Melissa Hogenboom on Changing the Woman's Role in Society

0:28Zoe and Georgia will be here in just a moment with Made by Mummers. know you're born on your podcast app and hit follow so new episodes land straight in your feed. Hello and welcome to Made by Mamas the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman. And I'm Georgia Dayton. And this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits. With five kids between G and I, we have seen a lot. We really have. Each week we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way. In short, We're the parenting podcast for you. Before we get started, hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands.

1:04And they're on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it really helps if you leave a rating and a review. You can also find us on Instagram. We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Wimbledon. The Wimbledon theme tune. She's had a tennis lesson. Now she's heading to Wimbledon. Guys, not trying to blow my own trumpet here, but my coach, Andy, thinks I might be able to win the club championships at the Fox Hills. I mean, it's a big deal. In the 40 to 50 box.

1:46Guys, it's so exciting. Oh, my God. So you had your first tennis lesson. Yeah. You said you haven't played for how long? Well, I played in the summer, but I haven't played properly for 20 years. Wow. And I absolutely loved it for so many reasons. And interestingly, we're going to talk a little bit about this in today's podcast, but really, I guess not in such kind of detail, but taking the hour to do something for me that wasn't going to the gym, that wasn't walking Murphy, that wasn't like, you know, rushing to something, just an hour for me that felt completely indulgent. George, it was just so lovely.

2:25I've got like a wanky tennis top on. I was like there with my little white socks and my new top. I bought myself a new tennis racket. And he said, if you carry on playing like this, you could win the club championship. So you've got something to aim for as well. I mean, do you know what's so funny? I booked onto that six week intensive paddle course. Oh, yes. I haven't started it yet. It starts at the end of the month. But I can tell you right now that the feedback from my coach will not be that. The feedback from my coach will be like, oh, you might be in the beginners if you carry on like this.

3:02Stick to walking to a coffee shop, George. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm very happy for you. Don't talk yourself down, George. No, no, no. I'm just realistic. I'm not talking myself down here. I'm really not. I'm just being very realistic. Well, listen. I'm like pre, pre, pre beginner. I'm like, let's talk about how to get your paddle out of the case. You're like Stone Age player. That's the level I'm at. I'm at that bit. Yeah. Okay. Well, listen, what the dream would be is that we play together. Yeah, but you're playing tennis and I'm playing paddle. But I could play paddle easy. Okay, fine.

3:40Yeah, no issues with that. Look at me. also guys no stomach pain today for the first time in six weeks well that yeah that is amazing that's really good you're feeling a little bit better turn the corner guys how are you george yeah i'm good i'm really good i'm just like very busy at work at the moment like ridiculously busy and yeah it's just it is what it is but um you're able to breathe no no no no no can't breathe definitely can't breathe but I am but then this is the thing isn't it this is why putting things in the diary like the paddle lesson or a tennis lesson or whatever it is is like even more important yeah now well you and I took took a couple of hours out to be together which was so lovely we went to um we went to the serpentine and had like a proper fancy lunch there Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was there and she is unbelievable by the way absolutely stunning I swear to God she was on rollerblades because she was sort of like colliding, floating everywhere.

4:41Floating around. But yeah, it was a brand event and they were unveiling this statue, which actually I think I've seen shared on social media a lot. Mother Verite, it's called. Yes, it is. And essentially it was to show what the female body like obviously goes through in motherhood, but also to celebrate women because only is it four percent of statues in all statues are women which is wild and they're obviously saying that you know statues are meant to celebrate like status and success but there's no statue celebrating like the biggest success which is the forming of life I guess. Georgia well beautifully put George you were listening to the whole talk I was listening shoveling down your sea bass but it does lead us quite nicely onto today's conversation talking about you know potentially maybe a slight bit of gender imbalance she has written the most incredible book called uh breadwinners and other power imbalances and we really wanted to have that discussion about how you guys feel at home if there's anything that's kind of coming up for you you know if one partner one of you earns more than the other one and kind of what that throws up day to day so um it was a brilliant conversation i really loved it really learned loads from it georgia should we just get into it because i feel like everyone needed to hear it.

