AMY GALLO: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Gallo.
AMY BERNSTEIN: And I’m Amy Bernstein. Toward the end of 2023, our producer Amanda saw a LinkedIn post from one of our former guests, Marti Bledsoe, that made her eyes go wide. Marti had titled the post “A PRETTY BIG YEAR” in all caps and justifiably so. In January, the older of her two children, a freshman in high school, was still coming through a major depressive episode.
AMY GALLO: At the time, Marti was the executive director of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, so she knew enough about the disorder to quickly coordinate professional support. By March, happily, her teenager was in a better place mentally and emotionally.
AMY BERNSTEIN: But Marti wasn’t. She had resigned from her job because she was burnt out—just like so many parents straining to manage their kids’ anxiety or depression or anger while also keeping up at work.
AMY GALLO: As exhausted as she was, she immediately started applying to leadership roles elsewhere, hoping that changing workplaces would re-energize her. Between Zoom calls with people in her network, she cried and napped.
AMY BERNSTEIN: A month into that routine, the landlord of the house she’d been renting decided he was going to move in, which meant that Marti and her kids had 60 days to pack up and leave. That’s when her plans to bounce right back into the workforce really started to fall apart.
MARTI BLEDSOE: Yeah, I remember it as very chaotic and out of my control.
AMY GALLO: They spent 12 weeks at her mom’s house before she found a new house within the same school district that would fit them and her fiancé and his daughter.
AMY BERNSTEIN: The last day of the move, her fiancé slipped and tore his patellar tendon, an injury that requires surgery and a 16-week-plus recovery.
AMY GALLO: Then her mom, who lived nearby, needed emergency cataract surgery, then retina surgery, as well as a couple of dental surgeries. Then one kid was struggling to see well, another was struggling to breathe well. Each of these problems required multiple doctor’s visits and a considerable amount of Marti’s time and attention.
AMY BERNSTEIN: The grind left her utterly and completely spent.
MARTI BLEDSOE: Maintaining all the standards, the orthodontist appointments, getting the oil changed, following up on bills, making sure the mail got forwarded, renewing everybody’s prescriptions, driving my fiancé to physical therapy, driving my mom to eye recheck appointments and doing all kid driving since those two were my backup drivers, juggling summer camp for my 10-year-old, signing up, paying for, and then attending summer softball league for my oldest, coordinating at-home counseling three times a week to continue supporting my kids’ mental health, and then planning a year-end wedding and brunch to celebrate our newly blended family. That sounds like a happy one, but we actually thought we’d have to reschedule the wedding because of the torn patellar tendon and the crutches and the knee brace. We would’ve lost a lot of money had we done that.
AMY GALLO: He ended up being okay enough to walk down the aisle and got through their first dance.
MARTI BLEDSOE: And then it was the time of year for open enrollment, and I was trying to continue one set of benefits, figure out enrollment into another set of benefits because we had a qualifying event, which was very exciting, but also, the paperwork was mind-blowing and then there was more driving. I kept thinking, “Is this really my life?”
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica Calarco, who’s a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, says this grind— this ever-expanding, relentless set of responsibilities—is the norm for lots of us in the US.
JESSICA CALARCO: Once women take a step back in the workforce, it can be very easy to fall into that default caregiver role and also leads to choices that then make it easier for you to be seen as the one who is logically most responsible for other types of care that comes down the line.
AMY GALLO: Jessica writes about the slippery slope in her book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
AMY BERNSTEIN: She’s here to help Marti make sense of that “pretty big year,” as Marti called her LinkedIn post—or more like a year plus away from paid work. They’re both here to help those of you who’ve ever been consumed by caregiving understand the forces that got you there. Here’s my conversation with them.
AMY GALLO: I’ll be back afterwards to chat with you about it.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Marti, you started looking for a new job as soon as you resigned. How did you set out? What did you want to accomplish each week and then tell us what actually happened?
MARTI BLEDSOE: I wanted to spend an hour or two a day on LinkedIn, looking around at folks in my network, what they were up to, following companies that might be in my line of work that I wanted to stay in, and working on all the things that it takes today to get a job because you need multiple versions of your resume so they can get past AI bots that are screening. You need your elevator speech of what you’re looking for and what you can do, and I wanted to be consulting. I really felt like, gosh, I can look for a job and I can bill out at my hourly rate and then this really won’t feel like too much of a bump.
AMY BERNSTEIN: But your time wasn’t spent just on finding your next job, right?
