June 27, 2025 • 42 mins
Another week, another Parenting Out Loud episode where if parents are thinking about it, we're talking about it.
On today's show, Jessie Stephens and Amelia Lester are joined by friend of the pod, and Mamamia's Deputy Editor, Stacey Hicks to discuss whether or not kids ruin your adult friendships.
Also, to what extent should children's entertainment figures be apolitical, and why is YouTube's Ms Rachel so controversial right now?
Plus, the dumb phone. Between landlines, 'brick' phones and a yearning for the '90s, it seems nostalgia is the newest tech trend for parents.
And, in this week’s reccos:
Amelia wants you to try a special storytelling collection, Jessie is recommending daycare with a twist and Stacey is all over Dolly Parton's 'imagination' library.
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WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT:
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 1: Grandparents — It's Time For Your Performance Review
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 2: The Death Of The Dining Table & 'Outdated' Schooling
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 3: A New Co-Parenting Rule & The 100% Work Dilemma
- How to Build A Universe: From Media To Friends, How To Manage Your Child's External Influences
- This Glorious Mess: Why Your Obsession With Bluey Is Deeper Than You Think (Bonus)
WHAT TO READ:
- Rachel Accurso's son struggled with a speech delay, so she started making videos online.
- ‘I was a total a**hole’. An open letter to the women who became mums before me.
- 'I didn't know how to keep my kids safe on their phones, until an expert shared these three hacks.'
- 'I'm a psychologist. This hidden phone setting kills your endless scrolling addiction.'
- Worried about what your kids see online? These 5 tips make digital parenting easier.
- 'I don't have a kid, but I told my workplace I do.'
- 'Why I refuse to use a smartphone.'
- 2006 called and it wants you to buy your kid a dumb phone.
THE END BITS:
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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 a Muma Mia podcast. Muma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of the land and waters that this
podcast is recorded.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On Hello and welcome to our limited series of Parenting
Out Loud. I am Jesse Stevens and I am joined
by Merely Lester. You can say hello and Maria. You're
alload to say hello, Hope, Jase, how are you good?
And we're here to talk about some of the stories
(00:41):
that dominated the week, because if parents are thinking about it,
we're talking about it. And today we also have a
very special third co host. It is Mum and MIA's
deputy editor. Welcome to Stacey Hicks.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Hello, Hello, thanks for scooching over.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
For hell me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This question is my nightmare. Thank you so much for
using that is so fine.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I wanted to leave it as open ended as possible
so that you'd lose slopover.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, I feel like all I do is scroll on
TikTok in bed so is not very interesting. I'm the
writer of many words on Muma Mia that you might
have seen on the website. I'm the drinker of copious
amounts of tea and margaritas, which tea and spicy irregular
marks oh English breakfast tea, milk sugar, depending on the
time of day. You're not a barbarian and I'm a
(01:28):
regular mar girl. Very saic.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
You know I've started putting jalapenos in my soblank.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh, yes, it's true. It's happening. Sally b An.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Early recommendation from Amelia Today and Stacey, do you have
a kid?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I do. It would be a bit weird if I
didn't throwing my opinions around. I am one and done
so I've had one child. I got it right. I'm
stopping so clever, We're done, well done. I have affected
the process you went. This one is ten out of ten.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Let's not tempt fate.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Or let's just never do that roller coaster again? Whid
have a way you want to look at it? How
old is the little one? She is four years old.
I have a four year old little girl.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
On today's show Do Kids Ruin Friendships? We discuss two
fiery essays about what happens to friendship in the wake
of children and the return of the landline signals nostalgia
for childhood. We might never be able to recreate. So
what is kid rotting and could it be the answer. Plus,
(02:26):
children's YouTube star Miss Rachel express support for the children
of Gaza and now she's had to disable comments on
Instagram and YouTube. We explain what happened and the parasocial
relationships we have with kids entertainers. But first, in case
you missed it, a number of unnamed women have confessed
to making up they have kids in order to get
(02:46):
flexibility at work. And I want your initial reactions now, please.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think it's genius, really yeah, because before I had kids,
I would always see these women leaving work early to
go and pick up so called children from so called school,
and they would be consumed with anger and jealousy. How
about you, Stacy equally think it's genius.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
But they have forgotten something very import the guilt that
comes along with leaving early. So once you have a
child and you have to duck out an hour early,
they're not thinking about the fact that you then make
up for that tenfold afterwards. To prove that you're way,
I'm sending a.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Lot of like sort of overly diligent emails to your
boss at nine pm.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's the part I resent. So one
woman told MoMA Maya that she lied to her boss
with a story about her daughter experiencing a health emergency
and she needed to leave. In reality, it was her cat,
and it really was an emergency. And I guess that
all depends on your definition of child exactly that definition
includes male cat doesn't for me. But I'm slightly horrified
(03:47):
by this story. Even though I know there's lots of research,
a health emergency of a child is really serious.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's really serious and scary for parent.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And that is not to undermine the horror of having
a sick cat. But your workplace should respect a sick cat.
You should be able to acknowledge I've got a sick cat.
I need to leave. There's caarras leave that exists. But
I think to suggest, and I saw some of this
research and some of the rhetoric around this that said women,
particularly without kids, pick up the slack of working mothers.
(04:21):
And I resent that so deeply because I know about
you too. But are we seeing much slack from working mothers.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, I'm not going to confess to it here yet.
I'm never slacking. No, we're definitely not slacking. But I
do think that we take it more seriously when it's
a kid. Like, if someone's kid had an emergency, I
probably would send them a message that night and say,
hope Paul is okay. If it was a cat, I
would not, And.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think that that's the right reactions good.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I'm allergic to cats. In my defense, I cannot do
kids ruin friendships. That's the real reason I barge my
way into the studio today. You're lonely and desperate. Yes,
I needed to talk about it with my favorite women
because I read an article on this very topic and
I cannot stop thinking about it. So in a sub
called in Pursuit of Clean Countertops, which is a great
(05:13):
name by Sarah Peterson, she spoke about how after she
gave birth, trying to care about anything other than her
baby's Pooh color and sleep schedule was akin to having
phantom limb syndrome. So she said she tried to care
but just didn't really, So instead of wanting to do
these gossip sessions with her child free friends, she was
craving more time with the mothers who were experiencing the
(05:34):
same thing as her. And the same sentiment was echoed
in a piece in the Cut where the writer Alison P.
Davis called children tiny little detonators, which they very much
are saying. Nothing represents a threat to friendship more than parenthood.
So does motherhood actually ruin our friendships or just change
the DNA of them a little bit? Well, in my experience,
(05:56):
they do ruin friendships a little bit. I've been on
both sides of this equation.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I had children fairly laid in the piece, and before
I had them, I felt a lot of rage. I
guess this is a thread through my remarks today. I've
felt a lot of rage was who had kids before
I did. I could tell that they were not inviting
me to birthday parties, which I didn't want to go to,
but nonetheless wanted the invitation for. I could tell that
they were getting together on side group chats to talk
(06:21):
about nappies and toilet training and things I didn't understand,
and I desperately wanted to be involved, and I couldn't
understand why they weren't involving me.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now that I'm on the.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Other side of that equation, I've realized that a big
time suck once you have children is that you do
have to make friends, not just because you need the
fellow feeling and the sympathy of having friends who will
also have kids.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
But also we live in such.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
An isolated society now and parenting is just put on
to the parents rather than the community. And I need
mum friends who I can lean on if I can't
pick the kid up from school at the right time,
or if I have a really important question about something
that Google is not going to answer for me without
a sort of anxiety spiral. I need those friends who
I can call on and lean on in moments of
(07:07):
crisis with my kids. So now I guess I understand
given that time is limited once you do have kids,
you do have to reserve a certain amount of time
for making those new friends.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So do you think that it's just about the equation
that we all have finite time and energy. Whether it's
you've got one child or you've got four children, you
suddenly have this person that needs all of your attention
or as much as you can give them, and then
you've got to make parent friends, which is true, whether
it's starting with mother's group and then at school and whatever.
(07:40):
Is it just that Is it just that there's not
as much time, or do you think that it's also
that you don't relate in the same way.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Stacey, have you lost friends since you had your shoes?
I think mine. I didn't lose friends completely, but I
think mine went into a state of flux. So you
added so many more people in that it just felt
like you couldn't give time to the ones that were
already there. And I also think, as you said before,
once I was on the other side, I kind of
(08:07):
went on this apology tour with all of my friends
that had had children before me, saying I get it now,
like I get why you did this. I get why
you retreated from me because I wasn't supporting you in
the way that I now need from you.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Which you can't. I'm sorry, but you just simply can't understand.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And all my friends were very gracious in that way
and saying you just didn't get it. You didn't know
that showing up with a teddy bear was not very
useful to me, and that it would have been better
if you'd stacked the dishwasher and not sat on my
lounge with me for two hours.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I have literally never stacked a friend's dishwasher. I need
to go on this apology to it.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I do well. Once I did that, I've been a
great mum friend to all my friends that have come
after me with children, but the ones before, thank god,
they were kind about it. But I think it's because
that happens with every single friend. You're in a line
of the order, and you've got to pay it forward
to the ones behind you. See.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I kind of reject this. I don't think that kids
ruined friendships, and I think accepting that can make us
all a bit lazy. It can make the people who
have either chosen not to have kids or don't have
them yet think they don't want to hang out with me.
