October 31, 2025 • 33 mins
Did you grow up in a home with a favourite child? Do you secretly favour one of your own kids? We unpack the expert opinions and whether or not parental favouritism actually matters in the long run.
Plus, we deep-dive into Jennifer Lawrence's recent The New Yorker profile where she shares what her life looks like postpartum and how returning to work has left her feeling like a fundamentally different person. Relate, much?
And, from Jennifer Aniston opening up about adoption to Hailey Bieber sharing the secret that helps her raise her son, it seems like the A-listers are finally peeling back the curtain on the unvarnished truth about having kids.
Our Recommendations:
📺 Stacey is obsessed with the new show Building The Band.
🎲 Monz recommends the simple but powerful children's game Spot It! — a secret weapon of OTs and speech therapists for motor skills and focus.
📰 Amelia is desperate for you to read the Jennifer Lawrence Profile so you too can join the conversation.
For support for perinatal & postnatal depression and anxiety please reach out to the Gidget Foundation.
Support independent women's media
What To Listen To Next:
- Don't miss an episode of Parenting Out Loud
- Picnic Table Politics & The Era Of Tiny Spies
- The Scariest Truth about Halloween & A Nepo Baby Debate
- The Royal Who Flipped The Script On Dads & The Unholy Truth About 'The Squeeze'
- So That's Why Magicians Are Back & The Eldest Daughter Theory
- Rihanna and A$AP Rocky's 'Love Junk' Rebrand & The TikTok Training Camp
- Stealth Mums, The Roblox Controversy & A Tiny Internet Feud
- Unpacking The KPop Demon Hunters Obsession & A Tracking Tool Controversy
- Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts
What to read:
- 11 years ago, Jennifer Lawrence predicted her future with freakish accuracy.
- 'When I was a teen, I overheard my mum say who her favourite child was. It wasn't me.'
- The Password Child: The new way of knowing if you have a favourite child.
- I have a favourite child. Here's why.
- We need to debrief about the first year of motherhood.
THE END BITS:
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and
waters that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Haylee Bieber broke the Internet again. Jennifer Aniston shared something
that no one saw coming, and do you have a
favorite kid? Because no one wants to admit it, but shit,
it can really do some damage. This is Parenting out Loud,
the parenting podcast for people who don't listen to parenting podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm want Eat Bowley, I'm Amelia Lester, and I'm Stacy Hicks.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thoughts and prayers for anyone dealing with a sugar come
down post Halloween. How is your Halloween night?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
It does feel a little bit like I remember after
I got married. I felt a little flat in the
days afterwards because I've been looking forward to it so much.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
And I sort of see.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
The same thing in kids after Halloween, just a sense
of I put on my special clothes, I have my
special night.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
What is that a look for to now? The answer
is Christmas. Yeah, it's not far away.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Hey, it's been a massive week for celebrity honesty in
the parenting department. So what have we seen?
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Stacy Hailey Bieber has done it again.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
My unlikely parenting guru said the thing that no celebrities
ever want to seem to admit on the In Your
Dream podcast, I.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
Do have help.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I have full time help, and I'm super not ashamed
to say that, and I would never shy away from
talking about that because I wouldn't be able to have
my career and do the things that I do without
the help.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
And I feel really grateful for that.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thank you, Hailey.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Do you know if you had said to me maybe
four weeks ago, Hailey Beba, this Hailey Beb, that I
would say to you, who like? Who is Hailey Baber?
I had no idea, And now I feel like every
single week she says something that I'm like, thank God,
someone is saying this. Someone who's cool, someone who's influential,
someone who's really powerful is saying these things.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I loved it and it was interesting because I first
came across it on People Magazines, Instagram, went for a
real Journey. A lot of people are angry at Haley
Beaber for admitting that she has helped unclear why, but
then the top comment really restored by faith in humanity
and was such a good point too. Someone wrote, people
(02:24):
be like it takes a village to raise a child,
but then get mad when they see someone with a village.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Exactly, And I think it's a good reminder to us
that celebrities can do all the things they do because
they're not parenting in the same way as we are.
They can hire a village, and that's a good reminder.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
The other comment that I loved on this was why
does some people think that to be a good mother
you have to suffer? Like It's been proven that kid's
success in life is linked to their mother's happiness, So
why wouldn't we want to have like happy, rested, healthy mums.
From one surprising admission to another, did you see what
Jennifer Aniston said this week on the Dak's Shepherd podcast.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
It is so good?
Speaker 6 (03:03):
People say, but you can adopt. I don't want to adopt. Yeah,
I want my own DNA and a little person. Yes,
And that's the only way selfish or not whatever that is.
I wanted it to. But is there the moments of
when you meet someone and you go, God, we would.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Have made some good kids.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yes, I almost snapped my achilles. Running to the comments
section of this, I was like, she's going to get reamed,
She's going to be canceled for saying this thing, which
is so honest and like incredibly shockingly slapped in the
face honest from a celebrity.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, it feels like the thing that we're not allowed
to say. Like, I don't think I've ever heard anyone
be as blunt and cut and dry about their decision
to not want to look into adoption.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
I have the exact same reaction.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
But then you mentioned that adoption advocates and experts say
that this is the correct way to talk about adoption. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Absolutely. I loved what was happening in the comment section.
Unlike the other comment section on Hailey be but this
one was surprisingly insightful and so many people really praising
her for saying this because they said adoption is not
a band aid for fertility. This shouldn't be your last resort.
And my favorite comment that I saw in there was
(04:16):
from someone saying everyone who thinks she should adopt should
go and adopt themselves. You don't have to be infertile
to do it. It's an act of love, not a
last resort. And so I kind of looked into this
to be like, what do the experts say around adoption
and the reasons you do it, then, like, if that's
not the main reason people are doing it, and they
say that adoptions for the child's welfare, not the parent's needs.
(04:38):
So if you're using it as a way to move
on from infertility, then that's very much the wrong reason.
And they recommend that you fully grieve the infertility period
of your life before you even consider adoption. So it
needs to come from a place of wanting to change
a child's life, because it's not an easy path.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I'm also loving that Jennifer Aniston, at this stage in
her life and career, is speaking so candidly about what
was clearly in retrospect a very painful period of her
life when there was so much tableau speculation about why
she wasn't having children and maybe that was the end
of her marriage with Brad Pitt, for instance, Well maybe
(05:16):
that's why justin throw finally took his leather jackets and
walked off into the sunset, When what we know now
is that she desperately wanted to have children, and that
that is a sadness in her life that it didn't happen,
And there's just something so admirable about being able to
speak about the most difficult parts of your life in
(05:37):
that way. Yeah, it probably helps someone else who's going
through it.
Speaker 7 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think she's the perfect example of speaking from the
scar not the wound. Like she has not spoken about
this really at all over the years, and rightly so.
But it feels like now she's in that place where
that window has very much shut for her. She feels
completely content, and she goes on in that interview to
say when there are periods like she said, oh, we
would have made a good kid, She said, it passes
in a couple of seconds, that sadness goes, and that
(06:03):
she has a peaceful life and feels like it was
the right choice for her.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
What do you mean by saying talk from the scar,
not the world wound? Can you explain that? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I think if she'd spoken about this as she was
going through the infertility journey, her emotions around it probably
would have been very raw, and she might have said
things that she regretted at that point about what she
wanted to do. I think now she's at a point
where she'd probably feel very resolved in her decision, like
it was the right decision for her. And so she
can speak about it in hindsight in a way that's
probably much more useful for people to hear. And I
(06:35):
loved that lots of people were saying, I've adopted and
that was the right choice for me. But I respect
her for knowing her limits and going this wasn't right.
