00:00:00.000Hey all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:11.900One of the things that I talk about a lot with my friends is that the childhoods that we are
00:00:17.940giving our kids today are like real different from the way that we were raised. In a lot of
00:00:25.360ways. I mean, I definitely never had a water bottle attached to my body at all times. And in
00:00:34.560fact, I was sent out of the house to go play until it got dark, really. I mean, I could say it was
00:00:40.580until dinnertime, but like they just threw a TV dinner at me when I came home and we ate that0.99
00:00:46.420shit in front of the actual TV. And so I was just running around the neighborhood most days after0.99
00:00:53.780school, and my only source of hydration was someone's garden hose. Like, some random house
00:01:02.020had their garden hose out, and you'd just, like, go take a slurp. No one was giving me water
00:01:08.420bottles. Nope. Nope. I mean, I was probably very dehydrated for most of my childhood, to be honest.
00:01:15.320But that is just a small, small thing. I mean, I didn't start real organized sports until middle
00:01:23.120school. And even then it was like, what do you want to try? Do you want to try some basketball
00:01:26.780and see if you like it? Or some field hockey? Just why don't you dabble? Why don't you dabble
00:01:31.080and see what you enjoy? And now, now, most parents that I know are signing their kids up for like
00:01:37.480travel sports at the age of six. And it takes up our entire weekends. And we feel like kids have to
00:01:45.360absolutely freaking excel at everything from day one. And it's not good. It's not good for
00:01:54.240parents. We're all burnt out. It's not good for kids. It's a different world than when I was
00:02:01.980raised. And I often say that I want to try to find a happy medium. Do I think it was necessarily
00:02:10.560great for all the moms to always just be drinking all the wine coolers and smoking, smoking all0.99
00:02:17.540their cigarettes in the station wagon while none of us wore seatbelts. Probably not the best.1.00
00:02:24.260But what's happening now isn't great either. So what is the middle? That's what, that's what I
00:02:30.500always want to find. I want to find the middle. And there is this book that I love by Jennifer
00:02:35.580Wallace that has been teaching me so much about how to find that middle. The book is called
00:02:42.960Never Enough, and it's really the definitive book on the rise of toxic achievement culture
00:02:50.100and how it's taken over our kids' lives and our lives and how we can build a framework
00:02:56.220to fight back against that. Because family incomes and schedules are stretched to the
00:03:03.340breaking point right now. And we're all looking for a better way. We're all looking for a better
00:03:09.280way. Jennifer did more than 6,000 interviews with parents. And she did this as a way to figure out
00:03:16.840how to parent her own kids through the toxic achievement culture. And she's just a delight,
00:03:22.420delight to talk to. I also, you're going to get to hear her adorable 60 minutes meet cute with
00:03:27.560her husband, which is just a joy to listen to. It very nearly rivals my Galapagos meet cute with
00:03:34.860Nicaster. Just saying. Here's Jennifer. Hi. Hi, Joe. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited to1.00
00:03:47.120have you here. So one of the things that we have been doing lately is before we dive into you and
00:03:52.760your book and all the things is I like it when people introduce themselves by telling me things
00:03:57.660that they don't do for work. Like, who are you? Who are you without the money making things?
00:04:03.360Oh, my gosh, that is a really good question. My so you're asking for how do I identify outside of
00:04:09.160sort of the workplace? Yeah, I would say that I am a parent of three teenagers. I would say that I
00:04:17.480am a New Yorker and have been for 30 years. But New York has always been my spiritual place since
00:04:27.320I was four years old, making my first visits to New York City. I knew I wanted to live here.
00:04:33.340So that's a huge part of my identity. Walking through Central Park with my dear friends,
00:04:38.500I would say friendship is high up on that list of things that I identify with. I love reading
00:04:45.320nonfiction books. I love drinking too much coffee. I also enjoy drinking too much coffee.
00:04:54.200Yeah, I love it. I don't know that the people around me love it so much, especially in the
00:04:59.560morning before nine. But I'd also say that travel is a huge part of my life and has been
00:05:08.860ever since I met my husband 25 years ago. Oh my gosh. Where did you guys meet?
00:05:14.100we met on a blind date uh i was working at 60 minutes um for morley safer back then
00:05:22.040the correspondents had their own little teams um many production companies um and i had a windowless
00:05:31.640interior office tiny almost like a closet and i looked like that's what they looked like and i
00:05:38.440looked out directly into Mike Wallace's office and his I would look past him through the view
00:05:44.600of the river and the you know just pretending I actually had a window and for years he said I
00:05:51.160want to introduce you to my grandson Peter and for years I said I'm good I have a boyfriend I'm
00:05:57.840great and then my boyfriend and I broke up Mike found out came into my office and said one day
00:06:05.500I'll chaperone. So anyway, that was almost 25. I love that story. That is truly excellent.
