Hello and welcome to To Be a Boy with Me, Jolie Braley.
I'm me, Elliot Ray. So today we're going to be
talking about an article in British Vogue by Shante Joseph
called Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now.
And this article's been out for, it's been out for a few weeks
now, I think. And it's sort of picked up pace.
Lots of people have been talking about it.
It's got attention. It was written in British Vogue.
Shante Joseph is a British writer.
And it's been published, I think, in 20 odd countries now.
Shante was on CNN talking about it.
It seems to have really hit a nerve with a lot of people and
we thought it would be a really interesting topic for this
podcaster. Nelliot and I would like to chew
the fat a bit on it. So I'm going to, I'll, I'm going
to have a little go at a little summary of what it made me.
Think going. The thing I took away from it
actually is that I mean it. Firstly, Shantae Joseph, I
think, is an amazing, amazing writer.
She has this knack of hitting on something very current and doing
it in a way that is so accessible and always fun.
She's a she, you know, she's just a fun human.
You can tell she's a fun human, but she makes everything really
accessible. And yet what she's talking about
has so many layers, and it's really complicated and nuanced.
And that's one of the reasons why I think this has really
taken off is because it's made people really reflect on lots of
different aspects of male and female heterosexual
relationships. And, you know, we've been
talking for a long time about the fact that heterosexual
relationships don't always work for women.
In the vast majority of cases, they're more unhappy in a
heterosexual relationship. They don't live as long.
I heard Scott Galloway saying on something this morning that the
research shows that when a widower's husband dies, she
actually is happier after he's died than she was when she was
married to him. And then so, you know, we have
known for quite some time that relationships aren't necessarily
working for women the way that they are working for men.
And so the first thing I thought when reading this is, come on,
women. Like you're kicking back against
the thing that lots of women of my generation have pushed to one
side and pretended isn't happening.
And you're saying enough now. I'm not going to stand for this.
Yeah, so did. Did you feel, were you, were you
celebrating the article, were you celebrating the idea or did
you also feel sad as well? I felt both of those things at
the same time, somewhat. Part of me felt proud of women
for not standing for this anymore.
And then another part of me, you know, I'm raising boys as well,
so I have a personal investment in this.
Another part of me felt deeply sad about the fact that we are
being driven further and further apart, men and women, and that
we seem to have got to a position where we are blaming
each other for lots of our problems.
And I think that is also part of why this article exists is
because it's not just about the fact that relationships aren't
working for women. It's about the fact that men and
women are getting really good at blaming each other and making
each other the enemy. And we're not each other's
enemy. We need to find better ways to
work together to find solutions to many of the problems that
we're experiencing. So what did you think about age?
Because obviously we are, I don't want to say mature, but
we've lived a little bit of life, right?
We've lived life. Experienced might be a better
word. What do you think in regards to
how this article resonates, translates to different women at
different stages of their lives? For example, what is the impact
or feeling on younger women who are maybe just finishing
university, early 20s, just starting to date?
Is there a difference between how this article resonates with
them to someone who is in their 40s?
We have a partner and a couple of kids.
Oh definitely. There would be some women my age
who won't understand it because when I was younger it definitely
felt that having you were worthless without a partner.
There was. And I know that when I in my
30s, I broke up with somebody and I thought, oh, I'm going to
end up lonely. No, nobody's going to want to be
with me. That's it.
You know, I'm sort of on the rubbish pile now.
I'm going to be a spinster and oh, like there's nothing worse
than that. How?
You know, nobody wants me. And I look back on that now and
think, Oh my word, what was I doing?
Why did I think that that you were definitely you had you, it
was projected onto you by others.
And I remember people saying, oh, well, you know, you could
just marry somebody who will have some money and they're so
don't you don't need to worry about it too much, you know, as
if, you know, that partnership was all that should really
matter to me. I don't think girls growing up
have that same messaging. I think that messaging is
different. So their experience of
relationships is is different from mine.
I mean, I don't know many girls, you know more than me growing
up. And then I have very few
interactions with teenage girls at all, sadly.
I'd love to, I'd love to talk to more.
So, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know what they're thinking, but
I would expect that the messaging they're getting from
society and from their parents is not one day you will get
married and you will have children.
The messaging is more sisters can do it for themselves.
You know, like you don't need a man.