That's not the path I want to take, and that's okay.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
And also equally for people who choose adoption regardless of
their fertility status, it's a nice affirmation of why they
do what they do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I want to talk about something that's quite a parental tobo,
and I want you both to keep an open mind
on this. Okay, are you the favorite child? Or did
your parents have one and it wasn't you? Because parental
favoritism it might just be the last parenting taboo. Every
parent swears they love their kids equally, and yet and
(07:16):
yet studies show that two thirds of families have a
hidden favorite, and the way they treat that child compared
to their siblings I have a really long lasting impact.
So you might be listening to this thinking I don't
have a favorite, not me. I don't. When my kids ask,
I say, I love you all equally. But the science
can be really subtle. So I've got a little quiz
(07:38):
for listeners to answer as they're listening to this. I'm
calling it, does your family have a favorite? It's based
on actual research into parental favoritism. So as you're listening
to this, I want you to think about the family
that you grew up in and just answer in your
head yes or no. Did one of you get hugged
or praised more than the others. Did one of you
get punished harder when things went wrong? Did one of
(08:01):
you make your parents.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Laugh more that one's so good?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Was there someone who got away with things because they
were sensitive? Did our parents celebrate one sibling's achievements a
little bit louder than the others? Is one of you
more like your mum or dad in personality or temperament?
And when money or help like babysitting or advice or
handout is on the table, does one of you get
(08:29):
it first? Now, if you answered yes to any of
these congratulations, your family probably had a favorite. Amelia. It's
really really subtle. It's these tiny little moments. But what
happens when parents play favorites?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, you're right that this is really something that's so
hard to talk about. And that's the first thing experts
say is we're not talking about this, but we need
to be because it's ubiquitous and it affects family dynamics.
So by not talking about it or actually making the
effects worse, and the effects are really weird and surprising.
(09:07):
One of the things that wele in my mind when
digging into this is that it's not just the one
who's not the favorite who misses out. The favorite has
some detrimental impacts from being the favorite. And one study
which really stood out to me from researchers in China,
found that parental favoritism is a positive indicator for mobile
phone addiction as an adolescent, So in other words, if
(09:27):
you were the favorite, you are more likely to develop
a mobile phone addiction in adolescence. And another that blew
my mind is that maternal favoritism is an indicator for
depression in adulthood. And the reason experts think is because
it creates tension with other siblings and that tension enduers
for decades beyond childhood. But I don't want people to
(09:51):
feel hopeless when they hear that, because even though as
you've mentioned, mones, it's an incredibly widespread phenomenon. The point
is that we need to start being aware of the
impact it's having. We can never avoid it, and we
certainly can't change it if we did grow up in
a household where we felt that another child was the
favorite or that we were the favorite.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
But being aware of it is the key.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And it's interesting what you say, like, I think a
favorite probably isn't set either. I think you probably can
have a favorite. The changes as you enter different life stages.
But there's a lot of research around similarity bias, and
it shows that if you have multiple children and that
one's more similar to you, whether that's their temperament or
their interests, that does draw you closer to that child
(10:34):
because you know how to parent that type of person
because you are that type of person. So that's often
what they say around, Oh they're a mini me, Like,
it's the one that is more similar to you. It's
probably the one that you feel a bit more ease
in parenting, And it's not just the oldest.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I think we sometimes assume that the oldest child is
the golden child and is therefore more likely to be
the favorite. But apparently this is not what the studies
show because that key indicator is whether or not the
child is like you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yes, it's not gender either, it's not mum's loving sons
or whatever. It is the key indicator, as you said, Stacy,
it's that bias there. There's also a stress factor in
the research where it shows that parents who are under
high stress inadvertently give less warmth to children who are
sort of high needs or who demand attention or more regulation.
(11:24):
And so the effect of that is that the difficult
child can often become the scapegoat in family dynamics. So yeah,
and as you said, Amelia, like everyone assumes that it's
great to be the golden child, but the research says
that is not the case. Like these favored kids carry
more guilt, feel more pressure, and have this lifelong need
(11:46):
to sort of keep performing to earn that love. I
think what's what was fascinating to me in this entire
research that we did around this is how tiny the
differences are. So I was listening to the Michelle Obama
podcast this week. It's called IMO if you haven't heard it,
she makes a rule where she doesn't talk about grades
at the dinner table. Have a listen.
Speaker 7 (12:06):
I needed a point not to talk about greedes at
the dinner tea just because you know, it's like, let's
talk about school. Yeah, but when we talk about grades
or scores, you know, I was always sensitive, what if
the other one's not doing greed and we are rewarding
and cheering an A when the other one might be
getting a C. And that's you know, and then you
(12:27):
set up you know, competitions, some kind of measure unintentionally.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
And I think that's how this sort of subtle favoritism
can sometimes show up. It's not in like grand declarations
like you get a car when you turn eighteen, or
it's just in these microme moments like who we comfort,
who we praise, who we laugh at, who gets the
benefit of the doubt in a fight. Like these little
tiny moments to a child seem quite big and they
(12:54):
kind of tell this story about where they stand.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
The interesting thing is that when we first started talking
about this topic, Stacy, you said, well, that's not relevant
to me because I only have one child, as you've
spoken about on this podcast. What I think people will
take away from this is that the patterns of your
childhood are likely to repeat in the way that you parent,
(13:18):
so even if you only have one child, if you
grew up with siblings, there were certain biases and patterns
of behavior that you learned from your parents to do
with your sibling dynamic that will invariably shape how you
parent as well.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, and do you think the favoritism ever gets misconstrued?
Because I was thinking about families like as you say, Mons,
where there's one child that might be high needs or
be a deeply feeling kid. The other sibling may view
that because that child needs more attention as them being
the favorite, when really the parent may prefer the ease
of the other child. So it's interesting that we all
(13:54):
kind of probably clearly have a thought in our head
over who the favorite was in our family from that
quiz you did, Mons, but that might not actually be
the case.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I'm just actually conscious that this discussion, listening to it
now makes me feel bad. I'm like, oh, for God's sake,
here's another thing that I'm doing wrong, like another thing
that I'm going to be screwing my kids up over.
But I don't want that to be the case. I think,
as you said, Amelia, this is the great unspoken thing.
But maybe it's just that awareness is the first step.
Maybe we just need to be more like Michelle Obama
(14:25):
in the way that we talk to our kids and
just be conscious of what we're saying in those stories
that we're kind of telling them.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Are we messing them up?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Though? If we have a favorite, like of course in
the more blatant ways, like if we were pulling a
Rupert Murdoch and like widely telling everyone that you know,
Lachlan was our favorite, or Chris Jenna. She's gone on
the record several times saying that Kylie is her favorite.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
MM.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
She says it rotates sometimes, but when she was asked
on a lie detector, she said Kylie and the lie
detector said, yep, that's correct. And she's the youngest in
the family. She's also made the most money out of
that family. So maybe that's why Chris prefers her. So
does it actually affect them, like, are the others struggling
because your parent has a favorite?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yes, that's what the research is saying, but that's why
I don't.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
But it's character building, monds, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Like, you know, if you feel a little hard done
by in your family, maybe it is something that builds
a bit more resilience.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I know, but Stacey wear intense millennial parents. We are
so conscious of screwing our kids up.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Look, I think the point is to be aware, and
one way that you can even be aware of it
is outside of the family in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
That point you made minds.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
That you're more likely to favorite someone who's like you
is equally true in workplace environments. People have found that
when people are hiring, managers tend to gravitate towards people
who look like them, behave like them, think like them,
and just like in a family situation, we've just got
to be aware of these biases that we all have.
