In this episode, Simone and I discuss a recent article in the National Review written by Michael Leibowitz about how bad therapy and bad psychology are to blame for the decline in birth rates. We also discuss the rise in estrangement between parents and their adult children.
00:00:00.320Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about how bad therapy and therapists and bad psychology tanked birth rates.
00:00:11.880And we're going to be doing it through the lens of an article in the National Review titled Bad Therapy Tanked the Birth Rates.
00:00:34.440And the New York Times article is like shockingly based.
00:00:36.980So we start with the New York Times article here.
00:00:39.120Over the past few decades, Americans have redefined harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma, expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life.
00:00:51.740Adult children seem increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously, cut off contact with a parent.
00:00:59.060This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting.
00:01:05.320And then the other writer says potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents and their future children.
00:01:13.160Leibowitz drives into this with the rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children.
00:01:16.980Most of the time, it's the offspring, not the parents, who initiate the initial estrangement.
00:01:23.940As Leibowitz writes, in 2019, Carl Pilkman, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27% of adult Americans reported being exchanged from a family member that the true number is probably higher.
00:01:34.220The most commonly severed relationships were parent slash adult child.
00:01:38.300And in most cases, it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement.
00:01:41.980Many psychologists and sociologists believe this is becoming more common.
00:01:46.760Now, note here, I love that they keep calling it the adult child.
00:03:24.420So the point here is that these things, it is really bad that our society has redefined them.
00:03:29.700And as we've said before, the reason the urban monoculture has evolved to redefine them is because it helps to cut people off from their birth culture and their natural support network.
00:04:51.160Well, but also I think it's reflective of your techno-Puritan worldview, which is a deterministic worldview where if someone's wretched in some way, it was predetermined.
00:05:04.520And that was their product of a combination of their genetics and life experiences, neither of which they had control over.
00:05:11.680Everything they did was out of free will.
00:05:20.500Well, I also find this idea of, I mean, the second point here, which I find really interesting, one is they are who they are, like learn to accept it.
00:05:28.660Like if your parents, you know, acted in line with who they are as people, I think, you know, you could say, well, I really detest who they are as a person.
00:05:38.420Or you can just be like, I understand why somebody with these beliefs and these perspectives would have acted in that way.
00:05:42.600And then you can look to yourselves and say, do you have an aspect of that personality?
00:06:44.740Where they're just going totally no contact.
00:06:47.500And recontextualizing everything as trauma.
00:06:49.720And honestly, no matter how progressive and perfect you are by the urban monoculture standards as a parent, you will probably still end up, if your child maintains the urban monoculture, end up being the villain.
00:07:02.620Because if, let's say that you provide your child with gender-affirming care, and then, you know, of course, the stats indicate that that probably isn't going to go so well for them.
00:07:12.260Like, they're going to continue to struggle throughout their lives.
00:07:14.140So it's not unlikely that even then, your child's going to be like, how did you let me do that?
00:07:20.500Well, I mean, keep in mind, Elon was supportive of his kid going through gender-affirming care when they did it.
00:07:28.460You know, he tried to be as supportive as possible, and the trans kid turned on him before he went anti-trans.
00:07:36.420You know, the anti-trans thing was he just went on.
00:07:38.280All this came out after it was published in a book that in court proceedings, she had asked to disavow herself from the last name Musk and disassociate herself from her brother.
00:08:17.620I mean, as a parental support person until everything ended, I guess.
00:08:23.800The larger point here being is you can't just capitulate enough.
00:08:27.660In fact, people would be like, oh, like, this is why I would recommend, like, nobody, like, if you're in the urban monoculture, it might even not be worth having kids.
00:08:34.260Because your kids will eventually hate you.
00:08:45.820I mean, they are increasingly infantilized.
00:08:47.580They'll either hate you or be infantilized.
00:08:50.180Yeah, they'll either, yeah, they'll either hate you or remain babies for their entire life and be dependent on you and live off you like leeches.
00:08:55.960Which, you know, I think I would prefer an estranged child who didn't speak to me anymore.
00:08:59.440Yeah, I wouldn't prefer an estranged child who, yeah.
