Based Camp - They Will Replace You： What Drives Them？ (With Catherine Pakaluk of Hannah's Children)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. We are so excited to be joined today by one of my favorite people in the entire

00:00:05.280 world, an inspiration to me, Catherine Ruth Pakalik. She is a teacher. She's a professor

00:00:10.660 of economics at Catholic University. But more importantly to me, she's author of Hannah's

00:00:14.980 Children, the book that changed my mind from wanting seven kids to 10 plus kids. It got me

00:00:21.300 so excited about it. So we're thrilled. We're thrilled to have you on. And we're very keen

00:00:26.480 to ask you some questions both about the book, but also about being a super mother. I mean,

00:00:32.960 you've had, you're the mother to 14 children, eight of them that you've given birth to. It's

00:00:37.900 just insane. Like you're living this dream. 14 children. But that gives you a lot of data points.

00:00:47.420 That's true. That is true. So the first thing we were curious as we were prepping for our

00:00:53.720 conversation with you and just wondering is when you published Hannah's Children, which is a book

00:00:59.660 in which you really share academic research where you did qualitative interviews with mothers who

00:01:04.880 had more than five children or five or more children, I should say. When you released the book,

00:01:09.820 or even when you were doing the research, what was the most controversial thing that came up or the

00:01:15.060 place where you got the most pushback or bristling? Yeah, probably if you want to know the truth,

00:01:21.160 it's probably the fact that I limited my sample of the college educated women.

00:01:25.260 Yeah. It's just interesting because a lot of people wanted to, you know, number one, you know,

00:01:30.300 are you sort of saying that the only way to be like a full human being is to have a college education,

00:01:34.960 which is funny because I'm like on the other end of this, I'd be more inclined to say like,

00:01:39.580 we've done too much college in this country and we need to kind of free up the education market,

00:01:43.220 free up the credentialing market. But so that was something that came up a lot as a kind of pushback

00:01:47.620 was like, you know, you're, you're, you're zeroing in on sort of this, a special group of people,

00:01:52.560 right? Cause it's not, it's not everybody. Why did you choose college educated women?

00:01:56.420 Yeah. Well, I did because that's where in the data, we really see this, the, the, the correlation

00:02:01.800 most strongly, right? So the more education people, women and countries have the fewer children they

00:02:07.180 have. So like, Oh, you see what I mean? So you kind of want to figure out this post globalization,

00:02:13.600 post female empowerment world. You're totally right. Cause one of the things we were just

00:02:17.920 recording an episode about was how we can't go back. How researchers have found that, for example,

00:02:23.020 giving men more economic empowerment relative to women actually doesn't increase marriage rates,

00:02:28.180 you know? So like, yeah, no. Okay. That makes sense. Now I get it. Yeah. Yeah. That was the reason.

00:02:32.120 And of course I wrote the book really for a general audience, a very wide audience. And so I didn't want to,

00:02:37.140 I didn't use a lot of space to make that case. It's like, it's like a couple of sentences. And then

00:02:41.860 people ask me later and they're like, Oh, you know, they didn't even read those two sentences.

00:02:45.220 And they, they think like, it's really elitist to just talk to college educated women. I'm like,

00:02:49.120 I didn't have a lot of space here, guys, but I did, you know, I did go, I did intentionally from

00:02:54.640 my sample of people who applied to be interviewed. I did grab women from kind of all parts of the

00:02:59.800 socioeconomic spectrum. So, I mean, you know, there are women who have college degrees who aren't,

00:03:05.200 you know, like living it up.

00:03:06.420 And then just to make sure you got some that were poverty in, you, you kept some on who wanted to get

00:03:10.760 PhDs and work in academia.

00:03:13.020 100%. Here you go.

00:03:15.060 You nailed it. Like my best friends. Yeah, that's right.

00:03:17.740 Right.

00:03:18.560 So question here, what surprised you most of the like findings or the commonalities

00:03:23.440 in these women, maybe that differentiated from your own experience or that affirmed your own experience?

00:03:29.080 Yeah. Good question. Let me see. I feel like this is going to sound funny, but you know, the first

00:03:34.620 that kind of confirmed my experience was that like people have reasons for what they're doing.

00:03:38.520 Right. I mean, I know this is like the whole, you know, this is something you guys talk about all

00:03:42.760 the time. You represent this in a lot of ways for so many people. And I think that's so cool,

00:03:46.820 which is like, we don't end up with a lot of kids. We just don't know how that happens.

00:03:51.960 Right. Like, obviously, like we go to great lengths to make it happen. It's something that

00:03:56.900 you could with a college education or whatever else, a lot of other things you could do with your

00:04:01.020 time. You could choose it on purpose. So, so that like I, my hunch going into it was like,

00:04:05.960 women are purposeful. Couples are purposeful. They're not accidentally having kids. We all

00:04:10.840 pretty much know how this happens at this point. And like birth control isn't that expensive.

00:04:14.680 So, so why did you do this? So, you know, but again, in a sense, it was a hypothesis. I had to,

00:04:19.660 it had to come out of the research, which was like, yeah, people have reasons and they can say what

00:04:23.100 they are. That was great. So that really confirmed my experience. You know, I, I, like I say in the

00:04:28.460 first chapter, I know when any, every one of my kids was conceived and I could have avoided it.

00:04:32.620 So there has to be like a story there. Like, what were you thinking? Yeah. Yeah. So that was a big

00:04:38.920 thing. Well, there's a theory that I've been building that's related to this. And we were

00:04:43.040 going to go over it at the pronatalist conference, but it said all kids come into existence for one of

00:04:49.980 three reasons. One is parents are practicing Jesus take the wheel. Basically, you know, they get

00:04:57.720 pregnant when they get pregnant, they keep the kids they keep. The second category is the parents

00:05:01.260 wanted a child and then did what they needed to, to bring that child into existence. And then the

00:05:05.860 third case is the kid was conceived accidentally and the parents then kept the kid. And when you're

00:05:12.540 looking at pronatalist interventions, pretty much every form of pronatalist intervention only affects,

00:05:18.820 now we can put the Jesus take the wheel families in a different category because they're one so rare

00:05:23.520 in already high fertility, but of the other two categories, every pronatalist intervention you can do

00:05:28.320 only affects one category. So for example, banning pornography, banning contraception,

00:05:33.920 banning abortion, all of these increase the accident kids, whereas economic factors, increasing

00:05:41.160 house sizes, all of that stuff that affects the intentional kid category. And that it's something

00:05:48.540 that we can be really intentional about as we build out policy, but also to bring focus to the fact that if

00:05:55.860 you look at where children are disappearing in the United States, we pointed out that on a lot of

00:06:00.820 podcasts, you really only see a drop in the children, the number of children and women under 24. In the

00:06:07.500 other categories, it's either growing or staying steady. And to me, that represents likely accident

00:06:12.540 kids in any time recently. So what actually is causing the existing fertility crash is a disappearance

00:06:19.820 of this accident category of baby. And the best way to resolve this is to increase intentionality

00:06:26.560 around having children and build more. And I'm wondering how you would think about doing that

00:06:30.800 now that you've seen so many families that made this decision.

00:06:33.780 Yeah. Well, I mean, so if I understand you correctly, you're saying like in a sort of move

00:06:38.660 people from the accident category into the intentionality category, which is like totally possible to do,

00:06:44.420 I think. I mean, first of all, I talked, so, so I mean, just, we can't underscore enough. Like,

00:06:48.000 I love that. I love the way you guys are thinking about this. And it tracks a little bit with some

00:06:51.980 of the things I'm hoping to present at the natalist. Are you guys going a person? Yeah.

00:06:55.700 Great. This is gonna be fun. Using the code word natalism.org or just look up natalcon,

00:07:03.060 you can get discount tickets using the code Collins, all caps. March 28th and 29th this year in Austin.

00:07:10.000 So just coming up. So it tracks a little bit with how I'm trying to formulate things. But right,

00:07:14.780 if people have reasons for what they're doing, then they, and they can say what those reasons are,

00:07:18.340 and they're not like hard to understand. Well, then, you know, that, that should inform our policy

00:07:22.580 tremendously. It should have a huge impact on our, on our policy. That's the first thing. Second thing

00:07:27.100 is I talked to a ton of people who didn't like grow up wanting to have kids in, or not wanting to have

00:07:32.380 like more than, you know, two kids or one, one kid, 1.5 kids. So, so people can be persuaded.

00:07:38.160 They can change their mind. And that's like, that's like the most normal thing in the world.

