A New York Times article tells the dramatic stories of three mothers who genuinely regret becoming mothers, and have dark and ominous tales. In this episode, we talk about why we should all be talking about this, and why it s a problem.
00:00:00.000Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about
00:00:03.860a New York Times article published in The Cut called I Regret Having Children, telling the
00:00:09.640very dramatic stories of three mothers who genuinely regret becoming mothers and have
00:00:14.700these dark and very ominous tales. And most of the conservative commentators I've seen covering it,
00:00:20.540basically, I feel like I'm seeing this everywhere online, so we have to talk about it.
00:00:24.300What I love about this is so many people, they're like, oh, Malcolm and Simone,
00:00:28.740think about how it's going to affect your kids that it is really publicly documented that you
00:00:33.220really wanted to have them and love them i'm like what what what about these people's kids
00:00:37.780like this is part of the the story well it's anonymous so the idea is that hopefully these
00:00:43.520children will never see it and even the mothers have said this like they wouldn't want their
00:00:46.840children to know how much they resent this but most of the people who are talking about it
00:00:51.660was one of them you no no actually but a lot of the people are saying this is antinatalist and
00:01:00.300this is terrible or like brett cooper thinks that the the discourse is really about unsupported
00:01:05.740isolated mothers and bad matching in marriage and not really about mothers hitting their kids
00:01:09.820whereas i think really everyone's missing the point and here's the thing i actually think this
00:01:13.940article is fantastic and that the the accounts that these mothers give are actually really
00:01:18.740important and that anyone who is really serious about kids should read these and read a lot more.
00:01:25.960And here's why. Basically the best way to get through the tough parts of having kids and having
00:01:30.380kids isn't necessarily easy is to have a strong reason for having kids and also know ahead of
00:01:36.020time, everything is going to go wrong. And you and I did exactly this, but not with kids with
00:01:40.260getting married. Remember we went instead of on like regretful parenting subreddit, we went on
00:01:45.160the relationship subreddit and we very misfestivously cataloged everything that could
00:01:49.420possibly go wrong with our relationship and we built plans contingency plans around those things
00:01:56.180and documents but the thing is is this is different because the people don't know what their kids are
00:02:00.800going to be like right oh no they do and we're going to get into that no they super do and that's
00:02:05.080the thing i mean genetically our kids are just us and this show and again in these stories so we're
00:02:09.680going to go over the stories but the bigger story here is no this is good we should be talking about
00:02:14.520this these problems are real but they're also very easy to navigate in fact many of the things
00:02:18.600that these mothers talk about these nightmare scenarios are things that at least on a similar
00:02:23.540level we are have as parents experienced this is not they're not like having universally terrible
00:02:28.980experiences they're just going through the rough parts of being early parents and most of these
00:02:32.980have kids like you know that are still in their toddler years it can be rough at times and the
00:02:38.160point is you should be talking about this people shouldn't have a different parenting i have a
00:02:42.520different reason why i like articles like this and i do like reading articles like this because
00:02:46.320you love the snark reason i'm like really into like red pill content about how horrible somebody's
00:02:52.480girlfriend was to them or something like that because it just makes me appreciate you more
00:02:56.360and make you feel like more of a treasure oh and how like before you'd love to see what happened
00:03:00.740to like old classmates on facebook so you could be feel yeah just like okay okay no but no i think
00:03:06.800a lot of people they think that like i'm watching like super misogynistic content and it's gonna
00:03:10.980make me misogynistic. And it's like, no, I just makes me appreciate how unique and special you
00:03:17.160are as a wife. And I think our kids are pretty unique and special too. So hopefully this,
00:03:20.760this reframes that as well. But I think for a lot of people, when they end up hating their
00:03:24.760children or being parents, it's because they don't really like their partner. They don't
00:03:27.560really like themselves because there's a lot of that in that, in this mix of the two of you
00:03:32.440personality wise. Like when I see my kids play, it's just me plus Simone. Like there's, there's
00:03:37.060not a lot of exogenous personality in there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's one of
00:03:43.120the really big themes in this actually, that we don't talk about enough as a society, but the
00:03:48.720article itself opens with parent regret is more common than you might think the are regretful
00:03:54.940parents subreddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate
00:03:59.800through stigma, makes it hard to admit it in real life below three moms of young children talk about
00:04:05.040why they wish they could go back to their old lives. And so I'm going to just pull some highlights
00:04:10.620from each mother who gives their account. And we're going to talk about how this, this is stuff
00:04:17.280that people actually really should be planning around and talking about. And that if you do
00:04:21.480adequately plan for these things, either one, you could just avoid becoming a parent if it's really
00:04:26.140not for you. But two, you can really make something that could be terrible, totally surmountable by
00:04:32.380just planning for it because it's pretty like the writing was on the wall for most of these issues
00:04:36.680that these women encountered. And that's a really big thing. And the most common problem for all of0.89
00:04:42.600these women is that they lacked a strong reason for having kids. So let's start with a 34-year-old1.00
00:04:47.160Rhode Island mother of a six-year-old and a three-year-old. First off, she did not have a1.00
00:04:51.580strong reason for wanting to have kids. She wrote, when my husband and I were dating, his deal breaker
00:04:55.860was having kids. Totally relatable, right? I didn't feel the same way, but I didn't see life1.00
00:05:00.660without children as an option. It always felt like the next stage of life for us. I remember telling
00:05:04.740my husband, I'm worried. I love our life now. And I'm not sure what it's going to look like with a
00:05:09.980child. And I think this is one super, super common. I mean, you, we can tell from the polling that
00:05:16.640women are far more ambivalent around having children than men are men put having a child
00:05:23.120and, and becoming a parent is one of the top things that they need for a fulfilling life.
