Pearl - April 12, 2025


The Modern Woman Life Cycle Is a Trap – And Here’s the Proof


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

172.78325

Word Count

1,403

Sentence Count

111


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I took a career break to raise my kids and now I feel like a failure.
00:00:03.780 Today we're going to talk about the modern woman life cycle.
00:00:08.300 It is the quintessential roadmap of the path that women in 2025 are taking to end up alone
00:00:14.340 with their dog or cat in their 40s and 50s, look back at their life with nothing but regret.
00:00:20.060 So just to recap, modern women will go to a high-priced institution, get a degree that
00:00:26.560 nobody cares about to put themselves in a whole bunch of debt and will burden them for
00:00:30.600 the rest of their lives.
00:00:31.920 After they learn in school, all they learn in school is how to be disagreeable and how
00:00:36.460 to use men.
00:00:37.760 Modern women, number two, modern women will get a job that is too stressful and does not
00:00:42.880 care about them.
00:00:43.600 In reality, the job isn't that hard or stressful, but the women will convince themselves that
00:00:48.960 it is.
00:00:50.000 Three, modern women will feel entitled to a certain lifestyle when they begin their careers
00:00:55.140 and will buy houses and cars they can't afford or spend all their money on travel while ignoring
00:01:00.440 their student loan debt.
00:01:02.320 Modern women at stage four will wake up between the ages of 33 to 37, rush to have kids, find
00:01:09.180 a husband or do both, step five.
00:01:11.840 Modern women will hit their late 30s and early 40s, try to get pregnant by a loser or go through
00:01:16.660 IVF, step six.
00:01:18.420 Modern women will start on antidepressants or become alcoholics, either or.
00:01:23.080 We don't discriminate here.
00:01:25.140 Step seven, women will buy a dog or a cat and die alone.
00:01:30.160 So today we're going to talk about the slight variation of the modern woman life cycle.
00:01:34.580 There are women who choose to have kids when they are young, but choose their careers for
00:01:39.340 their kids.
00:01:40.520 These women, just like women in the modern women life cycle, paid too much for a degree
00:01:45.280 to get a job that doesn't pay well and are usually in positions out the door, are in
00:01:51.600 positions that are out the door when an economic downturn happens.
00:01:55.440 These women neglect their children, causing serious damage to them and their development.
00:01:59.920 Many of these women miss their children's first words, first steps, and formative early
00:02:04.260 years.
00:02:04.740 And for what?
00:02:05.800 The average salary of a woman with a degree in the United States is still around $50,000
00:02:10.540 a year.
00:02:11.200 Is this still enough compensation to miss out on important things in their kids' lives?
00:02:17.560 Sadly, if you ask many of these career women, they would say yes.
00:02:22.060 So we are going to talk about women regretting picking kids over her career.
00:02:27.120 Can you imagine, like, the kids reading this?
00:02:33.680 Like, can you imagine?
00:02:35.000 Like, you're like, oh, mom wrote an article today.
00:02:37.120 Oh, let's see what it said.
00:02:38.800 Mom!
00:02:39.880 Like, can you imagine?
00:02:41.920 Okay.
00:02:42.280 I took a career break to raise my kids, and now I feel like a failure.
00:02:47.240 Every other Saturday, British Vogue resident, agony aunt Eva Wiseman answers questions about
00:02:53.420 life.
00:02:53.860 Okay.
00:02:54.400 So here we go.
00:02:56.620 All right.
00:02:57.240 A few years ago, I was flying high at work, but when my husband got the opportunity to
00:03:01.720 almost double his salary by working far away from home three nights a week, juggling my
00:03:06.840 job and caring for my young son, all I got was too, all, sorry, juggling my job and caring
00:03:13.400 for my young son all got too much for me, and I decided to quit.
00:03:17.260 At first, it felt liberating, but after a year, I was ready to go back to work.
00:03:21.480 Turned out it was really hard to find a job.
00:03:23.540 I couldn't get a similar job to my old one.
00:03:25.720 Despite having tons of interviews, I eventually took a job that I find boring because I'm overqualified.
00:03:33.360 Now I feel like a complete loser, and I'm full of regret for giving up my career.
00:03:40.220 Plus, I can't help but feel bitter and angry with my peers, one of who is now a CEO at a
00:03:46.000 really cool company and has three kids.
00:03:48.440 So translation, they paid a nanny to raise the kids, right?
00:03:52.240 She didn't want to do it.
00:03:53.460 She had someone else do it.
00:03:54.440 I feel weak and pathetic and like I'm being punished for it, and I'm in a job I hate partially
