“They’re showing you the version of themselves that they want you to idealize and emulate, but it’s not actually real.”
In this episode of Financial Feminist, Tori sits down with Paige Connell — a working mom of four who uses her platforms to raise awareness about the mental load of motherhood and advocate for equitable, supportive relationships. Together, they dive headfirst into the messy, real world of woman and motherhood.
Tune in for a candid conversation that highlights the stark realities behind the glamorized “trad wife” movement on social media, the high costs of childcare, and maintaining financial security and independence within relationships.
Whether you’re a wife, a parent, or interested in family dynamics, this episode offers meaningful insight and heartfelt discussion on how to make family life more manageable for all.
Key takeaways:
- The mental load of motherhood is significant: Tori and Paige discusses the mental load that comes with motherhood — the continuous cognitive labor required to manage a household and family that includes not only the physical tasks but also the invisible work of keeping track of schedules, remembering important dates and details, and ensuring that everything runs smoothly, Paige emphasizes how it often falls disproportionately on women. She highlights the need for equitable sharing of domestic responsibilities and the societal expectations that perpetuate this imbalance.
- Childcare costs in the United States are a significant financial burden: The lack of affordable childcare options forces many women out of the workforce. Without affordable childcare, women are more likely to become stay-at-home parents, which can lead to a loss of financial independence and increased vulnerability to financial abuse.
- Financial independence is crucial for women, especially stay-at-home mothers: Paige offers suggestions on how sahms can maintain some financial independence. She advises talking with your partner about what you can have that’s just for you, whether that’s a retirement account or bank account. She also stresses the importance of transparency and making sure to have access to all financial accounts, as well as understanding where money is coming from and where it’s going.
- Social media often misrepresents the reality of traditional homemaking roles: In the discussion about tradwives, Tori and Paige discuss how it often misrepresents married life by idealizing traditional gender roles and homemaking. Paige points out the financial and social realities often hidden behind these curated images, including potential financial abuse and the misrepresentation of the ease and joy of these roles.
- Open communication and boundaries are essential in relationships: Both Tori and Paige discuss the complexities of maintaining equitable relationships, particularly when it comes to domestic labor and mental load. They emphasize open communication, setting boundaries, and being willing to leave relationships that do not offer mutual respect and support.
Notable quotes
“If you’re a stay-at-home mom, there should be life insurance on you and your partner. That’s super important. And if your partner is not amenable to having a postnup or setting up a separate bank account for you, then you should probably not be a stay-at-home parent.”
“You would do it at work. You would do it in a career. You would say, ‘Hey, I wasn’t compensated fairly for this work, and I want to be.’ And we need to talk about what that back pay looks like. That is a conversation you can have in a corporate environment. And I don’t see why there’s any reason you can’t have that with your partner.”
“‘They have made the choice to be a homemaker, but they also have help. They are definitely paying people to watch their children. They’re definitely paying people to clean their house, they’re just not showing you that. They’re showing you the version of themselves that they want you to idealize and emulate, but it’s not actually real.”
Episode at-a-glance:
≫ 09:34 The fair play doctrine and domestic labor
≫ 19:11 The childcare crisis in America
≫ 34:41 Frustrations in household responsibilities
≫ 35:45 Resentment and societal expectations
≫ 39:15 Impact on children and parenting challenges
≫ 43:38 The trad wife movement
≫ 50:07 Financial independence and relationship dynamics
≫ 57:16 Navigating parenting in modern times
Paige’s Links:
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Meet Paige
Paige is a working mother of four who uses her platform on TikTok and Instagram to share her thoughts on the mental load, parenting, and her career. Her goal is to raise awareness about the mental load of motherhood and advocate for equitable relationships for couples. Additionally, Paige is a passionate advocate for affordable and accessible childcare options, working to make family life more manageable for all.
Transcript:
Paige Connell:
We had this fight over groceries when we first started doing Fair Play that I went semi viral for because he was sitting on the couch doing the online grocery shopping and he just kept saying, “Do we have oatmeal? Do we have peanut butter?” And I was like, “Oh my God.”
Tori Dunlap:
Go look.
Paige Connell:
“I’m not the pantry.” Stand up and go look. But the thing was, I did know, and that’s the mental load. I actually did know. I did know the answer to every single one of his questions because it had been my responsibility to know for so long that I could answer his questions. And I looked at him and I was like, “What is the point? I’ll just do the groceries at this point if you have to ask me every single question and you can’t stand up to see if we have bananas.”
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, Financial Feminists. It was my 30th birthday yesterday and I didn’t fall apart. I’m still here. We’re still thriving. I cried because I cry almost every year on my birthday. That happened. It’s okay. I often have a bad time celebrating myself and celebrating things. I say I’m going to celebrate them and I’ll go out to dinner. It’s not like I have no celebration, but literally when I hit my 100K goal, so this was five years ago when I was 25, I said, “Oh, I’m going to throw this massive party.” Did not happen. I ended up quitting my job. I was launching HFK full-time. I was stressed. I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make enough money. I can’t spend the money on the party. Life’s too crazy. And that didn’t happen. So we didn’t have a party for the 100K.
The business starts doing well. I had a million followers, 2 million followers, three. I’m like, “Oh, that’s party worthy. That’s celebratory worthy.” I took shots with my COO at the bar. That’s what we did. That was the celebration. The podcast launches. It’s the number one business podcast. “I think we should throw a party for that.” Didn’t happen. Book came out. New York Times bestseller. That also didn’t happen. So I said, okay, my 30th birthday, we’re actually going to celebrate obviously my birthday, but we’re going to celebrate all of the things I meant to celebrate but I got too busy to celebrate. I rented out one of my favorite restaurants here in Seattle, which is called Spinasse. This is not sponsored, but God, Spinasse, it is the best Italian food I’ve ever had outside of Italy. If you are visiting Seattle, it has to go on your list.
It is incredible. And it is constantly rated as one of the top five restaurants in the city. Rented out their back room. I had about 20 of my friends. I had six of my friends fly out, which was so humbling and so kind. Four from New York and two from Ottawa, Canada. And we just had a great time. It also flew by. It was this weird thing where I felt like what everybody tells you about weddings of you don’t get to eat your own food because you’re too busy hosting. It was a bit of that. We had cocktail hour from six to seven and that went really well. And I’m not going to say time moved slowly, but it was like, okay. And then seven, we went from seven to 11 and I booked that much time and I was like, that’s more than enough time. And it was 10:55 suddenly.
And I was like, where has the entire evening went? But I’ll post more photos on Instagram and we can link them down below if you really want to see. My friend Christine did floral arrangements because she used to be a florist. We had my friend Hannah, who runs a company called Picnic Party here in Seattle who did a lot of the candles and napkins and all the things that make it look pretty. We just had a really, really lovely evening. As soon as I was like, “Oh, my celebration can just be me buying a really expensive, nice dinner for my friends,” I was like, “Great, down. We’re going to do this immediately.” So yeah, my actual 30th birthday, I didn’t do much. We went to the volunteer park conservatory here in Seattle and went and looked at the plants. I wrote thank you cards for all the people who came to the party.
I got myself ice cream. I don’t know, it was a very chill day. It was kind of lovely though. And then my parents, which were very cute, they live about an hour away. They live in Tacoma where I grew up. The night before my birthday, they drove up in the quiet of the evening at like 10:30 at night and put a happy birthday sign in my garage and then put… My mom’s so crafty. She made candles out of pool noodles. Picture this for me: pool noodle cut in half, and then she put a flame on the top and then she stuck them in the grass.