00:09:01.420Because, I mean, at least they're probably more likely to be thriving.
00:09:04.160And they're not going to thrive if they live off the parental dole for their lives.
00:09:09.180Yeah, there is no good outcomes within that culture.
00:09:12.080Well, also keep in mind that the culture's Overton window is always moving.
00:09:42.260Laboussi notes that many of today's adult children often cut parents off what a generation ago would have been viewed as venial sins.
00:09:52.620Anna Russell, who interviewed estranged families for The New Yorker, found that reasons for estrangement included that people, quote,
00:09:59.380felt ignored or misunderstood by their parents or believed that a sibling had always been the family's favorite.
00:10:06.100Several described a family member as a, quote, unquote, classic narcissist or, quote, unquote, toxic.
00:10:11.680Now, I would note to you, though they're not reasons to cut a family off at all,
00:10:15.980and all of those are perceptual issues that rely on your individual perception.
00:10:20.460Well, if children also, if they acted as logical economic actors, unless a parent actively did damaging things,
00:10:26.700like take out debt in your name or demand money from you, there are plenty of instances of parents being a net drain.
00:10:33.580I think for most kids, it is better to maintain a relationship, even with a mediocre parent,
00:10:38.180because they may be more likely to distribute resources to you in some form at some point in the future.
00:10:46.460Yeah. So the point I'm making here is, sorry, I know that you're being like, well, you could get something out of them,
00:10:54.120but I'm just saying, like, this is a really crazy reason to cut family off.
00:10:58.080And keep in mind that if you cut off your parents, your kids are astronomically more likely to cut you off.
00:11:04.540Oh, yeah, I guess, yeah, you're normalizing it, aren't you?
00:11:07.120This is also what I said to the reporter, like, why would I ever normalize contextualizing my relationship with my parents in a negative light,
00:11:15.540where if I do that, my kids are going to do that?
00:12:28.100Well, and the idea of, like, a classic narcissist, I think, here's what I'd say.
00:12:32.020If you believe you know more than, like, one classic narcissist, you are the narcissist.
00:12:38.380The classic narcissists are not particularly common.
00:12:41.260And I find that narcissistic people are very common to see other people as narcissistic because they don't understand how anyone could not be centering them in every single thought another person has.
00:12:56.580Well, I was talking with one of our friends about, like, oh, you know, I hope your kids are incredibly respectful to you in the future, given everything you do.
00:13:06.260Because this person goes way above and beyond.
00:13:15.300And, you know, the urban monoculture just seems to be the primary driver of it.
00:13:18.540But she pointed out that she was calling an insurance company about some issue this morning, and they were telling her that there's this concept called mental health parity that was created under Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act in the United States.
00:13:35.720And what it does is it expands mental health and substance use disorder coverage, requiring that starting in 2014, all new individual and small group health insurance plans have to cover mental health and substance use disorder services at parity with medical and surgical benefits.
00:13:52.580So, suddenly, in 2014, it was possible to get a lot more mental health care.
00:14:00.620And I'm sure that this increased the number of people who went through the process of getting diagnosed with problems because they knew then that they would get coverage for treatment.
00:14:08.960And probably a lot more people were encouraged to seek out diagnosis.
00:14:15.480And it probably funded the industry a ton more.
00:14:18.420So, it's not just that we've seen this cultural shift in how people are contextualizing parenting and trauma and how therapy is playing out.
00:14:25.980I think that also in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act, there was this shift in funding, insurance funding, for mental health services that enabled us to grow.
00:14:36.940What I've noticed with therapists is that they will often search for conflict with family.
00:14:43.800They will look for areas of conflict with family to sort of grow because that creates dependency from the client.
00:14:50.860The more trauma they can build in you, the more you're going to want to consistently see them.
00:15:23.200And it's a very feminine versus masculine way, right?
00:15:25.480Like, the constant advice given to boyfriends is when your girlfriend presents you with a problem or grievance, do not try to solve the problem.
00:15:33.820You're going to want to try to solve the...
00:15:44.660Well, I mean, as a medical doctor, yes.
