December 1, 2022 • 39 mins
Whether you are a parent, know one, or have been paying any attention at all, you’ll know that the pandemic was a breaking point for caregivers and mothers in particular. “Moms are the shock absorbers of society,” says New York Times journalist Jessica Grose. “Everyone realized that when things fell apart, moms were just expected to be there to pick up the pieces.” Well, moms have had enough. But are our policies, workplaces, and cultural norms progressing fast enough to give modern mothers — and fathers — the support they need? On this two-part episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie explores the impossibilities of modern parenthood with two experts who have been living it and writing about it: journalist Jessica Grose and clinical psychologist (and “millennial parenting whisper”) Dr. Becky Kennedy. Jessica’s new book, “Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood,” which is out Dec. 6, dismantles 200 years of unrealistic parenting expectations to empower all those who might be struggling out there. Jessica and Katie talk about that historical context, as well as solutions that are already being put into place, and how and where moms are finding reprieve. Finally, Dr. Becky talks about creating a safe space for parents to seek advice, support, and feel seen.
Find out more:
- Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood, by Jessica Grose
- Jessica Grose on parenting at the New York Times
- Good Inside: The Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, by Dr. Becky Kennedy
- Good Inside, Dr. Becky Kennedy’s membership-based parenting community
- Reshma Saujani on why there’s no better time to redesign the workplace for women [Next Question with Katie Couric]
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Correct and this is next question.
Attention all parents out there, Whether you're one, you know
a parent, or whether you've been paying any attention at all,
you probably know that the pandemic was a breaking point
for parents, and mothers in particular. Mothers are the shock
(00:22):
absorbers of society, and everyone realized that when things fell apart,
moms were just expected to be there to pick up
the pieces, and if they ever complained about it, the
response was, well, you decided to have kids, so stuck
it up. Jessica Gross is a New York Times opinion
writer and creator of the New York Times Parenting newsletter.
(00:44):
She says, the pandemic exposed to reality. Mothers have been
living with for ages. Mothers have been talking about how
difficult it is, and especially in the United States, where
we don't have things like paid sickly of universal health care.
Mothers have been talking about this, if only amongst themselves,
(01:04):
for hundreds of years. The problem is that no one
has been listening to them. Today, we're exploring moms at
a breaking point with two experts who have been living
with it and writing about it. Our first Jessica Gross,
whose new book screaming on the inside. The unsustainability of
American motherhood dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations
(01:29):
to empower all of you who might be struggling out there.
You to kind of analyze motherhood from an historic and
a cultural and a government policy perspective. But I'm fascinated
by the cultural implications and how culture has shaped our
(01:51):
perceptions of motherhood. And I know that's an area of
huge interest to you too that you deal with in
the book, and one I guess one of the primary
anti hagonists of this story is the quote unquote ideal mother. Yes,
and and really the motherhood myth. So first, before we
talk about today's ideal mother, how this came about and
(02:14):
the letters that you read, I'm so interested from a
historic perspective, how this came to be and has evolved
in it into its current iteration. So, I mean, this
is going to be a very truncated version of the history.
But basically, in early colonial America, mothers and fathers were
both deeply involved in raising children. I mean everything was
(02:38):
in the home. There wasn't a lot of activity outside
the home period for anyone they lived in rural America.
And again this is a vast oversimplification, so okay, we'll
bear with you. Yes, as industrialization happened, there became this
divide where there was a domestic sphere in the public sphere,
and the public sphere was only for men and and
(02:59):
the dome stick spear was for women. And so as
that happened, let's say that's happening in the eighteen hundreds,
the Victorian era um, the idea of what a mother
should be and the domestic role um became sort of crystallized,
and a lot of those ideas still are still with
us today in terms of mother's main role in life
(03:23):
and only role was to think of her children and herself,
her desires. Her mind just had to be completely subsumed
to whatever um that was best for the child. And
of course, this woman who was supposed to stay home
with the children was always white, and was always Christian,
and it was many of the sort of cultural mores
and and laws that rose up at that time were
(03:44):
either implicitly or explicitly anti immigrant, anti black um. And
so as time sort of progressed, you know, women said,
I don't like this role. I want to do more
than stay at home with my children more and and
more and more. Women being educated was a big part
of this, so women getting higher education, women going into college,
(04:06):
and so as the twentieth century donned, um, you saw
lots of pushback from all quarters about you know, home
being the only place for a woman. Um. However, instead
of those responsibilities becoming less emphasized for women, we just
piled more responsibilities on top of it. So it's saying like, well,
(04:29):
you can work, but of course don't let anything drop
at home ever. And also, you know, social media is
sort of what is really new about the twenty one century,
and so women feel a lot of pressure to not
only be perfect in all ways and so be the
ideal work at work and be the ideal mother at home,
but to also perform this publicly for an audience of
(04:54):
either friends or the public. And we see other people
who are influencers performing this sort of perfect motherhood, and
that sort of makes it even I think a little
bit more insidious, because we're seeing these images, unrealistic images constantly,
and even if I think most of us at this
point know that they're not realistic, and yet they still
worm into our brains. Um. And so yeah, it's just
(05:17):
a pile instead of saying, okay, if mothers are doing
other things besides mothering, you know other people, their spouses,
their family members, their friends, you know people that they're
paying money to caregive who should be paid more money
than they are. You know, it should be a group endeavor,
but no, it is still this individualistic mothers should be
(05:39):
able to do it all. Well, let's talk about mothers today.
You're forty. You had some positive role models, not only
in your own mother but in terms of culture and
the shows, and you know, the idea that women could work.
But but where did that leave you in terms of
your current parents and teen roles? Because you said in
(06:02):
the book, you open with the line, I failed at
ideal motherhood before I even had a child. Yeah. So
I like to joke that I leaned into a toilet.
Um so because I had hyper amesis with my older daughter,
which is extreme morning sickness. So I think the technical
definition is that you lose lose five percent of your
body weight. Um. I was extremely sick and I got
(06:25):
very very depressed and anxious. Um. I don't know if
it was because I was not holding down any food
or it was because I went off antidepressants to conceive.
It was just I was a mess. It was a mess.
I had taken a brand new job and I it
was the first bigger management role UM. And I had
done so because I knew I wanted to have children
and I didn't UM. I wanted to be sort of
(06:47):
set up um when I had kids that I was
already sort of further along in my career. And I
didn't realize that I was already pregnant when I started
that job, UM, because you know, best laid plans UM.
And I ended up quitting that job because I realized
that short term disability would pay me so little that
(07:07):
it just was not worth it. And I had to
put my own health first. And I basically stayed in
bed for four months UM after I quit that job
because I just I couldn't be far from a bathroom.
And I know that's so crass, but it is the
truth of of how it was for me. UM. And
so you know, I did everything quote unquote right. You know,
(07:29):
I was married, I had no debt, I was I
got pregnant twenty nine because I was so nervous about um.
You know, oh you know your feeliship for atility declines
as you get into your thirties, you bet you better
get on it. And it's still the way our system
is set up. There was no room for me to
have a difficult pregnancy and continue to work. And so
you know, I had already been reporting on the inadequacies
(07:53):
of policy for American families, but really living through it,
uh taught me that lessons so deeply and so UM.