00:05:26.880whereas well especially conservative men whereas progressive men and all women polls recently that
00:05:32.120showed that conservative men having a kid is the number one thing in terms of life fulfillment and
00:05:36.740progressive women it was like the absolute bottom and i mean i mean that culture is just going to go
00:05:41.520extinct right like that's that's what happens when you which is a weird place to be where you can see
00:05:48.360that the cultures that we're opposing and the people we're opposing control elite institutions
00:05:52.280and have power within our society but their failure is also inevitable which makes things
00:05:58.500feel so weirdly comforting because i like being both the underdog in a fight but i also don't
00:06:04.220want the risk of thinking that we could lose yeah the other really big thing and i'm so glad you
00:06:10.280pointed to this is that if you hate yourself or you hate your partner you're going to have a lot
00:06:15.660of trouble with your kids and this also shows up in all three of the stories so this particular
00:06:20.340Rhode Island mother. What? If you hate yourself, adopt. I guess. Yeah. If you hate yourself,
00:06:27.160you are a good candidate for adoption. This particular mother had personal issues that
00:06:31.020now she is contending with in her kids. Like it's super obvious. She says she struggled with1.00
00:06:35.200postpartum depression. She's a perfectionist. She got diagnosed with ADHD after suspecting
00:06:40.360her eldest had it. And then, you know, she turns out she had it too. But she wrote when my younger
00:06:44.720daughter struggles to get dressed, I try to distract her or make compromises. But in the
00:06:48.960end she's screaming and I don't know how to make it stop so I just shut down and so one yeah you
00:06:54.420could adopt two you could genuinely like you could just do polygenic risk score selection like we did
00:06:59.520and select for different behavioral traits you can do that I mean like risks of behavioral traits
00:07:04.500but I think more importantly than that actually is and I have to be careful about how I say this
00:07:11.300right because we're not we're not big on therapy culture we're not big on like working through like
00:07:15.580your mental health issues. But like, how can I put it? Raising kids has forced me to give myself
00:07:24.280a lot of grace and forgiveness around, for example, my sensory issues, my autism. And
00:07:29.600while there's a world in which I could have seen that in my children and freaked out and everything
00:07:34.520got way worse. Instead, I see it in my children and it teaches me how to be more forgiving with
00:07:39.040myself and also way more understanding of my children. And I think for parents who do things
00:07:43.520struggle with depression and frustration and perfectionism like she does for example
00:07:46.880she has chosen to like have this turn into this vortex of pain and suffering for herself of like
00:07:53.440oh my daughter's experiencing because her daughter's her like her daughter has her same tendencies
00:07:57.220because you know they're very I want to you know illustrate for the fans what you mean when you say
00:08:02.240this because it's something that you you know focus on a lot is we'll see some behavior in
00:08:07.000our kids like the way they're picking this food in x way or yeah really into systematizing or
00:08:11.380or something else. And you will reflect on, Oh, like I can be more forgiving of myself for those
00:08:18.860traits because that was genetic. That wasn't like a personal failing on my part. Yeah. Like it helps
00:08:24.360me hate myself less for that. And I, with this mother, for example, if I were speaking with her
00:08:29.600in person, I'd be like, I mean, wow, this is, you know, an amazing way to give yourself grace
00:08:34.980for struggling with these things and just kind of deal with it together. And you get getting a
00:08:39.900little i know i i don't getting a little therapy as as they would say in the gamer rooms getting0.89
00:08:46.540a little gay here samoa i'm gay it's a it's a it's a little fake and gay but also like it's
00:08:55.380it's kind of it can be beautiful i'm just saying like the way you contextualize things really0.72
00:08:58.880affects how you can process it and there's a world in which this mother would be able to navigate her
00:09:04.300own struggles with perfectionism and depression as her daughter struggles with them in a way where
00:09:08.520they can both navigate it better and there's also a world in which it's worse but anyway
00:09:12.080the other the other part is again she has a six-year-old and a three-year-old like especially
00:09:16.440three-year-olds are really difficult start so because she has a really young kid it's also
00:09:21.740just going to suck and the problem is i mean after both her kids are over six years old things are
00:09:25.740going to get a lot easier and i think it's really unfair for this is where i think it's unfair with0.97
00:09:31.200the media and also probably our regretful parenting is riddled with parents who have
00:09:35.180toddlers and probably doesn't have a lot of older kids back i mean imagine how much that must make
00:09:40.980you dislike your kids to be constantly in an environment like a facebook group or regretful
00:09:47.020parenting where this hatred is being both rewarded and reinforced by the community you have chosen to
