Special Edition: Modern Motherhood & Making Room for Joy - The NewsWorthy

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[00:00]
A
Today is Saturday, May 9, the day before Mother's Day. And while, of course, it's a time for appreciation and celebration, it can also, for a lot of moms, come with some mixed feelings, like, I love my family and should it be this hard? Today we're talking about what the data shows about the pressures of modern motherhood and how to make sure Joy is still on the to do list. Our guest is Dr. Corrine Lowe. She's an associate professor of business, economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. And her book is called Having It What Data Tells us about Women's lives and getting the most out of yours? We talk about everything from the surprising data on the time women and men spend with their kids today compared to decades ago, to the ways families can think about outsourcing help, to how even overwhelmed moms, whether they work outside of the house or stay at home, can find more moments for themselves. Welcome to THE NEWSWORTHY special edition Saturday when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's special edition Saturday. Corrine Lowe, thank you so much for joining us here on THE newsworthy.
[01:15]
B
Thank you, Erika. Happy to be here.
[01:18]
A
So Mother's Day is often full of flowers and brunch and appreciation, and that is definitely lovely. But for a lot of moms, it can also bring up this kind of complicated feeling of I love my family, but I'm also pretty exhausted. So when you look at the data, what does it tell us about why so many women feel this tension?
[01:36]
B
Yeah, it tells us that what she wants is a nap. She wants a nap for Mother's Day. Yes. So there are these structural forces that are making moms and especially working moms more squeezed than ever. What we've seen is that gender roles have converged at work, but they haven't converged at home. So, so women who stepped into the workplace find themselves winning the bread and baking it, too. And then you add to this the fact that the time we spend with our kids has doubled over the span of a generation. I grew up in the 1980s, so, you know, my bedtime routine was go to bed.
[02:10]
A
Right.
[02:11]
B
But every parent listening knows the stories and the socio emotional processing.
[02:15]
A
Right.
[02:16]
B
And the laying there and kind of army crawling out. That is a mode of parenting that didn't exist 30 years ago.
[02:23]
A
And you have a visual chart available that really shows, like, comparing the time spent with kids. Can you explain that a little bit further?
[02:32]
B
Yeah. So I use this data source called the American Time Use Survey that actually gets a diary from people of how did you spend your day? And accounts minute by minute for how they spend their day. And when we look at that data that we have going back, because there were historical versions of this survey. And so we can go back into the 1960s, into the 1970s, into the 1980s, and what we see is that when we account for minutes spent on childcare tasks, that the stay at home moms of the 70s and 80s were spending fewer minutes per day, actually dramatically so, than the working moms today, because our expectations for what it takes to raise a child have actually changed that much. And the categories that you see skyrocket are travel, which is taking our kids back and forth to activities. Kids are in a lot more structured activities today than they were 30 years ago. Infant care, it's the extended breastfeeding. If you go back to the 1980s, less than 10% of women were breastfeeding at six months. And today that's 60% of women help with homework. This was a category that didn't exist in the 70s and 80s. Kids were on their own to do homework. And so you really see the way that we parent kids reshaped, and that then in turn shapes the amount of time that women have for our careers and for ourselves.
[03:50]
A
I'm sure that's not to say everything was perfect about parenting back then either, but it is showing the pressure that we feel to show up 100% in all of the areas of our lives.
[04:01]
B
Yeah, I think there's a lot of things to love about parenting now. Like, I love spending that extended bedtime with my kids, and I love the time that I spend with them. And part of it is that we've gotten richer as a society. And one of the things we've chosen to do is invest more in our kids and spend more time with them. And also it's about us understanding child development better and understanding that, you know, holding our infants and talking to them and sitting on the floor with our toddlers, that those things matter. So of course there's a lot to love about today's parenting, but we have to acknowledge that when you look in the time use data, women have less time for themselves. They have less leisure time. They have less time for that nap than ever before.
[04:38]
A
Your book is called Having it All. So based on Your research is having it all actually possible.
[04:43]
B
So I joke that, you know, what we should be striving for is having it almost okay. It's not going to be the perfect having it all. And it's about redefining what having it all means for you. And that's why I think my book is a little bit of an answer to lean in. Because lean in says, well, the only thing that you should care about is career success. And if you're not getting it, if you're not achieving and you're not closing the gender wage gap, well, the problem is you. And my book says, well, hold on, there's these structural forces at play where you have to acknowledge the enormous caregiving load that women are carrying and the fact that that might also be part of what they view as having it all, as having a full and complete life. And so what my book urges you to do is to map out what is most important to you. What do you get the most value from? Acknowledge that changes over the course of your life and then be strategic about when you're going to lean in and when you're going to try to find ways around what I call the squeeze. When all those kind of time pressures hit at once and when you're gonna step back for a minute. And that's so individual and personal to each person. And that's why there's no one size fits all solution. But what I'm never gonna give up on is that women deserve to be fully self actualized and have a life that is sustainable, sustainable, rich and rewarding, whatever that means to each person.
[06:01]
A
Listening, that's such an important point that it's, it's not going to be the same for every person and every family.
[06:08]
B
And with parenting, I think that's so important because for some people they're gonna say, well, I like to show love by making these beautiful homemade meals for me, if something has to give, I'd much rather use the Trader Joe's shortcuts, right? And then spend the time sitting on the floor playing with blocks or doing a puzzle or whatever, right? So I think for parent with par, we've got to pick and choose. We've got to say, well, this is what our priority is. And it doesn't matter that little Timmy is on three different travel sports teams. It's okay for our family to say, okay, we can do one season of travel sports and everything else has to be in walking or biking distance. It's okay to say, all right, I know that the neighbor is super involved in the PTA and in everything happening at school. And for me to have a career and have my kids, it means I need my intense time with my kids to be after school hours. So. So it is okay to kind of choose your own adventure. And that's why it's so important to kind of figure out what your values are. Because otherwise, if you try to do the maximum of everything, it just doesn't fit in your time basket. And you're going to be exhausted, you're going to be stressed out, you're going to be depleted. And then, you know, when Mother's Day comes around, instead of wanting to spend that joyful day with your family, you're going to be like, can you all please go in another room and just be quiet for an hour? Right.
[07:26]
