hol+ by Dr. Taz MD

‘Having It All’ Is a Lie: Burnout, Success, and the Toll on Women’s Health with Dr. Corinne Low
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Dr. Corinne Low: [00:00:00] You have to say no to this idea that we can be a 1950s housewife. Well, we actually have like a full-time, right? Insanely demanding job. We're trying to be a Frankenstein of the Instagram mom. Yep. And the like high powered super career person. The investment banking or CEO guy. Right? And we're trying to do both of those things.

Men actually do the same amount of housework as they did in 1970. And so that feeling of like, oh my God, this. Just isn't adding up. Is it just me? What I say is it's not in your head. It's in the data,

Dr. Taz: and it's real. It's real. Welcome to Whole Plus, the podcast that embraces and tackles the holistic way, bringing it all together, science, research, innovations and technology, and our collective human experience.

This is where science and Spirit come together. I'm Dr. Taz, your host and a double board certified medical doctor and integrative health expert, a nutritionist and an acupuncturist. I'm also the founder and CEO of whole plus a digital and clinical platform where my team and I [00:01:00] practice evidence-based holistic medicine every single day.

I know and I hear all the health and wellness noise that's out there. I want this show to be the one to empower you with the knowledge you need to heal. Not just your body, but your relationships, your communities, and our world. Welcome to Whole Plus. So there's something I hear from at least one patient every day in clinic.

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Just go to timeline.com/dr. Taz. That's timeline. T-I-M-E-L-I-N e.com/d, RT A z. Support yourselves, support your energy, and finally feel like you again. In 2017, I wrote the book Super Women Rx, and I wrote it because I was seeing women come in high powered women full of ambition and achievement. Literally crash out right before my very eyes, and that crash looked different depending on who I was talking to.

The idea of burnout, career burnout, being a superwoman, trying to do it all is something that we do need to talk more about and take seriously. The flip side is younger women today are talking about the soft life and really trying to do. What [00:03:00] is the right answer? How do we navigate things from here? And what if we really do wanna change the world, but still wanna have a family to help us with all of these questions?

My next guest is well qualified to really shed light on this important topic. Dr. Corinne Lowe is an associate Professor of Business economics and Public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the economics of gender and discrimination, and has been published in top journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy.

Corin and her work have also been featured in popular media outlets, including Forbes, vanity Fair, the LA Times NPR, she has spoken to and advise firms like Google, IFM Investors, Uber and Amazon Web Services, in addition to teaching in Wharton's executive education programs, her first book, having It All is forthcoming with Flatiron this September.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Lowe to the show. Dr. [00:04:00] Lowe, welcome to the show. You have quite the resume. You have studied in so many prestigious institutions, but you decided to write a book about burnout and about having it all. What happened there? Um, I was living it,

Dr. Corinne Low: so, you know, it might look from, you know, the sheet in front of you, like, you know, I had it all going for me, but, um, I was, where the book starts, I was commuting from New York to my job in Philadelphia.

I had a newborn. I was pumping in the Amtrak bathroom. Oh. I was in a deeply unequal marriage, which is something that I talk about in the book. And I was, you know, this big feminist and thought like, oh, I, you know, if I just want it to be this way, I'm gonna be able to actually divide things equally with my husband.

You know, even with having a child, um, I was shouldering the breadwinning load and the home production load. Mm-hmm. The housework, the childcare, everything, and I was exhausted. Every moment of every [00:05:00] day. And I literally thought to myself, okay, I guess this is just what it's like to have kids and to be in this part of my life.

I guess the fun part is over.

Dr. Taz: Mm. And you were working full-time at. At the same time as, as, as you have this newborn child,

Dr. Corinne Low: right? Yes. Okay. And trying to get tenure at Wharton, which was, you know, very like high pressure, trying to publish as much as possible. And I'm looking at my male colleagues and looking at how relaxed do they seem, how much more time they have than me.

And I was like, what is going on here? And as an economist, I had been studying all my career, right? The forces that impact women's lives. Um, when I was in graduate school, I started doing research on the trade off women make between fertility, timing, and career. So this is something I've been studying, you know, throughout my career.

And then I said, you know what, let me look at the data. And I started looking at data on women's time use. And when I looked at the data, you scared, I saw, okay, this is, it's not in my head. It's [00:06:00] ridiculous. It doesn't add up. It actually literally doesn't add up because we. Went from, you know, a specialization model where the husband was the one who had to produce in the market.

He was the one with the career, and then the wife took care of what is really a full-time job at home. Right. Right. All of like everything for the children, everything like for just managing a household, right. Taking the car in for repairs, all of that. It's really a full-time job to a model where it's a dual breadwinner model.

Mm-hmm. Gender roles have converged in the workplace, but they haven't converged at home. They have not converged home at home. Yeah. So men actually do the same amount of housework as they did in 1970. Yeah.

Dr. Taz: Is this the reason that women, like, you know, every couple months you'll see a new study come out, a new statistic come out saying that women are more stressed.

Mm-hmm. And this timing than any other previous generation, women have more issues with anxiety than ever before. And kind of how I opened the show, honestly, like I sat, I have sat with so [00:07:00] many women, thousands and thousands of women, and you know the story of burnout either direction, right? Mm-hmm. Like if you choose the high powered career path, or if you choose to stay at home mm-hmm.

There seems to be a cost. To both. Mm-hmm. Right. And it's left women feeling like, you know, I, I have a teenage daughter. Mm-hmm. And she's just like, what did you guys do? Like, why'd you mess everything up? Like, you should have just like left things the way they were in the fifties and sixties. Right. And, and like, lived a comfortable life.

And although there's

Dr. Corinne Low: a lot of problems with that too. Of course. Right. Which is what I pointed

Dr. Taz: out to her. Yeah. I'm like, it's not, it's not as pretty as the movies or whatever you're watching, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, there's a cost and you know, for me, in the exam room, the cost is medical. Yeah. It shows up in a diagnosis.

Yeah. Shows up in a divorce. It shows up in, in many different ways, you know? But. The data and the research. And I'm so curious, you know, with some of the work you've done, what you're uncovering, you know, as you're starting to explore this, not just with yourself [00:08:00] personally, but for women globally as they pursue their ambitions, which we should be able to do.

Dr. Corinne Low: Yes, absolutely. And as you said, like what your daughter's saying is like, why, why did you go from that? You know? And like Ali Wong has this bit where she's like, you know, women today are like, we can do it all. And I'm like, don't tell everybody because I don't wanna do it all. Right. Yeah. And it's like we went from a model that it had lots of problems and you know, women were lacking in a lot of really important like economic, political, social rights, but.

It was a model where that time use was divided. Mm-hmm. And now it's combined into one person. We're trying to be a Frankenstein of the Instagram mom. Yep. And the like high powered super career person, the investment banking or CEO guy.

Dr. Taz: Right. And we're

Dr. Corinne Low: trying to do both of those things and that just doesn't add up.

And then when you add to that, like already that impossible equation, the fact that the time we spent with our kids started skyrocketing in the 1990s. So when we [00:09:00] look at those trailblazers who were the career women who had it all, um, a generation before us, they were not. Holding their infants, you know, around the clock.

They were not sitting on the floor with their toddlers playing with blocks. They were not sitting at the kitchen table with their elementary school kids doing homework, and they weren't driving their kids back and forth to a million activities. Hmm. My childhood in the 1980s, um, I can't remember a single time being like tucked into bed.

