00:00:00Why do you think your work is seen as controversial?
00:00:04- Well, a number of reasons.
00:00:05I think some of the things I talk about,
00:00:08even though they're truths, they're inconvenient truths.
00:00:12My first book was about the importance
00:00:14of attachment security the first three years
00:00:16and a mother's presence.
00:00:19And so I think originally when that book came out,
00:00:23it was perceived as a message, which it really wasn't,
00:00:26which was an anti-feminist message
00:00:28that women shouldn't work.
00:00:29That wasn't the message of the book at all.
00:00:31Rather, it was a message about the importance of a mother
00:00:37or primary attachment figures physical and emotional presence
00:00:40as much as possible in the first three years.
00:00:43And again, that's a sensitive message in a society
00:00:46that says work, work, work, everybody should work, work, work
00:00:49and no one should raise their own children.
00:00:51And so I think that's how I originally became controversial.
00:00:54I think I'm controversial in many ways.
00:00:56I think my most recent book is controversial in other ways.
00:00:59My book on divorce, which-
00:01:03- Much less contentious topic.
00:01:04- It is, but it isn't because the book actually
00:01:08makes the argument of this idea of 50/50
00:01:12needs to be looked at very carefully
00:01:14that we are treating children like possessions in divorces.
00:01:18So that's a sort of controversial idea.
00:01:21Yeah.
00:01:23- Okay, many people assume that kids are quite resilient.
00:01:27From your clinical work,
00:01:30what do most adults misunderstand
00:01:32about what divorce does to kids?
00:01:34- So divorce is, we know is universally not great
00:01:39for children.
00:01:40It tests their emotional security.
00:01:44It tests their sense of permanence
00:01:46and trust in relationships.
00:01:49So, you know, one would never say it's good for children.
00:01:52And I certainly would never say it's good for children.
00:01:54There was a woman named Judith Wallerstein
00:01:56who wrote a book many, many years ago, decades ago,
00:01:59about how all divorce is terrible for children
00:02:02and no one should divorce.
00:02:03Meaning the implication is you should stay with your spouse
00:02:07even though you don't get along with them
00:02:09for the benefit of the children.
00:02:11But research that's come out more recently says that,
00:02:14well, no, divorce is not good for children.
00:02:17But there are ways to mitigate how bad it is.
00:02:20And it's that, in fact, chronic conflict,
00:02:24intractable conflict for children is much worse.
00:02:28So to live with parents who hate each other.
00:02:29So the ideal being two parents who love one another,
00:02:33respect one another, are affectionate with one another.
00:02:36That's what's ideal for children.
00:02:38But if you can't have that
00:02:40and you have two parents who hate each other
00:02:42or who are in permanent conflict,
00:02:43that's actually shown to be worse for children's psyches
00:02:47than a good divorce.
00:02:48So what I say is a good divorce is better than a terrible
00:02:51marriage.
00:02:52- Hmm, okay.
00:02:53Does that mean that divorce is costless
00:02:57if the marriage is sufficiently bad?
00:03:00- No, it's not costless.
00:03:03It's still going to test children's sense of security.
00:03:06It's going to test their sense of permanence
00:03:09about relationships.
00:03:10These are things that we'll test.
00:03:11It will test their resilience.
00:03:13One of the things I say in the book, which is controversial,
00:03:17is that you shouldn't divorce till your children
00:03:18are at least three years of age if you can help it,
00:03:22unless there's some kind of abusive situation going on.
00:03:25If there's physical abuse or sexual abuse,
00:03:28of course you should leave your spouse.
00:03:30That goes without saying.
00:03:32But if you're just not getting along,
00:03:34then if you can hold it and put your children first
00:03:37for the first three years,
00:03:38because we know that the first three years
00:03:39are the period of the greatest brain growth.
00:03:44So from zero to three, 85% of the right brain
00:03:48has grown by three years of age.
00:03:51And so you want to give your child as much stability
00:03:54and security and not having much conflict
00:03:58or stress in those years.
00:04:00So if parents can hold it for a few years,
00:04:02I mean, you were together.
00:04:03You loved each other at one point.
00:04:05You made this baby together.
00:04:07Hold it for three years.
00:04:08Let your child develop a sense of safety and security.
00:04:13And then if you have to divorce, do it after three.
00:04:17That's what I encourage people to do.
00:04:19- Why does constant parental conflict
00:04:22damage children so deeply?
00:04:23What's it doing to a child's system and brain development?
00:04:27- Stress.
00:04:28So we know that stress isn't good for children's brains.
00:04:32Well, it's not good for adults' brains either,
00:04:34but it's really not good for children's brains.
00:04:36So you could think of what's happening to the brain
00:04:40is it's, you know, the brain is being architected
00:04:44in those first three years,
00:04:45and stress changes the architecture of the brain.
00:04:48So there is the stress regulating system.
00:04:52So the amygdala is this tiny little almond-shaped part
00:04:54of the brain that is probably one of the oldest,
00:04:57most primitive parts of the brain.
00:04:58And it is responsible for putting us into survival mode,
00:05:03fight or flight.
00:05:04You know, it protects us.
00:05:05So we say that a little bit of stress,
00:05:07which produces a little bit of cortisol,
00:05:10can protect us, right?
00:05:11But a lot of stress, which is chronic,
00:05:15which children cannot, their brains cannot handle,
00:05:18actually changes the development of that brain
00:05:20so that child later on can't deal
00:05:23with adversity and stress as well.
00:05:26There's actually a researcher at Columbia University
00:05:28who talked about how,
00:05:29think about that part of the brain that regulates stress.
00:05:35It's meant to be offline for the first year,
00:05:38which is why mothers wearing babies on their bodies
00:05:40and carrying babies around.
00:05:43And then for the next two years after that first year,
00:05:45having them close by keeps their buffer stress,
00:05:48keeps their stress levels quite low,
00:05:50introducing stress incrementally.
00:05:52And then after that three-year period,
00:05:55children can begin to integrate more and more stress.
00:05:57But if you overly expose them in the beginning,
00:06:01you get an overactive amygdala
00:06:03that sets that baby into survival mode.
00:06:05And then that part of the brain sort of fizzles out.
00:06:09That's the best way I can put it.
00:06:10It sort of shrinks, shrivels up
00:06:12and ceases to be functional in the future
00:06:15to handle stress and adversity.
00:06:17So just basically not good for children.
00:06:19- What sort of person does that make in adulthood?
00:06:22- A person who can't deal with stress,
00:06:23a person who is anxious, who's depressed,
00:06:26who can't regulate their emotions.
00:06:28And that's what we have today.
00:06:30We have so many adults and young adults
00:06:32who can't regulate their emotions.
00:06:34So you could say that anxiety and depression
00:06:37and attentional issues are what, you know,
00:06:39everyone's calling ADHD, which isn't actually a condition.
00:06:43It's just a symptom of overexposure to stress.
00:06:46It's being in the flight mode of stress.
00:06:48- ADHD is a symptom of overexposure to stress.
00:06:51- It is, it's a hypervigilant amygdala.
00:06:54It's when you're exposed to too much stress,
00:06:57more than you can handle, and you go into,
00:06:59so you know what fight or flight mode is.
00:07:01It's our survival mode.
00:07:03So when we feel threatened or in danger,
00:07:07either our brains will go into,
00:07:08let me fight the predator that's chasing me or let me run.
00:07:11And so distractibility is the running part.
00:07:15It is the fleeing from something that feels threatening.
00:07:19And if you're in a chronic state of stress,
00:07:22then you're always in that state of flight,
00:07:24or you're always in that state of fight.
00:07:27And so that's basically what it is.
00:07:29But those are conditions of emotional regulation,
00:07:33what it means is that children were overly exposed to stress
00:07:37in the beginning, and then the consequences of that
00:07:39are that they can't manage stress in the future.
00:07:42- So is it your opinion that much of the modern
00:07:46youth mental health problems can be laid at the feet
00:07:49of dysfunctional upbringings?
00:07:53- Yep, that's correct.
00:07:55Not all, I mean, there's very little mental illness
00:08:00that is genetically connected.
00:08:04Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, there's genetic precursors,
00:08:08but there's no genetic precursor for depression,
00:08:10anxiety, and ADHD.
00:08:12- There's no genetic precursor for that?
00:08:14- No, but there is a genetic precursor
00:08:16for a sensitivity gene.
00:08:18And so what we found is a short allele
00:08:22on the serotonin receptor.
00:08:24So serotonin is necessary to pick up good feelings,
00:08:27but it's also a regulation gene.
00:08:29Helps to regulate things like excitement.
00:08:31And what we know is that there are some babies
00:08:34who are born more neurologically sensitive.
00:08:37That means they're more sensitive to stress.
00:08:39And their brains are going to be triggered
00:08:42into that fight or flight state more easily than other babies.
00:08:46So if you ask anyone who has more than one child,
00:08:49you know, you say, do you have one child or two children,
00:08:54maybe who cry more easily, who are harder to soothe,
00:08:57who you couldn't put down,
00:08:59who sort of clung to your body more, you know,
00:09:02who didn't sleep as well, you know,
00:09:05who had eczema and rashes on their bodies,
00:09:07who were more sensitive to the clothing that you put on them
00:09:12or the smells in the air or the sounds were too loud.
00:09:16A lot of those babies are what we call
00:09:18neurologically sensitive or more sensitive to stress.
00:09:20And what the research shows is that if those babies
00:09:23are given sensitive empathic nurturing,
00:09:27if they're provided with a consistent physically
00:09:30and emotionally present primary attachment figure
00:09:33in the first year to three years,
00:09:35those babies, it neutralizes that sensitivity gene.
00:09:38So those babies can be as healthy as a baby
00:09:40who's born without that sensitivity gene.
00:09:43But if that baby is overly exposed to stress,
00:09:46if you separate them from their primary attachment figure,
00:09:48if you put them into daycare,
00:09:51if you treat attachment security with very little respect,
00:09:56the respect that it deserves, then those babies,
00:09:58it exacerbates that sensitivity gene.
00:10:01- Is this what people mean when they talk about HSPs,
00:10:04highly sensitive people, or is that some term
00:10:06that's just being concocted out of nowhere?
00:10:08- It's concocted, but it's, yeah.
00:10:10So I suppose they're connecting it to the genetic,
00:10:14I don't know whether that term was invented
00:10:17when they found the gene,
00:10:18but the gene has been found for that.
00:10:20And so we know that those babies
00:10:25who are not provided with that sensitive empathic nurturing
00:10:28and that buffering from stress
00:10:30and that presence of their primary attachment figure,
00:10:33babies are born neurologically fragile.
00:10:35They're not born resilient.
00:10:36They're not born tough.
00:10:37They're not born capable of handling stress.
00:10:39They're born incredibly neurologically fragile.
00:10:42And so I always like to say that babies
00:10:45have a fourth trimester, which isn't real
00:10:48'cause a trimester is three, right?
00:10:50But it's that nine months after a baby is born,
00:10:54they're like marsupials.
00:10:55I was just in Australia and I gave a speech
00:10:57and I said, babies are like marsupials.
00:10:59If we had pouches, that's how they should be on our bodies
00:11:02for the next year after they're born.
00:11:04- What is it that's causing the issue then
00:11:08if physical and emotional closeness are what's important?
00:11:12What's the issue with divorce if it's dynamicably?
00:11:15- So the problem is that divorce demands that,
00:11:21well, at least today's divorce,
00:11:22demands that parents are treated with a certain amount of,
00:11:27I don't know, gender equality or 50/50,
00:11:30you know, this whole idea of fairness, you know?
00:11:32And the truth is that what's happened is quite a good thing,
00:11:36which is that fathers are now recognized
00:11:38as being very important to babies.
00:11:41And they are, but they're important to babies
00:11:44in a different way than mothers
00:11:47if the mother is the primary attachment figure.
00:11:49If the father is the primary attachment figure,
00:11:52then he's the primary attachment figure.
00:11:54But for the most part, mothers who give birth to babies,
00:11:57who breastfeed babies, who nurture babies,
00:12:00they still are the primary attachment figures.
00:12:02And so if you take a baby who's breastfeeding
00:12:05and is in a state of attachment security,
00:12:09building that attachment security with the mother
00:12:12and is securely attached to that mother,
00:12:14and now the judge comes in
00:12:16who has no psychological awareness or sense
00:12:18and says, "Right, like King Solomon,
00:12:20"split this baby in half, 50/50.
00:12:24"Take the baby away from the breastfeeding mother
00:12:28"who sleeps co-sleeping with the baby
00:12:30"and give the baby to the father three days a week."
00:12:34And now this baby's traumatized.
00:12:36This baby has just lost their entire sense,
00:12:38the person that is the center of their universe
00:12:41and the center of their security.
00:12:43And for what?
00:12:44Because of fairness?
00:12:45Because the father needs to have 50/50?
00:12:48So the idea being, in the first three years,
00:12:51that baby needs the mother more than the father.
00:12:54That doesn't mean the baby doesn't need the father,
00:12:56but the baby needs the mother
00:12:58if the mother is the primary attachment figure
00:13:00more than the father.
00:13:02The cases that I've worked on
00:13:04where the children do the best
00:13:07are the cases where, are the families where
00:13:10the father has a tremendous amount of respect
00:13:13for that attachment security
00:13:15and doesn't think of his own personal needs
00:13:20or a sense of fairness
00:13:22or as if the baby is a possession.
00:13:25The story of King Solomon is two mothers come in
00:13:27and say, each mother says, "This is my baby."
00:13:31They bring a baby in.
00:13:32And King Solomon says, "Well, you both can't be the mothers."
00:13:35And so he says, "Guards, come over here,
00:13:38"cut the baby in half,
00:13:39"and you'll each get half of the baby."
00:13:42And one of the mothers steps forward and says,
00:13:44"No, don't cut the baby.
00:13:46"Leave the baby alone.
00:13:47"Give the baby to her."
00:13:48And King Solomon in his wisdom knew what he was doing.
00:13:51He said, "You're the mother.
00:13:53"Not the selfish one, but the selfless one."
00:13:56So parents have a very hard time when they divorce
00:14:01for good reason, because they're in such incredible pain.
00:14:04It is such an incredibly painful thing
00:14:06to see parents go through.
00:14:08They're in such pain,
00:14:10they focus on their own pain and their own desires
00:14:14and their own needs and their own sense of fairness,
00:14:17rather than focusing
00:14:18on what's developmentally correct for babies.
00:14:21- A lot of courts push for 50/50 custody.
00:14:25I've seen this.
00:14:26- Right.
00:14:27- What does the sign say about that?
00:14:29- It says that, I think the courts
00:14:31are not psychologically aware.
00:14:32I don't think they do it maliciously.
00:14:36But I think that they do it because
00:14:40of this whole societal movement towards,
00:14:44we're exactly the same.
00:14:45There's no difference between men and women.
00:14:48And you know, the idea is that we're equally intelligent.
00:14:53Yes, we can do the same jobs.
00:14:55We should be equally admired and respected.
00:14:58But when it comes to nurturing,
00:14:59men and women have different nurturing hormones
00:15:02that affect their behavior.
00:15:04Women produce a lot of a nurturing hormone called oxytocin,
00:15:08which is euphemistically called the love hormone.
00:15:11And it makes women's behavior when they have a baby
00:15:14and they breastfeed.
00:15:15It makes them more sensitive, empathic nurturers.
00:15:17What does that mean?
00:15:19It means that they're very attuned
00:15:20to the distress of the baby.
00:15:22When the baby cries,
00:15:23they soothe the baby from moment to moment.
00:15:26And that emotional regulation is internalized
00:15:28after about a three-year period.
00:15:30So from moment to moment,
00:15:31if the mother is around most of the day for that baby
00:15:36and physically close to that baby,
00:15:37making skin-to-skin contact with that baby,
00:15:40that mother is emotionally regulating the baby.
00:15:42That's not internalized for about three years.
00:15:45Okay.
00:15:46Fathers, when they nurture their babies,
00:15:49they also produce oxytocin.
00:15:50It comes from a different part of their brain
00:15:52and it has a different effect on their behavior.
00:15:54It makes them playful tactile stimulators of babies.
00:15:57They tickle babies.
00:15:58They throw them up in the air.
00:15:59They roll around and roughhouse with them,
00:16:02which is really important for resilience building
00:16:06and separation.
00:16:07But you don't separate before you're attached.
00:16:10You have to attach.
00:16:10It's all about sequencing, right?
00:16:12So attachment security matters before separation.
00:16:15So fathers, throughout a baby's upbringing,
00:16:20will play with the baby and the mother will get hysterical
00:16:23and go, "Don't throw the baby up in the air like that."
00:16:25But it's actually a very important process,
00:16:28but it's also very important that the baby when in distress
00:16:30goes back to the mother, right?
00:16:33If the father is just on his own with an infant
00:16:36and he's playing and the baby's in distress,
00:16:40now there's no mother to go back to.
00:16:41So it's very traumatizing for a baby
00:16:43to not have the balance of things.
00:16:46And so I think the reason that,
00:16:49oh, I suppose I should tell you about vasopressin.
00:16:51Vasopressin is the nurturing hormone of fathers.
00:16:54It's actually called the protective aggressive hormone,
00:16:56very self-explanatory.
00:16:58But I'll tell you about an interesting study
00:17:00that was out of England,
00:17:03which is a mother and father lay in bed and the baby cries.
00:17:06And the mother wakes up vigilantly to the baby's cries,
00:17:10but the father sleeps through the cries.
00:17:12But when there's a rustling of leaves outside the window,
00:17:15the father wakes up and the mother sleeps through it.
00:17:18Meaning fathers are much more attuned to predatorial threat.
00:17:22And that's what protective aggressive hormones do.
00:17:25We're just different.
00:17:26We're not the same in terms of our nurturing hormones,
00:17:28which impact our behavior.
00:17:29Does that mean a father can't be a single father
00:17:32and nurture his child?
00:17:34Yes, he can, but he has to be taught
00:17:37because it doesn't come naturally to most fathers.
00:17:40- Yeah, that's so good that before the written word
00:17:42and in a time when maybe dads would have been killed
00:17:46before the baby was even born,
00:17:47who is around to teach a boy
00:17:50what it means to be a father in future?
00:17:52That has to be something that feels a bit more ingrained.
00:17:54I always think about this when I see dogs
00:17:56flicking their hind legs
00:17:57after they've just been to the bathroom.
00:17:59But at no point was there a little pamphlet
00:18:02that was handed to them.
00:18:03And an equivalent is if you put boys, young boys,
00:18:08kindergarten, five to 10 years old or whatever,
00:18:11if you put them in a yard and the stones,
00:18:14pretty soon those stones are gonna end up in the air.
00:18:17But there's just something in, I remember as a kid,
00:18:19if there was something to throw, I would throw it.
00:18:22No one had taught me to throw it.
00:18:23No one had told me to throw it.
00:18:24It's just what I wanted to do.
