Podcast Episode 252: Mama’s Mental Gymnastics: Why Dads Need to Stop Sitting in the Stands Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Paige Connell: like parental leave or equity in the home and men will often say, well, I’m the provider. That’s my job. And first off, I think that’s such an outdated viewpoint because most women work and earn money and fewer and fewer men are breadwinners, right?

Like, that’s just going to be a tired argument really soon. 

It’s not as if women are not money wise. They understand how to spend money. They understand how to make money. They understand how to budget. Like women know how to, use money effectively, but there’s this narrative that 

men will say, well, I earn more. Therefore I don’t need to participate at home you should stay home when we have kids. Or you’ll see those, Tik TOKs that are like, if my wife made 300, then sure, I’d be a stay at home dad.

And it’s like, well, why are moms being asked to be stay at home moms when their partner makes 60 K? What is the difference? Like, why is his money quote unquote goes further than her money does. Right. When in reality, it’s all the same. 

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I am your host JoAnn Crohn, here with the amazing Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Why, hello, hello, everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: we’re talking about mental load today and it’s not just mental load, it is really like how do we make people more aware of What women are expected to do and what men are expected to do

Brie Tucker: Right, right. so much complaint in society against like women complaining too much. And there is so much going on just in general with the whole traditional or the trad way of living Versus like non. I mean that’s a big hot topic. if you go on social media these days There’s a big people feel very strongly one way or another but I feel like sometimes they’re missing the whole point

JoAnn Crohn: Yes, they are. And so we have a amazing guest today. I follow her TikTok and I was so delighted to get to meet her and actually talk in real time. It is Paige Connell. You might know her as she’s a page turner on TikTok and Instagram. She’s a working mom four and a content creator who brings awareness to the mental load of motherhood and advocates for equitable marriages. Paige is also an advocate for affordable childcare. She’s been featured in scary mommy, the today’s show at Bloomberg and more. Paige helps mothers put words to their lived experiences so that they can strive for more equitable and happy relationships all in line with us here at no guilt mom,

Brie Tucker: That’s gonna say you can’t get much more than that Paige. 

JoAnn Crohn: can’t get much more than that. And before we get into our conversation with Paige, can you take a few seconds? Can you give us a review on the podcast? We would so appreciate it. those reviews, not only did they just light us up, podcast gets more women who need it.

So if you could please take a quick second for the review. We will love you forever. We really do. We read all the reviews, Brie. And we pass them along in our company. Yeah, we’re very excited every time a review comes in. So if you want to light us up today, please leave us a review. And without any more, here is Paige. 

Page, it is so good to see you because I get to see you online all the time and all of your reels and your TikToks, so it’s fabulous to meet you kind of in person, like screens in person.

Paige Connell: Yeah, live, right? It’s real connection. Yeah, 

JoAnn Crohn: I could talk to you and you could talk to me back right here without the Instagram comments or the like anything in between. So welcome to the podcast.

Brie Tucker: this is the new in real life. Like post COVID, this is how it is, man. being actual and live, live person. It’s overrated. It’s overrated.

Paige Connell: I mean, I, I miss it. I work from home, so I’d say like 90 percent of my, adult interactions are online these days, which is a bummer sometimes. I’m like, I would like to see a human today. That’d be nice.

Brie Tucker: It can be, well, we’re going 

JoAnn Crohn: kind of a 

Brie Tucker: We are gonna get to see each other in person though very soon. by the time this episode airs, we’ll be in person.

Paige Connell: Oh, yay. 

JoAnn Crohn: I get the whole, wanting to see other humans. I did a, talk at ASU here, two days ago. And it was supposed to be to women entrepreneurs. talking about, like, you know, being an entrepreneur and everything like that. And I was like, yes! I get to go see people in person! One student was there live. Everybody else was joining via Zoom. And I’m like, oh, this is so like, yeah, it wasn’t on the main campus. It was on like the West campus, which is much, much smaller. 

