Paige Turner (@sheisapaigeturner) is a 33-year-old working mom from Massachusetts who has been going viral for her take on why she's not that interested in career advice from men.
In a TikTok that's been viewed over 3 million times, Paige explains, "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."
She goes on to discuss an example of what she means, summarizing the story of a successful man that was shared on a podcast about how he made it in business. His story began with becoming a parent at a really young age. "He was like 15 years old, and he had his first kid. And after breaking up with his then-girlfriend at the time and the mother of his child at 17 or 18 years old, he moved from wherever they were in Connecticut, and he moved to New York."
She continues, sharing the "lesson" the man took from this experience: "He talks about how that journey required him to be fearless to have risk, you know, to be able to be willing to have risk. He persevered. He was patient, but he was willing to kind of do the gritty stuff. He slept on somebody's couch. He lived in a halfway house."
Then Paige breaks down her issue with his advice: "And the whole time I'm listening thinking, Where's your kid? None of these things are possible with a 2-year-old baby. You can't sleep on somebody else's couch with your 2-year-old baby. You can't stay out till 4 a.m. with your 2-year-old baby."
She continues: "This kid is probably with his mom. This kid is with his mom probably 90% of the time. She's probably doing 90% of the work, paying for 90% of the things, and raising him essentially on her own. 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."
Then she points out how different that same story might look if it came from a woman's point of view, saying, "If it were a mother telling that story, you would know what she did for childcare, how she paid for everything for that child where they lived, who supported her, what was her village like? You would know those things because those things were critical to her success if she had success."
She added, "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." Plus, a woman would most likely be judged wayyyy differently for leaving her small child with their father to pursue her career.
In the comments, people are sharing their own personal stories that mirror exactly what Paige is talking about:
They're also calling out specific male-authored books that they found completely useless as moms...
...and chiming in to agree with Paige's point:
