Podcast appearances and mentions of katherine goldstein

You're listening to Burnt Toast! I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Lisa Sibbett, PhD. Lisa writes The Auntie Bulletin, a weekly newsletter about kinship, chosen family and community care. As a long time Auntie herself, Lisa often focuses on the experiences of people without children who are nevertheless, in her words, "cultivating childful lives." We've been talking a whole bunch about community on Burnt Toast lately, and Lisa reached out to have a conversation about the systems that get in the way of our community building efforts—specifically our culture's systemic isolation of the nuclear family. This is one of those conversations that isn't "classic Burnt Toast." But we're here to do fat liberation work—and so how we think about community matters here, because community is fundamental to any kind of advocacy work. Plus it brings us joy! And joy matters too. I super appreciate this conversation with Lisa, and I know you will too.Join our community! Today's episode is free! But don't forget, if you were a Substack subscriber, you have until October 28 to claim your free access to our paid content. Check your email for your special gift link! Episode 216 TranscriptLisaSo my newsletter is about building kinship and community care. I live in cohousing, and I've been an auntie for many years to lots of different kids. I've always been really involved in the lives of other people's children. And people who have lives like mine, we often don't really have even language for describing what our experience is like. It's sort of illegible to other people. Like, what's your role? Why are you here?And all of this has really blossomed into work that's definitely about loving and supporting families and other people's children, but I also write about elder care and building relationships with elders and building community and cohousing. And I have a chronic illness, so I sometimes write about balancing self-care and community care. VirginiaI have been an instant convert to your work, because a lot of what you write really challenges me in really useful ways. You have really made me reckon with how much I have been siloed in the structure of my life. It's funny because I actually grew up with a kind of accidental–it wasn't quite cohousing. We had two separate houses. But I was the child of a very amicable divorce, and my four parents co-parented pretty fluidly. So I grew up with adults who were not my biological parents playing really important roles in my life. And I have gotten to the point where I'm realizing I want a version of that for my kids. And that maybe that is just a better model. So it's fascinating to consider what that can look like when not everybody has those very specific circumstances. LisaIt's a dreamy setup, actually, to have amicably divorced parents and extra parents.VirginiaI'm super proud of all of my parents for making it work. My sister —who is my half sister from my dad's second marriage—has a baby now. And my mom made the first birthday cake for them. There are a lot of beautiful things about blended families. When they work, they're really amazing. And it always felt like we were doing something kind of weird, and other people didn't quite understand our family. So I also relate to that piece of it. Because when you say "cohousing community," I think a lot of folks don't really know what that term means. What does it look like, and how does it manifest in practice? What is daily life like in a cohousing community? LisaThere are different synonyms or near neighbor terms for cohousing. Another one is "intentional community." Back in the day, we might think about it as kind of a commune, although in the commune structure, people tended to actually pool their finances. I would say that cohousing is a much more kind of hybrid model between having your own space and being up in each other's spaces and sharing all of the resources. Join the Burnt Toast community! So I really think of cohousing as coming frpm where so many dreamy social policies come from: Scandinavia. In Denmark and I think other countries in Northern Europe there is a lot of intentional urban planning around building shared, communal living spaces where there are things like community kitchens and shared outdoor space for lots of different residences. So that's kind of the model that cohousing in the US tends to come from. And sometimes it's people living together in a house. Sometimes it's houses clustered together, or a shared apartment building. It can look a lot of different ways. The shared attribute is that you're attempting to live in a more communal way and sharing a lot of your familial resources. In my cohousing community, there are just three households. It's really, really small. We really lucked into it. My partner and I were displaced due to growth in our city, and needed to find a new place to live. And we had been talking with some friends for years about hoping to move into cohousing with them. But it's very hard to actually make happen. It takes a lot of luck, especially in urban environments, but I think probably anywhere in the United States, because our policies and infrastructure are really not set up for it. So we were thinking about doing cohousing with our friends. They were going to build a backyard cottage. We were thinking about moving into the backyard cottage, but it was feeling a little bit too crowded. And then my partner was like, "Well, you know, the house next door is for sale." So it was really fortuitous, because the housing market was blowing up. Houses were being sold really, really fast, but there were some specific conditions around this particular house that made it possible for us to buy it. So we ended up buying a house next door to our friends. And then they also have a basement apartment and a backyard cottage. So there are people living in the basement apartment, and then, actually, the backyard cottage is an Airbnb right now, but it could potentially be expanded. So we have three households. One household has kids, two households don't, and our backyard is completely merged. We eat meals together four nights a week or five nights a week. Typically, we take turns cooking for each other, and have these big communal meals, and which is just such a delight. And if your car breaks down, there's always a car to borrow. We share all our garden tools, and we have sheds that we share. There are a lot of collective resources, and availability for rides to the airport ,and that kind of thing. VirginiaThere are just so many practical applications! LisaIt's really delightful. Prior to moving into cohousing, we never hosted people at all. I was very averse to the idea of living in shared space. I was really worried about that. But because we have our own spaces and we have communal spaces, it sort of works for different people's energies. And I certainly have become much more flexible and comfortable with having lots of people around. I'm no longer afraid of cooking for 12 people, you know? So it just makes it a lot easier to have a life where you can go in and out of your introversion phases and your social phases.VirginiaI'm sure because you're around each other all the time, there's not the same sense of "putting on your outgoing personality." Like for introverts, when we socialize, there's a bit of a putting on that persona.LisaTotally. It's much more like family. We're kind of hanging around in our pajamas, and nobody's cleaning their houses. VirginiaYou have that comfort level, which is hard to replicate. It's hard even for people who are good friends, but haven't sort of intentionally said, "We want this in our relationship. "There are all those pressures that kick in to have your house look a certain way. This is something I've been writing about —how the hosting perfectionism expectations are really high. Messy House Hosting! LisaAbsolutely, yeah. And it's just such an impairment for us to have to live that way.VirginiaFor me, it took getting divorced to reckon with wanting to make some changes. I mean, in a lot of ways, it was just necessary. There were no longer two adults in my household. The moving parts of my life were just more. I suddenly realized I needed support. But it was so hard to get over those initial hurdles. Almost every other friend I've had who's gotten divorced since says the same thing. Like, wait, I'm going to ask people for a ride for my child? It's this huge stumbling block when, actually, that should have been how we're all parenting and living. But it really shows how much marriage really isolates us. Or, a lot of marriages really isolate us. Our beliefs about the nuclear family really isolate us and condition us to feel like we have to handle it all by ourselves. So I would love to hear your thoughts on where does that come from? Why do we internalize that so much? LisaVirginia, you've been cultivating this wonderful metaphor about the various things that are diets. VirginiaMy life's work is to tell everybody, "everything is a diet."LisaEverything's a diet! And I feel like it's such a powerful metaphor, and I think it really, really applies here. The nuclear family is such a diet. You have done, I think, the Lord's work over the last couple of years, helping us conceptualize that metaphor around what does it mean to say something is a diet? And the way that I'm thinking of the Virginia Sole-Smith Model of Diet Culture is that there's an oppressive and compulsory ideal that we're all supposed to live up to. If we're not living up to it, then we're doing it wrong, and we need to be working harder. And there's this rewarding of restriction, which, of course, then increases demands for consumer goods and forces us to buy things. Then, of course, it also doesn't actually work, right? And all of that is coming out of a culture of capitalism and individualism that wants us to solve our problems by buying stuff. VirginiaI mean, I say all the time, Amazon Prime was my co-parent.LisaI think the nuclear family is just part of that whole system of individualism and consumerism that we're supposed to be living in. It really benefits the free market for us all to be isolated in these little nuclear families, not pulling on shared resources, so we all have to buy our own resources and not being able to rely on community care, so we have to pay for all of the care that we get in life. And that is gross. That's bad. We don't like that. And you also have written, which I really appreciate, that it's a very logical survival strategy to adhere to these ideals, especially the farther away you are from the social ideal. If you're marginalized in any way, the more trying to adhere to these ideals gives us cover.To me, that all just maps onto the nuclear family without any gaps. Going back to your specific question about why is it so hard to not feel like in an imposition when you're asking for help: We're just deeply, deeply, deeply conditioned to be self reliant within the unit of the family and not ask for help. Both you and I have interviewed the wonderful Jessica Slice in the last few months, and she has really helped me.Jessica wrote Unfit Parent. She's a disabled mom, and she has really helped me think about how interdependence and asking for help is actually really stigmatized in our culture, and the kind of logical extension of that for disabled parents is that they get labeled unfit and their kids get taken away. But there's a whole spectrum there of asking for help as a weakness, as being a loser, as being really deeply wrong, and we should never do it. And we're just, like, deeply conditioned in that way. VirginiaSpeaking of community care: My 12-year-old was supposed to babysit for my friend's daughter this afternoon, she has like a standing Tuesday gig. And my younger child was going to go along with her, to hang out, because she's friends with the younger kiddo. I was going pick them up later. But then we heard this morning that this little friend has head lice. And that did make the community care fall apart! LisaOh no. It's time to isolate!  VirginiaWhile I want us all to be together....LisaThere can be too much togetherness. You don't want to shave your head.VirginiaThat said, though: It was a great example of community care, because that mom and I are texting with our other mom friends, talking about which lice lady you want to book to come deal with that, and figuring out who needs to get their head checked. So it was still a pooling of resources and support, just not quite the way we envisioned anyway. LisaIt always unfolds in different ways than we expect.VirginiaBut what you're saying about the deeply held belief that we have to do it all, that we're inconveniencing other people by having needs: That myth completely disguises the fact that actually, when you ask for help, you build your bonds with other people, right? It actually is a way of being more connected to people. People like to be asked for help, even if they can't do it all the time. They want to feel useful and valuable and and you can offer an exchange. This sounds so silly, but in the beginning I was very aware, like, if I asked someone for a ride or a play date, like, how soon could I reciprocate to make sure that I was holding up my end of the bargain? And you do slowly start to drift away from needing that. It's like, oh no, that's the capitalism again, right? That's making it all very transactional, but it's hard to let go of that mindset. LisaYeah, and it just takes practice. I mean, I think that your example is so nice that just over time, you've kind of loosened up around it. It's almost like exposure therapy in asking for help. It doesn't have to be this transactional transaction.VirginiaAnd I think you start to realize, the ways you can offer help that will work for you, because that's another thing, right? Like, we have to manage our own bandwidth. You wrote recently that sometimes people who aren't in the habit of doing this are afraid that now I'll have to say yes to everything, or this is going to be this total overhaul of my life. And  No. You can say no, because you know you say yes often enough. So talk about that a little bit.Community building for introverts!LisaAbsolutely. I come at this from a perspective of living with chronic illness and disability where I really need to ration my energy. I've only been diagnosed in the last few years, and prior to that I just thought that I was lazy and weak, and I had a lot of really negative stories about my lack of capacity, and I'm still unlearning those. But over the past few years, I've been really experimenting with just recognizing what I am capable of giving and also recognizing that resting is a necessary part of the process of being able to give. If I don't rest, I can't give. And so actually, I'm doing something responsible and good for my community when I rest. You know, whatever that resting looks like for me or for other people, and it can look a lot of different ways. Some people rest by climbing rocks. I am certainly not one of those people, but...VirginiaThat is not my idea of relaxation. LisaBut, whatever, it takes all kinds, right? And I think that the systems of community care are so much more sustainable the more that we are showing up as our authentic selves. VirginiaYou talked about how you schedule rest for yourself. I'd love to hear more about that. LisaThat was an idea that I got from a really, really, really good therapist, by far the best therapist I've ever had, who herself lives with chronic illness and chronic pain. She initially suggested to me that whenever I travel--I have a hard time with travel--that, like, if I travel for three days, I need to book three days of rest. If I travel for two weeks, I need to book two weeks of rest. That's a radical proposition to me, and one that I still am like, yeah, I don't know if I can quite make that happen. But it did inspire me to think about what would work for me. And the reality of my life for many, many years, is that on a cycle of one to two weeks, I have at least one day where I just collapse and am incapable of doing anything. I can't get out of bed. So this conversation with my therapist inspired me to go, you know, maybe I should just calendar a day of rest every week. Instead of having an uncontrolled crash, I can have a controlled crash, and then I'm making the decision ahead of time that I'm going to rest, rather than having to emergently rest when other people are relying on me for something, right? It just actually makes me more reliable to rest on a calendar.VirginiaAnd it honors that need. You're not pretending that's not going to happen or hoping you can skip by without it. You're like, no, this is a real need. This is going to enable me to do the other things I want to do. So let's just embrace that and make sure that's planned for. It's really, really smart.LisaWell, and you know, I'll say that not having kids makes it much easier, of course. But I hope that there are ways that parents can schedule in little pieces of rest, even, of course, it's probably not like an entire Saturday. But, the more that families lean into aunties and community care, the more that that space can be carved out. VirginiaSo let's talk about the auntie piece. Is it just something, like, because these friends live next door and they had kids, you found yourself playing that role? How do you cultivate being an auntie? LisaThat's a great question. For me it was kind of both always going to happen and a conscious choice. I grew up in a big family. I'm one of six kids. I spent a lot of time babysitting as a kid for both my siblings and all the kids in my town, and some of my siblings are a lot older than me, so I became an aunt in my teens, and so I've always had kids in my life. Really, I can't think of a time when I didn't have little ones around, which I think is a real benefit, not a lot of people have that kind of life. And I was raised by early childhood educators. My mom is a teacher. My grandma was a preschool teacher. My other grandma is a teacher. There are a lot of teachers