Not Better, Not Worse — Just Different Support Systems

Support systems in motherhood often become a quiet comparison game — who has help nearby, who has childcare, who has flexibility, and who is doing most of it alone. But what if we stopped ranking support and simply acknowledged the truth: it’s not better or worse — it’s different.

In this episode, we explore how the structure around a mother shapes her experience — from time and career opportunities to marriage dynamics, emotional bandwidth, and financial decisions. Because motherhood doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens inside systems.

This conversation looks at the architecture of support — family help, paid help, partner dynamics, and community — and how those invisible structures influence the day-to-day reality of raising children. Without judgment, without comparison, and without the pressure to prove who has it harder.

Instead, this episode invites a more honest conversation about what support really looks like, how it impacts our lives, and how we can build or adjust the support systems available to us.

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This episode is sponsored by FM Bookkeeping 💛

FM Bookkeeping exists to empower business owners and give them peace of mind around their finances. We believe you deserve clarity, confidence, and support—without shame, judgment, or overwhelm.

Whether you’re behind, confused, or just tired of carrying the mental load of your numbers, FM Bookkeeping is here to help you feel grounded and in control again.

If you’re ready to stop stressing about your books and start feeling supported, visit:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Raising Hustle, the unflickered podcast for the moms who are building empires with babies on their hips and grits in their hearts. I'm your host, Mariel Fry, bookkeeper by trade, hustler by nature, and mama by choice. Around here we're raising kids, raising hell, and raising the bar. If you're tired of choosing between nap time and next level dreams, this is your space. Let's redefine what it means to have it all on our own damn terms.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hey hustlers and mamas, welcome back to Raising Hustle. Because it's not better and it's not worse. It's just different support systems. Motherhood conversations can get charged fast. Even when we start talking about support, who has grandparents nearby? Who has paid child care? Who has flexible work? Who has a partner that's fully hands-on? Who's mostly doing it alone? And sometimes instead of just naming the differences, we compare them. We turn it into who has it easier, who has it stronger, who should be more grateful, and who's allowed to complain. But what if we just pause and acknowledge something so simple? Support systems aren't better or worse. They're simply different. And different support systems create different experiences of motherhood, emotionally, logistically, financially, and mentally. Today's episode, I want to talk about what that actually looks like. Not to rank it, not to judge it, but to normalize this conversation. Number one, the architecture around a mother. So there's so much to unravel in this episode. There's so much to think about when it comes to being a mom and bringing a child into the world and what kind of support you even want or what you're looking for. Do you want to be close proximity-wise versus is it actually available? Sure, you could live close. I hear the story constantly of living so close to family and them never even visiting, or even them being available. So having those conversations ahead of time will just alleviate any headache you have. I know for me, the proximity wasn't going to be there and the availability wasn't going to be there. So it just wasn't going to work. Paid support versus family support. I know for myself, I knew I'd have to pay for any support, which meant I'm fortunate that I have a business that I can afford some babysitting and some nanny help. But for many people, that might not even be an option to have any paid help. And so they really rely on family. And that's free help. And that's what the anticipation is, or the hope. I think the bit scariest part for myself thinking about family help is sure, you you have the help and you rearrange your life to be near somebody. What if that family member you rely on gets sick or they have to move or something happens? That's the part that scares me a little bit. But again, every circumstance is very different. Partner support versus community support. My partner does help. Some days I joke, I wish he helped more, or maybe just took ownership of certain tasks or responsibilities. But if I need him to be home, he can be home. He's an entrepreneur like myself. We both have weird, flexible schedules where if we can make it work, we will make it work. But community support's really important too. And I'm fortunate where I live in a neighborhood where a lot of moms have young kids, but we support each other when we can. It's just we might not be able to be there. And I try to go out and meet other moms, but again, that's challenging too. And I think you have to want that. And I think when you think about bringing a child into the world, you think about the structure that you have and how close are you to family? What kind of job do you have? Can you leave your job? Do you want to find a new job? Do you have the family support? What kind of support do you even have in general? What support can you afford? Is it even possible? Think about the architecture and the foundation of what that looks like for you being a mom. And there's nothing wrong with