As they say in AA, let’s “play the tape forward.” What if I am not a “career” person?
I will have wasted:
22 years of schooling
10 years of striving in the corporate world
Finance will have “won.”
I will have failed.
I will become my worst fear: the stay-at-home housewife who dabbles and volunteers while her partner works a corporate job.
In my post, “What do you have to show for it?” I discussed how it has been difficult for me to find women whose stories about leaving the corporate world mirror my experience. I referenced the podcast “Quitted,” by Holly Whitaker and Emily McDowell, and how much I enjoy the two of them. However, neither of these inspiring women has children, as is their right! (Note: Emily’s partner has two teenage boys.)
I know that I want to have children. Who can I look to for guidance?
Right now, the creative solopreneur stories feel binary to me:
Option 1: Look at these men who forge their own work paths and their wives raise the kids!
Option 2: Look at these women who forge their own work paths and have no kids!
WHERE IS OPTION 3!?! Where are the women forging their own work paths who have kids? Is there only room for one solopreneur in a heteronormative partnership?
I recently joined a networking group for solopreneur women in my local area. Unfortunately, predictably the name of the group is “Boss Babes” (GROAN). I have been to a few events and the women are inspiring and kind. I asked if these women also feel like there is a lack of women's stories in the soloprepreneurship world and no one agreed. They essentially said, “Look around at all of these women and look at Instagram.”
I agree that the women sitting at the table appeared to be successful. My issue is why can I only find “girl bosses” on Instagram? I quit Instagram in April 2021 because I couldn’t continue to use the platform and have a sliver of mental health. I am a much happier person without Instagram. So without pictures and reels, how do I find successful women? How successful can they be if they can only be found on Instagram? Do all of their partners have corporate jobs that fund their creative endeavors?
I admire Khe Hy. He has been one of my inspirations since 2017. He has a new podcast called “The Examined Life.” In the first episode, he interviews a fellow solopreneur,
.Generally, I love what these two men have to say. However, later in the episode, they started discussing gender lines and I started to throw things. Khe begins,
“One thing that I think about often and we've alluded to this in different parts of conversation is the question of identity.”
He notes that his wife, Lisa, is an artist. Next, he says,
“When our kids were born she stopped working she stopped creating art.”
He says this so casually! To me, this is a mic drop/huge red flag. WHY? This is my greatest fear. Once you have kids, you stop doing what you love?! I need more context! How could she stop making art?
Khe suggests that having children creates an “identity vacuum,” which he describes as both external and internal. First, he starts with external identity, but only in the context of his wife’s decision not to continue working as an artist:
“A group of people go to a dinner party and in America one of the first three questions is going to be what do you do for work and if you are staying at home with your kids you're like oh I'm a stay-at-home parent and there is there is a some kind whether it's real or not some people feel a stigma to that which is like I'm not living my full potential of talent of skill of intellect of the degrees that I got leading up to this point.”
He then switches to his own perspective on his internal identity:
“As a primary Breadwinner is although that's changing but at least for me the how I see myself is a really powerful like I care a lot in my own eyes I care to see myself as smart I care to see myself as unique you know I hate to admit it. I care to see myself as as someone who is who is good. And when you put so many of those things I just described, smart, respected, creative, so many of those things are bequeathed upon you by work or or at least at the surface level right. You could be really smart but if you don't have a job a lot you might not feel that you're smart because there's no conduit to express your intellect.
I don’t really see his distinction between external and internal. In both examples, he is suggesting that his wife is not valuable because she does not work. You need an external-facing job title to feel valuable to others and yourself.
I like Paul’s response:
“Yeah I think that's spot on I think the other upside of work is it is a really easy way to find a role in the world right and societies a lot of what we're seeking is to be useful we want to contribute yeah most people don't actually want like impact, we want to contribute and be useful and that is channeled into work and that makes us legible to other people”
Paul continues,
“I think for me I didn't actually like all the labels and identities that were thrust upon me. I wanted to create my own identity.
He explains that his wife, Angie, listened to a podcast where women discussed the struggle of not feeling valuable as a stay-at-home mom. His wife did not relate to this feeling,
“She's like I don't resonate with these women at all, I've never felt more valuable and I'm so glad she can experience that because she does have so much to offer and like the mother role is so much more important than like any job.”
PULLS OUT HAIR!!!
Why is it that for WOMEN, the role of MOTHER is much more important than any job, but for MEN, the role of FATHER is not? Why does Paul get to create his own identity but Angie’s identity is mother!?
I DON’T WANT TO BE A MOTHER AND A MOTHER ONLY.
Mother will be one facet of my identity but not the entirety of it.
I DON’T WANT TO BE A BOSS BABE.
I just want to be a boss. No babe!
As of today (and I reserve the right to change my mind because I am constantly changing and evolving), I know with every fiber of my being that I do not want to be a stay-at-home mom (you can count on the fact that I will write about this in great detail if I change this stance).
Where does this leave me? Am I a terrible person because I don’t want to work a corporate job but I also don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom? My internal monologue says YES! It says “You are a lazy slob who can’t hack it at either and those are your only two options!”
I sent a draft of this post to Khe and he was very gracious despite my hostility. He sent me the names of a few female creators (Rachel Rodgers, Amanda Natividad, Katebour, and Cathryn Lavery). He also sent me a Twitter thread that I might find interesting. In the original post (which has since been deleted), the author wrote some nonsense about how there is only room for one business person in a partnership if kids are involved. One parent has to be fully dedicated to the kids.
Instead of being a sane person, I decided to enter the chat and ended up in a protracted Twitter battle with @RandomGuyCrypto (whose bio reads: “Jesus is King and BTC is Bible money. Anonymous for my family, not for me. I aint scared, come at me bro. Truth always wins.”
My brain says, “If you leave the corporate world, you might as well be Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” (disclosure: I have never seen this movie). In case it wasn’t clear, I struggle with the tenets of DBT, or holding dialectical beliefs.
One of my biggest fears is that everyone thinks that now that I have quit my job, I must be leeching off of my partner’s money. I have my own nest egg, thank you for much! I came out of the womb saving for my grandchildren’s education! My first words were “compound interest.” To be fair, no one has overtly voiced this accusation (although many have alluded to it).
WHEN WILL I STOP BEING CONSUMED BY WHAT OTHERS MIGHT THINK OF ME?
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Tags: Fear, Feminism, Motherhood, Movies, Work
How would you define success? How is an education wasted if you don’t earn money doing what you learned? I know I am “small potatoes” compared to influencers and boss babes but I don’t feel like I am defined by either my career or my motherhood role. Both are important to me.