I think there's a lot of assumptions going both ways
that aren't necessarily true. Because when I was in my
twenties and my friend wanted to go clubbing, I most
(09:19):
of the time didn't want to go clubbing, but I
went clubbing because I was like, I just want to
hang out with you.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wherever you are.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I would go and watch their basketball, they'd come watch
my netball. We went through a stage where we take
turns going and picking each other up just because we
just got our license right. And so it's never about
what you're actually doing. It's more about the time you're
spending together and In both of these articles, they were
sort of saying, if I don't have kids, I don't
want to spend time in a park I don't want
(09:47):
to spend time at your house with louiy on in
the background. And I kind of reject that. I think
that if you want to spend time with someone, then
you do it on each of your terms to varying degrees,
and you can try and maintain those friendships. But it's
give and take. I think there's something quite selfish about thinking, well,
I don't want to spend my Saturday in a parker
(10:07):
at a kid's birthday party. Like, if you want to
sustain the friend then there's got a beby given take.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
What's the give and take on the part of the
person who has kids in this equation, what are they
being asked to do.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was having this conversation with Maya on Out Loud recently,
and she said, get a babysitter and hang out at night,
And you know what, do that once a month if
you can, if you can afford it. And I know
that it's harder for some people than others. It's about
how much support you have, but if you can, yeah
have that in the diary a month in advance and
go all right, let's hang out. But still I think
(10:39):
that the friends who don't have kids also have to
compromise a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
See, I really disagree with you, Jesse. The last thing
I want to do is say to a friend of
mine who doesn't have children, Mina's at the playground. We
will have a half hearted, completely disjointed, ultimately unsatisfactory conversation
while I ensure that my child doesn't break his or
her neck.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Who does that benefit?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
All right?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
So I have a theory about why we feel differently
about this, which was in the cut article. There is
research to suggest something happens around the age of three.
The Journal of Demographic Research said that that's when from
the age of three is when kids are the most
demanding of the parents' time and energy. I currently have
a two year old. I wonder if I'm still in this.
(11:25):
She's started talking probably like what six months a year ago,
like properly talking. But in that first year you can
put the baby in the pram and walk the dog, right,
So there's still an element of socializing that's possible there
even now, push her on the swing. I was hanging
out with someone recently who had a five and a
seven year old.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
No, no, because it's.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The pulling of the skirt and going my.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Mom discussion of the Minecraft movie on which like, your
friend as lovely as they are, your kid's boring as shit.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, like they are boring as shit and you know that,
but you love them.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And whether you are boring at the start, you are
so boring once you have a kid, So actually they're
giving up a lot to spend time with you from
the start. Like I remember with my newborn talking to
my friend at nauseum about the tog rating of sleeping
bags and worrying that my daughter wasn't warm enough at night.
It's so dull.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But you know what, my friends who don't have kids
can also be very boring.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
True.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I have a friend at the moment who is doing
a fitness challenge. Holy boring the stuff I've heard about,
and I follow up, so he talks about his fitness challenge.
I talk about Luna's sleep and how much sleep I
got last night.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
We're both bored.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Isn't friendship just shared boreder?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Look, my main topic of conversation with people right now
is the fact that I love mouth tape and I
can see the.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Light draining from their eyes when I talked to them
about this.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Just last night, I had dinner with some mum friends
and our kids at a tepanyaki joint, which is really
interesting because you always wonder whether or not the food
is going to make it into the bowl or if
it's going to go all over your brand new jumper.
I'm pleased to report that my jumper did not have
stands on it. At the end of the night, you know,
I'm devoid of conversation. I'm very tired, and I just
started talking about mouth tape because that's my go to,
(13:06):
and I realized that's really boring. So we probably shouldn't
say just kids are boring, and in fact, this conversation
you couldn't send it to partners. Think about heterosexual relationships
where you've got do I bring the man who's now
in my life along to the dinner with girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have met men so much more boring than a
six momper so much.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
This is what I'm saying, And I guess the contention
that I'm moving towards here is we're all a little
bit boring, but our friends, the people who find us
the right amount of boring.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So let's not drag other people into the equation.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
See your friends on the terms as the friendship, don't
try and bring kids in, don't try and being partners
in interesting. I'm all about the compartmentalization.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I think it's also because we're not as accustomed to
the ups and downs in our friendships as we are
in our relationships. Like I think there's an understanding that
in long term relationships you might go through rough patches,
you'll go through great patches, and the same is not
really said for friendships, like we just go, oh, that's
run its course once they've had a child and they've
kind of retreated. So and the other thing to consider
is how much our circle of friends changes in that time,
(14:08):
because we talk about losing friends alone or maybe friends
without children retreating from us, but you also are forced
into a lot of extra friendships through circumstance, like whether
that's through a mother's group, whether that's through sport or kids' activities,
where so many more people end up in your life.
And there was an essay in Psychology Today where clinical
psychologist Seth Meyers, not the late night host, talked about
(14:32):
how many people are blindsided by the level of loss
when it comes to their friendships, because it's always the
ones they don't expect. But he also warned about being
a bit cautious going into these new friendships because they've
kind of been forced upon you by circumstance, that they
might not stand the test of time once those children
have kind of grown up or moved out of that activity.
That is so true.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I've seen that happen where I think people look at
each other and they go, oh, we're only mates because
or they've tried to like go, all right, so we're
friends because our kids into primary school together and they're like,
let's try and do a weaken away.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Doesn't worry.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's like, no, no, no, it only works in that context.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
This makes me think about the fact that when you
have little kids, conversation is never that good, and so
the friendship there's never that much stream put on the phone. Yes,
but as the kids grow older and they're off doing
their own thing, all of a sudden, the spotlight is
on can this relationship with stand.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Long stretches of actual conversation. The jury's out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
There are a few things floating around in the culture
that I'm going to attempt to bring together. The first
is The Atlantic published a story this month about the
return of the landline. Writer Rena Murray spoke to a
mother who bought her ten year old a landline to
connect with her friends, and this was in lieu of
a smartphone, and then encouraged other families in the suburb
(15:53):
to do the same. So now twenty or so families
have landlines. They've got their kids calling each other. She
writes about sort of practicing active listening, which is a
lot better than looking on FaceTime, which can be distracting.
And this leads me to the second thing. I listened
to this great episode of Search Engine, which was about
a booming industry of technology to stop you from using
(16:15):
addictive technology. So think a dumb phone, or there's this
thing called a brick, which is you kind of tap
your phone, turns all the apps off, and then you
can go for a walk or spent a few hours
or whatever, and then you tap it again, apps come
back on. And the third thing is a story in
The Cut about millennial nostalgia for a nineties summer. It's
about the school holidays where time was unstructured. You laid around,
(16:38):
maybe you watched some TV. You got up late, you
went on a budget family trip up the coast, basically
a time before YouTube.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And I think what.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
This highlighted for me is that we're trying to wind
back the clock and recreate the childhood we had. And
my question is is that even possible, Stacy, what do
you think?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
No, I don't think it's possible at all, But I
love that everyone is trying. And my best friend has
actually been telling me the same thing is happening in
her neighborhood at the moment, where all the year four
mums have set up a chat about reinstalling landlines in
their homes. I thought this was just an Atlantic trendy. No,
this is happening in regional Queensland where they're doing that
(17:22):
because and her reasoning was really interesting. She said, to me,
the most important thing to me is just allowing her
to be where she is. So whether they're out at school, sport,
whether they're at home just having family time, the technology
can physically not reach her, so it's very easy way
to shut it off and it not be available and
still be able to enjoy being in the present moment
of her childhood. And that's the fear.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
For everybody the idea that the landline is prolonging her
having to get a mobile phone. Yes, her daughter, Yeah, absolutely,
because then it is very much that she can talk
in a public space. Her parents are around, they can
see that she's chatting, and as you say, they're actually
holding a conversation. It's not just tapping away on a
keyboard to some faceless friend. They're actually communicating and learning
(18:06):
that skill, which I think. I mean, even I hate
having to call the doc now we just don't do it.
So it's great that they're encouraging them with that.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And the theory is that rather than just taking something
away and depriving, it's like you give them something else instead.
And it reminds me of in this Search Engine episode,
it said you can treat your mobile phone like a landline,
Like if you walk into your house and you plug
it in and you go when my phone is in
my house, it's plugged in, that's it, and when I
want to use it, I go upstairs or I go whatever,
(18:36):
and I tap away. I thought that's really clever because
that has some boundary where if you're sitting on the
couch and you just go to look at your phone
for the four hundredth time that day. Because let's be honest,
the reason why kids want phones is because we are
not setting a great example.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I am appalling.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Just having that bit of resistance is way better for us.
I think it was in the cut article it talked
about this concept of kid rotting, and it was saying
that it might be better to let kids do nothing. Right,
So what happens now? School holidays are coming up and
a lot of people will go camps training, let's have
(19:16):
something for every day.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
But I don't think.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You can let a kid rot anymore, because if a
kid is rotting, they will gravitate like there is a
magnet to the nearest screen and there is no unstructured
time because that's just screen time. We'll pay a premium.