So I have eight little candles, pool noodle candles outside of my house. So that was the little fun surprise that I woke up to. She called me and she was like, “Go outside.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And I went outside my front door and there was nothing there. And then I went outside my garage door and it was very sweet. So I felt very loved. I feel very grateful for my friends, for my family, for all of you. And yeah, it was exactly what I wanted, which was celebratory and also very chill. So yeah, I’m 30. Things are good.
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All right, team. Today’s episode, today’s guest has been someone I followed for a very long time and oh gosh, it’s just a good one. Paige is a working mother of four who uses her platform on TikTok and Instagram to share her thoughts on the mental load, parenting and her career. Her goal is to raise awareness about the mental load of motherhood and advocate for equitable relationships for couples. Additionally, Paige is a passionate advocate for affordable and accessible childcare options, working to make family life more manageable for all.
I love her videos because the amount of videos I’ve saved that I just nudgingly show my partner, who is very kind and very focused on equitable relationships. But I think this kind of information is the stuff that women have known forever, but men are just now waking up to, which is like, “Hey, it’s not just about equitable distribution of actual labor, which is one thing, but also everything I have to think about to do certain tasks.” We talked about this a little bit with Eve Rodsky, who came on the show to talk about her book and movement, Fair Play. This is a great companion to that episode. So I would do a one-two punch on these. I would go listen to hers, we’ll link it down below, go listen to Eve’s and then listen to today’s with Paige.
We got into domestic labor, the mental load specifically for mothers, but really for all women. We talked about the childcare crisis in America because that shit expensive. And Dave Ramsey is out here saying that you should just find free childcare for people. And where is it, Dave? Show me that farm. Show me that farm where there’s free childcare, there’s nothing. And how it’s led to the rise of the trad wife movement. We get into trad wives a little bit, which has been highly requested on the show. And we also talk about the financial realities of being a stay-at-home parent, including how to have better discussions with your partner about finances if you are a non compensated working parent, AKA a stay-at-home one. All right, without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors.
I love Boston.
Paige Connell:
Yeah, yeah. I’m from here, so…
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I have a friend who is from Buffalo and then moved to Boston for work and then went back to Buffalo, but she loved to go there.
Paige Connell:
Oh, nice.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Salem’s probably too touristy.
Paige Connell:
No, I love Salem. Here’s the thing, growing up in Massachusetts, I have an affinity for witches. I’m like, “This stuff is so cool, I want to know all about it.” We feel like we own Hocus Pocus a little bit, right? It’s our home turf. And we used to take a field trip to Salem every year, so we’d get on a bus and we’d go to Salem and learn about the witch trials. So yeah, no, I love it.
Tori Dunlap:
So I’m from Seattle, and even we have said no Starbucks, because Starbucks is too corporate. Does Dunkin run in your veins at this point?
Paige Connell:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
No? Okay.
Paige Connell:
No, it did. It did. And then I moved to LA, LA broke me. I moved to LA and Dunks wasn’t there at the time. My parents and in-laws run on Dunkins. But no, my husband and I make it at home and I actually hate Dunkin Donuts now. I just can’t drink it because what you’ll learn if you’re from Massa or anybody from Massachusetts knows this, but no Dunkin Donuts is the same. There are certain ones you avoid. You’re never going to get what you ask for, and you have to be comfortable with that level of inaccuracy with your coffee.
Tori Dunlap:
Uncertainty, yeah. I’m in New York right now recording this, and every time I walk by a Dunkin, there’s no Dunkin to speak of in the Pacific Northwest, nothing. So anytime I come back east, I’m like, “Okay, here we go.” But to your point, depending on where you go, you have a very different experience.
Paige Connell:
Totally.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s a very different vibe. I have been following you on TikTok for I think at least a year. And I am just so excited for this conversation because I have so much to ask you, but also so much to talk about. I would love to just kick us off with what drew you to the Fair Play doctrine and doing this work?
Paige Connell:
Yeah. So I started posting on TikTok just for fun. And it was around the time I was probably six months postpartum from having my fourth child. And so I was very much still in the thick of having young kids. I was working full-time, I had had no parental leave. I think I had eight weeks, went right back to work and I started posting about my experience of being a woman, being a woman in marriage with a man, working full-time, all those things. And so I started talking a lot about domestic labor and the mental load and the cost of childcare and all of these things. And so as I did, I started sharing a little bit about my experience with Fair Play. And so I am a Fair Play facilitator, but I really use it more as education for the content that I have already existing and how I live my life.
But Fair Play was really the catalyst for my marriage changing. I’d been with my husband since we were 16, so we were high school sweethearts and we had a really solid foundation, but then we had four kids in three years. There was a global pandemic, and our dynamic had shifted greatly and I became the default for everything in our lives. And I was done. I was really ready to leave. I was ready to just call it quit. And I read Fair Play and was like, “Wait, maybe we can fix it. Maybe we can fix this. We can get back to where we were.” I couldn’t see it at that time, but that book really did change my perspective, and so I just started to share about what that looked like for us.
Tori Dunlap:
Was there a specific moment where you’re like, “Holy shit, this wasn’t working”? I think Eve’s been on the show and she talks about the blueberry moment. Was there a particular moment for you where you’re just like, “Fuck, okay, this has to get better or it’s done”?
Paige Connell:
Yeah, there was a day, I think I had just gone back to work. I do mornings by myself. My husband leaves the house by 6:15, and so my kids are still sleeping, hopefully. Hopefully so am I. And I woke up, fed the baby. I was pumping, so feeding her, pumping. And his two things that he had committed to doing were the trash, and that meant all trash, like diaper trash, all the trash and the dishwasher. And so then I went into my daughters’ room, my daughters all share a room, and I had the baby in my chest and I was getting my toddler dressed and I went to put a diaper in the trash and it was so full, you could not fit a diaper in it. You couldn’t put a diaper in it if you wanted to. And so as I started to try and take it out, it was wedged in there.
And as I pulled it out, my finger caught the side of it and just sliced my whole finger open. So there’s blood gushing. I have a baby in my chest, I have a toddler crying. I have two big kids yelling, because they need me. And then they’re all freaking out. They’re like, “Mommy, are you okay? Are you okay?” I’m like, “I’m okay.” And I’m seething. I don’t feel the pain. I don’t care about the blood. I’m just angry. So angry. And when I got downstairs to do breakfast, the dishwasher had not been emptied. I couldn’t get any of the cups for the kids. And I was just like, this feels like the most blatant form of disrespect and saying my time is more valuable than yours. And that really was the day where I was like, “I’m done.” I will not live in a house where I feel like I am so in service of everyone else and so unseen. And that was really the day for me. It was just like a domino effect that morning. And it really was the day I decided to stop doing it.
Tori Dunlap:
So as a listener, and also as someone who is with men and dates men, I struggle with the, okay, I do like to care give. I am a caregiver. That is something that is important to me, but also I want to be your partner, not your mom. And I’m hearing your story. And how do you go from, “I’m completely fed up to,” I was just going to say getting your husband to change, as dramatic as that sounds, but how do you bridge that gap then? And I was going to ask it later, but at what point do you know actually this is not going to work, your marriage isn’t going to work? How many times can you say, “Hey, you’re on trash,” but even you having to say that as you project managing? I don’t know. This is what goes on in my brain where I’m like, I shouldn’t have to, but yet I want to in order to better the relationship. I don’t know my question. There’s a lot of feelings after that.
