try to do as much as I can to make his day easier. Like she'll clean up after dinner, pack lunches, run baths for the boys, put the baby to bed. You seem like you have actually enormous amounts of energy. I have a lot of energy.

And I might not always have a lot of energy. So while I have it, why not? Yeah. I do get really exhausted after they go to bed. But I don't necessarily want them to see me exhausted either, so I save it. That's the thing, though. So I really have trouble kind of taking care of myself. I have a perception, and it may be wrong, that if the working spouse is a man and the stay at home spouse is a woman, that the man does a better job at taking care of himself

than I am doing at taking care of myself. So a couple things really struck me about Julia's experience. And the first is that moment in her story where she talks about wanting to be on that late call, really wanting to be there and show up and be present because her whole family is depending on her being good at her job and being the breadwinner. And it struck me that so often when women talk about their work, we don't talk about the money part. We talk about the meaning

or the challenge or the learning opportunity, and we don't talk about this as a livelihood. And I thought it was so refreshing to hear her just say nope they're all counting on me and i'm gonna go do this because i think women suffer when we sort of pretend that we're working just for the fun of it there was something else i heard in that which is that she didn't want to be treated as if she had a handicap if you will you know that yes she has tremendous responsibilities at home but it's her decision whether or not to be on the call. It's a little patronizing to assume that she, you know, a family to go home to, so she shouldn't be on the call or wouldn't want to be on the call. You know, you don't make those decisions for other people. Yeah, that was like an example of benevolent sexism, you know, like protecting women.

I mean, it doesn't mean we're not sexist just because we're female. We all can be kind of sexist. And then the last thing that really stood out to me is when she talks about the pressure she feels to show the young women on her team what a working mom can be. She said she wants her team to feel like they can also do it. And so she feels this pressure to kind of to do the job and do it well and also not show some of the strain that she feels. That was mixed for me because I also feel in a good way that pressure to be a role model for other people. But I think part of being a role model is also being honest about the effort it takes. Yeah, that's what I was wondering if like more senior women feel like

they have to be role models to younger women on their teams, because as like someone who is younger and unconsciously seeking role models, like what my bosses do in terms of how open they are about the balancing act that they have to perform, like that affects how I show up at work too. You know, like if my bosses are open about like needing time off to take care of something, I feel more comfortable saying I might need time off to take care of this other thing too. Yeah. I think that stuff's really important. I mean, I think it's important to say I need to take time off to take care of my mom. Because you want people who work on your team to feel that that's totally fine. It's more than fine.

It's important that you have to set those priorities. Yeah, and I think what's hard for me about this in some ways is Julia talks about how it's a joy to have these two parts of her life. And someone could listen to her story and hear, God, she's so busy. There's so much going on. You know, she's this long commute. She has a kid who has had to have multiple surgeries for health issues. There's a lot there. But she says it's joy.

You know, and they sound joyful. And it was joyful being there in their home. And sometimes I think we focus so much on how hard this is and kind of the pressure to succeed. We hear a lot about how being a working mom is hard or being a working woman is hard. And it's also super fun. Oh, my God, it's so much fun. It is fun. It is fun to be a leader. I mean, it is super challenging. And that's part of why it's fun. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

It does seem very fun to do. But the process of getting there can be challenging and you can face a ton of obstacles that can seem insurmountable so it's just helpful to hear that you know you can overcome them and when you get there it's can be great i would the only thing i would push back on about that is it never really feels like you've gotten there yeah you think you're at the top of the mountain and then you realize you're on the lowest peak of a really tall mountain range. So you have to learn to love the process. Yes.

Because that's all there is. Yes. That is a message I'm telling myself a lot these days. Namaste. Sorry. You're not ending like that. No, sorry, sorry. I'm going to throw up.

Can we just end with that? Yeah. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com

slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. We wanted to hear how Julia's experience fit into the experiences of other women

making all the money for their families, or most of it. And so we're seeing the primary earner as being a woman is prevalent in single mother households, not as prevalent in married couples, but perhaps 5.4% is where we're at right now. That's Alison Byrne. She's an assistant professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland. She studies the relationship between status and gender, and she knows the research on women as financial providers. I wasn't actually able to be there when we taped the conversation with Allison, so I will let Amy and Sarah take it from here. Well, Allison, thank you so much for talking with us today. Thank you for having me. So when we talked with Julia, she mentioned that becoming her family's sole breadwinner wasn't something that she expected to do, and it didn't even necessarily feel like a choice.