You're going to be OK. A man is a nice addition to your
life, you know, if if you're heterosexual, but it's not a
necessity. Whereas it felt like that for
me. Yeah, yeah.
So listeners, I'm going to speak my thoughts on this, but please
don't cancel me because I am very, very conscious that I'm a
man and I don't really make a habit of trying to tell women
how to feel. But I'm going to talk about some
of the thoughts that I've had since.
So let me start on reflecting on acknowledging that, yes, I think
as you said, relationships and marriages, long term
partnerships are much better for men.
Like, I think we live longer and women live shorter, so there's
obviously something going wrong there and there is obviously
something we need to, as society and also individuals, unpick and
work through to make our relationships as a whole just
work better for women and for everybody.
So acknowledging that. But I was thinking in this
narrative, is it another example of telling women what they
should do and what they should be?
Because I feel like years ago it was you're shamed if you're not
married with children at this age.
And then now it's like it's embarrassing if you've got a
boyfriend. So it's another version of this
is how you should live your life.
And I also thought about where's that embarrassment coming from?
Because I don't think it's coming from men like I, I'm
assuming here the women that are embarrassed about having a
boyfriend. I'm not embarrassed by men
looking at their social media and thinking they've got a
boyfriend. So it's coming from men.
I think they're embarrassed or they feel like other women are
judging them for having a boyfriend.
And so is this another version of telling women how they should
be living their lives versus you can just be whatever you want to
be. And if that works for you, then
that's OK. I think that's a really
interesting thought. I guess when you push back
against anything that's had to like anything that's culturally
normalized, you tend to go to another extreme before you find
a middle ground. And I wonder if that's what's
happening here, that younger women are going, screw that for
a bag of peanuts. I'm not having any of it.
And they're going completely the other way to the absolute
extreme that they can. And eventually we'll come back
to the middle, which will hopefully be a place where we
can find more equality in relationships than what we've
had historically. So I think yes, it, you know,
it, it could be another form of telling women what they should
and shouldn't be doing and women policing other women.
We're really good at doing that, really good at policing each
other. And that's not healthy or
helpful. But I do think that something
did need to change that relationships couldn't carry on
the way they have been doing. And we've been having the
conversation for a while about unpaid labour, in particular
women doing the vast majority of the unpaid labour and it's still
very little is changing. We know in the UK that women do
almost one hour per day more of the unpaid labour compared to
men. That's data from the Office of
National Statistics and that doesn't include the emotional
labour and it doesn't include the mental labour.
And I do think for some women, they're recognizing that you get
into a relationship and you essentially giving over your
time and energy to somebody else rather than yourself.
And women tend to in relationships give their whole
selves and then beg for crumbs of the please just give me
something a little bit of love and not cut that just couldn't
continue. Yeah.
And two positions that I was considering is are some people
reading it and their take away is they are against the concept
of having a boyfriend. Like, you know, the men, men are
trash kind of movement narrative.
Yeah. Is it?
And I think it's both. I think it's partly the concept
of having a boyfriend or a partner is corny and goes
against a lot of women's values as a whole, politics, I would
say, as a whole. But also there's the individual.
Like I know a lot of women have posted their boyfriend on social
media and that boyfriend's has another girlfriend.
So it's like that particular boyfriend is going to embarrass
me. And what what?
Zoran Mamdani responded. He was asked about the article,
the new New York mayor, and someone asked him about the
article. And he said, you know, if your
boyfriend's embarrassing you, you should probably find a new
boyfriend. Yeah.
And I thought that was interesting because I think that
talks to the whole, yes, some men are not good, right?
Some boyfriends are not good, some girlfriends are not good.
But in this instance, some boyfriends are not good.
And so we, I guess we have to be careful about introducing people
onto our social media and standing next to them because
that is inviting them into our life as part of our identity.
And that footprint as we know now doesn't go away.
We can delete the picture, but someone's going to screenshot it
and save that picture. So that person is potentially in
your life story now forever with social media.
And I think there is definitely something to be said for getting
to a level of trust as much as you can with that person before
you do that. So my wife and I, we met in a
band many moons ago now, 2008, and Instagram wasn't around like
it is now, but Facebook was around and she was very careful
about not announcing our relationship to the point where
we were doing gigs. We were like touring the UK, do
lots of stuff, right? People didn't know we were
together until we put up our one year wedding anniversary picture
on Facebook. She waited until a year after
you were married. She.