This whole bedtime routine that we have, that's like hours and every parent's life. Right. Time. That's right. Um, I was just told like, go to bed. Right? Yeah. So what we are doing, what our generation is doing literally has never been done before. And that's why we're so stressed out. We're actually trying to do something that's impossible.

Dr. Taz: Well, when did that change? Because I didn't realize that. Mm-hmm. Women were not spending that much time with their kids, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

Dr. Corinne Low: No, I literally have the time use data. You're kidding. And you can see it start to spike in the 1990s. And it changed with our [00:10:00] greater understanding of child development.

So as we understood that. Parental time was part of how children grew and they blossomed. Right. The attachment parenting movement that said you have to hold your kid extended breastfeeding. Mm-hmm. Um, when you look at the career, women in the past, when they went back to work, they didn't breastfeed. Right.

Right. So then you're eliminating, pumping, you know, I was sitting here pumping before Yes. We, before we got, so, you know, they should have taken a picture of

Dr. Taz: that. Yeah. Classic. You know, having it all right. Yeah.

Dr. Corinne Low: Um, they weren't doing that. Um, and so it was our greater understanding of child development and it was also structural forces in our economy that the return to human capital became higher in the American economy as we transformed from a manufacturing economy to a service-based economy where now if you could get into the Harvard or whatever, it's gonna.

Yield much higher earnings over the course of your life. And so as that became more important, those outcomes for our children, as you know, like 'cause you have teenagers. Yes. Like we care so much about like, okay, what's gonna happen to this? Don't even start getting into [00:11:00] college. Right? Yes. As that became more important, we had to make more investments to achieve those outcomes.

And that's where our time just exploded. Mm. Really exploded. And so that, that feeling of like, oh my God, this just isn't adding up. Is it just me? What I say is it's not in your head, it's in the data

Dr. Taz: and it's real. It's real. And so the hours that women are spending between taking care of children, nurturing a career, I mean there's really not a lot of time to nurture a relationship.

You know, what are, I'm afraid to ask the number. What are those, what is the average number of hours that women are doing something working? Or in motion, does it even add up to 24 hours? Well

Dr. Corinne Low: that's even in like the time you said you can see that like multitasking or like, it's like do you have a secondary activity?

And women are of course doing more of that as well. Right. So when I look at the hours, but I talk about something that I call the squeeze, which is the period when our kids are young. Yep. And we're making career investments. Okay. And during that period you literally [00:12:00] see women's time use on childcare and housework like a hill, you know, it goes up like a hill and at the same time as their time on childcare and housework goes up like a hill.

The mirror image of that is my time on work and leisure. And that goes down like a deep valley. Mm-hmm. So the time I have for myself and the time I have to invest in my career because. We have young kids at home. Right? Right. Um, and then at the same time, the reason I call it the squeeze is because you're making career investments so they haven't paid off yet.

So you can't just like throw money at the problem either. Right. 'cause you haven't really achieved Right. What you wanna achieve. So that feeling when you're in that, and that was like when I was, you know, pumping in the Amtrak bathroom and just feeling exhausted and depleted and like, is this my life? Is it over?

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: That feeling is real. Right. That is caused by a bunch of forces conspiring to be right in that same moment. And why does it show up in that one moment? Well, because our reproductive timeline as women isn't flexible, right. So we can't move it, you know, all the way backwards or forwards to where it might be most convenient.

[00:13:00] Right. We are gonna have children, you know, in our thirties or maybe early forties. Right. But like, that's when it has to happen. And so. Those things all just end up in a career timeline built for men. They all end up in kind of a perfect storm. And the outcome, as you said, is that we're exhausted, we're depleted, we're burnt out, and our own needs end up coming last.

Dr. Taz: So when you wrote having it all, you know, what were you hoping to tell women? What were you hoping to uncover? Yeah. For all of us women. So

Dr. Corinne Low: by really telling that story of how impossible those constraints are and how it really doesn't add up, I wanted to empower women to make choices.

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: And to say, this doesn't mean that I'm less than, this doesn't mean that I'm failing.

This is how I am navigating an impossible situation. And so for some women, that means actually trying to achieve and compare myself to [00:14:00] a man with a stay-at-home wife at work. Is not sustainable for me. It's not fair, and I need to think, rethink my career path. Right? And so one of the things that I tell women is, your job is not the goal of your life.

Your job is a tool to convert your time into money, right? Your job is what you use to take your time and turn it into money. Why is that important? Well, as economists, we think of you as optimizing what we call utility, which is really like your overall happiness in life, right? Or your overall over the course of your entire life.

The amount of joy, fulfillment, and happiness and money can help you get utility or happiness because you buy things that are important to you. Right? Wait,

Dr. Taz: so wait. This is really important. I wanna make sure everybody heard this. So as an economist, you're defining utility as happiness and joy.

Dr. Corinne Low: So exactly what we think of.

So when you think of Affirm is maximizing profit, [00:15:00] right? We think of individuals are maximizing what we call utility. And what that means is really your personal satisfaction and deep meaning and happiness and joy in your life. And it's a little bit more than just happiness. And that's why I use all those extra words, right?

Because you know, sometimes we have to do something like set a screen time limit with a screaming child. That doesn't make us happy in the moment, but it leads to a long-term outcome that's important to us, right? Right. So, but your experience of your life is your utility. That's what you're maximizing.

And money is only one lever to pull to get that because yeah, money gives us a place to live. It gives us, you know, food on the table, super important things, right? Um, a mode of transportation and also other things that we just enjoy having. But at the cost of our time and our time directly translates into utility, into [00:16:00] meaning and joy, through time spent with loved ones, through time taking care of ourselves so that we have higher quality of time and length of time in our lives, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, if we don't sleep enough, then our quality of life as we get older is going to be worse. Right? Right. Um, because we didn't invest that time in taking care of ourselves. So what I tell women and what the book tries to empower women to do is to actually figure out what is important to you in life, right?

What gives you utility, this deep joy, happiness, and meaning, and then what role does your career play in helping you maximize that? And my commitment to my career should be in proportion. To how important it is for me getting this thing that is really what I'm here for, meaning and joy and happiness shared with loved ones in my life, right?

And all these other [00:17:00] things, then we realize are kind of noise. Mm-hmm. Because we've been taught, well, you should aspire to this, right? You should have, you know, you need to have this type of a lifestyle. Wait, where

Dr. Taz: is that coming from? Where? Where is the noise in everyone's heads coming from? Okay.

Dr. Corinne Low: Well, what I say is we are comparing ourselves to other people who don't share our utility function.

That's the economics way of saying it. I know what I'm maximizing. I know what's important to me. But then I compare myself to somebody who, let's take my career for example, right? I might look at the office next door and say, oh my God, he's publishing so many more papers. Why isn't my life like that? Well, because I'm choosing to be home every single night to have dinner with my family and to put my kids to bed every single night, right?

And those choices are actually what give my life. It's value, joy, and meaning, and I could make different choices and achieve more along one domain, but I [00:18:00] can't pull all these levers at once. Mm-hmm. There are trade offs and so you know, the answer of like, how can you have it all is like, you have to redefine what that means to mean focusing on what is actually truly important.

For you specifically in the long run.

