00:00:00.000what is a good mother what is a bad mother what is a traditional mother let's sit with all those
00:00:17.120questions for just a hot second and then realize that there's no right answers social media is
00:00:26.160going to make you believe that there are a lot of right answers to that. But a good mother,
00:00:31.940the best mother for your kids, it's probably what you're already doing. We talk a lot on this show
00:00:39.460about getting rid of the guilt and the shame that just sticks to motherhood like a kind of
00:00:46.740homemade slime that your kids made with borax and glue. It's not good for you. It's not good
00:00:53.840for your kids. And frankly, one thing that we do have to talk about a lot, a lot more,
00:01:00.020is that motherhood has never been this difficult. Caregiving has never been this difficult. And
00:01:09.660we've never, ever been shamed and guilted so much for doing so much. Humans lived for about 95%
00:01:21.640of our existence as hunter-gatherers. We used to raise children communally and in a way that was
00:01:29.740dramatically different from contemporary post-industrial societies. And even 50 years ago,
00:01:38.080we lived in more vibrant communities. We were in and out of each other's houses. We helped mothers
00:01:45.920with caring for children. And so I think there is a lot for us to talk about about what quote
00:01:55.400unquote traditional or biological mothering actually means. What are quote unquote mothering
00:02:04.440instincts? Do these things come naturally? Does modern mothering have any kind of historical
00:02:11.840precedent whatsoever. And today we're talking about all of it with science writer Elena
00:02:18.640Bridgers, who has been diving into this since having her first child, because she just wanted
00:02:24.360to see if there was a better way than what we're doing right now. Are there traditions in other
00:02:33.420parts of the world, in parts of history, that give us a better model for what caregiving looks like
00:02:40.620today. Because mothers are too overwhelmed by society's unrealistic and ridiculous expectations.1.00
00:02:48.700So let's just let's talk about what other models could possibly look like. We deserve something1.00
00:02:56.620better. And especially right now, right now, when we're at an inflection point in our country,
00:03:02.900where I do not think that mothers are going to be cared for, where I do think that we will be
00:03:08.860taking on so much more of the caregiving burden, where a lot of how we parent in the future
00:03:17.660is going to be up to us, because no one is coming to save us. Okay, so let's just let's start this
00:03:25.040conversation. What do we want our caregiving future to look like? What do we want to model
00:03:30.180for our children going forwards? Because this is in our hands right now, whether we like it or not.
00:03:38.860we're talking about something that i love today which is the science and evolution of why modern
00:03:50.460mothering is so hard and also why it doesn't have to be like this there is let me know if
00:03:57.720you agree with this statement there's actually no historical or evolutionary precedent for how
00:04:05.560we parent? Absolutely not. That is like the biggest myth that I love busting and probably
00:04:11.160like the whole purpose of my account is just to make people realize that the way we parent today,
00:04:19.280whether you're like the like, you know, typical lean in feminist type or like the trad wife
00:04:25.500mother type, none of these models of parenting are normal when you look at our evolutionary
00:04:31.320their history as a species. And all of them are way harder on women and moms than things used to
00:04:37.480be for the most part, right? Absolutely. Your content is so good about all of this. I learned
00:04:46.020so much. Walk me through some of it. What are other models that have existed where women aren't
00:04:54.340burnt out and miserable and just beaten down. Yeah. So I think it's worth maybe taking just1.00
00:05:02.840a minute to talk about why I'm so interested in how our Paleolithic ancestors lived.
00:05:09.760Please do. Please do. And how we even know what we know about, you know, what motherhood was like
00:05:15.060in the Paleolithic. One way that we can study the Paleolithic is obviously through the fossil
00:05:22.340record. But another tool that anthropologists use is studying contemporary hunter-gatherer
00:05:28.760populations. And that's because we know that humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 95% of
00:05:34.880our existence as a species, right? But we don't have a fossil record of everything. So specifically
00:05:44.400things like human social structure are very hard to study by looking just at the fossil record.
