May 18, 2025 • 18 mins
Last week Justin and Kylie discussed Chappell Roan's recent claim that everyone she knows who has kids is miserable.
- Listen to episode #1245 - Mothers & Happiness
In light of this, we thought we'd replay episode #1072 - an interview with journalist Angela Mollard about an article where she asked if parenting needs a PR job. The link to that article is in the notes below.
Journalist Angela Mollard writes that "[a]n age of confession and vulnerability has seen parenting rebranded as a challenging, joyless, expensive, and freedom-sapping decision. They forgot the awesome bits."
On the podcast today, Angela chats with Justing about finding the joy in parenting, the importance of perspective and gratitude, and why we must speak of the great parts of parenthood—because although parenting is hard, it's absolutely worth it!
In this episode:
- The vulnerabilities VS the joys of parenting
- Parenting needs a PR job? Blame the mummy bloggers | Angela Mollard | The Daily Telegraph
- Finding fulfilment in parenting
- Generational differences
- Gratitude
- Look for the 'glimmers' every day
- #148 Flecks of Gold
- Perspective
- Being present
- What Your Child Needs From You by Dr Justin Coulson (use coupon code SPRING15 for a sneaky discount! Ends 6/5/24)
Related links:
Doors are now open to the Happy Families Membership
NEW weekly kids’ ‘Print & Play’ subscription FELT (Fostering Emotional Learning Together)
Subscribe to the Happy Families newsletter
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
One of my favorite things about the Happy Families podcast
is talking to awesome people. One of my favorite people
in media today is somebody called Angela Mollard. If you
read any kind of media online or even even the
old fashioned way with paper in your hand, you will
have come across Angela Mollard's writing. Angela is an experienced
columnist skilled in journalism, radio, television, magazines and newspapers. And
(00:30):
I think we've been on TV together before it Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Be on Channel nine together on Today not Today Today Extra.
We used to do and we used to thrash things
out and it was lovely. You were the highlight of
my week.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Sometimes always fun, not just contributing to TV and writing
weekly for the News Court papers on a range of topics,
one of which is parenting. You shut up recently in
do you say Maurrie Claire or Marie Clair? I've never known.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Murray Claire was? Which one did you see there? And
why were you buying murraycare Justine?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
None of what I was. I was just gurgling around
and seeing what else you've been up to. I can't
even remember what the article was, but I do know
that I really enjoyed it because I.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I did the three of the Matilda's before they went Overseas,
and I did Elizabeth Deickie from The Crown, and I've
done Terresa Palmer and Shaketti. I love working for Murray
Clair Arrgeous Maazing.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I don't think it was any of those, but whatever
it was, it just drew me in. It drew me in,
and I thought, this is why I love Angela Mollart.
I need it on the podcast because of a recent
article that you wrote for the News Court Papers, which
is that parenting needs a PR job. We've got a
PR problem when it comes to parenting, and your argument
basically is that I don't know people who are sort
(01:42):
of in their twenties and thirties are looking at parenting
and saying it's kind of hard. It correlates with some
research out of Europe I came across and studied from
Germany that indicated that most German couples are opting for
zero or one children because once you get past one,
well it's harder again. And so there's just a there's
a lack of desirability on our younger generation around parenting.
(02:05):
Once upon a time, having kids was just what you did.
You had to consciously opt out of parenting a generation
or two ago, whereas now young people seem to be
consciously determining whether or not they will opt in because
they're worried about careers and houses and deposits and dollars
and accomplishment and figuring out who they are, just identity stuff.
(02:26):
I loved your article. Where did it come from? What
was the idea behind it?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Look, all most of my articles come from just listening
to hearing people having conversations and have friendships with people
in their late twenties and thirties, and some you know,
through relatives and things. I can hear this conversation and
I was actually speaking to someone, a couple who were
getting married about a week before I wrote this piece,
and it was just like, gosh, all my friends they've
had started having babies there, and these two were thirty two,
(02:53):
and they said, you know, none of them make it
look or sound any fun. They're always talking about how
tiring it is, you know, always exhausted. You know. Somebody
even gone so far as to say, you know, you
should think seriously about doing this. It really changes your life.