00:07:42.440 So, so a hundred percent, like our focus has to be on kind of like what defines this intentionality

00:07:47.540 category or where it comes from, where, how, what manner of educating kids is likely to perpetuate

00:07:54.220 that. Cause this has a lot to do with what, you know, in the policy world would think of as

00:07:57.720 preference formation, you know, kind of, or somebody else might just say like your beliefs,

00:08:01.740 like what do you believe about things? So that's more of just a way of underscoring the

00:08:05.900 importance of the question. Well, I want to dig into this actually, because we sort of offline

00:08:10.500 discussed the, a little bit of the way wise change, like often young parents start off wanting kids

00:08:16.680 or even a lot of kids for one reason, and they sort of build their plan, but then like there's a

00:08:21.720 totally different driver. And I feel like there's a pretty significant disconnect between all of the

00:08:28.160 wise of high fertility families. And then most of the policy focus, like I should ask, like,

00:08:34.880 did any of the families that you're interviewing that you interviewed before that you're considering

00:08:38.580 interviewing in the future say like, Oh, well, you know, I got a little more money. And so then

00:08:43.340 we decided we should have a big family. Like what were some of the wise that were really common

00:08:47.320 that came across? Yeah. Okay. So, well, I'll get to schooling in a minute. I mean, probably the

00:08:53.040 number one thing was like, I really enjoyed my kid. Right. And that sounds like so simple. It's so

00:08:57.680 ordinary. And yet you don't hear that as much. You don't hear this sort of these sort of stories.

00:09:01.360 I mean, I would want to merge that and say like, there's kind of an interaction effect between I

00:09:05.740 really enjoyed being with my kid and some kind of arrangement where people had the freedom to say,

00:09:10.880 well, I'm really enjoying this kid and I could just do this full time. I mean, so that there's

00:09:15.840 something there, like the woman who gave up being a doctor because she just actually turned out to

00:09:19.620 hate being a doctor. Yeah. But presumably her husband made enough money and they could just keep

00:09:24.060 having babies. So there was this, I mean, I do think the enjoyment or the experience of having kids was a

00:09:28.300 big factor for a lot of people. Then you have to ask that question. How early do you have to have

00:09:32.360 that first kid to kind of realize this? Like, oh, I really do like this. And I'd like to do this again

00:09:37.840 and again, probably for most people that's going to be like in your twenties. Did you have any examples

00:09:43.260 of husbands who convinced their wives and what arguments worked? Well, I had one like famous case and

00:09:49.580 it was so famous and so bizarre that it like, it had to be a chapter in the book. It was kind of the

00:09:54.140 exception that proved the rule because actually right of 55 people I interviewed, there was only

00:09:59.120 one case of all the 55 of what I would call husband-led childbearing. And it was the least

00:10:05.880 religious couple in my sample. So that I think is kind of fun and mind-blowing a little bit. These

00:10:09.840 were not like a bunch of religious families where the husband was like more, more, more, you know,

00:10:13.540 tribe, established tribe. No, it was the least religious couple. And, you know, I don't know a lot

00:10:18.700 about him. It'd be great to go back and interview him. What I do know is what I can say is that he

00:10:23.760 was a, he was a faculty member at a, at a really elite school. And I won't say the state because

00:10:29.520 that won't help. So, you know, he's a really successful, talented person. His wife to dual

00:10:35.720 PhD couples, when they met and they first started dating, he said to her right away, like, I want nine

00:10:40.280 kids, you know, and actually she learned about it first through his mom. And she's like, why,

00:10:44.460 you know, and I guess, I guess part of the point about like, he's really right. And he was a

00:10:49.280 bodybuilder and has a gym in the basement. So you're like, okay, does he just, he thinks he's got,

00:10:54.760 he's, he's, he's, he likes his life. He likes who he is. And he wants to have more of himself.

00:10:59.220 They, they didn't describe themselves as especially religious. They did identify as Jewish. But she said

00:11:05.840 really clearly, the Jewish part is separate from the having kids part. Whereas all the other Jewish

00:11:11.240 women I interviewed would have said, no, no, no. Like, of course, this is like the fulfillment of

00:11:15.020 our religious beliefs. Right. And so how did he succeed? I mean, he just, he just said he really

00:11:20.600 wanted these kids. And the way she put it, I drilled down. I'm like, look, if you don't want the kids,

00:11:25.660 how do you keep going along with this? And she said, it's really hard to make it sound like he's not a

00:11:31.180 dick. Like this is what she says. And she's like, but she's like, they have this great marriage.

00:11:36.500 They're really, they're really into each other. And she said, you know, and this is, I think really

00:11:40.980 telling. And it kind of reminds me of something that our friend at More Births, the, the ex-account

00:11:44.980 More Births said, she said, you know, he doesn't ask for much. He, he doesn't want me to cook for him.

00:11:50.320 He does his own laundry. He does everything. This is like the one thing he really wants for me.

00:11:54.900 We have a great marriage. And so like, why would, why wouldn't I just want to give that to him?

00:11:59.600 And so that sounds like I make her have lots of kids and she cooks for me and she cleans and she

00:12:09.700 makes our money because I'm a feminist. Full empowerment on my part. That's interesting though,

00:12:16.620 because we also didn't come from a religious background and Malcolm was the one that led

00:12:20.620 the interest in fertility. See, that is interesting. And then I, well, I do, I do kind of wonder if

00:12:25.580 there's part of this like secular, right, this like emerging secular, right, which you guys are

00:12:29.720 certainly representative of in some sense. Nobody's representative of anything at the end of

00:12:34.700 the day. Right. We're, we're, we're certainly mixing in there. Yeah. An episode on this in the

00:12:39.540 near future. One of our fans who sometimes collects data, collected data in Utah, that was really

00:12:44.120 interesting. He was looking at fertility rates of Mormons and voting patterns. And he found some really

00:12:50.140 interesting stuff in this study. But one of the things that I found particularly interesting

00:12:53.300 is that if you divide counties by, you know, Mormon voted Trump, Mormon voted against Trump,

00:13:02.080 non-Mormon voted Trump, non-Mormon voted against Trump, non-Mormon voted Trump has the same fertility

00:13:08.680 rate as Mormon voted against Trump. So voting for Trump is as impactful for your fertility rate as being

00:13:14.880 Mormon. Mormon in Utah. So Trump's solution to the birth rate. Get it, get on my team. It'll fix the

00:13:22.460 problem. Fixing may be more of a thing than people realize in terms of the vitalism. You know, one

00:13:28.480 thing I was wondering was because what I see with a lot of people, like my anecdotes, when I ask families

00:13:33.360 who wanted to have a lot of kids and didn't end up having a lot of kids is it's always, well,

00:13:37.560 they had that one really bad pregnancy scare or something like that. Yes. Could you run into that

00:13:42.960 frequent where these families who just didn't have that happen or did they have it happen and they kept

00:13:47.200 going? Yeah. That's a good question. And actually I'm glad you brought that up. Cause I was going to

00:13:52.020 come back to this, like, well, what, what, what does, what kept them going? What was the why? And

00:13:55.600 oftentimes it was really enjoying that first baby. And so, yeah, these aren't people who had like the

00:13:59.720 nightmare experience with their first kid. And so the first point is like, yeah, your experience with

00:14:03.880 kids actually highly influences, like whether you have more kids, like that's a really, which kind of

00:14:09.020 brings us back to like, well, what are those experiences? Do you feel as one of the women said,

00:14:12.880 like alone in a box? She says, we send people home from the hospital. They are alone in a box with

00:14:18.720 their baby. Yeah, basically. That's a good way to put it. Actually, that's true. No wonder, no wonder

00:14:23.620 you wouldn't want to go back to that for sure. So were there no bad experiences? I would say there

00:14:28.660 were a couple of bad experiences where people kept going. Of course, I don't know the counterfactual.

00:14:32.720 There could be, you know, bazillions of people who were potentially like multi-parity people who had a

00:14:37.960 terrible experience and didn't go on to have children. And I never interviewed them because that wasn't part of

00:14:42.060 my study design. But I did interview a few people who had bad experiences at the beginning,

00:14:46.740 postpartum depression, tough kids, that sort of thing. But the description there was kind of like,

00:14:51.460 we really believed what we were doing. We wanted to keep going. And at some point it leveled off.

00:14:56.100 So there was also this kind of interesting idea about like three was the hardest number of kids to have.

00:15:01.300 And that, you know, if you, if you kept going and got that far, like after that, it was kind of

00:15:06.200 like, there wasn't that much else to, to learn. It's like, it sounds like weird, but yeah, that was.

00:15:13.080 Yeah. No, that's what, like after three, well, really after four economies of scale

00:15:17.040 kicks in. And I guess with you, you like came in with economies of scale, like suddenly,

00:15:21.140 like you became mother to six children. Yeah. Economies of scale. But I think there's another

00:15:26.080 piece, which is, you know, like one mom said something like, well, I hate, you know, she said

00:15:30.140 something, I feel really bad for the people who give up after two, because like, now you're good at this.

