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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeart Radio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I am delighted to welcome Lauren Smith Brody to Before Breakfast.
Lauren is the founder of the Fifth Trimester Movement, also the author of a book by that name.
It's all about helping parents navigate the transition back to work.
She's also had a long career in the women's magazine world as well.
Lauren, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Laura.
So nice to be with you.
Yeah.
So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Sure.
So I am definitely a multi-hyphenate.
As you said, I came out of media, originally wrote a book looking at the experiences of returning to paid work after maternity leave for more than 700 moms.
That's called The Fifth Trimester.
And then I turned that into a business.
So I help companies do a Those new moms, but also all moms, all dads, anybody doing elder care, really anyone across the five generations of caregivers who are currently in the workforce and helping them, also doing research to understand the economic value of supporting those workers.
Absolutely.
And you have a family yourself as well.
I do indeed.
Yes.
In fact, I have one who just walked in the door coming home early from school with norovirus.
Oh, that's the worst.
Buckle up, friends.
I've got work travel this week and a big family vacation at the end of the week.
And just cross your fingers for me.
Yes, I have.
I have teenagers.
So I have a 14 year old and a 17 year old.
They're in eighth grade and 11th grade.
And we live in New York City.
I also have a husband and I have an extremely needy rescue dog who is lying on my bed looking at me right now.
Absolutely.
Well, between that and the norovirus, who knows what's going to happen in the next 25 minutes?
Oh, and she's got like a stomach issue, the dog.
Like, you know, we're just all about the gastrointestinal tract right now.
You know, the fifth trimester and what you've found.
Yeah, that like as people.
What do people who do well with the transition back to where we'll start with people themselves and then we'll move to organizations?
But when people make that transition back and do it successfully, what do they tend to do differently?
I really actually love the way that you asked that question because what I've realized now so it's almost 10 years since I did that original research looking at people's return to paid work after leave
And the research I've done since then is on sort of early and mid-year parenting and the support that you may have at work or not have for that kind of caregiving identity.
And then I also did a white paper more recently with a menopause care company called Midi Health, looking at what happens when workers have support for menopause at work.
And all of those things I realized as I was trying to connect the dots are really about the subset of people who have made it work, who had the support to make it work.
There are obviously incredibly important and accurate headlines about attrition of women in the workforce, very negative headlines about the impact of all of these sort of life transitions and caregiving processes on women's hopes and ambitions and careers.
I like to look at what's possible.
So with the fifth trimester, before I knew that's what I was doing, I was looking at specifically these women who had come back and maintained their careers.
And we know that about 30, 30 to 40 depending on which study you're looking at of new moms leave their jobs within about a year of having that baby.
And these were the ones who stayed, or at least who stayed in their careers.
And what did they do to reframe and redefine ambition and success in those moments, to hopefully get out of some of the things they were over delivering on in their job previously, so that they could then make room to keep growing or just to tread water?
Treading water needed to be okay for a lot of people too.
A lot of them were really deliberate about asking for the help they needed.
And for those who weren't able to.
A lot of what I researched and looked into was how do you convince people to be OK, asking for the help and support you need?
And often that comes down to understanding the business case for retaining them.
So.
It feels like obviously the moral and ethical case should be enough.
But very often, in order to go into some of those negotiations as new parents asking for things for the first time, it's really helpful just to understand the numbers behind the economy of supporting parents.
And so that's what I've done with a lot of my work since then.
Absolutely.
So basically that people who do it well are okay with asking for what they need?
Is that what I'm understanding you to say?
Yeah, yeah.
I guess it really boils down to something that simple.
It's also, it's really...
It's being open to sort of a new normal.
It's understanding that, although you may be quite good at the job that you do, you are brand new at being a working parent.
And so you're going to need some grace in transition.
And really understanding that there is, in fact, a whole additional fifth trimester.
So in America most parents are going back to work, usually at, you know, between like eight and 12 weeks postpartum.
There's no federally protected paid parental leave.
And so those who can are able to take and have access to it are able to take.
12 weeks of unpaid FMLA but Looking at the research when you actually understand where that came from.
12 weeks is totally arbitrary.
And what it takes to actually get new moms, in particular, over the hurdle.
Is you really want to have six months of paid leave, which feels like pie in the sky for most workers in America?
So what can you do as a worker to bridge that gap?
First of all, not being so hard on yourself, understanding that if it feels hard at the Eight weeks or 12 weeks, that that's not because of anything you're doing wrong.
It's just this, this idea that we have normalized something that is abnormal compared to the rest of the world.
