June 13, 2025 • 38 mins
Is the family dinner really just a guilt trip with cutlery?
One of the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is making everyone feel bad about themselves. Jessie Stephens and Amelia Lester unpack the pressure to sit and eat at a dining table together—even when that table (if you have actually have room for one) is buried under laundry and unopened mail.
Also, Kourtney Kardashian says school is outdated. With homeschooling on the rise, is she actually onto something?
Plus, the model who makes money from encouraging women and girls to live a 'skinny' lifestyle. Different generation, different platform, same disturbing message. We discuss.
And in our reccos this week:
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Amelia's got a brilliantly grim podcast that both you and your kid will love.
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Jessie shares her sneaky hack to score all the toys—no meltdown required.
Come join the conversation. New eps drop Saturdays. No shoulder spit-ups required.
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WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello and welcome to Parenting Out Loud. I'm Jesse Stevens
and I am joined by Amelia Lester, and we are
here to talk about some of the stories that dominated
the week, because if parents are thinking about it, we're
talking about it. Amelia, Welcome, Thanks Jesse. I wanted to
thank you because a lot of people may know you
as a fashionista. I believe it tree is the correct term,
(00:50):
and you recommended to me your Lulu Lemon fled pants.
We both agreed that they were an elevated active way.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Look, an elevated pant.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Term that fashion is to be used, and I bought them.
I went and found them, like secondhand.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You wearing your elevated pants.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Feel they're so.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Good because no one knows their leggings except you.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, they're my new uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Like I feel so jens Z like how I'm like
Billie Eilish the same I feel she has them.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm so bad in them. I just just.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Mixed metaphors there, but let's go with it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Infinitely cooler. So you are my cool, Gurula.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
People say that to me.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
A lot, actually, and on the show today, one of
the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is making everyone
feel bad about themselves. We've solved the mystery of what
happened to the family dinner table. Plus Courtney Kardashian thinks
school is dated, why more kids are being homeschooled than
ever before? And Skinny Talk Amelia is here to explain
(01:57):
the social media phenomenon promoting a skinny lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But first, in case you missed it, Kate Hudson has
revealed Mindy Kayling was back to work an hour after
giving birth, which made me feel bad. Hudson, who will
be forever almost famous to me and I'm assuming to
you too, Jesse, but is in fact, somehow now forty
six years old and has three children. She is on
a press tour with Mindy Kayling and they have a
(02:22):
new show on Netflix called Running Point. I had to
look up what this was about. It's apparently about a
reformed party girl put in charge of her family's pro
basketball team.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Apparently it's a lot of fun. It's like a female
ted Lassie. That's what I've mead.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, well, It's not an immediately interesting plot to me,
I had to admit, but I do love everything Mindy
Kayling does, and she co created the show. Anyway, Hudson said,
we had a script she and Mindy at our first
table read she's on zoom. Then she has a baby
and is sending notes like an hour after she has
the baby. I was like, isn't Mindy literally in labor?
(02:55):
She is a powerhouse and delivers what she's going to deliver.
Hudson continued, I want to unpack this with you because
so Mindy Kayling is forty five, she has three children.
I don't have an issue with Mindy Kayling doing anything
an hour after giving birth. God speed Mindy Kayling. She's
an amazing creative woman. But I think what I'm annoyed
(03:15):
about here is Kate Hudson lionizing the behavior. I think
that's what annoys me because doesn't it just put pressure
on other women who have maybe less power, fewer financial
resources to immediately get back to work after having a
baby when they hear stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah right, I agree with you. I'm in two minds
about it, because, like you, I think a woman can do.
I was gonna say whatever she wants post birth probably
limits on that. I think that she can pick up
her phone if she wants, right, I've heard I remember
Roxy just saying co speaking years ago, she's had two babies,
and she joked that she took one hour maternity leave,
(03:51):
and she said she checked her emails laying in the
hospital bed, and when she was sort of pressed on it,
she said, the baby was sleeping. I was going to
turn on the TV. I was going to have a sleeper.
I was going to open my emails, and I chose that.
And she's a woman running her own business like you do.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I actually find it really infantalizing when people tell women
what they can and can't do.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But I agree that the pressure it then puts on
other mothers in particular, because let's not pretend like we
wouldn't have any issue really with a dad checking his
emails an hour after birth, that doesn't have the same.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He's probably checking his emails during.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
During birth, yep, just checking his slack, making sure there's
nothing urgent coming through. But women, I think we do
put this pressure on each other. I remember seeing this
imagery of a woman pumping in the boardroom and that
being like it was some image that was going around
and it's like working mothers.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I feel like when I was growing up, that was
just sort of an image you saw every day. It
was like in the nineties there was a say of
women in boardrooms pumping yeah, with babies.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
And I saw that and I felt furious because it
was like, but I don't want to be pumping in
a boardroom. I want to be at home with my baby.
And does that make me less ambitious or less hard working?
I think when it's used as a proxy for unshakable
work ethic, it's super, super dangerous because if there's ever
excus use to not be on your emails, yeah, surely
(05:13):
it's when you've had a baby.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
You've dislodged a memory deep within me of a cover
of a magazine with Rachel McAdams pumping.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Now. There's also been covers. For instance, Australian l I
think was a World leader in a cover with a
woman breastfeeding. So I guess I shouldn't have an issue
with the Rachel McAdams pumping cover. It's certainly not anything prudish,
but again it's this sense of why are you multitasking,
because now I have to multitask. Isn't it enough to
just do one thing at a time.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And the thing with pumping is that it's always it's
always spilling and you're always running, like that's the imagery
of the pumping that it's like, now you're not physically bound,
you too can do a marriage.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Sorry, do you not run when you pump? That's weird, Jessie.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It's like, if you do want to sit down, it's lazy.
And I looked at this story and I even looked
at Roxy a little bit more closely, and I thought,
I don't know if anyone here is actually telling us
that this is aspirational. But there is this sensitivity when
it comes to anything motherhood that we internalize it, that
(06:22):
we immediately go, you've just made me feel bad.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And specifically the competition element, like this is probably my
problem more than it is Kate Hudson's. Yeah, yeah, I
should understand that what Mindy Kayling does after birth has
nothing to do with me, and yet we're always implicitly comparing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
One of the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is
making people feel bad about themselves, and it's got to
do with the dinner table. Eating dinner as a family
is seen as a cornerstone of good parenting, According to
an article published in Slate last month. Research has linked
the practice too better nutrition, improved academic performance, decreased depression, anxiety,
(06:59):
and kids improve communication. I could go on, but the
author of this article, her name is Dawn t, says
that in reality, most families just can't make it work.
In Australia, less than half of families currently eat together. Amelia,
why do you think this is? On the surface, it
looks like a relatively simple thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I think, Jessie, that this is a real estate story.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
In what way?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Let me unpack this? Do people even have dining room
tables anymore? And aren't they doubling mostly as laundry rooms?
Or is that just me?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I had my first dining table when I moved into
a home two months before we had Luna, and my
twin sister did not have a dining table for the
first year of her baby's life.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So did you grow up sitting around the dining room table? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah, And I was reading about Actually, they surveyed a
bunch of millennials about whether you grew up in a
house or an apartment, and the overwhelming majority was a house,
not necessarily a big house, not necessarily in a city,
but there was a house, which meant you had a backyard,
it meant you didn't have super close neighbors who were
maybe sensitive to yelling and crying. And now the percentage
(08:11):
because of high density living in cities, I believe it's
gone through the roof.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah. An SPS story basically summed it up with the
headline raised in a house, but parenting in an apartment.