A
Well, how do you think about our responsibility in a way to prioritize and decide what's important to us and do that versus kind of what you call the squeeze, where it's more of a structural societal problem or issue. How can we think about what's up to us as an individual versus what we need to think about as a society as a whole?
[07:44]
B
There are so many things that we need help with from society we need more support from. And I really hope that we're going to start to see some of those structural changes, whether that is subsidized childcare, whether that's universal pre K paid family leave, and also whether that's gender roles changing for men. But I wrote my book to empower women. Even taking as a given that the situation is kind of suboptimal out there, right? So even if the situation doesn't get fixed, empower women to say, look, you have agency and you can make choices that still make your life better. So when we're talking about the squeeze, once you understand how bad it gets in that, you know, middle life period, where you've got young kids and young career at the same time, then you give yourself permission to do what I call the minimum viable product, right? To say, all right, it just is going to be just okay for right now. And that's all right. It's okay that the house is a little messy. It's okay that I don't have the fresh herb garden on the windowsill. It's okay that we cook one big meal and then we eat the leftovers. You would love to volunteer for the committee. You would love to try to make the office a better place. But you might be saying no to some of those things to get through the squeeze. Because what I see in the time use data is that time goes off a cliff as soon as those kids are in full time. School money gets easier because paid childcare comes off your monthly budget and time gets easier. So it is going to get better. And so you might say, present me actually needs to pay for eight hours a day of childcare, even though it feels like that doesn't cover my salary. And a lot of women say, like, should I even be paying for that much childcare when I don't earn that much? You shouldn't just be thinking about your earnings right now. You have to think about the trajectory of your career and the payoff of investing a little bit more in the growth of your career. Whenever I talk about outsourcing, people say like, oh my gosh, well, that must be nice to be able to afford that. And that's the sort of unaffordable luxury. But I ask people to take a hard look at their budget, and almost everybody, even very modest income families, takes their car to the mechanic to get the oil changed. That's a form of outsourcing, but it's outsourcing, a male coded task. And so we consider it a necessity, even though anybody could watch a video on YouTube and learn how to change the oil. But we're used to assigning value to men's time, and we don't do it as easily with women's time. And I think a lot of stressed out moms are hiring themselves for too many metaphorical oil changes that happen to be different uses of time within the household, but they just assume they should be able to do it all even though they're also working outside the home.
[10:10]
A
Oh, such a good point. This is all such great data. And there might be a mom saying, whoa, this is a lot for me to think about. What's one step you would tell an overwhelmed mom to take to start heading in this direction?
[10:23]
B
So what I want you to do is if you are feeling so depleted, where everything feels hard, everything feels like work, I want you to just notice something that you do that does bring you value, that does bring you joy. Whether that's sitting in your garden and having coffee for five minutes, whether that is walking to work instead of taking the bus because, you know, you like to get a little bit of sunshine. Whether that's reading a book, a physical book, a paper book, and not something on your phone for 10 minutes, right? And I want you to set aside time for that thing and preserve it, okay? And put it first on your calendar. I call this paying yourself first with leisure time. Because often we do actually get time for ourselves, but we leave ourselves the time crumbles in the bottom of the cookie bag. Well, imagine how powerful it is to give yourself the first bite of the cookie instead of the crumbles left over and be really intentional about how you want to use that time and you are going to make your life so much richer and more full. Which is the point. Here is the thing that I love doing and I'm going to carve out 10, maybe 20 minutes three times a week to make sure that I get that first bite of the cookie for myself. You know, mom never gets the first bite of the cookie.
[11:35]
A
So and it's so relatable of like okay, I have 10 minutes, wait, what do I want to do? Yes, and asking that question and then yeah, and you end up scrolling instead, which is not as fulfilling. Still ahead, the data shows it Dads are doing more than ever before so why do many moms still feel like they're burnt out? Plus we talk about the tradwife trend planning strategically and three reasons why putting ourselves first sometimes is actually the best thing we can do for our families. That and more coming up. But first, a break for our sponsors. Lately I've been trying to be more intentional about the things I buy and Quince has so many great options with premium fabrics yet reasonable prices. So it's a go to I appreciate that Quince uses premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and ultra soft denim. Great for refreshing your spring and summer wardrobe. With that intention I've been looking for, I've already ordered new jeans and a linen top that I actually need. And for any moms listening who want to buy themselves a little something for Mother's Day, Quince has not only great clothes but also great jewelry options. I love a delicate diamond bracelet that I have from Quince. I wear it daily and it feels special every time. And of course you may have heard me talk about one of my favorite things from Quince, which is their Carry on suitcase. It's lightweight, sleek, rolls smoothly, it has compression straps to fit more in there and it feels high quality. Of course, everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.comnewworthy for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.comnewsworthy for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.comnewsworthy the Newsworthy is also brought to you by Deleteme. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Deleteme sends regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. It's one of those services that I'm definitely willing to pay for because I get both privacy and peace of mind. Especially since Deleteme is not just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. Even the New York Times Wirecutter named Deleteme their top pick for data removal services. As someone with an active online presence, it's something I think about often. And really, we all have information online these days. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com newsworthy and and use the promo code Newsworthy at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Newsworthy and enter the code newsworthy at checkout. Okay, now back to my conversation with Corinne Lowe. You know, you mentioned you're an economist, so you look at home life in a way that many of us maybe don't. Can you explain what type of economist you are? You're not looking at Wall street here and how that perspective has really shaped this book and your advice to women.
[14:42]
B
Yeah, it's funny because when I tell people I'm an economist and I teach at the Wharton Business School, then they ask me for stock tips. And that's not, that's not what I excel at. I'm like, okay, I can give you some advice on what age you should freeze your eggs at. I have a paper about that. So, yes, I am an economist that studies women's lives because economists study how people create and divide values subject to scarcity in the world. And all moms know about scarcity. Our time is scarce and our time is a valuable resource. And so I study the time that we spend with our kids and how it's changed over time and gender roles in the household and how those haven't changed over time.
