Pearl Daily critiques the "modern woman life cycle," where women in 2025 face regret—either from career sacrifices or debt-laden degrees yielding $50K salaries. She highlights systemic barriers like $20K/year daycare costs and workplace biases, including the "motherhood penalty," forcing women into guilt-ridden trade-offs while men often avoid stigma. Emma’s privilege in outsourcing childcare is dismissed as unrealistic, exposing emotional disconnection when parents prioritize work over milestones. The episode argues systemic change—not individual sacrifices—is key to balancing careers and parenting without resentment or abandonment. [Automatically generated summary]
I am your host, Pearl, and today we are going to be talking about women regretting losing their career over children.
But before we get into today's topic, please go to theaudacitynetwork.com.
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Okay, so today we're going to talk about the modern woman life cycle.
It is the quintessential roadmap of the path that women in 2025 are taking to end up alone with their dog or cat in their 40s and 50s.
Look back at their life with nothing but regret.
So, just to recap, modern women will go to a high-priced institution, get a degree that nobody cares about to put themselves in a whole bunch of debt, and will burden them for the rest of their lives.
After they learn in school, all they learn in school is how to be disagreeable and how to use men.
Modern women, number two, modern women will get a job that is too stressful and does not care about them.
In reality, the job isn't that hard.
Step six, modern women will start on antidepressants or become alcoholics, either or.
We don't discriminate here.
Step seven, women will buy a dog or a cat and die alone.
So today we're going to talk about the slight variation of the modern woman life cycle.
There are women who choose to have kids when they are young, but choose their careers for their kids.
These women, just like women in the modern women life cycle, paid too much for a degree to get a job that doesn't pay well and are usually in positions out the door or in positions that are out the door when an economic downturn happens.
These women neglect their children, causing serious damage to them and their development.
Many of these women miss their children's first words, first steps, and formative early years.
And for what?
The average salary of a woman with a degree in the United States is still around $50,000 a year.
Is this still enough compensation to miss out on important things in their kids' lives?
Sadly, if you ask many of these career women, they would say yes.
So we are going to talk about women regretting picking kids over her career.
Can you imagine like the kid?
Like, can you imagine?
Like, you're like, oh, mom wrote an article today.
Let's see what it said.
Mom!
Like, can you imagine?
Okay.
I took a career break to raise my kids and now I feel like a failure.
Every other Saturday, British Vogue resident, agony aunt Eva Wiseman answers questions about life.
Okay, so here we go.
All right, a few years ago, I was flying high at work, but when my husband got the opportunity to almost double his salary by working far away from home three nights a week, juggling my job and caring for my young son, all I got was to all, sorry, juggling my job and caring for my young son all got too much for me.
And I decided to quit.
At first, it felt liberating, but after a year, I was ready to go back to work.
Turned out it was really hard to find a job.
I couldn't get a similar job to my old one.
Despite having tons of interviews, I eventually took a job that I find boring because I'm overqualified.
Now I feel like a complete loser and I'm full of regret for giving up, for giving up my career.
Plus, I can't help but feel bitter and angry with my peers, one of who is now a CEO at a really cool company and has three kids.
So translation, they paid an annie to raise the kids, right?
She didn't want to do it.
She had someone else do it.
I feel weak and pathetic and like I'm being punished for it.
And I'm in a job I hate partially because I don't want to look like I've failed.
So question for Eva, drop her an email.
So you can ask this person.
Firstly, you did not give up.
You just did it.
You left work because that was the right decision for your family at the time.
But when that, but then what happened was work left you.
After having a child, many parents discover first slowly but then fast the realities of a painfully unbalanced world, suddenly seeing themselves, suddenly seeing for themselves how a lack of a flexible working arrangement and affordable child care is preventing many thousands of women from progressing in their career.
So this is aka.
I wasn't going to progress in my career anyway.
Otherwise I wouldn't have given it up.
But I want to blame it on something.
So I'm going to blame it on the kids.
That's translation.
Working mothers might be the norm today, but large flakes of the old patriarchy remain in all kinds of work and also in relationships.
It's quantifiable.
A campaign around the motherhood penalty last year revealed that the gap between mothers and fathers in the UK has grown by nearly a pound an hour since 2020.
On average, mothers earn 24 cents less an hour than fathers in 2023, a penalty of $4.44 an hour.
One consequence of this is that because women earn less than their male partners, it makes sense, as you found for them, to be the one to leave their jobs when it becomes untenable for both parents to work.
