This 33-year-old mom is not here to take career advice from men—here’s why 

In a report by the PEW Research Center, even women who are the “breadwinners of the family” are taking on more unpaid labor like child rearing and housework. And this statistic is one of the many reasons why working mom Paige Turner is going viral for saying she doesn’t take career advice from men. The 33 year old’s video started a heated debate. And honestly? She had some really good points. 

In her viral TikTok video, Turner said, “I do not tend to take a lot of advice from men, even the most successful men, and I mean advice in the form of self-help books, podcasts with successful men, or just men in general. I tend to take their advice with a grain of salt because I do not think it is applicable to women and mothers in particular.” Her video has been viewed more than 3 million times, and it really seems to have struck a nerve with people. 

Turner shared an example of a podcast she listened to where a popular male CEO shared his professional success story, which began with having a kid when he was just 15 years old. 

“He was like 15 years old and he had his first kid,” she said. “And after he broke up with his then-girlfriend at the time and the mother of his child at 17 or 18 years old, HE moved to New York.” 

Turner explained the “lesson” this man said he took from his experience was that he had to be willing to take a risk, be fearless, be willing to persevere, be patient, and do gritty stuff like sleeping on somebody’s couch. He also lived in a halfway house. Turner correctly questioned, “Where’s your kid? None of these things are possible with a 2-year-old baby,” she said. “You can’t sleep on somebody else’s couch with your 2-year-old baby. You can’t stay out until 4 a.m. with your 2-year-old baby.”

She points out that the kid was more than likely with his mom, and he probably has to be with the mom 90% of the time. “The mom’s probably doing 90% of the work, paying for 90% of the things, and raising him essentially on her own,” Turner continued. “This is not to say he’s not a good dad, that he didn’t participate financially or at all, because I don’t know; he doesn’t talk about it. And that is why I can’t take his advice,” she said.

Turner asked how different would this story be if it was from the woman’s point of view? Like what she did for childcare, how she paid for everything for that child and where they lived. Who supported her? “You would know those things because those were critical to her success if she had success,” she said. 

“But for him, it wasn’t critical because he had her. Men have women. That is the biggest lesson I’ve learned when they tell us any kind of advice about how they became successful. It’s because they had women supporting them.” 

Men have women. Successful men with families had women supporting them. Let that sink in for a moment.

“Plus, a woman would most likely be judged wayyyy differently for leaving her small child with their father to pursue her career,” Turner said.

The moms in the comments totally agreed and their reaction was the same as Turner’s. “As soon as you said he moved from CT to NY, I immediately thought, ‘So he abandoned his child,” one person said.

There are some good men out there, though, according to one person’s example she shared in the comments. She said, “When my dad retired his entire speech was about how my mom made it all possible for him. It was really special.” Sweet, but unfortunately this is probably the exception and not the rule.

In reference to this particular CEO’s story, “It wasn’t just that he was ‘willing’ to take risks, but that he had the FREEDOM to do so,” Annabel Stewart said.