[15:20]
A
And I want to acknowledge that the data does show that many men today are more involved at home. Right. And Want to be a big part of their kids lives. So where's the disconnect? Still happening.
[15:31]
B
Oh my gosh, I love talking about this. So thank you for asking because I think there is this major disconnect. And I know why. After looking at the data, the reason is men's time they spend with kids has also increased significantly over time. Because the way we parent today is so different. Because we are doing the homework help at the kitchen table and we are holding the babies and rocking them to sleep. Right? Men are doing that too. So when they compare to their dads, they're like, I'm an amazing dad. I read a bedtime story, I dropped the kid off at school. My dad never did that. Why is my wife nagging me? Right? But when you look in the time use data, men's time has increased significantly, but women's time has increased more. So the gender gap in the household has actually gotten wider instead of narrower. So what he's neglecting is that he's comparing himself to his dad but not realizing that his wife compared to her mom is doing way more. And so he's feeling like world's best dad. And then I think feeling a little insulted when I go and present my research and I'm like, men aren't doing enough. And literally every guy in the room is like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Haven't things changed over time? And they have, but the gender roles haven't changed. Parenting has changed. You are doing more, but the gender division has not changed. And if you actually look at what's on your wife's plate, and that's why I actually recommend for men that do want to understand this better and step up. I have a time tracking spreadsheet on my website and I recommend that couples track their time together and actually make the invisible labor visible. Because household time is like an iceberg. Men see the tip of the iceberg, which is dropping the kid off of school, and they do half of that. They're like, I alternate drop offs. And then there was this iceberg of invisible labor under the surface where, you know, calling the pediatrician, she's ordering instacart on her phone in between meetings, she's meal planning, she's answering texts to arrange a play date. And when you actually see how women spend their time and how much time they are spending on childcare and household labor, then men will realize, oh, if I have this vision of myself as the 5050 dad, I actually need to step up and do way more.
[17:37]
A
We've also seen the Rise of this trad wife trend online. It's kind of this romanticized version of staying home, baking bread, caring for the family, and really opting out of that career grind. So why do you think that's resonating? And what do you see about that extreme end of the cultural spectrum?
[17:53]
B
The problem with that is that is a tremendously economically insecure position for women to be in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a step back to invest in your family. But if you do that, you've got to make sure that your family has invested in your money making machine, your capacity to be able to take care of yourself. Because it's not just about divorce, it's about death, disability and layoffs. Okay, I might be coming for your husband's job and we might need you to actually be the one in the labor force. So if you are going to invest in your family, how has your family invested in you? And how have you made sure to upgrade your money machine first before putting it away in a closet?
[18:32]
A
What are a few examples of how a family can invest into a stay at home mom.
[18:36]
B
So a certificate program so that she can keep her skills current a half day every week where they still have childcare, even though she's a stay at home mom, so that she can keep her contacts current, so that she can go to networking events, so that she can pursue an online degree program if that's what she wants to do. Right. So I think if you have any piece of machinery and you don't maintain that machinery, it eventually depreciates your human capital is the same. Okay. So that your human capital is economist word for your money making ability. And it's something that has to be consistently maintained in order to be valuable.
[19:10]
A
As we wrap up here, since it is a Mother's Day episode, I want to end with more of that hopeful part. When women stop trying to meet kind of every impossible expectation that we get, what opens up not only for them but also even for their kids.
[19:23]
B
Such a great question. And I 100% think that this is the right perspective. Put on your own oxygen mask first. There's a reason they say that because you cannot put on your kid's oxygen mask if you pass out. Right. That's the reason that they say that. And so you've got to really apply that to your life. For me, the biggest cure for my mom guilt about needing to set boundaries for myself was seeing my relationship with my son blossom when I was actually getting my needs met. And so when I was consistently putting myself last, I Actually wasn't the type of mom that I wanted to be. And once I made some really big changes, you can read about them in my book. To actually get what I needed in life, to actually set up our lives so that it worked for me as well. For example, going from a two and a half hour commute from New York to my job in Philadelphia to a seven minute bike ride by moving to Philadelphia then I was able to be playful again. I was able to be fun. I was able to emotionally connect. And I think that's such an important thing for moms to remember. Is that what your kid wants more than the things they ask for? Because they will ask, right? More than the travel soccer team that they ask for, more than the things they're asking you to buy, more than the things they're asking you to make, more than the meal they're asking you to cook. They want you, they want you to be able to be present with them, to be your full self and be able to relax and laugh with them for a moment. And that is in the hierarchy of needs, so much more important than all of those other things that we are stressing ourselves out in order to provide. And so if that is what gets it done internally for you to set some boundaries and take some time for yourself, say that you are doing this for your family, you're doing it for your family now. You're doing it for being able to be there for your family for a longer time by taking care of your health. And I'll give you one more thing to help you set those boundaries, which is that you're actually doing it for gender equality. Because if you let yourself become a burned out shell of a person in service of your family, you are modeling for your sons that that's what they can expect from their wives and you're modeling for your daughters that that's what love looks like. So I want you to model the future that we are trying to build for your kids where mom is a person too. She is a person who has needs and she is a person who gets the first bite of the cookie sometimes.
[21:51]
A
Thank you so much to our guest, Corinne Lo for sharing her research, insights and perspective. You'll find a link to her book in today's episode notes on our website and it's called Having it what Data Tells Us about Women's Lives and Getting the Most out of yours. Thank you so much for listening today. Join us again during the week for daily news roundups in less than 15 minutes. We'll keep you informed in our fast fair fun style. So we'll be back on Monday with a look at the latest news. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. And of course, happy Mother's Day.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: "Special Edition: Modern Motherhood & Making Room for Joy"
The NewsWorthy with Erica Mandy | Guest: Dr. Corrine Lowe | May 9, 2026