either way. It's just thinking about what kind of support do you need to thrive to be a mother and not feel like you're surviving. Number two, time feels different depending on support. I really truly believe this. When you have like people, right, in your life, you do get a little bit more of a break. So, what does that look like? What kind of breaks do you have? I know with my son when it was one, having the break was when he napped. I didn't know how long he'd napped for or what that looked like, but at least it was a little bit of a nap. And I think there is something to be said when it comes to just the mental load or the mental space that comes with a backup. When you anticipate or know that like a mother-in-law is coming over or your mom's coming over, or a friend or a family member or an aunt or whatever, when you know that you're going to have backup come over and consistently help, you feel just like the weight's lifted off your shoulders. Like I know for me, having the help every Tuesday of a babysitter coming, I know I can have the deep work to really work and not have a child interrupt me. I know if I have to run errands, I can do that. It just feels really good to know that you can have the space to take for yourself whatever you need to do, depending on your support. I know I'm default parent. Why am I default parent? Let's even define what that means. Perfect example is we had a family member text both myself and my husband about just different items that they bought for the baby, but more importantly, food. And my husband goes, You need to answer that. He couldn't even answer it because he doesn't even know the grocery list of what I'm buying for my son. Doesn't mean he doesn't know what he we feed him, but he doesn't even know what to buy or how much we need to buy of it because he doesn't know. He doesn't know his appointments for the doctors. He doesn't know his appointments for, I guess, any doctor really. He doesn't take care of him day to day. So that's how I know I'm default parent on this. And doesn't mean he doesn't support me. He just doesn't really know a hundred percent, which leads to a lot of decision fatigue. I'm so tired of making decisions. I literally hate it. And it sucks because if you had other support or other people around, maybe they can help you with decisions. But when everything falls on you, you are the decision maker constantly. And like some days my husband will be like, What do you want for dinner? I'm like, I literally don't care. Just fucking cook something and make something. You know, I don't like spicy, you know what I want to eat. Like if I'm craving something right now, I'm seven months pregnant recording this. Yes, there are some days I just want a burger or I just want beef. But general rule of thumb, I don't want to make decisions if I don't have to. I make decisions 24-7. I make decisions in my business of delegating, I make decisions with clients, I make decisions with my husband, I make decisions for my son all the time. There's just some days I don't want to make a decision. And that makes me want to explode. Some days I'm like a ticking tie bomb. And that's very normal if you feel that way. I think depending on what kind of support you have or what's around you, there are some days you just like want to quit. There are some days you're just like, I need a break. I can't deal with this. And you have to like know that internally within yourself, what that looks like. I know for even telling my husband, it's like he is my biggest support family-wise. Like he is the person that is here. We only have each other where we live. Otherwise, every other support we have is paid. And so I do lose my patience some days because I don't have that family member or someone to come over. I don't have that person to pop on by. And so I get burnt out. And it's very normal to feel burnt out and tired and exhausted and just over it. So if you feel over it, just know you're like definitely not alone, especially with like not much support or anybody around you. Number three, career and ambition look different. I want to talk about when you scale a business. I have childcare that I pay for. And for many women, if you have family help and they say they're gonna come over at a certain time that they're gonna come, then you know that that free help is really invaluable and it saves you so much money. But for any day that I don't have a babysitter, I'm kind of flying off the seat of my pants and I'm working during nap times. I'm working in between naps or sometimes TV. I need the TV babysitter, as some people say. I'm not perfect, but that's how it looks like for me. If you don't have the help, you just need other distractions. Because I need flexibility, especially growing my business and doing this online and at home. I need flexibility. I need to adjust constantly, and you're just making it work. Somehow, someway, you're just you're literally making it work. And it's really hard when it's on you, when you don't have that family member or somebody to come over, because you just feel like you're putting all this pressure on yourself for everything, and especially your business. If you are have a scaling business that's growing, like myself, I do feel pressure of doing it all. Even as of recently, I decided to do like Whole Foods delivery. Now, I'm somebody who likes to go to a grocery store. I don't hate it. But as I get bigger in my pregnancy, it's getting tiring to do this. And I decided, you know what? I'm gonna write a grocery list. I'm gonna go on Whole Foods, I'm gonna get it delivered the next morning. But it was a freaking dream, to be honest with you. It is worth the little