JESSICA CALARCO: No, not at all. In fact, it was amazing how the hours got eaten up. I was packing to move, moving, and unpacking for quite a bit of that time. I moved twice in the time that I wasn’t working—once in with my mother. Of all the ridiculous things I spent time doing at that point, I remember posting on Facebook to one of my networks, “Hey, I have 13 beautiful houseplants that are in great shape. I’m moving in with my mother. She has a cat. Can anybody watch these houseplants for 10 weeks?” Of course, the woman who volunteered lived 30 minutes away. So, I literally found myself arranging care for my houseplants. I was doing all kinds of things…dropping off kids, picking up kids. For a while there we were in summer vacation, which is hell for working parents. It was a different schedule every week, and it just felt like every time I would sit down, my phone would ping or somebody would need me and the week would be gone.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica, help us understand this in the broader context. I mean, this is not an unfamiliar story to you. Why does this happen to women like Marti?
JESSICA CALARCO: Yeah, so other countries have invested in policies that help people manage their care needs and responsibilities. They have policies that allow people to live with dignity, to access economic opportunities, and to contribute equitably and sustainably to a shared project of care. In the US, we instead tell people that they should be able to take care of themselves and their families without relying on the government or even their employers for support, but the reality is that we can’t just DIY society. Some people, maybe most obviously children, but also people who are sick, people who are elderly can’t fully take care of themselves, and some jobs don’t pay enough to allow people to take care of themselves as well. So, acknowledging these realities would essentially destroy this illusion of a DIY society. But in the US, we essentially managed to maintain the illusion by relying on women to fill in the gaps, to be that social safety net for our families and for our community, and even for our economy, essentially by taking care of the people who can’t take care of themselves. We get women to do that work in part by grooming them for caregiving roles from the time they’re old enough to hold a baby doll, but also by pushing them into caregiving roles and then denying them any support in meeting those roles.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica writes about the slippery slope in her book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
AMY GALLO: Jessica is here to help Marti make sense of that “pretty big year,” as Marti called her LinkedIn post—or more like a year plus away from paid work. They’re both here to help those of you who’ve ever been consumed by caregiving understand the forces that got you there. Here’s my conversation with them.
AMY GALLO: I’ll be back afterwards to chat with you about it.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Marti, you started looking for a new job as soon as you resigned. How did you set out? What did you want to accomplish each week and then tell us what actually happened?
MARTI BLEDSOE: I wanted to spend an hour or two a day on LinkedIn, looking around at folks in my network, what they were up to, following companies that might be in my line of work that I wanted to stay in, and working on all the things that it takes today to get a job because you need multiple versions of your resume so they can get past AI bots that are screening. You need your elevator speech of what you’re looking for and what you can do, and I wanted to be consulting. I really felt like, gosh, I can look for a job and I can bill out at my hourly rate and then this really won’t feel like too much of a bump.
AMY BERNSTEIN: But your time wasn’t spent just on finding your next job, right?
JESSICA CALARCO: No, not at all. In fact, it was amazing how the hours got eaten up. I was packing to move, moving, and unpacking for quite a bit of that time. I moved twice in the time that I wasn’t working—once in with my mother. Of all the ridiculous things I spent time doing at that point, I remember posting on Facebook to one of my networks, “Hey, I have 13 beautiful houseplants that are in great shape. I’m moving in with my mother. She has a cat. Can anybody watch these houseplants for 10 weeks?” Of course, the woman who volunteered lived 30 minutes away. So, I literally found myself arranging care for my houseplants. I was doing all kinds of things…dropping off kids, picking up kids. For a while there we were in summer vacation, which is hell for working parents. It was a different schedule every week, and it just felt like every time I would sit down, my phone would ping or somebody would need me and the week would be gone.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica, help us understand this in the broader context. I mean, this is not an unfamiliar story to you. Why does this happen to women like Marti?
JESSICA CALARCO: Yeah, so other countries have invested in policies that help people manage their care needs and responsibilities. They have policies that allow people to live with dignity, to access economic opportunities, and to contribute equitably and sustainably to a shared project of care. In the US, we instead tell people that they should be able to take care of themselves and their families without relying on the government or even their employers for support, but the reality is that we can’t just DIY society. Some people, maybe most obviously children, but also people who are sick, people who are elderly can’t fully take care of themselves, and some jobs don’t pay enough to allow people to take care of themselves as well. So, acknowledging these realities would essentially destroy this illusion of a DIY society. But in the US, we essentially managed to maintain the illusion by relying on women to fill in the gaps, to be that social safety net for our families and for our community, and even for our economy, essentially by taking care of the people who can’t take care of themselves. We get women to do that work in part by grooming them for caregiving roles from the time they’re old enough to hold a baby doll, but also by pushing them into caregiving roles and then denying them any support in meeting those roles.