As it's hard to return, even with the new knowledge you've gained about interpersonal relationships and negotiation, patience, and budgeting from having a kid, some new employers are suspicious of your career break, or somehow they don't want, like, they don't want to pay for career number two, right?
So they're like a maternity leave.
Oh, no, we're not doing that.
Okay, or certain somehow that your brain has defrosted in times of motherhood.
All previous experience and sense now surely replaced with nap times or Lego.
And they say this is the world's hardest job.
Or they're unwilling to employ somebody they believe will never prioritize work or will no doubt leave in 10 minutes to have another baby.
Yeah, there you go.
Be gentler on yourself.
These failures are not your own.
They are the failures, of course, of our society.
One that pays lip service to the pursuit of equality but refuses to adapt in order to accommodate those who have caregiving responsibilities.
If you can't afford to, I think you should quit the job you hate.
Stop talking yourself down.
You're not weak or pathetic.
You're not a failure.
You're simply a woman struggling to find fulfilling work in a world designed for men and struggling with politics and identity shifts that come with motherhood.
Once you start being sweeter to yourself, you will be able to rediscover the ambitious drive that you saw flying high and find a job that offers growth and satisfaction.
No promises, but maybe.
And one more thing: you need to stop comparing yourself to other mothers.
It's silly and it only makes you feel worse.
Stop it.
The CEO with the kids, she has nothing to do with you, your life, or your careers.
Wow, that's like that's actually the only good advice I've ever heard a woman give.
Stop comparing yourself to other women.
All right, for all you know, despite the job and the children, she is struggling too.
In fact, I am sure she is, undoubtedly.
Countless sacrifices she is making when she appears to excel.
It's probably that.
Like you, some of you feel imposed upon her by that great, brutish hands that nudge her once life, nudge one's life as they age, pushing and bruising even the best laid plans.
So there's your advice: leave your job, go gentler on yourself, don't compare yourself to other women and fight the patriarchy.
Go.
So, again, now there's women that also have articles on how to make yourself feel better about mom guilt when you have a career.
So, again, men, when they make a choice, they just deal with the consequences, right?
Hold on, give me, I have a big water bottle, I need a sip.
Sorry, guys, I get parched when I read.
So, men accept that.
If they have to work the night shift, they are like, Look, I did what I had to do, I understand it.
But women have to rationalize bad decisions, I would say.
So, dear working mother, you're doing a great job, and your kids will turn out just fine despite the hours you spend away from them.
Truly, cope.
See, again, it's like the cope: it's the, I want to have it all, and I want to do what I want, regardless of how it affects my children.
And so, yeah, I'll just keep doing what I want.
And so I'm going to write articles rationalizing this instead of doing what I know is right.
So, of course, you probably didn't always feel that way about yourself.
If you are like most working moms, I know you may feel like you're forever coming up short.
And it comes to doing enough, giving enough, and being enough for your kids.
Not to mention your boss, your partner, and your aging parents, and extended family.
And of course, your community.
I haven't even mentioned doing, being, and giving enough for yourself, but that's another article.
I was warned about mother's guilt while expecting my first child.
However, having grown up with a hearty dose of Catholic guilt, I feel it couldn't be that bad.
And then I became a mother, and over the course of five years, I had four healthy children in between stop staring graduate studies towards a new career.
Needless to say, it was during that time I became much more acquainted with mother's guilt.
It became a constant companion until one day I realized that I didn't have children in order to spend my life feeling forever inadequate.
I wanted children to enrich my life, not enslave my conscience.
It's time to reclaim our right to enjoy our kids.
So it's time to, what they're saying is they want to take the clout from the kids and all the good stuff they get from the kids without doing the bad stuff.
So that's what she's trying to say.
Lest child rearing become a long exercise in never measuring up.
But how do working mothers stop wrestling with constant guilt?
First, we must uncover the destructive forces that are driving it.
So the need to do the right thing, like the guilt inside, that's what's driving it.
But instead of doing the right thing, they just are going to like push that down and keep doing the wrong thing.
Before, below are five ways to embrace your shortfalls as a mother and refocus your precisely finite energy on what truly matters.
Ensuring that your kids, ensuring your kids know they're wanted, loved, and lovable no matter what.
See, again, women's solution is saying things.
It's never doing things, right?
It's always telling your kids you love them, but not, it's never showing them by spending time with them and being pleasant, right?
