Overcoming Parenting Guilt and Relationship Challenges | Mo Gawdat and Zoe Blaskey on Parenthood

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet. This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends, sharing inspiring life stories, and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way. This is your invitation to slow down with us. Welcome to Slow Mo.

0:33welcome back my guest today is a very dear friend we met the first time here on this podcast i think three years ago or something three or four years three or four years ago can you imagine this play this thing has been running for more than four years but it's been one of my most enjoyable conversations. Zoe Blaski is the founder of Motherkind that came from a very personal experience of her own motherhood, mother of two, experienced the feelings of guilt and exhaustion and comparison, which, by the way, are normal because those little cute, fluffy, cuddly things are also little devils in so many ways.

1:13And they take so much effort from us. And then she dedicated herself basically to taking women from that place of exhaustion if you want to confidence and calm and really enjoying and loving motherhood if you want so mother kind is her podcast and now 15th of august is also her book am i the first place where you're gonna speak about yeah yes so we're recording this the first time i love uh zoe's work this book is you know it's quite interesting in terms of covering a few of the motherhood or motherkind moments and musings if you want and as well as a few tips for how to really make motherhood a pleasurable joyful experience as it should be so i am so grateful that you're here the first time we meet in person last time it was on zoom or something yeah was it in lockdown yeah i think it was just after lockdown yeah because you've came on mother kind yeah in the middle of lockdown i think yes i did yes yeah and then i came on this podcast first time yeah three years ago again on zoom i think just after lockdown you see this we had nothing to do other than just chat and so we might as well record it and uh and put it on podcasts exactly the fun way of doing it um so how has it been for the last three years so mother kind I know that you've been coaching for quite a bit of time which is maybe not the most effective use of your time are you still coaching not so much I mean I love coaching and to me there's no better experience than sat in front of a mother who comes to you struggling and leaves you thriving like there is no better feeling for me but you know I really want to have a big impact on the world with mother kind and hard as it is you know i'm only impacting one person at a time when i'm doing the coaching so now much more of my time is focusing on the podcast and the book which i just really want to reach you know hopefully so many mothers i know desperately need it did you guys hear that so we're going to pre-order the book right as we speak about this right now why the book i mean it's quite interesting because you have a very significant reach with mother kind the podcast yeah so why why idea i mean publishing is not the easiest thing in the world to do i always always had a dream that i wanted to be i love how every time i tell an author that publishing is not the easiest thing they go like ah publishing is so difficult isn't it it's so difficult and do you know what mo because i've interviewed gosh probably 450 authors you know on the podcast now i look back with just such different eyes at anyone that has written a book because I think it's almost like becoming a mother you actually don't know what the experience is like until you've been through it and you know I wrote my book in the summer holidays most of it with very little child care it was intense but I think you know like you when you have a passion that's what just kept me going and I just kept thinking about I actually drew out it's a bit embarrassing but I actually drew out a picture of the woman that I was talking to and I wrote you know how she was feeling and how I wanted her to feel after she read the book and I stuck that on my desk and I would look at that every time it was very early in the morning or very late at night and I was digging deep you know what it's like I would look at her and I think you know this isn't about me I'm doing it because I have had the privilege of speaking to some of the world's best including yourself and you know I really wanted to package up everything that I've learned in seven years of speaking to just the most unbelievable people and put it into one place and it's already been called like the new motherhood bible which blew me away a bit and that's exactly what i wanted to create so yeah that's what drove me so who is that woman that that's supposed to be reading this should a man read it as well yeah absolutely i think everyone should read it but predominantly i was writing it for that mother who feels overwhelmed she's quite hard on herself the person that's really going to benefit from this book so she finds it far easier to focus on what she hasn't done what she's doing wrong where she's not getting it right than being able to see what she has done and what she is doing right and I guess that woman is me right which is you know I was my first client in a way because I think you know before you become a mother you don't really understand how much it changes and transforms you and I think we don't talk about that enough and when you understand that and that it's meant to change you and it's meant to be a really hard time and you're meant to question everything and actually your values are meant to change I think the moment I understood that everything got so much easier so I'm really writing it for that woman who feels like she's not good enough he feels like there's something wrong with her for struggling and I really want to normalize that and then offer just these hundreds of little tools that I've peppered throughout the book to help in a really quick efficient way switch your mindset how to manage your energy how to put boundaries down with people how to work out what your values are so that you can yeah just feel more confident in it because it's just such a pressurized intense world that we live in and i think you know the explosion of the parenting industry on one hand is amazing on the other hand it's happened at exactly the same time as all of our support has fallen away so i think our generation of mothers constantly feel like we're failing and yeah i feel really passionately that we need to we need to change that we do we absolutely do i i'm gonna say something that i has sort of been on my mind a little bit i think there are almost two species there is a woman and there is a mother and there are so many changes that happens to a woman her priorities her focuses her time for herself her ability to enjoy things when when she's completely absorbed in the well-being and the nurturing of her kids there her judgment of herself as she's going through an experience for the first time unfortunately and yet expecting to nail it but failing to exactly share with me as a mother of two what it feels like what changes at that moment when that little crumbly thing shows up you know mo you are so spot on with that insight and there's actually a word i can't remember if we spoke about this last time there isn't actually a word that describes exactly that change and the word is matrescence you heard of it i have not no what's that so we all know about adolescence right which is when you go from a child to an adult happens over years it's a process your brain changes your body changes you might question yourself a lot you might try on different identities you might not quite know where you're at it's a real moment when you're at sea on that kind of old teenage awkward time yeah well matrescence is exactly the same but that describes the becoming of a mother wow yeah and so this word was first coined in 1973 by an academic but it has been hidden in kind of academic circles and even in academic circles still not well known and it's the first chapter of the book because on my podcast I was one of the first to start talking about it in the UK because the moment I heard that word my shoulders went from like round my ears as in why do I feel so different no one told me about this people told me that I might you know struggle with my body image or that I might find breastfeeding hard no one told me that actually every element of my life would change and I would find it really hard no one told me that was completely normal that actually it's a process and it's meant to be a bumpy process before you settle back into yourself so what you just described is it that is the word matrescence that is mental that it's not spoken about tell me about it I feel like you know 10 years ago when you know menopause was a word that we all knew but we didn't really understand the impact of it I feel like I hope that and hopefully I can be part of this in a decade's time everyone will understand matrescence they will understand the impact of becoming a mother and we will support mothers so much better with that transition because it's it's hidden and every mother hopefully there's some mothers listening now who just feel more relaxed and and their experiences feel more normalized that you are not supposed to have a baby and bounce back you're not supposed to have a baby and go back to who you were before you're not supposed to have a baby and just be exactly the same person but with a baby on your hip smiling happy that's not that's not what is a woman supposed to be what are the normal changes that she should celebrate as that happens to her yeah well the brain changes are phenomenal oh my gosh the brain changes in pregnancy and the first two years after birth more than any other time in a human's life your brain changes so so So the part of your brain which is responsible for empathy and compassion gets bigger.