5:59Who are we talking to today? We're chatting to Melissa Hogan-Boone. I've got a feeling in my bones that today's podcast is going to absolutely pop off off the back of a conversation that Georgia and I had the other day about the imbalance of, I guess I'd say, power and finances and all that intricacy in the household. Today, we are speaking to a BBC filmmaker and author explaining things that help you understand yourself. She's the author of Motherhood Complex and her recent book, which is called Breadwinners, which was out in August. Please welcome Melissa Hogan Boom to the podcast. Yay! Hey!

6:34Thanks for having me. Oh, thank you. We've been so excited for this chat. Do you know what? Before we get into the real conversation, we always ask our guests what they've been up to, what those days look like. So you told me you had had a quiet morning and I was envious. I have had a quiet morning. So my role involves a lot of research and fewer meetings these days. and I know you're both mothers as well but my partner takes the kids to school so it's a mad rush between seven and half eight and it's it's like we never stop you know it's the lunch boxes the snacks the um the piano books and then as soon as they're at the house at half eight I can finally have my coffee sometimes I go for a run and it just feels like I can decompress even though I'm then straight into research so even though I'm working I think this is common for many mothers yeah it's a bit of a break so that's why I feel like I've had a quiet morning I love that and your partner takes the kids to school every single morning so that's that's his role and then that's how you guys negotiate yeah talk us through that because I think that's also an interesting for me that's already sort of pinged something off in my mind actually yeah I think when both in a relationship or working you really have to be so on it with who's going to do what and when And we fell into a pattern where because he tends to work later, his job is less flexible, which is so common, by the way, in heterosexual relationships.

7:57The woman kind of sees their job as more flexible or takes some more flexible positions. But with us, because he only has to be at the office at half nine, he can drop them off on the way. They cycle two miles to school. I'm Dutch by background, so it's a good start to their day. And it means I can start my day early or get to the office if I am in the office because I'm always on pickup duty. So it's got its pros and cons, right? It means that if I have plans after work or if I'm recording a podcast or I want to go out in the evening, I have to negotiate that time. And I say negotiate. That's probably slightly wording it too formally because it's not a negotiation.

8:35But I have to check in. I can't just agree to any evening event without first checking in on his work schedule because his role is client facing. So it's kind of interesting that I write about these kind of phenomenons because I live and breathe it every day. I'm kind of having to negotiate time for myself or for my work. And so does he. He'll check in with me. So it's a very healthy dynamic. If he's not able to drop off, he always checks. Oh, can you do drop off next Wednesday because I've got a client meeting? So it's never assumed, which is quite nice. We'll be right back after this short break.

9:10Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? Can you just give us a little insight into what the book Breadwinners and Other Power Imbalances is about? Because I think there's going to be so much that we want to discuss here. But just what prompted you to write it and what can we expect? Yeah, of course. So the initial inspiration was when I found out that when women out earn their male partners, they're still doing the bulk of household and childcare chores at home. So they're not able to kind of have that higher status earning power that lets them off housework. In fact, some do more and overcompensate.

9:52And I thought that is such an interesting way to look at relationships, because if you look at basic common sense and take the emotions or our psychology out of it, in theory, the person who's earning more has less time available at home and therefore does less housework. And this has been the case in male breadwinner, female homemaker kind of relationships for centuries. Right. The man earns the money and the woman does the most at home. But of course, most of us are now in dual income relationships if we're in a relationship. It's a necessity. But also we want to many of us want to work. I really want to work.

10:28We get a lot of status and kind of recognition and satisfaction from doing so. And yet these gender roles haven't shifted. So I wanted to see if there was some psychological insights we can get into that. Like, why is it that money and power has such a hold over our relationships and it isn't just the case in the work sphere? These kind of expectations then come into the home. And it turns out there is a lot of reasons. So that's kind of the way into it. And it was a way of looking at who holds the power and why and how that influences us on a really basic level. So, Melissa, how do you do the research for the book?