Paige Connell:
Yeah, it’s hard. The first thing I say to everybody, because I get a lot of DMs asking me, “How did you know he was going to do it? How did you know it was going to get better?” And at the end of the day, I knew my husband. And when I brought it to his attention, was he defensive? In some ways, yes. But a lot of his defensiveness was around the fact that he’s like, “I don’t want to be a bad dad. I don’t want to be a bad partner. I don’t want you to dislike me.” That was his shame and that’s where he got defensive. It wasn’t around the dishes. He didn’t inherently think dishes were my job, and that was important. He was not the type of guy who thought that my job was to take care of him and the family. He wanted to be an active participant.
He cared about that. And so I think you will know if you have a willing and able partner who actually cares to be an active parent and an active partner. And if you don’t, it’s going to be very, very difficult to change the dynamics in your home and maybe even impossible if your partner doesn’t see it as their responsibility. Whereas my husband, I will say this, he was a very active participant. He would be with me at tubby time with the kids and he would be with me while I cooked dinner. But to your point, I was the project manager. I was in charge. It all stopped with me and I was responsible and accountable to everything. And because he was already participating, I knew we could get there. It just meant that he really had to step up and he had to stop being defensive.
He had to get more vulnerable and be willing to have these conversations and not hear that shame part of it. Oftentimes I’ll say things like, “I need you to do this,” and he would hear, “You’re a bad dad.” I’m like, “I just said nothing about you being a dad.” I said, “I need you to empty the trash, and those two have nothing to do with each other, but I still need that.” And so I think that’s a big part of it. And if you’re not getting that respect, and if you’re not getting the acknowledgement of the work, then those are bigger conversations you need to have with yourself as to whether or not you will be happy in that situation. I knew I wouldn’t be. And so for me, I said to him blatantly, I said, “It’s either this or I am done. So we have to figure that out together.”
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and a lot of your videos, and I think one of the videos that I saw that drew me to you was calling out men who seem to not understand how their inability to show up for women is so harmful. How do you go about changing the narrative, not just with that one conversation, but over a long period of time because behavior doesn’t happen, or behavioral change doesn’t happen just because typically of one conversation. So was it that ultimatum, or I’m thinking of the weaponized incompetence video that you did or the golfing video, and if you wouldn’t mind explaining what the golfing video was too. How do you get that to be a longer change?
Paige Connell:
Yeah, I think I am a person who has no problem articulating my feelings and thoughts. Obviously I’m doing it professionally, but I think we just had constant conversations about it. The golf thing, I’ve actually had multiple videos about golf, and people have this misconception that I hate golf. I actually like golf. And I tell my partner to golf all the time. I’m like, “Go golf. You should join the league. Do the thing.” For me, golf represents something larger, which is that men prioritize themselves and their time above women and their time and even their own family. And so they feel as though they are owed eight hours on a Saturday with their buddies, but their partner is not. They feel like they’re owed that time. And so a lot of my thoughts around golf or hobbies or weaponizing incompetence is the fact that men were raised in a society that told them to prioritize themselves, to put themselves first.
And if somebody will take something off their plate, then they should let them. And so the gift giving thing, the weaponized incompetence, men will look to their partner to buy all the gifts for their own family because she will, and if she will, then why would they? Why would they create more work for themselves? And so I think it’s a lot of conversations. It’s really breaking down these societal and gender norms because oftentimes, I personally believe it’s not always an individual failure. Some people truly believe these things. And so in that sense it is hard. But overall, I think this society has told us who we are and who we need to be. And I even have to break out of that. I do things or say things like, “Oh yeah, give me your friend’s mommy’s name.” Why am I just asking for mommy? Why am I not asking about daddy or whoever cares for that child?
I do it too. So even with my kids, I have to be really conscious about the words I use and the way I talk about things and the standards that I hold my son to versus my daughter. It’s constant. We have to be having these conversations and holding people accountable in all walks of life, not just within our home, but it starts at home. And so we’re just always having conversations about it. And I try my best to provide not just criticism, but perspective, which is like, “Hey, when you show up three hours late from golf, you’ve left me alone to do all of these things. And it feels like you’re saying your time is more important than mine.” And if your partner can hear that, then you can have a conversation about how to do it differently and what that should or could look like.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about childcare because you have touched on that. You shared with childcare costs, so many people ask you why you still work, but not your husband. Can we get into this conversation and why it’s potentially harmful for a mother to actually quit working?
Paige Connell:
Yeah, I think this narrative is so difficult, right? Because I want to say, I believe that if you would really like to be a stay at home parent, that you should have access to that. I wish that every family could choose. Ultimately, I wish you could choose to be a stay-at-home parent or a working parent, but most of us don’t get to make the decision. The economics make it for us. Can you afford your life with a stay-at-home parent? And if not, what does that look like? Or can you afford to work? Because childcare is so expensive, and so for many people there is no choice. But having said that, whether or not there’s a choice to be a stay-at-home parent, I think it’s very important for women in particular to protect themselves financially. I grew up in a home with divorced parents.
I saw what it meant for my mom to raise children on her own, in a sense. Yes, there was child support and things like that, but at the end of the day, she was caring for us the bulk of the time alone. And what did that mean? What did that mean in forms of childcare and her career and the cost? And she had always said, “My mom never stopped working.” And she’s like, “I could never have done this. I could never have taken care of you all if I hadn’t continued working. I would’ve been in a world of hurt, and our lives would’ve looked very different.” And so it was ingrained in me. I also grew up in Massachusetts, where most of the women I knew were working moms. So I think that colored my perspective a lot. But you hear a lot about women who become stay-at-home parents, and they no longer have a retirement.
They no longer have any form of savings. They no longer have their own bank account. They no longer have access to their partner’s bank account. They are truly blind to their finances. And I think that’s an incredibly dangerous place to be regardless of divorce. There is death, there is illness, there is injury, there are things that can happen in your family, and if you don’t have access to these things, you will be in trouble. And that is a scary place to be, especially if you have children. And so even without children, it’s a scary place to be, but especially with children. And so I often encourage women to have those conversations before you have kids. Say, “If I’m a stay-at-home mom, are you going to put money into my retirement? Well, I want my own bank account that you can’t touch. I want X, Y, and Z.” I think that is a very normal ask, and if your partner is not amenable to that, then you should probably not be a stay-at-home parent.
Tori Dunlap:
I have brought them up multiple times, but I have a friend who recently got married a couple of years ago and now I’m friends with her partner. And we literally just went out to dinner a couple of days ago and they talked about getting a prenup before they got married. And part of the conversation was like, okay, it’s a man and a woman, and, “If we choose to have a kid and I need to stay home, you will pay me a stipend to do that because I am no longer working. I’m no longer working up the corporate ladder. And yeah, you’re going to put money into my retirement because I’m not contributing to my own social security. You’re going to pay me a stipend because I am now the caregiver and the cook and the cleaner and everything else.” And so I just thought that was so interesting. And when I brought it up to other people, that seems like something that’s kind of radical, but I don’t think it’s that crazy.
Paige Connell:
I don’t think so. They say women often, people don’t believe in it even though it’s real, but the wage gap, the motherhood penalty, all of these things are real. And just having a child impacts your earning potential. Just having a child will impact your career trajectory just by simply having a child as a woman, not as a man, but as a woman. And so if you are to leave the workforce, even if it’s just for six months to a year, the impact is very, very large. It will go on for years. It’s not just that short period of time. People will often say like, “Oh, well, we’re going to save a hundred thousand dollars on childcare over the next five years.”
