Episode 47: Mama Needs a Minute! – with author Mary Catherine Starr

The Discussion

Amy Allebest: When I was first researching how patriarchy started in human civilization, I was enthralled by the book The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner. Lerner wrote about how patriarchy started during the agricultural revolution between 10 and 12,000 years ago, and she hypothesized that as part of this process, women began to take over more and more of the domestic labor, leaving men with more leisure time than women. Lerner wrote, “The allocation of leisure time is uneven. Men benefit more from it than women due to the fact that the food preparation and child rearing activities of women continue unrelieved. Thus, men presumably could employ their new leisure time to develop craft skills, initiate rituals to enhance their power and influence, and manage surpluses.” Then Lerner continues, “I do not wish to suggest either determinism or conscious manipulation here. Quite the contrary, things developed in certain ways, which then had certain consequences, which neither men nor women intended. I’ve tried to show how it might have come to pass that women agreed to a sexual division of labor, which would eventually disadvantage them without having been able to foresee the later consequences.” 

That passage really impacted me when I read it. I mean, no one really knows how it went for our ancestors in the neolithic age, but that description sounded so reasonable to me. In fact, I’ve seen many people accidentally fall into a gender division of labor that disadvantaged women. In fact, that’s even happened in my own marriage. This is an incredibly common problem, and no one describes this problem better than Mary Catherine Starr, the creator of Mom Life Comics, and the author of a new, delightful, and informative comic book, Mama Needs a Minute! I am so excited to discuss these issues with Mary Catherine Starr today. Welcome, Mary Catherine. I’m so excited about this conversation. 

Mary Catherine Starr: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here. 

AA: I wonder if you can start us off by telling us a little bit more about you, where you’re from, and some of the features of your growing up that created the person that you are today and brought you to do the work that you’re doing now. 

MCS: Oh, that’s the first time I’ve actually gotten that question, so thank you for asking! I’m from Georgia, I’m from Atlanta, the Atlanta area. Now I live on Cape Cod, which is where my husband grew up. But I grew up in a divorced family, and I think that really matters as I talk about my book and what we’re going to talk about a lot today, about my journey through motherhood and how that really helped me awaken to the societal structure that we’re living in, the expectations that we have for mothers versus fathers. And I think because I grew up in a divorced home, I didn’t really see, well, I guess I should say that my mom was a very traditional mom. So what I saw was a mother who had stayed home and who had made her whole life for children. And then when my parents got divorced, that was a real upheaval, because all of a sudden now my mom, who has stayed at home for all these years and was formerly a teacher, is now no longer employed and is now a single mom to three kids. And I really saw that experience, which made me want to go in the opposite direction. It made me say, “Oh no, I have to always have my own job. I have to have my own life outside of my children.” I saw the ways in which being a mother who had no recent work experience made it really hard for her to get a job that she enjoyed or that paid well, and all the struggle that she went through. 

I should say that my dad is amazing and he’s been my rock, but my parents were living separately, so she really found herself kind of floundering, feeling like, you know, she loved being a mother and that she’d put everything into that, and now the rug had been pulled out underneath her, and she had to figure out what to do. And because of that, I think I learned early on, like, “Well, as a woman I’ve got to make sure that I have a career and that I have my own identity outside my family.” And I think that made it really hard for me down the road, many, many, many years later, when I decided to become a mom. As I tried to figure out how to do all the things I wanted to do as a perfectionist, as a type A person, as someone who is very sensitive and very aware of what the world is telling me I should be able to do as a woman, I felt extra pressure to also be completely independent. And I think that’s a really wonderful thing. I’m very happy that I’ve had that kind of ingrained in me from a young age, but I think it made it really hard for me when I decided to become a mother because the model I’d seen was that you become kind of the martyr. You do everything for your children, they become your life, you should always be there for everything, you want to be there when they get home from school. 

I’d seen this model of the very traditional stay-at-home mom, and I also wanted and felt the need to be a very independent self-starter, a woman who has a complete life outside of her home. So I was kind of trying to do both. And then also, of course, I was raised in this generation where we’re told we could do it all, and I think all of that played a big part in where I got to and why I’m so interested in this subject now. Because I was just trying, I really was, and I still am, even though I know what I know now, I’m still trying to live up to this ideal of the person, the mother, the woman who does it all, who has this thriving career, who is always productive, who has a complete life outside of her home, and then also is a completely present mom who’s always with her children and playing with them and building her whole life around them. And I don’t think those two lives are totally compatible in our current system, and I’ve been kind of wrestling with that and what it means to be a woman and a mom in our current culture ever since. 

AA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I appreciate you sharing this with me. And to be honest, this is still something that I am acquainting myself with because I was raised in a very conservative religious environment, where I honestly didn’t even know– like the whole “supermom” thing that developed in the ‘80s and ‘90s and The Second Shift by Arlie Hochschild, that book,  where it was, “You can have it all and you should do it all.” And women doing it all. I didn’t even know that existed, to be honest, because I was not told that I could or should do it all. I was told– it was kind of like we were decades behind, the way I grew up. So for me it’s been really interesting studying feminism now and having lots of friends outside the religious community that was so insular that I didn’t even know other ways existed. But to think, I can actually see the trad wife reaction to that pressure, you still see it on social media in the comments. Women who are trying to pursue a career and then struggling with it, trad wives are like, “Well, see, that’s why women should just stay home,” and completely ignore the very vulnerable, scary position that that puts a woman in, first of all, financially, but also that it keeps a woman from developing her full human potential. It’s so crazy to me now that I’ve studied feminism in all the different eras that I see conversations happening between the different stages of development of feminism. We’re still arguing and kind of trying to figure out these questions in women’s lives. 