11:04it was really um varied so because i'm a science journalist at the bbc i'm used to speaking to experts kind of as my bread and butter um and what i tend to do is i draw influence from a range of fields so there's um a section on how the brain changes when we're in power so there's neuroscience in there and there is um you know social sociology in there there's a bit of anthropology and history but i always want to center it around something relatable so i spoke to dozens of women and men I spoke to um women and men in same-sex relationships I spoke to female breadwinners and stay-at-home dads to kind of see how what the sociologists and psychologists write in some of these quite academic papers how that actually plays out in the real world and luckily it usually does align because you'll you'll read a theory and you'll think that that can't possibly true like I came across this um lovely theory called gender display neutralization and what does Gender display neutralization.

12:02Okay. Gender display neutralization. So it's a sociological term, which I hadn't come across before. And it means that women are so ingrained to display their gender in a certain way, which is often manifest as caring for the children, for the home, that when they are earning more money and they're kind of seen as more powerful outside the home, this is really uncomfortable for the men. And so they kind of neutralize that aspect outside the home by leaning into their more feminine side inside the home, which is one of the reasons why women tend to overcompensate a home. And I was like, surely this doesn't happen.

12:39This doesn't make any sense. But then I spoke to so many women and they're like, yep, I earn all the money and I still do everything at home. And oh, my when my husband lost his job, I felt like I had to downplay my career because I could see success I had was leading him to become more depressed. And so it's not as simple as, oh, we need to expect, sorry, it's not as simple as we need to protect their self-esteem. It goes deeper than that. It's because society expects men to be earners in a way that's really unhealthy and tied to their kind of dominant aspect of their masculinity, which isn't really kind of, you know, necessary today in the modern world.

13:17And so when they're confronted with a very different reality to how people think of them, it massively impacts their self-esteem and leads to more depression. It leads to increases in divorce. And so women then neutralize this kind of gender deviance, as the psychologists say. It's also really unhealthy for the men in our lives as well to have that really sort of unnatural amount of pressure on them. And that if they're not performing financially or however you want to dress it up for a period of time, that that's seen as a failure because it's not the other way around either. You know, again, going back to this whole kind of like historical look at it.

13:55I don't do you think women felt like failures when they weren't bringing in money back in the day? no but there's something about that for me now which is quite triggering and I know that I I'm not necessarily money driven but I feel like if I have a bad month or I have a kind of disbalanced month that can make me feel really shit about myself and it's really interesting the way that creeps into then the marriage and the little like micro resentments that start happening at home where I think oh god you know I'm not earning as much money as I was last month and but I'm doing all the housework and is that because I'm not earning as much money and then I start it's like it's oh my god this is so this is why this conversation is going to be so great because i really feel like that that must be happening in a lot of relationships and households yeah and it happens across the income spectrum so even kind of women in really high powered roles to women who are working kind of more menial jobs um which i think is interesting because it shows that our view of masculinity kind of transcends income levels um and yeah i think another reason which is also what I found so fascinating is we equate money to status and power and so that's a lot to do with kind of our society's expectations of what it means to be high status and that's a very fundamental human motive right we all want autonomy over our lives and a way to seek that often is to have more power and so that's another reason why when men are feeling disempowered because they're not earning as much or they're completely out of the workforce it creates so much friction and so that's why i always want to focus on the reasons behind it rather than blaming men or women for acting yeah because essentially in a heterosexual relationship we just have to find a way to live together whatever that imbalance or power balance is so whether it's that you've got a female breadwinner or a male breadwinner there you know nine times out of ten there's going to be an imbalance there somewhere and it's about finding the way that you can like live like in harmony together and have like that understanding but I find it so interesting that you say that female breadwinners then overcompensate at home and do you think it feeds into this narrative of women wanting to be it all and be everything and that they feel like you know we in recent years we've been given that narrative that like yes you can you know you can out earn men you can still be really caring you can basically you can be all these things but actually that is completely exhausting I think rather than feeding into the narrative when we're confronted with these situations it becomes clear that it's not that we can do it all it's that we have to do it all I think that's why it's so problematic because yes, we can reach high power positions.

16:47Yes, we can use our income to pay some of the, you know, to get cleaners or pay for childcare. But that's looking at kind of the higher economic scale in a lot of the kind of female breadwinner situations that I came across. It was women, you know, on average incomes. In fact, there's even something called a female breadwinner penalty. So we know there's a gender pay gap. So it's logical that when there's a female breadwinner relationship, she actually earns less than a male breadwinner does in a comparative relationship. So if there's a female breadwinner, it's likely that there's financial pressure, too.

