Episode 3 Transcript - Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

Rachel: [00:00:00] The content of this podcast, Generation Mom, is for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and their guests are their own and do not constitute professional advice. While we strive to provide accurate and up to date information, this podcast is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional, medical, financial, legal, or other advice.

Always seek the advice of a qualified professional with any questions you may have regarding your specific situation. Thanks for listening.

 I feel like with my generation, especially there's been, and I think all of us, I think there's this expectation that you're supposed to work.

Like you're not a parent and you're supposed to parent like you don't have a job, right? And I am a parent and I need the people I work with to be understanding that I have children. And I need my family to be understanding that I also have a job, but it is that what mom was saying, like when I'm working, I need to be [00:01:00] working.

And when I'm with my family, I want to be with my family. I don't want to be thinking about work. And. That it's a hard boundary to put in place 

Hello and welcome to Generation Mom. I'm Rachel, the elder millennial who tries to stay grounded in all of the chaos of modern parenthood. 

Pam: I'm Pam, the Bloomer Mom to my two co hosts and Nana to their kids. I'm And I'm here to share my generational wisdom with a touch of tough love. And I'm Laurel, 

Laurel: your Gen X voice of reason, stuck in the middle, ready to weigh in with unsugarcoated advice.

Join us as we tackle 

Rachel: life's big questions across three generations, sharing laughs and insights along the way. This is Generation Mom.

Hello and welcome back to Generation Mom. Here we are. Welcome back.

 Today we

We are looking at careers through the lens of being [00:02:00] women of different generations, also mothers.

And so we'll talk a little bit about how that has impacted our career paths as well and even how we're approaching the idea of. Careers in our lives. I wanted to start today and just give a little bit of history, a very brief history of women and work because it's a big topic. And before we start, I just want to point out that women have always been working. domestic work, working at home, raising families and children. That is work. It's just unpaid labor. So it is work. Women have always been working very hard, but. When we're talking about women in the workforce, in the early 20th century, most women in the U. S., specifically, we're going to talk about the U.

S. today since that's where we're based did not work outside the home. And those who did were primarily young and unmarried. In that era, [00:03:00] just 20 percent of all women were gainful workers, which is what the Census Bureau categorized labor force participation outside of the home.

The statistics that I looked at from Brookings also obscure the differential experience of women by race. So African American women during the century were about twice as likely to participate in the labor force than white women at the time, largely because they were more likely to remain in the labor force after marriage.

Between the 1930s and the mid 1970s, women's participation in the economy continued to rise primarily with an increase in work among married women. By 1970, 50 percent of single women and 40 40 percent of married women were participating in the labor force, so there were several factors that contributed to this.

First, there was mass high school education, so graduation rates rose substantially during this [00:04:00] time. There are also new technologies that contributed to an increased demand for clerical workers, and these jobs were increasingly taken on by women. And because these jobs tended to be cleaner and safer, the stigma attached to work for a married woman diminished.

Over the decades from 1930 to 1970, there were increasing opportunities for highly educated women. But that said, early in that period, most women still expected to have short careers, and women were still largely viewed as secondary earners whose husband's careers came first. As time progressed, attitudes about women working and their employment prospects changed, a new model of the two income family emerged.

Some women began to attend college and graduate school with the expectation of working, whether or not they got married and have families. In the 1970s, young women more commonly expected that they would spend a substantial portion of their lives in the labor force, and [00:05:00] they prepared for it, increasing education and choosing college majors that better equip them for careers as opposed to just jobs.

So this shift from getting your MRS. And working till you found a husband to actually going to school with the intention to have a career. These changes in attitudes and expectations were supported by other changes in society. In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was passed to prohibit wage discrimination based on sex by employers. That's worked out well. And in 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed, granting temporary and family medical leave under circumstances such as the birth or adoption of a child. 

 In 1978, they passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and started to recognize sexual harassment in the workplace as a real thing.

Access to birth control also increased in the [00:06:00] 70s, so married couples had more control over the size of their family and when they had families and allowed young women to delay marriage and plan children around their educational and work choices. And in 1974, which was not that long ago, women gained, for the first time, the right to apply for credit in their own name without a male cosigner.

which is a pretty big deal. So by the early 1990s the labor force of prime working age women, those between the ages of 25 and 54, reached just over 74 percent compared with roughly 93 percent for prime working age men. By then, the share of women going into traditional fields of teaching, nursing, social work, and clerical work declined, and more women were becoming doctors, lawyers, managers, and professors.

As women increased their education and joined industries and occupations formerly [00:07:00] dominated by men, the gap in earnings between men and women began to close significantly. However, there's still a significant gender wage gap today. The Center for American Progress reports that in 2018, women of all races earned an average of 82 cents to every one dollar of men of all races earned.

Women are also underrepresented in senior leadership roles. According to McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2019 report, women in the C suite grew from just 17 percent in 2015 to only 21 percent in 2019.

 We still have a long way to go. 

 I'll start today with mom. We've talked a lot in our past two episodes about how you went to school with the intention of graduating and having a career. And so I wanted to ask you first, did you always hope you would have a career?

Like growing up, did you think you'd just get married and [00:08:00] have kids or, what sort of, what inspired you to want more than just getting your MRS? 

Pam: I would say that. There was a shift because I think when I was little, a little girl if you asked me what I wanted to be, I'd say a mother. And that was pretty much what was presented to me at that time. But as time went on and you have to understand too that my parents were pretty educated people.

So my father was a physician. My mother worked before she got married. And she continued to do lifelong education. She advanced her degrees as. As we were growing up. So I think there, was a shift in, in her thinking too, in terms of what, a woman could do. But I think around the time that I got ready to go [00:09:00] to college

I really didn't want to be dependent on somebody when you're growing up in the generation that I grew up in, I saw my mother being very dependent at times on my father, like my mother really never learned for all of her intelligence. And she was an intelligent woman. She never really learned how to write a check.

And that always bothered me because, to me, that was such a fundamental thing. And She really relied on my father for anything financial. And he would give her an allowance every week for groceries and things like that. And she would spend part of it on groceries and then she would hide part of it in her underwear.