Waited until our first anniversary of our wedding to be
like, yeah, this guy's all right.
I accept him now. Oh, that is brilliant.
For me, I, I wasn't too bothered, like I probably would
have introduced earlier, but you know, I'm not a massive picture
taker anyway. So it didn't, it didn't, didn't
bother me either way. And I was, you know, I didn't
care and I was like, we're, but we're happy in our relationship.
I don't really care if people don't know.
And actually it was quite nice that people didn't know because
we could turn up as professionals and they weren't
then like looking at us as a couple.
They were just looking at us as band mates and we were working
together. And so for that actually worked
quite well and it was quite good.
But I remember we posted the picture and some people were
like, what the hell, You guys are together?
I've known you for like 8 years, you're married.
And then some people were like, congratulations on your wedding.
Like this was a year ago. So you weren't invited.
But you know, and so I do think there's something in, in keeping
that quiet, like protecting your relationship, you know, like not
everything has to be out there for a variety of different
reasons. It may be because it's very new
and you don't know that person yet.
It may be, you know, a lot of people believe in evil eye and
people looking at their relationship and wishing bad on
it and stuff like that. Some that's some people's
beliefs. So there's that too.
But the bigger thing I took from the article was more about I
think a lot of a lot of views and politics now, a lot of
narrative that I think has been prevalent over the last few
years for women has been a lot around independence.
Obviously recognizing, as you said, all the negative
statistics around relationships or the negative things that men
do or don't do in a relationship and the freedom to be able to be
single and not be partnered up, which is great.
And we should celebrate that. And I think there are some like
influencers who who feature in the article or have spoken
around the article who have built their brand, if you like,
on being, I don't want to say a feminist because I think that's
too, too narrow, but being quite anti man and building their
narrative on Galbos. And I've kind of made it on my
own, you know. And so the concepts then of
being partnered up doesn't match because if my narrative to
everyone else is you can do it on your own, you can be
independent, yeah, men are trash or we just don't really need
them anymore. And let's do it together as as
girls and as women. Cool.
Then having a boyfriend who may pay half the mortgage, who may
have paid for that deny, who may have supported you emotionally
and mentally and physically as good partners.
Do I think part of that is then taking away from the narrative
of I did. I did this by myself and I think
that was 1 influencer who was commented either that article or
another article that I read who said they didn't want to tell
their followers they had a boyfriend because they would
then be seen as they haven't achieved their success by
themselves. So I think there's this kind of
idea of real success is that you you've done it by yourself and
if a man's helped you, that's corny and it kind of takes away
from your value if you like. And then also the original point
in regards to as a concept, I don't really like men right now.
Well, I found this one individual man who's actually
OK, but then can I introduce that one individual man into my
life when I've been selling the idea of we don't like men as a
concept? Yeah.
Have you heard of the term hetro fatalism?
Yes, this is new to me, but I read what it meant.
It's a term for the feeling of resignation and frustration that
heterosexual relationships are often doomed to fail, yet people
continue to engage in them. It describes the emotional
exhaustion and hopelessness that some straight women feel about
dating men, characterised by a deep seated disappointment with
men's behaviour coupled with a continued, often weary pursuit
of romantic connection with them.
Which I'm so elated that somebody coined it.
But when I looked up, like common expressions of what
heterophatalism would be, every single one of them rang true for
me and my female friends. So making jokes about men are
trash, but still swiping right on dating apps, like amongst
women when we're all together, you know it.
You know you're going to get a laugh if you make a joke about a
man being useless or rubbish. Everyone will chuckle along
lamenting one's attraction to men with shame or embarrassment.
Yes, like any women I know that are single in particular are
like, oh God. And you know, and it says
fantasizing about queer relationships as a way to escape
the emotional labor of heterosexual ones.
Yes, like the number of women I know that say God I wish I was a
lesbian. Feeling a sense of futility in
dating because of repeated disappointments and mismatched
expectations and a feeling of being stuck in a cycle of dating
because of the deep desire for a romantic connection despite the
perceived futility of it all. Absolutely true for me and my
female friends. And none of those jokes you
would make in front of men, We keep them.
You know, when the women are together, we say things, they
just roll off the tongue and stuff like that.
