Modern Wisdom｜The Career Trap That Makes Women Miserable - Suzanne Venker

You dedicated your book with an apology to a generation of women who've been misled.

How have they been misled?

I was essentially apologizing for the oversight that I believe...

Both my generation, which is Gen X, by the way, I was born in 68.

And the generation one up from me, which is the boomers, which I think is more really what I'm talking about, but definitely some Gen X, The oversight that they did not share with their children, their daughters in particular, because I really write mostly for young women.

How to go about building a life that essentially includes marriage and motherhood.

That the messaging has been for decades now.

You can do anything you want to do without any caveats there, with no explanation or nuance.

You need to sort of prove yourself in the world in the way men do because equality is the goal.

Men and women are the same.

This kind of messaging.

And then taught them pretty much to put career at the center of their lives.

Mm-hmm.

And it is well known that women start to think very differently about their future because they want to start having a family and they hear that clock ticking.

And their priorities are shifting and they feel stuck.

They feel like all these decisions that they've made up to this point were made with a different plan in mind, because nobody wanted to talk about the fact that men and women are different.

And so it's OK to construct a different kind of life.

Why do you think it's unpopular to warn women of that?

Because the goal is a political one.

It is about men and women being equal, which doesn't mean equal in value, the way I define it, but sameness, basically interchangeability, that what one can do, the other can do which, by the way, is often true.

But it doesn't take human desire into account.

So male and female desire is very, very different.

And we don't talk about that because that would highlight how men and women are different.

And the goal is for men and have these trajectories that are the same, so that everything can be equal in 50 50, in this sort of utopian version of what life should look like for men and women.

And it's just not working.

It's been several decades now with this messaging.

Yeah, I had this idea a little while ago, the bigotry of male expectations.

So there's an idea called the bigotry of small expectations or of low expectations, which kind of explains some of the white savior complex that college educated white people have around minorities that we will give you a helping hand, allow us poor people from a minority background, we will help you along, and there's kind of a similar situation.

I think that's happening with the way that women are being spoken to specifically by other women, which is you are only as valuable as you are able to play the role that typically men have done.

And, you know, that in some ways sounds very liberating.

So you go, wow, this is independence.

It's pushing women to be able to do what they want to do without the constraints that would have held them back previously.

And I think that that's true.

But what it forgets is that implicitly that denigrates what women have typically done.

It makes them second-class citizens for doing the things that they used to do.

There's a famous study that happened where hunter-gatherers from ancestral times were analyzed using modern hunter-gatherer societies and women slightly, how would you say?

Motivated research team analyzed the data and said women did just as much big game hunting as men, and maybe even more.

And what they were trying to put across was women were able to do the thing that men did.

Now they fucked with the data.

It turned out that that wasn't really the truth at all.

But what it implicitly said was that hunting was important, but gathering wasn't.

And Emma, how is that not misogynistic?

Yeah.

Like that's the most misogynistic thing that I can think of from someone that's supposed to be pro-women.

You're saying the thing that you do or did, or your ancestors do or did, naturally is not as important.

And only if you're able to contort yourself into the shape of a man are you worth something.

So in the same way you had women that did not fit the mold, say back in the 50s and 60s, who maybe did want more right from life than being just a wife and mother.

Although I use the word just only to make a point, not because I feel that way about it.

If they did want more, they felt a little odd.

And now you fast forward half a century and it's the complete opposite.

Right.

It's important for people to understand, which I don't think people in their 20s and 30s do so much.

And that is how this all really came to be.

Because feminism, the second wave, we're talking about 1970s feminism.

When you do a deep dive you which most people aren't going to do, you know, but if you do it, if you do it.

It was so depressing to have to go through all that stuff back in the day.

Um, You come to realize that the loudest voices that we heard from which is just a minority of women, right?

It's not the everyday women.

These are very small group of women who had some power and clout.

And if you study their backgrounds, you find that just about every single one of them had a very dysfunctional story or upbringing or background that caused them to turn away either from men or marriage as an institution.

And rather than study their own story and come to terms with what happened to their really, their mom and dad is what we're talking about.

They extrapolated that story to mean, oh, the whole system screwed up.

Oh, marriage is oppressive.

Oh, no woman could be happy at home.

I mean, they just made these stories.

And because they had the spotlight.

And people don't do that research.

It sounded plausible because maybe if you're a woman who kind of back in the day did feel sort of whatever about motherhood, that's going to speak to you.

Mm-hmm.

Or constrained by the lack of independence and financial freedom.

Because you are constrained for a while.

You're going – it's a lot of work and it's a tremendous amount of sacrifice.

It's a tradeoff that obviously I feel is 150% worth it.

But we don't live in that world that –

After so many years of all of that messaging, it's not like feminism.

Nobody really talks about it as a thing out in the world anymore.

It's more like it's just embedded into the fabric now of society.

You don't question or discuss feminism per se.

It's just kind of accepted and known online.

Well, of course, in order for a woman to be equal to a man, she's got to live that same life.

You can't be powerful or happy or liberated or empowered if you're not working for pay.

And if you do that, if you do the opposite of that, it's because you're specifically being counterculture or oppressed.

Yeah.

You've been conned by the patriarchy.

There you go.

Yeah.

So basically you're saying modern culture has prepared women for work.

Yes.

But not for relationships and family.

150%.

That's what I'm saying.

And so what I'm, I'm receiving the women as a coach who are coming in.

And as I say, they're usually around 30, maybe a little younger, maybe a little older.

And all of a sudden their priorities shift dramatically and they desperately want a baby, or they want to get married and can't find a man, or they are pregnant and they want to stay home and can't, because they made all these decisions professionally relationally, financially to set them up for a life where you are never out of the workforce.

And when you do that, you're going to feel stuck and it's going to be a lot harder to extricate yourself from that once your priorities shift.

And that's kind of where I come in when they call me.

And sometimes their husbands don't want them to do it.

And it's just been this – it's this mess.

Really, because of all this messaging and because – going back to your initial question about – apologizing to them, what i'm basically saying is i'm sorry, you were set up to fail.

It's wrong, and you were set up because of politics.

You don't really realize that, because this goes way back before you were even born.

What are the decisions that you think lock women into this future that is difficult to navigate when they grow up.

So I think there are three main decisions that women make throughout their 20s that can either set them up well or cause them to struggle more later.

The first one is professional.

So I've always been a very big proponent of finding and choosing a profession and a major in school.

Let's say that works well with the kind of life you want to have down the line.

So you have to really think ahead and play the long game when you're making these decisions.

So instead of getting a degree in some major that isn't going to do anything for you you're not going to make any money from it find something practical and not just that pays a decent wage, but also that can be worked around.

How you see your life in your 30s and 40s.

In other words, to simplify this rather than putting career at the center of your life and trying to fit men and marriage and motherhood in around that, I want them to do the reverse.

I want them to put family first and make these decisions first. orbit around that.

And that begins with the kind of career that you can move in and out of more easily, ones that can be done more, maybe part time or from home, ones that give you control.

You own something you know like you could start a business later.

Just basically flexibility, so that

When you're older and your priorities do shift, which for most women they do, you have options.

You say to the women that go, why should I have to give that up?

I don't want to have to give that up.

Why should I have to sacrifice and build my career around family life?

There's no should, but you will very likely want to.

And if you set yourself up the way you're doing it, you'll have no options.

If you do it the other way, you'll at least have the option.

Because what you're going to feel like is important at 32 is going to be very different from what you feel like at 22.

You just don't even realize how you're going to change.

I think that's one of the challenges with this right, that you're saying women who are not thinking about family literally don't even have it on their bingo card.

Exactly.

You need to think about a thing you're not planning for and currently don't want.

It takes an unbelievable amount of counterculture pressure to be able to say none of my friends think about this.

None of modern media is suggesting that I do this.

I don't even feel the desire to do this.

And actively, if I got pregnant right now, I don't even know what I'd do about it.

But I should start to construct a life that is future-proofing me in order to do that.

It's a huge going against the tide moment.

It's so huge, Chris.

I mean, it's a big ask, right?

It doesn't surprise me that women aren't doing it.

No, because the running joke is well, I'm trying to get to you when you're 22 before you come to me at 32.

But at 22, you're not interested.

But at 32, you're like, help me, help me.

And I'm like, you know, it's so hard.

I mean, one of the hardest things about coaching for me has been hearing these women say, And knowing that all of this stuff could have been avoided if they had just been told the truth.

Have you considered in school in the UK, we have something called scare them straight.

I don't know whether you have the same thing.

It's not gay conversion.

It's...

Getting prison guards in to schools and they explain how dangerous it is in prison and how bad of a time it is.

And the whole point is to try and warn young mostly boys, but I guess girls too off of the life of crime.

And I went to a very, very working class school in a very, very working class town with lots of crime in the UK.

Yeah.

And I remember this guy came through and he had this sock which had batteries in and he was explaining about how the guys get into fights and they use these sort of like maces in socks to like get in scraps with.

He banged it on the table.

And I remember I was so fucking scared.

I went to bed that night.

Like it really did.

For me, I was like, I cannot go to jail.

That sounds fucking terrifying.

Or they boil the kettle and put loads of sugar in and they make syrup and they throw it on people and it burns them and stuff.

It was fucking terrifying.

I was like 12.

It was terrifying.

Have you considered getting the women who are 32 to do an intervention with the women that are 19 and about to choose their major in college and being like hey, why don't we organize a local meetup and

It's not quite pan-generational, but it's actually the important bit.

The women who are facing this problem or facing this challenge.

Should I say to go and have a conversation with women?

That's a really good point.

No, the answer is I have not thought about that, but that's a really great idea.

Scare them straight.

You need batteries in a sock, don't forget.

Exactly.

Well, because it's so...

It's really scary.

I mean, these women are really, really... It's hurting their marriages, obviously.

It's not just hurting them personally, but if, for example, if you want to stay home but you can't because you've set up this life, it's going to hurt their marriage.

So then the marriage is falling apart.

The family's falling apart.

So this has a downward effect that somehow...

I think it's really clear for people who are very marriage minded young.

Like there are a lot of people who.

I always knew I wanted to be a mom.

What's that?

I always knew I wanted to be.

Yeah.

Like they get it.

I mean, they just like, well, yeah, of course.

And that.

So I'm not so concerned with them because they're going to set things up sort of naturally.

I mean, I did that, for example.

But.

It's much harder today because, as you say, and that's exactly right.

That's why I'm a countercultural author.

I mean, everything I do is basically my motto is if the culture says do it, don't.

