In this episode of Struggle Care, host KC Davis speaks with Neha Ruch, founder of Mother Untitled and author of The Power Pause. Together, they explore the reality of modern motherhood, particularly for women who decide—or feel compelled—to pause their careers to care for their children. This conversation addresses the outdated stereotypes of stay-at-home moms and offers empowering, practical insights for navigating this unique chapter with confidence and clarity.
Show Highlights:
Neha’s personal story behind writing The Power Pause
What the “tradwife” movement misses—and who this book is really for
Why "stay-at-home mom" is an outdated and limiting term
How women can redefine productivity, identity, and success during a career pause
The hidden costs of idealized motherhood in media and social platforms
A breakdown of the personal, professional, and family goals women can set while caregiving
Financial planning tips and why couples must prepare for the pause together
The role of privilege, budgeting, and honest conversations with your partner
How to reclaim agency and dignity during motherhood—without losing ambition
Why it’s time to rewrite the narrative of caregiving and career on your own terms
Resources and Links:
📘 The Power Pause by Neha Ruch – Available wherever you get your books
🌐 Mother Untitled Website – Free resources including financial prep, postnups, and return-to-work guidance
📱 Follow Neha on Instagram
Connect with KC Davis:
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KC Davis 00:00:05 Hello Sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle Care. Your host, KC Davis. I am here to talk with Nina Ruch We're going to talk about The Power of Pause, which is her new book about going through that period of motherhood where you make the decision or perhaps feel forced to make the decision to quit your job. Pause your career. Stay at home with kids for a time frame. Nihar, thank you so much for being here.
Neha Ruch 00:00:33 Oh, thanks for having me. This is I've so admired your work for so long. So this is an honor.
KC Davis 00:00:38 Well, I've looked at your book, and I wish I would have had it when I had decided to stay home with my kids. You know, the loss of identity and figuring out your footing and your routine and all this kind of stuff like that, really. And worrying about your career like that is exactly what your book is about. That's exactly what I had to fumble through. And here's where I really wanted to start, because this is what I love about your book.
KC Davis 00:01:00 I want to talk for a second about trad wives, because especially with the cultural moment that we're having, I feel like there's this interesting polarization where we really have kind of like the rise of trad wives in this conservative era that are talking about, oh, motherhood is the best thing you could do and really just focus on your family. And it's, you know, that's just so enlightened and so beautiful. And that's what we really want to do. That's what we were made for, and rightly so. There has obviously been a push against that, that like, that's not what our identity, you know, amounts to. You know, we have careers, we have lives, we have identity. But your book is speaking to a place that I don't think a lot of people are speaking to, which is, okay, maybe I'm someone who is not interested in being a trad wife by any stretch of the imagination. And yet we live in a society where I kind of. I can't afford to work right now.
KC Davis 00:02:02 I need to make the decision to stay home with my kids. Or maybe I'm not interested in trad wife messaging at all, but I also didn't expect to have a child with disabilities that required me staying at home full time. Or perhaps I'm just someone who wanted to take those years. You know, I really want to be there when the kids get off the bus. I really want to be there and do full time sort of parenting in those first few years. But I'm not a trad wife, and I don't think there's a lot of resources like your book, that are going to talk to women about making the choice to become the primary parent for however long, and how to go through that in a way that isn't this brain numbing, like, isn't it so beautiful? Isn't this what we were made for? So I just wanted to start there about and I don't even know what the question is, But like, was that part of what you were thinking about or reflecting on is kind of the lack of people talking to women who are either wanting to make this choice or being forced to make this choice.
KC Davis 00:03:09 That is not trad, wifey.
Neha Ruch 00:03:13 Well it's funny. I have a lot to say on this topic as you can imagine, but I started this work in 2017 before the trad wife hashtag, and I'm going to call it a hashtag, very intentionally emerged right at the time. I had had my first son, and it was the height of the lean in movement and the height of the girlboss era. And I like the women you describe just now. Right, who had clocked in a decade in my career, had a really equitable relationship with my partner, got a lot of value from, you know, be participating in the world fully, had a child and wanted more time with him. And I also wanted to sort of figure out who I was going to be in this next chapter. I was really leaning into it. I was like, oh, this is actually a really interesting moment for me to figure out what my next step is. And it was in my case, a privilege to choose, which I'm glad you called out.