MCS: Yeah, I agree. 

AA: I just wanted to say that I’m coming from a different place and I’m like, “Oh, wow. You felt that pressure too? Even though you were told you could have a career?” It’s just not easy for anybody, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. 

MCS: Right, right. And I should say, too, I had a stepmom who came in a little later and she had never had kids and was super career-driven. Obviously we became her stepchildren, but up until that point, she had been totally focused on her career and was a total feminist, and her influence was a huge part of me feeling that pressure to do both as well. But she had made sacrifices and she had not gotten married and not had kids until later because she’d focused on her career. I think obviously the examples and the role models that we have growing up plays such a big part in our understanding of womanhood and motherhood, and I think we all end up in the same place. Despite having different role models and maybe different belief systems growing up, we still get to this place where we’re like, “I don’t know how to make this all work. What does it look like? And how can I feel like I’m thriving in this system that is built in a way that women are not supposed to thrive in the way that we now want to?” If that makes sense.

MCS: Yeah, so I should say that many moons ago I was a blogger, you know, back in the heyday of blogs. So I did have this very small audience way before I built Mom Life Comics. Very small, but I was a yoga teacher at the time, even before I was a mom, so I was blogging a lot about yoga and art and being a creative person in the world. And I do think that matters just because it got me really comfortable talking about my life online, which is what I ended up doing later through my comics. But when I started making my comics, it was kind of in tandem with this blog I’d been writing, and I was active on Instagram and I was talking about the hard parts of being an adult, the hard parts of being a woman in the world, or a type A person, or a person who felt very defined by my productivity levels. 

And then I became a mom and obviously everything turned upside down, and I was still blogging that whole time. And somewhere along the way, I started talking more about what made motherhood feel so hard to me and why I felt like I’d gone into it with one expectation and it was completely different. So I started talking about that on my blog, but I’d be posting these posts about how hard it was, and then the picture that I would post with it would be like me and my kid smiling, or some highlight real picture with this caption or this blog post all about how much I was struggling. So I was looking for a way to have a visual that went along with these conversations I was trying to have with this really small little community I had. And I started just, you know, I am an artist, I’m a graphic designer, so I started thinking, “I’m just going to do some little drawings about motherhood.” And what I did want to draw, obviously, were scenes of how overwhelming and hard it was at the time with these young kids. So that’s what I started doing, and I was just posting them to my personal Instagram, just these little, I didn’t even call them comics, but they were silly little drawings with a little caption or maybe a speech bubble. And then below I would talk about whatever the subject is I wanted to talk about that I was struggling with. 

And I saw that they were really taking off. At this time it was just my personal Instagram feed, and I saw that people were sharing them a lot, and I thought, “Okay, there’s something here.” So I kept kind of doing them. I had started making these comics in January 2020, so a few months later the pandemic hit, and I think that kind of helped them to pick up steam because we were all at home, everyone’s looking for that connection and we were all feeling so overwhelmed. So I was able to start making these little comics, not about the pandemic necessarily, but just how intense mothering is right now. So in July 2021, I ended up making my own Instagram account, @momlife_comics, just for these comics because I had seen over and over again that they were being shared. But my feed was a little confusing, because it was lots of pictures of me and my kids, and then a random comic. So I did start that, and that was in July. And then in January of the following year, 2022, my “double standards of parenting” comic went viral. And that changed everything that led us to where we are today. 

But that comic was, you know, I’d already been doing these comics for a while. I’d been making these comics before that one went viral. But it’s a very straightforward comic. And for those who haven’t seen, it was a series of panels that are split in half, and one side is a mom and one side is a dad, and they’re doing the exact same thing. So for instance, the first one that I shared was my husband coming in the front door holding a bag of fast food and then me coming in the front door holding a bag of fast food. And above him it says, “Fun dad” and above me it says “Lazy mom”. So there were a lot of series like that, showing that when a mom and dad do the exact same thing, the mom is judged or criticized or labeled something negative, and the dad is often labeled something positive or praised for it. And that was really what I wanted to get at. And those comics, I mean, I think because they’re just so simple and it’s just such a stark, simple contrast, they really struck a chord. And that’s, as you say, the rest is history. But that sent me into this next level of connecting with people around the world and finding this community of people who really feel the same way I do about the expectations, the double standards, the patriarchal norms surrounding parenthood and how it’s really unfair and makes it really impossible for moms to succeed or to feel good about what they’re doing as parents right now. 

AA: Yeah, for sure. Well, that was my next question about that. You mentioned that connection, that people really felt connected to those comics. And it’s really neat thinking about your genre, and how humor and just simple visuals can create that kind of connection and make people not feel so alone and isolated. Can you talk about that just for a second? Because it’s not my genre, and I think it’s so, so powerful. 

