What’s the Best Way to Raise Good People? A Debate
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This is Honestly. On this show, we cover some of the most contentious topics in America, like should America intervene militarily in Ukraine? What should be the role of trans athletes in women's sports? From questions about institutional racism to free speech to the lab leak, we're not afraid to go there.

But as I prepare God willing to become a parent for the first time in a few months, I am realizing that perhaps the most contentious topic in America is not pronouns, is not failing institutions, is not the culture war or cancel culture. It's parenting.

I'll tell you something once, you do it then. You don't do it then, I'ma spank you. But the example you're showing is if I don't like your behavior, it's okay for me to be violent. No, it's not. If I don't like your behavior, you're gonna be violent. So if I don't like your behavior, it's okay for me to hit you. No, that's not my parent. No.

Nowhere is the internet more alive and more vicious than in matters of how to raise your kids. You take a child, a child is like an average child, 40 pounds, 40 pound child. You have an average adult, 170 pounds, to do the math. Why do the snacking? Spare the rod, or the child. And judging you if you're not raising your kids in the right way.

Because of the fact that my wife and two of my producers are pregnant, which means literally half of our staff is expecting a child, we are hosting our first ever parenting roundtable with three guests who have researched and written a whole lot about the subject of parenting and have really different ideas about how to raise kids.

Brian Kaplan is an economics professor at George Mason University. He's written a lot of books that challenge the status quo, including one about parenting called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids and one about education called The Case Against Education. Michaelene Ducliffe is an NPR global health correspondent.

who, after becoming a mother, decided to take her three-year-old across the globe to learn how kids are raised outside of the narrow and often ineffective framework of modern Western parenting. It's a trip that she turned into her best-selling book, Hunt, Gather, Parent. And finally, Carla Nomberg is a clinical social worker who has written five books on parenting, including her bestseller, How to Stop Losing Your Shit with Your Kids.

Brian, Michaelene, and Carla, welcome to Honestly. Howdy. Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you. So I want to start with the very idea of parenting and just the radical change in expectations around parenting. As many of you pointed out in your work, the word parenting as a verb wasn't even a thing until the 1970s. Talk to me about how this shift into parenting as a job happened and

And also, what its effect has been on the way that we think of parenthood in America. Brian, let's start with you. I would say that it's always been a job. It's just what the job consists in has changed so much. It used to be just keeping your kids alive was the job. And you had so many of them in older times. The technology was so primitive and people were so poor that the focus was just on taking care of your kids' very basic needs, right?

Really what happened was once in rich countries in the 1950s, those kinds of problems stopped being an issue for most people. That's when people began to say, or yes, but how exactly should I be doing this emotionally? That's when you had people like Dr. Spock become popular.

And I'd say that is really, it's a reflection of the luxurious conditions in which so many parents are in in rich countries. They actually have time to wonder, what should I be doing on top of what I take for granted, which is keeping them alive, which now is actually pretty easy. When I think about how the idea of parenting has changed,

I think how the role of mother has transformed. You know, just a few decades ago, a mother who didn't work was called a housewife. Today, moms who don't work are called stay-at-home moms. Carla, what does that change tell us about the changing expectations on moms in America and maybe the West more broadly today? And why is this more than just an issue of linguistics?

Absolutely. Great question. So it used to be that women who didn't work outside the home were called housewives and their jobs were to take care of the house and make sure it was clean and make sure that they had lunch ready for the ladies or a drink ready for their husband. And now our primary job for women who are not working outside the home is to take care of our children and nurture them. So it really doesn't matter if our house is a mess. In fact, for some women, that's a badge of pride because they're so busy taking care of their kids, you know, they can't possibly clean up.

And it doesn't matter if they don't know how to cook because a lot of times we see men cooking more too in these relationships. But what we're really seeing is that women, mothers...

are really being charged with taking responsibility for every aspect of their child's development. It is no longer sufficient to send your child to the doctor if they're sick, or send them to school to learn, or send them to a specialist if they've got a problem. You as the parent have to research every single aspect of who this doctor is, understand the medicine enough yourself so that you can decide if the doctor's doing the right thing. You have to understand every curricular opportunity and option

so that you can make sure that your teachers are teaching the right way. We no longer, you know, trust teachers to do that. And so parents, you know, as opposed to being sort of the hub that kind of held the fort down and sent their children out into the world, we're now expected, mothers especially, to follow our child into every single place they go, you know, literally and metaphorically, and make sure that they are getting the best possible whatever. So can I

I've been here a little bit because I think there's kind of a little bit of an erroneous thinking going on. So first of all, there's a big time period between survival and parenting in like 1950s. So parents 100 years ago, 200 years ago, were doing a lot more than just

keeping their kids alive. That's like hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before the 1950s, really before the Industrial Revolution, parents were doing lots of things for kids, very different than they are now, but they were still doing a lot of things. And some of those things were passing on certain values, like helpfulness around the house, like generosity and sharing,

All hunter-gatherer groups around the world specifically and intentionally teach kids these values. And the second thing that they were doing is teaching kids how to be a successful adult, teaching kids how to farm, how to hunt, how to gather, how to build something. So we've been parenting and doing things besides keeping kids surviving for a lot longer than since the 1950s. What has shifted since the 1950s is what we're doing.

The values that we're teaching kids has shifted and we no longer see it sufficient to just teach kids to learn how to do adult tasks. We also want to teach them to play an instrument, to speak multiple languages, to play on soccer games, to learn art. So we've created this whole entire child world that didn't exist 100 years ago. And that is really where things have shifted and

The other big shift is where we've learned to parent, right? We used to learn to parent from our parents and our aunts and our uncles and neighbors and cousins. And now...

horribly. So we learned to parent from books and things like this, which has really changed the whole dynamic. You know, Michaelene, at this point, it's a cliche to say it takes a village, but you've actually gone to the villages, you know, in places like Mexico and Tanzania and the Arctic Circle, where the village, like the structure that you're describing, that has sort of fallen away in places like LA, where I am right now, is still very much alive.

What is it that they have that we lack in our isolated sort of nuclear family bubbles? And also just to connect to what you said just before, you know, what are the values that they are passing on that we have sort of either forgotten or pushed away?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the major things that is there that is like glaringly missing in my life, especially when I get back from these trips, I'm just, I kind of sit around and cry for days because we're missing this thing. And that is like support. Every place that we went, you know, I spent a lot of time with women because that's what was appropriate in those settings. You know, women gave each other this huge amount of support.

When we first got to Tanzania, I couldn't tell which baby or toddler belonged to which mom because they're all taking care of these kids. But they also just have incredible amounts of social support too. They know each other really well. There's just never this sense of you're doing it on your own.

Whereas then I get home to my condo in San Francisco and I'm just like, I am just living in this tiny box by myself doing this thing all alone. And the thing is, is if you look at like evolutionary biology and primatology, like kids are made to be raised and evolved to be raised by more than two people. And they really thrive under that condition.

And so then parents, I say like, we're doing this task, one of us, two of us sometimes doing this task that really five people are meant to do and we don't have the teachers. We don't have the older people in the home and neighbors to teach us.

the values that shift, right? So in West modern Western culture, right? We, we teach kids individualism. Like it's all about what you achieve, right? And you, you have a goal and you go after it. And what we've kind of lost is this value of helping other people being a contributing member of the family, being generous and sharing it and respect. There's a lot of respect that's missing. We teach kids to argue. We teach them to debate.

And a lot of kids are missing out on learning how to be respectful to each other. In lieu of the actual village, it seems to me that people are turning, as you guys mentioned, to other forms. Books, of course, like yours. Podcasts, maybe like this one. But also things like Instagram and YouTube and pregnancy apps.