And it’s like, great, but her loss is going to be a million. So how are we compensating her for that loss, that loss of time in the workforce, that loss of skillset, advancement, all those things? How are we compensating her for that? And it’s always so black and white, especially I find in these heterosexual relationships where it’s like, “Oh, her salary is less than daycare, so she has to stay home.” And it’s like, but it’s not about today. It’s about the next 30, 40 years of her career.
Tori Dunlap:
And her investing potential too of being able to put some of that in the stock market. Yeah.
Paige Connell:
So shortsighted, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and you just mentioned childcare. So I am a child free person. I don’t have children. I know from talking with friends how expensive childcare is, but I don’t know if any of us really truly understand how expensive childcare is. So let’s maybe talk about how expensive it is. And one of the things that I love that reconnected us was my favorite person, Dave Ramsey talked about sending kids to free summer camp, and that’s your solve to expensive childcare. And he basically called everybody an idiot if they were paying for childcare. And it’s just reason 562 why he’s out of touch. So how expensive is childcare? Talk to me about the state of childcare in this country right now.
Paige Connell:
Yeah. So I have a unique perspective in the sense that I used to work in daycares, so I’ve worked within daycares as a nanny, and then now I am a parent who pays for daycare. And so I understand both sides of it. The cost of childcare is something that most people don’t have visibility to, first and foremost. Most people have children and they don’t realize how much childcare costs because it’s sometimes gate kept. And so daycares are not advertising how much childcare costs, and you’re not really in the know until you’re in the thick of it. So the overarching issue with childcare right now in the childcare crisis in our country is a lack of affordable childcare and just a lack of accessible childcare. You cannot get childcare, and so you can’t get childcare. And if you can, it’s incredibly expensive. So for context, depending on where you live in our country, the cost ranges. I live in Massachusetts, it’s on average $20,000 a year for one child to go to childcare centers, like a daycare based center.
The problem with this is that it is a huge portion of people’s salaries. It’s about 24% of a family’s income every year, which is a huge portion of your income. And most families can’t afford this level of childcare. They can’t afford this cost, and that is why many women are being forced out of the workforce. But the overarching issue with childcare is that there is no true infrastructure. A lot of it is privatized and some of it is unregulated even though it shouldn’t be, right? And so families are not only looking for affordable childcare, they’re looking for safe childcare, and that is not always easy to come by. The other side of this is kind of the childcare math doesn’t make sense. The cost to run a childcare center leads to very little profit, if any profit. And so the people that work within the childcare centers also don’t get paid very much.
So as a childcare worker, you might be getting paid $15, $16 an hour. There is the alternative, which is a nanny or more private one-on-one childcare situations. Those are just incredibly expensive and most people cannot afford it. For me, oftentimes people will say, “Why do you pay for daycare if it’s $60,000 a year?” And I say, “This is actually the affordable option for our family with the most hours because if we had a nanny with four kids, she’s charging an hourly rate and adding additional to it based on how many kids we have. We have four kids, she’s going to look for 35 to $40 an hour.” And again, I’m saying she because overwhelmingly this industry is women and women are often taken advantage of in care work. If you think about teachers, nurses, childcare providers, they are often seen as people who should sacrifice of themselves for the greater good of everybody else.
But the problem with this childcare industry and this childcare crisis is that families are not able to access childcare or afford it. The people who work within the industry can’t sustain living on the wages that they have, so they’re leaving, which makes it even harder to find childcare. And so it’s actually having a pretty big impact on not just individual families, but our economy as a whole. And people often think this is just an individual failure. You knew you were going to have kids, you knew it was going to be expensive. This is on you. But at the end of the day, families are struggling with lack of paid leave, lack of affordable childcare. The cost of living continues to rise. Our salaries are stagnant, and the cost of childcare has risen 10 to 20% every year since the pandemic started, which no one could have anticipated. So I mean, this is just such a widespread issue that is impacting families all over our country no matter where you live.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and to your point in the video about Dave Ramsey, his whole thing is it’s like take them to summer camp or have your mom watch them. And that’s such a privilege. And first of all, there’s no free summer camp. And second of all, okay, some people are lucky enough to have family support and village support, but some people aren’t.
Paige Connell:
No. And I think the thing about this relying on family, rely on your grandmother or somebody said in my comments one day, “You should be friends with your neighbor.” And I’m like, what? And exploit them? That’s crazy.
Tori Dunlap:
And hand you their child?
Paige Connell:
It’s one of those things where again, we’re relying on the unpaid labor of women. We’re saying, “Make grandma do it. Make your sister do it. Make that neighbor do it.” As opposed to saying, “Hey, why don’t we build actual infrastructure around childcare in our country to support families and children?” Again, it’s placing the responsibility on the individual. And many of us, I know I don’t have access to family who can watch my children. And I live close. I live in the same town as a lot of my family. They cannot do it. They’re working and/or they are older and can’t keep up with four kids. And so it’s very difficult because the old narrative was rely on your village, rely on your family. And that doesn’t exist for many of us. And also wasn’t necessarily the best for everyone. Not everybody wants their mom raising their children. That dynamic isn’t always the healthiest either.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Or you don’t have a good enough relationship. You’re estranged with your family and you don’t have family to turn to. Yeah, I mean the whole show, everything we talk about in Financial Feminist, it’s just like every single episode, I think to myself, if we stopped doing as women uncompensated labor, the entire system and world falls apart. So it’s basically the demand on us to do that so that the economy can run, so that our families can run, so that everything keeps running. And I think often I’m like, if we just stop doing it for a day and in protest, shit would get so real so fast.
Paige Connell:
Truly. I think it’s never more evident to me than now that my kids are in public school because now that they’re in public school, there are so many requests on parents to support, whether it’s the PTO or volunteering or fundraising, and they’re looking to us to do all this work and I’m happy to do it, obviously. But when you show up to a volunteering event, it’s all moms. It’s all women. And there’s even this term, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, because I know you don’t have kids yet, but a room mom. They call it a room mom.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. The mom who’s just there hanging out, who’s there to open your baggie when you can’t open it.
Paige Connell:
She’s also responsible for getting volunteers for parties, getting all the gifts together for Teacher Appreciation week, getting all the supplies.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, boy.
Paige Connell:
But it is again, looking to a woman and saying, “Hey, give me your time.”
Tori Dunlap:
Classroom project manager.
Paige Connell:
Yes. And people are like, “That’s what a room mom’s for.” And I’m like, who came up with this? And the fact that we just are comfortable saying room mom and not room, parent or room whatever, it just is part of everyday life. It’s part of so much of our lives that we sometimes don’t even see it or acknowledge it because it’s just so normal for us.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and we’ve been dancing around it and haven’t talked about it very specifically, but the mental load we were just talking about this of, yeah, I think of it as project management for your relationship or for the house. So when it comes to the mental load, can we share more ON that? And also talking about, again, we talked to Eve Rodsky on the podcast before, and what ways are women given most of the responsibility, even if some of the tasks on paper are equal?
Paige Connell:
Yeah, I think the mental load is a really triggering word for men because again, it makes them feel less than, it makes them feel like they’re not doing enough. And my answer to that is you probably aren’t. If you can’t relate, you probably aren’t.
Tori Dunlap:
I was literally just going to say, if you feel that way, then step the up.
