Ep 1079 ｜ When to Stop Having Kids ｜ Guest： Dr. Catherine Pakaluk
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
Dr. Katherine Pakalik is a mother of eight and an economics professor. She wrote the book, Hannah's Children, about women across the country who are defying the birth dearth by having lots of kids. She s looked at this from all kinds of angles: scientifically, economically, morally, and spiritually. And the conclusions that she has walked away with are just amazing and compelling.
Transcript
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Dr. Katherine Pakalik is a mother of eight and an economics professor.
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She wrote the book, Hannah's Children, and she tells the story of women across the country
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that are defying the birth dearth by having lots of kids.
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She's looked at this from all different kinds of angles, scientifically, economically, morally,
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The conclusions that she has walked away with are just amazing and I think really compelling.
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For everyone, but especially those of you out there who are considering whether or not
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to have more children, you guys are going to love this conversation.
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It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Go to go.goodranchers.com slash Allie, code Allie, go.goodranchers.com slash Allie.
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If you could just tell everyone who you are and what you do.
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My name is Katherine Pakalik and I teach at the Catholic University of America.
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I'm an economist by training and I also have eight wonderful children.
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You know, that's a funny combination to some people because a lot of people cite economics
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And yet you have written this book, which basically makes the case for having a lot of kids.
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And as we'll talk about, it's even been reviewed by the New Yorker.
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So let's just start with your book, why you wrote it, what it's about.
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Well, I wrote my book because as an economist, I've been, like many economists, studying birth
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rates because birth rates feed into the labor force, right?
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So just in my training as an economist, I was aware of the fact that people are worried
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But meanwhile, my personal life, I knew many people in my church and other churches who
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And I thought, is there something we can learn from these kind of unusual families all around
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So I wrote the book to provide a kind of little peek into the world of people who are defying
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falling birth rates and then try to draw some conclusions about that.
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So the subtitle is The Women Quietly Define the Birth Deerth.
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So even that subtitle, that is saying that there are women who are purposely having eight kids
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when typically we hear, you know, even, I think it was Emmanuel Macron who said, well,
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She's being forced to or, in very crude terms, she's too dumb to know how not to have kids.
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I mean, didn't we see this with the coverage of Hannah Neelman in the Ballerina Farm recently?
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I mean, that article, the interviewer just went and talked to her and kind of, you know,
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walked away concluding, it must be that deep down she's being kind of forced into this
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So no, I went out to talk to people who said their family sizes were purposeful and to
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I found out that by and large, these purposes are connected to being women of faith.
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I'd like to sum it up as saying there are all these women who believe that children are
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expressions of God's goodness, the purpose of their marriages, and blessings from God in
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And we hear a lot that if women were more educated, they would have fewer children.
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These women who you're saying, you know, they trust God with their childbearing, therefore
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Well, so it's fair to say that around the world, it's a very strong predictor of lower
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That's why I was really looking to find women who are college educated.
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Not because I think college education is a great norm for human society, but because I
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was looking for people who kind of beat the odds or defied that norm.
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Um, and so of course, no, it wasn't a story of women who don't know what they're doing
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or kind of accidentally ended up with a bunch of children.
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Um, these were women with, I think, really compelling stories.
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Um, and so while overall it was kind of a story of biblical faith, I would say, um, or
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love in one case, a woman who really just loved her husband and he really desired a large
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Um, what I, what I try to explain is that each, each story is a story of meaning and purpose
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I think this is full screen seven where you are clearly in graduation garb and you are holding,
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let's see how many of your six children at this point.
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And I, I'm guessing those are all the children that you had because the youngest looks like
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Um, so you were a very educated person and you are still in education and you.
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You chose with all the education in the world to have as many children.
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And so talk to me about your decision-making, you and your husband's decision-making to have
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So I remember as a child, um, I was oldest of nine and I remember as a child, just thinking
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the most wonderful time, the most magical time.
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It was like Christmas was when a new baby came into the house.
