Work-Family Balance: What Can We Learn from Policies Around the World?
Episode 60: Work-Family Balance: What Can We Learn from Policies Around the World? with Caitlyn Collins
In this conversation, Rachael interviews Caitlyn Collins, an associate professor of sociology and author, about work-family life and how policies affect families in different countries. They discuss the differences between the United States, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and other countries in terms of parental leave, childcare, and work-life balance.
Inside this episode:
The importance of collective responsibility and cultural attitudes towards caregiving.
How better policies can not only benefit families but also have economic and social benefits for society as a whole.
The importance of Caitlyn’s book, Making Motherhood Work, which talks all about different countries and their different work-family policies and the work-family conflict that mothers (and fathers!) experience.
Why is Sweden often held up as a paragon of work-family policy?
How division of labor and gender inequality in households differs in other countries.
Changing the language around paid leave from “luck” to “rights” and why this can be a powerful shift
Flexible work options for moms
The potential for policy changes at the federal level in the United States.
And so much more!
Mentioned in this episode:
Caitlyn’s Book: Making Motherhood Work
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Rachael is a mom of 3, founder of Hey, Sleepy Baby, and the host of this podcast.
Listen to the full episode
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Welcome to the podcast No One Told Us, where we tell the truth about parenting and
talk about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids. I'm your host, Rachael, and today I'm so excited to speak with Caitlyn Collins, an associate professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She's from Portland, Oregon, got her bachelor's from Whitman College and her PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She moved to St. Louis in 2016 and lives there with her partner and they're 22 -month -old Toddler! Wait, I didn't know that our kids are almost the exact same age.
Yes, my birthday, her birthday is July 10th.
Oh my gosh, okay, it's my favorite age. I can't wait to hear about this. Caitlyn's also a published author of the book Making Motherhood Work, How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. And this is how I was first introduced to Caitlyn, because I absolutely loved your episode on The Ezra Klein Show, and it just got me thinking, looking into your book, and I just knew I wanted to get you on this podcast because this is such a huge topic. So thanks so much for joining.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me today.
I mentioned I first kind of heard about you and your book through the episode on The Ezra Klein Show. I know you've made the rounds in podcasting. I think it's just such a huge topic, especially, I mean, I spend my days working and talking to mostly mothers, mostly primary caregivers. And there's a lot of stay at home moms. There's a lot of moms that work. There's a
lot of moms kind of in that in between of working from home or maybe doing some side projects while they're mothering. You know, sometimes we tend to glorify other places or other cultures. I know I do sometimes because living in America as a parent can feel really hard and we assume that other places have it all figured out.
Yep.
And I'd love to hear your perspective on whether or not that's true. And what kind of got you thinking about this in this specific way for your book?
Thank you. Yeah, so I guess the narrative arc for my own interest in topics of motherhood goes back way before I became a mother myself. And that's because I grew up with a working mom. And I opened the book by talking about my own mom's story, which is that she was a white upper middle class mom in the Pacific Northwest who had my little sister and me and she worked in corporate sales and marketing and she loved her job, but it demanded long hours. It was really meaningful and fulfilling for her, but it was also really exhausting. And she cobbled together what I think of as a really kind of patchwork set of solutions for child care for my sister and me and my parents got divorced when I was eight and then this work remained largely or solely on my mom's shoulders and so she was trying to navigate employment in motherhood as a single mom, you know, still working very long hours and she hit a breaking point after a few years of doing this as a single mom and she quit her very successful job to take a part -time job in consulting that had, you know, no
benefits and far less pay, but was way fewer hours and allowed her to effectively be a stay -at -home mom.
My sister and I were both in elementary school by this time and she would say that this is the best decision that she ever made and I hear that and yet watching my mom step away from a career that really meant a lot to her, I remembered thinking of that something was off there, right? Why couldn't she do both at the same time? And it became clear as I became a teenager, a young woman, and then an adult myself that a lot of women are making decisions like this when they have children because they're forced out of full and fulfilling jobs, especially for advantaged folks.
And there's something profoundly unfair about that in my opinion. And the truth is
that it's mostly moms who are stepping away from those jobs. And I spent some time
abroad after graduating undergrad and it became so obvious to me that things looked
different elsewhere, as you just pointed out. And not necessarily that it was infinitely easier or better, but it was very different, right? I taught English in Spain for a year, I lived in Germany for a while and was like, okay, moms are doing this differently. And it's because things look different, both culturally and politically. And what does that look like?
