Why "Having It All" Is Making Mothers Miserable

0:02Have you ever looked around at your life and thought, why can't I keep up? Welcome, it is Monday, it is time for a little shot of inspiration with our moment episode. Maybe you are juggling work, children, the house and everyone else's needs, yet somehow you still feel like you're falling short. If this resonates, I cannot wait to hear this Monday moment of motherkind, all the M's, with Dr Giselle Goodwin. It starts with a birthday that should have been a celebration, but instead became a turning point. What follows is one of the most validating conversations I've had on Motherkind, because it completely reframes the story that so many mothers tell ourselves that we're failing.

0:44I hope that by the end of these few minutes, you'll feel a little lighter, a little less alone. And remember, something very important every mother needs to hear. you're finding it hard because it is there is nothing wrong with you if this resonates i would really encourage you to go and listen to the full episode afterwards you will find the link in the show notes we go way deeper into why modern motherhood can feel so overwhelming what the research tells us about the pressures that women face today and most importantly how we can stop blaming ourselves for a system that was never designed to support us i genuinely think it's one of those conversations that changes how you see yourself and I really hope that it does that for you.

1:27Here it is.

1:30Tell me about your 35th birthday and the moment that you had when you say it was one of those moments that just pierced your reality and you saw things in a different way. Yeah my 35th birthday was stressful. So normally I love my birthday you know like that's a time when you get to celebrate, you get to do something for yourself. And the morning of my 35th birthday, I woke up and I had two young children at the time. I had two businesses and life was busy. And I woke up to really kind, lovely messages on Facebook, you know, like people you hadn't heard from from a while. And I remember feeling angry when I woke up, like I got these messages And I was like, I haven't got time to pee on my own.

2:21I haven't got time to wash my hair. I haven't even got time to answer birthday messages. Like, I'm so stressed out. I'm overwhelmed. And I don't know whether I'm coming or going. And I just remember thinking like it was a real moment of this just clarity around life was too much. Life was too much. And I wasn't coping. I wasn't coping. And what was too much? Was it, it was the businesses and the two kids and, and, and were you, were you that sort of woman who was trying to keep it all together? That sort of good girl, perfectionist? Was that? Yes. So that was very much my story. So it was very much about me being in a situation where I suppose I'd grown up with this idea that certainly as far as it came to women and working and things I should be doing, you know, that feeling of we should.

3:17I definitely grew up with this idea that, you know, woman's job is to be in the workplace. I can do all of this. And, you know, my job was I had to put my big girl knickers on, get on with it. And that worked quite well throughout my 20s. That was absolutely fine. By the time I got to being mid 30s with two young children, and I had a couple of businesses, I was just spinning plates. I was just spinning plates. And it just seemed to me it just wasn't working. So that was quite a clarifying moment that morning of my 35th birthday. But another really kind of time that just brought things into sharp focus for me was a conversation I had with a friend of mine a couple of years after this.

4:01This friend of mine, Fran, she's amazing. She's lovely. And we were sat at my kitchen table and we were putting the world to rights, having this little chat. A friend said to me, she said, the thing is, Giselle, and we were talking about this friend of hers who was a hospital doctor. And she was kind of trying to do it all. So she equally had small kids and was, you know, trying to perform in terms of a career and work in the hospital. And my friend was like, the thing is, I'd never tell my daughters to try and be a doctor. She said, it's just, she actually said, the thing is feminism is bollocks.

4:37She was like, Like it just, none of it works. None of it works. She said, women are so sick of this idea of us like running in circles, trying to have it all. And she said, all we're doing is doing it all. And it's just not working. And I remember thinking like, that's, yeah, it's not working for me. It's definitely not working for me. Like, what do I do? And also at that time, my children were there. So we were having this conversation and I, you know, the girls were there. I have two little girls. And I remember thinking, well, this doesn't work for me. What do I tell them? Like, what do I say to them?

5:13How do I make this better for them? Because it's not worked the way I thought it was meant to in terms of career and family. And I thought that was meant to be like this done deal. Like, you know, I'd grown up in that era, you know, like 1980s. I'm Gen X, born in 76, grew up in this era where, you know, we were told, You remember those tie-dye t-shirts? Like, girls can do anything. And I was told, and certainly the societal messages I received was, this is going to be okay. I could balance work and family. That was fine. You know, my job as a woman, put your big girl knickers on, get in the world of work, don't rely on a man to earn money for you.