MCS: Yeah. It’s one of those things that I really fell into. I’ve talked to some other moms in particular who make comics and they’ll say, “I’ve wanted to be a comic artist since I was young,” or, “I’ve always loved graphic novels,” or something like that. And I definitely fell into it more. But I think it’s because of what you’re saying. I had been looking for so long for a way to really connect through art and writing with other women who are feeling the same way I did. And I had some of that here and there through my blog or through some of my Instagram posts, but I felt like I was never able to really fully say what I wanted to say in a way that would welcome people into the conversation as much as comics do. And I think it’s because you can laugh, right? I think there’s definitely this phenomenon thanks to the internet where we do like to say, “LOL, this is me, hahaha.” And it’s something hard or negative that’s signaling how overwhelmed and miserable we are or whatever. But being able to laugh and being able to share something and say, “This is exactly how I feel,” it adds a little bit of a lightheartedness to a really heavy subject and makes it easier to share with others and also say, “Me too.” I think that’s one part of it, and that’s why comics strike a chord, is because you can invite people into the conversation in a much less scary, much less aggressive way. And especially because a lot of my work talks about relationships and marriage or partnerships, I think it can be a lot more difficult to send like your partner a long-form video or give them a book, that’s much more of a commitment than it is to send them a silly, colorful drawing of a couple having a little argument and being able to laugh, “Look at this. Can’t you relate?” It feels much less aggressive, and I think for that reason, for some people, it’s a really great in to talk about this harder stuff. 

AA: Yeah, I totally agree. So effective. And especially like you said, sharing it with a husband or a dad or a brother, you’re like, “I know this is a good man, but I really need you to see this.” It’s just genius. I love it. 

MCS: Thank you. 

AA: Okay, let’s start talking about the book. One thing I loved about the book is that you talk about your own personal experience and you outline kind of chronologically how these issues develop. Can you walk us through, and if you’re okay talking about your own personal experience that would be great, but how do these dynamics of the mental load and the mom doing so much, how does it develop for a typical couple?

MCS: Yeah. Like you said, my goal with the book was to use my story, me and my husband, our relationship, to demonstrate how this could happen. And when I say this, it’s that we started our relationship very egalitarian, very, I would say, very feminist, very progressive. Everything was equal. We did all the dishes together, you know, he would wash, I would dry. We would go grocery shopping together every Sunday. We would do our laundry separately but together, like we each would have our own basket in our apartment building and walk downstairs together and start the loads together. We both shared all the household labor and the mental load of running the house was pretty evenly distributed. And I just felt like I was in a very modern, equal relationship. And I talk through it in more detail in the book, but then I talk about how we start to plan our wedding, and there are some little things that start to happen. It’s easy to say, like, “I’m the one who’s better at planning this,” or, “I care more about this.” In the case of a wedding, I’m the one who cares more about how it looks, so I’m going to take this on and that’s okay because I enjoy this, you know? And I think it’s easy to start to set up patterns even before you have kids that can eventually trickle into leading to a much more traditional distribution of labor. When I say traditional, I mean very heterosexual, heteronormative, man does this, woman does this. 

So I talk in the book about how even before we had kids, we started slowly drifting in the direction in some ways in our relationship towards this more traditional distribution of labor. But then we had kids, and I think for a lot of the people who respond to my work, and a lot of people I talk to, it’s really having kids that tips the scale and changes things. So I use our story to demonstrate, you know, for us it’s all these things we’ve already kind of touched on. It’s the way we were raised, it’s the way that we’re susceptible to societal messaging, it’s our personalities. And then so much of it to me is societal expectations and how those really start to pigeonhole us into these roles and these corners that even though we’re aware of them and we are trying everything we can not to fall into those roles, we just do because of all these pressures. I talk a lot in the book about how that happened for us, and we had one kid and things started to shift. I’m the one who’s home. I work for myself, so I was able to take more parental leave and my husband didn’t have as much time. Our daughter never took a bottle, only breastfed, so my husband didn’t learn how to soothe her, especially at night. So now all of a sudden I’m doing all the nighttime wake-ups. I go through all these reasons that I became really the primary caregiver despite us both working a lot. I went back to work at 12 weeks, and I have more flexibility in my schedule because I’m self-employed, but I still had tons of work. It was what happens to so many people, right? I was able to be more flexible, or I made it possible for myself to be more flexible, and therefore I started taking on more and more of the household stuff because I was there, even if I was working from home. And because I was the one who knew more about it, it was easier for me just to do it because I’d been home. So many of the reasons I’m sure a lot of your listeners are already familiar with, especially if they are parents.

But I found myself a few years into motherhood really resentful and frustrated and overwhelmed and feeling like I was drowning. All the things we now know are really common, especially in moms of young kids, and also in parents who are trying to work and be the default primary caregiver, which is where I found myself. And I use the book to tell that story to show really concrete examples. I try, through comics and illustrations, to show, like, “Here are these little ways in which this happens.” Because it’s not like you have kids and you wake up the next day and you’re doing everything. It’s very slow, kind of just falling back into roles. And when I say “back into,” we were never really in them, but back into these traditional roles. And I think so much of it is really because we are expected to do it. We just kind of do it. Or because we’ve seen it modeled for us, we just do it. 