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So I was launched into adulthood with that, um, very strong sense that children were sort
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And so while I, I did feel, and I still do feel that God was calling me to use my intellectual
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gifts in a way to serve the church, to serve the world, to help pursue truth and help people
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live better lives, I always felt that, um, I wouldn't want to put that off.
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I wouldn't want to put off having a child to do something, um, in the world.
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I always thought, well, you know, I can do those things later.
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So when we got married, my husband was a widower and he'd just lost his first wife to breast
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Um, and there's something about loss, which I think oftentimes helps you see the value of,
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And we thought, well, we'd just see if we could have a family right away.
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And when my first child was born, I like to say, well, he was the best baby in the world.
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And I thought, well, well, how soon can we have another one?
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Um, and that, that, you know, that's more or less continued.
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Of course, there's, there's, uh, you know, stories, ups and downs in there, but, um, ultimately
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Um, and now really, honestly, it seems like, uh, I can't even believe that where that time
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And how old is your oldest and how old is your youngest?
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My oldest is 24 and getting married in December.
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Um, my youngest is just turning eight this month.
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So you have such a wide range of life because you have a grandchild who's six months old
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How does that dynamic, I've heard from a lot of moms in that same situation, either that
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it keeps you young or it makes you feel like, wow, I can't believe that we're still in the
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I think, um, well, I think it's a little bit of both.
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My husband says this all the time about, um, the times we get to sit with our eight year
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old or I take him on bike rides and he just chatters away.
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And so it does, it keeps you feeling a little bit closer to what it was like to be a young
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And at the same time, when I go to church and I look at the young moms, I realize, well,
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I, my children are getting married and having babies.
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Um, also I want to just emphasize to the relationship between those oldest children and the youngest
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What a rich life my eight year old has because he has siblings, you know, working and out
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of college in college, in high school, in middle school, uh, and those relationships
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You know, I only have three, but, and there are challenges to every transition.
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There's challenges transitioning from zero to one, one to two and two to three.
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And every child of course adds another logistical hurdle just when you're thinking about transportation
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and nap times and schedules and things like that.
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But in some ways I've thought that this was the easiest transition because my confidence
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as a mom has skyrocketed, whereas my anxiety has really plummeted.
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Not that I worry about nothing, but you learn through experience that more things are going
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Not that everything works out perfectly, but fewer things are a big deal than you originally
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And that confidence has made motherhood this time around much easier.
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I mean, times a lot more, you know, than what I have.
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I remember a very specific moment when I thought, this is really not like it used to be.
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You know, you're kind of waiting for the shoe to drop or something.
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And, you know, a couple months in thinking there's no shoe dropping.
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But yeah, I think that's been, at least among the women I talked to and studied, it was
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And because it's not widely known, you worry, if we don't share that truth with people,
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they may stop when it's still so anxiety producing.
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When they might have enjoyed knowing that, you know, it gets easier.
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And so I'm so interested to know how you would answer it.
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The question is, how do I know when to stop having babies?
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I guess I would say right off the bat, keep the door open.
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But I think the culture has really pushed us to have this idea that we can know fully.
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But we know that our hearts change and that God speaks to our hearts at different times
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And we know so many cases and so many cases of hardship.
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So it's a great gift to be able to receive life.
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And if you're not ready today, you might never be ready again, in which case you'll look back
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But what I heard from so many people was how much you change.
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And I know I've been there where you think, okay, never again.
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And so the main thing I would say is to keep the door a little bit open and not to make
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And my first and third postpartum were really hard.
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But my first and third postpartum is really hard for different reasons.
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It's physically hard, emotionally, just a lot of different things going on.
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And for the past year, my husband and I have been like, we're good.
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And just the thought of putting my body through it again.
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I don't want to go through something hard again.
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And then it's just, even though, you know, that's not, we don't know.
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But I will say you already, after being a year postpartum, you feel your heart start
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And I think there's even something hormonally about that, where your body is telling you
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And then as the hormones start to change, it's, you know, God's way of, you know, creating
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the mechanics of your body to say, well, it might not be so bad at some point.