extra money to pay the delivery and to pay the tip and all of that. Because we cannot do it all as moms, mamas. We just, we have to give ourselves that break. And I was okay with actually getting these groceries delivered. And my husband brought the groceries in, and you know what? I put them away, and that was it. It was easy, so easy. And I would say, even in your business, like make your life a little bit easier in your business with systems and support. I know for me, I use double. And it's like if Asana and QuickBooks made a baby, it would be this. I say that quite a bit, but it's true. And I am able to do a lot more automation in my business, ask the same recurring questions, and not have to like always have my team to remind. So build systems and things in your business that are gonna help you, especially a mom without support. Like I said, I don't have family to come and support me. So I have to build things very strategically and smart. Otherwise, I will drown. I will literally drown. And mom is, I don't want you to drown. I want you to build systems and make your life more efficient, especially financially, if you can afford to do it. Why wouldn't you? Something I did. And it's helped me think about my ambitions and my life, and it's given me a little bit more time back to focus on the things I want to focus on. Number four, marriage partnerships and dynamics. So this can be interesting. I think the reality is, is you want to make sure, like if you have a child, you're with the right person. And now there's plenty of women out there who are just having kids on their own. And kudos to y'all. I don't think I could do it, but I give you a lot of credit if you can. But for my husband and I, we are really building a life to silo ourselves. Doesn't mean we don't want family around. I'm not saying that, but we built a life intentionally away from our family so we can afford a nicer home and we can afford to have kids. And now we're both business owners and we're thriving in that sense. But we want to make sure like we're taking care of our family first. We've heard so many stories of like extended family doing weird things and really questioning people. And you start to realize like, what is important to you? And what do you want out of like extended family, or what are you looking for out of just people in general? I think for my husband and I, we just really want to keep our family siloed. We're building our life, we're being a little selfish. And it feels really good for the first time in my life to say that. I think, especially for women, we're people pleasers and we want to do everything for everybody. But I know for my husband and I, we both are gonna stand our ground a little bit more. We both are going to communicate a little bit better. We both want to just do things that build our relationship, but build our support. And if it means that we need to hire more people or we need to do date nights more, we're gonna protect that peace and protect that power within our relationship. We don't want that to get ruined by other outsiders. We want to really focus on that. And again, because we don't have support of other people, like we are so self-reliant and so like independent from anybody else helping us because we know that we, if we want to get shit done and take care of it, like we have to do it ourselves. We don't have a safety net of any family coming to help us. And so if you do have the family coming to help you, it is amazing to have that. I think it's an incredible thing to have family and love and support around you if you can live close enough and afford to as well, because that's always a big one. Number five, emotional regulation and nervous system. So, what does it feel like to not have backup? I think you don't think about it until you're sick. There's been plenty of times I have been sick dealing with a babysat toddler, and that sucks. I'm not gonna lie. I feel so burnt out and stressed. And look, I may have to hire extra help because I don't have the support. But I think if you live in your family and you are sick, you do have somebody to come over and like help with the baby so you can get help for yourself. And that's really hard. That's really hard. It's hard when you don't have the backup or can afford the backup, and everything falls on you and you feel like a failure and you feel exhausted, and I think it's miserable. And it affects your nervous system so much. And it affects your parenting, it affects the way you think, it affects the way you feel. There's so much of that. And it feels impossible. It feels really hard and it feels really daunting. And you question, right? I look at social media or just with other people, I'm like, why are other moms calmer? Why do they feel that they know how to regulate or have more patience than I do? And I think a lot of it has to do with the support that they have or the help that they have, paid or family. Either way, they have some kind of like serious help to feel the way that they feel. Because I knew with my mom growing up, she didn't have any help. She didn't have anybody like save her, right? When she was sick, like she still had to get up and take care of us. And it's really shitty to not have that if you don't have that. You kind of have to pick the pieces up and you got to figure it out. And so it's really hard. So, like I said, especially the days you're sick and then taking care of like a baby and other things that you have going on, it can feel impossible. And that's why women, so many women, spiral. But what I've learned to realize is the comparison game. My husband always says comparison is a thief of joy. And when we talk about