AMY GALLO: Jessica writes about the slippery slope in her book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
AMY BERNSTEIN: She’s here to help Marti make sense of that “pretty big year,” as Marti called her LinkedIn post—or more like a year plus away from paid work. They’re both here to help those of you who’ve ever been consumed by caregiving understand the forces that got you there. Here’s my conversation with them.
AMY GALLO: I’ll be back afterwards to chat with you about it.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Marti, you started looking for a new job as soon as you resigned. How did you set out? What did you want to accomplish each week and then tell us what actually happened?
MARTI BLEDSOE: I wanted to spend an hour or two a day on LinkedIn, looking around at folks in my network, what they were up to, following companies that might be in my line of work that I wanted to stay in, and working on all the things that it takes today to get a job because you need multiple versions of your resume so they can get past AI bots that are screening. You need your elevator speech of what you’re looking for and what you can do, and I wanted to be consulting. I really felt like, gosh, I can look for a job and I can bill out at my hourly rate and then this really won’t feel like too much of a bump.
AMY BERNSTEIN: But your time wasn’t spent just on finding your next job, right?
JESSICA CALARCO: No, not at all. In fact, it was amazing how the hours got eaten up. I was packing to move, moving, and unpacking for quite a bit of that time. I moved twice in the time that I wasn’t working—once in with my mother. Of all the ridiculous things I spent time doing at that point, I remember posting on Facebook to one of my networks, “Hey, I have 13 beautiful houseplants that are in great shape. I’m moving in with my mother. She has a cat. Can anybody watch these houseplants for 10 weeks?” Of course, the woman who volunteered lived 30 minutes away. So, I literally found myself arranging care for my houseplants. I was doing all kinds of things…dropping off kids, picking up kids. For a while there we were in summer vacation, which is hell for working parents. It was a different schedule every week, and it just felt like every time I would sit down, my phone would ping or somebody would need me and the week would be gone.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica, help us understand this in the broader context. I mean, this is not an unfamiliar story to you. Why does this happen to women like Marti?
JESSICA CALARCO: Yeah, so other countries have invested in policies that help people manage their care needs and responsibilities. They have policies that allow people to live with dignity, to access economic opportunities, and to contribute equitably and sustainably to a shared project of care. In the US, we instead tell people that they should be able to take care of themselves and their families without relying on the government or even their employers for support, but the reality is that we can’t just DIY society. Some people, maybe most obviously children, but also people who are sick, people who are elderly can’t fully take care of themselves, and some jobs don’t pay enough to allow people to take care of themselves as well. So, acknowledging these realities would essentially destroy this illusion of a DIY society. But in the US, we essentially managed to maintain the illusion by relying on women to fill in the gaps, to be that social safety net for our families and for our community, and even for our economy, essentially by taking care of the people who can’t take care of themselves. We get women to do that work in part by grooming them for caregiving roles from the time they’re old enough to hold a baby doll, but also by pushing them into caregiving roles and then denying them any support in meeting those roles.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Jessica writes about the slippery slope in her book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
AMY BERNSTEIN: She’s here to help Marti make sense of that “pretty big year,” as Marti called her LinkedIn post—or more like a year plus away from paid work. They’re both here to help those of you who’ve ever been consumed by caregiving understand the forces that got you there. Here’s my conversation with them.
AMY GALLO: I’ll be back afterwards to chat with you about it.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Marti, you started looking for a new job as soon as you resigned. How did you set out? What did you want to accomplish each week and then tell us what actually happened?
MARTI BLEDSOE: I wanted to spend an hour or two a day on LinkedIn, looking around at folks in my network, what they were up to, following companies that might be in my line of work that I wanted to stay in, and working on all the things that it takes today to get a job because you need multiple versions of your resume so they can get past AI bots that are screening. You need your elevator speech of what you’re looking for and what you can do, and I wanted to be consulting. I really felt like, gosh, I can look for a job and I can bill out at my hourly rate and then this really won’t feel like too much of a bump.
AMY BERNSTEIN