10:33And the baby brain thing, which people think is, you know, makes you forgetful. That's actually a myth. I had an incredible author on a scientist who'd written a whole book about the brain changes. And that's not that's actually a myth that actually that's that's attributed to just the mental load and having more on your plate. What actually changes in your brain is the area for empathy and compassion. And there's new evidence that says that actually having children is neuroprotective for your brain. Actually, it helps you, you know, live longer. And there's other unbelievable benefits, which makes sense, right?

11:05Because you have to be so flexible when you have children. Yeah, so the brain changes. But what I would say we should be doing is just giving ourselves a lot of compassion and understanding. Almost universally, and you talk about this, Mo, in your books, almost universally mothers are too hard on themselves. Oh, absolutely. You know, there's an amazing study that is in the book that, you know, 98 % of mothers feel this pressure to do it all and be it all. 94 % feel guilty every single day. Oh, my God. And 93 % of mothers in the UK would hit the statistics for burnout. So we are in a bit of a crisis.

11:43And I think it's not spoken about or understood. because there's also, you know, the other side of it is that mothers don't like speaking up about this because people fear that they're going to be seen to be complaining about their child. And I think something that I talk about a lot is separating out your experience of motherhood with your child. Like I adore my children more than anything, like more than anything. And there are certain parts of my motherhood experience that have been really, really challenging. And we can take those two apart one doesn't need to negate the other percent i i think i think i always say the same as well i mean you know i look back at how much having my children has changed everything about my life right sometimes in in very difficult ways i had them very young i you know i i don't know if there is a word for it but i believe that if there was a word to describe a man's experience a father's experience patrescence is it yeah and i mean to me i completely became a different person i mean my focus on providing and protecting uh before that i was a hippie really i i just loved my carpentry and my hobbies and i went to work i didn't know that about you yeah i'm i'm like a still today if i have a choice i'll just make things all the time and you know who wants to go to work and who wants to make money and i remember vividly it's like the minute i held ali was like, okay, this little thing's never going to need anything.

13:12That's it. Everything is going to be provided. I'm giving the rest of my life for it. But the thing is that you go through those things and definitely I would say more instinctively probably for a mother than a father. But also, you know, you're completely unaware of what's happening. Like you're completely unaware of why. Why is it that someone like me who never cared about money ever, when Ali is about to get to kindergarten or I as about to get to kindergarten I'm starting to talk to my manager about income and promotions and like really making massive changes to my life because of it and they determine almost everything going forward at least for until they're independent right and we just take it with a stride really saying yeah you know are we going out to party again no are we going to you know like everything changes yeah yeah i'm obsessed with um and i know you like think about this as well with with values and thinking about because i think so few people actually can define what their values are and what matters to them and i think particularly as a parent if you know what matters to you then it really helps drown out some of the noise doesn't and because there's so much you know we live in a completely different time now really than when you know my mom was raising me even when your two were little and i think if you know what matters to you like you were saying you knew what mattered to you and i think that helps you then focus on that turn down all the judgment and the criticism and you know all the noise coming at us and i it is a bit of a superpower in this day and age to know what's important to you do you think that the reason why mothers feel they're not good enough is because they don't appreciate the incredible amount of amazing stuff that they do every day or is it because society makes them feel that they should be better both you think so yeah i mean i think and i really i really dived into this actually in research for the book like why is it what is it that makes us so self-critical particularly in motherhood there's a couple of things one is that a lot of us have an inner critic you've written a whole book on it but that critic gets louder the more that we care about something yeah because now our failures are not just hitting us they're hitting that spot on so i'm someone who had an inner critic my whole life you know i was always quite down on myself I always struggled to believe in myself.