I think that was the low point in a lot
of ways. Um And in some ways, I not to
be pollyannish about it, but I think it was good
for me to have that experience, only because it made
(08:13):
me more confident in my own instincts and intuition and
to say, these ideals are crazy and they clearly are
not working for most people, and to be able to
sort of, um, do what I thought was right for
my family and my kids, rather than what seemed to
be the best or you know, the most ideal or
(08:34):
the most most performative. Because it sounds as if just
as we got to a point where we were understanding
or getting a better understanding of the pressures and complications
of motherhood of trying to quote unquote have it all,
social media came in and really set us back in
(08:55):
a lot of ways. You mentioned about sort of mom
influencer person all that jazz I was surprised how big
a role mormon Ism played in that or is playing
in that. Can you describe to our listeners how Mormon
moms have kind of taken over the internet and what
their impact has been. There is a sort of terminology for, uh,
(09:20):
the way that Mormon moms have sort of cornered the
market on momfluencing, and it's called the blogger knackle, which
I did not come up with, but I think is
a very apt term. UM. And it is um. And
again it's you know, like every religion and every UH faith,
there are many people who believe many different things within
(09:43):
that faith. So we're just talking about sort of a
certain subset subset UM. And so there's an emphasis on
record keeping, and there is an emphasis on making things
UM look a certain way. And so there was and
there's obviously an emphasis on traditional marriage and the nuclear
(10:04):
family UM. And so there was sort of already an
infrastructure in place for Mormon moms too display their lives
in a way that was very attractive UM to viewers
and to show what was beautiful and exciting and lovely
about motherhood. And I love looking at what they produced.
(10:28):
It is beautiful, it is there. They make it look
so effortless and lovely, and so I you know, again,
I think that the Internet is big and there is
room for every kind of mother But that ended up
being the vision of motherhood that was very appealing to
advertisers because advertisers don't want anything that is controversial for
(10:50):
you know, rock the boat in any way, and it
is very It is much easier to sell a grinning,
beautiful young mom with her beautiful all children who are
all dressed matching in a matching way against the backdrop
of beautiful mountains. That is an image that is easier
to sell than an exhausted, you know, spit up covered
(11:13):
disaster like sinking into a couch, which is how most
of us feel in the early motherhood days. And so
you know, it sort of becomes the self perpetuating thing
where it's like, if that's what the algorithm supports, that's
who's doing sponsored posts. I also you heard from um
folks who had become influencers that if they live in
(11:38):
very conservative communities, it's a way for them to work
in a way that's acceptable, and to have sort of
a public voice in a way that so interesting. Yeah,
that's you know again, I have only support for anyone
living their motherhood how they want to live it. However,
it is just not how many of us experience set
(12:00):
and I think it puts a pressure on UM, on
folks who don't conform to that very narrow vision UM
to feel less than There was a moment, I want
to say, before Instagram got really huge, when blogging was
still the primary mode of motherhood expression, where there it
(12:25):
did feel like a more realistic vision that was more
diverse might be the kind of transcendent form of motherhood
that we saw on the Internet, and then Instagram, which
is so image heavy. It is not words heavy, it
is image heavy. When that became the dominant mode, and
the way that people could make money writing being mother's
(12:49):
basically that just went out the window because it was
so visual, and so if you did not conform to
a certain visual appearance, if your house was not perfect,
if your children were not effect you aren't going to
get that advertising money. So blocking was in a weird
way more helpful to moms because it did open the
door to talking about some of these issues. I wrote
(13:10):
my memoir about a year ago, and I talked about
the fact that that I had sort of postpartum depression
or this form of postpartum I was worried that I
was going to hurt my baby, and it was so
I was so riddled with shame. I couldn't talk to
anyone about it. It was really scary. And we I
wrote in my book about the fact that that these
(13:32):
mommy blogs kind of open the floodgates where women could
talk about these things openly in a supportive community. And
it sounds like Instagram and sort of current social uh
media is is less a healthy environment for that and
one where there's more judgment. But I but I do
see things on Instagram that seemed to encourage that kind
(13:55):
of conversation, even on my feed for sure. I mean,
and that the thing with social media, it is enormous.
It is very hard to make generalizations about it either way.
I mean, you can sort of pick up threads and
and kind of try to look at the big picture,
but even the sort of perfect vision of motherhood that's
what makes money. But there is definitely real talk. There
(14:18):
are communities that are incredibly supportive and helpful. I have heard,
especially from moms whose kids were in the nick you
for a long time or who experienced multiple pregnancy loss
that have are like um, the I think autism community.
I think it's a lot of support for each other,
and they have found that to be lifelines. UM. And
(14:41):
I think that the other thing that's happening now, and
I see this in my own life. A lot of
the most supportive communication is private. So it's in what's
app groups, it's in discord circles, because the open Internet
is a trash fire. Like you tweet something and you
might get some great feedback, and you might get some
ile feedback. That is, you know, it's just being on
(15:03):
the open Internet in any way where anyone can comment.
I think if you're in a vulnerable place, not great.
So the sort of more private UM kind of communication,
I think people are are gravitating towards when we come back. Jessica,
share some solutions for moms and dads who have had enough.
(15:35):
Your New York Times parenting newsletters started about nine months
before the pandemic hit. First of all, you were widely
praised for being a lifeline for so many mothers, But
how did how did this turbo charge, all these collective
forces that we've been talking about. So I think in
(15:56):
their day to day most parents, especially of young children,
are so busy they can't even think about the larger
societal picture and how it's hard for everyone because we're
so siloed from each other. And I think what happened
during the pandemic is um and one mom said this
to me and my reporting that mothers are the shock
(16:16):
absorbers of society. And everyone realized that when things fell apart,
moms were just expected to be there to pick up
the pieces, and if they ever complained about it, the
response was, well, you decided to have kids, so stuck
it up, um. And so the amount to which it
was just as I say in the subtitle of my book, Unsustainable,
(16:39):
that mothers were expected to educate their children, work, cook
you know, be emotional support for everybody, just completely losing
their minds and all of those things. Sometimes in the
same moment. I often describe something that happened in the
summer of where I was listening to a conference call
(17:02):
on my headphones while changing the laundry from the washer
to the dryer and listening to my kids wine in
the background. Because they were hungry for lunch, and I
was just like, I am being pulled in so many
directions in this millisecond, and that this is every day
for me um and had been since March. I just
(17:23):
it just was not something that could go on in
that way. And so I think, you know, I has
a term to use, the term radicalize, because I think
it's overused, but I think a lot of moms were
radicalized by that moment um. They realized how little our
country does to support parents and that no one was
(17:44):
coming to fix it, and that really stuck with them.
Even now, you know where things obviously the COVID is
still going on, but you know, things are somewhat back
to normal in terms of our schools being open and
you know, many services is being back to at least
some semblance of where they were. But I think that
sort of feeling of I want to say, almost betrayal
(18:06):
has stuck with people. I know that Melinda Gates talks
about the fact that when all is said and done,
women spent a total of seven years taking care of
domestic chores, children, ailing parents, on and on, and it's
it's it's a seven more additional years than their partners.
(18:29):
Hasn't that changed a little bit? Aren't fathers? I feel
like my late husband when our kids were super small,
because they were only two and six when he died,
But I did feel like in those early years my
husband Jay really was we co parented, and aren't more
couples doing that now? Absolutely? And I think so many
(18:51):
dads stepped up. I mean, you know, if you look
at this societal wide, yes, mothers are absolutely still doing more,
but so many dad's not only stepped up, but I
think that there is this perception that dads don't want
to be involved with their kids, which is a lie.
Many many dads want to spend more time with their children.