00:09:53.480surround yourself with if the water cooler talk every day is how much you hate your kids you're
00:09:58.620going to begin to hate your kids more and more the same thing happens with partners if you surround
00:10:04.140yourself with a community that's core conversation point is how much you don't like your partners or
00:10:09.860even you get social credit for challenging yourself or for being the beleaguered mother
00:10:15.320then you're going to project that more but let's get to what the actual article says
00:10:19.460okay we'll move on to the i just want to point out though like you're missing my point that
00:10:25.000when you actually look at these parents and being like oh my god i'm not happy and that's bad
00:10:30.300one it's a very short term period where on average parents especially women are less happy
00:10:36.180and that's specifically when they they have really young children and it passes and it
00:10:41.520should be just better understood that this isn't a period that's like necessarily full of joy okay
00:10:46.420so moving on to the 30 year old european mother of a three-year-old she says that she grew up
00:10:51.240sheltered with a stay-at-home mom she married at 22 her mother said that she'd help out with a new
00:10:55.940baby which turned out to not be so true she felt like she was one she had a terrible pregnancy and
00:11:01.820delivery experience she was constrained to bed rest in her first trimester she had a horrible
00:11:06.300recovery from birth like it was painful to move there was something like an incision made that
00:11:10.700was just incredibly painful everybody who's had a number of kids always has a few bad pregnancy
00:11:15.320stories i think when people are like i stopped having kids because of a bad pregnancy then you
00:11:20.340were never going to be in a sustainable population if that was what prevented you from having kids
00:11:24.820you've had really terrible pregnancies in the past yeah and again it comes down to contextualization
00:11:30.320she i think experiences in an isolated way where people were kind of gaslighting her into like
00:11:35.400everything's going to be great everything's wonderful it's all magic and the worst thing
00:11:38.720for her and this is one of those things where had she looked at everything could that it could go
00:11:43.540wrong and actually looked at regretful parenting before she had her baby she could have basically
00:11:48.960headed this off but she was in a situation where both her mother and her husband didn't help that
00:11:53.360much she wrote my husband had a month and a half of paternity leave but the only helpful thing he
00:11:57.820did during that time was change her diapers though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face
00:12:02.440I had the feeling he never never believed how much pain I was in my mom helped but she didn't
00:12:06.880like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her
00:12:11.100I hallucinated from lack of sleep it felt like I'd been tricked into this everyone who wanted
00:12:15.800me to have a child my husband my family knew they weren't going to lose much while my freedom and
00:12:20.680my identity went down the toilet and that's something that she could have if they'd all
00:12:26.280discussed it anticipated and headed off like i think it's horrible what happened to her
00:12:29.880and it didn't know i mean i think that's an i'm gonna be honest we tried to do for the younger
00:12:36.200years with kids do more gender equal breakdown in terms of care and it just doesn't work very well
00:12:42.140it ends up being so contrived the way you do the split care for the infant yeah like infants really
00:12:48.780was in our house the infant is always Simone's like total responsibility and I'm in charge of
00:12:55.040the fallback for anyone over that age and that works really well but if you're just going into
00:12:59.840this and you just have one kid and you're in that infant stage when the mom bears and it is hard I
00:13:06.180mean you've got to remember guys if you're watching this what it's like to be a new mother
00:13:10.800you are in enormous pain often because you just underwent some form of surgery or something like
00:13:16.380that the kid could die at any moment because kids of that age do die just die randomly it's
00:13:22.120horrifying yeah especially when you're a first-time parent and you you don't necessarily i mean if you
00:13:26.160didn't grow up with very young siblings you also have no idea what you're doing and you're like oh
00:13:29.440my god this is the human and i feel like i'm gonna kill this you're not sleeping like at all because
00:13:33.780you have to stay up over all night and day yeah if you're breastfeeding that is very painful it can0.94
00:13:39.840be for some people they just love it but for a lot of people it's not the best so the the you
00:13:46.260know you are in both constant pain but also your brain is hypersensitized to the needs of the baby
00:13:51.120i can see in simone's face how distressed she gets when we have the infants i think the reason why
00:13:58.260you don't contextualize all this is as horrible as she is contextualizing it is one you know that
00:14:03.720your sacrifice is appreciated which is really important for guys to make sure that you are