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But I do wonder how many women make permanent decisions when they're in the thick of postpartum,
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thinking I can never do this because you're sleepless, your body hurts.
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And maybe a year or two or three years later, you're thinking, gosh, I actually could do
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Or financial circumstances change, or whatever the thing that seemed too much at the time.
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Um, and that to me seems like a simple, um, way to give it to God and to say, you know,
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God, God changes us and he changes, um, our opportunities and our, our capacities, actually.
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Um, so I think that's a beautiful, like simple idea, just not to make a permanent decision,
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but the doctors and the medical industry, they do really, um, they do really push us,
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Like we know many women are offered permanent solutions right after having a baby.
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I think that's the worst time to be making a permanent decision.
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I, I remember my doctor after my first, I had two C-sections and then I had a V-back after
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And I remember my doctor who pushed me into a very unnecessary C-section.
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I remember asking him, well, you know, what if I want more?
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And he said, uh, he said, you know, well, I really don't recommend more than three C-sections,
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Even if that's true that a woman doesn't want more than three, who are you to give, give
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Even women who will get pregnant with twins or triplets are very often pressured to do
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a selective reduction and kill one of their babies in the womb.
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We have, we live in such an antinatalist society.
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And it's these little, it happens in little ways, right?
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You're not going to go out to lunch and have somebody just, you know, talk to you about
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It happens sometimes, but it's these little things that we don't even notice, right?
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I mean, I would say, um, how many times have I been asked if I was done?
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Because people see four, they see five and they go, oh, aren't you done?
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Uh, but they want to know as if it's, um, really fascinating to them.
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Well, they know they're done and how come you don't know that you're done?
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So I think these are all little ways in which the culture is pretty antinatalist.
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You know, you mentioned that you went to school and you worked even as you had children.
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Can you talk through what those seasons looked like?
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Because there are such different seasons and different stages of motherhood.
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And how did you decide what your work and education looked like as you were raising these kids?
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I think, um, when I talk to young women, I think that's the thing that you really want to stress
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is that I think we're, as women, made for seasons.
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Um, when I was having my babies, when, you know, they were coming, um, more close together,
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And so it's a kind of work, um, but it's not a kind of work where there are close deadlines
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and, you know, hours that you have to be in the office.
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So looking back, you know, you might say that for my first six children, like when you saw
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that picture, that was kind of very part-time work.
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Um, and I could control the hours that I was out of the house.
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Um, and I could, I could lean into the seasons of my, my children too, right?
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So when you have a baby and you're nursing and you're kind of close to home a lot.
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Um, and then, uh, was my last couple for my last couple of kids, I was working as a college
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And, um, for me, it's been important to have a job where I could do much of my work from
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Um, and I, you know, I'm blessed to be able to do that.
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And so he also works from home and we can sort of trade off hours.
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So, I mean, those are big blessings that kind of work that we do is pretty flexible.
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I was going to ask just how kind of you logistically managed that.
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Was it just kind of you and your husband trading hours and making it work?
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I mean, of course we've had, we've had older children be babysitters from time to time.
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Um, and occasionally we've, we've, we've always worked at colleges.
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So we've had college students come and help from time to time.
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Um, but, uh, for us, that was the best decision for us was to be with our kids, but to take
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I think there is, especially in the Christian world, such a debate over stay at home mom
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versus working mom, as if they're these like two clean cut black and white.
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And it's like moms who say have a professor job or a podcasting job, even if they spend
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a ton of time at home are still considered working moms.
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Whereas say the mom who has an Etsy shop from home is considered to stay at home mom, but
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But we've kind of created these categories that makes women think it's all or nothing
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And that's, I don't know if throughout history, that's necessarily what motherhood has looked
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No, I think motherhood has throughout history looked a lot like the kind of thing we're
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describing a kind of, um, there's need, your children make demands on our time.
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But of course, women have always engaged in the enterprise of the home, whether it was
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their husband's occupation, their own occupation, making textiles or clothing at home.