You know, the other day my wife paid for a video of a woman to teach us how to swaddle a baby because we've never swaddled a baby before. And it struck me as just so strange that, you know, my mom who's across the country or her mom who's in a different city wasn't there to just show us.

Many of the parents that I know talk about being flooded with, like, momfluencer posts, accounts with millions of followers about very specific things like toddler feeding and toddler feelings. There's accounts dedicated to gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting, free-range parenting, attachment parenting, posts about sleep training, sleep scheduling, co-sleeping, baby-led weaning, baby-wearing, breastfeeding, and on and on and on.

I just want to know, is this digital tribe, for lack of a better term, helpful? You know, is it leading to something that we would call good? Brian, maybe let's start with you.

The main thing that I say in my book is that people just seem to really overestimate how much difference these different parenting techniques matter, especially in the long run. It's easy to see that different things you're doing matter in the very short run. The kid's happy with what you're doing or they're not happy. But if you are thinking of this as some part of a plan to give your kid a certain kind of future, their question is, well...

what really happens when you do different techniques. In my work, I focus a lot on research on twins and adoptees. And the main punchline of this is that kids who grow up in very different kinds of homes seem to turn out on average in very similar ways.

Again, there is a limit to this. So if you look at kids that are in third world orphanages, then that really does matter. It does actually cause problems for life. But within this very large range of different parenting styles that we see in Western countries, there are what I call large flat ranges where it really doesn't make any difference. For example, there's this really neat study of Korean war orphans that got adopted by Americans in the 50s and 60s. One big result is that

Kids that got adopted into the very richest families ended up having the same average income as kids that were adopted into the very poorest families in the sample. And that was actually one where they let people who were only 25% above the poverty line adopt. So it's not just that only upper middle class families were in the sample. It was a pretty wide one. There's also a lot of work on what happens when you get adopted into a more educated family versus a less educated one.

And punchline for that is the mom has an extra year of education. The kid, on average, grows up to have an extra five weeks. So basically, you want the kid to have an extra year of education. You need the mom to have another 10 years of education. Right. It's we're talking about very large changes in parenting in order to get quite modest changes in kids outcomes. Now, of course, we can only really confirm this for outcomes that we measure.

So there's the social science stuff you measure. You measure income, you measure education, you measure intelligence, you measure personality. We measure happiness too, though. We measure things like quality of the relationship with the parent, the psychological measures. We got really detailed things like how many teeth you still got in at different ages, life expectancy. All these things have been studied through this lens of twin-ed adoption research. The whole idea of this research is to try to really separate out

the part of parenting that is actually causing the outcome versus the part that's just coincidental because people are usually raised by people who share their genes. And so the punchline of all of this is really it just seems like people are greatly overestimating the long run effects of what they do on their children's outcomes.

And what I say is it then makes a lot more sense to focus on the short run and doing things you actually enjoy together if the investment part is really mostly pretty hollow unless you do something crazy. I'm curious what you guys think of that. Is the headline that gentle parenting versus authoritative parenting versus co-sleeping, like that none of it really matters, it all comes out in the wash? What do you guys think? In the long run. In the long run. To me, they're just different shades of Western parenting, right? They're just different shades of gray. Yeah.

And if you look throughout history, or throughout the recent history, they just swing kind of in these big swings. They're really just responses to the previous way of parenting. I mean, to me, when I hear this, what worries me is that, you know, the trends of children in American society are not great when it comes to mental health, right? I mean, like a third of kids, by the time they go to college, will have had some clinical version of anxiety or depression. You know, suicides are up. And so...

To me, I'm not so worried about the outcome in the sense of like, is my kid going to go to UC Santa Cruz or some, you know, state college or community college? I'm more worried that like, you know, she's going to be mentally healthy. And I think Western parenting right now doesn't do a great job of it. Carla, do you agree with that? Yeah.

I don't have opinions on like this parenting trend is better than that parenting trend. I think it goes back to this idea of when we used to compare ourselves to our village, our in-person around us village, you

You know, we were doing things the way everybody else was doing them. So if we were totally screwing it up, hey, we were all screwing it up together. And there's real value in that, right? Whereas now we compare ourselves to the entire world. And when that happens, we feel like we're the only ones screwing it up because there's so many messages out there about how everyone else is getting it right. And I think the biggest problem with social media is

is that the underlying message of all these accounts from momfluencers and parenting experts and blah, blah, blah, is that it is possible to get parenting right, whatever that means. I don't know what that means, but it is possible to have children who just readily and happily put on their shoes every single morning. I don't know how that happens. I can't get my kids to do it. And so the problem with this kind of message that somebody out there has figured this out

is that what that means is that if your child is struggling, you have not worked hard enough. You are not doing the right thing. And so then the idea behind that is you need to work harder as a parent. And all of this is so flawed, right? Nobody has figured out parenting. None of us are nailing this gig. There is no getting out of this unscathed. There is no like grace where, you know, we have these moments, but they're so fleeting that

And the idea that we as parents need to work harder, research more, find the right specialist, find the right answer, listen to the right podcast, and suddenly we're going to unlock the secret that makes it all like magically work, that's BS, right? But it's so damaging to parents, especially mothers, and it is pervasive right now. Is there a connection between...

Is Western parents or let's just say American, maybe upper middle class parents obsession with getting parenting right and the epidemic of anxiety, depression and mental health we see among kids? A hundred percent. Here's how I think about it. My husband right now, every job he's had is related to an app.

on a phone. Neither of these things existed when we were kids. I couldn't have even imagined the jobs he's doing now when I was a kid. And so modern parents are looking to the future and we have no idea what to prepare our children for. It used to be that if you were a blacksmith, you prepare your kid to be a blacksmith. If you were a doctor, you hope they go into the family business. If you had a daughter, she was probably going to be a nurse or a bookkeeper or a teacher.

And now we are supposed to, upper middle class, you know, or middle class parents are supposed to prepare our children for anything, for this unknown future. Right.

And so that is terrifying. Right, like learn Mandarin for a world where China is, you know, the superpower, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, yes. And learn every single kind of computer coding and all the things. And I'm not saying this doesn't apply to economically disadvantaged folks, but I also think that there is really this message that we have to prepare our children for an unknown future. And that dramatically increases parents' anxiety, which then leads to our kids being anxious too. It's like a cycle.

So I'm a pretty contrarian economist. Usually I'm telling other economists that they're overrating how important money is for happiness. But it's still true that if you go around the world, you'll see that the happiest countries are on average the richest ones and the countries where the average person says they're very unhappy are among the very poorest. It's complicated. Like Latin America seems to do better than you expect given their income.

Africa, on the other hand, seems to be about where you'd expect in terms of reporting low levels of happiness. And the richest countries are quite clustered up at the top. People talk about Denmark being the world's happiest country. It's within a rounding error of the U.S. It's not actually that different in terms of the averages.

So, I mean, I would say that we should be cautious in romanticizing poorer countries and saying they've got everything, you know, they've got things figured out or they have such supportive cultures that things are great for them. Wouldn't be surprising at all if they were doing better in some ways, but still, overall, it looks like people are happiest in the richest countries.

And you might think, well, maybe we just say that because we're supposed to say that. Americans are supposed to say we're happy. Other countries that are culturally different, as long as the rich are still, seem to be pretty similar to the U.S. here. When we talk about all of the mental health problems of young people, I think it is worth remembering that 200 years ago, no one had any mental health problems because we didn't call them mental health problems.