00:06:13.240Yeah. And go Mike Wallace. Okay. I love your book. I think so much about the things that you write
00:06:20.660in it. And we, on this show, we focus a lot on how social media is impacting all of us. And,
00:06:29.580And one of the things that I think that it's doing is pushing a toxic achievement culture that's overtaking not just our children's lives, but parents' lives.
00:20:15.400So we need to protect that relationship as much as we can.
00:20:19.760And one of the ways we can do that is by getting curious,
00:20:23.780not furious about our kids' social media use.
00:20:28.320It doesn't mean abandoning all standards.
00:20:30.560We can have and we should have structures and barriers around it, teaching our kids how to have a healthy tech life, just like we teach them how to have a healthy life in real life, teaching them balance, which is also something that leads into what I discuss in the book,
00:20:54.080which is what parents can do to help their kids become healthy achievers for life.
00:21:02.720And one of the things, a big part of my book, so in the beginning of the book, I talk about
00:21:07.800sort of just a bit about the roots of our toxic achievement culture. But to be clear,
00:21:13.900this book is not anti-achievement. I am a high achiever. My husband's a high achiever.
00:21:18.860I get lots of enjoyment in my achievements, in my positive, what I hope is a positive impact
00:21:26.100on the world. And I want that for my kids. So for the book, I went in search of the kids who
00:21:32.060were doing well. Despite the pressure, I wanted to know what they had in common. What was home
00:21:38.180life like? What were their relationships like with their peers? What was their relationship like
00:21:42.940with their parents, with their school communities, wider communities. And I get into it at length in
00:21:49.540the book, but it boiled down to this. The kids who were doing well despite the pressure
00:21:53.800felt like they mattered for who they were deep at their core, away from their achievements and
00:22:01.940successes. The kids I met who were struggling the most felt like their worth, their mattering,
00:22:09.000was contingent on their performance, on how they looked, on the amount of social media followers
00:22:15.500they had, on their weight. What mattering does when our kids know that they matter for who they
00:22:22.960are deep inside, that it's not reliant on external markers, what I found is that it gave these kids
00:22:29.880kind of healthy motivational fuel to reach for high goals. Because what they knew and what they
00:22:36.840believed was that failures and setbacks were temporary. They were not an indictment of their
00:22:43.600worth. These healthy strivers that I met, yes, they got cut from teams. They got rejected. They
00:22:49.340weren't invited to Friday night parties. They didn't get into their quote unquote first choice
00:22:52.920school. But these setbacks were temporary. They had the tools to cope with them. They had the
00:23:00.120mindset to believe that they were more than their external achievements. And so mattering acted like
00:23:06.180a kind of protective shield, a buoy that would lift them up. So, you know, we talked in the
00:23:12.560beginning of our conversation about what we want most for our kids. You said you wanted them to be
00:23:20.620happy. I certainly want that for my kids. But since researching the book, I actually want
00:23:26.720something more than happiness. Because what I have found through the research and through my
00:23:32.680interviews, and really reflecting on my own life, is that happiness is a byproduct of mattering,
00:23:41.740of feeling valued by the people around you, and being dependent on and having the opportunity
00:23:48.780to add value to others. So what I want my kids to know is how to matter, how to surround themselves
00:23:56.960again with people who, who recognize their worth, how they themselves can recognize their
00:24:03.660unconditional worth, but also how they can get that social proof that they are worthy by doing
00:24:10.420positive things in the world, by locating genuine needs in their communities and using what they're
00:24:16.840good at, using their strengths to meet those needs. So that to me, mattering is really the
00:24:22.820protective shield that I want to put on my kids so that they can have that to carry them through
00:24:27.880life when I'm no longer around to guide them. And I think that's so beautiful. Let's take one
00:24:35.080more quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk about mattering. Your new book is going
00:24:39.220to be about mattering. And I want to talk about why mattering matters.
00:24:52.820okay we're back you you just said something that you know at its root is simple but it's
00:25:04.980also complicated and i think you know especially right now the the world of careers and work
00:25:12.700is so tumultuous and we all want purpose we all want to feel like we matter um how
00:25:19.780how can we model this for our children? Because I think that is, that is, that's something I'm,
00:25:26.060I'm learning too. Again, compared to you, I'm such a newbie at this parenting thing. My oldest is
00:25:30.980seven, but you know, what I'm learning is that what I do matters so much as they, because they
00:25:36.880watch me. And, you know, showing that I love what I do, showing the purpose in what I do is something
00:25:42.540I'm trying to do. So how do we model mattering for our kids? Oh, I love this question. So yes,
00:25:49.540it is about modeling, but I'm going to go even one step further. What decades worth of resilience
00:25:56.320point to is that the best thing we can do to help our kids' resilience, to keep them resilient,
00:26:03.480to help them when they were struggling or when they will struggle, is to make sure as their
00:26:09.340primary caregivers that our social network, our mattering, our mental health is intact because
00:26:17.900our children's resilience rests fundamentally on the resilience of the adults in their lives,
00:26:25.180particularly their primary caregivers. And our adult resilience rests fundamentally on the depth
00:26:32.960and support of our relationships. So what I heard over and over again in my interviews with parents
00:26:39.120for this first book, and actually for my second book, was it wasn't that they didn't have friends.