And it really made me think about it. I think
since the turn of the century and the sort of
(03:14):
since we started having mummy bloggers, I think the whole
notion of talking about parenting has largely been and you know,
it's great just talk about the vulnerabilities and to be
open about it rather than simply just brushing it under
the carpet. But I do think that we've spoken so
much about how bad it is that we've forgotten to
talk about the joy of it.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Even as you're saying that, I'm thinking about mummy bloggers
and Insta mums and the TikTok parenting. I mean, it's
just it's almost rabid in some sections, and there's a
whole lot of people who are not experts who are
masquerading as experts and telling parents how to do it,
and for the most part, they make parenting look hard.
Like when you go away and try to be a
(03:52):
quote unquote gentle parent, it never quite works out the
way that it looks on social media. It looks really hard.
Question for you, did your parents complain about how hard
it was to be a parent like modern parents do?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Fantastic question, justin not at all. Never have, even now
my parents that they enveloped their grandchildren, they have them
living with them for periods of time. I've currently my
grandparents have one of their grandchildren from Japan living with
them for this year. They've had others living with them.
They have always embraced it and believed it just a
normal part of life that doesn't actually require as much
(04:27):
commentary as we currently give it. They always made growing up.
My mum always made me feel that I was myself
and my brothers were number one. Her life revolved she
was a teacher and a special needs teacher, so she
had a big job. She still sees kids along the way.
And I always felt like I was just the center
of her universe. And I interviewed her recently because she's
(04:49):
turning eighty, and I thought, and you know, even listening
to her, because I wanted to interview her just in
case was she ever to get to dementia or anything
like that. That I have a record of some parts
of her life, and what san through was just how
much she enjoyed it. She just enjoyed raising three kids.
But she did make the point there wasn't the expectation
for the children to perform, for the children to get
(05:11):
to this birthday party, for kids to look a certain
way on social media or to perform at school. We
just bumbled along and you know, I just went to
the local co ed secondary school, I felt and she
talked a little bit about where hunger came from kids
themselves rather than from expectations put on them from parents,
(05:31):
And I think that made it easier for parents and
easier for children.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Angela, this idea of your mum being fulfilled by the
role of mother, do you think that that fulfillment is
still evident in twenty twenty four. Do you think that
parents are looking at the role of parenting and saying, yes,
this is number one, what I'll be doing. I don't
have to opt in around, It's just what I do.
(05:55):
And number two, I expected to be fulfilling. And could
that be part of the proper as well? For all
of those times, Let's face a lot of the time
parenting is not fulfilling. It is actually it's a bit
of a grind's what Tody, I'd be boring.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
It can be grindy. We can. I think we measure
it more than we ever used to. We focus on
outcomes more than just letting it flow. But to answer
your question about do you think it can be fulfilling.
The reason. One of the reasons I wat this piece
is that I woke up one morning from a text
from my daughter, who is twenty. She was upstairs. A
(06:28):
possum had got into her room at night, and she'd
sent me a message overnight saying, Mum, there's a possum
in my room. I didn't want to wake you up,
but I think it might be a two man job
to get rid of it. And I lay there in
bed before I jumped up and went to deal with
the possum. I lay there and thought, this little girl
used to come into my bedroom every night for a year.
(06:48):
It used to do my head, and it used to
be I was so tired. And then one day she
just stopped. And I realized that everything in parenting just passes,
and if you just go okay, this is just happening now.
And now I have this twenty year old, this fully
girl and adult who dealt with this problem herself. Went
up there in the after I'd laying there for ten minutes,
just really reflecting on I've raised an adult and she
(07:11):
can now deal with things on her own, including a possum.
And I went upstairs and the possum had got itself
out through the window that had come in. There were
droppings all over her desk, next to her perfume bottles
and you know, and her books, and I just thought, wow,
I am so fortunate that this human I've created this
human and I get these experiences all the time. Look,
(07:31):
I will say there were moments in the park when
I was pushing them and I had a deadline, and
I you know, it wasn't I as a journalist. It
was I have a very sort of erratic working life.
But I'm really grateful. There's nothing in my life that
means more than them, and I'm so grateful I had them.