00:15:34.680 And so there's this idea that like, there's a skill to be learned. And if you take that 10,000

00:15:39.280 hours concept. Yeah. I actually haven't worked it out. How many kids do you have to have to do 10,000

00:15:43.620 hours of parenting? Gosh, like actually not that much. Like you're a couple of years in you're.

00:15:48.860 Yeah. You're probably pretty close. Right. Even if you're not doing a whole lot of childcare. Yeah.

00:15:53.020 Right. Cause unlike the other skills, you have to like go out and do them for a few hours a day,

00:15:56.520 whatever that is, like to 10 years over a few hours a day. But anyway, I mean, just take that concept. I think

00:16:01.120 this is a big piece of our culture is that people think of parenting as a binary condition. Like

00:16:05.560 you're our parent or you aren't a parent, but there's such a thing as being like a better parent

00:16:09.760 and a worse parent. And actually, I think that's why people don't like to talk about it. Cause it

00:16:12.920 seems like you're criticizing people like, Oh, you're, you don't even, you don't have much

00:16:17.620 experience, but actually we've got to talk about parenting as a skill in part, because it's great

00:16:21.520 news. It means that actually you can get better at it. True. Yeah. Speaking of parenting as a skill,

00:16:27.260 I mean, you are, you've done a lot of it. I'm very curious to hear what one you would say is most

00:16:34.980 misunderstood about being in a large family, a parent in a large family. And two things that

00:16:42.100 you learned after having a lot of kids where you now, like when you meet someone who's becoming

00:16:47.280 a first-time parent or they're about to start their family, you're like, let me head this off.

00:16:53.020 Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Maybe I'll go backwards. Things that I want to head off,

00:16:57.240 I'm like, I look back, especially with my last few kids and I'm like, wow, I didn't need all the

00:17:01.020 stuff, like all that stuff, like those, you know, the babies, you got all like four different kinds

00:17:05.340 of strollers and baby seats. And I just didn't know, right. All the stuff. I really, maybe there's

00:17:11.640 no way to prevent that. But I think part, part of it is like at the beginning, you feel like

00:17:15.060 it's like the crash test dummies. You feel like you need to sort of everything has to be protected

00:17:19.360 and it needs a tool or a machine. With my last couple of kids, I just had like a thing,

00:17:23.580 like a backpack or a thing. And I just, the car seat never left the car. I didn't tote things

00:17:28.940 around. I hardly use strollers to be honest. Same actually. Yeah. I mean, maybe cause I don't

00:17:34.980 live in a city, but you know, mostly if I went out with my kid on foot, I would carry the kid. So

00:17:40.420 I found baby wearing to be really something that freed me up to do a lot of things.

00:17:44.920 You have your hands when you're wearing your baby.

00:17:47.900 Yeah. And I used to teach classes with the baby on my back, which was great anyway. So

00:17:52.080 I think there was a sense in which when I was younger, like there's just a lot of stuff and

00:17:55.780 like I carried a huge diaper bag at the beginning. And then later it was like, I don't think I need

00:18:00.200 more than two items and I can stick them in something else. You know, my pocket, like there's

00:18:04.200 a diaper and a, and a onesie in my pocket. I'm good to go. Right. It's a good pocket that goes

00:18:09.860 against the female conspiracy against pockets, but I know here's the question. What are your thoughts

00:18:16.120 on advice to people who are dating to attempt to find a partner who wants a lot of kids?

00:18:20.920 Yeah. Well, you definitely have to be upfront. Right. And I think people have to like have to

00:18:25.180 match on that from the beginning. I don't, I don't know. I guess I've known a few cases where it was

00:18:30.260 like, surprise. I really, but I feel like that ought to be like very high on the profile.

00:18:35.340 Oh yeah. Like, right. It could kind of cut through a lot of stuff. I suppose people don't want to

00:18:39.580 like reduce the pool or something, but fundamentally that's what you have to do is reduce the pool.

00:18:43.700 So you get to know sooner if you filter them out earlier. Otherwise you've just wasted two weeks

00:18:48.900 or more. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think if you don't have kids, I mean, right. If you don't,

00:18:53.700 if you don't have kids yet, it's, it's, it's a pretty big sell. I mean, it's, or it's a

00:18:57.880 something you really have to kind of get through, but yeah, that's my number one thing with my,

00:19:02.580 my own kids that are dating my college students. You're like, you like my son dated a girl in the fall

00:19:08.220 and they met on hinge and, you know, and you're like, did you know, do you know if she wants kids,

00:19:13.180 you know, three weeks in, you know, it's like, Oh, it's not going to work out. And you're like,

00:19:18.480 that's what it was. Wasn't it? And it's not just kids. Right. It's like, well, cause if anybody will

00:19:24.540 say you want kids, maybe you have to be more specific. It's like, I want to get married to

00:19:28.720 start a family like right away. Cause that'll scare them off really quickly. Yeah. Wouldn't that

00:19:33.980 have scared you off Simone? Well, on our second date, Malcolm was like, I want to have a lot of kids.

00:19:38.380 I didn't say right away. I didn't say right away. Well, it was on the second date. It was on the

00:19:42.260 second date. Yeah. It was after, and it wasn't like the first conversation. I think it's a good

00:19:45.660 second date subject. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to let it go. You don't want to let it go too far.

00:19:50.060 Yeah. There's some chemistry and try. Yeah. I mean, but I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

00:19:54.380 I mean, obviously like, look, churches do this for people. And so there's a lot of this happening

00:19:58.360 in churches where you don't have to be explicit. Like you're both, you're part of some tiny

00:20:02.500 traditionalist group and you know, like everybody in this church already agrees that this is what we're

00:20:07.020 going to do when we get married. And then you don't have to have all those conversations. But I think

00:20:10.260 if you're just dipping into the big pool and a dating app or whatever, you're going to have to

00:20:14.200 get it out there quickly. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. So at the beginning, I interrupted you.

00:20:20.940 You were going to say the second thing that you thought was interesting in the pool of people

00:20:24.180 that you had, or surprising to you. That surprised you about the interviews?

00:20:27.760 Right. Well, I guess this was interesting. I guess, well, I don't know. Like I'm, I'm familiar with

00:20:31.720 Catholics. I'm Catholic, but I interviewed women of a bunch of different religious backgrounds and

00:20:36.000 beliefs. And I didn't really know what the story was going to be. And I think what surprised me was

00:20:40.100 to find out that while religious identity was strong in most of my interviewees, except for that

00:20:46.320 one, that one couple, what surprised me was how, way to go, baby. Is he drinking the, she's drinking

00:20:54.020 the beer. Just Malcolm. That's so cute. It's a girl, right? She's a girl. Yeah. Yeah. I remember

00:21:01.200 that. Yeah. What surprised me was actually like how non-creedal the common sort of religious factors

00:21:07.960 were meaning they were kind of common across all of these different Jewish and Christian groups who

00:21:13.960 shared the same, you know, or, or partially share the same scriptures. So this kind of like thing

00:21:19.380 that you can say in a, in a, in sort of non-religious terms, that children are blessings,

00:21:23.440 I guess it's a religious term of like a blessing, but you know, it wasn't like, well, the Mormons have

00:21:28.060 this one idea and then the Jewish women had a totally different idea and that it was really linked to

00:21:33.880 their specific religious creeds. It was pretty general. And so I think that was interesting.

00:21:40.640 So I, I've started to think, and by the way, what was the content of that? It was this, we might call

00:21:46.640 it pronatal belief. I know that's what some people like to call it, or like a conviction that children

00:21:51.700 are, are really important, worth having. And I think what that drove me to think, and I'm, I'm really

00:21:59.180 kind of thinking about this going forward, looking at the social science of religion. I mean,

00:22:02.780 you've seen this Pew study that was out this week about how like Christianity stopped falling.

00:22:07.380 I guess the number of people who identify as Christians stopped falling. So it's not exactly

00:22:11.900 like it's rising, but it stopped falling. Like that's what Ryan Burge is calling it. Maybe we

00:22:17.960 hit the floor of, and so, but I think that the study of religion, the scientific study of religion

00:22:24.420 in this country has got to move past like just these denominations. Like that's as much as we do.

00:22:29.440 We just sort of survey. And what I'm finding is there's this like minority group in all these

00:22:34.040 different religious groups that has this very strong, we could say biblical set of principles

00:22:39.820 or beliefs about the value of having children. And if you want to know who's having kids, you,

00:22:44.300 it's like, that's who you have to find. It's like the 5% of Mormons and the 5% of Catholics and the,

00:22:48.360 but, and so it's religious. It is religious for those people, but you couldn't find them just by

00:22:54.680 finding out who's religious. You'd have to dig into, so it's like intersect the being religious

00:22:59.020 with this specific belief. Like, so it's like what kind of religion did you find unifying?

00:23:05.280 Was it that they also lived in really high fertility communities? Like were there correlatory factors

00:23:10.520 that seem to indicate like, okay, so this is, this is what makes them that 5% of Mormon or Catholic or

00:23:16.780 whatever it may be that is really high fertility.