regulation and our nervous system and all of that, we're always comparing to everybody else's situation. And that's not going to help our situation. That's not going to help what we're dealing with today. And so my husband and I really try to be mindful of what backup could look like if we're sick or what backup looks like if something's not going right. Because again, we don't have the family help. And if you have the family help, take advantage, especially if they want to help and be there. Like take advantage of that. As much as we think beforehand, oh, we don't need the help or we're fine. No, if you can take the help, like I would definitely take it if it is given to you and the opportunity exists. Otherwise, you might not get that help, or you might constantly feel like you're in survival mode or flight mode. But I know for myself, I just try to be mindful of my situation the best that I can. And no two days are perfect, but I just do the best I can with what I have. Number six, the economics of support. So obviously talking about money, this is going to be more of like a factual thing. But paid help versus unpaid paid help. Let's be very clear on this. When you have paid help, I love the fact that I tell someone to come at nine o'clock, they better damn well be here at nine o'clock. Granted, there's traffic, I'm not mean. But I'm paying for you to be here and watch my child. It's a job for you. I'm expecting you to take care of him and feed him and change him and play with him and all the things. Because I know I have work to do and I have errands to run or I have just appointments that I made. But unpaid help is wonderful if you have family willing to step in and help you and not have to pay for their services. I have heard of some people paying for family for a lot of circumstantial reasons. But I would say, generally speaking, a lot of people who have family nearby want to help and they're not going to ask for money. They're going to come over and help you. And that is a massive difference when you have children, especially under the age of kindergarten. Again, depending on your situation, like I mentioned earlier about like preschool or nursery school, whatever. I would say if you have a kid in kindergarten, then they can be in school full-time. But those years, zero to five, zero to six, they're tough. And depending on your situation of how much you have to pay or potentially not pay, it's going to make a big difference in regards to how your life is going to look. And there is, I know for me, not being your family and having this financial help. I, my husband and I, we pay for a lot. And I pay for probably most of the babysitting at this point. And it is a financial privilege. I can't afford to pay for it five days a week, but I can afford a day or two right now. And so it's a massive privilege to be able to afford childcare or a nanny or a babysitter or an au-pair or any of it. If you can, right? If you can afford it. For many people, having kids, that's just like not an option. That's why a lot of moms stay at home because they realize if I go back to work, I'm going to be spending more money on daycare than what I'm making. Is it even worth it? And unless you have the privilege of living near family and family's willing to step in and be available, not only are they close, proximity-wise, to you, but they're available to help you. Then that's everything. When that saves you a ton of money and you're still able to thrive and work and do all the things you need to do because you have the help. I know for myself also not having help. What does the budget look like? What is the cost of this? I know for again a lot of people listening to this, that might not be an option for you. But maybe we think outside the box, right? Of what support looks like. Maybe we have a mom friend where we can like swap, or maybe we can think of a trade. There's always things you can think about to lower some of your cost, or maybe it's finding food that can be a little bit cheaper. So then you can budget to pay for a cleaner. Like what does your caliber look like when it comes to money? And what does that feel like? Does that feel good to you, not good to you? The support that you have, it's just really thinking about what that looks like or what you want it to look like and to have the conversations around it, because that's everything. Number seven, gratitude and grief can coexist. So I love my son. I'm grateful to have him, but I'm still overwhelmed. And just because I do pay for some help and I have that doesn't mean I have it every day or all the time. And because I don't have family around, doesn't mean I have any family wanting to help or come here, which is fine. Made the choice, but it's still overwhelming. And so I have massive gratitude for the life I've built. And I love that I could be a mom peneur and have a business and be a mom. But there's some days I want to like throw the towel and be done with all of this. It's just like exhausting. I miss my old life some days. I miss the freedom I have. But it doesn't mean I don't love my son. It doesn't mean I don't love the life that I'm building. I think boundaries are really important in this. I think you have to have some kind of boundary and self-respect. I think for me, I just don't really have time for the bullshit anymore. I don't have time to be a people pleaser. I just have to kind of run with it and go with it because otherwise I'll go nuts. And I think for me, right, this pivotal moment in my life of having my son and growing a business and having this wonderful human being, I'm letting go of the idea of what my life is, right? I'm letting go of the idea of