15:51But the moment that baby was in my arms, oh, my gosh, it's like the volume got turned up to 100. I really struggled to breastfeed. And the critic and the critical thoughts and what a failure I felt was off the chart. I mean, one of the reasons I started the podcast, to be honest, was because I was like, there must be some answers for A, why this is and B, what I can do about it. So the more we care about something, the louder that critic gets. And most mothers, most women have never cared about anything more than that child in their arms. So that's one reason. And the other part of that is that often we're not taught what to do with that critic.

16:29We don't know, you know, unless we read one of your books or maybe listen to, you know, tons of the amazing resources that are out there to help us these days. But, you know, I know for me, I was like, I don't know how to. I thought I was my thoughts. I thought that thought telling me you're not good enough, you're failing her already. She's only a week old and you've already failed. I thought that voice was true. It was only when I learned the skill of not believing those thoughts, choosing a different thought. And it is a skill. You know, I think there's this kind of myth that we have this maternal instinct and you'll know what to do.

17:04That's not true. These are skills you have to learn. And I think one of the most important skills you have to learn in life and motherhood, you know, which is why it's in the book, is how to question those thoughts, is how to notice what you are doing, not what you're not doing. You know, negativity bias means that our brains are wired to focus on what's wrong. And I think as a mother, there is ample opportunity any given moment of any given day to focus on what's wrong. And I think learning that skill, learning about things like negativity bias, learning how to reframe those thoughts, learning how to focus on what you're doing right, learning how to feel good enough, let go of perfectionism.

17:44And I think, you know, the other thing which is fascinating is that a lot of the women that I've worked with, a lot of the behaviors that made them quote unquote successful up until that point, actually the things that block joy in motherhood. So things like control. If you think about a woman who, you know, for the first decade in her career trajectory has been focused, you know, very hardworking, quite perfectionist, hard on herself, maybe, you know, asks a lot of her teams, likes to control things, has a lot of spreadsheets. You know, I coach a lot of women like that. Suddenly you have a baby.

18:23Control is out of the window. You have no control. Zero. Literally none. Yeah. you can't do it perfectly it is literally impossible to do it perfectly you never know what's going from day one to day two and if you're someone who's equated your worth with your productivity you're likely to find those early years of motherhood incredibly challenging because you can spend all day busy and have nothing to show at the end of it I mean I would say you have a lot to show at the end of it you have a great connection with your child but I mean in terms of you know you can't say I've done this project or I've ticked off this this thing on my list my list so I think that's just a massive invitation to think about okay if I can't control how do I go with the flow a bit more and actually these questions help you in all areas of life I think you know if I can't be perfect how do I allow myself just to do something good enough and if my worth isn't about my productivity what is my worth about and that's a question that I asked myself quite early on in motherhood and it was just phenomenal the shift in me you know and I think about then what do I want my girls to see their worth is and you know I really noticed that how I would so often equate what I achieved to my worth you know like I'm a good person because my house is tidy or I'm I'm a worthwhile person because I've achieved something at work but I would look at my little babies and think well they have inherent worth like I adore them and they haven't achieved a thing apart from keep me up all night so I must be the same I must have inherent worth you know and that was a massive leap in my in my healing I guess you'd call it in how I feel about myself actually I'm worthwhile just for being me I don't need to I don't need to achieve anything and motherhood unlocked that for me it shocks me very much because I don't know if that's all men but I definitely when faced with requests of equality and that I need to take care of the kids and so on.

20:19I'm very open about it. I suck at it. I'll try my best. But, you know, I always feared holding my kids because I thought I would break something. You know, I'm very clear about that. And I say that with sort of an invitation for people to understand that, you know, there are things I can do really well. there are things I couldn't right and honestly when when Nibel my ex would want to leave home and she would leave Ali with me it was the most fearful moment in my life because I love that thing so much but it's so damn fragile and you know what if it cries I was like in a constant panic if I would actually be able to to comfort him yeah I think a lot of mothers feel exactly the same the only difference if i think about that with with my partner and i is that i just had hours upon hours and hours of practice because i was the one at home i felt exactly the same the only reason i think i looked quote unquote more confident was just because i practiced for hundreds of hours and i didn't break anything and i suspect had you been thrown into that you would have developed you know just the the same level of confidence but isn't that isn't that in itself a reason to know how incredible you are like you know you you sort of like are handling this little fragile biscuit and you're not breaking it and you know that in itself is a reason to celebrate and yeah and and of course because i was so anxious you know when i would hold a i would go like i don't like this one right and she would cry and then when when nibel would hold a she would go like yeah i like that one that one knows what she's doing right yeah and and and it's quite interesting because that would make me feel more like a failure but then somehow in the mother's mind she doesn't recognize how incredible that is no yeah no because i think you know you asked the question how much has societal messaging had and i think again that's just a huge part of it a huge part of it that idea of perfection that if anything goes wrong the child will be suboptimal if you want right and also just the you know even just the language you know we call it maternity leave let me tell you that year where i wasn't in paid work was the hardest year of my life yeah there was no leave about it yeah it was like the opposite and you know i remember when i went back to work how was your break did you have coffees you know is it good to be back doing something i was like i've been awake on average for 20 hours a day for a year i've slept no longer than 30 minutes in a go and I have learned hundreds of new skills with a live being that I adore more than anything it has been a baptism of fire and I think we do not understand that yeah you know there'll be people listening that will be nodding I'm sure going yeah I had that when you go back to work often it's seen as a break it's seen as this thing where you're floating around London you know having coffees and that's not the reality for 99 % of of mothers and parents you know if they're shared leave it's it's not the reality and yet it's completely invisible the work of it and how hard it is so you write about what you call mother kind moments yeah okay what are those so mother kind moments are when i was writing the book i really didn't want to write a kind of philosophical book i think it would have been quite easy for me to do that because i've had essentially 450 academics in a lot of ways a lot of the people i've spoken to have been studying studying a lot of doctors a lot of phds a lot of people like you you know in-depth knowledge and and i thought you know there's a real risk here that i could write a brilliant book but actually wouldn't be practical and i thought i have to have it where someone can open this book at any page and just be able to grab something and use it in that moment because typically clean mothers, my audience, they're really short on time and they're quite short on attention.