(15:55):
It's the same in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Is that why you and I have both ended up
in matching blue shirts? Today?
Speaker 4 (16:00):
We should explain to listeners that we're wearing the unofficial
Parenting podcast uniform of elastic waist pants and a blue
shirt with a French tuck.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
We are, we are.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's our bias and brown hair down the mum uniform.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Okay, guys, I think we're moving to the country because
this week I have two stories to bring to you
of country kids who did things so wholesome it's going
to make you book The movers and go to the bush. Okay,
this is my rural rap. Try saying that three times quickly.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Mon's r rap. I love it.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
First up, ten year old Brock Knewett from Nadamook in
Country Victoria. Most ten year olds would be glued to Minecraft.
Not Brock. He has his train collection, two hundred and
thirty five toy trains. He took them to the local pub.
He set up a display, and then he charged people
a gold coin to come and look at them. And
what did he do with the money? Pray tell? Did
(16:54):
he go and buy a PS five or whatever they're
doing nowadays? I don't know five. He took the eight
hundred and ten dollars that he raised and donated it
to the Royal Children's Hospital. Not even all right. And
then over in Country wa eleven year old Harry said
(17:14):
rock hold my beer. Because he was a bit bored
on the farm, so he went to the local tip
and he found a nineteen seventies land cruiser. Instead of
climbing in pretending to drive it like my kids would
have done, he took it home and restored the whole thing.
He apparently spent four hours a day on this thing,
like before school, after school, rebuilding the engine, painting it,
restoring it all via YouTube and some help from dad,
(17:37):
and then he won the People's Choice Award at the
Bruce Rock Show. I just our country kids just better.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
There's absolutely something about this story of eleven year old
Harry restoring the nineteen seventies land cruiser, which as an
anxious city parent, I would absolutely pay for a school
holiday program where my kids did this, which is very
sad to admit that I'm having to enroll them in
programs where.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
But we just don't know these things.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Like I love that he just was like, I'll just
teach myself, Like, how credible our.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Country kids better minds? You know more about the country
than I do. Do you think that's true.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think that's the romantic view of it. I think
country kids also have difficulty accessing good health services, sometimes
educational services, so it's not all restoring land cruisers and
toy trains in the pub. You've talked before about biases
in the workplace, Amelia. If I see that someone has
grown up in the country, I am very heavily biased
(18:36):
towards them.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I don't think I'm overselling this, But this week was
the Millennial parenting moment of the year. It also happens
to be my recommendation for the week, and it is
the New Yorker's profile of Jennifer Lawrence that dropped at
around ten pm Tuesday night, and which I have been
reading ever since.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It is it's long, right, it's eight thousand words. How
many times have you read it?
Speaker 4 (19:04):
It honestly felt like eighty words to me. I think
I've read it maybe seven times. The profile is written
by Giatolentino, who is the author of the book Trick
Mirror and who has been probably the I think, the
best writer on what the Internet is doing to our
brains of our generation. And she is profiling Jennifer Lawrence,
(19:27):
now thirty five, now a mother of two. She is
now the cool girl, all grown up. And we learn
so much in this profile about what it means to
return to the workplace after children. Now her workplace is
more glamorous, well not more glamorous than ours, because ours
is very glamorous, but more glamorous than many workplaces. But
(19:50):
I still think that there's some really telling, universal themes
in there to draw out. She's so honest with Gia
Tolentino Jennifer Lawrence about how she feels like a completely
different person after children. May I unpack a few gems
for you.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Please, because when you sent this to me, I said, Amelia,
eight thousand words. I will skim it at bet, so
tell me all the best bits, like why I should
read this.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I got the highlighter out to Emelia. I'm here for good.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Let's compare notes. So the big headline that you may
have seen is that Jennifer Lawrence has breast surgery schedule
for November. Now we don't know what the nature of
that surgery is, but it's some kind of esthetic procedure.
Because she says she has a nude scene to do
early next year. Now, Gia says to her, would you
be doing that anyway even if you didn't have a
(20:37):
nud scene, And she says yes, because after her first child,
whose name is CSI, her body bounced back, that's her phrase,
by the way, bounced back. After her second child, who
we think is called Louis, although the name is not
mentioned in the article, she says her body did not
bounce back, and that is why she is having the
breast surgery.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I found that the least interesting part of this article,
I could not care less. She also talked about she's
going to get a face it too. This is just
fodder on the side of it. What I want to
talk about is how she's rebranding herself. She's gone from
being the cool girl who ate pizza and drank beers
(21:16):
and burped and fell over on the stairs at the
Oscars Red carpet, and she's had this metamorphosis into serious artists.
Now she's gone away, she's had two kids, she started
a production company, and she's coming out with this really artistic,
deep movie that Martin Scorsese rang her up and said,
you've got to do this. In fact, I thought that
(21:39):
was really key. She says, it was six weeks after
the birth of my first child when Scorsese's name popped
up on my phone. He said, this is the kind
of thing you should be doing. Go take a chance,
not any sense of a comfortable character off the board,
and just go for it. And in this entire eight
thousand word article, I felt like that was really key,
(22:00):
because there is this moment that mums have after they
become mums where work takes on a whole new meaning
and you need it to feel really worth it in
a whole new way. If you are spending time away
from your child, you want it to be for something.
It's just like weird, desperate puol of this has got
to matter. Maybe that was just my reading of it,
because that feels intensely personal to me. But it does
(22:22):
feel like this profile takes her from being that ubiquitous
cool girl into like serious artist, and I just thought
that transition is really interesting.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I think that's so profound because it's a lot to
do with how she approaches her work. She was always
a serious artist. She won an Oscar, she was a
critically acclaimed actor in a lot of indie films in
addition to the Hunger Games trilogy. She was always a
serious artist. But what's changed is that now she's comfortable
talking about herself and treating herself like a serious artist.
(22:54):
Before it was all kind of a joke. It was
the falling down stage at the Oscars. It was the
eating of the fried chicken. It's interesting that there was
this trope of cool girls doing interviews where they ate
like lots of fast food and showed how relaxed they
were around food and so on. It's interesting that in
this interview she and Gia Tolantino go out for lunch
at one of the most sought after restaurants in New York,
(23:17):
and Jennifer Lawrence doesn't eat. And what I take from
that is that she's so serious about nailing this interview.
She's not going to concentrate on anything else while she's there,
because she was.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Very much the victim of that over exposed Hollywood actress,
right Like, she kind of got put in the same
basket as the Anne Hathaways where they were just everywhere,
and then they got branded as too annoying, that they
were almost too relatable and too cool girl. And it
feels like she's pulled back on that yew.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Kind of be relatable and yeah, she's just like, I've
got a film to promote. I feel very proud of
that film. It took me away from my children, and
now I want to make.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Sure that it's a success.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
There's another great moment where when they're at that lunch
or that meeting at the restaurant, Gia Tolantino describes this
sense of an invisible string pulling Jennifer back to her
six month old baby who's at home. That sense when
you have a newborn where it's like a ticking time
bomb if you're away from them, And that just underscores
this sense of I am away from my baby. I
(24:14):
don't have time to eat elaborate foods to prove to
you anything. I just want to talk to you about
this movie and why I feel passionately about it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh, that was such a beautiful line, and Giotlantino can
write the shit out of it, right, but she says,
I highlighted it for you. It was like there was
an invisible tether new mothers have to their infants, the
rope tightening, the clock counting down. Like Jennifer Lawrence is
in a cafe talking to a journalist, but her body
is still on baby time. It's just nailed it.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I've never heard it put that way, but that is
what it is, isn't it. When you have a little kid,
everything feels like it's on a timer, like you're counting
down to getting back to them.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
All the time, everything's heightened. Yeah, there's another great moment
that didn't make the headlines, but which I think is
so interesting, which is that when you become a parent,
you start to reevaluate your relationship with your own parents,
and you see it in a new light, and that
can be positive, it can be negative, it can be neutral.