And you will be successful.

But if you're following it, you're going to struggle.

The average American adult is likely to be divorced, has less than 1K in the bank and they're obese.

That's the average.

That's the middle of the bell curve.

So following the path that everybody else treads sounds like outsourcing wisdom to the crowd, but it's actually a reliable route to a life that you probably don't want.

And what do you think separates the people who get that from the ones who don't?

Not listening to what everybody else says.

So can you give me an example of the prototypical 32-year-old person that comes to you?

What career choice have they made?

What did they do in their 20s?

And why is that an issue now?

Because a lot of women might think well, if I choose a high-powered career, that means that I've earned more money, which means that I can step back from it.

So I'd say the biggest issue there that cannot be overlooked and one of the ways I think this began to go really downhill is student debt, which is a massive problem in America.

And that messaging came from people who are parents who were like, Doesn't matter what it costs.

I mean, this is the most important thing ever, so it doesn't matter if you have to go into debt to do it, because you're just going to pay it back, right?

Well, the problem with that is And then this other thing comes into play so that.

And this leads into homeownership.

All these financial issues that were a result of decisions that were made again because they're not playing the long game, because nobody taught them.

Listen, if you go into this much debt and then you get married and maybe you want to stay home, you're not going to feel like you can because you owe all this money and your money is not going to go as far and you're not going to feel like you can have a house.

It's not fleshed out in the way that it needs to be.

For both young, I mean.

I have a son and a daughter, and everything my husband and I taught was for both of them.

But...

Of course, their trajectories are going to be different because one's a boy and one's a girl.

And that's another thing that's really taboo, because nobody wants to parent their children opposite-sex children differently, because you're supposed to be the same.

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Okay, so first thing is choosing your work and education career around building it around the family.

Yes, flexibility, basically.

Instead of these careers that are going to literally take over your life.

You're working 24-7.

You have no space in your life to even find love or nurture love, or get married and have children, and you're not thinking about it.

And then all of a sudden you're, you're older and you're saying, where have all the good men gone?

I don't see them.

It just, it's, there's a, there's just a downward.

Yeah.

Sorry?

You said there was three elements.

Oh, yes.

Sorry.

So the second one is, what did I say?

Professional and then relational.

So this is another big one that's...

Controversial, I guess.

It used to be that moms and dads would tell their daughters don't bring home any man who doesn't have a job or isn't going somewhere.

Let's say

That's, of course, not done anymore because you're supposed to take care of yourself.

You don't need a man to take care of you.

So there are a lot of women who are getting with men who haven't found their professional footing.

Let's say,

Let's put it that way.

Or they're going to bank on the fact that they will find it someday.

Mm-hmm.

And why should that be controversial?

Here's something that's really interesting.

They took a poll of Americans and 71 of American adults believe that it's important for a man to be able to provide for his family.

Guess how many think a woman should be able to or should do it?

50?

32.

Okay.

71 to 32.

Now that says to me that we know instinctively that women become vulnerable to when they have a child and that they're going to need support, both emotional and financial, for X period of time.

And that, that is in part why we need men to, um, embrace their providing and protecting desire.

And women aren't sort of expected to be the providers.

Because do we really want women to get pregnant, Carry that baby for nine months, give birth breastfeed, go through all of that?

And by the way, get back to work.

You should be working too while you're doing that.

I mean, nobody really thinks that's a good idea that you hear because why not just do that too?

You know, it's not, it isn't natural.

And if you're experiencing it, when you really do experience it and you look at it, you're like how could I ask her to go do this right now?

She's very busy and she's very tired and she's depleted.

And she has an appendage hanging from her that needs her.

And so I think we know that instinctually.

And I think that's the reason for that gap.

Yeah, it's an interesting one, because I wonder how many women are allowing themselves to pick up the slack of mate choices where they thought well, I'm independent already.

So financially, maybe I'm going to pay a little bit less attention to his future prospects in this way.

You know the top quintile, so the top 20 of female owners and the bottom 40 of male owners are mating, with the woman as the primary breadwinner.

So the top 20 of women are mating down socioeconomically and the bottom 40 of men are mating up socioeconomically.

That's a big chunk.

That's a lot.

It's a lot.

That's going on.

So yeah, I wonder how many women are Basically picking up the slack which creates this self-reinforcing loop of I need to work harder in order to be able to provide me the size and amount of freedom that I think that I need in order to be able to get a family off the ground without realizing that it kind of is a trap.

It's a trap.

They're locking themselves in.

And then I mean it's true that we have a big problem with men not in the world in the way they used to be, in producing.

And that's a subject of its own.

But there's a lot that women are doing to themselves.

And again, I don't fault them.

They were tutored to do this.

They were schooled to live this life.

It's just that...

That's why when they reach out to me, they're like, why didn't anybody tell me about this?

It's hard to understand, make the argument, you should be less financially independent.

In what world does less financial independence make sense?

Because that's not the right framing.

The framing is...

What do you want?

Why are we here?

What's the most important thing in life?

What do you really want in your life?

What do you want your life to look like?

What do you foresee your daily life to be like when you're 35, 40, 45?

What kind of relationship do you want with your family?

What are your interests in work?

Like you have to sort of pan out and decide what's the most important thing to you at the end of the day.

And I believe – and maybe this is just a parenting thing –

Because I do think a lot of this is really about parenting.

I do.

I think that the culture can be the culture.

But if parents were stronger in their opposing messages, that it would be.

I feel like that's our best hope is through parenting, because it's very hard to change the culture.

Is teaching what really matters and why we're here and...

Is it really so that you can be as rich as you want or as... well-known.

I mean, are you, is status your goal or is meaning and your relationships and family your goal?

And those, I hate to say it, are just, they're competing.

They just, they compete with one another and we don't like that.

We want to, we want to, Create a world where they can coexist in extreme forms simultaneously.

You know, you can be all of this and you can still have this all at the same time.

As well-known and rich as possible whilst also having the family that you've always wanted.

And you made a comment on one of your shows recently.

What's that saying that someone said, what you see in private?

What you're praised for in public, you pay for in private.

That is exactly what I'm talking about.

So you go out and you do this thing, but no one's talking about what really goes on at home to allow that to happen and how you're suffering.

Yeah, you can't.

I got to bring this up.

Okay.

Are you familiar with Emma Greed?

No.

Do you know who she is?

No.

Emma Greed is the British Kardashian whisperer entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of the Good American clothing brand and a founding partner of Skims.

But lately, she's been getting way more attention.

Something else.

How she parents her four kids, ages 12, 10, and 4.

They're twins.

And we've got a clip I want to show you.

Well, and you're very honest about how you view parenting.

I have to ask you about this.

You did an interview with the Wall Street Journal and the headline was the Kardashian whisperer who says three hours with her kids is enough.

That's based on what you say in your book.

You call yourself a three hour max mum.

That raised a lot of eyebrows, as you know.

What did you mean by that a three hour maximum?

Well, what i meant by it was exactly what i said, and i really don't want to backpedal.

You know, the first thing that i thought when i saw that headline was like wow, that would never have been written about a man.

Nobody would ever have written that about my husband.

The important thing is that I bring a level of honesty to everything I say, because when you work Monday through Friday, the idea that you've got this entirely free weekend to just be with your kids and orientate your whole, whole world around your children

It's just not a reality.

I have errands to run.

I have things to do.

And because we're in a social media culture that says you have to arrange every payday and count every macro and decide what your kids can and can't eat and make sure that they're constantly entertained.

It's impossible.

We're setting women up for a failure and we're holding women to impossible standards.

So what I meant when I said I was a three hour mom is that I probably spend like three hours with my kids doing the things that they want to do.

Entertaining them, being down on the floor and playing with them.

Then I have other things to do.

And that's just the truth.

It's just a reality.

And I think a lot of parents feel exactly the same, that you're depleted after a week at work.

And actually, you only have a couple of hours.

But isn't that good enough?

I think it is.

What do you think of that?

So much to say about that.

I don't know where to begin.

Back when I wrote my first book, and that was 25 years ago.

You can't even believe how many of these things

Of course, we didn't have social media, but it was all print.

But the amount of stuff that I read, like that from um working, hardcore working mothers who basically wanted to make the argument that you know uh, good enough, good enough mothering, just give them a box of cereal.

They'll be fine for dinner if you're too tired to cook, that kind of thing.

Um, I have a theory that this over-parenting craze of the last what do you think?

That is 15 years came about as a result, sort of after women had started mothers excuse me, had started going into the work en masse.

And finding out for themselves that wow okay, this doesn't work well with especially with littles but full-time with motherhood, with young children.

And they had to cut corners.

And so...

My argument's always been that those are two full-time jobs in the same way.

You can't be a doctor and a lawyer simultaneously.

Nobody would suggest you do that.

It's no different from full-time motherhood and whatever she's doing or people are doing that are full-time.

They clash.

They inherently clash.

And something's got to give and you have to make choices.

So...

There's a couple different elements to that.

On the one hand, I want to say you know, when you are home full time, let's say with your children, It is true that you would only spend a couple of hours, as she puts it down on the floor, with them doing something that they want to do really intensely.

It's not like stay-at-home moms are any different from her in that regard.

The difference is that the rest of the hours of the day you are physically present and available.

So, as an at-home mom, you're not supposed to be on the floor 12 hours a day engaged with your child, as if they're the center of the universe.

That's not motherhood.

But It got skewed when this transformation happened, when moms were trying to mother with leftover time and feeling intense about it like oh my gosh, I haven't been here all day, so I have to really make this one or two hours count.

And then they came up with a conclusion about, well, it's not supposed to be this way.

Let's just say screw that.

Yeah.

But that's a misreading of really what it.

It's not that you can be absent 10 hours and then come home for two hours and be intense.

It's when you're there.

And you are present.

There's so much going on that is outside of the one on one care.

I don't know if I'm making this very clear.

It seems like what Emma would say is she's making it work.

She's doing three hours and the kids are at least.

Yeah, I mean.

Well, what do you think is happening to kids that are getting three hours with mom over a weekend?

Well, three hours on a Saturday and three hours on a Sunday.

Well, it's more about what's happening the rest of the time.

I mean, those three hours might be great, but what's happening the rest of the hours of the week?

You can't fill in for an absence immediately.

With a couple of hours a week with small children, it just doesn't work that way.

That whole quality time thing is bogus.

That's not real.

Children need tons and tons and tons of quantity time, not quality time.

It's just not something you can just do in leftover time.

I don't know how else to say it.

Why do you think Emma believes that you can then?