17:24It's not always high-powered women that are female breadwinners. And so then the narrative that we can have it all is actually really toxic because, yes, we can have a career, but we're still doing everything at home. and then that creates kind of burnout, resentment and all the kind of toxic side effects of that. What was the big or the biggest surprise that you discovered during your research? I think I always try and come at it from a solutions focus. So I like to write about these big meaty issues, but it kind of, it feels a bit depressing if it's like, oh, we still haven't reached gender equality, we're still struggling.

18:06So I think the surprise was how much change there is occurring on an individual scale. So a lot of the changes don't happen in society because society takes so long to catch up with our attitudes. So businesses need to enact quality change. But there was some really heartening research on men and masculinity, actually. And so I found that the The more men spend time caring, they actually change their understanding of what masculinity means to involve more caring, to become more tolerant. You had men who are caring more, were more likely to hire women in more senior positions. They're more likely to be more sympathetic.

18:45I know it's aggravating. We don't need men to be fathers for them to empathize with women. But it does change things. And the more times men spent with their children, the more they wanted to and got more out of it. because often in typical relationships you see kind of the mum doing all the the drudgery work the care work the cleaning and there's fun dad who comes in and you know does more the more of the playful work um it could be because because time available but also often the woman is the primary caregiver so she's the one who has to do with more of the outbursts and the emotional fallouts um and so that changes the more men spend time with their children and that was really kind of heartwarming and then there was also a subset of men um who were they were like i'm putting my family first i don't care what society thinks of me um if you as an employer don't give me flexibility i'll look elsewhere so of course that's a subset of men who have their experience to be able to negotiate that but it was occurring and it was increasing and so the fact that men are recognizing that they do want to be more involved fathers i think that that was the kind of the most heartwarming part of it is that what you called the bucket fathers yes yes i loved it they yes and there's been increasingly studied and i interviewed some of them and they're great so there was a actually he's a he he was in a um government position hated it quit his job to care for his um children one of whom has autism so he needed to be really kind of involved in their care and he was like I'm going to join the mom groups I I don't care they they kind of look at me with suspicion but I've always got on with women so I'm just going to you know I don't care what they think and then he he launched like a little gathering of dads where they'd meet up and cook together um he then re re um established his career as a carpenter but does it around his child caring needs which is what typically you see women doing yeah um and so he when I interviewed him I was like do you you know do you feel that there's an expectation of what you're meant to earn and how people judge you he's like I don't care my family's the most important I want to see them care see them growing up and seeing me as you know a good role model I don't care what other people think of me and so that and that's really difficult but it was really nice that there was that that is happening yeah we'll be right back after this short break

21:10welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas now where were we We hear a lot from our sort of listeners, followers on Instagram about, you know, when there's a female breadwinner and them being very aware of what we've just been talking about, their partner feeling like emasculated or not as important because they, you know, because they've got that, they haven't got that power balance, I guess, in a normal way. or how they would have maybe have envisaged. But how do we get to a point where that doesn't matter or that both people feel, I guess, empowered? I think there's a lot of steps couples can do that don't depend on society.

22:06So it's seeing income as shared rather than mine and hers, but that also requires seeing as the relationship as a team and if you think about it allocating equal time to leisure time and if there's an imbalance at work which there often is one person tends to work longer hours in the time you both have available outside of work make sure each of you is getting to you know pursue your own hobbies one one thing I found quite funny and amusing is there was a phenomenon called goal contagion. And this simply means that you change your goals depending on your partners. And often the higher power partners goals become contagious.