It was actually an FMLA.
Federally protected unpaid leave was passed into law by Bill Clinton in 1995.
I want to say.
Oh, I might get that wrong.
I think it's 93.
And it had been proposed for nine years prior to that.
And when it was originally proposed it was supposed to be six paid months, which I think a lot of people don't realize.
But even back then we knew that six months was most protective of mom's physical health, mom's mental health, baby's physical health, dad or partner's bond with the baby, mom's ability to maintain her income and her status at work all those things.
And yet we ended up with a sort of Band-Aid placeholder that was supposed to be improved upon.
That So far has not been acceptance, except in several states where it has been, and set by private companies where it has been.
But then you have to have a job at one of those companies.
So anyway, there's this whole.
I think that this is where the root of mom guilt comes from, working mom guilt in particular, that you know, if you go back and it feels hard, there must be something wrong with you.
No, not at all.
So instead of.
The real advice is to link arms with others who have similar needs and to call out and see the business case behind calling out the needs you have.
Because if you help your employer help you, you're ultimately creating a better culture and a more profitable company.
So it's really that reframe and then how you apply that, like you can apply that in you, The ways that you ask for flexibility in your day, and I have sort of negotiation tactics around that in how you, how you organize your mornings, how you organize your child care, how you sort of orient your feelings about that child care, like how you make child care decisions in a way that ultimately helps you feel good, which then comes back to your child.
Anyway, all the research had been sort of previously focused very much on what's good for baby.
I like to look at what's good for mom, because when you look at what's good for mom, ultimately that's good for baby too.
Yeah, well, let's let's talk about that negotiation.
Let's say that you would like a slightly more flexible schedule when you when you come back.
What are how how would you propose doing that?
So the first step is a precept, which is really it's convincing yourself.
And this is what I spend if I get on a screen or stand on a stage and talk to an audience for an hour.
So much of what I'm doing and sharing all of these data points and research and the numbers is to help fill up your pockets, right.
Like pretend you have on cargo pants, like fill up your pockets with everything you need so that you feel like I have.
I can go into these negotiations feeling really, really sturdy in what I'm asking for, knowing that it's not just for me, you know, as a a needy person myself for my little family, but it's something that is ultimately better for my employer.
It makes me.
You know you can look at kind of how your employer compares to other employers in the area or other employers in your field and look at you can either make the case that they need to be doing more because others are doing more.
So to keep up, or you can make the case that actually like they're doing the most and they need to maintain that in order to maintain their sort of their lead, of retaining new moms.
So convince yourself and then you want to have a really firm sense.
This is so basic, but you just want to know what your job description is.
You would not believe how many people don't actually like, can't stop and think, like what is?
What are the five things that are on my job description?
And I guarantee you you're doing twenty five hundred things because so many of us like outgrow what we're doing and we're really comfortable with the old stuff and we add the new things and we get promoted and we take the new stuff on and we don't ever get rid of the old.
And that's how you find the time that you ultimately are going to need to be able to have the white space in your day to keep growing, to keep feeling like you can breathe, to have time for networking and connecting and business development and all the things that sort of keep your career moving on that upward track.
So Research outside, then research inside the company what policies are already available that you may not be using?
Then go in with a sense of what your job description is and propose a plan, but also have a plan B and a plan C that fulfill that job description.
Then you can also propose, this is sort of the last step, to try it.
Just propose a trial period.
Because, particularly if you're a new mom, but really in kind of many stages of caregiving, your needs are going to change within a month, within two months.
And so you want to have this be sort of a continuum of conversations, not just a one and done conversation.
And this way you end up actually sort of showing the service you're providing, like they're giving you something you need, but you are, you're the test case.
You're helping them see what works, what doesn't work, and communicating in a sort of naturally open fashion that just buys people's trust.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Lauren Smith Brody.
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Well, I am back talking with Lauren Smith Brody of the fifth trimester and talking about how people can successfully transition back to work after paid leave.
You mentioned something interesting there, of sort of looking at exactly what your job description is and getting sort of back to the core of your job description as a way to free up white space in your day, and not just white space for emergencies, but white space for growing and trying new things.
I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little bit and why that's important.
This is like I have a feeling you relate to this, but so often we write about the things that we need ourselves.
And I think it was like how many days in a row that I took a shower and then immediately ran out of the shower and, dripping wet, wrote down the idea that I'd had the to-do list thing that hadn't made it onto my list.
And I realized...