It was sort of just how things happened. Is that a common experience for women who end up in this role? Right. And so research suggests that even amongst highly ambitious, highly motivated, and highly talented women, they still anticipate that their role is going to be secondary to their husband's. And if these expectations are there and they're not discussed and they're not understood, they become self-fulfilling prophecies, I guess. And so women more, of course, taking on more of the child responsibilities and less likely to have their careers prioritized over their husband's. And so I think, like Julia, a lot of people go in with these expectations that despite the education and the goals that they might have at one point, their careers will become secondary to their husband's, particularly if it's not discussed and really negotiated, I think, at an early stage of their marriage.

Let's talk about the differences that you see in families where women do get to choose whether they're the breadwinner and where they don't get to choose, but still end up as breadwinner. Do you see differences? There are some differences. And again, I want to make a point that this is a vastly understudied topic in research, and it tends to, I'm drawing from sociology and the family research, and management really hasn't explored this as much. But in some of the research that looks at women who have chosen to make this decision, so it's a conscious decision that they make with their partner, as compared to women who find themselves in this role reluctantly, the women who find themselves in this role reluctantly can be, I guess, envious or feel resentful towards

their husband who has more time with their child, particularly if they were the ones who wanted to be that stay-at-home parent. And also they may feel that they're being judged, perhaps unfairly, for being in this role. And there's research to support that that's not a bad assumption, particularly for white middle class and upper middle class. There's the expectation of intensive mothering, where women are supposed to be fully devoted to taking care of their children, putting both time and resources into rearing children. And we haven't quite captured the idea of being judging them for not taking on the good mother identity by going to work, especially if it's out of choice. It's interesting to hear you say that about white women, because it often the public conversation about African-American women in particular is that if black women aren't working, then they are seen as bad mothers.

Exactly. And that's actually been and again again, limited research on some of these topics, but the research that is out there on African American women suggests that being a breadwinner is very compatible with being a good mother. You know, it demonstrates that they are, you know, self-reliant, that they are a good role model for their children, and that it is, as you said, you know, people see it as very compatible that being a good mother also means a working mother. And it doesn't seem to have that same intensive mothering all focused on your children that seems to be targeted more towards upper middle class and middle class white women. And do you see anything in there, too, about our assumptions about single mothers? Because,

you know, that's a situation where, you know, we've kind of talked a lot about what it's like when there is a couple and one person may be staying home or earning less. But if you're a single parent, there is no one else. Exactly. And it seems, I mean, again, limited research in the area, but when studies have looked at single mothers, they do not feel that same intense pressure of having to do intensive mothering and they actually define it more as extensive mothering and such that being a provider is necessity and once they people hear that they are single mothers that pressure to be you know all 100 with their children seems to be alleviated and it seems more compatible and judged less by society that they are working and they are still providing

and being fully responsible for their child's well-being. But of course, in being fully responsible for your child's well-being when you're the only parent also means that there needs to be a financial component. So perhaps that identity is broadened to encapsulate both the working side as well as the mothering side. So in marriages where women or relationships where women are the primary or sole breadwinners, how did the power dynamics break down? Talk about that. Sure. And so one would assume that if a female is the primary breadwinner, that they should enjoy, you know, the same pleasures that breadwinning husbands do, having more responsibility or having more decision-making power on how the money is

spent, et cetera. Research doesn't necessarily support that. And there's been some work by Tishner that looks at the fact that women may actually overcompensate for this new status. So they spend energy deferring or placating or minimizing their achievements relative to their husbands, and then transferring that authority back to their husband. So that sort of redoing gender in the home, so that he has more of a say and sort of how the household runs in terms of money and decision making. She may be less likely to make the sole decisions for how they spend their money or, you know, those types of things. Whereas in traditionalist homes where he makes the earnings, I think research would largely suggest