But I get the whole thing. Paige, I need to tell you how we found you because we found you in a very interesting way. it was actually, we have a company of people We call two and a half because one of our people’s part time Christina and Christina found your video talking about summer camp like keeping the mental load in terms of like what shirts they have to wear on which day can’t remember all the other details you went in and that’s was my first introduction to you and since then I have followed you a ton and talking seeing you talk about mental load and like the disparity about what men are expected of and what women are expected of. So I’m curious, like, how did you start doing this?

Paige Connell: it was by accident. I was living it, right? I think I was living it. I became a mom right before the pandemic, and now have four kids. And so I feel like I came out of that period of time And my eyes opened up and I was like, whoa, these last three years went by in a blur and now I am the primary parent.

I’m doing the bulk of the domestic labor. I’m working full time. I am carrying the mental load. I am tapped out, right? Like I, I just one day as a mom, I came to the realization of what had happened to me over those three years that we were in this weird, fake world, right. That we were living in.

And I started working through it in my own life and talking about the mental load and domestic labor with my partner and equity and all of these things. this was a conversation that was happening in my home. And it just happened to coincide with the fact that I work with a company or in a company where we utilize TikTok for marketing and we were learning about TikTok.

And so I was like, you know what, I’m going to play around on this app. I’m going to learn about it. I’m going to, I’d always been a lurker. Like I’d always watched TikToks, but I’d never interacted or posted or did anything. And so I said to myself, I’m going to, I’m going to dabble. and I was just posting stuff about my life, motherhood.

Parenting, career, et cetera, and started to, yeah, find out that people were interested in what I was saying or had similar experiences and really started to hear a lot about the mental load of parenting and just what it feels like to be the primary parent or a working parent, whatever it might be.

And I just grew from there and continued to share both my experience, but also just my observations on. Our society as a whole a lot of what I talk about is not about my marriage. It’s about just what Exists what we’re all working with and how we can change it or adapt and advocate for ourselves And so yeah, it just happened. it was not intentional by any means, but I am really Thankful for the platform I have and try to be really intentional about how I use it.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. And like you’ve been getting picked up by media and you have a huge following. A lot of men who decide to comment on your stuff and tell you how wrong you are, we’ll talk about them in a little bit and how you handle that. but what was like the first thing like you did where you’re like, Oh my gosh, I like really have something here. What was like the, the little, the little twist that was like, Oh, okay. People are 

Paige Connell: Yeah. The, my very first video, um, on TikTok got 

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah.

Brie Tucker: the gate, man! 

Paige Connell: Yeah. and you know what I was talking about was I was talking about the cost of childcare in a sense, in a roundabout way, right? people were talking about the ideal time to have a kid and I was like, hey, what I’ve learned as a mom of four kids is that if you can avoid. Having a cutoff kid, you avoid like 20, 000 in childcare costs, right? cause I have a child who’s born in November. So she has an extra year of daycare compared to all of my other kids. And I was, it was just like, it was just something I was like, Oh, I didn’t even think about it when I had her. 

It wasn’t intentional. I’m not, I wouldn’t have changed it. Right. But like something to think about. and I advocate a lot, For affordable childcare and accessible childcare, because I’m a parent who’s both worked in daycare and also utilized daycare. and yeah, so that first video really was like my first indicator that like, okay, maybe, maybe I have some helpful thoughts.

but it really didn’t probably click for about six months when I, I had a video go viral about why I continue to be in the workforce, which brought out quite opinionated people in the comments, but I basically was talking about why I as a mother chose to continue working, despite the astronomical cost of childcare and despite the fact that it’s hard when you’re raising kids, and, Yeah, the overwhelming, response from women is what keeps me going, right?

Like hearing from women who say, you’re saying the things that I didn’t know how to say or you’re putting words to experiences that I couldn’t do. Thank you. Now I can talk about it. Now I can have conversations about it because before I couldn’t articulate what it was I was feeling. and that’s really for me kept me going and really motivated me to keep posting.

JoAnn Crohn: Let’s stick into that a little bit. what was that video? Why did you decide to stay in the workforce when you had four kids and daycare was real high? 

Paige Connell: yeah, I mean, we, we pay a lot of money for daycare and childcare. We have four kids, and we pay what would be average where we live. Like the cost is average where I live. So when I talk to people where I live, they’re like, yeah, that makes sense. But like, when you say it out loud to somebody who maybe doesn’t live in Massachusetts, they’re mind blown right at that, how much we pay.