And I just don't hear that story anymore. I don't
(07:51):
hear the joy of it. I hear how tired is
how I need to have a glass of wine to
get through it. And I'm not critiquing any of that,
but I just wonder if we were more present with it,
and if we you know, one of the reasons I
wrote the headline is I did that you know it
needs a pr job. Is that the government, the treasurer
is talking about we need more kids. The birth rates
fall and it's dropped significantly in cities, but rather than
(08:12):
just saying have a child, we're not really showcasing how
joyous it can be. And the and I just think
if we can encourage more conversation about it so that
when that thirty year old sits down, we're thinking about
having a baby, the friend says, oh, yeah, we were,
you know, we had a hard night. But honestly, that smile,
that little smile just makes my day. I just don't
(08:33):
think we're hearing that we skew to the negative.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Angela. I've become a grandfather, and it's brought back the
most joyful and delightful parts of what parenting is. A
sense as I'm listening to what you're talking about that
a lot of people are focused on the short term.
And the short term is poo explosions that go up
the back and out the neck of the jumpsuit. The
short term is sleepless nights. The short term is I
(09:05):
don't want to eat my dinner on the green plate.
I want the blue plate. And of course we've got
things like diagnoses and the work, the work juggle, trying
to get family life around that. And yet I see
that little soon to be one year old smile at me,
and I just I almost want to weep. It's so gorgeous.
And the long term, the long term of parenting is,
(09:28):
as you've said, seeing this twenty year old deal with
the possum that got into the room overnight, and I
don't know, your child still managed to survive, didn't end
up with scratches and have her eyes gouged out by
by that possum. The long term is becoming a grandparent,
like I mean, that's a really long term play. But
oh my goodness, I'm getting weepy just thinking about it.
The long term is seeing your child achieve something where
(09:50):
they defy the odds. The fulfillment that comes from that
is so extraordinary. But I wonder, I wonder if you
were to reflect on what you wrote in this article
about parenting needing a pr job, and if you were
to take the straw man argument that so many make
that parenting is too hard and turn it into a
steel man where we argue that parenting is worth it
(10:12):
while still maintaining that sort of short term focus, because
when you're talking to a twenty four year old or
a thirty four year old, they're not really looking twenty
to thirty years down the track. They're just thinking, I've
got to go through twenty to thirty years of investment
and pain to get to this payoff that I'm describing.
How would you steal man that short term argument.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'd go macro over micro. We're always thinking about the micro.
We're always thinking about this one minute when this kid
is putting their fingers into the power points, or when,
as you say, they want the green plate not the
blue plate, or they have had a meltdown in the supermarket,
or they're not sleeping. That's all micro. Those are all micro,
(10:50):
just as you have micro experiences in the workplace you
as a journalist, I might spell something wrong, well there's
something grammatically incorrect, or I'm trying to get an interview
with someone and I don't get it. They're all micro.
The macro is that I've loved my journalism career. So
you can if you take a macro approach to parenting,
it's pulling back out from the micro. So actually draw
(11:11):
your lens back out as if you've got a camera
on it, sail above it, take a bird's eye view
on it, and think where will this be? You know,
what was it like for my parents? What was it
like when these children potentially do have grandchildren. Just pull
back the lens and think what could this be in
years to come. I can't you know, even if you
can't really envisage it, use your imagination, because there was
(11:36):
a reason you had them in the first place, right
you didn't just you know, most people would have planned
having a child. You would have imagined some kind of magic. Okay,
and the magic that created them were you all know,
the magic that mostly creates them. Sometimes there's you know,
there's other magic either year it's magic too. Try and
impart the magic that led you to create them to
the magic that you'll end up with in the end,
(11:57):
and not just in the end, ye every day some Yeah,
there might be something hard or something negative, but there's
still magic. But I think one of the hardest things
is that the negativity and round parenting has grown as
we've had dual working parents, and I think so we've
lent into that productivity means we do that it's a
(12:19):
different lifestyle, we have more kids in childcare. I totally
understand all of that, but I wonder if we also
think about legacy, Like I know a lot of kids
at school they do they do this thing in their
later years where they think about what their encouraged to
think about what their legacy will be. I think your
legacy when you're parenting. You know, I've had times when
(12:40):
I've given my all to my work, like I'm on
a deadline. Even the other night, my daughter wanted me
to watch the NRL with her, and I was trying
to deal with something sitting on there, and that later
that night I went, she just really wanted me to
watch the footy with her. Why did I not watch
the footy with her? I was just thinking I had
to deal with this thing right now. I think just
sometimes what is what's the end game here? And the
(13:01):
end game is that you have these beautiful people in
your lives forever more hopefully.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The key word perspective, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It is. It really is perspective. And you know, I
don't know how we actually do it. I don't know
how we sell it, but it feels to me like
we need an add campaign around it, just as we
did were smoking and seat belts and if we really
want to encourage parenting and look, I did this child
Free by Choice feature last year three thousand words for
(13:30):
Weekend magazine for News Corp. And I was really interested
in what all these people had to say. A lot
of them was environmental, a lot of them was cost
of living issues. I understand that, I do understand how
expensive it is, but I wonder whether we were to
talk more about that moment when they snuggle into your
bed and all the lovely things that you get, you know,
(13:51):
when they talk to you, if you could record their
conversation and listen back to it sometimes, that's so funny.
