May 9, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode, Karol and Liz Wolfe discuss various aspects of motherhood, parenting challenges, and the cultural narratives surrounding family life. They explore the complexities of raising children in urban environments, the impact of reproductive technology on family dynamics, and the importance of maintaining a sense of adventure and exploration in life. The discussion also touches on education, career choices, and the need for a more nuanced understanding of personal and societal expectations regarding motherhood and family. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marko Wood Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Liz Wolfe. Liz is
an associate editor at Reason. She writes the daily Reason Roundup.
You can get it every morning in your inbox, and
she hosts the show just asking questions. So nice to
have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Liz, Carol, It's so good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's really really good to see you too. You have
become a mom since the last time I saw you
in person, which is quite a big change. And your
son is just the cutest. How's that going.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's the best thing ever. I am very, very eager
to try to exceed your record of three kids. I
am in awe of moms who have a whole brood,
and I hope to join their rank someday. I feel
like you're playing on easy mode to some degree when
you just have a youton child. But I also live
in New York City and I consider that to be
basically playing on hard mode compared to most other peoples.
(00:57):
So I feel like it's a little bit of a
mixed bag here.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, I'll tell you, I think having one wasn't super hard.
Having two almost killed me, But having three was the
easiest of all of it, because they're just entertaining each other.
And by the time you have the third, theoretically the
first and the second can you know, sort of take
care of the third a little bit. Three is the
magic number, I would say, I mean three plus. Anything
(01:23):
past three, but one or two is still kind of tough.
You need to be doing a lot of the entertaining
and the parenting and the taking care of them when
you could just kind of hand it off to the
older children. The more kids you have.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, as a libertarian, I believe in economies of scale,
and so there's something really frustrating about only having one kid.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I need to scale this enterprise. It's going so well.
We can definitely add more. We need more division of labor,
more specialization in the household. We've got it under control totally.
And the thing is if you space them correctly, you
can I think three years that's what we have is
good because you can hand down the crib and the
high chain and you know, the the car seats and
(02:02):
stuff like at the exact right time to not you know,
not need new ones. Do it too soon though, and
you're gonna need two high chairs and two cribs.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And yeah, you can stack them on top of each other, though,
right you can.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
It works.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I mean, Carol, I feel like you've long been an
inspiration for me, especially because raising three kids in New
York City, which you know you were doing up until
the pandemic, attempted to make everybody's life hell, and you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Made the rational decision to escape.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
But it's the thing that I struggle with is like,
if I want to have three or four or even
like five kids, like the the Hannah's Children vision, Like
what is the way to get them all on and
off the subway? Frequently I kind of don't understand from
like a people wrangling standpoint, how the mechanics of that
works when you're dealing with like rush hour trains.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think you end up putting the older kids in
charge of like, Okay, you're getting these two, I'm getting
these two. Let's do it. Also, I love the idea
of you having five kids because you say I'm an inspiration.
You are such an inspiration. You are quite young, and
you have your act so together, you know what, you believe,
you are in a great marriage, you know, and you
(03:12):
have a child already, And I just I think you're
wonderful and like so advanced and such an inspiration to
I think young people everywhere. Oh, I want you to
go on the road and tell people how to do it. Well.
The problem is like, dispositionally, I don't want to tell
people how to live their lives at the same libertarian
(03:33):
but what I did anyway, you know it's possible.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, I think the thing that's really frustrating to
me is like it feels like people live in this
world of buying it like very false choices and binary
where it's like either you have to be full on
feminist girl mossing it up and wait until you're forty
five to have kids and make sure you freeze your eggs,
or you have to be like barefoot and pregnant eternally
in the kitchen. And to me, this's just like it's
(03:57):
such a pointless conversation that people have surround troud wifery
and motherhood because like, this isn't actually how people operate
in the wild, right. I have a job. I also
have a child who I spend a lot of time with.
There are lots of people who have these sort of
hybrid arrangements, and there are also lots of people who
maybe they have one vision for the timeline that these
(04:17):
things will happen at. But then, I mean, your story
is I think definitely a point like a story in
this favor where it's like, you don't know on what
so now timeline things are going to pan out for you.
And how frustrating and frankly disrespectful for people to be
told that, like, oh, well, you're doing it wrong if
in fact there's a bunch of circumstances where like it's
(04:38):
actually quite prudent to wait until you're in a good partnership,
ideally a good you know, covenantal marriage before you begin
to bring a bunch of children into the mix. And like,
for lots of people, it seems like the coupling upside
of things is happening later and later, and they're not
feeling stable and secure in that. I'm a little bit
less sympathetic to the oh, the finances aren't in order
type of argument, because I think people kind of don't
(04:59):
re lize how inexpensive having a child can be and
how you don't necessarily have to have, you know, every
child in their own room or every child going to
a for your ivy league institution, like you have a
lot of options beyond that, and people are unimaginative with
their sense of what having a child actually entails. And
(05:20):
I think that our parenting culture suffers because of that,
because we believe that it has to be so much
more complex with you know, five summer camps that all costs,
you know whatever, three thousand and four thousand dollars apiece
for every kid, and it's like, well, no, wonder, it
seems unfathomably expensive, But that's negotiable. That's something that's optional.
And I wish more young women didn't feel shame about
(05:40):
the timeline or trajectory that they're on, but did do
a little bit more rethinking, Like it's not necessarily as
binary as work or quit. It's not necessarily as binary
as have your finances perfectly an order or be destitute.