Drawer to use at her discretion for whatever she wanted, but it was like a [00:10:00] secret. Whenever I needed money, I knew exactly where to go because she had worked up quite a stash, but that bothered me a lot. And there was no reason for that. She was a bright woman. She could have done everything herself.

And that was one thing that always really bothered me. And I thought, I don't want to be dependent on a man for my well being and my money and that kind of thing. And I didn't, certainly didn't want a man giving me an allowance because to me, I felt like that, you get kept a child, which is what women have been kept throughout the years.

 That's when I really decided that I had to start thinking about if you don't want to depend on a man, then what are you going to do? You've got to learn something. You've got to be interested in something. You've got to do something so that you can. So you, that you can support yourself. 

Rachel: How did you [00:11:00] decide what you wanted to do for a living? And you can tell our listeners what you, what your career was. 

Pam: I ended up being a speech pathologist and audiologist. But truthfully, I initially really wanted to be a doctor, female doctors, there were, there, of course, there were some in the 1960s. But it wasn't very common. And pretty much, you had this view that you gave up.

your personal life pretty much in order to do that. I also honestly didn't think I was smart enough to be a doctor, which I think today would be different. I don't think I would feel that way, but back then I really did feel that way. And I, it may be You know, what was going on at that time or how I was raised.

I don't know. But anyway, that's the truth. I went into sort of a general kind of [00:12:00] curriculum. And then I was interested, really, in a lot in psychology. But again, it seemed a little daunting to me. So I I somehow got introduced to speech pathology, and that seemed like a kind of an in between of psychology, you're working with patients you're doing therapy, and that appealed to me.

So that's how I got into speech pathology. I wish now that I had the opportunities that you guys had, because I think I would be something different today than I am. But I don't have any regrets really. I think I'm, a product of my generation basically. Did you 

Rachel: have any gender specific challenges when you first started working?

Pam: Speech pathology was a predominantly female profession back then, but [00:13:00] The few men who were involved in it usually made more money and they usually attained higher positions than women did. So for example, in my first job I worked in a hospital and the director of the department of speech pathology in the hospital with that I worked in was a male.

And everybody else was female. All of us who were working under him were female. So you always had this feeling like there was a man, above you. And of course he made much more money than any of us. I think I made $9, 000 in my first job, which would barely feed a family for a month now, but, and I was happy to get it at that time. So yes, there were some demarcations there. 

Rachel: Laurel, the same question for you, growing up, what were your ideas about career? 

Laurel: This is [00:14:00] complicated question for me. I feel like I had the aspiration. I feel like it was very instilled in me that I wanted to be career driven. I wanted to have some sort of grand career. I wanted to make money. I didn't want to be dependent on a man especially like in my teenage years.

teens and early 20s, I didn't even see myself getting married. So I had this idea that I was going to have to support myself anyway, because I didn't see myself partnering up. The problem was, I never knew what it was I wanted to do. And I remember for a time, wanting to be a veterinarian.

And then I think I became aware because I love animals, but I think I became aware of sort of everything that entails and the good and the bad, it's not just cuddling everybody's cutie animals all day. And I quickly chose not to do that . And then, I felt like [00:15:00] there were. A few jobs I knew about there was doctors, there was lawyers and there was teachers and I didn't have any real awareness of any other real careers.

Of course, there were people who, work in stores or restaurants but as far as postgraduate jobs, I had no real concept of what it I wanted to do or what I wanted to be and 

 I spent extra time going through college because I kept changing my major. When I got into college, computers were a big thing and I Was making friends with a lot of people going through computer career degrees.

And so I thought, okay, I'll do that. And, my initial computer programming classes were actually fun. They were problem solving. We got fun little projects to do, and it was so rewarding when they worked. And then as I continued on throughout [00:16:00] that degree program first of all, I cannot pass calc three.

I just got to this point where math just stopped making sense. Calculus was so outside my comprehension and the programming was getting really intense and I could make it work and I got a lot of satisfaction from making it work, but it was hours and hours and hours and sometimes a lot of really messy workarounds.

And my husband's actually a computer programmer and he's brilliant. He's very good at it. And one of his biggest complaints is when people write messy code, and I was one of those people who would write messy code to make it work, and the problem with messy code is it may work in this situation, but it may not when it needs to. So at some point I was like I'm out of here I'm not doing this anymore.

And so then I flopped around trying to decide Now what? Especially [00:17:00] since I was well into my college years at that point. I have always been artistic. I've always had an interest in art. I've always loved art, but art was one of those careers or one of those things that just couldn't be a career.

You can't make a living doing art. So that was just something to do that was fun to do. And at the time I was going through this, Sort of crisis my cousin was graduating and she had a degree in graphic design and I never really realized that was a thing. So I was like, Oh, that sounds cool. I'll do that.

And so I submitted a portfolio to the art school and got in and. Then I pursued that and that was bumpy as well. And I still don't have a lot of confidence. It's very hard to put yourself out there. I have a lot of imposter syndrome and so I got through that degree [00:18:00] and. Had a hard time finding careers, a job, things to do.

I ended up getting a job back here at a publication company. Back in the day we had this thing called the real estate book and it was in like magazine chaos in every grocery store and real estate agents would post their houses in the book that they were trying to sell. This was, a big deal. In the early days of the internet when we didn't have things like Zillow, and it was essentially Zillow in book form.

I worked for the real estate book, which was a privately owned family company, a little publishing company. It was actually a fun job. I was going through stuff at the time. Personally, that wasn't great. So it made it not as fun. And Atlantic traffic made it not as fun. And I quit a lot of jobs because of Atlanta traffic in my life.

And that was one of them. But at that point, I was also already pursuing. [00:19:00] getting a teaching certificate and I had kinda decided that It might be fun to teach art and I struggled with that because teaching was women's work and teaching was low reputation and Oh God, being an art teacher was even worse and was like a disrespected job.

Even then, this was, the early 2000s, it's only gotten worse. And. If I had this very sort of Pollyanna kind of idea of what it would be like to sit and do art all day with a bunch of elementary students, and so I started pursuing my teaching credentials as I worked at the publishing company.