That is the experience. It's certainly my experience. And just
to throw some numbers at you because I thought they
were really interesting, the number of families with children and
apartments has increased by fifty six percent from twenty eleven,
which is huge. Yeah, and then one in five apartments
(08:38):
now are occupied by a family with children. Certainly, anecdotally,
almost everyone I know lives in an apartment and yet
grew up in a house.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
But apartments fundamentally are not built for families.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
They're not. Well, this is what I need to get
on my high horse about. I think, even though Australians
are now living more and more in apartments and raising
children in apartments, I don't think that culturally we've caught
up with this. And I want to mention one particular
aspect that you touched on before. I think noise is
a real issue. So i live in an apartment with
two kids, and I've noticed that I'm not the most
(09:12):
popular resident of the apartment building. I think that's safe
to say. I don't think any of them listen to this,
and I don't think that I need to worry about
them being offended. I just don't think they like us
living in the apartment very much. Can talk about the
various microaggressions, but this is not time for my real
estate gripes. It's not just in my head, because it
turns out a twenty eighteen study found that Australians correlate
(09:34):
being a good neighbor with being a quiet neighbor, which,
fair enough, I get it, Yeah, quiet neighbors are probably
better on balance than loud neighbors. But also the survey
found that people think that children shouldn't be the norm
in apartments. They think that they shouldn't be noise from
children in apartments. And so how this changes my parenting
is that I'm constantly telling my children to speak less loudly.
(09:55):
The net result is that they actually play less. They
certainly horse play less because that's very loud. And often,
if I'm really stressed out about the volume, I'll just
turn on the TV because then I know they won't
be screaming and running through the apartment playing tip And
I think that we're seeing the same thing with the
dinner table idea. We're constantly told that you'll only raise
good conversation as if you sit down at the dinner table.
(10:15):
And certainly I was raised sitting at the dinner table
watching the news every night. I cannot imagine subjecting my
children to the news in this day and age. But
the idea of that's what makes you a good parent
is grounded in an assumption that people are living in houses,
not flats.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Exactly right, And I suppose as well, the difference from
parenting in an apartment is a necessity every single day
to get out of the house. There is no like
they talk about how important it is to know, not supervise,
and to let kids sort of play and explore. When
you've got an apartment that's for square meters, there isn't
a lot of places to explore. And I was reading
(10:52):
about how in Singapore, for example, they open up public
schools after school hours and stuff so that parents, because
let's not pretend like Australia is the only place with
high density living right like France, China, Singapore is one
of them, and so they found ways to make communal
green space where people can go out and play. And
(11:12):
Australia or the cities, it really depends on your suburb.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
This was something that really surprised me when I moved
back to Australia last year after many years in the US.
Public schools in the US routinely are open after school,
before school, and on the weekends they're just not closed
so you can take your kid in and play on
the playground equipment. Here, I was shocked by this notion
that when school ends, the gates close and you can't
(11:37):
use the playground, and it feels like a waste of
space because you've got all these areas for kids to play,
and it also again feels like it's a relic from
a time when kids went home from school and maybe
frolicked around the yard like chickens. We don't have a
yard now.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Most people don't. It makes a really big difference. But
back to the dinner table. Example. I think even people
who live in homes or who do have dining tables,
and I think the apartment thing is that open it's
too small for a dining table, or they've got like
built in benches, so the bench is kind of the hub.
But I think the way our home have changed is
that the centerpiece of the house is now the living
(12:13):
room with a television. True, and so screens have stolen
the time that we would ordinarily sit around and have
a chat. Maybe, and that's not like we don't value
that as much, or because we are living in smaller,
smaller places, the dining table has become a place with
just a lot of crap on it. So it could
(12:34):
be where you work during the day, if you're working remotely.
It could be homework. It could be laundry, because I
don't have a laundry, like we have to put it somewhere.
The other thing I thought, Amelia, and I wanted to
know whether you feel the same when I now picture
a family sitting around at dinner table. Do you see
that as class coded because I see it as a
(12:55):
sign of money, Yes, Like because you've got both parents
at home at six pm, which is I would say,
pretty rare. You've got someone who's made the meal before
six pm, or maybe you've got help who's made the meal.
But when I see that image, I go, oh, that's
become really loaded with class for me.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You're so right, because there's a fundamental physics problem in
getting a hot meal on a table at the time
that children want to eat it when we're all working
around the clock. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I don't know. It's like an impossible equation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And so this idea of having the space for the
dining room table, having the parents who have divided the
labor such that someone's made the meal or they, as
you say, assigned that to someone else, and then having
you all sit around the table, Yeah, it does feel
like a luxury in this day and age. But I
wonder do you think we should be worried about this
(13:50):
or do you think that the studies themselves are kind
of caught in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Look, I think ideally it would be really good for us.
I think it would because in terms of nutrition and mindfulness,
when you're eating, it is better to not be looking
at a screen. I say, this is someone who often
eates in front of a screen and The second thing
is I was reading about how evolutionary we tend to
trust people we eat with. It's like a programmed thing.
(14:16):
That's like there's a sense of connection we feel equal to.
It is hardwired into us that something social happens when
we eat, Like, for example, if you're doing a business negotiation,
you have snacks on the table, it's more likely to
go well. So that's hardwired into us. And I think
that that connection even growing up. I think they're some
of my favorite memories. So I keep going, I'll do
(14:37):
it eventually, I'll do it eventually. It's aspirational.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It's a work in progress.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Courtney kardashi In, the forty six year old reality star
and mum of four biological children and two step kids,
says going to school is dated and let me explain.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
She was recently on her sister Chloe's podcast and said
she has a rebel streak that includes questioning the purpose
of sending her kids to school. Apparently her kids started
sending her videos of successful people. She didn't quantify that.
I don't know what her definition is. I'm going to
say that coded for rich saying that their kids will
never go to school and when she really grappled with
(15:16):
what the goal was. She agreed that it was unnecessary
and decided to homeschool, and Chloe enthusiastically agreed. Now, there
are a myriad of reasons why you at homeschool your children.
But Amelia, do you think it's possible that Courtney just
got played by her kids who didn't want to go
to school next week?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I am intrigued by this notion of the videos of
successful people saying the kids will never go to school. Look,
I think this is part of a trend that has
come out of the US post COVID, and I'm actually
surprised that this trend has taken so long to make waves. Basically,
I think that as society becomes less equal, as the
(15:55):
very rich become not just very rich, but sort of
gluttonously extravagantly rich, there's no wonder they've decided school is
not for them. School is a fundamental leveling field. It's
a place where all children are meant to go to
learn the same things. And it's actually surprising that we've
managed to hold on to this kind of egalitarian institution
for as long as we have in such a stratified society.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So in Courtney's defense, does it kind of not matter
if her kids go to school? Like for the rest
of us, it does matter because it is a great equalizer.
But if you are the child of Kourtney Kardashian, maybe
you don't need that. Maybe you don't need that background.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Well, now that we have this phrase generational wealth in
the language, I guess it doesn't really matter from a
financial perspective. But I think that once the rich start
pulling their kids from school, the institution starts to crumble.
I'm very worried about this. We've seen it also in
the US with the way that Silicon Valley has rejected
the idea of higher education and of university. They've decided
(16:52):
that you don't intergo to university at all, no matter what.
It's a waste of time, it's indoctrinating you and certain
sort of center left ideological beliefs that they don't approve of.
Now they've come for school. It's all part of the
same movement.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
There's obviously been this widespread rejection of institutions, some of
it which is really understandable. For example, the Catholic Church
that have been criticized, and understandably people are moving away
but there's also this rejection of education, of the scientific method,
of academia, of studies, of any sort of rigor to
(17:31):
the ideas that we put forward. And I wonder if
this is the beginning of the end in terms of
any sort of enlightenment ideals like it is worth reading
what other people say so that you can evolve how
you'd think.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, it's fundamentally anti intellectual. And I think that what
is of a piece with it is the Robert F.