There's a lot of range that a lot of people
are working.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
With, absolutely, and your whole economy is of scale thing too,
a lot of the things that people think is going
to cost you know, you don't buy five cribs, You
buy the one crib and you pass it down. And
I heard one time somebody says something like, oh, you know,
I grew up poor, We grew up with hand me downs,
and I was like, I don't know how rich I
need to be that my kids are not going to
be wearing each other's hand me down. It's like you are.
(06:15):
They're all wearing each other's hand me downs forever. Like
it's definitely like, oh, you need a new pair of cleats,
Let's go see if your brother has an old pair.
And that's how I think it's supposed to go. You're
so right, though, And I think about this a lot.
Where people are just maybe it's because of the online
culture and they think that you could put everything neatly
into a box of you know, girl boss or trad wife,
(06:36):
but most people are a some combination. And just because
you think your life is going to go a certain
way doesn't mean it will. I when I got married,
our plan was I was going to be a stay
at home mom, and then I opened an unrelated business,
and then I got into journalism, and you know, you
just don't know where life is going to take you,
so you can't have what you're doing in this moment
(06:59):
be or a identity. And I think that's the thing
that people don't understand. They're scrambling around for like what
am I going to be? Well, maybe just don't think
of it like that, Maybe think about what you're going
to going to do instead, And it's it's a tougher
ask because what am I going to be? Sort of
gives you the roadmap, but nobody is just that one thing.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You know. The Drake album More Life, hmm, this is
I feel like my mantra and probably yours too, Like
both of us have a little bit of this, like
this antsiness, this eagerness to like stick our hands in
a million different parts, even if we're overextended, like I've
always had this.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, Iggy Pop puts it as like luss for life
right in right, it's Rake World, It's more Life.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
But there's a little bit in the sense of just
like you know, it's it. I think there's this narrative
out there that's like, once you have a child, your
life is over. Your life must be and say goodbye
to going out and to the fancy restaurants and to
parties with your friends, and you know, forget about throwing
a house party ever again. You really have to step
into this, you know, different state of and in some
(08:00):
ways it's true, right, because you can't do cocaine and
stay out till I am if you.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Have a newborn that you need to nurse, right like obviously, yeah,
but until I become a toddler.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
At least, you know, yeah, then you and the toddler
can be on the exact same But there's something so
frustrating about like having maintaining a lust for life, maintaining
a sense of more, a sense that you know, I
am infinitely capable and that my life isn't over and
I'm not waiting for some other stage to begin. But
(08:32):
these things can coexist at once. You know, your child
can be beautifully fit in to your sort of normal life.
You will have to change some components, and your values
and priorities might change. That's all like an appropriate and
very healthy thing. That's also just something that naturally happens
as we grow up and as we age. But it's
always been really frustrating to me that people have this
(08:52):
like stupid kind of sad narrative that sells woman short. Yeah,
that's this one of like, oh, well, you know, now
you're just releive to the status of mother. It's like
I am mother, and I am also a whole bunch
of other things I wants. Yeah, I think my child
is well served by me doing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That absolutely, and that lust for life, I think the
older you get, it's so easy to lose it. It's
so easy to stop listening to music, for example. I
think that that's something that a lot of women hit
a certain age and they don't listen to new music anymore,
or even old music, just kind of don't do it.
I went through a phase of that myself for sure,
But you know, loving everything and wanting to be part
(09:30):
of everything. I don't think you need to hit an
age where you're no longer in the mix and you're
just relegated to this one thing. I love your point
of view on this, and I'm not kidding. I think
you should be touring the country speaking to young women.
You can give them the libertarian like. You don't have
to follow what I'm saying, but maybe do it.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Maybe this is the better way.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Maybe you know, maybe you vote for this.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Oh okay, I'm so close to being an America expert,
which is what I've termed somebody who's visited all fifty states.
So I do kind of want to come up with
an excuse to go on across country to that, mostly
because I need to knock off the Dakotas and I
don't know how to do this, and it seems selfish
to drag my entire family on a North Dakota South
Dakota vacation that they definitely don't want to go on,
(10:14):
just so I can check this box.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I don't know if that's selfish, but I literately I
feel so close.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm a completionist, a geographic completionist, and there's something really exciting,
even though obviously, you know, I don't fully know every
nook and cranny of America. You know, I was just
in Maine, but I only saw a tiny little portion
of Maine for just a few days at a time.
But there is still something really beautiful about feeling like
I have a taste of every single region, every single state.
You know. I've spent a little of time chatting with
(10:42):
people or eating their food, and I don't know, I
think a lot of New Yorkers have this like obnoxious
and I say this about myself because I live in Queens.
They have this obnoxious view of like New York is
the center of the New Years, as we could ever compare.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's almost like a small town. Yeah, like thinking I know,
I know, I was such. I was so like that,
Like why would I go anywhere else? I'm in New
York on my worst days, I think I am that.
But I do also think, like, you know, being.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Deliberate about cultivating an appreciation for like what is there
to love in Oklahoma? Like what's the Alabama? Turns out
there's actually a lot. And I feel like, I this
is really dorky. But I feel as though I have
this like patriotism that swells up within me and I
can experience it and indulge it through travel. And I
think that's a good thing because libertarians are sometimes so
(11:32):
dispositionally oriented toward burn it all down.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I was not gonna say, you're sounding a little conservative.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I mean, yeah, I think I do have legitimate, like
appreciation for this thing that we call the American Project
and for you know what the Framers and the founders intended.