But in Jennifer Lawrence's case, that means feeling able to
(25:13):
pull away from this very rigid religious upbringing she had,
where she felt a lot of shame around sex and
her sexual identity, she maybe didn't agree with her parents'
political views, and now that she's had her own children,
she feels able to stand on her own two feet
aside from that parental unit that she grew up with.
Sort of like what we were saying before about favoritism
(25:34):
in families, you start to only see those dynamics, I think,
or you can start to only see those dynamics after
you have your own children.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
So true. The other really honest thing she talks about
is her postpartum anxiety, not with her first child, but
with her second. She says, I just thought every time
he was sleeping he was dead. I thought he cried
because he didn't like his life or me or his family.
I thought I was doing everything wrong and that I
would ruin my children.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's so interesting to say about a second. I feel
like that's the thing from everyone with a first I know,
I definitely felt like that and was kind of leaning
over twenty times a night to make sure my daughter
was still alive. But you never hear that with the
second so I love that she's talking about that too.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
She also gets at that feeling when you have a
newborn where you're just typing things into your phone for
reassurance at all hours of the night. So she asks
chat GPT a question about breastfeeding and then gets back
this very rope response, you were doing a beautiful thing
for your child, And she says that that just made
her feel worse because she was like, I don't believe
(26:39):
that chat GPT cares about me. Who cares about me?
It was very relatable, that sense of seeking answers from
the internet late at night.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She does seem incredibly self aware and intelligent. Does she not?
This entire profile, I was really surprised at what I
was reading about her and the way that people talked
about her, and what it acting genius she is as well,
and how she never had any training and that's actually
her superpower. She just drops into the roles and the
more she studies the character, the tighter she gets about it. Anyway,
I'm going down a wholerabbit hole about her. Acting. Now,
(27:07):
what else do we need to know about it?
Speaker 5 (27:08):
But that's connected to what you started with Mons.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Because all these people are quoted admiringly in the article
about how great an actor Jennifer Lawrence is, from Emma
Stone to Jodie Foster. But what comes through so clearly
is that now Jennifer Lawrence knows that she is a
serious actor, and she is owning that. And it seems
like that realization and that acknowledgment of her own skill
(27:35):
is actually intertwined with having children for her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
On that same note, the other thing that really struck
me was how the machine of Hollywood was controlling her.
But now she's taking control back, Amelia in my mind.
So she talks about how when she was at the
height of her fame, she was hounded by the paparazzi
and now she just plays their game. Now that she's
got children, the stakes are higher. So what she does
is she leaves her house, she lets the pap take
(28:00):
their photos, and then they leave her alone for the
rest of the day. And on that she says, I
realized that my kids would be aware of my energy,
and that if I was nervous and pissed when we
left the house and the paps were there. They would
feel that in their little bodies. So it's almost like
she goes, yep, I get the game, have your photos,
and leave us alone. And that feels very much, in
(28:22):
a way, taking back the control of what she can control.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And I saw that in action this week because I
did see some photos of her crossing the street in
New York wearing a giant witch's hat, and I thought,
that's Jennifer Lawrence doing the mum thing. Yeah, So that's
your recommendation for this week? Familiar you must, I guess
it is. Yes, that is my recommendation.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Where do people find it?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
It is a profile of Jennifer Lawrence in the New
Yorker magazine by Geotolantino. The New Yorker does have a
pay well, but typically you can get away with reading
one piece for free.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Let's put a link in the show notes to the article.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
If you are struggling with some of the issues that
we've discussed here around postpartum depression and anxiety, we will
include a link also in the show notes with some resources.
And we send all our love to you.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Stacy. What is your recommendation this week?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Look is not as high brow as there. So mine
is just a multi screen show. So you know how
you just need a show at night where when you're
scrolling on your phone and your bugget you just need
something that's easy and lovely to watch. And I have
been watching Building the Band.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
What is that?
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (29:24):
So it flew under the radar, but hosted by Nicole
Scherzinger from Pussycat Dolls.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
But she's also like a Tony Winner or something.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yes, yeah, she is an aj McLean from Backstreet Boys,
so they host it so they are well versed.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
He's bad, bad.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Backstreet boy, right, no street boy, he's like an anti vaxsa.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
Oh no, I don't think it's him. He's fine. He
gets a bath.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But they get all these talented singers and they all
have to audition for each other sight unseen, and then
they decide if they'd want to be in a band
with that person. So it's kind of like love is
blind Slash the Voice, and they have to decide after
hearing each other who they want to pair up with.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
They get a few chances to chat.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And then they're thrown in as a full band, so
they have no idea what these people look like.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
If they're going to mesh.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's just actually quite wholesome.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It's really good.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And late Liam Paigne from One Direction, who passed away
last year, he was a guest judge on it, so
it was obviously filmed a long time ago and just
came out this year. It's just great, Like it's just
such a vibe, so highly recommend able.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yes, that's a great recommendation. I think that's a really
good co watching show. I'll tell you what's not a
good co watching show. I've been watching The Golden Bachelor,
and I mean, I'm loving it sick. But my kids
were drawn in by the rousing music and you know,
all the beautiful lights in the mansion. Explaining that show
to my kids was so diabolical. I was like, Okay,
(30:49):
so all these amazing women are trying to get the
attention of this one man and he gets to pick.
The man gets to pick which one he wants. And
my kids like, why does the man get to pick?
What's good about the man? And I was like, what's
good about nothing? Nothing, Let's turn the shuttle over.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
So, but what a good question. It was confronted the
man and it's a great question for life.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's a lot exerciety so too, and what's your recco
mons apart from the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Okay, So, a friend of mine who's a speech therapist
recommended this to me and she says, every single ot
and speech therapist has this little game in their kit bag.
It's a little kid's game called spot It, and it's
very simple, it's very fun. But here's the genius. It
teaches like visual processing, fine motor skills, attention and social skills.
(31:44):
And you would never know it because it's actually really fun.
It's called spot It. It's about twenty dollars from Big
W Target came out all those places. Just throw it
in your kids Christmas stocking or put it in the.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Present cupboard for little kids.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Like how young are we talking that you do?
Speaker 5 (31:58):
Use this with no I reckon?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
You could play it like three year olds to probably
ten year olds.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Cool. That's great. That's all we got time for.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Thank you for being with us today all the way
through to this point. And a huge thank you to
the people who clicked follow because there were actually hundreds
last week and it's such a micro thing to do,
but it helps us massively Some people even went beyond that,
guys and left a review. Now, usually we like to
ask people to leave a gentle parenting review, which makes
(32:28):
us really laugh, but we can't control everyone. Some people
just go completely rogue, such as this one from a
sixty year old child free person who says, I'm in
my early sixties and free of offspring by choice, but
have amazing nephews, nieces, and a gorgeous collection of god children.