00:05:50.240So that's why a lot of anthropologists combine that research with research on contemporary hunter-gatherer populations. And so I think it's important to also say that contemporary hunter-gatherer populations are not living fossils, but, you know, the conditions in which they live do resemble our shared evolutionary past much more than, say, a modern New Yorker. And so we can learn from that, right?
00:06:17.560Right. And so my Instagram account and my substack and my work generally tends to focus more on studying on the research we have on hunter-gatherer populations and what motherhood was like in those, what motherhood is like in those societies, right?
00:06:35.360Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And how did you, let's back up even further, my friend. How did you get interested in this in the first place?
00:06:42.260Yeah. So I studied human biology as an undergrad at Stanford. And so I've always had an interest in evolutionary biology. And then I worked as a social entrepreneur in women and children's health after graduating. And I worked in India. I worked in, I lived in Burkina Faso for a year. I worked in France.
00:07:02.200So I've seen how motherhood works in a lot of other cultures around the world.
00:07:08.380And then for a long time, I just like didn't do anything related to that.
00:07:13.440But then five years ago, I became a mother.
00:07:17.360So I now have a five-year-old and a three-year-old.
00:07:25.300You know, like so many other mothers out there.
00:07:29.340um and so i started asking questions i was like this doesn't it doesn't make sense to me
00:07:35.880that like we're supposed to get sleep but like we can't get sleep you know like how does this
00:07:41.560make sense like um and so i started doing research deep dives and since then i have read hundreds of
00:07:52.060books and scientific papers because i think this stuff is totally fascinating and decided to start
00:07:58.600writing about it and talking about it on Instagram. And it kind of blew up because I guess other
00:08:04.500people were like, wow, we also really wanted to know this. This is not common knowledge. And it
00:08:11.420explains so much of why the motherhood experience is so hard in the modern context.
00:08:19.080Yeah, yeah, it really does. And I think it's so interesting how a lot of women I know,
00:08:24.400So after they become mothers, they often pivot or shift to trying to figure out how this all works. I mean, that's the reason that I created this podcast in the first place, right? Because I think we have this deep curiosity about why is it like this and does it have to be like this?
00:08:43.600Yeah. And I also the other thing that I think is fascinating is how many myths are out there about what kind of behavior is, quote, natural or like good for a mother. Right. And I think, you know, I know you talk about trad wave culture a lot on your podcast.
00:09:04.700And so much. Yeah. Weirdly. I've weirdly become America's leading expert on trad wives.
00:09:10.660I am not an expert on trad wives, but what I think is fascinating about trad wife culture, you know, as represented like Ballerina Farm and Company, is that they're all kind of billing themselves as being a return to a more natural version of motherhood.
00:09:31.440And it's just not true. Right. And so one of my favorite things to talk about on my Instagram as well is to say, you know, when you see these women mothering this way, and I have no judgment for them, but just know that that is not a natural way to mother based on what we know about our evolutionary history as a species.
