Gender Dynamics in Parenting and Marriage

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So you're actually making progress over time More than three hundred thousand patients have already found high quality psychiatric care through talkiatry So head to talkiatry dot com slash Kate Casey. to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkatry dot com slash Kate Casey to get matched in minutes Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with K KaseC, and I've got a great episode for you today So I was watching Real Housewivways of Rhode Island this Sunday night and I had a couple thoughts and I wanted to run them through you becausecause I think a lot of you are watching the show and maybe having some of the same observations or questions And let's talk about Brian and Rula. Now Brian to me, is a very specific person. He's a man who loves a tan. And that would be despite what any dermatologist would ever tell him. Like he's more committed to the tanning bed than he is to his wife, which is obviously very problematic in several ways I don't know. he stries me as somebody who spends a ton of time on his hair, and that's despite having very little of it Also, I do believe he still colors it And I think it's because he doesn't want anybody to think he's over forty. But then, of course, the shoes in the luxury car tell another story And correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't he seem like he is the person who has like several friends, they all have the same name? But to differentiate them, you said to give them nicknames It's like they're all named James, but one's squiggy, and other's Mllow or Chotchy There's got to be a jimmy trash bag in there And I think that they're close because they keep each other' secrets. Like Jimmy Trashbag's real phone number is kept under dry cleaner in his phone And that's because the Jimmy trash bag person on the phone is the person the woman that he's currently trying to hook up with He probably uses Jimmy Trash Bags beach house for hookups And I know that he's a podiatrist and a foot and ankle surgeon, and I do know that they have this med spa But don't we also think that he may have like five other revenue streams and he forgets about most of them Like if you ask him when he does, he'll say, like go a little of this, a little of that. And then somebody's going to be like, wait a minute. I thought that you said you had a marketing firm. So anyway Rouula and Brian are together. they have wo kids and they may may or may not have met when he was married to Alicia Spanish teacher She just seems committed to him, and here's why. And again, it's weird because he's got a mistdress and she's like posting pictures on social media. And all of the women are clamoring like Oh my God, how are we going to tell Rula? She's going to be devastated to learn he has this mistress who's like basically saying that So we're going gonna start in life together Rula does not care. She doesn't care. She gives two shits And I think because number one, it's not the first time. this is not the first rodeo. There's probably been a lot of women before this. I think this is more of a business arrangement Sure, they are affectionate like when she went into his office and she said she had the foot problem and they were acting like they make out sometimes Fine, sure. Maybe they hook up once once or twice, you know, a month or a year. I don't know. I think this is mostly a business arrangement because at this point, their finances are so deeply entangled that maybe they're just like it's not worth it to get a divorce. So she's like, sure, I don't know H have a mistress just leave me alone And I think Now it's been said she was just supposed to be a friend of the show. So she thought, I can dip in and out and we can blow the med spa up. L everyone's going to come The girl that's going to come and do everyone's lips and then we got this and we got that, and we're going be on the show and it's going be bigake. because it was an affair And you know, Rosie didn't have a lot going on and neither did Kelsey. They're like, okay We're going to lean into this because it's weird, and it is weird. It is weird Why doesn't she care? I think it's a business arrangement? I don't know. Are we watching a true crime documentary I need you guys to report back to me And then of course, I just have to say again, Ashley and Jared are so perfect because they are completely unfazed by the cameras and they just talk about very normal things like finances in front of the cameras in a way that Brian and Rula don't, obviously But you know, they've been on TV for a long time. so they're like,, whatever, like, this has been our life for like twenty years. Meanwhile, the other cast members are like, This is our moment in the sun and we're going to, you know become big time movie stars from this So those are the things that I'm observing right now and I just find them to be endlessly fascinating and hilarious So in this episode, I've got an interview with Hannah Sellinger. and she wrote a book called Valley of the Ms. I know that you guys love a good summer read and you know I just put out my summer reading list. It's in the episode notes and also at katecasey. sububstack. com. Make sure you go check that out because I have so many books for you to read this summer I know they're going to love Valley of the Moms. It just came out and Here's what I love about the story. So a body is found in the frozen Ipswich Rriver Look at a grieving husb And he becomes the prime suspect. It's this cutthroat circle of moms that close ranks So the book alternates between two perspectives The character, Anna and her husband, Denny exxactly one year apart. And that builds to this shocking concluding twist So the world it covers is wealthy suburban moms, toxic social hierarchies and the secrets that fester inside these pristine zip codes I'm telling you're gonna love it. Now, Hannah is a James Beard Aard nominated journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times magazine The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Food and Wine Travel and Lisure, and the Boston Globe And she also wrote the memoir, Seller Rat, My Life in the restestaurant Under Belly which you have to put on your list of books to read as well Also, important to note Canah. is the person who coined the term sccandobal Here's my interview Well, Hannah, it's a real pleasure to meet you. I feel like I found out about your book on a Monday. I already read it, and now here we are together. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me Now I feel like you're a girl after my own heart because Not only are you like a prodigious reader and writer, but you also actually like reality shows. so much and have like a tiny bit of a stake in the reality like world Well, tell us a little bit about that because from the top, I want you to explain that connection Yeah. so I mean, have like long long time caller, longt time listener, first time caller Um I was Like in the Bravo sphere as like a watcher or like a, you know, a secondary participant for many years, big real House vives fan and big Van and Pumper Res fan And then when The big Tom Sandeal Ariana thing happened. I was like sitting on my couch like, you know, passive aggressively pulling up stories on Instagram And I just sent something out on stories saying like You know, we need to call this end of all, I'm officially naming it S scanable, hashtag, scannable, and I tagged Andy Cohen. And that night you reposted it on Instagram and he said this term is going to be called Sandibal now and I'm officially like Hannah this is officially Hannah Sellinger's term. I'm giving her credit. And so I am officially the person who named Sandaval Skandaval, which is a weird thing to be able to say, but he actually Gave N credit for it. as he should have. Absolutely. shouldould have, as he should have So You know, I watched Vanderpump from the beginning and I really enjoyed like the process of being able to like pick up the Easter eggs going back that final season after we like knew the scandal had broken and we were a midseason and then crazy finale when they had picked back up filming But that's my kind of like reality television claim to fame. No are you keeping up with the summer house scandal Of course, actuallyually it's so weird. So Kyle is from Ry, New Hampshire, which is just a couple of towns from where I grew up on the Massachusetts New Hampshire border. When they were, I don't know if it was onn their honeymoon or like right after they got married, they went to St. John. And my husband, who swears that he doesn't watch reality TV, but he does, he watches it with me. We were sitting at this bar called Limelight, which is a floating bar in St.t John There are these pods and we were in a pod and he looks back and he's like No two people behind us They're from that show you watched that's set in the Hamptons. We had lived year around in the Hamptons for many years And I was like Hyon Amanda. So he was the one who recognized them and they were sitting you know, maybe two feet behind us W And we talked to them for like an hour Interesting? Yeah, like about you know, the fact that Kyle was from right where I grew up and we gave them like recommendations about where to go. They took none of them and that' great And then we had watched the show for a while partly because it was set in the Hamptons one we knew all of the locations and we knew we actually knew somebody who was on the show was like a He wasn't really a cast member. He was just like someone who would come and party at the house But u I Obviously when all this dropped, I was like, well, I have to kind of like get back and reinvest it. And I think the reunions actually have been I don't want to like ress The Sandoal reunions because that was some great television. I think that the last episode of the Sandval season, which was the penultimate season of Vaner Pump Pump Rlls or that iteration because I don't watch the new Vaner Pump Um I think they that was some of the best television, but I think these two past reunions have been like maybe better than scam of all reunions, like this has been epic television. Well, number one question, do you think Amanda and West were on beta blockers or something more Yeah, um She definitely is And drs. I don't know what is I heard that she was from that reunion for an hour. An hour. Yeah. Yeah. So that's crazy. They should never have allowed that because there're all be there. And that's just insane to me U Or the people in the back were like, girl Like they' trying to wake her up. They they were slapping her bas throwing water on her. What is going on with that? And really like the whole point of this is that You're, you know, Look, I don't know, I don't know that I always want to be agree with Lindssey Hubber, She was right to say that like she was held accountable for her behavior in many reunions past. and you know, they all sort of They go there and the point is that like you kind of get ripped a new one. That's what we're there for to sort of see everyone come back and have to face their demons and Amanda really has not had to do any of that. She sort of gets to walk away and cry and then come back and Yeah ye take none of her. she just doesn't have to sort of face any of it and that feels unfair. It does seem stronger than a beta blocker though, for both of them and Wes, man. He doesnn't even chase after his girl until his you know, his girl's ex husband tells her tells him to go do it. so feels whichich is really sad. Well, the other question is having spent an hour with