And the reason I feel like I have to often justify it, right. I shouldn’t have to do that, but I do, I justify it. And the reason that I personally remain in the workforce is. First and foremost, because I wanted to. I want to have a job. I want to have purpose outside of my kids. I, my parents were divorced when I was young and I always saw the value in my mom being able to support herself and, have that financial security.

That’s really important to me, not even just for divorce, but God forbid something happens to my partner. He works an incredibly dangerous job. Like I want to know that I could take care of my family. If I wanted to, it gives me purpose, right. It gets me motivated, more than that, if we were solely talking financial reasons, what I’ve said is, oftentimes people leave the work for a short period of time, or people tell them to like, just leave for five years, you can go back.

And for me, The short term cost savings didn’t outweigh the long term opportunity for my career, for my, income growth, for my retirement fund, for my benefits, right? all of these things that I want to do in 10 years require me to stay in the workforce now. And when I think about it, it’s like, what do I want my kids to have?

I want to be able to pay for them if they want to play Travel baseball or something. I want to be able to pay for that and be able to do that. I want to be able to take them on vacations. and we don’t do a lot of that right now because of the cost of childcare. But I think to 10 years from now, when I don’t have that cost anymore, what would it look like?

What will this money do for our family? What will this allow us to do for our children? and that’s what motivates me as well, at least in the financial side of things, which is also, also I’ll be able to retire and not put a burden on my own kids, right? For that part. So for me, it’s that whole picture.

It’s like personally, I wanted to work, but financially for what we want to do with our lives and where we want to go from here, it does require me remaining in the workforce and taking this temporary financial hit when it comes to the cost of child care.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh yeah, definitely, like I agree, like it is thinking long term because a lot of women I feel like, we’re told you take some time off, it’ll be okay. But then it’s really hard to get back in after you’ve taken time off because like gaps in resumes are a real thing, especially with employers. And as much as people like to say yeah, mother should go spend time with their kids. It doesn’t work out in like, the real world. 

Brie Tucker: right, seriously, there’s hardly any careers that you could really take a five year gap and be able to come back in, even at the same point hmm. Like, I just, I can’t even fathom it, and having worked in early childhood myself as well, and that’s a pretty mom friendly career field. And 

Paige Connell: Yeah. 

Brie Tucker: you, it’s like trying to run up a hill of sand. you would just keep sliding down. 

Paige Connell: Exactly. And I say, it’s not that you can’t get back in. You can. You can definitely go back to work. You’re just probably not going to be at the same level, the same pay, the same respect too. There’s this like idea that like, oh, she took off three years from work so her brain has turned to mush and she knows nothing. It’s no, of course not, like 

JoAnn Crohn: it’s there. It’s 

Paige Connell: exactly, but they’re like, Oh, you lose so much. And it’s I’m sure I’ve lost some of the new lingo, or I don’t know the latest, like app that does X, Y, and Z, but you can learn that in a month. Right. I don’t need those three years.

Didn’t negate my whole lived experience up until that point. Right. but that’s how people view women in the workforce. Like when they’ve left for three years, they view it as if they’re starting brand new, like fresh out of college. They know nothing.

JoAnn Crohn: No, it’s true. It’s true. I want to hear what the response was to that video and what you said right after this okay. Paige, my squirrel brain really won’t let it go. What dangerous job does your husband do?

Paige Connell: Oh, yeah, he’s a lineman, which, when I say that people think football, which is not football, he, it’s, an electrical lineman, essentially. So he,climbs utility poles and fixes electricity and 

Brie Tucker: It could get electrocuted any day. 

JoAnn Crohn: Brie, that’s what your brother in law does, right? Or he does something similar to that? No. But it’s something like No. Okay. 

Brie Tucker: Not really.

Paige Connell: Fine,

JoAnn Crohn: Totally off. Totally off there, JoAnn. Totally off there. No. Nope. No. Oh. 