00:09:57.020right? This is like a kind of unprecedented experience for a woman, if you take the long0.81
00:10:04.880view. Yeah. What are some things that you've learned about how we, how human beings probably
00:10:16.020parented, again, for 95% of the history of human beings? Yeah. So the three big myths that I like
00:10:24.660to debunk specifically about trad wife culture are, one, women did not evolve to have eight
00:10:33.600plus children spaced two years apart, right? So we can talk about birth spacing. I think that's
00:10:39.460a really interesting aspect of it. I mean, that is something, yeah, I mean, yeah, that is something
00:10:44.660I see all the time on social media. Do you know, you probably do know this, but there are many,
00:10:50.340many people on the social medias who believe they are experts at birth spacing uh-huh yeah yeah i
00:10:55.860don't know because i i again i i'm not an expert in this and i don't follow that many mom accounts
00:11:01.720because i think a lot of it is kind of toxic but um what we know from our evolutionary history or
00:11:08.940from studying hunter-gatherer societies is that well first of all our closest living relatives
00:11:14.840are the great apes, right? And the great apes have super long interbirth intervals. Chimpanzees
00:11:23.340have their babies six years apart. Orangutans have their babies eight years apart. Human1.00
00:11:30.480hunter-gatherers generally have their babies about four years apart, which is much longer0.87
00:11:37.640on average than, you know, contemporary Americans. And in fact, in most hunter-gatherer societies,
00:11:44.420women do not get their first period until they're 17 years old and won't become fertile until they're
00:11:51.180maybe 19. And so typically they're only having about four kids over the course of their entire1.00
00:11:58.320adult lifespan based four years apart. And that has to do with like nutritional stress
00:12:05.720and breastfeeding patterns, which act together as a natural birth control. But this notion that
00:12:13.860having 10 plus kids spaced less than two years apart is somehow natural or normal for our species
00:12:20.700is just not true. You know, humans are born very immature at birth. And in fact, one of the only
00:12:29.480reasons that we think that humans evolved a closer inner birth interval, which is to say
00:12:35.300four years relative to the six year interval of chimpanzees, is that we evolved to have
00:12:42.400abundant help from the community. So not only are trad wife mothers parenting huge families,
00:12:54.200but they're doing it in the context of a single family home where they usually don't have0.98
00:12:59.060any help or very little help, right? Very little help. Right. Right. Yeah. Because, I mean,
00:13:05.240not having complete self-reliance is often seen as a moral failing in those families.
00:13:13.220Exactly. But we have so much evidence from hunter-gatherer societies to suggest that,
00:13:18.500you know, children were held by others in the community at least half the time. You know,
00:13:24.600babies had as many as 14 different caretakers in a single day. Women would share, there was
00:13:33.280shared suckling you know they would like hate turns yeah passing the baby around breastfeeding1.00
00:13:38.440it because why wouldn't you I mean that's I mean I think about this all the time I'm like why
00:13:42.460wouldn't you you have milk like just you have food yes in your body so yes why it doesn't make
00:13:48.680any sense to me that you I do think that there's kind of maybe a gross out factor for like modern1.00
00:13:54.960modern women but I mean if you think about it it's just milk be milk yeah exactly they didn't1.00
00:14:00.680have bottles you know they didn't have formula on hand so like if if mom needed a break that was0.88
00:14:05.940the only option totally totally i mean well i when i was writing sicilian inheritance we
00:14:12.220got into this because you know one of their i don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't
00:14:17.860read it but they're a child goes on a boat ride um without uh a parent without without their mother
00:14:26.440and other women offer to nurse that child.
00:14:30.420And I think that that probably happened quite a bit.
00:14:46.480Well, and I love what you said about 14 different caregivers.
00:14:50.980You know, so many different people pitching in, picking up that child. We've really been just culturally indoctrinated into the idea that we have to be the ones doing everything for our kids.
00:15:08.580And I remember so clearly, starting with my second baby, we worked with an au pair in our house.
00:15:36.140But that was my first experience of being like, no, you have to do this all yourself or somehow you're going to mess up this baby.
00:15:42.620Exactly. And what is so interesting about that is that we have research in the modern context to suggest that when we increase social support for moms, it actually improves mother-infant relationships and attachment, which just like flies in the face of so much mainstream thinking on attachment that like if you're not like skin to skin with your baby 24-7, they're not going to like form a secure attachment and they're not going to be a healthy adult, which is bananas.