Paige Connell:
Yeah, you probably aren’t. So the way I think about it is it’s all of the work, it’s the running to-do list that never gets shorter, it just gets longer, of all the things you need to know for your family. It’s the fact that I have to remember that on Friday, it’s Eric Carle painting day at school. So I have to send a smock and clothes that can get dirty. It’s library day for my son tomorrow. My daughter has an IEP meeting next week, and I need to fill out paperwork and get her birth certificate. It’s all these things that I need to know that don’t actually necessarily right now require me to do anything, but I have to keep them in my brain.
And I think oftentimes women are very familiar with men saying to them, “Hey, remind me of that. Can you remind me of that? Can you remind me of that?” And it’s like, who is reminding me? Who’s telling me what to do? And what I’ve found is with my partner, he would cook dinner every night, but every single night I sit in my office and there’s these French doors and he would come to the door and say, “What should I make for dinner?” And I’m like, “oh my God, you’ve made dinner every single night this week. How do you not know what to make? You know what foods in the fridge?”
Tori Dunlap:
Wait, Paige, can I pause you?
Paige Connell:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Can I pause you there? So what is the response to that? Because I want to be like, “Fucking figure it out. You said dinner? Fucking figure it out.” And then I think the other response too is most women just go, “Fuck it, I’ll just do it myself.” Because it’s just like if you’re asking me to do half of it already, I may as well just do it.
Paige Connell:
The easy part is cooking. The easy part is the cooking. The hard part is knowing what to cook, knowing what you have, knowing which meat.
Tori Dunlap:
Food allergies.
Paige Connell:
Food allergies, which meat is expiring. That is the stuff that takes a lot of brain space. It’s not the chopping of vegetables.
Tori Dunlap:
Going to the store, they’re not going to have it at Trader Joe’s so I also got to go to Safeway or got to go to Albertson’s as well. Yeah.
Paige Connell:
Exactly, exactly. Or if I cook X, Y, and Z, but we don’t have ketchup, nobody’s going to eat it, so I’m not going to cook it if we don’t have ketchup because it’s just wasted. And so it’s all of that work. My response to my husband was not always graceful. I’d literally look at him and be like, “I don’t fucking know. Look in the fridge. You are a grown adult. Go look.” And we had this fight over groceries when we first started doing Fair Play that I went semi viral for because he was sitting on the couch doing the online grocery shopping, and he just kept saying, “Do we have oatmeal? Do we have peanut butter?” And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m not the pantry. Stand up and go look.” But the thing was, I did know, and that’s the mental load. I actually did know.
I did know the answer to every single one of his questions because it had been my responsibility to know for so long that I could answer his questions. And I looked at him and I was like, “What is the point? I’ll just do the groceries at this point if you have to ask me every single question and you can’t stand up to see if we have bananas.” And so sometimes I’m not that graceful or kind about it. I’m just not. I will just say, “If you’re doing it, then do it. Do the whole thing. Don’t look to me to do half of your job for you.” And back to your question from earlier, we did this a lot. We were constantly having these conversations, and I would have to check myself and say, “Yes, it would be easier for me to answer this question right now, but I’m not worried about easier.” I’m worried about the rest of my life, and I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life.
Tori Dunlap:
And I didn’t mean to cut you off, but I immediately had that feeling of like, because I’ve had that of just, “Okay, then fuck it. I’ll do it myself. If it’s easier than describing to you exactly how dinner has to be made and exactly what ingredient, then I’ll just fucking do it myself.” But what you said at the end of that is exactly right, which is, it is going to be harder, but do you want to be resentful your entire life?
Paige Connell:
And that was an overwhelming feeling I had to my husband for a whole year was just, I felt resentful. I resented him for everything, for the fact that he didn’t see it or didn’t take ownership of it or that I had to remind him of it. And I think people are looking for a quick fix on this. And I think it is so ingrained in our society that there is no quick fix, unfortunately. And which is why I try to be really conscious of how I raise my kids, because I don’t want them to have that when they grow up. I don’t want my daughters to fall into the pattern that I fell into because I thought I knew I was pretty good going into it. I was like, “I’m independent. You do your stuff, I do my stuff.” But once kids came into the fold, that changed.
It just changed so drastically. And my feminist ways just kind of fell to the wayside. And I think it’s because I had been told that’s what it meant to be a mother, not necessarily a wife, but what it meant to be a mother. And I think changing that narrative too is really important. Where my kids the other day were like, “You’re always leaving.” I had to go to a work trip in New York. “You’re always leaving.” And I was like, “Daddy sometimes works 80 hours a week, and nobody says that to Daddy. Nobody complains about Daddy.” And so I’m trying really hard not to justify it. I’m not trying to explain it away. I say, “Yeah, mommy is leaving. I have to go work.” I was like, “And you’ll have daddy here and you’ll be good, and I’ll be home and we’ll talk on the phone.” And I’m trying not to try and justify it because if I justify it, I think again, it shows them that Mommy has to justify it. Daddy doesn’t have to justify it, but I do.
Tori Dunlap:
Or that you feel bad.
Paige Connell:
Yeah. And I don’t. I don’t.
Tori Dunlap:
Right, yeah. And what man has ever felt bad for leaving and providing for his family?
Paige Connell:
Oh, yes. Providing and protecting. Always.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I want to pep talk our listeners because as much as we want to sit here and say, “Yes, work on your relationship and hopefully find somebody who is willing to work,” there is sometimes where I’m reading your comments or I’m reading mine, or we’re getting questions and I’m just like, dump him or leave. So at what point do you know that actually this isn’t going to work? Or actually this isn’t something that I’m willing to put myself through in order to get to a solution that may or may not happen?
Paige Connell:
For me, I think it came down to a couple of things. I cannot stand when a man appeases a woman. It’s really just manipulation. At the end of the day, they’ll say, “Yes, babe, I will do that. Yes, I will do that. I want you to be happy. I’ll do that.” And then they never do it. And then you bring it up and they’re like, “I just want you to be happy. I just want you to be happy. I’ll do that.” And then they don’t do it, right. And so it’s these empty promises. I think if you continue to that with no action, I think you have a lot of your answers. If somebody continues just to tell you what they think you want to hear in hopes to shut you up, that’s what they’re doing. At the end of the day, they’re just trying to get you to be quiet. And for my husband, I was never quiet, so that wasn’t going to happen for me.
But I think a lot of men think if they do that enough times, their partner will stop asking. They’ll just stop asking and they’ll just become comfortable with what is. And so I think if you are uncomfortable and you are not going to settle for that, then you need to have that conversation with yourself, not necessarily your partner, with yourself. Because they’re just telling you what they think you want to hear and not actually following it up with true action. And so I think there’s that. The other side of it for me that was really important was I was so unhappy and resentful that my kids could see it, and I wasn’t going to have that be a part of my life. I didn’t want that to be how my kids viewed me or my husband. I didn’t want them to view us as these unhappy people who didn’t enjoy being their parents and enjoy being in our home.
And so there was a point in time where my son said something like, “You guys are always fighting.” And it wouldn’t be a fight, like yelling fights. We’d be like bickering over something. Like, “You said you were going to do this and you didn’t do this.” And we were having a little fight in the kitchen. And my son was like, “Stop doing that.” And I was like, oh my gosh, he’s five. He’s five, and he’s calling us out on this behavior. And so that for me too is really big. I said to him, I was like, “We are not going to continue to do this. I will not allow my children to grow up in this.” So if you are with somebody and you don’t have children, your tolerance might be different.