00:18:26And whatever this is,
00:18:28some version of neurochemical predisposition
00:18:31pushing us toward an instinct,
00:18:33which over time evolution has found out,
00:18:35well, it's pretty adaptive.
00:18:37It's pretty good.
00:18:38This is gonna increase your chances of fitness
00:18:40or whoever is around you.
00:18:41It's gonna be pro-social or it's gonna get you more status,
00:18:44kin selection, whatever it might be.
00:18:46It doesn't surprise me that that's the case.
00:18:48But I guess given that most children
00:18:51need a primary attachment figure,
00:18:54that runs almost counter to every custody discussion.
00:18:58Even the ones, forget 50/50,
00:19:00most custody discussions at least include some custody.
00:19:04And that means not custody for the primary caregiver,
00:19:07which is the mother, which baby cries,
00:19:11who are they gonna crawl to?
00:19:14- So again, I'm talking about the cases
00:19:19that I've helped with,
00:19:20the families I've helped through divorce
00:19:22where the children have the best outcomes
00:19:24in terms of emotional security and attachment and resilience
00:19:28are the ones where the father's made a lot of sacrifices.
00:19:33Meaning if you're gonna divorce in the first three years
00:19:37while your child is still developing attachment security,
00:19:40then the father should have as much access
00:19:43to that baby as he wants.
00:19:46But when it comes to overnights
00:19:48and long periods of time away from the mother,
00:19:51that's just not good for babies.
00:19:52So that may be good for fathers in their minds,
00:19:55but in the end, it's not good for fathers
00:19:56'cause if their babies end up having mental health issues,
00:20:00I've never known a parent who's happy
00:20:02if their child is not doing well.
00:20:03So what you think is good for you in the moment
00:20:07may not be good for your child.
00:20:10So the cases where the father has said,
00:20:12I'm going to, we have to divorce
00:20:14because we really hate each other and we can't live together
00:20:17and the baby's only one.
00:20:19Then the fathers who have taken a little bit on the chin
00:20:23and said, you know what?
00:20:25You be the primary parent right now.
00:20:29I will come and go.
00:20:30I'll come and spend lots of time with the baby,
00:20:33but I won't do overnights until the baby's a little older.
00:20:36And mind you, when children get older,
00:20:39particularly in adolescents and in the school years,
00:20:42there are times when they need their fathers
00:20:43more than they need their mothers,
00:20:45particularly little boys and adolescent boys.
00:20:48And so mothers also have to accept that there are times
00:20:52when fathers are needed more than mothers.
00:20:54But what we do know is that when parents can make sacrifices,
00:20:58when they're not self-oriented,
00:21:00but when they are capable of sacrificing,
00:21:03when they're capable of putting aside their own needs
00:21:06for the benefit of their children
00:21:08and making a divorce more child-centric,
00:21:11then children do better.
00:21:14In other news, Shopify powers 10%
00:21:17of all e-commerce companies in the US.
00:21:19They are the driving force behind Gymshark and Skims
00:21:22and Allo and Nutonic, which is why I partnered with them
00:21:26because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers,
00:21:29they are best in class.
00:21:30Their checkout is 36% better on average
00:21:33compared to other leading commerce platforms.
00:21:35And with Shop Pay, you can boost conversions up to 50%.
00:21:38Basically, you didn't get into business to learn how to code
00:21:41or build a website or deal with the inventory stuff,
00:21:45bullshit on the backend.
00:21:46You just want to get down to creating
00:21:49and promoting an awesome product.
00:21:50And Shopify takes all of the mess off your hands
00:21:53and allows you to focus on the job
00:21:54you actually came here to do,
00:21:56designing and selling the thing that you love.
00:21:57So upgrade your business and get the same checkout
00:21:59that we use with Nutonic with Shopify.
00:22:02Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period
00:22:05by going to the link in the description below
00:22:07or heading to shopify.com/modernwisdom or lowercase.
00:22:10That's shopify.com/modernwisdom.
00:22:13The child-centric divorce is a meme that could take hold.
00:22:17Isn't it strange?
00:22:18So much talk about absentee fathers, deadbeat dads,
00:22:22dads that sort of aren't a part of the picture.
00:22:25And yet, if you're going to take
00:22:26a neurobiologically developmentally informed approach,
00:22:31you actually almost need to program that in to a degree.
00:22:35Not that the father shouldn't be there,
00:22:37but that the father should be deprioritized.
00:22:39And I think this is what a lot of men,
00:22:41a lot of the men going their own way
00:22:45in men's rights movements have pushed back
00:22:48against family court saying, "This is unfair.
00:22:50I don't get to see my kids," so on and so forth.
00:22:52Now, I don't think the reason
00:22:54that they weren't allowed to see their kids
00:22:56is because of a neurobiologically informed approach
00:22:59to a child's development.
00:23:01I think it was much more of a discarding
00:23:03and a disregarding of the importance of fathers
00:23:06and of them as someone that should be considered
00:23:09when these sorts of conversations are happening.
00:23:11But it's an uncomfortable realization
00:23:14to come full circle twice,
00:23:16however many times around the horseshoe it is,
00:23:18to realize, oh, actually,
00:23:20maybe that's what's best for the baby.
00:23:22And if my primary sense of happiness as a father
00:23:27is going to come from raising a happy baby
00:23:31into a happy child, into a happy adult,
00:23:33I actually need to, the cultural meme needs to change
00:23:39so that I see this as an oddly,
00:23:43like, not glorious thing to do, but a worthy sacrifice.
00:23:48- Yeah. - And it's a challenge
00:23:50that no one's gonna give me that much sympathy for
00:23:53because the pattern matching is only half an inch away
00:23:55from being a deadbeat dad who's absent.
00:23:57Well, mom's looking after, so yeah,
00:23:59but I go around every day.
00:24:00I go around for this time during the afternoon when I can,
00:24:03but I can't stay over.
00:24:05We're no longer together.
00:24:06It's difficult for me.
00:24:06I have to go through this thing.
00:24:08It's her house.
00:24:09These complicated custody schedules must be a nightmare.
00:24:13It must be super destabilizing
00:24:15for mom and dad and kid as well.
00:24:17- You know, the reason, I mean,
00:24:19there is such a thing as alienation,
00:24:21which is really problematic in divorces, and it does happen.
00:24:25And it happens when parents divorce
00:24:29under very contentious situations,
00:24:33very belligerent, contentious, hostile divorces,
00:24:37where, you know, I always say in divorces,
00:24:40it's rare that two people look at one another and go,
00:24:43yeah, let's, you know, we'll call it quits together.
00:24:46We're on the same page.
00:24:47It happens, what we call amicable divorces.
00:24:50Usually divorces are pushed by one person.
00:24:53So that means that there's always somebody being left
00:24:56or somebody who perceives as being left.
00:24:58And so that means that that person
00:25:00is in a tremendous amount of pain.
00:25:01And sometimes that hostility and that pain
00:25:05turn into vengeance, and vengeance can turn into alienation.
00:25:08So alienation does exist, so--
00:25:11- How does alienation show up mechanically?
00:25:13What is it?
00:25:14- Well, basically the term alienation legally
00:25:16is used to describe an obstacle that's put in the way
00:25:20of either parent having a relationship with that child.
00:25:23And so, look, there are mothers and/or fathers
00:25:27who create obstacles, either physical or emotional obstacles,
00:25:31to their child loving the other parent.
00:25:33You know, either they bad mouth the parent
00:25:36and are critical of the parent
00:25:38and say terrible things about the parent,
00:25:40or they don't allow phone calls to the parent
00:25:43or visitation to the parent.
00:25:45Or if the parent misses visitation or is an hour late,
00:25:49the mother shuts the door.
00:25:51You know, so it does happen.
00:25:54But I think what has happened is it's assumed
00:25:57that that's always happening, and it's not.
00:25:59I would say it's more rare cases where there's alienation.
00:26:04I think parents just need to be educated
00:26:06about how if you're gonna get divorced,
00:26:09children aren't the ones who ask for it.
00:26:11And it's you have to be very selfless
00:26:14in the process of divorce
00:26:15if you want your children to be well.
00:26:18- What happens after age three?
00:26:21I have to assume that four or eight or 12-year-olds' parents
00:26:26getting divorced is not that much better.
00:26:28So what is the issue with older children, divorced parents?
00:26:33- So actually, there is a period of time
00:26:36that's more stable in development.
00:26:37So we know that there are unstable periods of development.
00:26:40I hate to call it that, but they kind of are.
00:26:43The brain is in a less stable situation, right?
00:26:46Zero to three, the brain is very unstable.
00:26:48It's growing so rapidly,
00:26:51and it has certain needs for security.
00:26:54So it's rather unstable.
00:26:56It's what we call plasticity, a period of great plasticity.
00:27:01Another period of great plasticity is adolescence.
00:27:04So adolescence is from nine to 25,
00:27:07starts earlier, ends later.
00:27:08And in young men, it really doesn't end till about 27.
00:27:12So what we know is that
00:27:14during those two periods of plasticity,
00:27:16the period of great growth, which is zero to three,
00:27:19and then adolescence, which is a period of great pruning.
00:27:22So imagine if you grew a garden,
00:27:23the first three years are like you grow your garden,
00:27:26and then the garden overgrows.
00:27:28And then you know that if you have a vegetable garden,
00:27:30if it overgrows, it's not going to produce vegetables.
00:27:33So you have to prune the garden.
00:27:35So the pruning period is also very critical,
00:27:37and it's a period of great plasticity and vulnerability.
00:27:40We call it a critical period.
00:27:42Probably the two worst periods to divorce
00:27:44is zero to three and nine to 25.
00:27:46And what I say, I'm going to be a little generous and say,
00:27:51the worst period of adolescence to divorce in
00:27:56is about 11 to 14.
00:28:00It is the worst,
00:28:02I say it's the worst period of anybody's life.
00:28:04It's middle school.
00:28:06And it is the most challenging transitional,
00:28:10torturous period for children.
00:28:14They're physically developing,
00:28:15they're going through puberty, there's social drama,
00:28:18there's rejection and exclusion and teasing and bullying,
00:28:23and it's terrible.
00:28:24And so if I were going to say,
00:28:27are there periods that are more stable
00:28:29in terms of development and brain growth?
00:28:32You would say probably from about six to about 11,
00:28:36if there's an ideal period to divorce, it might be that.
00:28:40- Never a good time to divorce,
00:28:41but if you're going to do it. - Never a good time
00:28:43to divorce, but if you have to do it,
00:28:45that's probably a good window.
00:28:47You could also do it after 14.
00:28:51It's a little more stable after 14.
00:28:54So adolescence is broken up into three periods,
00:28:57early adolescence, mid-adolescence and late adolescence.
00:29:00So you kind of want to get to late adolescence
00:29:04if you want to divorce.
00:29:05And then I'm going to say
00:29:06there's another period that's sensitive.
00:29:08I mean, it's a little like a landmine, right?
00:29:10'Cause what I'm saying is try not to do it zero to three.
00:29:14- Feel like I'm playing divorce battleships with you.
00:29:16- But you know what?
00:29:17Developmentally, children are more sensitive.
00:29:20See, no one ever talks about this.
00:29:21So this is maybe controversial to say
00:29:23that there are better times to divorce than other times.
00:29:26People think, these are all the myths, right?
00:29:30They think, oh, it's better to do it
00:29:33while the baby is little
00:29:34because they'll never know any better.
00:29:35Okay, then you're tearing apart attachment security.
00:29:38Oh, another myth.
00:29:40Oh, it's better to wait till they go to college.
00:29:42And just when they go to college, we'll divorce.
00:29:44When they go to college, we'll tell them and we'll separate.
00:29:48When kids go to college,
00:29:51it's a transition that is so incredibly fragile
00:29:56and they need to feel that they're tethered
00:29:59to something very secure,
00:30:01to go out into the world and individuate.
00:30:03So there's two things.
00:30:04There's separation, which is physical separation.
00:30:06And then there's individuation,
00:30:08which is developing your identity as a separate person.
00:30:12And it is such a fragile period.
00:30:14So I say, if you're gonna do it after they go to college,
00:30:18then wait till they finish college and they're launched.
00:30:21Wait a few years.
00:30:23You know, so if you've waited this long,
00:30:25don't do it when they're 18, wait till they're like 23.
00:30:28And they have friends and they have a job
00:30:31and they're more secure.
00:30:33But this idea that, you know, as soon as they go to college,
00:30:36they're like done, they're cooked.
00:30:38And it's, you know, like they're not cooked at 18.
00:30:41They're not cooked till they're 27.
00:30:43And so, yeah, there are better times than,
00:30:46I mean, there's no good time to divorce,
00:30:48but there are better times for children than other times.
00:30:52- What is the impact on the future adult
00:30:55when divorce happens 11 to 14?
00:31:00You've spoken about the importance
00:31:01of the primary attachment figure,
00:31:03the fact that this is getting ripped away,
00:31:05regulation of emotions.
00:31:07That has to be a different mechanism.
00:31:08It's the same stimulus, parents splitting up,
00:31:11but it's gotta be a different mechanism that's happening now.
00:31:13So what is the impact and what that person will be like
00:31:17in future?
00:31:18- Well, they're already more unstable in that period.
00:31:21So what you're trying to do is you're trying
00:31:23to help stabilize them in that period
00:31:25and provide them with a sense of security.
00:31:27So, you know, people hear attachment security
00:31:30and they think it's only zero to three.
00:31:31In fact, attachment security is throughout childhood
00:31:35at different points.
00:31:36And so another point of attachment security
00:31:39is when your child is separating,
00:31:41'cause you wanna be as secure as possible,
00:31:44you wanna give them a stable base,
00:31:46a platform from which to experiment
00:31:50and explore being independent.
00:31:53But it's hard to do that if what you're coming back to
00:31:56is are moving tectonic plates.
00:31:58And so really there are points
00:32:01at which children need a lot of stability to grow.
00:32:03So if you destabilize them at a time
00:32:06when they're already unstable,
00:32:08it's going to be very hard for them to find their footing.
00:32:12It may delay their development.
00:32:14It may keep them in a somewhat regressed state.
00:32:17So some kids whose parents divorce
00:32:20at very critical periods of brain development,
00:32:23they kind of stay in a more regressed state.
00:32:25They don't keep developing.
00:32:27It's sort of like they get stuck in a certain period.
00:32:30- Why?
00:32:31- Because to continue to move in development,
00:32:35you need a certain amount of stability.
00:32:37And so they stay in a state of,
00:32:40wherever they were traumatized, they get stuck there.
00:32:43So to say that divorce is a trauma, it is a trauma.
00:32:48And what my book is trying to do
00:32:51is to help you to reduce that trauma,
00:32:53to mitigate that trauma and make it as gentle
00:32:58and as sensitive and as the least traumatic situation
00:33:01you can make it for that child.
00:33:03- Who is affected more by divorce, boys or girls?
00:33:08- That's a good question.
00:33:10Funny enough at different stages of development,
00:33:13it might be different,
00:33:13but boys are more neurologically sensitive than girls.
00:33:16We know this from all the research that even from in utero,
00:33:21boys are more sensitive to cortisol, to the stress hormone.
00:33:25And we see it in little boys who go into fight and flight
00:33:30so easily in school with behavioral problems
00:33:33and attentional issues.
00:33:34There's probably more little boys with behavioral problems
00:33:37and attentional issues than little girls.
00:33:40But girls are also susceptible to stress,
00:33:44particularly in adolescence.
00:33:46I mean, one of the things that we know
00:33:48is that girls' brains are very hyper-vigilant
00:33:52to criticism of any kind.
00:33:54It's why social media is so bad for girls.
00:33:56- Especially during that 11 to 14 range.
00:33:58- Yeah, self-consciousness and criticism
00:34:03that they exaggerate in their minds.
00:34:08And so, at different stages of development, it's different,
00:34:11but what we do know is that little boys are more prone
00:34:14to things like autism, to behavioral issues,
00:34:18to attentional issues.
00:34:20And all of those are...
00:34:23Autism is a developmental condition
00:34:27that goes back to being in utero.
00:34:30But there is some research to try to connect cortisol
00:34:34to autism, and the idea is not that it causes autism,
00:34:38but it may be one of the things that can trigger the gene
00:34:42and turn it on.
00:34:44So we know that boys are very, very neurologically sensitive.
00:34:47So I would say probably boys even more than girls,
00:34:50but at certain periods of development,
00:34:53particularly adolescents,
00:34:54girls can be very susceptible as well.
00:34:57- What about separation during pregnancy?
00:35:00What's the impact of that?
00:35:02- You don't want the mother to be under stress.
00:35:05So what we know from the research is that cortisol
00:35:08is transmitted to the baby.
00:35:09And again, as I said, there's some research that's going on
00:35:14trying to connect what cortisol does
00:35:17to the baby's developing brain.
00:35:19So if a mother is stressed out in her pregnancy,
00:35:24either because of a divorce or because of a work situation
00:35:27or because a parent's dying,
00:35:29or there's a lot of research now going on
00:35:33about how that affects the baby in utero.
00:35:35So I'll leave it at that, to say it's not good
00:35:40for the mother, but we know it's definitely not good
00:35:43for the baby.
00:35:43- Well, presumably the same thing is true of women
00:35:46who need to keep on cranking their careers right up until
00:35:49the moment that they give birth.
00:35:51No one around the office really thinks all that much.
00:35:54- Well, I'd better not push to hit the sales target
00:35:58this quarter because Suzanne is pregnant.
00:36:01So we have a business and you're supposed to be here.
00:36:04And also there's a sense I think that a lot of women have
00:36:07of they don't want to be seen as fragile.
00:36:09They don't need to be seen as a diva.
00:36:11They don't want to have the accusation of, oh, here we go.
00:36:15Estrogen's on the line and no one's,
00:36:17no work's gonna get done.
00:36:18They're just gonna be crying in the bathroom all day.
00:36:20So I think pushing through the normal discomforts
00:36:24of everyday work, which when you actually think about it,
00:36:26when you think about what even a relatively unstressful job,
00:36:31somebody that's a gardener, right?
00:36:33Which I think of as probably being a little bit more sedate
00:36:35than someone that's a salesperson.
00:36:37Even that there's traffic on the way to work
00:36:39and you're trying to get in and out.
00:36:41There's some conflict and the boss has changed
00:36:43and the new guy that's just come in, he's a bit of a dick.
00:36:46All of these little insults that happen.
00:36:48That's not to say that there wouldn't have been this
00:36:50ancestrally, but given that we're trying to design
00:36:52an environment that's really great for mom and baby
00:36:56and then dad as a part of that.
00:36:58Yeah, the fact that, what's the mandatory mat leave
00:37:04in America?
00:37:05- I was gonna say, do you want to know what my wishlist is
00:37:09or do you want to know the reality?
00:37:11'Cause there is no maternity leave.
00:37:13We have something called the Family Leave Act,
00:37:16which means that you can't be fired for three months,
00:37:20but you don't get any pay.