Episode Overview

This special Mother’s Day edition explores the realities and pressures of modern motherhood through the lens of data, societal expectations, and personal fulfillment. Erica Mandy sits down with Dr. Corrine Lowe, associate professor at the Wharton School and author of Having It: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. Together, they discuss why today’s mothers can feel so overwhelmed, how expectations have evolved over generations, and practical strategies for reclaiming joy and personal time, all while challenging the concept of “having it all.”

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Double-Bind of Modern Motherhood

Contemporary Tension: Mother’s Day is a time for appreciation, but also highlights exhaustion and complexity in women’s lives (00:00–01:17).
"Winning the bread and baking it, too": Women’s roles at work and at home have not converged equally. Working mothers are expected to excel professionally and remain primarily responsible for domestic and emotional labor (01:35–02:15).
- Quote: “Women who stepped into the workplace find themselves winning the bread and baking it, too.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (01:48)

How Parenting Has Changed (And the Time Crunch)

Exploding Expectations: Using the American Time Use Survey, Dr. Lowe explains moms today – especially working moms – spend far more daily minutes on childcare compared to stay-at-home moms in the 1970s and 80s (02:22–03:49).
- Structured Activities: Increase in “travel” time (shuttling kids), more complex bedtime routines, higher breastfeeding rates (from <10% at 6 months in the 80s to 60% today), and direct homework help (03:12–03:49).
Resulting Squeeze: Modern moms have significantly less leisure time than in the past, contributing to a feeling of depletion (04:00–04:37).

Redefining "Having It All"

Personal Definition: It’s not a perfect balance, but rather about redefining and constantly re-evaluating what matters most to each individual and family (04:43–06:01).
- Quote: “What we should be striving for is having it almost okay... It’s about redefining what having it all means for you.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (04:43)
Strategic Choices: Encourage parents to “choose your own adventure” and not feel pressured to excel in all areas simultaneously. Prioritizing your own family’s values over external expectations is key to sustainability and genuine joy (06:07–07:26).

Agency vs. Structure: What Can We Control?

Limits of Individual Choice: While women must make choices in an imperfect system, real societal change (e.g., paid family leave, subsidized childcare, universal pre-K, and shifting gender roles) is also necessary (07:44–08:20).
The "Minimum Viable Product": Give yourself permission to let some things be “just okay,” especially during life stages when demands peak (08:20–09:05).
- Quote: “It’s okay that the house is a little messy... that we cook one big meal and eat the leftovers.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (08:42)

Outsourcing and the Gendered Value of Time

Breaking the Taboo: Outsourcing domestic tasks (regardless of gender coding) can be a necessity, not a luxury, to protect women’s time and well-being (09:30–10:10).
Analogy: Comparing household outsourcing to taking a car to the mechanic – outsourcing is normalized when it’s a “male” task (09:45).

Practical Advice: Finding Small Spaces for Joy

"Pay Yourself First": Instead of leaving personal time as an afterthought, intentionally schedule small moments of joy and preserve them without guilt (10:23–11:34).
- Quote: “Imagine how powerful it is to give yourself the first bite of the cookie instead of the crumbles left over… you’re going to make your life so much richer.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (11:11)
Action Step: Identify a small daily pleasure and treat it as non-negotiable, not just leftover time (10:23–11:34).