in my family, and a lot of them worked with little kids, so there are a lot of resources available to me.But then I also did have to make some conscious choices. I think that one of the early things that happened for me was one of my best friends asked me to be her child's godmother, and that kid is now 17. I know, she's a teenager, oh my god. So that relationship in my 20s started to condition me to think: How do I really show up for a family? How do I really show up for a child that's not my own child? And then when we moved into cohousing, which was in 2019 right before the pandemic started. We knew that we would be involving ourselves more in the life of a family. More on Lisa's childful lifeAt that time, my partner and I were hoping to have kids, and I ended up losing a lot of pregnancies. We decided to not become parents, but so we were initially envisioning sort of raising our kids together, right? And then when my partner and I decided not to have kids, one of the things that we sort of decided to pivot toward is like, well, we're going to really invest in these kids who live in our community, which we already were, because the pandemic hit and we were a bubble. So many people know the story. All the adults are working full time. There's no childcare. There are little kids. So it was really all hands on deck during that time, and it really pushed our community into a structure of lots and lots of interdependence around childcare and I spent a lot of time with these kids when they were really little, and that really cemented some bonds and forced us to make some very conscious decisions about how we want to be involved in each other's lives. To the point that once you get very involved in the lives of kids, you can't exit. Like, even if you wanted to. And so that changes your whole life trajectory. Moving to Mexico is off the table for me and my partner until these kids are at least out of the house, and that's many years down the road, right? It would be harmful for us to separate from these kids at this point. So, there are conscious decisions and just sort of happenstance. And I think for anybody who's interested in becoming an auntie or recruiting an auntie: Every situation is kind of different. But the piece about making conscious decisions is really important and requires sometimes scary conversations where we have to put ourselves out there and be vulnerable and take risks to let our loved ones know that we would like to form these kind of relationships. VirginiaAs someone on the side with the kids, my fear would be that I'm asking this huge favor, and like, oh my gosh, what an imposition. Because kids are chaos and these friends have a lovely, child-free life--I love my children, standard disclaimer. LisaKids are total chaos.VirginiaKids are always in whatever vortex of feelings and needs that that particular age and stage requires and asking someone to show up for that is, it's big. It's big.LisaWell, I definitely can't speak for all childless people, definitely not. But there are a lot of aunties who read The Auntie Bulletin, several thousand people who read The Auntie Bulletin, and a lot of shared values there in our community. Something that I think is a common feature among people who are aunties, or who want to be aunties, is: We really recognize how much we benefit from being in relationship with families. There are a lot of people, myself included, who were not able to have children and really want to have a child-ful life. We would feel a loss if we didn't have kids in our lives. And so this was something that I was reckoning with during the pandemic, when my partner and I were providing really a lot of childcare for another family. People would ask me: Do you feel like you're getting taken advantage of? What are you getting in return? What I realized during that time was, I'm getting paid back tenfold, because I get to have these kids in my life for the rest of my life, but I don't have to do the hard stuff. And that's really important. Parenting, I don't have to tell you, is very hard. As a person with chronic illness and disability at this point, I'm very glad that I don't have kids, because I don't think actually that I have the stamina. It's not about capacity for love, it's just about straight up physical energy. And so I'm able to have the benefits as an auntie of being parent-adjacent, without the cost. So I'm the winner in that transaction. And I think a lot of aunties think that way.VirginiaWell, that's really encouraging to hear. And I think, too, what you're talking about is just having really good communication, so people can say what they can do and also have their boundaries honored when they have to set a limit. That's key to any good relationship, so it would apply here too. Subscribe to Burnt Toast! LisaYeah, totally.VirginiaThinking about other barriers that come up. I've been reading, and I know you're a fan too, of Katherine Goldstein, and she's been writing such interesting critiques right now of how youth sports culture really derails families' abilities to participate in community. That's a whole fairly explosive topic, because people are really attached to their sports. So, I'll save the specifics of that for some time I have Katherine on to discuss this. Are youth sports a diet? Yes, absolutely. And we are not a sports family, but when she wrote about it, I immediately recognized what she meant, because every fall I noticed that my kids' friends become much less available for play dates because it's soccer season. And it's like, waiting for when soccer practice will be over, so that so-and-so might come over. Suddenly, even as a non-sports family, I feel like I'm loosely revolving around these schedules. And to bring it back to your work: That is one aspect of parenting culture that is really feeding into this isolation problem and this lack of community problem. This way that we've decided parenting has to be so intensive and performative around sports makes people actually less available to their communities. So this is a long way of asking my question: Do you think what we're really talking about here is a problem with the institution of marriage or the institution of parenting, or is it a bit of both?LisaThat's so interesting. I do think that youth sports is, like, by far, the kind of biggest engine of this. But there also are families that are, like, deep, deep, deep into youth performing arts that would have the same kind of function.Virginia Dance is another big one. Competitions taking up every weekend.LisaOr youth orchestra, sometimes those can be incredibly consuming and also incredibly expensive. So going with the grain of the parents that are really hyper investing in their kids activities: They will find community in those places often, right? It's a sort of substitute community for the length of the season, or whatever. And then my question is: What's the culture within those spaces? Is it like, hyper competitive? Is it about getting to the national championship? Is there a sense of community? Is there a sense of supporting kids around resilience when things don't go the way that they want them to? The cultures within these spaces matter. And I think it just ties back to the way that the nuclear family is a diet. Because we are so deeply incentivized to be fearful in our culture and to treat our problems with money, goods, services, activities. And the fear, I think, for a lot of parents, is that their kids are going to not have a good and happy life. So then there's what Annette Lareau, an educational researcher, calls concerted cultivation, particularly among more bourgeois middle class families of trying to schedule kids to the hilt, to make sure that they get every opportunity in life, and they can therefore succeed through every hurdle, and never have any adversity. Or that the adversity that they have is character building adversity in some way. And so I think that the hyper-involvement in kids activities does come from fear that's motivated by capitalism. And is that an issue of parenting culture or marriage culture or capitalist culture or gender culture?VirginiaAll of it. Yes. I mean, one thing I think about, too, is how these activities create their own community. But it's a very homogenous community. The child-free folks aren't there, because it's only soccer families or dance families or whatever. And you're only going to get families who can afford to do the activity. So it's a self-selecting group. This is not to say I'm doing a great job cultivating a more diverse community for my kids. I live in a white majority town. This is hard for all of us. We're not saying you all have to quit your sports! But if that's your primary community, that is going to narrow things in a in a way that's worth reflecting on. To bring this a little more fully into the Burnt Toast space, where we talk about diet as metaphor, but also diets specifically: One question I am asked a lot from the aunties in the Burnt Toast community, is, "How do I show up for the kids in my life that are not my own, I don't get to make the parenting calls, but for whom I still want to model anti-diet values?" Maybe there's stuff the parents are doing with food that's sending a weird message, or dieting in the home, that kind of thing. LisaWell, my sense is for myself—and I try to preach this gospel at The Auntie Bulletin— is that there are a lot of these moments for non-parents who are really deeply invested in the lives of kids, where it's not our call. And it's just a tricky terrain for aunties or any kind of allo-parental adults who are involved in the lives of kids who aren't their own kids. I'm really fortunate that most of my friends are pretty on board with an anti-diet philosophy. The people who are close to me, where I'm really involved in feeding kids are on the same page. But it comes up in other ways, right? Where I might have a different perspective than the parents. My sense is really that aunties do need to follow parents' lead that it's actually quite important to honor parents' decision makings for their kids. And we can be sort of stealthy ninjas around how we disrupt cultural conditioning more broadly. So I'm not super close to their parents, but we've got some kids in our neighborhood who are buddies with the kids who are a big part of my life. And those neighborhood kids get a lot of diet conditioning at home. There's this little girl, she's in fourth grade, and she's always telling me about her mom's exercise and saying that she can't get fat and she can't eat that popsicle and things like that, which is really heartbreaking to witness. And it's exactly that kind of situation where it's like, I'm invested in this as a just a member of our society, but I also care about these kids, and it's just not my call, you know? So I can just say things like, "Well, I like my body. I feel good that I have a soft body and I'm going to have another brownie. It tastes really good." And just kind of speak from my own experience, where I'm not necessarily trying to argue with their parents, or trying to convince the kid of something different. I'm just modeling something different for them. And I think it's totally fine to say, "In my house, you're allowed to have another brownie if you want one!" VirginiaThat modeling is so powerful. Having one example in their life of someone doing it differently, can plant that seed and help them reframe, like, oh, okay, that's not the only way to think about this conversation. That's really useful.LisaAnd I think affirming difference whenever we have the opportunity to do so is important. When a kid comments on somebody's body size or shape, you can just always say, "Isn't it great how people are different? It's so wonderful. There's so much variety."VirginiaRelated to modeling and fostering anti-diet values: I think there is a way that this collective approach to living and being in community with each other runs quite counter to mainstream narratives around what is good behavior, what are social expectations, and which groups do we let take up space. I'm thinking about how the group of soccer moms is allowed to be a community that everyone has paid to participate in, while the Black neighborhood having a block party might have the cops called on them. So, talk a little bit about how you see collectivism as also an act of radicalism.LisaYeah, thank you for that question. It's such a good one. A soccer community that is literally pay to play, where there are increasing tiers of elitenes—that is coded as very respectable in our society. Whereas a block party in a neighborhood of color is coded as disrespectable, unrespectable, disreputable. The music is loud and the people are being inconsiderate and their bodies are hanging out. There is all of this stigma around collectivism. I find for myself it's very insidious and subtle, the ways that collectivism is stigmatized. I have a theoretical allegiance to collectivism, but it takes having to actually ask for help to notice our friction and our resistance to that. You were talking about that earlier in the follow up to your divorce. And I've had that experience, when I've needed to ask for help around my disability and chronic illness, and there's all of a sudden this feeling of like, oh, I shouldn't ask for help. Oh, there's something wrong with that. And I think that there actually is a dotted line there between our resistance to asking for help and that feeling like we're doing something bad and anti-Blackness, anti-brownness, anti-queerness. Community is so, so essential for queer folks who have had to find their own family, choose their own community for for for generations. There's this kind of whiff of disreputability around collectivism, and these narratives around these kids are running wild and bodies are hanging out and the music's too loud, and like, what's going on there? What are they eating? VirginiaThere are so many ways we police it all.LisaIt's all really, really policed. I think that's really well put. So I think it's important to reclaim collectivism and reframe collectivism as legitimate, valuable, important, meaningful. Collectivism is something that a lot of people who live in dominant white communities have actually had taken from us through the medium of compulsory individualism. We need to reclaim it, and we need to not stigmatize it in all the communities that are around us and our neighbors.VirginiaMaybe instead, we should be looking at other communities as examples to emulate.LisaAs resources, absolutely. The disability community as well. VirginiaI think that's really helpful, and I'm sure it gives folks a lot to think about, because it just continues to show up in so many small ways. Even as you were describing that I was thinking about the stress response that kicks in for me after I host a gathering, and my house is left in whatever state it's left in. And it's like, of course, the house is messy. You just had 12 people over, and there are seltzer cans laying around and throw pillows out of place. That's because you lived in your house. You used it. But there's this other part of my brain that's so conditioned to be like, well, the house has to be tidy. And now it looks like you're out of control. But it's that kind of thing, that inner policing we do, that is very much related to this larger societal policing that we participate in.LisaAbsolutely, yeah.VirginiaAny last tips for folks who are like, okay, I want to be doing more of this. Particularly folks who want to connect with child free folks, or for child free folks who are listening, who want to connect with more families with kids. Any little nudges, baby steps people can take towards building this?LisaMy big nudge is to practice courage, because it's scary to put yourself out there. You have to be vulnerable when you ask to build a relationship that's deeper with people. And I think it actually is analogous, in some ways, to forming romantic relationships. You have to take some risks to say what you want, and that's a scary thing to do, but there are lots and lots of people out there who want to be more involved in the lives of families. And there are lots and lots of families out there who need more support.VirginiaWhen you were talking about the pandemic, I was like, I would have killed for an auntie. LisaEvery family needs an auntie. Two adults I love, Rosie Spinks and Chloe Sladden who both have wonderful newsletters, have been writing about this lately, that even having two adults is just not enough to run a household in the structure of society that we live in. I think that that's right, even if you've got a man who's pulling his weight, to crack open a whole other can of worms.Why Fair Play didn't work for ChloeVirginiaWhich, yeah.LisaThey're rare, but it does happen, and even then, it's not enough. We actually need more adults to make communities run than we get with the way nuclear families are set up. So it's a really worthy thing to seek out aunties, and for aunties to seek out families, and it's just a little bit scary. And you also have to be persistent, because when we offer, parents will usually say no. Like they don't believe us. They think their kids are too wild and whatever. So parents have to persist and and families need to persist in being welcoming. VirginiaI would also add on the parent side, as much as I appreciated what you said before about aunties have to respect parents having the final call on stuff: It's also an exercise in us having to loosen up a little. Not everything is going to go exactly the way you want it to go. The bedtime might look differently, meals might happen differently, there might be more or less screens, and we have to be less attached to those metrics of parenting and touchstones of our parenting day, and realize that the benefits of our kids getting to be with other people, way outweighs whether or not they eat three cookies or whatever it is. LisaYeah, the more that we live in community, the more we all learn to be flexible.VirginiaWhich is really the work of my life, learning to be more flexible. Work on flexibility with us!