00:37:22So there is no federal paid leave in our country, none.
00:37:27State by state, like New York State, I believe now
00:37:31gives three months of paid leave at minimum wage maybe,
00:37:35but it's not very much, but that's state by state.
00:37:38But there is no federal paid leave.
00:37:40And then it's contingent upon your employer's good graces
00:37:44if they decide to give you six weeks or three months.
00:37:48But there's- - Totally discretionary.
00:37:49- There's totally discretionary.
00:37:51So I call us- - That is fucking Barbara.
00:37:54This country is mad. - Yes, it is Barb, it is.
00:37:56I call it the most uncivilized country.
00:37:59And the country that pays lip service,
00:38:01so this is my frustration, the country that pays lip service
00:38:04to mental health talks a lot about mental health
00:38:08and children and we care and we love families
00:38:11and it's all a bunch of bullshit.
00:38:13Because if you really cared about mental health
00:38:16and you really cared about children
00:38:18and you really cared about families,
00:38:20you would have 12 to 18 months of paid leave.
00:38:23I just came back from Australia where I have probably
00:38:27had more influence in Australia and the UK
00:38:29in terms of policy than in America, and I'm American.
00:38:34I live here, but nobody wants to listen to me here.
00:38:38The Democrats see my messaging as anti-feminist
00:38:44and the Republicans see my message as too expensive.
00:38:48So I am just stuck in no man's land.
00:38:51I am in no man's land.
00:38:52Until the day I die- - I'm with you, Erica,
00:38:54don't worry, no, I'm in the trenches with you.
00:38:56Don't worry about it.
00:38:57- Till the day I die, I will be fighting in this fight,
00:38:59I'm afraid, so I'm 61.
00:39:01If I live another 25 years, I'm pretty sure
00:39:04I'm gonna be fighting until the day I die.
00:39:06But until we recognize that mental health starts from birth,
00:39:11even from in utero-
00:39:16- It starts from conception.
00:39:17- It starts from conception.
00:39:19The last trimester with cortisol, women are most susceptible,
00:39:23babies are most susceptible to cortisol
00:39:25in the last trimester.
00:39:27So if we were to give women 18 months of paid leave,
00:39:31which will never happen, but I wish it would,
00:39:34then we would start, and some countries are starting
00:39:37to do this now that are more civilized than us
00:39:40and really do care about children's mental health,
00:39:43you start to give the mother a paid leave
00:39:46before the baby's born, so she can relax,
00:39:51get her cortisol levels down, and then prepare
00:39:54for this baby psychologically and emotionally.
00:39:57What's happening is women wait till a minute
00:40:00before the baby's born and they're totally wound up
00:40:03and feeling guilty about leaving their work and overwhelmed,
00:40:06and then they have a baby and they're exhausted
00:40:08and they crash from postpartum depression.
00:40:11They also crash from postpartum depression
00:40:13'cause from the moment their baby is born,
00:40:15they're worried about when they're gonna go back to work,
00:40:18and they're on a timer, they're on a ticker,
00:40:21like a basketball game, like the, it's a,
00:40:24what do they call it, a shot clock.
00:40:26They're on a shot clock from the moment they have, right.
00:40:29So it's, they're counting the minutes,
00:40:31and so what happens is that stress,
00:40:34cortisol affects breast milk development.
00:40:38So we have this phenomenon of all these mothers
00:40:41breaking down from postpartum depression,
00:40:43but also saying I'm not producing enough breast milk.
00:40:47This is a phenomenon that we never experienced before
00:40:50because cortisol affects prolactin and estrogen
00:40:53and breast milk development.
00:40:55- A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated
00:40:58because they don't drink enough water.
00:41:00Turns out water alone isn't just the problem,
00:41:02it's also what's missing from it,
00:41:04which is why for the last five years,
00:41:05I've started every single morning
00:41:07with a cold glass of Element in water.
00:41:10Element is an electrolyte drink with a science-backed ratio
00:41:13of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
00:41:14No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients,
00:41:17just the stuff that your body actually needs to function.
00:41:20This plays a critical role in reducing your muscle cramps
00:41:23and your fatigue, it optimizes your brain health,
00:41:25it regulates your appetite, and it helps curb cravings.
00:41:28I keep talking about it because I genuinely feel
00:41:30the difference when I use it versus when I don't,
00:41:32and best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy
00:41:35with an unlimited duration.
00:41:36So if you're on the fence, you can buy it and try it
00:41:38for as long as you like, and if you don't like it
00:41:40for any reason, they just give you your money back.
00:41:42You don't even need to return the box,
00:41:43that's how confident they are that you'll love it,
00:41:45and they offer free shipping in the US.
00:41:47Right now, you can get a free sample pack
00:41:48of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase
00:41:51by going to the link in the description below
00:41:53or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.
00:41:56That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.
00:42:01You talk about divorce as something
00:42:04that children experience almost like a death in the family.
00:42:08What's being lost psychologically?
00:42:11- So when we have, again, another politically incorrect thing
00:42:16or maybe politically correct thing to say,
00:42:19it's better to have two parents.
00:42:22It's better to have a mother and father
00:42:24because they serve different functions.
00:42:26But as they say in the UK,
00:42:29better to have an heir and a spare, right?
00:42:31So the idea that you have two parents means
00:42:33that if you lose one, you have another.
00:42:35But the concept is when you have a nuclear family,
00:42:39when you have two parents, you're under the illusion
00:42:43that it's a safe nest,
00:42:44that it is a safe, stable environment in which to grow up.
00:42:48And that stability provides you
00:42:51with the emotional security you need
00:42:52to develop in a healthy way.
00:42:55When that sense, that illusion,
00:42:57there is an illusion
00:42:59because there's no permanence in life, right?
00:43:01I mean, your parents could die, they could get sick,
00:43:05they could get hit by a bus.
00:43:07I mean, there's no permanence,
00:43:08but we're born with sort of a need
00:43:10for that illusion of permanence.
00:43:13And in fact, people with very healthy defenses,
00:43:16me included, with everything that's going on in the world,
00:43:18as you know, which could be crazy making,
00:43:22my defense has helped me not to obsess over it
00:43:26or focus on it because I can stay optimistic.
00:43:29My resilience allows me to cope
00:43:33with the adversity of the world.
00:43:34It's like having shock absorbers, right?
00:43:38And so it's that sense of stability and permanence.
00:43:42When you divorce, that permanence is,
00:43:46the children are disillusioned in a way before they're ready.
00:43:51I always say every child is born
00:43:54with the need for a sense of omnipotence in their parents.
00:43:58They need to believe their parents are perfect,
00:44:01they can do anything, they'll protect them.
00:44:04Yeah, and so I always tell this story.
00:44:08My husband, when he was a little boy,
00:44:10his father always drove, was more traditional.
00:44:12His mother never drove and the father was in the car.
00:44:14And he would sit in the back and he said,
00:44:17"I always felt like my father knew every road
00:44:20"on every map in the whole world."
00:44:24That's what childhood is, is a sense of feeling protected
00:44:28and as if your parents are bigger
00:44:30and bigger than life characters.
00:44:33When they divorce, you see the imperfections of your parents
00:44:36and you start to see them as human before you're ready,
00:44:39but also the impermanence of relationships
00:44:41and the lack of trust, right?
00:44:44So then you no longer necessarily trust in the permanence
00:44:48of those connections, of those romantic connections.
00:44:50So many kids from divorce have trouble trusting
00:44:55in the permanence of marriage and connections later on.
00:45:01Not all, so the reason I wrote this book
00:45:04is how do you help them the way you talk to them,
00:45:09the way you treat each other,
00:45:11the way you care about each other as a divorced couple,
00:45:14the way you work together and collaborate
00:45:16and cooperate and communicate.
00:45:18That's going to determine that you can put them first
00:45:22and sacrifice your desires and needs for fairness
00:45:26and put them first.
00:45:28All of that is going to dictate whether that child,
00:45:31in the future, can see relationships as trustworthy.
00:45:36- Isn't it crazy the idea of fairness
00:45:40that that needs to be put to one side,
00:45:42that there is something unfair to the parents
00:45:44that is adaptive for the kid, that's good for them,
00:45:46that's good for their upbringing.
00:45:48I think a lot of children blame themselves
00:45:51for their parents' divorces.
00:45:53Why do you think that's such a common pattern?
00:45:55- It's magical thinking.
00:45:56So children who are very young,
00:46:00there's a great commercial on television.
00:46:02A little boy is in a Darth Vader outfit
00:46:05and he's got a wand or whatever it's called, a lightsaber.
00:46:10And he has- - Fucking wand.
00:46:12- Yeah. (laughing)
00:46:14A lightsaber.
00:46:15- Darth Vader going, "Expelliarmus."
00:46:17(laughing)
00:46:19- A lightsaber.
00:46:20And he flashes it towards his car, the family car.
00:46:24And the father is behind with the remote control
00:46:28and the father presses it.
00:46:30And the little boy goes, "Oh my God,
00:46:32"I turned it off in my lightsaber."
00:46:35That's magical thinking.
00:46:36Magical thinking is something children have
00:46:39when they're very little and they outgrow,
00:46:41which is the belief that they are the center of the universe.
00:46:44It's a good thing.
00:46:45We're born, if our parents focus on us
00:46:49as if we are the center of the universe,
00:46:54then we believe that we are the center of the universe.
00:46:56And that gives us a sense of steadiness
00:46:59and stability and security from which to develop.
00:47:02We outgrow magical thinking
00:47:04where we feel we're in control of everything,
00:47:07but it helps us to feel secure when we're little.
00:47:10So if something bad happens to our parents
00:47:14when we're angry at them,
00:47:15like if your father or mother get into a car accident
00:47:18and die, let's say, when you are really angry at them
00:47:22because they didn't give you that toy
00:47:24or when you have terrible fantasies and thoughts as a child
00:47:27that you wish they would die,
00:47:29which aren't so terrible, they're just fantasies,
00:47:32and that parent actually does die,
00:47:34that child then feels responsible for that death.
00:47:36That's magical thinking.
00:47:38So basically, they believe they control what's around them.
00:47:42So it's very common for children to believe
00:47:45that they are responsible for the breakup of their parents.
00:47:48And so that's one of the things in the book that I talk about.
00:47:51How do you talk to children
00:47:52so you disavow them of those illusions,
00:47:56that they are not responsible,
00:47:58that you will always love them?
00:48:01Because again, that destruction of that sense of permanence
00:48:06in a relationship and that breaking of trust,
00:48:09children can easily understand parents' breakup
00:48:13as something parents could do.
00:48:14If parents can leave one another,
00:48:17then can't they leave them as well?
00:48:20So there's a lot of things that parents need to consider
00:48:23when they talk to their children,
00:48:25and there is a way to talk to children about a divorce.
00:48:28- Is there a sense as well,
00:48:30like how a lot of attachment wounds from early childhood
00:48:33get replayed in adult relationships,
00:48:35that if I can redeem myself in this situation,
00:48:38I will fix the wound that existed before,
00:48:40that sort of classic loop?
00:48:41Is there something similar to that going on
00:48:43with the magical thinking from the kids
00:48:46that if I caused it, I can fix it?
00:48:49This line that I wrote in an essay a couple of weeks ago,
00:48:52which was, if as a child you're taught
00:48:56that you need to work hard to be loved,
00:48:58if you don't feel loved, you just need to work harder.
00:49:02And it kind of feels a little bit similar to that.
00:49:05- Yeah, absolutely.
00:49:06I mean, again, I think it's very important, I'll say this,
00:49:10that if you're going through a divorce,
00:49:13that you get support.
00:49:15And I'm not gonna be one of those therapists
00:49:17who says like, everybody needs therapy.
00:49:19Not everybody needs therapy, but a lot of people do,
00:49:22particularly if they're going through life transitions
00:49:25or traumas or, you know.
00:49:28And so if you think about divorce as a trauma for everyone,
00:49:31for parents, for children, and so parents need support.
00:49:36One of the main reasons they need support
00:49:38is so they don't leak all over their children,
00:49:41'cause it's very common for parents
00:49:42to overshare their pain with their children,
00:49:45to leak all over their children.
00:49:47- Treating the kid, the kid of the separation,
00:49:50as the therapist for the separation.
00:49:54- Yes, and also just as a container, dumping into them
00:49:58about, you know, either oversharing about their loneliness
00:50:02or their pain or their sex lives or,
00:50:07so basically parents need therapy so they can raise children
00:50:12without burdening those children.
00:50:15Children need therapy because they can't always go
00:50:19to their parents and tell them what they're feeling
00:50:21and thinking because they might feel uncomfortable.
00:50:24And so they need a safe space that isn't either parent
00:50:29to bring their feelings.
00:50:32That doesn't mean that parents aren't also safe spaces,
00:50:35but children need to have therapy to make sure
00:50:39that you're addressing these conflicts
00:50:40and these traumas early on.
00:50:42So as you say, they don't carry them into adolescence
00:50:45and young adulthood and adulthood.
00:50:47- What are the typical stages that children go through
00:50:49emotionally during a divorce?
00:50:51- It's the same stage as any mourning process.
00:50:55Think of it as grief.
00:50:57They go through the same Kubler-Ross.
00:50:59How we say grief is grief, mourning is mourning.
00:51:03It's a death and so when someone dies,
00:51:05you go through the disbelief and you go through the sadness
00:51:09and you go through the anger
00:51:11and you go through the acceptance.
00:51:14And the problem is if your child gets stuck
00:51:18or if you as a parent, as an adult,
00:51:20while you're going through a divorce gets stuck.
00:51:22I've had patients who've gotten stuck for a decade in grief,
00:51:27meaning they get stuck in anger
00:51:30or they get stuck in sadness and despair where they can't,
00:51:33you're meant to move through grief.
00:51:36So I'm Jewish, so we say, you know, morning is a year.
00:51:39You know, from the moment someone dies,
00:51:43we don't unveil the stone.
00:51:45We don't take a cloth off the stone.
00:51:46We don't put the stone up actually for a year.
00:51:49So it's a year,
00:51:51but we have a year to go through the process, right?
00:51:54But then we're meant to unveil the stone
00:51:56and move on with life.
00:51:57What's happening is that people are holding on.
00:52:01They're getting stuck,
00:52:02almost like a scratch in an old LP record.
00:52:04They're getting stuck at certain stages
00:52:07of the grief and mourning process.
00:52:09And they'll either get stuck in the depression
00:52:12or the disbelief or the anger,
00:52:14but many don't get to the acceptance stage.
00:52:17And children also aren't getting to the acceptance stage.
00:52:20They're getting sort of stuck
00:52:22in one stage of grief or another.
00:52:23- How should parents tell their kids if they're divorcing?
00:52:27- Together.
00:52:29Emotionally balanced.
00:52:33So if you are hysterical or your partner is,
00:52:36that's not the time to do it,
00:52:37to do it in a way that is emotionally regulated.
00:52:42To do it in a way where you agree
00:52:44on what you're gonna tell the children.
00:52:46Don't do it before a major exam.
00:52:51Be sensitive.
00:52:53This is like the fact that you have to tell people,
00:52:55"Please be sensitive."
00:52:56Don't do it at a time when your children
00:52:58are very stressed at school or stressed socially
00:53:01or about to play a big game or a big concert,
00:53:04or don't do it at a major holiday.
00:53:07Don't do it at Christmas time.
00:53:09I'm not Christian, but don't do it at Hanukkah.
00:53:12Because that holiday will forever be associated
00:53:14with that divorce, right?
00:53:16They'll never be able to love Christmas again.
00:53:20Don't do it on their birthday
00:53:21'cause they'll never like their birthday.
00:53:23- How much of a dick do you have to be as a parent?
00:53:26- You'd be surprised.
00:53:27- Happy birthday also.
00:53:29- Yeah, and you know,
00:53:30so I suppose you could do it on vacation
00:53:35when you have a whole week to spend together
00:53:39and process and go for walks and talk about things
00:53:42and-
00:53:43- I suppose that's not gonna tether it
00:53:45to some geographical location.
00:53:47The kid might have to go back to the living room.
00:53:49This is the, that's the seat where I sat.
00:53:51- That's right, so somebody said to me,
00:53:53"Well, if you're gonna," this is an analogy, mind you,
00:53:56"If you're gonna neuter your dog,
00:53:58make sure that you take them to a vet
00:53:59that you never ever want them to go to again."
00:54:01- Bingo.
00:54:02- Yeah.
00:54:03- Take them to a crap holiday destination
00:54:04that they're never gonna want to go back to.
00:54:06It was bad enough already.
00:54:07- And spend a week there and process it with them.
00:54:11- Yeah, so basically the idea is
00:54:14just be wise and sensitive about it.
00:54:17I mean, think about the fact that how you tell them
00:54:21will always be referred back to in their mind,
00:54:23how and where.
00:54:24- What sort of explanations are psychologically helpful
00:54:30and which should never be said?
00:54:31- You never want to say, "I never loved your mother,"
00:54:39or, "I never loved your father,"
00:54:40because, or, "I wish that I had never married that person
00:54:44or been with that person,"
00:54:47because what's implied there, I'll let you answer that one.
00:54:51- The family unit that you thought was secure
00:54:57was never secure, and your ability to understand
00:55:00what is and is not attachment was wrong all along.
00:55:03- And you should never have been born.
00:55:04- And that.
00:55:07- Yeah.
00:55:08- Downstream from "I didn't love them" is,
00:55:10"and we shouldn't have had you."
00:55:11- Right, right, "I wish I'd never met your father."
00:55:14"I wish I'd never married your mother."
00:55:17It was a mistake.
00:55:18- This is more than just the
00:55:20we're getting divorced conversation.
00:55:22This is now two years later, the very difficult night
00:55:26where all of the co-parenting schedules have fallen apart,
00:55:29and, "I wish I'd never met them, I wish I'd never."
00:55:32- Children want to know that they were born out of love.
00:55:37- It's hard, I've had families where it's been like a one
00:55:40night stand, and they say, "How do I talk about it then?"
00:55:45And I say, "Well, you say you were young
00:55:47"and it was the illusion of love.
00:55:49"You thought you loved the person."
00:55:52That's okay, but to say that all children
00:55:55want to be conceived out of love, they want to be wanted.
00:56:00You know, there's this whole issue of,
00:56:03we say adopting children is a mitzvah.
00:56:07It is a great blessing, but it's really hard to,
00:56:11and you need to know when you adopt children that it's hard
00:56:14because that child, no matter how wonderful you are,
00:56:17you're always going to have to address and help that child.
00:56:22Again, it's a mitzvah because you're helping that child
00:56:25to overcome a conflict and a trauma,
00:56:28which is that their biological parents didn't want them.
00:56:34- Before we continue, as you're probably aware,
00:56:36I'm not a massive drinker, at least not anymore,
00:56:38but even if you too are not drinking,
00:56:41sometimes you just want something cold, frosty, and tasty
00:56:44without the fear of a hangover the next day,
00:56:46which is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co.
