S
Sara Goldstein
Guest
- Thread Author
- #1
Iliza Shlesinger’s kids are allowed to watch cartoons, but nothing too grown-up. At the same time, they occasionally hear whatever’s thumping through the wall of her home office, where she’s been teaching herself to DJ. “It’s a lot of songs about female anatomy, and a lot of words we don’t use in real life,” she says.
She tries to turn it down, but doesn’t turn it off. The playlist is the exact stuff elder millennials have been getting down to since high school and college, and like many of us, she fully embraces the anthems. “These are the songs of my people,” she says. “This is called ‘Salt Shaker.’ We’re gonna go from the window to the wall, and I will tell you it’s about a nap party.”
As a fellow elder millennial myself, this jarring contrast is quite familiar. We dropped it low in the club once. Just because we’re hauling kids from school to soccer practice now, are we supposed to forget how to back that ass up?
Shlesinger, 43, has spent close to two decades turning this self-awareness into stand-up. Her 2018 Netflix hour “Elder Millennial” gave us the phrase to define a very specific subset of a generation. She’s still at it, with her latest special, “A Different Animal,” and the ongoing ILIZA! LIVE tour. On her podcast “Ask Iliza Anything,” she hands out blunt advice to strangers like the no-filter friend you trust with your most-unhinged questions. There’s a new Pampers campaign too. And there’s her home, shared with her husband, chef Noah Galuten, 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son.
We got the exclusive chance to ask Shlesinger about what it means to parent as an elder millennial and how it feels to learn at 43 that Pampers wipes were never supposed to come out six at a time.
It’s no secret that motherhood requires a deep, personal shift. That doesn’t make it less difficult to navigate. You’re still the same person under there, the one who knows every word to “Salt Shaker,” and at the same time you’re turning into someone new you’re still getting to know. And though her kids aren’t newborns, the evolution continues to catch her off guard.
“I’m shocked at how often I’m re-realizing what a mom I am,” she says. Everything from the way she puts her jeans on to the fact that somehow, her phone flashlight is always on. “This didn’t happen like, five years ago. I was cool,” she offered with a declarative tone any elder millennial can relate to. Similarly, she recently snapped a naked selfie for her husband and clocked the kids’ toys in the shot. “Yes, they’re his kids, and it’s our bathroom. But that’s not hot.”
Part of parenting as a millennial is the urge to give your kids the childhood you had, or the best of it anyway, and the slow realization that you really can’t. The world they’re growing up in doesn’t match the one that made you. Shlesinger ran into that gap with a thought about her daughter. “She’s not going to go to my school and have my memories,” she says. “Once I internalized that, I got goosebumps. It’s up to me to make it just as nice as possible.” She can’t transfer the memories, so she’s salvaging the ingredients, keeping what worked and leaving the rest. “Picking all the good stuff from growing up. A scary story, a fun tradition. Letting go if it doesn’t work.”
In the name of creating new traditions, she’s gone all out with fall decor in the form of an elaborate front-yard autumn tableau, lifted straight from her Texas childhood. “I always saw the houses that decorated for fall as the ones that felt comfortable and safe, and the world feels so unsafe now,” she says. What that produced is an epic scene of controlled insanity. “So I’ve become that Texas mom. I paid cash for men to deliver bales of hay and oversized pumpkins that are rotting in the heat right now. No one on my block did it. None of my friends did it. My husband did not care.”
The display is firmly autumnal, not a drop of fake blood or oversize cobweb in sight, which is precisely why her 4-year-old objects. Her daughter wants spiders and gore, but she’s getting hay bales and tasteful gourds. “I’m like, we’re not doing that. It’s autumn.“
Related Childhood is making magic out of everyday rituals
When asked how she manages parenting two kids alongside a bustling career, Shlesinger gives the answer few are willing to admit. “Do you want the honest answer that no one’s allowed to give, because people will say you’re unrelatable? I have a nanny. I’ve always had a nanny. We have help.”
Shlesinger believes that women are meant to raise kids in the company of other women. “It’s about letting other women help you parent. Letting other personality types in. Learning from other women.”
In fact, she didn’t crack a single manual. “I didn’t read one parenting book. I work, I have a career. I figured I’d wing it.” And she defers to her hired caregiver without ego. “Anything she said, I just did. I did not hire her to argue with her.”
She’s also clear that other women should have the same support. “If we lived in a country that valued women and parenting, and put money toward giving mothers resources so they can afford childcare, I wouldn’t have to tell you I pay for a nanny,” she says. “Other countries, the village raises them. We decided to make it very hard, for deeply misogynistic reasons, to let women be fully realized artistically and career-wise, and be mothers [at the same time].”
Like most of us, Iliza admits she’s learning as she goes. Take, for example, baby wipes. Every parent knows how hard it is to pull out just one wipe while one hand remains committed to a squirming, half-cleaned baby. Instead, you grab six. Shlesinger had always figured that was just how wipes worked.
“I thought, this seems really difficult, but all things are made difficult for moms, because the world hates moms,” she says. Then Pampers came to her with a campaign built on fixing that decades-long annoyance with a redesigned pack that releases one wipe at a time. The novelty of a company solving something is what stuck with her. “We live in a world where nothing gets done. And a corporation said, enough women talked to us about a problem, so we fixed it. I wish politics worked that way.”
For now she’s building the childhood she wants her kids to have, decorating for fall like there’s a neighborhood award at stake (there’s not), and processing all of it out loud for a living. Like so many of us, she still finds being a mom bewildering, but she’s doing her best nonetheless. “I’m constantly in awe of how little I know and how much I thought I knew,” she says. “Being in charge of everything, and then feeling so stupid most of the time. I think that’s peak parenting.”