00:26:46.180They had friends, but what they often didn't have was the time or the emotional bandwidth
00:26:52.300to invest in those friendships so that they could be sources of support when needed.
00:26:58.000We are often told as parents to put on our oxygen mask on first, but what I'm saying
00:27:06.720I am saying have one or two or three people in your life who know you intimately, who
00:27:14.180you can open up to, who you can feel supported by, who can see when you are struggling and gasping
00:27:21.740for air, and who will reach over and put the oxygen mask on for you. That is a very different
00:27:29.860level of support than we normalize in today's hyper-individualistic, busy culture. So I wanted
00:27:38.440to know from the researchers, what did these relationships look like? Like, is it about going
00:27:44.620on a mom's night out once a week? Is it, could it be with your significant other? So one, it's
00:27:53.220different than mom's nights out, which do give us a sense of belonging and connection. We cannot rely
00:27:59.160on our partners because those relationships are already overtaxed being, you know, as we have to
00:28:06.880be these one family villages. Oh my gosh. Yes. I preach against this all the time. Right. So what
00:28:13.940do these relationships look like? It looks like, so this is research out of the Mayo Clinic of busy
00:28:19.560physician mothers and nurse practitioners and nurses, and it's since been replicated.
00:28:23.440These relationships look like one or two or three people who you set aside intentional time with
00:28:33.240each week for one hour where you can open up and they can open up. These aren't therapy sessions,
00:28:40.920right? These are, therapy is great, but we pay our therapists. What these relationships do is
00:28:48.260they offer the social proof that we are worthy of support. And so it's just carving one hour
00:28:56.400of intentional time. You could do this on a walk with friends. You could do this virtually. You
00:29:02.220could do it at a mom's night out as long as these are relationships that you can be vulnerable with
00:29:08.640and they can in response be vulnerable with you. So it's really about deep, nourishing
00:29:15.560relationships. So that, I would say, is the first thing we need to do to model resilience and
00:29:22.240mattering for our kids. And don't hide this. When I was a young mother, I used to hide going out
00:29:27.120with my friends, pretending I had to work, but I don't anymore. Now I broadcast it. I say to my
00:29:32.960kids, mom's going out with her friends. Here's why I do it because I need the support and they need
00:29:38.700the support. It's, it's actually something I, there's a motto I adopted in my house that
00:29:43.660I got from the psychiatrist, Nen Hallowell, and it's never worry alone. So I have found that if
00:29:52.740I never worry alone, that boy, am I so much more resilient. And I want that for my kids. I think
00:30:00.100if we as a society could really adopt the idea to never worry alone, I think we would really
00:30:06.960combat the mental health distress that we are seeing in our youth, but also in the adults in
00:30:13.260their lives. When it comes to modeling, I agree. I think it's not enough to model. I think we have
00:30:21.720to be explicit about how, you know, in words, where we feel a sense of purpose, why we do what
00:30:30.620we do. You know, I've started adopting the Jesuit motto, not better than others, but better for
00:30:39.160others, that, you know, why do my kids need to learn how to read and write? Why do they need to
00:30:47.300know how to be good public speakers, because one day there are going to be people in their lives
00:30:53.380who are going to need their help, who are going to need their voice to help lift up their own.
00:31:00.860So, you know, I'm explicit. I volunteer with the Coalition for the Homeless here in New York,
00:31:04.980and I say to my kids, I use my voice to help uplift their voices, which are currently feeling
00:31:12.940silenced in our society. So it's not, it's not being better and achieving for our own
00:31:21.160resume. It's beyond that. It's so that we can make positive impact on the world and be better for
00:31:28.860others. I love all of this. I feel, I feel, I feel very, very inspired. I mean, I was just writing
00:31:37.380things down on my sticky notes and pasting them all over the room. I do think that there is
00:31:47.180actually a lot of hope right now among my parent friends. The Surgeon General's morning was a big
00:31:53.960wake-up call, but there's things we can do. There are things we can do, and we can make choices.
00:32:02.160We can choose our own path. And, you know, we preach on this show all the time about the importance of the village. And we were never meant to live, you know, in these intensely, intensely nuclear family centric worlds. And so I'm actually optimistic. I'm not optimistic about a lot of things in the world. But this, this I am.
