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this podcast is brought to you by knowah [Music] warten welcome to knowledge at warten
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I'm Angie bessan with me today is Dr Stuart fredman he's the author of baby
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bust new choices for men and women in work and family it's a really interesting look at how our competitive
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demanding work culture in the United States is leading more and more young people to question whether they want to
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become parents or even have families Dr fredman is an organizational psychologist he joined the Wharton staff
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in 1984 and in early 1990s set up two of the seminal programs here at the university the Wharton leadership
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program and the Wharton work life integration project he has uh been a sought-after expert in the topic of work
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life balance and he's won numerous awards for his teaching Excellence now he is an Emeritus practice professor of
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management Stu thanks for joining me so great to be here Angie thanks for having
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me thank you well we have something to celebrate today because it's is the 10th
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anniversary of baby bus so it's been reissued to marthy occasion congratulations that's an achievement
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thank you I'm very glad to have this new addition and grateful to the Wharton
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press for uh for doing it absolutely well this book is based on your research using Wharton graduates as your as your
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subject matter you talked to the class of 1992 and then 20 years later the class of 2012 you surveyed them about
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their perceptions and their attitudes about work and family give us a bit of an overview and really what inspired you
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to write this book well uh you know back in the 80s I was doing research and practice uh
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working with organizations on leadership development talent management for uh for
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how companies prepared and selected their senior Executives um that was my dissertation
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at the University of Michigan that's what I've been working on and it was all
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going quite swimmingly when uh few years into that in the late 80s I became a father for the first time and that sort
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of changed things for me and I realized at that moment of meeting my son for the
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first time that uh that I had a new question to pursue and that was how am I going to contribute to making the world
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one in which he's going to flourish so I brought that question to everyone including my students in the Wharton
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School uh in the MBA program and asked what are you as future Business Leaders going to do about uh cultivating not
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just the next generation of talent in your companies but the Next Generation full stop and that uh that conversation
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led me to to become a lot more active in doing research starting to develop teaching models and uh sharing knowledge
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about how people integrate the different parts of their lives for Mutual gain it
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led to this the start of the work life integration project which did uh research in the field finding people who
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were good at this uh and identifying what it was about what they did that helped them to find Harmony among the
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different parts of their lives as parents and in other aspects of their lives we also did large scale survey
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research uh starting in 1992 uh which was uh the basis the original basis for the uh the baby bus
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study so uh we started tracking different classes of of Wharton students and as the project grew and aged and as
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I aged uh we we decided 20 years after the initial study uh the first in a series of
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studies we decided to go back to the class of 1992 and ask them a series of questions about their lives their
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careers their hopes their dreams their passions their interests um their political views lots
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and lots of questions about who they are as people but we also surveyed the class
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of 2012 which enabled us to do a cross-generational study 20 years apart so we compared the class of 1992 when
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they graduated and the class of 2012 when they graduated so we had a true uh you know cross-generational
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comparison that's the study that uh baby bust is about and now 10 years after
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that study uh I've had a chance to to provide some new commentary on what we
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observed then in 2012 or 2013 was actually when the uh um the study was published and and now 10 years later the
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the main finding the thing that really struck me when I looked at the data uh comparing the class of 1992 to the class
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of 2012 was what men and women were saying about their interests in planning uh to have or adopt
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children in 1992 uh about 78 79% of men and women said that they plan to have or adopt
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children so the the response scale was uh yes probably not sure probably not and no so 78 79% men and women said uh
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yes or probably in 1992 in 2012 that number dropped to 42 43% that's really dramatic I was it was
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crazy I thought no that can't be that's just too too huge a drop uh but it was
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true so that became kind of the focal point for looking at what had changed when we when we studied the Gen xers
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compared uh to the uh compared to the Millennials um and so in in the book what what I do is to
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describe what changed uh and why uh and and how the story is a little bit different for men
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and women as to why fewer young people were planning to have or adopt children let's talk a little bit about that um
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first of all I do want to show the book here it is this is the newest edition with the orange cover um the the there
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is a striking number of differences in the attitudes and the perceptions between the Gen xers and the Millennials
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um some things were similar as you put in the book there's good news and there's bad news can you highlight some
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of those differences that you found for us well people are less likely to want to have children now I thought uh and
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and in indeed the original response to the to the book uh was oh that's just Wharton