Paige Connell: it’s just a lot of electricity which is dangerous, right? And they work like a ton of storms and he works a lot of crazy unexpected hours. It’s just yeah It’s just a dangerous job. Um, 

JoAnn Crohn: it’s crazy. It’s crazy. But let’s get into, so you put the video out saying that you chose to stay in the workforce, take the temporary hit and cost, and you got a lot of, unquote, reaction. What was some of the pushback to that argument? Because to me it makes total sense.

Paige Connell: Some of them were like you’re selfish. how could you prioritize money over your kids? how can you let somebody else raise your children 

Brie Tucker: Can I do an audible eye roll to that there? Like for people that aren’t, aren’t seeing video. Oh my God.

Paige Connell: yeah. yeah. One guy, it was right before Mother’s Day, this video came out in May, commented, you don’t deserve to celebrate Mother’s Day. Like that, in all caps. And I laughed. I was just, I laugh. Like I take a lot of it with a grain of salt. I’m like, who is this random human being on the internet? I don’t care.

but the comments were really divided. there was a ton of women who were like, yep, get it. I’m with you. Totally agree. the other half were either moms who were saying, I can’t imagine leaving my children. I can’t imagine doing what you’ve done. or kids don’t need those things. And of course they don’t like, great like extracurriculars vacations.

They don’t need those things, but we all get to choose what we want to prioritize. Right. And I think that’s the thing that is really difficult about being online chronically for all of us is that We have our own opinions on what we think is valuable for our kids And people cannot help but share them with you when you say anything that differs with it, right? and so it’s like You might not care about your kid doing taekwondo, but my kid loves it And so i’m gonna do it and so who cares right let me live. I’ll let you live. We’ll all be happy like

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah,

Paige Connell: getting hurt, right?

JoAnn Crohn: something like people really don’t take into account with money because there’s so much like money mindset in this society That like especially women take on like we’ve been told like, you know, don’t be too greedy be happy with what you have But in the same time it’s like they tell all the men Oh go and earn what you need to earn make sure like you get the best deal make sure you do all of this so it’s very like It’s countering each other and it’s taking away, I believe, a lot of women’s rights to do stuff, be mobile, for instance, in society to like leave horrible relationships to take care of their children.

If something happened to their husband, it is such a messed up mindset that people perpetuate about money. I mean, have you seen this page? Yeah.

Paige Connell: like parental leave or equity in the home and men will often say, well, I’m the provider. That’s my job. And first off, I think that’s such an outdated viewpoint because most women work and earn money and fewer and fewer men are breadwinners, right?

Like, that’s just going to be a tired argument really soon. it already is, but it will be even more so in the future. But for me, it’s. That men have been told they are providers and that is their ultimate job. And so they prioritize it over everything else. And women have been told their primary job is to be mothers and, or we are also told a narrative about what we do with money.

Women are shopaholics. Women light money on fire. I it’s my money. She just spends it right. Like this whole narrative that we’ve placed on mothers when in reality. I know as a mom, almost every dollar I spend is on my kids or my partner, right? Like I’m buying him new socks. I don’t, he’s not buying them.

I’m buying them when I go to Costco, right? It’s not as if women are not money wise. They understand how to spend money. They understand how to make money. They understand how to budget. Like women know how to, use money effectively, but there’s this narrative that they don’t. And so that’s also really frustrating and a big part of this conversation too, which is, women.

Struggle in the workforce because there’s the motherhood penalty and the wage gap. And then men will say, well, I earn more. Therefore I don’t need to participate at home you should stay home when we have kids. Or you’ll see those, Tik TOKs that are like, if my wife made 300, 000, and then sure, I’d be a stay at home dad.

And it’s like, well, why are moms being asked to be stay at home moms when their partner makes 60 K? What is the difference? Like, why is his money quote unquote goes further than her money does. Right. When in reality, it’s all the same. 

Brie Tucker: it comes into that whole thing too, about like your time, like it, JoAnn, I know we’ve talked about this in several podcasts, like the value of your time, because with that mindset that you’re talking about, like traditional mindset would be that, okay, so a male’s time is worth what he gets paid because that is what he does.