There is such desperation to be like, oh, school holidays,
how do I separate child from screen for the longest
(19:39):
amount of time possible?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I was talking with a friend about the pressure that
we have to enroll kids and all sorts of activities now,
and she really dropped a truth bomb. She said, I
realized I dial back on my kids' activities, and then
I realized that I was just giving them more time
to watch television.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yes, exactly right. We had television back in the olden days.
But were we just watching less of it?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, because it wasn't I think underpinned with an algorithm
designed to turn our brains into mush. It was like
I think we all remember the experience of getting bored.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, And also we didn't have the expectation that we
would need to be entertained at all times, exactly children
already have.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And then when you went outside, like, yeah, you could
go to a friend's house and watch television. But even
if you haven't seen your kids in a while and
they're at the neighbor's house or whatever, they're probably on
PS five right like that, it's very unlikely they're making
a tree house, which is I think contributing to this
parental anxiety. And it also I think screens make time
(20:38):
feel different, like there is this endlessness to a day
where you're engaged with the world around you, and now
it just feels so punctuated by three second videos or
YouTube or whatever they're on.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
And here's another thing I'm concerned about the death of
the prank call.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Make prank calls so important, Amelia so true?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
What was your go to oh.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Look, I don't even want to say it on that,
but I did love a prank call, like wrap the
curly cord of the phone around my finger doing the
star sixty nine to.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
See who would last call remember that someone tells her
how to devilish sense of humor. I loved all of that,
I know, and it's sad to think that, for the
most part, kids are not having that. I just wonder, though,
it's hard to distinguish between moral panic around phones and
also the inevitable nostalgia that a parenting generation has for
(21:35):
its youth.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Is that just what we're doing here, or is there
something fundamentally different about the digital world that we live
in now as compared with the world that we grew
up in.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I wonder that too, because there's an inevitable nostalgia. Like
I'm sure my mum felt the nostalgia because we had
Foxtel and she was like, well, I think when my
mom grew up, TV wasn't actually on all night, Like
there was a point at which the TV stopped and
she just went you could watch.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
TV at any time, and you can change the channel
and ware. And when I grew up, there was rage
and rage it's rage. It is so sad, and you
don't have to wait for the video to rewind, so
there is absolutely no patience. Remember that when you get
out the best video that you wanted to watch on
school holidays and it was at the end, you had
to wait to rewind it back to the start. I
don't do that now. It's just on a loop instantly.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And I do think the fundamental challenge we have as
parents is trying to reacquaint ourselves with boredom, because.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Our children are learning from us.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Every time we pick up our phone because we feel
discomfort or disquiet or boredom.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I reckon algorithms have changed childhood. There is an element
of nostalgia and us wanting to recreate what we see
as an idyllic if we're lucky enough, but moments of
an idyllic kind of utopian childhood, and we go I
want to give them that. I do think that it's
fundamentally changed how time is spent in childhood. And I
even think about the computer room. Like when I grew up,
(22:56):
when the computer did come, it was in a room
and you fought for it, and sometimes it was dial up.
There was a sense as well that even though it
was a room that it wasn't entirely private, so you
felt like you were being watched. And now every in
every house is a computer room, so it just means
that time isn't it doesn't have these distinctions when it comes.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
To exactly and on Muma Mea, actually, we've seen a
huge appetite from parents for information on how to control
their children's access to technology. We did a story on
the top three safety features every parent needs on their
phone that analyst Todd wrote for us and it was
top on the site for days just talking about us. Yeah,
so there's lots of different features. This is mostly for
(23:38):
the Apple users, so apologies to the androids users among us.
But there's now nudity blocking functions where oh wow, you
can set those up on your children's phone so it
blurs the images. They've got a three step process they
have to get through to see it, including you putting
in a password for them to see the image. There's
screen time setups now where you can be blocking certain
(23:59):
websites so that they can't access them, and of course
like limiting their screen time all together can be done
as well. But the response to that story was epic
and I think that just showed how worried we all
about that, whether we're at that stage with our children
or not, to be thinking well, how am I going
to get on top of this? And maybe a little
bit of thinking how do I get on top of
this one myself now so that I'm not setting this
(24:21):
up for them.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Emily Osta, who gives a bit of parenting advice, and
a lot of it is databased, she says about screen time,
what's it taking away from? So whenever you have a
child who's looking at a screen, So for example, Luna
has been unwell recently, and it's like we wouldn't be
at the park, we wouldn't be doing something enriching, she's
(24:44):
glad to look at the TV. Like, if the difference
is between looking at a TV and looking at a
white wall, then you're allowed to do the TV. It's
just when it starts to sort of encroach on other activities.
And I also heard an expert say not all screen
time is equal. So if you can find something that
has any sort of narrative, like even Blue Eye, it
does have like a story to it, way better than
(25:05):
just jumbling fast cuts of like this is brainmush or
social media. That makes a difference and something that's a
little bit more slow is also what some of the
experts say. And in terms of phones, I remember reading
the advice years ago turn it to gray scale, and
it makes it less appealing, and I've found that helps
for me to see.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Mss Rachel is a very popular children's entertainer. I have
actually never seen her videos, but I have gone deep
on a controversy that has embroiled her and which I
think gets to the heart of the relationship that we
now have with children's entertainers. So let me unpack it.
Her real name is Rachel and Accurso. She is a
(25:47):
former teacher. She makes adorable content for kids on YouTube.
I'm told it's adorable. She certainly looks adorable. She wears
overalls and a pink T shirt and a pick headband,
and her channel, which started in twenty nineteen to help
her own son with a speech delay, has over fifteen
million subscribers, and she's recently had her videos licensed by Netflix,
so she might be, by some metrics, the most popular
(26:10):
children entertainer in the world. However, she is in trouble.
In April, an American group called Stop Antisemitism called on
the US Attorney General, Pam Bondie to investigate Miss Rachel.
The group said that she had been disseminating pro har
maass propaganda and getting paid by her MASS for doing so,
(26:30):
which would be quite a scandal. I agree, is Miss
Rachel in fact disseminating pro har mass propaganda? We should
say that she denies that she is being paid anything
by her MASS, and I think that the charge that
she's disseminating propaganda is kind of a tough case to make.
Speaking as someone who is not very familiar with her content,
(26:50):
I watched a few of her videos in preparation for this.
They seem very benign to me. They seem to be
about toilet training, brushing your teeth, learning your colors. I
did not see anything that would seem to be pro
har mass propaganda. What she has posted on her social
media feed on her Instagram so separate from the YouTube channel,
(27:12):
are images of traumatized children in the Gaza strip. These
images often feature the children watching her videos or even
interacting with Miss Rachel via FaceTime. She has also pledged
one million dollars to the World Food Program, which works
to provide nutrition for kids in conflict zones Sudan, Ukraine
and also Gaza. She has also posted about Israeli children
(27:35):
who were held hostage by Hamas. She told The New
York Times in a very long investigative peace about this
that her posting about children in Gaza was a continuation
of her lifelong work and passion for children. But The
Times quoted some Jewish parents who felt distraught. They said
that there was a relative lack of posts about Israeli children,
(27:55):
and The Times, which did an analysis of Miss Rachel's
Instagram content, agreed with that assessment that she did tend
to post more about ghaz and children than Israeli children.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
One Jewish parent.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Quoted said Miss Rachel seems to be someone who was
really really good hearted, but in the context of everything
that's going on, she says, I care about all children,
She's really talking about the children of Gaza. That was
a Jewish parent called Stacy Hackner, who's based in London.
She said that has left a lot of Jewish parents
feeling quite isolated. In research for this, I have to
(28:29):
say that one video that Miss Rachel Pinn really made
a big impression on me. It featured a three year
old girl called Rahaf who was a double amputee who
was medically evacuated from Gaza for her surgery and sings
a song with Miss Rachel about skipping and hopping. Her
two brothers are still in Gaza with their father. Stepping
back from all of this, though, I want to talk
(28:51):
about why we feel so connected in this way to
children's entertainers, why it matters to us what Miss Rachel
thinks about world news and events. I think it's probably
inevitable on one level that these debates are happening. You
just have to look at how during COVID desperate parents
were looking for anything to entertain their children, and they
(29:12):
latched on to all sorts of parenting gurus. So one
guru I was obsessed with during this time was an
American woman called Taking Cara Babies. Have either of you
heard of her?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
So she is this lovely blonde woman from Arizona who
posted endless Instagram videos about sleep schedules. She absolutely got
me through twenty twenty. I'm still citing in my household
all the time. Her idea of the sleepwave, you got
to ride the sleepwave. This applies to adults too. If
you feel sleep coming on you got to ride the wave,
and if you miss the wave, you gotta wait for
the next one.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Genius. I was very dismayed when I found out that
Kara was a Trump supporter. She had not posted about
it on her taking care of Babies account, but she
was posting about it on her personal account. I really
resented her using even her personal account to talk about politics,
and it made me not want to watch her videos
or take her sleep advice anymore. I I'm not drawing
(30:07):
equivalences or even parallels between these very different political st
stories here. I'm mentioning it.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Because I felt left out, resentful, angry at taking care
of babies in a way that perhaps I didn't have
a right to. She was teaching me about children's sleep.