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students we can't really generalize well it turns out that these are trends that
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are both National and Global uh I I became much more knowledgeable about Trends in birth rates because I had to
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to try to learn something about uh what it was we were observing among students uh and and now alumni turns out
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um these are not isolated findings among you know these Elite Business School students these are uh broader findings
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and uh there are a number of reasons that explain why men and women uh shifted in their in their interests
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their willingness to want to have uh kids of of their own uh it's not that they think any less about the importance
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of long-term relationships or even becoming a parent it's still an important part of life it's just that
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many many fewer of them are planning to actually do it uh for for men it had to do in part with
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um having a different attitude about what a modern father is a a different father than the one that they had in
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terms of their role in the family wanting to be more involved more active um and also wanting to be able to
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uh to uh to fund their family's needs and their concerns about that so we found that people uh young men who were
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caring uh a high level of student debt for example they were less likely to want to have kids because they were
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afraid that they couldn't provide the support uh they also anticipated greater
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conflict uh in their uh relationships because uh of their um expected amount of Engagement in the role of Father uh
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and how that was going to conflict with their um being you know uh successful in uh in their careers women
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on the other hand had had very different reasons uh for their reduced interest in
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having children one was uh greater Freedom uh they they had a greater sense of choosing not to become uh a mother uh
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compared to their uh the the um gen xers before them that the social pressures to
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become a mother were not as great uh they also were conflicted about their role in society more women who felt that
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uh it was important for them to be contributing to social good through their work those people saw a conflict
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between that role and their ability uh to have the time and attention that they wanted uh for for children so those are
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just some of the uh ways in which men and women shifted over the course of those two generations I think for me
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what really struck me about that shift that change is is almost like the the Gen X uh cohort had these rose-colored
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glasses on right the idea that they could achieve it they could do it all and um the Millennials uh went into it
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with their eyes wide open this that you mentioned in the book they're concerned
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about student debt they're concerned about climate change they're concerned
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about social injustice um it reminded me of a Betty for Dan the famous Betty for
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Dan quote uh you can have it all just not at the same time and it felt it felt like the Millennials kind of got that
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message so they were sort of scaling back their expectations of what their life might be like and understanding
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that perhaps these are choices now that they have to make that they cannot have at all would you say that that's an
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accurate uh sort of depiction of uh the differences yeah one of the fascinating of observations comparing those two
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generations was that men seemed in their attitudes to become more egalitarian in
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terms of how you know two career uh relationships were going to work where men were going to be more active at home
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and to be uh more equally Distributing you know domestic responsibilities however to your point women seem to have
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um learned from the generation prior to them uh some hard lessons uh that that perhaps the Gen xers didn't quite
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Envision with their more Rosy or optimistic view about you know anything being possible and so the uh the uh Gen
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X women were less likely to have uh the The View that relationships at home would be egalitarian than their
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forebears so they saw it as necessary to make sacrifices more so than uh the people 20 years prior to them uh the
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result though is that the attitudes about egalitarian relationships two career relationships and how they were going to
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work converged uh and so they're more on the same page now uh than men and women
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are than they were in the past and that uh that there's a note of optimism I
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think that comes from that observation definitely you you as you mentioned there's good news there but it also what
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was striking to me was just how much the the men that you surveyed really um were
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vocal about their concerns about their worries yes they see uh women's careers
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as being equal to theirs they see their role in fatherhood as being much greater
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than the generations previous to them but they were also concerned about how they were going to accomplish that as
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well um if I ask you to prognosticate a little bit into the future um if you were to survey the attitudes of the
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class of 2022 which would be 10 years forward what do what kind of differences do you think you might find
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now well these last 10 years uh have been um really tumultuous of course we all know that uh and and the trends uh
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that I observed in that earlier study continue so birth rates continue to decline uh in our society and it's it's
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a frightening Prospect for the future um the pandemic had a radical shift uh in how people think about the
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relationship between work and the rest of life um there's a greater recognition
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that people have lives outside of work um there's also a greater recognition of
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the need for uh us as a society to be investing more in education uh as people came to realize that uh professional
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Educators do an enormous service to our society and need need more support and uh you not just economic but all kinds