I passed my state tests. I started doing supplemental classes. To get my certificate and I applied for a job in the public schools, the local public schools. I worked in the public schools for about 10 years.

Rachel: When I was little, or I guess, when I was little I wanted [00:20:00] to be a princess. When I was a kid I wanted to be an acting, singing epidemiologist.

I was really into the hot zone. I wanted to cure Ebola, that's what I thought I was going to do. I was going to study epidemics and diseases and work at the CDC because we have the CDC here in Atlanta.

And then I got to college. I was, first of all, I was bad at math. All through high school. I could never get my head around chemistry. I was really good at biology. I was like biology was my thing. I loved it in high school. I took biology in college, but I just I couldn't get chemistry. And so that scared me off.

And so I actually did, I started taking some speech pathology classes because we had actually had a very good speech pathology program where I went to school, Ithaca College, and I really liked the [00:21:00] classes and I called home to talk to mom and dad, just normal call home and mentioned that I was.

Because I was undeclared the first two years, I had to pick a major by my junior year, and I said, I think I'm going to pick speech pathology. And dad said, that's a woman's profession and you'll get paid like a woman. And So I remember Is that what he felt about you? 

Pam: Apparently. Although, you know He never said that to you?

I had my own business at that point. So it was a little different, but I mean he watched me come up from the dregs, through the years. And he saw me not get paid as well as the men, the few men that were in the profession. And also how difficult it [00:22:00] was really for me to establish my own business. It was not easy back then. And even when we established the business, which was, it had to be the end of the 70s. He had to really do a lot of the negotiating because I'm a woman, people just didn't, necessarily take me seriously. And so he stepped in and did a lot of the negotiation for, the business and all of that, which used to make me really upset and mad and in the beginning, even some of the contracts that we had at that point he negotiated with the people.

Because they wanted to speak to a man.

He doesn't know anything about speech. Okay, tell me what to say. So I tell him what to say, or how to answer the questions, and then he'd [00:23:00] negotiate. He'd be the face.

Rachel: And I don't know if that was just his way of trying to protect me as his daughter. I think it was.

And, knowing he knew what you had been through, so I had a lot of friends who were in television production. And so for a while I thought I wanted to go into TV production. And then I think I talked to our uncles who live out in California and they know people in TV production. They talked about how it was another kind of difficult field to get into.

And so that scared me off from that. But part of the television production major, Was advertising and public relations. I thought I was going to go into advertising that seemed cool and fun and creative.

And I was taking all these advertising classes, but I also took PR classes. And I really liked what I liked about PR was. Was the writing and you could still be creative. [00:24:00] And I really liked my PR professor. He ended up just being a really good mentor for me. And even as I was. Getting my first jobs.

Like he just, he was a really nice guy. But the funny thing is I ended up going into public relations, which is a woman's profession. And I got paid like a woman through most of it, because it's one of those professions that's also ruled by women, except for at the very top, there are these men my first job was at Rubenstein Associates in New York, which was led by Howard Rubenstein, who is one of the godfathers of the PR industry. And in New York, he was, like, the one who created public relations in New York. And so I was lucky to get that job there because it was so prestigious.

But I was the lowest Rum on the ladder. I was treated like I was basically an administrative assistant was [00:25:00] my title But you're doing like low level PR. We're getting coffee, but also I mean I was writing press releases and things But I was also like this is before I don't know. I mean we had computers but Howard Rubinstein Got a book.

 I think it was at the end of every week. And it would be a book of all the media clips. So all the like newspaper articles and things that had run. And so I had to sit there with all the other admin assistants on Fridays. With the newspaper and clip things out and paste them on a piece of paper and copy it and like we compiled this book for him that he would take home every Friday and look at in his briefcase and like we couldn't leave till the book was done.

I'm being like Devil Wears Prada. I'm thinking the same thing. Very much was that. I thought I was going to go into celebrity PR had some cool experiences in my early career and we'll [00:26:00] talk about, in a minute, how our careers progress. But I'm in my twenties in New York and find myself somehow I'm five feet tall at the time I weighed 90 pounds and somehow I was like.

Put in charge of security for Sarah, Jessica Parker at this event where I had to like, keep all the fans back away from her. And this is the height of sex in the city. And I'm like, standing there trying to keep people away and I'm no bigger than she is. And I don't know I'm at parties with. With these like big designers and celebrities and I just didn't, I had fun but also didn't know what to do with myself or how to act and those, I'm not a good schmoozer or small talker, and so yeah, it was.

It was a fun experience working in New York right out of college, but it also very quickly got old for me, and I ended up coming home and working in PR, a big PR agency here that was based in New [00:27:00] York too, but had a big office here in Atlanta and worked there for five years.

Laurel: How did you handle Affording to live a New York lifestyle as a coffee grabber and newspaper cutter. 

Rachel: I made 25, 000 on my first job, which was not a lot of money then, especially in New York, especially in New York. When I first got to New York, I had a friend from college and he had a roommate who was gone for the summer.

So he let me live with them for basically, I think the cost of utilities. And then. I lived with a friend of his on her couch,

and after that, I moved back to my other friend's house and lived on his couch again for a while, and then I was trying to find a room and I had that boyfriend that we talked about in the last episode at the time, and we ended up moving in together. [00:28:00] In Princeton, New Jersey. And so he worked in Southern New Jersey and I was going the other way up to Manhattan.

And so Princeton was in the middle. And so I took two trains to get to work every day. My commute was probably a two hour commute, both ways. It costs as much. The monthly pass for the train to New York, I could have afforded a small place with a roommate. And Manhattan for the cost. So it's not like we were really saving any money.

 I did love Princeton. It's a cute little town. I'd love to go back and visit sometime. I lived over a CVS and there was a little ice cream shop across the street and it was a cute, really cute place. And I think I liked it because it had trees and grass and I'm from Atlanta and I like having trees and grass and seeing squirrels. And I did not love Manhattan that much in New York because it was just a concrete, it is a concrete jungle. It used to call 

Pam: me. 

Rachel: I would [00:29:00] cry. 

I cried every day on the way to and from that job because They were just, they're just such mean people working there. I had one of my bosses was really sweet and wonderful. And she lives in Atlanta.