And I think that's the same for all women when they're together.
And so I think this has been happening, this move away from
it being cool to have a boyfriend for quite a while
behind closed doors. And now we're seeing it
translate into social media and the way that people are hiding
boyfriends. I also, I mean, I think the
social media aspect is really interesting because I think
social media has had an impact on so much of our behaviour.
When I was like 1920, all I did was get drunk almost constantly.
I'm not like celebrating that and telling people it's cool,
but that's what I did. I was in the pub all the time
drinking. And now you go past universities
and all the bars have closed and nobody's really doing that
anymore. And I think partly that's
because firstly they seem to be a far healthier generation, but
also because I think part of it is you don't want that to be
documented. You absolutely sloshed, you
know, falling over somewhere and you don't want it to be stay
with you for eternity. And so the social media is
influencing their behaviour and drinking, and I think it
potentially is also influencing people's behaviour in
relationships. I think it started to filter
through these messages of being in a relationship is not good
for you. And also this need to be seen to
be an independent woman. I'm an independent woman.
I mean, maybe that song has a lot to answer for.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also, Beyoncé then did bills, bills, bills.
Yeah. Which is like, can you pay my
bills? So the contradiction is crazy.
Yeah. Like, I want to be independent
and celebrate that call. Then also, I'm only going to
date you if you could pay my bills.
Yes. But you see, we've also come
from a situation where women were doing the vast majority of
the, you know, going back to, I think unpaid labour is a big
part of this though. We go back to a phase where, you
know, point in time when women were doing absolutely the lion's
share of the unpaid labour, the cooking, cleaning, soft paying,
the caring, but there was an unwritten expectation that then
the man would do the vast majority of the earning, the
external labour to bring the money home.
And we're not in that position anymore.
One in one in four couples, women are the primary earner and
when they are the primary earner, they tend to do more of
the unpaid labour. So we're in a situation now
where women are falling to pieces because we are still
doing the vast majority of the unpaid labour and we are now
expected to be independent women who can earn their keep and be
financially independent. So we've got to do both of those
things simultaneously. So back when we had this
unwritten agreement where men would bring home the bacon and
the women would cook it, at least we were both doing similar
amounts of work, just in different spheres.
And I'm not saying I want to go back there.
Absolutely don't. I'm just saying that transition
has been really slow. Women are doing a lot more of
the paid work, and men haven't on average, kept pace with the
other side. And so it does feel like a real
kickback to me. And that nowhere was this more
apparent than during the pandemic.
And I feel like the pandemic has sort of put rocket up the ass of
this because we saw so clearly in households when people were
stuck at home that women would like falling apart mentally.
Because the only time the unpaid labour was shared between
mothers and fathers was when the mother was continuing to do paid
work and the father was furloughed.
Then it was shared equally the unpaid labour.
Women were interrupted during their paid work on average every
hour. Men were interrupted every three
hours. The government, for goodness
sake, put out an advert to tell everybody to stay at home and
the image was of a woman doing the hoovering and the unpaid
labor and the man was lying on the sofa.
No way. Like, you know, it was just
everywhere and everywhere you look, women were falling apart
because they were doing, trying to keep it all together, the
emotional labour, the mental labour, the domestic labour and
the paid labour. And I think that has potentially
forced people to sort of see these inequalities that really
exist and think, I don't want that for me.
I don't want my life to look like that and it's a kickback
against those things. I did a talk 2 days ago and got
a really interesting question. So the audience were people who
share family networks in companies.
And I did my talk about engaging dads in family networks.
And at the end, this lady put her hand up and asked a question
about how do they talk to the dads from the angle of when you
prioritize childcare or find a better balance between your work
and your life and you are active equal parents at home, it's
potentially going to impact your career.
Like how do they approach that conversation with the men
because they see that that is a barrier to those men doing what
they should be doing at home. And I just, I spoke about
consequence, the fact that I don't think as men, we've had
conversations about consequences and what the result of our
decisions could be, especially now.
So maybe 15 years ago, there wasn't so much of a consequence
of prioritizing work. And I say prioritizing not not
discounting households needs, financial contributions and
whatnot. What I'm talking about here is
for the men who have choice, who earn a decent amount of money
and there is a decent amount of money coming into the home.