Sports and activities offer a slew of benefits for our kids, but can often come with burnout, battles, and blown budgets. We break down how to balance structured sports with free play and how to help your child discover what truly lights them up inside. And, once we are in the sports, reframing quitting, the sports scholarship myth, building resiliency, and more.Articles mentioned: The Double Shift, by Katherine Goldstein 

Krystina used to host gatherings all the time. Then came kids and the pandemic, and the parties ground to a halt. She's feeling a renewed urge to bring people together—specifically her inspiring, badass female friends—but every time she starts to plan something meaningful, she balks. On this episode: How To!'s Courtney Martin connects Krystina with Katherine Goldstein of the Substack and podcast The Double Shift. Katherine shares what she's learned from her new project, The How To Find Your People Club, including a guiding principle: Don't overthink it. More from The How to Find Your People Club: 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You'll Actually Do It) More Advice for the “Deep Casual” Hosting Movement! A Research-Backed Method to Ramp Up Our Social Skills A Nitty-Gritty Guide to Finding a Community That's Right for You If you liked this episode, check out How To Throw a Party They'll Remember and How To Find Friends in Unexpected Places. Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer. Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Krystina used to host gatherings all the time. Then came kids and the pandemic, and the parties ground to a halt. She's feeling a renewed urge to bring people together—specifically her inspiring, badass female friends—but every time she starts to plan something meaningful, she balks. On this episode: How To!'s Courtney Martin connects Krystina with Katherine Goldstein of the Substack and podcast The Double Shift. Katherine shares what she's learned from her new project, The How To Find Your People Club, including a guiding principle: Don't overthink it. More from The How to Find Your People Club: 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You'll Actually Do It) More Advice for the “Deep Casual” Hosting Movement! A Research-Backed Method to Ramp Up Our Social Skills A Nitty-Gritty Guide to Finding a Community That's Right for You If you liked this episode, check out How To Throw a Party They'll Remember and How To Find Friends in Unexpected Places. Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer. Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Krystina used to host gatherings all the time. Then came kids and the pandemic, and the parties ground to a halt. She's feeling a renewed urge to bring people together—specifically her inspiring, badass female friends—but every time she starts to plan something meaningful, she balks. On this episode: How To!'s Courtney Martin connects Krystina with Katherine Goldstein of the Substack and podcast The Double Shift. Katherine shares what she's learned from her new project, The How To Find Your People Club, including a guiding principle: Don't overthink it. More from The How to Find Your People Club: 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You'll Actually Do It) More Advice for the “Deep Casual” Hosting Movement! A Research-Backed Method to Ramp Up Our Social Skills A Nitty-Gritty Guide to Finding a Community That's Right for You If you liked this episode, check out How To Throw a Party They'll Remember and How To Find Friends in Unexpected Places. Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer. Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Krystina used to host gatherings all the time. Then came kids and the pandemic, and the parties ground to a halt. She's feeling a renewed urge to bring people together—specifically her inspiring, badass female friends—but every time she starts to plan something meaningful, she balks. On this episode: How To!'s Courtney Martin connects Krystina with Katherine Goldstein of the Substack and podcast The Double Shift. Katherine shares what she's learned from her new project, The How To Find Your People Club, including a guiding principle: Don't overthink it. More from The How to Find Your People Club: 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You'll Actually Do It) More Advice for the “Deep Casual” Hosting Movement! A Research-Backed Method to Ramp Up Our Social Skills A Nitty-Gritty Guide to Finding a Community That's Right for You If you liked this episode, check out How To Throw a Party They'll Remember and How To Find Friends in Unexpected Places. Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer. Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Check out my Substack Live conversation with Katherine Goldstein, author of How to Find Your People: A Guide to the Transformative Power of Community about the importance of finding or creating community.After watching the replay above, make sure you're following Katherine on Substack at The Double Shift.My upcoming book, Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age, is now available for preorder! This book is my guide to figuring out what lights you up and will show you how to live on fire every day. Click here to preorder and get locked into some incredible bonuses. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonwatts.substack.com/subscribe

The Double Shift's Katherine Goldstein joins Sarah and Miranda to talk about her creative solution to the problem that is American summer, why parents are set up to fail in finding summer care, and how to actively create the kind of community we need to build something better. Links:* The Incredible Things You Can Do Instead of Paying For American Summer Camp* How Other Countries Handle Summer with Kids* Katherine's How to Find Your People Club* Ezra Klein Show - Sabbath and the Art of Rest This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

A lot of moms are hitting a phase where our kids get older and we're wondering what the next chapter looks like for us. If you know you can be more fulfilled with your life but don't know where to start, you'll get so many helpful tips from my guest, award-winning journalist Katherine Goldstein She's the founder of The Double Shift, a fellow at The Better Life Lab at New America, and a fierce advocate for moms, families, and gender equity. Tune in to hear us discuss Katherine's popular HuffPost op-ed There's a Life Coach for Everything These Days, and describe the questions to ask yourself before a big pivot. She also has fantastic advice about how to decide whether you need a life coach, career coach, or mayyyybe just a good therapist and community of friends. ----- Support Our Awesome Sponsor: Phyla Skincare: If you struggle with acne or have kids who do, save 25% your first order with code COOLMOM on Phyla Phortify Probiotic Serum. (There's a reason Ryan Reynolds is an investor!) This is the breakthrough, science-backed, derm-recommended, probiotic acne serum that prevents breakouts, all without side effects or harsh chemicals like Accutane. Hard recommend! ----- Our Cool Picks of the Week include a fabulous book just for moms and another Substack community that's especially helpful for women over 40, whether you have kids or not. ---- Follow Spawned: Apple, Spotify, Amazon Find Katherine Goldstein: Website, Substack, Podcast Instagram, Find Liz Gumbinner: Instagram, Substack, Facebook, Threads Shownotes from today's episode: Cool Mom Pick Podcast Page Subscribe for cool picks each week right in your inbox: coolmompicks.com/subscribe/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode we sat down with Katherine Goldstein, author of the Double Shift Newsletter, mom and journalist covering Caregivers in the Workplace. Ahead of Moms in MFG conference on June 13, Katherine talked about parenting, caregivers in America and advice that she has for other working moms. As a journalist, Katherine has researched ways to help caregivers in America and what we can do to transform the workplace.

Welcome to the audio version of The Double Shift newsletter, read by yours truly, Katherine Goldstein.Today's edition is about my big financial decision to switch newsletter platforms, and what it means to “start over.” I'm ready (with my face scrunched and my fingers crossed) to take the risk of asking my existing members to stick with me by taking a few extra steps to sign up again with their credit cards on Substack. I believe what I do is valuable. I want it to reach more people. I want to earn more money for it. If you are new to The Double Shift newsletter, some recent posts you may enjoy are my two-part series: The “Every Family for Themselves” Fight for Summer Camp & How to Make Summer Better for Everyone. Or check out Millennial Dads and The Caregiving Praise Conundrum, Your Working Conditions as A Parent Are Unacceptable, or How to Make Friends as An Adult. If you want more audio newsletters and want to be a part of our community, subscribe now and become a member of the Double Shift. If you have questions or need help with your podcast feed or membership, reach out to us at askthedoubleshift@gmail.com. You can get a one month free trial of The Double Shift newsletter on Substack by going to thedoubleshift.substack.com/listeners or click the button below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thedoubleshift.substack.com/subscribe

Katherine Goldstein is the Creator of The Double Shift, a newsletter and community that's a social change laboratory for moms. She is a journalist who writes about mothers, caregivers, and gender equity for the NYTimes, Harvard Business Review, TIME, WashPost, Vox, and more. Katherine is a 2023 care reporting fellow for the Better Lab at New America and a former Harvard Nieman Journalism fellow. She is also a corporate speaker and consultant for companies supporting caregivers. In this episode... Are you struggling to balance being a mother or working? Where can you get the support you deserve to thrive as a working mom or caregiver? Juggling work responsibilities while caring for children or other family members is a challenging experience. Trying to do it all can often lead to guilt or stress for many. Katherine Goldstein says that despite the challenges, it is possible to balance the demands of work as a mom. She shares her journey as a thriving working mom on a mission to make society and workplaces more equitable for moms and caregivers. In this episode of Reclaim Your Career, Jess Galica is joined by Katherine Goldstein, creator of The Double Shift, to discuss how to flourish as a working mom or caregiver. Katherine talks about her professional journey as a high-achieving working mom, how to deal with the caregiving crisis, and the future of caregiving.

Katherine Goldstein is a journalist who writes on mothers, caregivers and gender equity for The NYTimes, TIME, WashPost, Vox and more… while also raising 3 kids (including pandemic twins!). Hear why Katherine is ready to banish the phrase “working mom” and how her return to journalism after a difficult postpartum experience fueled her next career stage. PLUS Katherine is telling us about what it was like going into the podcast business totally cold and what her biggest struggles were when figuring it all out. 

The guests on today's show are Eva Dienel and Christine Bader. Eva is a freelance writer, editor and communications consultant with 25 years of experience telling stories that matter. She is the founder of The Life I Want story telling project and Christine has been a contributor to it from 2019 to 2022. Christine is a TED and TEDX speaker, book author, was Amazon's former director of social responsibility and has been teaching students at multiple universities. How to connect with Eva & Christine: Eva Dienel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eva-dienel-19a8a72/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EvaDienel   Christine Bader: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinebader/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/christinebader   The Life I Want: https://www.thelifeiwant.co/   What we talked about on the show: 1:55 Where Eva & Christine are calling in from 4:16 Professional background - Eva 10:34 Professional background - Christine 19:08 The Life I Want 44:40 Message for business leaders/ HR leaders   Additional resources that were mentioned on the show: Leslie Forde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieforde/ Otter: https://withotter.com/journey Amy Henderson: https://www.amyhenderson.org/the_book Katherine Goldstein: https://www.thedoubleshift.com/   How to reach out to the host, Karin Tischler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-tischler/  

Gloria gets a lesson from journalist Katherine Goldstein about why she no longer uses the term “working mother.” Katherine, who is also the founder of The Double Shift newsletter, podcast, and community, explains why the phrase devalues caregiving, and how it creates an artificial barrier between mothers that prevents them from addressing their shared struggles and concerns. Then, Katherine makes the case for year-round public school and 8-hour school days, and debunks the myth that remote work will enable women to have it all.   This podcast is presented by Neighborhood Villages, and is brought to you with generous support from Imaginable Futures, Care For All Children by the David and Laura Merage Foundation, and Spring Point Partners.   Follow Katherine Goldstein on Twitter @KGeee and on Instagram @thedoubleshift. Subscribe to The Double Shift newsletter here. Katherine also speaks and consults about issues facing caregivers in the workplace.    Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.    Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/.   Laugh, cry, be outraged, and hear solutions! Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nooneiscomingtosaveus.    Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.    For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Katherine Goldstein is a journalist and social activist. Her podcast the Double Shift challenged the status quo of motherhood in America. In this episode, she shares the challenges of being in the newsroom as a mother, but also what she has learned from interviewing successful change advocates. One key message is: don't do it alone. Download your free burnout guide on my website www.DrJacquelineKerr.com.

Regardless of your opinions over what we've endured over these past 2+ years, one thing we can all agree on is the fact that this global pandemic has had a profound impact on parents. Nicole Nalepa chats with award-winning journalist Katherine Goldstein who specializes on social and economic issues facing moms. She'll focus on the fallout mothers have been facing both at-home and at the workplace, explore the real challenges, who's hurting the most -- and how we can help each other out.---------------------------------------------SHOW NOTES:Host: Nicole Nalepa | @NicoleNalepaTVGuest:  Katherine Goldstein Katherine now writes a weekly newsletter about the forces that shape family life in America, filled with reporting and storytelling: thedoubleshift.com/newsletter.  She also just  relaunched The Double Shift member community, which is a social change laboratory for moms: thedoubleshift.com/join.You can also follow Katherine on Twitter: @kgeee