And then for a woman, okay, maybe she gets paid less, but then what about all the extra stuff that she does? Everything else that she does. Add that into her time and guess what? She far surpasses you in that primitive thought process. So anyway,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s also like the whole thought process in all of it. I’m reading this book right now I talk about it a lot in our balanced community like every day. It’s called on her best behavior Have you heard of this 

Paige Connell: Hmm. I have 

JoAnn Crohn: Um, oh it is so good It’s basically how women’s behavior has been dictated by the seven deadly sins And how like everything that like we’re told not to do aligns back to that kind of You know, that, that philosophy.

So I was just listening to the chapter on anger this morning, and this goes into this conversation because a lot of the times when we go online and we speak our opinions, we’re seen as like the quote unquote, angry woman, here’s the angry woman. Oh, don’t listen to her. She’s so shrill. She doesn’t like appreciate the things she has in life.

She doesn’t expect gratitude. We shouldn’t listen to that. And. We have never really been taught to see that like a woman who’s angry is just as valid as a man who is angry. And one of the huge like examples that stuck in my mind this morning is they talked about tennis stars and like John McEnroe, for instance, when he had his like huge tantrums on the court and he was like throwing down his racket, they’re like, that’s John McEnroe.

He’s passionate about tennis. And then. There was something that happened with Serena Williams where she lost a title, because first of all the ref caught her for getting coaching help from the stands. All her coach gave her was a thumbs up and that the ref said, Oh, you’re getting coaching help. And then she got knocked off for arguing against that with the  and she got so many penalties.

She lost it all because she just spoke up and gave her opinion. And so I’m wondering like especially Paige since you are seeing like all of this in social media and you have so much interaction there How much do you put into this about being the quote unquote? angry about things because we are angry about things and speaking out

Paige Connell: get called bitter a lot. And I’m like, of course I’m bitter. Why wouldn’t I be? Like, how could I not? Right? I don’t know. Why aren’t we all bitter? Right? And I think it’s a thing that men will think that I’m gonna Take personally and I’m like, no, I am like for sure. I’ll own that. I’m bitter. I’m bitter that you get more free time and recreation time than women.

I’m bitter that you don’t have to do more childcare. I’m bitter that you don’t take parental leave when you have it available to you. yeah, I am. I’m bitter. that pisses me off. And I, I have a lot of people say a lot of men are like, I agree with you, but you could say it nicer. You could say it differently. And I’m like, are you kidding though? Like if you were going through what women go through, you wouldn’t be happy. You wouldn’t do it with a smile on your face. 

Brie Tucker: let’s just be honest,  the polite, very nice, like Joey would just said, like on her best be the nice, quiet, polite, Oh, can I speak, 

JoAnn Crohn: you have to be like in all of society because it’s even like this book, Fierce self compassion by Dr. Kristen Neff. She talks about how in interviews, women, like women versus men in job interviews. So like men can go in and tout all of their accomplishments and everything they’ve done.

And if a woman goes in and says the same thing, she is, looked up on more poorly than the man. However, there’s one change the woman can make in her behavior, is that she can say all her accomplishments, but she could also put in things about how she helps others and how she helps people and takes care of people in the office.

And then they’re judged the same, but there’s so many implicit biases in our society that people don’t even realize they’re doing. Like the man who’s like, yeah, you could say it a little bit nicer. I bet he has never been told that he could say something nicer in his entire life.

Paige Connell: No, no, yeah, and I also have people use my kids, right? They’ll be like, oh, how would you feel if your kids saw this video? And i’m like, I don’t think my kids would be surprised because they live with me, right? They know that I think about these things and I talk about these things and Wouldn’t it be weird if they didn’t?

I don’t know like I’m not living two separate lives over here, right? My kids are aware that I think that women deserve the same things that men get and you know I have one son and three daughters and you know my son I remember this morning He just left a banana peel on the counter and I was like, whoa, dude Walk it back.