And I think that was also a takeaway of many
(19:14):
people during the pandemic was it was incredibly hard. I mean,
my kids brew three and seven when it started. My
husband at the beginning was probably doing more childcare than
I was, because his work had slowed down a little bit,
whereas mine was like just wall to wall, like it
was the biggest news event in parenting that had ever
(19:36):
been right, right, right, So you know, especially at the
beginning of the I would say in March and April,
he was doing probably se of stuff with our kids.
Um so lots of dads I think not only are
more involved, but want to be more involved and find
it incredibly unfair that the structures of our country are
(19:57):
such that they cannot be more involved. I mean, put
eternity leave is there's as much as we don't have
enough paid maternity leave. It's even worse for paid paternity leave.
I mean, my husband got a single day off when
our second daughter was born, one one day. He was
not happy about it. He was really unhappy about it.
So I think it is less uh from a desire
(20:21):
to be like they want to be with their kids.
I think again, it is the way society is structured
that prevents them from doing so. And I do think
again the change is incremental, but I do feel as
leadership of companies and politicians are get you know, the
rising generations have experienced a more egalitarian society, we will
(20:45):
see more and more change. It just is going to
take time. Well, let's talk about what change needs to happen,
not only from government policy perspective, but from a corporate
America perspective and from a kind of cultural educational attitude perspective.
(21:05):
If that covers all the bases. Okay, so politically, you know,
that's the easiest answer, although the hardest to make happen.
It's like paid leave, paid parental leave, paid sick leave. Um.
You know, universal health care I feel like would fix
so many ills because I think a lot of parents
(21:28):
stay in jobs that are bad for them and their
families because their healthcare is attached to them. And Helen Peterson,
who was lovely enough to blurve my book, uh, we
did a podcast together and she described the lack of
universal health care or that you know, our jobs are
attached to healthcare the original sin of the workplace because
(21:52):
it doesn't allow parents to you know, maybe take a
job that has more flexibility because the only jobs that
have health care are absolutely full time. That's just really
the way it is. UM. So that sort of morass
needs to be fixed. UM. In terms of the workplace.
Beyond that, UM, I think accepting that when people have
(22:20):
young children, they are going to desire more flexibility in
their lives. Um, And that that doesn't mean that they
are less productive. I mean, there's so many statistics coming
out of the pandemic that showed that in fact, remote
workers were more productive than you know, in office workers,
So just sort of rethinking a lot of office norms. UM.
(22:43):
Certainly many many jobs need to be in person, but
just sort of reevaluating the way things have always been
and whether that is serving most people. Because we're not
just talking about parents here. Most people will have to
care for other humans at some point in their lives,
whether that is elder care, whether that is caring for
(23:04):
a spouse, whether that's caring for friends. I mean, we
just devalue care in every possible way, so it's not
just parents. I think it is. Actually one of the
problems is that we just associate this desiring of flexibility
and humanity UM with mothers, because it is simply not
true that only mothers desire that kind of flexibility for caregiving.
(23:24):
So that's really important. UM. I almost think the cultural
piece is the hardest UM, because we have so many
ingrained expectations UM. And that was one of the things
I really wanted with the book was to think about
my own assumptions and the own the pressures I had
put on myself UM, and tried to figure out where
these even came from. Like we already talked about sort
(23:47):
of pregnancy, but to this day and my older daughter
is almost ten. I still feel guilty about being sick
when I was pregnant with her, even though it was
completely out of my control. And so just asking where
does the idea that you are supposed to feel good
during pregnancy even come from? Because most people don't feel
(24:08):
great at least at some point, even if you're not
going up every second of the day. Um, So it's
just sort of every time you feel like you're not
measuring up, just even asking yourself, why do I feel
this way? Where is this pressure coming from? And it
is it? Is it from a place that is working
(24:28):
for me? I mean sometimes I feel pressure and guilt
and it's it's okay, Like I have a lot on
my plate. I want to do a lot of things.
So it's okay to feel stressed and guilty some of
the time. But I think continually asking yourself where these
expectations are coming from and if they're coming from a
place that you actually respect. The good news, Jessica is
(24:50):
that people are talking about it. I think companies are
taking it seriously. I think is the workplace is being
re evaluated. Um you know, everyone is giving this a
lot more thought because of the pandemic. So maybe in
a weird way, that's the silver lining. And I know,
(25:10):
as somebody who came up in a very traditional kind
of work environment, I myself have my own implicit biases
about Oh, people working from home, they're goofing off, they're
eating candy and watching soap operas, which are you know,
have been ingrained in me for some weird reason. And
it's just not true. When you look at all the
studies about productivity, it doesn't matter where you are. In fact,
(25:33):
people get more done often when they're working remote. And
I read an interesting article it's always also when you work,
because some people want to work at night when their
kids are in bed, and some people. You know, having
that flexibility will not only make people happier and more
productive in their in their home life, but happier and
(25:55):
more productive in their work life too. Absolutely, And I
think it's just we're all going to have the things
that we're tough on ourselves about. But like I said,
it's just continually asking yourself, where did these ideas come from?
And why do I think this way? And is it
valuable to me and my family to think this way? Yeah,
take a moment and reflect. Dr Becky Kennedy, or Dr Becky,
(26:30):
as she's known to her millions of followers, is a
clinical psychologist who became Instagram's favorite parenting guru during the pandemic.
In the three years since launching her Instagram account, Dr
Becky has built a membership based parenting community called Good Inside,
launched a podcast of the same name, and has written
(26:51):
a book called Good Inside, A Guide to Becoming the
Parent You Want to Be. Because Dr Becky seems to
have broken through the cluttered parent teen market and is
really tapped into the problems modern mothers and father's face,
we thought she might have some insights into some of
the issues Jessica just talked about. You filled a huge
(27:13):
need during the pandemic. I know, before America shut down,
you didn't have an Instagram account. Now you have one
point five million followers, a book, a little bit of
a many empire going. So why do you think, Becky,
you hit such a chord. And by the way, I've
never been so grateful to have grown children then in
(27:35):
the last few years, because hats off to all the
mothers and fathers, parents everywhere who had to juggle and
deal with so much. And I love that shout out
to everyone listening who had young kids, who had teenagers,
who had their first baby, who were single parents, who
are going through a divorce, who are who are married,
(27:56):
and still like, no matter what, it was hard, it
was so hard. And actually, the other thing we were
talking about before this was how important it is to
kids to to just name what's true, to talk about
the hard stuff. We often think we're protecting them by
not but I think we're actually increasing a lot of
their anxiety because again then they feel alone and we're
confused and confused. Nobody likes feeling alone and confused. Those
(28:18):
two things together are awful, right, So I think during
the pandemic, I think something that really maybe like help
me hit a stride with people as I do. I
think I've always been someone who has never shied away
from naming the hard, like even say this is hard.
We all yell at our kids, this pandemic sucks, This
is so difficult. You are doing an impossible thing. You
(28:39):
are a warrior. You did not mess up your kid
forever when you yelled. Here are some words you can use.