And when I became a PhD student in graduate school working to become a professor, I knew that this topic of women's rights in the workplace and in family life is where I wanted to kind of dedicate my life's work inspired by my own mom's story and that again was the foundation for this project interviewing working mothers in Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the United
States about how they navigate employment and caregiving in these four places with
very different public policies and also very different cultural attitudes about men
and women and work and family and what moms and dads can and also should do. And
I say should with quotation marks, right? Because we have very gendered ideas about who should be working, who should be caring for kids. And it looks really different across these four countries.
That's so interesting. And I definitely wanna dive into the countries and why you decided to choose the countries that you did and what you found. as you were talking, I was thinking about, there's all these like mom wars on the internet, you know, like formula versus breast milk, sleep training versus co-sleeping, like there's all of these dichotomies and one that comes up so often is the stay at home mom versus working mom. And I think so many of us were maybe lied to as we were growing up, I'm a millennial and I remember just hearing all
the time, women can do everything, you can have it all.
You can you know be a mom and have this high -powered career and I don't know about other people, but I feel very dupe. Even though I do have kids and a great career I have so much support and I have so much privilege to be able to make that my reality, a lot of people if not most people don't have those same resources and opportunities and you sometimes do
feel like you have to choose between being a mom and being someone who works outside of the home for pay. So I'm so glad that you wrote this book to kind of speak to all of the barriers, right? And all of those things that we don't necessarily think about or talk about out loud all the time.
Thinking about the book, I'd first just just kind of love to hear how you chose the countries that you're going to look at. So what were the criteria that you were looking for? Or
was it just countries that were personally interesting to you.
Yeah, those who are policy nerds like me will not be surprised by these choices in
countries, but everyday people who don't spend all their waking hours reading about
this might be surprised. So the way sociologists think about kind of our countries is to think of what we call welfare states. How are they providing for their citizens, right? And there are roughly four or so different kind of groups or categories of welfare states that we think about in the kind of wealthy western industrialized world.
And I chose one country from each of these categories that is very often held up as sort of an archetype or an ideal typical example of their respective welfare states. So Sweden, for example, is what, again, as policy nerds and sociologists refer to as a social democratic welfare state where the state intervenes intentionally in the market to buffer citizens from uncertainty to create a really robust social safety net, to protect and support citizens, and also to buffer them from uncertainty in general, and to advance the goal of equality. That welfare
state looks very different than the welfare states of the other countries, so Germany is a what we call conservative welfare state, Italy is what we call a to familialist state, it really relies on the family to support the well -being of its citizens and then the US is what we call a liberal welfare state or some folks would argue a neoliberal welfare state that really suggests that adults turn to the market to meet their needs. The expectation is that adults are working for pay mostly full time and that they turn to the market to meet their needs.
So, you know, you're having a problem getting your laundry done, pay for someone to do it. You're having a hard time with childcare, hire someone to do it, right? You need work family policy supports like paid parental leave, vacation and sick days. Go find an employer who
has those available, right? It's this idea that the market is where you find your needs met is very different than these other European countries. So that's why I selected the four.
Okay, interesting. And so of all Westernized countries, the US ranks dead last, I believe, for work -family policies, what did you find these other countries you looked at are doing differently when it comes to their policies and providing their citizens with more of a work -life balance?
Oh gosh, Rachael, these other countries are just doing things so differently than we
are. We're really light years behind these other countries and to me this is like
an international embarrassment, right? The US likes to think of itself as this world
leader in innovation, creativity, right, diversity, and yet we are failing American
families and in particular American women because they bear the brunt of child
-rearing responsibilities today by not offering these sorts of family policy supports.
So Sweden is often held up as the paragon of work -family policies. So let me talk
you through their policies for parental leave. For example, parents get 480 days of
paid parental leave. 480 days of paid parental leave.
My eyes just rolled so far back in my head for those who are only listening, yeah.
In a country that has no paid days whatsoever, that's absolutely shocking. Those days are paid out at 80 % of your wages and most employers, as a result of union collective bargaining agreements, actually top it up to 90 or 100 % so you're not missing out on any of your pay
when you take those days. And importantly, those days can be used flexibly anytime
until your child is eight years old.
So imagine in the US if you have a six year old and you've saved some days and you wanna go on vacation or you wanna work four days a week for the summer when they're out or something, you can use parental leave days then, right? For years after your children are born. To me, that's absolutely astonishing, right?
Right? Must be so useful. I mean, I'm just thinking back to not even that old, but my daughter started preschool around age three. How nice would it have been to have like a week or two where we were available for her for that huge transition and not rushing her out to this huge
change of starting a new school and being separated from us for the first time 'cause we had to get to work. Like that's just-- -
Exactly. - It just makes sense. It just makes sense. - It just makes sense, you're right, exactly.