Kennedy Make America Healthy Again movement, This idea that the
scientists might say that vaccines are worthwhile and that fluoride
makes your team stronger, but what do they know. I'm
sure that Courtney Kardashian is sympathetic to that kind of
(18:04):
quasi scientific thinking as well. It's really a rejection not
just of education, but of expertise.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yes, And the rejection of that expertise doesn't hurt the
Kurtnay Kardashians. It hurts the people who don't get the
vaccination and have comeobidities and a black or Hispanic and
have you know a number of things that would make
them particularly vulnerable to an illness. Right, And that's what
I think Hearing her talk about that, I agree made
(18:32):
me worried. And I agree as well that this has
a lot to do with the pandemic, because in Australia,
if you look at homeschooling rates absenteeism, which we should
say are not the same thing, but absenteeism school refusal,
they've gone through the roof, and experts have said they
think that COVID made parents see schooling as something that
(18:55):
could be done from home. So in the same way
that working from home became something all employees went, well,
it's possible, you just sent us home. If they saw
that as something that worked for them or was even
a possibility, then suddenly you've got literally there are more
Australian Is being homeschooled than ever before. And they say
that's a result of things like bullying, of obviously the
(19:16):
increase in tech that it can be done, and also
of safety like them not feeling safe at school, which
I think is everyone's prerogative. And also homeschooling is a
lot higher among people with an autism diagnosis or an
adh DE diagnosis. Maybe there's also a discussion to be
had about the failings of some schools to cater to
those diverse.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Needs, and specifically the underfunding of public education around the
country as well. I've heard similar things from friends in
the US. I have a friend in a US state
that is very religious and she has to homeschool her
child because they do not have a lot of schools
to choose from around and her child has many additional
(19:56):
needs that the local schools were just not really able
to meet, so they made the decision to hire a
private tutor and homeschool their child. When she went to
the local town office to put in the upp location
to homeschool, she was shocked by how easy it was
to say that you're going to homeschool your child, and
how little supervision was applied to this process. So she
(20:19):
basically filled in a one page form that asked her
very little about what she was going to teach, didn't
provide her with any resources visa VIE, curriculum or anything else.
She essentially just had to say, I want to homeschool
my child. I don't need to tell you the reasons,
and then got approved for it. And it was really
viscerally upsetting to her because while she's going to be
(20:40):
making sure that her child is meeting the state curriculum
requirements and has been in a position where she can
hire a tutor who she feels really confident in that
can educate her child properly. There are many people in
this state who clearly have parents who are not necessarily
trying to check all those boxes and are doing it
because they don't want them to be exposed to a
(21:01):
mainstream school curriculum. And that's really concerning to me.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that speaks to the Courtney
Kardashi an example too, because I don't think any of
us would imagine that Courtney is going to sit at
home and teach maths like that's access to a private
shootor which is again like something that's on offer to
some families and not to others. Another thing that I've
heard everyone in my family, teachers and both my parents
(21:28):
spoke about an enormous rise in this school refusal phenomenon
after COVID. It's been almost rebranded by some people in
the space as school can't because they say refusal suggests
they're making a decision, and these are kids who cannot
go to school, and so all these psychologists are trying
to work out what to do because in Australia, you
(21:49):
have to go to school, like there are repercussions and
the school has to get involved, and it can be
really complicated. I would look at these stories and kind
of go, all right, there were days I didn't want
to go to school either, like I didn't have a
lot of empathy for it. And Dad told me this
story about a kid, the poor mother just putting the
kid in the car and dads standing there and the
mother just trying to like pull him by his ankles
(22:11):
and being like, you have to go to school, this
is so important, and the kid just couldn't, like couldn't
go into the classroom.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
This is a post COVID study.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
This is a post COVID story. And the numbers nearly
half of all students missed ten percent of school in
twenty twenty two, so that's actually quite a lot. The
sick days thing is becoming more and more prominent, which
I guess is probably to do with screens. But again
the idea that it's optional. When something becomes optional as well,
(22:42):
then I suppose you go. I'm not going to go today.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I was surprised when I started my kids at their
school that they still give out prizes for best attendancy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yes, that's controversial, contras, I can.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
See why, because kids can't help it when they get sick.
Do we learn nothing from COVID? I'm just really surprised.
Why do you think schools? I mean, I guess I'm
going to answer something own question here. I think schools
are persisting with that idea of perfect and tended and
rewarding kids who make it into school the most because
they're seeing this trend of school refusal or school can't
(23:18):
and they want to hammer home what an example of
a kid showing up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Every day looks like and the importance of sitting in
the classroom, because my parents would say that, you know,
you might look at your nine, or you might look
at your five and go, come on, what's a day?
But if you repeatedly miss that, there are certain blocks
in learning that are very difficult to catch up on.
So there is something that you will learn in year five.
I'm not saying on one day. I'm just saying, like,
if you you know, and people who have had a
(23:44):
prolonged illness will know this, you miss that and it
become very hard to catch up in year six or
year seven. So I suppose it is like, if you're
on the fence, go, but presentee is a more forcing
that also isn't the ideal?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yes, So I guess we're kind of talking about a
few different things here. One is the rise of homeschooling,
which I think we can attribute to the general decline
of trust in authority and expertise post COVID, And it's
right now. It's being led by very wealthy people, I
would say, who want to control what their children learn
and are maybe not very interested.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
And then on the other hand, people with kids with
different needs. I think that's the other group. Yeah, we've
probably got to acknowledge and in fact, for them, the
outcomes are really good.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Liv Schmidt is a twenty three year old model in
New York City who makes her money encouraging women and
girls to follow the skinny lifestyle. This was a story
in The Cut last week that is causing people to
lose their minds. Basically, I knew nothing about this but
Live Schmidt. She was on TikTok until last year, then
she was banned after a Wall Street Journal article. Now
(24:52):
she's on Instagram. She's just been banned from Instagram as
a result of this article. Basically, she mocks women who
she says are large and fat. She posts videos where
she says things like girls be three hundred pounds, saying
I'm a snack. No Megatron, you're the fkn vending machine.
So just really nice things like that. She has a
(25:14):
subscription only group called Skinny Society, which, for twenty dollars
a month, members gain access to exclusive content, including recipes,
workout videos, and diaries of everything Schmid eats in one day.
She gained some notoriety recently because she said that instead
of having dessert, you could swallow your boyfriend's semen, and
(25:36):
she said that semen's only something like five calories of
tea spoon, so that's good to know. There's also a
group dm thread that you get access to where people
basically egg themselves on to eat less. And it's just
really distressing to read about airmail. The publication Airmail recently
estimated that she makes one hundred and thirty thousand US
(25:57):
dollars a month from the six and a half thousand
members in the Skinny Society. So look, I think why
this article made such as splash is that people definitely
did not realize how thriving this somewhat underground community is
because as shown by the fact that TikTok and Meta
both had to ban her after news articles came out,
(26:17):
so clearly they're not moderating their platforms very well. If
you search skinny or skinny talk on TikTok and Instagram,
you'll apparently see thousands of videos along these lines of
very thin women showing off their locale diets. What's interesting
about liv Schmidt to me, having lived through the nineties
and Kate Moss and heroin Chic, is that she's very
(26:38):
careful not to advocate for particular foods, particular diets. She
frames it all in this sort of faux feminist empowering language.
She says things like eat like you're the main character,
because you are. She says, eat like your highest self
is watching. So it's a very interesting kind of twist
on that feminist rhetoric to basically further eating disorders. And
(27:01):
the Cut article found evidence of girls in high school
posting on skinny society, including about how thin they were
for their graduations. I was shocked by this, but maybe
that's because I'm not super immersed in social media. Jesse,
how did this article make you feel? Were you shocked
by it.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I was because I'm not being served this. But then
the way the algorithms work, the people who will be
most sensitive to it will And maybe it's easy for
us to assume that the culture has shifted. But I
was at something a few weeks ago where it was
like a kid's fun day thing, right, and there was
like an obstacle course. There was a jumping castle and
(27:40):
there was face painting, and in the obstacle course there
was a tunnel thing, you know, kids like run through
these little tunnels. And there was a girl she might
have been six or seven, and she was standing there
and her friend said why aren't you going through the
tunnel like because she hadn't been doing it, and she said,
I can't fit through the tunnel. I'm too fat. And
(28:03):
the look on this girl's face, I went, oh, I
thought that didn't happen anything. Yes, I thought that that's
not how we spoke exactly. It wasn't that she said
I can't fit, because she could have gone I'm too big.
She was a little bit older than the four year
olds going through. It was the way the word fat
came out of her mouth that I went, oh, that's
got to her at seven. Yeah, like that is sickening.