She was actually also, she went to Emory. And so I got lucky that I met her because she was like the one thing that kept me going there is it was like. I had that connection to home, but my other boss, she was probably only three or four years older than me, but she was a total nightmare. She'll go shopping in the middle of the day and be like, can you cover for me?

And her boss was just the meanest, scariest woman ever. And so I would get in like yell that because my other boss wasn't there to get yelled at. 

All right. So mom, talk to me a little bit about, so you started out, let's talk about your career progression. 

Pam: I graduated with a master's degree and after I got my master's degree, I started looking for work. And so [00:30:00] during my program, we'd have these internships, which meant that you went to different hospitals and clinics and worked in them so I had made some contacts through that. And I started applying to different places. So I got a job we were in Boston at the time. Daddy was at MIT and I got a job in a hospital in Boston. I picked this hospital because I was most interested because the kind of speech therapy that I was doing that I got interested in and it really became my specialty was a geriatric stroke population. And this hospital, particular hospital, really was the premier hospital for that.

 Like you, I started at the lowest of the low. And this this program, I did have a female boss. [00:31:00] And she was something else. And, um, she was very interested in us devoting most of our time, to work. And I was young and I had just gotten married, I'm a newlywed, so it wasn't just Monday through Friday, nine to five, she wanted us to come over to her house on the weekends.

And do journal discussions and each of us had to take a topic and we had to present it at this journal meeting and, finally, I thought, I'm not getting paid enough for this. And the last thing I wanted to do was do that on the weekend. I wanted to be with daddy. So like you, I used to cry all the way in, in the morning and all the way back home at night.

But I didn't drive at that time, so I would ride in with Daddy in the morning, and then he would come and pick [00:32:00] me up. Finally after, I think I was there for two years, at the end of those two years, we were talking about maybe we wanted to start a familY. Daddy had gotten his third engineering degree at that point. And I thought he was going to start looking for an engineering job. He picked me up from work one day and I'm crying.

And he said how would you like to quit your job? I said, Oh, I would love to quit my job, but we can't, we're not in a financial position. And he said I have a plan. I said, okay, what's your plan? He said, I'm going to get a job. as an engineer, but I'm going to apply to law school and I'm going to go to law school during the night.

I looked at him and I said, That is a stupid idea.[00:33:00] 

I said, you are not going to go to school at night. I said, if you're going to go to law school, you're going to go to the best law school that you can get into. And I'll just continue working and we'll forget about the baby. And that's what we did. So he applied to the University of Michigan Law School.

And I started applying for jobs in Michigan. I got accepted at a a couple jobs. One I didn't know I was accepted in until I, I started working at the hospital where I was working and I got a call one day from, it was a school system and the school system called me and said, where are you? And I said I'm here in my office.

And they said you're supposed to be here. We have a stamp with your name on it and everything. They didn't tell me.

So anyway, so then that was the hospital that I worked in Michigan. [00:34:00] And I have to say I loved that job I think because I was hired at a little bit higher position, I was making a little more money, and I worked at that job until Daddy got his degree in law, and we started thinking about where we wanted to live.

And we, he started interviewing in different places. He interviewed in Texas. I don't remember why. He interviewed here because his parents at that point had moved here. In Atlanta. And we, and he interviewed in Arizona, because my parents were living in Arizona at the time, and we wanted to get out of the cold.

We were both, I was born in Michigan, he was born in Minnesota, but neither one of us loved the cold. And we really wanted to get out of it. To make a long story short, he got a job in Atlanta, and so did I. And I started working for this [00:35:00] clinic. And there were two women who ran the clinic, 

Laurel: but something else happened.

Pam: That's true.

I had a baby. 

Laurel: We are the forgotten generation. 

Pam: That's true. I had a baby. When We moved down here. She was, I think, four, about four months old. So I didn't work for a while in there. But as she was approaching a year, I felt like I needed to go back to work. So I got this job in this clinic. It was two women who owned the clinic. And I started doing more and more. And in other words, in the beginning, I was a speech therapist employee. And as time went on, I was taking more and, over more and more of the administrative responsibilities.

And I would take over the clinic when the two of them would go on vacation. At [00:36:00] some point they gave me the opportunity to buy the clinic.

I ended up owning that clinic and running it for about six years, six, seven years, I think. And that was great because I was the boss. And it was my first time really experiencing that of being the boss, hiring, firing.

And I had about Six therapists who worked under me, and I had a lot of big contracts in the Atlanta area, which was, really nice. So we did some work within the clinic, and we did some work outside of the clinic. And it was very interesting, and it kept me really busy. And then we, we had all the problems.

I had all the problems of being a working mom. 

Rachel: Laurel, talk a little bit about your career progression up to right before you had kids.[00:37:00] 

Laurel: Okay. I started in the publishing company. I started at $29, 000, which even then. Wasn't great, but for a first job, it was passable. I started out living here and then eventually got my apartment with my boyfriend. The job itself, I enjoyed the people I enjoyed. I worked night shift, which I'm a night owl.

So initially I liked it, but then it got to the point where I was Literally sleeping all day, waking up and going to work, and then coming home and staying up all night and going to bed like as the sun came up. So my image of, oh I'll have the day to get stuff done and then work in the evening and sleep it didn't quite work out that way.

I was flip flopped completely, so it, it wasn't quite the image I thought it would be. I hated the traffic it wasn't bad coming home, my drive home at 3 in the morning was 15 minutes, my drive [00:38:00] in could be an hour and a half which just was ridiculous to me. After about a year, I had done enough to get what's called provisional certification, which is a temporary teaching certification.

And I started looking for teaching jobs and I got a job in the middle of the school year teaching in a middle school. And on top of that, it was a middle school that was opening fresh. And I thought this was great because I was gonna have a brand new school and a brand new room and it was a really fancy room with, just state of the art and it was big and the storage and the, it sinks and a back door to a courtyard for like outside art classes.

It just seemed like I never actually even got to teach today in that room. Because when we opened the school in February, I think That wing of the school was still under construction. [00:39:00] So they placed me in a in a science lab. I started out with literally no supplies.