So paid maternity leave and paternity leave, it's available if you're in a different gender couple, you can split the 480 days between the two of you. If you're a single parent, you get all of those days. So I find that fabulous. You also don't have to be legally married to get them. So if you're just two parents who had a kid together, you get those days, which I think is very cool.
What about same -sex couples, same thing?
Exactly, yep, same deal. deal. Childcare, right? Children have a legal right to a spot in a daycare facility starting at the age of one. And these are world renowned as kind of the best quality early childhood education and care facilities in the world. To be a teacher there, you have to have at least a bachelor's degree in early childhood education in order to work there. You know, these are all over the place. You walk around neighborhoods and you see these little daycares close by to folks' houses. So the idea that you're not schlepping your kid all the way across town is really desirable.
And the important thing here, it not only beyond the quality… is the cost, right? So it's heavily subsidized such that parents are not supposed to pay more than 3 % of their household income for their child's daycare. And for low income families, they pay nothing at all. But for the very wealthiest families in Sweden.. Gosh, when I say this figure, American families, parents eyes, I'm going to brace myself out of their heads, right? Then for the most expensive
families to send their children to full time daycare, it's about 175 US dollars a month.
A month, a month, a month. Yeah, wait a second. Okay. Okay. I, I need a minute to let that sink in because I actually left my job. I was a teacher before I did this and one of the wealthiest counties in California, if not the country, I was in Marin County. This was 2019 and I was paying 1800 a month for one of my kids and then I had a second. I couldn't go back to work.
I was like, my literally my entire take home paycheck would have gone to child care for both of them. So I left. Also, it was COVID. So that's like a whole other story, but that is absolutely insane that it's less than 200 a month a month. And I was paying nearly 2000 per kid.
Exactly. Wow. So that alone changes family's financial circumstances dramatically. And again, it's free for low income parents. And when you have another child, It's less, proportionally less. So it's not 175 a month each, right? It's less money with the idea that it shouldn't then cost double for the next child up, right? 'Cause they understand the parents are under financial pressure. So childcare is another huge source of support in a country like this. They also
have abundant paid vacation and sick days. Rachael, if you get sick while you're on vacation, you get your vacation days back because they're like, well, you didn't enjoy it.
Employers usually pay what's called a vacation bonus, which is the extra money you get when you take vacation to help you pay for your vacation. These are just ways of thinking about supporting families that's so radically different from how we think of them here in the U .S. that part of the reason I wrote this book is that I wanted folks to be able to envision a world in which these are considered completely normal.
And like this just shows us that it's possible right so what are these we're gonna take a quick break when we come back I want to know what are these countries doing so differently to make that type of policy possible and why are we not doing that we'll be right back.
So we are back and my jaw is now off of the floor and I've processed a little bit, but we now see like these things are possible, right? It's possible to treat families with dignity and respect and to give them resources that they need to live happy, healthy lives and to provide for their families and their children. What are they doing so differently? Are they just paying millions of dollars of taxes? Like how are they making these policies possible and why are we not?
Why are we not? That's the question of the hour, isn't it? So in my book, I write about the
reality that they treat one another differently as citizens. They think that child rearing is a collective responsibility rather than a private personal individual responsibility. You often hear people in the US comparing having kids to like adopting a pet, like a dog, right? Like, oh, I'm not paying for your dog's kibble. So what's the deal here? Why would I be contributing to tax dollars of my own to help support your child's well -being and growth?
Well, the truth, of course, is that children and dogs are not equivalent. Children become our future tax payers, workers, neighbors, community members, citizens, in a way that dogs certainly do not, right? So the comparison to me feels really problematic. And even before I
had kids, I was so happy to pay taxes knowing that this was going to support the well -being of my neighborhood in my community, right? And the truth is, of course, that our tax money in the U .S., although it looks so different than these other countries, our tax money is already going to support other families, right?
We have a public education system that does provide public schooling for children ages 5 to
18 in K through 12 schools. So why in the world don't we think that the same logic applies to the first five years of children's lives. To me, we know the research shows over and over and over again that these are the five most critical years of a person's life, and these are the five years where we provide nothing to families to support their children and to help them care for them, right?
So to me, this idea that child rearing is parents' own job all by themselves is truly at the heart of why we have so few policy supports and these other countries, again, think of this as a collective responsibility and that cultural belief gets to the heart of, I think, these policy differences and we have to shift that philosophy if we want to see traction on the policy front here in the US.