00:14:07.840signaling that that you understand and it is appreciated and that's the thing she pointed out
00:14:11.360right that like her husband didn't seem to really believe her that it was like yeah for her and two
00:14:16.940you see the outcome in the the older children like when i i see my kids i hug my kids my kids
00:14:24.300jump on me i see how awesome this what to me is honestly a very boring stage of life the infants
00:14:30.540i've i've been i do not like zero interest but i love toddlers like but i mean parents should talk
00:14:37.120about that because i think that that also some women may grow up exposed to what i call like
00:14:42.480baby men who just like there's five to ten percent of men just seem to be baby crazy like they
00:14:47.840absolutely love babies i want to hold the baby they're the baby whisperers and then every other
00:14:52.880man like zero interest like they you know like they'd rather hold a wet stray dog covered in
00:15:00.980trash you know babies disgust I'm not a fan of babies yeah newspapers when when I first said
00:15:06.960that as you said you know we need to normalize it you can feel like I'm not a big fan of babies0.92
00:15:10.800but I it's worth it for when they're toddlers newspapers when that went viral for me saying
00:15:15.760that they're like oh he doesn't even like his children he doesn't even you know like being
00:15:19.220around them or enjoy parenting and I'm like what a sick reason to have kids because you're going to1.00
00:15:23.920enjoy it right like this but also again women need to be aware of this like women shouldn't0.98
00:15:28.460be gaslit about like oh yeah you know like your your husband's gonna be in love and also like
00:15:33.700keep in mind the the men who are referenced in by these women in this article typically were like
00:15:39.100yeah i really want to have kids like kids are a must for me like they act like they really want
00:15:43.620to have kids but then they're not into kids below three years like that's actually super normal and
00:15:48.980that doesn't mean they don't want to have kids that actually they're probably going to be great
00:15:51.900dads is this with the dog and chickens the dog and chick oh you you always right malcolm has been
00:16:00.760the one who's pulled the trigger ultimately on us getting a bunch of pets and then who ends up being
00:16:06.140the only person who takes care of the pet who feeds the pet i'm sorry simone i will endeavor
00:16:13.060to lighten your load there where i can yeah sure it's been how many years now
00:16:19.620okay it is it is appreciated though Simone and I'm just I'm just airing that so that you know
00:16:26.960that I I know that you likely feel similar to them just in other domains of our life
00:16:31.920no well no but also like you're not into babies like you don't have you've changed I guess when
00:16:38.500you you do you do take text to the diaper so you've changed his sorry to the doctor so you've
00:16:42.900changed his diaper then but you don't you have not we started was kid number one we shared by
00:16:47.920diaper changing, but we stopped doing that pretty soon after.
00:16:50.800We just dropped it. Yeah. Like, cause it didn't make sense, but it's, I just, I, I think it's
00:16:54.540great that this is being discussed because it should be discussed because if you, here's the
00:17:01.260thing. So we had on the podcast at one point, the author of Hannah's children, Dr. Catherine Ruth
00:17:06.540Bukalik, she interviewed academically and then published a book on college educated mothers of
00:17:12.140five plus children. And she told us that the top factor determining whether or not someone was like,
00:17:17.620oh my god I am all in this I want to have so many kids was whether or not they had a good
00:17:23.780experience with their first kid um and if they felt you know well supported and it was you know
00:17:29.760what they wanted and they had a great experience they were way more likely to want to have a lot
00:17:34.500of kids even if like they came into it being like I really like keep I will I mean you didn't read
00:17:38.780the book but many of the mothers who were interviewed in the book had similar starting
00:17:43.900points to these three women who regret becoming parents. We're like, I don't know. Like, okay,
00:17:49.600let's, let's get to the next one. But my point is though, that like, if you come into it the right
00:17:53.740way, you know, if you come in prepared, you can be super into it. So anyway, so she had this
00:17:58.760terrible experience. Her husband and mother didn't help much, but another common thread here,
00:18:03.540she had a history of depression and anxiety. And I think, again, if you've got a lot of mental
00:18:08.760health problems especially as a woman i i do think that you need to plan extra for that well this is
00:18:15.620i think one of the biggest arguments for polygenic selection is a lot of people who have major
00:18:21.060depressive disorders or anxiety disorders these are the things that i have heard the technology
00:18:26.400being used for the most is ensuring that they do not pass major depression onto your kids people
00:18:31.600are out there imagining that it's going to be people like us selecting against autism or something
00:18:36.200we're like no we don't select against autism like or selecting against you know some sort of like