We hear so much about Betty Friedan, and the Feminine Mystique. And the whole thing was women find power and fulfillment and identity outside of the home by working professionally. Right? The thing that that leaves out is when you go outside of the home, who’s in the home? Like that work never went away.Hello and welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health.Today I am chatting with Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother and the brilliant new book Essential Labor. I am a huge fan of Angela’s. We’ve been sort of admiring one another from afar over the internet for several years now, and this is our first IRL conversation (Well, IRL+Zoom, if you will.) We talk a ton about her new book, which is about the social construction of modern motherhood and what we need to do to truly support mothers, but also all caregivers and care work. It’s a really fun and sort of surprisingly funny conversation for what’s a pretty heavy topic. I think you will get so much out of it and even more out of her book Essential Labor, which I really recommend you run right out and get. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And subscribe to the Burnt Toast newsletter for episode transcripts, reported essays, and more.PS. The Burnt Toast Giving Circle is over $11,000! You are all amazing. We will be picking which state election to fund in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for details there. And if you’ve been thinking about joining, we still need you! Here’s the Burnt Toast episode where I announced it, ICYMI, and the link to donate.Episode 43 TranscriptVirginiaSo the new book is just incredible. How are you doing? How are you feeling? AngelaThank you for asking! I’m feeling so many things. I’m feeling tired. I hate to be the person that leads with “I’m tired,” but I feel like writing a book is is a frankly terrible process. I feel like my brain is still sort of recovering from that. And I was on kind of an accelerated timeline. I finished edits on the book in like December/January. And now it’s coming out. But I mean, I’m excited. I feel like I have been cooped up with these ideas and these thoughts for like, two years, and I am ready to like, be on the loose. COVID variants willing, I’m ready to go on tour and connect with people. I’m really desperate for that contact and conversation. So I feel really good. And I feel proud. I feel really proud of the book I’ve written. I’m trying to just hold on to that because amidst all the chaos that is going to happen, and hearing what other people think, I want to always remember how good I feel about this book and how that’s really the only thing that matters.[Virginia Note: So far, people think it’s amazing. Here’s Jia Tolentino and Sara Louise Petersen saying so, among others.]VirginiaYour book is very of the moment. Did the idea come out of the pandemic? Or was it something you’ve been thinking about, because it also ties so closely to your first book?AngelaThe secret history of this book is that I sold a second book right after my first book came out in 2018. It was a book of essays about the human body, like the body as a lens for how we move through the world and how we process the world. I was trying to write that book for two years, and it was due the summer of the pandemic. A couple of weeks into lockdown I contacted my editor and I was like, “There’s no way. There’s no way I can meet this deadline.” I’m a professional, like, I always get it done. And luckily, she was totally understanding because she was like, “I just told my husband, I think I have to quit my job.” So like everyone was going through this thing. So we pushed the deadline back several times. I used to co-host a podcast called The Double Shift with my friend, Katherine Goldstein. She invited me, during the pandemic, to cohost this with her because she wanted to continue to make the podcast during a time in which it felt almost impossible to do it and during a time in which we both felt mother’s voices, and the voices of caregivers, were both vitally important, but on the edge of being erased. And just consumed by domestic work. In September 2020, 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce in one month, because no one could be a caretaker, a virtual school proctor, and a professional worker at the same time. So I said, “women’s participation in the workforce is directly tied to their participation in public life. And what happens if women disappear for a year? Or more?”So, from that lighthearted thought, I had a wonderful editor who reached out to me and she was like, “Do you want to write about this? I want someone to write about it and I think you need to do it.” I had not been writing and I was scared to do it. But I basically put every bad thought I’d been having about disappearing, about feeling unsatisfied by domestic labor, about questioning ambition, about just everything, and I wrote this piece for The Cut that ended up going a little bit viral. Elizabeth Warren retweeted it—career highlight for me. And I realized I’ve been isolated and alone with my depression and my concerns, but I’m not alone. So many people are feeling this way now, as everyone’s trying to force us out of the pandemic. Which, facts to the contrary. These problems aren’t going away. Childcare, figuring it out on your own. Our society’s treatment of mothers and care work. We have not solved that problem. It is a longstanding problem that we have never properly reckoned with. So that’s a very long answer to how I wrote this book. The one nice thing about it is that there’s a lot about embodiment in this book. And while I was not unfortunately able to cannibalize everything from the first book, it did feel good because all of that research that I had done that I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. A lot of that research and some snippets of writing made it into this book. And it also made me feel like everything I’ve been doing has not been a waste of time.VirginiaYou give us this whole history of care work, tracing your family’s history. It helped me, and I think it will help a lot of people, put what happened in the pandemic into context. People with privilege were caught by surprise by how hard it is to live. Obviously, it was not news to the majority of people, but it helped me put in context, like, what is happening right now? And why is it so bad? Why is it happening in this way? So it absolutely transcends the pandemic because you’re explaining this much larger systemic issue and also looking ahead into where do we go from here with that.There is a snippet from the book I wanted to talk about in detail. Okay, so actually two little quotes I’m gonna read. You wrote: The pandemic revealed that this can happen to anyone. That work won’t save affluent white women, despite Betty Friedan’s theorizing. Ultimately, they cannot ever fully outsource domestic labor, it still comes down to them. And then later you wrote: It makes white women uncomfortable to think that they are no different from their hired help. What they chase and  have been given is validation, acceptance, and success—but only on terms set by white men.I mean, Angela! So good! I read those, I underlined them, I came back and read them again. I was just flashing back to so many phone calls with editors. So many reporting trips. I remember being on a reporting trip when I was visibly pregnant with my second daughter, and feeling like I had to hide it and downplay it. This weird guy who worked for the Philadelphia Mayor was making comments about it. It was like a whole thing where I was like, I can’t be pregnant in this public space because it’s getting so weird for everybody.Angela I can’t be who I am. VirginiaThis is what my body’s doing right now and I have to do this work. There are these ways in which we are conditioned to downplay our kids, to downplay our responsibility to our kids, in order to seem professional and successful. For a lot of us, the pandemic is what made it impossible to maintain that lie. Like your editor, I was in the same boat of like, “Okay, I’m just not working for several months here.” I would love for you to unpack for us a little further why this is so specifically a problem of white feminism.Angela I mean, I want to start by saying that I’m really glad that you want to talk about this. As I was writing it, I was like, “This feels risky.” Do I want to call out white women? As a woman of color that felt and still feels a little bit risky. But this really gives me hope, because you know my joke is “some of my best friends are white women.” And I feel like there’s a reckoning that’s happening. I know that word has been overused in the last couple of years. But I think that people really want to understand what’s happening and why they feel so betrayed, and why so many white women felt and were righteously angry, you know? I want to harness that power which is why I want to keep talking about it. Mainstream feminism, which is white feminism, has always had a race problem, just like the United States. We have never fully acknowledged the history, right? Susan B. Anthony, a great suffragette, did not think that black women deserved to vote. Betty Friedan—and I shouldn’t have to say this, but these women contributed to society. I am not trying to take away, I’m not trying to come for them. VirginiaYou’re not canceling Susan B. Anthony. AngelaExactly. I just feel like these people were human. We hear so much about Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique. The whole thing was women finding power and fulfillment and identity outside of the home by working professionally. The thing that that leaves out is when you go outside of the home, who’s in the home? That work never went away. There’s a history of slavery in this country. We have a history of Black women working for free in the home and taking care of children and cooking and cleaning, black women as property. And so it was easy to slot women of color and Black women into these roles as domestic workers because they’d always been doing this labor. So, I just want to point out that women—and specifically affluent white women—were sold a bill of goods. I think Boomer women especially. I think a lot of white women now are reckoning with this. A lot of Boomer women were like, “I can have it all.” And that’s the huge lie that we’re still grappling with. Like, you cannot have it all. Even if you come close to it, someone will be like, “can you hide your pregnant body?” It’s very inconvenient that you are overflowing with life, right? Because white women are also oppressed, right? But there’s a better chance for white women to attain success or to fit in. You know, oppression sucks. The thing that marginalized communities and marginalized women and people of color understand is that this world wasn’t built for us. So success is sort of unattainable. At least, I’m speaking for myself now, this classic, shiny version of white feminist success is out of reach. I started self-identifying as a feminist when I was 12 years old. But nothing I read ever talked about my mother, who was an immigrant from the Philippines who worked and raised three kids. Marginalized people have a better understanding of who is left out of conversations. White women haven’t been challenged to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes. They’ve been encouraged to lean in. But to go back to history, when we think of feminism, we don’t think about Johnnie Tillmon or the National Welfare Rights Organization, who were contemporaries of Betty Friedan. Their work was organizing to make sure that women and families who received welfare, which was called aid for families with dependent children at the time, were able to access aid from the government. There was a time when women receiving that aid were subjected to impromptu searches of their home because the government thought that if they were giving them money, then they had the right to come in and make sure they weren’t sleeping with men. Because if men were in the picture, then they shouldn’t have any support. So the NWRO and Johnnie Tillmon were working in a multiracial coalition for poor people. And their analysis, when faced with the same scenario that Betty Friedan had, was that we should have a universal basic income. We should eliminate poverty and we should make life better for as many people as possible. And that’s also history that we don’t hear about. What white women are taught is white feminism, and actually, there is and has always been a much more inclusive feminism. The feminism of women of color, of marginalized people. It’s time for people to understand that and reckon with it and realize that it’s solidarity. I quote Sylvia Federici in the book: “All women are in a condition of servitude when it comes to the male world.”VirginiaThis distinction between Johnnie Tillmon and Betty Friedan is so important because it shows us that the answer was never to try to live on men’s terms. What you’re arguing for is that we need to reject that whole system. We need to do something really different. AngelaCare work is essential to life. It is the work that makes all other work possible. It’s mind boggling when you realize the extent to which we have tried to make care work invisible. The way we have devalued care work. You either do it as a labor of love as a woman or you outsource it to women of color and you pay them poverty wages. Domestic workers are three times as likely to live in poverty than workers in any other field. The median wage in America is close to $20. The median wage for domestic workers is $12. What I’m arguing is that, actually, the only work that matters as a human being is taking care of people. I was struggling with this in the pandemic with the “mask debate.” I’m at a loss. I don’t know how to convince people that they should care about other people if they don’t already have a sense of that. I think it’s a very human and innate and beautiful urge that we have to take care of each other. And I think our culture has beat it out of us. This culture of individual, of hustle and grinding, every man for themselves, I’m looking out for number one. It’s not working. The pandemic showed us that we can’t do it alone. What I’m arguing for is the visibility of care work, the absolute insistence on the importance of care and viewing care as labor that should be respected and valued, culturally and financially.VirginiaIt makes a ton of sense and is tricky to implement because you just keep coming up against the ways in which the systems don’t allow for it. Do you know what I mean? But I think holding that as the starting point and the goal feels critical to making any change.AngelaI do feel hopeful that we’re having a moment. I think it’s going to take longer than I thought. When we got the Biden administration, we were talking about paid leave. We had been experimenting with direct stimulus payments to people. There was, in the American Rescue Plan, the advanced Child Tax Credit which did lift a lot of families and children out of poverty—like four million of them for the brief time. Even though we have a Democratic leadership in Congress that died and the funding lapsed and so we’re backsliding. I definitely have felt really disappointed and disheartened by that. But the fact that we are talking about these things, the fact that we had those things, there are these glimmers of hope. I also just see, too, that maybe the government isn’t coming to save us, right? Like we’ve known that since the start of the pandemic. Certainly the Trump administration wasn’t going to come and save us. The Biden administration feels like a grave disappointment to me in this sense, too. But what I do see and what I always saw through the pandemic is that we take care of each other. We have pods. We have mutual aid societies. We have playdates, we have community fridges, we have little free libraries. I’ve seen a flourishing of that and that, again, is to me the most beautiful human thing of caring for each other. Maybe we don’t name that as such, but I want to spend some time naming that and acknowledging that and saying that that is how people survived. VirginiaI’m glad you brought that up because that was a big takeaway I had from the book. I would read a chapter, and I I would think, I am craving community so deeply. AngelaDidn’t you have COVID at the time?VirginiaOh right! I read it while I had COVID. I was like, why did I feel so alone? It was because I couldn’t leave my house. AngelaI think I was like, “Virginia! You don’t have to do that!” VirginiaNo, it was actually amazing to read it while I had COVID! I highly recommend it to anyone getting COVID now.AngelaWell I’m honored that I got to keep your company during this dark moment in your life.VirginiaIt was fantastic. Well, and because it was this moment where I was having to parent really intensively because the four of us were locked in our house together. So, it was a great book to be reading. I was like, I am really in this care work right now in a very intense way. I want to go back to the community thing in a minute, but this does remind me. One other thing I thought about as I was reading was that I often don’t like care work. I don’t enjoy it. I love my children—you know, standard disclaimer—but I don’t enjoy a lot of the minutia of negotiating with someone about socks or making a potty try happen. I’m not someone who was ever like, “I would love to be an early education teacher.” Maybe this is my white feminism coming up again, or maybe it’s just my being a heartless person who doesn’t like children enough. Or both. But I have fallen into this trap of no, no, my career still needs to matter so much. My motherhood is going to be a smaller part of my identity because I am not taking the pure pleasure in it that I thought it was supposed to. What I like about what you’re arguing for is: If we really value care work and elevate it, I think we can make it more pleasurable, right? Because it can be less isolating and draining. And it creates an opportunity where, if you don’t love it, it’s less awful that you’re outsourcing. You’re valuing who you’re outsourcing it to, right? It creates a more collaborative community approach towards it. AngelaThe thing that I feel when you say that is like, you shouldn’t have to choose. That’s the thing, you should not have to choose. I hate that. So many of us are left feeling bad or like, “Is it me? Am I heartless? And am I a bad feminist?” We internalize that and I just really want to press pause. Let’s back the drone camera up and be like, this is a systemic issue. We hate women. Our country hates women. It really hates women of color, and it doesn’t value care work. That’s not for you or me to solve individually. We can’t. I just want to point that out, too, because I think that’s a very familiar feeling that people have. I am someone who actually did take great pleasure in care work. Not all of it. Straight up, a lot of it is drudgery. So many fluids. Little silver corners torn off of fruit snack things are everywhere. That’s my thing these days. And also just the feeling that no matter what happens in life, it somehow always comes down to me, on my hands and knees, with a sponge. So, you know, care work is not great when that’s all you have to do, right? Which is what the pandemic showed us. Like, as someone who actually enjoys like a certain amount of care work, like loves to cook, is satisfied by sweeping, I felt like I saw the pleasure bleed out from it in the pandemic. It was really hard to enjoy the things that I used to enjoy. So I don’t expect everyone to be suddenly like, “Oh, I love doing care work and domestic labor.” But I’m talking about some of those physical pleasures of care and how satisfying it can be to care for yourself, too. Meaningful self care, taking care of your body, it feels so nice to give yourself a rest. And I just wanted to give people space and I wanted to give myself space to reimagine these things. If I’m going to be doing this care work, I can’t hate it. Life is so hard. If you do nothing else today but keep yourself alive and love on somebody else, you did a lot. That’s a really good day. VirginiaThis allowed me to take more pleasure in the parts I do enjoy. I do find it really rewarding and have sometimes felt embarrassed to admit I enjoy it, too. That’s the other piece.AngelaOh right. Because then you’d be like, “I’m a housewife.”I mean, I don’t like imaginative play with my children. I don’t want to play hide and seek. I don’t like to do the kitty cat game or meow. It’s just not really my thing. And I’m always like, “Oh, my husband’s more fun,” because he’s willing to do that stuff. But I have more patience to sit and read on the couch with them. The other thing is, young children are so different. My children are seven and four now and I feel like I’m emerging from a dark tunnel. VirginiaMy youngest is four, too, and it is a turning point.AngelaYeah. Thank f*****g god. Because it was really hard for a while there.VirginiaSo as I said, while reading your book is trapped in my house, I really missed community. But you know, I’ll be honest, even when I don’t have COVID, I’m an introverted person. We live in a fairly rural area in the Hudson Valley. We are part of a small town but we don’t even live down in the town. We live out in the woods. What advice do you have for us? Being a better part of our communities feels so fundamental to mothering as social change to valuing care work, but how do you start if you’re not naturally good at that?AngelaThat’s a great question because I think a lot of people feel challenged or like, I want to do something but I don’t know what. The first thing I would say is that small is great. I remember  when you were in COVID, you had posted that a friend brought you groceries. So I think part of it is just that these little gestures actually do go a long way. If it’s safe to have a playdate, having a kid over to explore the woods by your house is very cool. Maybe it’s reaching out to someone you don’t know very well, maybe even a parent that you suspect you might not like that much, but just inviting them. Community doesn’t have to look any particular way. I think it is stepping outside yourself, feeling part of something bigger than yourself, and contributing to it in a hopefully positive way. If you’re in a position of privilege, one great thing to do is to be a community member who does not reap the benefit of community. Who is in fact the person who is giving, whether that is money, or time.  It actually feels really good to care for somebody else and expect nothing in return. We always think community works in a reciprocal way. But maybe the effects are not immediate. This is my existential, philosophical answer. I think you can start small and simple. VirginiaI like focusing on small, it feels doable. Angela It’s the littlest things that are so meaningful and that make you feel like a human being and make you feel like part of something. We are not all made for the grand gesture. You know, like, I am not. I’m so grateful to activists who are in DC, not giving up, talking to people. That’s not my role. Those are not where my energies are best served. I used to think maybe that I was rationalizing and then I was really just lazy and not that good a person. VirginiaI do struggle with that. AngelaI think Everyone has a role to play and sometimes it takes some work to figure out exactly what that is.Meanwhile, you just started a fund through your newsletter to support democratic elections happening in states! I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. Like, that’s huge. And it’s really important and engaging your community.VirginiaI appreciate that. I do think, especially for us introverted types, online community can be much more doable. I also, of course, want to discuss your beautiful chapter “Mothering as Encouraging Appetites. I am quoted in this chapter, so full disclosure, I’m obviously biased to loving it.AngelaYour writing and your work is definitely a guiding force and spirit in the chapter. So thank you for your work.VirginiaThank you. Well, it’s a really powerful piece of writing. You’re talking about owning our appetites, coming to terms with our bodies, and how one of the most powerful things we can do as mothers is help cultivate that in our kids. You wrote about realizing you don’t take after your own mother physically. You wrote:I decided that being a little bit fat was the price I paid for always wanting seconds. I don’t know why I didn’t shrink myself, only allowed myself to expand both in size and in personality.I love this so much. This is my mission for my children, just not wanting them to shrink themselves. And realizing that if this is the body that you have that allows you to be a happy and fully present person, this is the right body.AngelaYeah, that’s a perfect body. VirginiaSo can you tell us a little more about how you arrived at that place? And how it informs how you’re parenting your daughters now around food and body?AngelaI’m not a stereotypical petite Filipino woman. I really struggled with that. I mean, now I look at pictures of myself in high school, and I’m like, I can’t believe I thought I was fat. But the message is so clear. Being thin and being white, that’s how people will recognize you as beautiful. I have struggled with my own self esteem issues with my own body acceptance and body issues. But I feel so grateful that diet culture didn’t interest me. I just really love eating. And I was like, I’m not gonna stop. I mean, part of it is that I really think like, to go back to something we were talking about earlier, I am just all about physical pleasure. And leisure. I love fudgy cheeses. I love really sour vinegar. I love spicy soup. I love chewy bread. I love all of these things and they make me so happy. And I’ve never been good at denying myself pleasure, which isn’t great in terms of impulse control as an adult sometimes. Definitely not in my 20s. But there was something in me, this spirit, that I’m so grateful to little baby Angela for. There was just this spirit that was like, “No. I’m not I’m not going to be crushed.” And so, and I don’t know how I did it. Honestly, like, I’m not sure what I did. So there’s part of me that’s like, I want this to be the same for my girls but I’m not sure how to replicate it.Part of it goes back to white feminism. I was just like, I’m never gonna fit in, so I might as I might as well just be me. And there’s something very freeing in that.VirginiaI wondered if that was a piece of it. I often find women in very small bodies who live very close to the ideal have large struggles, in terms of internal struggle, because it’s like they’re so close and they can’t get there. I mean, fat people are experiencing oppression for their fatness. That’s different. But I’m talking about the internal stuff. And it’s not to say that fat folks don’t also have those struggles, because we do. But I think that when you are like a 98% on a scale that is completely unrealistic, the extreme tactics to get there feel reasonable because you could get there. Whereas I think if you have a body type that is never going to be it, you have to reckon with that earlier in some way. AngelaThere is still a very dominant image of beauty in the United States. But I have this language now where I can say to my kids, like, “Being beautiful, it’s not like the most important thing. Because you decide what’s beautiful. And because it’s not the most important thing to be. The most important thing to be as a nice person, an empathetic person or a kind person.”We have a long way to go, but representationally they see more. They go to school with mixed race kids now. My girls are mixed race. You know, my daughter’s already talking about how I am Brown Filipina, Daddy is American White. My daughters looked at a picture of me from like 10, 12, 14 years ago, and they were like, “Mommy, you got fat.” And I was like, stay in it. Stay in it. You’ve been training for this, Angela. You’ve been training for this. And it was so hard, but I was like, “Yep, I got fat.” They weren’t weird in the moment. Fat to them is an adjective. And that’s all it is. The person who was making it hard was me! And I have tenderness for myself in that moment. But I felt like, oh, no, I’m doing a good job here. One of the things that I hear mothers committing to is like, I am going to continue to struggle with my body, but I want to do my best to not say disparaging things about my body in front of my children. Or to be honest with them about what’s hard about it. What do you do?Virginia I’ve had that same conversation of “Yep, I’m fat. That’s right. Fat bodies are great bodies.” And I definitely have had that same experience of like, “Oh, God, this is the moment that I have been preparing for. And also people ask me for advice on this and so I really better get it right now.”AngelaNo, totally, that’s a lot of pressure.VirginiaI better get a newsletter essay out of this. AngelaWriters are such traitors. When that was happening to me, I was laying on my bed and having that discussion with my girls like about how I’m fat. I’m trying not to cry, and I’m having all of these feelings. And this thing popped Into my mind. I was like, “Well, I’m gonna have to write about this.”VirginiaThanks, kids. Sorry that I do this with our conversations.The other piece of it that you were emphasizing: That being beautiful doesn’t matter that much, and that it needs to matter less—that we both need to broaden our definition of beauty and we need to care less about beauty. It’s hard to hold both of those together, but it’s really the crux of it. You had this line in the book which I really think you need to put on t-shirts: “Eating is a necessity. Being beautiful is not.” Thank you. That’s it.AngelaThat’s what it comes down to.VirginiaYou are allowed to reject this whole system that’s telling you your body isn’t good enough. You’re allowed to just say f**k it, and center your own pleasure and your own hunger. AngelaAnd you’re allowed to talk about how that is really hard sometimes. I’m contributing to the conversation and cultural change. But we can’t solve problems that we don’t talk about. And there’s so much shame and stigma around talking about bodies and how we feel about our own bodies. But yeah, like, 100% I just want to enjoy my life and my body. I could spend my whole life trying to make my body do a thing or I could just live my life in the body that I have. I take option two.VirginiaOption two sounds much easier and less stressful. And more fun, for sure. Butter For Your Burnt ToastAngelaI recommend falling in love with your friends. I just went away on a weekend. It was supposed to be a writing retreat with my friend, the novelist Lydia Kiesling. We became friends because we published our books around the same time, our first books, and our books were both about mothering, so naturally, we were lumped together. But we’ve never lived in the same city and I’ve met her just a couple of times, but I’ve always had this feeling like I think we would be friends. And then I was like, how would we ever figure out how to do that? And then, one of the things in the pandemic is, I’ve just been like, I don’t want to waste time. I want to see my friends, I want to spend time with them. I want to make the most of it. And I want to invest in this friendship. And so I invited her to go away on a weekend with me and we were gonna write. We had these adjacent little studio cabins, I would bring her coffee and a bagel with a fried egg. And then I would get into her bed and we watched “Love Is Blind” together. Like, speaking of physical pleasure, these are the things that we have been denied. And you know, I’m not saying, everyone go jump in bed with all of your friends. But thank God for vaccines, right? Like, that’s an option that is open to us again. I want to remind everyone that we can reawaken to things that are pleasurable and spending time being in the company of friends. What is better than friendship? There’s nothing better. Sex is great, but have you had a friend?VirginiaI did a weekend with my three best friends from when we were in our 20s. And now we live in all different places. We haven’t seen each other, obviously, in a whole pandemic. We did a weekend together last month. I came home feeling high. Like I was just like, I had long conversations with these women that I love so much. Oh, it was amazing.Angela It was like three days of one running conversation. VirginiaIt is such a good feeling. Well, that is a wonderful recommendation. Mine is also very pleasure related, because I felt like that was gonna be a theme in our conversation. I am recommending romance novels, specifically Talia Hibbert and Jasmine Guillory. I have just discovered both of them. Two Black novelists who write about Black characters. The women are usually in larger bodies, and they are really hot and there’s a lot of good sex in these books. They’re romances, so happy endings are guaranteed, but they’re fun and sexy and I haven’t read romance in years and years. My image of Harlequin romance was very like, skinny white lady and you know, big ripped brooding guy and there’s been a total evolution in the genre. There’s all these great feminist writers writing very sex positive, women-centered—like the woman always get taken care of first. Like, chapters ahead, often. She gets hers and then they get around to him much later on. It’s pretty great.Angela I love it! I feel like that’s all the stuff that were taught we don’t deserve. And to see it really front and center? It’s beautiful.Virginia They’re just delightful. And very heteronormative so disclaimer on that. If listeners know of good, queer romance novelists, drop them in comments, because I’m here for that too! I just want people to be having sex and loving their bodies. Well, Angela, thank you again, this was an amazing conversation. Tell people where they can find you and follow your work.AngelaThank you so much, Virginia. It was a little bit like falling in love. You can find me on my website and on Instagram.VirginiaAnd you all need to go and get Essential Labor. It is everywhere you get your books and required reading for Burnt Toast listeners. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player or tell a friend about this episode.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