24:22So I was like, there's no point in me writing, you know, a beautiful philosophical academic look at modern motherhood. I wanted to write a really practical toolbook. So I came up with these three ideas. One's called a mother kind musing, which is where I ask you to think about something in your own life. Some people might want to jot those thoughts down. Some people might just want to muse on them. And those have been tested time and time and time and time again. And they're almost like journaling prompts to get you to a really quick self-awareness with a question. Then there's the mother kind moments, which are kind of these key ideas.

25:01I really want people to grab that mother kind moments of what you would write on a post-it and stick on your mirror and just you'd want to remember. And then there's mother kind toolkits, which are tons and tons and tons of little tools, things you can do in the moment. So I teach thought reframes. I teach little quick affirmations. I teach things you can do physically, things you can do in your body that can change the trajectory of your day. Examples? please so well one of my favorite ones is about we're learning about the stress response and i know that you are the master of this so please correct me or chip in if i'm if you need to but i think when i i'm someone growing up in my home emotions you know it was the 80s emotions weren't really a thing so we we didn't really get taught how to handle big emotions ours other people's It was just kind of, I think in the 80s, the idea was, you know, just smile through it and everything will be fine.

25:59So that's how I came into motherhood. And of course, I now know that babies and children are really just balls of emotion wrapped up in skin. And the emotions can get so heightened, can't they? The joy and the sadness and the tantrums. And what I noticed is when my first daughter would have big crying fits, she was quite a refluxy baby. She would cry a lot. I would notice myself almost wandering off in my head almost associating and I thought I was just the worst mother in the world I told no one it was only when I started seeing a new therapist because of it I was like I don't understand she starts crying and I'm almost shutting down she said that's your stress response so she is kicking you into your stress response and you're going into a freeze you are going into a freeze so the moment I understood that a it was just the biggest relief and you know when you realize something's a thing and you just get that self-compassion and you realize there's nothing wrong with you and at other times she would cry and I would want to run out the door I'd literally want to run out of flight exactly I'd gone into I'd gone into flight and other times still now you know when they shout at me that urge is to shout back again well that's me going into my fight and these reactions happen really quickly and they happen really subconsciously so one of my favorite toolkits in the book is just how to move yourself out of that really quickly using your breath so just you know there's two breaths that I love one is a quick box breath so you're just breathing in for four holding for four out for four you know just doing that when things are kicking off before you respond to your children I generally never knew before I became a parent that 99 % of it was me managing my emotions i thought it would be me you know managing them managing them teaching them no because i get dysregulated around them and a dysregulated adult cannot calm a child just the math doesn't work so there's a lot in the book about how to calm yourself first you know and actually these are skills that we can take into you know all the rest of our our life as well but the moment i started doing that making it a practice you know i would read these parenting books and it would talk about being the steady ship in the storm and i think this these parenting books are bonkers because they're not talking to what is going on with the parent they're assuming that you're in a regulated calm state the whole time and you can grab the right script the right word the right and that's just not the reality but when i started understanding my stress response and doing these quick breathing exercise i was like oh my gosh i am actually being this steady ship that gets talked about so much in in parenting books and it completely changed how i was able to handle my children's emotions completely changed my parenting really so that's like one little example of a tool honestly the way you speak about it i have to laugh because you know you're when you really describe that whole process of them distracting us and then you know throwing in fits and then it's like it's it's it's almost as a comedy show really in a yeah so why do we have them i i never understood that bit i mean i love my kids to bits and i would never never take it back right but there were moments in my life where i was like why why did i do this i think that's really normal i don't think there's a parent who hasn't had that thought yeah honestly i don't think so and i think this is where those you know one of those things where two things are true like you can adore your children and sometimes think gosh this this would be easier if i you know if I hadn't had them doesn't mean you don't adore them it's just the realities of the pressure of it because you know we've got more mothers than at any other point in history in paid work as well as raising children and just the intensity of that there's an amazing study I found that showed that the average mother works the same number of hours a week as two and a half full-time jobs she starts just on motherhood yes she starts at 6 38 a.m and on average would finish at 8 30 p.m well i don't finish at 8 30 p.m so and i'm not sure many many do so just the pressures of it it's completely normal if you've had that thought because it's you know in many ways we're raising our children in quite an unnatural way and gabor mate really taught me about this when he came on the podcast i'd never thought of it before and he was saying you know we're actually biologically wired to raise children in small groups of 50 and our brains and our biology haven't changed since that time and yet a lot of parents particularly mothers particularly with young children you know raising children on streets where they know no one you know they might be in a flat all day particularly through the pandemic you know not seeing anyone on their own and that is completely unnatural it's actually beyond human capacity to to do that and there's an amazing term called alloparent heard of it which essentially shows that children thrive when they have multiple caregivers because that's how we were designed to be raised you know in small villages with multiple caregivers the the parenting responsibilities was never meant to be down to just one or even two people it's too much it is actually very unnatural when you really think about it.