If you are doing all of your good thinking in the shower, you need to have some space on your calendar for shower time.
That's actually just like you at your desk or computer or couch or wherever you do your work.
And so, yeah, you need to be able to build that time in.
It also communicates sort of counterintuitively.
When you aren't the person answering the emails late, late at night.
If you can schedule send for the next day, it communicates a sense of power and control that you have over your life and schedule that, then you sort of boomerangs back to you.
You feel it, but you also project it.
People, people only treat you as well as you treat yourself.
So if you can save some of that space, not only do you have the space, but you look like someone who like, has their crap together enough to be able to have time to make a connection.
That's lovely to be able to, you know, make time to go have a coffee or to post something on LinkedIn.
How many times do we see somebody post something on LinkedIn?
You think, oh my gosh, how did it?
I never like something I just the last thing on my list.
They must have do something right if it's something that made it onto the list, and they actually did it that day.
So be that person.
Yeah.
Try to avoid the hot mess vision of life.
And I say this as a person who's like made a second career out of vulnerability and like being a little bit of a mess and comfortable with that, because we can't fix things.
We can't fix challenges we can't see.
And so like. yes, have the spit up on your sweater and tell people that's what it is.
Or, you know, if you're exhausted and stumbling over your words, go ahead and say I didn't sleep last night, because what that says is not I'm weak and I didn't sleep last night, but like I have a whole life beyond here and I still showed up.
I'm still here because it's still important too.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I heard somebody recently have a discussion about one of the ways you can kind of stay in is to.
Consider being a good employee for a while.
Yes.
Not a great, you know, top of the pile.
But like if you've been an A-plus worker for a while, you might be an A-minus kind of person for a year or two, as you're hanging in there.
Which is, by the way, still an A. Which is still an A. And is...
You know, from the retention perspective, probably better.
Your a minus is it's going to take a new hire a long time to get up to that a minus.
Yeah.
But kind of convincing yourself to be OK with that for for a little while.
Yeah, I think that there's another aspect to that, which is also that you know it's a little bit like.
Have you heard the concept of the good enough mother?
This is like.
I think it's from like 70s maybe, but it was a sociologist named correct me if I'm wrong Whittacott Whittacombe Whittacott, I think.
Yeah.
Who looked at, actually researched, that if you're too good of a mom, it's actually not great for your kids.
You want to be like you want to be like a B plus A minus because it teaches them independence.
It teaches them how to do things for themselves and how to advocate and that life is not perfect.
And it's actually ultimately builds a sturdier, stronger kid.
So I think about that a lot.
And I think about it in the context of the paid work that we do, too, because.
Yeah, like we are, sort of many of us particularly, you know once by the time you've like climbed the ladder enough to get to where you want to achieve.
It's like we're so programmed to over deliver.
We're programmed to want to succeed.
And you have to realize that actually part of your job is to manage.
And managing means letting go of some things and letting other people learn how to do them, or teaching them how to do them.
I mean it's just delegating but actually, in the context of feeling like you're delegating because you now have a family to take care of, feels like you're giving up.
But the truth is, even if you didn't have the kid, you would be in that inflection point anyway, where you have to learn to start mentoring and teaching other people to do things.
And so freeing up that time for yourself ultimately is a power move.
Yeah, absolutely.
And there's also something I've Heard and people try, which is that I know a lot of a plus employee people as well have a tendency to want to ask permission for everything, like to get my flexible job program in formal writing, or that I'm officially doing an 80 schedule as opposed to just like leaving 20 early and getting your job done.
I'm curious what you think about that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's that can be such a good point because from an HR perspective you know, a lot of the people I work with are in talent and HR
As soon as you have a policy, that You have to make people comply to the policy, as opposed to if you just have people who find a way of being grownups and getting their job done in a different timeframe, different style, different location, that can be okay.
Where it gets tricky is that we find that people are more able to be flexible with themselves if they're privileged in some way.
So you want to make sure that you're not imbalanced in who you let do what.
And that's why you want to come back to the job description.
You just want to make sure that people are doing the jobs they're hired to do.
And if that's done...
I mean, and part of your job might be showing up for the team meeting and mentoring and being around physically.
That could be part of your job.
But yeah, it's.
Sometimes the policies actually are more detrimental than not, which is which is surprising.
Yeah, well, that's that's kind of life.
We're going to take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Lauren Smith Brody.
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Well, I am back talking with Lauren Smith Brody of the fifth trimester.
So, Lauren, I'd like to pivot to you here.
Yeah.
Talk about how you work.