My friend's grandchildren are being introduced into our crazy, wonderful
world at a rate of knots. So I like to
(32:50):
be across all the things around, navigating the journey. I
enjoy listening to these girls so much. You all rock.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Can I just say that I know that that woman
gives the best birthday presents.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
Oh, she's so totally. She's doing so much research.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
She's got tabs open, she's got a little notes app
thing on her phone with like a list of ideas
year round.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
She's such a yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Okay. The other thing I loved about is that she
left no name, just emojis as her kind of name,
shell and like an octopus.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
That's so cool. I didn't even know there was a
jellyfish emoji.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
She's the cool jellyfish shell and a piece of coral.
You rock too, our emoji godmother, thank you so much,
and also a big thanks to our team Tesakotovich, Leap,
Worgeous and Sashtanic and the big Boss is ripped. Devine,
have a great week. We'll be back in this feed
next Saturday morning. I cannot wait. Bye byeye
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and
waters that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Haylee Bieber broke the Internet again. Jennifer Aniston shared something
that no one saw coming, and do you have a
favorite kid? Because no one wants to admit it, but shit,
it can really do some damage. This is Parenting out Loud,
the parenting podcast for people who don't listen to parenting podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm want Eat Bowley, I'm Amelia Lester, and I'm Stacy Hicks.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thoughts and prayers for anyone dealing with a sugar come
down post Halloween. How is your Halloween night?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
It does feel a little bit like I remember after
I got married. I felt a little flat in the
days afterwards because I've been looking forward to it so much.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
And I sort of see.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
The same thing in kids after Halloween, just a sense
of I put on my special clothes, I have my
special night.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
What is that a look for to now? The answer
is Christmas. Yeah, it's not far away.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Hey, it's been a massive week for celebrity honesty in
the parenting department. So what have we seen?
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Stacy Hailey Bieber has done it again.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
My unlikely parenting guru said the thing that no celebrities
ever want to seem to admit on the In Your
Dream podcast, I.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
Do have help.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I have full time help, and I'm super not ashamed
to say that, and I would never shy away from
talking about that because I wouldn't be able to have
my career and do the things that I do without
the help.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
And I feel really grateful for that.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thank you, Hailey.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Do you know if you had said to me maybe
four weeks ago, Hailey Beba, this Hailey Beb, that I
would say to you, who like? Who is Hailey Baber?
I had no idea, And now I feel like every
single week she says something that I'm like, thank God,
someone is saying this. Someone who's cool, someone who's influential,
someone who's really powerful is saying these things.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I loved it and it was interesting because I first
came across it on People Magazines, Instagram, went for a
real Journey. A lot of people are angry at Haley
Beaber for admitting that she has helped unclear why, but
then the top comment really restored by faith in humanity
and was such a good point too. Someone wrote, people
(02:24):
be like it takes a village to raise a child,
but then get mad when they see someone with a village.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Exactly, And I think it's a good reminder to us
that celebrities can do all the things they do because
they're not parenting in the same way as we are.
They can hire a village, and that's a good reminder.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
The other comment that I loved on this was why
does some people think that to be a good mother
you have to suffer? Like It's been proven that kid's
success in life is linked to their mother's happiness, So
why wouldn't we want to have like happy, rested, healthy mums.
From one surprising admission to another, did you see what
Jennifer Aniston said this week on the Dak's Shepherd podcast.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
It is so good?
Speaker 6 (03:03):
People say, but you can adopt. I don't want to adopt. Yeah,
I want my own DNA and a little person. Yes,
And that's the only way selfish or not whatever that is.
I wanted it to. But is there the moments of
when you meet someone and you go, God, we would.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Have made some good kids.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yes, I almost snapped my achilles. Running to the comments
section of this, I was like, she's going to get reamed,
She's going to be canceled for saying this thing, which
is so honest and like incredibly shockingly slapped in the
face honest from a celebrity.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, it feels like the thing that we're not allowed
to say. Like, I don't think I've ever heard anyone
be as blunt and cut and dry about their decision
to not want to look into adoption.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
I have the exact same reaction.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
But then you mentioned that adoption advocates and experts say
that this is the correct way to talk about adoption. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Absolutely. I loved what was happening in the comment section.
Unlike the other comment section on Hailey be but this
one was surprisingly insightful and so many people really praising
her for saying this because they said adoption is not
a band aid for fertility. This shouldn't be your last resort.
And my favorite comment that I saw in there was
(04:16):
from someone saying everyone who thinks she should adopt should
go and adopt themselves. You don't have to be infertile
to do it. It's an act of love, not a
last resort. And so I kind of looked into this
to be like, what do the experts say around adoption
and the reasons you do it, then, like, if that's
not the main reason people are doing it, and they
say that adoptions for the child's welfare, not the parent's needs.
(04:38):
So if you're using it as a way to move
on from infertility, then that's very much the wrong reason.
And they recommend that you fully grieve the infertility period
of your life before you even consider adoption. So it
needs to come from a place of wanting to change
a child's life, because it's not an easy path.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I'm also loving that Jennifer Aniston, at this stage in
her life and career, is speaking so candidly about what
was clearly in retrospect a very painful period of her
life when there was so much tableau speculation about why
she wasn't having children and maybe that was the end
of her marriage with Brad Pitt, for instance, Well maybe
(05:16):
that's why justin throw finally took his leather jackets and
walked off into the sunset, When what we know now
is that she desperately wanted to have children, and that
that is a sadness in her life that it didn't happen,
And there's just something so admirable about being able to
speak about the most difficult parts of your life in
(05:37):
that way. Yeah, it probably helps someone else who's going
through it.
Speaker 7 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think she's the perfect example of speaking from the
scar not the wound. Like she has not spoken about
this really at all over the years, and rightly so.
But it feels like now she's in that place where
that window has very much shut for her. She feels
completely content, and she goes on in that interview to
say when there are periods like she said, oh, we
would have made a good kid, She said, it passes
in a couple of seconds, that sadness goes, and that
(06:03):
she has a peaceful life and feels like it was
the right choice for her.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
What do you mean by saying talk from the scar,
not the world wound? Can you explain that? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I think if she'd spoken about this as she was
going through the infertility journey, her emotions around it probably
would have been very raw, and she might have said
things that she regretted at that point about what she
wanted to do. I think now she's at a point
where she'd probably feel very resolved in her decision, like
it was the right decision for her. And so she
can speak about it in hindsight in a way that's
probably much more useful for people to hear. And I
(06:35):
loved that lots of people were saying, I've adopted and
that was the right choice for me. But I respect
her for knowing her limits and going this wasn't right.
That's not the path I want to take, and that's okay.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
And also equally for people who choose adoption regardless of
their fertility status, it's a nice affirmation of why they
do what they do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I want to talk about something that's quite a parental tobo,
and I want you both to keep an open mind
on this. Okay, are you the favorite child? Or did
your parents have one and it wasn't you? Because parental
favoritism it might just be the last parenting taboo. Every
parent swears they love their kids equally, and yet and
(07:16):
yet studies show that two thirds of families have a
hidden favorite, and the way they treat that child compared
to their siblings I have a really long lasting impact.