She wasn't showing me her political beliefs or talking about
world events. But I think what's interesting is that we
clearly do expect people who work with or care about
kids to not share their political beliefs with us, and
(30:33):
to not share how they think about the wider world.
And I'm wondering if that's really fair, And it seems
connected to me to an idea that children themselves should
not be talked about as living in an inherently political world.
Children at living in a world where the decisions made
by leaders directly impact them. Doesn't it make sense for
the experts that we turn to to raise our own
(30:55):
children to weigh in on these decisions that are being
made by leaders.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's interesting because I reckon it is a totally different
level of parasocial relationship. And I think it's because of
the moments where we feel our children with a Miss
Rachel example, She's been in your home, she's been in
your child's bedroom, she's sung in your child's ear.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Are you are Miss Rachel arclose?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So we have Miss Rachel plays a song for us
every time we brush our teeth. We do the brushing
teeth song, and she is like I see her and
hear her at some of my most vulnerable moments, at
some of Luna's most vulnerable moments, that she feels like
an extension of the family. And I don't think we
realize this until there is a moment, as you say
(31:40):
with your example, I don't feel this about Miss Rachel,
but like of betrayal, where people then go, hang on,
You're not who I thought you were. And I wonder
if it's like if you have a nanny or an
early educator or even a teacher, like there is an
expectation that their political selves or whatever might be left
outside the classroom because there is this incredible, innocent, almost
(32:06):
quite simplistic and straightforward relationship with your child. But on
the Miss Rachel example, I think it feels so consistent right,
Like she has said that no child should have their
crucial brain development interrupted by trauma. And whether you want
to talk about scale, and everyone has the right to
(32:27):
feel how they want to and not listen to Miss
Rachel if she doesn't feel like an extension of your
family anymore. But that does feel consistent with what she's
always done. And she's always, you know, encouraged people to
donate to the food bank and make sure kids have
enough food. And I think that there were videos or
examples of kids in some of these instances watching Miss Rachel,
(32:48):
so to her, I think she probably felt drawn into
it as well because she had this presence.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I am a Miss Rachel household as well. We very
sincerely referred to her as the third parent in our household.
Can we step back, and I just want to ask
you both a quick question about her, because I'm not
familiar with her, she clearly is inspiring incredibly strong feelings
in people, both positive and negative. What is it about
her that broke through.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
In twenty twenty and beyond that was so different from
all the other children's entertainers? For me, it was that
I had my daughter during COVID, So Miss Rachel's voice
face was with me in my darkest moments quite literally,
like in the dark with my daughter when I couldn't
settle her with you know, colic and reflux and all
the things. Miss Rachel was the answer to that. So
I think you tie her to yourself in some sort
(33:36):
of you know, she's my savior in this situation.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Interesting your example, right, because as you were saying, Amelia, so,
I think that she only started making these videos in
twenty nineteen, twenty twenty nineteen, and then something that she
couldn't control, which was the pandemic, happened, and that is
when her star just rose enormously.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Why her as opposed to other children's entertainers? What was
it about her communication style? For instance?
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I think it is about the fact that what she
does is educational. She has a master's degree in music education.
She sings, she's all about nunciation and that origin story
you told of how her son was one and didn't
have any words, yet she made these videos to help
him with language. And I think that, as we were
saying before, there's this sense that if a screen is on,
(34:23):
it should be enridging or it should be educational. It
was a guilt free way for people to have their
child exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
And my daughter learned sign language before she could speak
from Miss Rachel. We learned it from Miss Rachel. So
we started doing it because she was doing it, and
it felt like, oh, at least if I've got the
screen on. As Jesse said, it's something useful. It's something
that's helping her with her speech. It's helping her with
songs that we can't remember from where we were young.
That I think was the magnetism of her. I think
(34:53):
that's the.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Missing puzzle piece I needed to understand this story, because
the idea that she's helping children learn makes her very
different as a figure to someone like say Blippy. Yeah,
mister Blippy is not helping people children to learn, largely
cavorting through ridiculous scenarios and driving parents mad. And I
(35:16):
wonder if that's part of why a parents who love
missus Rachel love her so much, and b why she
feels so strongly that there's a through line with what
she's doing to help children learn and how she's communicating
to their parents on Instagram about what she feels as
an urgent political situation that she wants them to learn about.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, that's really true. And I suppose if the children
are absorbing her through YouTube, then that feels like a
siloed experience. And then people, I guess, are seeing that
this smiling, chirpy woman who not only taught my child
but taught me a lot about parenting, taught me about
enunciating or what words to do, or are we doing colors?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Are we doing shapes?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Are we doing all of these things? What's difficult about this,
you know, crisis as well, is that what someone says
and what someone hears are not often the same thing,
because it is a very loaded There's a lot of history,
that a lot of context, there's a lot of trauma,
and so I think that that two is people feeling
betrayed by something that has been shared.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, and I think we expect a lot more from
anyone in the public eye now than we ever did.
I don't know if we would have known the personal
lives of the og Wiggles, that alone their stance on
geopolitical issues back when we were growing up, but so true.
Now there's so much more information out there, and I
think it is definitely worse for women in the public eye.
Like Taylor Swift was criticized for not backing Kamala Harris
(36:41):
quick enough in the US election. Chris Brown is currently
on a world tour even though he's found guilty of
domestic violence charges. We don't seem bothered by what his
views are on anything. Like there's just a very double
standard there for women. That's true.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I do think though, that we've got the Wiggles on
sometimes and my obsession with Emma n Lucky's marriage has
just gone to ridiculous. And it wasn't just me, it
was also Luca. We had a week where Luna was
second was on constantly and I swear we were hallucinating.
We're in a weird state, and like we needed the
wedding photos and then we needed to know why they
(37:17):
broke up. And now Lockie has a new family and
who is she? And I can tell you what Emma
did her PhD in and then I had to go
down the route of like is it a wig or
is it her real hair? Like if I saw Emma
walking down the street, I'd be like, hey, Amma, how
you going? Like nice yellow bow? I would just have
so much She feels like a member of my family,
which is unlike anyone else I can see him through
(37:38):
a screen.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I'm also thinking about the fact that for missus Rachel,
she has the YouTube channel for kids, She's not posting
this on the YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
She's posting this on the Instagram. And last time I checked,
most three year olds don't have Instagram, so there is
a difference between those platforms. On the other hand, to
argue with myself, when I found out that Taking care
of Babies was a Trump supporter, she had never told
me that on the Taking care of Babies sleep Instagram,
So why was it my business?
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Why did I care if she was doing it over
on her set personal account.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I think it's because you start to get your guard
up about whether that is informing the information or the
content that she's providing to the children.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I think that that's what you start.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
To go are you brainwashing my child? And then you
start to get like a bit paranoid about it. And
it's interesting that Miss Rachel has had to turn off
comments on Instagram and YouTube so under her teeth brushing song,
the level of trolling was so bad that she had
to just go, no, I'm not taking this on.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
There is though, that fear, isn't there, that maybe this
sleep advice is tinged.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
With maganists makes you sort of start thinking about all
of them exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
It's time for recommendations, Stacy, what have you got for us?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I feel quite smug about this recommendation, so imparting it
so you can all feel smug when you recommend it
to someone else. So my daughter gets a free book
every month from Dolly Parton. What the Dolly Parton sends
my well, not personally, I imagine she has someone at
the postal service that does this for her. But she
has a free book gifting service. They have it all
around the world. It's in the US, UK, everywhere, and
(39:16):
you can just sign your child up and they'll send
you out in the mail a age appropriate book for
your child each month. That is brilliant. It's the best.
My daughter loves getting mail every month. I love that.
I don't have to buy her a book every month,
like it's the best service. So you just have to
find out if it's in your little area. It's called
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. I love Dolly Parton. She's good Egg.
(39:39):
She's a very good egg. You couldn't love her more.
And then she goes and does that. Amelia, what's your recommendation?
Speaker 3 (39:44):
My recommendation is to do with learning how to read.
I have a child, two children learning how to read,
and the books that the school sends home are interminably
boring and I'm not inspiring a love of reading. My brother,
who lives in the UK, turned me on to Julia
Donaldson's Songbirds Phonics Storytelling Collection. Julia Donaldson, you may know
(40:07):
from such classics as Gruffalo and Zo. She has written
sixty books where almost every word is phonically decodable, and
they are also somehow interesting stories.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Okay, what do you mean phonically?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yes, I can't get into it with you. You wouldn't understand it,
but we're not at the stage you won't understand. But
the point is there are books for kids learning how
to read that are actually fun for them to read. Oh,
I love it all.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Right, Okay, my recommendation is similar to yours, Stacey. There
are kind of different versions in different states, but look
up to see if there's one near you. But in
Sydney there's one called Bubbadesk, and I am recommending this
place because this is where my twin sister essentially just
wrote her book and it is a coworking space with
more and more people sort of freelancing or even if
you're on maternity leave or you work three days a
(40:55):
week or whatever, and there is a day or an
afternoon where you need to get some work done and
you don't have child care options, you can take your
child to Bubbadesk.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
There's another one in if you're going to say what
I think you're going to say, and you can drop
the child off and work.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yes, So it's like a child like they're right there,
they're upstairs. You get a little monitor so you can
just see what they're doing. They have like a system
where they'll be like Luna's playing with a block, Luna
just date her lunch and I'm like lies, they like
you having tunea morning bullshit, and then they'll have like
(41:33):
you can, yeah, get the little baby monitor, see what
she's doing. If you want, you can go up and
check on them. I often find better not to. They're
just like mums here what. But it's brilliant and it's
all parents that are kind of doing it. There's even
the Bubbajesque that I went to. There was a gym
attached to it because they were like, you can go
to I.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Don't have any excuses, like I know.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
So it's really really good and there is an equal
amount what I love about it too, equal amount.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Of dads and moms there.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
So look up at co working space with kids. I
didn't even know they existed. Thank you so much for
joining us today. We will be back next Saturday.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Bye yeah
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Muma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of the land and waters that this
podcast is recorded.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On Hello and welcome to our limited series of Parenting
Out Loud. I am Jesse Stevens and I am joined
by Merely Lester. You can say hello and Maria. You're
alload to say hello, Hope, Jase, how are you good?