And I think during that time of so much uncertainty, yeah,
when people knew like Okay, I can go somewhere and
there'll be someone who's naming something that feels right on
to what's actually happening in my house, who's not telling
me necessarily how to make it all better, but who's
just helping me tolerate how hard this is. Yeah. I
(29:02):
think we all needed that. And I think that you
were hearing the desperate cries of mother's everywhere. What were
they saying to you? What were they struggling with? I
guess just about everything, right, Yeah, I mean I think
that the biggest thing they were struggling with is like,
is is this tell me this is as hard as
(29:24):
it feels, you know, Like, and it's one of my
core mantras for parenting is just this feels hard because
it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. And
I always think that when something's really hard, if we
can just validate for ourselves. Wait, I'm not a horrible parent,
Like this just actually is really hard to be home
with two kids in a pandemic or even at this stage,
(29:44):
this is really hard to manage through a tantrum and
a grocery store. We don't then layer on the self blame,
which goes into I'm a horrible parent. I messed up
this forever. If people saw me, they wouldn't believe that
I'm the type of parent. When we add that layer,
I think hard becomes impossible. And when we remove that layer,
which is the impossible, it's still hard, but hard is
(30:05):
is far superior to impossible. Well that's interesting too, because
who's to say that first time parent or even a
second third time parent has all the answers. It is
really a kind of learn as you go process. And
there isn't really a handbook for handling this. No. I mean,
(30:27):
this is the thing that gets me super fired up. Um,
and I think is such a larger sociological problem that
I feel like most drawn to, almost more than any
you know one parenting problem, this bigger problem, which is
parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world.
And it's a job we have for a lot of years.
Like your kids are older, you're still a parent, Like
(30:48):
you still parent. And most jobs in this country that
we value that we think are important, we really prioritize
the people in those jobs getting training and resources. And
not only that, Like if I think about a surge
and I'd ever go to because I would think surgery
is like another really important, you know, really hard job.
I would never see a surgeon who like got their
tips on Instagram, Like I'd be like, oh, okay, like
(31:09):
did you get training? And the surgeon who got the
most training, the surgeon who had ongoing support. I think
all of us would look at that surgeon positively, not
like what's wrong with you? I'd be like, that's amazing,
you know, when can I get an appointment? And with parenting,
it's the opposite, where we just take this baby home
from the hospital. We're given nothing. There's this bullshit about
maternal instinct, right, so it's kind of saying if you
(31:31):
are struggling, it's your fault, you know, as opposed to
if I am struggling, maybe I wasn't set up to thrive,
and maybe there are resources and support I can then
go invest in, not just for my kids, but again
just so I can feel more confident. So I think
you're right, and I think that's a huge shift we need.
Mothers have always had just incredible pressure to be perfect,
(31:55):
and now more than ever, they are assaulted really by
images and advice and honestly, this manufactured idea on social
media of momfluencers and look at me looking beautiful while
I'm taking my child to the park. I mean, it's
(32:16):
just everywhere. How do you advise parents to not let
that permeate their psyches and make them strive for really
unachievable goals as a parent, So many things I'd want
to say to that. So, first of all, I really
(32:36):
think good inside is this approach that helps parents become
sturdier leaders. And being a sturdier leader, I think really
comes from learning to gaze in and notice, like what
do I have? What do I know? Versus do I
need to define who I am and how much I'm
worth based on things outside of me? And so I
actually think, you know what, we hear a lot in
(32:56):
our communities. They feel so much less permeable, so much
less horsts to the social media world, and even I
hear all the time like I've stopped following various accounts
that I used to follow because I felt like it
was this you know, ideal version of who I wanted
to be, and I realized, you know, forget what we
could say it's fake or whatever, it just it wasn't
good for me. I love hearing that from parents. It
doesn't make me feel good, right, And I think in
(33:18):
social media, noticing what accounts make me feel empowered and
what accounts make me feel anxious and shitty about ourselves.
It's like the way we all need to cleanse our
you know, social media. And I also think that a
lot of this idea of perfect motherhood is intertwined with
this idea of motherhood is martyrdom. So the perfect mother
ideal we hear about on social media is not you know,
(33:41):
the parent who's you know, prioritizing themselves at times setting boundaries.
It's like, look at the Pinterest crafts I've created. I've
spent eight hours pouring myself out, even though underneath I
feel reachful and resentful, and I haven't done a thing
for myself in the last two years. Right, There's nothing
that I care is passionately about as much as changing
(34:02):
that idea of motherhood is martyrdom. I also think that
it's one of the reasons we created, frankly our membership
that parents would say, like, I want this parenting content.
It's so deep, like it doesn't solely belong on social media,
and I don't want to see it next to an
account that makes me feel bad. Or next to something
that's making me buy shoes I don't really want to buy,
you know, frankly, And so I think us all having
(34:25):
spaces to connect with other parents away from this like
shiny ideal is so important, whether we find that in
an online community, whether we find that in our in
real life community. The only place we get parenting information
cannot be the world of social media, which yet sets
(34:46):
us up to feel not good enough. And how do
you handle sort of you being held up as this
kind of ideal and people worrying that maybe you're you're
sitting in judgment of the Yeah, I mean, and I
really mean this to anyone even listening, or like if
people do feel like that with me, like I I
(35:07):
really mean, I want to know right away. That would
be super important because I very much want to always
be part of the other camp. And I think it's
why first of all, like I never wear that much makeup,
Like I never you know, wear much besides the white
T shirt and legging, So like that's how I sew
up on social media, like I generally have food in
my teeth, and so like that's why I show up
that social media. Um, and I think I try to
(35:29):
say as often as possible, things like I don't think
I did the stuff with my kids all the time.
So here's what I did when I yelled at my
own kid. Here's why I repair is so important because, yeah,
I think we all need a model of parenting that
gives us ideas we might not have thought about, because
that just helps all of us grow. But holds that
right next to you know, just human nous and and
(35:50):
that's what you know I try to do. And that's
super important to me. So anyone out there who thinks
I like, I don't even know what you mean the
answers that all the answers you always do it right,
I think you are very vulnerable. And the way you
communicate your ideas acknowledging that, hey, this is how I
did it. In other words, this is how I corrected
(36:11):
something I was doing wrong. Yeah, And like someone coming
to me, I really mean this. I feel very good
if someone's like, here's what's going on with my kid,
Can you help me understand it differently? Can you help
me think of other ways to interview? And I do
feel really good about doing that. But like, if that
exact situation happened with my kid in my home live, Like,
don't think Dr Becky would be responding like Becky, who's human,
who has triggers, who's overwhelmed, Like I would need my
(36:33):
own consultation with Dr Becky after and be like what
should I do? You know? So, my husband's always like
I always wanted to tag your personal account on your
Instagram account. And one time he's like, you would really
like this real? And he send it to me and
I pulled it up with like my own real. I
was like, damn it, like you know because I was
like super reactive with my kids that day, right, So
just being real, Yeah, I think not a real but
(36:55):
real yes, nobody, right, nobody, nobody has it together all time,
and and like I really mean this, I wouldn't wish
Dr Becky on my kids as their parents, Like I
can't imagine my kids going to adulthood being like you
know what love and closeness and healthy relationships are someone
always being attuned to what's going on for you and
understanding you, Like if there's something that's going to set
(37:17):
them up for a history of like really awful relationships,
because they'll never get into one because they're gonna be like,
but where is my perfect partner, it would be that expectation, right,
So I want my kids to know that in general,
I approached them with respect and understanding and seeing that
good inside them, and when I don't, inevitably, I will
more often than not go to repair. And I think
that is what kids need, not some quote perfect parent
(37:42):
which doesn't exist anyway. She had so many interesting and
important things to say that we thought Dr Becky deserved
an episode all her own, so we're releasing our conversation
in full. You can find it in my Next Question
feed beginning tomorrow, December two. You'll hear us get into
all of it. Dr Becky's unique parenting philosophy, the importance
(38:05):
of repair, and why we all could benefit from looking
inward and reparenting ourselves. Honestly, it was so eye opening
that'll be in Part two of our Parenting Deep Dive. Now,
a huge thank you to both my guests, Dr Becky
Kennedy and Jessica Gross. You can sign up for Jessica's
(38:25):
parenting newsletter at New York Times dot com, and her book,
Screaming on the Inside The Unsustainability of American Motherhood is
out December six. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a
(38:50):
production of My Heart Media and Katie Kuric Media. The
executive producers Army Katie Kuric and Courtney Litz. The supervising
producer is Lauren han Sin. Associate producers Derek Clements and
Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements.
