Fresh Take: Corinne Low, HAVING IT ALL

23:26Amy Wilson:But it is one of those things that as you look back on your life, like the magic of the holidays that my mother and grandmother created, or passing down family handwritten recipes and knowing that we have the fiesta cake at every family party, that those things have value in a way that is worth categorizing as well. Do you agree with that? Yes. So I talk about it as like that those things are actual economic production, because if you think about it, if you go to work and you get a paycheck and then you buy stuff, we understand that you've participated in the economy, you've created economic value.

24:01But we don't tend to name that when you set up the train set and the gifts under the tree and you bake everybody's favorite cake, right? But when that lands and gives people joy, you've created the same amount of economic value as if you used your money to buy a gift that brought them joy, right? So when we do that work in the household, that's why economists call it home production. We are creating economic value. And I absolutely think that we need to honor that. And we need to think about investing our time. So we have to ask, what is the return that I'm thinking I'm getting from this because knowing how much time with our kids has exploded.

24:41I mean, it's literally doubled from our mother's generation from when we were kids. If you think about us out riding bikes at all hours and, you know, no snacks, no water bottles. We must have been very dehydrated. We are now spending time with our kids. They come home from school. We sit down, spend time with them. So that means that that might crowd out some of that kind of aesthetic homemaking that our parents' generation did because they actually were doing less of the reading the bedtime stories and doing the homework and driving to soccer practice. So I think it all absolutely has value.

25:14And I think it's also OK to kind of choose your own adventure to say, what investments am I going to make where I'm getting the highest return to my kids? And I experience it as the most joyful. So am I the person who it's making the elaborate Christmas dinner? Or am I the person who orders the Christmas dinner from takeout but makes sure that we We all play a board game on the floor after we eat it. And what you like to do the most enters the chat, right? In terms of... Absolutely. We put the train thing under the tree because it brings me joy to see it. Or we make Christmas dinner because I love to make Christmas dinner.

25:46Or we don't because I don't really enjoy that part anyway. That you don't have to have the chalkboard in the laundry room unless you really dig having a house that looks that way and it brings you joy. Then go ahead. But nobody has to do all of it. Yeah. And we can't do all of it. So it's just that's our worst enemy is instead of seeing those as the unique way that somebody chooses to maximize their own utility function. If we see like each of those things as objectives and we try to put all of those things in our time basket, they don't fit. So we've got to pick and choose what is going to fit in my time basket and what do I feel like I'm getting the highest return on the same way when we invest money, we want a good return.

26:22So how am I investing my time? What is the stuff that is actually contributing to my utility function, my values, my connection with my children? And what is the stuff that I'm kind of internalizing somebody else's message about what it looks like to be a good mom?

26:36Amy Wilson:Let's talk about the term collateralized marriage and the idea of gender roles specialization. I found this theory in the book really interesting. Yes. So important to talk about this right now because we are in a moment of nostalgia for the past around gender roles in marriage. And I think it's really important for people to understand marriage as a financial and economic contract. So when you think about the model, what economists call specialization, which is one person kind of went to work and one person focused on home production. So you're both contributing. Those are both economic production, but they're specialized domains.

27:12That's our kind of image of the 1950s. And the key thing for that is that for that to work, marriage had to be a really strong contract because it's really risky for one person to invest in public goods. which is the house and the kids and dinner on the table and the suit being freshly pressed, and the other person to invest in a private good, which is developing his own career. Because if you get divorced, which is what happened to many women, when divorce became easier in the 1970s, they ended up starting over with minimum wage jobs because they had not invested in their own career and in their own human capital.

27:44Because the contract that they entered into that they thought was secure, it actually changed. and now we have this insecure marriage contract. And I think a lot of women don't realize because I'm part of the generation where we got the warning from our mother's generation where they said, don't let this happen to you. Make sure you always have a career. You always have the ability to earn your own money. And I think now there's some women who are kind of romanticizing that specialization of the past saying I would like to just specialize in the home production domain, but not realizing it's like a tremendously risky position to be in because you're not protected.

28:20If not just divorce, but death, disability, other things could happen. Your husband could get laid off. And so then the idea of collateralized marriage is that one of the things that makes women more protected is kind of assets in the household. For example, owning a home, because those are divided when you get divorced. And so I have a study where we show that when couples own homes, the wife invests more in home production and the husband tends to invest more in market work. and that has a benefit to him. He actually earns more because she's taking on the home production labor. So I think a lot of women need to do that checkup of if you are staying home, are you collateralized?

29:00How protected are you in the case of divorce, but also, like I said, death, disability, and investing in a career? I talked about your career turning your time into money. I think of it as like building a money machine that you keep in the closet. Even if you want to step outside the workforce and you want to spend time investing in your kids, I think that's great. And the book goes into a lot of detail about how I think that has tremendous economic value. And I think it's been kind of poo-pooed by a lot of the lean-in kind of feminists. So absolutely nothing wrong with that. But you've got to make sure that you have your money machine tucked away in the back of the closet in case you need it, which is that you've got your degree.

29:35And I talk about this one paper by a friend in the book that's called Degrees Are Forever. Diamonds aren't forever. Degrees are forever. So by investing in a degree, investing in your career, you have a way to convert your time into money if you need to. But if you just invest in your children's human capital and you never make sure that your family invests in you, then if the situation changes, you don't have that money machine in the back of your closet. You also talk about doing a little work on the way in. I mean, Margaret has joked about, you know, don't worry if he's a good dancer. Worry if he knows how to use a wrench.

30:11That you are entering into a contract with somebody. We're going to build a home together. We're going to raise kids together. How good are you at this? Are you up for this? And considering that instead of his eyes or her eyes, not to be heteronormative, right? Like you're picking a partner for a big, big part of your life. That's right. And yes, of course, whether they're cute matters. But you know what? No one is cute when you're wiping their toothpaste off the sink. OK, no one is cute when you're doing that. It's true. So that piece that you think is determining your value right now is not what determines your value over a lifetime.

30:45When we talked about, I love the reference to obituaries or, you know, being the 80 year old in the rocking chair in the retirement home. What's going to contribute to your happiness, your utility over a lifetime? Is this somebody who is a real partner in raising kids and taking care of the house? Is this someone who invested in my career, if that's something that I want? And I think we tend to select, I joke, we interview for the wrong position. We interview for the position of boyfriend because that's what we need right now. But we don't interview for the position of co-CEO of the household.

31:15And I think the questions we would ask would be a little different if we were thinking in that direction. We're talking to Corinne Lowe. Her new book is called Having It All. We'll be right back.

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33:44Amy Wilson:And right now, we have a special discount just for you. Get 10 % off your first order site-wide with code FRESH at OSEAMalibu.com. That's code FRESH at OSEAMalibu.com. Let's talk about the idea of constraints. You talk about somebody saying to you, I used to have dreams, but now I have a mortgage. And I think that one of the mistakes that we make in this, I don't know how she does it, you can have it all idea is that we forget about constraints. And I'm currently working on a show and I keep saying as we're crafting and creating the show, it can be anything, but it can't be everything. Like the show, we're making it up.

34:29Amy Wilson:It can be anything, but it can't be everything. And that is, I think, life. And the idea of constraints is you can have anything, but you can't have everything. And that's so important for giving life meaning. I remember Steve Jobs gave this graduation speech where he said that like death is important for giving life meaning because it says you have to make choices. You have to choose the things that you value. And I think actually like having a budget and being financially constrained is important. If you think about billionaires who just can have whatever they want, it's hard for them to make sense and make meaning of their lives.

35:04It is important for us to say like, I'm constrained, but that means I have to choose what I value and I have to recognize what do I actually value. So I don't think we have to look at it as a negative thing, but our constraints are different from one another. And so sometimes when you see something that you're like, oh, her garden is so beautiful. Why can't I have the beautiful garden? Right. We're not seeing that like, yes, she can actually afford the gardener that comes twice a week and trims her weeds and that like replants the flowers with the season. And so often we aren't seeing that people's constraints differ from ours.

35:35I tell a story in the book about being like a brand new consultant fresh off of graduation. and to me, I felt like I was making a million bucks because it was the most money I'd ever made in my life. But I was living in an apartment far off, like 30 minutes from the city and had hand-me-down furniture. And I go to my friend's house and she's also a brand new consultant, same job. And I see that she's living in the loop in a high rise and she has this beautiful furniture. And I was like, what's going on? And she said her parents were paying her rent. It was like, oh, okay. We're not all facing the same constraints.