Dr. Taz: One of the things though, as, as you're speaking, I'm thinking about so many younger women who come to me, my own daughter again, um, women that work for me, you know, and one of the things that I'm sure they would ask or push back on is what if you don't know what brings you joy?

Mm. What if you're not clear? You know, again, I could tell a thousand stories, but you know, my own sisters, my mother, you know, you walk through life and you make decisions. Yeah. And you land in places. Yeah. Right? And you make those decisions for different reasons. Maybe you're not self-aware enough, maybe you had some sort of familial pressure or economic pressure or these type of different things, and you [00:19:00] land in a situation.

And once you land in that situation, how do you see your way out of it? How do you. Plan for some of these things when you yourself don't really have the awareness. Right. And I think for many women, you know, that are older or in their thirties and forties, you know, they have other pressures on them.

There's the fertility pressure. Absolutely. There's again, economic pressure. Yeah. Because for many people today in the economy that we live in, yeah. And I would love your opinion on that. You need two incomes. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do you, how do you do these things without having two incomes, you know? And then, you know, I think when you've built an economy within your home, thinking about, you know, later, later stage families, and you've built an economy within your home, and then that economy collapses for different reasons.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. How do you navigate that? Yeah. So I mean, it's like, you know, ideally we would all be self-aware right? And we would pre-plan, right. But sometimes life doesn't work out that [00:20:00] way, you know?

Dr. Corinne Low: Absolutely. And my own story was like, yeah, exactly that. And I talk about that in the book that I'm like, you know, we didn't think when all of us, me and my friends, when we were like getting married, we didn't think like, who's gonna be the best partner to like weather all of life's ups and downs, right?

And help me run, co-run, uh, basically a household business. Right? Right, right. We thought like, who's cute? Right? You know, like, who liked spending time with, you know, and that was how we then ended up, you know, I talk about the book where a lot of those ended up with partners who like really didn't have the skills that we needed to like manage this Right.

You know, home economy. Um, so that's absolutely, that's human nature. And I think, you know, every day is a chance to reexamine our lives and to try to get in touch with ourselves and say. Okay, let me take a step back. Is the way I have my life arranged actually serving my deepest values and the things that do bring me the most meaning and joy?

And if they're [00:21:00] not, then it's not an overnight change, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's about, okay, can I make some little shifts here and there to try to get closer to that and can I start cutting out the things that don't bring me closer to that, right? So, um. I call this throwing out your house plants. Okay. I like that.

Dr. Taz: Got a lot of dead house plants. Yes, exactly.

Dr. Corinne Low: Because I have like these wilting house plans. Right. And they just like make me feel like a, a guilt, like guilty and a, a failure. I feel like a failure. Like I can't take care of my plants. Like that's, you know, and it's like, okay, but like, you know what? I don't have time for houseplant.

Okay. Right. Like, I have kids and, you know, and loving my kids and spending time with them and, you know, putting important work out there in the world. Actually that's more important than whether the leaves on my houseplants are dead. And so, you know what? I give you permission right now to go home and throw them away.

Mm-hmm. And I want you to do this in every aspect of your life. Okay. I talked to a young woman who told [00:22:00] me, um, that she was burnt out. She's working full time and you know, she had two kids and another one on the way. And she was like, and then I take their, you know, I make homemade baby food and I freeze it in little cubes and then I bring it back out.

Yeah. And I give it whatever, and I'm like. You have to say no to this. Yeah. You have to say no to this idea that we can be a 1950s housewife. Well, we actually have like a full-time insanely demanding job. So we have to figure out, and that's the idea of it is like, yes, those constraints are real. The fact that the economy is bad, the fact that I need to work, the fact that my kids need me.

All of those things are real. But can I the same way Marie Kondo taught us to like get tough on ourselves, throwing out our possessions. Mm-hmm. Can I do the same thing for my time? If I recognize my time as the absolute scarcest asset and the thing that I have to make joy and meaning with my life, okay, [00:23:00] what can I actually get rid of?

So can I throw out the house plants? Can I say no to? The hand decorated birthday cupcakes. 'cause maybe it means more for my kid to actually be present and joyful and smiling because I don't feel so stressed out because there's a million things going wrong. You'll see on the cover of my book that there's like dinner on fire because that's like an experience all of us have had.

Like we're trying to do something for our families or trying to make this beautiful homemade dinner. But we're also taking a work call and now dinner's on fire. Right. And then we're crying. Right, right.

Dr. Taz: Yeah. Uhhuh.

Dr. Corinne Low: So is it actually more meaningful to be present and relaxed and you know, able to give our kids emotional and mental space rather than to check all these boxes?

Mm-hmm. Of the things we think they're supposed to have. And the same thing in the office like. I have to say no to volunteering to take on the task that nobody else wanted to do or to plan the [00:24:00] office retreat or to, you know, do all of these extras. That would be like, nice if, you know, I had a full-time stay at home spouse, but you know what, I don't.

Mm-hmm. And so I'm gonna cut that out. Right. And then even transforming our relationship with money, as I said, to understand that we trade our time for money. Right? And so how much of that time, how much of my literal life force am I willing to give up for material possessions? Mm. How much do I need to give up for material possessions?

Dr. Taz: Right? Right.

Dr. Corinne Low: And if we can get that into proportion as well and recognize, okay, some of what I'm chasing with this commitment to my career, some of it is like literal needs and trying to make sure I can pay for my kids' school and trying to make sure that like. You know, I can afford our rent. Right, right.

But is there any part of it that's about keeping up with the Joneses, trying to prove to myself that I can do it? [00:25:00] Prestige. Mm-hmm. And that feeling of accomplishment and even social comparison. Yeah. There's literally economic studies that show that people will choose a job where they make less money, but are relatively better off compared to others versus a job where they literally make more money, but they're lower in the pecking order compared to others.

Right. So those are things that, like I said, are noise that get in the way of us actually maximizing our utility and actually getting the most from our lives.

Dr. Taz: What are three things or three areas, I don't know if there's research on this, where, where women just, you would tell women, stop. Just stop. Stop doing this.

Like, if you're a new mom, you're a brand new, you know, newer mom. I'm a, you know, mom with teenagers, you know, women trying to hurry up and get pregnant. What would you tell them? Just, just stop. Stop doing this.

Dr. Corinne Low: There are, I mean, I see every, every mother I know running herself ragged. And so I [00:26:00] think what I would say is for each thing that you're doing, ask yourself like, how does this serve my ultimate goal of like utility?

Right? And I think for some of those, you know, you'll see the direct relationship, right? You'll see like, okay, no, this is the right choice. Because when I sit down and have dinner every night with my kids, that makes us feel connected as a family or you know, a lot of moms, I know they like breastfeeding.

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: But they hate pumping. Right? Well, once you use kind of utility as your guide, right? I give you permission to say like, okay, I'm gonna breastfeed, but once I go back to work, I'm actually not gonna pump, right? Because by then my kid will have gotten the immunity from my breast milk. Right? We will have gotten some of those benefits and now, you know, formula can feed them, right?

So I think using utility as a guide, it gives you permission to say no to those areas that aren't serving you. So I would say like making yourself nuts about how your kid gets fed. That's absolutely an area I would [00:27:00] say trying to be an Instagram mom. Mm. And like trying to have everything be like perfect pretty and it's beautiful and like, like handcrafted or whatever aesthetic.