00:16:10.720because we've never done things that way ever and i also don't want to misrepresent the research
00:16:17.920it's true that mothers and hunter-gatherer societies do spend a lot of time in close
00:16:24.320physical contact with their babies um and you know they don't have to go back to you know like
00:16:30.820a nine-to-five work job and leave their child in daycare starting at two weeks because you know
00:16:35.880the whole society is completely different so it is it is different i mean they they do
00:16:42.720there are things about you know like baby wearing and prolonged breastfeeding that are very common
00:16:48.660in crunchy culture um that that are in some ways closer to i guess you know the hunter the hunter
00:16:56.700gatherer model but the brutal absence of help or you know this idea that spending
00:17:04.220you know you get a long maternity leave and you do it all yourself with no help from anyone
00:17:10.360that's very unnatural and that's bananas absolutely but very hard i mean with my with my second so
00:17:20.440with my first i had i was lucky to have a long maternity leave but my husband got zero leave
00:17:26.440and so and I have no family around so I was doing it all by myself and then when my second came
00:17:33.200along and I spaced my children very close which is part of the reason I got so interested in the
00:17:39.100birth spacing research was because I got hit by a truck like when my second came along less than
00:17:45.560two years after my first and once again I was lucky to have a long leave but I had no help
00:17:52.440And I was like, how am I supposed to take care of a super active toddler during the day and then be up all night with a baby at night?
00:18:22.440Okay, we're back. Talk to me about some of the other myths that can be debunked just by looking at ways humans have done this for a very long time in the past.
00:18:33.740Yeah. One of my other favorite topics is leisure. So, yeah, I think it is. I mean, to me, the most interesting snippet of that ballerina farm expose was the part where her husband said that she was so exhausted she couldn't get out of bed for weeks. Right.
00:18:58.840um yeah and that is not normal um in hunter-gatherer societies moms spend typically
00:19:07.100about half of their waking hours in leisure and when i say leisure i am not talking about0.98
00:19:12.740domestic labor child care i mean just chillaxing and they're only able to do that because they
00:19:21.700have so much help from the community and the other thing that's very fascinating about it is that
00:19:27.600the distribution of leisure is extremely egalitarian. So like dads and childless
00:19:36.180individuals don't have any more leisure time than moms of young kids, which is absolutely not the
00:19:42.580case in modern society. There's abundant research to suggest that mothers of young children have0.63
00:19:49.100less leisure time than any other category of individual in society these days. And so we are
00:19:57.560completely overworked. We are exhausted. There's this crazy gender imbalance in the labor because
00:20:07.640even as moms have entered the workforce en masse, we haven't figured out how to split labor equally1.00
00:20:16.400in the home. And by the way, it's not always possible to split labor equally in the home.0.99
00:20:23.000If you're a breastfeeding mother, it's hard to outsource that, right? And so one of my big things
00:20:30.180is how do we push the workforce to accommodate that? Because the status quo just isn't working
00:20:39.400and the exhaustion is not normal right
00:20:42.760no it's not normal it's not normal at all it's it's unlike any other kind of exhaustion
00:20:51.440that i have ever had and i will also tell you i still grapple with the leisure part of it right
00:21:00.720i still somehow this episode is becoming a lot about my own guilt and shame and unpacking all
00:21:05.520of it so thank you for the free therapy you're welcome but i still yeah it's very helpful i
00:21:11.660i still like i'm either working or momming right and i i do still have a hard time yeah taking time
00:21:22.680for other things i've gotten a lot better at it uh because i know that i have to take care
00:21:27.840of myself and my body, so I try to reserve 12 to 1 every day to work out, right? But I was really
00:21:36.160tired after I worked out today, and I had time before we did this interview, and I thought,
00:21:41.220wouldn't it be nice just to lay in bed and read a book? But because it's quote-unquote work hours,
00:21:47.960I felt weird about it. I hear you. Which I just think, again, it's such a social construct,
00:21:53.060It is, but we're all programmed so deeply with this need to strive, strive, strive, you know, get things done. Otherwise, we're going to fall behind. And that's no one's fault. I just want to make this very clear. Like if you're having a hard time carving out leisure time for yourself, you are not to blame.