Like, who do you think’s picking that up? I’m not, right? I’m not picking that up. Put it in the trash. And he like grumbled, you know, and I’m like, yeah, it sucks. Sucks to have to clean up after yourself, but we all have to do it. And so you do too, right? And so we’re having conversations about domestic labor and who’s doing what in our house because if we had these conversations with our kids, then when they grow up, they wouldn’t go, oh, that’s a bitter old lady over there. They’d say like, yeah, she doesn’t want to be disrespected.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Exactly. Let’s get into that subject of like how we can not train our kids to do this, but how we can really inform our kids and educate our kids about the mental load. And we’re going to get into it right after this. So let’s talk about our kids and how we’re kind of looking to them and seeing like how we can educate them on the mental load. Because I know one thing like I don’t want for my kids is, I have a 10 year old son and a 15 year old daughter, I do not want either of them to be in relationships where one person takes on the brunt of the mental load and one person is looked to do all of the household tasks.

while the other person is just expected to work. and in my household, actually, we have something where my husband works outside of the home. he makes most of the money in our house too, just because, I mean, he, he’s an engineering. He has, he’s been in the job for 30 years. come on. I’ve gone from like, duh, duh, duh, from teaching to entrepreneurship. and just trying to show kids how to create a quality in the home Is really hard, and I’m interested in what conversations are you having, Paige, to help with that?

Paige Connell: I think sometimes it’s conversations and sometimes it’s action too. Right? I, shared with JoAnn and Brie that, I have, there’s a stomach bug in my house right now. And, the reason I’m here on this podcast is because my husband took the day off. And he was like you’ve got stuff to do and so he took the day off, right?

And there’s this assumption in our house that it’s not always mom Taking the day off and doing the grocery shopping and doing the cooking and doing the cleaning right or doing it together He’s just as active of a participant. So I think that’s part of it right in my home growing up and even Up until recently, I remember my dad used to be like, Paigey, go get me a water.

Go get me a napkin. And I’d be like, what, like you have feet? You have legs? Why am I, why am I doing this? Right. But we just did it. cause that’s how we grew up. And it was like, we just bring things to him. Right. And. My mom didn’t necessarily do that, but like that was the narrative, right? Like the patriarch of the family and that doesn’t happen in our house, right?

We don’t do it like that. So I think there’s that, right? And then when we talk about it, the way I talk about it is, my son was goofing the other day with his Cheerios and he, they flew everywhere, everywhere. And I was like, cool. I was like, yep, it was an accident, not a big deal. I was like, well, how are you going to clean it up?

And he’s can you clean it up? And I was like, oh, well, you know, I didn’t really make the mess. And, I’m happy to help you, but I do think you need to come help me do this, right? Because this is a lot of work, right? And we talk about that. Like, oh, this is a lot of work. it’s not super fun to have to chase Cheerios all around the first floor of our house, right?

This isn’t enjoyable. And even just, like, age appropriately saying, hey,this is yours and you, you need to do this. And I find chores are a good way. we don’t do chores in a super, structured way because my kids are all young, but, they all. ask to do chores.

They think it’s a fun thing. We’ve made it something that like everybody’s doing. So I don’t care which, if you’re sweeping, if you’re wiping the chairs down, doesn’t matter to me. but participating, right. they all view that as just an assumed thing we do in our house. And like I said, my kids are super young, they’re all under six.

And so we’re not necessarily. Talking about the mental load or talking about the work itself. But even things like money, right? We can talk to our kids about these things. My son will be like, why do you have to work? And I’m like, oh, well, I have to pay for things and that’s how I get paid. And he’s like, well, what are you paying for? And I’m like, electricity and water and this house and the dog and you, and 

Brie Tucker: You like those fruit roll ups? They’re not free.

Paige Connell: Yeah. and so they, they, know that, right? they’ll be like, oh, that money costs water or water costs money. And and I’m like, yeah, and I’m like, yeah. Everything actually does cost money, right?

And, bummer, huge bummer, but, when they ask me why I have to go to work, like I, I do say those things in an appropriate way for them, which is yeah, mommy goes to work because this is how we’re able to, do some of the things that we do. And mommy likes to work. So.

JoAnn Crohn: that’s a, that’s something that I feel is not talked about enough. It’s work is fun if you’re in a good,if you’re in a career you enjoy, work can be very fun. And it doesn’t have to be something that, you’re giving up your kids to go do something you hate just for the money. I feel like that’s the thing out there. You see a lot of, I’m sure you’re familiar with the trad wife movement. have you heard about the tradwife movement?