This week, Liz is so happy to be speaking (again!) with award-winning journalist and The Double Shift founder Katherine Goldstein, about her recent HuffPost article, There's a Coach for That. It lead Katherine to research the difference alllll the many kinds of coaches out there, and today she's explaining what different coaches do, who they can help, and whether what we really need is a good friend, or even a therapist. If you've been asking yourself, "What's next for me?" this is such a helpful conversation. // Thanks so much for listening, we appreciate you! Please take a moment to subscribe if you like our show. // Want to say hi? Find us on FB, Twitter, IG, Pinterest // Shownotes: CoolMomPicks.com. // Stay safe out there, friends and let's take care of each other.

Today, Bridget chats with Katherine Goldstein- Journalist, and Creator and Host of The Double Shift Podcast.Once Katherine became a mom, she became acutely aware of how society was failing mothers. She, like so many of us, fell victim to blaming ourselves rather than acknowledging that the challenges that mothers face are societal issues. But then Katherine channeled her journalist skills to “stop feeling guilty and start feeling mad”. Katherine is a passionate advocate for mothers. She uses her platform as a podcast host of the award winning Double Shift and as a writer to inspire other moms to advocate and take action. Links from Today's EpisodeNeighborSchools Blog - If you don't have time to listen to the whole episode, go check out the highlights on NeighborSchools' blogChamber of Mothers- The advocacy group that Katherine recommends.  The Chamber of Mothers is a collective movement to focus America's priorities on mothers' rights. Their first goal is to secure federal paid family and medical leave.The Double Shift- Katherine's award winning podcastThe Double Shift Newsletter- The Double Shift is going on indefinite hiatus but stay up to date on their amazing work through this newsletterAmerican moms: let's stop feeling guilty and start getting mad- Katherine's article in the GuardianRapid Fire Responses:Mom Gear- Medella Freestyle Hands-free PumpWho to follow on IG- @babiesafter35Mom Hack- TickTick- Katherine's list app that she, her husband and her caregiver all use 

Women with children have been working as long as there have been women, babies and work — but the phrase “working mother” is a modern description. This week we launch Season Four with a deep dive into its complicated history.  Support Us  Get The Breadwinners t-shirts, stickers and more!    Episode Links  Employment Characteristics of Families — 2020  Nation's Working Mothers Increase 800% Over Last 150 Years  It's Time to Retire the Phrase “Working Mom” — by Katherine Goldstein and Jo Piazza  A Blast From the Past: 10 Cringeworthy Ads From Past Issues of Working Mother  The Working Mother as Role Model — by Anita Shreve  The Triumph of the Working Mother — by Stephanie Coontz  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this holiday rerun, Farai Chideya brings back some of the best interviews of the year. First, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois on her personal and professional connection to the maternal health crisis, and what she thinks politicians can and should do about it. Author Carmen Maria Machado shares how her gay memoir found itself at the center of a controversy in a Texas school district over what to teach students. Educator Lydia X.Z. Brown explains their perspective working within and without institutions as an activist in the disability justice movement. On Sippin' the Political Tea, Farai discusses how moms are faring with their mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the co-hosts of The Double Shift podcast, Angela Garbes and Katherine Goldstein.EPISODE RUNDOWN0:50 Representative Lauren Underwood on maternal health in the U.S.12:33 Author Carmen Maria Machado on the power of a moral panic18:38 Educator Lydia X.Z. Brown on embracing different ways of learning31:18 Sippin' the Political Tea: the co-hosts of The Double Shift come on to talk to Farai about the mental health of moms during the Covid-19 pandemic

Changing workplaces to make them substantially better for moms and caregivers is, in fact, possible. Inspired by our show on paid family leave back in 2019, we hear from some Double Shift listeners who fiercely advocated for -- and got -- better paid family leave at their companies. We are closer than ever before to getting federally funded paid leave for everyone. This is so important, but it's just one part of an ongoing movement. Today's episode offers encouragement, some playbook tactics, some real world examples, and something we all need right now -- hope.  Subscribe to our newsletter: http://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter (www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter), and become a member to support our show. http://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (www.thedoubleshift.com/join). Listen to our episode from 2019, https://megaphone.link/DSPRD2455271552 (Paid Leave, We Can Do Better). Subscribe to our newsletter: http://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter (www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter), and become a member to support our show. http://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (www.thedoubleshift.com/join). Listen to our episode from 2019, https://megaphone.link/DSPRD2455271552 (Paid Leave, We Can Do Better). Information and Resources: “https://niemanreports.org/articles/where-are-the-mothers/ (Where are the Mothers?)” Read host Katherine Goldstein's original reporting about how the women at the New York Times improved their parental leave. Making the case for parental leave: “https://www.maisonette.com/le_scoop/paid-family-leave (5 Ways to Explain the Urgent Need for Paid Family Leave.)”  “https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/upshot/the-economic-benefits-of-paid-parental-leave.html?_r=0 (The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental Leave.)” “https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/upshot/parental-leave-company-policy-salaried-hourly-gap.html (Wal-Mart and Now Starbucks: Why More Big Companies are Offering Paid Family Leave.)” Read The NYTimes Parenting Section's Guide to negotiating for parental leave: “https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/parental-leave-hourly-worker?te=1&nl=nyt-parenting&emc=edit_ptg_20190522 (How to Ask for Parental Leave When You're an Hourly Worker)” “https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/maternity-paternity-leave-parents-freelancers?te=1&nl=nyt-parenting&emc=edit_ptg_20190522 (How Freelancing Parents Can Create Maternity or Paternity Leave.)” “https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/maternity-paternity-leave-parents-freelancers?te=1&nl=nyt-parenting&emc=edit_ptg_20190522 (How to Ask for Maternity or Paternity Leave When Your Company Has No Policy.)” Additional organizations that support family leave advocacy: https://paidleave.us/ (Paid Leave US) is a national advocacy organization aimed at getting national paid family leave by 2022. https://paidleave.us/resources#workplace-policy (Check out) their FAQ, templates for getting better workplace policies and a cost benefit analysis resource. https://www.abetterbalance.org/ (A Better Balance) has tons of resources on knowing your rights around https://www.abetterbalance.org/resources/paid-family-leave/ (family leave), pregnancy and more. https://www.domesticworkers.org/ (National Domestic Workers Alliance) has an https://www.myalia.org/ (online platform for paid leave) for domestic workers. Get in touch with Erin Grau on https://www.linkedin.com/in/eringrau/ (LinkedIn), or email her at e@charterworks.com. Check out https://www.chamberofmothers.com/ (The Chamber of Mothers), and get involved.  ----------

Changing workplaces to make them substantially better for moms and caregivers is, in fact, possible. Inspired by our show on paid family leave back in 2019, we hear from some Double Shift listeners who fiercely advocated for -- and got -- better paid family leave at their companies. We are closer than ever before to getting federally funded paid leave for everyone. This is so important, but it's just one part of an ongoing movement. Today's episode offers encouragement, some playbook tactics, some real world examples, and something we all need right now -- hope.  Subscribe to our newsletter: www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter, and become a member to support our show. www.thedoubleshift.com/join. Listen to our episode from 2019, Paid Leave, We Can Do Better. Subscribe to our newsletter: www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter, and become a member to support our show. www.thedoubleshift.com/join. Listen to our episode from 2019, Paid Leave, We Can Do Better. Information and Resources: “Where are the Mothers?” Read host Katherine Goldstein's original reporting about how the women at the New York Times improved their parental leave. Making the case for parental leave: “5 Ways to Explain the Urgent Need for Paid Family Leave.”  “The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental Leave.” “Wal-Mart and Now Starbucks: Why More Big Companies are Offering Paid Family Leave.” Read The NYTimes Parenting Section's Guide to negotiating for parental leave: “How to Ask for Parental Leave When You're an Hourly Worker” “How Freelancing Parents Can Create Maternity or Paternity Leave.” “How to Ask for Maternity or Paternity Leave When Your Company Has No Policy.” Additional organizations that support family leave advocacy: Paid Leave US is a national advocacy organization aimed at getting national paid family leave by 2022. Check out their FAQ, templates for getting better workplace policies and a cost benefit analysis resource. A Better Balance has tons of resources on knowing your rights around family leave, pregnancy and more. National Domestic Workers Alliance has an online platform for paid leave for domestic workers. Get in touch with Erin Grau on LinkedIn, or email her at e@charterworks.com. Check out The Chamber of Mothers, and get involved.  ---------- Thanks Kiwico.com: Get 50% off your first month of super cool, hands-on science, art and geography projects delivered to your door every month, plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code DOUBLESHIFT Listen to White Picket Fence Season 2, wherever you get your podcasts. 

