“I Don’t Take Advice From Successful Men” — Woman Says Men Are Able to Work Because of Women

A TikToker named Paige (@sheisapaigeturner) said that she doesn't listen to advice from successful men on how they were able to "make it" as they have the luxury to make certain sacrifices and hard choices in their lives because they aren't the primary caregivers to children.

She went on to say that women suffer from a double standard if they decide to have a child and decide to not be the primary caregiver for that child and elect, instead, to pursue a career after following through with their pregnancy.

Paige begins her video by stating that she doesn't tend to take advice from these men who are "successful" whether it's in self help books, on podcasts, or the fact that they have a y chromosome 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 then went on to discuss how she was listening to Casey Neistat's podcast with Steve Bartlett and how Neistant, who managed to become a leading social media Influencer through perseverance, consistency, and persistence, moving from New York to Connecticut and doing all of the difficult/hard things like sharing a living space with 10 people, crashing on couches, and grinding it out, despite having a kid with someone at 15 years of age — while she said it was inspiring, she ultimately couldn't identify with his message.

"The whole time I'm listening to it 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 two year old baby. You can't stay out till 4am with your two year old baby. You can't live in a half way house like that with a two year old baby cause he claims he bribed is way into it."

She continued, "Like you don't do that with a two year old. And he's talking about how he doesn't have money for a taxi or anything like that, and the whole time I'm thinking: where's this kid? 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," she adds.

Paige doesn't think that this information detracts from Neistat's relationship with his son or is bringing this up as a way of mitigating his role in raising his child: "that he didn't participate financially or at all cause I don't know he doesn't talk about it and that is why I can't take his advice I want to know what happened there."

The TikToker then said that this kind of information was relayed by a woman who gave birth to a child that they then subsequently raised, she would be more receptive to listening: "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, like you'd know those things."

She went on, "Because those things were critical to her success if she had success. But for him it wasn't critical because he had her."

Paige then went on to say that men who have children are able to pursue their own personal dreams without worrying about the responsibility of raising those children because "men have women. That is the biggest lesson that I've learned."

"When they tell us any kind of advice about how they became successful, it's because they had women supporting them the problem is if that woman, if she, his baby Mama, wanted to do the same thing that Casey did would that have been possible? Could she have left her kid with him for 90% of the time and participated slightly and maybe monetarily, but mostly was off sleeping on couches in New York City," she said, highlighting what she thought was a double standard in Neistat's story.

Paige went on to say that the double standard also extended to perception between what women pursue and what men decide to pursue when it comes to their children: "Could she have done that? Probably not. And if she had, she would have been frowned upon for doing so and that's the difference. He is held up on this pedestal for doing this work and for becoming successful and doing it the hard way, but if she were to do the same thing, she would be called a bad mother who put her career before her kid."

"That is why I don't take advice from men even successful men because their advice is not applicable to women. It just doesn't apply in today's society, and it doesn't apply to f*cking, logistically because it's impossible to do the things they do because we are held to a different standard and expected to do more than they do.

When it comes to Neistat, Paige isn't the first person to bring up this point, this same discussion about Neistat, which seems to be in response to her video, even, was held on Reddit, with some folks stating that they believe Neistat's relationship with his son has been strained.

However there was one TikToker who brought up a very salient example of a single father who had to raise their child by themselves despite being homeless while looking to earn a better living: "Single dad since my daughter was 2. This is why pursuit of happiness is one of my favorite movies!"

The Pursuit of Happyness is a 2006 film that tells the true story of Chris Gardner who raised his son by himself, much like the TikTok user who mentioned that they were in a similar situation in response to Paige's viral rant.

As is the case with virtually every species of mammal, human mothers tend to be the primary caregivers for the offspring they birth, a point that many TikTokers brought up in response to Paige's clip: "A female friend of mine says 'I’d love to be a parent if I could be a father' and the first time she said it, it messed me up for days"