36:07And so that's another important point about comparison. But it's also really important to get very clear on what are the real constraints versus what are the have tos or the shoulds that we kind of build up and we structure our life around. Like for me, I would have said, well, my commute is a big constraint because it takes two and a half hours. But that was actually a choice. It was my choice of how to optimize given the real constraints that I faced in that it was like, all right, there's not a good of a job that's available in New York City. and I have family reasons for it being hard to be in Philadelphia, right?

36:43So what I take you through in the book is actually naming the real constraints, the real hard limits. Because sometimes we say, well, my son has to go to soccer practice 45 minutes away, but it's killing us. It's destroying our week so we can never have family dinner. And it's important to just slow down and say, what's the real constraint? The real constraint, we live here, that soccer club that we like is there. He likes soccer. These are the realities we're dealing with. But then we're still making a choice of how to optimize because sometimes that opens up that we might need to make different choices, especially in this period of life that I call the squeeze, which is when we're most constrained.

37:19It's when, you know, work investments are happening at the same time as child investments. Our kids are young and we're just busier than ever. And if you look in the book, there's a graph that literally shows a mountain of time use. You are most constrained in that period. So sometimes in that period, we have to say, all right, are there ways to change our choices to make it feel less constrained, which is like, maybe we actually need to live closer to the job in a smaller apartment instead of in the nice house with the lawn that I would like to have. Or maybe we need to live closer to my parents, even though I might not want to in the long term.

37:53Because sometimes you're building those constraints yourself because you have this mindset of this is the way it has to be. This is the way it should be. And so the book talks you through trying to find those levers to pull, if there are any, where you can switch from something feeling really tightly constrained, where you're feeling like smashed, to being able to say like, no, I am proactively making these choices. I am facing constraints, but I'm making these choices to kind of live my best life amid those constraints. There's also the constraint of thinking you can't afford something or have something that you want, like having somebody come clean your house once a month.

38:28Well, we can't afford that. Well, maybe you should go out to dinner two times less, whatever. You find the money because that's more important than something else. That's right. You just said it so well that sometimes what we think of as a constraint, it is a matter of priorities. And if we decide this is actually a priority to us, it is possible. And when you're in the squeeze, I do recommend using money to make time if it's possible. And with those things like outsourcing, one of the things I want everyone listening to notice is that probably everybody who's listening takes their car to a mechanic to get the oil changed instead of changing their oil themselves.

39:03So even very modest income households feel like we can afford a mechanic instead of me needing to spend two hours learning how to change my oil. But that's actually a mindset that says men's time has value. And therefore, for male coded tasks, it's worth it to pay an expert to do it. But I should be able to redecorate my laundry room. I should be able to organize the kids toys. I should be able to cook the healthy meal every night or I should be able to do this or that in the home. And that's where I say, again, we're still stuck in the 1970s where we sometimes don't recognize our time has value.

39:37And if it's worth it to hire a mechanic for 80 bucks, sometimes it may be worth it to hire an organizer for 80 bucks. And again, even when you feel financially constrained, because it's a matter of prioritizing and recognizing that your timing, your sanity does have value.

39:53Amy Wilson:This is something we talk a lot about in our lives, and it was very interesting to see how you approach it from a very data-driven point of view, but that aligning your values and what your actions are can be very, very hard as a parent. Because if we say our family value is everybody likes to say, I just want everyone to be happy and healthy. But we're getting in the way of our own happiness by driving to three different sports activities all day on Saturday and Sunday. But it's skipping this step where we sit down and we take a really hard look. It's like making a budget, right? The reason I don't like making a budget is because we don't have enough money to pay for the things we want.

40:38Amy Wilson:And so I want to skip the step where I investigate that because then I'm going to have to. But my husband and I have been recently concentrating much more on our budgeting. And one of the things he said pretty early on is we have a storage unit where I keep the holiday decorations because our storage in our house is extremely annoying. You have to crawl in on your hands and knees. And I said, as we were able to have a conversation about the budget, I'm not getting rid of that storage unit. I will stop eating before I get rid of it because you don't understand. I don't want to crawl into the scary dark crawl space to tug out Halloween decorations, but I like having the house decorated.