And my kids are now nine and six, and we are still working our way back to being more equal. It’s taken us this long, despite me spending so much time thinking about all this and researching it and talking about it, and it’s so hard even for us. And my husband is very supportive of my work and a really great dad and a really great husband, but even for us, it’s been really hard to get back to this place where we aren’t just filling these societal roles where one person has more free time and one person is doing everything. And it’s been tough. My goal is really just to tell our story and to help other people hopefully learn from our mistakes and maybe take a deeper or closer look at their own relationship or their own household systems and see, “Where have I taken on more or had more dumped on me?” It’s definitely not, you know, I don’t like to victim-blame, it’s not a woman’s fault if she finds herself in a place where I found myself. But to really take a closer look, and that’s what I’ve had to do, is I’ve had to say, “How did we get here? Why did we get here? And how can we get out?” That’s what my focus is with all my work now. 

AA: Yeah. 

I am curious, I’d love to dig into this more and get into the details. If you did have a time machine, if you could go back to that couple that’s walking down the stairs with your laundry baskets, before the kids came along, and then if you got to be there for your past selves as a coach to say, “I know you don’t see where this is going to go long term, but you actually really don’t want to establish this precedent right now because it’s going to be so much harder to dig yourselves out of the trench of habit later. So let’s avoid this problem.” What would be some advice? What were the things, like the turning points early on that set you on that path that you would correct if you could? 

MCS: I think the easiest, clearest time that I can identify where I started to really see more of this happen, some of it happened of course before kids, but it was when I was pregnant. When we started doing things, it sounds silly, but things like making the registry for our baby. The stuff we would need for a baby, getting the clothes and the supplies and kind of assembling all of that, like the raw materials you need to have to take care of a baby. This is another pretty common dynamic, but I had friends who were already having kids, women who had already done this, so I would reach out to them and say, “What do we need for the baby?” And they would send me their registry list. And then I would go through it and I would research it and I would compile, “We want this, we don’t need this,” you know? So then I knew what attachment we needed for the stroller to get the car seat in. I knew what kind of onesies or sizes you need for the baby, or, “Okay, we need to have some diaper genie.” All those kinds of things. I was already starting to be steeped in this world of parenting, and I didn’t ever invite Ben, my husband, I never invited Ben into that much. I mean, I would say, “We need to make the registry. I’ve gotta look at that.” Or I’d say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And he’d go, “I don’t know. What do you think?” And I’d say, “Maybe this.” And he’d say, “Okay, then do that.” And it was like I just started to take things on. 

And part of that, like I said, is my personality. But part of that is because I just, “Well, someone’s gotta do it and I’m the mom, so I’m gonna do it,” you know? And I think there were a lot of things like that in pregnancy and in very early days of parenting where, I mean, it sucks that I would have to invite him in, right? In an ideal world, he would take charge of that or we would do it together, or he would be the one thinking of it. But I think that’s not really the norm. And it is what it is. So I was the one taking charge of that, and I think because I never invited him in, asked him to take it on, again, I hate it that women have to be the ones doing the including, but I think if I had, it would’ve changed things a lot. If I’d said, “I want you to be in charge of the stroller, the car seat, X, Y, Z. Here you go. Please research and buy them,” that would have started us down this path. And there are plenty of examples like that. I got the changing table with all the different shelves and I organized everything in there and I labeled it and I knew where it all was. So then we had our baby and I said, “Go grab the extra __.” He had to say, “Where is it?” And I have to say, “On the right side of the changing table.” And it sounds silly, but that’s all the mental load that ends up leaving moms feeling so raw and overwhelmed. I wish I’d said, “Here’s our changing table. Here’s what needs to go in it. I need you to organize it.” And again, I still would’ve been the one delegating, but at least we would’ve started on this path where he had a little more information in his brain about parenting. 

And I think there are so many things like that. I mean, I can go on and on, but I think instead of just taking it on and doing it because I thought it was my job, I wish I’d realized that this is our job. We’ve gotta do this together. I can’t take it all on, he has to take some of it. So sure, maybe I have to be the one to delegate, but I’m going to do that and then I’m going to stand back and let him be responsible and trust him that he will do it, which is a hard thing for a lot of women. I think if I’d given myself permission to not do everything and invited him into parenting a little more from the beginning, that would’ve made a big difference. And it would’ve at least set us down a road where we were both thinking a lot more about this than we ended up. Now we’re doing that, but it’s a lot harder to change these habits after being 6, 7, 8 years in. And it would’ve been from the beginning.

AA: Yeah, for sure. One more topic while we’re on this is how it kind of bleeds– it’s one thing, I feel like it kind of makes sense, especially if you do have a breastfeeding baby. Like, that baby is attached to the mother in a way it isn’t to the father. That’s a physical, real thing. But then from there it starts to bleed into other areas. Then suddenly, why is the woman doing more dishes? Because that doesn’t have anything to do with childcare, like a baby needing the mother in the first while. Dishes, laundry, housework, how does that transition happen from childcare to housework?