Dads Are Doing More, But Gender Gaps Persist

Widening Gap: Although fathers spend more time with children than previous generations, the increase in mothers’ time is even greater, so the gender gap in home labor persists or has even grown (15:30–16:50).
- Quote: “Men’s time has increased significantly, but women’s time has increased more. So the gender gap… has actually gotten wider instead of narrower.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (16:04)
Invisible Labor: Men often see only the visible tasks, unaware of the magnitude of invisible household labor mothers manage (16:04–17:36).
- Suggestion: Couples should track their time to reveal these disparities.

The “Tradwife” Trend and Economic Security

Online Romantization: The tradwife (traditional wife) trend glamorizes full-time homemaking but obscures the risks of economic dependency (17:36–18:31).
- Quote: “If you have any piece of machinery and you don’t maintain that machinery, it eventually depreciates. Your human capital is the same.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (18:48)
Tips for Stay-at-Home Moms: Continue education or networking, maintain skills (“money-making machine”), and ensure economic options remain viable (18:36–19:10).

The Payoff: Healthier Moms, Healthier Families

Self-Care as Family Care: By setting boundaries and putting personal needs first at times, mothers both model healthier patterns for their kids and directly improve the quality of their relationships (19:23–21:50).
- Quote: “What your kid wants… is for you to be able to be present with them, to be your full self and be able to relax and laugh with them for a moment… If that is what gets it done for you to set some boundaries… say that you are doing this for your family.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (20:40)
Modeling Equality: A mother who always sacrifices herself models that dynamic for her children—for better or worse.

Notable Quotes & Moments

“She wants a nap for Mother’s Day.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe, humorously capturing modern maternal exhaustion (01:37)
“Parenting is like an iceberg… Men see the tip … There’s this iceberg of invisible labor under the surface.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (16:25)
“You are modeling for your sons that that’s what they can expect from their wives and you’re modeling for your daughters that that’s what love looks like.” – Dr. Corrine Lowe (21:36)

Segment Timestamps

00:00–01:17: Introduction to episode’s topic and guest
01:17–02:22: Mother’s Day’s mixed emotions and root causes in data
02:22–03:49: How time with children has changed, key data and comparisons
04:37–06:07: Can anyone really “have it all”? Rethinking expectations
06:07–07:26: Choosing and prioritizing family values over societal pressures
07:26–10:10: Agency, structural limitations, "the squeeze" and outsourcing
10:10–11:34: Tangible tips for depleted moms: “Pay yourself first” with time
14:42–15:20: Dr. Lowe’s economics perspective on household time and scarcity
15:20–17:36: Dads’ increased participation, persistent gender gap, invisible labor
17:36–18:31: Analyzing the "tradwife" trend and the need for economic autonomy
18:31–19:10: How families can practically “maintain” stay-at-home moms’ skills
19:10–21:50: Hopeful closing: self-care benefits for mothers and children, modeling healthy behaviors

Tone & Takeaways

The episode is empathetic, data-driven, and solution-focused, offering both big-picture context and actionable steps. Listeners are reassured that perfection in parenting is neither possible nor necessary. Instead, acting intentionally—prioritizing joy, redefining success, acknowledging invisible labor, and advocating for change—is what moves families and society forward.

Dr. Lowe’s book, “Having It,” and further resources are linked in the show's notes.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Transcript31 lines