Yeah, it is definitely such a cultural thing. I was actually, I post on TikTok sometimes against my better judgment, but I posted something because there were so many horrible comments about not really this exact idea, but actually this exact idea, where it's like this
individualistic versus collectivist way of thinking where people are, you know, there are plenty of people that are child -free by choice, people that are not interested in becoming parents themselves, which is absolutely fine, of course. But they then take that a little bit farther and say, "I'm not responsible for your kid. "I don't want them in I don't want to see them like they just want the world to be free of children and that is such a problem. And I don't think most people feel that way, But you can see how that idea is starting to kind of permeate our
society where there's no Collectivist thinking, there's no community care. People are
really just out for themselves And they don't Understands that the good of all of
us means the good for all of us, right?
What are the benefits then? What are these countries seeing as far as mental health? Are people having more children? Like how are these policies helping their community or are they?
Oh my gosh. I mean, it's so straightforward, right? You know, we see in the United States, yeah, let me just talk about this context and then make a comparison to these other
countries here in the US. When we do invest in early childhood education and care
for kids ages 0 to 5 in the U .S. when we see pilot programs that have done this or
counties for example or cities that have universal pre -K that they funded through
tax dollars, tax money, they see enormous financial benefits to that community long
term.
So the research at the moment shows that for every one dollar you invest in zero to five early childhood education and care, you save $13 later in that child's life on services that they simply don't need because they got adequate care early on, right? So even if you don't think of this as a, from a kind of an emotional perspective, a feminist perspective, whatever, an ethical perspective, there's a business case, like a financial and obvious economic is to be made for these policies, right?
So, you know, put aside, I think we should take care of one another on a fundamental level. So that's my pitch. But, you know, if that's not the pitch that sells you, let it be this economic one, that there's just a very straightforward financial argument to be made for supporting children early in their lives. And in these other countries, of course, they already have received these
economic benefits because they are investing heavily in early childhood education and
care. So their prison systems look entirely different. Their social services, their need for mental health counselors and social workers and stuff are infinitely less than ours here in the United States. They also have highly subsidized, you know, universal healthcare and college, right? So for free. So that means that they have way more people going to school, completing school, going on to receive higher education, which means their whole population is more highly educated, right?
They have folks who are more, right? Like emotionally and mentally stable and healthy and
mature because they receive really good care throughout their whole lives. Like don't
we all need and deserve that? All of us need and deserve high quality care. Why in the world don't we want that for everyone around us? I hear you that that is lacking here in the U .S. And then I try to put my, you know, compassionate hat on and think to myself that we're also living in some really economically precarious times when healthcare and education, higher education are not free and universal, I totally understand the idea. I have a daughter myself, right? Of being like, I gotta pay for her childcare and it's $25 ,000 a year. One day she's gonna need to go to college and that's gonna be hundreds of thousands of dollars. If a health
crisis hits my partner or me or my child, we might be out a lot of money.
So the idea that you want to preserve financial well -being for your own family because no one else is looking out for them, that makes a lot of sense to me. Like I get that, I want to extend compassion to people whose attitude falls along those lines because that makes all
the sense in the world to me. But to my way of thinking, if childcare were highly subsidized, if healthcare were highly subsidized, if higher education were highly subsidized, if all of us had the opportunity to access what I think of as is that should be a right rather than a privilege, our world would look so different and so much better. And that framing in the way we talk about these policies and benefits is really important. And that's part of why I wrote this book and was on the Ezra Klein podcast and why I wanted to talk to you, Rachael, is because I think we need to shift our language to stop thinking about feeling lucky and grateful to receive
support even if it's tiny from our employers, like 10 days of paid vacation a year, Right?
To be like, actually, we all deserve time to rest and recuperate from paid work. And it does make us more productive employees when we return to our jobs, when we've taken a bit of time away. But rather than thinking of that as luck or privilege or gratitude, let's think of those as a right that we deserve, right, as Americans. And when we think of paid leave, of high quality child care that's actually affordable as our right rather than as our privilege, I think we're gonna finally get the traction we need to see these policies passed at the federal level.
And that's how European moms talk to me constantly about these policies. And they actually kind of laugh when I said, like, oh, American moms talk about how lucky they are to have six weeks of parental leave. And first, their jaws fall open that they only get, you know, some women only get six weeks of paid leave. And the second then is they're like, but that's your right, right? It's your right to spend time with your baby after your baby is born, why would you be lucky to have that? They think of it as a fundamental right. And we never talk about these things in the U .S. that way. And I think if we did, we would be mad. And we would channel all that anger in really righteous ways that could actually bring about some policy
change that I think we all need and deserve.