And we're here to talk about some of the stories
(00:41):
that dominated the week, because if parents are thinking about it,
we're talking about it. And today we also have a
very special third co host. It is Mum and MIA's
deputy editor. Welcome to Stacey Hicks.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Hello, Hello, thanks for scooching over.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
For hell me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This question is my nightmare. Thank you so much for
using that is so fine.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I wanted to leave it as open ended as possible
so that you'd lose slopover.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, I feel like all I do is scroll on
TikTok in bed so is not very interesting. I'm the
writer of many words on Muma Mia that you might
have seen on the website. I'm the drinker of copious
amounts of tea and margaritas, which tea and spicy irregular
marks oh English breakfast tea, milk sugar, depending on the
time of day. You're not a barbarian and I'm a
(01:28):
regular mar girl. Very saic.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
You know I've started putting jalapenos in my soblank.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh, yes, it's true. It's happening. Sally b An.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Early recommendation from Amelia Today and Stacey, do you have
a kid?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I do. It would be a bit weird if I
didn't throwing my opinions around. I am one and done
so I've had one child. I got it right. I'm
stopping so clever, We're done, well done. I have affected
the process you went. This one is ten out of ten.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Let's not tempt fate.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Or let's just never do that roller coaster again? Whid
have a way you want to look at it? How
old is the little one? She is four years old.
I have a four year old little girl.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
On today's show Do Kids Ruin Friendships? We discuss two
fiery essays about what happens to friendship in the wake
of children and the return of the landline signals nostalgia
for childhood. We might never be able to recreate. So
what is kid rotting and could it be the answer. Plus,
(02:26):
children's YouTube star Miss Rachel express support for the children
of Gaza and now she's had to disable comments on
Instagram and YouTube. We explain what happened and the parasocial
relationships we have with kids entertainers. But first, in case
you missed it, a number of unnamed women have confessed
to making up they have kids in order to get
(02:46):
flexibility at work. And I want your initial reactions now, please.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think it's genius, really yeah, because before I had kids,
I would always see these women leaving work early to
go and pick up so called children from so called school,
and they would be consumed with anger and jealousy. How
about you, Stacy equally think it's genius.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
But they have forgotten something very import the guilt that
comes along with leaving early. So once you have a
child and you have to duck out an hour early,
they're not thinking about the fact that you then make
up for that tenfold afterwards. To prove that you're way,
I'm sending a.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Lot of like sort of overly diligent emails to your
boss at nine pm.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's the part I resent. So one
woman told MoMA Maya that she lied to her boss
with a story about her daughter experiencing a health emergency
and she needed to leave. In reality, it was her cat,
and it really was an emergency. And I guess that
all depends on your definition of child exactly that definition
includes male cat doesn't for me. But I'm slightly horrified
(03:47):
by this story. Even though I know there's lots of research,
a health emergency of a child is really serious.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It's really serious and scary for parent.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And that is not to undermine the horror of having
a sick cat. But your workplace should respect a sick cat.
You should be able to acknowledge I've got a sick cat.
I need to leave. There's caarras leave that exists. But
I think to suggest, and I saw some of this
research and some of the rhetoric around this that said women,
particularly without kids, pick up the slack of working mothers.
(04:21):
And I resent that so deeply because I know about
you too. But are we seeing much slack from working mothers.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, I'm not going to confess to it here yet.
I'm never slacking. No, we're definitely not slacking. But I
do think that we take it more seriously when it's
a kid. Like, if someone's kid had an emergency, I
probably would send them a message that night and say,
hope Paul is okay. If it was a cat, I
would not, And.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think that that's the right reactions good.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I'm allergic to cats. In my defense, I cannot do
kids ruin friendships. That's the real reason I barge my
way into the studio today. You're lonely and desperate. Yes,
I needed to talk about it with my favorite women
because I read an article on this very topic and
I cannot stop thinking about it. So in a sub
called in Pursuit of Clean Countertops, which is a great
(05:13):
name by Sarah Peterson, she spoke about how after she
gave birth, trying to care about anything other than her
baby's Pooh color and sleep schedule was akin to having
phantom limb syndrome. So she said she tried to care
but just didn't really, So instead of wanting to do
these gossip sessions with her child free friends, she was
craving more time with the mothers who were experiencing the
(05:34):
same thing as her. And the same sentiment was echoed
in a piece in the Cut where the writer Alison P.
Davis called children tiny little detonators, which they very much
are saying. Nothing represents a threat to friendship more than parenthood.
So does motherhood actually ruin our friendships or just change
the DNA of them a little bit? Well, in my experience,
(05:56):
they do ruin friendships a little bit. I've been on
both sides of this equation.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I had children fairly laid in the piece, and before
I had them, I felt a lot of rage. I
guess this is a thread through my remarks today. I've
felt a lot of rage was who had kids before
I did. I could tell that they were not inviting
me to birthday parties, which I didn't want to go to,
but nonetheless wanted the invitation for. I could tell that
they were getting together on side group chats to talk
(06:21):
about nappies and toilet training and things I didn't understand,
and I desperately wanted to be involved, and I couldn't
understand why they weren't involving me.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now that I'm on the.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Other side of that equation, I've realized that a big
time suck once you have children is that you do
have to make friends, not just because you need the
fellow feeling and the sympathy of having friends who will
also have kids.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
But also we live in such.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
An isolated society now and parenting is just put on
to the parents rather than the community. And I need
mum friends who I can lean on if I can't
pick the kid up from school at the right time,
or if I have a really important question about something
that Google is not going to answer for me without
a sort of anxiety spiral. I need those friends who
I can call on and lean on in moments of
(07:07):
crisis with my kids. So now I guess I understand
given that time is limited once you do have kids,
you do have to reserve a certain amount of time
for making those new friends.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So do you think that it's just about the equation
that we all have finite time and energy. Whether it's
you've got one child or you've got four children, you
suddenly have this person that needs all of your attention
or as much as you can give them, and then
you've got to make parent friends, which is true, whether
it's starting with mother's group and then at school and whatever.
(07:40):
Is it just that Is it just that there's not
as much time, or do you think that it's also
that you don't relate in the same way.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Stacey, have you lost friends since you had your shoes?
I think mine. I didn't lose friends completely, but I
think mine went into a state of flux. So you
added so many more people in that it just felt
like you couldn't give time to the ones that were
already there. And I also think, as you said before,
once I was on the other side, I kind of
(08:07):
went on this apology tour with all of my friends
that had had children before me, saying I get it now,
like I get why you did this. I get why
you retreated from me because I wasn't supporting you in
the way that I now need from you.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Which you can't. I'm sorry, but you just simply can't understand.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And all my friends were very gracious in that way
and saying you just didn't get it. You didn't know
that showing up with a teddy bear was not very
useful to me, and that it would have been better
if you'd stacked the dishwasher and not sat on my
lounge with me for two hours.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I have literally never stacked a friend's dishwasher. I need
to go on this apology to it.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I do well. Once I did that, I've been a
great mum friend to all my friends that have come
after me with children, but the ones before, thank god,
they were kind about it. But I think it's because
that happens with every single friend. You're in a line
of the order, and you've got to pay it forward
to the ones behind you. See.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I kind of reject this. I don't think that kids
ruined friendships, and I think accepting that can make us
all a bit lazy. It can make the people who
have either chosen not to have kids or don't have
them yet think they don't want to hang out with me.