MCS: Yeah. I think it’s because of, again, the societal expectation around the way that we run the household and who’s in charge. And as I mentioned, if someone’s going to change their work schedule to be available and home more, it’s often the woman, because that’s what we’re expected to do in most workforces. There’s a lot more grace given, I think– well, I guess that’s arguable. But I would say that in a lot of jobs, women going part-time is much more accepted than men going part-time. So a lot of women are doing that or adjusting their lives to be home more. And at least in our situation, I was still working the same number of hours, I was still making the same amount of money, but I was now working at night after the kids were asleep. Or I’d wake up at 5:00am to work or I’d do it in nap time and I was always frazzled and trying to squeeze it in. But that was so I could be home with the kids more. And if I’m the one who’s home, then I can throw in a load of laundry because I’m here. Or if the kid is playing for five minutes comfortably on the floor, okay, now I can go run and do some dishes. And I think because we’re present in the home more, we’re seeing it all and we have those little pockets of time where we feel like we have to be using every free moment to keep the house going. So I do think that, at least in my case, I began to take ownership over the way the house looks, the running of the house, not because I wanted to, but because I was physically home more and seeing it more and in it more. 

And also, if you’re the one who’s taking care of the kids, and the laundry you need or the dish you need isn’t clean, you can’t do that job as well. A lot of women will say, “I asked my husband to do them and he didn’t do them and I needed it. He didn’t wash the bottles. I asked him to, he said he would, but he didn’t know I would need the bottles first thing in the morning. They weren’t there, so I had to do it. Then I realized, why even ask him? I should just do it myself, then I’ll know they’re ready the next morning when I need them.” You know? So it all comes back to this structure, the societal structure that we’re operating under, which is that women are the ones who should take time off, women are the ones who should be more present in the home, women are the ones who need to be or should be managing all of this to make sure that the kids are taken care of. And I think the household chores just kind of get bunched in there with the child rearing. And at least in our situation, it snowballed and before anyone realized it, it wasn’t like I was like– I think some couples do say, “I’m going to be the primary caregiver and homekeeper and you’re going to–” But we never had that conversation. I didn’t want that. We didn’t have a work setup that would allow me to be doing all of that. It ended up happening, but only because I was not sleeping as much and not having the downtime he had. But yeah, it wasn’t a purposeful distribution of labor. It was an accidental falling into it because of all the reasons we’ve talked about. 

the household chores just kind of get bunched in there with the child rearing

AA: Yeah, yeah. That’s really, really helpful to have you lay it out so explicitly. And what you just mentioned, the sleep. That’s a huge one that contributes to really negative mental health outcomes, burning the candle at both ends so that you can fit in the work and all of the household management, is just not healthy. 

MCS: Yeah. I think the majority of moms that I know who are trying to work outside the home and manage the home have so little downtime. Not only are they not sleeping very much, but they’re not spending hours and hours a week watching TV. They’re not going out and doing things with friends for six hours on a Saturday. Especially parents of young kids. I have a lot more of that balance now that my kids are older, but I think the big difference is that so many dads to young children are still getting a lot of, you know, whether they go to the gym every day on their way home from work, or whether they go golfing, or whether they are just laying on the couch for two hours at night watching a sports game. Moms of young kids are not doing that to the same extent. There’s data, obviously, that backs that up too, in time used surveys about how much leisure time men have versus women. But I also think that even if you aren’t resentful and frustrated about your situation, women and mothers of young children are probably not enjoying much time to themselves doing the things they love. And I think that’s another huge issue with all of this, is that loss of identity and the stuff that really makes you feel like a person. 

AA: Yeah. And then feeling worse in general about your life, and then the resentment toward the partner that can start to build up and cause real discord in the marriage, and that’s not good for anybody. 

MCS: Right. 

AA: Okay, let’s switch gears a little bit. You talk about the information age and the deluge of “expert” advice that’s coming in from podcasts and books and social media influencers. And again, my kids are a little bit older. I even felt that way when I was just getting books and getting advice from lots of different people, but I think it’s insane now with social media. What effect does that have on mothers, especially? 

MCS: Well, personally, it definitely has shaken my confidence as a mother, and it’s left me feeling like I’m always doing something wrong or always failing. I think for me, I follow a ton of experts. I really love their advice, I’ve learned so much from experts. So I always say, when I talk about this, I’m so thankful for the Dr. Beckys and the people who do picky toddler eating advice and all this stuff. I think it’s so helpful and wonderful, but so much of that leaves me feeling like I’m not doing it right. And when I see an expert who models some amazing thing you could say to your child in the heat of a tough moment, and then I try it and it doesn’t work with my kid, or I’m not able to really say it the way I want, or it doesn’t happen the way this perfect Instagram post leaves me hoping it would, I always find that I feel like I’ve failed my child somehow, or I’m failing at motherhood. And I think it’s led a lot of us moms who follow a lot of these experts to feel like we lose our ability to trust our gut or our moral compass, or whatever you want to call it, that kind of inner knowing of how to parent our kids. And it leaves us wondering all the time if we’re failing. Are we screwing them up? And I know parents of every generation probably have had those feelings, but I think when you’re constantly opening your phone and seeing more and more people telling you about the right way to do something, or the best way to do something, or this is harmful to your kids, it does leave you with this kind of anxious feeling of like, I’ve already said it, but like you’re just not able to do it right, or not doing it as well as you could be doing it.