For sure, yeah. I was at a baby shower actually this past weekend and everybody was talking about their leaves. And oh, how much do you get? Oh, how much do you get? And the most anybody said was 16 weeks and they were like, oh, that's great. And, you know, they said exactly what you just said, like, yeah, it's good, I'm lucky. And I'm just like, yeah.
And in a world where no one has any federal right to leave, I understand feeling lucky, right? I get that completely. But we should all have access to it. So rather than it being a matter of luck in a world that's deeply socioeconomically unequal, and only folks who are advantaged to work for employers that volunteer to offer it, which is great. I mean, more power to them. What about all the folks who don't work for companies like that who also desperately need to leave and also don't have the financial resources to fall back on for unpaid time or work for the kinds of companies where FMLA applies to them?
So to me, moving away from this language of luck is a really important first step toward thinking about how we can get these policy supports for all of us. And also 16 weeks is nothing. What do you think? Oh my gosh. A little four -month -old baby, right? Let alone--
Honestly, it's like the worst time. It's the worst time to go back. Four months is such a trainwreck for so many people. And if you have a newborn, just block your ears. I'm sorry, pretend I didn't say that. But it's such a tough time. And in a way, it's also when you're kind of getting in a groove, and then you have to leave your baby. And it's so, so heartbreaking, especially if you don't have that quality care that you feel really great about, right?
Oh, it's, yeah, it's just so heartbreaking. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that we're obviously in the midst of an election cycle. I'd kind of love to hear your thoughts on policies that might make their way towards the federal level from either candidate, I mean. -
Sure, I mean, I could talk about this all day, gladly. I think, you know, there has been a lot of traction in recent years and decades as a result of a lot of bipartisan organizing for Universal Pre -K, which I think is really, really exciting. We've also seen on the ground evidence of how these sorts of Universal Pre -K programs are working in lots of municipalities across the country. So, Washington, D.C., for example, has universal pre -K, and it's fabulous. Families love it, and it's working really well for children. I think that we're starting to kind of see the traction we need to see that pass to the federal level, which is so exciting. So, you know, that would mean that three and four -year -olds also have access to high -quality early childhood education, just like kiddos do starting in kindergarten again using that same logic that you know we all benefit when children are raised well I think that argument now has the kind of bipartisan support that we need which I think is lovely.
I also think paid family leave, paid family and medical leave is right there and it was really close in the Build Back Better Act and was nixed at the last moment which was really unfortunate but I think we're getting close on that front too which feels really exciting. The vast majority of Americans are in favor of us having paid family medical leave. I imagine when we get it, it will start out something pretty minimal like six weeks. And my hope right is that once we get it, and folks see that, you know, our whole nation didn't fall apart when parents spent a bit of time with their children early on that workplaces didn't collapse, that employers didn't, you know, companies didn't go under. We can expand it, right, to show like, okay, we went gone from zero to six weeks, how about six to 12, right?
Let's start expanding from there. I think of these as stepping stones to the kind of world that we want to to see. And so we can envision it when we've got a little bit of it. And it's hard to
envision when we get none of it right now, right? So to meet Universal Pre -K and paid family medical leave are two most promising policy options. And the Harris -Wall's ticket has a lot more ideas for supporting families than the alternative.
Yes, they do. We're going to be right back and I would love to chat a little bit more about the division of labor and gender inequality. We'll be right back.
Caitlyn, in your book, you also talk a lot about the different ways that we kind of divide the load, the mental load, the labor load in our households, and how that might be a little bit different to other countries. Can you talk a little bit about why you wanted to look at that?
Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm a sociologist, so I'm really interested in thinking about the structures that influence the ways that individuals make decisions about things, right? And US is so focused on the individual that we don't spend much time thinking about these larger social structures, but I'm really interested in how social policy and culture shape these very intimate ways of living our lives in our homes, behind closed doors that we often don't see, right? And we don't think about these nebulous structures as really playing a role in our daily
lives, or we don't want to think about them.
But the truth is, of course, that they that they do. So let's go back to Sweden, right? Sweden is a country that has very intentionally their government has intertwined their labor policy with their family policy and gender policy. So they are very explicitly oriented toward the goal
of gender equality as a society. The Swedish government at a federal level has in fact explicitly stated that they consider themselves a feminist government. Can you even imagine?
No, I love that. The term like that here in the United States." No, that would cause like a civil war. Exactly, exactly. So So feminist government means a place that intentionally puts their money where their mouth is and tries to advance the cause of gender equality with the lever of policy. So paid parental leave is one example. They were the first country in 1974 that offered paid parental leave to both parents, to men and women. They had had paid leave for women available for decades, but as a result, again, of organizing, of social movement
organizing, they passed paid parental leave from men too, and they economically incentivized them to take it, right?