00:56:49Thank you very much.
00:56:50Their non-alcoholic brews taste just as good
00:56:53as the real thing.
00:56:54They've got IPAs, Hazy Goldens, they're so good
00:56:56that you'll forget that there's no alcohol in them
00:56:58until you wake up the next day feeling fantastic.
00:57:01It means that you can enjoy the ritual without the wreckage.
00:57:04No hangover, no 3 a.m. panic, no wasted Sunday
00:57:07recovering from Saturday.
00:57:08That is why I partnered with them.
00:57:10You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best-selling lineup
00:57:12at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option,
00:57:15get the full variety pack of four flavors
00:57:17shipped right to your door.
00:57:18Right now, get up to 15% off your first online order
00:57:21by going to the link in the description below
00:57:23or heading to athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom
00:57:27and using the code modernwisdom at checkout.
00:57:29That's athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom
00:57:31and modernwisdom at checkout.
00:57:33Near beer, terms and conditions apply.
00:57:35Athletic Brewing Company, fit for all times.
00:57:38You know James, my business partner in Newtonic,
00:57:40he was adopted.
00:57:41Do you know that, Jared?
00:57:42- No, I didn't know.
00:57:43- James was adopted.
00:57:44James says that he is the closest advocate
00:57:47for the abortion community that exists
00:57:50because if you were adopted at some point,
00:57:53there was a conversation.
00:57:54And he literally says,
00:57:56"No one speaks for the aborted community."
00:57:59I will, that's his one source of privilege that he's got.
00:58:03But yeah, and you know, the mad thing,
00:58:06the maddest thing is James has just got the most secure,
00:58:09high self-esteem, confident attachment thing.
00:58:12Both of his parents absolutely love him.
00:58:14And he's still got fantastic relationship with both of them.
00:58:17- But you have to deal with it.
00:58:20And so yes, so adopting children is a mitzvah,
00:58:24but you have to know how to help them with that
00:58:27because that is something-- - Sorry, what's a mitzvah?
00:58:28- Oh, it's a blessing.
00:58:30We say it's a blessing.
00:58:31It's the greatest blessing.
00:58:33But it is something you have to deal with.
00:58:37You have to know that that's a part
00:58:39of the underlying unconscious feeling
00:58:42is did my parents want me?
00:58:43And it's the same with children that go through a divorce.
00:58:46Am I the cause of this divorce?
00:58:48Did my parents concede me out of love?
00:58:50Did they ever love one another?
00:58:52And so, you know, I would say that most parents
00:58:56conceive children when they loved one another,
00:58:59I would say most, you know,
00:59:00or at least there was the perception of love, right?
00:59:03The illusion of love.
00:59:04And so you want to give children that.
00:59:08You want to give them that perception, that illusion,
00:59:12that reality that, you know,
00:59:14that we loved each other very much
00:59:16and you were conceived in love
00:59:18and brought into this world in love.
00:59:20But we adults sometimes fall out of love,
00:59:24but they never, ever, ever fall out of love
00:59:27with their children.
00:59:27- That's a good point.
00:59:28What role does honesty play versus protecting children
00:59:33from adult realities?
00:59:34- So I always say that honesty,
00:59:38children have bullshit meters.
00:59:40So they know when you're lying to them.
00:59:42So you don't want to lie out and out blatantly lie to them,
00:59:45but you have to be sensitive in your truths, right?
00:59:48You have to be discriminating in your truths
00:59:51and how you describe those truths.
00:59:54So you can tell children the truth.
00:59:57I think that a lot of parents lie to their children
01:00:01or make promises to their children because they feel guilty.
01:00:06That's dangerous.
01:00:07So meaning, if you're divorcing and your child asks you,
01:00:12you know, will we still have holidays together?
01:00:18What will we do about Christmas?
01:00:21Saying to them, oh no, we're still a family.
01:00:24We'll always, you know, I always think this is funny.
01:00:28There's a division in the community
01:00:30that deals with divorcing families
01:00:32and this idea of the we're still a family.
01:00:35It's a complicated thing to say we're still a family.
01:00:40Yes, in some form, we're still a family,
01:00:43but usually divorced families don't spend holidays together.
01:00:48Maybe they do in the beginning, but eventually they don't.
01:00:50And so to promise your child that nothing is going to change
01:00:54in their life, in their living situation, in their school,
01:00:59you do want to keep as much the same as possible.
01:01:02You want to disrupt as little as possible in a child's life,
01:01:05particularly in the first year,
01:01:06but to make promises that you can't keep to them
01:01:09is perceived by children as lies
01:01:14and a further breach in trust.
01:01:19- I wonder, let's say that I gave you the task
01:01:23of trying to design the worst possible divorce
01:01:27for a child to go through.
01:01:29That is to say, what is the worst way
01:01:32that two people could get divorced?
01:01:33How would they talk about it?
01:01:34What would they do?
01:01:35How would they tell them?
01:01:36How would that roll over time?
01:01:37- Oh dear.
01:01:38- What would that look like?
01:01:39- How much time do we have?
01:01:40'Cause I treat some of those cases.
01:01:44It's very sad for me to treat them.
01:01:45- Well, you've got inspiration then.
01:01:46This should be easy.
01:01:48- The worst cases are the cases where one parent,
01:01:53I suppose, betrays another parent.
01:02:01And then it's something that the parent who's betrayed
01:02:05can't get over.
01:02:06And so there is depression, hostility,
01:02:10belligerence between the two parents.
01:02:16I guess the main things that I've seen
01:02:19are when parents treat children as possessions,
01:02:22like a Porsche or a car or like splitting the 50/50 piece
01:02:27when they treat children as possessions.
01:02:31That is a terrible thing.
01:02:33I think when parents lie to children in one way or another,
01:02:39when parents overshare with children,
01:02:45when parents alienate children from one parent or another,
01:02:50when parents are terrible at communicating
01:02:52and cooperating with each other,
01:02:54we call it co-parenting for a reason,
01:02:56when they are more focused on themselves and their own pain
01:03:01and will do what's right for them,
01:03:04but not what's good for their children.
01:03:06Yeah, those are some of the-
01:03:09- And they did it at Christmas.
01:03:10- Yeah, those are some of the top hits, yeah.
01:03:13- Okay, and what's the inverse?
01:03:14If you were to tactically say these are the biggest movers
01:03:18for going through a difficult time well,
01:03:22what does that look like?
01:03:24- Cooperation, communication, respect you,
01:03:32finding somewhere deep inside of you
01:03:34the respect and admiration and love
01:03:39that you once shared with the person
01:03:42that you had children with.
01:03:43You might not be in love with them anymore.
01:03:45You might even be angry at them and disappointed in them,
01:03:49but that you can dig deep and find some degree of respect
01:03:54and admiration and love for them that you shared with them
01:03:57so you can do the right thing for your children.
01:03:59So you can see your children for where they are
01:04:03developmentally and in age,
01:04:05and know that in the scheme of life,
01:04:08for women who have careers and want children,
01:04:11I always say you can do everything in life,
01:04:13you just can't do it all at the same time.
01:04:15And I'm gonna say it's the same with divorce.
01:04:18You know, throughout a child's life,
01:04:20you are going to get a lot of love and attention
01:04:23and connection to that child.
01:04:24But you may not get it all at the same time
01:04:26as the other parent.
01:04:28So the competition between parents sometimes
01:04:31sort of overwhelms what a child may need,
01:04:37or maybe usurps what a child may need.
01:04:40So, you know, the idea of working collaboratively,
01:04:43having good open communication,
01:04:45having some respect and admiration
01:04:47for the partner that you have the child with.
01:04:50And then living close together.
01:04:52You know, the other thing is that
01:04:55the best co-parenting situations
01:04:57are ones where parents live close to each other,
01:05:01close enough that children can go easily back and forth.
01:05:05- You don't have to put them on a flight.
01:05:07- The other thing I will say is
01:05:08there is a trend in America to do this two, three, two,
01:05:13you know, custody arrangement,
01:05:18which is like treating children
01:05:19like they're a sack of potatoes.
01:05:21Children hate it.
01:05:22- What's two, three, two? - And when they grow up,
01:05:24two days with one parent, three days with another parent,
01:05:27two days with two, three, two, three, two, three.
01:05:30It's like a dance, two-step dance.
01:05:32It drives children crazy.
01:05:35And when they grow up, teenagers and young adults
01:05:38will say the worst thing for me
01:05:40was that I was thrown back and forth like a sack of potatoes.
01:05:43- Why is it so bad?
01:05:44Why is two, three, two so bad for children?
01:05:47- Because they need stability,
01:05:50particularly during the week when they're in school.
01:05:53They need to feel that they have a primary residence
01:05:56where they can lay their head down on the same pillow
01:05:58and they have some stability.
01:06:00This idea of, so, you know,
01:06:02for anybody who's ever had two homes,
01:06:05either intentionally, involuntarily, or involuntarily,
01:06:09you know what it's like to have to move
01:06:11from home to home to home to home.
01:06:14It's crazy making.
01:06:16And for a child who's already feeling destabilized,
01:06:19I always say in the first year,
01:06:21the best is to do something called nesting
01:06:23where they don't have to move at all.
01:06:25I always recommend that for a year, no more than a year.
01:06:28- Put them in one location
01:06:29and have the other parent come to visit regularly.
01:06:30- They stay in their home.
01:06:32They stay in their home and the parents come and go.
01:06:35So the parents have a separate apartment.
01:06:37And that's fine for a year.
01:06:41But after that, that you find an arrangement
01:06:43where the children can have a primary residence.
01:06:46And this is also very controversial
01:06:48because everybody wants to see this thing as a fairness thing.
01:06:52And everybody has to have their,
01:06:54like, I'll take the legs, you take the arms.
01:06:56But what children actually need is stability.
01:06:58They need to feel they have a secure and primary home.
01:07:02- And make, go ahead.
01:07:03- And then, so the old arrangements,
01:07:06interestingly, the old arrangements,
01:07:08which now are considered passe,
01:07:11where a child lived with a mother during the week
01:07:14and then spent weekends with the father,
01:07:16or maybe was with the father Friday through Sunday morning.
01:07:20That works far better 'cause the child isn't in school.
01:07:23The child can be home, come home every day,
01:07:25do their homework in the same place
01:07:27and have a sense of stability
01:07:29and then go to the father on weekends.
01:07:31Or if the father's the primary attachment figure,
01:07:33the child lives with the father during the week
01:07:35and then goes to the mother on the weekends.
01:07:38But the idea of having a primary stable residence
01:07:41is far better for children.
01:07:43And that doesn't mean that the parent
01:07:45who's not living with the child during the week
01:07:47can't see the child.
01:07:49You know, you can come and you can have dinners
01:07:51and you can have mock sleepovers
01:07:52and you can pick the child up from school
01:07:54and take them to soccer practice.
01:07:56But it's the idea of where you sleep.
01:07:58You travel a lot, I know, right?
01:08:01You travel a lot and I travel a lot for what we do.
01:08:04You know what it feels like too.
01:08:06It's like being almost like in a band, you know,
01:08:09where you're like have one gig and it's very destabilizing
01:08:12to not sleep in the same place and have a home.
01:08:16And I think that's what it feels like to children.
01:08:19And they resent that more than anything.
01:08:20I would tell parents who are listening,
01:08:22children resent that more than anything.
01:08:26- Consciously resent it.
01:08:27- Consciously resent it and tell parents they resent it.
01:08:31- What is the longest amount of time
01:08:33that kids should go without seeing the other parent?
01:08:36- I think parents should see children every day if they can.
01:08:40So if I live down the street from you,
01:08:42I don't recommend that people live in the same building,
01:08:45but sometimes it works for a variety of reasons.
01:08:47I think it can be problematic.
01:08:49But if you live down the street or a block away
01:08:52where you can still stay in the routine
01:08:54of walking your child to school
01:08:56or picking them up from school
01:08:58or going to soccer practice with them,
01:09:01that's a very good thing for children
01:09:03where a lot of the routines that they may have had
01:09:06with the parent aren't disrupted.
01:09:08So that can be a very good thing
01:09:11where parents are geographically close
01:09:14and they continue to do the same things they always did
01:09:18on a daily basis.
01:09:20If Tuesday night was pizza night at the house,
01:09:23then your dad takes you out for pizza on Tuesday nights
01:09:26but then brings you home to sleep in your bed
01:09:29that you're used to. (chuckles)
01:09:31The things that you do now when your children are young
01:09:35and you're going through a divorce
01:09:36are going to be appreciated in the long run.
01:09:40They may not say to you, the kids,
01:09:42"Thank you, mommy. Thank you, daddy."
01:09:45But in the long run, your children will see,
01:09:48they will know whether you have been willing to sacrifice
01:09:52your own personal desires and needs for them.
01:09:55And in the long run,
01:09:57it will pay off in terms of the relationship with them.
01:09:59But yes, parents should have regular access
01:10:03to their children.
01:10:03And if they're geographically connected,
01:10:06then I don't actually like the 232
01:10:08because what it assumes is that on those two days
01:10:11or three days, the child can't see the other parent.
01:10:14- Yeah, it's an all or nothing, black to white.
01:10:17- It's all or nothing.
01:10:18And then I have situations where parents move out of state
01:10:21where they're literally,
01:10:23I can't tell you how many people call me
01:10:25to do expert witness for their cases.
01:10:28And these cases are so incredibly sad to me.
01:10:31And I cannot take all the cases
01:10:33that I'm asked to be expert witness on,
01:10:35but cases where parents have moved out of state
01:10:38and they literally want to take a breastfeeding baby
01:10:42away from a mother for a week at a time
01:10:46to be in another state, to be handed over to a caregiver
01:10:49or put in daycare or to a grandmother
01:10:52because that way they possess that child.
01:10:55I'm like, first of all,
01:10:56parents shouldn't be allowed to move out of state.
01:10:59I mean, and if they move out of state,
01:11:00then the other parent has to go with them.
01:11:03This idea that you can take babies away from parents,
01:11:08it shouldn't be allowed.
01:11:10- Or that if you move out of state,
01:11:11that you give up your custody rights.
01:11:13- That's it.
01:11:14Or you come and visit on weekends or vacations,
01:11:17but that somehow you're not pulling the baby apart
01:11:21for your own personal satisfaction and fairness.
01:11:25- It certainly seems like the onus is on the parents
01:11:28that moves away, even if they weren't the one
01:11:30that was the departure from the relationship.
01:11:33- It should be that way.
01:11:35The onus should be on them to have to make the accommodation.
01:11:39The other thing is this is a very common situation now,
01:11:42which is very frustrating to me.
01:11:44If one parent is a stay-at-home parent,
01:11:48and let's say it's the mother,
01:11:49but it could also be the father.
01:11:51If one parent was the primary attachment figure
01:11:54and the stay-at-home parent,
01:11:56and the other parent was working full-time,
01:12:00and that situation is going to continue.
01:12:03Or even if the mother or the primary attachment figure
01:12:09works part-time and the father works full-time.
01:12:12Let's just say that for now.
01:12:14But the father wants the child half the time.
01:12:19But the child could be with the mother
01:12:21if the father's traveling or is working 10-hour days.
01:12:26There are parents who would rather take the child
01:12:29away from the spouse who could watch that child
01:12:33and be with that child and care for that child
01:12:35and put that child in daycare.
01:12:38Or give that child over to a babysitter
01:12:41rather than allowing a mother
01:12:43or the primary parent to care for them.
01:12:47This is happening all the time.
01:12:49And it's selfishness.
01:12:50It is pure, unadulterated selfishness.
01:12:53And it is very hard for me to see parents being selfish
01:12:57in the face of a divorce.
01:12:58So one thing I can't abide by.
01:13:01- Before we continue,
01:13:02if you care about what you're putting in your body,
01:13:04protein powder is probably the supplement
01:13:06that you think least about.
01:13:07You buy a big tub that says grass-fed on the label
01:13:10and you figure that's good enough.
01:13:11But here's the thing.
01:13:12Most brands never test their product
01:13:14after they leave the factory.
01:13:15And that is why I'm such a
01:13:18massive fan of Momentus.
01:13:20They test every single batch for contaminants,
01:13:22heavy metals and banned substances.
01:13:23They're NSF certified for sport,
01:13:25which means it is the highest bar
01:13:27that you can clear in the supplement industry.
01:13:28And their way comes from grass-fed European cows,
01:13:30which means no hormones, no antibiotics or any other junk.
01:13:33It's fast absorbing, easy on the gut
01:13:35and actually mixes smoothly without that chalky aftertaste
01:13:38that most clean proteins have.
01:13:39This stuff rules.
01:13:40These travel packs are awesome as well.
01:13:42If you've been struggling to hit your protein goals
01:13:43like everybody else,
01:13:44or you've just never fully trusted what's in your tub,
01:13:48it's time to give Momentus a shot.
01:13:50And there's a 30-day money back guarantee.
01:13:52Buy it completely risk-free.
01:13:54They ship internationally.
01:13:55And right now you can get up to 35%
01:13:58off your first subscription
01:13:59and that 30-day money back guarantee
01:14:00by going to the link in the description below
01:14:02or heading to livemomentus.com/modernwisdom
01:14:05using the code modernwisdom at checkout.
01:14:07That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/modernwisdom
01:14:11and modernwisdom at checkout.
01:14:13Look, I understand.
01:14:19I'm trying to sort of put myself in the mind
01:14:21as somebody that's never been married
01:14:22and doesn't have a kid.
01:14:23I'm trying to put myself in the mind
01:14:24of someone who's on the tail end of it
01:14:25who's trying to do a post-mortem
01:14:26of the imaginary marriage and child.
01:14:28It must be so difficult to try and navigate
01:14:32this rupture of an attachment.
01:14:34The person that you thought you're going to spend
01:14:35the rest of your life with has left you.
01:14:37And now there's this weird push and pull dynamic
01:14:41and what are we going to do about money?
01:14:43And I need, my emotions are bleeding out of me.
01:14:48I mean, think about how much people struggle
01:14:50just with normal breakups already.
01:14:52And then divorce is even worse.
01:14:54And what's going to happen with the car?
01:14:56And what's going to happen with the bank accounts?
01:14:57And what's going to happen with the house?
01:14:59And what's going to happen with the kid?
01:15:01And all of this excess emotion is just pouring out of you.
01:15:05And the baby or adolescent is just the sponge
01:15:13that's absorbing a lot of this.
01:15:14It's really tough.
01:15:16And I get it.
01:15:17I had a, I'm using my evolutionary psychologist hat here.
01:15:21Given the fact that it's important
01:15:25for there to be the spare when it comes to parenting,
01:15:30obviously if you were to go through a divorce pre-verbal,
01:15:35there's going to be stress.
01:15:37But if the wife was to hot swab the baby,
01:15:43swap to a new male partner sufficiently quickly,
01:15:47presumably that would actually mitigate
01:15:49some of these challenges.
