Motherhood Identity Series with Advocate & Influencer Paige Connell

This mom of four is an inspiring influencer and advocate raising awareness on the realities of parenting, the mental load mothers carry and the inequalities women face

If you’re in a partnership or relationship, you know how tricky it can be at times to share the ever-expanding mental load. Motherhood isn’t just taking care of children: it’s thinking three steps ahead, planning for meals and vacations, anticipating growth spurts, scheduling doctor’s appointments—and the list goes on (and on and on). Plus, for many families who depend on dual-incomes to make ends meet: it’s doing all of this, while also working full-time.

It’s an experience influencer and advocate Paige Connell knows first-hand as a mom of four. Her viral TikTok videos discuss sharing the mental load, what an equal-partner relationship looks like and means, plus the reality of the cost of daycare and other expenses modern parents manage. 

Paige never set out to be a social media influencer for parents—in fact, she kind of stumbled into it. What started out as a marketing experiment for her job, turned into an inspiring, empowering real-talk community where she sheds light on the realities of parenting, the mental load mothers carry and the inequalities women face. In this week’s Motherhood Identity Series, she candidly opened up about the highs and lows of motherhood, marriage and more.

Paige is not just influencing for fun and klout—she wants to change the narrative, and we wanted to learn why and how: 

Was there a moment when you realized how important it was for you to start addressing all of the topics and issues that you do address on your platform? What really inspired you to put it all online? 

I wouldn't say there was a specific moment. I started posting as part of my job. My job uses TikTok for marketing, and it was a platform we weren't super familiar with. So I started posting, but I didn't tell anybody. I was much more of a lurker on social media prior to that. I had an account, but didn't post very often. As I started posting though, I was having fun conversations with people and building a community. I didn't really have a niche or even an agenda until six months later. 

When I shared how much I paid for childcare, the response was incredible. It highlighted to me the inequities that exist between men and women, and even just the way that we all view women in particular.

There were a lot of comments telling me I didn't deserve to be a mom if I was letting other people raise my kids.

This showed me how most people are uneducated on the realities of parenting these days—and how prevalent inequities are and how they trickle into all different areas of our lives. When that happened, I made a decision that these were the things that I cared about and wanted to focus on. Once I got the conversation started, I wanted to make sure I took it seriously and used it as an opportunity—hopefully for good.

What was your personal experience finding childcare?

My journey to becoming a mother was a little bit different because our two oldest kids came to us through foster care. We were foster parents to our two oldest first and that experience was different. In Massachusetts where we live, most children in foster care are eligible for a voucher for childcare, so the cost is essentially covered. But there is still a struggle to find childcare. Not every center has a voucher slot available or even accepts vouchers. We were very lucky to get them both into the same child care center. But a year later, we had officially adopted them and also moved. 

We were contacting places that were telling us they could take one of your kids, but not the other. It was a struggle. Post COVID, most schools had shut down a lot of their rooms. They were struggling with staffing, so my daughter was put on the waitlist. She didn’t end up getting into daycare until she was almost two. The same thing happened to my fourth child. We had a part-time nanny and had an au pair for the two years until they were in daycare. Now we officially have all four kids in daycare or camp and after school. 

What are some strategies that you use or recommend for moms who are trying to manage the mental load—and also create an equitable partnership with their partner? 

It does come down to how you operate. I am very type A: I live and die by my calendar and my reminders. Everybody asks me how I manage four kids. Their schedules are color coded in my Google Calendar. But when it comes to the mental load, I actually use my reminders app. It's a free app where you can set reminders for yourself and put if they are one-time or recurring. That is something that I have always done even prior to children.

When it comes to your partnership, we really struggled with it. We started our conversation by doing Fair Play, the book and the game. I don't know that it works for everyone and it does put a lot of the responsibility on the woman, which I think is a questionable thing. But for us, it was a really great place to start the conversation. 

We started to give each other cards. If you have a card about dinner, your job is to do all of that. The planning, the execution, and the cooking. You do everything associated with dinner and that's the mental load. We started to use an Excel spreadsheet where we looked at all the things that happen in our home. 

I'll jokingly say ‘I thought the dishwasher was yours, right?’ What happens when you own a task fully is that you own the mental load too. You relieve the other person of having to think about that task. Sometimes men take on mowing the lawn. The mental load with that is I never have to think about if there's gas in that lawn mower. I don't know. Not my problem, right? 

In the same way, my husband doesn't know if every camp form was filled out because I did that, that's my task. I think that if you are going to do something, you really have to do it fully. Otherwise, it's really not helpful to your partner.  