Yes. Um. That it's completely unrealistic the person who is showing you that thing that is their career. Right? Right. And you're trying to do this in addition to your career. Right? Right. That is actually their source of income is doing this thing. That's why it looks so good. Right? Right. It's not yours.

And I think I want us to reframe that. When women think about outsourcing, they often feel guilty. Like, I should do this for my kids. I shouldn't buy this. Right. I should make it for them. Right. Well, choosing to do it yourself. Is choosing to hire yourself for that job. Mm, right. That's a great way to look at it.

We rarely do this with male coded tasks, so most men don't hire themselves to fix their cars or hire themselves to repair the roof. They find the most competent person, you know, and they call that person to do it and pay them. But for female coded tasks. [00:28:00] Somehow we're expected to be able to do double duty.

Mm-hmm. We're expected to be able to, um, insource these tasks and do them at this level of excellence and work full-time in the market. Right. So, like if you're a lawyer who bills at a certain number of, you know, dollars per hour, I literally want you to think, am I the cheapest person to hire for this task?

And am I the best person? Like, am I actually that good at making the cupcakes or do I just feel better when like they were made with mom's love? Right. But you know, by the way, nothing needs to be made with dad's love for like, kids to know the dad's love. Right. That's right. Nothing's ever, like, that's

Dr. Taz: not a tagline

Dr. Corinne Low: on anything.

Yeah. It isn't. So that's the second area is like, try, I would say is like trying to be like an Instagram mom. Um, and I would say the third area is comparing ourselves to men at work. Mm-hmm. Or women from a previous generation or women who just might have supports or advantages that we're not aware of.

Right. And thinking that we're coming up short. Yeah. And even. I hear this more and more from young [00:29:00] women now, like feeling that we're some kind of like philosophical feminist failure if we're not putting every minute we have into work, right? Mm-hmm. Because we've gotten this message that's like, you should be able to do it all, and like you should be able to be this like perfect career woman and this perfect mom.

And so then I hear women say like, oh, but if I take this step back that I feel like I really need to step back to be the kind of mom that I need to be, am I letting generations of women down? I'm like, girl, get the grip. Stop, right? Because we can't put that on you. The problems that we're facing are structural, right?

They need structural solutions, and so in the meantime you navigate it. However you can to get the best life for your PO yourself possible.

Dr. Taz: Now we know we have, you know, uh, economic construct, we know we have sort of this gender construct. Mm-hmm. We know we have religious constructs. There are a lot of constructs that put women in the position that they're in today.

Right. One of the things though that I've [00:30:00] often wondered, is it something in our biology mm-hmm. That doesn't allow us to do exactly what you're telling us to do, where we hold responsibility. Absolutely. And we hold task and we're afraid of telling like a partner or like a coworker, like, I need you to do this.

Yeah. I need to offload this. Yeah. You know, and that. Uh, that form of self-advocacy I think should be a part of utility. Yeah. You know, but is it biological? Is it economic? Is it cult? Why do we do that? You

Dr. Corinne Low: hit the nails. I

Dr. Taz: I got

Dr. Corinne Low: it. I got it. I got it. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. And so you are a butting economist.

'cause your intuition is spot on. Because what? I hit

Dr. Taz: horrible in economics, by the way. So I don't think so. But this is, you know

Dr. Corinne Low: what, that's because we were told economics was about boring stuff. Okay. And I'm an economist that I study, like the decisions that women's make in their life. Just putting that out there, there's this field of behavioral economics and it's all focused on how the way our brains evolve to survive kind of makes us, ill suited to make the right decisions in the modern [00:31:00] world.

Okay. But it's really focused on men. It's like, oh, you were taught, you know, like on the Savannah, you had to make sure that you had enough food to survive this day. And so humans tend to be present biased. So we make bad investment decisions because we focus on today at the expense of tomorrow. But actually nobody has really looked at.

Those same as you said, evolutionary forces and how do they kind of uniquely affect women. Mm-hmm. And when you do, when you look at the science, you will find exactly that, that women are evolutionarily, like conditioned. It's literally in our DNA to care about others and to take care of others. Right.

Because it is important for our survival as a species. Right. So love and caring are these tremendous evolutionary forces that are sometimes working against our own best interests. Yes. And so that's why part of this, you know, how do I get more for my life, [00:32:00] is really taking a step back and learning to listen to ourselves and to experience our lives.

Because I, you almost feel, and I'm sure you've felt it, when you're so busy, you have this like disembodied experience Yeah. Of like, you're just trying to get everything done. You're not. Living in the moment, you're just like doing, you're just accomplishing. Right? And I fall into that all like all the time.

And if you stop and you experience and you take the time to like actually think like, is this bringing me joy and meaning? Right? Then you can start to notice, okay, why did I say yes to this thing? Mm-hmm. That's making me feel stressed out. Now I recognize 'cause I got that fleeting reward of like whatever it is, being the good girl, doing what I was supposed to do, do the good girl, like being helpful, right?

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Having, helping somebody else. But now when I really take that moment and expand out my lens, I see that that came at a huge cost. Yeah. Of my sleep, of my stress, of my [00:33:00] wellbeing. Right. And so we have to learn to take our own experiences seriously to help tune down this tremendous. Power. Right?

That's in our DA for millions of years. That's telling us to care and love and take care and do everything for everybody else.

Dr. Taz: So hard. I mean, I will never forget, like we went through that really tough, the que, what'd you call it? The squeeze gap. The squeeze, exactly The squeeze where two young children, two businesses, two jobs outside stress to the max.

And the one difference between my husband and I, who were both in the same situation at the same time was that he could come home and shut the door mm-hmm. And be done with the day. Yeah. He's done. With whatever happened in the day. I would come home and I'd perseverate. Mm-hmm. And I would obsess and I would like stay up for all hours.

I'd put the kids to bed and stay up till two and three in the morning, like sending emails and doing all kinds of things. I couldn't let it go. Mm-hmm. [00:34:00] That's something we do to ourselves. Mm-hmm. Why do we do that?

Dr. Corinne Low: I mean, I think the reality is the data shows like that, and this was something that was hard for me to accept when I was like an 11-year-old feminist and I was like.

Girls and boys should be able to do exactly the same thing, right? Right, right. But the data shows that like, because our brains are shaped by different evolutionary forces that, like men's and women's brains on average work differently. There's a range of gender expression. So of course there's, you know, women who exhibit more stereotypically masculine traits, right?

Right. But on average, we see in the data that like women's and men's brains work differently. We have different hormonal influences on our brains. Right. And I think that when you go back to that, like survival on the Savannah, like we were the ones like making sure that like that family unit actually survived, right?

We men were maybe more laser focused on some like goals of like, okay, I've gotta protect the nest and I've gotta, you know, like, you know, hunt for the next day, right? But not that caretaking and that community [00:35:00] building that then now takes up a ton of mental space in our brains, right? Mm-hmm. The emotional labor, that's what you're doing when you're processing all of that, right?

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: Um. Yeah, we take that on for like everybody else around us and often it comes at the cost of ourselves. Right? Right. And so, um, I have this, it's from the Onion, the comedy newspaper and this headline that has lived rent free in my brain for like, you know, since I read it. And it is, mom hasn't had favorite pizza topping in over a decade.