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of support in society um so there's a greater recognition of the need to support the whole person and to help
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people to create bound boundaries among the different parts of life uh and to invest in the whole person that shift is
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definitely happened it's a good thing however the digital revolution has uh created a a an environment in which it's
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it's harder to focus uh on one thing at a time it's harder to focus on work
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people young people especially are even more socially isolated and alienated feeling lonely these are not my own
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personal observations there's a lot of research supporting this and I think that makes it harder for them to connect
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in ways that make them want to become parents of course there's climate change
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which has become a much more present issue in the minds of most thinking people uh and people who are informed
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about what's happening in the world and uh when I when I had a discussion about
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the original findings of the baby bust study uh in a recent class uh in my MBA uh class on leadership from the point of
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view of the whole person What I Call Total leadership um which is another outgrowth
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of the work life integration project another another topic which I won't delve into here but in that class we had
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people reading this the study findings and then learning about what the impact of climate change was going to be on the
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future and our future business um ideas and this was uh a heated debate uh that ensued about well is it is it moral to
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bring children into a world that is going to be uninhabitable so so there are those
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kinds of concerns on top of all the other uh sort of chaotic changes that are happening in our world that I think
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make it ever less likely for people to feel confident in taking up the role of uh being a parent I would love to have
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been a fly on the wall in one of your classrooms during one of those debates um it's certainly a debate that you hear
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pretty much in every corner now uh younger older people doesn't matter um it's just something that's on the top of
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our our minds right now um let me ask you one of the things that I really like about this book is that it's not just a
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summary of your research it's not just a narrative you also offer these policy
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recommendations okay doct Freeman what can we do to fix it and you put those in there you have them at the society level
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which is more cultural policy you have it at the organizational level and you have it at the individual level and of
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course we can't talk about all of them but I was wondering if You' pick out
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some of the ones that you feel are the most important maybe the most doable that we could start looking at well
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where we have seen some change at the policy level though not nearly fast or enough substantial enough is in child
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care and uh family leave there is no reason why the United States cannot be the world leader in providing real
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support for families all kinds of families uh and that starts with family medical leave and child heare uh we are
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woefully behind the rest of the world the rest of the developed world for sure uh and um you know that's a that's a
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matter of political uh will uh we again have made some progress not nearly enough the real progress seems to be
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happening at the municipal and state levels that are more malleable perhaps uh but at the federal level there's been
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very little uh so that those are two that's where I would start uh and there
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are you growing movements uh of political actors of Advocates of All Sorts activists who are pressing for
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this and you know that's something that each and every one of us can have an
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impact on in terms of the people we vote for um at the at the organizational level in businesses all kinds of
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organizations there has also been progress probably more progress on that front where you have the private sector
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responding to the demand of the labor market wanting more flexibility and more control over their lives so that they
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can do the things that matter to them in all the different parts of their lives including becoming parents you see just
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greater uh understanding and respect for how to enact a a real flexible uh workplace there are still many sources
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of resistance to that uh including traditional outmoded views about what u a good working life looks like but that
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is clearly changing and will continue to as young people especially gen Z are you
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know pressing up against and pushing for change at the individual level and you know within families I've done a lot of
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work on that uh in what I referred to earlier is the total leadership program which I created when I was I took a
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leave from Morton for a few years about 20 years ago to become head of leadership development for Ford Motor
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Company and what we did there was to develop a model model of leadership that's about the whole person we called
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it total leadership and you can learn all about that at and about the baby bus study and some other research uh at
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total leadership.org that is all about how you learn to become a better leader and have a richer Life by knowing what's
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important to you knowing who's important to you and experimenting continually
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with how you get things done and we've seen incredible results in helping people to find greater freedom
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and greater control of their lives to be able to create a bit more Harmony in their lives and to perform better and to
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grow faster As Leaders the most recent um version of that work is a book called parents who lead where we took the the
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essence of that total Leadership Model and practice which is a course that I've
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been teaching at Wharton now for over 20 years and we applied it to parents people who are in the parenting project
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together and so we had another set of Orton alumni uh develop with us uh a set of tools that help parents get on the