So it was like, well, I could go back to work as soon as my kid was born, or I could stay home and get paid for it. Why would I not? And really within virtually a generation, all men were expected to stay at home such that you would seem like something was wrong with you if you didn't take time off after your kiddo was born. And the truth is in Sweden that women still take more days than men do. It's not like it's perfect there yet, but there is absolutely a norm of equal involvement in family life on the part of men and women to the point that, you know, when I was doing interviews in Stockholm and, you know, just like in my normal social life chatting with folks at barbecues or whatever, you know, I'd ask men with kids like I'd say to them, for example, I think it's so cool that I see men everywhere out in public with their kids.
And I really love this kind of duty or obligation or sense of responsibility that men feel
to be equally involved in family life. And men would look at me kind of puzzled or confused and interrupt me often and be like, "Duty? No, obligation. That's not it. I have a right to spend time with my child. Of course, I want to be involved in their life." And to me, this is a fascinating way that Sweden has kind of in the gender script on what it means to be a good man or a good father. And it means to participate equally at home, right?
That's a point of pride that they participate and know their child's preferences, personalities, desires, wants, needs, just like their mom does, right? Like what goes in the diaper bag
before you leave the house? Well, men know the answer to that question because they stayed home too. They've been solo parenting while their partner worked, right, when they went back to work, often that paid parental leave is staggered so that parents overlap for a bit, but also both have time just to themselves caring for the child and that there are so many benefits that research has documented long term.
But that's one small example of how I see these other countries shifting the load to be more egalitarian between men and women such that it doesn't fall solely on women's shoulders. And I think that is so so vital and it's something that's entirely possible here and I think we can use policy and culture as a lever to help encourage and incentivize men to do more to try and equalize that in the home.
I forget what study it was but I think there was something done about having partners stay home and how drastically it improved postpartum mental health and yes there are so many benefits it's so funny that they looked at you so confused too 'cause my husband, I mean, we're in San Francisco. We're in a very progressive city. And my husband is a stay -at -home dad. He takes our daughter out and he just gets treated like an absolute hero.
Super dad. Or like a unicorn. - Yeah, no, but like he's the only dad. He's the only male at most playgrounds. It's like a few stay -at -home moms, mostly nannies. It's just so funny to me. And you're right, like we could do it so differently. It's almost like we're actively choosing not to, or
like our government is choosing for us, I guess, to not. But I love the piece too about the economic incentive because I've talked to parents in my community before and asked them like, you know, did your partners stay home and did they take any leave? And a lot of them said, well, they had it available but they didn't take it because they thought they'd be penalized at work. They would miss out on opportunities or promotions and it just wasn't worth it. And they're almost looked at like, oh, you're gonna take a vacation. "Oh, you're gonna take time off?" And it's frowned upon, like, "Oh, okay, I guess." Instead of, like you mentioned, this right that they have to be with their newborn baby and to support their partner who has
just given birth. So I'm really glad that you brought that up.
Exactly, right, and in a place like Sweden, part of what makes this possible is that all parents do this. It's not just some, it's not just, not just progressive liberal parents or whatever, it's everyone. So I interviewed an emergency room nurse, for example, who was like, "Oh, the surgeon that I work with a lot, he just got back from an 11-month leave with his second child." Right? Can you imagine a surgeon in the United States taking 11 months off? It just feels laughable here. But to her, she saw me literally laugh after she said that out loud. And she was like, normal here. That's normal.
And that phrase just spoke volumes to me, right, about that just being normative. It was the norm for parents, even in positions of power in the workplace, like a surgeon, right, or managers to take this time and they role model to others
that it's completely socially acceptable to take this time. So it's not just that the policies are available. It's that there's also support for actually taking advantage of them. And that's a big problem in the U .S. right now that people have access.
Some people have, in advantage circumstances, tend to have more access to these policies than lower income folks. But even though they have access, that doesn't necessarily mean they feel comfortable taking it. So that cultural piece of puzzle is really important here too.
Yeah, peer pressure can really help a lot. Outside of the parental leave policies, how are other countries doing it when it comes splitting just the everyday child care stuff. I think here a lot of the, we call it the mental load or the invisible load, a lot of it still falls to the mother or the
birthing parent. Is it still similar in other places? I think a lot of times people just assume that it's like our natural role as women or as mothers, like we're just better at it. We're just more nurturing. We're just better at multitasking. So we just naturally do it all. Is that true, or have other countries figured out a way for everybody to share the load equally?