00:22:14.080It is the way that we've structured society because it is hard to keep up, you know, in a late stage capitalist economy. But the hunter gatherers just lived in a very different context where, you know, they could cover all of their basic needs in about four hours worth of work a day. So there was no incentive to work harder.0.90
00:22:38.860exactly exactly yeah i mean again there is there the reason i'm so excited to talk about this is
00:22:47.660because there are these ideas that are very deeply ingrained in our brains uh but they're there for
00:22:56.020cultural reasons they're not there because any of this makes sense i mean they're just and and i'm
00:23:03.200very interested in how we can flip all of this um how how can we talk about different narratives
00:23:10.220different ways of being yeah well i mean that is like i said a huge goal that i have with my account
00:23:19.360is to try and deprogram people um which again is not to say that doing things the hunter-gatherer
00:23:27.240way works in the modern context right um right yeah totally i mean i tried the paleo diet once
00:23:35.140and i got very aggressive i was just i was eating all meat and all bacon and i was just mad all of
00:23:43.100the time which by the way is not really the paleo diet if you wanted to do the real paleo diet you'd
00:23:48.260have to start eating a lot of bugs i really hate to break it to you okay yeah um i think those
00:23:54.180People are not quite ready to get on board with that.
00:23:56.280But like caterpillars were a mainstay.
00:30:49.640so we've been talking we've been talking a lot about the idea that really until recently
00:30:59.240women did not do it all when it came to motherhood there was help and
00:31:08.160i think we're in such a unique political situation today because this idea of full
00:31:14.300self-reliance versus the lean-in working mom. It's created this dichotomy. It is creating a very
00:31:20.360strange political situation. And you've written about this. What are you seeing? Yeah, well,
00:31:26.780so as I spoke about at the start of this podcast episode, I don't think that any of the models of
00:31:37.920motherhood that we're seeing are really natural these days. Again, the lean-in feminist,0.97
00:31:46.460full-time career working mom type who puts her children in daycare or has a full-time nanny0.93
00:31:54.060is not really particularly representative of our evolutionary past. And again, I'm not talking
00:32:00.860about this from the perspective of children and children's well-being. There's a whole debate on
00:32:05.380that. I am thinking about this from the well-being of the mother because we know that we have an
00:32:14.180epidemic of postpartum depression and psychosis, right? Yeah, we do. We do. And I think for most
00:32:23.360people, your kids are mostly going to be fine. Whether you choose to potty train at two or three
00:32:31.320does not matter you know that the conversation we should be having is about maternal mental health0.65
00:32:36.600and so yes yes yes and so so with the you know with with the careerist mom she's getting burnt0.99
00:32:47.440out because she's working nine to five and then coming back home and doing still the majority of1.00
00:32:55.960the child care and maybe she's breastfeeding and a ton of invisible domestic labor and people
00:33:04.540talking about the mental load and that's a real thing, right? And then on the other hand, you have
00:33:10.600this... And also the guilt, right? And the guilt. The guilt that you've been gone all day. So you
00:33:14.360feel like you have to be a super mom when you get home. Exactly. That you have to compensate. There's
00:33:18.940that stat everyone throws around about how working mothers actually spend more time with their
00:33:23.560children, more time playing with their children actively than stay at home mothers did in the
00:33:28.6001950s. And there's good evidence to back that up. And then on the other hand, you know, you have0.58
00:33:34.860this trad wife model and it's like stay home with the kids, the kind of 1950s housewife type thing,1.00
00:33:42.180which is also not normal because those moms are also totally burnt out because they're getting1.00
00:33:50.040no help from anyone with the exhausting, totally emotionally draining labor,1.00
00:33:58.360unpaid labor of raising children, which is also often very socially isolating. I think that
00:34:07.020there's some data to suggest that at least 40% of mothers in the modern context report feeling
00:34:13.180lonely. And that spikes to 70% for mothers who have a child with a problem. So the people who
00:34:21.680need the help and support most are the ones who are ending up the most socially isolated,
00:34:28.640just because, again, of the way we've structured things inside a single family home.