22:49If your partner loves golf, and they are the ones that have more leisure time, you might be like, okay, I'm going to I'm going to play golf too, because then we can do this activity together. But that can be really toxic if it happens at the expense of your own goals and so that's what I mean by sharing leisure time equally and making sure it's for you and not not not you joining your partner's goals and it can apply at work as well so if they have a higher power position they might be able to decide where you live or what city to move to because their job's more important so their goals become your goals and you often see that in relationships where instead of saying I want this it's like oh we decided to move here or we decided on on this um house or this car it's like did you decide or did he decide and so i think um understanding that that happens is really important um and then also it's it's really basic but and we we all say this in job interviews but communication is so important um and what i find find really mind-blowing is when we're stressed our cortisol levels go up as many of us known and our ability to communicate effectively becomes impaired so if we feel disempowered and stressed because we're doing more at home or because our partner isn't kind of understanding our needs it's really hard to vocalize why that's happening and especially if you're overcompensating or your goals have been obliterated then it's hard to say oh I need something from me as well because you might think you're sounding selfish or being you know unnecessarily prioritizing yourself when it should be about the family but we all have basic needs we all want autonomy so I think on an individual level there is there's lots of things we can do and then on a society level you know shared parental leave I think that's the biggest one oh my god well Georgia and I bang this drum so much and we have this conversation up so much because we're both married to ex-sportsmen who the day after our babies were born had to go back to work and we were at home with two tiny creatures that we had no idea how to take care of and it was really I speak for both George and I it was a very bewildering time because we had to figure it out totally on you know they were back by sort of two three o 'clock but it was like the next day and I remember thinking oh my god you're not going are you you can't leave and he had to I mean that and that and that isn't even the two weeks that's less than 24 hours yeah it was really really full on and and you know what i met someone the other day in the gym and he was this lovely daddy had his baby in this purpose and i said oh you know what i actually said what are you doing here at this time and he was like oh i'm gonna go and join the 10 o 'clock and i was like oh brilliant and then he was like yeah i've taken shared parental leave and i i even me who's kind of in this world i was quite shocked he goes yeah my company i work for i want to say deloitte they've given them they give them all um six months i think yeah same in the BBC yeah amazing that's so great and as it should be yeah it makes such a difference yes for bonding with the baby everything for and also the load like I think it it helps the mental load like going forward because if you've had that shared start and shared responsibility at the beginning then that goes on when you you know if you both go back to work it it should in theory stay shared whereas I think that's so often isn't it where it gets where we get it wrong is that one person takes the time off they then have the mental load then when they go back to work they carry on with having the mental loads as well as working and then there really is no the balance is off right right from the start sorry George I was just going to ask about the finances because I think this is quite interesting when you talk about power when you talk about power do you do you mean financial power?

26:36By financial power, it's how we often think of ourselves as having power. So it's not necessarily how power manifests in all relationships. So it could be somebody has more sway in deciding where to go on holiday. Someone can decide where the children go to school. So I talk about different types of power. There's positional power, which is your power outside the home to do with your status in society and then there's your sense of power which is the power you think you have and what I think is kind of mind-blowing is that women often have more power in the home to make decisions but I say it's faux it's false power it's faux power because it's because they're disempowered outside of it so it's the mental load right if the woman is deciding the school places the researching the swimming clubs um and then so often i you know if you're meeting up with a couple for lunch and you you ask the man he's like oh ask ask the message she organizes all of that um as if he's disempowered in those decision-making um spheres but actually has more positional power outside the home and then it is it does tend to be closely linked to finances because of the way our society is structured so would you say this is correct that people that earn more money in the home do less around the house?

27:59Men. So men who earn more money do less around the house. Why is that? Because of very strict gender norms. So I think it's only in 7 % of households do men and women do equal amounts of housework. There was one survey that found that. 7%. Wow. And that's why I found it so baffling that when women earn more, in theory, they should also do less outside the home. So one is basic economic theory. If the man's earning more, he's probably busier or his job's more important. Women often work more part-time roles. And so she often has more time available at the home. But then there's also gender norms.