One of the ways that I realize that or sort
of live that out is by you know, hopping on
a plane and going and eating a bun to clams
and oysters in Maine, you know, just over a two
(12:03):
day trip or whatever. Or my husband I have road
trip between New York and Texas like twelve times, and
we take a different route every time. That's awesome in
part so that we can see, like what's going on
in this new place, but this also results in a
lot of like, oh crap, we're in the middle of
Ohio and we have nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
We're so bored, right, Yeah, it's it's tough. Ohio is tough,
my sister, I'm least from Ohio. I shouldn't. I shouldn't.
I shouldn't randomly insult Ohio like that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think. My favorite place that I've stumbled across so
far is like the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Like Fair Hope,
Alabama is has an intense, like Marti gra culture, which
I really enjoy and appreciate. And then also just like
I don't know, based off of my random walking around,
like seems like a very high proportion of lesbians convered
to straight people.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Okay, who knew?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, sort of like a cutely outdoorsy, very good community vibes,
pretty good food scene, Like I don't know. I was
kind of shocked to discover that it would actually, I think,
be a place I could see myself living.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Another possible idea for you,
because again we have that thing where we're doing a
million things at the same time. I something like a
travel I don't know site that does kind of underrated
places or places you might not have heard of. I
(13:23):
could see you being very good at that. Like again,
it could go hand in hand with your Let me
tell the children what they should be doing, and I can.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Tell the adults where they should be visiting. The problem is,
I think the kids these days like the Zoomers. They
don't listen to me. I feel even though I'm I
was born in nineteen ninety six. I think I'm technically
a zoomer, depending on how you calculate it. I feel
so woefully out of touch. I think in part because
I did everything on a sort of like you know,
slightly yah faster timeline, and so I feel also like
(13:53):
my cohort, like I feel strongly like disillusion slightly ironic millennial,
which I'm not saying is a good thing, Like I
wish I would assume or they seem better.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, I don't know the millennials. I used to be
pretty tough on them, you know, because I'm a Generation X. Yeah,
they're the generation right under you. The generation under you
is always the worst, right, But I feel like the
millennials got you know, a little bit too much complaining,
especially for me. They're far far better than this new
(14:25):
you know gen z thing. I apologize Millennials. I really
didn't mean it.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Well, everyone got so mad at them for all the
avocado toast and sort of the frivolous spending. But then
now it looks a little bit silly because it was like,
for a while, we truly did have such like a
VC cash infusion into a lot of these sort of
sharing economy and kick economy businesses, and you know, we
should have just probably spent less time doing sort of
dumb think pieces criticizing them for their choices, and more
(14:54):
time just waiting for these businesses to end up not
profitable or end up being really really bad models, because
I mean, people got a little bit overhyped and the
bubble burst, and we could have just let the cycle
run its course, and instead we felt the need to
just like hector other choices.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I did hector that much. Again, I'm sorry, Millennials, what
do you worry about.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
What do I worry about? I think the main thing
right now is the future that is brought into existence
by reproductive tech. And I mean more than just IVF.
I mean IVM and IVG, the sort of new incarnations
of that, the more advanced technology that may come to
(15:39):
replace IVF. But I also mean like gene editing of
embryos and the ways in which this sort of warps
what family life means, and the types of choices that
women are expected to make. So not the types of
choices that are available to women, but I'm worried a
little bit about, like what happened and when companies start
(16:01):
incentivizing women to freeze their eggs and to engage some
of these technologies in an effort for them to basically
push off their child bearing years until way later, to
the point where okay, well, in some sense, it's nice
for a woman who's in her forties or fifties to
be able to have children that she might have thought
she was unable to have. But in another sense, it's
(16:21):
a lot harder to raise those kids into the healthy
parenting culture when your parents are dying or you're in
the elder care stage of life. Fore, you no longer
have a support system because Frank fifty five is a
little late to be having a toddler. That's right if
you're a woman, and I worry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Man. My husband always says, you know, having kids is
a young man's game, and he's right. It's not easy
to chase around a toddler. And I always say, you
know these people who are like, oh, mc jagger had
a baby at eighty, you know eighty, Like you're not
mc jagger, you don't have a staff like I got
a McJagger.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I also get the sense that mc jagger is on
the more eryle side, Like I don't get the sense
that he has any difficulties with conception. I would. Yeah,
It's it's sad to me that there's been this cultural
narrative that we I think the fourth wave feminism has
taught women that you can basically, you know, you know,
wait and see, like hold on, wait, like focus on
(17:15):
other things, have your fun, have your career, wait, wait, wait,
it's always there, and it's like it really is not,
and that you might be setting yourself up for heartaches
that you're not really anticipating whether that heart itch comes
in the form of struggles with conception or miscarriage, or
you know, the awfulness of being sandwiched between taking care
of a toddler and dealing with older care.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Sure, just not being there for your kids as they
get older. I'm forty seven. We have three kids. I
wish we had a fourth. I do, but you know,
we never we stopped at three, that was it. But
I would never be like, oh, let's let's do this now.