[00:00]
A
Today is Saturday, May 9, the day before Mother's Day. And while, of course, it's a time for appreciation and celebration, it can also, for a lot of moms, come with some mixed feelings, like, I love my family and should it be this hard? Today we're talking about what the data shows about the pressures of modern motherhood and how to make sure Joy is still on the to do list. Our guest is Dr. Corrine Lowe. She's an associate professor of business, economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. And her book is called Having It What Data Tells us about Women's lives and getting the most out of yours? We talk about everything from the surprising data on the time women and men spend with their kids today compared to decades ago, to the ways families can think about outsourcing help, to how even overwhelmed moms, whether they work outside of the house or stay at home, can find more moments for themselves. Welcome to THE NEWSWORTHY special edition Saturday when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's special edition Saturday. Corrine Lowe, thank you so much for joining us here on THE newsworthy.
[01:15]
B
Thank you, Erika. Happy to be here.
[01:18]
A
So Mother's Day is often full of flowers and brunch and appreciation, and that is definitely lovely. But for a lot of moms, it can also bring up this kind of complicated feeling of I love my family, but I'm also pretty exhausted. So when you look at the data, what does it tell us about why so many women feel this tension?
[01:36]
B
Yeah, it tells us that what she wants is a nap. She wants a nap for Mother's Day. Yes. So there are these structural forces that are making moms and especially working moms more squeezed than ever. What we've seen is that gender roles have converged at work, but they haven't converged at home. So, so women who stepped into the workplace find themselves winning the bread and baking it, too. And then you add to this the fact that the time we spend with our kids has doubled over the span of a generation. I grew up in the 1980s, so, you know, my bedtime routine was go to bed.
[02:10]
A
Right.
[02:11]
B
But every parent listening knows the stories and the socio emotional processing.
[02:15]
A
Right.
[02:16]
B
And the laying there and kind of army crawling out. That is a mode of parenting that didn't exist 30 years ago.
[02:23]
A
And you have a visual chart available that really shows, like, comparing the time spent with kids. Can you explain that a little bit further?
[02:32]
B
Yeah. So I use this data source called the American Time Use Survey that actually gets a diary from people of how did you spend your day? And accounts minute by minute for how they spend their day. And when we look at that data that we have going back, because there were historical versions of this survey. And so we can go back into the 1960s, into the 1970s, into the 1980s, and what we see is that when we account for minutes spent on childcare tasks, that the stay at home moms of the 70s and 80s were spending fewer minutes per day, actually dramatically so, than the working moms today, because our expectations for what it takes to raise a child have actually changed that much. And the categories that you see skyrocket are travel, which is taking our kids back and forth to activities. Kids are in a lot more structured activities today than they were 30 years ago. Infant care, it's the extended breastfeeding. If you go back to the 1980s, less than 10% of women were breastfeeding at six months. And today that's 60% of women help with homework. This was a category that didn't exist in the 70s and 80s. Kids were on their own to do homework. And so you really see the way that we parent kids reshaped, and that then in turn shapes the amount of time that women have for our careers and for ourselves.
[03:50]
A
I'm sure that's not to say everything was perfect about parenting back then either, but it is showing the pressure that we feel to show up 100% in all of the areas of our lives.
[04:01]
B
Yeah, I think there's a lot of things to love about parenting now. Like, I love spending that extended bedtime with my kids, and I love the time that I spend with them. And part of it is that we've gotten richer as a society. And one of the things we've chosen to do is invest more in our kids and spend more time with them. And also it's about us understanding child development better and understanding that, you know, holding our infants and talking to them and sitting on the floor with our toddlers, that those things matter. So of course there's a lot to love about today's parenting, but we have to acknowledge that when you look in the time use data, women have less time for themselves. They have less leisure time. They have less time for that nap than ever before.
[04:38]
A
Your book is called Having it All. So based on Your research is having it all actually possible.
[04:43]
B
So I joke that, you know, what we should be striving for is having it almost okay. It's not going to be the perfect having it all. And it's about redefining what having it all means for you. And that's why I think my book is a little bit of an answer to lean in. Because lean in says, well, the only thing that you should care about is career success. And if you're not getting it, if you're not achieving and you're not closing the gender wage gap, well, the problem is you. And my book says, well, hold on, there's these structural forces at play where you have to acknowledge the enormous caregiving load that women are carrying and the fact that that might also be part of what they view as having it all, as having a full and complete life. And so what my book urges you to do is to map out what is most important to you. What do you get the most value from? Acknowledge that changes over the course of your life and then be strategic about when you're going to lean in and when you're going to try to find ways around what I call the squeeze. When all those kind of time pressures hit at once and when you're gonna step back for a minute. And that's so individual and personal to each person. And that's why there's no one size fits all solution. But what I'm never gonna give up on is that women deserve to be fully self actualized and have a life that is sustainable, sustainable, rich and rewarding, whatever that means to each person.
[06:01]
A
Listening, that's such an important point that it's, it's not going to be the same for every person and every family.
[06:08]
B
And with parenting, I think that's so important because for some people they're gonna say, well, I like to show love by making these beautiful homemade meals for me, if something has to give, I'd much rather use the Trader Joe's shortcuts, right? And then spend the time sitting on the floor playing with blocks or doing a puzzle or whatever, right? So I think for parent with par, we've got to pick and choose. We've got to say, well, this is what our priority is. And it doesn't matter that little Timmy is on three different travel sports teams. It's okay for our family to say, okay, we can do one season of travel sports and everything else has to be in walking or biking distance. It's okay to say, all right, I know that the neighbor is super involved in the PTA and in everything happening at school. And for me to have a career and have my kids, it means I need my intense time with my kids to be after school hours. So. So it is okay to kind of choose your own adventure. And that's why it's so important to kind of figure out what your values are. Because otherwise, if you try to do the maximum of everything, it just doesn't fit in your time basket. And you're going to be exhausted, you're going to be stressed out, you're going to be depleted. And then, you know, when Mother's Day comes around, instead of wanting to spend that joyful day with your family, you're going to be like, can you all please go in another room and just be quiet for an hour? Right.
[07:26]
A