Let's let's talk about your schedule.
Do you have any routines that you think make you more productive, in particular a morning routine?
I do.
So I think I have learned to work with my brain, which is very much a brain that is on from about ready 3 pm to 11 pm.
It's so bad for a parent because, like that's when my kids walk in the door and when I want to be with them.
Um.
So what I've learned to do is to do sort of the low hanging fruit stuff first, actually to not be a um, eat the frog for breakfast person, but I recommend that for others who that works for.
But I will um, get up, get my kids out the door, walk the dog, come back in still while I'm in either my pajamas or my workout clothes.
I will do, like the three emails, that if I don't do them, that day will just haunt me the whole day and sit over my head and be the thing I avoid.
So get those done quickly.
They're not usually hard.
They're just like The thing that needs to get out in order to move somebody else to the next step on something.
Then I will try to exercise.
Oh, no, wait, wait.
Before that, I have a group chat with my mom, my sister and my my dad.
I'm sure you hear this a lot.
And we do we do Wordle and we do connections.
And I am like the best thing that I am at my entire life is connection.
So I feel like an immediate sense of pride all day long, no matter how the rest of it goes.
Then I do a little workout.
And when I say little, I mean super little.
I do like a Peloton 15-minute or 20-minute weightlifting thing, and I feel really good.
And then I start my meetings.
So Sometimes I will have clients who I'll meet with as early as 8 or 9 a.m.
Happy to do that, but a great day is when I start actual on-screen meetings or on-phone meetings at 10.
I usually eat a late lunch.
Oh wait, there was eating in there too.
I have the same, I make myself the same smoothie every day.
Again like a little bit because like, if I get vitamins and protein at breakfast, like then I kind of the rest of the day is fine.
And I try to do something social in the day, whether it's just a quick phone call with a Or actually like turning a meeting into a walking meeting with somebody who's I have a lot of colleague friends.
I'm very, very lucky to be at a stage of life where, like first of all, I work for myself and work from home.
Secondly, like so many people I work with, I consider friends and so many friends I've found ways to work with.
So I try to take advantage there and double dip on that.
There's always a load of laundry going.
I have a feeling it's the same at your house.
Yeah.
And then I really like to cook dinner every night.
I love the sort of book ending of my day and the cooking part.
Sometimes there's some work that happens afterwards, but my kids come home and generally are doing their homework while I'm wrapping up my meetings.
I usually do meetings until about 6, 6.30, sometimes 7.
And then...
We have a late dinner.
My husband has a commute, gets home around seven, thirty or eight, and we sit together every night like they're at an age now where, like anybody who doesn't have that in their life yet, like you, may get there one day and it's awesome.
So I highly recommend it.
Yeah.
Well, when do you do that?
Thinking the shower, thinking that you said you were trying to push out of the shower into other points of your life?
When does that happen?
That's a good call out.
So often that will happen on whatever the social thing is.
I have really, really sort of purposefully blurred the lines.
And so I don't have friend conversations that don't also include some of what I'm working on.
And also-
I forgot to say this, but a big part of what I work on is my public policy work through a nonprofit that I co-founded called the Chamber of Mothers.
So all of that is like donated time, but it's with colleagues, but they're also very much friends.
And so there will be a lot of sharing of ideas and just helping each other that happens then.
And so often that will spark something that will either inspire me to then like go put time on my calendar the next day to follow through on something, or it will just like it will happen in the meeting.
It happened this morning.
We had an idea in a meeting that we just ran with, and Now each of us sort of has our own creative role that we're taking on it.
And that feels like that white space to me.
Excellent.
Well, there were a couple of great ideas in there that I just wanted to call out.
Like one.
Having this family group chat doing a game together can be a fun way to start the day and stay connected with people while doing something.
So it's not just what are you up to?
I don't know.
What are you up to?
And then working with friends that I know.
Some people do like to have separation between work and life, but there's some wonderful upsides when you can arrange for it to have a person who you would voluntarily spend time with.
Be someone that you are spending time with while on the clock.
Exactly.
Yes.
So Lauren, I ask all my guests what is something you've given us already?
Some, but what are some?
What is something you've done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Actually, I have a really good example for this.
Maybe not.
I have a feeling you have a lot of people who answer that question with, Laura, I took a walk.
But like, I took the best walk of my freaking life.
Okay.
It's like a nap.
There are some good naps or some great naps.
It's like a walk.
There's some good walks and amazing walks.
Okay.
There's some context that makes it make more sense.
So I had this is last week.