Neha Ruch 00:04:05 1 in 3 women are pausing their careers today because of the cost of childcare. Regardless, I chose to initially downshift my career to two days a week, part time. Eventually I'd pause, but as soon as I did, I started hearing, are you giving up? Are you going to be bored all day? And why did you even bother with business school? And I meanwhile, was meeting all these women similar to the ones you described, who had a number of different reasons why they were sort of facing these bold choices in which they were wanting to make shifts in their career. Some of them were going part time, some of them were going freelance, some of them were fully pausing and saying, you know what? I know how smart I am. I know I will be able to find my way back, but right now I need or want to be home for a period of time. And none of them were serving their husbands cocktails. At the end of the day, all of them were accomplished and interested and interesting, and none of it matched the character.
Neha Ruch 00:04:55 And so I started to figure out, like, where is the character coming from? And like go back to 2016 and there was all this great content about the traditional working mother. But anyway, I looked for the stay at home mother dialogue. Right? It was still left back in the 1950s with this like portrait. And by the way, we did a number of research. We did a research study and did a number of questions around perceptions. And one of them was like, what do you think of as a stay at home mom? And the number one answer was June Cleaver was literally an apron clad caricature from the 1950s.
KC Davis 00:05:27 And also like, literally a fictional character.
Neha Ruch 00:05:29 A fictional character, which, by the way, was interesting in contrast, because we asked, well, who do you think of as a working mother? And they said, Michelle Obama, who, by the way, is had a very non-linear career in an empowered way, whatever. And then and then from there it was Sheryl Sandberg and Beyonce, like very real, very prominent characters, which just speaks to the fact that, like, we have all these prominent women in the workforce that we're talking about, but we've sort of left anyone choosing to take their foot off the gas.
Neha Ruch 00:05:55 Back in the 1950s. So that was actually the caricature I was contending with then when I started this, because I said, okay, well, I'm literally at home with my kids right now, and so I can't like, do a huge thing, but I'm going to start planting the seeds. And that's that was the beginning. I was going to start profiling women who I was meeting who were like the true real woman who was making these complicated choices, and none of them matched that outdated caricature. And that's where this all started. And then my book, I got my book deal and it was 22, 23. And that's where the trad wife trend was post-pandemic and sort of in this conservative ideologies started to appear. And my biggest fear was this very slim minority of human beings who got a lot of pride and joy from homesteading. I've realized that they're going to make money off of it. By the way, all of them are working. They're like, I'm going to make a killing off of presenting these beautiful images Is in a line and it's going to catch fire, and then I'm going to do it more.
Neha Ruch 00:06:54 And my biggest fear was, oh wait, they're going to bring it up again. Like just when I've made progress and starting to like, blur the lines between stay at home and work and bring us together over the reality that, like, we're actually more alike than we're different. We're taking pauses, we're taking shifts, we're taking sprints, we're all dealing with this. There's going to be this like tiny little sliver that is not representative of the majority.
KC Davis 00:07:19 Yeah, it is interesting, you know, when you talk about like, the lack of I don't want to say like role models, but like sort of public understanding, like figures of the quote unquote stay at home mom, which we'll talk in a second about just that moniker by itself. But it is fascinating to me that our view of the classic stay at home mom is a fictional view. And our and then we have these, like, real world examples. And so let's talk for a second about that name. Stay at home mom. What did you find as you were writing this book about that little moniker?
Neha Ruch 00:07:53 Well, I think the first thing I found was just through lived experience, right? Like when? Ten years ago.
Neha Ruch 00:07:59 Nine years ago, when someone asked me what I was, it just didn't fit. Like the label didn't fit for all the reasons we've talked about. It just conjures up this like very dated image. And it's too heavy with the stigma of someone who's giving up. And, you know, the women I was meeting felt similarly. And by the way, as I was meeting more women, none of them, they all had their hand in something, right? Either they were doing like personal growth and personal development, or they were volunteering, or they were working on a little project that they'd always wanted to do. And, you know, it was like me planting seeds for something that might turn into something down the line. They were freelancing or consulting, or they were, by the way, just doing the work of, like, their kid has diabetes and they're sitting on the phone with insurance policy and, like, trying to get their kid covered and like, writing protocol for the school nurse to how to like.
Neha Ruch 00:08:49 You know, none of it felt not intellectual or not creative. So, you know, from a purely, anecdotal perspective, it just didn't match. It just felt too black and white for the reality of the modern woman. Then the piece second piece was when I started researching like from a sociolinguistics perspective, stay at versus working. Right? Working is a verb. Stay at implies stop not moving stuck in one place. And so, you know, I think you start to see like the flaws in that language. Like if you've ever spent a moment with children, like you're not staying in one place. And so there's like a socio linguistic problem and then there's this sort of it's inherited all these cultural tropes. And to your point around fact versus fiction in what our imagery is, it's all fiction, right? Like even those examples are so polarized, they're so extreme when the reality is that we're sort of more of us are just trying to figure out the in between then not, you know, 1 in 3 women who are working out of the home are going to pause in the next two years.