Like that's the harder part.
Being a nice person, being pleasant.
It's easy to say, I love you, right?
That's easy.
And it's the same thing with men.
They're like, well, tell them how you feel.
Well, does it matter what you say if you don't back it up with actions?
And that they benefit from having you as a role model for a rewarding life.
Accept trade-offs as inevitable.
When you choose to combine motherhood and a career in any way, shape, or form, there will always be trade-offs, sacrifices, and compromises.
What is crucial to your happiness as well as your ability to starve off guilt is reconciling those trade-offs by being crystal clear about why you're making them in the first place.
Create a list of the reasons why you work: money, satisfaction, sanity, to provide a helpful reminder of your personal convictions when you work or from attending a concert and compels you to outsource the organization of your child's birthday party.
When I'm not able to be involved with my kids' activities as it might seem ideal, I am very clear that my kids, my family, and myself are ultimately all better off because I have a rewarding career outside of the home.
Number two, don't shoot on yourself.
Do you know what's so crazy?
Men can hear the word should and agree.
Women, it's like we can't handle it.
Like women, if you say you should lose weight to a fat guy, he'll say, I know.
But if you say that to a woman, like it's World War III, you know.
So mother's guilt will not always sorry, mother's guilt was not always a mother's lot.
Mothers in the Victorian England banished children and nursemaids before farming them off to a boarding school at age five so they could continue to their high T social lives.
Acclaimed photographer, Dorothy Lang, paid foster families to look after her children so she could venture off on a months-long photography expeditions.
That sounds like a terrible mother.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like McDonald's is hiring, and you could do that when the kids are older.
You know, I feel like women, whenever they do something at the expense of the children, it's because they want to bang somebody at work or somebody there.
Because like that is the only force that I see women like doing crazy things that's strong enough, right?
So I bet there's hot guys that she was photographer, like taking pictures of or something, or near her.
I don't know.
Likewise, I cannot recall my own parents ever coming to a softball game or reading me bedtime stories.
Truth be told, I never gave it a second thought until I found myself guilt ridden when unable to attend one of my children's games or too tired to read them a bedtime story.
Why?
Because I had unwittingly taken on board a mother load of good parent shoulds that my mother never did.
And it's so crazy because men can admit like when they're bad at something.
So men will say, yeah, I was a bad dad.
Like I've actually heard men admit that where they said, you know what?
I wasn't the best father.
But admitting that as a woman, it's like World War III.
You know, we can't all be good at everything.
Some things we're just not good at.
And, you know, like men, I've met men that were, say, alcoholics, right?
And they can admit they just weren't the best dad and they live with it.
But women, they'll write articles.
Like instead of just saying, you know what, I'm a bad mom, they'll write an article rationalizing the fact that they're not a bad mom.
That's the I enjoy being involved in my children's activities and in their lives, but I also know they don't need me cheering them on at every game, creating scrapbooks for every milestone, or welcoming them home from school with fresh baked muffins in order to feel loved and grow secure into well-rounded adults.
While they are central to my life, my world does not revolve around them.
I'm sure they love hearing this.
Can you imagine reading this?
Did you see what your mom wrote about you?
She said her life does not revolve around you.
Nor do I believe it would serve them any better if I did.
Three, lowering your bar to good enough.
The bar on what it means to be a great parent has gradually been moving up.
Oh my God.
You know, women used to like sew their kids' clothes, but somehow we're like deluded into thinking the bar for being a good parent has moved up.
We don't even raise our kids.
I mean, we throw our kids.
It's like you could put the kid in daycare.
My sister worked at a daycare.
They throw him in like six months in.
My sister was raising your children.
Okay.
My sister did it.
So I have firsthand.
And do you know what?
My sister would tell me how bad some of the people watching the kids were.
So I know what's going on in these daycares and you people aren't going to like it.
Okay.
Oh, we got a super chat.
Thank you, Daily Driver.
If you have anything you want to read, feel free.
Okay.
So the, all right, so where were we?
After all, it's who we are for our children, happy, good humored, and a role model for values that we believe in that ultimately impacts how close we are, our homes, our meals, and responsible for women, our, on the front cover of women's magazines.
The reality is that you don't have to be a perfect parent to be a great parent.
See, there it is.
You do have to be damn near a perfect parent to be a great parent.
Like that's, you can't be great at something unless you're close to perfect, right?
But, you know, there's A-level parents, there's B-level, there's C. Men know that there's good enough, right?