While other news outlets have “moved on'' from talking about how mad and burnt out moms are, we're just getting started. In part two of this intimate, in-the-moment audio diary series, host Katherine Goldstein shares her story of caring for newborn twins and a four-year-old as the coronavirus shut the world down around her. She's joined by co-host Angela Garbes to discuss the idea that mothers are the unacknowledged essential workers of the pandemic, what's changed in the year+ since the audio diaries were recorded, and what hasn't. Katherine and Angela also reflect how they both see collectively harnessing anger over what has happened in the last 19 months as crucial for finding a path forward. Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/2021/06/11/exclusive-pandemic-could-cost-typical-american-woman-nearly-600000-lifetime-income-1594655.html (Pandemic Could Cost Typical American Woman Nearly $600,000 in Lifetime Income) Check out https://www.instagram.com/thenapministry/ (The Nap Ministry) on Instagram. If you love the Double Shift Podcast, sign up for our newsletter,https://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter ( thedoubleshift.com/newsletter).  Consider joining The Double Shift member community, which is a social change laboratory for moms. Learn more here at https://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (thedoubleshift.com/join).

While other news outlets have “moved on'' from talking about how mad and burnt out moms are, we're just getting started. In part two of this intimate, in-the-moment audio diary series, host Katherine Goldstein shares her story of caring for newborn twins and a four-year-old as the coronavirus shut the world down around her. She's joined by co-host Angela Garbes to discuss the idea that mothers are the unacknowledged essential workers of the pandemic, what's changed in the year+ since the audio diaries were recorded, and what hasn't. Katherine and Angela also reflect how they both see collectively harnessing anger over what has happened in the last 19 months as crucial for finding a path forward. Newsweek: Pandemic Could Cost Typical American Woman Nearly $600,000 in Lifetime Income Check out The Nap Ministry on Instagram. To support our work, become a member of The Double Shift. It starts at $5/mo. You get an ad-free feed, members-only hangouts and other great perks.  Thanks to our Sponsors Home. Made: Listen to podcast about… home. And what happens when you open that door and step into a new world, whether that's a house, apartment or neighborhood. Kiwico.com: Get 50% off your first month of super cool, hands-on science, art and geography projects delivered to your door every month, plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code DOUBLESHIFT

Every mother has been touched by the pandemic and every mother has a story that deserves to be heard...including our own host, Katherine Goldstein. In this two-part series, Katherine shares her story of caring for newborn twins and a four-year-old as the coronavirus shut the world down around her. Through intimate, in-the-moment audio diaries, she strips away the tropes around self-sacrificing pandemic motherhood and lays bare the frustration, fear, uncertainty, and anger (so much anger) over how mothers, children, and caregivers have been abandoned in this crucial moment -- and have actually always been left to fend for themselves. A year and half later, we all know where this story is headed....but we don't yet know how it ends.  To support our work, become a member of The Double Shift. It starts at $5/mo. Thanks to our Sponsors Home. Made: Listen to podcast about… home. And what happens when you open that door and step into a new world, whether that's a house, apartment or neighborhood. https://link.chtbl.com/homemade?sid=podcast.thedoubleshift Mercato.com: Order online and have your locally owned grocery stores delivered to your door, and save $20 off your first order with code DOUBLESHIFT. Kiwico.com: Get 50% off your first month of super cool, hands-on science, art and geography projects delivered to your door every month, plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code DOUBLESHIFT ----- Listen to Battle Tactics for your Sexist Workplace wherever you get your podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/battle-tactics-for-your-sexist-workplace/id1391206534

Every mother has been touched by the pandemic and every mother has a story that deserves to be heard...including our own host, Katherine Goldstein. In this two-part series, Katherine shares her story of caring for newborn twins and a four-year-old as the coronavirus shut the world down around her. Through intimate, in-the-moment audio diaries, she strips away the tropes around self-sacrificing pandemic motherhood and lays bare the frustration, fear, uncertainty, and anger (so much anger) over how mothers, children, and caregivers have been abandoned in this crucial moment -- and have actually always been left to fend for themselves. A year and half later, we all know where this story is headed....but we don't yet know how it ends.  ---- If you love the Double Shift Podcast, sign up for our newsletter,https://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter ( thedoubleshift.com/newsletter).  Consider joining The Double Shift member community, which is a social change laboratory for moms. Learn more here at https://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (thedoubleshift.com/join). ----- Listen to https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/battle-tactics-for-your-sexist-workplace/id1391206534 (Battle Tactics for your Sexist Workplace) wherever you get your podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/battle-tactics-for-your-sexist-workplace/id1391206534

In Part 1 of this series, hosts Katherine Goldstein and Angela Garbes shared their own mental health challenges over the past year. They definitely aren’t the only ones who have struggled -- and in this episode we hear directly from some listeners who’ve sent us voice memos about how they are also not OK. We share some of the most pressing issues we are hearing about with Dr. Amber Thornton, a clinical psychologist and a motherhood wellness consultant. We discuss moms’ needs coming last, challenges in accessing care, additional obstacles for women of color in getting mental health support, some realities around self medicating, and more.  You can find out more about Dr Amber at Balanced Working Mama, and her podcast The Balanced Working Mama Podcast. https://www.balancedworkingmama.com/ & https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-balanced-working-mama-podcast/id1520168735 To become a member of The Double Shift go to thedoubleshift.com/join. It starts at $5/mo. If you are already a member and would like to up your contribution, sign in with your email address at: doubleshift.supportingcast.fm/account and hit the "change" button next to your email address, and select a different plan option. Resources: If you are needing mental health support, please check out the following organizations: Postpartum Progress https://postpartumprogress.com/ Postpartum Support International Hotline: 1-800-944-4773 (1-Spanish, 2- English) Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (In English and Spanish) https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/ppc/documents/DBP/EDPS_text_added.pdf Motherhood Understood, https://www.motherhood-understood.com/resources which includes Mother’s Manual for Postpartum Mental Health, Cheat sheet to Medications, Cheat sheet to Partners, and other resources. SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline is 1-800-662-HELP (4357). They also have a treatment locator. https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/ National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-273-8255 Thanks to Our Sponsors: Listen to Home. Made. a podcast that explores the meaning of home and what it can teach us about ourselves and each other, wherever you get your pods. https://link.chtbl.com/homemade?sid=podcast.thedoubleshift 1 in 5: check out this new documentary podcast from Ascend at the Aspen Institute about student parents. https://1in5.simplecast.com/

In Part 1 of this series, hosts Katherine Goldstein and Angela Garbes shared their own mental health challenges over the past year. They definitely aren't the only ones who have struggled -- and in this episode we hear directly from some listeners who've sent us voice memos about how they are also not OK. We share some of the most pressing issues we are hearing about with Dr. Amber Thornton, a clinical psychologist and a motherhood wellness consultant. We discuss moms' needs coming last, challenges in accessing care, additional obstacles for women of color in getting mental health support, some realities around self medicating, and more.  You can find out more about Dr Amber at https://www.balancedworkingmama.com/ (Balanced Working Mama), and her podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-balanced-working-mama-podcast/id1520168735 (The Balanced Working Mama Podcast). https://www.balancedworkingmama.com/ & https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-balanced-working-mama-podcast/id1520168735 If you love the Double Shift Podcast, sign up for our newsletter,https://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter ( thedoubleshift.com/newsletter).  Resources: If you are needing mental health support, please check out the following organizations: https://postpartumprogress.com/%20- (Postpartum Progress )https://postpartumprogress.com/ https://www.postpartum.net/get-help/ (Postpartum Support International Hotline): 1-800-944-4773 (1-Spanish, 2- English) https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/ppc/documents/DBP/EDPS_text_added.pdf (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (In English and Spanish)) https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/ppc/documents/DBP/EDPS_text_added.pdf https://www.motherhood-understood.com/resources (Motherhood Understood), https://www.motherhood-understood.com/resources which includes Mother's Manual for Postpartum Mental Health, Cheat sheet to Medications, Cheat sheet to Partners, and other resources. SAMHSA's (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline is 1-800-662-HELP (4357). They also have https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/ (a treatment locator.) https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ (National Suicide Prevention Hotline): 800-273-8255 Membership: Consider joining The Double Shift member community, which is a social change laboratory for moms. Learn more here at https://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (thedoubleshift.com/join).

It’s time to get real about the impacts of the pandemic on motherhood. It’s not just homeschooling that’s taken a toll on us all, it’s as if motherhood has gone under a microscope and there’s no returning to normal. My guest Katherine Goldstein, host of the Double Shift Podcast, and I explore: Why it’s time to choose anger over guilt Who has to step up to intensive parenting Making motherhood political Why this isn’t our problem Whether women are leaving the workforce or are we forced out? Read my book, NOISE: A Manifesto Modernising Modernhood  About my guest, Katherine Goldstein:  Katherine Goldstein is the creator and host of The Double Shift Podcast a reported show the challenges the status quo of motherhood in America. An award-winning journalist, speaker, and media entrepreneur, Katherine is extensively quoted as an expert in issues facing working mothers in the NYTimes, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and on WNYC and NPR. A Harvard Nieman Fellow, ‘17, She runs Double Shift Productions as an independent journalism company out of Durham, N.C., where she lives with her husband, five-year-old, and twin babies. School for Mothers Website - School for Mothers Instagram

The twin economic and health crises have rollbacked gender equality in Canada and around the world. Women, particularly those with children, as well as those who are racialized, and/or low-income have come to bear the brunt of the global pandemic and recession. Today we have incredibly knowledgeable and distinguished experts to help us understand these issues. Ariane Hegewisch is the Program Director of Employment and Earnings at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and a Scholar in Residence at American University. Dr. Marina Adshade is Assistant Professor of Teaching at the Vancouver School of Economics.Dr. Sarah Kaplan is Director, Institute for Gender and the Economy,  Distinguished Professor of Gender & the Economy and Professor of Strategic Management at Rotman.Katherine Goldstein is an award-winning journalist and media entrepreneur. Katherine is the creator and host of the podcast The Double Shift. Produced by Mycala Gill, Chayce Perkins, and Erin Christensen 

Today on the Dads with Daughters Podcast we spoke with Katherine Goldstein, the creator and host of The Double Shift Podcast. The Double Shift is a groundbreaking, reported podcast about a new generation of working mothers. I was introduced to Katherine after a tweet that she wrote talking about a study released about the number of women (over 800,000) leaving the workforce over the past few months. Today we talk about this, gender equity at home and in society and more. You can also follow along with Katherine on Twitter or on her website.  I also mentioned Fathering Together's great new Dads for Gender Equity group, find out more today! If you've enjoyed today's episode of the Dads With Daughters podcast we invite you to check out the Fatherhood Insider. The Fatherhood Insider is the essential resource for any dad that wants to be the best dad that he can be. We know that no child comes with an instruction manual and most are figuring it out as they go along. The Fatherhood Insider is full of valuable resources and information that will up your game on fatherhood. Through our extensive course library, interactive forum, step-by-step roadmaps and more you will engage and learn with experts but more importantly with dads like you. So check it out today!

An award-winning journalist and media entrepreneur, Katherine Goldstein has been extensively quoted as an expert in issues facing working mothers in the NYTimes, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and on WNYC and NPR. She has a track record for conversation-setting work, such as the viral New York Times op-ed, “The Open Secret of Anti-Mom Bias in the Workplace,” “American Moms: Let’s Stop Feeling Guilty and Start Getting Mad” and “The Mothers of America Need a Bailout. This Could be the Answer.” Katherine joins Blessing Adesiyan, Founder and CEO of Mother Honestly and Villo, to discuss how moms (and themselves) are feeling currently and where things need to change for working mothers. Katherine also shares her "CareCorps" strategy directed as a large public policy solution to provide the nation with better child care strategies and learning opportunities which have arisen from the pandemic. Follow Katherine @katherinegoldstein and be sure to check out The Double Shift Podcast The Mother Honestly Podcast is brought to you in partnership with Pacira and Lincoln Fleet.       

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, Policy Director, Tori Gorman, economist Diane Lim and journalist and podcast host Katherine Goldstein. We discussed multiple-job holders in the labor force and their impact on the economy, with a focus on women and mothers in the workforce and how they are being affected by the pandemic.