I remember going to Walmart and buying copy paper and pencils, and that was what I had. They did not set me up at all. And as a brand new school, you're supposed to have some huge budget to equip your room initially.

I never got any of that. My department boss, the sort of county. Our guy in charge of the art, all the art teachers he was great at the time and he did show up in my room at some point after I complained enough with a few bottles, a few gallons of paint and some paper and, some other just basic supplies.

The kids were all coming from multiple different elementary schools and I think three or four other middle schools. So there was a lot of grouping based on what [00:40:00] school you just got pulled from they were very much self identifying in their homeschool groups.

They weren't integrating together. I am going to be honest and say that I was a small, white young and very young looking woman. In a very, low income African American part of this county. And that gave me added challenges. And I think I really had just a unrealistic expectation of what I was stepping into.

I thought I was going to, Walk in and you know inspire them and arts fun and I'd be the fun class and they'd want to come to my class and it was not An easy few months. It wasn't even a year. And by the end of that year, I'm in Georgia, or at least in this county, you are given your recommendation for a [00:41:00] contract year to year.

And my contract was renewed, but it was suggested that maybe I'd do better in elementary school. So I started the next year in elementary school. 

And then the other thing I wasn't prepared for. Again, especially among elementary students was the discrimination. Between minority groups and also within minority groups. There were names called that I had never heard in my life that, were very clear that, they felt certain ways about each other as well.

And, am so not the person to speak on this, but this was my experience and then on top of that basis, you're dealing with. administration. You're dealing with parents who also don't trust you or respect you. You're dealing with legislators who don't know what the hell they're doing.

Rachel: So what did you decide to do? 

Laurel: I worked in the first elementary school maybe four years, [00:42:00] and then I got married.

And I moved up to Indiana and had a very hard time finding a job up there, as I talked about, and then I ended up coming back here and getting a job in a second school, which was even worse the elementary school that I taught in initially. I think I got to a point where I was A fixture in the school I had established myself in that school.

I had kids who had come up with me at that point. I wasn't like the new teacher anymore. I had kids who I'd had since kindergarten, or lower elementary. They were used to me. They all hit that 5th grade point and but, they were. It wasn't quite as bad anymore.

I started to establish some programs in the school. I think there's something to be said for that, and in Atlanta or in Georgia, we don't have things like a teacher union. We don't have tenure here. So I don't have any of that to rely on. But think there is still something to be said for sort of seniority or especially with kids who are only there for five or six [00:43:00] years but I still had issues in that school.

They took away my planning time things like that. And so it was a relief, to leave when I went to Indiana. And then when I came back, I got into another school, which had even. worse issues, than that first school did. And I worked at that school for three years, and then I got to the point where I just needed out.

We were actually having violence, serious violence happening in that school amongst the children towards teachers. We had a teacher removed for violence on a child.

And that's the direction things were going. And I hit this point. I couldn't do it anymore. I just knew I couldn't do it anymore. And I felt that I, this also wasn't a time when we had a real understanding of different personality types and different Neurodiversities [00:44:00] and I think as I've gotten older, I've really come to understand certain things about my own personality and my own way I work best and handle things. There were things about teaching that worked for me and there were things that weren't. I really liked the schedule. I liked Having the kids, at this time each week or whatever I didn't like it when things disrupted the schedule.

I liked the creativity. But I needed some sort of quieter, calmer sort of job. So at that point randomly, I'd gotten enamored with our bookkeeper. And not really her specifically, but her position. And I got very interested in that. And I thought maybe I could be a bookkeeper at the school.

And that looks like a really nice job. She has a nice office she approves things and, it seemed like a really neat job and I started looking into that and I ended up going to a, um, a night program as I worked my [00:45:00] last years in school and got a certificate for for accounting.

And so that's, that was my ticket out of teaching 

Rachel: I was going to be a vice president by the time I was 30 when I joined the PR agency. When I got to Atlanta, I remember looking at the handbook, it showed the different positions and how many years experience you needed to get promoted and all of that.

And I figured out I could be a vice president by the time I was 30. And I was at the agency in Atlanta for five years. And I worked my butt off there. I was young, I was in my twenties. I had the energy. I could deal with the Atlanta traffic. I, didn't have anything else to do. And so work was my social life and my work and ate, slept and breathed.

The work. And at one point I had, I think, 12 different [00:46:00] clients. But I didn't love it. But I kept dipping a toe out into other things I was thinking about going to law school and I thought maybe I want to be a paralegal first. And so I went and I got my paralegal certification and I really liked my paralegal classes.

I really enjoyed it. But by that time I think I had been promoted once at my job and so I was in a higher pay bracket and I was looking at what you would make starting out as a paralegal and I Didn't think it was worth the step back, which is funny. Now, in hindsight, it wouldn't have been that big of a step back.

And I was young, if there was any time to do it, it would have been then. But, and then my job was fine because I got to travel so I had cool experiences, but I was getting tired. I just started dating my husband then there was an opportunity in Orlando to go to the Orlando office.

And I was also thinking about becoming a [00:47:00] speech therapist, because I was taking speech therapy classes and I had applied to some schools and I got into University of Central Florida. And I thought if I go, if I transfer down to Orlando, then I, I can just go to Central Florida. But then I started dating my husband and I think I was in Florida at that office for one month, I wasn't even fully unpacked into my apartment, still living out of boxes.

And I saw a job with the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and I've, my career had gone into this direction of travel and I really loved travel PR. And. I wanted to come home to Atlanta and it was my dream job. And I remember talking to my husband, boyfriend at the time saying, Oh God, should I apply for this job?

This. There's this job. He's yes, apply for it. I'm like what if my job finds out? He's so what? Apply for it. You won't get it if you don't apply. And I applied and [00:48:00] got called immediately and came back to Atlanta to interview for it. And then I went back to Florida and then it was, The day, I think it was either my birthday or the day after my birthday, I got the job.

And so he came down, he packed up my two cats and my apartment and we drove back to Atlanta. And I was at that job for five years and I absolutely loved that job, I had an awesome boss. I loved her. I love the CEO of the company. It was just a great company. It is a great company and they're great people. But I was ready for something else and, My husband and I have been married.