Because she needs to.

Otherwise, her life wouldn't work if she actually entertained something else.

I don't know her, and I don't know how many children she has, and I don't know how young they are.

Oh, you said four, right.

Twelve, eight, and two four-year-olds.

Okay.

But it doesn't sound like this is a new... revelation to her.

It seems like this is her approach to... This has been her approach to parenting for a while.

She's been the CEO of Skims.

Oh, sure.

There's people who do it all the time.

She's got a lot of daycare help, a lot of handler... Right.

Childcare assistance.

But, for example, if we were to present to I don't want to talk about her per se, but just somebody like that, present to her information about the early years like you spent several hours with Erica Komisar talking about what goes on in the early years and attachment and all of that a person who has a different philosophy about it will not be able to take that information in.

Because in order to do that, you'd have to completely rearrange your life and look at it.

What you're suggesting here is that, in order for this kind of life to work, where there's only three hours with kids, there are some unseen but very powerful attachment costs that are going to happen to the kids.

A hundred percent.

There's damage that's being done, but it's just not visible.

But the damage that would be done if you had to leave work would be immediately visible.

Say that last second one, the damage if you were.

If you had to leave work.

So if you had to, there are no solutions, there's only trade-offs.

You're right.

And the trade-off that you have to make here is in order for me to work as much as I want to work.

Yes.

The kids don't get to see me, but they're fine, is the assumption.

Erica's work is saying, no, they're not, and this isn't good for them.

But that price gets pushed down the line.

You know, the attachment issues only show up when they're trying to date in their 20s and 30s.

There you go.

That's it.

However, the alternative, the other trade-off, which would be I need to leave work that's paid immediately.

Yes.

That gets paid right now.

Yep.

So it's...

I mean, we're not even allowed to talk about this.

Let's be honest.

So I mean, not only do we not address it until years later, when they're in their own relationship, we don't even talk about the early years.

We don't talk about daycare being bad, for example.

I keep on putting my phone in.

It's fine.

So anyway, I don't know how we got on to her, what I said per se.

You were just talking about this cultural pressure on women to produce in the same way as men do.

What does the cultural pressure on women to produce in the same way as men do to women?

Yeah.

I don't think at the beginning it feels necessarily negative.

I think when men and women are young, their lives do look remarkably similar.

You go to school.

You get a job.

You're working.

You're not married with kids yet.

So you kind of do look interchangeable, right?

You're doing the same things.

And everybody's fine.

My argument is that it's really not until you start to either think about children, or then really when you have them, that our differences become glaring between women and men.

So, for example, when a woman goes through all of that physically in pregnancy being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding and being at home in those early months or years nurturing.

I mean, when she has a baby, her first inclination is not to financially provide for the baby.

Your first inclination as a woman is to take care of him or her and to nurture him or her.

That is natural to you.

Your desire to work for pay, at least in that moment, for those, let's just say months, ramps down.

Generally speaking, when a man becomes a father, his desire to provide ramps up.

And my theory about that is is really that I feel like because there's such a difference in men and women as mothers and fathers in those early years, it's so obvious and natural that a baby needs his mother because you're physically attached and there's so much that she's doing physically.

And I feel like a father is sort of.

He's there more to support her and And to get things done so that she can be with her baby.

But he doesn't really feel needed in the same way.

And so his response to oh my gosh, now I have a baby.

Is immediately to ramp up his desire to provide.

That's my theory about it.

So when you have a child, it really just makes our differences – and they just continue.

Like, it just continues.

There's so many things that go on after the baby comes, where marriages start to strain because they are operating in – sameness mode, equality mode 50-50, tit for tat.

You do this, I do this.

And it's a shit show, honestly.

It really is.

You cannot go into marriage with that mentality or you're going to be really unhappy.

And so anyway, going back to your question, is I just feel like, And because those differences between us don't show up until later I think women don't realize until later how much they've been misled and how much it is hurting them, until they're in the throes of it.

What are you learning about breadwinning mums?

This is a really difficult subject for people to talk about.

Again, going back to, what we're saying is that we're supposed to be the same, so there shouldn't be any difference.

But the truth of the matter is...

For most women and not all.

There are some women who are happy and fine in living a more traditional man's life for life.

But for most women it has been my experience doing this for so many years that eventually, no matter how happy they may be in their career at first or, you know, being independent, earning money whatever, if they're going to be a wife and mother and if you're not, that might be a separate conversation ultimately that pressure to produce becomes very taxing once you've become a wife and mother, especially a mother, really a mother And the more and more you are the primary breadwinner and oftentimes this happens not necessarily consciously, but as the relationship grows and if you are becoming the primary provider or the main provider and I mean if there's a real gap here, especially if you have a stay-at-home dad, let's say that's almost a.

An extreme version of that.

They become resentful.

And it's not their fault.

It's not natural for them to be doing both of those things, in my opinion, simultaneously unscathed.

Meaning you can, but you're wearing yourself into the ground.

This is why we have the mental health crisis we do.

This is why we're having marriages strained as we do, because you're asking them to do too much.

You cannot do both of these things simultaneously without breaking down, because they're not meant to be done simultaneously.

But the only way you could understand that is if you acknowledge the incredible amount of work that goes into raising a baby to become a healthy adult.

If you dismiss that or think that's just something you can do on the side, this isn't going to register for you.

And that goes back to the whole career at the center and thinking you can just these things can orbit around it and it just, it just doesn't work that way.

A man who's providing is in the main role.

He's not going to be taxed by that, he's going to be emboldened by that.

He wants to do that.

He's a provider and a protector.

It's in his dna and it's unique to him and it's special for him.

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You've got a line.

Men want their wives happy and if they believe she wants to provide, they instinctively step back.

After all, if she's bringing in enough, why work harder or work more?

So I truly believe that men need an incentive to work hard.

They need something to work toward, not just work for work's sake, but to work toward something, a reward, accolades you know to produce, to be useful.

And you know, when you have an entire generation of women saying you know, I can have the babies, raise them, and I can take care of them financially too.

Where are they going to go?

What's going to happen to men?

I mean, it's happening now.

They're pulling back.

They're pulling back because they're saying, well, I guess nobody needs me, so...

It would be a lovely world if we could say well, they should just do it for themselves, the sake of themselves.

But I just don't think men do that.

I think they need incentive.

And the greatest incentive of all has always been providing for a family.

And I think it's just been disastrous for them honestly that they've been told we don't need that anymore.

Yeah, there's some interesting paradoxes here that deadbeat dads, fathers that don't contribute much, almost universally, even by feminists, seen as not good.

It would be better if you were contributing more, especially financially, and making it easier on the wife.

But also it's put forward that women shouldn't need to rely on their male partner and that they shouldn't really be looking for their financial stability that much at all, because I have my thing going on.

And you can be a stay-at-home dad.

And similarly... there's a lot of complaints around the lack of maternity leave in the U S which I think is fucking barbaric.

Like it's insane.

And also that your career is the most important thing that you'll ever do in your life.

And that if you are not working as a mom, I have a friend who, um, Had a bunch of kids.

Then her and her husband stopped.

And she was working while they had the first ones.

And then the most recent one, she decided to be a stay-at-home mom.

And she went to a play date with her three-year-old, the newest one, and a bunch of other moms.

And they were all working moms.

And one of the moms turned to her and she said, you know what?

I really wish that I'd known you while you were working, you know? while you had a lot going on.

And she said it felt like she's never felt that hurt by another comment from someone.

So I'm glad you brought that up, because that, I mean, you've really hit a nugget there of what makes so many women today feel that they can't succumb to their inherent desire to just be a mom.

And I say just on purpose, because in their minds, it's just being a mom.

And I've kind of been here all... To not need to be anything more than another.

Yes.

And I've been like, this is the whole thing.

This is it.

This is why we're on the planet.

This is to build relationships, build a family.

There is work that goes into this.

It doesn't.

Kids don't just come about while you go do your thing.

You know it's, it's work, and because it's not work that is paid We, as we are today, as a country that is materialistic individualistic, all about stuff status, we don't value it anymore.

We don't value anything that doesn't have a nice giant paycheck associated with it.

It doesn't generate economic return.

And this is new.

I mean, really, this is new.

Like, this is new.

I don't know.

I wouldn't say...

I want to say quarter of a century.

I've been writing about this for about 25 years.

And it's been interesting to see where things were with this subject then and now.

It's just gotten worse and worse and worse in terms of our values and this materialism that we live in today.

And it's so twisted that when you start with that base of money money money status career, whatever you're never going to be successful in your professional life and in your personal life and in your relationships, because your focus is on the wrong thing.

I mean, this is true for men and women, by the way.

Your position here, it's probably worth restating it if it's not obvious.

What you're saying is that your family life will be more important and more rewarding to you than your professional life.

Because if you don't have that frame, or if you're unaware of that frame, none of this makes sense.

Exactly.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

The only other caveat here which we need to get onto at some point is well, there are material constraints.

I need to have food on the table.

I need to have a roof over my head.

So it's not just I can live my life by my values exclusively.

There are also genuine material... Yeah, exactly.

Right.

We got to talk about things around it that will... But your point here is...

Start with that base.

Correct.

Start with that value at the nucleus.

In your experience, how many women have you worked with?

I don't know.

I mean, I've been coaching for about five years.

And then the women I heard from before that were all from my book.

So I don't... Thousands, tens of thousands?

Not one-on-one with thousands, but I've heard from thousands over the years, for sure.

Yeah.

In your experience...

How true is it that women realized that their career was the most important thing and that the family thing didn't really matter that much?

Zero.

I mean, there's a selection effect.

They're coming to you for a reason, right?

The sort of things that you're writing about the independent lean-in ladies are maybe not going to gravitate to your content.

True, true.

Look, nobody is telling women, and I get in trouble all the time for this.

I've never, and nobody that's ever been on this show, has told women to have kids that they don't want to have.

No one that doesn't want to have kids should have kids.

In fact, I'm actively opposed to women who don't want to have kids having kids.

I think it's a horrible idea.

I think it's a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible idea.

However...

Given that most women end up having kids in the end.

86% by the time the end of their maternal.

But don't forget that women who get to the end of their biological clock, they hit menopause and can't have kids.

But didn't have kids.

Yes.

80% of them didn't intend to be childless.

Four out of five.

Four out of five women who don't have children after menopause didn't intend...

Which shows you how small.

Correct.

So 10% of women can't.

Right.

Very unfortunate.

Lots and lots of pain associated with that biologically.