Neha Ruch 00:09:55 One and two are going to downshift their careers to less than 20 hours. So freelance flexible contract, you name it, entrepreneurial. 90% of women who are on pause are going to return. And so you're looking at is just like we just need more fluid language around it as opposed to like these black and white labels. Like I like to say right now I get to be with my kids or I.
KC Davis 00:10:17 Yeah, it does have also like a connotation of permanency. Like when I think about growing up and I think about kids that would be like, oh, my mom's a stay at home mom. It was like that woman was in for the long haul. Like she did not go back to work. She just continued to, you know, whatever, which is fine. But that is different than what you're speaking to, which is women who have thriving careers, who decide to take several years, intend to go back, whether it's in the same career or different career, Like, it really is just about kind of the trenches of child rearing in those first, however many years.
KC Davis 00:10:51 And I do think that that you're right, it doesn't quite fit. And I run into this on line two when I want to speak to certain like mothering phenomenons, because there are so many things about stay at home experience that I understand and live and can speak to because of my life situation. And yet I write books like and yet I make money. And I have a, you know, LLC and a business and all this kind of stuff. And so occasionally I'll be like talking about something. And the only way to explain quickly, like why I'm like talking about this is to say like, as a stay at home mom, whether I'm, you know, talking about being the primary parent or my kids getting off the bus or whatever it is. Right? And people be like, yeah, but you work, you're a working mom. I'm like, okay, so like you said linguistically. Technically, yes, I am a working mom because I have a career that I that like, pays me money to produce goods and services.
KC Davis 00:11:54 But I'm not a working mom in the definition of the sense of like, I go to an office from 9 to 5 and I'm having to juggle my responsibilities to a boss and my responsibilities to a house. Like, that's not my reality. Like, I work for myself. It's all freelance. I have very little like I have total control over my schedule. I could stop working for three months if I wanted to like. And some of that is me. Some of that is my husband's job and, you know, our financial privilege. But it's like there's not really something that fits kind of what I do. And now that both of my kids are in school, it is like I get up. I'm the one that gets them on the bus. I drop them off at school, and then I sit down until 330 and work.
Neha Ruch 00:12:36 Right. And which is a reality of many women, which then why say, you know, I say at the end of the book, if I do my job right, when my daughter grows up and someone says, like, do you have a stay at home mom or a working mom? She'll be like, I'm no idea what you're talking about.
Neha Ruch 00:12:51 Like, I know what she cared about. I know she was present and, you know, it all worked like that's all I want for them, because I just, I think, you know, even the fact that we have to identify with these camps, stay at home, are working is divisive. And if we know anything about the moment in time we're in is what we need more than anything is to come together. Right? Is to like, agree. Caregiving is hard. Managing our careers is hard. Whether you're pausing or shifting and you're trying to keep yourself in the game or, you know, and so then, you know. And by the way, if someone says, what do you do? It's not like you're like, oh, I'm a working mom. You know, that's a hard thing to say. Like you would say right now, you know, I'm mostly with my kids and I'm working on a book alongside, like, I and I think giving ourselves that ability to say, first of all, right now, like this a moment in time and this is my choice.
Neha Ruch 00:13:41 Like, this is sort of the blend of what I'm doing, like actually doing with my time. It just it unifies us. And I think we need that because what happens for women is they we face these really. And you described it yourself in your own experience. You you face a decision point, you know, whatever that is, whether it's financial, whether it's emotional, whether it's stress in the home, whether it's family relocation, it's logistical, a layoff. And we think that we've just it's all over like we've we're giving up everything and or we're giving up our ambition. We're giving up our feminism. And so this thing that should be purely about like what's right for us right now and what will we need and want to keep ourselves sort of connected, certainly. And like thriving during that time. But how can we, like, make the best right choice for right now for us and our family? The block becomes, well, if I do this, I go into that side of the camp and that side of the camp is cut out and count it out.
Neha Ruch 00:14:37 And I think that's where we get a really scary place for women, because it feels like our identities are we're going to become invisible and the people are going to judge us. The harder our hardest are our friends.