For those men who have the choice to take the full parental
leave, the choice to work flexibly, the choice to leave
early three days a week to do the school pick up, the choice
to take on the mental load, which a lot of men that I speak
to do. So I think maybe 1520 years ago,
the consequence of not parenting out loud at work and being equal
parents at home, maybe there wasn't much of A consequence
because your partner might have stayed because at the time that
was culturally what you know, what we did.
I think in in recent years there has been a shift.
Now so many more women have realized, actually, I can do
this by myself. As you said, when women are
widowed, they are sometimes happier.
I know women in my own life who have, who are mothers who got
divorced are, are way happier now.
So for those men before, they may not have been a consequence.
Now there is a consequence and if you want that really strong
relationship with your children, but also you want a happy
partnership and a happy wife, partner, girlfriend, and you
want that close relationship. You want regular good sex, you
want a happy home, you want the the joys of being in a family
unit and all the stuff that comes with that.
Then we have to think about what is the consequence of our
decisions if we choose not to. When we do have the choice, the
consequence may be that we're going to get divorced in a few
years. The consequence may be in 20
years time our kids come over and they don't really have much
to say to us and there's a bit of distance and we don't feel
connected because we didn't have those shared memories when they
were younger. Potentially that is a
consequence. I don't think we've spoken
enough about the reality of that, but that's happening all
the time. It's happening all the time and
so we're trying to bring up those conversations.
It's not about blame, it's not about accusing anyone.
It's not about anyone making anyone feel feel bad about
anything. It's just the reality of what's
going on. And every decision we make comes
with a trade off. And the reality is, yes, if you
do prioritize childcare and, and parent loudly and, and for a
little while, you're going to be really pouring into your
children. It may be that your career's
going to stall for a little while, you know, not forever,
but for a few years. You might not get promoted.
That is a consequence of that decision, but you're going to
have fingers crossed, a really good relationship with all your
family members. And we know how valuable that
is. The flip side is we prioritize
work. We stay late, we don't take that
parental leave. We say no to the flexible
working when we could do it. We don't work from home when we
could. We don't do the mental illness
school pickups. We may get promoted, we may earn
more money. That's a consequence, but that's
probably going to have an impact at home.
Again, it's not to say anyone has to make any decision.
It's just about presenting the reality of where we are and the
privilege, if you like, of working in the time.
Now, depending on where you work, obviously, but for a lot
of people, they do have access to work to be, to be more
flexible. It is possible for men to be
equal parents. We can still maintain careers
and earn good money. It it can be done, take
advantage of that. So that's definitely one thing I
always want to talk about. The other thing that I think
from this article really kind of got me is obviously like, I have
two daughters and I think about how I would feel if they were
reading this article. And part of me is like, yes, I
want them to get their own money, not feel like they have
to rely on anyone. Definitely it's better to not
being a in a relationship is better than being in a bad
relationship. 100%. But the flip side of that is
that there are still really good men.
There are still lovely, caring men who will do all the things
that most women want them to do. There's those men still exist.
And I feel like what I wouldn't want my daughters to do is to go
into the world and think, oh, having a boyfriend is
embarrassing. Point blank.
That's it. That like, oh, that there's,
there's no good men. And there's a blanket statement
and that is true. And we live kind of that's,
that's that's our starting point.
I don't, I don't want them to do that because there are still
good men out there, you know, and, and I want them to find if
they are heterosexual, I want them to find a good man and have
a partnership because that is, that is really good too.
Again, they're not taking anything away from single
people. That's cool.
If you want to do that, that's fine and you can live a happy
life being single. But it's also really nice to be
in a good partnership when it's healthy.
And when it comes to building wealth, when it comes to like,
basically like group economics, right?
It's easier to build together. And so I just wouldn't want.
I was thinking about that. I was thinking, OK, like, I hear
it. I understand it for all the
reasons we've spoken about. I don't think I would want my
daughters to read it without conversation with me or their
mom about like what the wider context of this means.
And I hope also that they may read that, but think, well, my
dad's cool, Yeah. My aunt.
My uncle's cool, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So. I mean, you have set a precedent
for your kids, they've seen your behaviour and they will expect
that now in a man. And that's the absolute most
glorious thing that you could do for those girls is show them
what a good man is and how he behaves because and the lots of
girls don't get that opportunity.