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And, um, I think it's maybe a by-product of the industrial revolution when we think that
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Um, and that we're just, we're kind of still struggling with this, but we're really in
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an economy now that doesn't look like that anymore.
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So we have this kind of odd dichotomy between there's work and there's home.
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And yet, um, a lot of the work I do, I'm doing right with my kids in a sense, right?
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So what work looks like for us a lot is reading books.
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So actually, you know, this is the life of our home and it's almost a family business.
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And there are certain jobs and certain ways to work that are not really conducive to being
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present with kids, but not all work has to look like, as you said, going to a factory
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Well, and that insight I think leads to the kind of thing that, um, I think women in my
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stage of life, it's good to say to younger women, look, I mean, if you have choices when
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you're young and you know, you want to have children, you know, think about the kinds of
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options for your professional work, which will be flexible in that way that you could
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Um, it's, you know, because of the way our modern life is and the culture, you have to
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They aren't just going to be a part of life that we plan around.
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Um, and so if you plan for it, um, it can, it can be much easier.
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I mean, I knew as a college student and so, uh, that I'd like to have children.
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So I thought, well, there's a lot of ways I could use my talents that would be, that
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would put me in a position of having to choose between an office and my home.
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So you were strategic in choosing the kind of work that would allow the flexibility,
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which is what I, you know, I would say that too.
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In fact, it's something that if we don't, if we don't encourage each other to do it,
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Nobody in school or my college or my university ever suggested, you know, you, you have a degree
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You could go into finance or wall street or something at bank.
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Um, but maybe you should also consider options that involve more, um, more blended work.
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And so if it hadn't come from my family background, I don't think I would have known it.
00:21:40.860
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And this is a company that is completely unashamed of their pro-life values of their faith.
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We do hear that motherhood is economically disadvantageous for women.
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And in fact, when we hear administrations talking about adding jobs or bouncing back from economic
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malaise, they will say, we have this many women back in the workforce.
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Or they'll talk about, oh, so many women left the workforce during COVID as if it's this horrible
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But women working full-time and either putting off motherhood or not being with their children
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is not necessarily a sign of economic health in a country, right?
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At the moment, where we are, many countries with their falling birth rates, we really kind
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We view kind of full employment of every able-bodied man, woman, and child, except we don't employ
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We'd like to have all the bodies, you know, in the workforce.
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But no, the life cycle for women, of course, is very interesting.
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I like to think about some of the Olympic athlete stories that we know of, women who
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had their babies and then came back to participate in track and field events or whatever.
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And sometimes you see these cases where women who come back after having babies achieve personal
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And I think actually that's a good model for us because women often, after having children,
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So the productivity of our, of our life cycle is, again, it's seasonal, can be seasonal.
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When a woman has babies, she's contributing workers in the next generation.
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And so what we often see when we hear policymakers say, talking about keeping women in the workforce
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or protecting women in the workforce, it's a little bit of a short-sighted vision, right?
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Because women spending more time in the workforce, say, in ways that make it harder for them
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to have children, reduces the available workers in the next generation.
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And I think we're kind of, I think we have to accept that the crunch we're seeing now
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Because you said there are so many falling birth rates around the world.
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It's not just the United States, but obviously Canada.
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And as you're writing your book and as you've looked at this, what do you think is really
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Well, I guess I would like to say that I think the thing that's driving it is big and sort
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And it's obviously something that's common to all the countries, right?
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It's not just the socialist countries or the Western, more free countries.
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So it really is, I think, best explained, the fall is best explained by the sort of the
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I don't mean that anybody, it's sort of an evil genius is up, you know, in an office saying,
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you know, we're going to penalize people for having kids, but kids aren't labor for the
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So for each individual household, children don't add any sort of economic rationality.
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Um, and then, you know, once you had the sort of, we'll say the, um, the women's revolution
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of the 20th century, opening up all these different job opportunities, maybe a more fine
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tuned ability to control our reproductive lives.
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Um, they introduce a new cost, not a budgetary crunch, but an opportunity cost.
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So women are choosing between two, let's say great things, two great things.