We've been trying to have a baby and it wasn't really working out our way. And I remember I had known a woman who worked with this hotel company doing PR for them. And it just seemed so glamorous and I knew it paid more than what I was making. And she ended up leaving her job. And so I knew her job was available.

And so I [00:49:00] applied for it. And I got hired at the hotel. I was making six figures for the first time in my life, like the most amount of money I had ever made or thought I could make and had decent benefits and. It was great. It was a good job, but it was stressful and it was, I liked the people I worked with, but there wasn't as much flexibility as my previous job.

They were there, a culture that was very, you need to be in the office showing your face, sitting at your desk every day. And I had an office that had no windows. Cause if you don't know about hotels, behind that front desk is a whole suite of offices and most of them have no windows. And there are a bunch of people working back there.

And so that was wearing on me, like not having natural sunlight. And this was me going from like a corner office. My last job with not as much money, but more flexibility to like [00:50:00] way more money, not as much flexibility. So this is definitely a trade off. And I was stressed out all the time and hospitality is a fun field, especially when you're young.

And then I was traveling a ton and you go to all these conferences, but then there's so much. Drinking, like it's a big drinking culture and it was just getting exhausting to me having to show up at these events and so I wouldn't really go to the after work stuff and people were starting to notice and that gets points ticked off and so I, I remember mom and I went on a retreat cause I've, I also became a yoga teacher and all of this, like I went.

And 2013 and got certified as a yoga teacher and started teaching yoga at some local studios and got really into the yoga community here in Atlanta. And so one of the teachers that owned one of the studios I taught at she and a business partner Started a retreat company and they'd go on these retreats in North [00:51:00] Georgia.

And I took my mom with me on one of those retreats. And I remember we drove up and I was talking about how miserable I was and how I was thinking of going out on my own and how nervous I was. And I remember you talked to me a lot about your experience and when you quit your job and it, Gave me the courage to decide that I was going to go out on my own.

And I had lunch with my former boss, the one from the commission of visitors bureau, because she, when she left the CVB, she started her own PR company. And so I asked her out to lunch one day to pick her brain. And she was also really encouraging. And she was like, there's so much work out there. And so I.

Ended up leaving my job to start my own PR company. And I ended up working with her mainly to begin with. And about a month [00:52:00] after I left the job and started my own company, I got pregnant and I don't think that was an accident. And this was after trying fertility treatments and we were just about to start doing IUI.

We had been doing medication and stuff and all this testing and I got pregnant, had a miscarriage which is another whole episode you could do but. Yeah, I don't think it was an accident that I got pregnant right away. 

Pam: I think you started doing the yoga to handle your own stress in the beginning and you really loved it and then started teaching.

You were good at it. 

Rachel: I did. Yeah, it was the one thing that in all of the sort of chaos of my job kept me grounded and it was the thing I could come back to and got into meditation. It was one of the things that really Helped with the stress level.

So then we all had children So talk to me a little bit mom because you were working when Laurel was Baby, and then [00:53:00] you made the decision after I came along some years later to leave.

Pam: I think it's interesting that we have all talked about stress In each one of these stories, there's a level of stress. And, I think some of that is unique to women because we have to play so many roles. And everything was pretty hunky dory until I had a baby. You never realize what it's like having a baby until you have one.

And whatever your notion is wrong. Because your life entirely changes when you have a baby. And you have this little, helpless being who's relying on you every day. And I was immediately thrown into this. into this dilemma because I, I still had the notion she's older. She'll, she'll [00:54:00] be okay.

She can go to daycare. She'll be all right. But I think we touched on this in another episode. The daycares were not that wonderful back then. There weren't a whole lot of them and, people were not really prepared to take care of your child. In the way that you would want them taken care of. So that was a whole stress.

And then the fact that, when you're at work, you're worrying about your baby. And, you feel guilty because you don't know what happened that day. She could have walked and you didn't see it. And that was one thing with you, Rachel, is that, I missed your first steps. The housekeeper, who happened to be taking care of you that day, saw you walk for the first time, and I remember I cried bitterly over that.

 So you're caught in this Catch 22. I'm worrying about my child when I'm at work. I'm worrying about my work when I'm at home with my child. So that cuts into some of my [00:55:00] child time, and I think you Just one day, it dawns on you that you're not superwoman. And this is what happened with me. I actually became physically ill to a point where I was hospitalized because I was under so much stress.

Because here I am running this business, I had all these therapists under me, I had all of these contracts that I had to keep going, and I had to keep them happy. And then I have Laurel and I, it was just so hard and then eventually I had you and then it was compounded by two. And so that was the point at which I had to make a decision and I remember I'm laying in the hospital and the doctor came in and he sat down on the bed.

And he said, you can't be all things to all people. He said, you have to consider what your [00:56:00] priorities are. What is most important to you? Now, I was in a position at that point where I could do that. And I know there are people out there, there are women out there who are single mothers. They don't have this choice.

But really thought about it and I had to decide what was most important to me. Was it most important to be this business woman who had this rather thriving business at the time, or was it more important for me to be home? With my kids making sure they got they ate their lunch and they got what they needed and you know I was there to kiss the boo boos and all of that and so I made that decision that I Was going to sell my business, which was a very hard decision to make at that point.

And that I was going to stay home with my kids. And I did that. What [00:57:00] I did in the beginning is, I did sell the business. So that took a lot of pressure off my back. I wasn't responsible for all these people anymore. I wasn't responsible for all these contracts anymore. But I did work part time. And so I think once, You started middle school, I think. I pretty much retired. And I know a lot of people are going to think that it's a strange time for you to retire. But honestly, I think it's just as hard when kids are teenagers. Maybe even harder because they're going through so much.

And you need to be there even more, I think, to listen, to them and all of that. I don't regret it. I am happy I did it. I'm happy I worked, but I'm also happy that I made the decision that I wasn't a superwoman and that I [00:58:00] had to prioritize my life. Now that was for me, and I had the privilege of being able to do that.

And I understand that some women Don't have that privilege.