I think there's a lot of assumptions going both ways
that aren't necessarily true. Because when I was in my
twenties and my friend wanted to go clubbing, I most
(09:19):
of the time didn't want to go clubbing, but I
went clubbing because I was like, I just want to
hang out with you.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wherever you are.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I would go and watch their basketball, they'd come watch
my netball. We went through a stage where we take
turns going and picking each other up just because we
just got our license right. And so it's never about
what you're actually doing. It's more about the time you're
spending together and In both of these articles, they were
sort of saying, if I don't have kids, I don't
want to spend time in a park I don't want
(09:47):
to spend time at your house with louiy on in
the background. And I kind of reject that. I think
that if you want to spend time with someone, then
you do it on each of your terms to varying degrees,
and you can try and maintain those friendships. But it's
give and take. I think there's something quite selfish about thinking, well,
I don't want to spend my Saturday in a parker
(10:07):
at a kid's birthday party. Like, if you want to
sustain the friend then there's got a beby given take.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
What's the give and take on the part of the
person who has kids in this equation, what are they
being asked to do.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was having this conversation with Maya on Out Loud recently,
and she said, get a babysitter and hang out at night,
And you know what, do that once a month if
you can, if you can afford it. And I know
that it's harder for some people than others. It's about
how much support you have, but if you can, yeah
have that in the diary a month in advance and
go all right, let's hang out. But still I think
(10:39):
that the friends who don't have kids also have to
compromise a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
See, I really disagree with you, Jesse. The last thing
I want to do is say to a friend of
mine who doesn't have children, Mina's at the playground. We
will have a half hearted, completely disjointed, ultimately unsatisfactory conversation
while I ensure that my child doesn't break his or
her neck.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Who does that benefit?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
All right?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
So I have a theory about why we feel differently
about this, which was in the cut article. There is
research to suggest something happens around the age of three.
The Journal of Demographic Research said that that's when from
the age of three is when kids are the most
demanding of the parents' time and energy. I currently have
a two year old. I wonder if I'm still in this.
(11:25):
She's started talking probably like what six months a year ago,
like properly talking. But in that first year you can
put the baby in the pram and walk the dog, right,
So there's still an element of socializing that's possible there
even now, push her on the swing. I was hanging
out with someone recently who had a five and a
seven year old.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
No, no, because it's.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The pulling of the skirt and going my.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Mom discussion of the Minecraft movie on which like, your
friend as lovely as they are, your kid's boring as shit.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, like they are boring as shit and you know that,
but you love them.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And whether you are boring at the start, you are
so boring once you have a kid, So actually they're
giving up a lot to spend time with you from
the start. Like I remember with my newborn talking to
my friend at nauseum about the tog rating of sleeping
bags and worrying that my daughter wasn't warm enough at night.
It's so dull.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But you know what, my friends who don't have kids
can also be very boring.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
True.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I have a friend at the moment who is doing
a fitness challenge. Holy boring the stuff I've heard about,
and I follow up, so he talks about his fitness challenge.
I talk about Luna's sleep and how much sleep I
got last night.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
We're both bored.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Isn't friendship just shared boreder?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Look, my main topic of conversation with people right now
is the fact that I love mouth tape and I
can see the.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Light draining from their eyes when I talked to them
about this.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Just last night, I had dinner with some mum friends
and our kids at a tepanyaki joint, which is really
interesting because you always wonder whether or not the food
is going to make it into the bowl or if
it's going to go all over your brand new jumper.
I'm pleased to report that my jumper did not have
stands on it. At the end of the night, you know,
I'm devoid of conversation. I'm very tired, and I just
started talking about mouth tape because that's my go to,
(13:06):
and I realized that's really boring. So we probably shouldn't
say just kids are boring, and in fact, this conversation
you couldn't send it to partners. Think about heterosexual relationships
where you've got do I bring the man who's now
in my life along to the dinner with girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have met men so much more boring than a
six momper so much.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
This is what I'm saying, And I guess the contention
that I'm moving towards here is we're all a little
bit boring, but our friends, the people who find us
the right amount of boring.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So let's not drag other people into the equation.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
See your friends on the terms as the friendship, don't
try and bring kids in, don't try and being partners
in interesting. I'm all about the compartmentalization.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I think it's also because we're not as accustomed to
the ups and downs in our friendships as we are
in our relationships. Like I think there's an understanding that
in long term relationships you might go through rough patches,
you'll go through great patches, and the same is not
really said for friendships, like we just go, oh, that's
run its course once they've had a child and they've
kind of retreated. So and the other thing to consider
is how much our circle of friends changes in that time,
(14:08):
because we talk about losing friends alone or maybe friends
without children retreating from us, but you also are forced
into a lot of extra friendships through circumstance, like whether
that's through a mother's group, whether that's through sport or kids' activities,
where so many more people end up in your life.
And there was an essay in Psychology Today where clinical
psychologist Seth Meyers, not the late night host, talked about
(14:32):
how many people are blindsided by the level of loss
when it comes to their friendships, because it's always the
ones they don't expect. But he also warned about being
a bit cautious going into these new friendships because they've
kind of been forced upon you by circumstance, that they
might not stand the test of time once those children
have kind of grown up or moved out of that activity.
That is so true.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I've seen that happen where I think people look at
each other and they go, oh, we're only mates because
or they've tried to like go, all right, so we're
friends because our kids into primary school together and they're like,
let's try and do a weaken away.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Doesn't worry.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's like, no, no, no, it only works in that context.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
This makes me think about the fact that when you
have little kids, conversation is never that good, and so
the friendship there's never that much stream put on the phone. Yes,
but as the kids grow older and they're off doing
their own thing, all of a sudden, the spotlight is
on can this relationship with stand.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Long stretches of actual conversation. The jury's out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
There are a few things floating around in the culture
that I'm going to attempt to bring together. The first
is The Atlantic published a story this month about the
return of the landline. Writer Rena Murray spoke to a
mother who bought her ten year old a landline to
connect with her friends, and this was in lieu of
a smartphone, and then encouraged other families in the suburb
(15:53):
to do the same. So now twenty or so families
have landlines. They've got their kids calling each other. She
writes about sort of practicing active listening, which is a
lot better than looking on FaceTime, which can be distracting.
And this leads me to the second thing. I listened
to this great episode of Search Engine, which was about
a booming industry of technology to stop you from using
(16:15):
addictive technology. So think a dumb phone, or there's this
thing called a brick, which is you kind of tap
your phone, turns all the apps off, and then you
can go for a walk or spent a few hours
or whatever, and then you tap it again, apps come
back on. And the third thing is a story in
The Cut about millennial nostalgia for a nineties summer. It's
about the school holidays where time was unstructured. You laid around,
(16:38):
maybe you watched some TV. You got up late, you
went on a budget family trip up the coast, basically
a time before YouTube.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And I think what.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
This highlighted for me is that we're trying to wind
back the clock and recreate the childhood we had. And
my question is is that even possible, Stacy, what do
you think?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
No, I don't think it's possible at all, But I
love that everyone is trying. And my best friend has
actually been telling me the same thing is happening in
her neighborhood at the moment, where all the year four
mums have set up a chat about reinstalling landlines in
their homes. I thought this was just an Atlantic trendy. No,
this is happening in regional Queensland where they're doing that
(17:22):
because and her reasoning was really interesting. She said, to me,
the most important thing to me is just allowing her
to be where she is. So whether they're out at school, sport,
whether they're at home just having family time, the technology
can physically not reach her, so it's very easy way
to shut it off and it not be available and
still be able to enjoy being in the present moment
of her childhood. And that's the fear.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
For everybody the idea that the landline is prolonging her
having to get a mobile phone. Yes, her daughter, Yeah, absolutely,
because then it is very much that she can talk
in a public space. Her parents are around, they can
see that she's chatting, and as you say, they're actually
holding a conversation. It's not just tapping away on a
keyboard to some faceless friend. They're actually communicating and learning
(18:06):
that skill, which I think. I mean, even I hate
having to call the doc now we just don't do it.
So it's great that they're encouraging them with that.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
And the theory is that rather than just taking something
away and depriving, it's like you give them something else instead.
And it reminds me of in this Search Engine episode,
it said you can treat your mobile phone like a landline,
Like if you walk into your house and you plug
it in and you go when my phone is in
my house, it's plugged in, that's it, and when I
want to use it, I go upstairs or I go whatever,
(18:36):
and I tap away. I thought that's really clever because
that has some boundary where if you're sitting on the
couch and you just go to look at your phone
for the four hundredth time that day. Because let's be honest,
the reason why kids want phones is because we are
not setting a great example.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I am appalling.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Just having that bit of resistance is way better for us.
I think it was in the cut article it talked
about this concept of kid rotting, and it was saying
that it might be better to let kids do nothing. Right,
So what happens now? School holidays are coming up and
a lot of people will go camps training, let's have
(19:16):
something for every day.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
But I don't think.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You can let a kid rot anymore, because if a
kid is rotting, they will gravitate like there is a
magnet to the nearest screen and there is no unstructured
time because that's just screen time. We'll pay a premium.
There is such desperation to be like, oh, school holidays,
how do I separate child from screen for the longest
(19:39):
amount of time possible?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I was talking with a friend about the pressure that
we have to enroll kids and all sorts of activities now,
and she really dropped a truth bomb. She said, I
realized I dial back on my kids' activities, and then
I realized that I was just giving them more time
to watch television.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yes, exactly right. We had television back in the olden days.
