← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1813: Affording Parenthood: Exploring the True Cost of Raising Children
00:30:40
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- [00:00]
Capital One Bank Guy
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- [00:30]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [01:46]
Ruthie Ackerman
You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Kharabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh yourself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to Sew Money.
- [02:13]
Ultimately, what changed my mind though, was that I started reading books about our foremothers. I'll just call them who were trying to think about ways to create a revolutionary version of mother. Or as I talk about in the book, an outlaw motherhood. Wow. Is it only when we don't have children that were. I don't know if we can say this on air, so to speak, but is that the big fuck you to the patriarchy, the not having children?
- [02:46]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Welcome to Sew Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Are you on the fence about having children? I'm talking to my women listeners out there, if this is you, you're not alone in today's world. You know better than anyone that women face enormous pressure and endless question around motherhood. Is this something I really want? Can I afford it? How will this impact my identity, my career, and my happiness? Our guest knows this internal struggle very well. Ruthie Ackerman is an accomplished writer and journalist whose new memoir, the Mother Code, My Story of Love, Loss and the Myths that Shape Us, dives deeply into these very questions. Ruthie bravely explores the emotional, societal, and financial realities of deciding whether or not to become a parent. And in our candid conversations, she shares her deeply personal journey, questioning motherhood amidst family history, societal expectations, genetic fears, and profound personal and financial costs. She opens up about fertility treatments, egg freezing, ivf, and the financial strategies and sacrifices that made motherhood possible for her. We also discuss how redefining motherhood can be a radical act of self love and empowerment, and how financial independence can profoundly influence our personal choices, including our decisions to become parents. Enjoy the show.
- [04:12]
Ruthie Ackerman
Ruthie Ackerman, welcome to SO Money. So much to get into with you in this episode. I don't know if we're going to have enough time, but we'll try.
- [04:20]
Thank you for having me. Farnoosh.
- [04:23]
I want to ask you so many things about your life as a writer. There's so much advice I think you can give the aspiring creatives in the audience, as well as your financial experience. But let's start with the big news here. Your book, the Mother Code. It's such an important book for anyone out there who is curious about the journey that is called motherhood and all that goes into it. The conventional and unconventional, the costs, the societal pressures. You really get into this in Ruthie Ackerman style, which is to say that you bring a great deal of research, poignant reflections, insights. And this is also very much a memoir, the Mother Code. You have a deeply personal reckoning with motherhood, with inheritance, with identity. Let's start by having you just take us back to the moment when you first began to question what motherhood could look like for you and the emotional weight of that moment.
- [05:26]
Yeah, I think the real answer is that I spent my whole life questioning what motherhood could look like. And that's because every family has mythologies. Every family has stories. My story that I grew up with was that my great grandmother and my grandmother had abandoned their children. And so knowing that having that heavy sort of generational inheritance, I always thought doesn't sound like motherhood must have Been very good for them. And then I looked around me, I saw my own mother, my friends, mothers, the moms I saw on tv didn't look like any of them were having any fun. And so I thought, why would I do this to myself? So by the time I got to college and I was taking women's studies classes and my best friend and I, we pinky swore we were never having kids because it just didn't look like anyone was having a good time. And at the time of my life I wanted to.
- [06:22]
That's not the point, Ruby.
- [06:25]
I know, but this is part of the exploration for me that. Who says that motherhood needs to be this selfless, painful, compromising thing? Can we have motherhood and a good time? Can we have motherhood and still keep our identities? Can we be self actualized people? And so all of these things had been going through my mind in my twenties and probably even earlier. And then on top of that, I met a man in my early 30s, I was 31, who didn't want to have children. And at the time I was thinking about all that history I just told you about, plus the fact that I have a mother who suffers from mental illness. I also have a half brother who has a triple whammy, I call it in the book of rare disorders that all struck him in the womb. The genetic inheritance felt very scary to me. Like, why take a chance of my child having some sort of mental health health issue, severe mental health issue or rare disorder, or like my matrilineal line, something's wrong with me and I end up abandoning my child. So those were all the pressures. And then I meet this man who doesn't want kids. And that's when it came to a head. Really.
- [07:52]
Yeah.
- [07:52]
And I had to make the decision once and for all, am I going to do this or not?
- [07:56]
You write about this like a tension between seeing childlessness, child free ness as a radical act. And then you do come to this point, obviously in the book, it's your life today, a radical shift and evolution, which is that maybe I will be a mom. How did you. How do those two ideas evolve in your mind? So like reinforcing maybe things that you were already thinking, but that actually isn't where the story ends. There's a whole shift that happens which is Ruthie saying, actually I do want to become a mom. What happens?