So you might be listening to this thinking I don't
have a favorite, not me. I don't. When my kids ask,
I say, I love you all equally. But the science
can be really subtle. So I've got a little quiz
(07:38):
for listeners to answer as they're listening to this. I'm
calling it, does your family have a favorite? It's based
on actual research into parental favoritism. So as you're listening
to this, I want you to think about the family
that you grew up in and just answer in your
head yes or no. Did one of you get hugged
or praised more than the others. Did one of you
get punished harder when things went wrong? Did one of
(08:01):
you make your parents.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Laugh more that one's so good?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Was there someone who got away with things because they
were sensitive? Did our parents celebrate one sibling's achievements a
little bit louder than the others? Is one of you
more like your mum or dad in personality or temperament?
And when money or help like babysitting or advice or
handout is on the table, does one of you get
(08:29):
it first? Now, if you answered yes to any of
these congratulations, your family probably had a favorite. Amelia. It's
really really subtle. It's these tiny little moments. But what
happens when parents play favorites?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, you're right that this is really something that's so
hard to talk about. And that's the first thing experts
say is we're not talking about this, but we need
to be because it's ubiquitous and it affects family dynamics.
So by not talking about it or actually making the
effects worse, and the effects are really weird and surprising.
(09:07):
One of the things that wele in my mind when
digging into this is that it's not just the one
who's not the favorite who misses out. The favorite has
some detrimental impacts from being the favorite. And one study
which really stood out to me from researchers in China,
found that parental favoritism is a positive indicator for mobile
phone addiction as an adolescent, So in other words, if
(09:27):
you were the favorite, you are more likely to develop
a mobile phone addiction in adolescence. And another that blew
my mind is that maternal favoritism is an indicator for
depression in adulthood. And the reason experts think is because
it creates tension with other siblings and that tension enduers
for decades beyond childhood. But I don't want people to
(09:51):
feel hopeless when they hear that, because even though as
you've mentioned, mones, it's an incredibly widespread phenomenon. The point
is that we need to start being aware of the
impact it's having. We can never avoid it, and we
certainly can't change it if we did grow up in
a household where we felt that another child was the
favorite or that we were the favorite.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
But being aware of it is the key.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And it's interesting what you say, like, I think a
favorite probably isn't set either. I think you probably can
have a favorite. The changes as you enter different life stages.
But there's a lot of research around similarity bias, and
it shows that if you have multiple children and that
one's more similar to you, whether that's their temperament or
their interests, that does draw you closer to that child
(10:34):
because you know how to parent that type of person
because you are that type of person. So that's often
what they say around, Oh they're a mini me, Like,
it's the one that is more similar to you. It's
probably the one that you feel a bit more ease
in parenting, And it's not just the oldest.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I think we sometimes assume that the oldest child is
the golden child and is therefore more likely to be
the favorite. But apparently this is not what the studies
show because that key indicator is whether or not the
child is like you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yes, it's not gender either, it's not mum's loving sons
or whatever. It is the key indicator, as you said, Stacy,
it's that bias there. There's also a stress factor in
the research where it shows that parents who are under
high stress inadvertently give less warmth to children who are
sort of high needs or who demand attention or more regulation.
(11:24):
And so the effect of that is that the difficult
child can often become the scapegoat in family dynamics. So yeah,
and as you said, Amelia, like everyone assumes that it's
great to be the golden child, but the research says
that is not the case. Like these favored kids carry
more guilt, feel more pressure, and have this lifelong need
(11:46):
to sort of keep performing to earn that love. I
think what's what was fascinating to me in this entire
research that we did around this is how tiny the
differences are. So I was listening to the Michelle Obama
podcast this week. It's called IMO if you haven't heard it,
she makes a rule where she doesn't talk about grades
at the dinner table. Have a listen.
Speaker 7 (12:06):
I needed a point not to talk about greedes at
the dinner tea just because you know, it's like, let's
talk about school. Yeah, but when we talk about grades
or scores, you know, I was always sensitive, what if
the other one's not doing greed and we are rewarding
and cheering an A when the other one might be
getting a C. And that's you know, and then you
(12:27):
set up you know, competitions, some kind of measure unintentionally.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
And I think that's how this sort of subtle favoritism
can sometimes show up. It's not in like grand declarations
like you get a car when you turn eighteen, or
it's just in these microme moments like who we comfort,
who we praise, who we laugh at, who gets the
benefit of the doubt in a fight. Like these little
tiny moments to a child seem quite big and they
(12:54):
kind of tell this story about where they stand.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
The interesting thing is that when we first started talking
about this topic, Stacy, you said, well, that's not relevant
to me because I only have one child, as you've
spoken about on this podcast. What I think people will
take away from this is that the patterns of your
childhood are likely to repeat in the way that you parent,
(13:18):
so even if you only have one child, if you
grew up with siblings, there were certain biases and patterns
of behavior that you learned from your parents to do
with your sibling dynamic that will invariably shape how you
parent as well.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, and do you think the favoritism ever gets misconstrued?
Because I was thinking about families like as you say, Mons,
where there's one child that might be high needs or
be a deeply feeling kid. The other sibling may view
that because that child needs more attention as them being
the favorite, when really the parent may prefer the ease
of the other child. So it's interesting that we all
(13:54):
kind of probably clearly have a thought in our head
over who the favorite was in our family from that
quiz you did, Mons, but that might not actually be
the case.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I'm just actually conscious that this discussion, listening to it
now makes me feel bad. I'm like, oh, for God's sake,
here's another thing that I'm doing wrong, like another thing
that I'm going to be screwing my kids up over.
But I don't want that to be the case. I think,
as you said, Amelia, this is the great unspoken thing.
But maybe it's just that awareness is the first step.
Maybe we just need to be more like Michelle Obama
(14:25):
in the way that we talk to our kids and
just be conscious of what we're saying in those stories
that we're kind of telling them.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Are we messing them up?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Though? If we have a favorite, like of course in
the more blatant ways, like if we were pulling a
Rupert Murdoch and like widely telling everyone that you know,
Lachlan was our favorite, or Chris Jenna. She's gone on
the record several times saying that Kylie is her favorite.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
MM.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
She says it rotates sometimes, but when she was asked
on a lie detector, she said Kylie and the lie
detector said, yep, that's correct. And she's the youngest in
the family. She's also made the most money out of
that family. So maybe that's why Chris prefers her. So
does it actually affect them, like, are the others struggling
because your parent has a favorite?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yes, that's what the research is saying, but that's why
I don't.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
But it's character building, monds, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Like, you know, if you feel a little hard done
by in your family, maybe it is something that builds
a bit more resilience.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I know, but Stacey wear intense millennial parents. We are
so conscious of screwing our kids up.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Look, I think the point is to be aware, and
one way that you can even be aware of it
is outside of the family in the workplace.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
That point you made minds.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
That you're more likely to favorite someone who's like you
is equally true in workplace environments. People have found that
when people are hiring, managers tend to gravitate towards people
who look like them, behave like them, think like them,
and just like in a family situation, we've just got
to be aware of these biases that we all have.
(15:55):
It's the same in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Is that why you and I have both ended up
in matching blue shirts? Today?
Speaker 4 (16:00):
We should explain to listeners that we're wearing the unofficial
Parenting podcast uniform of elastic waist pants and a blue
shirt with a French tuck.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
We are, we are.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's our bias and brown hair down the mum uniform.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Okay, guys, I think we're moving to the country because
this week I have two stories to bring to you
of country kids who did things so wholesome it's going
to make you book The movers and go to the bush. Okay,
this is my rural rap. Try saying that three times quickly.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Mon's r rap. I love it.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
First up, ten year old Brock Knewett from Nadamook in
Country Victoria. Most ten year olds would be glued to Minecraft.