Around about 10% of women end up realizing that they didn't want to, don't want to.

That is a group as well.

80% of women who don't have kids...

Did not do that by choice.

Didn't intend to be childless.

They're not childless by choice.

Correct.

Yes.

Yeah.

And... Listen, instinct is strong.

We are...

I mean, we are governed by our instincts.

We don't like to talk about it that way, because we want to set up a social system the way we want it to be.

But it's going against what our desires are.

And to me, one of my lines is that societal progress does not undo biological leanings.

I mean, we are what we are.

We have to work with... I say move with the biological tide, not against it.

The more you move with it, the smoother your life will be.

Every time you're trying to move against it, you're fighting.

You know, I don't want it to be this way.

I don't want it to be this way.

It shouldn't be this way.

And then you're just miserable all the time.

Do you think Mothers are denigrated in modern society?

Are women punished socially for wanting traditional lives?

I don't know if I'd say punished.

I just think that they feel... that that's the wrong choice to make.

That's what I think that they just cannot shout it from the rooftops, cannot openly talk about it or plan for it.

They have to sort of do this.

You don't think women are seen as second-class citizens when they become mothers versus when they stay working?

To me it doesn't seem like there's that much.

The pedestalization of mothers seems to come from a counterculture standpoint or a trad wife conservative talking point, like some Christian white picket fence thing.

To me, I don't see that much pro-motherhood...

Oh, no.

Yes.

No, I agree with that.

The Emma Greed lady was on Oprah and she did two million plays a couple of weeks ago.

If you're asking me whether the non-motherhood women I don't know how you want to define it gets more play in society.

Well, yeah, that's like 90-10.

But that's mostly because the women, who are wives and mothers, and even happy doing it, are quietly living their lives.

They're not sitting here.

Right.

So you're not going to hear from them.

There's millions of them.

It's just they're not represented, because the people who are represented in the media not so much alternative media, but all these years in mainstream media are the minority of women for whom family is not the focus.

That's really important to understand because.

Prior to YouTube and social media and all of that, all of the information was coming from this small group of women who do not represent the average woman.

And that's why it's skewed and makes the masses of women feel like there's something wrong with them, when in fact they're the norm and those women you're hearing from are not.

But they're the most influential and the loudest.

Exactly.

You say who you marry and how that marriage fares will have more of an effect on your happiness and well-being than anything else that you do.

Do you think women are aware of this?

No.

I don't.

Where would they hear it?

Who's saying it to them?

I mean, you're not allowed to talk about it.

Really, when would they hear it?

If their parents aren't passing that on.

Seriously, if their parents are not passing that on, Or some family member.

They're not going to hear it in the media.

They're not going to hear it at school.

They're not going to hear it on the, where would you hear it?

Well the Disney movies wouldn't be pushing that kind of a meme as much as it would have done in the 90s, maybe the 2000s.

I mean, look, the reality is you can change your career.

You can change a job.

People do it all the time.

You can shift your interests and all of that.

But who you marry if you have children with them.

You are tied with them until you die, if you have children.

Now, obviously, there's divorce.

But, A, who wants to promote that?

That's not really, you know... what anybody wants to do.

And B, you've created a family.

And so you are linked.

So it has more impact on what direction your life takes than a career choice.

Because again, you can change a career.

You can't just change out a husband or a wife.

I mean, people try all the time. but doesn't really work very well.

Second marriages are notoriously more flimsy than first, third even more so, fourth even more.

I mean, just go down the line.

It's not really an answer for most people.

So we need to give it, in my opinion, the weight that it deserves and the attention that it deserves.

And we're so afraid to talk about it.

And that says so much about where we are today and what we value that we can't even openly talk about what's great about marriage.

If it's the most important decision that someone's going to make.

If they want to make it.

I'm not telling you you have to make it.

If you don't want to get married, don't get married.

But most people do.

Most people do get married.

Eventually.

If it's as important as it is for the people who want to do it, isn't that strong evidence against rushing into a marriage?

No.

I would say well, I don't think anybody should rush into marriage, for sure.

But I would say it's an argument for early education about marriage and early education about Gosh.

There's so much education that young people don't get when it comes to the subject because again, we're not allowed to talk about it.

Take the fertility crisis.

We're not allowed to talk about the fact that even- You're among friends here.

That you have a biological clock.

I mean, why should I not talk about that?

It's-

I can't change it.

I didn't make it.

It just is, right?

So let's work with it.

Let's create a life that works with what is, not with what we wish could be.

And so that's a taboo subject to say that.

You can't tell that to women.

So okay well, the reality is a 40-year-old man can marry a 30 year old woman and still have a family.

And it's not going to be the same if a woman's 40 and looking for a husband.

And let's talk about that.

Even though it's painful to talk about or whatever.

What does dating with purpose look like for modern women?

How do you advise women to date well?

You know, things have gotten so bad in that department, like so much so, over the last 10 or 15 years really 10 years that I'm almost to the point where I'm like just get it out on the table in the first three dates.

Get what on the table?

You know, I have this theory that you just you weed out the people who aren't on the same page as you when you just get it on the table.

What does that look like?

For example.

OK.

We're in a date.

OK.

I mean, the first date.

No.

First date is just who are you?

Hello.

Where are you from?

What do you like?

OK.

It's our third date.

Perfect.

Perfect. presumably if you're on a third date with someone, you are getting into deeper conversations than on the first date.

Just by nature of you're talking more, so more things are going to come up.

You're going to talk about your background, presumably.

And you're going to talk about your history and what you want, I think, I guess, I did.

And naturally in the conversation you're going to kind of learn whether or not the person is family-focused or career-focused, or wanting something temporary or wanting something permanent.

I feel like by the third date you would know that.

Do you disagree?

No.

And so why...

It's just so much pretending going on.

What would you ask?

So much fear.

Imagine for a second that we're on the date.

Let's role play this.

And you're going to ask me some of the questions that you think are important for women to ask.

You didn't prepare me for this, Chris.

Look, you've told enough women how to do it.

Put your cards on the table.

I mean, tell me about your.

You know, if it didn't come up naturally, tell me about your childhood.

Tell me about your parents.

Are your parents married?

Let's have the conversation.

Are your parents married?

Why is that important?

Because it's going to skew how you think about marriage, probably.

Okay.

Do you have a good impression of it?

Do you have a bad impression of it?

All right.

What else?

Um, And then about your work, tell me about your work.

Where are you with things?

I mean, this sounds more like a business meeting, but it would be more natural than that.

You'd be talking about what you like and what you do for work.

And that would tell me where you are in the scheme of things.

And if you asked me, depending on where I was, that would tell you a.

Let's see, we go all the way back to my 20s.

I'll just tell you with my husband, I was a teacher.

And so he knew right away that I love children.

He knew that, well, I was married before.

So there's a great example of just something that comes up naturally.

So, oh, well, what happened?

Well...

And then you get into different values and priorities, which is what happened with my first marriage.

And he wanted different things.

Oh, well, then what do you want?

Well, I want to have children.

I want to be home with them.

That ding ding ding ding, ding ding is going to tell the guy well OK, she wants to be home with him.

I guess we're going to live on a one income family if I stick with this girl.

What's wrong with that?

I mean, it just gets it out, you know, and if you don't want it.

So you should be asking the next person.

You should be asking things like, do you want kids?

How many?

Yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be so directed.

Like I said, it would come up naturally, like like I just explained.

And he knew just from what I said without having to say, do you want that?

You know.

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I think you're right.

I think that being intentional with dating is one of the most important things, because I think about basically the way that the human attachment system works like not anxious avoidant, secure but the human romantic attachment system is basically one big thing psychedelic trip that hopes that you can attach yourself to this person sufficiently quickly while you're in the drug state before you get to the my brain's come back online state.

And I wonder how many people started hanging out with this person and you know they wouldn't nice and hot and I kind of got a bit obsessed with them.

They used to text me all the time and Then, you know, we just started hanging out a bit more.

And we didn't really move in, but we started staying over at each other's houses a bit.

And then we decided, well, we might as well move in.

And that was, you know, like nine months or something.

And then we got a golden retriever because we thought for Christmas he'd get me a golden retriever.

I've always wanted a golden retriever.

And then, yeah, we just sort of stayed together and things kind of became comfortable.

And, you know, we settled into it.

And then...

We just thought, well, like you get engaged.

That's what people do.

You get engaged.

And then we, you know, the wedding came along and things were okay.

And then we had the first kid.

And before you know it, you've fallen backward into a relationship and a cohabiting situation and a dog and an engagement and a marriage and kids that at no point you actually chose.

100%.

You didn't choose this thing.

This person was around you.

They were in your proximity while you didn't have any serotonin in your brain.

That's exactly right.

And that is why I have been against cohabitation from day one.

And I was saying it in a different way because people It wasn't from a religious perspective or a sex perspective.

It was...

It doesn't serve you well to do that for exactly the reason that you described.

People often slide into marriage as a result of everything you just described, as opposed to making a conscious, well-thought-out decision in advance.

This is who I want to marry.

And you need objectivity for that.

You need separation.

You need to go home to your own space.

But you advise people to do instead.

Not live together.

Date and live on their own.

No.

I mean, once they're engaged, that's fine.

Once you've made, it's about making the decision.

You make the decision from a distance, from living in your own space.

Will you marry me?

Yes.

And then go about your business.

But if you do it before, it's like you said, it's all skewed because, well, you're here.

We're in it now.

Yeah.

You're LARPing as a married couple without having actually got the wedding done, which makes you think that the wedding becomes more of a formality than a decision.

Yes.

It's just a natural progression.

We're already kind of married, right?

We're already doing it.

I mean, how many people have gone, well, you know, we're already kind of doing it.

I've never even thought about it that way.

The cohabitation effect, which you're probably familiar with, And that gets explained away by a variety of different reasons.

But I've never thought about it as keeping you and your partner separate until you make the decision to be engaged.

Because what lots of people would say is I'm not going to marry someone that I don't know if I can live with them.

But the difference is you can call off an engagement way easier than you can call off a marriage.

And if you're saying the decision that you make is actually the engagement one, Once you're on that set of train tracks the marriage sort of comes along for the ride.

But it is a reversible decision.

Significantly more reversible than getting the fucking family together and all of the things.

And then you've done this big ceremony and blah, blah, blah.

If you say you shouldn't make the decision of the engagement, you shouldn't make the proposal until you're sure that this is a good thing to do.

And the best way to be sure is to have most of your faculties and logic intact, which means that keeping a little bit of distance is a good idea.

