The Decision Education Podcast
Sep 16, 2026 · 44 min · 12 segments
What if the biggest parenting mistake is following a script you never consciously chose? **Corinne Low, associate professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School**, joins host…
Corinne LowGuest
Annie DukeHostYou keep saying economic agents, right?
So I wanna kind of come to that.
So it was really interesting, just randomly yesterday, 'cause I knew I was having this conversation with you today, but I did not create this conversation.
But somebody who's in their 20s, who I've been mentoring for a while, actually asked me about, "Well, you know, you have a bunch of kids.
I'm thinking, 'Do I want kids? Do I not want kids?' Like, what is your take on work, career, you know, kids, so on and so forth?" And I was like
likeWell, it's a complete myth that you can fully focus on your career and somehow fully focus on your children, and you just have to go into it realizing that that's not so.
'Cause she was feeling that she's a career person, she's very passionate about her career.
She's like, "How am I supposed to fit kids into that?" I'm like, "You fit them in however you can." Right? And it's all good.
I was promising her it was all good, and I said, "Then you make the decision that you want." So let's talk about that, because we can think about, you know, when my mom was growing up, that it was incredibly rare for a woman to fully have a career.
The career was homemaker, you know? Then, then obviously there was this shift that came with women's liberation movement really in the '70s to, no, women can be CEOs also.
Which all sounds fine and good, but you're saying, okay, it's not just what I said, which was that idea that you're still supposed to be, like, perfect mom.
So I wanna go back to the history a little bit, because if we take, like, a longer window of history, and this is part of what Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize for, what you actually see is that, like, women were very active in producing, like, the economic spoils of the household.
And maybe we didn't call it employment, but they were producing the economic product of the household alongside men.
In fact, even the term parenting is very new, right? So then you get to the period of where, as you said, your mom was growing up, and in that period, suddenly households are getting richer.
Men and families are moving off of farms, they're urbanizing, and as they urbanize, suddenly there are jobs where men can earn enough that he can support the household all on his own.
You keep saying economic agents, right?
So I wanna kind of come to that.
So it was really interesting, just randomly yesterday, 'cause I knew I was having this conversation with you today, but I did not create this conversation.
But somebody who's in their 20s, who I've been mentoring for a while, actually asked me about, "Well, you know, you have a bunch of kids.
I'm thinking, 'Do I want kids? Do I not want kids?' Like, what is your take on work, career, you know, kids, so on and so forth?" And I was like
likeWell, it's a complete myth that you can fully focus on your career and somehow fully focus on your children, and you just have to go into it realizing that that's not so.
'Cause she was feeling that she's a career person, she's very passionate about her career.
She's like, "How am I supposed to fit kids into that?" I'm like, "You fit them in however you can." Right? And it's all good.
I was promising her it was all good, and I said, "Then you make the decision that you want." So let's talk about that, because we can think about, you know, when my mom was growing up, that it was incredibly rare for a woman to fully have a career.
The career was homemaker, you know? Then, then obviously there was this shift that came with women's liberation movement really in the '70s to, no, women can be CEOs also.
Which all sounds fine and good, but you're saying, okay, it's not just what I said, which was that idea that you're still supposed to be, like, perfect mom.
So I wanna go back to the history a little bit, because if we take, like, a longer window of history, and this is part of what Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize for, what you actually see is that, like, women were very active in producing, like, the economic spoils of the household.
And maybe we didn't call it employment, but they were producing the economic product of the household alongside men.
In fact, even the term parenting is very new, right? So then you get to the period of where, as you said, your mom was growing up, and in that period, suddenly households are getting richer.
Men and families are moving off of farms, they're urbanizing, and as they urbanize, suddenly there are jobs where men can earn enough that he can support the household all on his own.
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