200 years ago, we would say someone was a melancholic or miserable or sad, but a lot of what's going on is that we have just medicalized problems that have always existed. So we do need to be careful when we're looking at numbers and saying that there are problems that are going through the roof. So how much of it is just that

this way of medicalizing problems is going through the roof. I would definitely make an exception for viewers. I'm not saying that these people are happier. I'm just saying that there's no doubt if you look around the world and at different cultures and communities, I mean, if you even look at through Western culture, through time or different parts of Western culture, you know, you, you can see that certain in certain aspects, um,

People struggle and cultures struggle. And in certain aspects, they thrive. And I think that we can learn from other cultures in the areas that we struggle with. I think middle class Western parents struggle with raising helpful children. There's just no doubt about that. And I think that the Maya communities, indigenous communities in Mexico have a lot to teach us. Is their lifestyle perfect? No. But I think they have a lot to teach us.

about how we raise a helpful child. I mean, I think you can look at any culture and you can find something that they do really well and we can learn from it. And that's all I'm saying. And I do think right now Western culture struggles with mental health in young people. I mean, pick up a paper, look at the numbers. It's sad. It's really sad. And I think that...

There are connections to the way we parent, and I think that there's a lot of data that supports that. And as Carla said, like an anxious parent...

is more likely going to raise an anxious child? Do they always know? I think you raise a really important point, and both of these points about happiness, about what we didn't used to have a name for and what we do now, and also parents raising kids who don't know how to be helpful. I think I'll touch on a really important point, which is that for the first time, as far as I'm aware, in the existence of humanity, we are talking about the importance of the parent-child relationship

and how it impacts who the child becomes. Now, I'm not saying that parents in previous generations didn't care about their relationship with their kids. I'm just saying now we are starting to talk about attachment relationships, which goes back to the work of Winnicott, and trying to make sense of how our relationships with our children are likely to impact their

their relationships in the rest of their lives. And this is something that parents are thinking about for the first time. And all of a sudden there is this focus on not only do you have to give your kid all these life skills and make sure they can speak Mandarin and make sure they can code computers, but you need to make sure that they have a good relationship with you. And I think parents often confuse that with making sure their children are happy.

And I think one of the biggest problems that Western culture deals with is we are assuming responsibility for our children's happiness. And P.S., you can't make someone else happy. That's not a thing. You can't control someone else's feelings. We can't even control our own feelings. That's not a human possibility. But we have been raised in a culture that glorifies and deifies happiness.

And the message is if you're not happy and your kid isn't happy, you're doing something wrong. Whereas I would argue that not being happy is kind of the human condition. And it's just a sign of normalcy. I want to dig into this focus on parent-child relationships. The idea that an anxious mother would create an anxious child or a happy parent would create a happy child. And also just the focus on feelings. It brings me to this parenting trend that I keep hearing about over and over and over again.

Before I explain what this parenting trend is, I want to tell you, and this picks up on what Michaelene was saying about how there are swings that are reactions to the previous generation. I was raised as a Jew in Pittsburgh, and yet somehow the Bible for my parents was a book by a Christian evangelical called James Dobson's Dare to Discipline.

Now, that is a conversation for a therapist, but suffice it to say, I don't know anyone who's heard of that book or is reading James Dobson these days. But many people I know are reading books like No Bad Kids, Brain Body Parenting, The Whole Brain Child, and Parenting from the Inside Out.

And they tell me, and this was not a phrase I heard until a few months ago, really, is that this is all part of this new trend called gentle parenting. Can one of you please explain to me what gentle parenting is? I have seen the phrase gentle parenting come up in the various blogs and websites I read, and I have actively refused to click on those links. And my understanding, though, and I could be completely wrong because I'm not reading it because this stuff drives me bonkers –

Right.

Really, they wouldn't. But I can't. I just have to be real and honest and come out with this. And I have to tell you, my 13-year-old and I actually had a beautiful moment because she was like, yeah, I kind of am. And then we talked about it. So I, needless to say, have a huge problem with gentle parenting, even though I clearly don't entirely understand it. But I'm so reactive after 13 years of hearing this stuff because when my daughters were babies, it was attachment parenting, which I think I'm still sort of traumatized by.

And my big problem, just to jump into this, is that it leaves zero room for the parent's experience and feelings. It leaves zero room for the parent to show up as a real person. And I'm not saying we should be calling our kids names at every moment. I'm absolutely not advocating for that. But I think there is a place for a parent to say, you know what? I don't have anything to give in this moment and I need to take a break. And how we do that looks different depending on the age and style and nature of our relationship.

But I just have no patience for parenting models that expect parents to show up in some sort of perfect way to every interaction they have with their children. It's not possible. It's not necessary. And it's not how real relationships work. Well, let's give a scenario. Michaelene, your daughter, you write about in the book, used to throw these tantrums that you dreaded, hitting, biting, freaking out. What do you make of this tantrum?

How are you feeling? Gentle response to a kid throwing herself on the ground when you're in the checkout line at the grocery store. So first of all, I've tried it for like, you know, a year or something. I tried to do it. Acknowledge the emotion. I think gentle parenting, I think that like, oh, you're angry right now. Like, you know, telling the child what they're feeling. I can go into some of the science behind that. The thing that bothers me about gentle parenting is it's not based on science. No matter what they want to tell you.

So I tried it and it just did not work with my daughter. It's kind of what Carla was saying. It was like, in the end, eventually I got, if it didn't stop, I got angry. And then I was a real parent. I was the real Michaelene. And then, you know,

Eventually, it didn't work. In some ways, I think it made things worse for her. I think that there are aspects of gentle parenting that you see all around the world in many, many communities and that are probably good.

anthropologist that studies Western parenting, you know, has told me that this parenting approach is a reaction to the way it was in my parents' generation when it was like, you know, basically shut up and stop. You know, do it because I told you so. Yeah. Do what I said and like just shut up. Don't feel it, right? Don't feel anything. And I think as we really swung and...

you know, what I learned from while traveling was like, all I really needed to do when Rosie, my daughter, was having these tantrums was kind of just be there and be calm. It's really crazy. It sounds really crazy, but really actually shut up, number one, because like,

Talking to her, a two-year-old, is highly stimulating. She can't understand what I'm saying. Eventually, I become emotional. All I was doing with the, like, are you okay? Oh, you're feeling sad. You're feeling angry, was making her tantrum, her energy go higher and higher and higher. What parents in the Arctic really taught me was all I need to do is be really calm and quiet and kind of close to her. You know what? She will stop.

And then the beauty of that technique is like she has learned herself how to calm herself down. I believe, looking at the scientific literature on this topic, I believe that we are kind of teaching children in some way to have certain feelings, right? Like if Rosie's upset because last night she got upset because she didn't get to make the guacamole. She really wanted to make the guacamole and she was really angry about it. And I could have been like, you're angry because you didn't make the guacamole. Right?

But then like, am I teaching her to be angry about the guacamole? I feel like I kind of am. I'm kind of, what's the word? Like reinforcing that really strong emotion over guacamole. Like enabling. Yes, yes. And you do not see this anywhere else in the world. I have never seen this before.

this acknowledging a child's emotions like that? Look, I think acknowledging emotions can be an incredibly powerful moment. And there are times when, you know, I have a kid who's really struggling. If I say to my daughter, you're really sad because I didn't get you the cookie.

Like all of a sudden the tears come, yeah, I'm sad, because I have a kid who literally will cry over not getting a cookie. And then she kind of moves on from it. It's kind of like when you're in the therapy office and your therapist just nails the thing you're feeling and then you kind of lose it and it's cathartic and you move on. But I think there's two issues here is that one, we as parents can't do that at every single moment, nor should we.