My daughter when she was little, when she said, you know,
it was asking about how she was born, and she said,
you know, when you were pregnant with me, if I
did a handstand, if you did a handstand, would you
would I have come out your mouth like that. She
couldn't conceive of how you could have a baby, and
you tell me and it not fall out. I just
(14:14):
I don't know. I just think there's magic that you
don't expect and that we don't give up on it,
but we we forget it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Angela, I want to share a story with you. It's
a story that I've shared in my presentations over the years,
and I'd love to get your reaction to it as
we come to a conclusion. The story's actually got nothing
to do with parenting. It's a story about a young
man who heard about a gold rush in the west,
so he packed up his things and decided to go
and make his fortune. He sat down by the river
(14:41):
and he panned day after day after day looking for
all of the gold that he was hearing about. Nuggets
were apparently rolling down the river, and all he was
finding was rocks. He'd pull another rock out of the
pan and add it to the pile beside him, day
after day after day, all of these rocks mounting up
beside him, until he's destitute. He's got nothing left, and
he knows that he's going to have to go home
and ask his parents to take him back so he
(15:01):
can start his life all over again, just a lot
poorer than he had been before he went out to
the gold fields. As he was preparing to pack up
and leave, an old man, a wealthy prospector walked past
him and kicked at the pile of rocks and made
the astute comment, that's quite a pile of rocks you've
got there, to which the young man responded, there's no
gold here, just stupid rocks. I've worked, I've given everything,
(15:25):
I've lost everything. I'm going home. The old man picks
up one of the rocks and he cracks it open
on the edge of the pan, and as he holds
it open, a whole lot of gold flecks glisten reflecting
in the sun. And the wise old prospector says, you're
sitting on a pile of gold right here. The young
man responds, no, no, no, no no, I'm not looking for
gold flex. I'm looking for nuggets like you've got in
(15:47):
your pouch. The old man opens the pouch that's on
his belt, and the young man is chagrined, surprised to
see that the pouch is full not of nuggets, but
of gold flex, to which the old man responds, young man,
it's a steady accumulation of these flecks of gold that
has made me rich. As I hear you talk about parenting,
needing a PR job, and the things that you've shared
(16:09):
in this podcast, which have just been beautiful, so heartwarming,
my sense is that the best PR job we could
have is to notice the thousands of flex of gold
that passed by us every single day in the river
of family life.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I love that it's kind of like glimmers, isn't it
noticing glimmers. I've saw that word recently. When something just
glimmers it catches your eye. It doesn't have to last
very long. It's just a moment. It's just a moment.
Inhabit it, see it, feel it, because that's all we
ever have is glimmers. And you know, there is not
some moment that you arrive at some imagine tomorrow that
(16:46):
is perfect with you know your child is perfect. That's
just what life is. It's just this parenting. It's an
opportunity to be at the cold face of life, doing
it beautifully some days, and struggling the days and just
in finding it all and wretching because if it's all
just smooth and even that's not a life, it's never
(17:07):
going to be a life. So parenting's the same. It's
an appreciation that it's going to be. You know, it's
going to have moments. But as you say, and as
that story shows, it's really choosing what you see. It's
choosing what you notice. And if you choose to notice
the negative, that's what your story will be. If you
choose to notice those little flecks of gold, that's what
(17:29):
your story will be.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Parenting needs a pr fix. Angela Mollard. I vote for
you as the person to lead the campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Oh like you, Justin Miner are a bit more grown
up now, so I'm handing the baton on to the
younger parents. But talk about it, talk about the great stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, there's something that comes though with being an older
parent and having been through it, you can see why
it's so worthwhile. I think you've done a beautiful job
articulating that today. Thank you for your article and thanks
for chatting with me.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Thanks Justin. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Angela Mollardist, journalist, radio, television, magazine and newspaper, writer and
commentator and all the rest of it. Most regularly with
the News Corp papers on a range of topics, including
the one that we shouldn't leave alone, parenting. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
(18:18):
For more information about finding the joy in parenting, please
visit us at happy Families dot com dot you and
check out my book What Your Child Needs from You.