Just had to have a baby at forty seven. I
know people do it, God bless them. But my mom
my in laws are so involved in being with my kids.
(17:58):
We get to like travel and do our work stuff
that we wouldn't get to do without them. And I
don't know how I would do it if I had
to have a baby right now, and it would be
a real difficulty and I would miss so much of
their life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think people do a good job of anticipating the benefits,
but sometimes a pretty poor job of anticipating the risks
and the costs. And it's hard, right because if that
is the only option available to people, right, I don't
want to deny them that option. I'm worried sort of,
you know, thinking not on the micro level, but more
on the macro level, like if parents today already feel
(18:35):
beleaguered and like our parenting culture has sort of a
deep rot within, especially in the big city urban course.
I don't think that pushing it off and making it
even more clinical than before is the thing that we'll
serve as a corrective to this cultural issue. And in fact,
I fear it really making it worse. And it takes
a lot for our libertarian to say that. I mean,
(18:56):
I think this is where my Catholicism is.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Coming up a conservative as you get older currently on
this issue, I mean completely, You can definitely see my Catholicism,
you know, creeping in here, and I will make no apologies,
right yeah, but it really is something that keeps me
up at night and something where you can never give
this advice in a way that makes somebody feel like
(19:20):
you're indicting or condemning their choices. But at the same time,
I really really wish people thought a little bit more
deeply about this. I agree. Yeah, We're going to take
a quick break and be right back on the Carol
Marcowitch Show. What advice would you give your sixteen year
old self? Like, what would you tell yourself to do differently,
(19:43):
or maybe not to do differently, maybe to do the same.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think my very clear answer, my clear verdict is
you will enter college and you will hate it. Drop out,
cut your losses. I would probably counsel myself to, you know,
only go for like a year or so, get a
sense of ensuring that you're like ensuring that you know
(20:08):
what it's all about, and really make sure. Like I
think that going and dropping out would probably be better
for me than not going at all, because I would
have a sense of what I'm foregoing, and I would
also have a sense of I think, motivation, like there
would be a fire lit beneath me. To avoid that
(20:28):
sort of environment, I went to college at William and Mary,
and I entered in twenty fourteen, the fall that the
Rolling Stone Repokes story was out and the beginning of
a lot of crazy social justice in sanity and me
too related insanity and you know, the era of Title
nine due process violating campus kangaroo courts, and it felt
(20:48):
like an environment that was full on in a social
justice frenzy. It was an environment where as a writer,
you know, I got sort of like soft canceled on
campus and was extremely unpopular because of the things that
I was writing, and it was also just, I think,
a pretty unintellectual environment. And you couple that with the
fact that college is so obscenely expensive and my parents
(21:09):
gave me some money to pay for it, but I
was also expected to, you know, commit a fair amount
of money to pay for it. So it was not
just like a spend whatever you want type scenario. Far
from it, and I felt I just remember feeling like
this is a bad deal. I care about learning, I
love learning, I'm deeply curious, but this feels like an
(21:30):
environment that is just it's about brainwashing, it's about intellectual conformity,
and you really get punished if you deviate from the herd.
And I wish i'd like fully embrace the autodidact life
and move to like Mexico and just compact it to
Spanish immersion legitimately, like yeah, I speak a little bit
of Spanish, but not super well. And I wish I'd
really gone all in on that and just been focused on,
(21:52):
like in my free time, almost the will hunting approach
of like all you need is a library card, that's it,
go read.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I love that. I hope that more kids take a
different path. It's very hard, you know. I know with
my own kids, like when I'm like, maybe you don't
go to college, like, oh, we're going to college, Like
they're just in their own heads. They're they're in for
the experience, they're not trying to deviate from it. But
I hope if my kids enter and don't feel like
(22:19):
they belong there or feel like they want to do
something else, I hope that they take that path.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well, It's something I think about so much, like I wish,
I hope that I have the balls to stick to
my guns here. That's a really mixed metaphor. I hope
I have the balls to stick to my guns here
when my son, you know, is eighteen, But I really
want to present a full array of options to him
and to all future kids where it's like, you could
choose trade school, you could choose a four year college
(22:46):
so you know, figure out some ways to pay for it, buddy,
you could choose some sort of other creative path. But
at the age of maybe seventeen, not the age of
twenty two or twenty three, the age of like seventeen,
you need to be thinking what is it that I
am uniquely gifted that and what are the waste that
I can make money with that? And it doesn't have
to you don't have to have a perfectly sketched out plan,
(23:07):
and you know things can change on you. But I
just find this whole trend of like people will bankroll
their kids college educations, and their kids will be an
undecided major and declared major until they're twenty one or
twenty two, and the kid wastes a bunch of money
and then they graduate and they still don't really know
what they want to do. And look, I love iterative processes.
(23:28):
I'm all for trial and error, but like, come on,
this is a rescue for wasting money and wasting time.
And I just don't think we parents need to be
guiding children to not permit them to do that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Totally. Well, I've loved this conversation. You are just one
of my absolute favorites. End us here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, play like a child. Next time you see a trampoline,
please go jump on it. Next time you see the ocean,
run into it time kids or having a monkey bar
contest like you enter, I just think that you know
the Twitter meme is like go out and touch grass
and it's like no, actually, just like start playing again. People,
get off of your damn screens and just embrace the tactile, beautiful,
(24:16):
risky world out there. And I just I guarantee it
will do good things to your soul.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I love it. She is Liz will sign up for
a reason. Roundup, check out just asking questions. Thank you
so much for coming on, Liz.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Thank you so much, Carol, It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
Which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marko Wood Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Liz Wolfe. Liz is
an associate editor at Reason. She writes the daily Reason Roundup.