that he also has control over how money is spent, what decisions they make. So it sounds as if women in these situations are pretty conflicted about their power. And I'm wondering what you're seeing. Yes. Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment. You know, in some research, they would suggest that, yeah, they feel empowered. It's nice to know where the money's coming in and that they have control over that. Absolutely. But that in the home dynamic, again, if they're feeling pressure to be both an ideal worker, of course, at work, but at home to be an ideal wife or an ideal woman, then taking ownership of how the money is spent and how things go at home isn't very, it doesn't fit with those models. And so in being a good wife or being a good mother or being a good woman, it's not to be the assertive one. It's not to be the strong and

agentic one. And those dynamics can play out in the house as much as they can play out at work. So I want to ask a little bit more about the pressure women face, because one thing we did hear a lot from women who are, especially the sole breadwinner, is that there is a ton of pressure to keep bringing home that bacon. So is this the same kind of stress that male breadwinners have been dealing with for a long time, or is this somehow different? Is it different when women are carrying that stress? So Meisenbeck has done some work on female breadwinners, and they said that they experienced quite a bit of pressure as the sole breadwinner. And they argued that this pressure

would be qualitatively different than the pressure that men felt, given that men's idea as being, you know, a good father, a good husband is compatible with being an ideal worker and such that, you know, by providing, bringing home the bacon, for lack of a better term, that would be compatible with being both a good worker, while also being a good dad, good husband. But for women, they didn't feel that way because they felt the pressure to also be a good wife or a mother, which isn't compatible with, of course, them being a good worker, being always available for the workplace. And so they would argue that that pressure is different. But interestingly, Kristen Munch and her colleagues presented some work at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, which I think is currently under review. And she looked at men and women's relative

income contributions and found that actually when men took on more financial responsibility in their marriages, their psychological well-being declined and was actually at its lowest level when they were the sole breadwinners. However, breadwinning had the opposite effect for women's psychological well-being, where it improved as they made greater economic contributions to their marriage. And she suggests that men approach breadwinning with a sense of obligation and worry about maintaining that status. And so they feel quite a bit of pressure on, if I were to lose that, they feel quite concerned about making sure that they could provide for their families. For women in her study, she argued that, you know, they approach breadwinning possibly as an opportunity or as a

choice, and that they may feel actually a sense of pride, not necessarily worrying what others will say if they can't or don't maintain it. So they don't feel that same sort of societal pressures to keep up the breadwinning role. And so, again, really interesting that those findings are mixed, but I think it opens the opportunity for more discussion, if nothing else. Let's talk about women who have been the breadwinner for years and they want to make a change in their careers. They want to dial back a bit or take a break. How should they handle that? How are you seeing that being handled?

So I will say right off the bat, there's just really a limited understanding of that. We do know that professional women, when they take time out of their careers and they want to go back, they tend not to go back to the same types of industries and will frequently look at more family friendly companies and or positions, which typically means that they're want to take a rest or take a break, they do need to keep that in mind that if they want to come back, unfortunately, the reality will be that they may not be able to enter back into the role that they wanted to or they may not wish to anymore. So just being cognizant of that is probably quite important. I'm also wondering what we know about how being a sole breadwinner affects women's health. And I'm sort of coming at this a little bit because Julia mentioned, you know, how she feels exhausted but feels like she can't show that to people. But also I was super impressed that she goes running quite regularly on her lunch break, which is like I have no excuse, but I don't do that. So I feel like on some level, she's way more healthy. On another level, maybe there's something else that either physically or mentally this takes a toll. Oftentimes, when women come home from work, they try to then relieve their husbands of the,

you know, the domestic responsibilities. And so that provides husbands with time to pursue other activities at home. And so they can engage in leisure time or in outside activities. But it really means that the mothers are going straight from work where they were engaged, assuming many hours a day, exercising, whatever, getting that in during the lunch break, squeezing in whatever time you have. And then going home and being full on full time parents when they get in the door. And so that swap of responsibility can be absolutely exhausting on somebody who's literally never getting a break. And so, you know, it might be a way that women try and minimize some of the guilt perhaps that they're experiencing by violating the social norms of, you know, being a full-time worker and not necessarily being able to encapsulate the