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So how they rank those two things will, will be the difference.
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So overall you have that children are less valuable to the household.
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And that's true everywhere you go, um, because of old age programs, because children don't
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And then now they're a cost in terms of women's income.
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And so that's, what's driving falling birth rates.
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It's happening in every continent that we know of.
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And, um, so this is where this inquiry became important to ask, well, is it, is it, um, does
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it have to happen this way or where, who, who are the people still having children?
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And so in that, in the face of that kind of economic logic against children, what I discovered
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Is it possible to change the falling birth rates without a spiritual reawakening?
00:27:04.720
Because you mentioned the spiritual aspects being the driving force between women or behind
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Well, I have to imagine that the increased secularism has also contributed to this antinatalist
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mentality, replacing kids with pets or with careers or whatever it is.
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Um, so I just, cause we're not going back to pre-industrial America where we're in an
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agricultural society where you need your kids, you know, milling wheat for you and all of
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Most of us are going to live in the post-industrial world, unless you're someone like Hannah Nealman
00:27:46.120
Most of us are still going to be, you know, in this technological world where parents are
00:27:57.820
They constantly feel pulled in a million different directions.
00:28:00.340
So it's hard for me to see how we're going to reverse that trend.
00:28:05.700
Well, I think spiritual renewal is the reversal.
00:28:10.600
Um, I say at the, at the end that after talking to all of these people, I'm just really struck
00:28:15.820
by the extent to which, um, we might just call it old fashioned biblical values, uh, seem to
00:28:22.060
be an adequate and not just adequate, but actually a, a super impressive motive to have
00:28:28.680
Um, kind of a simple trust that God says children are blessings.
00:28:32.900
And, um, as one woman said to me, well, the three big blessings we have from God are health
00:28:43.180
And she paused and she said, and I don't think you could have too much of any of these things.
00:28:48.640
And I thought, oh, that's a really beautiful way of putting it.
00:28:51.720
So if you really did view children as wealth, which is what the scriptures say, right, then
00:28:57.320
you would arrange your life to get more of that kind of wealth.
00:29:01.120
And so when I say this is the spiritual awakening is a, is a viable path, it seems like this
00:29:08.560
is the case, um, among women of many faiths, but, um, who are all anchored in those biblical,
00:29:14.680
And they really did, they believe them in a, in a simple way, but in a very serious way.
00:29:21.940
I think it's like really good news and very interesting.
00:29:24.940
And it's also always comforting to think that all of the issues that we're talking about,
00:29:30.180
whether it's anti-baby culture, anti-natalism, they're not new, they take on new forms.
00:29:36.320
But even if you look back at the early Roman empire, the babies who are abandoned through
00:29:40.960
exposure because the parents couldn't take care of them.
00:29:44.280
And then Christians came along and said, nope, we're not doing that anymore.
00:29:49.620
So it does seem like it is still 2000 years later, the Christian responsibility to oppose
00:29:55.680
the culture of death, the culture of childlessness and the culture of anti-natalism.
00:30:02.840
Um, I'm so glad that you mentioned the history because I think that people naively look back
00:30:07.680
and they say, well, in the past people valued children and today we don't.
00:30:11.160
And I think there's a, there's a way in which that's true.
00:30:14.080
There was more economic value that children had, but did people value children always forever
00:30:19.780
And I think that that's the, that's always been a note of Christianity, right?
00:30:25.240
Because God came to earth as a, as a human infant, right?
00:30:30.660
We know that he's God, but he chose to have a mother and to come into our midst as a baby.
00:30:37.960
So yeah, Christianity has always, um, stood for the value of the child as a, a weak, you
00:30:48.340
Um, and I think it's like a great time to rediscover that.
00:30:53.900
I'm, I'm thinking just as you were talking about how God's people were always the one
00:30:58.980
standing against the destruction of children, like even going back to the Hebrew midwives
00:31:05.520
when the Egyptians were trying to kill all the babies, you know, under two years old and
00:31:11.880
they would, the Hebrew midwives saving those babies.