31:19I think it's a topic that really needs to be discussed more because even if you just go back 50 years, you know, a little more, a little less, you know, when I was growing up, parenting was not as intensely in your face. So the streets of my neighborhood were safe. I'd come back from school and the playground around our home for a while. And, you know, my mom would come home, she would cook but I'm not in her face complaining and and you know and asking for attention and then eventually she'd call me up right and and I was sitting a couple of weeks ago in a restaurant somewhere next to me are good parents trying their absolute best to talk so reasonably to their children and you know the children are just constantly like I want this but I don't want around and I it just hit me that they're actually not supposed to be sitting on this table at all you know they're supposed to be playing somewhere and we just sit them down and we tell them to try and you know and and behave in a certain way and it's just so unnatural the modern world is not the way we're supposed to be raising kids at all yeah absolutely absolutely that's a big channel i mean that needs to is there like something that says raise them like we used to raise them or raise them more in touch with nature or yes not it's not that's not my i've not done all the research on that my focus has been on it's unnatural how we do it there's a thing called alloparent which means that actually we should raise raise our children together and the reason that i i guess touch on that rather than i haven't done the deep dive research into it is really to give people self-compassion because what i've noticed almost universally is that when we don't know things like this and we don't have that thought we decide that we're wrong we must just be failing we're not good enough and so whenever i say to a parent particularly a mother well actually if you thought that perhaps you're finding it hard because it is hard not because you're doing it wrong and perhaps if you thought you're finding it hard because it's not meant to be this way not because you're doing it wrong like often the tears come you know like that release when you could just you just ease into a bit of compassion for yourself often women cry when i when i talk to them about that because i think so many feel like they are failing and they are doing it wrong whereas actually it's it was never supposed to it's never supposed to be this way i think it's that pressure of i'm failing i'm doing it wrong but i don't see a way out exactly exactly trapped especially as you know i feel like in a way my generation of mothers i think will be seen in the future almost as a bit of a guinea pig generation because we're the generation really leaning into paid work as well so as i said before there are more mothers in paid work than at any other point in history right now and our systems at home haven't quite caught up so what do you mean by that mental load split of domestic tasks child care so what you actually have is a lot of mothers working really hard at paid work and still taking on the majority of running at home exactly default child care so actually you kind of get this perfect storm going on i think that's absolutely going to change but we're not there yet and i think that's that's my generation really feeling that at the moment yeah i think that's why burnout is so high in my view of it and i struggled with that to be honest even as a ceo or a leader of a company that it almost feels to me that your normal duties, you said two and a half full-time jobs, are just continuing.

34:59Yeah. And you're just on top of that layer, the idea of working full-time, which to me sounds very unreasonable. And I attempted to try and think of ways to make that different at work, but I couldn't find many, to be honest. Yeah, I think because so much of it is linked to home. I think so much of it is linked to whether you have a partner if you have a partner how supportive are they not only how supportive are they how willing are they to really share in the domestic in the child care in the in the mental load and it's not about giving your partner a list or saying can you do that pickup because the woman is still holding all the executive functioning correct and she's the one that's concerned if he's going to do it right right which is why project managers get paid more right because you're because you're managing the whole project we don't want that we want a scenario in a system where if you're both bringing in financially to the home you want to be able to split the executive function and the mental load of running you know a home which is just a huge job in itself that's why housekeepers get paid that's why chefs get paid and taxi drivers get paid and nannies get paid i think someone worked out the other day that's a very very visual way of putting it yeah someone worked out the other day that if you took everything that uh a typical mother mother does and put those salaries on it would be 182 000 pounds a year no way yeah so you'll get a driver a maid if you add up a maid a driver a cook a cleaner a pa to do all the admin the number of school emails it is it honestly does feel like particularly if you have more than one child maybe they're at different schools every single day there will be something significant that you have to remember or contribute to you know you would need it's the equivalent of needing a personal assistant and some people might think what is this girl talking about but I promise you if you start to think about it in those terms you will see it differently a lot of women are preparing two three or three meals a day cleaning it's huge the mental load as well as all the emotional load and the research so imagine if you had a child who has allergies or have a child who's extra learning needs you know the hours of reach that some mothers i speak to my community say i've been i was up till 3 a.m you know researching how to help my child who's struggling with dyslexia or adhd or it's a huge amount and then imagine if on top of that she's also a single mother or or not single but but the what the father is yeah yeah the father is not participating yeah that's so unfair yeah i think this should be rejected in society yes same same shall we start a start a revolution i think so but i think you know and hopefully what what the book does and what mother kind does firstly is names a lot of this so i talk about a lot of phrases that people just haven't heard of before like executive functioning like mental load like matrescence Like I think when you give something language, it's the first step to really being able to see it clearly.

