She’s Not in STEM. Here’s How It Feels to Raise a Family and Work in Silicon Valley.
Artist, author, mother and Mormon Ashley Mae Hoiland-Christensen (“Ashmae”) moved to the Palo Alto, CA area seven years ago when her husband began a Ph.D. at Stanford University. During that time, she’s run a small art business, done two Kickstarter campaigns, published with an academic press, written six children’s books, created the popular “We Brave Women” cards, and mothered three children. Despite all this, she struggles with the feeling that she does not offer Palo Alto the things it values.
In this interview, she discusses how Stanford’s family housing enables her parenting and creative work; how Palo Alto has changed how she views herself, her career and money; and what she’s learned about how women can support each other.
Find more about Ashmae and her work on her website and follow her on Instagram and Twitter @birdsofashmae.
Where do you live?
We’ve lived on Stanford’s campus in family student housing for about seven years, although we will have to move in the summer. Our house is built around a beautiful, huge shared courtyard. The apartments have little back patios with gates. Downstairs, there is a tiny living room and a small kitchen. Upstairs, there is either two or three bedrooms and a bathroom. We moved a couple of months ago from a two-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom apartment, because there are now five of us.
How do you create spatial separation between yourself and your children?
I function really well with a space of my own, and in the smaller two-bedroom I never had that. There wasn’t a separation. If I wanted to paint something, I did it at the kitchen table. But then we didn’t eat at the kitchen table. I tried for a while to have a little space in my room, but Stanford gives an excessive amount of furniture. So we were trying to stash bookshelves and extra desks.
Everything was intermixed. There was literally no extra space. In the three-bedroom, I have an office with my printer, scanner and art supplies.
How do you create time to pursue your art?
I haven’t figured out how to do it yet with three kids. But with two kids, I was really, really productive during nap times and after they went to bed.
Does the family housing community provide parenting support?
Yes. There is such a community environment here. From where I work, I can look out over the playground and see my children running around in the yard. Kids are in and out of my house all day long, and my kids are in and out of other people’s houses all day long. Part of me feels like maybe I should intervene more — do a project with them or something. But part of me is like, no. They are so happy. Why would I interrupt that? I don’t need to entertain my kids a lot.
We’ve been here so long that I forget this isn’t normal. My son has been here since he was three months old, so he has no idea that in the real world it isn’t this way — you don’t just run out and find your friends next door. It is a very privileged scenario in some ways. I know that I can trust most of these people, because I get to know them pretty intimately. And kids are not actually inside houses for very long, because the outside space is beautiful and the weather is so nice year-round.
It’s such a blessing to parent here, because you have someone who has your back. You talk about how naps or potty training are going — issues that you wouldn’t necessarily be in constant communication with someone about in a normal setting. People say they go through major withdrawals when they leave here.
What are the families like that you encounter in family housing?
I am Mormon, and there is always a core of other Mormon moms here. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon church, has historically encouraged women to prioritize raising children. So a lot of times Mormon women are some of the only Americans here who stay home and don’t put their kids in daycare.
There are usually women from other countries without work visas who stay home as well, and a lot of kids that don’t speak English when they first come. We’ve been here long enough that I’ve begun to recognize certain patterns as the kids adjust. They are usually speaking English well enough to get along within a month, and by time of year is up, they speak perfectly. There’s also always been a good percentage of non-Mormon American women pursing PhDs here while their husbands work jobs, but we don’t interact with them as much.
As a Mormon, it’s sometimes caused me a fair amount of stress to have this really homogenous group always here. I’m like, why aren’t there more female PhD students? At the same time, Mormon moms are super-friendly and kind. I feel like they have done a good job reaching out to the people from other countries who live here.
Do you have childcare in addition to your community support?
No, which has actually been the hardest thing about living in Palo Alto. A student-parent alliance has formed recently in direct response to the lack of support for families here on campus. The waitlists for daycares are very long, and the rates for childcare are so high that it is infeasible for many students.
I haven’t worked outside the home, because I would literally be working to have my kids in daycare at this point. If I were to get a nanny, it would probably be upwards of $40 dollars an hour. The cheapest daycare we’ve found is around $80 a day per child. There’s not anything I want to do enough to make that worth it.
Bottom line, we’ve figured out that you just have to be a millionaire if you’re going to live here.
Does living in a community environment enhance academic conversations?
A lot of cross-disciplinary projects happen because of it. My husband, for example, has written papers with a history professor, because they talk in the courtyard while watching kids. Another friend said that her dissertation stemmed from conversations that we had on the playground.
Has being a stay-at-home mother and artist enhanced your intellectual freedom?
I wouldn’t say freedom, but I would say intellectual fodder. I don’t think it allows me freedom, because nobody’s going to take me seriously on this campus without the proper degrees or without certain things that we deem valuable here. But it allows me space to work through things.
I actually started writing a novel about being a stay-at-home mom on Stanford campus. I feel like I’ve been sitting back and watching this for so long. And it’s fascinating. It’s such an interesting study in humanity.
How has living in Palo Alto impacted how you view your career choices?
I sometimes lack belief in my own ability to ever earn money and contribute to anything worthwhile, and I think part of it is being in this environment. People here are not always very kind about us having three kids. A friend was yelled at about how she will pay for her children’s college, for example, and then some people have environmental concerns. It’s very clear that many people are not impressed with me being a stay-at-home mom. They think that my husband must be oppressive and holding me back.
For my first five or six years here, I was totally fine with being a stay-at-home mom, because I was working on my own projects. But most of my friends have moved away now, and my kids are not always going to be young. I’m not going to be a stay at home mom forever, but I don’t know what to do next.
