1919: What the Data Proves About Marriage, Motherhood, and Having It All - A Conversation with Wharton Professor Dr. Corinne Low

Dec 17, 2025

Dr. Corinne Low, a Wharton professor and author of 'Having it All', dives into the complexities of modern womanhood and the unequal distribution of household labor. She reveals why today’s women are more exhausted than ever, despite advancements in their careers. The discussion highlights how societal biases undervalue women’s time, advocating for outsourcing domestic tasks. Corinne also shares strategies for redefining partnerships and negotiating responsibilities to create more sustainable and equitable home dynamics.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Career Demands Meet Stagnant Home Roles

Women face unique time pressure because careers demand more while household gender roles remain unchanged.
That mismatch explains why modern women report being exhausted despite greater workforce presence.

INSIGHT

Cooking And Cleaning Reveal The Mental Load

Cooking and cleaning time has stayed constant for men since the 1970s and serves as a proxy for the mental load.
Parenting time rose for both sexes, widening the gender gap in household labor.

INSIGHT

We Outsource Male Tasks But Not Female Ones

Society undervalues women's time so households outsource male-coded tasks while keeping female-coded work unpaid.
People hire mechanics but resist paying for cooking or cleaning, reflecting skewed valuation of labor.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

For decades, women were told that if they wanted equality, they needed to lean in harder. Work more. Organize better. Choose better partners. Be more efficient.

And yet, here we are. More educated than ever. More present in the workforce than ever. And somehow… more exhausted.

My guest today says this isn’t a contradiction. It’s a data point. Dr. Corinne Low is a Wharton professor and an economist. She is the author of the new book, Having it All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours.

She has spent the last 15 years studying how women actually live — how we work, how we partner, how we parent, and how we divide time and labor inside our homes. And what her research shows is uncomfortable: while women’s careers have evolved dramatically, the structure of marriage and household labor has barely changed since the 1970s.

In this conversation, Corinne walks us through the data behind why modern women are so tired, why the mental load remains stubbornly unequal, and why cooking, cleaning, caregiving, and the invisible work of running a household still fall disproportionately on women — regardless of who brings home the bigger paycheck.

We talk about why “fair” isn’t always the right goal — and why sustainability, nourishment, and evidence-based decision making matter more. We dig into outsourcing, why women undervalue their time, and why we’re far more comfortable paying someone to change the oil than paying someone to make dinner.

And then there’s Corinne’s personal story, one that the media turned into a headline, but rarely explained well. After divorcing a man, Corinne remarried a woman. And in doing so, she experienced something unexpected: when gender stopped silently organizing the household, equality no longer had to be negotiated; it could be designed.

We talk candidly about what same-sex couples get right about partnership, what heterosexual couples can learn from that, and why true equality at home requires interrogating defaults — not just dividing tasks.

We also get into the bigger questions women are asking right now: when to have children, how motherhood reshapes careers, why women still take the professional hit for caregiving, and how AI and economic change may actually make women’s labor more — not less — essential in the future.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.