Like men kind of understand, like, really, I've heard more men going by trying to get like passing grades, good enough.
They're like, you know what?
As long as my kid's not on the street, he's not doing drugs.
My daughter's not on OnlyFans, you know, maybe she grows up to be like a lazy person, but she's not the lazy, or maybe, you know, maybe she, like, she has her flaws.
She's still a woman, but at least she's good enough.
Or my son, yeah, he's, he has this bad character trait, but you know what?
He's not doing drugs.
Men can accept that about their kids, right?
They're like, you know what, good enough.
That's a stamp.
That's past.
But women, it's like they have to be great at things.
You can't just be, well, I was an all right mom.
All right.
Refuse to buy into guiltmongerers.
While some women thrive on critiquing other women's parenting proficiency, the best mothers I've met have no need to throw stones at how other people parent their children.
They're simply more interested in doing the best that they can on their own.
So while you can't always avoid the righteous parenting police, you can choose to see their self-inflating opinions on everything from disposable diapers.
I didn't even know there wasn't disposable diapers.
Do you guys clean that?
Ew.
Sorry.
Okay.
To disciplinary tactics for what they are.
An easy way to justify their own choices and conceal doubt about their own parenting skills.
The fact is there is no one right way when it comes to raising children.
Just we, as we all differ in our personalities, preferences, and circumstances, the choices that we make make us feel whole, healthy, and happy differ as well.
To those who love to critique and judge, and to all those who felt a long string of judgment remark or scornful glance, I say to each their own.
So again, women's biggest fears being judged.
Because again, it makes perfect sense.
Like if we had a bad reputation in a tribe, do you know who was going to get our head chopped off or sacrificed to the gods?
Like they used to believe in like sacrifice.
And so if you weren't like, if you had a bad reputation as a woman, guess who was getting her head chopped off next?
Guess who was on like the Salem witch trials?
Do you know what I mean?
You.
So we had to protect our reputation with our life.
Men had to work on being useful.
There's nothing worse than a useless man, right?
Like that.
So men, they don't really care if they're liked.
They're kind of like, eh, I don't care if you think my kid is good or bad.
I care that my kid isn't doing drugs and is not in jail and graduates from high school, makes it to 18 without being pregnant or getting someone pregnant.
If I've done that, I've done my job.
Good enough.
And if the kid comes back and says, you were a bad parent in this way and this way and that way, the mothers, it's World War III and the dads will say, I was.
The dads will say, yeah, I was.
But you know what?
You're alive, aren't you?
Women, we just can't like own the fact that we're not perfect.
You know, like men, they know.
They're like, well, I could have been better.
I could, like, they're like, yeah, you know, and it's the same thing at work.
Like, they don't, as long as they're doing a good job, they don't care if everyone thinks they're doing good.
They don't care.
Like, that's how women get all these useless awards because they care about them, right?
So, you know, I've heard about women getting awards for work that men have done, but men just don't care about that.
So they're just like, here you go.
They don't care about credit.
But women, it's like, I know, just take the L. Zach in the chat is saying, just take the L's.
Why can't we?
You know, I was raising cotton diapers.
My dad would throw these bad boys over the fence and hit them with garden hose.
Five, don't dilute your presence with distraction.
We can't be with our kids 24-7 and yet never be fully present to them while turning off from work and other distractions.
It's easier said than done.
It's important to be intentional about being fully present to your children whenever you are with them by minimizing the multitasking as much as humanly possible.
I often take my kids off for kids out for a hot chocolate at a local cafe as a sweet treat for me and for them as well, which removes me from the magnetic pull of my home office.
Some may believe this is going great lengths to avoid distraction, but as I've mentioned, it's not about what other people think.
It's what works for me.
So what women tend to do is we like to buy.
We have a hard time being a nice person, right?
We have a hard time, like just being pleasant.
Like that's very difficult for us.
You know, not being a bitch, not nagging.
So what we like to do is buy things and hope you forget all of the bad things we do.
And men are easily like guilt-tripped and kids can really, I mean, they can be bought, right?
I mean, it's like you buy my sister concert tickets to Adele.
She forgets.
You know, so yeah, and that's easier than, again, the hard thing, which is like character building.
Like men, if they don't build their character, they get beat up by other men.
They get taken advantage of by women.
Like the life happens to them, but women, we can just be like, nah, that's too hard.
You know?
All right.
What other mothers are doing is none of your business.