01:15:50Because baby's ability to detect that is dad
01:15:54is actually pretty limited in any case at the start.
01:15:57So not advocating it, not saying that this is a strategy,
01:16:02but I think it's an interesting thought experiment
01:16:05that what you need is a male figure.
01:16:08For instance, could a mother use her father,
01:16:13get her father to come and live in the house with her
01:16:17and have a brother or an uncle or something like that,
01:16:22or best friend's husband or whatever.
01:16:24Can you mitigate some of that?
01:16:27- Yes, and that's very important to understand
01:16:30with older children.
01:16:31Let's say you have a primary school age child,
01:16:36an eight-year-old child, or even a six-year-old child
01:16:39who is very attached
01:16:40to the non-primary attachment figure parent.
01:16:43Having a grandmother in the house
01:16:45or an aunt that lives with you, or even a babysitter,
01:16:47it's perfectly fine and reasonable
01:16:49to say there's a female figure in the house.
01:16:53We're talking about when children are developing
01:16:56a deep sense of attachment security.
01:16:58Remember that attachment security
01:16:59is the foundation for mental health.
01:17:01So this is a period that should not be touchable.
01:17:04It should not be a movable feast at all.
01:17:07It should be respected on such a high level
01:17:10that judges and mediators and divorce attorneys
01:17:14and forensic psychologists and co-parenting specialists,
01:17:19they should all be on the same page.
01:17:22Unfortunately, they're not.
01:17:24Most are not well-versed on attachment security
01:17:28or the importance of it.
01:17:29And again, prioritize the fairness, the legal fairness
01:17:33of splitting the baby in half and parents' rights.
01:17:36It's all about parents.
01:17:38So with a very young baby,
01:17:40the baby's needs must always be prioritized
01:17:43over your own needs.
01:17:44And that's a harsh toke for a lot of parents to hear,
01:17:47but that's the truth.
01:17:48- 'Cause they're psychologically suffering.
01:17:50I'm already in pain. - Yes, that's right.
01:17:52- And you're telling me that I need to--
01:17:54- That's right.
01:17:55- Apply more pain to people. - That's right.
01:17:56When you stub your toe,
01:17:58whoever is in the room is gonna get screamed at.
01:18:01If I stub my toe and my husband's in the room,
01:18:03I'll be like, "Why'd you friggin' put that bed in the room?"
01:18:07Everybody does that, right?
01:18:08We all do that because it's human nature when we're in pain
01:18:12that we wanna make other people feel our pain.
01:18:14- We lash out.
01:18:15We lash out at the people that are around us
01:18:17because we want support.
01:18:18I mean, think about what pain,
01:18:21the physical, verbal presentation of somebody being in pain.
01:18:26The Yelp, what is that?
01:18:28It's a big alarm.
01:18:29It's a big alarm that's going out
01:18:31to everybody around, "I require help."
01:18:35And then you curl up into a ball,
01:18:36your shoulders sort of curl over in this kind of way.
01:18:39You make yourself look small and fragile and frail
01:18:41like somebody that could do with some fucking help.
01:18:43- It's an infantile Yelp.
01:18:45- Correct.
01:18:46- It's when adults act like infants.
01:18:48And when we're in pain, we all regress to an infantile state.
01:18:52- Some of us do it more consistently than others.
01:18:54- Yes, but the idea is that around children,
01:18:56you better pull yourself together very quickly
01:18:59and realize that you are not an infant.
01:19:01You're the adult in the room.
01:19:02And that child is the infant.
01:19:03And that child needs you to be the adult in the room.
01:19:06- Okay.
01:19:07Talk to me about what parents can do
01:19:10to improve their emotional regulation
01:19:13during these situations.
01:19:14'Cause it feels like you need to do it.
01:19:19And I agree that you've had the kid, you were in love.
01:19:23This is now an 18-year contract to get,
01:19:26or maybe a 23-year contract, to get this thing out
01:19:30into the real world, to create a big enough runway.
01:19:33But it's not just, okay, I'll just decide to do it.
01:19:36The sensation, this overwhelm of emotions and activation
01:19:41and my wounds, I'm just like my mother
01:19:44and he's just like my father and rah, rah, rah.
01:19:47How can parents who are going through a divorce
01:19:50learn to regulate themselves better
01:19:52so that they can be better co-parents?
01:19:54- Right, it's a trauma laboratory is what I call it.
01:19:57So the idea is that you need a support system.
01:20:00And again, I'm not someone who advocates for therapy
01:20:03with everyone, but I am gonna say
01:20:05when you're going through a divorce,
01:20:06you need to get some help.
01:20:07You need to get some therapy
01:20:10because you need someplace to go with those feelings
01:20:13where you can deposit them and leave them there.
01:20:16Once a week, twice a week, where you can go to that person,
01:20:21deposit those feelings, process them,
01:20:23process the conflict, mourn with somebody
01:20:26who's got your back and who understands.
01:20:29Sometimes you can also go to your family
01:20:31and your close friends, they have to be supportive.
01:20:34Not all family and friends are supportive.
01:20:36We would hope that they would all be,
01:20:37but not all family and friends are supportive.
01:20:40So, and family and friends come with a particular perspective
01:20:44and often an agenda, which is why therapy is so different
01:20:47than going to family and friends.
01:20:48So people will often say,
01:20:49"Well, why do I need to go to therapy
01:20:50"if I have family and friends?"
01:20:52Well, family and friends have a particular perspective
01:20:55and they often want to share it with you.
01:20:57Therapists are not meant to share
01:20:59their own personal perspective with you.
01:21:01And if they do, you shouldn't be with that therapist.
01:21:04A therapist is there to help you to process that grief,
01:21:08to help you to process that loss and to get through it
01:21:10and be a safe container for those feelings.
01:21:13So you need family and friends support
01:21:16as long as they're supportive.
01:21:17And then you also need therapy.
01:21:19You need someplace to take those feelings
01:21:20so you don't offload on your children
01:21:23and you don't start making terrible decisions
01:21:25that will have long-term consequences
01:21:27on your children's mental health.
01:21:29Because again, your children's mental health
01:21:32isn't an easy fix later on.
01:21:35- Okay, going back to your original area of work
01:21:40from a few years ago,
01:21:42the attachment security that kids need
01:21:45in those first three years, what does that look like?
01:21:48You said what it doesn't look like, absentee of the mother,
01:21:51et cetera, et cetera.
01:21:52What's the gold standard for attachment security
01:21:54for a child who's naught to three years old?
01:21:57- So again, in a way I think what's happened to the world
01:22:02is that we used to be able to look at infants
01:22:06and see how fragile they are.
01:22:10I think the world has become desensitized,
01:22:14deconditioned if you will, to the fragility of infants
01:22:19and toddlers, just how fragile they are.
01:22:22They're not at all resilient.
01:22:24They're not at all self-possessed.
01:22:27They cannot deal with great amounts of stress.
01:22:29So I feel like the world's become sort of desensitized
01:22:32to so many things, but yeah.
01:22:35So attachment security is both an emotional
01:22:40and a physical state of being.
01:22:42It is when babies are born,
01:22:45they literally need skin to skin contact
01:22:48to regulate their emotions.
01:22:50You're not only regulating emotions,
01:22:52you're also regulating biological processes.
01:22:54You're regulating their breath and their heartbeat
01:22:57but mostly their cortisol.
01:22:59You're keeping it very, very, very low.
01:23:01There was a researcher that I interviewed for my book.
01:23:04She's European and she said,
01:23:05"Babies in the Western world cry more than any other babies
01:23:09in the world."
01:23:10She said, "Because in other parts of the world,
01:23:11they don't need to cry
01:23:12because their distress levels are kept so low
01:23:15'cause they're worn on their mother's fronts
01:23:16and then their mother's backs,
01:23:18they're not separated from their mothers."
01:23:19But in the Western world, we have this very perverse idea
01:23:23that babies are supposed to be independent,
01:23:25that they're born independent,
01:23:27that they're born self-sufficient
01:23:28like self-cleaning ovens or something.
01:23:30- Where do you think that's come from?
01:23:32- It comes from a narcissistic, a growth of narcissism,
01:23:37sort of like bacteria, a growth of narcissism in society
01:23:42that has put the individual first before relationships,
01:23:47before connection to others.
01:23:52That could be a whole other podcast interview with you
01:23:56to talk about that but there is a growth in individualism,
01:23:59self-centeredness, even self-sufficiency.
01:24:03- So is this as much that newborn baby
01:24:08is now an independent agent or is it,
01:24:13I am an independent agent and that thing is imposing on me?
01:24:16- Both. - Right.
01:24:17- It's both. - Okay, yeah.
01:24:19- Where did it start?
01:24:20Some say the Industrial Revolution,
01:24:23which separated families and made mothers go out to work
01:24:26instead of being with babies.
01:24:28Some say it was the first wave of feminism
01:24:30but actually the first wave of feminism was very pro-maternal.
01:24:33- It was maternal feminism? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:24:35Yeah, it was.
01:24:35- Sheryl Sandberg, is it her fault?
01:24:38- No, not Sheryl Sandberg.
01:24:39It was the Gloria Steinem's and the people that came later.
01:24:42It was the second wave of feminism
01:24:44that really promoted the idea
01:24:47that mothering was not valuable work.
01:24:51But actually the first wave of feminism
01:24:52was very pro-maternity.
01:24:54And the Me movement, the Me movement in the '60s
01:24:58was very pro-individualism.
01:25:01- Not me too.
01:25:02- No, no. - What's the Me?
01:25:04- No, no. - What's the Me movement?
01:25:05- The Me movement was the beginning.
01:25:07It was a movement towards individualism.
01:25:09It was actually called the Me movement.
01:25:11So all of these social movements,
01:25:15which were moving away from the family construct
01:25:19towards sort of the communal construct,
01:25:21towards, you know, David Brooks writes about this,
01:25:23other people write about it,
01:25:24but towards a more individualistic, narcissistic,
01:25:29self-oriented approach to living.
01:25:32Which also has meant the dissolution of the family.
01:25:35I mean, you know, divorce is, we don't talk about divorce.
01:25:38One of the reasons I wrote this book
01:25:39is 'cause I was so frustrated.
01:25:40I only write books when I'm really frustrated
01:25:43about something in society and there isn't anything
01:25:45that I can refer patients to, to really help them understand.
01:25:50I think we don't talk about divorce.
01:25:5150% of couples divorce.
01:25:53And if you wanna know on some basic level,
01:25:56what's causing, you know,
01:25:58what's contributing to the mental health crisis,
01:26:01one in two couples divorce, leaving their children
01:26:03without a nuclear family or two parents
01:26:07or, you know, sort of this rift in the family.
01:26:10It's a trauma.
01:26:12And I don't think we wanna talk about it
01:26:13'cause I think it's so sensitive
01:26:14'cause then people will feel guilty.
01:26:16And everybody's so sensitive about everybody feeling badly.
01:26:19- Apart from the kids.
01:26:20- Apart from the kids, that's it.
01:26:22All the adults in the room are so fragile
01:26:25that we can't talk about having to stay home
01:26:28if you have a child for a little while.
01:26:29Having to give up some career ambitions
01:26:32in those early years that your children need you.
01:26:34You know, we can't talk about, you know,
01:26:37divorcing in the first three years probably isn't a good idea.
01:26:41We can't talk about these things
01:26:43because it's gonna make somebody feel badly.
01:26:45I'm like, you know what?
01:26:46And I've said this over and over again.
01:26:48A little bit of guilt is a healthy thing
01:26:51'cause it means your ego is functioning.
01:26:53- It's gonna guide you in the direction
01:26:54that's good for your behavior.
01:26:55- Your superego, which dictates what's right and wrong
01:26:58is part of your ego.
01:27:00And so when you feel badly, it's generally a signal feeling
01:27:04that tells you you have a conflict.
01:27:06Ooh, I have a conflict internally.
01:27:08Something doesn't feel right.
01:27:09Maybe I should look at it.
01:27:10But instead we tell people,
01:27:13ah, don't feel badly, everything will be okay.
01:27:16So we're basically telling people to ignore instincts.
01:27:18You said something about evolutionary instincts.
01:27:21First of all, we're mammals.
01:27:23We have evolutionary instincts.
01:27:26We have nurturing hormones that affect our behavior
01:27:29and we have guilt.
01:27:31Guilt is like pain.
01:27:32What would we do without pain?
01:27:34You know, there are people
01:27:35that are born without pain receptors
01:27:37and if they touch a stove,
01:27:38they can like have third degree burns and not know it.
01:27:41What would we do without guilt?
01:27:43We need a little bit of guilt.
01:27:45Excessive amounts of guilt could be pathological,
01:27:47but a little bit of guilt.
01:27:50We don't want anybody to feel badly.
01:27:52Sometimes we have to feel badly
01:27:54if we're gonna look at what we're doing
01:27:56to ourselves or to others.
01:27:58- I had this realization when I was looking at a study
01:28:01that came out that was reanalyzing
01:28:02some big game hunting data.
01:28:04And you might've seen it.
01:28:05It was women did just as much big game hunting as men
01:28:08and sometimes even more.
01:28:10And I thought, well, this is surprising.
01:28:12Like big game hunting is pretty big
01:28:15and women don't tend to be quite as big as men on average.
01:28:18And maybe they've got-
01:28:18- It's a surprising figure to me too.
01:28:20- Turns out that it was wrong.
01:28:22That's why it's surprising.
01:28:23They reanalyze the data,
01:28:24but they'd done loads of fuckery with P values
01:28:26and categorization and a lot of other stuff.
01:28:28So the revelation became un-revelated,
01:28:33I guess, again, later on.
01:28:34And I was trying to think about why the female,
01:28:39I think feminist leaning researchers had decided
01:28:43that they wanted to do that.
01:28:43Like, what would be the reason for doing it?
01:28:45And you know, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
01:28:49Yeah, I think there's a soft bigotry of male expectations.
01:28:52I think that implicit, and it's the me movement.
01:28:54That's what made me think about it.
01:28:56Implicitly, anything that a man does
01:28:59is seen as the preferred kind of behavior,
01:29:01even by women who are trying to do
01:29:03the we are for women thing.
01:29:05And it's such a slippery kind of stupid way
01:29:09to slip misogyny into your own worldview
01:29:12as someone that's trying to combat misogyny.
01:29:14Because if you're to say,
01:29:16well, big game hunting, that's important.
01:29:18Women should have done it and maybe they did even more.
01:29:20It's like, but implicitly you're derogating
01:29:22how important the gathering is.
01:29:24If you're saying that the hunting is more important
01:29:26and the rearing and the nurturing and all of the other things.
01:29:28So the same to say that motherhood is just,
01:29:32it's not that important, you know, working.
01:29:34It is interesting to me that a lot of the people
01:29:36that hold these sorts of opinions are able to hold two
01:29:39that seem to contradict each other.
01:29:42First, corporations are soulless bloodsucking monstrosities
01:29:45and capitalism is a scourge on the earth
01:29:47that's trying to keep everybody down.
01:29:49And also your career is the single most important thing
01:29:51that you should do and nobody should ever stop you
01:29:53from doing it, least of all a child.
01:29:55And also maternity leave is a complete fucking crime
01:29:58against humanity and inhuman and we should have more of it.
01:30:01Okay, well, square this triangle for me, please.
01:30:03Because it just seems like people want,
01:30:08I think that you're right.
01:30:09Sovereignty, independence,
01:30:11but it's a kind of petulant independence.
01:30:14It's like a meh, like stamping of the feet
01:30:16and throwing of the hands on the floor.
01:30:17- It's infantile, yeah.
01:30:18- It's juvenile, like I want my thing.
01:30:20I want my thing the way I want it right now
01:30:22and nobody else can tell me how.
01:30:24- Yeah.
01:30:24- But you don't even know what's good.
01:30:26This isn't an informed opinion.
01:30:27You don't know what's right for you.
01:30:29You don't know what you're going to regret
01:30:30or not regret in future
01:30:31because you haven't thought about this.
01:30:33You're at the mercy of memes that have been created
01:30:35by people who have got even less education than you do
01:30:39that you're now being marionetted by.
01:30:40You're being parroted by these ideas
01:30:42that you don't have any idea where they've come from.
01:30:45And I'm sure that I have tons of them as well.
01:30:48But these are big life decisions.
01:30:51And that soft bigotry thing was so surprising to me
01:30:56as a group of people trying to be pro women,
01:31:00trying to be holistically integrated,
01:31:03transcending and including all of the things
01:31:05that they want women to have been in the past
01:31:08and become in the future.
01:31:09You are by design making anything
01:31:13that women have a predisposition toward less.
01:31:17And anything that true freedom is having sex
01:31:20like your brother and working like your father.
01:31:22- So there's a defense called identification
01:31:25with the aggressor.
01:31:26It's a psychoanalytic term,
01:31:28but it basically describes what it is.
01:31:31That when you feel abused or oppressed,
01:31:37rather than taking a position opposite the oppressor,
01:31:41you want to become the oppressor.
01:31:44Because then you have the power.
01:31:46- Redemption.
01:31:46- You have the power.
01:31:47You have the control.
01:31:49You'd rather be the victimizer than the victim.
01:31:52And what happened with the second wave of feminism
01:31:56is a lot of those feminists
01:31:58had come from very traumatic histories
01:32:01where they were very adversarial with men
01:32:06and treated men more as adversaries,
01:32:08had been abused or there was a lot in that group of women.
01:32:13And although they did a good thing for society
01:32:18by freeing women from the oppression of men,
01:32:21in a way what they did is they wanted to become men.
01:32:26Instead of saying we want to be respected
01:32:29and valued for being women
01:32:31and maybe even be paid for being women.
01:32:35So one of the things is that men had power and control
01:32:39because they had money and money became power and control.
01:32:43Wasn't just political power, it was financial power.
01:32:46And so women rather than saying, you know what?
01:32:50Women's work is valuable work.
01:32:54Caregiving, caring for children,
01:32:56nursing elderly, nursing, teaching,
01:32:59all these professions which were quote unquote women's work
01:33:03are incredibly valuable.
01:33:04One might say in the age of AI,
01:33:06they may be the only ones left
01:33:07because they're so right-brained and irreplaceable.
01:33:12They'll try to replace them with AI,
01:33:14but they're not going to be able to, at least not well.
01:33:17And so these kinds of important
01:33:21loving caregiving relationship work,
01:33:24it was diminished and demeaned in favor of men's work.
01:33:29Now that is identification with the aggressor.
01:33:33That is becoming your oppressor and the aggressor
01:33:36instead of saying, wait a second, we are valuable
01:33:40and what we do is valuable
01:33:41and we want to be recognized for what we do
01:33:43and we want to be paid for what we do.
01:33:45So I just came back from Australia where they're proposing
01:33:50not only 18 months of paid leave,
01:33:52but family stipends instead of daycare.
01:33:55I fight against daycare.