(28:25):
There is so much information now on food and solids
and feeding and all of that and how to prevent
you know, restriction and all of that. And I've been
deep in this because I have a child who eating
has never been very straightforward, and the idea that you
put it there and you decide when you're full and
you don't comment on things like that. But I've certainly
(28:47):
noticed that even like oh, she's so little or whatever,
has already started. And I wonder how you then protect
them from because inevitably, and I went through this, you
then go through puberty where your body starts to change
and suddenly you know, maybe you're not that little, or
parts of you, whatever it is, it's a really hard
(29:10):
thing to sort of recalibrate. I wouldn't think that seven
year old is even on social media, so I imagine
that it's just coming into the well. It's plackground.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
As you point out, with your own child, people are
already judging or commenting on her body, on Luna's body,
so it's happening early. And I completely agree with what
you said about thinking that we were over this, because
you and I both lived through the body positivity moment
(29:38):
in the mid two thousands, and thinking back to I
guess it all started actually with the Dove ads and
then it kind of snowballed from there, and it coincided
actually with the decline of magazines, which is where I
certainly inhaled a lot of this content in the nineties,
and I sort of thought we were just beyond it,
that along with them on nuanced understanding of things like
(29:58):
sexuality and race relations and the environment and taking care
of the environment, we were just getting more progressive, more enlightened,
and that our children wouldn't have to deal with this.
While it turns out I was wrong, and what came
through to me in this cut article is that every
generation ends up having this issue, and it's just that
the language around it changes and the media in which
(30:20):
it's consumed changes. So I mentioned that for me in
the nineties, it was very much magazines that were conveying
the diet tips. In the early two thousands, it was
probably live journal, Tumblr of those kinds of platforms.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Oh Tumbler, I forgot, how And that was very much
the image that it had. This Really there was a
term that was used that was almost hashtagged, and it
attracted people who were struggling with eating disorders and glorified
bro Anna.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Right, yes, yes, yeah, so that was the thing then
and now it's just moved on to a different platform.
What I want to ask you is, do you think
that there is any escaping it or is this kind
of like nihilistic idea that every generation of young women
inevitably has to cope with this.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I think it's true that we had this optimism. I
remember hearing mums talk about it in the office of like,
I'm going to get my daughter when she has a phone,
I'll just follow a bunch of diverse people on Instagram,
so she'll see all of those images and it'll be
the antithesis of a magazine or whatever because she'll have
all of these different bodies and shapes coming up. You
can't do that on TikTok, like you just can't.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And won't curate in that way. No control.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
All it takes is you know, I'm pretty sure if
that app knows that you're a young girl, it's going
to go I know what to give you, and then
all you have to do is stay for a second,
and you're just going to get more and more so
in that way. I don't think so. But from what
I've heard, people I know that grew up with a
real complex around weight seemed to absorb some of that
(31:51):
from their family, And I just maybe the hope or
the thing that I go the difference we can make
is like how we talk about it inside the house, yes,
and the language, how you speak about other people, how
you speak about food, how you speak about bodies, how
you look at yourself in the mirror, all of those
things I think does impact it. I grew up with
a mum who never commented on her body once, not negatively,
(32:14):
not her face, not anything, and I think it was
just like to me in my house, it felt irrelevant,
whereas I know that that really impacted other people who
grew up with a different experience.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
It's also really hard to escape even when you are
trying to create a body neutral space within your family. So,
for instance, I loved roll Dyal books growing up.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh yeah, been.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Reading them to my children, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory and the Twits. And the problem with these books
is that the word fat and the idea that people
who are ugly on the inside are always ugly on
the outside, and that those two things are essentially synonymous.
It pervades those books a sort of repulsion for women's bodies,
(32:59):
particularly fat women's bodies, particularly women who are maybe not
your platonic ideal of beauty and the merging of the
inner and outer self. It's there just through those books.
It's shot through them, and a lot of older books
do have that idea of inner beauty being the same
as out of beauty, and if fairy tales have it too.
(33:21):
In fact, the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella, for instance, they're
both ugly and mean. Cinderella is both beautiful and kind,
and to decouple those qualities if you're going to read
classic kids literature, it's really difficult to convey that those
two things are not synonymous.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
That must be why every children's book now is animal.
It's like it's a gendlest animal because it's like we
could project on it. It doesn't matter the size. Sometimes
it's an elephant, sometimes it's a mouse. But it's like
you don't get all of that complexity of trying to
then identify them into a certain body or you know that's.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
True because it is also quite recent that we've started
to talk about this in this way. For instance, Harry
Potter is full of the same thing, and that was
written in the two thousands. So it just goes to
show that we're hopefully on the cutting edge of trying
to teach a different thing to our children. But then again,
I'm sure our feminist mothers thought that they were doing
(34:19):
that too. Alright, it's time for recommendations, Jesse, what have
you got for us?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Amelia? Have you ever been to a toy library?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
No? I see these sides, tell me what they're If
they sound wondering.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
They're so good and it's so not something I would
ever have gone and found.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Well, it would be weird if you didn't have kids
and were just hanging out at toy library exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
But the toy library is part of my local library,
which is on my string. That's so very, very easy.
But I looked it up and there are hundreds across
the country. It's not just my neighborhood. But a toy
library is literally you go in and it's got every
toy you could possibly imagine. It has costumes. You know,
there's a stage at which they might like a little
pram to practice their walking because and you know, you
(35:02):
need that for like two months and then you never
need it again. It has things like that, and then
you do aigh. I think it was like seventy bucks
for twelve month subscription and I could go every week
if I want it, and I can get like three
or four toys, and then I get three at a time.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, so you get multiple toys return them. And I
was like, can I donate toys to this because I
remember reading something a while ago about how there's an
ideal amount of toys. They say it's between ten and
fifteen so and probably wouldn't and probably wouldn't And it
inspires creativity because it's like, if they don't have the doll,
(35:36):
then they have to make the doll out of playtoes,
which is yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's where my parents went wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But Toy Library is so so good because we all
know the clutter everything. Often your kid just wants it
for two weeks and then it disappears and they never
think about it again.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So I love that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
That's my my hack. How about you, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
My recommendation is one very near and dear to my heart.
It's been a companion in my life. For years now.
It's a podcast. It's called Grim Grimmer, Grimist. Have you
heard of it?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Is it Grim Brothers related?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Oh I love them?
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yes, it grim fairy tales. I mean the Grim Brothers
are like true crime for the eighteenth century?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Right, Were they twins or just brothers? I think they
want maybe just brothers. But Clara and I find them
very inspiring because they watchmen. Yeah, it's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So the host is Adam Gidwitz. It's an American podcast,
and the fifth season of this podcast drops, And yes
I did say dropped. I'm very excited about it. Dropped
a couple of days ago. That's my household version of
rep TV. Just to give you a sense of how
exciting this is. So here's the premise. Adam Gibwitz goes
to the classroom of a very fancy school in Brooklyn,
(36:42):
New York to tell grim fairy tales, and he records
himself telling the story and also records the kids responding
in real time to the story. So this podcast works
on a number of levels for parents. There's something slightly
voyeuristic about the milieu of this podcast, which is, like
I mentioned this very fancy school because the kid's parents,
you learn through their anecdotes, are all like really fancy careers,
(37:05):
like their set designers, their novelists, and you're just getting
this glimpse into kind of like the upper crust of
New York and how they're raising their kids.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
It's heavy. I love it, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
And then the second thing is the kids are extremely
precocious and well spoken because their parents are again set
design as a novelist in the upper crust of New York,
so they add in these actually very witty interjections to
the stories. And then the third thing that's great about
it is that the grim fairy tales are just the
best stories.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's like canceling Gretelin styf Yeah, right, Like it's all
the really disturbing ones that I loved.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Really disturbing. And so that's why it's called grim, Grimmer, Grimmest,
because each fairy tale is ranked is it grim, is
it grimmer, or is it grimmest, And so you can
kind of pick how dark you want the story to be.
They're not sugar coated, they're not done down. In fact,
some of the stories most of the stories are quite violent.