- [08:31]
Looking for a sign, really. I wanted someone to tell me, should I have a kid or not have a kid? Because I really felt torn in half about this. So I read tons of books about people that were unsure. I read Lori Leibovich's book maybe Baby. I read so many books about people changing their mind. If it's out there, I've read it. And I also talked to a number of my friends, both those who had children and those who didn't have children, just to see, like, what's it like out there and who do I want to be in the world? Ultimately, what changed my mind, though, was that I started reading books about our foremothers, I'll just call them, who were trying to think about ways to create a revolutionary version of mothering, or as I talk about in the book, an outlaw motherhood. Wow. Is it only when we don't have children that were. I don't know if we can say this on air, so to speak, but is that the big fuck you to the patriarchy, the not having children? Or can we have children and be mothers and do it differently? And that's a way to say, oh, we're not going to be caged in or boxed in or forced into these. These roles and rules and expectations that we don't want to uphold.
- [09:54]
Was there a point, Was there a question that you asked, which was, what do I want? Because what I'm hearing so far is, is this aligned with effing the patriarchy? Is this actually a medically smart move for me and our family if I'm worried about my lineage and my DNA? So at what point did you ask the really important question, which is, like, what would make me happy? Because there is that too, right? There is that all things aside, the relationship that you have with someone that is a human that came spawned from you and all that you can influence or not with this person, this human. I mean, many parents would say that's the most important thing, all things aside, Absolutely.
- [10:39]
And I was asking myself that question, what would make me happy the entire time? But the truth is, and maybe you felt this too far, Nouge, because I've heard from other women that they felt it. I spent my whole life bombarded by what I call the white noise of the patriarchal machine. And I no longer knew what I desired. I only knew what I heard from the outside. And so I spent so long thinking about, oh, if I don't become a mother, then this is how I'll be looked at in society, or if I become a mom, then this is what's expected of me. And so I did try to quiet the voices, quiet the noise, hear my own truest, deepest desires. But to be honest, I felt out of tune or out of touch with what those even were.
- [11:29]
Because I would say that's the ultimate F you to patriarchy is for Ruthie to do what would make her happiest. You know what I mean? Like just doing you. Because to your point, there are a lot of expectations and requirements of women in our society that are whatever. So it's almost like that would be the most eff you move. In my mind, I'm just gonna do what I want because that is not what people want of me or expect of me. The fact that women can actually choose pleasure. I interviewed who wrote the book about going to Paris and just fucking around for four months.
- [12:04]
Oh, yeah, Glynis McNichol.
- [12:06]
Glynis McNichol's book. It reminds me where she's. The ultimate protest was just to go somewhere and just be into pleasuring myself in all the ways because we're not allowed to do that. So motherhood is a whole other kind of example of that. But it's like doing what you want can be actually quite a protest.
- [12:25]
I agree 100%. But there was the added issue of the fact that I at that point was married to a man who adamantly didn't want children. If I do follow my own heart, then I have to deal with all of the repercussions and what I considered and I talk about in the book. It felt like a punishment because then I would have to be choosing between my own happiness one way, being a mother, and my own happiness in another way, having a man that I knew loved me and I loved.
- [12:55]
How did that conversation go? Or conversations take me to that step.
- [13:00]
How did the conversation go? Not we're not married anymore. I was always asking him, like, let's make pros and cons list. Let's figure out what we want together. And he kept saying, I know what I want. I don't want a kid. And I kept thinking I was could change his mind. But the most interesting moment was even when I knew, okay, I want a chance at having a child, even if that means I'm going to end up doing it alone or who knows what that's going to look like. It still took me two more years before our marriage ended. And I was not the one who ended it. Even when I knew the truth, the action didn't follow. And it took him leaving me, I felt like I did not have the agency to leave. Maybe that's personally my own past traumas, but also I feel like women are told, you have a man that loves you and you're gonna want more. Take the bird in hand, so to speak. We're expected to lap up the crumbs and be happy with them. I'm not saying he's the crumbs, but I'm trying to make a point, to.
- [14:06]
Use the name of your book, the Code. Right. And I think what I am understanding from you so far is that the code can be whatever you want it to be.
- [14:14]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Right.
- [14:14]
Ruthie Ackerman
We feel like there's only one code, but really it's a choose your own adventure. Now you're single and you have to do this alone, which is for various reasons. It can be harder, but I would say financially harder, definitely when you're one income versus two, trying to conceive a child, trying to bring a child into the world, trying to adopt a child. Whatever your journey is, there's an economic reality to becoming a parent that. That's often glossed over in our cultural discussions about parenthood and mothering. How did you start to evaluate all the different financial considerations? At some point, there's a new chart that you're making which is like, what's financially. What does everything cost? What am I willing to afford? Will I just throw all my money at this and hope for the best? What was your calculus, the first calculus?