01:33:57I go around the world and speak out against universal
01:34:00institutional warehouses of children
01:34:03and what I call day orphanages, which is what daycare is
01:34:07and how terrible it is for children's nervous system
01:34:10and how it's contributing to the mental health crisis.
01:34:12But they're also proposing now against the labor government,
01:34:16the conservative government is proposing income splitting,
01:34:21which means that if your husband is the main money earner,
01:34:26'cause one thing for women is
01:34:28they weren't getting social security.
01:34:29If you're caregiving and taking care of children,
01:34:32you're also not getting a pension, right?
01:34:34For the most part, your husband is getting the pension
01:34:36and you're not getting the pension.
01:34:38You're not being paid, he's being paid.
01:34:40So the idea of income splitting where a wife is considered
01:34:43half of what the husband earns is on the wife,
01:34:46so she's also getting a pension.
01:34:48But the concept is that rather than women say,
01:34:52pay us for our work, give us some power and some legitimacy
01:34:56and some admiration for our work,
01:34:59they said, no, I wanna compete with men
01:35:02and be better than men.
01:35:04And that's what happened to the feminist movement.
01:35:06And that's when children got left behind.
01:35:08- Talk to me about daycare.
01:35:10What's the problem with daycare?
01:35:12- Well, daycare, as I said,
01:35:14it's basically separating babies
01:35:18from their primary attachment figures,
01:35:20putting them in institutional settings
01:35:23with ratios of no less than five to one,
01:35:25usually eight to one caregiver to child ratio.
01:35:29And you're basically sending that child's cortisol levels.
01:35:33The research shows that salivary cortisol levels
01:35:36go through the roof.
01:35:37So babies go into high stress states.
01:35:39Now they're separated from their mother's bodies
01:35:42and they're separated from the person in the world
01:35:44who's meant to make them feel safe.
01:35:45They're in a loud overstimulating setting
01:35:48with babies crying and caregivers,
01:35:51transient caregivers alternating and some being absent.
01:35:55And it's a new caregiver 'cause they're always out sick
01:35:57and it's the worst possible caregiving situation for a child.
01:36:02There are so many better.
01:36:05If you have to work, the best is a mother or father,
01:36:10whoever's the primary attachment figure.
01:36:12The next best is kinship bonds,
01:36:14which are family or extended family members
01:36:17who have a more similar investment to children emotionally.
01:36:21The next best would be a single surrogate caregiver
01:36:24or a nanny or a babysitter
01:36:25who's going to be an alternative attachment figure
01:36:28to that baby, which will provide them
01:36:29with some sense of security and care for them in your home.
01:36:32And if you can't afford that, then share a caregiver.
01:36:35That's a big thing in California
01:36:36where they will split the cost of one caregiver.
01:36:39So that caregiver is now taking care of two or three children.
01:36:42You have now reduced the ratio
01:36:43and that child is being cared for in your home.
01:36:45And you have agency over that.
01:36:46- Basically private daycare where you don't have to travel.
01:36:49- And it's in your home.
01:36:50And so you have agency over who that person is,
01:36:53how they care for your child.
01:36:55You can put cameras in your house if you want.
01:36:57You can see what they do.
01:36:58You can observe them.
01:36:59You know who's taking care of your children.
01:37:02And your child isn't going into this like high stress state
01:37:07of screaming, crying.
01:37:09If you go into a daycare center, you would cry.
01:37:13I always say to parents, you drop them off
01:37:14and you have this schizoid response
01:37:16where you shut down what you're feeling and go to work.
01:37:19But if you knew what happened in those daycare centers,
01:37:21if you heard those babies cry.
01:37:23- What does happen?
01:37:24What happens in daycares?
01:37:26- Crying babies because the bottom line is
01:37:30if I handed you eight babies and you're one person,
01:37:34could you soothe all those babies in distress
01:37:37at the same time?
01:37:38- I'm not convinced I could soothe one of them.
01:37:39- Okay, now I'm giving you eight.
01:37:42And so what's happening is those one person cannot,
01:37:46you know, parents who have attachment disorders
01:37:50of their own think,
01:37:52"Oh, it's better for somebody else to care for my child
01:37:55"'cause I'm not a good, I can't handle it."
01:37:58Without thinking, who's this person
01:38:00that I've just handed my baby to
01:38:01and how are they gonna care for five to eight children
01:38:05and soothe them when they're in distress?
01:38:07And so parents just, it's like they shut down a part of their,
01:38:11it's like they shut down their empathy.
01:38:13It's like they have a schizoid response with empathy
01:38:16where they cannot see their baby's vulnerability
01:38:18or their baby suffering.
01:38:21- What are your favorite studies that show
01:38:23how we shouldn't ignore early attachment in childhood?
01:38:27- John Bowlby is the father of attachment.
01:38:32You need go no farther than John Bowlby,
01:38:34but you could look at all of the,
01:38:37what they call the stranger situation studies,
01:38:39which they've been doing since the 1960s.
01:38:42They have repeated this experiment over and over.
01:38:45In fact, I was, there's a researcher named Beatrice Beebe
01:38:49in New York, she's very famous.
01:38:51And I was in some of her videos
01:38:53because when I was a young social work student,
01:38:56I did some volunteering in a stranger situation study.
01:39:01Again, this situation is repeated
01:39:04over and over and over again.
01:39:05It's the most well-known attachment security study.
01:39:09And it sort of goes something like this,
01:39:11the mother and baby are playing in a room,
01:39:13a stranger walks in, the mother walks out of the room,
01:39:18the mother walks back in, and there's a reunion.
01:39:21It's sort of, they look at the baby's reactions.
01:39:25They look at the interaction between the mother and the baby,
01:39:27the interaction between the stranger and the baby.
01:39:30They look at the reunion between the mother and the baby.
01:39:32So this is something that's done over and over.
01:39:35We have so much longitudinal research on attachment security
01:39:38going back to the '60s.
01:39:40So much research to show that attachment security,
01:39:45if you're not securely attached at 12 months,
01:39:48then 72% of those babies 20 years later
01:39:51will not be securely attached.
01:39:52And that insecure attachment is tied to depression, anxiety,
01:39:57borderline personality disorder.
01:40:00So we have the research.
01:40:02The research has been there for many years.
01:40:05We just, now we have the neuroscience research
01:40:08and the epigenetics research to support
01:40:11the attachment research.
01:40:13- Square this circle with the heritability
01:40:15of attachment style for me.
01:40:16- The heritability of attachment style, no.
01:40:22So it's generational expression.
01:40:25So I sort of balk at the idea of inheritance.
01:40:28It's inheritance of acquired characteristics.
01:40:31So you don't inherit it genetically.
01:40:33You inherit sensitivity genetically,
01:40:36but you inherit through acquired characteristics,
01:40:39meaning your environment.
01:40:41A mother who is insecurely, anxiously attached
01:40:46will more likely produce an anxiously attached baby.
01:40:49A mother who is avoidantly attached
01:40:51will more likely produce an avoidantly attached baby.
01:40:54A mother who has a disorganized attachment
01:40:57and is a borderline personality disorder kind of patient
01:41:00will more likely produce a child
01:41:02who has a disorganized attachment
01:41:03and probably a borderline personality disorder.
01:41:06So we call it generational expression of mental illness.
01:41:10So inheritance of acquired characteristics.
01:41:14- I guess it's interesting to think about predisposition
01:41:22versus predetermination with stuff like this.
01:41:25The raw materials are there.
01:41:26I've always thought this about, I'm a big Plowman fan.
01:41:30I think he's one of the best researchers of all time.
01:41:34He's about the fifth most cited psychologist
01:41:36in the 20th century.
01:41:38The guy that, kind of the grandfather of behavioral genetics.
01:41:42I think he rules.
01:41:43And when I think about the first few years of a child's life,
01:41:48it's such a weird confluence of
01:41:51what were the raw materials that you were made of?
01:41:54How were they expressed in the people who gave you them?
01:41:59They are expressed in behavior.
01:42:04And that behavior happens to be the environment.
01:42:07It would be like a cow that cuts its own leg off
01:42:12to then cook it in a stew.
01:42:13You know, like the very thing that it's made of
01:42:15is the thing that's creating it.
01:42:18And that's a horrific analogy, but it seems so unfair.
01:42:23This is what I sort of came back to
01:42:26when I started to think deeply about behavioral genetics
01:42:29and attachment style.
01:42:30That you have presumably an anxiously attached mother
01:42:34has the raw materials to be anxiously attached.
01:42:39And then is presenting in an anxiously attached way.
01:42:42Which means that the child that has the raw materials
01:42:44to be anxiously attached gets that reinforced.
01:42:47And all of this happens pre-verbal.
01:42:49All of this happens before you can even remember.
01:42:52I can't remember anything basically before age nine or 10.
01:42:57Really spotty memories.
01:42:58- So you know the song from Hamilton,
01:43:00"You want to be in the room where it happens?"
01:43:02The room where it happens is zero to three.
01:43:04That's what it means to be in the room where it happens.
01:43:08And no one wants to talk about the room where it happens
01:43:11'cause they can't remember it consciously
01:43:13'cause it's pre-conscious memory,
01:43:15but it's what shapes your personality.
01:43:17So nature versus nurture is always an interesting question
01:43:22because we are born with a constitution,
01:43:25meaning constitution is the amount of aggression
01:43:28we're born with.
01:43:29Babies are all born aggressive.
01:43:30- Was it the most aggressive people on the planet?
01:43:32Three year olds?
01:43:34- Well, no, actually babies are born dysregulated
01:43:37and babies are all born aggressive.
01:43:39So, you know, people get it wrong.
01:43:40People think that babies are born regulated
01:43:45and we dysregulate them by neglecting them or abusing them.
01:43:48No, actually babies are born dysregulated
01:43:51with highs and lows.
01:43:53I mean, if you ever just observe a baby,
01:43:57infants that are newborn infants,
01:43:59they will go from being happy one second
01:44:04and zero to 60 in three seconds.
01:44:06Boy, they'll be screaming.
01:44:08- Just the most bipolar little blobs.
01:44:09- Just bipolar little blobs.
01:44:11Okay, but they're not blobs.
01:44:12They're incredibly sort of present,
01:44:15but they have no emotional regulation.
01:44:18And it is by that skin to skin contact,
01:44:22that calm, soothing tone of voice
01:44:24of the primary attachment figure.
01:44:26Every time the baby's in distress,
01:44:28the mother soothes the baby.
01:44:30The way I would describe it is babies are born
01:44:33like sailing a sailboat in the Pacific in a storm.
01:44:38This is how babies are born.
01:44:40By having a mother physically and emotionally present
01:44:43in those first three years who is calm and present
01:44:46and loving and soothing, you get the baby,
01:44:50you don't want to get the baby flat lining.
01:44:52That's not what we call homeostasis.
01:44:54We call homeostasis more like sailing in the Caribbean
01:44:57on a sunny day.
01:44:58There's waves, but you can manage them.
01:45:02And then they're kind of manageable and pleasant.
01:45:05And that's where you want to get the baby.
01:45:07But you cannot do that if you throw your baby
01:45:10into a daycare setting,
01:45:11if you disappear 10 hours a day and go to work.
01:45:14And the one person that's meant to help them
01:45:18to learn these things, they're not learning.
01:45:20So we have children who are going into primary school years
01:45:25and then adolescence completely dysregulated,
01:45:30which is why they're all breaking down
01:45:31in this mental health crisis.
01:45:33It's not a mystery, but you have to go back
01:45:36to the room where it happens.
01:45:37But aggression, aggression is one of the things
01:45:40that you're born with constitutionally.
01:45:42In the old days, you used to go into a hospital
01:45:44into a maternity ward.
01:45:46Thank goodness John Bowlby got rid of the maternity wards.
01:45:49John Bowlby went into the hospitals in the UK
01:45:52and he said, "No, no, no, those babies,
01:45:55"they need to lie in with their mothers.
01:45:57"They need to be, they've come out of the mother's--"
01:45:59- What was a maternity ward?
01:46:01- It was a room where they took the babies from the mothers
01:46:04so the mothers could rest and they took them.
01:46:07So now nurses who they didn't recognize this were,
01:46:11you know, were just mammals,
01:46:13didn't recognize the smell or the voice,
01:46:16couldn't find their mother's eyes
01:46:18because they saw their mother's eyes when they were born
01:46:20'cause they would show you the baby,
01:46:21"Here's your baby, now bye."
01:46:23And they would take the baby away,
01:46:24put it in this maternity room
01:46:26with other screaming, crying babies.
01:46:29And the mother is sleeping
01:46:30and they're telling the mother this is normal.
01:46:33I mean like cuckoo, right?
01:46:36So he said, "Wait a second."
01:46:37You know, he studied cultures all over the world.
01:46:40He wrote a big book like this called "Attachment,"
01:46:42which I recommend everyone who has a baby to read.
01:46:44And another book like this is a book like this
01:46:46called "Separation," where he studied cultures
01:46:49all over the world, universal, right?
01:46:52The idea that attachment security is critical
01:46:55to a baby's emotional regulation and conditioning.
01:47:00Okay, so he got them to get, pretty much get rid of,
01:47:03they still have them for like ill babies,
01:47:05but even the ill babies are supposed to lie in
01:47:07with the mothers, right?
01:47:09But if you went into one of those maternity wards
01:47:13before he did that,
01:47:14what you'd find is that constitutionally
01:47:16you had 20 babies in there.
01:47:18Constitutionally, babies are not the same.
01:47:21Some babies would stare at the light
01:47:24and try to reach their hand
01:47:27and try to sort of just, they were quieter.
01:47:30And then there were other babies that were just like,
01:47:33"Wah, pick me the fuck up," you know?
01:47:36(laughing)
01:47:39That's me, I'm that baby.
01:47:42And so babies were born with different varied amounts
01:47:46of aggression, okay?
01:47:48I'm allowed to curse on, right?
01:47:50It's a podcast. - Correct.
01:47:51- So they're born with varying amounts of aggression.
01:47:54And so that is constitution.
01:47:59They're also born with varying amounts of energy.
01:48:02That is constitution.
01:48:04You know, I have three kids.
01:48:06Two of them have my husband's calm energy.
01:48:10My middle son has my energy.
01:48:13He's just got my energy.
01:48:14Aggression, energy, there are certain things
01:48:17that we call just internal to us, constitutional to us.
01:48:21But pretty much everything else is not constitutional.
01:48:25It's environmental. - When you're saying
01:48:26constitutional, what do you mean?
01:48:28- Meaning there's a genetic marker for it
01:48:31or it's passed down.
01:48:33So in other words, a very high energy mother
01:48:36or father might produce a very high energy baby.
01:48:39A very quiet kind of calm, more passive feeling parent
01:48:44can produce a less aggressive child.
01:48:47- But stuff like extraversion, openness to experience,
01:48:51agreeableness, all of these things.
01:48:52- That's person, that is constitution.
01:48:55You will see that in children very young.
01:48:58You'll see a child who, and that's when parents go,
01:49:00"Oh, she was, I was just like her.
01:49:04"She's like me," right?
01:49:06And so there is constitution.
01:49:09It's a small part of our personality
01:49:11because it's not the constitution, it's what we do with it.
01:49:14So it is important to embrace your child's constitution
01:49:18as individual to them.
01:49:19If your child is more reticent,
01:49:22if your child is more extroverted,
01:49:24those are things that you aren't going to change
01:49:27about your child, but you want to appreciate
01:49:29and accept about your child.
01:49:31Levels of aggression.
01:49:33Some kids are more, little boys are more needing to get
01:49:38their aggression out and play physically
01:49:40or do sports or, you know, some are more,
01:49:45they want to sit in a corner and read and do art.
01:49:47And there's something constitutional
01:49:49that isn't environmental, but the rest is environmental.
01:49:54- Okay, so what happens if a primary attachment figure
01:49:58isn't sufficiently available during those first few years?
01:50:01- So children develop coping mechanisms,
01:50:06but they aren't necessarily healthy coping mechanisms.
01:50:10So they're adaptations they have to make
01:50:14and they're usually pathological,
01:50:17meaning they form what we call attachment disorders,
01:50:21which are defenses that help them to cope with the loss.
01:50:25Strategies, if you will, to cope with the loss.
01:50:29And the kids who develop a strategy tend to survive
01:50:32more than the kids without a strategy.
01:50:34So they tend to do a little bit better.
01:50:37That doesn't mean there aren't long-term consequences.
01:50:39So a strategy is, an avoidant attachment disorder
01:50:43is a strategy.
01:50:44My mommy's left me.
01:50:46My daddy's left me in this place with strangers
01:50:50and no one's coming and I'm crying
01:50:52and no one's going to pick me up
01:50:53and I'm just going to have to manage on my own.
01:50:56And so it's something called learned helplessness
01:50:58where they turn away from care.
01:51:02And that's most closely correlated with depression
01:51:07and difficulty trusting in relationships later on.
01:51:11An anxious attachment disorder, another strategy.
01:51:14It's a consistent strategy.
01:51:17If your mommy leaves and when she comes back,
01:51:22you cling to her like a baby monkey
01:51:24and you will not let her go and you cry desperately
01:51:28and you just cling to her.
01:51:29And the dialogue in the baby's head is something like,
01:51:33my mommy left me, she's going to leave me again.
01:51:36And it's the anticipation of loss.
01:51:38So we say anxiety is the anticipation of loss in the future.
01:51:41It's PTSD.
01:51:42So an anxious baby is clinging
01:51:44because they know their mommy's going to leave again.
01:51:47And that's very much correlated with anxiety in the future.
01:51:51Then there are babies that don't have,
01:51:54can't find a strategy.
01:51:55And so they end up cycling through all of the coping mechanisms.
01:52:02They might turn away from the mother on the reunion
01:52:05and then cling to the mother and then slap the mother
01:52:08'cause they're enraged and then turn away from the mother,
01:52:12cling to the mother and then slap the mother.
01:52:14And we call this disorganized attachment disorder
01:52:17because it doesn't have a strategy.
01:52:19It's almost like gears trying to find where they click in,
01:52:24but never quite finding where they click in.
01:52:28And that's associated with that kind of emotional volatility
01:52:32is associated with borderline personality disorder later on.
01:52:35So we see the results of the mental health issues
01:52:40related to these attachment disorders,
01:52:42but we don't want to talk about it
01:52:44'cause we don't want to talk about the room where it happens.
01:52:47- Why?
01:52:49Why don't we want to talk about the room where it happens?
01:52:50- Because then we would have to question
01:52:52the system that we've created, which sends people,
01:52:56which first of all, values work
01:52:58and making money more than anything else.
01:53:00Careerism and materialism and going out into the world
01:53:03values that more than anything and pushes women
01:53:07to go back into the workforce right away
01:53:09and also tells women that if they stay home,
01:53:12they're nothing, they're no one, they're invisible,
01:53:15they're meaningless, they're powerless, they're useless,
01:53:19they're without any value.