How has social media impacted your experience as a mother and your own personal identity?

I think it's made me even more empathetic to others. I hear from so many women in my DMs. Everything I post is very emotional and tied to so many aspects of our life. I try to be really empathetic towards others and the things people share with me. I don't ever take for granted the role that I'm playing in their life.

At the same time, it's also given me a really unique perspective to how I view social media. I'm just an everyday mom who’s sharing her experience. It's made me break that third wall of influencing. I have to remember these are just people because I think oftentimes we view somebody who has a million followers differently. There’s still a person behind that and it's important for us to remember that. 

As moms, I think we get a lot of social content thrown at us about how to be a “good mom”—and I think that can be really hard.

For me, it's made me more empathetic to people around me and it's also made me more critical of things. I used to just maybe consume content. Now, I'm thinking about the content I consume and how it ended up in my algorithm, which I never would have done two years ago. I just saw the video, liked it and moved on. 

How do you remove yourself from the negativity? Does it impact you? Does it make you feel like a bad mom?

I pretty much ignore all of it. I look at it and I will engage here and there. If I’m hitting the wrong side of TikTok or the wrong side of Instagram, a bunch of angry men are in my comments. I just don't look because if I wouldn't take that feedback in real life seriously, I'm not going to take it online. 

I will say there are days that are hard. There are days where you're already having a day and then you see somebody say something bad about you. I think that they’re not hearing me, they’re not seeing me and they’re not understanding me. They just saw a video. I try to remember when I see something like that, that this person does not know me and they're leaving a comment based on their own experience. 

What do you hope your kids will take away from the advocacy work you’re doing?

Right now, they don't get it. My kids are seven and under, they don't know what I do. My daughter sometimes jokes like, “Are you on TikTok?” When they get older, I hope they won't see it and be surprised by it, because they hopefully will be seeing this in their everyday life. 

I'm having these conversations with my sister, my husband and people in my real life—and my kids are hearing them. Hopefully that will shape the way they view me and what I do.

Especially since I have three daughters, I hope they see that work that I'm doing and know that I'm doing it so that they can have the equal opportunity to men.

I want them to know they are capable, deserving and that their work is important and valued, even if they want to be a stay at home mom. I hope my son will grow up to value women. I'm holding him to the same standards I hold his sisters to. 

As a mother of four, how would you say your identity has shifted in motherhood? 

When I was doing our training for foster care, they asked us to name three things that we think define us. I remember saying: my job. Somebody said to me, ‘that won't be the case for long.’ I thought, “No, I'm still gonna have a career and be a mom.” I still do those things, but they were right in the sense.

How I view myself in the world has changed drastically. I'm a millennial, and I came up in the ‘girl boss’ era where you think I can and I will do all of these things if I just work hard enough. 

I think becoming a mother radicalized me. Now I think: “I still am going to try and do all these things, but I will no longer accept the system that I have to do this within.”

Why am I expected to do all the cooking and the cleaning and the kids and have a job? Why is that expected of me but not of my partner? Why are people asking me if my salary covers the cost of child care, what about my husband’s salary?

Having kids changed my perspective on the world so much. Specifically the world that mothers have to walk through and live in. I have a bigger purpose now to hopefully have an impact on other mothers, children and partners to make it better for everybody.

Going into November, childcare and maternal mental health is all very much on the ballot. What advice would you give to women who want to find resources or educate themselves on these topics? 

Do what you can. If you can't attend meetings, you can still write letters, still sign petitions, still engage in social media content and still be educated. Organizations like Chamber of Mothers, Moms First, Moms Rising and Mother Forward can help you get involved right where you are. I think the biggest thing as mothers is it's so hard to find any time, just in general. It's really hard to feel like you can get involved. But you can get involved in little ways. I think a good way to start is to follow organizations you align with. 

What’s next for you?

I have recently stopped working my 9 to 5 job and will be focusing more on this work. I am excited to be launching my new Substack where I will have longer form content. I also have a content series on YouTube with my friend Abby, called On the Same Page. Essentially our goal is to have conversations about what you should be talking about before major life decisions with a partner. 

What do you wish you talked about before you moved in with them? What do you wish you talked about before you got engaged or before you got married? Do we want to join a bank account? Do we not want to join a bank account? 

So I'm really excited about that because I think so often we go into these things with rose-colored glasses. I'm also working on a podcast about parenting and the kind of things nobody told me going into it. It's called Do You Want The Truth? I'm excited because one of the hardest parts of parenting is that there's so much you don't know until you're in it.