5:57You know, you could do that. And as I say, it worked really well up until the point I became a mother. So it was my 30s in particular that I found really quite a challenge.

6:09And then what did you do next? So as I say, I had these businesses I was managing in my 30s. And then I actually got the opportunity in 2018 to sell both my businesses. So I had a recruitment company. I had an online pharmacy. You know, as I say, on the outside, I guess, if you were looking in, I guess I was ticking the boxes. Yeah. On the inside, it felt like I was permanently failing or looking over my shoulder and feeling like somebody else has made a better decision than me or those guys can cope better than me. I'm just I must be some weakling. I can't cope with this. So that's where I got to.

6:48And in terms of what I did next, in 2018, I had the opportunity to sell the businesses and I went and did some writing. So I attended a load of writing conferences and met up with this lady at a writing conference who was a professor of women and work. And I thought she was fab. I thought she was amazing. So she's about 10 years older than me. And she was just, she had all this wisdom. And one of the things she said to me was, do you know what, Giselle? It's not you. It's not you personally that's failing. This is society. These are these kind of constructs that we've built. It's not you where it's going wrong.

7:29It's society that's just not working for women currently. And so she actually invited me to interview about my businesses, which I did. And then she said, would you be interested in studying? So that's what I went to do. I did a PhD with her in women work and well-being. And then I've written this book about women. Can women really have it all? Which, you know, I think is still up for debate. Right. And having now, you know, seven years of kind of deep diving into this, what do you wish that burnt out woman on her 35th birthday had known? that's such a good question the one kind of key message for me is the idea if I could tell her something it would be it's not you personally it's not you that's getting it wrong there's so much in terms of how society operates today that makes working mothers feel and mothers in general feel that we're not getting it right no matter how we turn no matter what we do and so I'd love to know just this is not you failing.

8:36This is not you making bad decisions or not being able to cope or whatever. It's not you, it's society. And what are some of those societal challenges from the research? What are those? Yeah, okay. So what we know is that researchers have been talking about how women's lives have changed kind of in a very, very recent past. So for the last, since the early noughties, researchers have been saying, we know that women today have what they call a new sexual contract. So our new sexual contract with society today, very different than what it used to be. So it used to be that, you know, in order to be, I suppose, fulfilled or what society expects of women, it would be fulfill your reproductive destiny by becoming a mother.

9:24Now what we expect women is two things. Number one, fulfill your reproductive destiny by becoming a mother. Number two, we expect women to financially provide for their families. So the research shows this, study after study shows that society expects women to do both these things. And this is a very different societal expectation than was previously held. And I actually contend and I take that research a little bit further and I say that women actually have three jobs. So we've got the work inside the home. We've got the work outside the home. And we also have the work of living in a female body.

10:01So we've got this additional workload, which is, so we all know the periods, the pregnancies, the breastfeeding, the menopause, all those things. We know that women spend 25 % more of their lives in ill health than men. We know in terms of work as well, we think about the beauty pressure that women are under and a$500 billion beauty industry that puts pressure on women consistently, keeps us feeling inadequate. So we keep purchasing on repeat. So I contend that women have all this work. And as a consequence, we know that when it comes to stress levels, women with children have 40 % more stress.

10:46And this shows up in biological markers in their body, like cortisol markers, 40 % more stress than women without children. And they're 28 % more likely to burn out than working fathers. And we know, and I know you talk about this an awful lot, this chronic guilt that mothers feel. That feeling of like, you can't do right for doing wrong. So, you know, you stay home with your kids and all of a sudden you're like, lazy mom. Like, what did you do all day? You go out to work and all of a sudden you're like, bad mom. Like, why didn't you show up for the recital? So we chronically feel guilty and bad about the stuff that we're not doing.

11:25and I also contend that you know these expectations today are on steroids it's not even just this work of inside the home outside the home and everything else it's the good pressure isn't it just as you said before it's the good girl scenario you have to be good at everything so you know good mother good partner good worker good friend good looking all of it that was the episode I hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and i will see you next time