For more information about today's episode, or to sign up
(39:10):
for my morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie
correct dot com. You can also find me at Katie
Currect on Instagram and all my social media channels. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Correct and this is next question.
Attention all parents out there, Whether you're one, you know
a parent, or whether you've been paying any attention at all,
you probably know that the pandemic was a breaking point
for parents, and mothers in particular. Mothers are the shock
(00:22):
absorbers of society, and everyone realized that when things fell apart,
moms were just expected to be there to pick up
the pieces, and if they ever complained about it, the
response was, well, you decided to have kids, so stuck
it up. Jessica Gross is a New York Times opinion
writer and creator of the New York Times Parenting newsletter.
(00:44):
She says, the pandemic exposed to reality. Mothers have been
living with for ages. Mothers have been talking about how
difficult it is, and especially in the United States, where
we don't have things like paid sickly of universal health care.
Mothers have been talking about this, if only amongst themselves,
(01:04):
for hundreds of years. The problem is that no one
has been listening to them. Today, we're exploring moms at
a breaking point with two experts who have been living
with it and writing about it. Our first Jessica Gross,
whose new book screaming on the inside. The unsustainability of
American motherhood dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations
(01:29):
to empower all of you who might be struggling out there.
You to kind of analyze motherhood from an historic and
a cultural and a government policy perspective. But I'm fascinated
by the cultural implications and how culture has shaped our
(01:51):
perceptions of motherhood. And I know that's an area of
huge interest to you too that you deal with in
the book, and one I guess one of the primary
anti hagonists of this story is the quote unquote ideal mother. Yes,
and and really the motherhood myth. So first, before we
talk about today's ideal mother, how this came about and
(02:14):
the letters that you read, I'm so interested from a
historic perspective, how this came to be and has evolved
in it into its current iteration. So, I mean, this
is going to be a very truncated version of the history.
But basically, in early colonial America, mothers and fathers were
both deeply involved in raising children. I mean everything was
(02:38):
in the home. There wasn't a lot of activity outside
the home period for anyone they lived in rural America.
And again this is a vast oversimplification, so okay, we'll
bear with you. Yes, as industrialization happened, there became this
divide where there was a domestic sphere in the public sphere,
and the public sphere was only for men and and
(02:59):
the dome stick spear was for women. And so as
that happened, let's say that's happening in the eighteen hundreds,
the Victorian era um, the idea of what a mother
should be and the domestic role um became sort of crystallized,
and a lot of those ideas still are still with
us today in terms of mother's main role in life
(03:23):
and only role was to think of her children and herself,
her desires. Her mind just had to be completely subsumed
to whatever um that was best for the child. And
of course, this woman who was supposed to stay home
with the children was always white, and was always Christian,
and it was many of the sort of cultural mores
and and laws that rose up at that time were
(03:44):
either implicitly or explicitly anti immigrant, anti black um. And
so as time sort of progressed, you know, women said,
I don't like this role. I want to do more
than stay at home with my children more and and
more and more. Women being educated was a big part
of this, so women getting higher education, women going into college,
(04:06):
and so as the twentieth century donned, um, you saw
lots of pushback from all quarters about you know, home
being the only place for a woman. Um. However, instead
of those responsibilities becoming less emphasized for women, we just
piled more responsibilities on top of it. So it's saying like, well,
(04:29):
you can work, but of course don't let anything drop
at home ever. And also, you know, social media is
sort of what is really new about the twenty one century,
and so women feel a lot of pressure to not
only be perfect in all ways and so be the
ideal work at work and be the ideal mother at home,
but to also perform this publicly for an audience of
(04:54):
either friends or the public. And we see other people
who are influencers performing this sort of perfect motherhood, and
that sort of makes it even I think a little
bit more insidious, because we're seeing these images, unrealistic images constantly,
and even if I think most of us at this
point know that they're not realistic, and yet they still
worm into our brains. Um. And so yeah, it's just
(05:17):
a pile instead of saying, okay, if mothers are doing
other things besides mothering, you know other people, their spouses,
their family members, their friends, you know people that they're
paying money to caregive who should be paid more money
than they are. You know, it should be a group endeavor,
but no, it is still this individualistic mothers should be
(05:39):
able to do it all. Well, let's talk about mothers today.
You're forty. You had some positive role models, not only
in your own mother but in terms of culture and
the shows, and you know, the idea that women could work.
But but where did that leave you in terms of
your current parents and teen roles? Because you said in
(06:02):
the book, you open with the line, I failed at
ideal motherhood before I even had a child. Yeah. So
I like to joke that I leaned into a toilet.
Um so because I had hyper amesis with my older daughter,
which is extreme morning sickness. So I think the technical
definition is that you lose lose five percent of your
body weight. Um. I was extremely sick and I got
(06:25):
very very depressed and anxious. Um. I don't know if
it was because I was not holding down any food
or it was because I went off antidepressants to conceive.
It was just I was a mess. It was a mess.
I had taken a brand new job and I it
was the first bigger management role UM. And I had
done so because I knew I wanted to have children
and I didn't UM. I wanted to be sort of
(06:47):
set up um when I had kids that I was
already sort of further along in my career. And I
didn't realize that I was already pregnant when I started
that job, UM, because you know, best laid plans UM.
And I ended up quitting that job because I realized
that short term disability would pay me so little that
(07:07):
it just was not worth it. And I had to
put my own health first. And I basically stayed in
bed for four months UM after I quit that job
because I just I couldn't be far from a bathroom.
And I know that's so crass, but it is the
truth of of how it was for me. UM. And
so you know, I did everything quote unquote right. You know,
(07:29):
I was married, I had no debt, I was I
got pregnant twenty nine because I was so nervous about um.
You know, oh you know your feeliship for atility declines
as you get into your thirties, you bet you better
get on it. And it's still the way our system
is set up. There was no room for me to
have a difficult pregnancy and continue to work. And so
you know, I had already been reporting on the inadequacies
(07:53):
of policy for American families, but really living through it,
uh taught me that lessons so deeply and so UM.
I think that was the low point in a lot
of ways. Um And in some ways, I not to
be pollyannish about it, but I think it was good
for me to have that experience, only because it made
(08:13):
me more confident in my own instincts and intuition and
to say, these ideals are crazy and they clearly are
not working for most people, and to be able to
sort of, um, do what I thought was right for
my family and my kids, rather than what seemed to
be the best or you know, the most ideal or
(08:34):
the most most performative. Because it sounds as if just
as we got to a point where we were understanding
or getting a better understanding of the pressures and complications
of motherhood of trying to quote unquote have it all,
social media came in and really set us back in
(08:55):
a lot of ways. You mentioned about sort of mom
influencer person all that jazz I was surprised how big
a role mormon Ism played in that or is playing
in that. Can you describe to our listeners how Mormon
moms have kind of taken over the internet and what
their impact has been. There is a sort of terminology for, uh,
(09:20):
the way that Mormon moms have sort of cornered the
market on momfluencing, and it's called the blogger knackle, which
I did not come up with, but I think is
a very apt term. UM. And it is um. And
again it's you know, like every religion and every UH faith,
there are many people who believe many different things within
(09:43):
that faith. So we're just talking about sort of a
certain subset subset UM. And so there's an emphasis on
record keeping, and there is an emphasis on making things
UM look a certain way. And so there was and
there's obviously an emphasis on traditional marriage and the nuclear
(10:04):
family UM. And so there was sort of already an
infrastructure in place for Mormon moms too display their lives
in a way that was very attractive UM to viewers
and to show what was beautiful and exciting and lovely
about motherhood. And I love looking at what they produced.