ideas of, you know, intensive mothering, but it just means for a very intensive day and certainly would be exhausting over time. I'm also, I'm curious to know about the different kinds of support that the husbands in these situations provide. So your research found that tangible support or practical support made a much bigger difference than emotional support. What's going on there? Yes. And we were surprised, to be fair, when we found that out. And then we really dug a little bit more into the literature. And so the domestic, the child care and the elder care, those are those tangible components that women are typically asked to do themselves. And so when their husbands are doing that,

one, they're showing respect for their wives' careers. First and foremost, they're showing that, you know, I'm willing to do this because obviously your career is important to our family. And so I can pick up the slack, but it's also the things that she physically cannot do. And so if it means that for her work, she has to travel and then she doesn't have to worry about her husband taking care of the kids at home, then that would show a real demonstration of instrumental and valuable support that otherwise she would have to outsource or feel quite a bit of pressure to do herself. The emotional support side, what we found is that women are more likely to find emotional support in a whole host of areas. And so while it's great if a husband wants to be their wife's cheerleader, she doesn't need that. She can get that from her

friends, from her colleagues, from other people. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to look to their wives for the emotional support. If they're having a rough day at the job, they're going to come home and want their wives to support them. But women are able to find that sense of support from other sources. And so we think that that's why the instrumental support was so much more important in our study than the emotional support. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's

Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at Work. One thing that we noticed was that Julia said she wasn't sure how many of her colleagues knew that she was the breadwinner and all the pressure that comes with that. It's not as if she was keeping a secret. She just never talked about it that much. Do you think that female breadwinners should talk more openly about their experiences? This is a really tough question, I think, because on the one hand, you know, the literature on disclosure in the workplace suggests that in order for people to forge really strong relationships with their coworkers, they should be willing to disclose information about themselves, including their values and beliefs. And on the other hand, this idea of segmentation, so keeping one's personal life separate from one's work life, can be really helpful. In Julia's case, and in other female breadwinners' cases, I think that it becomes extra complicated. Because on the one hand, they are on paper, they're kind of the ideal

worker, right? If they have a stay-at-home husband, they are on paper, they're kind of the ideal worker, right? If they have a stay-at-home husband, they are on paper unencumbered and by outside responsibilities and can be fully available in the workplace. But yet they're also seen as women and good women are also good wives and good mothers. And to be fully devoted to one's work, they may get judged by others in the workplace. But on the other hand, I struggle with perhaps not having the opportunity to normalize this. And we know that there are more and more couples where females are the primary breadwinner, not necessarily with a stay-at-home husband, but certainly the primary breadwinner. And for other young women in the workplace who are aspiring to senior levels,

I think it's really important for them to have role models who may model some sort of a family dynamic that they can aspire to. And so perhaps they are seeing women in senior leadership roles or in really challenging positions and thinking, well, how do they do it all? And not knowing that they have a very supportive partner at home might suggest something different to these young women who are thinking, well, I can't do it all, but yet she can. There's no way I can accomplish this. So I think there's two sides to that coin. I certainly understand why there's an unwillingness to disclose, yet it may help normalize things if the disclosure was there. We also asked Julia if there was anything her organization could have done that would make her life a little easier. She said, no, she couldn't really think of anything,

but I'm wondering what you think. One of the things I thought was really interesting that Julia brought up was that she had a great boss, someone who supported her but also continued to give her challenging work. And I think that was really critical because I think Julia was honest when she said, you know, there isn't anything else the organization can do. And a supportive boss is critical. And so Jenny Hubler and her colleagues have done some research on when managers might perceive that there's work-family conflict for women that exist, regardless that was their perceptions. And it didn't actually matter whether, you know, the women's family structure or their actual difficulty in managing their responsibility and roles. It was simply whether the manager believed that there was going to be an issue and therefore was less likely to promote them and to give them high performance appraisals. And so I think that when Julia said, you know, no, my boss is continuing to give me,

you know, respect and support, but also really challenging work, that was the signal that she needed. And so I think for managers and for organizations, I wouldn't assume that women, just because they have families at home, or if you think they might have families at home, that that's going to hamper their ability to take on challenging work. One other thing I think that organizations can do to help female breadwinners is normalize the use of family leave by men. Make it more normative that men can be supportive of their wives. That would be a really big step forward. So female breadwinners, clearly there's a lot expected of them. And I'm wondering what they can do to manage expectations. I think it does require a bit of self-awareness. And in research that looks at these nontraditional couples, particularly Aaron Reid's most recent research, these husbands that are supporting their wives' careers in the bread-share model, they're very aware that they fit this nontraditional model.