him, does it just Boggle your mind that they didn't have sex the entire time they were married. You saw them together in a vacation setting That does not boggle my mind. There doesn't seem much natural chemistry there. They seem very like Interesting that you are from the area in which he's from. So maybe you do in some ways kind of understand him I wonder What part of you is always Massachusetts So I'm a Yankees fan until I die, but I'm a Dunkin' Donut drinker until I die. So these are conflicting elements of my personality And do you think that like the Ben Afflecks, the Matt Damons of the world adequately represent the good people of the state of Massachusetts? That's actually a fair representation. And there was like a skit earlier this year. I don't know if everybody found this as funny as I did, although my mother. So I was actually raised by my mother who is from Massachusetts. and my father was from New Jersey, which really transates to New York in a lot of ways. but it's sort of like a You know, the character is very similar Um, and There was a skit on Jimmy Fallon where Jimmy Fallon who is actually from New York, but then pretends to be from Massachusetts. Matt Damon And then havef like ed with a dead od Massachusetts accent every single town in Massachusetts alphabetically. W It was just hilarious and everyone from here found this like riotously funny. I don't think that anyone outside of the bay state found this funny at all. L I don't think anybody found any humor in this, but I sent it to like my mom And like my aunts And like my cousins and all the people I grew up with and we just like we like kept replaying it. Like we're probably the only people that got it up to a million views But we just found this so funny and Yeah, like they that sort of like like, you know, I'll fight you in a parking lot, but then' my best friend tomorrow kind of thing. like that's like very genuine to who we are as people will have your back, but also Don't fuck with us. See, I think coming from Philadelphia originally, we are like that, but not the part where we'll be friends with you the next day. That's where it ends. Yeah Y brain is already of full capacity. With tooos and errands and birthdays and the dinner plans for Tuesday, you have to let Skylight Clendar handle the rest. 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I mean, you do spend half your life there Sleep cooler this summer with Bowoland Branch during their annual summer event For a limited time, get twenty percent off sitewide at bowolandbranch dot com slash Kate Casey with code Kate Casey That's Bowl N brranch B O L L A N D branch d. com slash K Casey Casey to take twenty percent off Bolenbranch d. com slash Kake Casey, code Kate Casey. Exclusions apply Well, what's interesting especially reaching you now at this part of your life, becoming a fiction writer, like you have a completely different origin story. You were in the restaurant industry and a journalist, so ye how did you get into that Yeah, well, so actually the origin story is fiction. it just is kind of buried. because because I went to college for English and comparative literature and then slipped into a master of fine Arts program for fiction But then kind of thought U It's not like how do you sell that? And you know, originally when I was twenty five and I graduated with an MFA, I thought I'm just going to write and sell the great American novel. But it was two thousand five and I also needed to make a living. so I immediately went and got a job as a server, which was like the only marketable skill set I had comoming out of, you know, I'd come out of college. Right after the nine eleven attacks, which happened when I was a senior in college and then There was like, you know first market crash like a soft market crash in around two thousand two. And all my friends had gone off to become like, you know, hedge funders or lawyers. and I was like, well, I'm not going to do any of that So I went and became t F first I was like a server in my hometown at like, you know, crappy tverns and whatever. and then I went back to New York where I was working at serious restaurants. I was working for Bobby Fle and then As time progressed, Laurent Torendell where I became a somal kind of by accident. L I didn't know anything about wine and they were like, well, you can learn here. and then the more I learned, I was like, well you know, barring anything else, I can I can do this. And that became a fallback career for me for a long time. then and then When the original plan had been to kind of wait tables and right on the side. thinking that I was going to have all this time. what happened was It was taking all of this time out of my life to do this stuff. And then wine was taking more time. I thought, okay, well maybe this just sort of is my career now And it became that for almost fifteen years What is that world like for the outsider? Because I mean, we've all kind of watched some sort of cooking competition show It seems like a very sophisticated snobby world. Am I wrong U I think it depends that well, I mean It depends on what type of restaurant you're working at and it depends on when in time you're working there When I was coming up in two thousand five through, you know, before twenty fifteen U And this is obviously in you know you sort of have to frame it before the pandemic. Yes., I was working at two three and four star restaurants, and when I say two, three and four star, that's framed through the New York Times dining you know, their system, which is E though it's the New York Times New York, it really is sort of a global system of evaluating restaurants, although we also go by Michelin Um It was really prestigious It was really serious There were a lot of rules. There were a lot of ways that you had to hold your body and