38:05And then in each of those I offer through the through the toolkits and the moments and the musings, you know, OK, so say you do find yourself in a situation where you have a partner who isn't really being a partner at all. How do you start to have that conversation about the split of childcare, about the split of the mental load and the domestic domestic life? of how do you start to have that conversation and what might that system look like that is all in there because I think that's really really important I can't talk to being an empowered happy mother without also talking to to some of those things as well I'm between one of two sides on this one side is my typical masculine brain going like I need to solve this I need to solve this I need to solve this which I've been taught over the years to not talk about when we're sharing but it just frustrates me so much yeah the modern world has so much injustice built within it yeah well i mean lots of people think that we have a gender pay divide we don't have a gender pay divide it's actually a motherhood penalty so a motherhood penalty yeah so that the pay differential between a man and a childless woman is actually negligible it's tiny the big pay differential is between a man and a mother so we act yeah it's actually the motherhood penalty and there's an incredible book and an organization and i've had called pregnant then screwed and i've had the founder of that on on my podcast great name isn't it um and she has written a whole book on exactly that penalty and how it works and how it holds you how it holds you back so that when I when I tell you that as a CEO myself I struggled very much with that is because from one side you can try to make it equal for everyone but then the hours won't be the same because basically it becomes unfair to those who are putting in more hours and you're absolutely right those if a woman is not a mother yet she mostly puts the same hours exactly yeah exactly exactly and you know the moment you have any time out of paid work it is very very hard then to catch up absolutely you know it's just a graph it's impossible from a promotion point of view from an appreciation of a career point of view and at the same time being a very loving father myself i'm like but your number one priority should always be the kids right absolutely and it's just it just frustrates i don't like to be presented with a problem i don't have a solution to yeah but it just gets to me every time yeah the motherhood penalty when i when i learned that it blew my mind and it also just made complete sense but you know when you when you say we're supposed to raise kids in groups of 50s i think we should be raising kids as societies i think from a compensation point of view yeah somehow the whole society should say uh you know and by the way there's also um like a social agreement around the motherhood exactly there are countries that pay mothers women parents actually not gender but it normally is the it normally is the mother there are countries that pay women to stay at home with their children for the first couple of years for exactly that reason which when you first hear it you think what people are getting paid to care That sounds insane.

41:28But when you understand the economics behind it and you understand the cost of childcare and you understand the motherhood penalty, it actually economically makes a lot of sense. It does, 100%. Yeah. You see, the challenge with that still remains to be from a career point of view. When someone else, you know, a woman that's not a mother or a man is still working full time. Yeah. They get the two years advantage. That's it. that whole time they are learning, you know, on the job. I would argue that the skills that you learn in motherhood are unbelievably transferable into the workplace. And PricewaterhouseCoopers did an incredible study that showed the most efficient worker.

42:11They studied all categories of worker and who was the most efficient in terms of output per hour. And it was part-time women, a.k.a. mothers. the ones that have to juggle 400 things exactly every day exactly i mean mo like i wrote this book i record two podcasts every week i've not missed one in seven years you still do two yeah yeah raising two girls like i am the most the efficiency is unbelievable how efficient you get as a mother if i was to take these skills into the workplace you know i think you there are things that you learn as a mother that are incredibly valuable however they're not valued you know linkedin only added parents as a as an option um on its drop down box two years ago you know so we're right at the forefront of seeing of seeing this completely differently i think so when you talk about what you called it motherhood musing yes give me a couple of examples of those like things that a mother when she gets those four minutes without uh anything to do should think about yeah well if a mother had four minutes that would be luxurious let's let's go with it if i would i would say the the question that i would get a mother to moose on in four minutes is what do i need oh because we don't often ask ourselves that if you ask a mother what do you need she will often answer with what her children needs what her partner needs to go buy buy diapers exactly exactly whereas i did a talk once and i think i was talking away and i was like i'm just not connecting you know that feeling when you're giving a talk and you're not connecting emotionally and i was like everyone just close your eyes and put your hand on your heart and ask yourself what you need and i could see the tears just started streaming and and the feedback was i've never asked myself that question since becoming a mother and some people were saying you know i just need half an hour on my own i just need an early night i just need someone to hug me and tell me that i'm doing a good job someone was saying you know i really need to eat better you know i think when you ask that question the answers come but we just forget to ask ourselves that question i think you know self-care and this idea of self-care has become so commoditized really that word it's been about it's become about buying things and doing things to your outer shell whereas i'm far more interested in what does your soul need you know what do you need physically what do you need emotionally often i need to drink a big glass of water it's you know the amount of mums who will tell me you know i've been running around non-stop between you know caregiving paid work caring for everyone else i actually haven't stopped to eat or drink today yeah and then they'll tell me they feel burnt out and anxious you know like often we have to start right at the bottom of of you know the hierarchy of needs right at the bottom on the basics have you eaten well today have you fueled your body have you moved your body a bit have you connected with someone or something that you love have you drunk a glass of water like real basics but in motherhood these basics just get dropped and forgotten i'm gonna have to ask this question even though i don't know if you like it do you advise that people think deeply before they make that choice do you have a space in your approach to motherhood that says maybe you're not supposed to be a mother maybe you should allow yourself a few more years before you do that maybe maybe you should consider if you don't want kids at all i mean there is a biological element to wanting to be a mother that's very different by other way than wanting to be a father right but you think that it is a viable option to say maybe motherhood's not for me absolutely i think every woman should absolutely ask herself that question you know i'm really i'm really passionate about people living their lives to their values not on what they think they should i actually talk about this thing called the should scam which is where we we do all these things just because we think that we we should and I think whenever you hear that word in your head it's just a massive red flag to me that you're living according to society's expectations someone else's expectations I think one of the most empowering questions you can ask yourself is do I really want to be a mother and I would love people considering that question to read the book because I think it would give them lots of insight into what it's really like and I I love the childless by choice movement at the moment I think it's really empowering because I think the world needs more women that have made conscious choices you know whether that's into motherhood or not I think I think we need to bring that level of awareness and freedom and choice I think it's absolutely important there is that biological fear of missing out like what if I make that choice and then regret it that's life though isn't it every choice that you make you are grieving a choice you didn't make you know for me for me i could never talk to a woman that talk as a woman that didn't want a child because i did like i really did but i know there's some incredible books where people have explained emma gannon's written one or talks about it often you know how she she didn't have that desire and that drive and actually leaning into that and yeah olive that's right i hosted her on on olive yeah yeah and and grieving what could have been you know any any choice that you make is yeah it's interesting there's a grief the way the way the way you position it actually is very eye-opening because you you know when you're sort of worried about your biological clock and what if i don't have a child and regret it later i think you should also ask yourself what if i have a child and regret missing out on all of those other opportunities for the things that I wanted to have.