(10:28):
It is beautiful, it is there. They make it look
so effortless and lovely, and so I you know, again,
I think that the Internet is big and there is
room for every kind of mother But that ended up
being the vision of motherhood that was very appealing to
advertisers because advertisers don't want anything that is controversial for
(10:50):
you know, rock the boat in any way, and it
is very It is much easier to sell a grinning,
beautiful young mom with her beautiful all children who are
all dressed matching in a matching way against the backdrop
of beautiful mountains. That is an image that is easier
to sell than an exhausted, you know, spit up covered
(11:13):
disaster like sinking into a couch, which is how most
of us feel in the early motherhood days. And so
you know, it sort of becomes the self perpetuating thing
where it's like, if that's what the algorithm supports, that's
who's doing sponsored posts. I also you heard from um
folks who had become influencers that if they live in
(11:38):
very conservative communities, it's a way for them to work
in a way that's acceptable, and to have sort of
a public voice in a way that so interesting. Yeah,
that's you know again, I have only support for anyone
living their motherhood how they want to live it. However,
it is just not how many of us experience set
(12:00):
and I think it puts a pressure on UM, on
folks who don't conform to that very narrow vision UM
to feel less than There was a moment, I want
to say, before Instagram got really huge, when blogging was
still the primary mode of motherhood expression, where there it
(12:25):
did feel like a more realistic vision that was more
diverse might be the kind of transcendent form of motherhood
that we saw on the Internet, and then Instagram, which
is so image heavy. It is not words heavy, it
is image heavy. When that became the dominant mode, and
the way that people could make money writing being mother's
(12:49):
basically that just went out the window because it was
so visual, and so if you did not conform to
a certain visual appearance, if your house was not perfect,
if your children were not effect you aren't going to
get that advertising money. So blocking was in a weird
way more helpful to moms because it did open the
door to talking about some of these issues. I wrote
(13:10):
my memoir about a year ago, and I talked about
the fact that that I had sort of postpartum depression
or this form of postpartum I was worried that I
was going to hurt my baby, and it was so
I was so riddled with shame. I couldn't talk to
anyone about it. It was really scary. And we I
wrote in my book about the fact that that these
(13:32):
mommy blogs kind of open the floodgates where women could
talk about these things openly in a supportive community. And
it sounds like Instagram and sort of current social uh
media is is less a healthy environment for that and
one where there's more judgment. But I but I do
see things on Instagram that seemed to encourage that kind
(13:55):
of conversation, even on my feed for sure. I mean,
and that the thing with social media, it is enormous.
It is very hard to make generalizations about it either way.
I mean, you can sort of pick up threads and
and kind of try to look at the big picture,
but even the sort of perfect vision of motherhood that's
what makes money. But there is definitely real talk. There
(14:18):
are communities that are incredibly supportive and helpful. I have heard,
especially from moms whose kids were in the nick you
for a long time or who experienced multiple pregnancy loss
that have are like um, the I think autism community.
I think it's a lot of support for each other,
and they have found that to be lifelines. UM. And
(14:41):
I think that the other thing that's happening now, and
I see this in my own life. A lot of
the most supportive communication is private. So it's in what's
app groups, it's in discord circles, because the open Internet
is a trash fire. Like you tweet something and you
might get some great feedback, and you might get some
ile feedback. That is, you know, it's just being on
(15:03):
the open Internet in any way where anyone can comment.
I think if you're in a vulnerable place, not great.
So the sort of more private UM kind of communication,
I think people are are gravitating towards when we come back. Jessica,
share some solutions for moms and dads who have had enough.
(15:35):
Your New York Times parenting newsletters started about nine months
before the pandemic hit. First of all, you were widely
praised for being a lifeline for so many mothers, But
how did how did this turbo charge, all these collective
forces that we've been talking about. So I think in
(15:56):
their day to day most parents, especially of young children,
are so busy they can't even think about the larger
societal picture and how it's hard for everyone because we're
so siloed from each other. And I think what happened
during the pandemic is um and one mom said this
to me and my reporting that mothers are the shock
(16:16):
absorbers of society. And everyone realized that when things fell apart,
moms were just expected to be there to pick up
the pieces, and if they ever complained about it, the
response was, well, you decided to have kids, so stuck
it up, um. And so the amount to which it
was just as I say in the subtitle of my book, Unsustainable,
(16:39):
that mothers were expected to educate their children, work, cook
you know, be emotional support for everybody, just completely losing
their minds and all of those things. Sometimes in the
same moment. I often describe something that happened in the
summer of where I was listening to a conference call
(17:02):
on my headphones while changing the laundry from the washer
to the dryer and listening to my kids wine in
the background. Because they were hungry for lunch, and I
was just like, I am being pulled in so many
directions in this millisecond, and that this is every day
for me um and had been since March. I just
(17:23):
it just was not something that could go on in
that way. And so I think, you know, I has
a term to use, the term radicalize, because I think
it's overused, but I think a lot of moms were
radicalized by that moment um. They realized how little our
country does to support parents and that no one was
(17:44):
coming to fix it, and that really stuck with them.
Even now, you know where things obviously the COVID is
still going on, but you know, things are somewhat back
to normal in terms of our schools being open and
you know, many services is being back to at least
some semblance of where they were. But I think that
sort of feeling of I want to say, almost betrayal
(18:06):
has stuck with people. I know that Melinda Gates talks
about the fact that when all is said and done,
women spent a total of seven years taking care of
domestic chores, children, ailing parents, on and on, and it's
it's it's a seven more additional years than their partners.
(18:29):
Hasn't that changed a little bit? Aren't fathers? I feel
like my late husband when our kids were super small,
because they were only two and six when he died,
But I did feel like in those early years my
husband Jay really was we co parented, and aren't more
couples doing that now? Absolutely? And I think so many
(18:51):
dads stepped up. I mean, you know, if you look
at this societal wide, yes, mothers are absolutely still doing more,
but so many dad's not only stepped up, but I
think that there is this perception that dads don't want
to be involved with their kids, which is a lie.
Many many dads want to spend more time with their children.
And I think that was also a takeaway of many
(19:14):
people during the pandemic was it was incredibly hard. I mean,
my kids brew three and seven when it started. My
husband at the beginning was probably doing more childcare than
I was, because his work had slowed down a little bit,
whereas mine was like just wall to wall, like it
was the biggest news event in parenting that had ever
(19:36):
been right, right, right, So you know, especially at the
beginning of the I would say in March and April,
he was doing probably se of stuff with our kids.
Um so lots of dads I think not only are
more involved, but want to be more involved and find
it incredibly unfair that the structures of our country are
(19:57):
such that they cannot be more involved. I mean, put
eternity leave is there's as much as we don't have
enough paid maternity leave. It's even worse for paid paternity leave.
I mean, my husband got a single day off when
our second daughter was born, one one day. He was
not happy about it. He was really unhappy about it.