- [15:04]
It was one step at a time and stick my head in the sand in between, if that makes any sense. The first step was I decided at 35, when I was still married to my first husband, that I was going to freeze my eggs. And so that was the first financial calculation, and that was about $15,000. Once we had gotten divorced, we made a very smart decision where we bought a place together in Harlem. And over that, during the recession, when it was cheaper to buy a place and then sold it, when we got divorced and made some money there, the calc, that was that. First of all, I wanted to say that the majority of women in this country and in the world who get divorced are not left financially whole. So that was like privilege number one. So with that money, I was terrified to do anything with it because I thought, oh, I better save this, because who knows what my fertility future is going to look like at that point. When I got divorced, I was already 38. This is probably not going to be smooth sailing, so I'm going to save this money. So that was one calculation. The other calculation was finding a job that at the time, I thought it didn't end up being true, but I thought would pay for my IVF rounds if I needed them. And in New York and New Jersey and many other states. I don't know them all, but these states, employers are required to pay for a certain number of rounds of ivf, which I ultimately ended up needing, but because my employer at the time was and I don't know exactly what this is called, so we'll have to probably look it up later. But they basically have their own insurance plan, self funded insurance plan. They didn't have to follow the state laws. The point is, I thought I was doing the smart thing and getting a job that would pay for my fertility treatments, and that's not the case. I've heard stories One other interesting thing, just talking about calculus. I've heard stories of people taking money out of 401ks. I've heard stories of people who get second jobs at Starbucks because Starbucks pays for IVF. Ultimately, thawing my eggs was another. I Forget exactly, but 12, $13,000, when I was ready to use them, they ended up not being viable. Two rounds of IVF at about $25,000 each. And then ultimately we used donor eggs, which was another almost 50. So that one year basically all of the money that I had in the bank from that from felt like our apartment went to that.
- [17:48]
Farnoosh Tarabi
A few summers ago, we booked an Airbnb on the southern coast of California for our extended family. Parents, siblings, cousins, the whole crew. We wanted a place with plenty of space, a big kitchen for family meals, and enough bedrooms so no one had to fight over who got the couch. And we found the perfect spot. We spent our mornings drinking coffee on the porch, afternoons exploring, and our nights playing board games in the living room.
- [18:11]
Ruthie Ackerman
And that trip got me thinking about.
- [18:12]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [18:37]
Ruthie Ackerman
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- [18:48]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [18:50]
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- [19:37]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [21:48]
Ruthie Ackerman
Sometimes friends ask me, should I take out a loan to freeze my eggs? Should I get further into debt to do XYZ related to my fertility? And it's the hardest question to answer. No, I don't want you to go into debt, but also I don't want you to forego becoming a mom. How do you hold those two things in balance? Things worked out eventually and you didn't go file for bankruptcy, but did you have in your mind a number that was like, if I go this far into debt, it's just. Just not. I'm not going to pursue this anymore?
- [22:20]
Yeah, in a way, yes, I think that's true. So there's, I think two parts of your question I want to talk about. The first part of your question is should you do this, Meaning fertility treatments, egg freezing, that kind of thing? No one can answer that question for anyone else. That's an obvious thing. But I will say I don't regret having done it. Even though the eggs didn't end up being viable and the egg freezing, the ivf, both IVF rounds failed. Even through all of that. What I know now, I still would have done it. It was a tool in the toolbox that I had. It got me to where I am today, which is we ultimately use donor eggs. I can't say like I would do it differently if I was 35. Again, I can't tell you if you're 20 or 30 or whatever age you are to spend this money if you don't have it or put yourself into debt if you don't have it. And at the same time, we don't really have better options. This is like what we have in the toolkit. So that is like the one big thing.
- [23:20]
Did you have a number in your head of I'm only gonna spend this much money because anything more than that is just financial lunacy.
- [23:29]
We knew that we could only do two rounds of IVF and then we'd have to make a decision. Either we stop at two rounds no matter whether we were gonna have a baby or not and do eggs. Or we could gamble with one more round of IVF so another 25,000 and then we would not have the chance to do donor eggs if it didn't work. And ultimately after the two rounds didn't work. So I guess the answer is yes. 100,000 was our max and we spent that hundred thousand dollars. So in the midst of all of this, I ended up meeting a wonderful partner. His name is Rob. I talk about him in the book. We are married today. We've been together going on. On nine years. So he's not a sudden appearance of a new partner. But yeah. So we had to decide together. Even though this was money from the sale of my apartment in a previous marriage, it was now our money. And we had to decide, are we. This is money we would use to potentially buy a new apartment. This is money we would use to potentially raise a child. There's other expenses besides just getting pregnant.