KC Davis 00:14:47 So let's talk about some of the challenges that women face when they decide to take this pause, because your book really speaks to, I think one of the biggest ones that I experienced, of course, is that loss of identity. Like, and again, you talk about this in a way that I think is really helpful because it is a trad wife talking point to say your identity is in your career and it should be in and it's like, that's shut up. That's not what we're doing. But the truth is, we do get a good bit of our identity from our career, and that's not a bad thing. I think that's the difference. It's like we're not saying that's bad. Everyone gets identity from everything. You get identity from your hobbies, from your friends, from where you live, or how you grew up from the job that you have.
KC Davis 00:15:27 Like all of that is pieces of our identity. And it is difficult to go from the type of productivity Activity that is time based, linear and has a big payoff. Lots of finish lines, right? I finish a project at work. Even if you're a cashier, it's like, okay, but I finished my shift. Okay, I got a raise. I got a promotion. I got a better schedule because I've been working towards X, Y, Z. Like, there are these. It all feels like there's this, for lack of a better term, like that big dopamine hit in your brain to kind of produce something. And the hardest thing for me, when I took that pause and started being at home all the time with my kids, was that everything there is cyclical and monotonous, and there is no big. Like, you could clean your house and feel that payoff of a clean house. But if you're also taking care of young kids, it's like, okay, it's going to look messy again tomorrow and you get really discouraged by that.
KC Davis 00:16:31 Or at least I did. And so talk to me for a second about preparing women for that struggle.
Neha Ruch 00:16:38 Yeah. There's two pieces that you talked about. The first part was the identity, right. Which I think I want to address really quickly because that's huge. And it is like the universal stumbling block, kind of like we were talking about, like, how do you answer the question, what do you do? The reason it's universal is because it speaks to how well I've identified with all of these things for so long, and that's been like my pithy identifier, and it sort of held my place in the world. Who am I without it? And, you know, of course, we talk about like, that's why so much of the book is scripts to be able to say like, this is just the language so that you can hold this a little bit more lightly. But part of it is also to know that this is temporary and to say all of that stuff goes with you, like if you were a cashier, like the organization, the communication, the empathy, all those skills, the parts of your job that you like to bring with you and now you're entering a chapter that you're going to add to it a layer of new skill, right? New skill, new interests, and you get to come back and redefine this.
Neha Ruch 00:17:32 But your ambition is wrapped up in the fact that you made. You built a set of accomplishments, and now you're trusting yourself to sort of do the right thing for you and your family. Or what if that is indeed, it's like aligned with your values and you're going to be really intentional. And this is the second part that I think what happens, and it's a trap we all fall into, is we have been measured by salary bumps and promotions and like, we know what we're supposed to do. And if you can enter this stage of life knowing I am going to grow like this is another part. Like this isn't just about me raising my kids. I'm going to raise myself alongside them right? This and that is so much why this book is called The Power. It's not called the Career Paths for Family life. It's called the power paths because you're going to gain, if you are intentional about it, your own sense of clarity, your own interests, your own expansion in your network. But you do have to go into it agreeing with yourself and agreeing to the mindset that this is not a career ender.
Neha Ruch 00:18:29 This is a moment where you're going to build. And when you do that, then you say, okay, well, if my success was I need to win this many clients or I need to write this many articles, what is success? And the number one trap becomes, well, my success becomes my kids behavior, how clean my house is and how healthy like my marriage is on any given day. And like, let's start with the the marriage part. Like that's work that like let's table that one. But the kids in the house are like surefire ways to feel like a failure. And so then you get into this moment of like, I'm pouring myself in and I feel stuck and I'm not moving. And so that whole section about gaining your footing starts with, well, how can you enter the stage of life deciding that you might not be able to teleport to this like future version of you tomorrow, but how can you start to say use this time to say for so long people have assigned me success metrics, and now I'm actually going to be intentional about what does success actually look like for me? And if you do nothing else, if you do not read the book.
Neha Ruch 00:19:31 I always say just like goals feel so lofty and it feels so hard to wrap your head around until you take a little while to write in great detail who you would like to like. Ideal day in five years. Who do you want to be spending time with? How do you want to feel in your body, in your house and your mind? How do you want your relationships to feel? What's important to you? What's not? Not because you're going to be that person tomorrow while you're at home with like a four and one year old. But it starts to leave clues as to like, oh, these are some professional goals I have. These are some personal goals I have and these are some family goals I have. Right? And from there you can sort of back into. And I think this part is really important, especially when you're in the thick of it. Whether you have a 12 year old working through a diagnosis or you're going through college applications with an 18 year old, or you're at home like post maternity leave with two kids, if you're feeling in it, then like, how do I move myself forward against these personal, professional and family goals is like, break it into like tiny, small, measurable increments, meaning, you know, personal goal for me was I wanted to get back into writing.