So I think it is less uh from a desire
(20:21):
to be like they want to be with their kids.
I think again, it is the way society is structured
that prevents them from doing so. And I do think
again the change is incremental, but I do feel as
leadership of companies and politicians are get you know, the
rising generations have experienced a more egalitarian society, we will
(20:45):
see more and more change. It just is going to
take time. Well, let's talk about what change needs to happen,
not only from government policy perspective, but from a corporate
America perspective and from a kind of cultural educational attitude perspective.
(21:05):
If that covers all the bases. Okay, so politically, you know,
that's the easiest answer, although the hardest to make happen.
It's like paid leave, paid parental leave, paid sick leave. Um.
You know, universal health care I feel like would fix
so many ills because I think a lot of parents
(21:28):
stay in jobs that are bad for them and their
families because their healthcare is attached to them. And Helen Peterson,
who was lovely enough to blurve my book, uh, we
did a podcast together and she described the lack of
universal health care or that you know, our jobs are
attached to healthcare the original sin of the workplace because
(21:52):
it doesn't allow parents to you know, maybe take a
job that has more flexibility because the only jobs that
have health care are absolutely full time. That's just really
the way it is. UM. So that sort of morass
needs to be fixed. UM. In terms of the workplace.
Beyond that, UM, I think accepting that when people have
(22:20):
young children, they are going to desire more flexibility in
their lives. Um, And that that doesn't mean that they
are less productive. I mean, there's so many statistics coming
out of the pandemic that showed that in fact, remote
workers were more productive than you know, in office workers,
So just sort of rethinking a lot of office norms. UM.
(22:43):
Certainly many many jobs need to be in person, but
just sort of reevaluating the way things have always been
and whether that is serving most people. Because we're not
just talking about parents here. Most people will have to
care for other humans at some point in their lives,
whether that is elder care, whether that is caring for
(23:04):
a spouse, whether that's caring for friends. I mean, we
just devalue care in every possible way, so it's not
just parents. I think it is. Actually one of the
problems is that we just associate this desiring of flexibility
and humanity UM with mothers, because it is simply not
true that only mothers desire that kind of flexibility for caregiving.
(23:24):
So that's really important. UM. I almost think the cultural
piece is the hardest UM, because we have so many
ingrained expectations UM. And that was one of the things
I really wanted with the book was to think about
my own assumptions and the own the pressures I had
put on myself UM, and tried to figure out where
these even came from. Like we already talked about sort
(23:47):
of pregnancy, but to this day and my older daughter
is almost ten. I still feel guilty about being sick
when I was pregnant with her, even though it was
completely out of my control. And so just asking where
does the idea that you are supposed to feel good
during pregnancy even come from? Because most people don't feel
(24:08):
great at least at some point, even if you're not
going up every second of the day. Um, So it's
just sort of every time you feel like you're not
measuring up, just even asking yourself, why do I feel
this way? Where is this pressure coming from? And it
is it? Is it from a place that is working
(24:28):
for me? I mean sometimes I feel pressure and guilt
and it's it's okay, Like I have a lot on
my plate. I want to do a lot of things.
So it's okay to feel stressed and guilty some of
the time. But I think continually asking yourself where these
expectations are coming from and if they're coming from a
place that you actually respect. The good news, Jessica is
(24:50):
that people are talking about it. I think companies are
taking it seriously. I think is the workplace is being
re evaluated. Um you know, everyone is giving this a
lot more thought because of the pandemic. So maybe in
a weird way, that's the silver lining. And I know,
(25:10):
as somebody who came up in a very traditional kind
of work environment, I myself have my own implicit biases
about Oh, people working from home, they're goofing off, they're
eating candy and watching soap operas, which are you know,
have been ingrained in me for some weird reason. And
it's just not true. When you look at all the
studies about productivity, it doesn't matter where you are. In fact,
(25:33):
people get more done often when they're working remote. And
I read an interesting article it's always also when you work,
because some people want to work at night when their
kids are in bed, and some people. You know, having
that flexibility will not only make people happier and more
productive in their in their home life, but happier and
(25:55):
more productive in their work life too. Absolutely, And I
think it's just we're all going to have the things
that we're tough on ourselves about. But like I said,
it's just continually asking yourself, where did these ideas come from?
And why do I think this way? And is it
valuable to me and my family to think this way? Yeah,
take a moment and reflect. Dr Becky Kennedy, or Dr Becky,
(26:30):
as she's known to her millions of followers, is a
clinical psychologist who became Instagram's favorite parenting guru during the pandemic.
In the three years since launching her Instagram account, Dr
Becky has built a membership based parenting community called Good Inside,
launched a podcast of the same name, and has written
(26:51):
a book called Good Inside, A Guide to Becoming the
Parent You Want to Be. Because Dr Becky seems to
have broken through the cluttered parent teen market and is
really tapped into the problems modern mothers and father's face,
we thought she might have some insights into some of
the issues Jessica just talked about. You filled a huge
(27:13):
need during the pandemic. I know, before America shut down,
you didn't have an Instagram account. Now you have one
point five million followers, a book, a little bit of
a many empire going. So why do you think, Becky,
you hit such a chord. And by the way, I've
never been so grateful to have grown children then in
(27:35):
the last few years, because hats off to all the
mothers and fathers, parents everywhere who had to juggle and
deal with so much. And I love that shout out
to everyone listening who had young kids, who had teenagers,
who had their first baby, who were single parents, who
are going through a divorce, who are who are married,
(27:56):
and still like, no matter what, it was hard, it
was so hard. And actually, the other thing we were
talking about before this was how important it is to
kids to to just name what's true, to talk about
the hard stuff. We often think we're protecting them by
not but I think we're actually increasing a lot of
their anxiety because again then they feel alone and we're
confused and confused. Nobody likes feeling alone and confused. Those
(28:18):
two things together are awful, right, So I think during
the pandemic, I think something that really maybe like help
me hit a stride with people as I do. I
think I've always been someone who has never shied away
from naming the hard, like even say this is hard.
We all yell at our kids, this pandemic sucks, This
is so difficult. You are doing an impossible thing. You
(28:39):
are a warrior. You did not mess up your kid
forever when you yelled. Here are some words you can use.
And I think during that time of so much uncertainty, yeah,
when people knew like Okay, I can go somewhere and
there'll be someone who's naming something that feels right on
to what's actually happening in my house, who's not telling
me necessarily how to make it all better, but who's
just helping me tolerate how hard this is. Yeah. I
(29:02):
think we all needed that. And I think that you
were hearing the desperate cries of mother's everywhere. What were
they saying to you? What were they struggling with? I
guess just about everything, right, Yeah, I mean I think
that the biggest thing they were struggling with is like,
is is this tell me this is as hard as
(29:24):
it feels, you know, Like, and it's one of my
core mantras for parenting is just this feels hard because
it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. And
I always think that when something's really hard, if we
can just validate for ourselves. Wait, I'm not a horrible parent,
Like this just actually is really hard to be home
with two kids in a pandemic or even at this stage,
(29:44):
this is really hard to manage through a tantrum and
a grocery store. We don't then layer on the self blame,
which goes into I'm a horrible parent. I messed up
this forever. If people saw me, they wouldn't believe that
I'm the type of parent. When we add that layer,
I think hard becomes impossible. And when we remove that layer,
which is the impossible, it's still hard, but hard is
(30:05):
is far superior to impossible. Well that's interesting too, because
who's to say that first time parent or even a
second third time parent has all the answers. It is
really a kind of learn as you go process. And
there isn't really a handbook for handling this. No. I mean,
(30:27):
this is the thing that gets me super fired up. Um,
and I think is such a larger sociological problem that
I feel like most drawn to, almost more than any
you know one parenting problem, this bigger problem, which is
parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world.