Love that, but in a kind of kid's storybook somehow
(37:59):
age appropriate way.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
How long are the episodes.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
They range in between about twenty and fifty minutes. You
probably need to buy some episodes if you want the
whole back catalog, but there's plenty available for free on
podcast platforms to just try out. A good one to
try out versus Rumpelstiltskin, which is one of my favorites,
and Gidwitz itself. He's just a fantastic storyteller. There's a
(38:22):
reason why when you type his name into Google the
first result is Adam Gibbwits married, because I've definitely googled
that and you will too.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I love that. Thank you so much. That is all
we have time for on Parenting out Loud today. MoMA
Mea Studios are styled with furniture from Fenton Inventon. Visit
Ventoninventon dot com, dot au. We will see you next Saturday. Bye.
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello and welcome to Parenting Out Loud. I'm Jesse Stevens
and I am joined by Amelia Lester, and we are
here to talk about some of the stories that dominated
the week, because if parents are thinking about it, we're
talking about it. Amelia, Welcome, Thanks Jesse. I wanted to
thank you because a lot of people may know you
as a fashionista. I believe it tree is the correct term,
(00:50):
and you recommended to me your Lulu Lemon fled pants.
We both agreed that they were an elevated active way.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Look, an elevated pant.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Term that fashion is to be used, and I bought them.
I went and found them, like secondhand.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You wearing your elevated pants.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Feel they're so.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Good because no one knows their leggings except you.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, they're my new uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Like I feel so jens Z like how I'm like
Billie Eilish the same I feel she has them.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I'm so bad in them. I just just.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Mixed metaphors there, but let's go with it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Infinitely cooler. So you are my cool, Gurula.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
People say that to me.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
A lot, actually, and on the show today, one of
the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is making everyone
feel bad about themselves. We've solved the mystery of what
happened to the family dinner table. Plus Courtney Kardashian thinks
school is dated, why more kids are being homeschooled than
ever before? And Skinny Talk Amelia is here to explain
(01:57):
the social media phenomenon promoting a skinny lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But first, in case you missed it, Kate Hudson has
revealed Mindy Kayling was back to work an hour after
giving birth, which made me feel bad. Hudson, who will
be forever almost famous to me and I'm assuming to
you too, Jesse, but is in fact, somehow now forty
six years old and has three children. She is on
a press tour with Mindy Kayling and they have a
(02:22):
new show on Netflix called Running Point. I had to
look up what this was about. It's apparently about a
reformed party girl put in charge of her family's pro
basketball team.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Apparently it's a lot of fun. It's like a female
ted Lassie. That's what I've mead.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, well, It's not an immediately interesting plot to me,
I had to admit, but I do love everything Mindy
Kayling does, and she co created the show. Anyway, Hudson said,
we had a script she and Mindy at our first
table read she's on zoom. Then she has a baby
and is sending notes like an hour after she has
the baby. I was like, isn't Mindy literally in labor?
(02:55):
She is a powerhouse and delivers what she's going to deliver.
Hudson continued, I want to unpack this with you because
so Mindy Kayling is forty five, she has three children.
I don't have an issue with Mindy Kayling doing anything
an hour after giving birth. God speed Mindy Kayling. She's
an amazing creative woman. But I think what I'm annoyed
(03:15):
about here is Kate Hudson lionizing the behavior. I think
that's what annoys me because doesn't it just put pressure
on other women who have maybe less power, fewer financial
resources to immediately get back to work after having a
baby when they hear stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah right, I agree with you. I'm in two minds
about it, because, like you, I think a woman can do.
I was gonna say whatever she wants post birth probably
limits on that. I think that she can pick up
her phone if she wants, right, I've heard I remember
Roxy just saying co speaking years ago, she's had two babies,
and she joked that she took one hour maternity leave,
(03:51):
and she said she checked her emails laying in the
hospital bed, and when she was sort of pressed on it,
she said, the baby was sleeping. I was going to
turn on the TV. I was going to have a sleeper.
I was going to open my emails, and I chose that.
And she's a woman running her own business like you do.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I actually find it really infantalizing when people tell women
what they can and can't do.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But I agree that the pressure it then puts on
other mothers in particular, because let's not pretend like we
wouldn't have any issue really with a dad checking his
emails an hour after birth, that doesn't have the same.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He's probably checking his emails during.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
During birth, yep, just checking his slack, making sure there's
nothing urgent coming through. But women, I think we do
put this pressure on each other. I remember seeing this
imagery of a woman pumping in the boardroom and that
being like it was some image that was going around
and it's like working mothers.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
I feel like when I was growing up, that was
just sort of an image you saw every day. It
was like in the nineties there was a say of
women in boardrooms pumping yeah, with babies.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
And I saw that and I felt furious because it
was like, but I don't want to be pumping in
a boardroom. I want to be at home with my baby.
And does that make me less ambitious or less hard working?
I think when it's used as a proxy for unshakable
work ethic, it's super, super dangerous because if there's ever
excus use to not be on your emails, yeah, surely
(05:13):
it's when you've had a baby.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
You've dislodged a memory deep within me of a cover
of a magazine with Rachel McAdams pumping.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Now. There's also been covers. For instance, Australian l I
think was a World leader in a cover with a
woman breastfeeding. So I guess I shouldn't have an issue
with the Rachel McAdams pumping cover. It's certainly not anything prudish,
but again it's this sense of why are you multitasking,
because now I have to multitask. Isn't it enough to
just do one thing at a time.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And the thing with pumping is that it's always it's
always spilling and you're always running, like that's the imagery
of the pumping that it's like, now you're not physically bound,
you too can do a marriage.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Sorry, do you not run when you pump? That's weird, Jessie.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It's like, if you do want to sit down, it's lazy.
And I looked at this story and I even looked
at Roxy a little bit more closely, and I thought,
I don't know if anyone here is actually telling us
that this is aspirational. But there is this sensitivity when
it comes to anything motherhood that we internalize it, that
(06:22):
we immediately go, you've just made me feel bad.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And specifically the competition element, like this is probably my
problem more than it is Kate Hudson's. Yeah, yeah, I
should understand that what Mindy Kayling does after birth has
nothing to do with me, and yet we're always implicitly comparing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
One of the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is
making people feel bad about themselves, and it's got to
do with the dinner table. Eating dinner as a family
is seen as a cornerstone of good parenting, According to
an article published in Slate last month. Research has linked
the practice too better nutrition, improved academic performance, decreased depression, anxiety,
(06:59):
and kids improve communication. I could go on, but the
author of this article, her name is Dawn t, says
that in reality, most families just can't make it work.
In Australia, less than half of families currently eat together. Amelia,
why do you think this is? On the surface, it
looks like a relatively simple thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I think, Jessie, that this is a real estate story.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
In what way?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Let me unpack this? Do people even have dining room
tables anymore? And aren't they doubling mostly as laundry rooms?
Or is that just me?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I had my first dining table when I moved into
a home two months before we had Luna, and my
twin sister did not have a dining table for the
first year of her baby's life.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So did you grow up sitting around the dining room table? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah, And I was reading about Actually, they surveyed a
bunch of millennials about whether you grew up in a
house or an apartment, and the overwhelming majority was a house,
not necessarily a big house, not necessarily in a city,
but there was a house, which meant you had a backyard,
it meant you didn't have super close neighbors who were
maybe sensitive to yelling and crying. And now the percentage
(08:11):
because of high density living in cities, I believe it's
gone through the roof.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah. An SPS story basically summed it up with the
headline raised in a house, but parenting in an apartment.
That is the experience. It's certainly my experience. And just
to throw some numbers at you because I thought they
were really interesting, the number of families with children and
apartments has increased by fifty six percent from twenty eleven,
which is huge. Yeah, and then one in five apartments
(08:38):
now are occupied by a family with children. Certainly, anecdotally,
almost everyone I know lives in an apartment and yet
grew up in a house.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
But apartments fundamentally are not built for families.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
They're not. Well, this is what I need to get
on my high horse about. I think, even though Australians
are now living more and more in apartments and raising
children in apartments, I don't think that culturally we've caught
up with this. And I want to mention one particular
aspect that you touched on before. I think noise is
a real issue. So i live in an apartment with
two kids, and I've noticed that I'm not the most
(09:12):
popular resident of the apartment building. I think that's safe
to say. I don't think any of them listen to this,
and I don't think that I need to worry about
them being offended. I just don't think they like us
living in the apartment very much. Can talk about the
various microaggressions, but this is not time for my real
estate gripes. It's not just in my head, because it
turns out a twenty eighteen study found that Australians correlate
(09:34):
being a good neighbor with being a quiet neighbor, which,
fair enough, I get it, Yeah, quiet neighbors are probably
better on balance than loud neighbors. But also the survey
found that people think that children shouldn't be the norm
in apartments. They think that they shouldn't be noise from
children in apartments. And so how this changes my parenting
is that I'm constantly telling my children to speak less loudly.