But were we just watching less of it?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, because it wasn't I think underpinned with an algorithm
designed to turn our brains into mush. It was like
I think we all remember the experience of getting bored.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, And also we didn't have the expectation that we
would need to be entertained at all times, exactly children
already have.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And then when you went outside, like, yeah, you could
go to a friend's house and watch television. But even
if you haven't seen your kids in a while and
they're at the neighbor's house or whatever, they're probably on
PS five right like that, it's very unlikely they're making
a tree house, which is I think contributing to this
parental anxiety. And it also I think screens make time
(20:38):
feel different, like there is this endlessness to a day
where you're engaged with the world around you, and now
it just feels so punctuated by three second videos or
YouTube or whatever they're on.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
And here's another thing I'm concerned about the death of
the prank call.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Make prank calls so important, Amelia so true?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
What was your go to oh.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Look, I don't even want to say it on that,
but I did love a prank call, like wrap the
curly cord of the phone around my finger doing the
star sixty nine to.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
See who would last call remember that someone tells her
how to devilish sense of humor. I loved all of that,
I know, and it's sad to think that, for the
most part, kids are not having that. I just wonder, though,
it's hard to distinguish between moral panic around phones and
also the inevitable nostalgia that a parenting generation has for
(21:35):
its youth.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Is that just what we're doing here, or is there
something fundamentally different about the digital world that we live
in now as compared with the world that we grew
up in.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I wonder that too, because there's an inevitable nostalgia. Like
I'm sure my mum felt the nostalgia because we had
Foxtel and she was like, well, I think when my
mom grew up, TV wasn't actually on all night, Like
there was a point at which the TV stopped and
she just went you could watch.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
TV at any time, and you can change the channel
and ware. And when I grew up, there was rage
and rage it's rage. It is so sad, and you
don't have to wait for the video to rewind, so
there is absolutely no patience. Remember that when you get
out the best video that you wanted to watch on
school holidays and it was at the end, you had
to wait to rewind it back to the start. I
don't do that now. It's just on a loop instantly.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And I do think the fundamental challenge we have as
parents is trying to reacquaint ourselves with boredom, because.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Our children are learning from us.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Every time we pick up our phone because we feel
discomfort or disquiet or boredom.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I reckon algorithms have changed childhood. There is an element
of nostalgia and us wanting to recreate what we see
as an idyllic if we're lucky enough, but moments of
an idyllic kind of utopian childhood, and we go I
want to give them that. I do think that it's
fundamentally changed how time is spent in childhood. And I
even think about the computer room. Like when I grew up,
(22:56):
when the computer did come, it was in a room
and you fought for it, and sometimes it was dial up.
There was a sense as well that even though it
was a room that it wasn't entirely private, so you
felt like you were being watched. And now every in
every house is a computer room, so it just means
that time isn't it doesn't have these distinctions when it comes.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
To exactly and on Muma Mea, actually, we've seen a
huge appetite from parents for information on how to control
their children's access to technology. We did a story on
the top three safety features every parent needs on their
phone that analyst Todd wrote for us and it was
top on the site for days just talking about us. Yeah,
so there's lots of different features. This is mostly for
(23:38):
the Apple users, so apologies to the androids users among us.
But there's now nudity blocking functions where oh wow, you
can set those up on your children's phone so it
blurs the images. They've got a three step process they
have to get through to see it, including you putting
in a password for them to see the image. There's
screen time setups now where you can be blocking certain
(23:59):
websites so that they can't access them, and of course
like limiting their screen time all together can be done
as well. But the response to that story was epic
and I think that just showed how worried we all
about that, whether we're at that stage with our children
or not, to be thinking well, how am I going
to get on top of this? And maybe a little
bit of thinking how do I get on top of
this one myself now so that I'm not setting this
(24:21):
up for them.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Emily Osta, who gives a bit of parenting advice, and
a lot of it is databased, she says about screen time,
what's it taking away from? So whenever you have a
child who's looking at a screen, So for example, Luna
has been unwell recently, and it's like we wouldn't be
at the park, we wouldn't be doing something enriching, she's
(24:44):
glad to look at the TV. Like, if the difference
is between looking at a TV and looking at a
white wall, then you're allowed to do the TV. It's
just when it starts to sort of encroach on other activities.
And I also heard an expert say not all screen
time is equal. So if you can find something that
has any sort of narrative, like even Blue Eye, it
does have like a story to it, way better than
(25:05):
just jumbling fast cuts of like this is brainmush or
social media. That makes a difference and something that's a
little bit more slow is also what some of the
experts say. And in terms of phones, I remember reading
the advice years ago turn it to gray scale, and
it makes it less appealing, and I've found that helps
for me to see.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Mss Rachel is a very popular children's entertainer. I have
actually never seen her videos, but I have gone deep
on a controversy that has embroiled her and which I
think gets to the heart of the relationship that we
now have with children's entertainers. So let me unpack it.
Her real name is Rachel and Accurso. She is a
(25:47):
former teacher. She makes adorable content for kids on YouTube.
I'm told it's adorable. She certainly looks adorable. She wears
overalls and a pink T shirt and a pick headband,
and her channel, which started in twenty nineteen to help
her own son with a speech delay, has over fifteen
million subscribers, and she's recently had her videos licensed by Netflix,
so she might be, by some metrics, the most popular
(26:10):
children entertainer in the world. However, she is in trouble.
In April, an American group called Stop Antisemitism called on
the US Attorney General, Pam Bondie to investigate Miss Rachel.
The group said that she had been disseminating pro har
maass propaganda and getting paid by her MASS for doing so,
(26:30):
which would be quite a scandal. I agree, is Miss
Rachel in fact disseminating pro har mass propaganda? We should
say that she denies that she is being paid anything
by her MASS, and I think that the charge that
she's disseminating propaganda is kind of a tough case to make.
Speaking as someone who is not very familiar with her content,
(26:50):
I watched a few of her videos in preparation for this.
They seem very benign to me. They seem to be
about toilet training, brushing your teeth, learning your colors. I
did not see anything that would seem to be pro
har mass propaganda. What she has posted on her social
media feed on her Instagram so separate from the YouTube channel,
(27:12):
are images of traumatized children in the Gaza strip. These
images often feature the children watching her videos or even
interacting with Miss Rachel via FaceTime. She has also pledged
one million dollars to the World Food Program, which works
to provide nutrition for kids in conflict zones Sudan, Ukraine
and also Gaza. She has also posted about Israeli children
(27:35):
who were held hostage by Hamas. She told The New
York Times in a very long investigative peace about this
that her posting about children in Gaza was a continuation
of her lifelong work and passion for children. But The
Times quoted some Jewish parents who felt distraught. They said
that there was a relative lack of posts about Israeli children,
(27:55):
and The Times, which did an analysis of Miss Rachel's
Instagram content, agreed with that assessment that she did tend
to post more about ghaz and children than Israeli children.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
One Jewish parent.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Quoted said Miss Rachel seems to be someone who was
really really good hearted, but in the context of everything
that's going on, she says, I care about all children,
She's really talking about the children of Gaza. That was
a Jewish parent called Stacy Hackner, who's based in London.
She said that has left a lot of Jewish parents
feeling quite isolated. In research for this, I have to
(28:29):
say that one video that Miss Rachel Pinn really made
a big impression on me. It featured a three year
old girl called Rahaf who was a double amputee who
was medically evacuated from Gaza for her surgery and sings
a song with Miss Rachel about skipping and hopping. Her
two brothers are still in Gaza with their father. Stepping
back from all of this, though, I want to talk
(28:51):
about why we feel so connected in this way to
children's entertainers, why it matters to us what Miss Rachel
thinks about world news and events. I think it's probably
inevitable on one level that these debates are happening. You
just have to look at how during COVID desperate parents
were looking for anything to entertain their children, and they
(29:12):
latched on to all sorts of parenting gurus. So one
guru I was obsessed with during this time was an
American woman called Taking Cara Babies. Have either of you
heard of her?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
So she is this lovely blonde woman from Arizona who
posted endless Instagram videos about sleep schedules. She absolutely got
me through twenty twenty. I'm still citing in my household
all the time. Her idea of the sleepwave, you got
to ride the sleepwave. This applies to adults too. If
you feel sleep coming on you got to ride the wave,
and if you miss the wave, you gotta wait for
the next one.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Genius. I was very dismayed when I found out that
Kara was a Trump supporter. She had not posted about
it on her taking care of Babies account, but she
was posting about it on her personal account. I really
resented her using even her personal account to talk about politics,
and it made me not want to watch her videos
or take her sleep advice anymore. I I'm not drawing
(30:07):
equivalences or even parallels between these very different political st
stories here. I'm mentioning it.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Because I felt left out, resentful, angry at taking care
of babies in a way that perhaps I didn't have
a right to. She was teaching me about children's sleep.
She wasn't showing me her political beliefs or talking about
world events. But I think what's interesting is that we
clearly do expect people who work with or care about
kids to not share their political beliefs with us, and
(30:33):
to not share how they think about the wider world.
And I'm wondering if that's really fair, And it seems
connected to me to an idea that children themselves should
not be talked about as living in an inherently political world.