Neha Ruch 00:20:35 I had been in strategy for so long. I lived in PowerPoint decks. I didn't want to be doing that anymore. I wanted to write, okay, how can I do that? I can write commit to three short posts a week on a free website. Like that's all I did on a personal. I wanted to really heal reactivity, which is like just in my bloodlines. I wanted to work on that during this time in my life. And it was I'm going to listen to a podcast every week about women and anger or women and emotion or communication and on family. I wanted to feel like that future version was like a silly household, like I wanted. And so it was, I'm going to have a dance party every single Monday. That's it. And that was my way of feeling like I'm being intentional with this time in my life. It's not happening to me. The house might be a mess. The kids are eating chicken nuggets. My three year old is pushing my one year old, so it's not like they're like perfect binding.
Neha Ruch 00:21:25 But I still feel like I myself will look back on these days and it will feel successful to me.
KC Davis 00:21:31 And I want to kind of tie that back to when we were talking about like, June Cleaver being a fictional character is that I feel like what happens if we don't think intentionally? The way that you're describing is that subconsciously our metrics become the societal metrics for quote unquote, stay at home mom, which I would say is stuck in the 1950s, but it didn't even exist in the 1950s. And your book talks to this about how this version of the 1950s housewife isn't real and never was real. And I'm not saying women didn't stay at home in the 1950s, but I mean, this idea that a woman should be able to keep the house clean and then the kids happy and the meals made and feel fulfilled and go to book club like that version is made up. Can you talk about that for a minute?
Neha Ruch 00:22:28 Well, it's funny because June Cleaver is certainly like a dangerous portrait, but like, then what we've come up with is this new ideal, right? Which is like another fiction which and I love social media.
Neha Ruch 00:22:41 It's let me I think it lets so many women explore their interests and connect and like all the things it should come with a PSA in motherhood, right? And one of those is when you're scrolling, you're taking a corner of one person's life and like they have a thriving business. I have another corner, which is like they do really nice meals. They're really attentive to their kids nutrition. Another one where someone has like a beautiful home and another one where they're very well dressed and another one with the kids are like, you know, killing it at soccer and and school and chess and all the things, and you put it all together and that becomes this new ideal. And what we don't realize is those are corners of everyone's life, meaning someone is letting something go behind the scenes. And I can use my own example, because when you get to the rhythms part of the book, I talk about how you can architect your day around the things that give you meaning, that make you feel productive in whatever way that means to you.
Neha Ruch 00:23:41 And for me, that was art that made me feel connected to my kids, that made me feel like, oh, I'm exerting my creativity. That made what you didn't see is yet like, I might do an art project, but I was consciously letting go of like very well curated meals, right? And I consciously had a conversation with my husband that said, this house is I'm not going to be able to pick it up all day long. We together, you get home because we are. And we didn't talk about the finances of this, but we are an interdependent organization. You partner working out of the home depends on me, so I can only do so much if I'm also going to keep myself feeling whole and healthy and these kids whole unhealthy, and we're going to do art. So instead of the like cleaning up that we're going to do that together at the end of the day because that's going to work. And let me use naps and night times for my own goals, right? Like and so there's all these choices we're all making behind the scenes, but we're only seeing what people are focusing on and we're putting it together.
Neha Ruch 00:24:35 And I think, you know, we inherit this flawed belief that, like, if you're a stay at home mom, you're super mom, right? And like, you have to earn your stripes now because you've you've given up your paid work. So now you're going to earn it with like doing all the things. And I think that that sadly is part of like our inherent undervaluing of how much actually goes into intentional care. Do all these many other things if like basic care is so quote unquote simple.
KC Davis 00:25:00 To your point about like everyone showing motherhood online in these corners, and it can really be very aesthetically pleasing and part of what I think, and obviously this isn't everyone, like some of us are just talking about motherhood, but one of the losses that that we sometimes feel when we transition from kind of our job outside the home to, you know, whatever we're doing in that pause period is that we're used to a lot of external validation. We have a boss telling us we're doing a good job.