28:38We haven't got out of the assumption that women are homemakers. We internalize it. If you're taking on the mental load of the toilet roll and toothpaste, you're going to spend more time buying those things. So there's lots of reasons why women still do more. But they shouldn't be if they're earning more because that's what economic theory suggests but that shows that our socialization overrides basic economic theory so it doesn't make sense and that's why it's so toxic um yeah should be changing and i think it will but just really slowly wow you mentioned um in the book that you um you sort of spoke to a lot of same-sex couples about their dynamic and that there's a lot that heterosexual couples can learn from same-sex couples do you want to just talk to us about that because obviously then there's not that gender um sort of norms roles yeah yeah they they really expose how it should be in relationships we should do tasks according to time available or how good we are at them not according to who is earning more money right that's that on a basic level that gives us more satisfaction autonomy and freedom and that's what happens in same-sex relationships there isn't the assumption of one person doing more or one person doing more of the menial organizational tasks both take on equal amounts and and and this applied to both men and women i spoke to one one couple were like if it's at all unequal the other one will complain and we the tasks we don't like we share them if one person is better at the you know admin for finances they'll do them and then the men were really interesting as well so same-sex men who have children they've realized the double standards of expectations on women because they they they were telling me I'm congratulated on just being out and about with my child and the fact that we're you know doing all these menial jobs that women have done for centuries on their own even when we're doing them together people like oh it's so great that you guys are taking that on and one one man I spoke to said yeah he said he couldn't believe that women go back to work sorry that that women are left on their own with their babies after they've just had this huge physical ordeal of childbirth because for them there was two of them and they found it exhausting and difficult with this newborn so he was like just just baffling how our society set up that just these women martyr themselves to look after children at the expense of their own sleep and mental health do you know one thing that i've started doing around the house which is i've really started to like notice when it happens whereas i sort of let it go before Just taking this as an example around the kitchen when there might be a plate that gets left on the side as opposed to being put in the dishwasher.

31:23And you know what? My husband is so hands on. This is not me sitting here bashing him because he's actually brilliant. And actually, he came with the baby. So he knew what he was doing earlier than I did. But things like the tasks around the house. And this morning, I just went, see that plate that you just put there? That goes in the dishwasher. And he went, so I said, so could you just put it in, please? And he went, yeah. yeah and I said because it doesn't sit on the side and I was like thanks very much and I said and the kids like I normally I just go I'll do that that's absolutely fine but when you start picking apart and they're just tiny things right but if all the tiny things in the house stop getting done who gets to do them hey lucky me yeah it's really interesting but I find like how deep honestly like deep rooted it is in us because I even noticed with my son and daughter right so my daughter is so much like more engaged with helping me like I don't know why but she's so much more engaged with helping me so like you know oh the Ocado shop's at the door guys can someone come and help me yeah I want to help whereas my son's like Gigi Gigi mommy wants you to help and I'm like what what and so I do have to try and make a conscious effort to get him involved maybe that's a personality thing i don't know but i just watch it play out it's a gender thing well i just in my house it seems to be i watch it play out and i'm like yeah how is how is this happening i mean my husband like does the laundry my my son's not interested in doing that but my daughter is yeah gender expectations start so young so there is actually research that's found that girls do more chores than boys um fathers talk differently to their daughters than to their sons they talk more about emotions to daughters.

33:11Fathers engage in more rough and tumble play with sons compared to daughters. And boys, you know, from the age of zero, they see what women are doing and they see women doing more than men. And so they internalize it. So I get quite frustrated when, not frustrated, it's only natural. So many people say, oh, well, I try to raise my kids gender neutral, but my boy likes cars and my girls doesn't. I'm like, that's because children are little sponges and from the age of birth they get given cards with cars on them they see other boys around them with um you know trucks and the girls see princess dresses so a hundred years ago princess dresses didn't exist so of course it's social conditioning and it's really really strong so i think that is one of the biggest take-homes as well we have to remember that our children see the power imbalances in our relationships and they internalize them even if our partners are hands-on I mean, my daughter literally said, oh, yeah, you're messier than daddy.

34:05But I'm messier because I'm usually cooking while helping with homework and doing another five things at once. My husband comes in the door at 7 p.m. And so it was really funny. He doesn't think that. But I'm like, well, he's never cleaned the fridge. Right. So I'm always like multitasking. And so they don't see the little hidden things, but they see the bigger things. So I think it's important to remember. Are there a lot of frustrations across households around the world? I think in your opinion, there are so many frustrations, but it's really uncomfortable to constantly bring that up. Like your plate example, if you have to say that every single day, it's going to cause resentment and you're going to come across as nagging.