Chase is joined on the show by Concord Coalition Executive Director Bob Bixby, Policy Director Tori Gorman, economist Diane Lim and journalist and podcast host Katherine Goldstein. They discuss multiple-job holders in the labor force and their impact on the economy, with a focus on women and mothers in the workforce and how they are being affected by the pandemic.

This entire year has been one huge change after another, forcing us all to take a deeper look at how we used to live and wonder what the future holds. Our stories this week explore how society is rapidly changing before our eyes.Dylan Heuer looks at how Covid-19 is affecting the way mothers balance work and life. An excerpt from HRN’s Queer the Table featuring Soleil Ho shows how assumptions about the audience for food writing and restaurant reviews are being upended. Alicia Qian ponders pumpkin spice and the implications that come with such “basic” trends. Armen Spendjian brings us a report on how UT Austin’s campus dining program has changed for the Fall semester. Further Listening/Reading:Listen to episode 15 of The Big Food Question: How can Growing Your Own Food Address Issues of Food Sovereignty and Access?Read more from Katherine Goldstein about bailing out American mothers here and anti-mom bias in the workplace here, plus listen to The Double Shift wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to episode 15 of Queer The Table - A New Kind of Restaurant Critic: Soleil HoPreorder Jaya Saxena’s new book, Crystal Clear: Reflections on Extraordinary Talismans for Everyday Life here.Listen to episode 87 of Meat and Three - School Lunch in the Age of Social DistancingKeep Meat and Three on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. Meat and Threeis powered by Simplecast.

We continue tracking the ways the pandemic is impacting women’s lives and careers, and discuss how to not only manage the challenges but also shape a more equitable future. Guests: Kathleen McGinn and Katherine Goldstein.

As the number of child care slots shrink and the prospect of remote education grows, working parents are in crisis. In this episode, Katherine Goldstein, host of The Double Shift podcast about the lives of working mothers (and soon-to-be homeschool teacher to a kindergartener), makes the case for a national “CareCorps,” putting young adults to work supporting working families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're so honored to welcome back The Double Shift podcaster, journalist and working mom expert Katherine Goldstein for an incredible conversation about one of the many troubling aspects of the Covid pandemic: its profound impact on working moms. We discuss the real challenges, who it's hurting most, how to rally for the help we all need, and what the long term impact of Covid could be on an entire generation of working mothers...if we don't start prioritizing childcare in America. Plus, she's got a great alternative to the "mommy war" shaming over parents' (decidedly limited) choices right now. // Thanks so much for listening and subscribing. You can discuss this episode with us in the Spawned FB community // Shownotes: CoolMomPicks.com // Many thanks to our fantastic sponsor, Breyers CarbSmart for helping us get through this hot summer at home

The Double Shift is still on hiatus, but while we dream big about Season 3, check out this new show from Planet Money creator, Adam Davidson, who sits down with people who’ve channeled their unique passions and interests into successful businesses.  If you are missing the Double Shift, consider becoming a member! It starts at $5/mo. Right now, host Katherine Goldstein and Senior Producer Rachel McCarthy are having a series of unfiltered conversations about their lives with kids in the Covid era. To get access to this, as well as other exclusive content, go to thedoubleshift.com/join.

The guest for this episode is award-winning journalist and media entrepreneur, Katherine Goldstein. In 2017, she created and also hosts The Double Shift podcast, a show that uses storytelling to fundamentally transform how society sees mothers and how we see ourselves in order to achieve greater parity for women in all aspects of society. She’s also the creator of The F*ck Mom Guilt World Tour, which promotes and discusses themes from the show, with successful, sold out events in NYC, Durham, NC, and the Bay Area. Now in Season 2 of The Double Shift, the theme is “The Revolution Begins at Home” and includes six episodes tackling the personal side of working mothers, their home life. During our conversation, we talk about the conception of The Double Shift and some of the interesting subjects of Season 1, and her vision going into Season 2. She’s currently pregnant with TWINS so lets all congratulate her and she gets into what that means for her and the show in Season 2 of The Double Shift. A lot of good information about motherhood in this episode and you don’t even need to be a parent to get learn something from this interview. Download The Double Shift on your favorite app: fanlink.to/tds Follow Katherine Goldstein: Web: katherinegoldstein.com Twitter: twitter.com/KGeee Instagram: instagram.com/katherinegoldstein Follow The Double Shift: Web: thedoubleshift.com Linktree: linktr.ee/thedoubleshift Instagram: instagram.com/thedoubleshift Facebook: facebook.com/thedoubleshift SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW FRESH IS THE WORD: Please subscribe and rate/review on whatever platform you prefer to listen to podcasts. Here’s a listing of where Fresh is the Word streams: linktr.ee/freshisthewordpodcast or just search “Fresh is the Word”. THEME MUSIC Courtesy of Knox Money, Bang Belushi, and Foul Mouth. Support via Patreon For as little as $1 per month.The $3 per month tier gets you access to the Patreon-only episodes with my archived interview audio from past interviews outside of the podcasts: patreon.com/freshistheword Support via Paypal If you don’t want to do Patreon, you can donate via Paypal: PayPal.Me/kfreshistheword --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/freshistheword/message

This episode is brought to you by Everlane. Check out your personalized collection today at everlane.com/momanddad.  On this week’s episode: Dan, Jamilah, and guest host Katherine Goldstein answer listener questions from a parent looking for ways to enjoy family visits and a neighbor who is worried for the kids next door who were left behind. For Slate Plus, what should you NOT say to someone expecting twins. Sign up for Slate Plus here. Recommendations: Jamilah recommends matching outfits with your kid. Katherine recommends Shrinky Dinks as a creative way to pass a few hours. Dan recommends That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug from Emily Flake. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833. Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson. Hosts Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and communications strategist based in California. Dan Kois is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How to Be a Family and the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward. Katherine Goldstein is a journalist as well as the creator and host of The Double Shift, a reported, narrative podcast about a new generation of working mothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Everlane. Check out your personalized collection today at everlane.com/momanddad.  On this week’s episode: Dan, Jamilah, and guest host Katherine Goldstein answer listener questions from a parent looking for ways to enjoy family visits and a neighbor who is worried for the kids next door who were left behind. For Slate Plus, what should you NOT say to someone expecting twins. Sign up for Slate Plus here. Recommendations: Jamilah recommends matching outfits with your kid. Katherine recommends Shrinky Dinks as a creative way to pass a few hours. Dan recommends That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug from Emily Flake. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833. Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson. Hosts Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and communications strategist based in California. Dan Kois is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How to Be a Family and the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward. Katherine Goldstein is a journalist as well as the creator and host of The Double Shift, a reported, narrative podcast about a new generation of working mothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode: Dan, Jamilah, and guest host Katherine Goldstein answer listener questions from a parent looking for ways to enjoy family visits and a neighbor who is worried for the kids next door who were left behind. For Slate Plus, what should you NOT say to someone expecting twins. Sign up for Slate Plus here. Recommendations: Jamilah recommends matching outfits with your kid. Katherine recommends Shrinky Dinks as a creative way to pass a few hours. Dan recommends That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug from Emily Flake. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833. Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson. Hosts Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and communications strategist based in California. Dan Kois is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How to Be a Family and the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward. Katherine Goldstein is a journalist as well as the creator and host of The Double Shift, a reported, narrative podcast about a new generation of working mothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Biz and Theresa wonder if and how our use of the internet in relation to parenting has changed. Looking up “rash” is never a good idea, but is looking up “dangers of social media” any better? However, we also find communities and support on the wild, wild web. In a time when isolation is a real experience for parents, the internet may be the village we need. Plus Biz is all a buzz, Theresa looks back, and we talk to Katherine Goldstein of The Double Shift podcast about working mothers. You can follow Katherine Goldstein on Twitter @KGeee. You can learn more about The Double Shift podcast and subscribe at TheDoubleShift.com. Season One is available now wherever you download podcasts. Check out Theresa's new book! It Feels Good To Be Yourself is available now wherever books are sold.  Our book You're Doing A Great Job!: 100 Ways You're Winning at Parenting! is available wherever books are sold. Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of MaximumFun.org. Our sponsors this week are Michelin and Mathnasium. Next time when you’re looking for new tires for the family car, consider Michelin Premier® All Season tires. Michelin, performance EVERY time! Go to Mathnasium.com/OBM today to learn more about their programs, or call 855-354-MATH. Share your genius and fail moments! Call 206-350-9485 Be sure to tell us at the top of your message whether you're leaving a genius moment, a fail, or a rant! Thanks!! Share a personal or commercial message on the show! Details at MaximumFun.org/Jumbotron. Subscribe to One Bad Mother in iTunes Join our mailing list Join the amazing community that is our private One Bad Mother Facebook group Follow One Bad Mother on Twitter Follow Biz on Twitter Follow Theresa on Twitter Like us on Facebook! Get a OBM tee, tank, baby shirt, or mug from the MaxFunStore You can suggest a topic or a guest for an upcoming show by sending an email to onebadmother@maximumfun.org. Show Music Opening theme: Summon the Rawk, Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Ones and Zeros, Awesome, Beehive Sessions (http://awesomeinquotes.com, also avail on iTunes) Mom Song, Adira Amram, Hot Jams For Teens (http://adiraamram.com, avail on iTunes) Telephone, Awesome, Beehive Sessions (http://awesomeinquotes.com, also avail on iTunes) Closing music: Mama Blues, Cornbread Ted and the Butterbeans

The next generation of working mothers is not going to accept the status quo. Unpaid labor, the mental load, and harsh self-judgment could be a thing of the past. But only if we stop feeling guilty and start getting angry, says Katherine Goldstein, creator and host of The Double Shift podcast. We debated these issues and more with Hana Baba, of The Stoop podcast and KALW in this live audience taping from the Betabrand Podcast Theatre on the Bay Area Stop of the Fuck Mom Guilt World Tour. Plus! Lauren shares her 9/11 story. Support the production of Inflection Point with a monthly or one-time contribution! And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions. Subscribe to “Inflection Point” to get more stories of how women rise up right in your feed.

Join us to talk about an unexpected turn towards transition thanks to health problems and an untimely job loss. Katherine Goldstein, host of the podcast The Double Shift, shares her walk with transition and its early companion, failure. We explore the feelings of being alone in our failure and the surprises we meet along the way. A 12-minute power episode for another way to see ourselves and to learn about the power in reframing our narratives. Don't miss this one! If you like our podcast please take a moment to tell a friend or read more about my work at www.Novofemina.com. I'd love to hear from you! Find me on Twitter @LindaARossetti.  

It’s commonly accepted at this point that the idea of leaning in is at best flawed, at worst myopic, harmful, and privileged AF. But when Jeannie and Eula explored the book Lean In further, they noticed something troubling. Leaning In is a tactic, much like the ones they suggest on the show. Double Shift host and journalist Katherine Goldstein loved* Lean In* at first. She even started her own Lean In Circle. Today, she sees its flaws clearly - but she also thinks many of us are too quick to gloss over why it was so important and ultimately helpful. She tells Eula and Jeannie why so many of us kind of needed Lean In, even when it hurt us more than it helped us. Love this podcast? Support KUOW Public Radio and BTSW by donating here: https://kuow.org/donate/btsw?utm_source=shownotes&utm_campaign=btswbonus

Welcome to a summer season episode swap featuring Katherine Goldstein of The Double Shift podcast. Earlier in the season, I shared my conversation with Katie Bethell, the founder of Paid Leave for the US--or PLUS, an advocacy group working to win paid leave for everyone--whether you need to care for yourself or others. While Katie and I were talking, another podcast that I follow, hosted by Katherine Goldstein, called “The Double Shift” about working mothers...also did a story--with a woman who decided that the paid leave policy at her workplace was good....but not good enough. I want you to hear what happened when she took matters into her own hands, and how the management team at the New York Times, where she worked, responded. But wait, there’s more! You’re invited to a live taping with me and Katherine Goldstein of The Double Shift when we appear together live in San Francisco August 15th as part of her “F*ck Mom-Guilt.... World Tour”. She will also be in Oakland, August 14th. Click here for tickets! Support the next season of Inflection Point with a tax deductible contribution, click here! *Thank you to our sponsors! * NATIVE Deodorant: 20% off your first purchase. Go to nativedeodorant.com and use promo code INFLECTION during checkout. Spotlyte: Spotlyte is your destination for curated, expert content helping you discover how beauty, skincare, and medical aesthetic treatments may fit into your routine.

While all mothers are constantly working on raising the next generation, moms who end up re-entering the workforce face difficult challenges. From accepting that being a stay-at-home mom may not be your thing to being discriminated in the workplace for being a mother, your career path gets complicated if and when you decide to have children. We are joined by the creator and host of the Double Shift Podcast, Katherine Goldstein which shares stories of current mothers in the workforce, along with Kathleen McGinn of Harvard Business School, who researches how gender and class impact work, home life, and negotiations.

This week's guest on the Spawned parenting podcast is Katherine Goldstein, award-winning journalist and host of the brilliant new podcast, The Double Shift. Ever since her viral New York Times article about anti-mom bias at work went viral, she's been investigating, writing about, and advocating for changes to make the workplace more mom-friendly. Because when parents get the support and resources we need -- at work and at home -- everyone wins. Whether you work out of home or not, this is a fantastic episode to help us all lose the mom guilt and help make change instead. Yes! // Show notes on the Cool Mom Picks podcast page, or join the Spawned parenting community on Facebook to discuss. // If you love what we do, please consider leaving us a positive review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps support us. And thanks! -Kristen + Liz

The paid family leave situation in America is so bad, mothers are conditioned to think that we’re “lucky” to get ANY time off at all to care for a new baby or adopted child. Erin Grau was a New York Times employee who wasn’t satisfied with “good enough” parental leave. So, along with a determined group of women, she fought to make it better for everyone at her company.   Additional interview with Claire Cain Miller, reporter for the Upshot at the New York Times.   In addition to Erin, Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, Alex Hardiman, Christine Hung, and Alex MacCallum worked to improve the New York Times’ parental leave policy.   Additional field production on this episode by Molly Nugent.   Join:   For bonus content on this episode, and access to a members-only community launching this summer, become a member of The Double Shift for $5/mo. Go to thedoubleshift.com/join   Resources:   “Where are the Mothers?” Read host Katherine Goldstein’s original reporting about how the women at the New York Times improved their parental leave.   Making the case for parental leave with reporting from Claire Cain Miller: “The Economic Benefits of Paid Parental Leave.” “In Google’s Inner Circle, a Falling Number of Women.” “Wal-Mart and Now Starbucks: Why More Big Companies are Offering Paid Family Leave.” “With Paid Leave, Gates Foundation Says There Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing.”   Read The NYTimes Parenting Section’s Guide to negotiating for parental leave: “How to Ask for Parental Leave When You’re an Hourly Worker” “How Freelancing Parents Can Create Maternity or Paternity Leave.” “How to Ask for Maternity or Paternity Leave When Your Company Has No Policy.”   Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving, By Caitlyn Collins   Additional organizations that support parental leave advocacy:   Paid Leave US is a national advocacy organization aimed at getting national paid family leave by 2022. Check out their FAQ, templates for getting better workplace policies and a cost benefit analysis resource.   A Better Balance has tons of resources on knowing your rights around family leave, pregnancy and more.   National Domestic Workers Alliance has an online platform for paid leave for domestic workers. Thanks Takecareof.com: For 25% off your first month of personalized Care/of vitamins, use the code DoubleShift30.   StoryWorth makes it easy and fun for your loved ones to share their stories, with weekly emailed story prompts go to Storyworth.com/DoubleShift for $20 off.

