The Stay At Home Mom

05/11/20 • 37 min

If posted as a job description on your company's careers page, the life of a Mom would attract fewer applicants than that entry level sales role that's been unfilled since the beginning of time. In fact, it would probably be flagged by OSHA as an unsafe and abusive work environment. The work is exhausting, unsanitary, and (often) embarrassing. There's no pay, no opportunity for promotion, and no objective definition of success. Job training? None. Work hours? All of them. Unreasonable coworkers prone to frequent emotional meltdowns and verbal abuse? You betcha.
Thankfully, despite all of this, millions of brave women still sign up for the job every year. The future of the human race (very literally) depends on them. And thankfully for us, one of those women agreed to talk with us last week about her life as a mom. Amy Evon, full-time mom and full-time sister-in-law to Kent, joins us for a special Mother's Day edition of the podcast to share about the highs, lows, and hilarity of her life as the mom of Susie (9), Emma (7), and Quinn (4). If you've ever wondered how you would handle a child pooping and puking at the same time, this episode is for you. And, if you forgot to say something nice to your Mom yesterday, consider yourself reminded. #backtowork

Previous Episode

Dream Jobs By The Numbers

For this week's episode, we decided to social distance from our guests and talk to some numbers instead.
As much as we've loved talking to real people working jobs they really love, and as excited as we are about having even more of those conversations, we wanted to take a step back to frame the "thesis" for this podcast in light of the available data. This podcast started with a simple idea: meaningful work is a necessary component of a meaningful life. But is that really true? Is it just something Millennials say to justify their pathological inability to stay in a job for longer than 24 months? Are there other macro trends at play that make it challenging (but no less essential) to structure our work in a way that provides purpose beyond a paycheck?
This episode attempts to answer those questions while also unpacking the uniquely-Millennial hangups and neuroses that make meaningful work especially challenging in 2020. Like most of these early episodes, this conversation was recorded months ago and, therefore, has no knowledge of the impending COVID calamity. (Ah, December...such a simpler time.) But it doesn't make the data any less relevant or any less true. Give it a listen! And let us know what you think.
Articles and data points referenced in the episode:

Workism is Making Americans Miserable (The Atlantic)
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (Buzzfeed)
Life purpose is significantly correlated with all-cause mortality
Embracing community leads to longer, happier lives (HBR)
Millennials value paychecks over purpose (Gallup)
The Enormous Cost of Unhappy Employees (Inc.)
Millennials and loneliness (Vox)
Millennials are poorer than previous generations (Financial Times)
95% of teens say having a job they love is extremely or very important to them (Pew)
Why are young people pretending to love work? (NY Times)

Next Episode

The Political Lobbyist

Things we never thought we'd talk about on a podcast about dream jobs: transgenderism in the military, foreign money in American elections, and the mass deportation of Liberian immigrants. We hit all three (and learn about the creepy nightclub where Onnie met his wife!) on this week's episode. And we still have time for a deep dive into the ins and outs of political fundraising and petty bickering about who the "real" host of this podcast is. All in a day's work.
Our guest this week is Tyler Deaton, a political lobbyist and fundraiser who focuses primarily on causes related to human rights and free markets. We try really hard to "talk politics" without getting anyone dis-invited from Thanksgiving dinner. We're aided in that effort by the fact that we recorded this conversation pre-COVID, back when we thought people would actually care about the 2020 presidential election. At this point, any conversation about politics that doesn't immediately devolve into shouted accusations of who's trying to bankrupt who's family business and who's trying to murder who's grandma feels charmingly quaint. So come for the reasonable, non-pandemic politics, stay for the #ProTips on bribing Capital Hill guards. #BackToWork