00:23:18.760 Well, I'd be hesitant to draw a strong conclusion from my relatively small sample, which wasn't

00:23:24.480 representative, but I did have like all kinds. I mean, I did have people who did live in these

00:23:29.000 smaller communities, but a lot of times like they went to move near them. So they already,

00:23:32.860 they got this belief or they became convinced of this. And then that's why they sought out the

00:23:36.480 community. So the causality went in the other direction. It's true. I had one, some, I, one lady who

00:23:41.680 moved to a community because of a school and then met a bunch of people and was like, okay, I can keep

00:23:46.200 going. But then you've got the couple in chapter seven and they just are like opening the Bible

00:23:50.780 and they feel like, you know, they're Jesus take the wheel types and, and they just are off by

00:23:55.380 themselves at their own church in the Rocky mountains. So I think we need to do more research

00:24:00.380 on that. I think there were certainly cases where clearly the, that orientation or belief was coming

00:24:06.140 out of how they were, how they had been educated, how they'd grown up. And that's a piece that's

00:24:10.480 relatively understudied. So it's something we can take to the data in the next couple of years and kind

00:24:15.760 of ask like what, what types of schooling most predict higher, higher birth rates.

00:24:22.080 Like, like my hunch would be, we'd see a lot of homeschooling. We'd see a lot of private

00:24:25.740 independent schools, like micro schools, co-ops, things like that. That'd be my hunch, but I haven't

00:24:31.480 asked the data yet. Yeah. We're really, we'd love to see more research on that too. And it's like,

00:24:36.440 in terms of, oh, go ahead. You're talking about the, the idea of these high fertility

00:24:41.020 sub-factions of these religious communities is, is participation in them intergenerational? Like

00:24:47.720 does it persist with fidelity or do they deconvert to the other type of Christian within this community?

00:24:55.340 Have you seen? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the question. There's been a little bit of work on

00:24:59.620 intergenerational transmission of values in, in that I looked at in, in European data,

00:25:04.580 but my problem with that data, cause it would, it would, it would argue that basically like religious

00:25:08.540 groups don't pass on their values, like particularly well, but I would argue that the thing that they're

00:25:12.840 not looking at is the, the beliefs of the groups. Like it's not granular enough because some people

00:25:18.800 clearly are. And so, you know, you just need to get more granular. What type of religious group is

00:25:23.640 it? And then how do they educate their kids? We know that sort of alternative schooling, isn't

00:25:28.060 that common in Europe. So if I were to guess, I would say that that's the missing link, but.

00:25:33.140 Oh, I don't know. I actually, I'm going to push back here. I think that a lot of people who are from

00:25:37.840 religious backgrounds, when they see things like the rate of religion stabilizing or growing,

00:25:43.000 what they think it is, is families getting better at keeping their kids within the religion.

00:25:46.700 And what it actually is, is people joining new types of religion that are radically different

00:25:52.920 from their parents' version of Christianity. And I've seen increasingly poor rates of keeping kids,

00:26:01.520 especially within the incredibly conservative iterations of religions. One of the things I was

00:26:06.860 telling Simone recently, I didn't know, is apparently, and I've got to look for more

00:26:10.840 information on this, but the FLDS, the FLDS are, FLDS are the most extreme. Those are the Mormons

00:26:16.520 that have like multiple wives and dressed kind of frumpy. Apparently they held their third gay pride

00:26:22.860 parade this year. Two towns on the Utah-Arizona border with deep roots in the FLDS church will

00:26:29.520 celebrate pride this weekend. Jenna Brie shows us how queer people are openly showing their colors.

00:26:36.000 An area known for its polygamous community and ties to the fundamentalist LDS church. The history of the

00:26:42.660 town, you know, I feel like it kind of gets a bad breath. Last year, Short Creek Pride was included

00:26:48.300 in the 4th of July parade. And Aldrich says they plan on marching with their community again this year.

00:26:54.360 Like we're seeing within the most extreme factions of these religion communities, they're losing young

00:27:00.080 people to woke, like at a way higher rate. Which is really shocking. It's not what I would expect

00:27:04.980 because I thought they were more culturally isolated. It's what I'd expect if you have a cultural

00:27:08.800 preference for high authority and following what the average of the community is the pressure of you

00:27:13.740 in terms of value systems. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Well, that, yeah, go ahead. I was

00:27:20.640 going to say that we definitely have to study this more because we don't really know. More data as

00:27:24.880 needed. I want to hone in on something that you said about sort of the factor that made people want

00:27:30.160 to have a lot of more kids, which is that first kid is that they really like it. Like they have one

00:27:34.960 and they get hooked. And I think Malcolm and I got hooked after two or three, like it wasn't like,

00:27:40.240 we think the hardest number of kids to have is one. It's just like you're doing everything

00:27:43.560 for the first time. It's just so stressful, but I'm also curious from a policy or cultural design

00:27:50.020 or lifestyle design standpoint, if you came across factors that you think correlated with that being

00:27:56.240 a good versus bad experience, like basically being alone in a box with your kid, sort of terrified and

00:28:02.080 alone versus super enjoying what we think is like the hardest stage, you know, first time with

00:28:08.220 everything. Yeah. Hmm. You know, I'm just, I'm reaching. It's not something that, that I, I mean,

00:28:13.960 I would certainly say, I was going to say some, sounds, sounds obvious. Like I would certainly say

00:28:18.720 for me, the, the hardest transition was zero to one. I think in terms of like just the, the chaos of

00:28:25.180 parenting, it was harder, like at three or four or three toddlers was really tough, but yeah,

00:28:29.980 like the lifestyle changes, like the psychological shock was biggest from zero to one. There she goes

00:28:34.920 again, but I had a lot of, I had a lot of kind of cultural capital coming into that. Cause I came

00:28:40.460 out of a large family. So I kind of had this vision, like it's going to get better. Oh, you'd

00:28:45.800 seen it before. Yeah. And I feel like that's the, the me, you know, like that would, that would have

00:28:51.100 to be, but then, you know, then you kind of bump into this, this, I think it's one of the reasons

00:28:55.160 why lower birth rates beget lower birth rates, like how you get into these traps that keep cycling

00:28:59.760 down. Cause I think that the fewer kids there are around, the less you have like a, uh, a belief

00:29:06.720 that it will get better. You haven't seen it before. So the, you don't have any context to

00:29:12.240 interpret how difficult that is. Yeah. At one point in the book, you do talk about the, the shortage of,

00:29:18.580 of people growing up in America who even have had exposure to infants in their entire lives. Like

00:29:24.780 maybe when they have a kid, that that's their first time encountering a young human, which

00:29:30.740 definitely was pretty much the experience for me, for example. Yeah. So do you think that's a big

00:29:36.460 factor? I mean, a huge factor. I think, I think it's gotta be a huge factor. I mean, I did some back

00:29:41.480 of the envelope, you know, calculations, like how many, how many years of your childhood would you

00:29:45.960 have been exposed? Like, even if you had one sibling, which is a pretty normal family these days,

00:29:49.220 two kids. Well, like most normal people are going to have their two kids and probably maximally

00:29:54.340 like a five-year span, which means that by the time, you know, by the time your brother or sister

00:29:59.760 is born, you're like two. By the time you're six, you're not going to remember a baby. By the time

00:30:04.900 you're 12, a baby never happened in your house, you know? Right. So I think that's gotta be enormous.

00:30:10.480 Like, and then you don't have cousins nearby and then that's it. That's, that's gotta be really big.

00:30:15.780 And it's so strange. Like, well, think about like you're in the hospital and like, you've got these

00:30:19.880 unrelated human beings who are like, let me show you how to put up a baby on your boob.

00:30:24.340 Yes. Yeah. And change a diaper. And you think about like the dogs and the cats and that, like,

00:30:29.540 you think what a weird species that we like need someone to show us how to feed our, our offspring.

00:30:35.760 So, which I hadn't thought to ask before, but I guess it's actually really important for this

00:30:39.780 new theory I have. If you were going to estimate what percentage of these high fertility families,

00:30:45.060 you know, five kids over when you were talking to them, didn't plan on their children, i.e. they

00:30:49.760 were using a full Jesus, take the wheel thing. Not, not tracking their cycles, not anything like

00:30:54.440 that. Versus what percent do you think really intended on having every kid they had?

00:31:00.080 Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure. Cause I did ask, like I asked about every kid in the interview.

00:31:04.820 It's not, it doesn't necessarily come out in the book. I'm pretty sure it was like one out of 55

00:31:08.680 was the Jesus take the wheel case. Yeah. Yeah. That was incredibly rare. I was talking with a

00:31:14.560 Catholic reporter about this and I was like, it's rare within Catholic communities. And he was like,

00:31:18.120 what makes you think that? And then Simone had great evidence for that. She said, well,

00:31:23.080 they tracked their cycles so well that they were the first to realize the vaccines were causing

00:31:27.800 issues. The only reason you would know your cycle that well.