It is a book about the joy of parenting and
I think that it will help you to get the
reset that you need to make your family happier.
One of my favorite things about the Happy Families podcast
is talking to awesome people. One of my favorite people
in media today is somebody called Angela Mollard. If you
read any kind of media online or even even the
old fashioned way with paper in your hand, you will
have come across Angela Mollard's writing. Angela is an experienced
columnist skilled in journalism, radio, television, magazines and newspapers. And
(00:30):
I think we've been on TV together before it Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Be on Channel nine together on Today not Today Today Extra.
We used to do and we used to thrash things
out and it was lovely. You were the highlight of
my week.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Sometimes always fun, not just contributing to TV and writing
weekly for the News Court papers on a range of topics,
one of which is parenting. You shut up recently in
do you say Maurrie Claire or Marie Clair? I've never known.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Murray Claire was? Which one did you see there? And
why were you buying murraycare Justine?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
None of what I was. I was just gurgling around
and seeing what else you've been up to. I can't
even remember what the article was, but I do know
that I really enjoyed it because I.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I did the three of the Matilda's before they went Overseas,
and I did Elizabeth Deickie from The Crown, and I've
done Terresa Palmer and Shaketti. I love working for Murray
Clair Arrgeous Maazing.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I don't think it was any of those, but whatever
it was, it just drew me in. It drew me in,
and I thought, this is why I love Angela Mollart.
I need it on the podcast because of a recent
article that you wrote for the News Court Papers, which
is that parenting needs a PR job. We've got a
PR problem when it comes to parenting, and your argument
basically is that I don't know people who are sort
(01:42):
of in their twenties and thirties are looking at parenting
and saying it's kind of hard. It correlates with some
research out of Europe I came across and studied from
Germany that indicated that most German couples are opting for
zero or one children because once you get past one,
well it's harder again. And so there's just a there's
a lack of desirability on our younger generation around parenting.
(02:05):
Once upon a time, having kids was just what you did.
You had to consciously opt out of parenting a generation
or two ago, whereas now young people seem to be
consciously determining whether or not they will opt in because
they're worried about careers and houses and deposits and dollars
and accomplishment and figuring out who they are, just identity stuff.
(02:26):
I loved your article. Where did it come from? What
was the idea behind it?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Look, all most of my articles come from just listening
to hearing people having conversations and have friendships with people
in their late twenties and thirties, and some you know,
through relatives and things. I can hear this conversation and
I was actually speaking to someone, a couple who were
getting married about a week before I wrote this piece,
and it was just like, gosh, all my friends they've
had started having babies there, and these two were thirty two,
(02:53):
and they said, you know, none of them make it
look or sound any fun. They're always talking about how
tiring it is, you know, always exhausted. You know. Somebody
even gone so far as to say, you know, you
should think seriously about doing this. It really changes your life.
And it really made me think about it. I think
since the turn of the century and the sort of
(03:14):
since we started having mummy bloggers, I think the whole
notion of talking about parenting has largely been and you know,
it's great just talk about the vulnerabilities and to be
open about it rather than simply just brushing it under
the carpet. But I do think that we've spoken so
much about how bad it is that we've forgotten to
talk about the joy of it.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Even as you're saying that, I'm thinking about mummy bloggers
and Insta mums and the TikTok parenting. I mean, it's
just it's almost rabid in some sections, and there's a
whole lot of people who are not experts who are
masquerading as experts and telling parents how to do it,
and for the most part, they make parenting look hard.
Like when you go away and try to be a
(03:52):
quote unquote gentle parent, it never quite works out the
way that it looks on social media. It looks really hard.