(09:55):
The net result is that they actually play less. They
certainly horse play less because that's very loud. And often,
if I'm really stressed out about the volume, I'll just
turn on the TV because then I know they won't
be screaming and running through the apartment playing tip And
I think that we're seeing the same thing with the
dinner table idea. We're constantly told that you'll only raise
good conversation as if you sit down at the dinner table.
(10:15):
And certainly I was raised sitting at the dinner table
watching the news every night. I cannot imagine subjecting my
children to the news in this day and age. But
the idea of that's what makes you a good parent
is grounded in an assumption that people are living in houses,
not flats.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Exactly right, And I suppose as well, the difference from
parenting in an apartment is a necessity every single day
to get out of the house. There is no like
they talk about how important it is to know, not supervise,
and to let kids sort of play and explore. When
you've got an apartment that's for square meters, there isn't
a lot of places to explore. And I was reading
(10:52):
about how in Singapore, for example, they open up public
schools after school hours and stuff so that parents, because
let's not pretend like Australia is the only place with
high density living right like France, China, Singapore is one
of them, and so they found ways to make communal
green space where people can go out and play. And
(11:12):
Australia or the cities, it really depends on your suburb.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
This was something that really surprised me when I moved
back to Australia last year after many years in the US.
Public schools in the US routinely are open after school,
before school, and on the weekends they're just not closed
so you can take your kid in and play on
the playground equipment. Here, I was shocked by this notion
that when school ends, the gates close and you can't
(11:37):
use the playground, and it feels like a waste of
space because you've got all these areas for kids to play,
and it also again feels like it's a relic from
a time when kids went home from school and maybe
frolicked around the yard like chickens. We don't have a
yard now.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Most people don't. It makes a really big difference. But
back to the dinner table. Example. I think even people
who live in homes or who do have dining tables,
and I think the apartment thing is that open it's
too small for a dining table, or they've got like
built in benches, so the bench is kind of the hub.
But I think the way our home have changed is
that the centerpiece of the house is now the living
(12:13):
room with a television. True, and so screens have stolen
the time that we would ordinarily sit around and have
a chat. Maybe, and that's not like we don't value
that as much, or because we are living in smaller,
smaller places, the dining table has become a place with
just a lot of crap on it. So it could
(12:34):
be where you work during the day, if you're working remotely.
It could be homework. It could be laundry, because I
don't have a laundry, like we have to put it somewhere.
The other thing I thought, Amelia, and I wanted to
know whether you feel the same when I now picture
a family sitting around at dinner table. Do you see
that as class coded because I see it as a
(12:55):
sign of money, Yes, Like because you've got both parents
at home at six pm, which is I would say,
pretty rare. You've got someone who's made the meal before
six pm, or maybe you've got help who's made the meal.
But when I see that image, I go, oh, that's
become really loaded with class for me.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You're so right, because there's a fundamental physics problem in
getting a hot meal on a table at the time
that children want to eat it when we're all working
around the clock. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I don't know. It's like an impossible equation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And so this idea of having the space for the
dining room table, having the parents who have divided the
labor such that someone's made the meal or they, as
you say, assigned that to someone else, and then having
you all sit around the table, Yeah, it does feel
like a luxury in this day and age. But I
wonder do you think we should be worried about this
(13:50):
or do you think that the studies themselves are kind
of caught in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Look, I think ideally it would be really good for us.
I think it would because in terms of nutrition and mindfulness,
when you're eating, it is better to not be looking
at a screen. I say, this is someone who often
eates in front of a screen and The second thing
is I was reading about how evolutionary we tend to
trust people we eat with. It's like a programmed thing.
(14:16):
That's like there's a sense of connection we feel equal to.
It is hardwired into us that something social happens when
we eat, Like, for example, if you're doing a business negotiation,
you have snacks on the table, it's more likely to
go well. So that's hardwired into us. And I think
that that connection even growing up. I think they're some
of my favorite memories. So I keep going, I'll do
(14:37):
it eventually, I'll do it eventually. It's aspirational.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It's a work in progress.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Courtney kardashi In, the forty six year old reality star
and mum of four biological children and two step kids,
says going to school is dated and let me explain.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
She was recently on her sister Chloe's podcast and said
she has a rebel streak that includes questioning the purpose
of sending her kids to school. Apparently her kids started
sending her videos of successful people. She didn't quantify that.
I don't know what her definition is. I'm going to
say that coded for rich saying that their kids will
never go to school and when she really grappled with
(15:16):
what the goal was. She agreed that it was unnecessary
and decided to homeschool, and Chloe enthusiastically agreed. Now, there
are a myriad of reasons why you at homeschool your children.
But Amelia, do you think it's possible that Courtney just
got played by her kids who didn't want to go
to school next week?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I am intrigued by this notion of the videos of
successful people saying the kids will never go to school. Look,
I think this is part of a trend that has
come out of the US post COVID, and I'm actually
surprised that this trend has taken so long to make waves. Basically,
I think that as society becomes less equal, as the
(15:55):
very rich become not just very rich, but sort of
gluttonously extravagantly rich, there's no wonder they've decided school is
not for them. School is a fundamental leveling field. It's
a place where all children are meant to go to
learn the same things. And it's actually surprising that we've
managed to hold on to this kind of egalitarian institution
for as long as we have in such a stratified society.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So in Courtney's defense, does it kind of not matter
if her kids go to school? Like for the rest
of us, it does matter because it is a great equalizer.
But if you are the child of Kourtney Kardashian, maybe
you don't need that. Maybe you don't need that background.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Well, now that we have this phrase generational wealth in
the language, I guess it doesn't really matter from a
financial perspective. But I think that once the rich start
pulling their kids from school, the institution starts to crumble.
I'm very worried about this. We've seen it also in
the US with the way that Silicon Valley has rejected
the idea of higher education and of university. They've decided
(16:52):
that you don't intergo to university at all, no matter what.
It's a waste of time, it's indoctrinating you and certain
sort of center left ideological beliefs that they don't approve of.
Now they've come for school. It's all part of the
same movement.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
There's obviously been this widespread rejection of institutions, some of
it which is really understandable. For example, the Catholic Church
that have been criticized, and understandably people are moving away
but there's also this rejection of education, of the scientific method,
of academia, of studies, of any sort of rigor to
(17:31):
the ideas that we put forward. And I wonder if
this is the beginning of the end in terms of
any sort of enlightenment ideals like it is worth reading
what other people say so that you can evolve how
you'd think.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, it's fundamentally anti intellectual. And I think that what
is of a piece with it is the Robert F.
Kennedy Make America Healthy Again movement, This idea that the
scientists might say that vaccines are worthwhile and that fluoride
makes your team stronger, but what do they know. I'm
sure that Courtney Kardashian is sympathetic to that kind of
(18:04):
quasi scientific thinking as well. It's really a rejection not
just of education, but of expertise.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yes, And the rejection of that expertise doesn't hurt the
Kurtnay Kardashians. It hurts the people who don't get the
vaccination and have comeobidities and a black or Hispanic and
have you know a number of things that would make
them particularly vulnerable to an illness. Right, And that's what
I think Hearing her talk about that, I agree made
(18:32):
me worried. And I agree as well that this has
a lot to do with the pandemic, because in Australia,
if you look at homeschooling rates absenteeism, which we should
say are not the same thing, but absenteeism school refusal,
they've gone through the roof, and experts have said they
think that COVID made parents see schooling as something that
(18:55):
could be done from home. So in the same way
that working from home became something all employees went, well,
it's possible, you just sent us home. If they saw
that as something that worked for them or was even
a possibility, then suddenly you've got literally there are more
Australian Is being homeschooled than ever before. And they say
that's a result of things like bullying, of obviously the
(19:16):
increase in tech that it can be done, and also
of safety like them not feeling safe at school, which
I think is everyone's prerogative. And also homeschooling is a
lot higher among people with an autism diagnosis or an
adh DE diagnosis. Maybe there's also a discussion to be
had about the failings of some schools to cater to
those diverse.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Needs, and specifically the underfunding of public education around the
country as well. I've heard similar things from friends in
the US. I have a friend in a US state
that is very religious and she has to homeschool her
child because they do not have a lot of schools
to choose from around and her child has many additional
(19:56):
needs that the local schools were just not really able
to meet, so they made the decision to hire a
private tutor and homeschool their child. When she went to
the local town office to put in the upp location
to homeschool, she was shocked by how easy it was
to say that you're going to homeschool your child, and
how little supervision was applied to this process. So she
(20:19):
basically filled in a one page form that asked her
very little about what she was going to teach, didn't
provide her with any resources visa VIE, curriculum or anything else.