Like, you know, if my kid cries because she doesn't get to make the guacamole, which happens in my house too, especially over the guacamole, I'll just say, yeah, that happened and maybe you'll get to make it next time. Moving on, right? Let's just move on with it. And sometimes I do have that moment with her where I need to sit down and really connect and I think –

A lot of it has to do with, you know, whether or not I can do it in that moment. Kind of taking a moment to check in with myself. Do I have the space, the head space, the heart space, the energy to do this with my child or not? And we don't have to do it every time. We don't have to be perfect. Our kids don't need that. And in fact, not being perfect creates some space for them to learn that they can survive even when not every single one of their emotional needs is met. Okay, so my other problem with kids

specific parenting advice in difficult moments. Like if your child is on the floor screaming, if you can just stay calm and use the right words, they'll be okay. There are a million reasons why that kid might be on the floor screaming, right? It could be because they're exhausted or haven't had a snack. It could be because they didn't get the toy they want. It could be because they actually have some sort of undiagnosed sickness

situation going on that's actually going to require a lot of time to take care of. Like I had friends whose kid had really serious celiac disease. And until it was diagnosed, the kid was a mess. They were crying all the time. They were screaming. You know, it was awful. And saying to my friend, if you just use the right words, when in fact their kid was actually having a horrible allergic reaction multiple times a day,

That's so disempowering and disrespectful, right? So I think anytime I see this batch advice that's like, in this situation, if you do this, it will be okay, I get real queasy about that. Brian, you have said a lot that parenting styles just aren't that important, you know, but it's kind of like these parents are putting in so much work and asking of themselves, like,

the patience of a Zen monk, you know, in a grocery store meltdown situation. To me, it seems like the latest iteration, having not been in that situation yet myself, I'll report to you on the other side, but it seems like the latest iteration of a parenting phenomenon that requires parents to be just

hyper-vigilant, hyper-involved in just about every aspect of their kid's life. You know, we talk a lot on this show about books like Coddling of the American Mind and the way that kids seem just not resilient, not just kids, like young people. When you look at the data, how do these hyper-vigilant modes of parenting work?

have an effect on the young people that are sort of becoming adults and going out into the world? Does it actually create compassionate, you know, self-confident kids as the books promise, or is it resulting in something kind of different?

It's hard to say about any one particular parenting style because that is not likely to have actually been studied. What we can say is about the general pattern of how much do parenting styles at all matter. And that's where, again, we just see much less effect than what most people think. I think especially if we focus on what are the things that we can say confidently. One is if you think there's a parenting style that you must do or else you're a terrible parent and it's very emotionally demanding to do it, you will be unhappy. Right.

And probably in the short run, you're going to make your kid unhappy too. In terms of what else we know, I've been talking about how the effect of parents on kids' outcomes is greatly overestimated. There are some exceptions. So one exception is the quality of the relationship where it really does seem like even in the long run, you do have a noticeable effect on

So that's one thing. So I often tell people, in the process of trying to invest in your kid to change them, probably you're going to fail, but it's very likely that you will actually mess up your relationship with your kid if you make a big deal about how you have to do things my way or else you are a failure and I'm going to be angry at you. In terms of short-run effects, when parents discipline their kids, they're so often thinking, if I don't do this right, then maybe you'll end up a criminal or a drug addict or something like that. And it's very little evidence that's true.

But on the other hand, there is good evidence that just giving very poor discipline leads children to be badly behaved in the moment. So this is one where there actually are experiments where they will have people either give no punishment at all, sort of your gentle parenting where whatever you do is fine, or you'll do whatever – the parent will just react spontaneously or there will be –

standard expected consequences. That is one where just having standard expected consequences for bad behavior really does seem to be effective. The problem is a lot of parents who do use discipline do it very emotionally, so if they're feeling calm or relaxed a certain time, they'll let a kid get away with murder. Another time, the kid's doing exactly the same thing, they're really angry and they flip out at the kid. This is not a good way to send the message to the kid of what is and is not okay.

It really is, again, I'll say in my book, I go over experiments on this. The one where, look, there's just a, there's a penal system in this house. And when you do certain things, you get punished. It doesn't matter whether I feel happy or sad or angry on that day. It just always happens. So, you know, speaking from my personal experience, so I've got four kids, but we, this means there's also a bunch of other kids that are over at our house. And I will sometimes contrast our kids who just know that they can never lobby their way out of anything. Right.

Like, you know, this is the rule. It's not never changed before. It's never going to change. And I see other kids saying, please, please, please. There's no, there's no like negotiation and reasoning. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't work here. We have a system. Like I'm not, you know, I said, why are you so mad? I'm not mad. Actually. I'm perfectly calm. I'd rather not enforce this, but that's what, that's what I do. I found that that's what I need to do in order to keep things working. On the other hand, something that seems to be ultra genetic is happiness itself. Yeah.

You can change your relationship with your child. You can make your child like you or dislike you, but that doesn't mean they're going to be happy overall in their life. You know, a person could have a great relationship with someone, but it doesn't make them happy overall, right? That is much more internal. So just thinking about the things that you can affect and the things that you can't affect, or especially the things that at least hardly anybody affects and the things that most people do seem to affect a lot. Human happiness seems to be something that really is very internal and

The relationship with your child, that's something where even there, partly, there's a genetic fact of some people are just inclined to forgive their parents for whatever they do, and some judge them harshly no matter what they do. But nevertheless, there's something where we can see from identical twin studies, even separated twins, that it really matters who raises you for how you see the person that raised you.

And then finally, in terms of discipline, I think there is good evidence that the clear, simple rules that are enforced consistently without a lot of emotion is the best way to get your child to behave. It doesn't mean that it works perfectly by any means. It's rather one, well, this is the best thing we've got. And if you're saying it's not working, we don't know of anything really better. I want to get to nature and nurture and definitely the question of disciplining as someone who was spanked a few times in a little bit.

Last question, though, about coddling. When my producer was 12 years old, he started a paper route. And when he was 13, his dad helped him open a checking account. And here's what his dad said to him at the time. You can buy anything you want with this money that you're earning on the paper route because you earned it. It's your money, not mine. You can decide. But he also said...

Anything you now want, whether it's new clothes, a new glove for the baseball season, a car when you turn 16, it's on you. I'm not helping you. Now, when I hear that story, that story's from the 90s, okay? But to me, it feels like it's from 100 years ago because it feels unimaginable, both in terms of a 12-year-old riding around town by himself delivering papers, at least in a lot of cities where I've lived,

But also the idea that a 13-year-old would be sort of financially independent and making those decisions. Now, when I talk to my producer about it, he says this was really good for him. He learned independence. You know, he feels grateful for this kind of, I don't know what you'd want to call it, tough love. You know, I wonder if that is lost to time, if that could come back around again.

And Michaelene, if this kind of whatever we want to term it, free-range parenting, independent-minded parenting, is closer to the kind of parenting you saw in the research you did for Hunt, Gather, Parent.

Yeah, so I think a lot of cross-cultural psychologists would call it autonomy, right? The dad is actually teaching the child, the 12-year-old, how to be autonomous, right? How to do things himself, earn his own money. And there is really good data connecting autonomy and a lot of great things in kids, like confidence and less stress, less anxiety. And absolutely, you see autonomy everywhere.

throughout the world. And in fact, it's one of the key characteristics of hunter-gatherer communities. So all humans were hunter-gatherers at some point. If you look all around the world at modern hunter-gatherer communities today, you find that autonomy with kids and adults is one of the key values and the key characteristics of their relationships. And it's different than, for

Free range or independence, which we like to give kids in our culture because autonomy also includes thinking about a group.