Question for you, did your parents complain about how hard
it was to be a parent like modern parents do?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Fantastic question, justin not at all. Never have, even now
my parents that they enveloped their grandchildren, they have them
living with them for periods of time. I've currently my
grandparents have one of their grandchildren from Japan living with
them for this year. They've had others living with them.
They have always embraced it and believed it just a
normal part of life that doesn't actually require as much
(04:27):
commentary as we currently give it. They always made growing up.
My mum always made me feel that I was myself
and my brothers were number one. Her life revolved she
was a teacher and a special needs teacher, so she
had a big job. She still sees kids along the way.
And I always felt like I was just the center
of her universe. And I interviewed her recently because she's
(04:49):
turning eighty, and I thought, and you know, even listening
to her, because I wanted to interview her just in
case was she ever to get to dementia or anything
like that. That I have a record of some parts
of her life, and what san through was just how
much she enjoyed it. She just enjoyed raising three kids.
But she did make the point there wasn't the expectation
for the children to perform, for the children to get
(05:11):
to this birthday party, for kids to look a certain
way on social media or to perform at school. We
just bumbled along and you know, I just went to
the local co ed secondary school, I felt and she
talked a little bit about where hunger came from kids
themselves rather than from expectations put on them from parents,
(05:31):
And I think that made it easier for parents and
easier for children.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Angela, this idea of your mum being fulfilled by the
role of mother, do you think that that fulfillment is
still evident in twenty twenty four. Do you think that
parents are looking at the role of parenting and saying, yes,
this is number one, what I'll be doing. I don't
have to opt in around, It's just what I do.
(05:55):
And number two, I expected to be fulfilling. And could
that be part of the proper as well? For all
of those times, Let's face a lot of the time
parenting is not fulfilling. It is actually it's a bit
of a grind's what Tody, I'd be boring.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
It can be grindy. We can. I think we measure
it more than we ever used to. We focus on
outcomes more than just letting it flow. But to answer
your question about do you think it can be fulfilling.
The reason. One of the reasons I wat this piece
is that I woke up one morning from a text
from my daughter, who is twenty. She was upstairs. A
(06:28):
possum had got into her room at night, and she'd
sent me a message overnight saying, Mum, there's a possum
in my room. I didn't want to wake you up,
but I think it might be a two man job
to get rid of it. And I lay there in
bed before I jumped up and went to deal with
the possum. I lay there and thought, this little girl
used to come into my bedroom every night for a year.
(06:48):
It used to do my head, and it used to
be I was so tired. And then one day she
just stopped. And I realized that everything in parenting just passes,
and if you just go okay, this is just happening now.
And now I have this twenty year old, this fully
girl and adult who dealt with this problem herself. Went
up there in the after I'd laying there for ten minutes,
just really reflecting on I've raised an adult and she
(07:11):
can now deal with things on her own, including a possum.
And I went upstairs and the possum had got itself
out through the window that had come in. There were
droppings all over her desk, next to her perfume bottles
and you know, and her books, and I just thought, wow,
I am so fortunate that this human I've created this
human and I get these experiences all the time. Look,
(07:31):
I will say there were moments in the park when
I was pushing them and I had a deadline, and
I you know, it wasn't I as a journalist. It
was I have a very sort of erratic working life.
But I'm really grateful. There's nothing in my life that
means more than them, and I'm so grateful I had them.
And I just don't hear that story anymore. I don't
(07:51):
hear the joy of it. I hear how tired is
how I need to have a glass of wine to
get through it. And I'm not critiquing any of that,
but I just wonder if we were more present with it,
and if we you know, one of the reasons I
wrote the headline is I did that you know it
needs a pr job. Is that the government, the treasurer
is talking about we need more kids. The birth rates
fall and it's dropped significantly in cities, but rather than
(08:12):
just saying have a child, we're not really showcasing how
joyous it can be. And the and I just think
if we can encourage more conversation about it so that
when that thirty year old sits down, we're thinking about
having a baby, the friend says, oh, yeah, we were,
you know, we had a hard night. But honestly, that smile,
that little smile just makes my day. I just don't
(08:33):
think we're hearing that we skew to the negative.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Angela. I've become a grandfather, and it's brought back the
most joyful and delightful parts of what parenting is. A
sense as I'm listening to what you're talking about that
a lot of people are focused on the short term.