00:31:30.680 Yes. Yes, exactly. I don't think they would mind if I share this case, but well, I'll just say,

00:31:37.140 I know a young couple, I wouldn't say who they are, but they got married. They're Catholic. They got

00:31:41.480 married. They knew because she was, they were tracking before they got married. Cause they

00:31:45.000 wanted kids. They knew that they got married like on peak fertility. Oh my gosh. Amazing. Nobody would

00:31:50.280 know that. And so like they got off their honeymoon and knew that there was a good chance they were

00:31:54.140 expecting because they got married on peak, peak, uh, peak fertility tested at the earliest possible

00:31:58.780 minute. You know, it's about like under two weeks from their wedding. They knew they were expecting

00:32:02.740 and you nailed it. When you get people looking at them, like you definitely must've like gotten

00:32:08.580 pregnant before you got married. Um, but that's because people don't understand how granular that

00:32:13.680 is and how much I could know about your cycle. So that's really interesting. I only met one family.

00:32:17.640 I put them in the book. Cause again, like my job was to display the whole diversity of it. The general

00:32:21.360 story was that people did intend and knew exactly when they got pregnant, but there was that one couple

00:32:26.280 that in chapter seven and we're like, we just didn't ever, we didn't ever do anything to plan

00:32:31.480 or to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's really rare. And I, and I think that's what we should

00:32:37.440 expect. Like, I think people are smart and they, they learn stuff and. Well, I don't, I don't think

00:32:43.260 it used to be that way. I think that this is a, that used to make up maybe 30% of, of some

00:32:49.240 population's birth rate, maybe, you know, 50, 60 years ago. Yeah, I think that's correct. And it's,

00:32:55.520 but it's, it's one of the reasons why, I don't know, some people sort of naive idea that we could

00:32:59.280 just like ban birth control would somehow like change the picture. I don't think it would change

00:33:03.280 the picture. It might for like communities in poverty that are really uneducated. No, but even

00:33:08.940 like with apps being what they are now, I think people just, people find a way. Also historically,

00:33:13.260 you can see different birth rate trends and when economic prosperity goes up, suddenly birth rates

00:33:18.740 go up too. Like people have always kind of had a ways, even without the apps, even without,

00:33:23.360 you know, groups you can pee on. There have been so many ways for people to take care of

00:33:28.240 their fertility. Yeah. I mean, probably, you know, probably like the teenagers and the kids

00:33:32.340 that like people who aren't planning to have sex. And then all of a sudden that, you know,

00:33:35.160 so they weren't tracking or something, but that's, again, that's that third category that's

00:33:38.780 shrinking. This is kind of accidental ones. But I think among the people who like are coupled

00:33:43.420 up or would like to be coupled up, I mean, I think people are, they're either using birth control,

00:33:47.200 they're tracking, tracking is becoming incredibly common. And it's like so easy to do it at this

00:33:52.160 point. I do think that's going to be a huge piece of the future.

00:33:55.120 What percent of the kids were in public school?

00:33:59.000 Of the kids of the women that I talked to?

00:34:00.980 Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm curious.

00:34:03.040 We're around public school in these communities or was this not as much?

00:34:06.960 That's a great question. You've asked me a question for which I don't have a ready answer.

00:34:10.900 I didn't total that up, but if I'm just thinking through the people I talked to,

00:34:15.400 it was certainly under 50%.

00:34:17.240 Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I mean, this is, I see throughout the community

00:34:21.160 being terrified. We have our kids until middle school and public school or until they say they

00:34:26.660 don't want to be there anymore. And our own community is like, you can't put that, like,

00:34:30.020 what are you doing?

00:34:33.920 Amazing.

00:34:34.700 Yeah. We'll see.

00:34:35.740 Yeah. We'll see. Well, I mean, I think the, I mean, we're, this is the kind of a funny moment

00:34:38.740 to talk about schooling because my own, I think like 10, 15 years from now, the menu of options that

00:34:44.400 are going to be out there for schooling is going to be so diverse and so different from

00:34:47.420 what we have now.

00:34:48.400 Well, the Collins Institute is improving publicly. We're, we're adding an AI test and tutor to

00:34:54.300 it, which should be ready by the summer.

00:34:56.640 That's right.

00:34:57.020 We're trying to like make possible at scale and very affordable aristocratic tutoring,

00:35:01.580 which just seems like such a great way of learning, you know, just being able to explore

00:35:05.680 what you like and talk to someone who can help guide you through it and not be, you know,

00:35:10.760 taken through this industrial system. But yeah, I mean, I think a big factor,

00:35:14.280 that we look at certainly with pronatalism is just school choice and educational freedom,

00:35:19.500 because there does seem to be this element of mainstream culture that just takes the focus

00:35:24.220 away from that point that you point out of, of just kids are good. You know, kids are a blessing,

00:35:28.680 kids are good. And that, that is this really important meme that takes place with high fertility.

00:35:33.060 And I'm, I'm curious to get your thoughts on like other ways that a country trying to improve

00:35:40.640 its birth rates can do that. I mean, we've, when, when you were talking about your exposure to

00:35:44.520 babies thing, for example, I was thinking about, I think it was in Australia, that one case where

00:35:50.040 the birth control program, where teens had to take home baby dolls and they were like,

00:35:54.560 Oh wow, this is, I can handle this. This is great. Like they, they got exposed even to fake

00:35:58.860 baby dolls and it encouraged more fertility, which is crazy. Um, but then there's, there's kind of

00:36:05.200 examples of like watching teen pregnancy reality TV really successfully reducing rates of, of teen

00:36:13.100 pregnancy. Cause they saw it as like low class or undesirable or disastrous. And I'm curious, um,

00:36:19.500 if you saw anything among the families, I mean, it sounds like even within your family,

00:36:23.180 with your kids who are dating, there are some discussions on like, well, I mean, do the partners

00:36:28.780 want to have kids? How do you promote a pronatalist kids are a blessing culture within your own family?

00:36:34.440 How have you seen the families you've spoken with do it in a way that's not like, you know,

00:36:39.280 creepy or backfiring? Right. Well, I, I, there's probably a lot of things to say. There's like

00:36:45.080 the policy stuff, by the way, I wanted to say that I think I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful that like the

00:36:49.720 remote work stuff is going to keep going. Cause I think that's been, I mean, look, I, I work remote.

00:36:55.220 I mean, although I, I have a job that wouldn't have been called remote work for a long time,

00:36:58.780 but when I was in college and I knew like, I wanted to have kids and be, you know, be, be able to have kids.

00:37:04.440 I remember looking at the menu of options. I was like, well, I'm, you know, I'm doing economics and math and,

00:37:09.860 you know, there's a strong pull to do wall street or finance at that. And I'm looking at it. Like

00:37:13.060 you have to be in your actual office, you know, like 40, 50, 60 hours a week. That's not going to work.

00:37:18.820 I want to have a couple of kids. So I'm looking at it as a young person thinking, how come like

00:37:23.300 academics aren't like all with a huge family? Cause I'm thinking to myself,

00:37:27.340 that is what blows my mind. These people have very flexible jobs, right? So why? Yeah. Well,

00:37:34.580 I think like academia is like tilted left and sort of antenatal, as long as I can, I mean,

00:37:39.940 certainly for a hundred years, if not more. Have you run into antinatalists yet?

00:37:44.100 At university or in general? Within your job or within your promotion? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I get

00:37:49.740 emails from them a lot. I'm like, yeah. I mean, you know, like the nastier ones are the ones who send

00:37:55.740 you these little, do you guys get them? Like little handwritten scrawled notes. And you're

00:37:59.080 like, Oh yes. I'm looking at this script and like, I think you're 95 and you're in the Bay Area.

00:38:05.020 Was it on a used like bill envelope? Cause that's what we got. Like, you know, the ones with the

00:38:10.020 windows of like, he just used, he was like, cause he's, he cares about the environment. There are too

00:38:14.200 many people. So he's reusing. Oh yes. They're like, you're like, you are just like filled with old

00:38:19.340 bills and stuff like that. Like writing books. No, exactly. No, they, they do. They come out of the

00:38:24.820 woodwork. They send you, you know, letters and you're, and you're like, you're so old and you're

00:38:28.180 so out of touch. Like who is paying your bills? Like, you know, buddy, this is just outrageous.