And I think it's important for women to start understanding that as well, that if they're going to be in this kind of a dynamic, are they willing to go that route and to sort of maybe loosen the reins on the identity pieces that might be really critical to them? And so some of the research on maternal gatekeeping comes to mind where women are often hesitant to relinquish responsibility for family matters. You know, they want to set the schedules, they don't want to let their husbands or the fathers take as much responsibility in terms of how the family dynamics works. And so I think that, you know, for women who are going to be primary breadwinners or sole breadwinners, that relinquishing of the maternal gatekeeping

needs to be something that they're aware of. They need to be mindful that they're doing that, if that's something that's important to them. And I think they also have to understand that they're not immune to the socialization pressure. So in my research with Julian Barling on status leakage, the women that we studied were incredibly educated. They were highly successful. I mean, these were high-status professional women, and even they were not immune to the traditional norms. So they still reported a higher level of status leakage when they out-earned their husband, so feeling resentful that their partner made less than they did, you know, feeling embarrassed or wishing that he had a similar level of status. So despite all of their accomplishments and their achievements

in their education, they still can feel the pressures of the social norms that are in place. And so I think women just need to be really self-reflective about that challenge and just be mindful that they have to deal with those pressures. So let's talk a little bit about kids and what they think of all this. We did ask Julie and Andy's older two boys who are 7 and 10. We did not ask baby Winslow what they think about their mom going to the office and their dad staying at home. What did you hear in the boys' answers? I thought those questions were great for the kids, and I was really impressed by the older sons. He was very aware that he's in an unusual situation.

And he mentioned how in the cartoons, it's always the mom who stays home. But he feels very privileged that in his situation, he gets the dad to stay home. And to me, that really demonstrated a couple of different things. One, it demonstrated role modeling. These boys are going to grow up with different expectations about gender roles, both at work and at home. They have a role model as a father who is somebody who supports his wife's career and is fully comfortable with taking on the lead parenting role at home. And that's not something that many young boys or girls get exposed to at such an early age. So I think

that was really critical. One of the other things is that I noticed he mentioned that his mom cares for his dad or trusts the dad enough to take on the role of the dad at home. And so in some ways, it sounds like Julie has really relinquished that maternal gatekeeping and is fully comfortable with allowing her husband to take on a lot of the parenting decisions of the parenting role, which really demonstrates a high level of respect and trust between the parents. And so I think there is something really phenomenal that such a young child, two young children, can pick up on such critical pieces of a marriage just in that conversation. Yeah, I was really moved by those answers. Those kids are so thoughtful.

They really were. Well, Allison, this has been so interesting. Thank you for talking with us today. Oh, thank you for having me. Thanks so much, Allison. Thank you. So we've brought in a special guest to help us talk through some of these issues. She's the editor of HBR.org.

She's the supervising editor of the show, and she's her family's primary breadwinner. She's also my boss. Hello, Maureen Hoke. Hello, Sarah. Hello, Amy. Hello, Maureen. It's good to be here. It's great to have you.

Good to be here. So, Maureen, what stood out to you or surprised you in our conversation with Allison? There were a couple. Well, there are many things, to be clear, that sort of resonated with me, and it's always helpful to sometimes hear how research reflects your own experience. But one thing that surprised me is that in my family, we did make a choice to have my husband stay home and really take on a lot of the responsibilities for caring for my daughter, so we chose that. And Allison talked about how it's really the minority of families who are in the situation of really choosing that the woman is the primary breadwinner. So that surprised me. And then something that really

resonated with me was this identity issue of if you are hardworking, financially providing woman, you can't be a good mother. So that's interesting. Your daughter, Irene, is four years old. And so I imagine that you've been struggling with this since she's been part of the family there. How much of that is coming from inside of you and how much of it is sort of projected onto you by others? I really think it's both. I think some of it does come from this idea that as a woman, you need to be a great mom, a great wife. And, you know, if you're working a great worker and there's really not a lot of give. And sometimes it feels like for men, there's more of an expectation. Well, they're doing such a great job providing for their family. They don't need to worry about like