And I think on the flip side, so many dads are not getting any of that messaging. We talk a lot about how moms are comparing themselves to the best moms out there, and dads are comparing themselves to the worst. So dads are like, “I didn’t leave and I’m not a deadbeat, so I’m great.” Whereas moms are like, “I didn’t do X, Y, Z that this expert said is the best way to handle this moment, so therefore I’m the worst.” And I think moms are just left always feeling like they’re failing their children, and I feel like so many dads feel like they’re doing a really great job. And that’s a pretty weird dynamic to live in if you’re living with a partner and you feel like you’re always failing and you see them doing so much less than you and they think they’re doing great. It really messes with your mind and kind of shakes your self-esteem. And I think it’s yet another kind of weight that moms are carrying around. Like I said, we’re already feeling overwhelmed, we’re already sleep deprived, we’re already feeling like we’re completely responsible for the wellbeing and functioning of our household and our kids, and then we also are now seeing all these right ways to do things that we aren’t either able to do or haven’t even tried or are failing at. And all of this to me is just a recipe for moms to be, you know, I mean, the Surgeon General gave out a parenting warning about how stressful it’s to be a parent, and I think it really does leave parents, moms in particular, feeling like they cannot possibly win or succeed in this system. And it’s a really bad place to live your life from, you know? 

AA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what’s the antidote to that? What are some suggestions that you would make to moms or dads? 

MCS: Well, there’s the big picture stuff and then there’s the personal, individual stuff. Big picture, we have so many changes that we need to make, and I know there are some great people who are fighting for these changes, but I’m not super encouraged with the current state of our government that we’re going to see major changes on the structural and policy side of things. So much of what I talk about can really take root, these big divides and these big inequities happen a lot in the first year or two of parenting. I think that’s when we set in motion a lot of these dynamics. And I think right now the parental leave situation in our country is just horrific. And even though maybe a lot of businesses have moved towards offering equal parental leave for moms and dads, dads are still not encouraged to take it all in a lot of ways, or if dads do take it, they’re kind of shunned. 

Obviously moms are not getting enough parental leave at all in our country, but I think that the inequity in the fact that in the first four or five months of a child’s life, the dad could only get a few weeks if they’re lucky, maybe a few days, and a mom might get, you know, six weeks to 12 weeks if she’s lucky. That still sets us up at the very beginning for inequity. The dad now is not learning any of the systems to care for the child. The mom is the one who’s responsible for the child, the dad isn’t. A very simple way we could change this, which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon, but there are lots of countries where we see each parent getting a year, or them being able to divide up that year however they want. These amazing ways to start to redistribute that first year and the responsibilities of parenting. I think there are tons of societal and structural ways. That’s one example. 

But I think on an individual and personal level, which is sadly where I think a lot of this change is going to have to happen right now, I mean, there are things I’ve done and I talk about some of these things in the book. I hate this advice, but for me it has worked. But what makes me so frustrated about all this is that I think often the ones who are going to have to really do the self work to make these changes are the women. And that sucks, but it’s always the person who is being held back that has to make the change. For me, it’s been things like, I started when my kids were younger, just leaving more, like going to do things, taking fitness classes, even going on smaller trips. For many years I wouldn’t let myself do that. I was a primary caregiver and I felt guilty if I left. The kids needed me so much, it was so hard for my husband, so I was just always available, always home. 

And it wasn’t like my husband was saying, “You need to stay home,” but it was easier for everybody and I just felt like it was easier for me and better for everyone. But I started leaving the house and now everybody’s really comfortable with it and I can leave whenever I want. And sure, the kids still don’t want me to go, but it forced my husband to start to be able to learn his own way of taking care of the children. It forced the kids to get used to life without me doing everything for them. So that’s a small thing, but it’s one of the many things that started to make a change and that took a lot of me being like, “I’m just going to do this even though it feels really uncomfortable and scary.” And I know some people listening probably think that sounds crazy, but I think if you’re the primary default parent, it can be hard to leave your kid. There can be so much guilt. 

AA: Oh, for sure. And that actually reminds me of another topic that you talk about, which is the preferred parent and default parent dynamic. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because that’s a big deal when the kids are little.

MCS: Yeah, and I talk about that a lot in the book because for us it’s still an issue. But this all kind of led to me being the preferred parent. So, because I was home more, because I was the one who was breastfeeding, because I was the one who had changed my schedule and was much more flexible, I started being the one who developed all the household systems. And now I know how they like to have their toast made and now I’m the one who knows what clothes they like the most. And all the things that when you are the primary caregiver or the default parent, you just start to learn. Then the kids start to prefer me, and then they start to prefer me even more and more and more, and then it becomes a system where it’s a battle to get them to let my husband do anything for them if we’re all together. If I’m not around, he can do stuff for them. But if we’re all together, you know, when you have these toddlers who have a lot of emotions and they want things the way they want them, they want mom to do it. And that was a huge issue for us, and we still work on it, but I think that happens a lot to people. 