So it means, yes, I'm doing what I need to do. I'm doing, I'm making my own choices. I'm learning to function by myself, but I'm also thinking about helping others. I'm respectful to the group and I'm, and I'm generous. So I think that what this does is it gives kids freedom. It teaches them confidence because they're allowed to make their choices and it

But it also teaches them to be empathetic and be connected to others. And there's, again, there's a lot of good data. There's Latin American countries that have better happiness

Given their economic situation, I'm doing a story on this right now, and what current research shows is that that happiness comes from learning how to have really deep and meaningful relationships. And so I think that's what we've lost. Kids have lost autonomy, which is a combination of freedom but also a responsibility to a group.

I can tell you an example. You know, up in the Arctic, kids, by the time they were 10, were providing for families. We saw like a nine, eight-year-old, nine-year-old catch a narwhal.

And feed a big part of the village. Catch it and kill it? Well, yeah. So they harpoon them and then they shoot them like after. And yeah, he caught it. I have a picture of him. And then his aunt and his aunts butchered it and they all kept it, you know, they put sacks of it out and the whole village came and took some of it. And, you know, because he had been going on hunting trips with his dad since he was probably three or four.

Now, can Rosie spear a narwhal in San Francisco? Rosie cannot spear a narwhal, but I just wrote a piece about how when she was four, she started going to the market by herself in San Francisco. So, I mean, I think that there's... Wait, wait, wait. Let me just make sure I understand it. Four years old, San Francisco, went to the supermarket by herself. Well, she went to the

little corner market, which is like two blocks from our house and bought something for us. Yeah. She started doing it. And what was the response to that story? Oh, it was amazing. This response, we got, you know, I probably got a hundred emails of people telling us that they did this, that they helped their kids do this, that they used to do it, that they want to do it. They thought I was a crazy mom, you know what I mean? Just whole gamut. But, but at the point of that story was about like, not, it's not what the kid does. Killing a narwhal, going to the market, you

it's about giving the kid a little bit of autonomy. So like one of the moms says, "I can't do this because we live in a very crime-ridden neighborhood." And I say, "Okay, well then have her go into a store and you're outside and have her pay for it or have her pay for the items when you're standing there." It's these little tiny things.

over time that build kids' confidence and build autonomy. And I mean, there is no doubt kids need this. They are built for autonomous exploration and autonomous learning. No doubt. We'll be right back to ask things like, is spanking really so bad? And more hard, honest conversation about parenting. Stay with us.

Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Before we get into some specific parenting questions that our team has about yelling, about corporal punishment and other things,

Just a brief interlude. Nature versus nurture. To me, it seems like the whole thing comes down to that because if you believe that it's mostly nurture, you're going to become obsessed with different parenting styles because you are going to believe that you can impact your child in a profound way. Brian, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm hearing you say it's mostly nature versus

And a lot of this stuff is just ornamentation or parents' anxiety or, you know, it just doesn't really matter in the end. Am I getting it right? Yeah. And in particular, what I want to say is this isn't just my opinion.

All right.

What could we do in order to actually answer the question? They said, how about we start studying non-standard families where we did not have nature and nurture in a strictly intertwined? So most obviously look at kids that are adopted where you've got only nurture, no nature.

And then also said, well, we could go and compare identical fraternal twins, identical twins sharing all their genes, fraternal genes sharing half, and we'd see how much extra similarity identical twins have even when they're raised in the same home. So this research began around 1960, but what I show in my book is it covers now almost every kind of outcome that parents care about.

So we're talking about health, intelligence, happiness, success, character, values, appreciation, all of these things. You really can find a lot of relevant research on it. And with a few very special exceptions, the punchline is that within rich countries that nature matters a lot more than most people want to believe, including for psychological and social outcomes. Almost everyone will admit that for physical outcomes, there's a lot of nature.

Right? You have your dad's nose or whatever. Right? And no one is going to say, well, if you're raised by a different family, you'd have their nose. No, I'd have the same nose regardless of what family I was raised in. But people often want to say, no, no, psychological and social outcomes are completely different. And what this research says is, no, actually, it's a lot more similar to physical appearance than you would think.

Right. And not just for some trivial things, but for things that people really care about. People really want to make their kids successful in school or successful in their careers, or maybe they just want to make them happy. That's a totally different goal. Many times people say, I don't care about education. I don't care about income. I care about happiness. Well, we can look at that too. And we can see, well, what happens to happiness of kids that are adopted by very happy families or not so happy families, how much of that actually rubs off on them.

And I try to go over all this research in my book and come down to, yeah, it's not the case that nature, that nurture doesn't matter at all, but the effects are just a lot smaller than what most people think. And yeah, so when parents believe otherwise, it does lead to just a lot of waste of not just time, but a lot of wasted emotional energy. And so I always say, save your emotional energy for something that really counts, the relationship with the child, rather than trying to mold the child. One of the best analogies I heard is,

Imagine on your wedding day, you're there saying, okay, I've got a plan for how to change my spouse now. This is my plan. I've read a bunch of spousal upbringing books. This is going to tell me what to do, how to make them into the perfect spouse. And you realize, look, first of all, it's not going to work. You're not going to change them. Second of all, the conflict caused by this misguided effort to change them is going to be very bad for the relationship.

And really to think about your relationship with your child as being very similar. It's not reasonably about trying to transform them, but about trying to have a good relationship with them, which I'd say is definitely the approach that I've taken. I feel really good about it. But nurture can clearly have some impact. And I'm wondering, Carla and Michaelene, where you guys feel nurture is most important. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like we're missing out on this whole idea of teaching children values. If you look around the world, every culture has a specific kind of set of values that they intentionally or subconsciously pass on to their children. And it definitely has an effect. Nurture. Yes, exactly.

And that's where I think it comes in. It's like, okay, Rosie's going to be Rosie and she's going to figure out what she's going to do in life. I have no doubt this child's just going to do. And me trying to change that path is going to cause a lot of resistance and really hurt our relationship.

But I can help guide her. I can kind of guide that path. I can support her on that path. I can watch her. You know, maybe she's cutting something in the kitchen and she's not doing something quite right. She's going to cut herself. I can guide that. I can help instill in her the value of helpfulness and generosity, right? So I do play a huge role.

But at the end of the day, I'm guided by her, right? She's kind of leading her life and her way. And I'm kind of the stagehand in the background watching and being there for her. And I think she can feel that support. And that type of support is really important for children's mental health.

So, yeah, I think kids are who they are. And, you know, I think we take it personally when our kids misbehave. We think it's our fault, you know, or when they don't succeed or they have problems. But a vast majority of parents around the world don't. They just know that these kids are the kids and that parents can only do so much.

I want to ask you guys some questions that I think are relevant to any parent, practical questions that affect parents every day of their lives. And these are the little decisions they are making day in and day out that I don't feel there's a clear answer on. And I am turning to you three as people who have much more experience both as parents and as experts on these questions. Let's start with yelling.