And also I think you need to do something for yourself. Whether it's yoga, meditation, taking a bubble bath, whatever, you need some time to give to yourself, where you can just let go and relax. And I was never very good at that either. I think it's a hard position to be in, and I think it's hard for women, because we don't have any, we don't have a.

a wife, taking care of us. And I always felt that when I was 

Rachel: working that I needed a wife. I've said that to my husband. I'm like I need a wife. Maybe we need another person. I just need a wife or I need to clone myself. That sounds like a good idea, right? So Laurel, talk a little bit about when, [00:59:00] cause you got pregnant with Brandon.

You were working at the law firm, 

Laurel: so after I got the or actually before, even I got the certification and accounting as I was finishing that up, I got a job in a law firm and I initially really enjoyed that job and really liked it. One of the things, looking back now I took a 15, 000 pay cut to take that job, and you said the pay cut wasn't worth it for you.

It was worth it for me. However, looking back, I remember when I got the call, she told me this is the salary, and I said okay, and she said okay, and she sounded surprised, and at the time, it didn't register with me, I, I thought she was surprised I was taking the job or whatever,, wow, I was supposed to negotiate that wasn't I, and I've watched my husband through multiple negotiations now and I had no idea in teaching your [01:00:00] salaries, your salary, you like you're on a pay scale and they tell you this is what you make.

And I had no idea I was supposed to negotiate that. And unfortunately, that led to a lot of resentment, ultimately, because I did take such a pay cut, I felt very underemployed. And there really wasn't upward mobility there. And the people who were above me, were significantly above me.

And had a lot of liberties, and I was resentful about that because they weren't older than me, and so as we started to try to have a baby, and it took a little while. Not quite as bad a situation as Rachel had at that point. But, , I got pregnant. I kept under wraps for a while because I was working a professional job, as I started to plan, I had never considered really staying home and I know my boss didn't believe me, but I really didn't initially intend to [01:01:00] quit my job after having my son. I. Even was trying to work all the way up to having him. But again, we're little tiny people who have giant enormous babies.

I'm sure that's going to be a common theme you're going to hear. And my back hurts so bad. I was, twice as far out as I was high, my feet were ginormous I could barely drive, I couldn't reach the pedals and sit far enough back for my tummy it got far enough.

really difficult and this pregnancy went 41 plus weeks and this wasn't even my longest pregnancy. And so finally when he just wouldn't come and he wouldn't come, I couldn't take it anymore and I Did tell them I needed to just go ahead and take leave and I think what I ended up doing was Doing some work from home up until he finally did come.

And then I started becoming aware of what a good daycare costs. And me with my little [01:02:00] 29, 000 salary and driving hours a day to and from the law office and the gas and wear and tear. And I just sat down and went, this is really not worth it.

I'm barely covering the cost of daycare. I rather be with my kids and I'll let someone else raise them, so I was already behind in this career path and then I was also going to lose more time, having staying home with a child. And talked about it.

My husband bounced a couple of jobs at that point. But he'd gotten some significant raises by that point. And I think we just decided that we're going to have to, make it work. And so I decided to stay home with him. And then that's what I did, yeah. Yeah. 

Rachel: I have to say what, what mom said about finding what your priority [01:03:00] is resonates with me. And I was in an interesting position because I was already working for myself. By the time I had my daughter but I was still working pretty hard. And I was lucky when I left the hotel company, they actually hired me as their a PR contractor.

So I had that financial. Stability and I was working with my old boss too. So I was actually making about what I was making at the hotel when I left and started my own thing, but I was traveling a lot still because one of the hotels I represented was in Nashville. So I was driving up to Nashville once a month, which I was also a big, giant pregnant lady.

And at a certain point, I knew I couldn't do it. And then I knew once my daughter came, I wasn't going to want to do that once a month. I knew we would probably put her in daycare and I would keep working a few hours, but I thought like a half day or a mom's day out, or I think we started her just a couple of days a week and I would work on those [01:04:00] days, but I knew I was going to lose the hotel business.

And then when I was on maternity leave, which I self funded my own maternity leave, I saved, I knew I was going to probably, I knew I wanted to take time off, so I just started putting money into savings to cover three months off of. No, none of my income. And so while I was on maternity leave, my old boss, who I was working with now for her PR firm, she came over to bring me food and meet the baby, and she told me that she was going to close her business and she had decided she wasn't going to work anymore.

And she apologized to me for this a couple of years later, because she was like, I realized now that was probably not the best time to tell you that I was like, no, it was okay. She's I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to add any stress. And she didn't really add stress. I was just I wonder what I'm going to do now.

And I think in the past I would have really freaked out about it, but I think by that point [01:05:00] I had enough confidence in myself that I knew like I can find other clients or I can build my business up. And that's what I did. I ended up. Making my business so that I don't have to go out and find clients.

I subcontract with PR agencies right now. So they're handling all the business development. They're handling the whole business side of it. So I really only have to do the client work. I'm not traveling anymore. I pretty much get to pick my own hours for the types of clients I'm working on.

Like they need me. To be reachable, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, but I can go run errands if I need to. And in the beginning, I only had my daughter in daycare a couple times a week. And it was hard, like the, I feel like I've been through a few different iterations of how I've worked, because I've learned.

I can't work when my kids are at home. It's impossible. I've tried juggling it. I've tried, especially during the [01:06:00] pandemic when everybody was home. We had a nanny. And I had to lock myself in a room and it was torture because the kids knew I was home.

They both wanted me. I had a new baby. So I'm like stopping to breastfeed him every couple of hours and then going back into my room and my, daughter who was two and a half is like pounding on the door and I'm trying to be on a conference call and then, even at.

Yeah. Now they're ones in school and ones in daycare. And when they have breaks, I've tried to work on the breaks during the summer, they had a week off between school starting and school ending. And it was impossible. I had one conference call and my son's beating me over the head with the balloon that we had.

And I'm on a zoom call so they can see this in the background. Even now I'm still learning. I'm learning to put up boundaries. And I feel like that's a big thing know your priorities. I know it's miserable for everyone when I'm working, when the kids are home. And now I've just said if my kids are home, I [01:07:00] can't be on conference calls.