And it's a job we have for a lot of years.
Like your kids are older, you're still a parent, Like
(30:48):
you still parent. And most jobs in this country that
we value that we think are important, we really prioritize
the people in those jobs getting training and resources. And
not only that, Like if I think about a surge
and I'd ever go to because I would think surgery
is like another really important, you know, really hard job.
I would never see a surgeon who like got their
tips on Instagram, Like I'd be like, oh, okay, like
(31:09):
did you get training? And the surgeon who got the
most training, the surgeon who had ongoing support. I think
all of us would look at that surgeon positively, not
like what's wrong with you? I'd be like, that's amazing,
you know, when can I get an appointment? And with parenting,
it's the opposite, where we just take this baby home
from the hospital. We're given nothing. There's this bullshit about
maternal instinct, right, so it's kind of saying if you
(31:31):
are struggling, it's your fault, you know, as opposed to
if I am struggling, maybe I wasn't set up to thrive,
and maybe there are resources and support I can then
go invest in, not just for my kids, but again
just so I can feel more confident. So I think
you're right, and I think that's a huge shift we need.
Mothers have always had just incredible pressure to be perfect,
(31:55):
and now more than ever, they are assaulted really by
images and advice and honestly, this manufactured idea on social
media of momfluencers and look at me looking beautiful while
I'm taking my child to the park. I mean, it's
(32:16):
just everywhere. How do you advise parents to not let
that permeate their psyches and make them strive for really
unachievable goals as a parent, So many things I'd want
to say to that. So, first of all, I really
(32:36):
think good inside is this approach that helps parents become
sturdier leaders. And being a sturdier leader, I think really
comes from learning to gaze in and notice, like what
do I have? What do I know? Versus do I
need to define who I am and how much I'm
worth based on things outside of me? And so I
actually think, you know what, we hear a lot in
(32:56):
our communities. They feel so much less permeable, so much
less horsts to the social media world, and even I
hear all the time like I've stopped following various accounts
that I used to follow because I felt like it
was this you know, ideal version of who I wanted
to be, and I realized, you know, forget what we
could say it's fake or whatever, it just it wasn't
good for me. I love hearing that from parents. It
doesn't make me feel good, right, And I think in
(33:18):
social media, noticing what accounts make me feel empowered and
what accounts make me feel anxious and shitty about ourselves.
It's like the way we all need to cleanse our
you know, social media. And I also think that a
lot of this idea of perfect motherhood is intertwined with
this idea of motherhood is martyrdom. So the perfect mother
ideal we hear about on social media is not you know,
(33:41):
the parent who's you know, prioritizing themselves at times setting boundaries.
It's like, look at the Pinterest crafts I've created. I've
spent eight hours pouring myself out, even though underneath I
feel reachful and resentful, and I haven't done a thing
for myself in the last two years. Right, There's nothing
that I care is passionately about as much as changing
(34:02):
that idea of motherhood is martyrdom. I also think that
it's one of the reasons we created, frankly our membership
that parents would say, like, I want this parenting content.
It's so deep, like it doesn't solely belong on social media,
and I don't want to see it next to an
account that makes me feel bad. Or next to something
that's making me buy shoes I don't really want to buy,
you know, frankly, And so I think us all having
(34:25):
spaces to connect with other parents away from this like
shiny ideal is so important, whether we find that in
an online community, whether we find that in our in
real life community. The only place we get parenting information
cannot be the world of social media, which yet sets
(34:46):
us up to feel not good enough. And how do
you handle sort of you being held up as this
kind of ideal and people worrying that maybe you're you're
sitting in judgment of the Yeah, I mean, and I
really mean this to anyone even listening, or like if
people do feel like that with me, like I I
(35:07):
really mean, I want to know right away. That would
be super important because I very much want to always
be part of the other camp. And I think it's
why first of all, like I never wear that much makeup,
Like I never you know, wear much besides the white
T shirt and legging, So like that's how I sew
up on social media, like I generally have food in
my teeth, and so like that's why I show up
that social media. Um, and I think I try to
(35:29):
say as often as possible, things like I don't think
I did the stuff with my kids all the time.
So here's what I did when I yelled at my
own kid. Here's why I repair is so important because, yeah,
I think we all need a model of parenting that
gives us ideas we might not have thought about, because
that just helps all of us grow. But holds that
right next to you know, just human nous and and
(35:50):
that's what you know I try to do. And that's
super important to me. So anyone out there who thinks
I like, I don't even know what you mean the
answers that all the answers you always do it right,
I think you are very vulnerable. And the way you
communicate your ideas acknowledging that, hey, this is how I
did it. In other words, this is how I corrected
(36:11):
something I was doing wrong. Yeah, And like someone coming
to me, I really mean this. I feel very good
if someone's like, here's what's going on with my kid,
Can you help me understand it differently? Can you help
me think of other ways to interview? And I do
feel really good about doing that. But like, if that
exact situation happened with my kid in my home live, Like,
don't think Dr Becky would be responding like Becky, who's human,
who has triggers, who's overwhelmed, Like I would need my
(36:33):
own consultation with Dr Becky after and be like what
should I do? You know? So, my husband's always like
I always wanted to tag your personal account on your
Instagram account. And one time he's like, you would really
like this real? And he send it to me and
I pulled it up with like my own real. I
was like, damn it, like you know because I was
like super reactive with my kids that day, right, So
just being real, Yeah, I think not a real but
(36:55):
real yes, nobody, right, nobody, nobody has it together all time,
and and like I really mean this, I wouldn't wish
Dr Becky on my kids as their parents, Like I
can't imagine my kids going to adulthood being like you
know what love and closeness and healthy relationships are someone
always being attuned to what's going on for you and
understanding you, Like if there's something that's going to set
(37:17):
them up for a history of like really awful relationships,
because they'll never get into one because they're gonna be like,
but where is my perfect partner, it would be that expectation, right,
So I want my kids to know that in general,
I approached them with respect and understanding and seeing that
good inside them, and when I don't, inevitably, I will
more often than not go to repair. And I think
that is what kids need, not some quote perfect parent
(37:42):
which doesn't exist anyway. She had so many interesting and
important things to say that we thought Dr Becky deserved
an episode all her own, so we're releasing our conversation
in full. You can find it in my Next Question
feed beginning tomorrow, December two. You'll hear us get into
all of it. Dr Becky's unique parenting philosophy, the importance
(38:05):
of repair, and why we all could benefit from looking
inward and reparenting ourselves. Honestly, it was so eye opening
that'll be in Part two of our Parenting Deep Dive. Now,
a huge thank you to both my guests, Dr Becky
Kennedy and Jessica Gross. You can sign up for Jessica's
(38:25):
parenting newsletter at New York Times dot com, and her book,
Screaming on the Inside The Unsustainability of American Motherhood is
out December six. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a
(38:50):
production of My Heart Media and Katie Kuric Media. The
executive producers Army Katie Kuric and Courtney Litz. The supervising
producer is Lauren han Sin. Associate producers Derek Clements and
Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements.
For more information about today's episode, or to sign up
(39:10):
for my morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie
correct dot com. You can also find me at Katie
Currect on Instagram and all my social media channels. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Katie Couric
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