00:32:23.480Here's why I'm optimistic. One, we are having this conversation here in the U.S. We are de-stigmatizing the loneliness, the burnout that modern parents are feeling. Workplaces are waking up to the fact that people want to feel like they matter in the office, where they're not going to come in, where they're going to quiet quit.
00:32:45.080So I think as a, you know, it's going to be a multi-pronged approach.
00:32:49.800We need, so we need government structural supports.
00:32:53.300We need workplaces to realize that their employees are humans and not machines.
00:33:00.760They need to be treated like they matter.
00:33:03.040They need to be recognized and appreciated and given a good wage, a living wage to be
00:33:08.400able to live in the world today, this ever-increasing expensive world.
00:33:13.200I also think that parents are now starting to open up with each other, talking about this feeling of loneliness that parenting can feel like.
00:33:24.740So the first step, I think, is raising awareness.
00:33:28.140The second step is knowing that it does not require a huge shift in our lives.
00:33:34.220So I literally mark out one hour a week of time with my closest friends.
00:33:41.520And I just now, in the past week, reached out to my college friends.
00:35:03.460And I've been so just like you, I've been so explicit with my kids lately about I'm like, oh, this is what I'm doing.
00:35:10.100Or, you know, instead of being like, oh, you know, I'm traveling for work.
00:35:13.660I'm like, oh, no, I'm going going away for a weekend with with Glynis because that is what friends do.
00:35:19.780And and you need to spend you need to nurture these relationships.
00:35:23.940And yeah, it's just it's so it's so important.
00:35:27.140And I think that is really the crux of putting our oxygen mask on first.
00:35:31.560It's not necessarily the find a great therapist. Right. But it's which is also important. Love the therapy. But also, you know, the things that I think for the past decade or so have been discounted as frivolous, perhaps, I think actually matter so much more than the other things.
00:35:48.180I agree. I think, you know, part of where we've gone astray is the multi-billion dollar wellness industry that is trying to sell us resilience by light this candle, take this bubble bath, get a massage, download this app and you'll be resilient.
00:36:06.220those are wonderful stress reducers, but they will not give us the resilience we need to be
00:36:12.380the first responders day in and day out of our kids' lives. The only thing that does that is
00:36:18.140relationships, that social support, that social proof that we are worthy of support.
00:36:25.500Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, I want everyone, when does your new book come out?
00:36:32.420so the new book is due in april so it will come out the spring of 2026 that's a 26 yeah and what
00:36:41.940the reason i wrote the book is with the first book i was hearing from parents that not only did their
00:36:47.520kids not feel like they mattered or that their mattering was contingent on external markers of
00:36:53.420success but that there was were too that they were going to offices for 8 10 12 hours a day
00:36:59.140Whether they were doctors in major hospitals, corporate lawyers, teachers, therapists, first responders, they were feeling like hogs in a wheel, that they could be replaced at any time, that they could be laid off at any time, that they were not known individually.
00:37:15.620And so how do you, after 12 hours, 10 hours a day in these places that make you feel like you don't matter, how can you show up for your kids?0.69
00:37:26.620So this book, it's not just for parents, it's for it's for our, you know, people who have retired, people who's, you know, where their sense of mattering in the office, you know, they feel a bit lost or aging or going through a chronic illness or, you know, being a lonely parent, all of these or being a college student.
00:37:50.780You know, there are all of these areas in our lives, these life transitions that can really
00:37:55.060disrupt our sense of mattering. So how to unlock mattering in ourselves and how to unlock it in
00:38:00.720the people around us. That's what this next book is about. This is very exciting. I don't want to
00:38:06.240wait so long for it. I don't. I don't either. I want to publish already. I don't want to finish.
00:38:12.020I know. I know. I know. But publishing, publishing is not a fast, it's not a fast industry. But for
00:38:19.660now everyone can order never enough and they should order never enough it's such a great read
00:38:25.100um for not just parents but for for people who support parents uh for you know that the whole
00:38:32.700ecosystem of you know teachers administrators child-free friends my my girlfriend glenis
00:38:39.760just wrote this great op-ed for the times about um you know she doesn't she's raising a bunch of0.90
00:38:46.260quote-unquote raising a bunch of kids and none of them are hers. She's child-free by choice. She's
00:38:50.400a 50-year-old woman. And yet she has such a presence in all of these children's lives. And
00:38:55.280so I don't think this is just a book for parents. It's a book for humans.
00:38:59.860It is. And it's also so many single, young single women talk to me about how it helped0.99
00:39:05.080them reparent themselves. Yes. Yes. I mean, because I think the young single women,1.00
00:39:42.100And so, yeah, the more that we talk about this with all of the people and with, you know, so much, I do often feel like men get ignored in a lot of these situations, sometimes by choice, but not often.
00:39:54.360My husband's like, a lot of things are written for me.