And especially, again, when you have these two different work experiences and one parent’s more flexible and one isn’t, I think it’s really easy to fall into these roles in the house. So that happened for us, and when I say I had to leave, that’s kind of why. I was not able to have any autonomy in our household, and it’s still hard for me to work from home if the kids are home. It’s better for me to go to the library or something, because they want me. And I think this is really common and I think it leads to a lot of guilt and a lot of what we’re talking about, this feeling of having no life outside of your kids. And it also leads to your partner, in this case my husband, feeling really frustrated because no one lets him do anything. Or I say, “You just gotta do it,” then he has to deal with this massive meltdown and everyone’s fighting. And then sometimes I’ll be like, he is doing it wrong, maybe I should just step back. I mean, parenting with someone else is just so hard anyway, but I think parenting with someone else in this broken system where you’re trying to figure out how to distribute things between two people and all the other forces are working against that, whether it’s the society, whether it’s work-life balance stuff, whether it’s the children actually wanting one parent more, whether it’s the school only calling the mom even when the dad’s listed… 

There are all these reasons that moms just keep being forced back into being the person who does it all. And I think that’s what we have been trying so hard in my house to change, and it’s just an uphill battle. It’s an uphill climb, you know? It really is. So that’s why I say, again, it sounds so silly, but moms leaving more, doing more for themselves, signing up for classes or going out to take yoga or whatever it is, that was a huge turning point for me when I started giving myself permission to take more breaks from being a mom and to outsource things. Or to just leave and let my husband deal with it. I have lots of other advice, I don’t know how far you want me to go, but that’s one thing that for me sounds small but it made a big difference.

AA: It’s a huge, big deal. I do remember those moments when the child’s crying, your husband’s frustrated, and then your heart is breaking that your child’s crying. You’re like, “This isn’t even working.” It’s just so much easier to be like, “Forget it. I don’t need to go. I’ll just text my friend that I can’t make it tonight. I’ll stay home.” One thing that helped me so much, and I’ve talked about this a lot with my sister who really struggles with that too, I think about– I have three daughters, and because the guilt of leaving the kids if they didn’t want me to leave or stepping away was so hard, so it’s easy to be like, “Just don’t feel guilty about that stuff.” You do feel guilty about it and it feels terrible. It feels so uncomfortable, but I would picture my daughter in that position, being a mom, and her calling and saying, “I can’t sleep. The kids only want me, my husband’s like trying to pitch in, but it’s just easier if I do it. But I am drowning in depression. What do I want for my kids?” Then that’s what I need to model for them. And that really, really helped me, because then I’m putting my kids first, actually, by stepping away a little bit so that they learn to tolerate it so that they can attach to their dad, and so that when they grow up, they can take care of themselves and their mental health first and have egalitarian homes. That helped me. 

MCS: Yes, yes. That’s so beautiful and so true. And I had done a lot of that too, saying, “What would I want for my kids? What do I want them to see me doing?” I want them to see me, you know, when I was working on this book, I had so much guilt because I’d have to go away on the weekends or go away for four hours on a Saturday and work at a coffee shop. At one point when I was explaining what I was doing, I would always say, “I have to go work on my book.” At one point my son said, “Do you like your book more than you like us?” Knife to the heart, you know? But I kept telling myself that I want them to see a mom who has a life outside the home, who has work that she’s passionate about, who follows her creative urges, and yeah, I had to keep telling myself that. But you’re right. It’s still so hard. It still hurts a lot. And again, when we talk about expectations and double standards, my husband doesn’t have guilt really ever about parenting. He may feel guilty about other things, but we’ve talked about it a lot because I am basically racked with guilt all the time no matter what I do, and he really never feels guilty. I think it’s because I’m trying to live up to the standard that is impossible, and he doesn’t really have anything he is trying to live up to as a dad because he’s doing so much more than his dad did. As far as he’s concerned, like what he’s seen modeled for him, he’s killing it. And the expectations are so low for dads that they don’t have that same guilt when they do things for themselves. It’s not even a thing. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, I shouldn’t speak for every dad, but a lot of the dads I’ve talked to and definitely what I’ve seen in my own relationship. 

MCS: Right. Some people have told me that they found success by just unfollowing all of them, which I have not done, but I understand the need to just mute all the noise. And I think for some people that might be the answer. I think for me, I mean, it sounds trite, but I’m in therapy and that’s been really helpful to talk to someone who’s not a social media expert, but just someone who is seeing me as a mother and is able to reflect back to me what they see as my strengths or reminding me to really go with my gut, talking me through things that I’m experiencing as a parent and being that voice of sound judgment, reminding me that I can trust myself. So, I do think therapy has been really helpful for me. But also just the reminders that you know your kid the best. And a lot of that’s come from– I’ve made some really great friends that are moms and there’s a lot of us sitting around talking about what we’re struggling with in our parenting journey and validating each other’s feelings and saying, “My kid does that too,” or, “I’ve tried that and that does not work for my family either.” 

So I think the more that you can surround yourself with real-life parents as opposed to influencers or experts, or if it’s a therapist, but people who can validate your experience but also tell you, “It’s not you, you’re not the problem,” is so helpful. And for me, that’s been for sure friends, for sure therapy, but also I do follow a lot of accounts that are moms who are talking about the challenging side without giving answers. Just saying, “I’m dealing with this too, and it’s hard, and you’re not alone.” And that’s been helpful for me too, just to be like, “You know what? There are so many different ways to do this, and we’re all trying our best, and it’s going to look really different. And I can try a part of what that expert said, and it might be helpful in one instance, but not in another. And I’m still a good parent even if I fail.” But yeah, it’s hard. And even in my book, I say a lot of times that I don’t have the answers, I’m still figuring it out, I don’t feel like I’m an expert at all on any of this. I really feel like I’m a person who’s lived it and has talked to a lot of other moms and has heard a lot about people’s experiences and can say, “Here’s what doesn’t work,” or, “Here’s what I did that I wish I hadn’t done,” or, “Here’s why I think this happened.” But I don’t really feel like I’m ever going to have all the answers. I really feel more like I can just say, “Hey, it’s not your fault that this is hard. You are not the problem. It’s expectations, it’s our society structure, it’s our government,” whatever the case for this specific instance. But that’s really what I’m here to do, is to point out more of, “It’s not you, it’s a much bigger picture issue, and you are not failing.”