Doing what works for you, for your children, and your family to stay happy, stay humored, and connected is all that matters.
I actually do agree, but mothers will make it everyone's business because they can't shut up on the internet.
So they will, they will give like best practices to parent and whatnot.
So they'll say that, but like she's got a blog talking about how she parents.
Like she just talked about the hot chocolate, right?
So they say it, but they don't mean it.
So, I mean, women, right?
All right.
So now we're going to get.
So the woman that did a rant about her husband not doing chores, she has not stopped.
She has not.
So she went even further.
And now she's talking about rationalizing outsourcing motherhood.
So here we go.
There are lots of reasons why people would have child care.
I was mostly speaking in response to the woman that I responded to because I'm pretty sure she has videos saying she could be a stay-at-home mom.
She just chooses not to for her career's sake.
Hi, I'm the working mom who prioritized my career over my kids, according to Emma, and she's been responding to my video in all of her videos.
And I'm just here to say that, yes, I made a video that outlined the cost that has been identified as the cost to raise a child these days and labeled it as one of the main reasons that some millennials are choosing not to have kids.
Not all millennials, but some millennials.
And not only that, I acknowledge that I come from a place of privilege.
I'm a mother of four kids and I am able to spend a shit ton of money on daycare because my husband and I have careers with salaries that allow us to do that.
We are incredibly privileged to be able to do that.
But the connect with someone at work and find a second husband.
And while I do that, I want someone else to raise the kids because I don't really like the husband that much and I'm kind of regretting pro-creating with him.
I kind of, I think I could have did better, even though I can't because, you know, she looks like that.
But she's convinced, again, you know, cute, right?
Cute enough to flirt with at work, but you're not marrying her, right?
I mean, you'll, you'll hit, you know, you'll hit in the parking lot at work when it's convenient, right?
When it's easy, but you know, so that's going to dilute her.
Cost of raising a child in our country is unaffordable and inaccessible.
I have very expensive tastes to most people, not to some, but to most, because the cost of daycare alone is averaging around $20,000 a year per child in many states.
The cost of groceries is on average like $12,000 a person a year.
That is an insane amount.
The cost of housing has gone up like crazy, as have interest rates.
So if you, unfortunately, were not one of the lucky ones to get in with a 3% interest rate.
If you are not one of the lucky ones to have a career that allows you to be able to afford child care, then you are probably having a difficult time navigating managing having a child and a family.
It's not about priorities, it's about privilege.
When you have privilege, you're typically able to do things that other people cannot do.
But that does not mean you should use your privilege to be blind to the realities of everybody outside of your lived experience.
Here's the thing: she made a comment about me prioritizing my career and choosing not to translation.
I do prioritize my career.
I don't really want to watch my kids, but I'm going to spend three minutes and 48 seconds of Pearl's life.
Now I have to react to this.
Thank you.
You know, I should say thank you.
You keep me employed, ladies.
You really do.
If you guys were normal, then I wouldn't have a job.
Thanks.
To be a stay-at-home mom, but that is not accurate.
I've talked about why I'm not a stay-at-home mom.
There's many reasons.
One of them being, yes, I like my career and I like having a job.
But the other reasons are: one, I'd like to be able to provide for my family in case my husband's ever unable to work for any reason and/or is deceased, whatever it might be, divorced.
Who knows?
I need to be able to provide for myself.
He said, I'm not going to buy her coffee, but I'll make her an office coffee.
Yeah, I mean, it's like easy, right?
It's convenient.
My children.
I would also like to retire.
That's something that's really important to me.
I would like to be able to provide my children with a certain kind of life.
I want them to be able to come to me should they need help financially when they're older.
I know many of us didn't have that, and I'd like to be able to do that for my kids.
I like being able to put my kids in soccer and basketball and gymnastics.
And I wouldn't be able to do those things if I didn't have a job, right?
There's so many things we wouldn't be able to do.
For some families, having a job means healthcare.
I like the clout of my kids being in all this stuff.
So, really, I had a dream of being a pro athlete.
And so I'm going to live vicariously through that through my kids.
And yeah, I like the status of going to this stuff.
Right?
These things.
You know, like men, it'll be like a cost-benefit analysis.
They're like, well, that's really expensive.
We're just not going to do it.
But the women are like, but clout, but status, but I want to look cool.
But I mean, the kids want, it's totally the kids.
It's not the kids.
These are really important.
Pearl Reed, this woman is nuts.