My dad is very ill and lives far.
My parents live far away.
I'm in New York.
They're in Atlanta.
So a plane ride away.
But I've been trying to get home every at least once a month for a couple of nights.
And I've had some I was on Capitol Hill the week before that for my nonprofit.
I have work travel tomorrow for a fifth trimester.
So I'm just I have like seven weeks in a row of travel.
And I don't want to give anything up of all the other things I'm doing, because I need the income from my paid work.
And my children are teenagers.
And I'm having this feeling of this like window is closing.
Like they actually sometimes want to spend time with me.
And I'm like, yes, I'll drop everything to spend time.
So all of that is context to say Sunday night, Monday night, I was in Atlanta caring for my dad.
Extremely heavy, but really really heavy, fulfilling conversations like lots of i.
I left the trip with um a draft of his obituary that he wants me to work on with his best friend.
So then that meeting was scheduled like really heavy but important, and so simultaneously kind of i feel bad calling it heavy, like like very, very meaningful things.
Um Get home to LaGuardia at like five.
Get home to our apartment by six.
Immediately get on the Q train with my son because we have tickets on a Tuesday night which is really unusual to go to a concert for a band that he really likes in Brooklyn.
Ooh, nice.
I haven't slept in three nights at this point.
I mean, I put my head on the pillow, but I didn't sleep well.
So we go to Brooklyn for the concert.
We get home from that at midnight.
I wake up the next morning and I am just emotionally and physically beyond.
And I'm at a point in life now where I could just tell my kids, get your own breakfast, kids.
I'm going to go back to bed.
But I just...
I wanted to see them.
So I got up, did the thing that I told you about earlier, take the dog out.
It's one of these like weirdly warm days.
And I was like, you know what?
This is a perfect walk day.
Except I have a really important quarterly check in with one of my anchor clients, a law firm, and meet like in like an hour and 15 minutes.
I had a meeting with my dad's best friend to like actually discuss the points of what's going to be in life memorial for him.
And then I had a couple of clients in the afternoon.
I didn't really have time.
And I was like, okay, so what can I do?
I'm going to not shower and get dressed for my quarterly meeting.
I'm on a Zoom.
I can put on my eyebrows, put on lipstick, put on a sweater.
They would never know.
So I'm going to do that.
So I sort of immediately made that call.
Then I went for the walk and I did it with my vest, my like middle-aged lady weighted vest, which felt really good.
Weather's great.
I didn't wear sunglasses because years ago a psychiatrist said to me like make sure the sunlight actually hits your eyeballs, because it helps your – it's not just vitamin D, It's actually serotonin or something.
Dopamine, I don't know which.
And so I'm doing all the things.
And then I'm like feeling bad that I haven't actually really read everything that I need to read about what is going on in the Middle East right now.
So I, like –
Put on the daily for the last two days.
And I'm doing that.
I'm answering emails while I'm doing the walk.
It's not what you're supposed to do.
Right.
It is not zone out.
Take a walk time.
I like somebody asked for a favor in the middle of it.
I scheduled the favor on my calendar as I'm on the walk.
And I'm thinking, you know what?
This is the best walk I've ever had because it's not what it's supposed to be.
And yet it's making me feel so, so good.
And I've been talking a lot.
I was preparing at the time, sort of in my mind, what I was going to say on a webinar that I was booked to do, like two days later.
And I have two ideas.
One is just resentment proof.
I talk all the time about how you should make decisions with your own lack of resentment in mind.
Like you don't want to resent your job, your partner, your boss, your children.
Worst of all, you really don't want to resent yourself.
So how can you make a decision that like like sort of forecasts feeling good about this.
And then the idea of being comfortable with your compromises.
That walk was an exercise in comfort with my compromises.
I was compromising all kinds of ways.
And that I realized is the goal.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is not like a balanced life.
The goal is being comfortable with your compromises.
And I was like, look at me living the thing.
Now I know what I'm going to say on Laura's podcast.
Absolutely.
I love it.
I love it for sure.
Well, Lauren, where can people find you?
Oh, so you can just email me.
It's Lauren at the fifth trimester spelled out or I'm on LinkedIn as Lauren Smith Brody.
Smith is my middle name, but I use all the names.
And I'm on Instagram.
The fifth trimester is my account there.
And again, it's the spelled out version.
And come find me.
I would love to meet anybody.
And if you want me to come to your business and help them do a better job of retaining you, just let me know.
Sounds good.
All right.
Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura, at LauraVanderkamcom.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at LauraVanderkam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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