Carla, you have talked a lot about parents losing their shit with their kids. In fact, you've written a whole book on it. It's the title of the book. And one of the concepts in there is you can't stop yourself from yelling just armed with willpower. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I think a lot of parents, myself included, assume or I used to assume that if I just decided –

hard enough that I wasn't going to yell at my kids, then I could just not yell at them. And that's not the way it works because that's a fundamental misunderstanding of why we lose it with our kids. And I want to start out by being very clear in saying, I don't actually think it's a terrible thing to yell at your kids sometimes. I think that it's a reasonable thing for a kid to learn that if they push a button too hard and too many times, they're going to provoke an unpleasant reaction and perhaps a slightly out of control reaction, right? Right.

my concern is parents, and I think there are many of us who are losing their shit with their kids multiple times a day, and that it has become one of the predominant interactions in the relationship, right? That's a problem. And the reason that's happening on a fundamental level is because we are completely worn down. I mean, this really goes back to our fight or flight reaction, which I think of as the fight, flight, freak out reaction, because, you know,

You know, when you are living under a constant state of stress and hyperarousal, which I would argue most parents are most of the time, and during the pandemic, it's just skyrocketed. Like our base level of worry, of anxiety, of constant stress is so high, right? And then our nervous system is already on high alert, like our prefrontal cortex can barely keep a lid on

our amygdala, our limbic system, which is that part in the back of your brain that's like a toddler just waiting to explode. It's also the fight or flight part of your brain. And then the kid comes along and they push our buttons and their little fingers are like so perfectly the right size and shape for our buttons, right? So they push our buttons and we explode. And so parents think that we should just be able to go through our day dealing with

sick in-laws and ingrown toenails and like flat tires on cars and angry friends. And, you know, you see the person in the pickup line and they make some weird comment and then you have to ruminate about for half an hour. Are they pissed at you? Are they not? And then don't even get me started on the news, which is so unbelievably horrible. And we think we should just sort of be able to like take all this stuff in and then go home to our kids. And when they ask us for science fair materials at nine o'clock at night, that's due the next day, we're supposed to stay calm.

That's like not how the human being works. And so the argument I make in the book is,

is that there are specific strategies and choices we can make in the way we kind of move through the world and take care of ourselves that will make it less likely that when the kid pushes our buttons, we're going to explode, right? And so many people would call this self-care, which I think a lot of parents, especially moms, blow off as kind of self-indulgent. I don't have time for that. And that's fine. But I would argue that these are the behaviors we have to engage in if we want to stay calm with our kids.

And there are lots of other books...

that really focus on you have to get your kid to behave and cooperate. And if you can get them to behave and cooperate, they won't push your buttons and then you won't explode. And I think as Mickalene pointed out so beautifully, that's just not how kids roll. And all of us, I think I can hear that voice in my head saying, well, I never pulled this crap with my parents when I was a kid. And that's true. I didn't. I was also terrified of my parents. And that's not the kind of relationship I'm trying to engender with my own children. And I think, you know, hinging our behavior

on our kids' behavior is a problem, right? Because kids are insane and they do crazy stuff. So my point is that we need a huge amount of support. I mean, I can't emphasize Mickalene's point enough that

Parenting alone is one of the most terrifying things you will ever do. And so if nothing else, just having another adult in the room, if that's literally the least you can do, get another adult in the room with you. And that will bring down your stress levels so dramatically and help you be far less likely to lose it. But also just basic things like can you try to get some sleep? Can you focus on just doing one thing at a time? Multitasking is a guaranteed surefire way to lose it at your kids.

And really, at the end of the day, can you have a huge amount of compassion for yourself when it all falls apart, which it will sometimes. So that's my little short story about losing it with your kids. Brian, I saw you making a face when Carla was saying parenting is terrifying. Want to jump in?

Sure. Yeah, I have to say I don't relate to any of the things people are saying about being terrified, overwhelmed. My kids are my greatest joy in my life. I love spending time with them. I love doing things with them. I also think that if I had let them walk all over me, it probably would have been a bit of a difference.

I mean, in terms of the question of yelling, what I'll say is, again, basically pretty much no evidence that you're messing your kids up for life. The thing that I think that you are likely to be doing is messing up your relationship with them. A bit of yelling, people can get over that. A lot of yelling, people probably won't. Some people are very forgiving. I mean, I think about how my parents raised me, which was with a lot of yelling. I never liked it. They would tell me, oh, well, when you're a parent, you don't understand. I still have no idea what they're talking about.

I don't think their behavior was acceptable and they should have kept themselves under control and behaved and they didn't. So I try to treat my kids with kindness and respect all the time. I do punish them, but I don't punish them out of anger. I say, look, you've broken a rule and now something's going to happen to you. It's just what I told you would happen. There's no talking your way out of it. And next time, let's be better.

This aphorism I have, you know, never make people bend the truth at your funeral. You know, when I die, I want people to say my dad was so great. He never yelled. He was always so understanding and just a great guy, right? And, you know, that's something that's hard to shoot for, but still it does stay with me as something I'm going for. Well, let's talk and let's go to Ekalene here about punishment and the nature of punishment.

Spanking has come up, but also just corporal punishment in general. You know, that went from being maybe the norm generation ago, two generations ago, to being unbelievably taboo. So should spanking or other kinds of physical punishment be the taboo that it is in the West? Oh, gosh. You're going to get me, like, crucified. Yeah.

If I answer this honestly. Answer it honestly. Absolutely. Until a couple generations ago, I was spanked. I was spanked with a belt. And I'm not saying that was good. I thought it was horrible. It's kind of like what Carla said. It made me terrified of my dad. And I did things because I was terrified of my dad. I was behaving because I was terrified of my dad. And I don't want Rosie to be terrified of me anymore.

What I saw when I traveled, I mean, a lot of hunter-gatherer communities are, you know, very specific and autonomy, right? Like, spanking somebody implies you're really trying to get them to do something, and, like, you just wouldn't do it, you know? Now, outside of those, so, like, farming communities, subsistence farming communities, pastoralists, like, all the different other communities, industrialists, like we are, it is universal at

at some level. And I would say not at the level of a belt, not at the level of probably what it was in America, you know, 50, 100 years ago. Like a small spanking, right, is really universal. But I just don't want to do it, you know? I don't want to do it. It makes me feel bad. And I think it does what Brian was saying, right? It hurts the, I think it hurts the relationship.

And I think that there are better, more effective ways to discipline. And my book goes over like, there's like 13 chapters on like tools to teach children things very gently. And I will use that word. It is a gentle way. It's a very like kind of constant gentle pressure, very different than the gentle parenting. But there's all these other tools that we are not taught, that I was never taught, right?

And some of them actually build the relationship, build communication with you and the child, and are fun. So I went from yelling at Rosie, not hitting her, but yelling and scolding and being really mean, kind of the way my dad treated me, to really...

teaching her through much more gentle methods, and we're both better off. It's interesting, though, because we had a podcast meeting the other day, and I said, how many people here were spanked? You know, I'm 38. We're all around that age. Every single hand went up, and every single hand's going up right now. And

You guys seem really well adjusted and normal. So I wonder if Brian's rule of thumb here that like a lot of yelling is terrible. If you got spanked a few times, not that bad. I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, I definitely think that we like overestimate our powers and we overestimate, like we are just, we're so black and white.