Well, so I'm a gender scholar, right? And I teach my kids and my kids, I shouldn't call them kids, my college students in my gender and society class. We deconstruct these ideas that there's these deeply genetic bases or biological bases for this division of labor. We aren't apes living in trees anymore. Like, you know, I've had people be like, oh, You know, women, they can see dirt more easily around the house because they used to pick berries, you know, and men were looking at bison trying to hunt them. And so that's why they don't see mess around the house. And I'm like, that's a hilarious joke and such a pathetic excuse not to assume that men are more capable around the house, right?
We have to expect more from the men in our lives. We have to expect more from them. They are capable. So many of the women that I know who will say like, "Oh, he can't handle the laundry well, right? He'll shrink stuff. He'll dye it pink." In the workplace, these are people who are leading big teams of people who are project managers who are using the sorts of skills in the workplace that are completely apt for managing a household. And so I don't think that men are malevolently shirking duties being like, "Haha, I'm going to put all of this on my partner." I think it's There is a what sociologists call learned helplessness, right?
It's like, well, you're better at it than me. So of course you'll pick it on. And a lot of research has shown that we tend to talk about personality, right? We won't necessarily say, oh, that's women's jobs and men's jobs because we tend to see these days in contemporary era that that's maybe not the most reasonable argument. So we'll start talking about people's personalities, right? Well, it's just my skill set, right? Like I just am more type A, right? Like, oh, I'm the list maker in our household. I do this. I am just as guilty of this as my friends are in our household. And my partner and I have to have really explicit conversations that's like, hold on a second.
Actually, at work, you do manage intense to -do lists on a regular basis, so why don't you be in charge of this for our kiddo, for example? And having very regular check -ins, I think, is one thing that some parents in these European countries, especially Sweden, I should say, said was really helpful. So one mom gave me the example of feeling like she had kind of unconsciously started doing more around the house and she was feeling kind of resentful about it. And it came up in a conversation she and her partner had. And so he agreed to take on the after dinner kitchen cleaning and reset for the next day. That was his like way of making things more equal was that he was like, okay, I'm gonna do the kitchen. I'm gonna reset after dinner and set us up, you know, So that when we walk in in the mornings, things are back to square one.
And that was their way of kind of renegotiating a more equal division of labor. And I thought that was such a helpful example, which was like, talk about it. Talk about it together. It wasn't intentional on his part that she was starting to do more. It just kind of slipped and slid into that new norm and talking about it really helped. I will say in all of these countries, there tends to continue to be the cultural norm that women are quote -unquote better at, more predisposed to knowing how to care give and manage a home. And of course, when you think back to the fact that we start training little girls, how to do these things from the youngest ages in a way we do not train little boys, we have to think about this cultural piece and socialization as being central here, right?
The number of people who I hear criticizing little boys for playing with dolls. When I see a little boy with a doll, it like makes my heart so happy, right?
I know same. - We have to start thinking about this at young ages too, and not just being confused why men in adulthood when they're partnered to women and starting a home and a family don't know how to do this stuff. It's like, well, did you ever teach them? Who ever
taught them what to do in the home? They have to learn just like women do. And so
this starts with our children, I think.
Yeah, for sure. I remember when my son was little, I was so afraid of this. I was like, no, I need to raise him to be a good man and a good partner and a feminist. I think I bought him a doll before I ever bought him a truck. And, you know, he ended up being very much more into
trucks than dolls, but I still tried my best. You know, now we have two girls and we try so hard to treat them all the same and to expect the same out of all of them.
And personality definitely does play a role. But yeah, I think it's, it's so important to not let those gender roles seep in, even though it's so hard. I was raised in like a very traditional gender role home, like my dad went to work, my mom was a stay -at -home mom and took care of all of that stuff. And so my husband makes fun of me because he was raised by a single mom who did everything. He calls me out sometimes like, "Oh, are you gonna take the trash out?" Or, "Is that a man's job?"
And so I-- - This feels so good to just call it out, right? I know it does and especially when he does it, not in front of our kids necessarily, but when he gently kind of teases me or things like that in front of them or he lets them see he's the one that does all of the laundry and all of the dishes and stuff. So to our kids, like that's just what's gonna be so normal and I'm so glad for that 'cause they're gonna see us both just kind of doing what needs to be done.
So what about for working moms in other countries? Is it split the same or are there not
as many stay -at -home moms in other countries because of these types of policies and
things?