My tolerance was much lower because there were children involved, and I did not want them to grow up thinking it was normal or okay, or even just building their viewpoints on us as parents on these interactions that we were having with one another. And so I think it really depends on your own situation, but there’s a point in time where you will decide for yourself and your family what makes the most sense.
Tori Dunlap:
And again, I don’t have children, but one of the things that absolutely breaks my heart is when women stay in relationships for the kids. And I’m putting that in quotes. And it’s like, to your point, even though divorce or separation is incredibly hard on children, I would argue it is way harder for children to watch, especially their mothers and women stay, even though they’re unhappy or even though they’re resentful. And I am privileged enough to have parents who are still lovingly together. I have not been through that, but I can imagine, I’ve talked with so many friends who are both parents and going through that with their kids of should we separate. And then vice versa, parents or kids who were like, “My parents stayed together even though they shouldn’t have and it actually made it worse. I kind of wish that they would’ve separated because I didn’t see that behavior modeled, which was like, yeah, this isn’t working, but we’re just going to do it for the kids.”
Paige Connell:
You know what I think though, as a child from a family of divorce, I think what makes divorce hard is when again, parents prioritize themselves over the kids. And so it’s not healthy to be in a home with that much conflict. It’s just not. You can feel it. It’s palpable. When somebody has a lot of anxiety, everybody feels the anxiety, right?
Tori Dunlap:
The energy is different.
Paige Connell:
Exactly. And so I think as somebody who grew up with parents who got divorced, I was always so thankful they did.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Paige Connell:
It’s like, yeah, that was not great. I wouldn’t have wanted them to stay together. I’m glad they’re not together. The things that made it hard later in life are when your parents kind of use you within that dynamic of the divorce, when they are talking poorly about one another or bringing you into their own disagreements. That’s what makes divorce hard. At the end of the day, I actually don’t think divorce is hard because your parents no longer live together or love each other. It’s because of the way they treat each other and treat you within the context of the divorce more than anything else. And so that’s my perspective. Obviously somebody might have a different perspective, but I was never upset my parents didn’t love each other anymore or didn’t live together anymore. That wasn’t what made divorce hard.
What made divorce hard was them yelling at us because we don’t spend enough time with them on X, Y, and Z holiday. That’s what makes divorce hard. And so I think if that’s what you’re concerned about, and if you know yourself well enough to know that you’ll parent in a way that you can be proud of through a divorce, then I think then that your kids will be okay. Because that’s, really at the end of the day, what it comes down to.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, you want to model the kind of behavior where you’re not just going to stay in something for somebody else, because that’s not, to your point, again, the energy you’ve created in the studio today is going to be felt. It’s going to be felt. And so staying in it for the kids when you’re both unhappy and it’s not healthy is actually even more unhealthy.
Paige Connell:
I agree. I just don’t think it’s good for anybody. I wouldn’t want to grow up in it. And so I don’t want my kids to either.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I want to switch gears and talk about trad wives.
Paige Connell:
Oh, God. Yeah, sure.
Tori Dunlap:
We have not discussed it on the show. I’ve been sitting on it.
Paige Connell:
Oh, really?
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve been sitting on it because I’m just like, how do I not turn this into a 45-minute rant? So let’s start at very high level. How do we define this movement? What does it look like?
Paige Connell:
Yeah. Trad wife, if you’re not familiar with it, is essentially the traditional wife. Her job is to cater to her partner and her family. She’s having lots of babies. She’s looking beautiful. She’s making cereal from scratch. She is doing all of the laundry, and she’s glamorizing it, right? Not only does she enjoy doing it, it’s lovely. It’s not hard. It’s not difficult.
Tori Dunlap:
It looks idyllic.
Paige Connell:
Yeah, yeah. It’s like, what’s her name now? Nara Smith, right? She’s in a kitchen, full glam. She’s an ex model baking Cheerios or something from scratch, and her kids are nowhere in sight, which I’m like, okay. That already is unrealistic. Whenever I’m cooking, my kids are screaming at my feet. So there’s the reality of what trad wives are, I think. And then there’s the social media version, propaganda trad wife. I don’t think Nara Smith is the lived reality of many women. That I think is just made up fake.
But there are many women who are living a version of that that’s not as pretty where they are the ones doing the cooking, the cleaning, the caretaking, all of the work in the home, the domestic labor. They are doing all of it and they’re doing it with a smile on their face because it makes their husband happy, and that’s what makes them happy. It’s centering their husband and their children above themselves within that traditional context of marriage. So that’s how I think about it. But I do think it’s two buckets. It’s like the real trad wives and then the social media trad wives.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. Well, what’s the other side? What are we not seeing? Because it’s very aesthetic and very glamorized, but what’s on the other side of that?
Paige Connell:
Yeah, I think it depends. I think for many of these influencers who are trad wife influencers, there’s a lot of money. There’s a lot of money on the other side side of it.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the thing. Everybody’s like, “I’m not working, and I stay at home.” And I’m like, you have a Like To Know It Amazon affiliate link in your bio, you are working. You’ve built a business, not having a business or not working at all. You are actually making probably a decent chunk of change.
Paige Connell:
Oh, a huge chunk. I mean, just on views alone on TikTok, she’s got millions. Millions. And so yes, there’s that money. I also think there’s money-money, like family money. Their husbands are very well-off. There’s generational wealth. I think a lot of people think of Ballerina Farms for husbands of the JetBlue family. There’s not just money. There’s stupid money involved. And I think that is the thing they don’t acknowledge, which is they have made the choice to stay at home. They have made the choice to be a homemaker, but they also have help. They are definitely paying people to watch their children. They’re definitely paying people to clean their house. They’re definitely paying people, they’re just not showing you that. They’re showing you the version of themselves that they want you to idealize and emulate, but it’s not actually real. So I think the big thing is people don’t realize, people who maybe are not as in the know on content creation in general, don’t realize how much money is involved.
Tori Dunlap:
And the woman you just mentioned, the JetBlue, remind me her name?
Paige Connell:
Ballerina Farms. I always forget her real name, but yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Isn’t she the one that does, there’s 12 people in the room and it’s a whole studio setup?
Paige Connell:
I don’t even know.
Tori Dunlap:
You don’t realize. It’s one of them who it’s like, you think it’s just her with a tripod. And it’s like, no, this is an operation. Which is fine, but you’re being sold something that’s not legitimate. That’s not real.
Paige Connell:
Exactly. Yeah. They’re brands. Ballerina Farm is a brand. Nara Smith is a brand. Right? They’re not just people in their homes. They’re a brand. They’re selling you something. Ballerina Farm too. They also have their own farm where they raise cattle and they sell meat. And it’s a whole thing.
Tori Dunlap:
Enterprise.
Paige Connell:
Yeah. It’s not just a mom baking sourdough in her kitchen. That is not what she is.
Tori Dunlap:
So the feeling I have when I watch these videos, and I’m going to have a fun little vulnerable confession. I’m tired. Women are tired. I don’t even have children, and I’m tired. And I watch these videos and I’m like, “That looks nice. That looks lovely.” It looks, yeah, idyllic. And it’s like frolicking through wild flowers, and it’s just calm, and it’s not hectic, and it feels weirdly anti-capitalist until you think harder and you’re like, “Wait, this whole thing is capitalist.” So I think that part of the appeal is that everything we’ve been talking about today of the mental load and of the expectation for women and all of this, even me as a hardcore feminist who publicly has a platform of feminism, I hate that I do this, but I look at these videos and I do feel this like, “Oh, that actually sounds nice to not have all these responsibilities and to just do one thing and do it really well.” But of course, that’s not what this is.