00:04:00.540 because I don't want to look like I've failed.
00:04:02.420 So question for Eva.
00:04:05.740 Drop her an email so you can ask this person.
00:04:09.100 Firstly, you did not give up.
00:04:10.460 You just didn't.
00:04:11.060 You left work because that was the right decision for your family at the time.
00:04:14.460 But then what happened was work left you.
00:04:18.400 After having a child, many parents discover, first slowly but then fast, the realities of
00:04:23.200 a painfully unbalanced world, suddenly seeing for themselves how a lack of a flexible working
00:04:31.080 arrangement and affordable childcare is preventing many thousands of women from progressing in
00:04:36.800 their careers.
00:04:37.440 So this is a.k.a.
00:04:39.720 I wasn't going to progress in my career anyway, otherwise I wouldn't have given it up.
00:04:43.560 But I want to blame it on something, so I'm going to blame it on the kids.
00:04:46.740 That's the translation.
00:04:48.860 Working mothers might be the norm today, but large flakes of the old patriarchy remain in
00:04:53.540 all kinds of work and also in relationships.
00:04:56.200 It's quantifiable.
00:04:57.540 A campaign around the motherhood penalty last year revealed that the gap between mothers
00:05:02.400 and fathers in the U.K. has grown by nearly a pound an hour since 2020.
00:05:07.980 On average, mothers earn 24 cents less an hour than fathers in 2023.
00:05:13.240 A penalty of four forty four dollars and forty four pounds an hour.
00:05:18.160 One consequence of this is that because women earn less than their male partners, it makes
00:05:22.940 sense, as you found for them to be the one to leave their jobs when it becomes untenable
00:05:28.820 for both parents to work.
00:05:30.260 As it's hard to return, even with the new knowledge you've gained about interpersonal relationships
00:05:35.080 and negotiation, patience and budgeting from having a kid, some new employers are suspicious
00:05:40.600 of your career break or somehow they don't want like they don't want to pay for career
00:05:45.480 number two.
00:05:46.420 Right.
00:05:46.600 So they're like a maternity leave.
00:05:48.540 Oh, no, we're not doing that.
00:05:51.300 OK.
00:05:51.800 Or certain somehow that your brain has defrosted in times of motherhood.
00:05:55.580 All previous experience and sense now surely replaced with naptimes or Lego.
00:06:02.780 And they say this is the world's hardest job.
00:06:04.700 Or they're unwilling to employ somebody they believe will never prioritize work or will
00:06:10.280 no doubt leave in 10 minutes to have another baby.
00:06:13.020 Yeah, there you go.
00:06:13.920 Be gentler on yourself.
00:06:15.340 These failures are not your own.
00:06:16.960 They are the failures, of course, of our society.
00:06:19.260 One that pays lip service to the pursuit of equality but refuses to adapt in order to
00:06:23.740 accommodate those who have caregiving responsibilities.
00:06:26.620 If you can't afford to, I think you should quit the job you hate.
00:06:30.300 Stop talking yourself down.
00:06:31.640 You're not weak or pathetic.
00:06:32.980 You're not a failure.
00:06:34.120 You're simply a woman struggling to find fulfilling work in a world designed for men and struggling
00:06:39.980 with politics and identity shifts that come with motherhood.
00:06:43.560 Once you start being sweeter to yourself, you will be able to rediscover the ambitious
00:06:48.220 drive that you saw flying high and find a job that offers growth and satisfaction.
00:06:54.940 No promises, but maybe.
00:06:57.660 And one more thing.
00:06:59.120 You need to stop comparing yourself to other mothers.
00:07:03.980 It's silly and it only makes you feel worse.
00:07:07.220 Stop it.
00:07:07.860 The CEO with the kids, she has nothing to do with you, your life, or your careers.
00:07:13.680 Wow.
00:07:14.500 That's like, um, that's actually the only good advice I've ever heard a woman give.
00:07:21.720 Stop comparing yourself to other women.
00:07:24.940 All right.
00:07:25.900 For all you know, despite the job and the children, she is struggling too.
00:07:30.680 In fact, I am sure she is, undoubtedly.
00:07:37.840 Countless sacrifices she is making when she appears to excel.
00:07:41.540 It's probably that.
00:07:42.440 Like you, some of them feel imposed upon her by that great, brutish hands that nudge one's
00:07:50.480 life as they age, pushing and bruising even the best laid plans.
00:07:54.580 So there's your advice.
00:07:55.700 Leave your job.
00:07:56.500 Go gentler on yourself.
00:07:57.740 Don't compare yourself to other women and fight the patriarchy.
00:08:01.080 Go.
00:08:01.380 Go.
00:08:02.520 Go.
00:08:02.740 Go.
00:08:03.000 Go.
00:08:03.320 Go.
00:08:04.260 Go.
00:08:04.700 Go.
00:08:05.320 Go.
00:08:06.000 Go.
00:08:06.240 Go.
00:08:06.840 Go.