She essentially just had to say, I want to homeschool
my child. I don't need to tell you the reasons,
and then got approved for it. And it was really
viscerally upsetting to her because while she's going to be
(20:40):
making sure that her child is meeting the state curriculum
requirements and has been in a position where she can
hire a tutor who she feels really confident in that
can educate her child properly. There are many people in
this state who clearly have parents who are not necessarily
trying to check all those boxes and are doing it
because they don't want them to be exposed to a
(21:01):
mainstream school curriculum. And that's really concerning to me.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that speaks to the Courtney
Kardashi an example too, because I don't think any of
us would imagine that Courtney is going to sit at
home and teach maths like that's access to a private
shootor which is again like something that's on offer to
some families and not to others. Another thing that I've
heard everyone in my family, teachers and both my parents
(21:28):
spoke about an enormous rise in this school refusal phenomenon
after COVID. It's been almost rebranded by some people in
the space as school can't because they say refusal suggests
they're making a decision, and these are kids who cannot
go to school, and so all these psychologists are trying
to work out what to do because in Australia, you
(21:49):
have to go to school, like there are repercussions and
the school has to get involved, and it can be
really complicated. I would look at these stories and kind
of go, all right, there were days I didn't want
to go to school either, like I didn't have a
lot of empathy for it. And Dad told me this
story about a kid, the poor mother just putting the
kid in the car and dads standing there and the
mother just trying to like pull him by his ankles
(22:11):
and being like, you have to go to school, this
is so important, and the kid just couldn't, like couldn't
go into the classroom.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
This is a post COVID study.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
This is a post COVID story. And the numbers nearly
half of all students missed ten percent of school in
twenty twenty two, so that's actually quite a lot. The
sick days thing is becoming more and more prominent, which
I guess is probably to do with screens. But again
the idea that it's optional. When something becomes optional as well,
(22:42):
then I suppose you go. I'm not going to go today.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I was surprised when I started my kids at their
school that they still give out prizes for best attendancy.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yes, that's controversial, contras, I can.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
See why, because kids can't help it when they get sick.
Do we learn nothing from COVID? I'm just really surprised.
Why do you think schools? I mean, I guess I'm
going to answer something own question here. I think schools
are persisting with that idea of perfect and tended and
rewarding kids who make it into school the most because
they're seeing this trend of school refusal or school can't
(23:18):
and they want to hammer home what an example of
a kid showing up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Every day looks like and the importance of sitting in
the classroom, because my parents would say that, you know,
you might look at your nine, or you might look
at your five and go, come on, what's a day?
But if you repeatedly miss that, there are certain blocks
in learning that are very difficult to catch up on.
So there is something that you will learn in year five.
I'm not saying on one day. I'm just saying, like,
if you you know, and people who have had a
(23:44):
prolonged illness will know this, you miss that and it
become very hard to catch up in year six or
year seven. So I suppose it is like, if you're
on the fence, go, but presentee is a more forcing
that also isn't the ideal?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yes, So I guess we're kind of talking about a
few different things here. One is the rise of homeschooling,
which I think we can attribute to the general decline
of trust in authority and expertise post COVID, And it's
right now. It's being led by very wealthy people, I
would say, who want to control what their children learn
and are maybe not very interested.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
And then on the other hand, people with kids with
different needs. I think that's the other group. Yeah, we've
probably got to acknowledge and in fact, for them, the
outcomes are really good.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Liv Schmidt is a twenty three year old model in
New York City who makes her money encouraging women and
girls to follow the skinny lifestyle. This was a story
in The Cut last week that is causing people to
lose their minds. Basically, I knew nothing about this but
Live Schmidt. She was on TikTok until last year, then
she was banned after a Wall Street Journal article. Now
(24:52):
she's on Instagram. She's just been banned from Instagram as
a result of this article. Basically, she mocks women who
she says are large and fat. She posts videos where
she says things like girls be three hundred pounds, saying
I'm a snack. No Megatron, you're the fkn vending machine.
So just really nice things like that. She has a
(25:14):
subscription only group called Skinny Society, which, for twenty dollars
a month, members gain access to exclusive content, including recipes,
workout videos, and diaries of everything Schmid eats in one day.
She gained some notoriety recently because she said that instead
of having dessert, you could swallow your boyfriend's semen, and
(25:36):
she said that semen's only something like five calories of
tea spoon, so that's good to know. There's also a
group dm thread that you get access to where people
basically egg themselves on to eat less. And it's just
really distressing to read about airmail. The publication Airmail recently
estimated that she makes one hundred and thirty thousand US
(25:57):
dollars a month from the six and a half thousand
members in the Skinny Society. So look, I think why
this article made such as splash is that people definitely
did not realize how thriving this somewhat underground community is
because as shown by the fact that TikTok and Meta
both had to ban her after news articles came out,
(26:17):
so clearly they're not moderating their platforms very well. If
you search skinny or skinny talk on TikTok and Instagram,
you'll apparently see thousands of videos along these lines of
very thin women showing off their locale diets. What's interesting
about liv Schmidt to me, having lived through the nineties
and Kate Moss and heroin Chic, is that she's very
(26:38):
careful not to advocate for particular foods, particular diets. She
frames it all in this sort of faux feminist empowering language.
She says things like eat like you're the main character,
because you are. She says, eat like your highest self
is watching. So it's a very interesting kind of twist
on that feminist rhetoric to basically further eating disorders. And
(27:01):
the Cut article found evidence of girls in high school
posting on skinny society, including about how thin they were
for their graduations. I was shocked by this, but maybe
that's because I'm not super immersed in social media. Jesse,
how did this article make you feel? Were you shocked
by it.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I was because I'm not being served this. But then
the way the algorithms work, the people who will be
most sensitive to it will And maybe it's easy for
us to assume that the culture has shifted. But I
was at something a few weeks ago where it was
like a kid's fun day thing, right, and there was
like an obstacle course. There was a jumping castle and
(27:40):
there was face painting, and in the obstacle course there
was a tunnel thing, you know, kids like run through
these little tunnels. And there was a girl she might
have been six or seven, and she was standing there
and her friend said why aren't you going through the
tunnel like because she hadn't been doing it, and she said,
I can't fit through the tunnel. I'm too fat. And
(28:03):
the look on this girl's face, I went, oh, I
thought that didn't happen anything. Yes, I thought that that's
not how we spoke exactly. It wasn't that she said
I can't fit, because she could have gone I'm too big.
She was a little bit older than the four year
olds going through. It was the way the word fat
came out of her mouth that I went, oh, that's
got to her at seven. Yeah, like that is sickening.
