Why this mom of 4 says she takes career advice from men 'with a grain of salt'
Paige Connell's video garnered 4 million views on TikTok.
Paige Connell is a mom of four kids under the age of 6 who has a full-time career outside of the home in addition to her work as a mom.
That's why she said when she hears advice from successful men about how they climbed to the top of their professions, she takes their advice with "a grain of salt."
"Their advice is not applicable to women," Connell, who lives in Massachusetts, said in a now-viral TikTok video. "It just doesn't apply in today's society and it doesn't apply ... logistically, because it's impossible to do the things they do because we are held to a different standard and expected to do more than they do."
Connell said she was inspired to post about the topic on TikTok after listening to a podcast in which a male CEO recounted how he climbed the ranks of success, in part by being willing to do things like moving to New York and sleeping on friends' couches and in group homes while his ex-girlfriend presumably cared for their child.
"The whole time I'm listening thinking, 'Where's your kid? None of these things are possible with a 2-year-old baby," Connell said in her TikTok video, in reaction to the CEO's story.
Connell goes on in the video to describe her bigger takeaway about most men's success, saying, "Men have women. That is the biggest lesson I've learned. When [men] tell us any kind of advice about how they became successful, it's because they had women supporting them."
Connell said that on the podcast she listened with the CEO, she did not hear him talk in detail about who cared for his child during his rise to success, though she acknowledged she does not have all the details of his story.
Connell's video has garnered over 4 million views on TikTok so far, and over 16,000 comments.
"When my dad retired his entire speech was about how my mom made it all possible for him," wrote one commenter.
"YEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!! 100%! So many podcasts with 'successful' men...no mention of their kids! Once you notice it you can't not," wrote another.
Another commenter recounted her own experience as a woman, writing, "I got pregnant in college: I immediately changed my major to something that could support me and my kid and gave my dreams up. No choice for us."
Connell told "Good Morning America" she was not surprised her video resonated so profoundly with so many people.
"I think it's such a common experience for women, especially women in the workforce, to receive advice from successful men, whether it's within their own company, or when they're networking, whatever it might be, that just doesn't feel applicable," Connell said. "They'll tell you something and you're like, 'Yeah, that sounds great in theory, but how am I supposed to do that when I have children?' or, 'How am I supposed to do that when I'm pregnant?'"
She continued, "It's just a very different 'game' for women in the workforce."
Amid changing generations in the the workforce though, more men are more equally dividing their time between work and home duties, with a growing number of men, for example, choosing to take paid paternity leave when it is offered. Overall, around 27% of private industry workers currently have access to paid family leave, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the U.S., working mothers today are typically paid, on average, 75 cents for every dollar paid to working fathers, a pay gap that results in annual losses of more than $15,000, according to the National Women's Law Center, a policy-focused organization that fights for gender justice. Research shows that once working women have a child, they face a so-called "motherhood penalty" that sees their earnings decline, while the earnings of their opposite-sex partner tend to rise.
Connell said that given the typical differences between men and women's experiences in parenting and the workforce, it's not that she doesn't find value in advice from men, but she, as a working mom, has to think about how to "strategically implement" their advice in her own life.
She also acknowledged that it can also seem hard to find stories of successful women, both because they don't get the same "air time" as men and because their success may be viewed differently. That realization prompted Connell to create a follow up video with a link to a curated list of books by women and for women.
"I think my biggest takeaway, and my biggest piece of advice to women who are also struggling, but just our society as a whole, is that women probably will never have the same access to success that men have until men are equally participating in caregiving and domestic labor," she said. "So, until men are equally participating in their homes, and in caretaking in general, in the way that women have for centuries, then women will not have that same access to the success that men have, or at least not the same journey to success that men have."