00:38:33.640 So I don't, I mean, I was, cause I don't have any colleagues or any, I haven't experienced anything

00:38:37.300 super nasty personally. The antenatalists are out there. You would think, but I will say like

00:38:45.260 politically there it's all over the map. Oh yeah. I'm so sorry. Catholic, but university,

00:38:52.160 Malcolm university. Yeah, no, no, it's true. Yeah. I won't, I probably should,

00:38:56.700 I should probably just leave it there. So that makes sense though. I mean, cause when we speak

00:39:02.140 with academics, especially when they're young, they're like, well, you know, no one would take

00:39:06.380 me seriously if I got pregnant and in all these things, I've been told not to have kids. And I

00:39:11.460 mean, actually the same thing happened to us when we were in private equity, we had people be like,

00:39:16.620 well, don't have kids until you've completely gone through the entire process and sold your company.

00:39:20.520 We're like, Oh, should we not tell him that we're pregnant right now? And we just did it. And that's

00:39:26.180 the thing is you have to just do it. You don't ask for permission. You just have to do it.

00:39:29.600 Well, my husband's not on this. My husband's not in this conversation, but at some point,

00:39:33.340 the four of us will sit down together and like, you guys are not short on confidence. And you know,

00:39:37.780 like we're kind of similar. We're like, well, you know, my, you know, my way or the highway. So,

00:39:41.720 but you know, it's true that definitely in the eighties and the nineties, like there's this very

00:39:45.760 normie kind of thing, which was like in academia, you know, you had your, you, you, you had your,

00:39:50.620 you finished a degree, you got tenure. And then, you know, when you're like 38, you would kind of

00:39:53.840 start having, and it like didn't work for a lot of people. And little by little people were like,

00:39:59.240 Oh, you know, kind of. So my advisor, one of my advisors was a female and, you know, she really

00:40:05.260 never said anything outright, but she, at some point she dropped me the tiniest line and said,

00:40:11.060 you know, you're, what did she, how'd she put it? She said, you're, you're, you're narrow,

00:40:15.980 like you're, you're narrow, narrowly focused peers will regret their narrowness later.

00:40:21.660 And I, and I thought like, that's not exactly a encouragement, but it's also not a discouragement.

00:40:27.320 So it's pretty good for the ivory tower, you know, broadly antinatalist environment. That was her

00:40:35.300 like underground railroad hint. She didn't have kids. And most of the women in the faculty,

00:40:41.060 didn't have children, but you know, you never really know. Like some people already know you

00:40:44.300 were pregnant when she said that though. Yeah, that was, that was like, I was like three kids in

00:40:48.520 and I'm sort of like, Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't get you this stuff. I'm slow. You know, she was like,

00:40:52.760 she was a little, you know, she was the one voice of like, don't worry too much about it,

00:40:56.180 which was, yeah, I really am. I'm really great. I probably saved that message someplace. I thought

00:41:00.460 it was like a miracle, but you know, I mean, especially when I was in my twenties, I didn't think of,

00:41:05.860 of trying to find out why the childless women on the faculty didn't have kids. Like, was it because

00:41:11.560 they had waited too long and couldn't, or is it because they didn't want to? I never asked her.

00:41:18.220 Yeah. Interesting. Seemed impertinent. I can't remember if this was mentioned in many of your

00:41:23.580 interviews, but did you find any trends with male versus female task sharing within the household?

00:41:31.340 I mean, cause there, there was a pretty good mix of like, there were some women who were full-time

00:41:35.380 mothers. There were some women who had sort of hybrid part-time careers or someone fully in.

00:41:40.880 Yeah. Was there a pattern?

00:41:42.420 What I heard a lot of was a lot of nice stories. I mean, again, you know, most, mostly people

00:41:46.780 volunteer to talk to an interviewer about their family size. You know, you're certainly not getting

00:41:50.620 the people who are really upset about how things are going. So, I mean, I realized there's a bias there,

00:41:54.360 but I got a lot of nice stories about, I mean, I guess I would say like, we would broadly think of it as

00:41:59.000 like, we figured out a way between us to kind of like share tasks in a way that is kind of division

00:42:04.680 of labor-ish. And I would say that in general, it was kind of traditional looking. And there's like

00:42:09.700 that one quote from the, the academic couple at the beginning of the book. And she says at the end

00:42:14.240 of that chapter, she says something like, we started out like kind of progressive and egalitarian.

00:42:18.140 We're like, we're going to split everything 50, 50, whatever. And she's like, but here we are with

00:42:21.480 five kids. And it's kind of weird how traditional it's turned out to be. This is not intentional.

00:42:25.860 It's just, it was like, we each leaned into our strengths and is what we got. Whereas, you know,

00:42:30.440 you had the couple where he was staying at home full time. So I guess I would say, I heard a lot

00:42:34.700 of stories about when you have a lot of kids, there's a lot going on. Like your household is

00:42:40.560 certainly a complicated, almost as a small enterprise, right? It's something else that you're,

00:42:45.420 you know, you have your work to manage and you have this other enterprise. And if you're doing it well,

00:42:48.860 you know, you've got like, you're developing your kids and you're, and so that, because it's an

00:42:52.920 enterprise, we do the thing that we do in human life. Generally, we sort of like,

00:42:56.700 we make rational decisions, like you're better at this. So you do it. So I wouldn't say like,

00:43:00.520 I knew, I knew this guy a couple, he's an academic. I knew him through, through conferences

00:43:04.500 and they were homeschooling and their, their deal was like, he did all the cooking because he was so

00:43:08.280 good at it and he loved it. And it was the deal because she was homeschooling. So she was like,

00:43:12.600 well, by the time my day is over, I've had it. And he just did the, so I wouldn't say I got

00:43:16.980 like this really long list of sort of like super traddy looking things, but rather sort of like,

00:43:22.220 it's worked out well because, you know, he's good at some stuff. I'm good at some stuff and

00:43:25.860 efficiency means that's how you do it. You just like, you're better at this.

00:43:30.140 It actually says a lot though. That's pretty radical because I think modern marriages are often like,

00:43:35.220 we are peers. We each do exactly the same thing. You know, maybe we make almost exactly the same

00:43:42.280 amount of money with the male making a little bit more. And with children, everyone has to do

00:43:46.520 exactly the same thing interchangeably. And otherwise it's not, it's like, you know,

00:43:51.680 early on. I mean, my husband and I didn't have any role, like we don't have any like principles

00:43:57.940 about who does what. And, and, but I figured out really quickly, like if, if I, if I divided up

00:44:03.160 like the nighttimes equally and I was like, you take this night and I take that night, the kid was

00:44:06.900 going to not be happy and I was going to not sleep well. So it was going to be like, not a good deal.

00:44:11.740 So I'm just like, okay, I'm nicer in the middle of the night and I want my kids to have a nice life.

00:44:15.100 So I'm going to see them in the middle of the night. But if we were to fast forward and like,

00:44:18.920 look at their teenage years, their early teen years, he does so much more with them in terms

00:44:23.560 of like taking them to sports stuff. Oh, that's interesting. So like stages of life too.

00:44:28.000 Stages of life. Yeah. Because I would say like now, you know, now I'm working a lot more than I did

00:44:33.460 when they were babies. And he is kind of in a sense, I won't, I don't want to say over the hill.

00:44:38.840 That's not right. He's, he's very productive, but he has done enough in his profession that he has time

00:44:43.780 to, so he's like, you know, taking them to, he oversees the piano lessons. He oversees the music,

00:44:48.440 he oversees the sports. And I'm so glad, I'm so glad because those are the things that I'm not

00:44:52.900 really that good at. I'd be way inclined to be too much of a gentle parent. Like the minute they're

00:44:56.860 crying over a piano lesson, I'd be like, all right, that's it. We're done. We're saving that money.

00:45:01.340 My husband's like, no, this is so good for them. We're doing this. We're going to push through it.

00:45:05.700 So, you know, I'm glad I was the person that was getting up in the middle of the night. Cause I think

00:45:09.400 the babies were, were better for it, better off for it. But we didn't, we didn't go into marriage

00:45:14.840 with like this game plan. Like this is how I'm going to do it. Right. You just sort of go hit

00:45:18.260 the moment. You're like, yeah, I'll take them at two in the morning. Like you sock at this. It was

00:45:23.160 like basically true. And you touched on something though, talking about that, you know, you, you do

00:45:27.580 invest in some activities for your kids. And we also talked about sort of frugality at the beginning

00:45:31.440 of this conversation briefly. We, we, one of our big arguments is that parenting is completely

00:45:37.060 overblown now. Like people very, very unsustainably parent their kids. And that's why they're like,

00:45:41.580 well, I can't afford to have a kid, but they're basically raising a millionaire, like a retired

00:45:45.660 boy. And like, I don't know why you think that's normal. Like it, it hasn't been for the vast

00:45:50.600 majority of humanity. And I, I, but I, I feel very conflicted on this. Like, I don't want to both

00:45:54.660 Malcolm and I are like, we want to give our kids everything. We also want to be reasonable. We don't

00:46:00.320 want to spoil them. We don't want to coddle them. And we also don't want to clutter their lives with

00:46:03.380 things that are like, you know, to your point, like we all get too much stuff. So

00:46:06.900 where have you found it to be like really useful to invest in things in your kids? And where have

00:46:12.760 you just decided, like, we don't need to spend money on this? Yeah. Well, I definitely think

00:46:17.120 skills and skills and things that are really challenging to learn. I think it's hard to

00:46:20.880 self-teach and a lot of those types of things, like, you know, I would say certain, certain

00:46:24.920 academic things and be like, you know, you could do a lot in math and languages that, that your local

00:46:29.680 schools aren't going to be able to do. You can invest in tutors. If you can't do it yourself,

00:46:32.880 those are things that are hard to just tell your kid, like, just pick it up. Right. Whereas

00:46:36.680 whereas, you know, some of the skills my kids have are things that because we didn't do,

00:46:41.460 we didn't occupy, we didn't have tablets. They didn't have devices. They didn't have video games.