00:18:40.700ethnicity or something and it's like no it's people who have gone through some sort of major
00:18:45.440psychological challenge in their own life who do not want to bring kids to undergo because depression
00:18:51.980isn't like a cool like nobody's like oh they're they're trying to genocide depression people
00:18:56.100everyone who's actually undergone like depression or anxiety or something like that understands why
00:19:01.240you may not want your kids like like that is an uncontroversial thing to not want to pass that
00:19:06.260down well and here's the really tough thing is is it's one thing to deal with ongoing like with
00:19:11.100postpartum depression and then with the anxiety of being a new parent like that that you can kind
00:19:15.220of anticipate if that's already your tendency it's going to happen to you as a new parent especially
00:19:18.880because you're under all this additional stress also dealing with that in your kid like having
00:19:23.620it magnified in that way is really rough and like yeah they're depressed and you're ready for that
00:19:28.360or you need to you know like do yeah try to reduce the odds of it happening in the first place
00:19:34.460something like polygenic risk or selection but actually this is interesting because you have
00:19:38.380traits that people could contextualize negatively while it's not depression you need an incredibly
00:19:42.620controlled environment or you become very stressed about things yeah and that can be seen in the
00:19:47.520setup of our house and the way that we make decisions but it's also it's it's something
00:19:51.180that's so cool i've been able to adapt with our children yeah well i don't think it's maladaptive
00:19:56.720for a modern society like actually it's much it's much easier for people like me to get by so I
00:20:02.220don't think it's it's like a bad thing to bring children in with those traits but like it makes
00:20:06.640me as a parent really you know I'm able to anticipate that in them and accommodate it I
00:20:13.160take custom orders for everyone's dinner every night like everyone gets to do a lot of things
00:20:16.960in their own special unique way that they have to do them because I know that that's how they
00:20:20.580need it to be and they'll be happy as long as that's the case and they are like it's good yeah
00:20:25.540so number three woman number three she's a 27 year old in north carolina and she's the mother0.54
00:20:30.760of a one-year-old and she is the most dark ending she don't start there when you're talking about
00:20:35.680kids come on oh well okay yeah not not not simone trigger dark meaning that like your child is
00:20:41.160getting hurt it's actually the the outcome is best for the children but it's still pretty dark
00:20:44.600for the child she didn't want kids she wrote my husband and i met in middle school he was always
00:20:49.440interested in having a big family and i told him i wasn't quite sure so already kind of a warning
00:20:54.480signs. Like really, if, if you're not into it, you know, it's, it's, you should get through that
00:20:59.020first before you, you weren't into it either. And now you're super, no, but you, you convinced me
00:21:04.020and I was like, yeah, I'm all in based on the conditions. And that was it. We were all set.
00:21:09.620I was 100% bought in. What happened to her though, was she got a positive pregnancy test and she's
00:21:14.400like, well, I guess I'm doing this. Her husband was like, I really, really, really want you to
00:21:18.760keep the baby. Like, I think she was even thinking about having an abortion. She has a history like
00:21:23.720the others of depression and is now dealing probably dealing with in our son she wrote my
00:21:28.940son has a low tolerance for frustration and doesn't communicate other than whining screaming
00:21:33.000crying throwing things and pulling my hair so again like this is one of those things
00:21:37.300just to highlight how you contextualize it but i mean i guess you could say like octavian constantly
00:21:41.540climbing on me and hitting me and everything like that is like this horrible thing well but you
00:21:45.320contextualize it positively and there's an even better example with her in contextualization
00:21:49.340because she has she has body dysmorphia issues she wrote during pregnancy I felt embarrassed I've
00:21:54.880had body dysmorphia issues since I was a kid and I felt so massive I used to be a track athlete
00:22:00.380and have always been fit and active so I didn't like feeling so heavy and restricted when trying
00:22:06.020to do the things I've always done like hiking during my third trimester I didn't want to leave
00:22:10.020the house so that people wouldn't see me so she like I also have body dysmorphia I hate the way
00:22:15.280have looked. I've always hated my body, but like the way I contextualize pregnancy is like, well,0.58
00:22:19.720all right, I am stuck in this body. I'm resentful of it. I am going to like wear this thing into
00:22:25.540the ground. Like it is the ultimate revenge of like, all right, well, we're just gonna
00:22:29.480wear like, you know, use it to the full capacity until I literally break it until I break my
00:22:34.320uterus until I break everything, which is ultimately more satisfying for me than like
00:22:38.080getting a hysterectomy, which is the first thing I thought about doing before I met you.