KC Davis 00:25:32 We have clients giving us feedback. We have team members who, you know, want to work with us. We have, you know, we have someone there telling us, giving us external feedback and benchmarks about how we're going. And then all of a sudden you're like, alone in your home and there's throw up on your shirt and, you know, people could talk all day long about how, like, you know, you're doing the most important job in the world, but it's like there's no one there to tell you that. And I think sometimes there's this, like, I'm with you. Like, I love social media and like there's some pitfalls to it. And I think what drives a lot of women to make that overly aesthetic homemaking content is that they are looking for that validation that they have lost. They don't have anyone going into their home and going. Look at how beautiful this pantry is. You really shine. You are succeeding. You are great. But if you put a video of your pantry online and you make it look so beautiful and you make it look like you're on top of it and you're you will get those comments, you will get that feedback, you will get that encouragement and that validation.
KC Davis 00:26:46 And I don't like people. Some people use validation as like a four letter word like validation is important.
Neha Ruch 00:26:52 And pride is important. By the way, there is nothing wrong with if you get joy. This is not a knock on the women sharing the corners, right? Because. Because if they get joy from curating that pantry and that is a skill that they are mastering, and they are using Instagram as an outlet to explore that interest because they, you know, they were an accountant before. And now they've taken this is their outlet, their creative outlet that they can manage alongside family life. Then having pride in that is so exciting and important and being able to exert that. The tricky part of social media is the context, the lack of context that we're.
Neha Ruch 00:27:41 All yes, it's the and it's the.
KC Davis 00:27:43 Self-awareness of like, am I, you know, and it's not it's not like it's bad, right? But it's like every time you push that clutter out of the way to make that shop pretty.
KC Davis 00:27:52 And again, not that there's anything wrong with that. I do it sometimes. But being aware of, like you said, the larger context that you're painting where we're kind of trying to make something look a little more polished and beautiful in this and that because it just kind of does something for us, and we want it to be seen in a certain way. You can that can get really tricky, really fast, and it can go beyond just I feel pride in the way I have organized this.
Neha Ruch 00:28:21 And it's a two way communication. Right. Like I think we as the recipients have to. And this is why we can only control so much. Right. We can control how we perceive it and how we can look at it through the filter of I'm actively choosing my measures of productivity are different. I'm actively choosing to not do that because I really need my naps and night times to write, or I really need my naps. And you know, I'm making that choice and how that allows me. And I think that that deliberate so much of goals dignify our time, but they also allow us to really root in what's most important.
Neha Ruch 00:28:59 What am I going to optimize for, and what am I going to let go of? And or what am I going to get support on? Right? Like, there's this whole other piece of this equation, which is the real invisibility of the help and support systems people have. Right? Which also lends to the false ideal because we don't, you know, women are damned if they do. They're damned if they don't. If they show their, you know, their staff, then like they're torn down for the staff. If they show the staff, if they don't show the staff, it contributes to the mental health crisis. The mothers were like, oh, we're all supposed to do this. And there's no she's doing it without support. And we like, logically speaking, as we articulate this out loud, it sounds ridiculous, but we're going through it all. We're moving through it all so quickly that we're taking it in without even realizing. And so rapid fire, it's coming at us and we're internalizing it.
Neha Ruch 00:29:48 And we don't even realize, that this is work we have to do independently to rewrite the media has created these narratives that we've internalized and have compounded from June Cleaver to now. Right? So we're facing it from all directions. So it takes active rewriting. It takes active communication to our friends where like so much of this change happens between each other, where we say, like, we talk about the good, we talk about the parts we're proud of. And we are also like, oh, and I have like a mother's helper for a week, right?
KC Davis 00:30:22 So speaking of outsourcing things, that kind of brings us to the budget conversation, which you address in this book. And so tell me some of the like, like highlight for me, some of the, the biggest conversations and sort of avenues that you talk about in this book when it comes to budgeting for that power. Pause.
Neha Ruch 00:30:41 Yeah, I think I'm glad we're getting into it now, because I think it goes hand in hand with the help and support, whether the help is unpaid and it's from your partner or not, because to allow yourself to walk through a career shift where you're parting with your paid work, walk through it.
Neha Ruch 00:30:57 As a modern woman who's taken probably a lot of pride in being financially independent, to feel financially safe, to feel financially dignified, to feel like you have a seat at this table, that the household income is yours. Even if this is a financial no brainer for your family, you and your partner have to be planning for this together at least six months out. Meaning you're having. I mean, if it's not six months, it's three months. If you haven't done it and you're already like four years in, there's no time like today to, like, start. But you're ideally looking at the household income in and you're thinking about these are all the things we care about, right? Travel, food, kids classes, therapy, whatever your list is, those are like your budget categories. And you're essentially you're stepping into this almost like you would a company, right? Like it's an organization. It's the most complicated organization you will ever run. It's the most important. So you and your partner are looking at this together and you're having conversations about what do we really want? What do we value? This is your time to say, you know what? I'm like, really wanting to make a shift for the next two years.