Well, how do you think about our responsibility in a way to prioritize and decide what's important to us and do that versus kind of what you call the squeeze, where it's more of a structural societal problem or issue. How can we think about what's up to us as an individual versus what we need to think about as a society as a whole?
[07:44]
B
There are so many things that we need help with from society we need more support from. And I really hope that we're going to start to see some of those structural changes, whether that is subsidized childcare, whether that's universal pre K paid family leave, and also whether that's gender roles changing for men. But I wrote my book to empower women. Even taking as a given that the situation is kind of suboptimal out there, right? So even if the situation doesn't get fixed, empower women to say, look, you have agency and you can make choices that still make your life better. So when we're talking about the squeeze, once you understand how bad it gets in that, you know, middle life period, where you've got young kids and young career at the same time, then you give yourself permission to do what I call the minimum viable product, right? To say, all right, it just is going to be just okay for right now. And that's all right. It's okay that the house is a little messy. It's okay that I don't have the fresh herb garden on the windowsill. It's okay that we cook one big meal and then we eat the leftovers. You would love to volunteer for the committee. You would love to try to make the office a better place. But you might be saying no to some of those things to get through the squeeze. Because what I see in the time use data is that time goes off a cliff as soon as those kids are in full time. School money gets easier because paid childcare comes off your monthly budget and time gets easier. So it is going to get better. And so you might say, present me actually needs to pay for eight hours a day of childcare, even though it feels like that doesn't cover my salary. And a lot of women say, like, should I even be paying for that much childcare when I don't earn that much? You shouldn't just be thinking about your earnings right now. You have to think about the trajectory of your career and the payoff of investing a little bit more in the growth of your career. Whenever I talk about outsourcing, people say like, oh my gosh, well, that must be nice to be able to afford that. And that's the sort of unaffordable luxury. But I ask people to take a hard look at their budget, and almost everybody, even very modest income families, takes their car to the mechanic to get the oil changed. That's a form of outsourcing, but it's outsourcing, a male coded task. And so we consider it a necessity, even though anybody could watch a video on YouTube and learn how to change the oil. But we're used to assigning value to men's time, and we don't do it as easily with women's time. And I think a lot of stressed out moms are hiring themselves for too many metaphorical oil changes that happen to be different uses of time within the household, but they just assume they should be able to do it all even though they're also working outside the home.
[10:10]
A
Oh, such a good point. This is all such great data. And there might be a mom saying, whoa, this is a lot for me to think about. What's one step you would tell an overwhelmed mom to take to start heading in this direction?
[10:23]
B
So what I want you to do is if you are feeling so depleted, where everything feels hard, everything feels like work, I want you to just notice something that you do that does bring you value, that does bring you joy. Whether that's sitting in your garden and having coffee for five minutes, whether that is walking to work instead of taking the bus because, you know, you like to get a little bit of sunshine. Whether that's reading a book, a physical book, a paper book, and not something on your phone for 10 minutes, right? And I want you to set aside time for that thing and preserve it, okay? And put it first on your calendar. I call this paying yourself first with leisure time. Because often we do actually get time for ourselves, but we leave ourselves the time crumbles in the bottom of the cookie bag. Well, imagine how powerful it is to give yourself the first bite of the cookie instead of the crumbles left over and be really intentional about how you want to use that time and you are going to make your life so much richer and more full. Which is the point. Here is the thing that I love doing and I'm going to carve out 10, maybe 20 minutes three times a week to make sure that I get that first bite of the cookie for myself. You know, mom never gets the first bite of the cookie.
[11:35]
A
So and it's so relatable of like okay, I have 10 minutes, wait, what do I want to do? Yes, and asking that question and then yeah, and you end up scrolling instead, which is not as fulfilling. Still ahead, the data shows it Dads are doing more than ever before so why do many moms still feel like they're burnt out? Plus we talk about the tradwife trend planning strategically and three reasons why putting ourselves first sometimes is actually the best thing we can do for our families. That and more coming up. But first, a break for our sponsors. Lately I've been trying to be more intentional about the things I buy and Quince has so many great options with premium fabrics yet reasonable prices. So it's a go to I appreciate that Quince uses premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and ultra soft denim. Great for refreshing your spring and summer wardrobe. With that intention I've been looking for, I've already ordered new jeans and a linen top that I actually need. And for any moms listening who want to buy themselves a little something for Mother's Day, Quince has not only great clothes but also great jewelry options. I love a delicate diamond bracelet that I have from Quince. I wear it daily and it feels special every time. And of course you may have heard me talk about one of my favorite things from Quince, which is their Carry on suitcase. It's lightweight, sleek, rolls smoothly, it has compression straps to fit more in there and it feels high quality. Of course, everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.comnewworthy for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.comnewsworthy for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.comnewsworthy the Newsworthy is also brought to you by Deleteme. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Deleteme sends regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. It's one of those services that I'm definitely willing to pay for because I get both privacy and peace of mind. Especially since Deleteme is not just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. Even the New York Times Wirecutter named Deleteme their top pick for data removal services. As someone with an active online presence, it's something I think about often. And really, we all have information online these days. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com newsworthy and and use the promo code Newsworthy at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Newsworthy and enter the code newsworthy at checkout. Okay, now back to my conversation with Corinne Lowe. You know, you mentioned you're an economist, so you look at home life in a way that many of us maybe don't. Can you explain what type of economist you are? You're not looking at Wall street here and how that perspective has really shaped this book and your advice to women.
[14:42]
B
Yeah, it's funny because when I tell people I'm an economist and I teach at the Wharton Business School, then they ask me for stock tips. And that's not, that's not what I excel at. I'm like, okay, I can give you some advice on what age you should freeze your eggs at. I have a paper about that. So, yes, I am an economist that studies women's lives because economists study how people create and divide values subject to scarcity in the world. And all moms know about scarcity. Our time is scarce and our time is a valuable resource. And so I study the time that we spend with our kids and how it's changed over time and gender roles in the household and how those haven't changed over time.