And I'm sure that people are going to spend weeks together, traveling and going on holiday and staying together and stuff.

But permanent locked in living together kind of causes you to fall backwards into marriage without thinking about it, because it's a natural progression.

But then you have still this window of a testing ground of, okay, can we live together?

Like can we lock this in from uh engagement up until marriage?

That means you're not getting uh slipstreamed, you're not secretly getting the marriage thing pushed along, but it does allow you to go, oh fucking hell, like i didn't realize that this was going to be such a big deal, and maybe this is something you mean during that engagement period.

Yes, exactly.

Um, I wonder what the stats are on, if there are any stats on well, maybe that's what you're looking at.

If you called off the engagement, is that what you want to know?

Yeah.

Once you're engaged and living together, you mean?

Yeah, my point is just, yeah, engaged and living together.

If you don't live together until you're engaged.

It means that you're not forced to get engaged because you're living together.

Right.

And if you live together during the engagement, it still is a moderately reversible door.

If you go fuck, this does not work.

Because most people's, and mine, I'm unmarried, right?

My concern would be what you're telling me that I'm going to not just get engaged but get married to this person without knowing if we could live together.

Yeah.

That seems like a large risk.

What if our lifestyles are incompatible?

What if we... Give me an example.

Because, you know, there were eons when people didn't live together until they got married, right?

More so than there were people who did.

And they stayed married more than we do today.

It's true.

They did.

I'm not convinced that that's necessarily because of this reason.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

But I'm saying my question would be, what do you think they did?

Do you think it was horrible?

What do you imagine it would be like if you moved in after you were married, as opposed to living together?

What are the kinds of things...

Because isn't marriage requiring you to figure that out anyway for the rest of your life?

To a degree, it does.

I think what people have and I'm probably speaking for an entire generation of young men and women who have an ambient fear around there being some fundamental incompatibility that I have with my partner, which is only revealed once we live together

I don't think that's unreasonable to think that it might be the case that there might be something in there.

But I understand what you mean, which is, if you've spent enough time together, you've stayed over at each other's houses, you've spent weeks and maybe even months traveling together and doing things and stuff like that.

You know what their sleep pattern is.

Yeah.

So what do you mean by like, what are the things you learn?

Like, you mean dishes?

I mean, stupid things?

Yeah, your level of tolerance for being together for very extended, very compacted periods of time.

I mean, how many marriages did we see break up during COVID?

Because people were spending an amount of time together that they hadn't been exposed to previously.

And I have to assume that maybe the same thing might be true if someone had never lived with their partner.

Do you think there's a person with whom that wouldn't happen if you were together all the time?

That you would love to be with 24-7?

Do you think there's a person that would not be an issue?

It's a shame that I'm not gay because I've got a couple of friends that I'd happily do that with.

I've hung out with a lot of friends for a long time without any distraction and it's been fucking sick.

It's just that the penis thing gets to me.

You know what I mean?

I'm saying in other words, you said you want to know whether or not you could live with the person in advance.

The level of compatibility.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to understand why that wouldn't have been ironed out, with everything you described staying over each other's houses.

You're right.

I think it's.

If it's about being with them all the time because it's so much space together well, that's going to be the case with whoever you marry, right.

So is there a person... whom you could spend that much time with and it wouldn't matter at all?

Or is that just human nature to rub up against each other?

It's trying to avoid some of the huge issues.

Anyway, just this cohabitation effect.

Divorce rate for people who cohabited before marriage, 31.4%.

Divorce rate for people who did not cohabitate before marriage...

25.9%.

Earlier research often found premarital cohabitation associated with roughly 20 to 50 higher divorce risk, depending on controls and demographics.

The sliding versus deciding, that's exactly what you're talking about.

So the unclear commitment is a really – inertia is the same thing.

Yeah.

Unclear commitment is a really interesting one, which is – one of the explanations for the cohabitation effect is that what both partners are doing is saying you're good enough for right now, you're good enough for us to live together, but you're not good enough for me to get engaged to at the moment.

So it is a an, it's an amount of commitment, but it's not the commitment right that everybody's looking for.

Um, But obviously there's a big one of the criticisms of the cohabitation effect is that it's a selection effect.

Like people who don't live together before they get married, includes a whole host of very religious communities.

Yes, that's true, much more stringent rules around divorce.

They've got a culture that supports marriage in a different sort of a way.

The kinds of people who wouldn't live together before also are maybe likely to be virgins or less socio-sexual.

There is something about that kind of person.

But I also think that it's too big of a difference between 20 and 50 increases in divorce because of cohabitation.

There has to be something about cohabiting which causes that impact.

And, of course, the studies have been done, as you I mean, um the sliding versus deciding is not small.

That's a huge piece of it.

I mean, you, I've never heard that before.

It's such a cool.

You slide into it because you're already there.

And the reasons why you shack up, let's say, are different from the reasons why you get down on one knee and ask someone to marry you for the rest of your life.

Those are two different decisions completely.

They don't really have anything in common.

So you started out with this sort of flimsy thing and then you can't really figure out if this is the one, because you're already doing it.

And that's where the sliding comes in.

And that's the inertia thing too.

It's just momentum.

We've already started to, you know, we're paying for the rent together.

And maybe they bought a house.

Don't ever buy a house with somebody you're not married to.

No, don't do anything financial that binds you if you're not married.

It's a really dumb idea.

I don't know how else to say that.

Okay, so women dating well, dating with purpose.

Dating with purpose or don't date at all.

I mean, just date and get it out on the table and you will weed out.

It's selective.

If they don't want it, no hard feelings.

Bye.

That's fine.

Are you familiar with the idea of a shit test?

Do you know what that is?

From women to... Pickup artistry.

Yeah, it was... Yes, the women to the men.

Exactly.

Shit test their men.

Yeah, exactly.

To see if they were strong enough.

Push their buttons.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

I had an equivalent when uh, i was dating, which was i would send weird psychology articles to the girl that i was talking to to see what her reaction, what she would respond with.

I'm like look, this is kind of important to me.

Yeah, my work is something that i care about and i think is interesting, and Marriage is basically one big, fucking long podcast to huge conversation that lasts for 20000 or 30000 hours.

And I'm still having it.

It's important to me and relationship.

My relationships have failed in the past because I haven't had much or enough interest in that to talk about with my partner.

And that means. it's really important that we can get on the same page.

So I would almost over signal weird psychology articles upfront, in the same way as you're saying get it all out on the table.

I think that's great.

Like, obviously there is an upper bound of how weird you should be.

You can be too weird, right?

Maybe don't talk about your farting problem and your athlete's fart on the first date.

However, I do think you know being you relatively unapologetically you, with the intentions that you have and the things that you're interested in, is good to get out early.

Especially before you've had sex and before you've gone too far down the line.

What do you have to lose?

Send the Psychology Today articles before you had sex.

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Okay, so what do you think about timing?

Have you talked to women about how long you should date before engagement, be engaged before marriage, marriage before kids?

Is that something that you consider?

I mean, I get asked about it and I don't have any hard line about it.

I think that it I think it can be different for different people.

And I think the circumstances matter, and how old you were when you met and what you're doing and what your background was like and how you are as a person.

So I don't think there's a hard line there.

For example, I knew my first husband for five years before we married and we were married four years and divorced.

No kids.

I married my husband current husband, only husband that I think of when I think of husband a year after I met him.

So he asked me six months after we met.

Wow.

Now, I was 29 and he was 33.

Wow.

So I do think it speeds up insofar as you, it's just.

But there were a lot of circumstances there that to somebody else that might sound fast, but actually and it was, but the circumstances were in place that made it make sense.

How long was kids after?

And because I'd been with five years sorry, with the other one.

Obviously I had a thing that well, that didn't work either.

So in my mind, I'm like, well, I guess.

How long were kids after the marriage?

I was married at 30, had a daughter at 32 and a son at 35.

Yep.

Cool.

Okay.

All right.

So you've got this situation where perhaps a woman is going to have to go to their husband and say I wanna stay home.

I wanna stay at home.

I wonder how many men, I think this is probably increasingly true.

I wonder how many men are going to feel indignant or not seen in the fact that the lean in quite masculine energy woman that they got into a relationship with, who maybe they were trying to encourage into her softness and her femininity for a long time and battle against and perhaps subdued some of the desires that they had around well, you know she's on a career thing and i guess i not.

That's not the kind of life that i'm gonna have.

So they've kind of got into this expectation and maybe even tried to suggest and and encourage that softness and that femininity to come through, only for them to find out after kids that they were right, but early.

I haven't had that exact same scenario that you just described come up in coaching anyway, but because usually it's From the woman's side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It might not be something that they would freely admit.

No, but it's... I was a lean in boss lady type energy for a long time.

And he actually asked me to do this a while ago.

And Totally.

And I actually wrote a book called The Alpha Female's Guide to Men in Marriage.

I don't know if you saw that.

And that's all about how the type A masculinized, hard-charging woman can become softer.

It's a whole book about how to become soft.

Fascinating.

What are the key takeaways from that?

Gosh.

I'm aware it's an entire book to be summarized, but...

That was 2017, Chris.

That was so long ago.

No, the gist of it is there's just a lot of little examples there of ways to...

Soften your approach and delivery so that it's received better.

And to understand that all those skills that you mastered and used to be successful at work which absolutely works

In public.

Really well in the marketplace.

Yeah. are a complete disaster at home.

The skills that you have mastered are the exact opposite skills of what you need to make this work.

And that is why so many, I think- Wow, you really write unpopular books.

I really do.

I mean, they sell, but like they're culturally horrendous.

They're horrendous.

You're actually quite toxic.

Yeah.

I really am.

It's sort of like, what's wrong with me?

You know, like I, you know it's Most of what I write comes from either personal experience or things that I've seen that either a lot of writers are writing what they're working through themselves, you know.

So there's that piece.

Research is research.

And then also just knowing things and you can't unknow them and you hear the lies that are spread and you just can't shut up about it.

I mean, that's basically it. my writing career.

And so I'm like, that's not true.

And I want to be helpful to people who are busy living their lives, doing their thing.

And unless you do this research, you really don't know that what you're being fed is crap.

It bugs the hell out of me.

So that's my motivation.

But anyway, yeah.

So that book is basically saying look, everything you've been taught to do works great in the marketplace.

But if you want to be successful in your love life, you need to develop a whole different set of skills, because that's not going to work.

Because if you've married a masculine, you know, just a man.

Mm-hmm.

You're going to, you know, he doesn't want that.

So it's going to, and you don't really, you need the yin and the yang.