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Corinne Low: And why is that? Right? Because you, I'm sure you, your kids, you're trying to order the pizza. Totally. But by the way, it's often like, oh, my husband doesn't eat sausage, or my husband doesn't and he gets what he wants on the pizza. Right, right. And the kids get what they want on the pizza, but you don't get what you want on the pizza.

Right, right. So we spend our lives making [00:36:00] magic for everyone else around us. We find ways to pull from. You know, pour from an empty cup to pull together things when there's nothing to pull from to deliver for our jobs, for our families, for our kids. And then there's nothing left. Mm-hmm. For ourselves.

Right. And I was telling this to somebody and she was like, okay, so you're saying women have to be willing to do the same thing for themselves as they do for people that they love. Right. And I said, I'm saying that you have to be someone that you love. Ooh, that's deep. You

Dr. Taz: have to be.

Dr. Corinne Low: So do we not like ourselves?

I don't think we treat ourselves the way we treat our loved ones. Right? Right. I think that we give so much to our loved ones, and that's why I reframe it that way to say, but aren't you someone that you love?

Dr. Taz: Mm. I think most women would answer. No.

Dr. Corinne Low: Well, that's the work, right? That's the

Dr. Taz: [00:37:00] work, yeah. I think most.

Again, I don't wanna speak for everybody, but I think the majority of women still carry within them a certain amount of shame. Yeah. A certain amount of guilt, a certain amount of not feeling good enough. Yeah. For whatever reason. Yeah. Right. And then are on this like journey of like proving and mm-hmm.

Trying to make a point to a certain extent, you know? And I think it's a little bit about the burden of the past that we bring into the future. Mm-hmm. We've already run the experiment. I see women getting sick. You're talking about the data and the burnout, you know, so when we look forward, you know, and we start taking these inventories and we start throwing these things out, you know, what do we tell women who are, who want to have a family and want to have a career?

How do they time fertility? How do they think about a partner? How do you evaluate a partner that mm-hmm. Is gonna support you down this journey rather than making the journey harder, like. You know, what's marriage equality? Is marriage even relevant anymore? Like, you know, [00:38:00] I'm just curious from an economic standpoint, like how do we start to think about some of these things?

Yeah,

Dr. Corinne Low: absolutely. And what you said, you know, it's, it's so true. And that's why I think it's so radical for me to try to get women in touch with the purpose of their life as this deep joy and meaning. Because then you can ask yourself, okay, these things I'm trying to achieve is that actually serving that purpose.

And if you take a step back and you have no joy in your life, if you keep a journal and you say, how did I feel throughout my day? Are there moments of just enjoyment, of just pleasure? And you're finding that that's empty, right? Then you need to make changes. You have a mandate to make changes because it will take its toll.

Dr. Taz: Mm.

Dr. Corinne Low: It'll take its toll on our bodies. And if you need the motivation to do it. It'll take a toll on the people that you love because you can't be present for them. Right. If you're not taking care of yourself. Like I realized, you know, the book talks about how I told you I was, you know, living it. I was so [00:39:00] burnt out and then I ended up getting divorced and, you know, moving closer to my job and I was so worried about the impact that would have on my son.

Right. But when I was in a better place, I was such a better mom to him that I realized that was what mattered. Yeah, right. It was like me being able to be okay, you know, it's like put your own oxygen mask on first, but then to get back to your question about, okay, how do you make a plan and choose a partner to navigate all of that, I think that's really what I want young women to think about, is to think about their partner as being one of the most important financial decisions that they'll make.

Because it's not just about what does the partner bring to the table, it's about are they able to support my career and are they able to actually do these things at home so I can make the investments I wanna make? And being about choosing. A co CEO for your household. So what does the job interview the dating look like if you're choosing a co CEO instead of you're just choosing someone to go to the movies with, [00:40:00] right.

What things do they need to be good at? What things do they need to bring to the table? And I think our standards as a society for men have been far too low, right? For far too long. Because women have taken on this entirely different role in the economy and men haven't adapted at all. So, you know, there's all these, this ink spilled in newspapers about the marriage crisis and the fertility crisis.

Right. And it's like, well if you want, you know, women to get married, then we need men to be marriageable. Right? Right. I mean, I'm now married to a woman, so there's also that option, right? Uhhuh. But you know, I think that men have not stepped up. And I would encourage young women to be very choosy, right.

About forming this. Unit this household with somebody who can't hold up his side of the bargain.

Dr. Taz: Mm. You know, I've had a lot of conversations with friends and, you know, you know, loved ones about the fact that high powered women in particular are often [00:41:00] so fatigued mm-hmm. That when they make that partner decision mm-hmm.

They're usually making it from a place of fatigue. Mm-hmm. They're exhausted, they're burned out. And, and it, this could be true for men too, by the way. Mm-hmm. It's not just true for, for women. So someone that might in the moment make you feel better Right. Does not mean they're necessarily the right partner.

Right. How do women avoid that trap? Like, what are some things that we should be, do they, I guess, let me be specific. Do they need to be financially equivalent to us? Mm-hmm. So that if we decide to take a step back, we're able to do that. Or if they wanna take a step back, you know, that can happen. Do they need to be emotionally equivalent?

Mm-hmm. You know, do they need to be from a culture that recognizes the importance of shared? How's work? Yeah. Is there a litmus test for like, figuring this out without blatantly being like, okay, we need to live together and see what you are and are not gonna do, you know, so Well,

Dr. Corinne Low: I mean, track record is important.

Yeah. And so, like, one of the things I tell like young women, because I, I teach college women, and I tell them to like ask their boyfriends, I'm like, who does your laundry? Right? Ooh, that's

Dr. Taz: a good,

Dr. Corinne Low: how does [00:42:00] food get in the fridge? What's in your fridge? What do you eat? Right? Yeah. 'cause if I want our kids to eat, like nourishing home cooked meals, but then the person that I'm choosing as a partner is the person who orders takeout every single night.

Right. He's not gonna wanna share this household duty with me 'cause he just sees it as unimportant. Right. Right. He doesn't see that as something that needs to be done. So he's not gonna share the burden because to him it's just like, well order the takeout. Right. Right. Like, why, why would I do that? So. I think you wanna take that step back and think about, alright, how do I picture my life and how is this person going to contribute to that?

And so in that regard, I don't think there's a specific litmus test of the contribution has to be financial or it has to be, you know, at home. But I do see that they should have the capability to take on roles in both of those domains the same as we do, right?

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: Um, and I think too often women engage in like some magical thinking Yes.

Of like. Things are bad now, [00:43:00] but like I'll teach him how to cook and how to do the laundry and then by the time we have kids, I'll make sure we're more equal. So I will say, and I'm sorry to be like the bearer of bad news, but the message I deliver to women is that however it's going, when you're dating, once you have kids, it's gonna get worse.

Okay. Wow. 'cause that's what I see in the data. I see that as we move from dating to cohabiting, to being married, to having kids, the um, inequality in housework grows. It doesn't shrink. Okay. So if you are already seeing those cracks, like when you're dating and you're like, oh, I wish you did this. I wish you did that, like, now is the time to try to nip it in the bud.

So either it might just be, you know, like, okay, this relationship's not gonna work. Or it's like, work on that now and fix it now, because once you get married it's going to get worse. Okay. That's what the data shows is that, you know, that inequality is gonna grow and then you add kids to the equation and that just is like turning up the difficulty level on everything and having kids.