Brie Tucker: Yeah. You, you’ve, brought that, yeah. 

JoAnn Crohn: Yes, okay. So for anyone who doesn’t know about the tradwife movement, it’s all about this going back to the home with the woman as the like the caretaker and making sourdough bread and doing all these things.

but what I see in there is like, Oh, why would I want a nine to five job when I could be like here sitting on the porch with my coffee? And I’m like, dude, that’s not the only consideration here. There is like a sense of joy and a sense of enthusiasm and accomplishment and achievement in work. That is so fun. 

Brie Tucker: and I think it comes right back to what we already talked about earlier about first of all, when I’m hearing you say Paige and what you’re talking about too, JoAnn, is that. If having a job, having that career is bringing you happiness, then that’s important and Paige, and you talked about this earlier that in the world that we’re in right now, it’s so easy for us to share our opinions with each other because of our virtual access to everybody.

And sometimes we are so stuck in what our values are and what makes us happy that we don’t necessarily realize that when somebody else is sharing what’s making them happy, that doesn’t make it wrong. Because again, it comes back to what makes you a happy and whole person. And for some people, it is going to be sitting on their porch, drinking coffee, taking care of the kids, and making the sourdough bread. But there 

JoAnn Crohn: And I would say that’s cool, but it crosses a line where it says that all women should be 

Brie Tucker: that’s what I was going to say, but there is nothing wrong with the fact that is not what brings you happiness. And we say it all the time in No Guilt Mom, the best mom is a happy mom. Because if you’re tired, exhausted, feeling unappreciated, feeling like you’re not being valued, you’re not going to be happy. And there’s no reason for you to suffer through that.

Paige Connell: yeah, and I think for me it’s not every we don’t view men and women the same in these conversations, right? How come moms are abandoning their kids when they work but men aren’t abandoning their kids when they work and you know for me that’s also the thing which is can we get on the same page and expectations for everybody and then maybe we can have a real conversation right because one we live in a capitalistic society like we need money, but we’ve allowed also men oftentimes to skirt You Being like parents because they make money.

I’ve had men tell me Oh, I don’t need to take my kids to the doctors because I have a job and i’m like, I don’t know like you chose to be a parent, right? Like you didn’t have to be a parent you chose this and so you having a job doesn’t excuse you from certain parental duties Right, and so I think Women are the ones who are being told all these different messages and being asked to do all these different things I’m sure some men too like I, my husband has a lot of guilt sometimes when he has to work overtime.

He’s like, I feel like I should be home with you. Cause because of the way we operate in our home, he’s like, I know how much work it is for you to do it by yourself. And cause, cause he also knows what it’s like to do it by himself because we share this responsibility together. And so. I am always saying to him too, it’s not just women who have guilt, right?

Like if, there’s a man who’s an active participant in his home, who has an equitable relationship with his partner, he likely too has guilt about these things, right? It’s just a question of what have they been conditioned to think? And I don’t think a lot of this is, an individual failure of women or men.

I think it’s societal, right? Like so much messaging, so much marketing, all of it. And so depending if you’re religious or not religious, right? There’s just so much messaging we’re getting. So it’s not about. Is your husband a bad guy because he prioritizes work? probably not. That’s just what he’s been told. And so how do we walk it back? How do we fix that? How do we acknowledge each other and work towards something different? If you want that. 

JoAnn Crohn: I think that that’s a great point because my husband, he, he’s great. Like mean, we we work on an equal partnership all the time, but like at the same time, he has some in him. Um, so that when we talk about this guilt conversation, I’m like, don’t you ever feel any guilt? He’s like, no, I don’t feel any guilt.

And it’s just because of the culture he’s in. However, he will also admit that he wants to be home with us. He doesn’t want to be in the office and he’s looking at it more as like an independent thinking kind of scenario where it’s not like he’s forced to be at home or feels guilty he’s not there but he wants to.

And I think it’s so interesting because I also think like he is probably feeling the exact same emotions everybody else is feeling but he is choosing to interpret it in a different way based on how he was conditioned and how he was raised. so, It’s totally like how you use the language, how you’ve been taught to use it and like how you view the situation.