Neha Ruch 00:32:05 Or your partner says, I really feel like our home is really stressful. What what can we do to eliminate the stress or that childcare budget line item is getting really significant, what are we going to do? Because what you're doing is you're having a conversation that is steeped in we together may want to make a change, even if it's one person leading it. It's you together are going to make a change. Okay, well, how are we going to make that change? And for some couples it's like, oh, really? I interviewed one couple who moved from the Bay Area to Virginia to offset. Like that was a big lifestyle change to offset the loss of income for some couples. It's crossing out travel and dining out for two years, right? And that's what they need to do. And even if it was, the math checks out and it actually makes a whole lot of sense, which it often does in the case of, you know, anyone making sort of less than sadly, like less than 100,000, $120,000 a year or these days because of the cost of childcare.
Neha Ruch 00:33:02 You are having a conversation about, if I make this shift, I'm putting myself in a vulnerable position, right? But I'm creating a lot of value. Like you, partner, working out of the home? Yes. Are contributing so much value through income, my value isn't going to be seen as much. But here's what it's going to look like. And this is, you know, in the case of my husband and I, he was running a company at the time, and that necessitated a lot of last minute travel. He could not have done that without a security blanket at home. Right. Without someone. He didn't have to think about like, oh, I can't go to Delaware, you know, because who's going to who's going to pick up the kids from school like that? Didn't that? And so this idea that he could single task outside of the home was a real privilege because of the person doing the care work in the home. And so having those conversations up front allows a couple of things.
Neha Ruch 00:33:55 It allows you to make conscious choices in the budgeting that you're doing together. You're not like, you know, woman who's pausing, saying, like, I'm going to, you know, cut my own hair now because I can't like, you know, I'm forgoing my income. It's you're still contributing value. It's it's a value to this household. You're also setting into place ideally like let's check back on this every year and see how it's feeling. So that the partner who's, you know, going to be continuing to do work out of the paid work, it doesn't feel like, oh my God, this is like forever and always going to be my role. The reason this comes up is because later when you're in the thick of it and you're like, oh wow, I really like I need support, I need breaks, like ideally this happens before two. You're having a conversation around, I need support. My work day, just like your work day has to end at some point. And so like to the point of like when I used to say to my husband, I'm not going to we're going to clean together at the end of the day because I did the care like I did that, and now we're going to clean together at the end of the day or you're going to cook.
Neha Ruch 00:34:57 We're going to think about ways they can support to because after sort of five or 6 or 7, we're both sort of sharing. Right. That's like one simple way. Or you may say, like, I need a babysitter 15 hours a week. Like to just to be able to invest that back into like some degree of sanity and like some degree of moving myself forward against those other goals. And you deserve just like the partner working out of the home deserve to feel healthy. You can't do your job without feeling healthy. And I think that that conversation becomes easier when you have an established foundation of we're both contributing value.
KC Davis 00:35:38 And I would even say that, like if you know that you're someone who might want to have kids and that may or may not include a pause, like, you can't have those conversations too early. Like when I met my husband, he was in school to become a therapist and so was I. And when we started having conversations about getting engaged, about getting married, about when we wanted to start a family, like one of the things that I expressed was that I thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom, or I at least wanted to take those first years.
KC Davis 00:36:09 And he literally I mean, he was in the middle of a master's degree, finished a master's degree, took the Lsat, and then went to law school. And that was entirely a decision based around me saying, I think there's going to be a time when I would like to not have to earn an income. And obviously that's there's, you know, a degree of support and privilege involved in that. It's not like I'm not saying like, okay, just do this, but just to point out that, like that conversation can happen very early because there are things that you can do to prepare for that trajectory, because he just literally came home one day and was like, I, here's what I want to do. I don't think that we could pull that off, you know? Or actually, it's not that we couldn't. He was like, I don't want to pull that off on a on one therapist salary. We could do it, but I don't want to. And so I want to make some changes to put myself in a different career position to prepare for, you know, the career trajectory that you're going to take.
Neha Ruch 00:37:08 Yeah, I love that honesty because I think we have been fed this sort of blind ambition, you know, with like no sort of holistic view on. Well, it has to include ambition, has to include real life, whatever you want that life to look like. And it may be where you want to live, right? It may be how much you want to travel, if that's important to you. Kids is a big one. Kids is a real big one. And how you want to raise them. And I think that that's, you know, money conversations have like are perceived as so sort of tricky and intimidating. I'm not going to go as far as to say, and I do call this out in the book like they're not romantic, but they are. They're so steeped in values, right? Like, they're so.