#115 — The Myths of Miscarriage, The Lean In Fallacy, and Mothers’ Rage What happens when you get pregnant as you are trying to launch a podcast about bias in the workplace against mothers? Why is the dominant cultural story about miscarriage and fertility trauma that if you end up with a kid, it's all okay? And who should you be looking for in a company when you're considering a new job? Today we get to hear from Katherine Goldstein, award winning journalist and host of the inimitable, brilliant new podcast: The Double Shift. Goldstein created The Double Shift to tell diverse, three dimensional, powerful stories of mothers as complete humans. At every turn she was forced to explain that, no, this is not a podcast about parenting. No, this podcast will not hit the single note of just how hard it is to be a working mother. This podcast will, finally, allow us all to see working mothers as people with their own stories, ambitions, and struggles beyond their children. Before podcasting, Goldstein spent several years researching bias and discrimination against mothers in the workplace. It seemed to her the deepest irony that she became pregnant while in immersed in the hectic world of pitching media companies and just how vulnerable that pregnancy made her professional ambitions feel. Her pregnancy ultimately ended in a miscarriage, and Goldstein goes deep here, talking about all of the ways we as a culture fail to understand and help parents process their grief and trauma around pregnancy loss. Today we also hear from Goldstein about: the blatant bias and discrimination against women in the workplace, why people in power love to push the myth of personal responsibility and “leaning in” to workers rather than deal with just how broken our working culture is, and why she feels uniquely positioned to tell diverse, meaningful stories of motherhood in order to highlight and shift just how marginalized mothers are in America. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Katherine navigated the experience of early pregnancy while shopping her podcast pilot to major media networks. Her experience with miscarriage and her desire to change how we speak about miscarriage and fertility struggles as a culture, moving away from the myth that if you end up with a child, everything worked out. She believes this edits out women whose experiences don’t end with a child from the whole conversation and forces women who’ve experienced real and meaningful trauma to act as though nothing happened. Goldstein’s decision to share her audio recordings of her pregnancy and miscarriage with The Double Shift audience as an episode in order to show just one of the three-dimensional, complex experiences that so many mothers have. The $2,500 bill Goldstein got from her insurance company to pay for the D&C procedure she needed to have after her miscarriage and her realization of just how harmful our entire healthcare system is to the working poor. Her biggest takeaways after spending a year reporting as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard on the open secret of anti-mother discrimination in American workplaces. How mothers, but not fathers, are punished for having children in their prime childbearing years and are never able to recover from the massive hit their earnings take as new mothers.

This episode comes to BTSW from the podcast The Doubleshift a podcast about working moms, hosted by Katherine Goldstein. Nydia Sanchez runs one of Las Vegas' only overnight, 24-hour child care centers, serving 108 kids. Many of her clients are single moms who work in casinos, and as waitresses, nurses and dancers. We visit to find out how Nydia keeps her business affordable and serves a group of moms that many bosses, and politicians, and other daycare owners just don’t think about.

This episode features Katherine Goldstein, host of The Double Shift, a podcast about the lives of mothers.  Learn about how she got into the podcasting business, and how we all feel like there continue to be gaps (and opportunities) in the podcasting sphere when it comes to working motherhood.  She shares with us her experiences as a relatively new parent finding her groove (her child is now 3), and her Friday evening ritual.  In Q&A, we address an emotionally charged question about overwork and resentme

Author Amy Westervelt and host Katherine Goldstein discuss how we can recapture the revolutionary spirit of Mother's Day and why it's time for us to put a dollar amount on all the invisible labor moms do to keep society and families running. https://www.thedoubleshift.com/calculator (The Invisible Labor Calculator,) created by Amy Westervelt, author of https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Having-All-America-Motherhood/dp/1580057861 (“Forget ‘Having It All': How America Messed Up Motherhood--and How to Fix It”) Want to gift a Double Shift Membership to a special mom in your life for Mother's Day? Go to https://doubleshift.supportingcast.fm/gifts (thedoubleshift.com/gifts.) If you love the Double Shift Podcast, sign up for our newsletter,https://www.thedoubleshift.com/newsletter ( thedoubleshift.com/newsletter).  Consider joining The Double Shift member community, which is a social change laboratory for moms. Learn more here at https://www.thedoubleshift.com/join (thedoubleshift.com/join).

Author Amy Westervelt and host Katherine Goldstein discuss how we can recapture the revolutionary spirit of Mother’s Day... and why it’s time for us to put a dollar amount on all the invisible labor moms do to keep society and families running. Plus, we announce an awesome next step for The Double Shift... a membership program for listeners. To become a founding member of The Double Shift, go to thedoubleshift.com/join. It costs $5/mo and you’ll get extended, bonus content & a cool community launching this summer. To read Amy and Katherine’s essay on returning Mother’s Day to its revolutionary roots, click here. And check out our invisible labor calculator and to find out how much you should earn per year keeping your family (and society) running.   Sponsors: ThirdLove: For 15% your first order, go to Thirdlove.com/doubleshift Myro: For 50% and to get started for just $5, go to mymyro.com/doubleshift and use promo code Doubleshift

This is the third episode in our four-part series for National Infertility Awareness Week on #InfertilityUncovered. Why, in 2019, are American workplaces still so bad at dealing with issues around infertility? That is the question that Katherine Goldstein, reporter and host of the podcast The Double Shift, asks in her article for Slate titled, “IVF & The Office.” Katherine has been researching and writing about issues relating to women and the workplace for years now, and when she turned her attention to infertility and the workplace she found herself with more questions than answers. In this episode Katherine uncovers what she’s learned while researching her article, the advice she has for women, and what workplaces can do to address these shortcomings. Today’s host is Cassandra Pratt, VP of People at Progyny. Guests include: Katherine Goldstein, The Double Shift podcast For more information, visit Progyny's Podcast page: http://www.progyny.com/podcast and The Double Shift podcast: https://www.thedoubleshift.com To ask your HR/benefits team for a fertility benefit, visit progyny.com/talktohr to start the conversation. Have a question, comment, or want to share your story? Email us at thisisinfertility@progyny.com

We hear lots of stories about motherhood and parenting. But not very many about moms themselves—except for ones where they feel guilty and exhausted all the time. Journalist Katherine Goldstein wants to change that. She joins us to talk about what it’s really like to be a working mom—and how she’s challenging the world around her, not conforming to it. Katherine is a journalist whose work focuses on women, work, and parenting issues. She’s also the creator and host of a new podcast called The Double Shift—a show that explores the intricate lives of mothers who work. She joins us to share her own experience, and the amazing stories of working moms—from a 24-hour daycare provider in Las Vegas to a candidate who’s running for office with three small kids in tow. The conversation about working mothers is very dominated by mostly middle class, white collar, urban people in big cities… usually through a lens of a lot of privilege. And those concerns that are raised by that group are completely valid and need to be talked about, but those are only a very small slice of the experience. —Katherine Goldstein, journalist and host of The Double Shift We talk about: How Katherine went from print journalism to reporting via podcast, and how she developed The Double Shift Why “leaning in” doesn’t work as advertised for moms, and, well, lots of women Why men are essential in the work of protecting and supporting women and mothers Why angry moms make such great activists Links: Twitter The Double Shift podcast Elizabeth Warren’s universal child care plan, explained How Democrats Plan To Make Child Care More Affordable For Working Families Plus Sara gets showered with glitter at a Robyn show and there’s just still so much glitter everywhere Katel and Sara discuss how their friends and families are navigating child care, from the wildly varying ways it takes shape to how much it costs—and what universal child care could mean for American parents And a big fuck yeah to...poetry! More specifically, lovely poetry books (and more) from Small Press Distributors

In this episode Diana chats with Katherine Goldstein, journalist and host of the podcast "The Double Shift" about the challenges that working mothers face in the United States. Diana and Katherine discuss how becoming a mother affects a woman's earning ability anti-mom bias in the workplace  what reentry to the workforce should look like for moms after childbirth Her podcast The Double Shift  ... AND MORE!    You can check out the Double Shift on Instagram.   Don't forget to share the podcast with your friends, please leave a review and follow us on Instagram and Twitter!  You can also follow P&P's host Diana on Instagram.  Until next time... don't forget to keep the hope alive! 

Gabriel Roth, Carvell Wallace, and Rebecca Lavoie are joined by Katherine Goldstein to talk about her brand new podcast The Double Shift, a show about working mothers. They also discuss a follow up email from last week's discussion about telling your kids about their biological parentage, plus as always: triumphs and fails and recommendations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Carvell Wallace, and Rebecca Lavoie are joined by Katherine Goldstein to talk about her brand new podcast The Double Shift, a show about working mothers. They also discuss a follow up email from last week's discussion about telling your kids about their biological parentage, plus as always: triumphs and fails and recommendations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carvell Wallace, Dan Kois, and Katherine Goldstein discuss calendar fails, the mundane unfairness of paying for daycare with a health care savings account, when to teach kids to clean up after themselves, and listener questions about dealing with a chauvinist grandpa and how and when to talk to your kids about a conspicuous confederate flag on the side of the interstate. This episode is brought to you by the following advertisers:  CollegeBacker, the easiest way to save for your child's education. Go to collegebacker.com/momanddad and CollegeBacker will match your first contributions up to $10. Coffee and Crayons, a new back-to-school podcast from Target and Slate Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Mac and Mia, an online clothing subscription service your kid will love. Take $50 off your first order by going to macandmia.com/mom and using the promo code mom. Gobble, a meal prep service that brings meals that are ready to eat in 15 minutes right to your door. For $50 off your first box, go to gobble.com/momanddad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carvell Wallace, Dan Kois, and Katherine Goldstein discuss calendar fails, the mundane unfairness of paying for daycare with a health care savings account, when to teach kids to clean up after themselves, and listener questions about dealing with a chauvinist grandpa and how and when to talk to your kids about a conspicuous confederate flag on the side of the interstate.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Rebecca Lavoie, and Carvell Wallace discuss the situation at the border, anti-mom bias in the workplace with Katherine Goldstein, how not to model vices for your kids, and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Rebecca Lavoie, and Carvell Wallace discuss the situation at the border, anti-mom bias in the workplace with Katherine Goldstein, how not to model vices for your kids, and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Rebecca Lavoie, and Katherine Goldstein discuss failed voice lessons, resigning yourself to chicken nuggets, dude time, what to do about sexist cartoons, how to cope with friends with bad parenting technique, plus recommendations and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Rebecca Lavoie, and Katherine Goldstein discuss failed voice lessons, resigning yourself to chicken nuggets, dude time, what to do about sexist cartoons, how to cope with friends with bad parenting technique, plus recommendations and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Lavoie, Carvell Wallace and Katherine Goldstein discuss a mostly successful binky-for-trains program, answer questions about a difficult divorce, and reading, plus more "Triumphs and Fails" and recommendations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Lavoie, Carvell Wallace and Katherine Goldstein discuss a mostly successful binky-for-trains program, answer questions about a difficult divorce, and reading, plus more "Triumphs and Fails" and recommendations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Lavoie and Katherine Goldstein explain Elf on the Shelf to Carvell Wallace, dealing with estranged parents and how to introduce them to your kids, whether following the rules too much is bad for kids, and the joy and sorrow of holiday traditions. Plus Triumphs and Fails and recommendations.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Lavoie and Katherine Goldstein explain Elf on the Shelf to Carvell Wallace, dealing with estranged parents and how to introduce them to your kids, whether following the rules too much is bad for kids, and the joy and sorrow of holiday traditions. Plus Triumphs and Fails and recommendations.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katherine Goldstein was on the fast track to a top leadership position in digital journalism, with senior roles at Huffington Post and Conde Nast before she was 30. Then she had a baby. I met Katherine when she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Her groundbreaking work on Mothers in the Newsroom (where are they?) is must reading for the moment we're in, as is her thinking on sexual harassment in the news business.  She'll tell us the story. Have a listen.    

Gabriel Roth, Carvell Wallace, and Katherine Goldstein discuss the welfare state critique of To Give a Mouse a Cookie, children's negotiating skills, potty training, Shrinky Dinks,  and more. Plus an interview with Lauren Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester about the complications of going back to work after having a baby, and a listener question about whether to get back on IVF again.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Roth, Carvell Wallace, and Katherine Goldstein discuss the welfare state critique of To Give a Mouse a Cookie, children's negotiating skills, potty training, Shrinky Dinks,  and more. Plus an interview with Lauren Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester about the complications of going back to work after having a baby, and a listener question about whether to get back on IVF again.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode of Media Voices sees Esther speak to Nieman fellow Katherine Goldstein about what it will take to make journalism in the US friendlier to new mothers and maternity leave, following the publication of her article on the subject: http://niemanreports.org/articles/where-are-the-mothers/ In the news round-up we talk about digital success at the Guardian and NYT, the ongoing pivot to video and the successful crowdfunding project to keep Snopes alive. Peter and Chris throw Esther under the bus rather than admit they were wrong about the Guardian's membership scheme.

Annie Novak, Michael Grady Robertson & Katherine Goldstein stop by Cheap Date to talk about hot young farmers.