00:34:33.560And if you think about it, I mean, how hard is it to get together with your mom friends? It's
00:34:38.040almost impossible it's like somebody's nap schedule is like this and that doesn't line up
00:34:43.540with school and daycare and work hours and and so you just end up not not seeing friends ever
00:34:51.200which also contributes to the the mental health thing and so i think to get back to your original1.00
00:34:58.980question the way we see this playing out in the political sphere is that you know moms are fighting
00:35:05.740with each other over, you know, which is the better model. And a lot of this has to do with1.00
00:35:11.800what people think is best for kids. And a lot of it has to do with just like our super polarized
00:35:18.220political situation that we have right now. And I think it's silly because, you know,
00:35:25.800we all are struggling. And I think we all agree on the fact that something needs to change.
00:35:32.600and i i see arguments on both sides like i i see how the sort of traditional second wave feminist0.99
00:35:44.220mom working long hours outside the home thing is problematic in the early years of having a child1.00
00:35:51.460and i also see but i don't think the solution is to slide back to the 1950s housewife model
00:35:58.540right like i think there's something in between which is also kind of a false nostalgia because
00:36:04.360there was such a small slice of women that could actually afford to be that person truth and then
00:36:10.600there are people like my paternal grandmother who she could afford to be that person and she had1.00
00:36:17.940six kids in four years and she had a mental breakdown because she couldn't because that's
00:36:25.020a lot of kids that's a lot of kids to take care of yeah and my grandfather was very much the
00:36:30.700classic 1950s man who was never home and never helped and that was just his conditioning I'm
00:36:38.420not trying to like you know throw him under the bus no no no but I mean look that's that's what
00:36:43.880they did that's what look again culture so that that wasn't healthy for women either so instead1.00
00:36:50.960of trying to fight about feminism is good, feminism is bad, or trad wife is good, or0.89
00:36:58.960working mom is good, let's talk about the fact that we all need more support and more
00:37:05.700help and we need to seriously rework the model.
00:37:09.280And I think that the model that humans lived by for 95% of our existence as a species might
00:37:17.960still be informative in the modern context in terms of the way that we structured things,
00:37:24.440because it was clearly a healthy way of living. I mean, the mental health of hunter-gatherers is
00:37:32.240a very understudied thing, but we have never observed, anthropologists have never observed
00:37:40.640any kind of pathological or visibly pathological postpartum depression or psychosis in a hunter-gatherer
00:37:49.900society. I think it's interesting some of the research on how that intersects with social
00:37:56.980media also. And the more time we spend on our phones, the less time we spend with real people.
00:38:03.740And that is clearly contributing to the mental health epidemic, especially among teens.
00:38:09.960These things are all interconnected. And we know that for the vast majority of our existence as a species, we lived in groups of 25, 30 people. And there was no such thing as a single family home.
00:38:32.460Everyone lived outdoors together. It was inherently social. You didn't have to put in effort to schedule time, you know, three weeks out with your mom friend just in order to be able to socialize. It was just part of life every day that you were constantly with people, people who you were close with.
00:38:53.580And, you know, sometimes things could get contentious. And I think that, you know, part of the reason we've shifted away from that model of living is that people just don't want to deal with conflict anymore. And we'd rather just have privacy. We value privacy more than we value being with people. But it's not good for us.
00:39:15.300it's it's not good for us it's not good for us it's not healthy we have one last question for
00:39:22.820you um i want to talk about the role of fathers yeah in in hunter-gatherer societies what have
00:39:30.780what have you seen there okay so this is a tricky one um it is highly variable between societies
00:39:40.500I think it's safe to say that, in general, fathers play a much more active role in the care of children than they did, say, in 1950s America.
00:39:55.520Hadza fathers, for example, have been observed to be the ones cradling singing to babies in the dead of the night to get them back to sleep.