KC Davis 00:37:48 They are intimate. They may not be romantic, but they are intimate.
Neha Ruch 00:37:51 They're intimate, and it has to be there for you to feel financially safe. And if you do not feel safe, and I and I do call this out, like if you feel like your partner is not bought into this decision, it is not the time to make that decision.
Neha Ruch 00:38:04 It may be the time to invest in couples therapy, or have to have a financial planner involved, or continue to sort of have these dialogues. If one person has to make a change because of a neurodiverse child, or because of family relocation, or because of elder care issues, post nuptial agreements like great idea, you know, how can we destigmatize the idea that we enter contracts all the time in professional capacities? This is a way to feel like, oh, I'm stepping into this with a sense of confidence, so I don't have to worry about that one thing.
KC Davis 00:38:37 Yeah, the woman shouldn't be the one, the only one taking the risk. Like, and I loved how you mentioned. And I've heard people say this before, like, it's easy for people to maybe look at me and be like, well, you know, you are so privileged to have someone who is a high earner. And yes. However, my husband, like you could say I'm able to do a stay at home mom stuff because my husband's a high earner.
KC Davis 00:39:02 But it is also the case that my husband is able to be a high earner because I'm taking care of so much stuff here, like you said, like he can do a last minute trip, he can work long hours, he can work six days a week. He can do things that he would not otherwise be able to do. And he has ended up loving his career trajectory in and of itself. Like it wasn't just some big sacrifice, right? And it shouldn't just be me taking the financial risk and going, well, I'm going to support you. I'm going to take care of all this stuff so that you can have this huge salary and hopeful and hope that you don't divorce me or hope that you don't die. Right. Because it's not always divorce.
Neha Ruch 00:39:42 It's not always, you know, we're talking about it right now because we're you'll stay tuned. We're working on, like, a life insurance policy piece around how do you make sure that everyone's interests are protected because there's no time like the present to get alive, you know, because in a lot of these conversations have felt so daunting because people are like, well, I don't want to bet on bet against my marriage or I don't want to bet on that future possibility.
Neha Ruch 00:40:04 It's not betting on it. It's securing yourself so you can worry. Like you can actually enjoy this life a little bit.
KC Davis 00:40:12 And you I mean, I always say like, women need to know just some basic like you need to know if you live in a community property state, right? You need to know, like what happens to that 401 K that's in his name, right? Like what happens to your savings? What happens to the cash that he has somewhere that isn't reported what happened. Right. Like what do we need to be doing?
Neha Ruch 00:40:39 by the way, even that you say 401 K. And I'm thinking one of the things I try and get women to talk about is in is there are ways in which to mitigate the like spousal IRAs exist. So like essentially, if one partner pauses, the other partner can still be contributing to your 401 K like and which is like a lesser known fact because it's not discussed. But there it's a really I think that being able to have the conversations around privilege, around allow us to be able to say, none of these choices are not complicated, though, like, none of them come without.
Neha Ruch 00:41:15 And this is still real work. I think that's one of the, you know, one of the many tropes about stay at home motherhood that haunts women is that it's a luxury. And when we associate one side with luxury and there's a difference between I had the privilege to get to choose versus this is a luxury. When we associate one side with a luxury, we associate it with like, oh, it doesn't deserve support. And women internalize that, including myself, like, oh, I'm doing this. And it's a luxury, which means I can't get a babysitter. I don't want to get a baby, you know, because I'm.
KC Davis 00:41:44 Failing if I need a babysitter. Yeah.
Neha Ruch 00:41:47 And so we've sort of, I think for a long time we have shied away from this dialogue around empowering women. If they take this chapter for caregiving because we've been like, oh, well, those women over there are, you know, their lap in the lap of luxury, so they're fine when we know that that is not true.
KC Davis 00:42:04 Well, I can't thank you enough for this conversation. I think it's a really timely conversation, and I think it really fills a gap in kind of the discourse about women and careers and motherhood and all this kind of stuff. So if people want to follow you and know more about you, where can they get your book? Where can they tune in to your next projects? Tell us all of those things.
Neha Ruch 00:42:27 You can follow me at Mother Untitled on Instagram. You can come to Mother Untitled. Com where we have so many free resources like preparing your finances, post ups, how to interview when you're returning, and dignify the time away from the workforce with confidence when you can get the book wherever you love to get books.
KC Davis 00:42:46 Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
Neha Ruch 00:42:48 It was a pleasure. Thank you.