Is unfortunately kind of [00:44:00] inherently gendered in a way that a lot of that other home production stuff isn't right. Because like, if you're the woman, you're the one who's gonna give birth and you're the one who's gonna breastfeed. Mm-hmm. So there's tasks that he can't take on. And then there's this evolutionary piece, and this is the piece I feel like women have been scared to admit, but I feel like at that moment of birth, as a mother biochemically, you're going through a process, right.

That leaves you more deeply connected to that baby, right, right. Than your husband who did not go through that process. Right. And that doesn't, that's not to say that over time you can't get to that same place. Right, right, right. But right at that moment, I find women are so transformed by being in charge of another human being.

And often then their husbands. Kinda continue to be the centers of their own universes. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Taz: Right? Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: And so then that gap between you, if it existed before, it grows drastically. So if that's gonna not be the case for [00:45:00] you, then you wanna find the guy who from the jump is, I'm so excited about having kids.

I have thought about what type of father I wanna be. I've thought about like my parents' parenting style and the ways I wanna break the cycle because women do that work all the time. And I rarely hear men talk about that, right?

Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Corinne Low: Um, so I have a friend who's a very high powered lawyer who, um, whose husband really does take on.

The more than 50% of the cooking and the parenting load. And he was that guy, you know, and she wasn't actually sure that she wanted kids, but from the moment they got together, he was the one who was like, I've always dreamed about having kids. This is what it's gonna be like. And I see that now bearing out.

Yeah. In the post period. Yeah. Whereas, you know, I think if you're already feeling the inequality and the, these were, this is from my own experience, these were the red flags I didn't heed. Right. Where things were already unequal in my relationship before we brought kids into the mix. And then it snowballed once we had kids.

Mm-hmm. And then speaking of like, you kind of can't predict [00:46:00] things. Before we had kids, me and my husband were relatively equal earners. Yeah. And so, you know, okay, well at least if he's sharing that burden, maybe it's okay. But, um, after my son was born, he left his job to start a business and he wasn't earning any money.

And so I had the entire breadwinning load on my shoulders, and now I'm doing 75% of the housework and the childcare. And then you're like, okay, well then. Then the question becomes like, well what are men for then? Right. From this, right. You here? Yeah. So that's, I think you really have to critically ask these questions and I totally know what you mean.

I mean, it is hard out there. Yeah. It's hard to find somebody. And so a lot of times we're just like, okay, good. Like you'll do Right. Or they just make you feel good, like Yeah.

Dr. Taz: For the second. Right. But it doesn't mean they're the right person for the, for the long haul. I think there's some of these behaviors and traits and patterns that women need to be clued into and you know, what would you say to the woman who has landed in that situation?

You know, I think I know what I see. I'm curious, like someone [00:47:00] who has landed in that situation where she is bearing the majority of the house work. Right. And needs to have sort of the self-advocacy in the home. Yeah. What would you say to her?

Dr. Corinne Low: So I think. It's never too late to renegotiate any deal in your life, including the one that you're getting in your marriage.

I like that. Yeah. So if it's not working for you, right? And if something is working for everybody else but you, then it's not working. So it's time to renegotiate. And so the same way that you would approach it, if things aren't working for you at your job, and you kind of think about, all right, what's my outside option?

What am I worth on the market? If I decided to leave this job, how would I na navigate that? And then you go and have a really frank conversation with your boss about what you need. Okay, we're gonna take that same approach in the home. You're gonna say, if I really needed to, how would I do this on my own?

Mm-hmm. And how can I set up my life so that that's actually a real possibility. So that means all throughout your marriage making. The decisions. I say it's very [00:48:00] unromantic, but like start planning for your divorce from the minute you got married because you don't know what's gonna happen. Right? Right.

Somebody can have an affair or something you guys can turn out to be incompatible. So women need to take care of themselves financially from the beginning. I

Dr. Taz: agree with that a hundred percent. Yeah. So

Dr. Corinne Low: you think about that and then you have a really frank conversation with your partner where you say, this is not working for me and I need more from you and we've gotta figure it out because otherwise my unhappiness is gonna become everybody else's unhappiness.

This is not sustainable. And then the exercise that I suggest in my book is that you actually track your time so you actually agree with your partner to both keep a journal of how you spend your time and then to have, be able to document. That's a great idea how much more time you spend on. Thinking about things for the household on housework, on the mental load, and on childcare.

Right. Then he does. And then look at those areas of inequality and figure out what you can [00:49:00] reallocate. So what things can he take on that he says, because most men will say like, I think I do about half. Yeah. But then when you go through this exercise, there's all of these categories of tasks that he didn't even know existed.

Right. Right, right. 'cause he's like, no, I do half, sometimes I feed the kids. It's like, did you know that you need to buy their snacks in the first place? And that's how they get in the fridge. Right, right. Um, you need to pack them too. You know? I get them dressed well, do you know that they outgrow clothes?

And then I, you know, spend time on Facebook trying to give them away and then I like, have to go buy new clothes and new sizes. Right, right. So once you actually see it on paper, you're like, no, no, no. This is what the universe of our. Shared work actually looks like no way. You're doing half right. And then some of them you also figure out, hey, does part of our shared household budget need to be spent on taking these things off of my plate?

Because we spend our shared household budget on a lot of things that make you happy. Right? So can we spend some of it on giving me time back to myself? To be able to be a person.

Dr. Taz: [00:50:00] Yeah. That's a big cultural and societal block for women. I've noticed when I've talked to them about this is that, you know, there are multiple obstacles, right?

Is your partner willing to have this conversa or first, are you willing to have this conversation and advocate your for yourself within the home? Is your partner willing to be receptive to this conversation that you're having? And then many times the answer's yes, you are married to a great guy, he just didn't know he was clueless.

Like end of story. It's not that deep. But then you are not willing to offload mm-hmm. Different tasks. Mm-hmm. And different responsibilities. You know, you're not willing to offload that. I've had one woman tell me flat out like, well in our family that's not what we do. Mm-hmm. Because she was driving everywhere and I was like, well why don't you delegate some of the driving?

Yeah. You know, so, you know, why do women put these impossible blocks up? Yeah. To offloading, you know, some of these tasks that to your point, are not worth their hourly rate. Yeah. They're not worth their time. Why do they do that? Yeah,

Dr. Corinne Low: I think it's because we have this outdated model that I should be able to do this.

And that's why I think starting from that time you stayed [00:51:00] and how it's changed over time is so important for me. 'cause I need to tell women, no, you shouldn't be able to do this. This does not add up. And by the way, your mother was not doing it. She was not spending that much time with you. And it is literally in the data.

Oh wow. So the way that you are parenting right now and the excellence that you're trying to deliver in every domain, and by the way, our careers are also more demanding than ever. Okay. That is not what the generation before you was doing. So when you say, I have these values from my generation, my family, you know that this is what they did.

No. Okay. That's not what they did. No.

Dr. Taz: Right. So

Dr. Corinne Low: literally impossible. And you are going to kill yourself, right? Mm-hmm. Like if you think about the real cost of like, you know, the, all of that stress, the lack of sleep, the lack of any kind of joy or presence in our life on our bodies. I mean, I felt like I was aging five years for each year when I was in that situation of like just juggling way too much that is going, it is going to come back.