Right? Like, one of the anthropologists told me, like, it's so Western. Like, we think that there are these windows of opportunity to teach kids things. Like, if you don't teach them this by this age, they won't learn. You know, if they haven't eaten the broccoli on the second attempt, they're never going to eat the broccoli. And parents will say that in studies. He's never going to eat the broccoli. I tried two times. So we have, like, we are just so easily to, like, oh, give up and throw our hands up. And, like, you know, whereas there's all these middle grounds, right? And

And we have so much less power over our children than we think. I mean, Brian has made that point over and over again. But it's part of the anxiety parenting, right? It's part of this, like, everything has to be perfect. And the more I do, the better I am. Like, that's the way I felt when I was traveling was like, I was always trying to do more, more, more, say more, talk more, you know? And what I realized was like, these parents do way less. Like, they do way less. And they're not

And they're not ignoring the children. They're watching the children. They're responding to the children if the children come over. But they're just kind of coexisting with the children. And it was like such an easier way, not only to be with my kid, but to be with my husband, my mom, like to just kind of

be there and enjoy each other instead of like trying to constantly control what each other does that we have a very very controlling way of parenting and it doesn't it's I thought I was like laissez-faire hands off but I realized I am a huge bossy pants or was a huge bossy pants because I'm constantly telling Rosie what to do and that is very very weird like that is not not universal at all Brian you mentioned punishing your kids what would some of the punishments be

Normally just taking away electronics, honestly. That works great. Once the kid's an addict, then you take away their addiction and then they really do not like that. So whether it's just taking away television or your tablet or whatever it is, that's almost all we ever need to do. So if there's food-related issues, then it seems more effective if you take away dessert.

Never spanking? So in my entire life, there's one time I was a brand new parent and my baby punched me in the face. And I was so stunned. I did spank him once and I haven't done that at any other point. If the kid was just so incorrigible and terrible, I do sympathize with parents that do spank if the kid is really that bad. But I would just say, well, have you tried the other stuff first?

Have you actually done it? And yeah, don't just do it twice like with the broccoli. Like actually, look, have you tried variations on things other than spanking? When someone says, I just resort to whacking him first thing, it's like, really, I think you could do better than that. Like if you just told me you've tried everything else a hundred times and that's the only way to keep the kid from biting other people, then I'm going to say, gee, I'm really sorry you're in this situation. I'm not going to judge you for spanking your kid then.

But yeah, I don't find any need for me to do it. And I do think, just when I look at other parents' discipline, usually it seems very impulsive. It's not like I see parents who are saying, all right, well, you've gone to a level three offense and that's a spanking.

Rather, I see parents who sometimes they just watch their kids do terrible things and like, I don't feel like doing anything about it. And other times the kid does something quite mild and they flip out at them and then we'll spank them. And that's where I'm like, this is really not about helping your kid behave better. This is about you not controlling your emotions. Carla, Brian mentioned taking away screens as a punishment. One of the things that...

listeners and readers wrote in the most about were questions about screens and social media, screen time, when to do it. So what age should kids have phones and social media, Carla? I do not know the answer to that. And I will tell you that when my older daughter was 20 months old, I was trying to train her to watch TV because I needed to figure out how to put my newborn to sleep and she didn't want to watch TV. But look, here's what I'll say about screen time is that first of all,

Cut yourself some slack. We are literally the first generation of parents in the history of humanity raising children who can walk around constantly with a screen in their pocket, right? This has never happened before in the history of time. And so we're all just trying to figure this out. There's no perfect answer.

The second thing I would say is every family deals with this differently and every kid has a different relationship with their screen and every parent has a different relationship with their screen. And during the pandemic, screen time has increased exponentially. And trying to get kids off screens in a sustained way or reduce their screen time is like the most painful Band-Aid to rip off ever.

I think the important thing is to continue to stay in touch with your kids about screen time, to know what they're doing, to know what they're up to, and to hold firm on whatever your family rule is. Because once kids learn that they can negotiate for more screen time, that will become such a dominant dynamic in your relationship. It'll just suck the air out of whatever is going on in your family. So if you go with Brian's rule that you take screens away as a punishment, great, do that. Just stick

to it. If your rule is no screens Friday night to Saturday night, don't break the rule. Stick to it. Okay, one more quick break, then a lightning round, plus questions from you. Stay with us.

Okay, lightning round and listener questions from parents and soon-to-be parents, some of whom are panicking. Brian, let's start with you. How many kids should I have? Is there a magic number? No. So honestly, what I always tell people, have the first one and then tell me how you're doing with that.

Right. So if the first one's going, it was working out really well for you, then yeah, let's, let's go for some more. I mean, like the main thing I'll just tell people is just to realize that the high stress you're having when they're really young doesn't last all that long. And you know, 20 years from now, you may be having empty nest syndrome and wishing you had more and just to put yourself in those shoes. But yeah, honestly, I'd say like if there's, if there are two partners and one has a strong preference and the other one is open-minded, then I'd go with the higher one.

Michaelene, at what age did you let your daughter Rosie cook at the stove? Actually, when I went to the Yucatan the first time, she was two and a half. And she started cooking right after we got back.

Carla, snoo or no snoo? Is it worth it? Snoo? I don't know what that is. Perfect. I don't know either. Good. Brian, sleep training methods, like crying it out, as in leaving your baby at the age of three months old in the crib, crying to learn how to sleep through the night, something the French do. Is it okay? It's totally okay and also scientifically proven to work.

The key thing to know is two things work. One is the hard line one where you just let them cry it out indefinitely until they fall asleep. That works, but it's really hard for the parent. But what also works is the Ferber method where you just let them cry for 10 minutes and then calm them and then let them cry again and calm them. It's much milder, but it's almost as effective as the total old school method. But yes, I'd say that sleep deprivation for parents of little kids is one of the worst problems they have. And there is a cure. You just need to steel yourself to do it.

I also, if you can, advise people to go and get thicker doors for your baby's room before you have them so that you can drown the sound out. And yes, we really did do this the second time around. How does it work in the hunter-gatherer communities? Like, do people co-sleep? Like, my image is maybe some stereotype of co-sleeping, etc. What happens in those places? Yeah.

So we actually, I never published this, but we actually did this extensive research on the ethnographic record of like how, where babies sleep, like around the world, using the resource at Yale. And what you find is, number one, babies sleep in the same room with the family basically everywhere. Putting a baby in a room by itself is very, very expensive.

rare, except in some parts of Western culture, right? So they're definitely in the same room. And then you go to these, you know, where you can't define it. Are they in the bed? Are they, are they, you know, next to somebody? And a big chunk of them are co-sleeping, right? But you have to remember that a lot of, you know, we evolved to co-sleep. There's no doubt, right? The babies evolved to co-sleep with their parents. But, you know, that was on the ground,

right? Which is a much safer place to co-sleep than in a fluffy sofa bed or, you know, but absolutely everywhere we went. I mean, I could not even mention the idea that Rosie wasn't sleeping with me. I mean, I would be like ostracized. They think I was like an abuser. Everyone sleeps with somebody. When the anthropologist that Barbara Rogoff told me when she first started working in this Maya village in Guatemala, a little girl ran out to her and said, who are you sleeping with tonight? And she was like, what? And

Because the idea that anyone would sleep in a room by themselves is just unheard of, and they actually sent out a young girl or a young boy to just sleep in a hammock next to her. So it's not just the babies. It's the adults too. Carla, you've talked a lot about support and seeking support from your community in this conversation.

If people are mobile, is it smart for expecting parents or parents of young children to move to live near their parents or in-laws for that kind of support? Should you relocate to create the village for yourself?

If you can move to an area where you can build a community, whether it's family, friends, a neighborhood with lots of families and kids, yeah, I think that's a great idea. And if you can't do that, then please do what you can to create that community. It is crucial. You can't parent without it. Brian, can you explain the very scary formula shortage right now in the United States and how we can fix it?