Paige Connell:
No, it’s not. And I think I too fall into that trap, right? I’m a working mom, I work full-time, and some days I go, “It’d be kind of nice to never get another email. It’d be kind of nice to only wake up and think about my house and making food. That’d be kind of nice.” But in reality, I know it’s so much deeper than that. I know it’s so much deeper than that. But on the surface, it looks nice. The grass is greener, but it’s so-
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the aesthetic.
Paige Connell:
Yeah, it’s so much deeper than that. The reality is so much different than that. And I think we go back to that conversation about finances too. For a lot of women who are actually traditional wives with partners who do the providing and they do the homemaking, there is a lot of financial abuse that happens. There are a lot of other abuse that happens. It is not as shiny as it looks on these social media posts. And I think a lot more people are coming out sharing their experiences of being actual trad wives and what that meant for them and their family and their children.
And that’s not to say everybody’s family is like that, but it is a breeding ground for those kinds of behaviors. It limits you and what you’re able to do in your life. If there isn’t the money, if the money’s not there in the way it is for these social media brands, then it’s a very different lifestyle. It’s not the same as what you’re seeing online. And so I think that is the deeper part of it, which is can you lift the curtain and see what’s going on behind the scenes and understand what that actually looks like.
Tori Dunlap:
I have a friend, good friend of mine, I just saw her for lunch recently, and her father and mother are still together, and her father has been financially cheating on her, financial infidelity of taking out credit cards, racking up debt, and her mom had no idea. And I asked her, “Would your mom have stayed if she wasn’t financially dependent on your dad?” And she goes, “Hell no. She would’ve gotten out or at least she would’ve thought seriously, more seriously about leaving.” And I think that’s what we’re talking about here. And we’ve again mentioned this on the show countless, numerous times, but this is why it’s so important to have some of your own money because you can’t leave. You don’t have the flexibility. You don’t have the ability to even consider, maybe I want to get out or maybe I want to take a break, maybe I want to separate for a period of time. You don’t have that option if you don’t have some of your own money.
Paige Connell:
Exactly. Even just court is expensive. Just getting divorced is expensive. A custody agreement is expensive. I know someone who said that her most expensive hobby is going to court. She’s like, “It’s something I’m going to be doing until my kid’s 18 and it sucks, but I’m going to put all my money behind it because it’s important to me to do this well and do it right.” And so I think oftentimes it’s not just, can I afford to live and buy groceries and take care of my children? Can you even afford to get divorced? Divorce is expensive and it shouldn’t be. I wish it wasn’t. But that is just the reality of this situation. And if you don’t have access to finances or a family support system, then it is incredibly difficult.
Tori Dunlap:
So we got a question, and I don’t know if I’ll read it verbatim. We can cut this too. It was basically about, and I wanted to bring it to this interview where it’s like the quote was, “Financial advice for those of us who started out with a career and somehow turned into Donna Reed.” And she talks about having special needs kids and husband being a partner at a law firm. She was a pastry chef, but it wasn’t comparable in salary. And so it was like, “Okay, I’m staying home to take care of the kids,” but almost accidental non compensated working parent of accidental stay-at-home parent. But then realizing, following me or following you, realizing, “Oh shit, I need some of my own money.” What do you do then? What is the next step to be like, “Oh shit. Yeah, accidental Donna Reed, when I don’t have any of my own money”?
Paige Connell:
Yeah. I think it is an important conversation to have with your partner. I think postnups exist for a reason, and again, you’ll learn a lot in having that conversation with your partner about how they view you and your work. But I think this is incredibly common when people have children and can’t afford childcare, somebody leaves the workforce, and it’s almost always mom. When you have a special needs child, somebody typically does leave the workforce, and it’s usually mom, right? It requires somebody to be the primary caregiver full-time, uncompensated. And so I think in an ideal world, if I were giving this advice to somebody who hasn’t yet left the workforce, it would be do the postnup now, set up a bank account. You should have a salary that’s going into that bank account. Your husband has no access or rights to that bank account at a later date if you are to separate. You put money into your retirement.
But it’s not too late. You can do those things now. And so what you need to decide and understand is how much, I don’t know your living expenses in your life. The average American family is tapped out, which is I think the other part of it. And so they can’t afford groceries or childcare or a car if their car breaks down. And so that makes it very difficult to have these conversations too, which is like, how are we putting money into my own bank account when we can’t even afford groceries? But there needs to be transparency. You need to know what’s coming in and going out and where all the money lives. You should have access to all of those things. You should have logins to all of those things. Your name should be on all of those things.
And if they’re not, you need that. And then you should talk about what you can have that is just for you. Can you have a retirement account? Can you have your own bank account? And even if it’s a minimal amount of money, what he’s putting in his savings should be what’s going in your saving. It should be equitable. Even if you guys are living paycheck to paycheck, if you’re saving anything, it shouldn’t just be an account that has his name on it. And so I think it’s never too late to have these conversations and to change this. I think there’s also no harm depending on where you are financially and how much money you guys have in asking for some back pay. You could do it, you would do it at work. You would do it in a career. You would say, “Hey, I wasn’t compensated fairly for this work, and I want to be, and we need to talk about what that back pay looks like.” That is a conversation you can have in a corporate environment. And I don’t see, there’s no reason you can’t have that with your partner.
Tori Dunlap:
And again, my friends who are partnered who are talking about a prenup, yeah, there’s part of that conversation of like, “Yeah, you will pay me a salary for raising children because you’re not paying a chef and a chauffeur and daycare or a nanny. So yeah, I’m getting part of your salary because you don’t have all of these expenses because I’m staying at home and also taking this hit for my career and my savings and my retirement.” So I love that of it’s never too late to have the conversation. And I think to our earlier point about when is it time to potentially think about leaving, if you feel like you cannot bring up a conversation about this without it turning absolutely sour or poorly, that’s a red flag too.
Paige Connell:
Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. If you have the conversation, it doesn’t go well or you’re fearful of having the conversation, I think you have a lot of your answers. And I know that’s a scary place to be, but I think that’s when you go outside of your marriage and you look for support outside to figure out how to proceed forward and what that looks like, whether that’s family, friends, your support system, your village, whatever that might be. But that would be an incredibly scary place to be. And I hope most women have partners who are able to have this conversation in a way that makes them feel safe. But I know that’s not the reality for everyone.
Tori Dunlap:
And it might take them a bit. Because I think that’s one thing. It might take them a little bit to process. My partner is very loving and very sweet, and sometimes the first time he hears something, it’s very difficult to hear, but it’s more about how does that person show up when they’ve had a second to think about it? And they might not completely agree with you, but figuring out what is the happy medium? What is the compromise? I mean, that’s all relationships are, right? Is compromising and figuring out what does work for both of you.
Paige Connell:
Exactly. Yes, yes. And it’s normal for people to feel defensive. It’s normal for these conversations to be hard. They shouldn’t be scary. They’re going to be hard. All of these conversations about the mental load, domestic labor, finances, they’re hard conversations. People don’t like talking about these things. We don’t like talking about money and relationships and death, even life insurance. These are hard conversations. That’s another one. If you’re a stay at home mom, there should be life insurance on you and your partner. That’s super important. But I think these are hard conversations to have, and so you shouldn’t sugarcoat it. That’s difficult, but hopefully you can have them and they can be fruitful.