And the short term is poo explosions that go up
the back and out the neck of the jumpsuit. The
short term is sleepless nights. The short term is I
(09:05):
don't want to eat my dinner on the green plate.
I want the blue plate. And of course we've got
things like diagnoses and the work, the work juggle, trying
to get family life around that. And yet I see
that little soon to be one year old smile at me,
and I just I almost want to weep. It's so gorgeous.
And the long term, the long term of parenting is,
(09:28):
as you've said, seeing this twenty year old deal with
the possum that got into the room overnight, and I
don't know, your child still managed to survive, didn't end
up with scratches and have her eyes gouged out by
by that possum. The long term is becoming a grandparent,
like I mean, that's a really long term play. But
oh my goodness, I'm getting weepy just thinking about it.
The long term is seeing your child achieve something where
(09:50):
they defy the odds. The fulfillment that comes from that
is so extraordinary. But I wonder, I wonder if you
were to reflect on what you wrote in this article
about parenting needing a pr job, and if you were
to take the straw man argument that so many make
that parenting is too hard and turn it into a
steel man where we argue that parenting is worth it
(10:12):
while still maintaining that sort of short term focus, because
when you're talking to a twenty four year old or
a thirty four year old, they're not really looking twenty
to thirty years down the track. They're just thinking, I've
got to go through twenty to thirty years of investment
and pain to get to this payoff that I'm describing.
How would you steal man that short term argument.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'd go macro over micro. We're always thinking about the micro.
We're always thinking about this one minute when this kid
is putting their fingers into the power points, or when,
as you say, they want the green plate not the
blue plate, or they have had a meltdown in the supermarket,
or they're not sleeping. That's all micro. Those are all micro,
(10:50):
just as you have micro experiences in the workplace you
as a journalist, I might spell something wrong, well there's
something grammatically incorrect, or I'm trying to get an interview
with someone and I don't get it. They're all micro.
The macro is that I've loved my journalism career. So
you can if you take a macro approach to parenting,
it's pulling back out from the micro. So actually draw
(11:11):
your lens back out as if you've got a camera
on it, sail above it, take a bird's eye view
on it, and think where will this be? You know,
what was it like for my parents? What was it
like when these children potentially do have grandchildren. Just pull
back the lens and think what could this be in
years to come. I can't you know, even if you
can't really envisage it, use your imagination, because there was
(11:36):
a reason you had them in the first place, right
you didn't just you know, most people would have planned
having a child. You would have imagined some kind of magic. Okay,
and the magic that created them were you all know,
the magic that mostly creates them. Sometimes there's you know,
there's other magic either year it's magic too. Try and
impart the magic that led you to create them to
the magic that you'll end up with in the end,
(11:57):
and not just in the end, ye every day some Yeah,
there might be something hard or something negative, but there's
still magic. But I think one of the hardest things
is that the negativity and round parenting has grown as
we've had dual working parents, and I think so we've
lent into that productivity means we do that it's a
(12:19):
different lifestyle, we have more kids in childcare. I totally
understand all of that, but I wonder if we also
think about legacy, Like I know a lot of kids
at school they do they do this thing in their
later years where they think about what their encouraged to
think about what their legacy will be. I think your
legacy when you're parenting. You know, I've had times when
(12:40):
I've given my all to my work, like I'm on
a deadline. Even the other night, my daughter wanted me
to watch the NRL with her, and I was trying
to deal with something sitting on there, and that later
that night I went, she just really wanted me to
watch the footy with her. Why did I not watch
the footy with her? I was just thinking I had
to deal with this thing right now. I think just
sometimes what is what's the end game here? And the
(13:01):
end game is that you have these beautiful people in
your lives forever more hopefully.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The key word perspective, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It is. It really is perspective. And you know, I
don't know how we actually do it. I don't know
how we sell it, but it feels to me like
we need an add campaign around it, just as we
did were smoking and seat belts and if we really
want to encourage parenting and look, I did this child
Free by Choice feature last year three thousand words for
(13:30):
Weekend magazine for News Corp. And I was really interested
in what all these people had to say. A lot
of them was environmental, a lot of them was cost
of living issues. I understand that, I do understand how
expensive it is, but I wonder whether we were to
talk more about that moment when they snuggle into your
bed and all the lovely things that you get, you know,
(13:51):
when they talk to you, if you could record their
conversation and listen back to it sometimes, that's so funny.