48:19Absolutely. It's, I've never thought of it this way, actually. It is a, I feel in my heart that honestly, I mean, Aya is the love of my life by a very large margin, right? And she just brightens my day every day. Even the times when we disagree or I'm concerned about her or whatever, there is that incredible, and I don't know how to describe it, connection that you don't feel for anyone else, right? But at the same time, it wasn't easy to get to this point. No. And I really think that, you know, if I were to choose, do I want Ali and Aya again for Ali to leave our world and really, really, you know, give me probably the biggest pain of my life and Aya to have gone through the difficulties we went through, not between us, but, you know, her feeling the pain of losing Ali and finding her way through it.

49:17And I would do it a hundred times over because there is something incredible about that bond, right? It just feels right. But at the same time, I have to say more and more, I keep asking people to really think deeply with full awareness. I think the book would probably be a very good tool for that. Yeah. You know, with full awareness of what you're setting yourself up to, up for, right? You know, I know it's not comparison at all, but I love old cars. I never have a car that has an, you know, a computer in it. And, you know, I restore them with my own hands. And I, you know, I love to bring them back to that state where they're brand new and I really invest heavily in them.

50:03But then they break almost every third time I drive them. and then I have to really know exactly how to fix them. And when I sell them eventually, I lose money on them. It's almost like I'm investing in my passion. But for those who are fascinated by the beauty of a classic car, you need to know all the price that you're gonna pay for it, right? For those who are just running and saying, oh, but I need to have a child because my biological clock is ticking, I think it's wise to actually think openly to yourself and say, what is the price that you're going to pay? Not to say, I'm not going to do it, but to say, am I prepared to pay that price?

50:50For the incredible reward, am I prepared to pay the price? Yeah, absolutely. Can I ask one last question and then let you go? What is the impact of motherhood on the relationship? oh it's huge i think this is one thing that often people are completely unprepared for i know i was i know i was this is what this was a loaded question as they said yes yeah i think i think this is something where you actually have no idea until you go through it how challenging it can be you know even just if you think just even on a emotional and physical level the sleep deprivation just makes you irritable even on the most basic level you are and then you sleep for 30 minutes and then you wake up and he's still there and i'm like what what are you doing there like you know yeah i don't want you there absolutely absolutely and then i think you know often huge resentment comes in where if you've got quite traditional setup and your partner is male and they're going back to work and you're female and you're staying at home with the baby i think a lot of resentment can come in then and actually studies show that's when a lot of the inequalities come in because naturally you start to pick up a lot of the housework and and the home you know the domestic load and that because you you're at home you know i remember guy and i were 100 percent equal before we had our eldest and then suddenly you know he would do all the clothes washing most of the cooking but then because i was at home all day you know i started just naturally pick all of that up and that is where a lot of the inequalities in the domestic split start I think, you know, then having to get on the same page around parenting is huge.

52:38And I wish that people asked this question of the person they were going to have a baby with. You know, like, how do you feel about discipline? What are your views on co-sleeping? What are your views on, you know, what values we think are important? What are your views on schooling, finances? because actually often you're sleep deprived it's the middle of the night and one partner might say oh let's just get the baby in with us and the other partner might say absolutely not they have to be in their own room you know i had a client who was grappling with exactly this and i think you don't think to ask those questions you do not think to ask those questions and actually one of one of my favorite tools in the book is is thinking about your own childhood and what do you want to carry on for the next generation and what do you want to leave behind you know I love this idea of breaking cycles and making new making new values and traditions and I think so often me included couples have not thought about that which I think is so eye-opening to be honest it's the you know it is also not just the question of do I want to be a parent do I want to be a parent with this person i mean absolutely someone could be an amazing partner for you but not a very good father for your child right absolutely not because they're a bad person at all even because they're just different or they might be an amazing father for example but have completely different viewpoints for you on school for example yeah they might be like academic academic academic and you might be emotional emotional you know that you might have i had that with nibel actually so so my you know Which side were you?