00:31:14.900
When you think about God instructing is the Israelites not to fellowship with the people
00:31:23.600
Um, and then of course, as you said, Jesus coming to the earth is an embryo.
00:31:27.980
Heralded by the kicks of John the Baptist in Elizabeth's stomach.
00:31:31.860
And then even, you know, Jesus chastising his own disciples, disciples, products of their
00:31:36.440
time who said, we don't want the children bothering this.
00:31:43.500
Let the little children come to me for such as these belong, the kingdom of heaven.
00:31:46.680
And like Christians who carried, who followed that man, that God man, that mentality, bursting
00:31:53.180
onto the scene of the Roman empire, which said, oh, people are, you know, valued by their
00:32:00.760
Well, the capital L logos, the word made flesh who dwelt among us said, no, that doesn't
00:32:13.920
That's why I think this is really good news, right?
00:32:16.040
It's, it's actually still possible to arrange your life, to welcome life today.
00:32:20.740
And we know it's possible for women who are in crisis pregnancies.
00:32:23.860
It's possible for those of us facing, you know, high housing costs or whatever those
00:32:28.840
And, um, and that's, that's a new, that's a gospel.
00:32:36.800
Um, and, and if we talk more about that and encourage it more, um, and, you know, lean
00:32:43.380
into our evangelization, we could see these things, um, improving.
00:32:52.680
After years of eating good ranchers, pretty much every day in this ducky home, I finally
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You know, it's so, it's sad when I see on social media, whenever there's a picture of
00:34:07.960
a mom with a bunch of kids, typically if it's more than three, the comments, a lot of the
00:34:13.380
comments are happy, of course, but then comments like, are you not done yet?
00:34:18.720
It's this, you know, same age old Malthusian dread of, and you know, Satan hates children,
00:34:27.360
But you know, Thomas Malthus and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Margaret Sanger, all these
00:34:32.160
people believed in, you know, this overpopulation myth.
00:34:37.280
I think it's important to, and as you say, to recognize it, it's of a piece with Satan
00:34:45.560
But when I think about Malthus and Margaret Sanger and eugenics movement, I think that what
00:34:52.500
kept coming to me when I talked to all of these women who represent like the other thing was
00:34:58.500
the substitution of human wisdom for divine wisdom.
00:35:03.400
And I thought, well, it seems, you know, so Malthus is there saying, well, you know, what
00:35:06.980
do you mean we can just welcome all the babies?
00:35:10.320
And then, you know, of course we see this later and then of course it gets very dark.
00:35:25.240
But, you know, God is asking us to trust him, right?
00:35:30.060
It might look as if you can't afford that child, but the child is wanted by God and loved
00:35:35.700
by God and God's providence will provide for that child.
00:35:39.460
So it's really, I think the smarter we get as a society, we can, you know, I don't know
00:35:44.940
what the most smart thing we do today is, right?
00:35:47.320
But we have all of this technology and all these neat things.
00:35:49.500
It becomes, I think, a little bit harder to trust that God's wisdom is really vastly
00:35:57.300
And obviously Malthus didn't take into account that human beings actually were contributors.
00:36:04.640
We're not just drain on resources, but we come up with more efficient ways to distribute
00:36:12.400
But even beyond that, because humans aren't measured by their productivity or their innovation,
00:36:18.860
But this concept of the Imago Dei is just really tough for the secular world to understand.
00:36:26.360
And they really also don't understand that, like, it is uniquely the United States who understood
00:36:33.220
that we were all created as just being a creation by God.
00:36:39.680
We were endowed with this certain inalienable rights.
00:36:43.040
Other societies really don't measure someone's rights or humanity or value based on the fact
00:36:50.380
But America at least understood that fundamentally.
00:36:57.280
And people just don't make those connections, but it's really all connected.
00:37:02.080
I was also thinking when you were talking about how children aren't just consuming resources,
00:37:08.660
And one of the neatest things that I heard when I was talking to women was the way in
00:37:12.740
which unexpectedly children didn't just bring, you know, maybe arrive with a, what they say
00:37:18.200
the proverb, children arrive with a loaf of bread under their arms.