You can get it every morning in your inbox, and
she hosts the show just asking questions. So nice to
have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Liz, Carol, It's so good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's really really good to see you too. You have
become a mom since the last time I saw you
in person, which is quite a big change. And your
son is just the cutest. How's that going.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's the best thing ever. I am very, very eager
to try to exceed your record of three kids. I
am in awe of moms who have a whole brood,
and I hope to join their rank someday. I feel
like you're playing on easy mode to some degree when
you just have a youton child. But I also live
in New York City and I consider that to be
basically playing on hard mode compared to most other peoples.
(00:57):
So I feel like it's a little bit of a
mixed bag here.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, I'll tell you, I think having one wasn't super hard.
Having two almost killed me, But having three was the
easiest of all of it, because they're just entertaining each other.
And by the time you have the third, theoretically the
first and the second can you know, sort of take
care of the third a little bit. Three is the
magic number, I would say, I mean three plus. Anything
(01:23):
past three, but one or two is still kind of tough.
You need to be doing a lot of the entertaining
and the parenting and the taking care of them when
you could just kind of hand it off to the
older children. The more kids you have.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, as a libertarian, I believe in economies of scale,
and so there's something really frustrating about only having one kid.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I need to scale this enterprise. It's going so well.
We can definitely add more. We need more division of labor,
more specialization in the household. We've got it under control totally.
And the thing is if you space them correctly, you
can I think three years that's what we have is
good because you can hand down the crib and the
high chain and you know, the the car seats and
(02:02):
stuff like at the exact right time to not you know,
not need new ones. Do it too soon though, and
you're gonna need two high chairs and two cribs.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And yeah, you can stack them on top of each other, though,
right you can.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
It works.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I mean, Carol, I feel like you've long been an
inspiration for me, especially because raising three kids in New
York City, which you know you were doing up until
the pandemic, attempted to make everybody's life hell, and you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Made the rational decision to escape.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
But it's the thing that I struggle with is like,
if I want to have three or four or even
like five kids, like the the Hannah's Children vision, Like
what is the way to get them all on and
off the subway? Frequently I kind of don't understand from
like a people wrangling standpoint, how the mechanics of that
works when you're dealing with like rush hour trains.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think you end up putting the older kids in
charge of like, Okay, you're getting these two, I'm getting
these two. Let's do it. Also, I love the idea
of you having five kids because you say I'm an inspiration.
You are such an inspiration. You are quite young, and
you have your act so together, you know what, you believe,
you are in a great marriage, you know, and you
(03:12):
have a child already, And I just I think you're
wonderful and like so advanced and such an inspiration to
I think young people everywhere. Oh, I want you to
go on the road and tell people how to do it. Well.
The problem is like, dispositionally, I don't want to tell
people how to live their lives at the same libertarian
(03:33):
but what I did anyway, you know it's possible.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, I think the thing that's really frustrating to
me is like it feels like people live in this
world of buying it like very false choices and binary
where it's like either you have to be full on
feminist girl mossing it up and wait until you're forty
five to have kids and make sure you freeze your eggs,
or you have to be like barefoot and pregnant eternally
in the kitchen. And to me, this's just like it's
(03:57):
such a pointless conversation that people have surround troud wifery
and motherhood because like, this isn't actually how people operate
in the wild, right. I have a job. I also
have a child who I spend a lot of time with.
There are lots of people who have these sort of
hybrid arrangements, and there are also lots of people who
maybe they have one vision for the timeline that these
(04:17):
things will happen at. But then, I mean, your story
is I think definitely a point like a story in
this favor where it's like, you don't know on what
so now timeline things are going to pan out for you.
And how frustrating and frankly disrespectful for people to be
told that, like, oh, well, you're doing it wrong if
in fact there's a bunch of circumstances where like it's
(04:38):
actually quite prudent to wait until you're in a good partnership,
ideally a good you know, covenantal marriage before you begin
to bring a bunch of children into the mix. And like,
for lots of people, it seems like the coupling upside
of things is happening later and later, and they're not
feeling stable and secure in that. I'm a little bit
less sympathetic to the oh, the finances aren't in order
type of argument, because I think people kind of don't
(04:59):
re lize how inexpensive having a child can be and
how you don't necessarily have to have, you know, every
child in their own room or every child going to
a for your ivy league institution, like you have a
lot of options beyond that, and people are unimaginative with
their sense of what having a child actually entails. And
(05:20):
I think that our parenting culture suffers because of that,
because we believe that it has to be so much
more complex with you know, five summer camps that all costs,
you know whatever, three thousand and four thousand dollars apiece
for every kid, and it's like, well, no, wonder, it
seems unfathomably expensive, But that's negotiable. That's something that's optional.
And I wish more young women didn't feel shame about
(05:40):
the timeline or trajectory that they're on, but did do
a little bit more rethinking, Like it's not necessarily as
binary as work or quit. It's not necessarily as binary
as have your finances perfectly an order or be destitute.