00:22:41.000and so there are ways to deal with these things you can have body dysmorphia and respond like
00:22:46.040she did or you can have body dysmorphia and respond like I did when they're both ways you
00:22:50.240can deal with it but I think we're having a lot more fun with my method so I'm just saying like
00:22:54.480contextualization is everything she also had a horrible birth experience I'm not gonna I don't
00:22:59.520have to describe it unless you want to I can I can read it but like I also have had horrible birth
00:23:03.900experiences and it sucks and I think that it well you one I would say was all of this you don't know
00:23:09.600some people just contextualize everything horribly right like yeah yeah you you know
00:23:16.060whatever their experience is it's going to be a horrible experience because like so her her she
00:23:21.680had an epidural but like it kept not working i also i didn't have an epidural and i was anyway
00:23:26.940continue they they had to like jump on her hip to dislodge him from like a place where he was stuck
00:23:34.200before he entered the birth canal or something and she still felt pain from that so it was it was bad
00:23:38.140it was like genuinely bad it wasn't just her whining about it malcolm okay but yeah she also
00:23:42.620more importantly for her is she felt erased as a human being she wrote i felt like i disappeared
00:23:47.800as a human being clients called me mama friends and family asked me how my son was they told me
00:23:53.760how excited and overjoyed i must be i tried telling them i wasn't coping well with motherhood
00:23:58.580and was still processing the birth and they tell me that's what motherhood is one of my friends
00:24:03.380texted my husband wow she's changed and not in a good way it came from a place of care she and
00:24:08.600many friends and family told me i had postpartum depression to seek therapy and to go on medication
00:24:13.100but at the same time they'd quickly flip it back to you need to be there for your son pick yourself
00:24:18.940up move on it's over with and done everything you went through is just like no big deal because the
00:24:25.560baby's here your existence doesn't matter and again that's contextualization and i think that
00:24:30.160one of the most toxic things about our modern society and I do think this has to do more with
00:24:34.380culture than it does with like preparing is that the more you focus in on yourself and get into
00:24:40.360your head the more miserable you're going to be so even if you want to optimize for hedonic pleasure
00:24:45.020doing what she's doing is kind of like an exercise in frustration and suffering and0.52
00:24:51.540I mean if she's such a miserable person the idea that she would want to identify more with herself
00:24:56.420to me so odd you know like you could just become more expansive and identify with your family and
00:25:00.720enjoy the joys of which is so interesting i mean it's it's
00:25:04.600you are supposed to stop being the point of your life your kids are the point of your life right
00:25:12.820like the the focus shifts and for somebody who adopted the urban monoculture that can be
00:25:19.900horrifying because they're taught in this sort of atomized self being the most important thing
00:25:25.300And this idea that you would sublimate that either in a marriage or through children is one of the most mortifying things they can imagine.
00:25:32.420And yet we had already, I mean, when we got married, there was a period where we stayed more atomized at the beginning.
00:25:39.820I think you were really afraid of this idea of, no, we're just one person now.
00:25:43.900Yeah, I was much more hesitant around it than you were.
00:25:46.640I think also, though, because women, one, lose more just traditionally than men do.