01:53:21And this is a message that's got to change
01:53:23if we want our children to be healthy.
01:53:25- What are the uncomfortable realities for modern women
01:53:28about raising healthy children?
01:53:30- That they have to sacrifice something.
01:53:32And then two, it's both, it's sacrifice.
01:53:35It's the inability to deal with discomfort
01:53:38and sacrifice and doing without for, not forever,
01:53:43but in the years that your children need you the most.
01:53:46And you know what, I'm going to be honest,
01:53:48throughout your children's childhood, sacrifice is the word.
01:53:52If you can't make sacrifices, don't have children.
01:53:55Penelope Leach, famous child developmentalist
01:53:58said well before me,
01:53:59if you don't want to care for your children, don't have them.
01:54:02Just don't do it.
01:54:04- But people think that they're caring for their children.
01:54:05I do care for my child.
01:54:07I'd look after them at home, I go to work,
01:54:08I take them to daycare.
01:54:09- Caring for children is actually being there
01:54:12from moment to moment to help to regulate their emotions
01:54:15and being present physically and emotionally.
01:54:18Throughout childhood, I'm going to say zero to three
01:54:20is a critical period of brain development,
01:54:22but throughout childhood, if you don't have a primary person
01:54:26for them to be primarily present,
01:54:29when they come home from school,
01:54:31when they're doing their homework at night,
01:54:33when they are in their transitions of waking up,
01:54:37going to school, coming home from school,
01:54:41getting ready for bed, going to sleep,
01:54:43and then doing it all over again the next day.
01:54:46If they don't have someone to help them,
01:54:49so parents are the emotional digestive system
01:54:55for children throughout childhood.
01:54:58- They metabolize, yep, yep.
01:55:01- And when it happened that we decided that children
01:55:07somehow were born with the ability to metabolize
01:55:11their feelings and their experiences
01:55:13and the world around them, that's when it changed
01:55:17for children because they can't.
01:55:19They need us.
01:55:21They need to depend on us in those years.
01:55:25And when we decided that we were all going to just do
01:55:29what was good for us and what felt good for us,
01:55:32that's when it changed for children.
01:55:34- How available is available?
01:55:36What does that look like?
01:55:37- So at some point, children go to school
01:55:40and Maria Montessori called school work.
01:55:44She said they go to work.
01:55:46School is children's work.
01:55:47It's also play. - Child's work.
01:55:48- Yes, child labor.
01:55:50It's play.
01:55:51It should be play.
01:55:53It shouldn't be work, but you could say it's their work.
01:55:56Learning, playing to learn.
01:55:58We want to make it play-based when they're little,
01:56:00but it's their work.
01:56:02So when they go to work, you go to work.
01:56:04Now, one of you has to work and make enough money
01:56:08to have a roof over your head.
01:56:10Whoever is that primary caregiver to that child,
01:56:13the idea is to work when they work.
01:56:17I always say to young mothers when they have a baby,
01:56:19sleep when your baby sleeps.
01:56:20It's so tempting when you have a baby to go do the dishes
01:56:23or write emails or whatever, get on the Peloton.
01:56:28I'm like, no, no, no, no.
01:56:30Sleep when the baby sleeps.
01:56:32If you need time to yourself,
01:56:33then take a little time during the day while the baby's awake
01:56:36and have a mother's helper, have your mother come.
01:56:39You need to do it with people around.
01:56:42You can't do it in isolation.
01:56:43This weird idea that we like isolated ourselves with babies
01:56:47and spent eight hours alone.
01:56:49I mean, never was that way.
01:56:50We lived in houses with extended family, yes, yeah.
01:56:53There's a wonderful man named Mark Friedman,
01:56:58who if you ever want to have somebody on your podcast
01:57:00who says something really interesting, like me,
01:57:02he's been sort of, how should I say, he's treated badly.
01:57:07- Pillared.
01:57:08- Yes, controversial.
01:57:11- He's among friends.
01:57:12- He says we've lost extended family generational living
01:57:17and it's disastrous to us as human beings.
01:57:21And it seems like a basic thing,
01:57:23but he actually talks about the origin of it.
01:57:25And he talks about the origin of like nursing homes
01:57:27and assisted living and how that was founded
01:57:30by real estate developers.
01:57:32- I was about to say one of my friends, Adam Lane Smith,
01:57:35attachment dude.
01:57:36- I know Adam.
01:57:37- Wonderful guy.
01:57:38And he was the first person that introduced me to this idea.
01:57:42I can't remember the tweet, but it's something like,
01:57:44never forget that moving away from home
01:57:46and not living in pangenerational housing
01:57:48for your entire life is a psyop made up
01:57:51by mortgage companies to keep you poor and alone.
01:57:54- And it was real estate developers actually.
01:57:56They said, we are going to create these adolescent living
01:57:59for older people and tell them that your family
01:58:02doesn't matter, but only you matter.
01:58:05Here it is.
01:58:05There it is.
01:58:06- Adolescent living for older people is such a hilarious way.
01:58:09It's halls of residence for elderly people.
01:58:12- You can have a second adolescence.
01:58:13You know, this kind of weird.
01:58:15Anyway, but the idea is that, you know,
01:58:18it's very important that women and men raise their children
01:58:22with other people around, that they're not isolated.
01:58:24- You know, I've found this stat.
01:58:26You know, fuck, who was the evolutionary pediatrician
01:58:31that we had on the show?
01:58:34Not Paul Eastwick.
01:58:35Who was the other guy?
01:58:36Have a look.
01:58:37The evolutionary psychology of child rearing.
01:58:38It'll be in the Spotify thing.
01:58:40Just mid seventies researcher,
01:58:43evolutionary psychology informed.
01:58:45He taught me that one in six adults in America
01:58:50have flattening of the occipital lobe.
01:58:52- Yeah.
01:58:54- So the back of their head is basically a straight line.
01:58:58- You're actually meant to be on your mother's body
01:59:01for the first year.
01:59:02- Bingo.
01:59:02Because this is how much kids are being left on the ground.
01:59:07Or you're just on the floor.
01:59:10You're on the floor so much
01:59:11that the floor made an imprint on your head.
01:59:14- Yes, that's right.
01:59:15- Your head is the floor now.
01:59:17- The neglect is a permanent imprint on your head.
01:59:19- It's reshaped the back of your head.
01:59:21- It's reshaped the back.
01:59:22And so there are little kids' families that I treat
01:59:25where they've had to wear helmets and yeah.
01:59:27- So you say take your ambitions
01:59:30and leave them at the door when you have children.
01:59:32- Yes, for a while.
01:59:34- Yeah, what are the toughest realizations
01:59:36that women have to accept given that a lot of pride
01:59:40and worth by society is laid at the feet of what's your job?
01:59:45Projections and what are you gonna do with your career
01:59:47and when are you gonna go back?
01:59:48- Again, that's a societal shift that has to change.
01:59:52It has to happen because if we only value work
01:59:57outside the home as valuable work,
01:59:59then women will continue to feel internal conflict
02:00:04over something they feel pulled towards.
02:00:07So in a way, I think what I've done with my books
02:00:10and with my platform is give women permission
02:00:14and tell them that your work is valuable.
02:00:17What you do when you care for your children
02:00:19is probably the most valuable thing you'll ever do
02:00:22in your life.
02:00:23That doesn't diminish your career.
02:00:26And in fact, whatever career you had,
02:00:28whatever skills you built, you don't lose them.
02:00:31You don't get amnesia and forget them all.
02:00:34You don't become, and this is, you know,
02:00:36you'd say we have terrorized women into believing
02:00:40that they lose everything if they take time off,
02:00:43that they lose all their skills and all their position
02:00:47in their careers, and it's just a bunch of baloney
02:00:50because you never lose your skills.
02:00:52And if you had an identity in a work or a profession,
02:00:56you don't lose that.
02:00:58You always have that.
02:00:59In some way, it's a part of you
02:01:01and it will always be a part of you
02:01:03and you'll come back and use it in whatever way you use it.
02:01:06I used to fly to visit my sister in London.
02:01:10She lived in London her whole adult life.
02:01:12And every time she'd pick me up at the airport,
02:01:16she would drive me a different way back.
02:01:19It was kind of crazy making,
02:01:20she'd drive me a different way back to her house.
02:01:22And I'd be like, "Karen, what's going on?"
02:01:25She's like, "Oh," she said, "I love going different ways."
02:01:28She never know like what you're going to find
02:01:30and you might find actually a more interesting way
02:01:32and a shortcut or, you know, it might be a better way.
02:01:35And I thought that's sort of an interesting metaphor
02:01:39that when you take time off or slow down
02:01:42when you have a baby,
02:01:43you never know how transformative having a baby will be.
02:01:47So you never know what kind of work
02:01:48you're going to want to do in the future.
02:01:50It may be the same kind of work.
02:01:52It may be something completely different in the future.
02:01:54- How fascinating that you've lived two decades,
02:01:58three decades, four decades of your life
02:02:00with this is what I like and this is why I'm here
02:02:03and this is what I'm into.
02:02:04And I know me and I know what's best for me.
02:02:06And then someone comes along
02:02:08and sort of shakes the etch-a-sketch
02:02:10that you'd drawn your life with.
02:02:12- That's right.
02:02:13- And you go, oh, that was such a existential upheaval.
02:02:18Actually, maybe I'd, huh, I like people.
02:02:22- Yeah.
02:02:23- I like people.
02:02:24I didn't think that I liked people.
02:02:27But there's this obsession
02:02:29with objective metrics of success.
02:02:32And we often trade,
02:02:33I kind of got this thing that I can't unsee anymore
02:02:35that we trade hidden metrics
02:02:38for observable metrics all the time.
02:02:40So a hidden metric might be the quality of your sleep
02:02:44or the peacefulness of your mind
02:02:45as you get to go in the shower
02:02:47or the quality of your relationship with your partner
02:02:50or how deeply you and your baby get to connect.
02:02:52But what are the things that are more measurable,
02:02:56that are more objective?
02:02:57What's the car that you drive?
02:02:59The postcode that you live in?
02:03:00The salary that you've got?
02:03:01The job title you have?
02:03:03How important is the company that you're working for?
02:03:06How many other people know you?
02:03:07Followers online, social media, bank account.
02:03:10And that's the bit that I really, really struggled
02:03:14to sort of square the circle of,
02:03:16which is nobody loves big corporations
02:03:20and almost everybody fucking works for them.
02:03:22Almost everyone is working
02:03:23for this nameless, faceless organization
02:03:25to whom you are just employee number 1,224.
02:03:29And yet that's supposed to be the thing
02:03:33that if it's taken away from a mother
02:03:35or a woman in order to become a mother
02:03:38is the worst possible scenario that she can go through.
02:03:42I feel like I need to do this fucking throat clearing thing
02:03:45because when I don't, the internet comes for me.
02:03:48Absolutely in the past, women have been financial prisoners
02:03:52of marriages where they haven't been able to leave.
02:03:54That is not something that we want.
02:03:55I think every woman should be able to have a family
02:03:59or not have a family freely
02:04:01and that that should be afforded
02:04:03through their financial freedom.
02:04:05Like that is important.
02:04:07Also, they want to feel like they're an agent.
02:04:08They want to feel like they've got sovereignty in the world.
02:04:10They want to feel like they can do things.
02:04:12They've accomplished things.
02:04:14But what is good to accomplish?
02:04:17That fucking industrial revolution was 150 and 120 years ago.
02:04:21It wasn't that long ago when this thing really got going.
02:04:24So to talk about what's important
02:04:27and even think about how curated it was
02:04:30that the school bells used in schools in the UK
02:04:34were the same ones that they used in the factories.
02:04:38That's how conditioned people were
02:04:40that your job is to go and work.
02:04:42In ancient Greek, the ancient Greek word for work
02:04:45was not at leisure.
02:04:47And the modern world has sort of turned this thing inside out.
02:04:51And I don't know, it's a really strange upheaval
02:04:55of what would have been to me a much more direct route
02:05:01for women to have value and a sense of purpose and meaning
02:05:06than this weird round the houses inversion thing.
02:05:11And I understand that somebody who fucking presents like me
02:05:15and looks like me talking about this
02:05:17sounds perilously close to someone going,
02:05:19I want to get women out of the boardroom
02:05:20and back into the kitchen
02:05:21and you shouldn't have a fucking degree
02:05:22and rah, rah, rah, rah.
02:05:24I don't think that at all.
02:05:25- Well, no.
02:05:26And I'm going to say that the women that I treat
02:05:29who come to me now, it is a particular group of people,
02:05:32come because they are looking for permission
02:05:37to leave that environment
02:05:39and to find many of them want to stay with their children,
02:05:44but many of them are looking for a kind of work
02:05:47that gives them agency, real agency
02:05:49and real control and real flexibility.
02:05:52So the illusion that being in the corporate world
02:05:55gives you agency and control and flexibility,
02:05:59it's like the matrix because it doesn't give you agency
02:06:03and it doesn't give you control
02:06:05and it doesn't give you flexibility.
02:06:07- You've got Stockholm syndrome over your own capital,
02:06:09but you've voluntarily decided to put yourself into.
02:06:12- So the best fields for women,
02:06:15and I have said this many times before,
02:06:19the best fields for women are not where they have a boss,
02:06:22but where they are their own boss
02:06:24or they form cooperatives where they are one of the bosses.
02:06:28- What's an example of some of those businesses?
02:06:30- Service fields.
02:06:31Service fields are wonderful
02:06:33where they can control the service,
02:06:34whether they're massage therapists or psychotherapists
02:06:38or speech therapists or even attorneys
02:06:42that don't work in big corporate firms,
02:06:44even nurses and doctors who don't want to work
02:06:48in big corporate hospitals.
02:06:49Anyone who provides a service where they're their own boss.
02:06:53- But not a teacher, unfortunately.
02:06:56- Some teachers, tutors,
02:06:58people who decide to teach on their own terms.
02:07:02You can, you can take those.
02:07:03Any service field is far better for women
02:07:06because they can have some control and agency
02:07:09and have flexibility over their work
02:07:12and control how many hours a week they work
02:07:15and what fees they get.
02:07:17And if their child is sick,
02:07:19the only boss they have to report to
02:07:22is themselves and their clients.
02:07:24- Yeah, they can just adapt the workload appropriately.
02:07:26- Yeah, so, but the idea of working
02:07:29in big corporate settings or,
02:07:32I had a doctor who came up to me when I wrote "Being There"
02:07:34and she was a Harvard trained pediatrician.
02:07:41Her whole responsibility was on helping children
02:07:45to be healthy.
02:07:47And she said, "Harvard gave me three weeks,
02:07:52"three weeks, my body wasn't even healed
02:07:55"and I had to go back to work in the hospital."
02:07:59She said, "Please do something about this."
02:08:01And so, right.
02:08:02- This country is so fucked.
02:08:04- Right, so the idea that you somehow have power
02:08:08when you work for a corporation, if you're trying to,
02:08:12I mean, again, I had two parents who were not rich,
02:08:17but they, my father had his own,
02:08:21he had a furniture business, but he had his own business.
02:08:24And my mother was a bookkeeper that worked in his business
02:08:27and they always said to me and my sisters,
02:08:30"If at all possible, be your own boss."
02:08:33And that's something my husband also learned
02:08:35from his parents.
02:08:36And so, you know--
02:08:38- Be your own boss or have your husband be your boss.
02:08:40- People say that, you know, is it elitist to say that?
02:08:44No, because if you look at other parts of the world,
02:08:47women form baking cooperatives and artists cooperatives.
02:08:52And, you know, in a way, in many parts of the world,
02:08:56family businesses where you have some say, an agency,
02:09:01you know, in India, if you go and you see a fruit stand
02:09:05that's run by a family where the mom goes with the children
02:09:08and then when she needs to take off, the aunt comes in or,
02:09:12so, but no, the corporate world is, it's a ruse.
02:09:16- What does the evidence suggest around,
02:09:20let's say it's a family where the man is able to provide
02:09:23enough that the mother doesn't need to work?
02:09:26What are the outcomes of someone, of a woman choosing
02:09:31to not go back to work versus going back?
02:09:35Is this just super idiosyncratic?
02:09:37It depends on how you feel work is valuable to you or?
02:09:40- Yeah, I mean, I think that part of what's happened too
02:09:43is that divorce is so high and women are so afraid
02:09:48to depend on men.
02:09:50So we've also told women not to depend on men
02:09:55and we tell men not to depend on women.
02:09:58And so, and then we wonder why nobody this young
02:10:01wants to get married and have children.
02:10:02We told them, don't depend on anybody.
02:10:05You can't trust men, they're untrustworthy.
02:10:09So you don't wanna form a collaborative team
02:10:11with someone who you can't trust.
02:10:13I mean, you have to have secure attachment enough
02:10:17to make good choices of who you trust
02:10:19and then to trust them.
02:10:21- Oh, so it becomes a self-perpetuating loop.
02:10:24- It does.
02:10:25- You have somebody who is unable to be securely attached,
02:10:27therefore their ability to discern is poor,
02:10:30therefore they choose poorly.
02:10:31- That's right.
02:10:32- They get a story that reinforces the bad.
02:10:35- And round and round we go.
02:10:36It's called neurotic repetition.
02:10:38Freud called it neurotic repetition.
02:10:40- What's it referred to as in modern times?
02:10:42- We repeat patterns of behavior that are unhealthy.
02:10:47And so, right, so if we don't trust,
02:10:51if we're a woman who doesn't trust a man to lean on,
02:10:56then we're not willing to form a team with that person
02:10:59because there may be times when our husbands lean on us.
02:11:03I mean, you know, I mean, I'm not exactly a perfect example,
02:11:07but my husband worked super hard in his practice
02:11:11and starting his nonprofit when our kids were really young.
02:11:15And I took time off with each kid
02:11:17and then worked very little, very, very, very little.
02:11:21Just enough, I had to deal with my husband
02:11:23just enough to pay the mother's helper
02:11:25who helped me during the day with three kids.
02:11:29And now I'm running all over the world writing books,
02:11:34seeing more patients than I ever saw when I was young.
02:11:37And he's spending, still in his practice,
02:11:40but spending more time skiing, hiking, seeing friends,
02:11:45doing the relationship building that he couldn't do
02:11:48when he was young when I was building relationships
02:11:50with other mothers.
02:11:51And so what I would say is you can do everything in life.
02:11:55You just can't do it all at once.
02:11:57- Isn't that fucking cool to think about,
02:11:59okay, we're gonna do this for the rest of time.
02:12:03Me and you are gonna do this for the rest of time.
02:12:04We're in our 20s or 30s. - We're in it together.
02:12:06- We're gonna do this for the rest of time.
02:12:08We do not need to win the first play.
02:12:11It does not need to be me just dribbling it down the court
02:12:14in order to be able to do that.
02:12:15- But you do if you're scared
02:12:16that the person is going to leave you.