41:18Amy Wilson:That's getting in my, it's that step of having the conversation out loud of like, let me explain to you why this is a priority for me. my return on investment for that storage unit is hard for you to understand. But you can see it when we actually look at the problem. And that part is hard to do. I understand why it's hard to do. Yeah. And when the kids feel they have these memories like, oh, the house is decorated for Halloween. It looks this way. It's like that is enabled by those choices that you made. But it is taking that hard look to say with our time budget, are we spending our time budget on the things that bring us the most value as a family and as individuals.

41:57And that's why the analogy to budgeting is perfect, because one of the things that I recommend everybody listening do as a very first priority is to take your leisure time and whatever brings you the most joy seriously as important to fit into your time budget. Because when you read about personal finance, they'll often say, pay yourself first with money. And so put it towards your investment priorities before you pay everybody else. And with your time, we often spend our time on everybody else's needs and we don't leave any for the stuff that actually brings us the most value. And so I say, yeah, if whatever you say, like for family time, this is what brings us the most value.

42:34We actually need to block that out first. And then we can see if the three different sports practices and the different directions fit around that. Right. Or for me, if I say this is the thing that fills my cup up. And when I'm talking about this, I really mean something that serves you as the primary beneficiary. I don't mean baking cookies for my kid, right? Or with my kid. Like that's parenting. I mean, the thing that really fills you up, if that is never happening, if that's always the last priority, you need to re-budget your time because we are people too. We need our needs met and it's going to let you show up for the family.

43:11And so if you think of your time as a budget in the same way we think of our money as a budget. You want to align how you spend your time with your priorities and make the choices of, for example, outsourcing some things, for example, saying no to some things. Another thing I joke about is throwing out your house plants because sometimes we spend time on these time-consuming projects where we're like, oh, this actually is making me miserable. It's not giving me any happiness and putting a lot of time into it. And we've got to find ways to make space in our time budget for the things that really replenish us.

43:43What do you hope is the primary takeaway that the reader who knows she's stuck in a situation that's not working for her takes away from this book? If that is the person who's stuck, it's that something has to change. It's that you deserve change. It's that you being unhappy is enough to say that this isn't working and that things do need to change. And then I hope the secondary takeaway is that you can do it, that you have the skills and tools to make some of those changes, even when you're highly constrained. And so one of the examples I give of like, how can you think when you're very constrained and you say, look, I don't have the money to throw out the problem.

44:20Maybe I can't even get my partner to help, even though I talk about in the book ways to get your partner to step up more. What can you do? Well, I give an example of play, I'll clean your house with one of your girlfriends. Go over to her house, drink a glass of wine, you clean her house. It's so much easier to clean somebody else's mess than your own mess. I don't know why. It's like a psychological thing. And then the next night she comes over and your kids play because play dates are childcare, right? So the kids play together, you clean her house. The next night she comes over to your house, repeat, you clean your house.

44:49You both have clean houses and you spent two nights hanging out with your friends. So it's when you say my needs actually matter, then you start to get creative and figuring out ways to actually get what you need. But I think as moms, what ends up happening is we just keep going, going, going, and we stop being proactive about what we actually need. And it almost can feel disembodied. That's how I was in the Amtrak bathroom of like, oh, this is my life over there. And I'm over here wondering how this happened to me. And so I want women to really get back in the driver's seat of their own lives and feel like they are making the choices.

45:25They are steering the ship. I've mixed metaphors, but you get it. We've been talking to Dr. Corinne Lowe. Her book is called Having It All, What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. It's a bestseller. I think you understand why if you've listened to this episode. And we will put the link to buy having it all in the show notes for this episode. You can get it wherever you get books. Corinne, tell our listeners where else they can find you and your work. Well, thank you so much, Amy and Margaret. If you go to CorinneLowe.com, that's my website. And so if you are interested in the time tracker spreadsheet, that's available on my website to kind of keep track of how you and your partner spend your time.

46:00There's other resources there as well. And I'm on Instagram, CorinneLowePhD.

46:04Amy Wilson:You know we've been telling you all about time tracking. Here it is. It's true. Corinne, thank you so much. This was an excellent book, excellent conversation. Thank you. Thanks, Corinne.

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