You need the masculine.

There's a line in your new one.

When women think and behave like a man, conflict in a relationship is inevitable.

Yeah.

Men and women.

The biggest distinction I feel like between them when it comes to communicating is that there needs to be receptivity on the part of the woman.

That I think is lacking when they're natural.

And I can speak from personal experience with this.

If you're a natural arguer, which clearly I am, that's what I do with my work.

So this really did come from my own space.

I always want to say the argument, the other side, you know, and it bugs the hell out of my husband.

But sometimes that's not necessary or needed in that space.

Disagreeability is actually positively correlated with earning professionally.

Correct.

Because it allows you to advocate.

I need a pay rise.

I deserve a pay rise.

That interview with Jordan Peterson.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Four times I must have seen it.

Just brilliant.

One of my favorite interviews of all time.

And I loved it when he said, you know, well, you're disagreeable.

It's working great for you here.

That was a good Jordan.

That was a great Jordan.

I mean, but you take that woman in that space, the way she was behaving, think about everything she was doing in that moment and take her home in her relationship and how that would go over.

You know it just wouldn't um, so it's, it's hard.

You just, you know women used to be a lot more naturally feminine and they were encouraged to be and they were more receptive and they were softer and they dressed like a woman and all of that's changed and i'm just saying you know it wouldn't hurt to bring a little bit of that back if you want to have peace in your relationship.

Jared, can you uh quickly youtube um?

Whitney Cummings, Chris Williamson A Challenge.

And it should be a short video.

It should be a short.

It did like a gorillion plays.

But Whitney basically explains high-powered comedian lady, lead in, Hollywood, exec, lots of things.

And had got... deeper into her thirties and was still dating.

So had maybe developed some of that.

You know professional uh, pushiness and um yeah, that top left 54 mil, that one.

Yep.

I dated a professional athlete, great at what he does.

There's not a lot of room for emotion to be involved.

It's either true or it's not true, or you're going to get your neck broken.

He could date whoever he wanted or sleep with whoever he wanted.

And we were like arguing about something.

And I was like well, why would you date me if like, I'm the person you date, if you want like a challenge?

And he just went, why would any man want a challenge in their relationship?

In that moment was like, oh, my God, I thought it was like hot to you.

I thought it was like what guys wanted.

I thought it was like feisty.

Like, I apologize.

Well, especially if you're dating somebody that is high performing in any realm, has goals.

If you're working that hard in the office, you really want to come home and be like right, there's that to do list done.

I wonder what fires I need to fight when I step through the front door as well.

That's the alpha book that I wrote.

That's exactly it in a nutshell.

Like who wants that?

That's not going to work.

And so there's a lot of this going on in relationships because of this.

What's the truth about the financial requirements for raising a kid?

Oh, my.

Well, it's really not that expensive in the early years, for one thing.

You just need diapers and formula, right?

Over the years, if you're looking at the whole 18 years.

There's a financial piece to it, for sure, but it's also

Not mandatory to do in a certain fashion.

In other words, you don't need to have a lot of money to have children.

You need to want to have a family and utilize the monies that you have to make that work.

So it's not like, in other words, don't have children because I can't send them to private schools and I can't send them to college and I can't buy them all the nice things and we can't go to Disney or whatever.

You don't need all of that, even if it seems like everybody's doing that around you in order to have children.

So, like in the early years, for us There was no, We didn't live the way we did, say when they were in high school, when they were early, when they were young.

I mean, you live on less.

You know, you make those choices and you make trade-offs.

And that's worth it to you if you value family and you value having a person at home or a mom at home or whatever.

Yeah.

And it's just a no-brainer.

Like, it never occurred to me, oh, well, I can't do three vacations a year, so I shouldn't do this.

Or, oh, I have to send them to private school to be able to do it.

It just, you work with what you have.

Why do you think it's the case?

If that's true, if it's not as expensive to raise a child as people think,

It doesn't have to be.

Why do so many women and men too, but primarily women cite economic requirements and economic instability as one of the main reasons that we can't afford to have a child?

Who can have a child in this economy?

Yeah.

So I, I have a, I feel like this is the fourth time I've said this.

I have a theory that um, that social media has been extremely harmful in a lot of ways, but especially for people's perspective of what's real and what's not, and believing that, um A, if someone says it, it must be true.

B.

If everybody that you're seeing looks like they're saying this and living this way well, that's the only way to live then

This is it.

I can't do it.

When you're not exposed to that, But you have a more insular which is good insular in this sense perspective just with your own little community and your own family.

It's just been really harmful, in my opinion, to see all these lives that look like they're the norm, and it makes you feel inadequate.

And I think that plays into that, believing that...

You have to live this certain way to have children.

No, you don't.

I mean, you can do things your way.

If you can't afford that lifestyle, that doesn't mean you don't have kids.

I mean, is the argument that kids are harmed by that?

You know, that's another interesting thing.

Kids don't need all that.

It's interesting.

I wonder whether people think that kids would be more harmed by not having three vacations a year or more harmed by not having mum at home.

What do you think they would say?

That's kind of a trite example.

That's a silly example.

I don't think that even the more extreme people... No one would say that.

I don't know conversations or I don't know what it is that people think that maybe the size of the house, like certainly housing, is a big deal right.

So few people want to raise a family in an apartment.

Yeah.

They want to have a house.

They maybe want to have a little bit of garden yard to play in with the kids.

And lots and lots of people are in housing that is not built for kids.

Like, do you want to raise a family in a fucking apartment?

Really?

I mean, if you ask most people, they're going to say no, right?

But it doesn't have to be a, as they say these days, forever home either.

It can be a starter home.

I mean, starter homes are really expensive too these days.

But I mean...

I mean you can raise a kid in the first I don't know five six seven, eight years in a three-bedroom house, a two-bedroom small like 1500-square-foot house, if you had to.

I mean, it's just hard.

Sorry for interrupting.

Just think about what people are optimizing for that.

People are optimizing to be near the coffee shops and like the cute place that they go for brunch with the girls.

You go, maybe this is a period, like the kids aren't going to school.

So, if you're okay to move within the next five years or something, I mean, the market's like a fucking nightmare, at least in austin austin's you've seen austin's market jared.

It's like two or three times as many sellers as there are buyers.

It's like the craziest sex ratio in history.

Um anyway, that that's one of the things that people optimize for, that they probably wouldn't want to not, but you go.

Hey, if you move, fuck me.

If you're prepared to get 30 minutes outside of Austin, you can get a lot of house, like a shit ton of house for your money.

Exactly.

Bingo.

So again, it's just be willing to go out 30 minutes.

There's so many options that aren't entertained.

If it's not exactly what you envision or want.

So much about wanting what you want right now instead of there's a stepping stone to that.

And that a lot of that has to do with, yes, inflated expectations for sure.

Again, social media plays a role into that.

But also the longer you live without getting married and having kids going back to what we were saying before The greater your lifestyle inflation.

Oh, my gosh.

You're making it really hard on yourself, in my opinion, actually, doing it that way.

Because everything looks harder in some ways.

We've always said that's the thing you're supposed to do.

For decades you've been saying wait wait wait, do everything in your 30s, you know.

There's just this whole theory, philosophy around that.

That i don't agree with, but that's the philosophy and it's been touted for a long time now.

But again, nobody ever talked about the flip side of that, which is what we're talking about.

As you're getting used to this certain life, you Hugely yeah.

I mean, the opportunity to grow, to become accustomed to a particular type of life.

So much.

Of what we're dealing with at the moment is people getting what they want, not what they need.

And it's not what they want, it's what they think they want.

And puppeted by, and this is true for all of us, right?

Like we're memetic social creatures, like it's the way that it works.

A friend gave me a really interesting thought experiment that kind of relates to the kids might be better off having three holidays a year than having mom at home, or something like that.

Imagine that you had a situation where two mums decided that they were going to start up a solo business looking after children.

So they were going to become nannies and each mother was going to look after the other's child and pay each other the exact same amount for it.

Or the mother would stay at home and just look after their own.

In one of these.

She's a self-starting business person that is praised and has a lot going on my friend's situation.

And in the other, they're just a mom.

And it's such a cool example because it kind of shows the expectation.

Or like, if it was two kids, no one would be a full time nanny for one kid with one kid.

But to do it for two or to do it for three and you go.

Well, I can fund my childcare with me doing childcare and it's just.

I don't know.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'm just aware that I'm horribly on the outside pissing inside of this tent, but like, What sense does that make?

What sense does what you were just describing make?

Yeah, of course.

Look, I'm allowed to comment on stuff.

I'm sat in the stands throwing, hurling mud and muck at people that are trying to make this work.

I am trying to be very empathetic about it.

But it really differentiates.

I mean again, that's exactly something you would learn about somebody when you're dating them, right.

Are you doing this Because this is what you value.

In other words, basically it comes down to that is what do you value?

What do you want?

If the most important thing to you is being present in your children's life and building that relationship and being responsible for that person's character and development and all the rest.

I don't care about any money or any other things.

That's it.

That's the focus.

The person who has to have the paycheck in order to feel good is going to have a different approach to all these decisions, these family decisions that you're making with her.

And so much of it is the inertia.

It's the momentum that you've had of...

What did my friends value?

What was my lifestyle like when I was younger?

What did I use social media in order to be able to advertise online?

Like I'm not going to be able to talk about my travels anymore.

I'm not going to be able to show where we're going for trips.

I'm not going to be able to wear the outfits and go out.

There's a lot of costs in the marketplace that people are inhabiting.

Lots of costs.

There are a lot of costs.

And there are costs, and this is, I think, important.

There are a lot of costs that women pay that the men don't.

Like the guys can still six months into baby.

The guys can still go out and see their friends and go and watch the game on a weekend.

That's going to be like oh my God, this is the first time in six months that I've been able to go out for mom.

That's not going to be the same.

There are requirements and lifestyle sacrifices that women have to make that men don't.

And that Being that social media and the current currency is attention and status.

That's a big hit to what the rest of the world valued you for.

The latter being the most important piece of that, because there's so much opportunity for growth and learning about this whole piece of the world that you've turned your mind away from that.

You're going to learn by not getting a paycheck and caregiving.

Yeah, throwing yourself into this space that's so unfamiliar to you and scary at first, but the things that I hear from people who have done that is, oh my god, I mean I wouldn't have changed that.

Like you said, that you said how many people, how many women, would change their mind.

Yeah, the growth is there, but we just don't again, we don't value it and we're not allowed to talk about it.

And you don't advertise it in the same way.