02:12:18If you're always waiting for the penny to drop
02:12:20and we have told women to not trust men.
02:12:24And as a result, maybe men have become less trustworthy.
02:12:27I'm not sure whether it is a vicious cycle, you know.
02:12:31But we have told young people not to trust each other.
02:12:35We told them it's a tentative connection
02:12:39and it can break at any time.
02:12:41- What certainly has happened
02:12:44is that less is being expected of everybody
02:12:46all at the same time.
02:12:49I guess increasingly we're seeing female breadwinners
02:12:53be the primary contributor financially.
02:12:58If a woman is the primary breadwinner,
02:13:02can't the father just be the primary caregiver
02:13:04and the mom go to work?
02:13:05- Yes, and it's happening more and more.
02:13:06But if we do that,
02:13:08then we have to look at the problems associated with it.
02:13:12We can't just say, "Oh, we just switch it."
02:13:14It's like, you know, red for blue and blue for red.
02:13:16- What are the problems associated
02:13:18with a female primary breadwinner?
02:13:19- So one of the issues is that fathers
02:13:23do need to be trained to be sensitive empathic nurturers.
02:13:28Not all, some get it down pretty quickly.
02:13:31But remember the playful tactile stimulation is important,
02:13:34but the sensitive empathic nurturing
02:13:36is more important in the early years.
02:13:39So the father who wears the baby skin to skin
02:13:41and feeds the baby as if he's breastfeeding,
02:13:45makes eye contact, left side cradles,
02:13:48looks at the baby when he's feeding the baby with a bottle.
02:13:51- Why left?
02:13:52- Oh, left side cradling is right brain
02:13:55to right brain connection.
02:13:57One of the ways we diagnose postpartum depression is
02:14:00if I handed you a baby, do we have a doll anywhere?
02:14:03Would you grab the baby on the left side or the right side?
02:14:06Well, now I'm telling you, so it'll influence you.
02:14:09But generally, someone who is securely attached,
02:14:14a mother will grab the baby on the left side.
02:14:16Even though you have two breasts that you feed with,
02:14:18usually a healthy mother
02:14:19and emotionally healthy mother has a larger left breast
02:14:23and she does a right breast.
02:14:24- An emotionally healthy mother has a larger left breast.
02:14:28- When she's breastfeeding.
02:14:29Because she feeds primarily on the left side,
02:14:33because that's the side where she feels most connected
02:14:35to the baby's right brain.
02:14:36- No fucking way.
02:14:37- Yes, fucking way.
02:14:38- Hang on, hang on, is this not?
02:14:40- It's not left handed, right handed.
02:14:43- No, no, no, no, no.
02:14:43What is the thing about eye to eye that-
02:14:48- It's crossed.
02:14:50So left brain, your right brain
02:14:51connects with the baby's right brain.
02:14:53- Is there not something, I swear that I had a conversation
02:14:58with a NLP and conversation expert
02:15:02and she was talking about focusing
02:15:04on the other person's left eye.
02:15:06That looking at that, not looking at that one,
02:15:08looking at that one.
02:15:09Do you know this stuff?
02:15:10Do you know what I'm talking about?
02:15:11- It's the same research.
02:15:13It's just reflecting this in adulthood.
02:15:14- Right brain to right brain to another person.
02:15:16- But because it's flipped, because we cross over,
02:15:18which is why the split brain patient
02:15:20and the painting of the hands and stuff.
02:15:21- Again, if you hand a baby, you could try it.
02:15:23You can hand a baby to a friend and say, could you hold?
02:15:26Or, you know, you'll see whether they...
02:15:29So one thing is right brain,
02:15:32if they cradle on the right side, it's more disconnected
02:15:35and it's not as natural for mothers.
02:15:37So again, teaching fathers, oh, cradle on the left side.
02:15:41Look at the baby, don't look at your phone.
02:15:43If the baby's crying, don't encourage them out of it.
02:15:47Actually reflect their emotions and say, oh, sweetheart,
02:15:50I see you're crying.
02:15:52Do what mothers do.
02:15:53Be a mother, not a father in those early years.
02:15:56You can teach some of this stuff.
02:15:59So, and then what are some of the other complications
02:16:03that when mothers give up that role,
02:16:09they don't give up the longing for that role.
02:16:13And so it causes competitiveness and envy.
02:16:18If a mother comes home and the baby is reaching
02:16:21for the father, but the mother still feels like she's...
02:16:25- Oh, wow. - Yeah, so all of this gender
02:16:28switching, we don't realize that a lot
02:16:31of this stuff is evolutionary.
02:16:32- Because how many times has a father come home
02:16:35and seen the baby reaching for the mother?
02:16:37- That's right.
02:16:38- And thought, why are you not reaching for me?
02:16:40- That's right, except now the mother's really
02:16:43very strong instincts.
02:16:45If you ask most mothers who work full-time
02:16:47who's the primary attachment figure, they'll still say me.
02:16:52Unlike John Bowlby said the primary attachment figure
02:16:54is the person who is with the baby the majority of the day
02:16:59from moment to moment to soothe them from moment to moment
02:17:02when they're in distress.
02:17:03That's the primary attachment figure.
02:17:05- There are some hard and fast physics of the system
02:17:08that are difficult to work around.
02:17:11I don't know whether you've seen this research.
02:17:12This is really, really new.
02:17:14The bottom two quintiles of male earners
02:17:18and the top quintile of female earners
02:17:22are now mating, their relationships
02:17:26are female primary breadwinner.
02:17:28So the bottom 40% of men in that earning bracket
02:17:31and the top 20% of women are in this dynamic
02:17:35where the woman is earning more.
02:17:36Now, what does this mean for predicting future income?
02:17:41Does this, it could be parity
02:17:42or just a little bit of a difference,
02:17:45but I think this is gonna be an increasing challenge.
02:17:48- But we have also, I mean, we have to have the discussion
02:17:51on an emotional level of whether it's emasculating to men
02:17:55ultimately, and also the testosterone discussion.
02:17:58There is an inverse relationship
02:18:01that oxytocin and testosterone have.
02:18:06So the higher the testosterone levels,
02:18:09the lower the oxytocin,
02:18:10the higher the oxytocin, the lower the testosterone.
02:18:12So there's a lot of research going on also
02:18:15because the higher the investment in nurturing,
02:18:19the lower the investment in mating.
02:18:21That's just a mammalian kind of concept,
02:18:24which what that means is that father
02:18:27who's been nurturing that baby all day
02:18:29and that mother comes home may not be so into,
02:18:32'cause men have to perform.
02:18:34Women don't have to perform.
02:18:36They can lie there and pretend, and that's the truth.
02:18:38Men have to perform.
02:18:40And then the question is,
02:18:41how does that impact sexual performance or sexual desire?
02:18:45If you are nurturing,
02:18:48one of the things that always comes up with married couples
02:18:51is she had a baby
02:18:52and she didn't wanna have sex with me anymore.
02:18:54I'm like, because she had a baby.
02:18:56And the mating behaviors and the nurturing behaviors
02:19:01are not happening at the same time.
02:19:04When you're nurturing, you don't wanna mate again.
02:19:06If you see a female lion who's nurturing her cubs
02:19:09and the male lion comes up and goes,
02:19:11"Come on, honey, let's do it again."
02:19:13She goes, "Get away from me."
02:19:15And there's a reason for that
02:19:17because she needs to protect her cubs,
02:19:19but she also can't mate at that moment.
02:19:21So we are just mammals.
02:19:24That's all.
02:19:25I mean, we have big brains, but we are just mammals
02:19:28and our instincts are related to mammal behavior.
02:19:32So how does it affect marital relationships,
02:19:35sexual relationships?
02:19:38I've had a lot of couples that I've treated
02:19:40where the husband lost interest in the wife.
02:19:44She'd come home and her testosterone was very high
02:19:48because she'd been out in the work world
02:19:49and she wants to mate.
02:19:52But he's like, "I don't wanna mate."
02:19:55Or, "I don't wanna mate with you.
02:19:56"I wanna find someone who I can feel more."
02:20:01So it's emasculating.
02:20:02And I think we don't wanna talk about this.
02:20:04You know who talks about this is Suzanne Banker.
02:20:07- Not familiar with her.
02:20:08- She writes books about this.
02:20:10That's her specialty is sort of talking about
02:20:13how the gender reversal in relationships
02:20:16has affected marital relationships overall.
02:20:18- Jared, spin it up.
02:20:19- Suzanne Banker.
02:20:20- Suzanne Banker, thank you.
02:20:23Believe it or not, she's Phyllis Schlafly's niece.
02:20:26- Okay, yeah, this feels like a, I don't know,
02:20:29inception or something that all of the circles
02:20:31begin to spiral closer and closer together.
02:20:34I think one of the reasons that this is very difficult
02:20:38to talk about, one of the reasons that people
02:20:42don't wanna have this discussion is there is a lot of,
02:20:45we wanna throw shade at the privileged group,
02:20:46the seemingly privileged group,
02:20:47or the man's able to go out and work
02:20:49and they don't want women to be able to go
02:20:51and have their kind of independence.
02:20:53They don't want to give up their place.
02:20:54They're intimidated by educated
02:20:57and socioeconomically successful women.
02:20:59And they should just, they're emasculated.
02:21:02They should just grow up
02:21:03and they should learn to be able to deal with it.
02:21:05And you go, do the women want that in their partner?
02:21:10How many women come home and want to be ravaged
02:21:13by their partner who's wearing a papoose
02:21:16and has been bottle-filled feeding all day?
02:21:21What's that Thomas Sowell line?
02:21:23There are no solutions only trade-offs.
02:21:26And look, this is just straight up going to be,
02:21:31unless some socioeconomic reversal happens
02:21:35whereby women see family building and motherhood
02:21:39as becoming re-pedestalized
02:21:41and the aspirational thing to do.
02:21:43And also we put the safeguards in place
02:21:45to mean that they don't have the concern of being left,
02:21:47being financially dependent
02:21:49because they can't be independent.
02:21:50Like a million things needs to happen.
02:21:53I don't think that that's going to occur.
02:21:55So increasingly this is going to happen.
02:21:56But the denial of the fact
02:21:58that there are some fucking trade-offs in this.
02:22:01- That's really the word, the trade-offs.
02:22:03And are we really willing to talk about the trade-offs?
02:22:06Are we willing to, is it so uncomfortable to talk about them
02:22:10that we won't talk about them?
02:22:12Because if you don't, you know, Fred Rogers,
02:22:15Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, I don't know you're from the UK,
02:22:19but Mr. Rogers' neighborhood was a big,
02:22:21he was a minister who had a public television children's show,
02:22:26which was the most psychological show on public television
02:22:30that basically he was the first person to treat children
02:22:34in a sensitive way
02:22:35and talk to them like sensitive human beings
02:22:38and not treat them like objects.
02:22:40And he said, he went in front of PBS
02:22:43when he was trying to save PBS
02:22:45and the funding for it many years ago.
02:22:47And he said, you know, what I do is I help to educate parents
02:22:50and children that when feelings are mentionable,
02:22:54they're manageable.
02:22:55So for some reason we've lost sight of that,
02:22:57that things that are mentionable are manageable,
02:23:00that we can work through conflicts
02:23:02if we mention them and talk about them.
02:23:04By sweeping them under the carpet
02:23:06and not talking about them,
02:23:08because it's not politically correct to talk about them,
02:23:11is not going to make them go away.
02:23:13It actually makes them hide in very deep and dark places.
02:23:16And cause things like divorce or mental health issues,
02:23:21or, you know, no, we have to talk about these things
02:23:24and we have to talk about the trade-offs.
02:23:26- You have mentioned,
02:23:28and we've spoken a lot about the physical presence.
02:23:31You keep saying another word as well,
02:23:32which is emotional presence.
02:23:33- Yeah.
02:23:35- What's that?
02:23:35What is emotional attunement in this context?
02:23:38How important is that?
02:23:39What's the role it plays?
02:23:40- Well, you need both.
02:23:41So, you know, this whole idea of quality time is a ruse
02:23:44and it's just that.
02:23:45It's not a real thing.
02:23:47It was made up to justify parents' absence.
02:23:50Children need, you are their digestive system.
02:23:54You have to be there throughout the day,
02:23:56or somebody has to be there throughout the day
02:23:58that they really trust and feel secure with,
02:24:01who is their primary person,
02:24:03to process, to digest, right?
02:24:06Like a stomach, like a kidney, like to digest.
02:24:10And I think that we have stopped thinking
02:24:14about parents' presence as something that is consistent,
02:24:18because it didn't suit the narrative
02:24:20that everybody should go out and work
02:24:22in the corporate world or in the world outside.
02:24:24So quality time is a ruse.
02:24:26Children need both physical presence and emotional.
02:24:29So you can be there physically
02:24:30and be emotionally checked out.
02:24:32It's possible to be there physically
02:24:34and be depressed or distracted or resentful, but it is not.
02:24:38And I say it is not possible to be there emotionally
02:24:42if you are not there physically.
02:24:44This is a bunch of bologna that we are feeding parents.
02:24:47- Oh, this magical thinking that quality time
02:24:50makes up for it. - Magical, that's right.
02:24:51That you can put your child on the shelf like a vase.
02:24:55And it's going to be, or like a picture frame.
02:24:57And it's going to be in the same position
02:24:59when you want the suspense, right?
02:25:01Until you come home again.
02:25:03- Can children tell the difference between a mother
02:25:05who is there but doesn't want to be,
02:25:08and one who is there but does want to be?
02:25:10- Yes, they can also tell the difference between a mother
02:25:14who has to go to work and who doesn't want to go to work.
02:25:17They can feel the pain in that mother,
02:25:19particularly if that mother shares it.
02:25:21And that's, in other words, a housekeeper or a babysitter
02:25:26or someone who works in a factory who's a single mother
02:25:29who's raising three children and has no option.
02:25:32She comes home at six o'clock and she doesn't leave again
02:25:37because she's not seen her child all day.
02:25:39And she tells her child and she tells her children,
02:25:43I wanted to be with you today and I didn't want to be at work
02:25:46where I really wanted to be was right by your side.
02:25:49And her children can feel with great authenticity
02:25:52that she means that.
02:25:54The problem is children know when their mothers and fathers
02:25:57don't want to be with them.
02:25:59- This is the thing, reading all of your work,
02:26:03the thing that has struck me the most is this weird
02:26:08panopticon situation that we've primarily put mothers in,
02:26:13the women in that are preparing to become mothers.
02:26:15In advance of having kids,
02:26:18I think a lot of women are really nervous.
02:26:20I'm going to have to let go of a lot of things
02:26:21that give me status and acclaim and prestige
02:26:24and independence and a sense of progress.
02:26:28And then once they have their kids,
02:26:30they feel like a second class citizen
02:26:32because everybody else is doing things.
02:26:34I was having a conversation with a mother of three
02:26:37who's a good friend and she was saying,
02:26:38I was so envious of people that had kids during COVID
02:26:42'cause they didn't feel like they were missing out
02:26:43on anything. - Yeah, and yeah,
02:26:45that's right. - I was like,
02:26:46hang on a second. - That's right.
02:26:48- What do you mean missing out on anything?
02:26:49That is the thing, the thing is the thing.
02:26:53But there is this-- - FOMO.
02:26:55- I feel like I'm falling behind.
02:26:57I have to justify my existence to the universe objectively
02:27:01every single day.
02:27:03And the fact that in advance of having kids,
02:27:06mums can be made to feel nervous.
02:27:10And then after pregnancy, they can feel ashamed and guilty.
02:27:14Like the single most transcendent, beautiful experience
02:27:18that most people go through is tarnished.
02:27:22It's tarnished. - It is.
02:27:24- By the fact that maybe through necessity, yeah, I get it.
02:27:27Like the raw materials that I have to do.
02:27:28Let's say that you have some degree of,
02:27:31I can feather the accelerator of this.
02:27:33I can go to work a bit.
02:27:35I don't need to go all the time.
02:27:36The reason that you're putting your foot back
02:27:40on the gas so quickly
02:27:41is that you feel like you're falling behind.
02:27:44All of the things that you worried about,
02:27:47all of the concerns that you had, now you've arrived
02:27:51and you're not even able to enjoy it.
02:27:52- That's right.
02:27:53- You're not even able to enjoy it.
02:27:55And your kid can notice.
02:27:56- That's right.
02:27:57It's turned life into a race.
02:27:58And so where are we all racing to?
02:28:00What is the value of life?
02:28:02What is the value of living?
02:28:03What is the meaning of living?
02:28:04And I think we've lost sight of that
02:28:06because if the meaning of living is,
02:28:10and the purpose of life is to be highly successful
02:28:14in our careers and make a lot of money
02:28:16and have a lot of stuff
02:28:17and have a lot of status and celebrity.
02:28:19If that's the meaning and purpose of life for you,
02:28:24then by all means, don't have children.
02:28:27But I'm gonna say that there's a higher purpose
02:28:31for human beings, which is to love and be loved.
02:28:34And if you're gonna teach your children one thing,
02:28:38it's to love and be loved,
02:28:40is the meaning and purpose of life.
02:28:42When you lay dying, Aristotle's deathbed question,
02:28:45when you lay dying,
02:28:47it isn't gonna be you sitting there going,
02:28:49gosh, I wish I was more famous.
02:28:51Gosh, I wish I had more money
02:28:53or wish I had another beach house
02:28:55or it's not what you're gonna be thinking about.
02:28:58You're going to be either sitting beside the people
02:29:01who you love and who love you
02:29:03and leaving this earth with a legacy of love.
02:29:07And as we say in Judaism, when somebody dies,
02:29:10may their memory be a blessing.
02:29:12You are either going to be a blessing
02:29:14to the people you love or you're not.
02:29:16That is the meaning of life.
02:29:19It is not how much money you make.
02:29:21It is not how successful you are in your career
02:29:23or how much status you have,
02:29:25how much celebrity you have.
02:29:26That is not the meaning of life.
02:29:28And I think we've gotten off track.
02:29:33- Erika Komisar, ladies and gentlemen.
02:29:35Erika, you rule.
02:29:36You're so great.
02:29:37And I love your work and thank you for that.
02:29:39Where should people go
02:29:40to check out everything you've got going on?
02:29:41- www.komisar.com.
02:29:44And I have three books here,
02:29:45which I'm gonna give all to Chris.
02:29:47I have the first, Being There, about zero to three.
02:29:50I have Chicken Little, The Sky Isn't Falling,
02:29:53Raising Resilient Adolescents.
02:29:56And I have my newest book,
02:29:57which is A Parent's Guide to Divorce.
02:30:00So, and this is how you raise emotionally resilient children
02:30:05while going through the separation and breakup process.
02:30:08So you can see all those books and buy all those books
02:30:12with the connections from my website,
02:30:14but you can also make appointments to see me and yeah.
02:30:17- You're fantastic.
02:30:18I really hope that you keep going.
02:30:19- Thank you. Thank you for having me.