[15:20]
A
And I want to acknowledge that the data does show that many men today are more involved at home. Right. And Want to be a big part of their kids lives. So where's the disconnect? Still happening.
[15:31]
B
Oh my gosh, I love talking about this. So thank you for asking because I think there is this major disconnect. And I know why. After looking at the data, the reason is men's time they spend with kids has also increased significantly over time. Because the way we parent today is so different. Because we are doing the homework help at the kitchen table and we are holding the babies and rocking them to sleep. Right? Men are doing that too. So when they compare to their dads, they're like, I'm an amazing dad. I read a bedtime story, I dropped the kid off at school. My dad never did that. Why is my wife nagging me? Right? But when you look in the time use data, men's time has increased significantly, but women's time has increased more. So the gender gap in the household has actually gotten wider instead of narrower. So what he's neglecting is that he's comparing himself to his dad but not realizing that his wife compared to her mom is doing way more. And so he's feeling like world's best dad. And then I think feeling a little insulted when I go and present my research and I'm like, men aren't doing enough. And literally every guy in the room is like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Haven't things changed over time? And they have, but the gender roles haven't changed. Parenting has changed. You are doing more, but the gender division has not changed. And if you actually look at what's on your wife's plate, and that's why I actually recommend for men that do want to understand this better and step up. I have a time tracking spreadsheet on my website and I recommend that couples track their time together and actually make the invisible labor visible. Because household time is like an iceberg. Men see the tip of the iceberg, which is dropping the kid off of school, and they do half of that. They're like, I alternate drop offs. And then there was this iceberg of invisible labor under the surface where, you know, calling the pediatrician, she's ordering instacart on her phone in between meetings, she's meal planning, she's answering texts to arrange a play date. And when you actually see how women spend their time and how much time they are spending on childcare and household labor, then men will realize, oh, if I have this vision of myself as the 5050 dad, I actually need to step up and do way more.
[17:37]
A
We've also seen the Rise of this trad wife trend online. It's kind of this romanticized version of staying home, baking bread, caring for the family, and really opting out of that career grind. So why do you think that's resonating? And what do you see about that extreme end of the cultural spectrum?
[17:53]
B
The problem with that is that is a tremendously economically insecure position for women to be in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a step back to invest in your family. But if you do that, you've got to make sure that your family has invested in your money making machine, your capacity to be able to take care of yourself. Because it's not just about divorce, it's about death, disability and layoffs. Okay, I might be coming for your husband's job and we might need you to actually be the one in the labor force. So if you are going to invest in your family, how has your family invested in you? And how have you made sure to upgrade your money machine first before putting it away in a closet?
[18:32]
A
What are a few examples of how a family can invest into a stay at home mom.
[18:36]
B
So a certificate program so that she can keep her skills current a half day every week where they still have childcare, even though she's a stay at home mom, so that she can keep her contacts current, so that she can go to networking events, so that she can pursue an online degree program if that's what she wants to do. Right. So I think if you have any piece of machinery and you don't maintain that machinery, it eventually depreciates your human capital is the same. Okay. So that your human capital is economist word for your money making ability. And it's something that has to be consistently maintained in order to be valuable.
[19:10]
A
As we wrap up here, since it is a Mother's Day episode, I want to end with more of that hopeful part. When women stop trying to meet kind of every impossible expectation that we get, what opens up not only for them but also even for their kids.
[19:23]
B
Such a great question. And I 100% think that this is the right perspective. Put on your own oxygen mask first. There's a reason they say that because you cannot put on your kid's oxygen mask if you pass out. Right. That's the reason that they say that. And so you've got to really apply that to your life. For me, the biggest cure for my mom guilt about needing to set boundaries for myself was seeing my relationship with my son blossom when I was actually getting my needs met. And so when I was consistently putting myself last, I Actually wasn't the type of mom that I wanted to be. And once I made some really big changes, you can read about them in my book. To actually get what I needed in life, to actually set up our lives so that it worked for me as well. For example, going from a two and a half hour commute from New York to my job in Philadelphia to a seven minute bike ride by moving to Philadelphia then I was able to be playful again. I was able to be fun. I was able to emotionally connect. And I think that's such an important thing for moms to remember. Is that what your kid wants more than the things they ask for? Because they will ask, right? More than the travel soccer team that they ask for, more than the things they're asking you to buy, more than the things they're asking you to make, more than the meal they're asking you to cook. They want you, they want you to be able to be present with them, to be your full self and be able to relax and laugh with them for a moment. And that is in the hierarchy of needs, so much more important than all of those other things that we are stressing ourselves out in order to provide. And so if that is what gets it done internally for you to set some boundaries and take some time for yourself, say that you are doing this for your family, you're doing it for your family now. You're doing it for being able to be there for your family for a longer time by taking care of your health. And I'll give you one more thing to help you set those boundaries, which is that you're actually doing it for gender equality. Because if you let yourself become a burned out shell of a person in service of your family, you are modeling for your sons that that's what they can expect from their wives and you're modeling for your daughters that that's what love looks like. So I want you to model the future that we are trying to build for your kids where mom is a person too. She is a person who has needs and she is a person who gets the first bite of the cookie sometimes.
[21:51]
A
Thank you so much to our guest, Corinne Lo for sharing her research, insights and perspective. You'll find a link to her book in today's episode notes on our website and it's called Having it what Data Tells Us about Women's Lives and Getting the Most out of yours. Thank you so much for listening today. Join us again during the week for daily news roundups in less than 15 minutes. We'll keep you informed in our fast fair fun style. So we'll be back on Monday with a look at the latest news. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. And of course, happy Mother's Day.