It's not privilege or luck.
It's hard work that enabled you to afford a house.
Important to consider.
It is not just about the career.
And God, why don't we ask dads why they're prioritizing their careers over their kids?
The priorities we're talking about is actually not whether or not a woman prioritizes her career over her family.
It's about what our country's about what our country's prioritizing over families and children.
There are people who can help create infrastructure to make it possible for millennials and all younger generations to have children and families, but that's not happening.
And people adjusting their priorities to not eat takeout or whatever it is Emma's alluding to is not going to make it possible for them to have kids.
You have to have a certain level of privilege.
It's so crazy because women will say anything's possible when it comes to their careers.
But when it comes to working and like having a family, they're like, impossible.
Like if you, if they'll nag their husbands and be like, you can make more, you can do more.
And the guy's like, it's just not possible.
She's like, it's possible.
But when you ask her, well, could you spend less money?
Impossible.
We can't.
We can't do it.
Order to have children these days.
It's like there's a reason we didn't have bank accounts or credit cards in the past.
There's a reason, you know?
Because it is incredibly difficult and expensive.
And I hear that from so many women and men on this app.
And it is important to remind ourselves that, yes, of course it's possible.
It's possible even in the most dire of financial situations.
You can have children.
It doesn't mean it's not very, very, very hard.
And it's not about your priorities at the end of the day.
Okay?
That's where I'm getting annoyed by all of this.
I didn't respond last week really.
I kind of wanted to move on from it, but I think the inherent privilege of being ignored in this conversation is so frustrating.
Yeah.
Woman talks when kids are married for their parents for working too much.
They're mad at their.
Okay, so it's when the kids are like, hey, mom, why didn't you raise me?
Like, why weren't you, did you not want to be there?
Did you not this comment as an example of how we can engage in perspective taking for both child and parent in adulthood?
This is a parent here that's saying that her adult child is blaming her for choosing her career over her children.
And the parent is saying, what was I supposed to choose?
Letting my kids be homeless and go hungry.
So there's clearly two very different perspectives going on here.
And unless we try to understand the other person's perspective, our feelings are just going to come out as like dismissiveness and blame and rejection of your feelings.
So let's talk about what it feels like for a child, my own child included in this, when their parent leaves and goes to work.
It's a separation.
It's painful.
Depending on the age of the child, they really don't understand why you have to go to work so much.
They don't understand what money is, how things are paid for.
These are things that they are learning.
All they know is that work takes my parent away from me, makes it harder for me to connect with them.
Work makes them frustrated, on edge, it makes them stressed.
Like work can mean a lot of bad things to a kid, especially if they hear parents complaining about work, venting about work all the time, acting very stressed about work.
And a lot of us do this just like on accident because life is hard sometimes.
And so the child identifies work as something that is not good in their life.
Now the parent knows as an adult that they have to work in order to pay the bills, in order to keep a roof over their child's head, to feed them, etc.
And the parent also probably feels a lot of stress about this, that it's difficult to maintain a job and take care of kids and do all these other things.
These two perspectives are both true at the same time.
The child can say, I feel abandoned when you go to work.
I don't like it.
It makes me uncomfortable.
I never know when you're going to come back.
I feel like work always makes you upset.
I just really don't like your work.
And the adult parent can also say, I have to go to work.
Work is necessary.
Work requires me to do all of these things.
And this is even something that I think about personally.
You know, when my kids are older, might they say to me, you didn't spend enough time with us.
I didn't feel like you were around a lot.
You chose your career over us.
And I would have to say, tell me more about what it felt like for you.
That might have been the only good piece of advice I've ever heard a woman say.
She said, don't gaslight them.
Say, tell me, tell me more.
I just can't imagine a woman actually doing that.
I can't, I cannot imagine a world where you could go to a mother and say, these are the things that I wish you didn't do when I was a kid.
And the mother saying, tell me more.
I just can't.
Has hell frozen over?
I just can't see.
Even her, I'm like, When I went to work.
Because the men, you could say that.
Like, do you know what's crazy?
You could go to the men and be like, yeah, dad, you didn't do this.
You didn't do that.
And you didn't do that.
And the dad would say, yeah, I didn't.
I did the best I could.
Like, that's what the guys will say.
They'll be like, yeah, I agree.
They'll be like, look, I was doing the best I could.
I did what I thought was best at the time.
But the women, it's like, you think I'm a bad person?
Cry, cry, cry.
It's like, oh, hell.