There's a general issue with shortages in the U.S. economy, and it really comes down to firms don't want to raise prices until the incentive to produce goes up and the incentive to buy goes down. Some of this is probably that consumers will just get really angry when you're raising prices. This is just very standard that

even when something is in short supply and it's flying off the shelves, the idea that you would raise the price in order to solve the problem that upsets a lot of people. I think also there's a lot of people in business who have a genuine conscience and they feel like in this time, it would be horrible for me to do it. Even if you were to say, yes, but if you don't raise the price, then as soon as it shows up, people will grab all there is. And what kind of a system is that?

So, I mean, honestly, at this point, a lot of it is just letting people know, look, businesses are not evil to raise prices when the things are flying off the shelves. And rather than blaming them, you should be happy that we are improving the incentives to increase production. Speaking of formula, any evidence, Carla, that –

It's worse than breast milk or affects health outcomes differently. Not that I'm aware of, and I do not judge parents ever for how they feed their children. Feeding your kid is an incredibly challenging thing to do for some parents and for some children. And we are all doing the best we can. And if you're struggling with it, my strongest recommendation is talk to your pediatrician or someone, you know, a lactation consultant or

I don't know, anyone who will help you feed your child in any way that works for you and your family. And I think it's such a personal topic that giving general advice often serves families very poorly. Michaelene.

in the hunter-gatherer communities? How do they feed their kids? I mean, it's traditionally right. There was all formula and it is, I mean, not formula, sorry, it's all breast milk, all breastfeeding. But, you know, things have changed and there's formula in all places now around the world, right? You know, but yes, people evolved to be breastfed. But I will tell you that

One thing people don't realize is that women struggle in all cultures to breastfeed. You know, it doesn't matter if you're a hunter-gatherer, you're an agriculturalist, you're an Inuit, you're Mayan, you're American. It can be really challenging for moms and especially new moms. And this is something I didn't realize. I thought it was just natural. You know, you stick the

baby on the boob and it works. But for some people, it's like that. But for a lot of women, it's not. In all these communities, women have help. They seek help from people that know, experts, and then older generations. So if you're struggling, that's like the natural state. Having it just work is more rare.

Do you think, each of you, do you think that COVID lockdown, school closures, and prolonged mask mandates for kids will have an effect on long-term developmental outcomes for kids?

Carla, let's start with you. Yeah, of course, but it'll be the entire generation and we'll muddle through it together. Brian? I don't think it's going to do long-term harm. I think that it's made their childhood miserable for two years for no good reason. And people should have just looked at the numbers and said, it's not a big deal for kids and we should live normally. I'm with Brian on this. I think that we tend to like give up and say, oh, we've hurt them and it's permanent. But kids are super malleable. You know, they bounce back, they learn quickly. And I think if we hold onto that thought, like they're going to bounce back.

We can move on. I think a lot of kids will. But, you know, it will depend. There'll be a distribution, right? Some kids I think will really struggle for a while. Before we go, a few burning questions from listeners. Suzanne wants to know if you've already let the genie out of the bottle with giving your young teen access to social media, Carla.

What do you do to protect her on those platforms? Continue to have conversations with your child. Be involved. Look at the platforms with her. Talk to her about it. Continue to talk about specific ways she can keep herself safe. But get engaged with that kid about what's going on and keep open communication about it. Dave wants to know, Michaelene, is too, too early for boarding school? Age two. Wow. I mean...

I would say yes. But, you know, interestingly, the Hadzabe in the book, those kids go to boarding school at 6 p.m.

They go away and they go to school at six and they come back and they still have all the values and the skills of their parents, the Hadzabi parents. So two might be too young, but maybe six is okay. Okay. Ian wants to know, given the declining birth rates in the developed world and the problematic social and economic impacts that might have, what is one thing that would convince even the most skeptical millennial or Gen Zer to have kids? Yeah.

One thing that would convince the most skeptical person, whether they're skeptical because of environmental reasons or overpopulation or whatever, what is the one thing you would use to convince them to have kids? Brian? Honestly, just the passage of time. That's the main thing that changes people's minds about kids. There's so many people who as teenagers say, I never want to, and they're 30 and they're doing it. In terms of arguments, I could go and give them my book. I don't think that's going to change the mind of someone that just says, I hate kids.

I say, well, if you hate kids, I don't know what more to tell you. Perhaps you will find something different inside yourself at a later age, but I don't think a book's going to change your mind on that. Carla? Parenting is so stinking hard even when you want kids. I would never presume to try to persuade someone who didn't want kids to have them. Michaelene? You know, I agree with Carla. We worked for like six years to have Rosie. She's like IVF. And then when I had her, I was like, wait a second, this is what all that work was for? Yeah.

This is not living up. It does not live up to the Facebook images. I remember right before Rosie was born, there was all this thing like, oh, I'm still maternity leave snuggling with my baby. And my maternity leave was not like that. So I agree. I think our lives could have been just as good without Rosie. I do have to say she's made me a better person. Yeah.

Like having to learn how to parent and be a good parent, I think has made me just a good, a better person. And my relationship with my husband is better now.

For me, when I just think about the incredible loneliness of not having kids, it really is like that bumper sticker for rescue dogs. Who saved who? I mean, just to have my kids around is such an incredible comfort to me. To go through COVID with no kids, man, I just don't even know what I would have done with myself. I agree. You know, one of the Maya moms told me that they enjoyed the company of their kids, and I was like, what? But now I totally get it. Like, I

I love being with her. She's one of my favorite people. I mean, that's true. I love being with my kids. So that is a thing. Okay, last question. As I mentioned, my wife and I are having our first baby in a few months. What is the one piece of advice you would give us? Carla. If you don't already know about the practice of self-compassion, learn it. Because the ability to cut yourself slack when you are struggling is a game changer in about a billion different ways.

Brian? Steal yourself and use the Ferber method to get that kid to sleep as soon as you possibly can. Do not listen to your feelings. Don't listen to anyone else. Do it. It has a very high chance of working very well, very quickly, and you'll save yourself years of sleep-deprived misery. Just do it. This is science. It must be done. How early should we do it? Three months. Okay. Mike Gilleen?

You know, if I had to do it again, I would take money from the college fund and hire somebody to help us at the beginning, for the first month or two. Even convince my mom to come live with us. I mean, sure, the firm will work, but those first three months, you're going to be so physically tired. And just having somebody around that knows what they're doing. We finally got a sleep expert to come in. And one night, she helped me so much with Rosie. And then

And then as she gets older, my one, cause that's the baby stuff, you know, that's physical. But when she gets older, my one giant piece of advice is never argue with her. Like I just stopped, like parents around the world don't argue and negotiate and bicker with kids. And I just stopped arguing with Rosie and it totally changed our relationship, you know? And you just, if something, if something needs to be done and do it, you know, just don't sit there and talk about it.

Guys, I will be calling you several months from now when we're in the midst of Ferber and either thanking you or crying myself. I'm not really sure. Carla, Brian, Michaelene, thank you so much. I look forward to raising a child that can spear a narwhal at nine years old. Awesome. If you do that, yeah.

Brian's book is Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Michaelene's book is called Hunt, Gather, Parent. And Carla's book is called How to Stop Losing Your Shit with Your Kids. Thanks to them and thanks to you for listening. Did you like it as much as I did? I had a lot of fun with this one. If you did too, I'd love for you to share it. Share it on social media or take a page out of Michaelene's book and share it with your village. Send them a text or an email and start a conversation of your own.

Also, we love hearing from you. If you have a tip or a story suggestion or want to send us your feedback about this episode or any other, write us at tips at honestlypod.com. Last but not least, congratulations to our producer, Candice Kahn. She produced this story literally as she was about to go into labor and she just gave birth to a healthy son. Mazel tov to her and we'll see you soon.