comport yourself. There were a lot of rules for like how you could put a fork down. I had come from you know, this kind of dining where, you know, you just sort of like gave people their food and like, you know, hey, who at this Who is the table got got the pasta. You raise your hand. and I' like I was not flying at New York City restaurants. You know, we put things into a computer with a designation about seat number was where and you know you wrroke everything down because you were not going by memory, you know, for fear of making a mistake And wine was at that same level. You know, you not only did you have to know you know what someone ordered, but you had to know what glass it went into. you had to know what kinds of grapes, you had to know vnd. you had to know what kind of soil it was grown in and hly it was. I mean, there, you know, the list goes on and on. And eventually when I became a Somer, I had to know I had to know the nose on it. Like someone recently blind tasted me on something. U No I I was doing a piece for a travel Misure in New Hampshire and I went to like a really nice sort of reallyian Chateau style property And he blinded me on something, and I got it. and I was like I'm out of practice, but I still have. Girls still got it. Girls still got it. I feel pretty good about myself. Will you ever go to Trader Joe's and get wine Oh yeah, you know, I think, u I drink what I. I also still go to McDonald's hing and French fries. I mean Yeah. firmly believe that people should eat and drink what they like Yeah And you know Um Value driven too. like, you know, there's a time and a place for everything. I think you should you know I'm not going to spend first of all, I'm never going spend a thousand dollars on a bottle of wine because I know that I don't have to spend a thousand dollars on a bottle of wine, but like I think that like It's it's just atrocious to spend a lot of money on a bottle of wine that's overpriced just because it's a good producer as it is spend a little money on a, you know, on a bad bottle of wine. Like there, you know, you should drink good things that taste good to you. doesn't, you know, I also love to drink diet Coke, so it' st bl know. Well, then I thought about it the way that you write, it's so detailed. So do you think I wouldn't assume you would say yes working in industry and being around those kind of characters, that it helped you in your writing career because you probably have much more rich character development And then the details that you put into describing scenes and characters a lot of that skill set, I would assume In that industry, especially as a Somalia, you have to pay attention to all the little details Yeah, I think it's complimentary. I mean, I think I probably had some of that before because it was coming from a literary place. And I think I think They work well together. you know, I later made a career in nonfiction writing about ood and wine, you know, for which I was nominated for a James Beard. And I think you know coming from fiction background helped inform that. and then later Getting into food and wine helped me see fiction differently. So sort these things are integrative. They kind of work with one another So let's talk about this book Um, Obviously, it's set in a place that you know very, very well Where did the concepts first begin Yeah. so I had just wrapped up seell a rat, but it wasn't out yet, which was my memoir that came out last year about working in the wine industry And I kind of wanted to sink my teeth into something else. I hadn' been thinking about working on a novel for a while, but I wasn't, you know It's much more difficult to sell a novel and I had no I had been out of fiction for so long. And when I first moved back to Massachusetts after having spent seventeen years in New York in the interim Um My husband and I moved to Bxford, which is about fifty minutes from where I grew up And at the time, my oldest son was in kindergarten and I had tried to get into this Zidi with your sweetieriel U like dance run by the parent teacher organization and I went to sign up like Dave. The minute that they open tickets And like The tickets were immediately sold out And I couldn't figure out why that was. And so I went on some like Facebook group for the parent teacher organization and I found out that there was like a tiered system and that if you have paid more money U Two days earlier, they had a released tickets to people who were like paid participants U you know, and they got the early release tickets. So there were only like a very slim amount of tickets left for, you know, the Hoi Poloi the regular people And I kind of got into it almost immediately with like some woman on the internet was like, well, if you would just just be normal, just pay the two hundred dollars. And I was like, no, but that's not actually normal. It's a public school And why should anyone it's not You know, it was just a principlple thing. It wasn't like I didn't have the two hundred dollars or or even that I wouldn't want to like give the money into the PCU. I just was like No one in the community should be like boxed out. They could get a bigger venue or they could just like why would they do that? That doesn't make any sense. so I got really enraged and I weeaked the story to the Boston Globe And then And then I leaked it to like, I don't know if I I think I leaked it to WBZ, which is like the local. television station and they came to my house and they like filmed a clip with me, which made be instantly unpopular with everybody in the sp. Okay Yeahah, how does that go down? So not that you do that. likeike the person that wrote that email back were they like, whoopsy or like I got so trolled like I was like off of Twitter now that it's become , but I got like super trolled on Twitter When