54:19I'm the one that was all about, look, there is a point in time where you need to become a little assertive in terms of the progress of the kids. Right. And, you know, she was like, no, no, just love them. Love them. It's going to be enough. Right. And that causes a lot of tension, right? It does cause a lot of tension. We're not going to talk about this now, Nibet. You know, it gets down to it. You know, it's six o 'clock on a Friday night and you've got one partner saying, do you know what? Let's just put your books away. Let's go and have a movie night. Let's have fun. no homework over the weekend and you've got another partner saying absolutely not the homework has to be done and more yeah you know and that's just a tiny example one of a hundred you know that one parent might be really be into you know exercise or achievement or how much sport that child they want that child to do the other parent might be like actually i just think they really should go and run around and play in the garden and relax you know and it can be just this constant is there a place where they can find the list of all of those topics to talk about yeah in my book there you go fantastic advertising can i can i ask you then if someone is already there like they've already had kids and they feel that level of disconnection i yeah i had a friend yesterday that was going through that yeah what do you advise them to do because it's funny to my mind because there was never a time they needed to be closer okay and yet when the child arrives they start to fall apart yeah and not just when the child arrives you know all all the way through all the way through i think i mean it sounds obvious advice but i had paul brunson on who i know you know as well he's just an unbelievable relationship expert i love him so much and everything that he talks about is just so researched and he said the you know one of the most important thing to do is to put your partnership over your parenting what and that really shocking that exactly exactly and he came on the podcast just a couple of months ago because he'd said that and it'd gone far and i i said you have to come back on and unpack that statement with me like what do you mean and he was talking about sometimes you have to prioritize your foundation which is your partnership he said all the time you and your partner are modeling the blueprint for your children correct for how the partners they're going to choose you know what a good partnership looks like what a good relationship looks like so he said sometimes our boys will be very disgruntled that jill his his partner and and him would be going out for dinner and leaving them he said but that is actually what's important and i think that's true if someone's disconnected you know the way through that is to get that connection again and that can only be done with time and I think that is why there is so much disconnection and why actually the divorce rate is highest in the first year of parenthood is because you you never have less time and there are so many other things to prioritize and it can feel like you know I'm guilty of this you know sometimes my partner goes to the bottom of the pile and I have to continually remind myself actually if I want this relationship to last night which I do and I want to model to my girls what that looks like i have to shut the laptop i have to leave the mess i have to you know put the kids to bed early and go and intentionally sit with guy and put our phones away and have a proper conversation but that's really hard yeah it's really easy before kids i think and it's really hard after kids it's so it's so important actually my biggest advice always is that you know it is hard already so you might as well do it with someone that you love and enjoy being with right And if you invest a tiny bit in at least acknowledging that this is the breakdown here is not because of you.

57:59It's just because this is circumstantial. Yeah, this is difficult for both of us. But I love you. I want you in my life. I want this to work. Even that, you know, just the intention behind it, I think would bridge a big part of that illusion in your mind. It's like what happened to her? She was so, you know, where did my sweetheart go? or you know what happened to him why is he's becoming so selfish yeah it's just that the circumstances have changed so much and i think resentment is something that a lot of mothers experience in their relationships you know really high resentment and i think resentment is one of those kind of toxic emotions that will chip away at your relationship very quickly you are just not even on this you know you're not even in the same library anymore let alone on the same page so I think you know having maybe like a regular check-in I had an amazing guest on the podcast who he wrote a book on called Fair Play Evrodsky you know she's unbelievable and she talked about having a 10-minute check-in just every day just to run through you know those resentments to air them she said because you think you're not communicating but you already are communicating of course you're communicating with a rolled eye and a slammed cupboard you know and a dinner flung across the table or you know you are communicating so you might as well start communicating a bit more intentionally and saying this is what's bothering me and i think you know i'll walk through in the book exactly how to do that because it's really easy to do that from a defensive angry place and then of course you're just going to get a defensive angry response so it's about choosing a time when emotion is lower when maybe you've had a slightly better night's sleep yeah you feel a little bit better and using i statements like i feel really x when i feel really y when as opposed to you and pointing the finger because that's just you're never gonna get a good result that way this is gonna be an amazing read i'm very grateful that you did that this is seven years it's seven years worth of research yeah and all put in 300 pages yeah that's actually a very good deal i think so so i love what you do i always did i always think that your vulnerability in terms of saying yeah i felt that you know and just sharing so openly what I think so many mothers are experiencing but don't think that it's okay to talk about it and to even acknowledge it to themselves this is really wonderful thank you so much for being here to talk about it well no thank you for thank you for having me on and for just being you know you're such such a great host now I love it oh no no no I'm just very curious and you're just such a great guest for all of you listening I I actually recommend Zoe very, very, very strongly since the day we met.

1:00:44She does what she does on Mother Kind for the passion of it, for the right reasons of having struggled herself, you know, wanting not to have other mothers struggle. I will tell you openly, my position is it's the best thing ever. Like I would give my life to have Aya over and over and to have Ali, despite leaving us over and over. I think it's definitely worth it. But it also is a question of, are you ready for it? Have you done the preparation that you need to be going through the biggest change of your life? So definitely, I ask you to, if you're preparing for motherhood, if you're even just a young person who thinks about motherhood one day, or if you're already a mother, if you're a father or a partner of a mother, I would recommend that you actually go out and pre-order the book.

1:01:37You have a week almost to go, 15th of August. That's right. Yeah. And if you're listening to this after the 15th of August, go for it. I strongly recommend Motherkind. And I ask you to take it very seriously, to take the life that you bring into this world, not just as a, as a like, oh, I have to tick that box, but really as the biggest project you'll ever embark upon. Everything requires a bit of time for you to slow down and think about. I think this requires a lot of time to slow down and reflect upon. So do that with your partners, with your loved ones, with your friends. And yeah, thank you for the opportunity to bring back old friends and having such wonderful conversations.

1:02:19And thank you for the opportunity through your listening for me to have those incredible insights all the time. Whatever you do this week, try to slow down a bit. There's always a bit of time to slow down. I love you all for listening and I will see you next time.