00:25:55.300like physically logistically especially in the younger years like to your point right like i'm0.99
00:26:00.400doing most of the infant care your life changes the least as we get a new infant so women women0.97
00:26:04.500do feel like they have more to lose especially in the early years and they do but also they've0.99
00:26:08.760been uniquely conditioned to be like no don't ever give those things up it's a bad thing if
00:26:13.140you give those things up whereas men have never really been told that actually hold on this could1.00
00:26:18.400be like a whole other episode but you could almost argue that feminism conceptually was0.99
00:26:24.440fighting against the the women's role as a mother that societal framing of a woman's position like
00:26:32.660and and and you see the people who have fully adopted feminist framing you even suggest well
00:26:38.420that's a woman's role and they freak out right yeah when you can also argue which i think is
00:26:42.840interesting is that women are so concerned about losing their identity but men never had them like
00:26:48.200men don't really get to be full men until they have their families and identify as their families
00:26:52.640which is so weird whereas like yeah they feel like they lose everything by getting their family
00:26:56.840which is i think a really interesting piece of tension and interplay that you get with
00:27:01.340relationships it's not so what i would expect but i yeah now that that's kind of that's kind
00:27:06.540of occurring to me that like men men aren't losing men men don't even get to be anything
00:27:12.140like an incel is nothing they don't have an identity they mean nothing in society that's
00:27:15.700actually a really interesting point yeah men do not matter until they're married and and then0.99
00:27:20.640really until they have kids from a societal perspective and then sort of women kind of cease0.56
00:27:24.300to cease well yeah i don't know like not that they cease to matter but they kind of recede into it and0.83
00:27:29.580they feel like they're losing something whereas men feel like they're finally getting their
00:27:32.920identity it's a very weird thing well and this is seeing that the that the mother is lesser in the
00:27:39.040eyes of the urban monoculture oh yeah no you definitely take a downgrade that's the the we've
00:27:46.040read other articles of women like identifying as single even when they're in a relationship1.00
00:27:50.300because it's seen as cooler or something yeah or identifying as a divorcee just to be
00:27:56.540even after she was remarried she still identified primarily as a divorcee my cachet is in rejecting
00:28:03.520marriage actually speaking of which so she after withdrawing from fellow parents because she just
00:28:10.360hated so much people identifying with their children decided to leave her husband and
00:28:14.840actually her son too she wrote my husband and i are taking steps to separate and he's willing to
00:28:19.200take on the role of a single parent which makes me feel incredibly guilty but i can't live this
00:28:23.580life with him anymore i'm not the parent my son needs and i one i think it's kind of based like
00:28:28.420she actually isn't the parent her son she seems to really hate it and that would be not good for
00:28:32.440a kid to grow up person anyone needs she seems and also yeah yeah no she she she seems genuinely0.92
00:28:39.000she needs to work on a lot of things and and i don't think she can do that with her husband and
00:28:43.080her son also like single dads statistically do really well so i'm not worried for the kid and
00:28:49.520i'm not worried for the husband and i didn't read these parts but the husband was also incredibly
00:28:53.480gung-ho about this kid really wanted to be a dad he's super on board with being a single parent
00:28:57.900so but it's still a very dark ending right this is a woman who rejected parenting so much that
00:29:03.100she's literally just going to end it she's not going to be i would say that kids more broadly
00:29:09.080and i really cannot make this point loudly enough is i don't know what this kid is like but like
00:29:14.940there are bad kids out there right like there are unpleasant kids i've seen our kids i've i've seen
00:29:21.200our kids interact with them we we have other kids who i i've like oh my god if that was my kid i'd
00:29:26.940like smother them in their sleep like they are a net burden to society and i don't i mean so you
00:29:33.060put it that way but like and so what this mother complained about was her son was not meeting the
00:29:37.000same developmental milestones that her peers children were and that he was in early intervention
00:29:41.340our kids have been in early intervention our kids have been diagnosed with autism our kids have gone
00:29:45.460through pretty extensive therapy like at first we were made to feel a lot of shame about that by
00:29:52.480some people in our family and stuff but then oh no and the wire ultimately realized like oh
00:29:57.360no you're just messed up like we are and like we all get along really well here um so i think i
00:30:02.520don't know what's interesting to me as well is and i think you make this point well the things
00:30:06.840that she complains about are all things i notice that our kids in and love i love the way that
00:30:11.140they're vitalistic and crawl all over me and fight me and like we're pretty chill about our kids not
00:30:17.180meeting the developmental milestones of like when i've seen kids and i was just like like the kids
00:30:22.180that have given me that it it's interesting they've always been like either like genetically
00:30:28.140obsequious you know like very needy attention wanting clearly like unsure of themselves it's
00:30:35.400interesting that to me that would be like such a trigger in seeing a kid who's unsure of themselves
00:30:39.820and being like disgusting or the they are timid and afraid you can't and afraid and that's like
00:30:49.020a big ick factor for me and it's interesting that i like have kid icks like that i'm like0.79
00:30:54.280i now know what women mean when they say this right you know i'm like like that is that that
00:31:00.420that's cringy to be around that but our kids just don't have any of that and i don't know0.99
00:31:04.120how I'd feel if we ever had a kid who was like that, but I also don't know how you and I could
00:31:09.320produce a kid like that. Yeah. It's unlikely, but I mean, you and I talk about this a lot and I
00:31:13.620don't know how much we've talked about it on our podcast. We have a little bit, but like,
00:31:17.880if you do not like your partner or you do not like things about your partner, you're going to
00:31:22.220really struggle with your kids. Cause those kids are going to exhibit those behaviors.
00:31:26.040It's going to be really tough for you. Whereas if you love your partner, you're going to be
00:31:30.200crazy about your kids at least if you're also forgiving of yourself and I think where I struggle
00:31:35.360most of our kids at times is when they exhibit behaviors that that bother me about myself and I
00:31:42.580see that in them and I'm like oh no but but then seeing you show grace around that I feel like
00:31:48.920you're showing me grace and it's just all over again you show me how much you love me this is
00:31:52.780the other weird thing that I've talked to Simone about when I see her being a really loving mom
00:31:58.300to our kids and she is she's a phenomenal mother like when i go down on a weekend because she gets
00:32:04.420the kids first on weekends and she has you know made them all like individual dishes and and music's
00:32:10.180playing and the kids are all roughhousing around and she's you know reading them a book or something
00:32:14.740and she's doing all these nice things for them and she does these things for them at least she
00:32:19.640tells me because you know she likes the kids but somehow my brain doesn't register it is that
00:32:25.800my brain every time i see her being nice to the kids is seeing her going out of her way to do me
00:32:32.300a favor well i mean the kids are just like i mean not to sound spiritual or like emotional but like
00:32:40.400the kids are fragments of our souls and they're they're definitely little pocket malcolms and i
00:32:44.480i see so much of them in you that yeah i mean if you love your partner you're gonna love your kids
00:32:49.080and that's i mean you can see this with with these parents i think that these mothers who really
00:32:53.080regret becoming parents i think are really also struggling with not just themselves it's clear
00:32:58.760that they have self-hatred issues or depression or anxiety or all of those things but then they're
00:33:03.240also really struggling with your husband and like imagine what a nightmare that is if you hate
00:33:06.920yourself if you don't like your husband either and now you're alone with like a version of the
00:33:11.220two of you magnified and also pooping and you know totally out of control like that that sounds
00:33:16.740yeah like a complete nightmare and well i also think another thing that's that we've we've
00:33:21.860started on here, but I think it's really important to drill into is the role of contextualization in
00:33:27.100all of this. Yes. You know, we had reporters here today asking me about like when people were
00:33:32.760dogpiling us online for using corporal punishment with our kids and saying that we're child abusers
00:33:36.760and everything like that. And like asking me, like, do you feel, and I was like, no, I don't
00:33:40.600really feel bad about that. Like I can choose how I contextualize these things that happen in my life.
00:33:45.080And when I was in that debate with Stephen Molineux and he kept trying to get me to be like,
00:33:48.660look at these things your parents did like you should reject them and condemn them and i was
00:33:53.300like i like who i am as an adult i'm not going to condemn them like it's fine right the outcome was
00:33:57.440good so yeah and i i realized that like at a pathological level if you look at me and and my
00:34:05.100outlook on life i just choose not to contextualize things negatively right and i because i don't see
00:34:12.760any purpose in it right like it doesn't help me and society will reward you for contextualizing
00:34:18.240things negative because everybody wants a sob story but if you can you know internally within
00:34:23.240your family culture steal yourself against that you will just be like way happier with your life
00:34:29.660and way more productive and this is and i think for a lot of these people it's just a choice of
00:34:34.840negative contextualization right of things that happen to me and you and i can textually and i
00:34:41.460never have like i never like made some deal with you around that you have to do this but it seems
00:34:47.140like you have organically adopted this as well we organically did it but what do you think about
00:34:52.980the idea of like we did with our relationship also doing stuff like this with parenting because
00:34:59.300it does seem to be a really big deal breaker in life in in a relationship that that people do i
00:35:06.200mean we did some things like what will we do if our kids ask for porn what will we do if our kids
00:35:11.040misbehave what religion will we we didn't do it about parenting logistics the idea of parenting
00:35:17.720choices in a parenting contract being something you create before having kids is a failure really
00:35:26.020i like the idea so why everything that would be in a parenting contract should be in the outset
00:35:33.840of the relationship the relationship contract okay that's fair but like instead of just looking
00:35:38.660at how relationships fail also look at how parenting fails exactly that's okay okay so we
00:35:43.260are on the same page i was like what are you talking and we had done all of that with our
00:35:46.960relationship contract no not all no what i'm saying is all we did actually was um religion
00:35:54.300porn and punishment and like where we spend family holidays we didn't do things parenting
00:36:00.080yeah those are core things that relationships end over but what we we didn't do was like you
00:36:05.880know how are we going to handle infants what's going to happen you know if i'm really injured
00:36:10.400in like a pregnancy what what's going to happen like with you know who's going to do overnights
00:36:16.700etc like what's going to happen now we did have an agreement on like what's going to happen if
00:36:20.320one person has to be a stay-at-home parent and it was going to be you but like i don't know i feel
00:36:25.040like we could have done more i just i want my thing is i again i think this article is good i
00:36:29.820think people should be aware of what can go wrong and i think people should plan for it
00:36:33.060as they're beginning the outset of a relationship.