00:15:46.160But as a mental health doctor, if you want to maintain a good...
00:15:49.100Well, I mean, as a medical doctor, if you want recurring revenue, you just, you know, physically disfigure somebody and then so they have to keep coming back to you.
00:15:56.520Well, if you're a mental health doctor, if you find new traumas that need more investigation, more work, and if you help the client directly identify with their mental illness, which in turn also requires more work.
00:16:28.580Well, I mean, I think with estrangement, the thing to focus on, and this is the thing about the insurance, as soon as insurance covers it, well, now you can go all the time, right?
00:16:35.360Like, now you can make this a part of your routine, and now you're around somebody who is going to, you know, hugely...
00:16:40.460I mean, I would, with our kids, given where the mental health industry is today, just strongly warn them against not engaging with it at all.
00:16:47.860Because I think that that's where a lot of this parental estrangement starts.
00:16:52.720Dr. Coleman, who counsels families experiencing estrangement, has seen children cut parents out of their lives because of financial conflicts, political differences, or negative comments about the child's partners.
00:17:06.780There's a lot of estrangements that actually happen to decent parents, end quote, he told me.
00:17:12.500I have seen parents who warned kids rightly do not marry that person, and the kids cut their parents out over it.
00:17:18.660Yeah, that's a really tough move, because I appreciated your mother's magnanimity toward me, and the way she just instantly accepted me understanding that dynamic.
00:17:28.140But a major problem in the birth rate crisis is that families have stopped taking an active role on their kids' dating, which includes passing judgment on partners.
00:17:36.520And I don't know the best way to navigate that.
00:17:40.240Yeah, well, I mean, I think you just need to actively help them find partners.
00:17:43.820Yeah, well, yeah, and create expectations, too, of like, hey, we're going to judge them.
00:17:48.120This is a normal thing that we do, and this is what we value.
00:17:51.560I mean, if you're judging every partner as negative, then clearly you're not doing a good job as a parent because you're not actually adding anything to the conversation, right?
00:18:05.280I think that would, as a kid, make me feel safe.
00:18:07.940Yeah, more positive than negative interactions or experiences on that front would make a huge difference.
00:18:11.920Yeah, but the idea of, like, cutting conflict, and we've seen this with a lot of the far left, cutting ties to your support network and your family over political differences is absolutely insane.
00:18:25.180You know, my family has both, you know, conservative and Democratic politicians.
00:18:30.180Like, for example, my grandfather was a conservative congressman, but my uncle ran the Fed and ran for, I want to say, Congress or the Senate as a Democrat.
00:18:40.080And, you know, obviously we're conservative.
00:18:42.540Well, and my brother's family is conservative, and my dad's family is conservative.
00:19:05.680The conservatives are willing to maintain friendships with progressives, and often do, often in a closeted way.
00:19:11.060Because, in turn, it's clear in the polling data that most progressives feel that if a friend turns out to be a conservative, the friendship is over.
00:19:18.960If they voted for Trump, the friendship is over.
00:19:21.020If a husband – I mean, I've watched various podcasts of people being like, I just found my husband voted for Trump.
00:19:28.220Well, the region and the culture evolved this is because the urban monoculture cannot stand up to scrutiny.
00:19:33.140If somebody within the urban monoculture is talking to somebody outside, it's very quick to see how imperialistic it is and how aggressive and colonial it is in its desire to eradicate cultural differences and sort of enact a global cultural genocide so that everyone has the same views of gender norms, has the same views of sexuality, has the same views of, you know, their relation to the environment.
00:19:56.500And this is self-destroying because it frames itself as good in opposition to colonialist and imperialist systems without admitting that it is itself a European colonialist.
00:20:07.800So it's so self-defeating as soon as you think about it.
00:20:12.660Well, the iterations of it who were open to engaging with people who still talk to conservatives, mostly they went to the right.
00:20:19.420I mean, that's us and everyone, you know, and a lot of people we know on the new right.
00:20:22.640Where the iterations who just had this, well, cut off any contact with anyone who thinks differently, they were able to stay.
00:20:29.380And so through cultural evolution, it developed this strategy of cutting people off and not talking to anyone with a different perspective.