(28:25):
There is so much information now on food and solids
and feeding and all of that and how to prevent
you know, restriction and all of that. And I've been
deep in this because I have a child who eating
has never been very straightforward, and the idea that you
put it there and you decide when you're full and
you don't comment on things like that. But I've certainly
(28:47):
noticed that even like oh, she's so little or whatever,
has already started. And I wonder how you then protect
them from because inevitably, and I went through this, you
then go through puberty where your body starts to change
and suddenly you know, maybe you're not that little, or
parts of you, whatever it is, it's a really hard
(29:10):
thing to sort of recalibrate. I wouldn't think that seven
year old is even on social media, so I imagine
that it's just coming into the well. It's plackground.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
As you point out, with your own child, people are
already judging or commenting on her body, on Luna's body,
so it's happening early. And I completely agree with what
you said about thinking that we were over this, because
you and I both lived through the body positivity moment
(29:38):
in the mid two thousands, and thinking back to I
guess it all started actually with the Dove ads and
then it kind of snowballed from there, and it coincided
actually with the decline of magazines, which is where I
certainly inhaled a lot of this content in the nineties,
and I sort of thought we were just beyond it,
that along with them on nuanced understanding of things like
(29:58):
sexuality and race relations and the environment and taking care
of the environment, we were just getting more progressive, more enlightened,
and that our children wouldn't have to deal with this.
While it turns out I was wrong, and what came
through to me in this cut article is that every
generation ends up having this issue, and it's just that
the language around it changes and the media in which
(30:20):
it's consumed changes. So I mentioned that for me in
the nineties, it was very much magazines that were conveying
the diet tips. In the early two thousands, it was
probably live journal, Tumblr of those kinds of platforms.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Oh Tumbler, I forgot, how And that was very much
the image that it had. This Really there was a
term that was used that was almost hashtagged, and it
attracted people who were struggling with eating disorders and glorified
bro Anna.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Right, yes, yes, yeah, so that was the thing then
and now it's just moved on to a different platform.
What I want to ask you is, do you think
that there is any escaping it or is this kind
of like nihilistic idea that every generation of young women
inevitably has to cope with this.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I think it's true that we had this optimism. I
remember hearing mums talk about it in the office of like,
I'm going to get my daughter when she has a phone,
I'll just follow a bunch of diverse people on Instagram,
so she'll see all of those images and it'll be
the antithesis of a magazine or whatever because she'll have
all of these different bodies and shapes coming up. You
can't do that on TikTok, like you just can't.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
And won't curate in that way. No control.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
All it takes is you know, I'm pretty sure if
that app knows that you're a young girl, it's going
to go I know what to give you, and then
all you have to do is stay for a second,
and you're just going to get more and more so
in that way. I don't think so. But from what
I've heard, people I know that grew up with a
real complex around weight seemed to absorb some of that
(31:51):
from their family, And I just maybe the hope or
the thing that I go the difference we can make
is like how we talk about it inside the house, yes,
and the language, how you speak about other people, how
you speak about food, how you speak about bodies, how
you look at yourself in the mirror, all of those
things I think does impact it. I grew up with
a mum who never commented on her body once, not negatively,
(32:14):
not her face, not anything, and I think it was
just like to me in my house, it felt irrelevant,
whereas I know that that really impacted other people who
grew up with a different experience.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
It's also really hard to escape even when you are
trying to create a body neutral space within your family. So,
for instance, I loved roll Dyal books growing up.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh yeah, been.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Reading them to my children, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory and the Twits. And the problem with these books
is that the word fat and the idea that people
who are ugly on the inside are always ugly on
the outside, and that those two things are essentially synonymous.
It pervades those books a sort of repulsion for women's bodies,
(32:59):
particularly fat women's bodies, particularly women who are maybe not
your platonic ideal of beauty and the merging of the
inner and outer self. It's there just through those books.
It's shot through them, and a lot of older books
do have that idea of inner beauty being the same
as out of beauty, and if fairy tales have it too.
(33:21):
In fact, the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella, for instance, they're
both ugly and mean. Cinderella is both beautiful and kind,
and to decouple those qualities if you're going to read
classic kids literature, it's really difficult to convey that those
two things are not synonymous.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
That must be why every children's book now is animal.
It's like it's a gendlest animal because it's like we
could project on it. It doesn't matter the size. Sometimes
it's an elephant, sometimes it's a mouse. But it's like
you don't get all of that complexity of trying to
then identify them into a certain body or you know that's.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
True because it is also quite recent that we've started
to talk about this in this way. For instance, Harry
Potter is full of the same thing, and that was
written in the two thousands. So it just goes to
show that we're hopefully on the cutting edge of trying
to teach a different thing to our children. But then again,
I'm sure our feminist mothers thought that they were doing
(34:19):
that too. Alright, it's time for recommendations, Jesse, what have
you got for us?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Amelia? Have you ever been to a toy library?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
No? I see these sides, tell me what they're If
they sound wondering.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
They're so good and it's so not something I would
ever have gone and found.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Well, it would be weird if you didn't have kids
and were just hanging out at toy library exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
But the toy library is part of my local library,
which is on my string. That's so very, very easy.
But I looked it up and there are hundreds across
the country. It's not just my neighborhood. But a toy
library is literally you go in and it's got every
toy you could possibly imagine. It has costumes. You know,
there's a stage at which they might like a little
pram to practice their walking because and you know, you
(35:02):
need that for like two months and then you never
need it again. It has things like that, and then
you do aigh. I think it was like seventy bucks
for twelve month subscription and I could go every week
if I want it, and I can get like three
or four toys, and then I get three at a time.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, so you get multiple toys return them. And I
was like, can I donate toys to this because I
remember reading something a while ago about how there's an
ideal amount of toys. They say it's between ten and
fifteen so and probably wouldn't and probably wouldn't And it
inspires creativity because it's like, if they don't have the doll,
(35:36):
then they have to make the doll out of playtoes,
which is yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's where my parents went wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But Toy Library is so so good because we all
know the clutter everything. Often your kid just wants it
for two weeks and then it disappears and they never
think about it again.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So I love that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
That's my my hack. How about you, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
My recommendation is one very near and dear to my heart.
It's been a companion in my life. For years now.
It's a podcast. It's called Grim Grimmer, Grimist. Have you
heard of it?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Is it Grim Brothers related?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Oh I love them?
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yes, it grim fairy tales. I mean the Grim Brothers
are like true crime for the eighteenth century?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Right, Were they twins or just brothers? I think they
want maybe just brothers. But Clara and I find them
very inspiring because they watchmen. Yeah, it's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So the host is Adam Gidwitz. It's an American podcast,
and the fifth season of this podcast drops, And yes
I did say dropped. I'm very excited about it. Dropped
a couple of days ago. That's my household version of
rep TV. Just to give you a sense of how
exciting this is. So here's the premise. Adam Gibwitz goes
to the classroom of a very fancy school in Brooklyn,
(36:42):
New York to tell grim fairy tales, and he records
himself telling the story and also records the kids responding
in real time to the story. So this podcast works
on a number of levels for parents. There's something slightly
voyeuristic about the milieu of this podcast, which is, like
I mentioned this very fancy school because the kid's parents,
you learn through their anecdotes, are all like really fancy careers,
(37:05):
like their set designers, their novelists, and you're just getting
this glimpse into kind of like the upper crust of
New York and how they're raising their kids.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
It's heavy. I love it, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
And then the second thing is the kids are extremely
precocious and well spoken because their parents are again set
design as a novelist in the upper crust of New York,
so they add in these actually very witty interjections to
the stories. And then the third thing that's great about
it is that the grim fairy tales are just the
best stories.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's like canceling Gretelin styf Yeah, right, Like it's all
the really disturbing ones that I loved.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Really disturbing. And so that's why it's called grim, Grimmer, Grimmest,
because each fairy tale is ranked is it grim, is
it grimmer, or is it grimmest, And so you can
kind of pick how dark you want the story to be.
They're not sugar coated, they're not done down. In fact,
some of the stories most of the stories are quite violent.
Love that, but in a kind of kid's storybook somehow
(37:59):
age appropriate way.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
How long are the episodes.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
They range in between about twenty and fifty minutes. You
probably need to buy some episodes if you want the
whole back catalog, but there's plenty available for free on
podcast platforms to just try out. A good one to
try out versus Rumpelstiltskin, which is one of my favorites,
and Gidwitz itself. He's just a fantastic storyteller. There's a
(38:22):
reason why when you type his name into Google the
first result is Adam Gibbwits married, because I've definitely googled
that and you will too.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I love that. Thank you so much. That is all
we have time for on Parenting out Loud today. MoMA
Mea Studios are styled with furniture from Fenton Inventon. Visit
Ventoninventon dot com, dot au. We will see you next Saturday. Bye.
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