00:46:44.920 Like they went outside and did stuff. And those are things we, we really under-parented in that

00:46:49.160 sense. So my, my three oldest sons are all like kind of really accomplished fishermen. I don't know

00:46:54.980 anything about fishing and neither does my husband. Did they just go out and figure it out once?

00:46:58.700 Yep. They a hundred percent. How did he not take GPS code on you? This is, this is the mystery.

00:47:05.200 No, we lived in Florida. Well, this is the funny thing about it. We, we moved there. I thought my

00:47:09.980 kids were going to eat and buy alligators and we lived, we had like, you know, there's, there's

00:47:14.080 water everywhere. And the kids are like, can we go to bass pro shops? We want to learn to fish.

00:47:17.580 Me being this like Northern sort of like educated, you know, safety conscious mom. I'm like,

00:47:22.940 they're going to die. Like they're going to get sharp stuff, you know? And of course,

00:47:26.180 like I know nothing at this point, I know nothing, you know? And then I think it was the grandma that

00:47:31.120 brought them to bass pro. Like it wasn't me. Right. So the grandma brought them over there.

00:47:34.140 They go out there with their stuff. And then like the next thing, I don't see them for four hours.

00:47:38.480 And so you're like, Hey, this is kind of good. Like that's good for them. Right. But actually the end

00:47:42.640 of the story is really kind of cool. Like they just, they became such good fishermen because of all the

00:47:47.980 time they spent unsupervised, just kind of figuring it out. So it's kind of a mixture.

00:47:51.580 There's a great story about them kind of in their mid teen years when they went out on a charter

00:47:57.180 sea fishing boat. And well, it was like a, like a neighbor brought them on this thing and it was

00:48:01.400 like a fancy thing. So they're out in this deep sea boat off the Gulf coast of Florida. And

00:48:06.300 the captain says that, Hey, they can't line up shoulder to shoulder on that, on that rail. Like

00:48:11.760 they'll get their lines crossed. Yeah. The boat's moving, you know, the water's moving. And so you

00:48:16.840 could see that would be reasonable. And the neighbor guy that took them, he said, no, I think

00:48:21.160 they'll be okay. And anyway, later the captain said, I've never seen three men stand shoulder

00:48:25.920 to shoulder and not screw up. He said, but that's just, they stood shoulder to shoulder

00:48:31.220 doing how they learn, you know, so they're great fishermen. So I think there's some mixture

00:48:37.060 of like, there's a bunch of things you want to throw your kids at that allow for that kind

00:48:41.360 of like just organic learning and lots and lots of time. But you know, music lessons there,

00:48:46.660 most kids aren't going to, they're not going to do music lessons. No, no, no, no, no. Who

00:48:53.540 knows? I think for developing inhibitory control, that's amazing. Like I, one of the things that

00:48:57.980 I've read that really stuck with me is that all humans now in like sort of developed societies

00:49:03.860 have lost the ability to sit with discomfort. Um, and that a lot of building resilience and

00:49:09.120 maturity is about learning how to be uncomfortable and not to immediately freak out and think something

00:49:12.980 needs to be fixed. If you are not happy and serene. Um, and I think that things like music

00:49:18.680 lessons, um, when it's just like, this is actually really frustrating and kind of boring and I'm not

00:49:22.900 enjoying myself is like, that is building that muscle for you. Yeah. So I like that, especially

00:49:27.320 in the absence of a really strict religious environment where you're like fasting and getting

00:49:32.560 all these things out and like, you know, spending like three hours at mass every day, like things

00:49:36.140 like that. Cause that also could do it, but it could do it. I don't know what's doing that.

00:49:40.000 Yeah. Most people don't. So question, do you, where do you see the most, because you've mentioned

00:49:45.820 a number of guys cooking, where do you see the most gender non-conformity in large current families

00:49:52.280 in terms of the roles that are taken on? That's a good question. Probably a lot of like

00:49:57.800 shuttling kids around. Like if you've got to drive to, yeah, I think, cause I think one idea is that

00:50:03.420 see, I think, well, I think there's this idea of like the soccer moms, right? I mean, that was like

00:50:07.900 the soccer moms, it was like, not a dad thing. It was a mom thing. But I think that with the larger

00:50:12.420 families, dad, just because of the number of trips, dads have to get involved with that. I think

00:50:17.160 that's, that's softly, at least the gender non-conforming thing. I think cyber truck dads

00:50:22.140 are the new soccer moms. Oh no, funny. That's it. It now makes sense. Yeah. What dads?

00:50:28.040 Cyber truck dads. Cyber truck? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that cooking, I think maybe tutoring or

00:50:35.160 kind of helping, helping kids. I mean, I did see, I don't think we've talked about this yet

00:50:38.840 explicitly. I think there's some, there were a couple of, you know, sort of the interaction with

00:50:42.760 these kind of alternative forms of schooling. Cause a lot of the dads are kind of getting involved

00:50:46.600 with, with, with tutoring or helping the kids with, with schooling. There were a couple of couples who

00:50:51.260 kind of hit that place where they had kids in private schools and then realized like, we're either

00:50:55.840 going to have another kid or we're going to keep schooling and we want another kid. And then you hear

00:51:01.300 like, well, that's when we turned into homeschoolers. And so, so that means dad's involved with a lot

00:51:06.740 of stuff during the daytime, maybe coming and working, working from home or kind of juggling

00:51:12.100 in and out. So I think that those are all kind of slightly, you know, they're not, he's not wearing

00:51:16.260 a dress, but they're also like slightly gender non-conforming. Yeah. Bedtime, bath time. I mean,

00:51:22.660 I was just going to say, that's a big one. Yeah. There you go. I think, yeah, I think cause there's

00:51:28.440 this idea like mom's pretty, pretty like tapped out by the end of the day. But when mom's pregnant

00:51:32.820 again, she's got to go to sleep early. Yeah. I know leaning over a bathtub with that belly is a

00:51:39.400 terrible thing. Yeah. Not, not ideal. Cause you don't trust me. Yeah, actually I, I, yeah,

00:51:45.060 I do the baths because a bath with Malcolm is not to my standards. Yeah. Yeah. See, that's like

00:51:51.080 middle of the night parenting is not to my standards of my husband. He'd be like, he'd be like,

00:51:56.660 I solved the problem. I just let the kid cry to sleep. Oh yeah. You didn't solve the problem.

00:52:02.400 You just turned the kid into like an anxious wreck for the rest of her life. Oh my gosh. No,

00:52:07.720 I think that's the interesting thing too, about how division of labor plays out. It's, it's both

00:52:12.660 what you're inclined to do and what you like to do, but also like where you can't tolerate your

00:52:16.100 partner standards. And then that's right. Exactly. Exactly. Which, which makes sense. Like to your

00:52:20.960 point, like you're too gentle parenting around some things like piano lessons where the kids get

00:52:24.140 frustrated. No, I would fold immediately. No, I would fold. I'm like, that's it. I can't.

00:52:28.420 The kid is crying. No, we're not. I mean, we get into trouble for barely beating our children.

00:52:34.660 Barely. Barely. Barely.

00:52:36.300 But I don't, well, no, it's interesting. I've talked to my wife. It's very interesting how we

00:52:39.880 both intuitively have such similar beliefs around, you know, punishment and the way. I always get so

00:52:46.000 happy when I see that she actually punishes a kid and I know that everyone else is going to

00:52:50.260 tell her to push. Well, keep it like for context, the last time he was berated by another parent in

00:52:56.040 public, it was merely because he removed one of our children from an arcade because that children,

00:53:00.680 that child had stolen a toy from another girl. Oh, the horror. Like what a terrible person you are.