Good question. So it depends on the country, right? In Sweden, virtually everyone works. There aren't, there's no such thing as stay -at -home moms. Like they don't have a term in the Swedish language for stay -at -home mom. Like I would ask them that and they'd be like, "I know what you're talking about. Like I've heard of that, but do you know anyone, like I'd say, do you know anyone in any of your networks, right? Like your friends, your family, relatives, coworkers, your partner's coworkers, anybody, and they're like, I interviewed two out of 25 women who knew someone. And it was because they were really wealthy.
And they said here in Sweden, you would have to be very religious or very wealthy.
'Cause it's an expensive place to live, right? Like I would imagine that it's expensive to live there, especially with all of these policies.
Yeah, so, you know, most folks would say like, well, we need two incomes, but also that's just what you do as an adult. You have a job and you have children, right? So almost everybody who is an adult in Sweden has children and has a job, and that's just the way of things. They don't really have a cultural comparison to stay -at -home parents, it's just not a thing. There's not a reference category, we call it, right, to compare their decision -making to, which is
so different. And then in a place like Germany, you have a lot of part -time working moms.
There's a wide variety of white -collar jobs that you can do part -time, which absolutely fascinates me. I think a lot of parents would love to work part -time, right? Like, if I could do my job as a professor, like 30 hours a week, I would be thrilled. That just sounds really nice to me. Like, six hours a day, come in at nine, leave at three, right? Like, that-- - Perfect. - Yeah, yes.
Like, I love my job, but I also love spending time with my child. I do not want to be with my child all day either, right?
Right, right. - I don't want to do my child 10 hours a day either. Right, there is a balance here. And I think Germany has really found one avenue of opening up more possibilities for combining employment and caregiving by providing a lot of part -time, high -quality jobs
for educated workers, right? Often in the US, if you can find part -time work, it's because it's like gig work or contingent work. It's flexible because you're an Uber driver or you are doing Grubhub, right? Like those are not good quality jobs with benefits and stability. They're actually really precarious jobs. And so in Germany, you know, I interviewed someone who was a lawyer who worked a part -time job. They job shared a law position.
Even your face now, now Rachael, I wish your listeners could see it because, you know, it's shocking to think about a law career part time.
That blows my mind.
But why not? - And so many people would take advantage of that. - Exactly, and in a place like Germany, what was fascinating is that I interviewed women whose partners did the same. They both worked 30 hours a week.
Oh wow. So splitting the childcare and the house stuff is probably a lot less stressful when you have all those hours in the day. Exactly. So the short answer here is that there are cultural
possibilities that feel so foreign to us in the US, but they're actually entirely normal elsewhere. And so we need to kind of recalibrate what's considered possible here for us to be more creative and imaginative in thinking about this different, better world we want for ourselves and our families.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing all of this. It's been absolutely fascinating. Again, I wish people could have seen my face throughout this chat because my eyes were bulging, my jaw was on the floor, these things shouldn't be shocking, right? They should be things that all
of us have the right to and access to. I'd love to end on a personal note though, I love to ask fellow parents, what is something that you wish you knew before becoming a parent that no one told you?
Well, it's funny to be a researcher of parenthood because I've spent so much time talking to parents and reading about parenthood that I feel like I was pretty darn prepared compared to most folks walking into this world. But something that has stuck with me when folks have asked me this question since having my daughter is that, gosh, the highs and lows will be more extreme than you are used to in your life prior to parenthood, that the highs are just the most wonderful, meaningful source of elation and joy to watch my daughter learn a new word or pick up a new skill just spontaneously out of nowhere, just brings me the kind of deep joy that I didn't know was possible in the world.
And conversely, the lows are in the same day, right? 30 minutes after that new word, she just busted out, we'll be so low, I might be sitting on the floor next to her crib crying because I cannot get her to sleep. And that roller coaster is just, it is so real and intense and it is just
part of the journey, but to know that that's normal and that other people are going through the roller coaster within the span of one hour, I think would help me know that that's also normal, right?
That I could have that extreme high and extreme low in a short period of time just to me as part of what it means to be a parent. So I guess I mentioned that with compassion to your listeners who are embarking on this journey too is that that's all so normal and understandable.
Yeah, it's It's a rollercoaster for sure. Thank you so so much, Caitlyn, for chatting with us today.
Where can listeners find your book? Because it is such a fascinating topic. I'm sure everyone's going to want to go grab it.
Oh, thanks. Anywhere you buy your books, you can buy Making Motherhood Work. It came out in 2019 with Princeton Press. You can find it on bookshop .org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever. Please do read and reach out to me if I can be of help to any of you listeners.
Perfect. Thank you So much, have a great rest of your day.
Thanks, you too.