Right. And it [00:52:00] is, it has an enormous cost. So it's non-negotiable for you to make some of these changes and you're being your own, your worst enemy. Right. By saying like, oh no, there's a special way that I put these clothes away. Right. And I'm the only one that can do it. Right. I've

Dr. Taz: heard that

Dr. Corinne Low: too. Yeah. Or even like that, oh, my kid, I had this colleague who was like, my daughter has to go to this school that's 45 minutes away.

But then I spend, you know, literally like three hours a day driving her back and forth to this school. And I was like,

Dr. Taz: why?

Dr. Corinne Low: She doesn't need to go to this school. Right. Like that's, that's not, there are real constraints in the world, but that's not one of them. Like that's a preference. That's a choice that you've made.

And when you look at your overall utility, does meeting this preference. Does it justify the loss of what you could do with three hours of your time? Right. In terms of all of the meaning and all of the joy you could build together with her in that time? Right.

Dr. Taz: Definitely. You know, you and I are both big believers and women [00:53:00] being self-determining in terms of financial independence.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Feel like there's something about money and power. There's something about what money does to, uh, a relationship. Right. Whether we like it or not, whether you're married to a perfect person or a terrible person, it's irrelevant. Mm-hmm. How do women stay in the workforce and navigate that squeeze mm-hmm.

Time period. Right. And not lose their identity or their financial independence. How do they do that? Because I, I have firsthand witnessed, you know what that looks like when somebody does lose it. Yeah. Because they've given up X, Y, and Z and to me, more concerning is young women, women of my, my daughter, 17, like her group again, the soft life.

Mm-hmm. We don't need to work. Mm-hmm. We're gonna stay home. What would you say to them?

Dr. Corinne Low: So. I think the unfortunate reality is there's a lot more off-ramps than on-ramps and careers. And so part of the issue is like that squeeze is temporary, but all too often I see women make [00:54:00] decisions when they encounter that squeeze that end up being permanent for them.

Right, right, right. And then there's women who like, you know, um, my son is eight years old and so like some of you know, his friend's moms, they now have kids who are all like for the first time, like in full-time school and they're trying to look at the job market again. And this one mom, you know, she was like an investment banker and now she's looking at jobs and she's interviewing for entry-level positions.

Those are societal problems, right? And believe me, I have issues with them, but we have to navigate that reality, right? And so what I would say to your daughter's generation is, um, your human capital is forever. It's something that nobody can ever take from you. And so if you establish yourself and establish some earning power earlier in your career, then.

You can take your foot on and off the gas at different points in your career, but your human capital's always there, right. If you count on, Hey, you know, a man is gonna support me, well he could lose his job. Right? Right. Like, this is not real. Or something could happen to him. Yeah. Yes. He could get injured.

He could. I [00:55:00] mean, you have to plan for a world where you need to be able to support yourself, right? Like Absolutely. So your human capital, there's a paper that I cite in the book that's literally called Degrees are Forever. Mm. And that's the message Mom always said that she'll be so happy, no one can take away your degree.

So that's the message that I, I would give to those young women. Right? Yeah. And to the women who are, you know, navigating like the squeeze. I would just say, yes, figure out how to navigate this, but. Remember that it is a temporary problem. And so if there's anything that you can do to pull more resources into this period, even if it means, for example, paying to outsource something and saving less than you would like to, because once you get through this period, it'll be okay.

Then you'll have a chance to do that and to make up that, those contributions to your 401k or whatever you wanna be doing. Right? Right. If, if it means, Hey, I'm not driving the car I wanna drive right now, or I'm not living in as nice a house I wanna live in right now, but it allows me to get the resources to make time for myself to survive this period.

[00:56:00] Right. This is a temporary problem. Mm-hmm. And so if you can get through it, it does get easier at some point. Like you're probably feeling like with your kids at the age they are. Right. That squeeze does start to alleviate, start to breathe a little bit more. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And so you have to do whatever you can to, you know, we can't time shift our fertility, you know, more than a little bit.

Right. As I've said. So you have to do whatever you can to try to time shift other things. Right? And so what can you do to pull resources into this period? To navigate your way out of it? And then like what we need to change as a society is that there need to be more ways for women to hit the gas after they exit that period of the squeeze, right?

Because they still have, you know, 30 years of working life ahead of them. And why aren't there more career paths where you can, you know, get into that high fast lane, right, right

Dr. Taz: then. Right. I completely agree. Now you mentioned fertility and the timing of fertility. Yeah. In your time studies, like what, what did they reveal when it comes to fertility, timing, [00:57:00] fertility, and how women feel?

Dr. Corinne Low: Yeah. So I think. This is something that women are trying to navigate, and it's something we're trying to navigate from very early in our lives. I did a study on, um, a country that made IVF free, and what we saw is that when they, when IVF was made free, actually young women delayed marriage. They got more education, it changed their career planning, anticipating being able to use this technology in the future.

And every time I would present it, men in the audience would be like, well, you really want me to believe that a 20-year-old is thinking about her fertility when she's, you know, 35 when she's making these decisions. And I'm like, we're economists. We think that people are planning for retirement from the time they enter the labor force.

Right? Like, of course they are like, yes. Like this is something that's present, you know, in our lives, you know, from the, from the very beginning of our lives because we're aware, we've heard stories of people who, oh my gosh, it's heartbreaking. This woman tried to do IVF and it didn't work because she waited too long.

Right, right. We, we know right, that that constraint is there. So. [00:58:00] What I see is that that reproductive time constraint is real and it really does contribute to the decisions that women make early in their career because they are trying to navigate it. And the more that we have technology, it can help right?

Free IVF freezing eggs. It can help, but it's not the answer.

Dr. Taz: It's not,

Dr. Corinne Low: it doesn't make it go away, right? Mm-hmm. There's only so much that you can do. And so, you know, my message to women is that you should choose to have children at the time that's right for you. There's no perfect time for your career and this technology is not gonna allow you to kind of delay it for that said, because I also think you need to be very choosy in choosing a partner, right?

Yeah, freezing your eggs before you get, before the pressure is really on. It is one way to give yourself the power, the ability to say, no, this isn't the right situation for me. Even if

Dr. Taz: it's psychological, right? To a certain extent. Yeah. That you have that safety

Dr. Corinne Low: net. Right. The same way that nest egg in the bank is a safety net.

Like [00:59:00] you're freezing your eggs. It's a form of savings. Right, right. And it just gives you that insurance to be able to, yeah. To be able to say like, Hey, I can navigate this relationship without so much time pressure. Right. Um, but I would say that what we're seeing is that, you know, women are marrying and having children later.

And I think because we're making these early career investments, we're pushing back some of what used to happen in our twenties where we used to, you know, have the relationships and the breakups and the heartbreak and the long relationship that didn't work out, and be trying to find a partner then. And a lot of women are now doing that in their thirties.

And the cost of that is that. Now you have less time. Mm-hmm. That if you, if something does go wrong, if you were living with a partner and you're in a seven year relationship and you thought you were gonna get married, but now it turns out you're not, right now, you're already pushing up against that boundary.

Yeah. Right. And so again, that's where I think, you know, egg freezing can play a role. Um, but I would never ask, I would [01:00:00] never tell women to do that for their careers. Right. Yeah. I would never, I think that that is too much to ask. I don't like it. I know,

Dr. Taz: I really don't. I've heard many high powered women do exactly that.