00:40:05.380um there's also interesting evidence from ita society where um or sorry from interesting
00:40:16.460evidence from aka society where fathers are highly involved in the care of children spend
00:40:23.580i don't know i can't remember the exact statistic but something like 40 percent
00:40:27.780of their waking hours caring for children. But the other thing that I think is important to
00:40:35.580acknowledge is that in the early years of a child's life or a baby's life, depending on where
00:40:44.260you draw that cutoff, really in the first two or three years, which is typically when children are
00:40:50.340weaned in hunter-gatherer societies, they still spend a lot more time with mom. And that is just
00:40:57.180because of breastfeeding. And that's also why society is structured. In hunter-gatherer societies,0.99
00:41:07.520there's this very gendered divide between men hunting and women gathering. And that's not to
00:41:14.460say that women don't also sometimes hunt in some societies and men do gather, but the traditional
00:41:22.140roles in most of these societies are for men to hunt and women to gather. And that's simply because0.87
00:41:28.460most women have at least one young child in their care for most of their adult life. And1.00
00:41:36.400breastfeeding is a matter of life and death. So they have to do work that is compatible with1.00
00:41:44.220breastfeeding. And hunting generally isn't, whereas gathering is. Mothers actually bring in
00:41:50.700the majority of the calories for the family. But they're able to do that work while carrying1.00
00:41:58.960and breastfeeding young children. And then as children get older, they spend more and more time
00:42:04.760in these multi-age playgroups once they're weaned. So mothers don't actually, like there is an
00:42:12.900evolutionary precedent for daycare starting at age three, right? Where-
00:42:18.020Oh, that's interesting. Talk to me about these multi-age groups.
00:42:21.060Oh, yeah. This is another one of my favorite topics. So once a child is weaned in hunter-gatherer
00:42:26.740society, usually, again, around age two or three, they will start spending more and more time in
00:42:34.880these multi-age playgroups, which are composed of usually about six to eight kids. And they just
00:42:43.900roam the savannah and play together with virtually no adult supervision so the older children will
00:42:51.720provide some level of informal supervision and care for the younger children and there's usually
00:42:58.840at least one adult within shouting distance in the camp but typically most of the adults
00:43:04.820including the moms are off foraging for the day and they're not taking care of the kids and the
00:43:11.220kids are an autonomous unit. They self-entertain. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of
00:43:18.640taking your kids, like, to a public park, and they find another group of kids, and they're
00:43:22.860just gone, you know? They're just gone. They're gone. Please. I have the experience of my kids
00:43:28.040just being gone all the time, okay? I mean, we really, I love a pack. Yeah, me too. Okay? I love
00:43:34.680a multi a multi-age pack you send that pack off and i'm within shouting distance right and usually
00:43:41.240within like eye contact distance but that pack they they take care of each other they take care
00:43:46.680of each other and they have so much fun and it relieves so much pressure on you as a mother
00:43:51.120because you are not the playmate and the one that has to do all of the entertaining i mean i've had
00:43:57.660this experience with my kids where they find a pack at the park and i can just sit and read a
00:44:02.940book and i'm like oh yeah this is how it was supposed to be this is how it was this is how
00:44:08.420it's supposed to be right this is how you get that that leisure time a hundred percent i'm not
00:44:13.260a playground mom i hate playgrounds and so and i've said this many times like i try i avoid
00:44:19.300taking the children to playgrounds because when i'm there they want me to do things with them on
00:44:23.700the playground and like the last thing that my body wants is to climb a freaking jungle gym
00:44:29.000okay no no no no because i also i love i love love love spending time with my kids and
00:44:37.320but i but i really like to do it on my terms like i i love doing a craft i love doing a project
00:44:44.100tonight for my daughter's fifth birthday we're taking her out to sushi and we're getting our
00:44:49.240nails done okay love love love that one-on-one time yeah i'm not a sit on the floor and play
00:44:56.300imaginary games with your dolls mom okay i don't do it i just don't do it i'm like find a friend
00:45:02.040or do it on your own i did it on my own i'm good now right so like i'm not going to be your number
00:45:07.500one playmate i'll be your mom yeah but i don't think it's normal for parents to sit around and
00:45:14.900be their child's only play no and by normal i mean like i don't think it's there's any historical
00:45:19.540precedent this seems brand new yeah absolutely and even in the context of the single family home
00:45:25.340I do think that mothers, if it's right for them and if they want it, can, without guilt, train their kids to play more autonomously.