- [24:39]
Now you're a mom. Tell us about your life as a mom and the myths that you went into it with that have been dispelled or reaffirmed.
- [24:49]
The things we talked about earlier in the conversation. The idea of losing my identity, not being able to do anything else with my time or think about anything else. I'll never read a book again. I was told, or read the newspaper. Those things have not been true for me. Me, I'm not saying it's not true for other people. It's not true for me. I wrote my book while my child was very young. She's almost five now, which blows my mind. So her life has been like birthing her and birthing the book at the same time. I've been pleasantly surprised that those parts of me are still there. Of course, I've been transformed in other ways. There are lots of things I used to do that I don't want to do any more. Times more precious. So I have to think about how I use those slices very carefully. And then the other thing is that there's so much more joy than I had been told about. I feel like there's been more of this conversation recently. Rachel Cohen wrote that great article about maternal dread in Vox. I think it was last year. And I think there has been a lot of conversation for very good reason about all the ways that moms have and failed in this country.
- [25:59]
Yeah.
- [26:00]
And at the same time, I think maybe we haven't heard enough about maternal joy and some of those pieces. And so I found. And maybe it's also because I waited so long to have my daughter that I was just like.
- [26:15]
Honestly, I don't think that's a small thing. I'm not a social scientist. I don't know. But I also had my kids in my 30s, my second in my late 30s, and I know friends who are having kids in their 40s. And there is, to use your words, like, there's this joy that comes and maybe it's linked, linked to wanting this for so long. But I don't think it's also a small thing that when I do find parents, men, women, who are more content with parenting, and I'm not saying it's smooth or easy, it's a lot of it is a shit show every day. You know, they do have the ability to find those moments of joy and are not regretful. They have money. They have some money. They have either stable jobs. They don't have this financial precarity in their lives, wherever it's coming from, whether it's their student loan debt or their shitty boss or the fact that they're living paycheck to paycheck or all of it. Money doesn't buy happiness, they say. But I do think that having financial stability affords you more parental stability, child care, time for yourself, choices that you just don't get in a society that's already setting up families behind the financial eight ball before they even have kids.
- [27:31]
Absolutely. And I would say one of the things that I say this kind of like half jokingly, the best time to have a kid is when I had a kid at 43, if I didn't have to deal with the struggle of trying to have the kid or the exorbitant amount of money I had to pay to have a kid. The truth is, by then I was already established enough in my career that it wasn't hard for me to keep going in my career. What didn't feel like. Like the only choice was to opt out at that point. And also that I was established enough that I could. I was working for myself at that point as well. So that's a different thing. I. Yeah. And I was at. Had at the earning potential or whatever the right word is at that point that it made things easier. Like I'm remembering, I sometimes laugh with Rob and compare like our childhoods to our daughters. My parents had me at 22, 23 and 20 years difference. But now it's like she gets so much more stuff than we ever got because.
- [28:34]
But Ruthie, 40 is the new 20, right? We're living longer. No, I know what you're saying, my mom was 19 when she had me and I was 37 when I had my daughter. And this morning I was putting paint chalk in her hair for school. And I was like my immigrant mother. A would have never spent the money on this, let alone allow me to walk into my school dressed like Punky Brewster. But here we are. Let's transition to talking a little bit about your career as a writer and any advice you would give those listening. You are living the writer's dream, working for yourself, writing what you want to write for these prominent publications, everyone from Vogue to the Wall Street Journal. You are a published author. So if you had to do it all again, and I think we're both Gen X, I'm on the cusp, but you're definitely planted two feet in Gen X, which I think is the best generation because you had to learn how to do it before the Internet. You are analog and also tech savvy. But if you had to start today, in 2025 to get where you're at today, what would you do differently or what's your advice?
- [29:46]
I feel like it's impossible to say what that would look like because I have two young women working for me and I just like stare at them in awe because the things that they're able to do in terms of their careers, because they can work remotely, they could be digital nomads, they can be entrepreneurs in their 20s and early 30s in a way we could never be because there wasn't Internet. And there's pros and cons to that too. I think about, like, after I graduated from college and going on the urail all around Europe and no one knew where I was and I didn't have a phone and I could get lost. There's wonderful things too about not having the technology, but I can't even imagine what being a writer starting out now would look like today. Because I think really the biggest piece of advice I would have is substack is where all the writers I know are. And this is the same advice that I feel like I got and scoffed at when I had just come out of journalism school in 2005. I started journalism school 2005 and I came out in 2007 and everything had changed in the world. It felt like in those two years I was told, you have to be a brand, you have to really create your own content. And to some extent that is still true today in a very different way. And then to some extent is the noise of everyone's doing it.