ticking all the boxes in these other categories because that's their main job and that's how people see them as being successful. I'm really hoping when it comes to Irene that she is going to have some different models and different ways to think about the options that she has and how she wants to think about her family or think about her path. You know, she's going to have a slightly different set of norms in front of her. How do you think Irene processes this, that you go off to work every day and Jason stays home and takes care of her? I think that sometimes things do happen. Like if I've worked a long day or if I say I missed bedtime the night before, and sometimes the next time I'll see her, she'll look at me and say, oh, you're here. Oh, it's so nice to see you. You know, sort of like, oh, this, you know, suddenly mom appears. So I think that she has a recognition that I'm not around as much as my husband is, obviously. And she and my husband have, you know, a really

terrific relationship. She's also four. So I think she's still figuring some of this out. But she knows about my office. I brought her into the office, which I think is really nice when you can share parts of your work with even your young kids. So they sort of get a sense and some context of what you're doing. I'm going to be really interested to watch how she connects the dots here. And in terms of the different things that I'm doing and hopefully the model that I'm showing her about how caring about your career and your work is okay. You know, that you can be a whole person in many different ways. And you just have to figure out the one that works for you. You know, I remember my mom worked.

She was an advertising executive. And it was a very big day each year when my brothers and I would get to go to her office. And I remember the day the penny dropped that my mother was, you know, the boss. And I remember processing this and talking to my little brother about it. And the feeling I had, and I can still feel it, was such incredible pride. Like I had to be told not to talk about it at school the way I wanted to talk about it. Because, you know, of course, as a little kid, you tested out on your parents first. Right.

So just a thought for you. I mean, that's what I really hope that in the future, if why wasn't I the one picking you up at school or why wasn't I the one doing these things, that that's going to be replaced with a sense of pride about, like, but my mom was out doing these things, and that's really cool, and that gives me inspiration to do other stuff and be proud of her. And people look up to her. Right. And that's the thing that really hit me is that

people looked up to her. I mean, I think something that's interesting from Irene's perspective, though, is sometimes these sort of gender stereotypes even come through other kids her age. So when Irene was three, we put her in daycare for a couple of days a week because my husband does work part time. He's a database developer and he does contract work. I'll never forget that I went to visit her daycare class and my husband had been the one dropping her off and picking her up and I hadn't been as visible. And so I'm in the class and I sat down and one of her classmates, who was probably four or so at the time, came up to me and said, who are you? And I said, I'm Irene's mom. And she said, you can't be Irene's mommy. Irene's mommy is a daddy. And I kind of sat there sort of shell shocked for a second. And then what

can you do but laugh? Irene's mommy had been a daddy for her at that point in terms of the mom's role and the dad's role. And I have had to develop my own thick skin about that, too. Sometimes that stuff does sting because you don't want to feel like you're absent. But sometimes also saying, yeah, sometimes Irene's mommy is a daddy and that's OK. Yeah, that's more than OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it was interesting to hear about the sense among women who are the sole or primary breadwinner that there aren't a lot of role models. And I hear a lot of that kind of that that isolation can really be a look up in the organization and if that's all you see, then you think, oh, I need to get one of these stay-at-home spouses because I can't get there if I'm in a different family model. And the data kind of bears out that when women have a support spouse at home, they are more likely to rise at work. So I have sort of mixed feelings about,

I don't want women to feel isolated, but I also have mixed feelings on just sort of the reality that having a supportive spouse at home lets you be more successful at work in a lot of cases. That is so hard because, you know, I think the message you don't want to hear too is that, oh, you can't marry an ambitious career-minded person that like one of you is, you know, that you're going to have to be supportive to the point of sacrificing your own dreams and aspirations. I mean, I think what Allison said about having those conversations really early on about how you see the future is so important. I think about some of the things that Viva Wittenberg Cox has written for us about how, yeah, yeah, if you want to have kids and careers, like sometimes you have to trade off, you know, like sometimes, you know, if you've taken a big job and you've been able to accomplish some things, then your spouse have to trade off, you know, like sometimes, you know, if you've taken a