You know, my dad was never around.
I never barely ever saw him. So knowing what a healthy
relationship looked like just didn't exist for me.
And I think it didn't exist for lots of, lots of women I know as
well, because our generation, the dad was out the vast
majority of, of the time the woman was at home.
You didn't see men behave in a way that was, you know, they
didn't spend as much time with the kids and they didn't spend
as much time at home as as men are starting to do now.
But your girls, well have, they'll have seen that.
And, and I think, you know, I, I think when I was growing up, you
didn't, your expectations of men were very low and you just felt
grateful to be in a relationship.
The vast majority of girls that I knew.
And I think now what I would hope comes from this is girls
are more demanding of better relationships.
They say to men, this is what I want in a relationship.
This is what is a good relationship and a healthy
relationship to me. If you are not prepared for
that, if that doesn't feel right for you, then this isn't going
to work. And I never had conversations
with anybody I was with like that and never talked to them
about, you know, and with my partner now, we never had a
conversation about if we have kids, who's going to continue
their career? Who's going to you know what?
You know, I did a post on LinkedIn recently, like asking
the simple question of if we both got an important meeting
and one of the kids is sick, who's going to step back?
Like have that conversation before you enter into those
relationships. I think if you do have those
open conversations, that could help to resolve a lot when you
come up against it rather than just like it happening and then
starting and you, you know, for some people then potentially
realizing crap, I've now got to take a step back from something
I love because the other person isn't willing to do it.
Yeah, to know what I think I realise from this is everything
we do is, is political. You know, whether we choose to
have a partner or not is now like a political decision.
And I, I think I saw a comment on the article.
I think it was a comment, It was another article.
There's so much that I've read over this over the last week or
so. And someone said why does it
feel like having a boyfriend is Republican?
That's actually quite funny. But I hear it.
I get it. I hear it.
Like I understand that. Do you think that this is two
sides of the same coin with being a trad wife?
Like I think there's a link there with the trad wife
movement that you've got, you know, in this case, people
saying, oh, well, I'm I'm going to remain single and I don't
want people to even know if I would consider being in a
relationship. And then the other side, you've
got women going. I will do whatever you tell me.
I'm going to stay at home and look gorgeous and do all the
cooking and cleaning and childcare.
Yeah. Do you know what's interesting?
Because in our relationship, we earn and care as equal as we
can. It changes week by week, but you
know, our starting point is, is equal.
And it's really hard, kids. Really bloody hard.
Yeah. Like you're both doing
everything and so I'm not saying I would want it the alternative
long term anyway. The alternative is not good, but
on a day-to-day, equal parenting is quite tiring for both of you.
Like it's, it's really hard for both, right?
And so last year, Snelli took a career break.
He took three months off and I would come home and the house
would be clean. Food on the table.
Kids picked up from the school
get me. Excited.
And I was like, Oh yeah, I am not running around like a
headless chicken trying to do all these things.
You're not running around like a headless chicken.
Don't get me wrong. That was like a career break,
right? Three months.
OK cool. It could have been either way,
it it was nice for that period of time.
Would it work for us long term? No.
First of all, financially the UK is bloody expensive.
Like 2 incomes really really help.
So first of all, financially. Secondly, Snelly wouldn't be
happy. Yeah, I was going to say.
That off work cool like home for three months, amazing.
It's a it's like a holiday. Do you know what I mean?
But OK, you are home for the next 20 years.
That's a different proposal now that's a different that's a
different scenario altogether. So she wouldn't be happy.
But also what I found out for myself is that if that was the
case, I would probably do less parenting, which I don't want to
do because naturally why would I leave, leave early to do the
pick up when she's doing it now? Like why would I wouldn't need
to? Even if I wanted to gradually I
probably would just back away. It's natural because you've got
your roles now. You're the main earner actually.
The pressure is on you to go out and earn.
So you better go out and earn mate, especially being
self-employed as well. Or like I can't just sit at
home, like don't get paid sitting at home.
I'd love to if I don't, so I would naturally pull away and so
it wouldn't work for any of us long term.
But for that three months coming home to a roast and the heating
on and the carpets been hoovered, it was lovely.
Can you imagine? My mum used to look after when
the kids were babies, she used to come to Manchester every two
weeks and she'd stay overnight one night every two weeks and
look after the kids. And that was my window into what
it was like to have somebody at home doing stuff.