But in the end, like society, like I’m all for taking down the patriarchy lately. I talk about it all the time because it’s really not a question of your, like your partner’s bad. question of like, here are the beliefs in society and we really need to acknowledge these so that we can change it for 

Paige Connell: hmm. Yeah, totally. And what you can do at home matters, but it’s not the only thing, right? There’s only so much we can do within our homes. and so that’s part of the reason I even do what I do is because I think it can’t just be at my house, right? Like we all have to start changing some of our thoughts. It doesn’t mean you have to change your life. you know, having access to it is helpful.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, Well, Paige, thank you so much for joining us. This has flown by and I actually really want to keep talking to you a more. Um, and so we have to put a pause on this for later, for like in two weeks when we meet up in person.

Paige Connell: I know. Yes, exciting. 

JoAnn Crohn: yeah, so we will, we’ll talk to you soon. 

Paige Connell: Yeah. Thank you so much.

JoAnn Crohn: I feel like we have all these things we don’t say during interviews of like things that like happen during them. Like I was just mentioning to you, y’all, landscapers, my dog, look at her butt. Like I’m so glad that the mics don’t pick up these things because you, I hear it. It is the most disgusting sound in the entire world.

And like, it fills me with rage. And I’m here like with my fingers, like snapping at her, trying to like get it off. Oh my goodness. there’s so much disturbance and noise. And then you were like, apologizing to me right after we stopped the interview about your brother in law.

Brie Tucker: So okay, so Paige shared that her husband works as a linebackers linebacker, like linemen,

JoAnn Crohn: Lineman. Lineman.

Brie Tucker: was completely the wrong thing. They’re linemen

JoAnn Crohn: talking about football though.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, right. and that he works,on the, um, electrical poles and with electricity and then you’re like, Oh, that’s what your brother in law does. And I go, Nope, Nope, not it. No, it be at first I, because I felt like I was like, no, what my brother in law does is he maintains the landscaping around cell phone towers. Now, in general,

JoAnn Crohn: was like, electricity, electricity. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: there, there’s no, he doesn’t deal with, electrical, or the tower, or any of that. His job is to, take care of the landscaping so that the people that do need to repair the tower can get to it. Now, the reason you said that, though, I’m certain, is

JoAnn Crohn: I was.

Brie Tucker: because two years ago when he was doing his job, which his job is hard. It is hard. It’s a lot of physical, labor. It is, it’s a rough job for sure.

But in terms of is he normally putting his life at risk? No, he’s not. Except for this one time when he was driving up a road to a cell tower in the middle of like nowhere, California. Took his eyes off the road for a moment to check the map and off the side of the mountain. Yes, my brother in law went off the side of the mountain his truck went down the mountain his laptop He was out the window Pieces everywhere.

yeah, he’s fine now. We can kind of laugh about this now, but it was interesting because yeah, like he, he completely totaled his car, all of it, his truck, all of his equipment, and Eventually, like, was able to crawl out of the wreckage, a passer buyer on a highway, a one lane highway because it was in the middle of nowhere, happened to come across him after he’d been out there for a little while, took him to a hospital, he had no ID, nothing, because it all, oh, I think

JoAnn Crohn: So off the window.

Brie Tucker: on fire, if I

JoAnn Crohn: my gosh.

Brie Tucker: because it started a fire on the mountain, too, like,

JoAnn Crohn: that’s not a good day.

Brie Tucker: Yeah,he came out, with nothing but bruises and scrapes and all of that, and having to replace a lot of stuff. But,yeah, that is where landscaping, uh, heavy job went awry. Went

JoAnn Crohn: why I thought it was, he had a dangerous job, 

Brie Tucker: Yeah, in general, as long as he keeps his eye on the road, it’s not dangerous.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, well, we hope we brought you something to think about today during the no get mom podcast and give you a little bit of laughs as well Please share share the podcast with anyone you know who’s in need of some uplifting and knowing that they’re not alone in motherhood 

Brie Tucker: Show them that, that they need to be a no guilt mom too.

JoAnn Crohn: Exactly and remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you, and we’ll see you later

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.