No.

So all they hear are the costs.

There's this whole other piece that's missing.

I mean, there really isn't any Yeah.

And each time he climbs to the next step, he'll turn around and see if you're there.

Then he'll go back and he'll take the next step.

And he turns around to see if you're there.

And by the time it's done, you have just created a human in that little space there of trust that is going to carry them.

And those are the things that are intangible and that nobody talks about.

And you have to actually do it to see it.

And I just want people to know about it before so they understand what's really going on there.

What do you think the lessons are?

That men and women are told about the value of money versus time at home?

I don't think there's any attention paid to the value or the significance of time at home.

I think there is only focus on money.

I don't I mean, we have never been more materialistic ever in history than we are today.

And once you get on that treadmill, I guess, it's almost...

It's like autopilot.

You just don't even realize there's a whole world outside of you.

It's called life, right?

Life that doesn't, you know, chores, errands, raising children, cooking.

There's just this whole world that has nothing to do with earning money that is like life.

It's the stuff life is made of.

Somebody's got to do it, which sounds like it's a bad thing to do, but...

A somebody has to do it yes, but also somebody gets to do it, you know, and with no attention on that, I don't think that people even recognize it as theirs.

And then when they do it, they get resentful about it because they're so focused on trying to make money that all this other stuff I just described is getting in the way of their path that they're on.

And it's like that's where the resentment's coming in.

But this is actually a job in and of itself, creating a home.

Raising children, doing errands, cooking.

I mean, cooking is a subject in and of itself, because we're fast food nation now and people are overweight and they're like how did I get this way?

And it's like because no one's in the kitchen cooking anymore.

It's so daunting when you're constantly working.

No one's going to cook at the end of a 10 hour workday.

Nobody.

That's when it all started to go downhill when nobody was home to cook.

That's interesting.

The obesity, the childhood obesity, which tripled in the last 50 years, happened at the same time.

Mothers left the home en masse.

Because who do you think was cooking before when we before when we didn't have the obesity crisis?

Why was that?

People talk about chemicals and oils and that's all fine and great.

But the truth is there was a mom in a kitchen cooking.

Well, calories are king, right?

If you know what you've put into your food, regardless of the seed oils.

It's calories in, calories out.

Correct.

Yeah.

And if the kids are getting takeout on the way home.

Mm-hmm.

It's the lifestyle.

It's a lifestyle switch that has happened that has created all these other problems.

What do you think about?

There's a big debate around the double shift for women, the sort of share of housework between men and women.

Yeah.

Every question that I ask you, it seems like it pains you.

I'm sorry.

It's just sometimes you're asking me some things that I haven't actually talked about or thought about a while, but I've written about extensively.

So I just have to pull it out of my mind.

Yeah.

Full-time motherhood includes all of those things that people are now fighting about between each other the husbands and wives, or couples, about who does more or whatever.

If you have somebody at home raising children, those things that we're talking about are going to naturally be part of that lifestyle of raising children.

So for example, when I was home and my husband was working, I would do more household chores because I'm there.

I'm physically home-based and there.

So I did the grocery shopping.

I did the cooking.

He would come home and do the cleaning.

He did plenty.

He changed diapers.

He cleaned.

He did all he could do on top of his full-time job.

But at no point did I fight with him or play tit-for-tat about who's doing more because...

You didn't have to because once you've divided it up that way, it's kind of obvious.

That stuff only came into play when women started working full-time too.

And now you've got both people doing it.

And men and women don't respond to the home stuff in the same way.

So women think men are supposed to respond the way they would respond.

But again, if you come with the argument that men and women aren't the same and interchangeable, it makes perfect sense.

But to them, it's, well, what do you mean we're equal?

So I should do this and you should do this.

He's going to step over the sock maybe because he doesn't see it or he doesn't care about it.

It's not because he thinks you're supposed to pick it up.

That's not the point.

It's just he doesn't care.

And you care.

And women care more about the home because they're nesters.

They're nesters by nature, even if they work.

There's a cool study that's done that women's level of sexual arousal based on how tidy the house is.

That basically, if there's not orderliness around the house, then they can sometimes struggle to switch off.

Oh.

So that's being irritated by the sock is a perfect example of that.

I don't know how many socks it takes to turn off your horniness, but maybe not many for some women.

Maybe some women are more sock sensitive than others.

My point being that the same is not true for a man.

Probably, on average, let's say.

There's another great story I saw on Twitter.

It was so good.

A woman had asked the man to do the dishes while she was out and she came back to find that he'd grouted the shower.

He'd like re-grouted the shower.

So he'd gone in and fixed all in between all of the tiles and he'd done this seal stuff.

And he came back and was like, so happy for it.

And she was mad at him because he didn't do the dishes.

And it kind of speaks to this.

There are certain tasks and roles that aren't necessarily seen by each other.

As important.

Yes.

100% that is.

Or aren't even noticed.

How often do you think she thought about the grouting in the shower?

Never.

Or the fact that the oil in the car hadn't been changed?

No, never.

And that's a big difference between men and women.

And that's why the playing tit for tat is so bad.

And going back to what you just said about a woman not being able to overlook the sock.

Yeah.

I always tell men to like... Well, you can't do this on any kind of regular basis, I guess.

But if you were to move a wife from the home and get her in a hotel room, let's say or just I don't know somewhere else, that's not the home sexually I'm talking about.

She's going to be able to be more receptive because she doesn't have to tune out everything in her midst, which is what you were getting at.

That's interesting.

That needs to be done in the home.

She's totally in sexual mode because oh, I'm in a hotel room or oh, I'm at a party or whatever it is you're taking her to is away from that drudgery which pulls away from her sexual desire, because

You want to go get to that stuff.

Jared, how old's your kid?

Eight months.

Okay.

Well, there's your hack, dude.

If you need to pipe it a bit more.

Yeah.

Hey, darling, I've got us an evening in a hotel and a nanny.

Locally.

Sick.

Report back to me.

Well, there's an interesting bit of like old school productivity, bro advice, which is you shouldn't have your desk inside of your bedroom.

There should be a separation of work and sleep because for the exact same reason.

But what's interesting here is the stay at home mom's office is the house.

So that means hey, if you're asking me to do something that is different in energy to what I do here typically, that might be a bit hard.

Yeah, because a woman doesn't feel sexy when she's, you know, cleaning the kitchen.

That's not a sexual.

Depends what outfit you're in.

Okay.

Daycare.

What do you think about daycare?

It's a necessary evil for many people.

They think it's a necessary evil.

They've got work.

They can't be at home with their kids.

The maternity leave that everybody, I think, thinks should be given isn't there.

What do you think about daycare?

You know, daycare was originally a Head Start program and it was just initially designed for low-income families and or one-income families who literally had no choice because mom had to go to work.

When it opened up which it did over time to just anybody who wanted to use it, just because regardless of their financial circumstances, that's when it ballooned and became eventually, over time, just a way of life.

Like it's just normal.

And one of the things that's been really interesting is watching.

Even, like I told you, I started this 25 years ago when I was first writing about this.

That was at a time when the mommy wars were all raging.

And it was kind of understood that you had to defend your choice of using daycare if you were using it.

Like, people were writing about it.

Because it was instinctively understood that that was not good.

It was understood.

Fast forward 25 years and I have noticed people are talking about it like they're taking a shower, dropping off their two-year-old in daycare or one-year-old or whatever six-week-old, literally like it's nothing.

And I look at that and I see what's happened.

And this person literally has no idea that daycare is bad.

No clue.

So it's almost like you can't blame her per se, because she just doesn't know what she doesn't know.

And I truly believe that's where young moms are today.

They really have no idea.

Daycare is the last place that littles belong.

Littles belong at home with their mom.

If not with mom, with dad.

If not with dad, then grandma.

If not with grandma nanny, if not with a nanny.

A neighborhood small.

I mean, daycare is the bottom of the bottom.

And it's the reason why is it's so giant.

It's so on.

It's it's too big.

Number one.

And you have so much turnover and in and out of people coming and going that the attachment that you are trying to replace for what they need in those early years, that can only be really done with one on one person.

It can't be had in an environment like that.

It's way too stressful.

There is.

I mean, I think if people go into daycares, really go into them and see what goes on, they'd have a better understanding of what it really looks like.

But it's like you're lined up, like you're one of...

And you're just, it's a pecking order, you know, you're a part of a machine almost.

There's no.

All those needs that need to be met in the early years can't possibly be met in an institutional environment like that.

I mean, the sleep alone.

I mean, babies need sleep and they need to be on a schedule and they need quiet and they need peace and they need to be cared for in a way that is not possible to replicate in a daycare center.

Because one kid is awake and crying or making noise while another is trying to sleep.

As an example, yes.

Or 10 people are.

And how can you sleep with 10 people, you know?

Or if you're hungry, you're not necessarily going to be fed until they can get to you.

Or you start to attach yourself to somebody and then that person goes into another room and gets moved, or he or she leaves.

Usually she leaves the building altogether after you've started to develop an attachment.

And then the exhaustion, the mere exhaustion.

So all those tears.

And, by the way, just to clarify, there's a big difference between a couple of hours in an environment like that and 10 hours for a one-year-old, let's say.

And people don't delineate or talk about that.

There's a massive difference.

I mean, a baby can handle an hour or two apart, or even an environment like that temporarily, if they know that they're immediately, you know, going back to mom.

But 10 hours being left there, eight hours or whatever, is awful.

It's just bad.

I posted a couple of clips with Erica talking about daycare.

Some of the interesting sentiments that came back from moms.

Things like my kid loves going to daycare.

He can't wait.

He wants to run out of the car or he's always really happy and smiley when I drop him off at daycare.

What do you think about that?

So there are many things that occur in the drop-off pickup scenario with a mom and a baby.

I mean nine out of ten times.

When you first introduce a baby to that environment, you're going to get tears.

Actually, both people are crying usually, both mom and the baby.

And you'll hear story after story or I have anyway of story after story of moms dropping them off for the first time and hysterical all the way to work.

I mean, just crying.

It was horrible, horrible, horrible, which to me... is a signal that something's gone wrong.

This is not good.

This is not normal.

The baby's crying.

You're crying.

That's something you should pay attention to.

That's something you should push away, which is what society wants you to do is push it away.

It's okay.

He'll be fine.

And what that baby does, or child does, in trying to get his needs met and seeing that they're no longer going to be met, they just sort of stop.

And give up and they're not crying for that moment.

And so you think they're fine.

But actually they just sort of well gave up because nobody tended to their needs.