the expectations I thought or the idea of a child, all of it. I just know that this is how my life was supposed to unravel and be. And I'm okay with it. Even on the hard days, even on the days I think, what the hell am I doing? My why has to be so deep. Just like in my business, my why for motherhood has to be deep too. Otherwise, you're gonna be very frustrated. And again, not having the family help or any free help, quote unquote, it feels very overwhelming and the pressure for me to perform. And when you have family help and people around you rallying for you and seeing you all the time and being there for you, it's a beautiful experience to have that. If you can have that, it's a lonely road to be a mom. And support matters. No matter how you're getting it, support really matters. Number eight, comparison is usually context blind. So the comparison game sucks because you can't help certain circumstances of your life, especially for women and moms who have to move, right? For a job or for family or military or whatever. Like they don't really have the choice or the option of this. And then they don't have the help. They don't have the people around to rally and support. That can be really hard on a mom to feel so lonely like that. And you can, you're easily going to compare yourself to everybody who has the help. You're going to compare that so quick and you're going to think, well, that person has helped and that person has helped and that person has helped. And why don't I have help? And it sucks to compare that. And it sucks to feel like you're so alone in something. And you just, first of all, you can't compare that because your life is so different to someone else's that no two lives and people raising children are ever going to be the same. I think social media sucks with comparison. I think they just show a real, they're not showing the true behind the scenes of how hard it is. I think if only people knew how hard it was in a real, maybe they would think different. But the social media thing is crazy. I think when you think about comparison, when you know somebody's mom is there all the time, of course, like you may want to get jealous and you may think, oh, that's so nice. I personally believe there's always a string attached. As much as people don't want to admit that, I always think there's a little bit of a string attached to any free help. Not in a bad way, but and look, some people might not be, but I would say general rule of thumb, feel like there's a string attached when something's free. But at the end of the day, plenty of these grandmothers or new grandmothers wanting to help their children with their your grandkids. I think it's a beautiful thing. And you can't help your circumstances and you know what you have. The only way you can maybe help it is if you move closer, if you can afford it. But we all make decisions in our life that we feel really good about. And it's hard to compare one situation to another. Cause I think, right, we look at the Instagram reels or we look at friends and we think, God, like she has no help, but she handles it so well. What is she doing? Um, she's hiring everybody under the sun to fucking delegate a cook, a cleaner, a maid, a housekeeper. She has nannies, the whole nine, if we really want to go into it for paid help. Or she's got family help, right, nearby. So when you look at someone handling it, like what does that look like? Like I know for me, I'm handling it, but some days I want mental breakdowns. And it's really hard. But again, I get through it. And I think what also you don't see behind the scenes, again, it is a lot of this help and delegation, but maybe they have a ton of child care. Maybe their finances are in order, maybe they're going to therapy, or there's some flexible work. We don't know what we goes on until we peel back the curtain. I do this a lot in my business, where when I create proposals, one of the things I do in the bookkeeping space is I create a loom video and I joke, I peel back the curtain behind their book so they know what's going on and why I'm giving them the proposal that I'm giving them based on what I see. And so, unless someone is willing to peel back the curtain, you are never going to know what is actually going on in somebody's life. You're just going to look at a reel, you're going to see the highlight, and you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. So have context around what is actually happening before you compare. Like really think about what you're comparing. And we all compare differently. I compare even my business. I think, oh gosh, I'm four years in business and I could be making a lot more. And Sally made triple the amount that I made in the same time frame. Who knows what she did? She could have paid for a ton of marketing. She could have paid for lead gen. She could have paid for SEO. She could have paid for all kinds of stuff. I don't know what she paid for or what she did. But my presumption is she probably put a lot more money into marketing versus myself, where I didn't put a lot in until recently. When we compare a mom who has all this help to a mom that doesn't, it's almost not even a fair comparison because they just live wildly different lives. And until you know the context behind the scenes, you're never really going to know the full story. So don't forget there's always a full story behind anything that you see or anything that you talk about with somebody. There's always a little bit more to it. And last but not least, building what you can. So I'm going to talk about this from a perspective of not having help. Again, if you have support and help, you can build things very