Not Brock. He has his train collection, two hundred and
thirty five toy trains. He took them to the local pub.
He set up a display, and then he charged people
a gold coin to come and look at them. And
what did he do with the money? Pray tell? Did
(16:54):
he go and buy a PS five or whatever they're
doing nowadays? I don't know five. He took the eight
hundred and ten dollars that he raised and donated it
to the Royal Children's Hospital. Not even all right. And
then over in Country wa eleven year old Harry said
(17:14):
rock hold my beer. Because he was a bit bored
on the farm, so he went to the local tip
and he found a nineteen seventies land cruiser. Instead of
climbing in pretending to drive it like my kids would
have done, he took it home and restored the whole thing.
He apparently spent four hours a day on this thing,
like before school, after school, rebuilding the engine, painting it,
restoring it all via YouTube and some help from dad,
(17:37):
and then he won the People's Choice Award at the
Bruce Rock Show. I just our country kids just better.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
There's absolutely something about this story of eleven year old
Harry restoring the nineteen seventies land cruiser, which as an
anxious city parent, I would absolutely pay for a school
holiday program where my kids did this, which is very
sad to admit that I'm having to enroll them in
programs where.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
But we just don't know these things.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Like I love that he just was like, I'll just
teach myself, Like, how credible our.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Country kids better minds? You know more about the country
than I do. Do you think that's true.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think that's the romantic view of it. I think
country kids also have difficulty accessing good health services, sometimes
educational services, so it's not all restoring land cruisers and
toy trains in the pub. You've talked before about biases
in the workplace, Amelia. If I see that someone has
grown up in the country, I am very heavily biased
(18:36):
towards them.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I don't think I'm overselling this, But this week was
the Millennial parenting moment of the year. It also happens
to be my recommendation for the week, and it is
the New Yorker's profile of Jennifer Lawrence that dropped at
around ten pm Tuesday night, and which I have been
reading ever since.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It is it's long, right, it's eight thousand words. How
many times have you read it?
Speaker 4 (19:04):
It honestly felt like eighty words to me. I think
I've read it maybe seven times. The profile is written
by Giatolentino, who is the author of the book Trick
Mirror and who has been probably the I think, the
best writer on what the Internet is doing to our
brains of our generation. And she is profiling Jennifer Lawrence,
(19:27):
now thirty five, now a mother of two. She is
now the cool girl, all grown up. And we learn
so much in this profile about what it means to
return to the workplace after children. Now her workplace is
more glamorous, well not more glamorous than ours, because ours
is very glamorous, but more glamorous than many workplaces. But
(19:50):
I still think that there's some really telling, universal themes
in there to draw out. She's so honest with Gia
Tolentino Jennifer Lawrence about how she feels like a completely
different person after children. May I unpack a few gems
for you.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Please, because when you sent this to me, I said, Amelia,
eight thousand words. I will skim it at bet, so
tell me all the best bits, like why I should
read this.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I got the highlighter out to Emelia. I'm here for good.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Let's compare notes. So the big headline that you may
have seen is that Jennifer Lawrence has breast surgery schedule
for November. Now we don't know what the nature of
that surgery is, but it's some kind of esthetic procedure.
Because she says she has a nude scene to do
early next year. Now, Gia says to her, would you
be doing that anyway even if you didn't have a
(20:37):
nud scene, And she says yes, because after her first child,
whose name is CSI, her body bounced back, that's her phrase,
by the way, bounced back. After her second child, who
we think is called Louis, although the name is not
mentioned in the article, she says her body did not
bounce back, and that is why she is having the
breast surgery.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I found that the least interesting part of this article,
I could not care less. She also talked about she's
going to get a face it too. This is just
fodder on the side of it. What I want to
talk about is how she's rebranding herself. She's gone from
being the cool girl who ate pizza and drank beers
(21:16):
and burped and fell over on the stairs at the
Oscars Red carpet, and she's had this metamorphosis into serious artists.
Now she's gone away, she's had two kids, she started
a production company, and she's coming out with this really artistic,
deep movie that Martin Scorsese rang her up and said,
you've got to do this. In fact, I thought that
(21:39):
was really key. She says, it was six weeks after
the birth of my first child when Scorsese's name popped
up on my phone. He said, this is the kind
of thing you should be doing. Go take a chance,
not any sense of a comfortable character off the board,
and just go for it. And in this entire eight
thousand word article, I felt like that was really key,
(22:00):
because there is this moment that mums have after they
become mums where work takes on a whole new meaning
and you need it to feel really worth it in
a whole new way. If you are spending time away
from your child, you want it to be for something.
It's just like weird, desperate puol of this has got
to matter. Maybe that was just my reading of it,
because that feels intensely personal to me. But it does
(22:22):
feel like this profile takes her from being that ubiquitous
cool girl into like serious artist, and I just thought
that transition is really interesting.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I think that's so profound because it's a lot to
do with how she approaches her work. She was always
a serious artist. She won an Oscar, she was a
critically acclaimed actor in a lot of indie films in
addition to the Hunger Games trilogy. She was always a
serious artist. But what's changed is that now she's comfortable
talking about herself and treating herself like a serious artist.
(22:54):
Before it was all kind of a joke. It was
the falling down stage at the Oscars. It was the
eating of the fried chicken. It's interesting that there was
this trope of cool girls doing interviews where they ate
like lots of fast food and showed how relaxed they
were around food and so on. It's interesting that in
this interview she and Gia Tolantino go out for lunch
at one of the most sought after restaurants in New York,
(23:17):
and Jennifer Lawrence doesn't eat. And what I take from
that is that she's so serious about nailing this interview.
She's not going to concentrate on anything else while she's there,
because she was.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Very much the victim of that over exposed Hollywood actress,
right Like, she kind of got put in the same
basket as the Anne Hathaways where they were just everywhere,
and then they got branded as too annoying, that they
were almost too relatable and too cool girl. And it
feels like she's pulled back on that yew.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Kind of be relatable and yeah, she's just like, I've
got a film to promote. I feel very proud of
that film. It took me away from my children, and
now I want to make.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Sure that it's a success.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
There's another great moment where when they're at that lunch
or that meeting at the restaurant, Gia Tolantino describes this
sense of an invisible string pulling Jennifer back to her
six month old baby who's at home. That sense when
you have a newborn where it's like a ticking time
bomb if you're away from them, And that just underscores
this sense of I am away from my baby. I
(24:14):
don't have time to eat elaborate foods to prove to
you anything. I just want to talk to you about
this movie and why I feel passionately about it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh, that was such a beautiful line, and Giotlantino can
write the shit out of it, right, but she says,
I highlighted it for you. It was like there was
an invisible tether new mothers have to their infants, the
rope tightening, the clock counting down. Like Jennifer Lawrence is
in a cafe talking to a journalist, but her body
is still on baby time. It's just nailed it.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I've never heard it put that way, but that is
what it is, isn't it. When you have a little kid,
everything feels like it's on a timer, like you're counting
down to getting back to them.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
All the time, everything's heightened. Yeah, there's another great moment
that didn't make the headlines, but which I think is
so interesting, which is that when you become a parent,
you start to reevaluate your relationship with your own parents,
and you see it in a new light, and that
can be positive, it can be negative, it can be neutral.
But in Jennifer Lawrence's case, that means feeling able to
(25:13):
pull away from this very rigid religious upbringing she had,
where she felt a lot of shame around sex and
her sexual identity, she maybe didn't agree with her parents'
political views, and now that she's had her own children,
she feels able to stand on her own two feet
aside from that parental unit that she grew up with.