34:50and that that's what I see in so many relationships so women just stop asking and take it on because it can be so confrontational so even in our relationships I'd say very balanced in some senses but for sure I anticipate all of the the household things that need doing in terms of food cleaning clothes for the kids but I've taken that on willingly because I'm here more but I'm aware of the imbalance and sometimes I'll have a little dig and be like he's like oh have you run out of toothpaste I'm like well I guess we have or cereal I don't eat cereal in the morning and then he's like oh we've run out of muesli I'm like you have to tell me because you know I'm the one that does the food shop and I don't mind we've talked about it I'm like I'm okay with doing the food shop because I'm I've always done it and so it's it's fine for me to keep that on but there has to be teamwork and it has to it has to come up in the right situation I think when it does cause resentment that's when to have a proper discussion about it because the constant commentary can if it comes across as nagging even though you're in the right you might then get extra stress because of the kind of the mood that changes or the frustration at being told what to do in your own house it's so it can be really toxic if you're happy because i think this is the thing isn't it and this is probably what we should take away from this conversation actually communication and setting out your household tasks is absolutely key it's not just expected if one person earns more than the other the other person takes on you know everything and what you're saying is if obviously if women are the breadwinners they're still doing everything anyway so I really think that that communication in this particular area seems to be pretty low on the on the important scale whereas actually I think it would make a much happier household if that sort of stuff was set out like Georgia you talk about James being head of laundry don't you that's his role he like you know he enjoys that he likes it but I didn't think I've ever sat down and said to Dozza like what is it he does the bins but what is it that we're doing you know forget about the finances what is it that we're doing in the house because it's not just yeah it can't be so one-sided I I think no and the perception is often if you ask men and women to note it down men often overestimate what they do yeah and women are more interesting yeah and it's it's the same isn't it with um like earnings as well men will like exaggerate what they earn and women will under like like basically say they earn less than they do why why would we do that it's it's the same it's the gender deviance neutralization because they're it's so uncomfortable so one one study literally called it manning up and womaning down because it's it's frowned upon socially if if you if you come across a couple and it's like oh she earns more it's like oh you know people do people do have an opinion about it whether they should or not and so women men both internalize that and they women then protect their men from feeling the judgment and what can we do about it what can we do about balancing it all out melissa in your in in your thought i think we have to appreciate on a very very basic level that unpaid work is just as important as paid work and we need to value both equally um we need to understand that if we don't relationships will you know have conflict and could likely end up in divorce there is going to The reason why it was so interesting to write and study about this is because it's not just about earnings and income, but it's huge societal changes are happening.

38:31Women are out earning men more than ever before, and it will continue. If that continues to cause relationship dissatisfaction, our children are going to suffer. If our children still see women doing more at home than men, then they're going to model those same traits as well. so I think having a conscious decision about who does what and when dividing tasks end to end having those conversations early on we didn't when I was on maternity leave I went back to work I was still thinking about everything and I didn't realize it I didn't understand that I my brain was full of do I need the breast milk when do I need to pump because I went back to work quite early and do I need to do the packed lunch and I was still I was she was weaning and I was providing food for the child might it was it was a stupid situation but i was doing all of that and i was writing these important articles for the bbc with real deadlines which is you know mentally exhausting as well um and neither of us thought about handing that over and so that it has to start at that at that level and then on a broader level advocate for policies that change the narrative in your workplaces if there is paternity leave available shout at men to take it because there's still a subtle judgment and one of my colleagues went on paternity leave and he's like I really worried I'd be judged for it but he realized it was more important for his family and himself to do it than than the outside expectation and so I think that slowly these will these things will change because work is more precarious than it's ever been you know work roles and jobs are changing on such a broad scale that so many of us are going to be out of work more than ever before you know between jobs and that sort of thing and so um if you let your earnings affect your relationship it's just not going to be a good ending so I think understanding all these processes is kind of what we can do for now yeah I mean I think it's so important what you say whether it you know whether it be on for a man or a woman that unpaid work is just as important as paid work so whether that be a stay-at-home dad and everything he's picking up or a stay-at-home mom that actually that is bringing a lot to the table and it's bringing a lot to the family um and I think yeah I don't know when we'll get there like you say but I think yeah all of these things will hopefully make a difference start balancing out we all want to feel appreciated and loved and I think it's when the appreciation goes and the expectation comes in that that's when the resentments build isn't it It's like we don't want to feel that we're expected to do everything.