My daughter when she was little, when she said, you know,
it was asking about how she was born, and she said,
you know, when you were pregnant with me, if I
did a handstand, if you did a handstand, would you
would I have come out your mouth like that. She
couldn't conceive of how you could have a baby, and
you tell me and it not fall out. I just
(14:14):
I don't know. I just think there's magic that you
don't expect and that we don't give up on it,
but we we forget it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Angela, I want to share a story with you. It's
a story that I've shared in my presentations over the years,
and I'd love to get your reaction to it as
we come to a conclusion. The story's actually got nothing
to do with parenting. It's a story about a young
man who heard about a gold rush in the west,
so he packed up his things and decided to go
and make his fortune. He sat down by the river
(14:41):
and he panned day after day after day looking for
all of the gold that he was hearing about. Nuggets
were apparently rolling down the river, and all he was
finding was rocks. He'd pull another rock out of the
pan and add it to the pile beside him, day
after day after day, all of these rocks mounting up
beside him, until he's destitute. He's got nothing left, and
he knows that he's going to have to go home
and ask his parents to take him back so he
(15:01):
can start his life all over again, just a lot
poorer than he had been before he went out to
the gold fields. As he was preparing to pack up
and leave, an old man, a wealthy prospector walked past
him and kicked at the pile of rocks and made
the astute comment, that's quite a pile of rocks you've
got there, to which the young man responded, there's no
gold here, just stupid rocks. I've worked, I've given everything,
(15:25):
I've lost everything. I'm going home. The old man picks
up one of the rocks and he cracks it open
on the edge of the pan, and as he holds
it open, a whole lot of gold flecks glisten reflecting
in the sun. And the wise old prospector says, you're
sitting on a pile of gold right here. The young
man responds, no, no, no, no no, I'm not looking for
gold flex. I'm looking for nuggets like you've got in
(15:47):
your pouch. The old man opens the pouch that's on
his belt, and the young man is chagrined, surprised to
see that the pouch is full not of nuggets, but
of gold flex, to which the old man responds, young man,
it's a steady accumulation of these flecks of gold that
has made me rich. As I hear you talk about parenting,
needing a PR job, and the things that you've shared
(16:09):
in this podcast, which have just been beautiful, so heartwarming,
my sense is that the best PR job we could
have is to notice the thousands of flex of gold
that passed by us every single day in the river
of family life.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I love that it's kind of like glimmers, isn't it
noticing glimmers. I've saw that word recently. When something just
glimmers it catches your eye. It doesn't have to last
very long. It's just a moment. It's just a moment.
Inhabit it, see it, feel it, because that's all we
ever have is glimmers. And you know, there is not
some moment that you arrive at some imagine tomorrow that
(16:46):
is perfect with you know your child is perfect. That's
just what life is. It's just this parenting. It's an
opportunity to be at the cold face of life, doing
it beautifully some days, and struggling the days and just
in finding it all and wretching because if it's all
just smooth and even that's not a life, it's never
(17:07):
going to be a life. So parenting's the same. It's
an appreciation that it's going to be. You know, it's
going to have moments. But as you say, and as
that story shows, it's really choosing what you see. It's
choosing what you notice. And if you choose to notice
the negative, that's what your story will be. If you
choose to notice those little flecks of gold, that's what
(17:29):
your story will be.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Parenting needs a pr fix. Angela Mollard. I vote for
you as the person to lead the campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Oh like you, Justin Miner are a bit more grown
up now, so I'm handing the baton on to the
younger parents. But talk about it, talk about the great stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Well, there's something that comes though with being an older
parent and having been through it, you can see why
it's so worthwhile. I think you've done a beautiful job
articulating that today. Thank you for your article and thanks
for chatting with me.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Thanks Justin. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Angela Mollardist, journalist, radio, television, magazine and newspaper, writer and
commentator and all the rest of it. Most regularly with
the News Corp papers on a range of topics, including
the one that we shouldn't leave alone, parenting. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
(18:18):
For more information about finding the joy in parenting, please
visit us at happy Families dot com dot you and
check out my book What Your Child Needs from You.
It is a book about the joy of parenting and
I think that it will help you to get the
reset that you need to make your family happier.
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