Because while she was there she'd do the work.
She'd do a bit of washing and she'd clean the floor a bit.
And sometimes she'd bring food with her.
And it was honest that I'd look forward to that every.
I mean, it stopped after two years and there was only once
every two weeks. But it was, it was, it was lush.
And I was like, this is what it was like back in the day for men
going out to work, come back, the food would be on the table.
Kids would be clean and sorted. I mean, no wonder, yeah.
No wonder. But I just know for Snelli, like
she's, she's very clever, right? Like she, she's way clever than
I am, by the way. She's so smart and has so much
value to give in the world and society and she's super
talented. So she wouldn't like, she
wouldn't be happy, right? And if she's not happy, I'm, I'm
not happy that no one's happy. So I, I, yeah, I think we're in
this interesting point now where again, if that's what people
want to do, then that's fine. And I, I don't think we should
make them feel bad for that. If they genuinely both want to
live in that traditional set up, then yeah, cool.
If it's healthy for you and you genuinely want to do it, great.
I think the other thing I've seen as well is, is I think the
definition of Chad wife has changed a little bit.
Because I feel like before a Chad wife was genuinely a Chad
wife. But I've seen some Chad wife
influences now on Instagram who have like 250,000 followers and
quite a lot of brand deals. And so are you a triad wife or
are you a part time influencer and you do all the childcare?
Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. Well, again, it's a big lie,
isn't it? I think being a triad wife does
sell, actually now it seems. And yeah, I think lots of there
are a lot of my trad, trad rising doing inverted Commons.
It's podcasts you can't see. I've just realized who they're,
they're pretending that, you know, their whole life is
looking gorgeous and doing all of the traditional work in the
home when actually they have careers, their career is
particularly working. Exactly.
You actually got a job. You've probably got like a
social media manager, like an assistant.
You've got a whole business. Yeah.
You're you're a businesswoman. Yeah, yeah, completely.
Yeah. We don't talk about that.
We just pretend that we're all just happy at home.
Yeah. I mean, it's such a such a mad
world kids growing up in now to me because, well, I'm sure to
you as well, because we just didn't.
None of this existed. There was just, there's no
social media, there was no Internet, there was no phones.
There was just a very simple kind of messaging.
It was still very simple. And now it feels all completely
in flux and there's all the chaos going on.
And I, you know, I think it will start to settle down.
I have hopes that things will start to settle down and we'll
find a rhythm that works in this new world.
We're just at the moment dealing with the complexity and that is
chaotic for all of us. And it means that we're seeing
things like it feeling embarrassing to have a
boyfriend, trad wives, polarization between men and
women, and many other groups. I have faith, though, that
eventually we'll find a way to work in this new world that
works for all of us. And.
I also, I think just to end as well, I think I'm it's in like
guiding the young people, right? Like your sons, my daughters, we
need to, we need to give them an insight into the world.
We need to give them like advice.
I think it's really hard to expect them to just go into this
world where there's so many options and so many narratives
and so many things that you could and couldn't be that
didn't exist 20-30 years ago when we were maybe a bit
younger. And we need to help them to
navigate this because back then, I'm talking about 20-30, forty,
50 years ago, things were shit for for women, right?
And now there are things that could make it less shit and
there are more options for how you can live your life.
But I do feel like we need to help young men and boys and
girls to navigate that. Like your post on LinkedIn, What
is a good relationship? What questions should you be
asking? Like before you get into a
relationship? You know, we did.
We used to do that. And also, I feel like spend a
little bit time off the Internet as well.
You know, I think yes, I think online narratives are a
reflection of real life, but also I feel like when we spend
so much time online reading things and we can, we can feel
like that represents the whole world.
And I look around and I'm like, it kind of does definitely in
some ways, but also it doesn't in some ways too.
And there's loads of examples, but I can reel off of healthy,
happy people who are in relationships who we haven't
even seen this article. We were just getting on their
life. So yeah.
So yeah, it's it's yes, it's a mindful to navigate.
I feel like I've got foodies without getting cancelled.
I feel like you did too. Well done.
I know I cancelled. But we'll wait and see, Elliot.
Well, thank you everybody for listening.
Take some time to go and read the article and let us know what
you think and we will see you next week.
See ya. Bye.