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same page in terms of their values and their Vision uh who is most important to them and how to connect with them in
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meaningful ways and how to experiment as a family with new ways to become uh uh more close to each other more trusting
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and better able to meet the needs of both parents or however many parents there are and the children as it grows
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uh in in uh in their communities and in their business lives uh people are more fruitful as a result because they are
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consciously and deliberately creating positive change that works for them their families their businesses and
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their communities uh so there there is hope I think the the the best action that I've seen and where I tend to focus
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my background is is is as a psychologist is at the individual and family levels because I think that's where you can
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have the most tangible kind of impact uh so there is some hope but you know uh I
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am pessimistic as we talk right now in February 2024 about the prospects for positive
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social change uh you know depending on what happens uh in the upcoming election I think it's going to have a profound
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impact on so many aspects of social life uh cultural life um including especially
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uh in support for families and the kind of freedoms uh like control over our own
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bodies for one and also how we choose to live in the kinds of families we want to
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create um so political action at this time I think is an imperative for all of us to try to create the world we want
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we're definitely at a Tipping Point um one of the things I wanted to bring out
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uh when you are talking about the individual level is you really in this book you encourage people uh to push
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back to challenge the stigmas of uh of work being this badge of honor this sense of heroism that I'm I'm working 10
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12 14 hours a day you encourage in particular men to push back against the stigmas of uh masculinity um the one of
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the phrases we use these days toxic masculinity to sort of engage and this what I'm hearing is this the sort of
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idea that it can come from the top from management from organizations and it can
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also Bubble Up From The Bottom from people saying no this isn't really how I
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want to live my life I think I can find a deeper richer more meaningful life in both work and at home so I think that's
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a really important message in your book and and uh that it is possible to not have it all at once as as you cited
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Betty frean speaking but we can have more of what we want as as people in society parents and in other roles if we
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take seriously the idea that to grow as a person as a leader in your life you need to really identify what's important
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to you what's important to the people around you and then continually look for
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opportunities to make change that's good for you and the people around you so to
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get beyond the trade-off thinking that the term work life balance canotes it's
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a bad phrase because it's it compels you to think about the trade-offs you must
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make now of course trade-offs are inevitable but there are more opportunities to create positive change
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that can have an impact on all the different parts of your life if you are intentional and smart about looking for
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those starts with knowing what's important to you who's important and then looking for ways that you can act
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to make a positive impact on the world and and there are many many opportunities and everyone can do this
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yes so that does give me uh some hope but it's a uh it's a difficult Road for
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us given the political environment that we're in right now let's stay let's stay
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positive uh I'm going to close but I wanted to read just a couple of sentences from your book uh you say the
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call to action described in this book is as relevant now as it was 10 years ago perhaps more so we can create a world in
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which people are free to choose whether to become parents and to make the parenting path more feasible for those
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who want to pursue it that's exactly what we've been discussing in the last
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couple of minutes what are your closing thoughts on that where do you hope we are in work life integration I won't use
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the word balance uh 50 years from now where will we be I really think it's going to depend
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on what happens this year in the presidential election uh and you know if if we have people who are thinking about
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the future and thinking about us as a society who are in positions of you know executive Authority making choices about
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investing in families and the the health and education that they need to to be supported in growing uh healthy
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well-nourished and open-minded citizens uh you know that that's going to help a
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lot uh I think you know it's hard to predict how the world's going to be 50
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years from now uh you know and it's uh you know my hope now as a grandfather
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I'm I'm the proud grandfather of three amazing people and I you know I think a
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lot about them and about what their world's going to be like and my hope is that we will make choices
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today that will that will enable them to be free to choose the lives that they want to
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live uh in all aspects of their lives That's My Hope and I hold on to that hope and I doing what I can to try to
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make that hope uh become real absolutely thank you so much again the book is uh called Baby bust uh
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new choices for men and women in work and family this is the 10th anniversary edition it is put out by Wharton School
00:26:03
press you can download it or get a copy from your favorite book seller uh I want
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to thank Dr Stuart freedan for joining me if you enjoyed this conversation you can check out all our content on our
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website it's uh just type knowledge of warten into your search bar I'm Angie
00:26:19
basuni thank you for being here thank you Angie for more insight from knowledge at
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Wharton please visit knowledge. won. up.edu [Music]