There's a lot of range that a lot of people
are working.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
With, absolutely, and your whole economy is of scale thing too,
a lot of the things that people think is going
to cost you know, you don't buy five cribs, You
buy the one crib and you pass it down. And
I heard one time somebody says something like, oh, you know,
I grew up poor, We grew up with hand me downs,
and I was like, I don't know how rich I
need to be that my kids are not going to
be wearing each other's hand me down. It's like you are.
(06:15):
They're all wearing each other's hand me downs forever. Like
it's definitely like, oh, you need a new pair of cleats,
Let's go see if your brother has an old pair.
And that's how I think it's supposed to go. You're
so right, though, And I think about this a lot.
Where people are just maybe it's because of the online
culture and they think that you could put everything neatly
into a box of you know, girl boss or trad wife,
(06:36):
but most people are a some combination. And just because
you think your life is going to go a certain
way doesn't mean it will. I when I got married,
our plan was I was going to be a stay
at home mom, and then I opened an unrelated business,
and then I got into journalism, and you know, you
just don't know where life is going to take you,
so you can't have what you're doing in this moment
(06:59):
be or a identity. And I think that's the thing
that people don't understand. They're scrambling around for like what
am I going to be? Well, maybe just don't think
of it like that, Maybe think about what you're going
to going to do instead, And it's it's a tougher
ask because what am I going to be? Sort of
gives you the roadmap, but nobody is just that one thing.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You know. The Drake album More Life, hmm, this is
I feel like my mantra and probably yours too, Like
both of us have a little bit of this, like
this antsiness, this eagerness to like stick our hands in
a million different parts, even if we're overextended, like I've
always had this.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, Iggy Pop puts it as like luss for life
right in right, it's Rake World, It's more Life.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
But there's a little bit in the sense of just
like you know, it's it. I think there's this narrative
out there that's like, once you have a child, your
life is over. Your life must be and say goodbye
to going out and to the fancy restaurants and to
parties with your friends, and you know, forget about throwing
a house party ever again. You really have to step
into this, you know, different state of and in some
(08:00):
ways it's true, right, because you can't do cocaine and
stay out till I am if you.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Have a newborn that you need to nurse, right like obviously, yeah,
but until I become a toddler.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
At least, you know, yeah, then you and the toddler
can be on the exact same But there's something so
frustrating about like having maintaining a lust for life, maintaining
a sense of more, a sense that you know, I
am infinitely capable and that my life isn't over and
I'm not waiting for some other stage to begin. But
(08:32):
these things can coexist at once. You know, your child
can be beautifully fit in to your sort of normal life.
You will have to change some components, and your values
and priorities might change. That's all like an appropriate and
very healthy thing. That's also just something that naturally happens
as we grow up and as we age. But it's
always been really frustrating to me that people have this
(08:52):
like stupid kind of sad narrative that sells woman short. Yeah,
that's this one of like, oh, well, you know, now
you're just releive to the status of mother. It's like
I am mother, and I am also a whole bunch
of other things I wants. Yeah, I think my child
is well served by me doing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That absolutely, and that lust for life, I think the
older you get, it's so easy to lose it. It's
so easy to stop listening to music, for example. I
think that that's something that a lot of women hit
a certain age and they don't listen to new music anymore,
or even old music, just kind of don't do it.
I went through a phase of that myself for sure,
But you know, loving everything and wanting to be part
(09:30):
of everything. I don't think you need to hit an
age where you're no longer in the mix and you're
just relegated to this one thing. I love your point
of view on this, and I'm not kidding. I think
you should be touring the country speaking to young women.
You can give them the libertarian like. You don't have
to follow what I'm saying, but maybe do it.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Maybe this is the better way.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Maybe you know, maybe you vote for this.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Oh okay, I'm so close to being an America expert,
which is what I've termed somebody who's visited all fifty states.
So I do kind of want to come up with
an excuse to go on across country to that, mostly
because I need to knock off the Dakotas and I
don't know how to do this, and it seems selfish
to drag my entire family on a North Dakota South
Dakota vacation that they definitely don't want to go on,
(10:14):
just so I can check this box.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I don't know if that's selfish, but I literately I
feel so close.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm a completionist, a geographic completionist, and there's something really exciting,
even though obviously, you know, I don't fully know every
nook and cranny of America. You know, I was just
in Maine, but I only saw a tiny little portion
of Maine for just a few days at a time.
But there is still something really beautiful about feeling like
I have a taste of every single region, every single state.
You know. I've spent a little of time chatting with
(10:42):
people or eating their food, and I don't know, I
think a lot of New Yorkers have this like obnoxious
and I say this about myself because I live in Queens.
They have this obnoxious view of like New York is
the center of the New Years, as we could ever compare.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's almost like a small town. Yeah, like thinking I know,
I know, I was such. I was so like that,
Like why would I go anywhere else? I'm in New
York on my worst days, I think I am that.
But I do also think, like, you know, being.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Deliberate about cultivating an appreciation for like what is there
to love in Oklahoma? Like what's the Alabama? Turns out
there's actually a lot. And I feel like, I this
is really dorky. But I feel as though I have
this like patriotism that swells up within me and I
can experience it and indulge it through travel. And I
think that's a good thing because libertarians are sometimes so
(11:32):
dispositionally oriented toward burn it all down.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I was not gonna say, you're sounding a little conservative.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I mean, yeah, I think I do have legitimate, like
appreciation for this thing that we call the American Project
and for you know what the Framers and the founders intended.