Sort of like what we were saying before about favoritism
(25:34):
in families, you start to only see those dynamics, I think,
or you can start to only see those dynamics after
you have your own children.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
So true. The other really honest thing she talks about
is her postpartum anxiety, not with her first child, but
with her second. She says, I just thought every time
he was sleeping he was dead. I thought he cried
because he didn't like his life or me or his family.
I thought I was doing everything wrong and that I
would ruin my children.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's so interesting to say about a second. I feel
like that's the thing from everyone with a first I know,
I definitely felt like that and was kind of leaning
over twenty times a night to make sure my daughter
was still alive. But you never hear that with the
second so I love that she's talking about that too.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
She also gets at that feeling when you have a
newborn where you're just typing things into your phone for
reassurance at all hours of the night. So she asks
chat GPT a question about breastfeeding and then gets back
this very rope response, you were doing a beautiful thing
for your child, And she says that that just made
her feel worse because she was like, I don't believe
(26:39):
that chat GPT cares about me. Who cares about me?
It was very relatable, that sense of seeking answers from
the internet late at night.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She does seem incredibly self aware and intelligent. Does she not?
This entire profile, I was really surprised at what I
was reading about her and the way that people talked
about her, and what it acting genius she is as well,
and how she never had any training and that's actually
her superpower. She just drops into the roles and the
more she studies the character, the tighter she gets about it. Anyway,
I'm going down a wholerabbit hole about her. Acting. Now,
(27:07):
what else do we need to know about it?
Speaker 5 (27:08):
But that's connected to what you started with Mons.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Because all these people are quoted admiringly in the article
about how great an actor Jennifer Lawrence is, from Emma
Stone to Jodie Foster. But what comes through so clearly
is that now Jennifer Lawrence knows that she is a
serious actor, and she is owning that. And it seems
like that realization and that acknowledgment of her own skill
(27:35):
is actually intertwined with having children for her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
On that same note, the other thing that really struck
me was how the machine of Hollywood was controlling her.
But now she's taking control back, Amelia in my mind.
So she talks about how when she was at the
height of her fame, she was hounded by the paparazzi
and now she just plays their game. Now that she's
got children, the stakes are higher. So what she does
is she leaves her house, she lets the pap take
(28:00):
their photos, and then they leave her alone for the
rest of the day. And on that she says, I
realized that my kids would be aware of my energy,
and that if I was nervous and pissed when we
left the house and the paps were there. They would
feel that in their little bodies. So it's almost like
she goes, yep, I get the game, have your photos,
and leave us alone. And that feels very much, in
(28:22):
a way, taking back the control of what she can control.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And I saw that in action this week because I
did see some photos of her crossing the street in
New York wearing a giant witch's hat, and I thought,
that's Jennifer Lawrence doing the mum thing. Yeah, So that's
your recommendation for this week? Familiar you must, I guess
it is. Yes, that is my recommendation.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Where do people find it?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
It is a profile of Jennifer Lawrence in the New
Yorker magazine by Geotolantino. The New Yorker does have a
pay well, but typically you can get away with reading
one piece for free.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Let's put a link in the show notes to the article.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
If you are struggling with some of the issues that
we've discussed here around postpartum depression and anxiety, we will
include a link also in the show notes with some resources.
And we send all our love to you.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Stacy. What is your recommendation this week?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Look is not as high brow as there. So mine
is just a multi screen show. So you know how
you just need a show at night where when you're
scrolling on your phone and your bugget you just need
something that's easy and lovely to watch. And I have
been watching Building the Band.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
What is that?
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (29:24):
So it flew under the radar, but hosted by Nicole
Scherzinger from Pussycat Dolls.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
But she's also like a Tony Winner or something.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yes, yeah, she is an aj McLean from Backstreet Boys,
so they host it so they are well versed.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
He's bad, bad.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Backstreet boy, right, no street boy, he's like an anti vaxsa.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
Oh no, I don't think it's him. He's fine. He
gets a bath.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But they get all these talented singers and they all
have to audition for each other sight unseen, and then
they decide if they'd want to be in a band
with that person. So it's kind of like love is
blind Slash the Voice, and they have to decide after
hearing each other who they want to pair up with.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
They get a few chances to chat.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And then they're thrown in as a full band, so
they have no idea what these people look like.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
If they're going to mesh.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's just actually quite wholesome.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It's really good.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And late Liam Paigne from One Direction, who passed away
last year, he was a guest judge on it, so
it was obviously filmed a long time ago and just
came out this year. It's just great, Like it's just
such a vibe, so highly recommend able.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yes, that's a great recommendation. I think that's a really
good co watching show. I'll tell you what's not a
good co watching show. I've been watching The Golden Bachelor,
and I mean, I'm loving it sick. But my kids
were drawn in by the rousing music and you know,
all the beautiful lights in the mansion. Explaining that show
to my kids was so diabolical. I was like, Okay,
(30:49):
so all these amazing women are trying to get the
attention of this one man and he gets to pick.
The man gets to pick which one he wants. And
my kids like, why does the man get to pick?
What's good about the man? And I was like, what's
good about nothing? Nothing, Let's turn the shuttle over.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
So, but what a good question. It was confronted the
man and it's a great question for life.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's a lot exerciety so too, and what's your recco
mons apart from the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Okay, So, a friend of mine who's a speech therapist
recommended this to me and she says, every single ot
and speech therapist has this little game in their kit bag.
It's a little kid's game called spot It, and it's
very simple, it's very fun. But here's the genius. It
teaches like visual processing, fine motor skills, attention and social skills.
(31:44):
And you would never know it because it's actually really fun.
It's called spot It. It's about twenty dollars from Big
W Target came out all those places. Just throw it
in your kids Christmas stocking or put it in the.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Present cupboard for little kids.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Like how young are we talking that you do?
Speaker 5 (31:58):
Use this with no I reckon?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
You could play it like three year olds to probably
ten year olds.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Cool. That's great. That's all we got time for.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Thank you for being with us today all the way
through to this point. And a huge thank you to
the people who clicked follow because there were actually hundreds
last week and it's such a micro thing to do,
but it helps us massively Some people even went beyond that,
guys and left a review. Now, usually we like to
ask people to leave a gentle parenting review, which makes
(32:28):
us really laugh, but we can't control everyone. Some people
just go completely rogue, such as this one from a
sixty year old child free person who says, I'm in
my early sixties and free of offspring by choice, but
have amazing nephews, nieces, and a gorgeous collection of god children.
My friend's grandchildren are being introduced into our crazy, wonderful
world at a rate of knots. So I like to
(32:50):
be across all the things around, navigating the journey. I
enjoy listening to these girls so much. You all rock.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Can I just say that I know that that woman
gives the best birthday presents.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
Oh, she's so totally. She's doing so much research.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
She's got tabs open, she's got a little notes app
thing on her phone with like a list of ideas
year round.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
She's such a yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Okay. The other thing I loved about is that she
left no name, just emojis as her kind of name,
shell and like an octopus.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
That's so cool. I didn't even know there was a
jellyfish emoji.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
She's the cool jellyfish shell and a piece of coral.
You rock too, our emoji godmother, thank you so much,
and also a big thanks to our team Tesakotovich, Leap,
Worgeous and Sashtanic and the big Boss is ripped. Devine,
have a great week. We'll be back in this feed
next Saturday morning. I cannot wait. Bye byeye
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