AA: Yeah. Oh, I love that. That’s so great. Well, the time has flown by with you. And I have to tell listeners again, I’m so excited about this book, Mama Needs a Minute! I’m so excited to have it, again, to give to young adults who are starting out in marriages and will be having children soon so that they can avoid some of the pitfalls that you’ve talked about. But I wonder, as we wrap up, if you could give a few action items for listeners who are finding themselves in this position right now, like the story that you lay out in the book, like, “We started out so egalitarian, and somehow we slid into the situation that neither of us really planned on, and now it’s so hard to make those changes.” What are some action items that you would like to share with listeners in that situation? 

MCS: Yeah. There are a lot of resources out there that are really great. Some people find a lot of success with Fair Play, which you may have read. I know it’s not for everybody, and for some people it’s not the right antidote, but there are a lot of great books about mental load. One called All the Rage is really wonderful, but there are so many great books about the mental load and just validating what it is and that it’s real. And helping moms to see what they’re carrying, I think can be really helpful. For me, so much of the change I’ve been able to make is because I really started learning about, “What is it that’s making me feel this way?” And I learned that it is this invisible labor, it’s the mental load, this feeling like my work is never done and my husband’s is, so how do we redistribute that in the house? Again, there are so many resources about this, but I think starting to learn more about what it is you’re struggling with, preferred parent dynamics, nighttime parenting, what is it that’s making your situation feel so overwhelming? And maybe it’s all of things, or maybe it’s just one aspect of this. Maybe it is just that you’re carrying too much of the mental load, so can you start to tackle that with your partner? What does that look like? Maybe you’re educating yourself, maybe you’re educating your partner, maybe you’re going to couples therapy, but how can you start to unpack and learn about the part of this that’s feeling so challenging for you? For me, the mental load has been the biggest of all of this, and I think it all works together to create this perfect storm of overwhelm. So that would be one thing. 

I think the other thing is, you know, I can’t say enough about how important friendship is with other moms or with other parents. And that’s really something that I think I lost in my early years of parenting. And I think that’s happening more and more to people in our current climate. I think maybe COVID sped that up, or maybe because so many moms are now working outside the home, we don’t have time to go to the groups where we might have met friends before. We’re not hanging out at playgrounds as much, or wherever it is that moms used to meet friends. I think that’s not happening as much, so it takes a lot more effort to meet other moms who have kids the same age as yours. But for me, cultivating a bit of a friendship mom village. I think we’re far away from the village, but at least having other moms you can ask for advice, bounce ideas off of, just complain to, whatever it is. That’s been huge for me and really, really helpful in combating some of what we’re talking about with the feeling like you’re a failure. Having other people who are in it with you. Although that’s not easy advice, “Find some friends!” I think for a long time I didn’t even put any emphasis on that. I just decided, “I don’t have time for friends. I’m too busy.” 

And I think that going and spending the time and energy and saying yes to social situations that I would’ve said no to in the early years of my children’s lives has really been a huge change in all of this. And it’s helping me to manage it and learn how to really make changes And also I think having mom friends helps you to get outside the house too, right? It gives you this extra reason to go do something away from your kids, and it feels like it’s still cultivating a relationship that’s important to you. And then also I think, you know, politically, get involved with something like MomsRising or Moms Demand Action. I found a lot of it in trying to fight some of the inequities and on a bigger level that’s given me a little more sense of purpose, like, I don’t want future generations of women to have to live in this unjust system that fails moms and families. So I think that’s another way to start to take action, is to find an organization that’s working towards better policies for women and for mothers. 

AA: All great advice. So awesome. Well, before I let you go, can you tell us all the different places where listeners can find your work? 

MCS: Yeah. I’m very active on Instagram, it’s @momlife_comics. I’m on Substack as well, and you can find a link to that on my Instagram or my website, which is marycatherinestarr.com. I think that’s really it. You can buy my books from most of the places you get books, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, Amazon, some indies carry it. If yours doesn’t, you can definitely request that they have it. But bookshop.org is a great way as well to connect to get it from an indie and support indie bookstores.

AA: Fantastic. Wonderful. Yes, I can’t recommend it highly enough. This is also, I was just thinking, a perfect book if you’re going to baby showers right now in your life. Buy 10 of these books and just give it. I think it would be a perfect time and a perfect baby shower gift. Again, it’s something that I would’ve benefited from so much when I was having my kids. So yes, I super highly recommend this book, Mama Needs A Minute!, by Mary Catherine Starr. Thank you for this conversation today, Mary Catherine. It’s just been a joy and I learned so much from you. 

MCS: Thank you for having me! I love what you’re doing. Everything you’re doing is amazing, and we’re all lucky to have you.

AA: Oh, thank you!

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