- [31:14]
Yeah, I think the tools are different, but the advice is consistent. And over the decades, I think it's always been just. And I wish I'd learned this sooner than later, was just the importance of establishing your own voice and putting your own flag down and saying, this is what I stand for. This is who I am. Personal brand building, creating a destination for that, whether that's a substack today or it could be starts on TikTok. But having ownership in your creativity is so important, because when I went to journalism school, the North Star was just to get a desk job at the New York Times, which is still an admirable post. No, no dig on Kansas City New York Times writers, but I think even the New York Times writers will tell you how important it is to have an identity beyond the New York Times, because you just don't know. We say diversify your portfolio. You got to diversify your career portfolio as well.
- [32:11]
Absolutely. And even now, within my own business, and so my business is working with other people who are writing books and proposals, and I have many different sides of that business. Because I always think, I don't know about you, Farnoosh, but I'm always worried about, like, when the bott drops out, like, what's the safety?
- [32:33]
I'm laughing because you're like, I don't know about you, but when I'm worried, I'm like, stop right there. I'm always worried. One last question. If you could give yourself a piece of financial advice when you were starting out as someone who was pursuing journalism and writing and creative. The creative space, what would it have been? Even now, also knowing your motherhood journey.
- [32:51]
I did all the wrong financial things.
- [32:54]
Give yourself more credit. A lot of this is just. Just betting. And you bet on yourself a lot, which is never a bad thing to do.
- [33:03]
Thank you. I agree. I agree. I think I just assumed that I could. You know what? I didn't negotiate my salary. My first salary. I wish I did now that I know it was. I was making so little. I just always assumed, like, it would work out. And I didn't worry about saving too much, even though I did not have a safety net. And so when it came time to actually, like, like, pay for fertility stuff, I was, like, scrambling. Part of the money for the donor eggs that became our daughter Clementine came from the fact that I had gotten a book deal. And once the contract was signed, it had fallen through. That's over a cocktail. I'll tell you about that. But the point is that I did not have to give back the first installment of the advance, and that became the money that was used for the donor eggs.
- [34:01]
Oh, my gosh. Doesn't it feel like fate in this? I don't know how much you believe in that stuff. I just feel later, in hindsight, you're like, oh, that was a sign, or that was fateful or. But wow, that's a great story. And I'm so glad you got to keep part of that advance because it's a long road and to be getting even the book deal, like, all the work that went into that, and then I don't know what happened. We'll have a cocktail. But I'm glad that you were able to keep some of that. That's important. It's like the kill fee.
- [34:30]
I know. And they were asking for it back, and I was like, with her, all.
- [34:35]
Those times you didn't negotiate your salary in your 20s, it all came to a head at that point, and you were like, no more. I love it.
- [34:44]
I think there's one more thing just to say about that, is that it's funny because, like you said earlier that, like, I'm living the writer dream, and I'm almost 48 in a few months. And it's just funny to me because all of the, like, winding roads between the divorce, between the book deal that fell through, between the career things where I was like, how is everyone else working for the New Yorker? Whoever I wanted to work for, and it never felt like I was. Like, I always felt too late or off track. And ultimately, I guess in retrospect, it feels like it worked out, but like, the overnight success never happens.
- [35:20]
Over never. Thanks for sharing that too. I think it's important for people to know it's not a straight road. You're always feeling late because we don't share enough of what is the truth behind everyone's finish line story. There were many pit stops along the way.
- [35:38]
Absolutely.
- [35:39]
Ruthie Ackerman, thank you so much. Congrats to everything that you have achieved. I'm so glad that you're sharing your story. It's gonna help a lot of women and I think, men. The Mother Code, everyone. Check it out.
- [35:54]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Thanks so much to Ruthie Ackerman for joining us. Her book is called the Mother Code, My Story of Love, Loss, and the myths that shape us. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope your day is so money. Ever wonder what your lashes are destined for? The cards have spoken. Maybelline New York Mascara does it all. Whether you crave Fully fan lashes with lash. Sensational big, bold volume from the colossal a dramatic lift with falsies Lash Lift or natural looking volume from Great Lash. Your perfect lash future awaits. Manifest your best mascara today. Shop Maybelline New York and discover your lashes destiny. Shop now at Walmart.
- [36:43]
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