I say Everyone was in my Instagram stories, like I would open up my Instagram stories and it was like Eone in my town and their husbands viewing my stories, like I was like, wow, I suddenly have a thousand views. This is so weird. So many people want to see what I'm writing on Instagram, like, no, they don't. just like U I was like block block, block, block block, block block. U I got emails I got an email from someone whose son was in my son's kindergarten class and like they had been to like a birthday party together and I was like Girls, you know me. L we like know each other, ourur sense of friends, like you don't want to go down this road with me, like I don't think U I had to file a police report whichich didn't go anywhere. it was just like, you have to tell the police and stuff like that. Like if you have a thousand people in your Instagram stories and like everyone's like, you know But like you have to tell the cops about stuff like that and And then it died down, but I didn't stop thinking about it. It was kind of like, okay, well You know ot It's not about the PTO, right? It's not about That's not the story. The story is wealth and privilege and a lack of awareness about Iigent people in your town and what wealth create What does wealthalth do to people? How does wealthalth manipulate Normalcy How does wealth change people's perception of where they're living and what they're doing and how they're behaving because all of these people For most of these people, seellf identified as liberal Most of these people identified as progressive But they were behaving in a way that was antithetical to progressive or liberal values. They were saying, oh, well, there are no indigent people in this town. Well, surely there were because we have a food pantry here but they were really comfortable was excluding The idea of that because It meant getting their kids into party Like, you know, anything that that where they were able to kind of you know, leverage their position. They were they were fine with sort of you know, putting on the blinders. and so That was really the story to me. it wasn't about whooever these people were, who cares, right? Like It doesn't matter who they are or what they're doing. It matters that wealth and privilege are able to kind of voiced upon us this different set of values Were there any particular people that you used in inspiration that were outside of the community in which you lived?ike D you write with the lens like this would be the kind of person this person in the public may have been if they were involved in a local school It wasn't these were nons specific things. I mean, the only other larger thing that I was thinking of was the Varsity Blues scandal with Lory Laoughghlin R because it occurred to me that like, If you're going to take an idea and you're going kind of like almost like gently satirize it or makeake it so crazy that it's hard to believe thenen you have to kind of look to real life examples where something so wild happens that you have to sort of say, okay, but look here, here's a counterpoint with something so crazy that actually did happen and That story was wild, right? Like you had multiple celebrities, you had her, you had Felicity Huffman who were like actually doing these crazy things And Um, to the point where they were imprisoned for it. They committed like you know, I don't know if it was a felony or it must have been a felony, right? These are felonies U and got caught and had to do time. all for the sake of getting their kids into college when their kids likely would have gotten into college anyway, and probably the colleges that they wanted to get into regardless So I thought, well, it's not such a leap, right to say, okay, well, peopleeople in real life are already doing these things. What about the things that we don't know about Yes Yes I kept thinking about the husband. And by the way, Denny is the most Massachusetts name that I probably ever has been You know, to me, he kind of represents the husbands that are sort of like oblivious and sort of baffled by women that are so overly committed and emotional about the PTO And it's sort of like Why are women so vicious the reality is like, okay, but men created the system in which Women don't have as much access to positions like whether it's politics, you know, financial institutions or or whatever So it's like we have to compress our ambition into these tiny containers which are often domains in which we are sort of pushed into. like especially once we have kids because then, you know It's like expected, Well, the woman. However whatever degree of success she's had, at least for a short period of time, she's going to have to take a back seat because, you know, we're going to start a family So in the short, so what happens is that the domains are like volunteering and PTOs and of that sort. And I think in any community especially in the United States of America, you're going to come across a woman. and I often think to myself You're so involved in this and so committed to it, immagine if you were running a small country or like a foundation. Like you'd be so successful and I empathy for the characters that are so You know overwhelmed in their commitment to like even the most minute details of what it takes to run a PTO or PTA because It's oftentimes women who would really flourish and do well. in other spaces, but we live in a system that disallows for that to happen So I think it's like a really interesting window into Our world, especially for women who, you know are between like, you know, what twenty five and fifty who go from a working world into some of these PTO's Yeah, you're not wrong I mean, I also think she likeike And this isn't specific to my marriage, but I think if you think about like how many times How do women go to their