big job and you've been able to accomplish some things, then your spouse has to be able to get some room to do that. I mean, I agree with you that I don't like the idea that that's the only way. Do you and Jason talk about this? We do. We try to kind of think about scenarios. You know, what if this is also just my personality and the way I think, but like what if something was to change with my job? You know, would I be the one to then like go out and find another full-time job? Would that be Jason's chance to step up or how would we think about that and what his sort of career ambitions are? I am, I think, in a very fortunate position that he has been really comfortable sort of taking just a different path and really being the primary parent for our

daughter. And, you know, he's still working, which is great and really helpful for our income, but he doesn't worry as much about those breaks, like being out of the workforce and then trying to get back in. Whereas I think if I did that, I would worry a lot about my kind of on-ramp back into my career if I was to take a break like that. So certainly communicating, I mean, really communicating your expectations has been absolutely key to making it work. So just a side note for listeners who are curious to hear more about two career couples, we did an episode on that in season one where we talked with Aviva Wittenberg-Cox, Jennifer Pagliari, and historian Stephanie Kuntz. It's called Couples That Work.

So if you want to know more on that, go check it out. One thing that really resonated with me was Allison's point about the kind of guilt and sensitivity that the breadwinner, the primary breadwinner, brings into the relationship. And I feel that sometimes. And it's nothing that my spouse is demanding of me. It's certainly nothing that we talk about. But I think part of it is I feel so fortunate to be in my role and to have the privileges that come with this role. So let's talk about first what's the worst part of being a primary breadwinner

and then we'll end on the best part so we can end on a high note. So what's the worst part of being in this position? The pressure that if you lose this job, you're not going to be able to make your next mortgage payment. Yeah, I think the pressure, sometimes feeling like I'm not meeting the expectations in all of my rules. That is sometimes really hard.

And as a mom, feeling like you're not being there for your kid as much as you want to is hard. And sometimes just feeling protective of my family that I wish that my husband didn't have to kind of have to explain why he's the one picking up my daughter every day. You know, it's really, sometimes it comes down to time. You just wish there was more time and there just isn't. And you have to, you have to be okay with letting some stuff go. And that is a lifelong skill for sure. How about for you, Sarah? I've sort of gone back and forth on this.

So Ben and I both have jobs right now. My career has been a slightly more dominant one in our relationship. He moved to Boston because I had a job here at HBR. And at the time, that was a sacrifice that both was incredibly meaningful, but also kind of hard to accept. It's like when someone does something super nice for you and you're like, no, you shouldn't have, except that, of course you should have. But that's a lot to carry around. It is a lot to carry around. And for a while, it sort of felt like I had to pay him back somehow for that. And so I think that there are times in a relationship where accepting the career sacrifice that someone else is making so

that your career can take off is tough. So best part. So I'll start. I think the best part for me is that I get to really believe in myself and exercise my ambition. You know, I like to work. I get to keep doing it. I feel very fortunate to have had what I feel like was a very direct calling to be an editor. Like I love like putting words together and having people read them. And I feel so happy that I get to do that and that I have a supportive spouse who believes in me and helps make that happen. And yeah, that I'm doing something that my daughter will be proud of. That's pretty good. For me, obviously financial freedom.

But the sheer joy of getting to do something you love. I think the joy of getting to do something you love applies. I also, I love knowing that I can take care of myself. Totally. And I'm not dependent on another person. And I think that there is something really new for a lot of women all over the world and having a really high level of financial independence. That's our show. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Nicole Torres.

Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor. And we get production help from Rob Eckhart and Isis Madrid. Don't forget that we've got discussion guides for each of our episodes to help you talk through the issues we bring up on the show. And we are thrilled that so many of you have joined our Women at Work online group. There are conversations happening right now about decision-making, perfectionism, managing parental leave. Good ideas come from all of us, and we hope you'll join and contribute

yours. We also hope you'll subscribe to HBR. By doing that, you not only support our show, you also get unlimited access to HBR's entire archive and a library of subscriber-only charts, tables, and slide decks to incorporate into your own presentations. Thanks so much for listening.