One of the ways that I realize that or sort
of live that out is by you know, hopping on
a plane and going and eating a bun to clams
and oysters in Maine, you know, just over a two
(12:03):
day trip or whatever. Or my husband I have road
trip between New York and Texas like twelve times, and
we take a different route every time. That's awesome in
part so that we can see, like what's going on
in this new place, but this also results in a
lot of like, oh crap, we're in the middle of
Ohio and we have nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
We're so bored, right, Yeah, it's it's tough. Ohio is tough,
my sister, I'm least from Ohio. I shouldn't. I shouldn't.
I shouldn't randomly insult Ohio like that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think. My favorite place that I've stumbled across so
far is like the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Like Fair Hope,
Alabama is has an intense, like Marti gra culture, which
I really enjoy and appreciate. And then also just like
I don't know, based off of my random walking around,
like seems like a very high proportion of lesbians convered
to straight people.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Okay, who knew?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, sort of like a cutely outdoorsy, very good community vibes,
pretty good food scene, Like I don't know. I was
kind of shocked to discover that it would actually, I think,
be a place I could see myself living.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Another possible idea for you,
because again we have that thing where we're doing a
million things at the same time. I something like a
travel I don't know site that does kind of underrated
places or places you might not have heard of. I
(13:23):
could see you being very good at that. Like again,
it could go hand in hand with your Let me
tell the children what they should be doing, and I can.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Tell the adults where they should be visiting. The problem is,
I think the kids these days like the Zoomers. They
don't listen to me. I feel even though I'm I
was born in nineteen ninety six. I think I'm technically
a zoomer, depending on how you calculate it. I feel
so woefully out of touch. I think in part because
I did everything on a sort of like you know,
slightly yah faster timeline, and so I feel also like
(13:53):
my cohort, like I feel strongly like disillusion slightly ironic millennial,
which I'm not saying is a good thing, Like I
wish I would assume or they seem better.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, I don't know the millennials. I used to be
pretty tough on them, you know, because I'm a Generation X. Yeah,
they're the generation right under you. The generation under you
is always the worst, right, But I feel like the
millennials got you know, a little bit too much complaining,
especially for me. They're far far better than this new
(14:25):
you know gen z thing. I apologize Millennials. I really
didn't mean it.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Well, everyone got so mad at them for all the
avocado toast and sort of the frivolous spending. But then
now it looks a little bit silly because it was like,
for a while, we truly did have such like a
VC cash infusion into a lot of these sort of
sharing economy and kick economy businesses, and you know, we
should have just probably spent less time doing sort of
dumb think pieces criticizing them for their choices, and more
(14:54):
time just waiting for these businesses to end up not
profitable or end up being really really bad models, because
I mean, people got a little bit overhyped and the
bubble burst, and we could have just let the cycle
run its course, and instead we felt the need to
just like hector other choices.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I did hector that much. Again, I'm sorry, Millennials, what
do you worry about.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
What do I worry about? I think the main thing
right now is the future that is brought into existence
by reproductive tech. And I mean more than just IVF.
I mean IVM and IVG, the sort of new incarnations
of that, the more advanced technology that may come to
(15:39):
replace IVF. But I also mean like gene editing of
embryos and the ways in which this sort of warps
what family life means, and the types of choices that
women are expected to make. So not the types of
choices that are available to women, but I'm worried a
little bit about, like what happened and when companies start
(16:01):
incentivizing women to freeze their eggs and to engage some
of these technologies in an effort for them to basically
push off their child bearing years until way later, to
the point where okay, well, in some sense, it's nice
for a woman who's in her forties or fifties to
be able to have children that she might have thought
she was unable to have. But in another sense, it's
(16:21):
a lot harder to raise those kids into the healthy
parenting culture when your parents are dying or you're in
the elder care stage of life. Fore, you no longer
have a support system because Frank fifty five is a
little late to be having a toddler. That's right if
you're a woman, and I worry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Man. My husband always says, you know, having kids is
a young man's game, and he's right. It's not easy
to chase around a toddler. And I always say, you
know these people who are like, oh, mc jagger had
a baby at eighty, you know eighty, Like you're not
mc jagger, you don't have a staff like I got
a McJagger.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I also get the sense that mc jagger is on
the more eryle side, Like I don't get the sense
that he has any difficulties with conception. I would. Yeah,
It's it's sad to me that there's been this cultural
narrative that we I think the fourth wave feminism has
taught women that you can basically, you know, you know,
wait and see, like hold on, wait, like focus on
(17:15):
other things, have your fun, have your career, wait, wait, wait,
it's always there, and it's like it really is not,
and that you might be setting yourself up for heartaches
that you're not really anticipating whether that heart itch comes
in the form of struggles with conception or miscarriage, or
you know, the awfulness of being sandwiched between taking care
of a toddler and dealing with older care.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Sure, just not being there for your kids as they
get older. I'm forty seven. We have three kids. I
wish we had a fourth. I do, but you know,
we never we stopped at three, that was it. But
I would never be like, oh, let's let's do this now.
Just had to have a baby at forty seven. I
know people do it, God bless them. But my mom
my in laws are so involved in being with my kids.