41:07But if someone turns around to us and says, I really appreciate you for doing what you've done there. And thank you. I know you're holding it all together. It's like, oh, my God, that's all I need. You know, I'm like, oh, my God, he sees me. He's, you know, and vice versa. I do the same to him. What would you say is the best piece of advice that you could give somebody listening to this podcast if they're struggling with this imbalance? I think it would be to take a step back take the emotions out of it note down what it is that is the most frustrating point is it like one I was on the women's hour and the one frustration this woman had was that her partner didn't clean the surface of the kitchen but it wasn't just that it wasn't just the surface of the kitchen it was that he didn't appreciate what was important to her so I think it's kind of comes back to that shared goals like have have what what's important to you might not be important to her or it might be a really really big deal um that something's done a certain way and if you diminish that or dismiss that you're you know you're not respecting your partner's needs at a very basic level so I think it's it's not just the you're not cleaning enough you're not um buying the toilet roll it's like what aspect is it that's the most frustrating and what's the underlying need that's not being met and if you figured that out then the smaller things might fall into play and then the second one is is the and i bang on about this a lot is doing tasks end to end um because i think the the invisible power that dominates so many relationships isn't often acknowledged or even understood by um partners so if and the most common example is the dad will take the kids to the birthday party but the woman's still the one that received the invite and bought the birthday present so all of these things have to be end to end if one of you is taking on swimming clubs they're also the one that should be booking it paying for it buying the new costumes because otherwise you're both kind of doing half amounts of each or in the case of most couples the woman is doing all the mental load of the task and the father might just be doing the execution so I think dividing and conquering and then doing it end to end if that works so I think understanding kind of what works within your time constraints so those kind of are really they seem small but they they will make a huge difference also I love that Melissa by the way I just wanted to say here there's going to be a lot I know there's lots of men that do listen to this podcast and I know that we will probably receive some messages from these these lovely men who listen going that's not what happens in our house that's not what we're saying here I think and I think that's important for us to state that that obviously this is not in every single household across the world this is this is you know this is extensive research that you've done Melissa and I find it fascinating but I I think um I think we can all do better can't we yeah from end to end yeah I I speak to quite a lot of men about it now and I always make a point I'm never blaming men or it's never it's these social structures and expectations are so big and then the policy implications of how that manifests if we're as you said if we're the ones on maternity leave and we don't realize it it's you know these it requires big social changes for men to be able to feel they can ask their employer for time off or to be able to do the school pickup and a lot of them don't feel they can ask that and then that creates a massive imbalance so yeah it's it's it's never about blame and it's about creating healthier happier relationships one where men shouldn't feel disempowered simply because they are tying their kind of status to their earnings so i think that that's that's a real positive and bringing men along with us is a massive first step because there's so many great ones fighting the hard fight out there and it will make a difference thank you so much what a brilliant conversation a couple of you've been talking for 40 minutes oh my gosh it's gone like yeah um you are you are amazing everyone needs to go out and buy melissa's books um what's the next project just quickly what if you've got another novel heading i want to look at what how we can achieve our full potential so what why why some of us achieve a certain success and some of us don't and how more of us can kind of tap into the qualities that make us feel more fulfilled and successful melissa thank you so much for coming on thanks for having me i mean wow there is a lot to take away there isn't it and I think it always goes back to this whole societal norms thing whether that be with gender roles whether that be with um you know parenting there's so much that we have been like wired to think and believe and where the world's changing we're now like trying to relearn it all yeah yeah and also what I took from it was for me it's about not trying to do everything that actually it's okay to sit back sometimes and highlight what needs to be done from another party and let them do it even if it takes 25 poo bags of murphy sitting on the window ledge for somebody else to fucking put them in the bin because it ain't gonna be me and it's been done now and when it was done last night i didn't say thanks oh well done i just said great glad you've done it that needed to be done yeah no exactly here's your poo medal thank you so much to melissa for coming on the podcast what beautiful conversation as always we'd love you to rate review subscribe and please give our podcast a follow yeah and if you have got any feedback on this episode or any guests you'd like to hear from then drop us a dm on instagram we aren't made by mommas and we'll be back on friday