Children at living in a world where the decisions made
by leaders directly impact them. Doesn't it make sense for
the experts that we turn to to raise our own
(30:55):
children to weigh in on these decisions that are being
made by leaders.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's interesting because I reckon it is a totally different
level of parasocial relationship. And I think it's because of
the moments where we feel our children with a Miss
Rachel example, She's been in your home, she's been in
your child's bedroom, she's sung in your child's ear.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Are you are Miss Rachel arclose?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So we have Miss Rachel plays a song for us
every time we brush our teeth. We do the brushing
teeth song, and she is like I see her and
hear her at some of my most vulnerable moments, at
some of Luna's most vulnerable moments, that she feels like
an extension of the family. And I don't think we
realize this until there is a moment, as you say
(31:40):
with your example, I don't feel this about Miss Rachel,
but like of betrayal, where people then go, hang on,
You're not who I thought you were. And I wonder
if it's like if you have a nanny or an
early educator or even a teacher, like there is an
expectation that their political selves or whatever might be left
outside the classroom because there is this incredible, innocent, almost
(32:06):
quite simplistic and straightforward relationship with your child. But on
the Miss Rachel example, I think it feels so consistent right,
Like she has said that no child should have their
crucial brain development interrupted by trauma. And whether you want
to talk about scale, and everyone has the right to
(32:27):
feel how they want to and not listen to Miss
Rachel if she doesn't feel like an extension of your
family anymore. But that does feel consistent with what she's
always done. And she's always, you know, encouraged people to
donate to the food bank and make sure kids have
enough food. And I think that there were videos or
examples of kids in some of these instances watching Miss Rachel,
(32:48):
so to her, I think she probably felt drawn into
it as well because she had this presence.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I am a Miss Rachel household as well. We very
sincerely referred to her as the third parent in our household.
Can we step back, and I just want to ask
you both a quick question about her, because I'm not
familiar with her, she clearly is inspiring incredibly strong feelings
in people, both positive and negative. What is it about
her that broke through.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
In twenty twenty and beyond that was so different from
all the other children's entertainers? For me, it was that
I had my daughter during COVID, So Miss Rachel's voice
face was with me in my darkest moments quite literally,
like in the dark with my daughter when I couldn't
settle her with you know, colic and reflux and all
the things. Miss Rachel was the answer to that. So
I think you tie her to yourself in some sort
(33:36):
of you know, she's my savior in this situation.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Interesting your example, right, because as you were saying, Amelia, so,
I think that she only started making these videos in
twenty nineteen, twenty twenty nineteen, and then something that she
couldn't control, which was the pandemic, happened, and that is
when her star just rose enormously.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Why her as opposed to other children's entertainers? What was
it about her communication style? For instance?
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I think it is about the fact that what she
does is educational. She has a master's degree in music education.
She sings, she's all about nunciation and that origin story
you told of how her son was one and didn't
have any words, yet she made these videos to help
him with language. And I think that, as we were
saying before, there's this sense that if a screen is on,
(34:23):
it should be enridging or it should be educational. It
was a guilt free way for people to have their
child exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
And my daughter learned sign language before she could speak
from Miss Rachel. We learned it from Miss Rachel. So
we started doing it because she was doing it, and
it felt like, oh, at least if I've got the
screen on. As Jesse said, it's something useful. It's something
that's helping her with her speech. It's helping her with
songs that we can't remember from where we were young.
That I think was the magnetism of her. I think
(34:53):
that's the.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Missing puzzle piece I needed to understand this story, because
the idea that she's helping children learn makes her very
different as a figure to someone like say Blippy. Yeah,
mister Blippy is not helping people children to learn, largely
cavorting through ridiculous scenarios and driving parents mad. And I
(35:16):
wonder if that's part of why a parents who love
missus Rachel love her so much, and b why she
feels so strongly that there's a through line with what
she's doing to help children learn and how she's communicating
to their parents on Instagram about what she feels as
an urgent political situation that she wants them to learn about.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, that's really true. And I suppose if the children
are absorbing her through YouTube, then that feels like a
siloed experience. And then people, I guess, are seeing that
this smiling, chirpy woman who not only taught my child
but taught me a lot about parenting, taught me about
enunciating or what words to do, or are we doing colors?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Are we doing shapes?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Are we doing all of these things? What's difficult about this,
you know, crisis as well, is that what someone says
and what someone hears are not often the same thing,
because it is a very loaded There's a lot of history,
that a lot of context, there's a lot of trauma,
and so I think that that two is people feeling
betrayed by something that has been shared.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, and I think we expect a lot more from
anyone in the public eye now than we ever did.
I don't know if we would have known the personal
lives of the og Wiggles, that alone their stance on
geopolitical issues back when we were growing up, but so true.
Now there's so much more information out there, and I
think it is definitely worse for women in the public eye.
Like Taylor Swift was criticized for not backing Kamala Harris
(36:41):
quick enough in the US election. Chris Brown is currently
on a world tour even though he's found guilty of
domestic violence charges. We don't seem bothered by what his
views are on anything. Like there's just a very double
standard there for women. That's true.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I do think though, that we've got the Wiggles on
sometimes and my obsession with Emma n Lucky's marriage has
just gone to ridiculous. And it wasn't just me, it
was also Luca. We had a week where Luna was
second was on constantly and I swear we were hallucinating.
We're in a weird state, and like we needed the
wedding photos and then we needed to know why they
(37:17):
broke up. And now Lockie has a new family and
who is she? And I can tell you what Emma
did her PhD in and then I had to go
down the route of like is it a wig or
is it her real hair? Like if I saw Emma
walking down the street, I'd be like, hey, Amma, how
you going? Like nice yellow bow? I would just have
so much She feels like a member of my family,
which is unlike anyone else I can see him through
(37:38):
a screen.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I'm also thinking about the fact that for missus Rachel,
she has the YouTube channel for kids, She's not posting
this on the YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
She's posting this on the Instagram. And last time I checked,
most three year olds don't have Instagram, so there is
a difference between those platforms. On the other hand, to
argue with myself, when I found out that Taking care
of Babies was a Trump supporter, she had never told
me that on the Taking care of Babies sleep Instagram,
So why was it my business?
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Why did I care if she was doing it over
on her set personal account.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I think it's because you start to get your guard
up about whether that is informing the information or the
content that she's providing to the children.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I think that that's what you start.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
To go are you brainwashing my child? And then you
start to get like a bit paranoid about it. And
it's interesting that Miss Rachel has had to turn off
comments on Instagram and YouTube so under her teeth brushing song,
the level of trolling was so bad that she had
to just go, no, I'm not taking this on.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
There is though, that fear, isn't there, that maybe this
sleep advice is tinged.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
With maganists makes you sort of start thinking about all
of them exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
It's time for recommendations, Stacy, what have you got for us?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
I feel quite smug about this recommendation, so imparting it
so you can all feel smug when you recommend it
to someone else. So my daughter gets a free book
every month from Dolly Parton. What the Dolly Parton sends
my well, not personally, I imagine she has someone at
the postal service that does this for her. But she
has a free book gifting service. They have it all
around the world. It's in the US, UK, everywhere, and
(39:16):
you can just sign your child up and they'll send
you out in the mail a age appropriate book for
your child each month. That is brilliant. It's the best.
My daughter loves getting mail every month. I love that.
I don't have to buy her a book every month,
like it's the best service. So you just have to
find out if it's in your little area. It's called
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. I love Dolly Parton. She's good Egg.
(39:39):
She's a very good egg. You couldn't love her more.
And then she goes and does that. Amelia, what's your recommendation?
Speaker 3 (39:44):
My recommendation is to do with learning how to read.
I have a child, two children learning how to read,
and the books that the school sends home are interminably
boring and I'm not inspiring a love of reading. My brother,
who lives in the UK, turned me on to Julia
Donaldson's Songbirds Phonics Storytelling Collection. Julia Donaldson, you may know
(40:07):
from such classics as Gruffalo and Zo. She has written
sixty books where almost every word is phonically decodable, and
they are also somehow interesting stories.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Okay, what do you mean phonically?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yes, I can't get into it with you. You wouldn't understand it,
but we're not at the stage you won't understand. But
the point is there are books for kids learning how
to read that are actually fun for them to read. Oh,
I love it all.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Right, Okay, my recommendation is similar to yours, Stacey. There
are kind of different versions in different states, but look
up to see if there's one near you. But in
Sydney there's one called Bubbadesk, and I am recommending this
place because this is where my twin sister essentially just
wrote her book and it is a coworking space with
more and more people sort of freelancing or even if
you're on maternity leave or you work three days a
(40:55):
week or whatever, and there is a day or an
afternoon where you need to get some work done and
you don't have child care options, you can take your
child to Bubbadesk.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
There's another one in if you're going to say what
I think you're going to say, and you can drop
the child off and work.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yes, So it's like a child like they're right there,
they're upstairs. You get a little monitor so you can
just see what they're doing. They have like a system
where they'll be like Luna's playing with a block, Luna
just date her lunch and I'm like lies, they like
you having tunea morning bullshit, and then they'll have like
(41:33):
you can, yeah, get the little baby monitor, see what
she's doing. If you want, you can go up and
check on them. I often find better not to. They're
just like mums here what. But it's brilliant and it's
all parents that are kind of doing it. There's even
the Bubbajesque that I went to. There was a gym
attached to it because they were like, you can go
to I.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Don't have any excuses, like I know.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
So it's really really good and there is an equal
amount what I love about it too, equal amount.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Of dads and moms there.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
So look up at co working space with kids. I
didn't even know they existed. Thank you so much for
joining us today. We will be back next Saturday.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Bye yeah
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