She tries to turn it down, but doesn’t turn it off. The playlist is the exact stuff elder millennials have been getting down to since high school and college, and like many of us, she fully embraces the anthems. “These are the songs of my people,” she says. “This is called ‘Salt Shaker.’ We’re gonna go from the window to the wall, and I will tell you it’s about a nap party.”
As a fellow elder millennial myself, this jarring contrast is quite familiar. We dropped it low in the club once. Just because we’re hauling kids from school to soccer practice now, are we supposed to forget how to back that ass up?
Shlesinger, 43, has spent close to two decades turning this self-awareness into stand-up. Her 2018 Netflix hour “Elder Millennial” gave us the phrase to define a very specific subset of a generation. She’s still at it, with her latest special, “A Different Animal,” and the ongoing ILIZA! LIVE tour. On her podcast “Ask Iliza Anything,” she hands out blunt advice to strangers like the no-filter friend you trust with your most-unhinged questions. There’s a new Pampers campaign too. And there’s her home, shared with her husband, chef Noah Galuten, 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son.
We got the exclusive chance to ask Shlesinger about what it means to parent as an elder millennial and how it feels to learn at 43 that Pampers wipes were never supposed to come out six at a time.
We’re still shocked to realize we’re a mom, years later
It’s no secret that motherhood requires a deep, personal shift. That doesn’t make it less difficult to navigate. You’re still the same person under there, the one who knows every word to “Salt Shaker,” and at the same time you’re turning into someone new you’re still getting to know. And though her kids aren’t newborns, the evolution continues to catch her off guard.
“I’m shocked at how often I’m re-realizing what a mom I am,” she says. Everything from the way she puts her jeans on to the fact that somehow, her phone flashlight is always on. “This didn’t happen like, five years ago. I was cool,” she offered with a declarative tone any elder millennial can relate to. Similarly, she recently snapped a naked selfie for her husband and clocked the kids’ toys in the shot. “Yes, they’re his kids, and it’s our bathroom. But that’s not hot.”
We nostalgic for the best parts of our childhood–and trying to recreate it
Part of parenting as a millennial is the urge to give your kids the childhood you had, or the best of it anyway, and the slow realization that you really can’t. The world they’re growing up in doesn’t match the one that made you. Shlesinger ran into that gap with a thought about her daughter. “She’s not going to go to my school and have my memories,” she says. “Once I internalized that, I got goosebumps. It’s up to me to make it just as nice as possible.” She can’t transfer the memories, so she’s salvaging the ingredients, keeping what worked and leaving the rest. “Picking all the good stuff from growing up. A scary story, a fun tradition. Letting go if it doesn’t work.”
In the name of creating new traditions, she’s gone all out with fall decor in the form of an elaborate front-yard autumn tableau, lifted straight from her Texas childhood. “I always saw the houses that decorated for fall as the ones that felt comfortable and safe, and the world feels so unsafe now,” she says. What that produced is an epic scene of controlled insanity. “So I’ve become that Texas mom. I paid cash for men to deliver bales of hay and oversized pumpkins that are rotting in the heat right now. No one on my block did it. None of my friends did it. My husband did not care.”
The display is firmly autumnal, not a drop of fake blood or oversize cobweb in sight, which is precisely why her 4-year-old objects. Her daughter wants spiders and gore, but she’s getting hay bales and tasteful gourds. “I’m like, we’re not doing that. It’s autumn.“
Related Childhood is making magic out of everyday rituals
We know we all need a village
When asked how she manages parenting two kids alongside a bustling career, Shlesinger gives the answer few are willing to admit. “Do you want the honest answer that no one’s allowed to give, because people will say you’re unrelatable? I have a nanny. I’ve always had a nanny. We have help.”
Shlesinger believes that women are meant to raise kids in the company of other women. “It’s about letting other women help you parent. Letting other personality types in. Learning from other women.”
In fact, she didn’t crack a single manual. “I didn’t read one parenting book. I work, I have a career. I figured I’d wing it.” And she defers to her hired caregiver without ego. “Anything she said, I just did. I did not hire her to argue with her.”
She’s also clear that other women should have the same support. “If we lived in a country that valued women and parenting, and put money toward giving mothers resources so they can afford childcare, I wouldn’t have to tell you I pay for a nanny,” she says. “Other countries, the village raises them. We decided to make it very hard, for deeply misogynistic reasons, to let women be fully realized artistically and career-wise, and be mothers [at the same time].”
We’re still figuring it out
Like most of us, Iliza admits she’s learning as she goes. Take, for example, baby wipes. Every parent knows how hard it is to pull out just one wipe while one hand remains committed to a squirming, half-cleaned baby. Instead, you grab six. Shlesinger had always figured that was just how wipes worked.
“I thought, this seems really difficult, but all things are made difficult for moms, because the world hates moms,” she says. Then Pampers came to her with a campaign built on fixing that decades-long annoyance with a redesigned pack that releases one wipe at a time. The novelty of a company solving something is what stuck with her. “We live in a world where nothing gets done. And a corporation said, enough women talked to us about a problem, so we fixed it. I wish politics worked that way.”
For now she’s building the childhood she wants her kids to have, decorating for fall like there’s a neighborhood award at stake (there’s not), and processing all of it out loud for a living. Like so many of us, she still finds being a mom bewildering, but she’s doing her best nonetheless. “I’m constantly in awe of how little I know and how much I thought I knew,” she says. “Being in charge of everything, and then feeling so stupid most of the time. I think that’s peak parenting.”