I'm not going to be available. The work will get done, but it's going to get done on our own time. And I take the kids to the pool, right? Cause I want to be with them. And I feel like with my generation, especially there's been, and I think all of us, I think there's this expectation that you're supposed to work.

Like you're not a parent and you're supposed to parent like you don't have a job, right? And I am a parent and I need the people I work with to be understanding that I have children. And I need my family to be understanding that I also have a job, but it is that what mom was saying, like when I'm working, I need to be working.

And when I'm with my family, I want to be with my family. I don't want to be thinking about work. And. That it's a hard boundary to put in place, I feel like, but it's been a necessary one. And what I'm still learning and trying to hold to, there's been this shift of I used to want to climb the corporate ladder and make all this money and be the president of the company and blah, blah, blah. Now I just want a job [01:08:00] that I can tolerate enough. That's fine. That I make a good salary and allows me to go to the beach with the kids when we want to or take a week off when we want to or be home with them when they're sick and not sign on to the computer and just be able to sit and watch movies with them all day.

Or if I'm sick to be able to take that time off because I feel like for so much of my career. I've just been giving my time to my job and didn't have any ownership over it. And I feel like there's this big, reclamation of ownership. And especially now that the world got a taste for what remote working is you were talking about how your commute, you've quit jobs because of the commute.

Are quitting jobs now because they're being forced to go back into the office and they don't want to waste, two unpaid hours of their life in a car anymore. They don't want to have to go to these mandatory social gatherings that [01:09:00] they're not going to pay for anymore it's ridiculous the amount of time you are expected to give out, but I could get on a whole soapbox 

Pam: about that.

It's interesting too, because in my time, in my generation, we were supposed to be childless. Or seem childless. So in other words, I would never use you guys as an excuse for anything I couldn't do because, oh you're not serious. Just go home and be a mother.

And that was so unfair. And I'm glad that, or I hope, and I'm glad that's changing somewhat because it was very difficult at that time. Because if one of you were sick and I had to stay home with you being sick, oh forget it. Nobody understood that. 

Rachel: And I feel like it's still relatively new.

That women are speaking up. There was that whole, there was that book when I was in, I first started working, it called lean in and it was basically [01:10:00] about how you had to work like a man as a woman and, but it was like this positive, it was supposed to be this positive empowering thing, but it's basically it's the truth, like.

Especially it was true in my early career. If you want to get ahead, you have to be like the men, you need to show up like the men do. And, if you have kids, you better not use them as an excuse. And I think it's only recently, I think because during the pandemic, our families were just on display for everyone.

And it normalized the fact that we are all humans that have families at home, I think only now, again, we got the taste of that. And so I think now there's a bigger push for change and for support And yeah, daycare is ridiculously expensive. It's as much as my mortgage, if not more.

And it is that choice. A lot of women still get forced out of the [01:11:00] workforce because they don't want to work just to pay for daycare. And and then it's hard to get back into it when it is time. I've really enjoyed our discussion today. I think too. If we could each, I didn't pull questions today, but if we each had one nugget of advice overall about career for someone listening what might you impart?

Laurel: Explore what you're interested in. Explore what your personality is. Would be successful in I'm not going to say do what you love and the money will follow because that hasn't been true for me. But, do educate yourself that there's more out there than doctors and lawyers and teachers.

There's a lot out there and there's even more now. As more and more people in the younger generations are just finding jobs for themselves and being these digital nomads and, entrepreneurs, which would have terrified me at that time, [01:12:00] but, it's inspiring. And, there's things out there that you can do and figure that out and don't just pigeonhole yourself into something.

Rachel: Yeah, I would say, yeah, be open to changing. I think I used to say Oh, I'll never want to work for myself. I never want to own my own business, but I think I was scared of what that would look like and it's been the best thing for me. And then don't make your life or your meaning your job. Your job can be something totally different than what you're passionate about.

And also you don't have to monetize the thing that you're passionate about. I think, in my generation, there's this urge to monetize everything. There's something to be said for just having a hobby and enjoying it and not putting that pressure on yourself to Do something with it.

And I would say let yourself have your interests. And it's okay if your job isn't your thing, if it's not your life's work. Like it's okay just to have a job that [01:13:00] lets you do the things you love. 

Pam: I guess I have two points. One would be don't let anybody tell you that you can't do something that you really wanna do

you're not gonna know unless you try it. And lot of people are very intent on bursting people's balloons. And don't let anybody burst your balloon. And the other thing I would say is, strike a balance in your life. Life is short, and I think that making your work your be all and end all is really sad. I think you have to have a more varied life.

So I, I would say add color into your life, add travel, add books, add whatever. Your family. Into your life because just working your whole life is not, you're not gonna lay on your death bed and say, oh, I'm so glad I only worked. [01:14:00] That's what I would say.

Rachel: So what do we, like right now? What's bringing us joy or delight? I can start 'cause I have one this week. I've been going on walks every morning and it's been great. I drop the kids off at camp and daycare. And I come home, and I go on a walk, and it's Because I don't do as much yoga as I used to do, it's become like my thing that's keeping me grounded during the day.

Like I can tell my mood is different the days I don't get outside and go for a walk. 

Laurel: We just got back from a nice, relaxing family trip. And so I'm on the low because we're back home. But it was a great time. Very successful, nice trip with my family. And we're planning another big family trip for early next year. So I've got to look forward now.

Pam: Well,

This is going to [01:15:00] sound stupid.

But I, I never was that aware of YouTube and I never knew all of the knowledge that you can glean from YouTube. And I thought it was just a collection of dumb things that people did, in film, but I've found so many interesting things on. on YouTube lately. From how to do your watch, your Apple watch band, how to change it to book reviews, which I'm really enjoy.

I have some booktubers that I really like to watch I'm obsessed. 

Rachel: If you have a favorite YouTube show, please send it to us because we'd love to check it out. And thank you so much for listening to episode three. We'll be back next week. We will. With a [01:16:00] topic to be determined. And. Sometimes they come to us as we're sitting here. Sometimes.

Yeah we come up with new ideas every week. And if there's a topic you'd like us to cover, or if you have any thoughts you'd like to share, you can visit our website, generationmompod. com or find us on Instagram at generation mom pod and we'll see you next week.