That doesn't mean they're fine.

It just means they're just quiet.

In fact, the quiet ones, sometimes you need to worry about more.

I think this was actively a lady or maybe a few ladies saying they love it.

They seem actively positive to be going there when I drop them off.

Well, that would be an older child, not a baby.

Yeah, maybe.

Like a three or four-year-old.

And by three, you're fine.

By three, you can go into preschool.

But again...

So let's say you have a three-year-old and you are having them in daycare 10 hours a day, or something which is different from preschool, which is just a couple hours in the morning, which is perfectly age appropriate for a three-year-old.

There are a lot of repercussions that are also not talked about.

That may not come in the form of tiers.

And that is the exhaustion piece because you should really still be napping at that point.

So they're really, really tired and overstimulated from this environment.

And then the child that you're receiving at the end of the day that's going to bleed over into the rest of the night, with the discipline that you're trying to instill, because at that point they're so tired.

Like I always like to.

It's just pointless to even attempt to discipline a child who is so tired he's out of his skin.

He can't even think straight.

He's like drunk.

So don't even attempt anything.

You just have to put him to bed basically.

So there's a huge piece of sleep deprivation that is also not discussed, with those early years and long care that bleeds over into the home and your ability to parent properly and well because of that exhaustion piece.

Or you have to put them to bed right away because they're so tired and then you don't see them.

Then there's that.

What's an alternative to daycare?

Some households are unable to survive on a single person's income.

Mom needs to get back to work at some point or mom wants to get back to work at some point.

Extend it as long as you possibly can before you do that and exhaust every possible means of care.

That is not group care in that way.

So that's neighbors, that's family members, that's tag teaming.

Some people tag team with their husbands.

That's another thing.

Some people can do that depending on your job situation where one's in and one's out.

It's not great for the marriage, but if you do it temporary because you don't see each other...

But you could get away with it temporarily.

And I've known people who have done that.

One's working days, one's working nights.

So someone's always at home.

That's one thing.

But your neighbors or your friends, like trading off with your friends.

So maybe your baby stays with your friend while you're working and then her baby's with you.

So it's just you and your kid and your friend's kid.

Two on one.

Yeah.

The smaller, the better.

Yeah, I mean look, one of the most interesting conversations I had.

There's a company called Athena that make virtual assistants and I had the founder and CEO on and I was saying having a virtual assistant or an assistant at all is wonderful, but how many people have got access to that?

That's not that realistic.

He said well, there's lots of ways that you can basically get the exact same function of that just by using your friends, and one of his examples was childcare.

Yeah, he says, if you want to work one day a week or two days a week yes, you only need one other mum.

Yes to To alternate.

Yeah, exactly.

And like one on two or one on three, maybe like you can probably get away with that.

You can come to our house, if you can go to yours, and then hey, if we organize our working schedules, you could get two days a week of workout.

And look, I mean The days when you're going to be at home outnumbered two to one or three to one by kids.

That's also going to be a pretty challenging day.

But it means that you aren't having to do the daycare thing.

It's free.

And you've got two and a half.

You do half of Wednesday and Thursday, Friday, and I'll do Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wednesday.

I'm a big believer that necessity is the mother of invention.

And if the daycare system, and it is a system, I mean, it is a... What's the word I'm looking for?

It's a...

Well, I'm blanking on the name, but if it weren't there as an option... People would figure it out.

People would figure it out.

They had to back in the day.

As I said, we had a Head Start program.

We had a thing in place for truly, truly, truly, truly needy families.

Of course, there's a lot more needy families today than there was 50 years ago, but...

What are you going to do if it's not there?

You know, if something isn't there, you go to the next thing and you figure it out.

I believe that.

I think it's just become.

My issue is more that it's become so normalized that we're not even allowed to talk about the fact that the thing that looks so normal actually is really bad.

That's my issue.

I just want to be able to talk openly and say, actually, this isn't good.

And here's why, so that they know.

Because truly, i believe people don't know.

I believe it's come to that.

There was a time when people knew instinctively this was not and they could talk about it.

But now, what's the most compelling reason that you give to some?

A mom who feels like daycare is fine, but you think hey, this is something that you should know um, that the most important thing for a child in the first three years of life is to develop The intangibles of love and trust that will then carry them into their own adult relationships later on, so that if they do not become attached to you in those early years, or to your singular alternative person or whatever, that will stay with them for life.

And it will show up in their relationships later on.

And that's real.

I mean, that's a real thing.

And it's, I think, surprising for a lot of people.

They just don't know about that.

It's an interesting duality.

Another one of those paradoxes that we were talking about earlier on.

A lot of people are into therapy.

A lot of people love books like Attached by Amir Levine or Jessica Baum's book.

Amir's got a new one out called Secure.

I just saw that.

They're on my home.

Yeah, just got read them.

Lots of people are very informed on the attachment literature.

And a lot of people that are going to therapy are also understanding the fact that hey, my parents maybe didn't care for me in the manner that would have been optimal to give me secure attachment.

And I'm now having to unpick and unwind some of these things.

Well, what are those?

Well, you know, they didn't hold me when I needed it.

They didn't see my needs without me asking.

They weren't understanding.

I didn't feel safe and secure.

There wasn't consistency availability reliability, responsiveness and predictability, like the five elements of secure attachment.

Those things weren't there.

But, and yet, yeah, let's not talk about this thing.

I can pay that forward.

It's like I'm going to go to therapy to unpick the patterns from the past, because I don't want my kid to inherit my bad patterns.

But because of the situation that I've constructed, or that I need to or feel like I need to, from education and employment and lifestyle demands, I am now potentially just recreating the thing.

Not only recreating the thing that happened to me and I don't want, but that I'm actively trying to unpick in an attempt to not pass down.

And this is where this is like, why I think that when it's said in a sober way, in a calm way, in a gentle way that accepts the challenges and the fucking like really odd economic and cultural situation that young women find themselves in now, that it should be something that, if it's,

If what you're saying is heard properly, for what it's supposed to be, it should be pretty well received, because look at how fucking hard you're working in therapy.

Why?

Well, because you want to be happy yourself and you don't want to be, you know, fucking puppeted by these patterns and stuff like that.

But because you don't want to pass it down to your future kids, too.

Like you're really, really working hard at this thing.

You're just working hard at it within the confines of this model that exists.

That these are the rules that you play.

Well, you earn lots of money to have the therapy, so that you can not pass the patterns on to your kids.

But that means that you can't afford to stay at home because you need to, So literally.

That's the reason I wrote How to Build a Better Life, which is my most recent book.

And it's for women who want to prioritize marriage and love and family, really like have that be the core of their life.

And that requires starting early to make the decisions that we've talked about. if you do that, all this stuff doesn't, it ceases to exist.

That's kind of like the whole point.

You know like if you create this life that's countercultural and not like the way you've been taught to do it, you wouldn't end up in this boat of worrying about repeating the patterns of, like your attachment issues.

Um, If it's circled back and understood that daycare is going to create that, then you can stop that in its tracks before it starts.

At the very least, it's not going to make it better.

Yeah.

So anyway, I just... There's just a whole different way to do life, I guess is my point.

And that's why I wrote that.

And it's there for the taking.

But you've got to be presented with the information and you've got to have people willing to talk about it, because it's so taboo to talk about.

Well, you've got a line, live your life, not theirs.

Yeah, so that was the end of that book and it was essentially saying if you're building a life based on what you're told you're supposed to do, even if it goes against what you might really want And sometimes you're all the way in before you know that

That's true.

You know, you're going to be unhappy.

You have to live.

You have to be satisfied.

You have to know what you want, know what you value, build a life that has that as its core, and not worry about everybody else's.

And which is so, so hard.

I'm going back to social media today.

We didn't have this.

You know, social media is new in my, I'm 58.

So I don't know.

How long has social media been around?

When my kids were little, it didn't exist.

So I think it was, they were in high school.

Facebook's about 20 years.

Yeah.

They were in high school by then.

So like being raised just seeing all these images and seeing how other people are living, people that wouldn't even care about these other people.

They don't even know them, you know, they live across the world.

But I certainly can understand when you're young, you're going to see it and be like, I need that.

And then your life's going to look terrible in comparison because they've got that.

But they don't have what you have either.

So you have to have perspective on it.

So I think social media has been really, really hard, really destructive actually for this concept of loving your life and not worrying about theirs.

But you really have to keep your eye on the ball to be happy, or you're going to be sucked into this other space.

What do you wish more young women knew?

If you were able to put a billboard up that all young women would see on their way to work.

What do you wish you'd be able to tell them?

Nothing in your life is going to compare to the euphoria and the satisfaction and the meaning of having a baby.

And raising that baby and having a family and having that sense of security and peace when the world's going batty around you and you just have your little home that you've created and nothing you do and no amount of money you're going to make is ever going to compare.

But you don't know that yet.

But I'll put my money on it.

Let's put it that way.

So if I'm wrong, what's the worst that's happened?

You know, I'm wrong.

And then the point is that you have choices.

If you believe me and you set up your life that way, you will have choices.

And that's where I want you to be.

Heck yeah.

Suzanne Venker, ladies and gentlemen.

Where should people go to keep up to date with everything you're doing?

Well, they can go to SuzanneVenker.com.

And I'm mainly on Substack these days, but everything is at SuzanneVenker.com.

Heck yeah.

I appreciate you.

Thank you for sticking your neck out and touching every third rail in existence.

Thank you.

All right.

See you next time, everyone.

If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom reading list.

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The most interesting, life-changing and impactful books I've ever read, with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them.

And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillx.com slash books.

That's chriswillx.com. slash books

[被误导的一代：为何现代女性需要在事业与家庭之间重新抉择]-[The Career Trap That Makes Women Miserable - Suzanne Venker - #1113 ]

📋 Summary

被误导的誓言：给一代女性的道歉

职业选择的陷阱：以家庭为核心的长期博弈

关系中的误区：经济独立与伴侣选择的悖论

母职的污名化与日托的隐患

约会与婚姻：从“滑入”到“决定”

结语：回归生物本能与生活真谛

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[被误导的一代：为何现代女性需要在事业与家庭之间重新抉择]-[The Career Trap That Makes Women Miserable - Suzanne Venker - #1113 ]

📋 Summary

被误导的誓言：给一代女性的道歉

职业选择的陷阱：以家庭为核心的长期博弈

关系中的误区：经济独立与伴侣选择的悖论

母职的污名化与日托的隐患

约会与婚姻：从“滑入”到“决定”

结语：回归生物本能与生活真谛

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