Tori Dunlap:
I know sometimes as someone who is child-free and with other child-free people, it can be hard to fully grasp the picture of what parenting is like. So to people who are not parents, what is something about motherhood or parenting that you wish they better understood?
Paige Connell:
I think the thing for me that I think is incredibly misunderstood is the realities of parenting these days and how different it is from previous generations, and how so much of it has changed even in a short period of time. I became a parent in 2019, and parenting in 2019 looks very different than parenting today in 2024, because the world has changed so drastically because of the pandemic, because of, it’s always something. It’s hard to talk about online, but gun violence in schools, all these crises that are going on globally, it’s difficult to be a parent right now. I am a biological mother to two, and my older two are adopted.
And so I have two children who are Black and raising Black children in our country is incredibly difficult and scary, and we have to have hard conversations at very young ages. And I think our parents often don’t see that or acknowledge it and are blind to it because they’re not in it. Even just the cost alone. When I share online, I just show my daycare rates. I just put them and I’m like, “This is what it is.” And people are like, “That’s not real.” And I’m like, “It is. It is real. We’re not making this up.” It’s incredibly difficult and expensive, and it is more difficult to be middle class. It is more difficult to pay for childcare. It is becoming increasingly more difficult in this economy to be a parent. And then you have all of this stuff going on when it comes to your kids and the expectations.
The one I always think about is my mom used to leave us in the car to go grocery shopping. If I left my kid in the car, somebody would call the cops on me, right? It is illegal, and the expectations are so different. Your kid can’t stay home alone at six. But my parents probably did that, and that was okay. And so it’s not that it’s harder, it’s different. The expectations are different. The standards are higher. The legal repercussions are far greater. I just think overall, it’s just changed so much. And if you’re not actively parenting, it can be hard to understand that.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think there’s just so much judgment around every aspect of parenting, but really every aspect of motherhood where you can never do anything, even before you have the kid. “Oh, you’re breastfeeding. Well, you shouldn’t be breastfeeding. Oh, you’re not breastfeeding. Well, you should be. Yeah, you’re having a C-section or you’re having an epidural. You’re having… Well, no, you should do natural birth. Oh, you’re doing it at a hospital. You should do it at home.” Even before the kid’s even hear there’s a million different opinions and everybody wants to give it to you. So I feel just so much empathy for moms especially, just trying to navigate all of that when everybody has an opinion about how they should be doing it.
Paige Connell:
And there’s so much information, right? There were baby books before, but now you’re just inundated with so much on social media.
Tori Dunlap:
Mom bloggers and-
Paige Connell:
All of it.
Tori Dunlap:
TikToks.
Paige Connell:
And experts. “I’m a sleep expert.” “No, I’m a sleep expert.” But they’re all saying something different and you’re like, oh, okay. I don’t know. And so the way I think about it in my own life is it, and I think people have heard this also on social media, if I wouldn’t take advice from you in real life, then I’m not going to take advice from you online. And if I wouldn’t care about what you thought about me in real life, then I’m not going to care about it online. So I have a pretty tough armor. I don’t care. People say a lot of things about me in my comments. I don’t care.
You can say what you want about me. I feel really secure in the kind of parent and partner I am, but I won’t lie. There are times where I really stress about whether or not I’m doing the right things for my kids, and if I’m approaching things in the correct way, or if I’m causing them lifelong trauma, because that’s what I’m hearing every single day. And it takes a real concerted effort to say, “No, no, no. I’ve got it. I know what I’m doing. I know I’m doing right by my kids and I’m going to feel confident in the decisions I’m making.”
Tori Dunlap:
My last question for you, maybe it’s the Dave Ramsey thing, but what is the hot take or the thing you saw that just absolutely boils your blood? What was the version where you were just like, “Oh, fuck this shit. This is ridiculous”?
Paige Connell:
I feel that every single day.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I do too.
Paige Connell:
About so many things. So it’s really hard to pinpoint. But most recently, I’ve made a handful of videos about how I don’t do my husband’s laundry because I didn’t want to learn to resent him. And the amount of comments that I get about how I’m a bad wife, how my husband must hate me, how I am just his roommate, what’s the point of being married? All this different commentary on why I’m a bad wife, because I don’t do his laundry. And it brings me back to the trad wife thing, which is that trad wives are doing all this shit for their husbands, the cooking, the cleaning, the baking, everything. They’re doing it all. And nobody’s commenting, “Wow, she must hate her husband. Wow, she must hate her husband.” But when I suggest my husband should do his own laundry, like his clothes, he should hate me.
And that is what pisses me off. And that’s what keeps me going every single day because there’s enough people out there who believe that it’s a woman’s job to center men in every single thing that she does. And I don’t believe that to be true. And I’m tired of hearing it. I’m tired of living it. I’m tired of other women being convinced and gaslit into believing that that’s their job as well. That boils my blood more than anything, which is the double standards that exist between how we expect women to show up in relationships in parenting and men.
Tori Dunlap:
I lied, that’s not my last question because what you just said. I think, but the response always is it’s like, “But you are better at it than he is,” or, “You are more competent.” So what do we say to that?
Paige Connell:
I’m more competent because I’ve been doing it longer. I’m an expert in this, so I’m better at it. Yes, I am. And you are not, but you can learn to be an expert, right? I hate the narrative that women should get up with the babies at night because they’re on maternity leave, right? “I have a job, so I need to sleep and she has to get up with the baby.” Because then what happens is she goes back to work eight weeks later, 12 weeks later if she’s lucky, and she still gets up with the baby at night. Why? Because now she’s better at it. Now the baby won’t calm down for him. Now the baby doesn’t want him. He only wants the mom. Why is that? Because she’s the only person who’s been doing it. Because she’s been working hard at it, because she put effort into it. Because she put love and time behind it. That’s why she’s better at it. So if you want to be better at it, then do it. You have to do it to be better. And that’s the only way you’re going to learn.
Tori Dunlap:
I have to edit there. It was so good. Thank you for your work. Every time I see a post of yours, even just talking to you today, I want to burn it all down and at the same time build it all up. So thank you.
Paige Connell:
Yes, thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Where can people find more about you? Where can people follow your work?
Paige Connell:
Yes, you can find me on all social media at She Is A Paige Turner. I also have a website at SheIsAPaigeTurner.com. Yeah, you’ll find me all over just posting more of this every single day.
Tori Dunlap:
And if you’re not following her already, I highly recommend it. And even the comment section alone is like fun little eating popcorn. I’m like, “Oh, look at this. Look at this nonsense.”
Paige Connell:
It is.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much.
Paige Connell:
Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Paige for joining us. A fantastic episode. Please share this with any mother in your life and maybe have a fun little discussion about it, because yeah, I just feel for all women, we’re just trying to navigate this world. And for mothers, I don’t know how you do it. I salute you and we support the kind of policies that allow you all to have better lives. You can follow Paige at She Is A Paige Turner on TikTok and Instagram to find more about her. Her videos are so informative. I would highly recommend it. Thank you as always, Financial Feminists, for being here. We appreciate your support of our work in this movement and these important conversations. I hope you have a kickass week. We’ll see you back here soon. Okay, bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Researched by Sarah Shortino, audio and Video Engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First $100K. Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Darrell Ann Ingman and Meghan Walker. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf. And theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about financial feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit FinancialFeministPodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, HerFirst100K.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