That they're gonna freeze their eggs, they're gonna worry about this fertility thing in their forties, they're gonna use their thirties to devote to their career. I think it's a mistake. I think that you, and even for the women in their twenties, I think that, and this is just an opinion, so don't, don't no one shoot me, but I think even for women in their twenties.

We all have to be living life while we are also building careers. Absolutely. We can't have these end points of here's my career and here's my family, and they're like, you know, little bookends to each one. I don't think that's how life works. I think that we have to have this mentality of experiencing it all.

As we can throughout the decades because there are no guarantees. Absolutely. And you can hold out and wait for that perfect partner and something can happen. Yeah. Right. And you can start early and think, okay, I started early, I'm taken care [01:01:00] of, and something can happen. Absolutely. You know, so I think, I think the biggest message that I hope women hear, young women, women that are, you know, even older, wherever you are in, in your journey of being a woman, I think the biggest message is understand your utility, value your time and understand, or really chart if you are using your time wisely, but stop this, like when this happens, that happens.

And when this happens, that happens in sort of these like hard, hard bookends. I mean, I had two children at one of the most stressful junctures mm-hmm. Of probably my career. And to your point, there wasn't. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Mm-hmm. There just wasn't a good time. If I had sat and intellectualized Right.

Having children, yeah. I probably wouldn't. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Because it doesn't add up. Right. Because it doesn't add up. The math doesn't work, you know? So anyhow, so I just, I would encourage women to just live. No, I totally agree. But then the advocacy, the only thing we didn't talk about, I know we're running up against time here, but I, I think it's important.

We talked [01:02:00] about advocacy within the home. We talked about self-determination and financial independence. We talked about fertility and taking that very seriously, time, utility, all these ideas. Do you feel like the workplace overall has become a better place for women? Do you feel like there's more like levers and like ability to be flexible and ability to off and on ramp, you know, than there was maybe a decade ago or two decades ago?

Dr. Corinne Low: I think there's been changes in kind of multiple directions. I wish I could say that like, I think we've solved this problem. We have not solved this problem. So when you look at, I think firms are doing really well at kind of entry level, and you see that like women are more equal at the entry points of their careers and it's closer to 50 50.

But in most careers, as you progress throughout that career, you see that gender gap grow. Mm-hmm. And you see that getting to higher levels in that career is still hard for women. Right. And I think that's where, that's because careers have become more demanding, you know, [01:03:00] from a time perspective where it's kind of all, it's all encompassing.

It's you kind of, you know, around the clock. Right. And so I think what women are finding is that there are certain jobs that work better for them. And what those jobs have in common is actually not flexibility, it's boundaries.

Dr. Taz: Ooh. So ing, the research

Dr. Corinne Low: shows that when you look at what women are willing to give up money for, give up, pay for, and you offer them flexible work, that's not what they're willing to give up pay for.

What it is, is if you say, okay, instead of having a set schedule, your boss is gonna set your schedule and gonna tell you when you're working. Then women are like, no, I will literally take a 30% pay cut to avoid that. Okay. Women don't want flexibility, they want boundaries. And that's why a profession like nursing Yeah.

Which is very inflexible. Seven. Seven, but very structured to eight. Yeah. Is 86% female. Mm-hmm. And so we see a lot of women finding that they've navigated finding the jobs that work better for them. Um. It's a [01:04:00] job like being a pharmacist where you're paid for the number of hours that you work, and if you decide to go part-time to take care of your kids and then go back to full-time, you haven't lost a step and you're not earning less than male pharmacists.

Right. It's jobs like being a physician's assistant or a nurse practitioner, or a doctor even, or a doctor where, but a doctor in family practice, right. Versus a surgeon. Right, right. There's certain jobs and, and what they have in common actually is boundaries. But I think that that's hopeful in a way because it means that I think we can reimagine what some of these other jobs look like, because if it's not, oh, you have to just give everybody endless flexibility and that sounds hard if like you're a lawyer, right?

And the client's, you know, watching to be on call, but instead it's, no, we need boundaries because we need to know when am I on and when am I not on? So. When we see women dropping off of the partner track at a law firm, could we say, Hey, can we assign two associates to this case? And can we have, you know, Monday this associate's on call, but [01:05:00] Tuesday she's not on call, you know, Tuesday somebody else is on call.

And then Wednesday you're back on call so that you actually know when are, when are you on call? And um, what gives me hope is there's actually a field that we've seen transform in exactly this way. It's the field of OB GYN. Mm-hmm. So when you go back to the seventies, it was entirely male dominated. Oh yeah.

'cause you had to be on call 24 7. Right. But as women entered it, they formed group practices where they said, no, you're not gonna see just one doctor. You're gonna see all of us and whoever's on call the night that you go into labor, that's who delivers your baby. Right. Right. And that field was transformed by women.

Yeah. And so I think that there's hope in the fact that what we really need is boundaries and technology offers this hope too that you can say, Hey, no, we don't need face time until 9:00 PM. We can all leave and go home for dinner at five, pick up our kids from daycare, be offline, and with our families from five to eight, but then log back on remotely at 8:00 PM you know, if we need to, you know, finish up something for tomorrow.

Right? So when [01:06:00] we understand that what is costly for women is this lack of structure and this leakage of work into all hours of the day, and that giving some structure and giving some boundaries is what it would make. It more possible for women to thrive? Well, I think that's possible. And think possible.

We need to dream bigger and demand

Dr. Taz: it. I think that we should all be advocating for that in our workplaces. And as somebody who runs a company, I think that that's a good lesson. Even for me, for the women that work for me. Oh my gosh, this has been incredible. I think we could keep going. I know, I, I love this topic.

I am so passionate about women, you know, being able to pursue financial independence, still have a family, still be healthy, not crash and burnout. I hope you all pick up a copy of this book. It's, it's coming out when, tell us about the book It's in,

Dr. Corinne Low: it's coming out in September, but it's available for pre-order right now.

Amazing. So you can go on Amazon and Bronze and Noble and I will just leave you with, you know, like this is your life now, exactly as you said, right? Yeah. This is your life now. So you have to start living it in a way that [01:07:00] is meaningful, sustainable, but also joyful.

Dr. Taz: Right. Well, one more question. Yeah.

Speaking of which, very relevant to everything you've said today, and I think you've used a different word to describe this, but what makes you whole?

Dr. Corinne Low: I would say what makes me whole is being able to have all of those different pieces of me

Dr. Taz: Yes.

Dr. Corinne Low: And show up unapologetically as that whole self, as the person who is a professor and the person who's a mom and who's queer and who's an activist.

And as just a person, as someone that I love, as I said. Right. Um, who deserves meaning and. It deserves to have experiences and you know, deserves good things in life.

Dr. Taz: And boundaries. And boundaries.

Dr. Corinne Low: So start setting 'em. Amazing.

Dr. Taz: Well, thank you so much for taking time out today to join us and talk about this really important topic.

And for everybody else, thank you for [01:08:00] watching and listening to this episode of Whole Plus, if you know a stressed out busy woman or a lost teenager or young woman in her twenties, please send them this book. I'll see you guys next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Whole Plus, be sure to share this episode with your friends and family.

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