I feel like I am not entirely cut out for what Palo Alto has to offer. I grew up in Provo, Utah, where so much happens at a grassroots level and people understand the value of the arts and writing. In Palo Alto, I feel that you have little of value to offer if you’re not rigorously doing some sort of technical job, in STEM or doing a start up.
I feel like I have nothing to offer Palo Alto. I’m not super old, and I have things to offer people. But I do not have the things to offer that Palo Alto wants or needs. It’s affected my confidence in my ability to have a career to the point that I’m going to see a counselor about it.
How did the grassroots business culture in Provo differ from Palo Alto?
I was in Provo during this boom when a ton of businesses were starting. I was selling at markets with friends and helping with things like homegrown photo shoots. A few of these are multimillion-dollar businesses now, and another handful are doing really well. Those businesses are based on community, and then they go out to the larger Internet crowd. They’re boosting each other up and promoting each other. I always thought that was the path I’d take, because that’s what my friends were doing. It felt natural to me, and I liked doing it.
When I got here, however, I realized there was not a market. There’s not a mom market in a lot of ways, which is what many Mormon mom businesses depend on. Here, there’s a sense that you need funding and an angel investor if you are going to do anything. Grassroots is like raising 10 million dollars for your company. Everything has to be scalable, or it has to be like this. It’s such a different way of thinking. Not that it’s bad. But it’s not for everyone.
What would you tell women who find themselves in places that do not fit their talents or values?
I did whatever I wanted before entering a structured system of publishing and marketing. If I wanted to do something, I just ran a Kickstarter campaign. I had a community of people who loved me, supported me and wanted what I did. And I made decent money doing things.
I’ve learned that going forward, I am not going to buy into a patriarchal system that is just not working for me. Trying to shove myself into it is probably not ever going to work.
You will find that women will support you. That’s where female communities show up for each other. There are really strong networks of women right now who want to support women doing cool things. As women, maybe particularly as Mormon women, some of the work we can do right now is to step outside systems that are not working and say, “I’m going to build from the ground up what feels intuitive and what is going to work for me.”
I intuitively know what I need to do. I don’t need another credential. When I do the thing that feels most intuitive, there is a whole huge community saying, “We’ve got your back. Not only do we have your back, but we are willing to pay you.” Reminding myself that this is a very much a reality when I ask it to be is such an important part of my work.
It’s the kind of thing that I forget being here in Palo Alto, where it can feel like I have to do all these steps before something is even a possibility. So many women are just tired of feeling like you have to have the next credential and you have to do things this way.
How has Palo Alto changed your perception of wealth and power?
It’s made me realize that money is power. Growing up without wealth, I never thought that I could actually make money and use it to affect change. Palo Alto has taught me that it is worth working hard and doing things to make money so that money gets into the right hands.
What I’ve learned in this space feels invaluable. I’ve realized just how normal these people are who are doing fairly world-altering things. We talk with them on a regular basis. We know these people who are doing huge things, and we know them as friends.
It’s also interesting how much my sense of monetary value has changed. I wrote a book that sold quite well, but the reality is that all the income I’ve received from it probably would not even pay for a month of daycare. This is where these weird intersections of Palo Alto and Mormonism come in. Mormons are expected to do so much for free. But there’s this other world that just wants to see your degree or how much money you’ve made.
How do you think Palo Alto’s wealth impacts diversity?
It is such a diverse area in a lot of ways, but I feel like the unique things about people from different cultures are second-tier. The common denominator is wealth and success. When it comes down to it — and this happens in any area — the area is homogenous in the way that wealth and a certain type of success keeps everyone together.
I thought I would I never want to go back to Provo, because everyone is similar and Mormon. But it’s like that here, too. Everybody is in some way the same, even if they look different or come from totally different places. Palo Alto asks you to erase a lot of those things that make you unique and conform to what it deems valuable.
How do you think Palo Alto’s wealth and success impact education?
My husband and I are both first generation college students, and I feel that we were not groomed in the same way as a lot of people here. People will assume things like your parents are helping you out financially. Both of us in some ways have no idea what we’re doing.
I worked as a tutor, but one of the jobs was to work with students on their college admissions essays. I decided I could not in good conscience be paid to help kids who are already well-off write admissions essays when East Palo Alto, where there is extreme poverty, is less than two-miles away. That just seemed like perpetuation of a problem.
I never took myself seriously for the first half of my life. It’s partly my problem. It’s partly the Mormon system I grew up in. And then all of a sudden to be thrown into a Palo Alto-scenario where high schoolers could beat me out of the job market at every turn, because they are taking themselves so seriously (and sometimes detrimental so) — it’s just been pretty tricky to see those two extremes and figure out where I fit in.
There’s just this intensity here. It’s a pretty anxiety ridden place. I tried to get some counseling services and could not even book an appointment for about five months. I feel like that is pretty indicative of the type of stress and anxiety that people are dealing with here.
Do you plan to stay in Palo Alto?
We know we have to move in summer, so we’re starting to look at housing for the first time. The two-bedroom apartments in our school area can cost over $5000 a month. It is not a very realistic scenario. But it is a realistic scenario for so many people here, so the landlords can and will charge that. A lot of Mormon moms go into apartment managing, but it’s hard to get into.
I just don’t think we could be in Palo Alto and live in a house where I would have space to work. I don’t want to end up with kids in junior high in a two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto because we didn’t plan for anything else.
Interview conducted March 1, 2018. Interview has been edited for clarity, privacy and brevity. Interviewee is an acquaintance of the Author.
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