00:20:47.360In other words, millennials were inundated with a lot of bad therapy.
00:20:52.680Unfortunately, Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been steeped in it even more.
00:20:56.640As Abigail Schreier has relentlessly reported, most of this bad therapy isn't coming from the mouths of licensed therapists or psychiatrists, but from school counselors, podcasters, and Insta influencers.
00:21:43.840This is a really long podcast I listened to about somebody who's currently in school to become a psychologist and they were like, or a psychotherapist specifically, and they were like, I cannot believe.
00:21:53.220They're like, eight out of ten of my classes is just woke nonsense, right?
00:21:55.720Like, they are teaching things that we know are wrong.
00:21:59.880They are constantly trying to culturally convert us.
00:22:02.840This is just a litmus test in a factory for breeding far woke culture because the woke culture learned it could use these industries for conversion.
00:22:13.920If you ever go to, like, a Scientologist, a Thetan reading, it's going to feel very much like a modern therapist meeting.
00:22:21.000Yeah, let's go back in time and find your traumas.
00:22:24.800Yeah, let's find ways to split you from your family and your birth culture.
00:22:27.740Katie Woodman wrote about the rise of therapy speak for the New Yorker in 2021.
00:22:35.960If we are especially online or roaming the world of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present.
00:22:46.980We practice self-care and shun toxic acquaintances, Tara Isabella Burton wrote, how this slipsome masquerading as self-care destroys relationships, community, and ultimately are very human.
00:23:00.140Like, there are words that you can use as sort of like, when I hear them, I'm like a massive red flag.
00:23:07.420These words are things like trauma or toxic or, you know, normal people don't say that.
00:23:13.880That's not a word that normal people say.
00:23:16.380This isn't a word that comes downstream of real psychology.
00:23:18.860This is a word that comes downstream of individuals attempting to implant within you things they can use to control you and create dependency.
00:23:31.280And then back to the New York Times piece.
00:23:33.020Now, I disagree with the second part, but I love the first part of this, which is to say that you, the truest parts of you are your desires and not your obligations.
00:24:00.900The truest parts of who you are are your obligations, your obligations to the future of humanity.
00:24:08.360Your desires are largely irrelevant because you didn't choose them.
00:24:13.120It's like your hindbrain versus your prefrontal cortex.
00:24:15.700What do you want to identify with more?
00:24:17.080Yeah, but if you look at the urban monoculture, you know, with the whole concept of pride, pride parades, everything like that, is your desires, things like your arousal patterns that define identity rather than your obligations.
00:24:30.500As we always say, you know, the point of prenatalism is we have to pay to the future the debt that we owe the past.
00:24:34.880We have to pay for the sacrifices our ancestors made so we can have the privilege of existence to the future.
00:24:41.260Right. Like, that's the way that you pay them back.
00:24:44.160But individuals who don't do that are fundamentally just stealing.
00:24:47.580They are stealing from their ancestors' sacrifices.
00:25:12.560Because there are lots of people who I think are brilliant and funny and interesting and insightful and intelligent who have been overtaken by depression and anti-needalist philosophy who decide that they're definitely not going to try to inherit the future.
00:25:48.620This kind of therapy, which chalks up negative emotions to quote-unquote trauma or quote-unquote toxicity, encourages clients to Marie Kondo anything and anyone in their lives that has bad vibes, even mom and dad, and even their future children.
00:26:08.260Her, her rule with objects, Marie Kondo is a Japanese influencer and organization and her rule with objects is, is it useful or does it spark joy?
00:26:16.680And if it doesn't, then you thank it and you get rid of it.
00:26:24.600I see this a lot with like trans women who had kids back when they were men and they very frequently, I'd almost say normalistically cut off their kids so that they, because it allows them to more, you know, authentically live this new identity, which is often just about his sex and self, you know, getting off as frequently as possible.
00:26:44.120But I mean, obviously the, the positive thing about all of this is there is, you know, justice in the end, these individuals are not truly happy.
00:26:51.740You can see our, the life of a Cenobite episode about Anna Balins, the nice reporter who went after Kershah, about how sad her daily life is.