What were you when I, well, I was always happy to hear that the parents were leaving the house when I was a kid.
Yeah, do you know what?
Like, at a certain age, I'm not even for like the house.
Like, I'm not even saying women can't work.
It's just like, who's going to raise the baby?
Like, somebody's got to watch the baby, you know?
I was thinking when I would go to work all the time, what do you think would have been different about your life if I was staying home and I was spending time with you?
And I will have to try to have a conversation about that.
But if your adult child is telling you, I feel abandoned by you.
I feel like you chose your work over me.
And the response is, what was I supposed to do?
Let you be homeless and go hungry.
That shuts the conversation down and it stops them from wanting to talk to you.
And you can have.
Yeah.
That actually, was that decent advice?
Like, you know, women, it's again, we give such bad advice all the time that when women say, not all, not all, but when women have a tendency to give such bad advice that when I hear a woman say something that isn't insane or crazy, I like feel like I need to get my ears checked.
I'm like, did that make sense?
I think that's why you guys watch my show, you know.
You're like, she doesn't, she can't be real.
Okay, here we go.
Should women give up their careers to raise kids?
Women shouldn't give up their career paths because I think that.
And you know what's crazy?
Men can give up their career for a couple years and then come back and come back better, stronger than ever, earning more.
Like you'll see like men go through like a second wave after their kids are older.
Women, it's really not the same.
They get burnt out and bitter.
Raising children is so deeply fulfilling.
Pearl Reed says, Jason, say, boy, you had a roof over your head and food in your belly when you were shower and you showered.
You were fortunate.
That's how he'd respond.
Yeah, you know, like the men, they're like, yep, this is, but it's finite.
It is finite.
And I think that if you put 100% of yourself into those children, I question whether that's even good for the kids to have that much pressure on them to know that someone's entire being is about them.
My pediatrician said to me when my daughter was born and I had a lot of postpartum anxiety about being away from her, he said, it's your job every day to put a little bit more space between you and her so that when she.
See, even the medical system lies to us.
They tell us what we want to hear.
They need our money, right?
The doctor's like, he's like, this woman is crying about being away from her daughter, but she clearly wants to work.
What does she want to hear so I can get more money?
And then he says, you know what?
Your daughter needs space from you at eight months old.
She totally does.
Your daughter is going to look back and say, yes, that's what I need.
Space and you to be your own person.
Is grown up.
She is a functioning adult, completely autonomous from you.
Yeah, I'm sure an eight-month-old, a two-year-old says, you know what I need from my parents?
Autonomy.
But again, they're like, how much money do I want to make?
Do I want to make $8 or do I want to make $2?
It's like, I'm picking eight, baby.
I didn't make this world.
And I remember thinking, God, that's harsh.
You know, I'm holding this tiny baby, but I understand it more now.
You know, dropping my little one off at kindergarten, watching her cry and pulling my car over and sobbing on the way to work is a big step for her and a big step for me.
And then when I pick her up at the end of the day and she's all smiles, like I understand the value of that process.
So I digress a little bit, but it is related to your question, which is, I think that when women come to me, you only need to see me this one time said no therapist ever after being married for 20 years and they've given up their career to raise children.
And then let's just use the cliche that the husband doesn't want to be in this marriage anymore.
That's not the cliche.
It's the other way around, but okay.
And I think this is a famous woman.
She's dating actors.
I mean, yeah, those guys, but like a truck driver is going to go find someone new.
It's way too much work for him.
Doesn't feel like he needs to support her.
And they look at me and they're like, Jack, what do I do?
And I say, you've got to try to support yourself and you've got to try to get a job.
And you've gotten there like, but I haven't worked in 20 years.
And that's just, I think that being financially capable is really important in life, no matter who you are.
I think that having the ability to provide for yourself.
I don't actually disagree with that.
I mean, in this world, there's too many skills that you can, like, you can make money on your laptop.
Like, there's so many ways to make money.
Yeah.
Makes it less likely that you will be dependent on somebody else and makes it less likely that you will stay in a bad situation.
Okay.
Anyways, guys, I think that's the last one.
Well, I'd love to hear from you guys if you could let me know in the comments section.
And I think I'll read it next show.
What was the working situation with you and your wife?
What did she stay home?
Did she work part-time for a period and then retire early?
How did you guys do it if you have kids?
And would you have changed anything?
I'd love to know in the comments.
Other than that, thank you guys so much for watching today.
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