00:45:55.040I mean, and I know it doesn't, I don't want to shame moms who, for whom this doesn't work. But the thing that I've noticed is that when we first started, it was really hard. But gradually, I just kept telling her, sorry, mommy's working right now. Mommy has work to do, you know, and then directing her back to her toys and her games and activities.
00:46:17.640and i've noticed a really significant improvement in her ability to play autonomously and she's
00:46:25.640she's happy i'm happy you know i think again we we get guilted into feeling like we have to sit
00:46:34.300on the floor and play dolls but that's never how it used to work no no no no no it really it really
00:46:42.320isn't. It really isn't. You know, on your sub stack, you mentioned an article that I really
00:46:48.180liked to the one in the Atlantic about the decline of teenage babysitting, which is crazy.
00:46:55.400I mean, I remember growing up and, you know, in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where as soon as
00:47:02.660I was able, I was being used as a mother's helper. Right. And then and then a babysitter.
00:47:08.180and this has so much to do with how you know over scheduled teenagers are too but i love a
00:47:16.280mother's health yes okay like as soon like we've we've got a lot of nine-year-olds uh in our
00:47:22.420friend group in our neighborhood nine to like 12ers and i don't like i'm not leaving right
00:47:29.640but like if i that i pay them at events and family parties to just chase the toddler amazing that's
00:47:37.860all I want them to do. I'm like, here is $5 an hour. Go chase a toddler for me. I don't want to
00:47:44.740run around the park or the party chasing this toddler. I want someone to help me with that.
00:47:50.020I love it. And here's the thing that I think is so interesting about the research on this
00:47:54.380in hunter-gatherer societies is that, so in the West, we kind of tend to pathologize that like,
00:48:00.860oh, it's parentification or whatever. And I'm not saying that parentification isn't a real thing in
00:48:05.380some extreme cases. But what we know from hunter-gatherer studies is that kids in these
00:48:12.240playgroups, the informal care that they provide for the younger children is fun for them because
00:48:19.480developmentally, they're still in a phase where they want to play, you know, like their brain is
00:48:27.660still wiring up the same way that the younger children's are also. And so engaging in that
00:48:34.780kind of play with younger children is not draining for them the way that it is for an
00:48:39.780adult. So they can provide this service for us in a way that is much less costly to them.
00:48:47.440And that's really how human society operated for, you know, most of our existence. But we've lost
00:48:55.340that today. We've lost that today. We really have. And you've also talked a lot about how
00:49:02.500parenting is learned, not necessarily an instinct. And I think that we learn a lot by being a
00:49:09.660mother's helper, by being a babysitter, by watching parents do the work of parenting.
00:49:15.640Yeah. I had hardly any experience with kids before I had my first baby.
00:49:25.880Yeah. And a lot of that is just because, you know, at Stanford, I remember choosing between a pretty good babysitting gig and being a research assistant. And I was like, being a research assistant pays more and it's better for my resume. So I'm going to do that. And honestly, I wish I had chosen the babysitting because, you know, my resume was fine. And I wish I had more hands on experience with kids before I had my own.
00:49:51.200because the parenting books will only take you so far if you don't have experience if you haven't
00:49:57.820seen what it's like before getting into it yourself to really care for a baby or care for
00:50:05.100young children you're you're in for a surprise you're in for a surprise I don't think I knew
00:50:12.700how to change I don't think I'd ever changed a diaper because I babysat but I babysat for bigger
00:50:16.000kids. So I had never changed a diaper before my own babies. Yeah. Yeah. Me neither. I remember
00:50:21.480lying awake at night when I was pregnant with my son being like, how do you tell when there's pee
00:50:27.060in it? How am I going to know? How am I going to know? How am I going to know? Turns out you know.
00:50:32.120Turns out that was really not the thing that I should have been staying awake worrying about.
00:50:37.520But it just goes to show you how little I knew about what it was like. And then the difference,
00:50:42.400Yeah, the difference of changing a diaper with a penis and then with a vagina because I had a penis first.1.00