differently. But I know for myself, I built micro support. I have a mommy kind of mentor who has been amazing. And I loved talking to her and vending to her and having like a stranger to talk to. So if you're in a season of life where you just feel so bogged down and you don't know who to talk to, like find a mommy mentor in your area. I'm part of Charleston Postpartum Support Group and it's been amazing. I did like the free lasagna initially, but I joined a lot of their meetups. I joined a lot of their spaces, and I had the best time doing it. And one of the things I did was a mommy mentor, and she helped me think about my life differently. So I challenge you if you don't have support, or if you do, right? If you do have support, but you want an outsider perspective, like find, find a mommy mentor, find some kind of support. It's really amazing to meet those people who are in the same season of life as you because then you can like compare notes. I know when I had my son, I had friends who had kids around the same time. And I was like, oh, are you going through this? Or like, yep, you went, I went through it. You'll be fine. You just got to wait it out a few weeks. And it was just so nice to talk to people who just understood you. I just felt really grateful for that. And look, for me, I pay for help. I pay for babysitters. I pay for cleaners. Like, I pay for these people because that to me is worth my time, value, money. Find friends who are in the same season of life. I know I just mentioned this, but I'm going to repeat this again and again and again. It is so important to have friends in the same season of life as you because they're going to understand you better than anybody else. It doesn't mean your mom doesn't understand you or a mother-in-law. They had kids many years ago. They're like out of the baby phase. They're out of like even the kid phase. Like they have adult children. They're just in a different season of life. And things when they raised children back then were very different than what they are today. So I would encourage you to find people who have children around the same age as you that you can be open and vulnerable without judgment or shame. That has helped me so much to find my people in that sense. Honest conversations with your partner. For me, I am very communicative, or I try to be. And I've had different strategies with my husband to communicate, whether it's a calendar invite, sometimes an email, a text message, phone calls, in person, depending on how tired he is or what's going on. I try to have real conversations with him about help and just telling him my struggles and what I need and expectations. And that's how I feel better. So have a conversation with your partner. Just be open. And hopefully they don't judge you or shame you or make you feel like shit. Hopefully they are there for you. Because that is your biggest support. Even with family support. And again, if you're having a kid on your own, very different. But if you're having a child with a partner, you that is your biggest support and your biggest backup. Even having family and other support around, I'm not saying that's not great, but your partner is everything in this. You created a life with this person. You made the choice to marry them or be with them or have a child with them. That should be your biggest support. And releasing what isn't available. I think we need to let go of the idea that we wish we could have other people around. Or maybe we don't. We all have choices that we can make. And for my husband and I talking to somebody about this recently, where her sister moved across country, she's like, well, she made that choice to move, not for a job, not for family. And I said, listen, you can argue I did the same thing. I didn't necessarily move for a job. I didn't move for family. I moved somewhere very different, away from it all. But my husband and I almost felt like we were building the American dream, where yes, we we knew having children, we wouldn't just be able to go to grandma and grandpa's house. We knew we couldn't just see a cousin or an aunt and uncle. But I know with technology we can be close. And I've released the idea that I'm ever gonna be near family. I'm okay with that. And I'm okay knowing I don't have support. I just know financially I'm in a place where I can afford it. That's not everyone's cup of tea, but just build what you can and do what you can, and you're doing the best job that you can. So just give yourself grace in this entire process of what your support looks like. Because support systems shape motherhood, they shape your time, your energy, your marriage or partnership, career, emotional regulation, and financial decisions. But they don't define worth, they don't define strength, and they don't define what what or who is doing it right. It's not better, it's not worse, it's just different. And the more we normalize talking about the differences without ranking them first to best or worst to best or one to ten, the more honest we can get about what we need. If this episode made you reflect on your own setup, whether you feel supported, stretched, grateful, resentful, or somewhere in between, that's actually the whole point. Because awareness isn't comparison, it's clarity. And clarity allows us to build, ask, adjust, and release.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Thanks so much for listening. This is just the beginning. Subscribe now to Raising Hustle and get ready for raw stories, real talk, and unapologetic ambition. We're showing up messy, loud, and all in. Because success doesn't wait for quiet. Let's raise our voices, our businesses, and our babies together.