(17:58):
We get to like travel and do our work stuff
that we wouldn't get to do without them. And I
don't know how I would do it if I had
to have a baby right now, and it would be
a real difficulty and I would miss so much of
their life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think people do a good job of anticipating the benefits,
but sometimes a pretty poor job of anticipating the risks
and the costs. And it's hard, right because if that
is the only option available to people, right, I don't
want to deny them that option. I'm worried sort of,
you know, thinking not on the micro level, but more
on the macro level, like if parents today already feel
(18:35):
beleaguered and like our parenting culture has sort of a
deep rot within, especially in the big city urban course.
I don't think that pushing it off and making it
even more clinical than before is the thing that we'll
serve as a corrective to this cultural issue. And in fact,
I fear it really making it worse. And it takes
a lot for our libertarian to say that. I mean,
(18:56):
I think this is where my Catholicism is.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Coming up a conservative as you get older currently on
this issue, I mean completely, You can definitely see my Catholicism,
you know, creeping in here, and I will make no apologies,
right yeah, but it really is something that keeps me
up at night and something where you can never give
this advice in a way that makes somebody feel like
(19:20):
you're indicting or condemning their choices. But at the same time,
I really really wish people thought a little bit more
deeply about this. I agree. Yeah, We're going to take
a quick break and be right back on the Carol
Marcowitch Show. What advice would you give your sixteen year
old self? Like, what would you tell yourself to do differently,
(19:43):
or maybe not to do differently, maybe to do the same.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think my very clear answer, my clear verdict is
you will enter college and you will hate it. Drop out,
cut your losses. I would probably counsel myself to, you know,
only go for like a year or so, get a
sense of ensuring that you're like ensuring that you know
(20:08):
what it's all about, and really make sure. Like I
think that going and dropping out would probably be better
for me than not going at all, because I would
have a sense of what I'm foregoing, and I would
also have a sense of I think, motivation, like there
would be a fire lit beneath me. To avoid that
(20:28):
sort of environment, I went to college at William and Mary,
and I entered in twenty fourteen, the fall that the
Rolling Stone Repokes story was out and the beginning of
a lot of crazy social justice in sanity and me
too related insanity and you know, the era of Title
nine due process violating campus kangaroo courts, and it felt
(20:48):
like an environment that was full on in a social
justice frenzy. It was an environment where as a writer,
you know, I got sort of like soft canceled on
campus and was extremely unpopular because of the things that
I was writing, and it was also just, I think,
a pretty unintellectual environment. And you couple that with the
fact that college is so obscenely expensive and my parents
(21:09):
gave me some money to pay for it, but I
was also expected to, you know, commit a fair amount
of money to pay for it. So it was not
just like a spend whatever you want type scenario. Far
from it, and I felt I just remember feeling like
this is a bad deal. I care about learning, I
love learning, I'm deeply curious, but this feels like an
(21:30):
environment that is just it's about brainwashing, it's about intellectual conformity,
and you really get punished if you deviate from the herd.
And I wish i'd like fully embrace the autodidact life
and move to like Mexico and just compact it to
Spanish immersion legitimately, like yeah, I speak a little bit
of Spanish, but not super well. And I wish I'd
really gone all in on that and just been focused on,
(21:52):
like in my free time, almost the will hunting approach
of like all you need is a library card, that's it,
go read.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I love that. I hope that more kids take a
different path. It's very hard, you know. I know with
my own kids, like when I'm like, maybe you don't
go to college, like, oh, we're going to college, Like
they're just in their own heads. They're they're in for
the experience, they're not trying to deviate from it. But
I hope if my kids enter and don't feel like
(22:19):
they belong there or feel like they want to do
something else, I hope that they take that path.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well, It's something I think about so much, like I wish,
I hope that I have the balls to stick to
my guns here. That's a really mixed metaphor. I hope
I have the balls to stick to my guns here
when my son, you know, is eighteen, But I really
want to present a full array of options to him
and to all future kids where it's like, you could
choose trade school, you could choose a four year college
(22:46):
so you know, figure out some ways to pay for it, buddy,
you could choose some sort of other creative path. But
at the age of maybe seventeen, not the age of
twenty two or twenty three, the age of like seventeen,
you need to be thinking what is it that I
am uniquely gifted that and what are the waste that
I can make money with that? And it doesn't have
to you don't have to have a perfectly sketched out plan,
(23:07):
and you know things can change on you. But I
just find this whole trend of like people will bankroll
their kids college educations, and their kids will be an
undecided major and declared major until they're twenty one or
twenty two, and the kid wastes a bunch of money
and then they graduate and they still don't really know
what they want to do. And look, I love iterative processes.
(23:28):
I'm all for trial and error, but like, come on,
this is a rescue for wasting money and wasting time.
And I just don't think we parents need to be
guiding children to not permit them to do that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Totally. Well, I've loved this conversation. You are just one
of my absolute favorites. End us here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, play like a child. Next time you see a trampoline,
please go jump on it. Next time you see the ocean,
run into it time kids or having a monkey bar
contest like you enter, I just think that you know
the Twitter meme is like go out and touch grass
and it's like no, actually, just like start playing again. People,
get off of your damn screens and just embrace the tactile, beautiful,
(24:16):
risky world out there. And I just I guarantee it
will do good things to your soul.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I love it. She is Liz will sign up for
a reason. Roundup, check out just asking questions. Thank you
so much for coming on, Liz.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Thank you so much, Carol, It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
Which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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