00:53:06.460 Malcolm was berated about breaking the cycle of trauma and like all these things. And like Malcolm

00:53:10.620 didn't hit the kid. Malcolm didn't know. Malcolm just was like, we have to go home now. I only didn't

00:53:14.720 hit the kid because I was afraid of being yelled at too. Well, you're self-regulating a little bit

00:53:22.680 there. I don't want my kid to grow up to be a hippie. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. Well,

00:53:31.580 go ahead. Sorry. Well, these are all things that like really grow out of experience. I mean,

00:53:37.500 the first time you think like maybe, maybe you have to smack your kid because they're reaching for

00:53:41.740 something dangerous, you know, and you kind of realize like it actually doesn't ruin anything.

00:53:45.120 It doesn't, your kid doesn't like love you any less. And, and then, you know, actually like over

00:53:49.880 time it, it creates a sort of a cycle of trust and exchange where the kid knows they're safe. And I

00:53:55.700 mean, that's all good. And that's kind of like how it's meant to be, but these are definitely ways

00:53:59.600 that parents make, or I don't know if it's, it's not that they mean to do it this way, but they,

00:54:04.760 it ends up making parenting so much harder, right? Like if your kids are well-disciplined,

00:54:09.160 well-raised from when they're young, like they're not terrible in their teenage years.

00:54:13.140 This is true. How old is your oldest? Our oldest is, is four. So we're, we're still pretty,

00:54:20.800 pretty young. You have your payoff stage yet. Also like, I don't know if the payoff stage is

00:54:25.740 ever going to come. Cause even though like our kids are broadly honorable, they're also like,

00:54:30.180 we know genetically, like from just the other family members that have gone through adolescence

00:54:36.840 and adulthood, that the rebelliousness will not stop no matter what we do. So we can more just

00:54:42.520 be like, this is the price. Like the new learning in our language is like, this is the price of this

00:54:47.300 activity. Like everything is a tax, you know, you can speed, you might need a speeding ticket,

00:54:50.760 but it may be worth it. Even if you have to pay that, like whatever fine, because you need to get

00:54:54.780 there. And we're like, yeah, maybe you're going to do this. This will be the price. If you do it

00:54:58.440 cross the line, pay the price. But like, that's all we can do now. We can just try to be like

00:55:03.540 the real world. We can't develop some kind of like honor or morality. Learn when you have kids,

00:55:09.100 there's, there's this category of kids. I don't know if other kids are like our kids,

00:55:11.880 but there's this category of kids where somebody is like, how, how much do you like punish your

00:55:16.540 kids? Like, how hard do you hate your kids? And I'm like, hard enough so that they don't laugh.

00:55:21.220 Yeah. It's not hard enough. It's just hilarious. And they're having fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They don't

00:55:27.320 think it's a game. Yeah. Like Jordan Peterson being like, I just sit that child down at the end of the

00:55:32.740 table and I just wait him out. And I'm like, wow, your kids are really different from mine.

00:55:38.780 Yeah. That's a lot of time too, by the way. I'm like, I got stuff to do, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

00:55:44.340 I mean, definitely in our, in our parenting, that's been different for different kids,

00:55:48.360 right? Like each kid is pretty different. We've had some kids, you just look at them funny. They're

00:55:53.000 crying. All you need to do, right. It's just like, no, you know, and you, you frankly, you know,

00:55:57.820 wrinkle your, and they're like, why are you yelling at me? Nobody was yelling.

00:56:02.740 But they just, they're so sensitive. That's how it feels to them. And then the other kids

00:56:06.980 Our daughter was like that when she was younger, but she grew out of that phase.

00:56:10.140 Yeah. Now she, she just, the important thing for her is that she makes eye contact with

00:56:14.040 you while breaking the rule, smiling. She just like loves to see your devastated face.

00:56:20.360 Is that your oldest? Oh, the youngest. Okay. That's your baby.

00:56:22.860 It's Titan. It's our number three.

00:56:24.320 Intentionally break rules ever. Like Octavian almost never breaks rules.

00:56:28.520 Hmm. Is that your oldest?

00:56:30.660 Yeah. Yeah. That's her oldest. Okay.

00:56:32.280 Don't punish the other kids if he sees them breaking a rule.

00:56:34.860 But I think that's a very common first child thing.

00:56:36.900 That is a very common first child thing. It doesn't mean that they don't have some other

00:56:39.940 interesting things going on, but they're kind of like, they figured out the system. They're like,

00:56:43.540 those are the rules. All right. But there's something else. Like I always, like the kids later

00:56:47.360 would be like, you didn't, you never knew what Joe was doing behind your back.

00:56:50.400 That's no, I mean, like, that's the thing that at least Octavian has revealed to us as the eldest

00:56:54.380 is that he likes the rules because then he believes that he has the right to impose them.

00:56:58.840 And at one point we were trying to like adjudicate things between them. And he was like, don't

00:57:03.540 talk to the little ones. Like they were in his domain. He rules them. And I think maybe that's

00:57:09.560 a good point.

00:57:10.200 And actually that's a great point we haven't touched on, which is like the community of the

00:57:14.040 children, right? Like how there's this cool thing that when you have a bunch of kids,

00:57:17.960 like they actually take on their own community, there's like the, the parents and then there's

00:57:22.620 the kids and they kind of like practice politics. They practice like all kinds of like, they make

00:57:27.940 societies and they have their own rules and, you know, like pecking orders. And it, it's got to

00:57:34.040 give them something that they, this useful stuff that they take into society.

00:57:38.580 Absolutely. Yeah. And when I think it's like really brilliant people, but like, I love the,

00:57:41.960 I'm reading his, his, one of his books again, David Sedaris. Like I love his writing.

00:57:45.180 I think he's really great writer. So much of his writing is about growing up in a family of six

00:57:49.980 kids. And it's about the politics of them when they were young and the things that they got up to.

00:57:54.480 And you realize just how much kids really raise each other. And I love that because Malcolm and

00:57:58.860 I are very flawed people and we don't necessarily believe that we have everything right for yourself.

00:58:04.520 I'm a very flawed person. My husband is perfect and beautiful. Malcolm is perfect and a hero in a

00:58:09.260 scene. But I love that. Like with every additional kid we have, that is one more moderating factor.

00:58:15.180 Where if we're wrong, maybe they'll be right. And they sort of make everything a little more

00:58:19.080 reasonable. But yes. And if you ask kids later, it's really interesting. Cause I don't think as

00:58:23.520 parents, we ever really get our feel for it. They, they often have a completely different

00:58:27.880 story about what it was like. You know what I mean? We imagine it's this and they have this

00:58:33.380 completely different story and that's, I don't, I don't think we can ever bridge that, but it's,

00:58:38.100 it's, it's a great point you're making that, that our children can moderate kind of the

00:58:42.100 experience of life for our other children. Yeah. Huge benefit. Oh my gosh. I just,

00:58:48.100 I want to thank you again for writing Hannah's children for doing that research. I do think

00:58:52.680 that this is like, again, looking at how to move forward because we can't go back. You have to

00:58:57.900 look at these populations. What do educated people who have a lot of kids do? What do they say? What

00:59:02.740 do they think? And to your point about, you know, young people being exposed to babies,

00:59:07.120 I think to a great extent, adults being exposed to high fertility families, even just through your

00:59:13.220 book is, it has a very birth rate, um, increasing property. Cause it definitely did that to me.

00:59:21.260 Yeah. I'm not the only mother who's read your book and been like, I'm in for more because you're just

00:59:26.540 like feeling like you get to know these families and you did great interviews with them. Um, it just

00:59:32.080 really makes it seem doable. Yeah. And I think, you know, most people, when they have a lot of kids,

00:59:37.560 it's like, it's just people act like you're crazy. And then you're like, well, I must be crazy. I can't do

00:59:41.360 this. And this makes it seem doable. So everyone, if you haven't actually read this book yet, you've

00:59:45.700 got to read this book. If you have a girlfriend who you want to maybe have considering like having

00:59:49.620 more kids, like her wife, like maybe give it to her as a gift with other really nice things as well.

00:59:55.840 Of course, maybe like, you know, some help around the house, cooking, driving somewhere, but yeah.

01:00:00.680 Thank you so much for coming on. And we'll see you at natal con in Austin in like a month. This is the

01:00:06.740 countdown. I know it's great. All right. One month from today. Good. All right. Well, thank you very

01:00:11.580 much. You're so welcome. Bye. Yeah. All right. I'm going to end the recording here. That was

01:00:17.960 fantastic. Really like keeping the house at 55. Okay. We're paying like $600 for electricity. So

01:00:24.300 wow. This is how it goes. But you know, I think a lot of it like comes down to your, you point out

01:00:31.140 in Hannah's children again and again, how families just sort of choose to prioritize their kids too

01:00:37.980 for these other things. And I think there's something connect, there's a connection between

01:00:41.420 thrift and having a lot of kids. I don't think I've got it like mathematically worked out, but it seems

01:00:45.280 to be true. Yeah. All right.

Based Camp - March 17, 2025

They Will Replace You： What Drives Them？ (With Catherine Pakaluk of Hannah's Children)

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