00:37:22.500
But that sometimes that loaf of bread or the way they contribute is also spiritual.
00:37:27.200
So I heard all these stories of people welcoming babies, perhaps in unexpected times.
00:37:32.080
And then discovering their babies brought, right, not just an augmentation of resources,
00:37:37.160
but joy or healing for, you know, spiritual, psychological healing.
00:37:42.800
And that was something that really took my breath away.
00:37:46.940
And again, it just kind of prodded me to this idea.
00:37:51.080
What are we missing when we substitute our wisdom?
00:37:56.900
This is how much, how many children the country can have, right?
00:38:00.220
When we substitute that idea, our wisdom for God's wisdom, what are we missing?
00:38:06.960
Um, a lot of people say, well, the reason why people aren't, women aren't having children
00:38:12.120
is because there's not paid maternal leave in the United States or mandated to pay maternal
00:38:23.540
We need what's seen as kind of these pronatal policies.
00:38:28.520
Well, um, they haven't really worked very well in the past.
00:38:32.820
So countries have tried these for almost 40 years.
00:38:36.160
Um, you know, notably the countries like in Asia, where the birth dearth has come sooner,
00:38:43.400
Um, and you know, so all over the place of different types, um, they haven't worked well.
00:38:49.040
Uh, there's not, to my knowledge, any example of a country that's meaningfully reversed its
00:38:53.460
birth rates through baby bonuses or, you know, other kinds of policies.
00:38:58.520
That doesn't mean that some of these policies might not be good to implement.
00:39:02.200
They might be family friendly or they might be, you know, good for, good for people at
00:39:06.740
a particular time and place, but they aren't going to be particularly useful for reversing
00:39:11.360
the birth rate because at least my research suggests it's, it's the way people value children.
00:39:17.400
It's the, it's the willingness to see the good of a child as bigger than all of those sort
00:39:25.080
The ones we talked about earlier, they're real, they're tough.
00:39:31.100
So I guess, you know, in a economic language, I'd say it's like a question of demand.
00:39:36.540
Women around the country having children against the odds or against the trend, I mean, they,
00:39:43.160
they face a lot of the same costs as other women.
00:39:45.440
So again, it might be a very good idea to implement some of these policies.
00:39:54.120
I don't study them directly, but I have studied the way in which they haven't really worked
00:39:59.500
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00:41:12.780
Do you think that childlessness is contributing to just, it seems like, the explosion of dependence
00:41:25.540
on SSRIs, especially among women, anxiety, depression, deaths of despair?
00:41:31.220
I mean, it's women over 40 that really are taking, it seems, the lion's share of these
00:41:40.620
Do you think this, the childlessness and those mental health issues go hand in hand?
00:41:49.240
So I'm not an expert on the connection between those two things, but it was, it came out of
00:41:53.900
my conversations with so many people that I think the language a lot of people used was
00:42:02.940
I definitely suffer from lack of sun in the winter.
00:42:06.800
You know, I feel that maybe I would be better off in Texas or Florida.
00:42:09.800
But, you know, that idea that sort of, there's something about babies who, I mean, what, what
00:42:17.020
You need, you need unconditional affirmation and babies, I mean, boy, they unconditionally
00:42:25.080
We're weak and we're not perfect moms and not perfect dads, but babies do.
00:42:29.700
So, you know, it's hard not to see those two trends as being certainly occurring at the
00:42:35.860
We've seen, and of course, you know, there's other contributing factors.
00:42:39.440
I certainly love the research by Jonathan Haidt on smartphones and technology.
00:42:45.100
I think there's multiple factors here, but I looked at my testimonies and I thought, wait
00:42:51.140
a minute, what the women are saying is that they have lots of anecdotal evidence from their
00:42:57.620
families that their children are a source of anti-anxiety, that their children are a source
00:43:04.620
of peace and joy, especially for the people in their homes that are most likely to be struggling.
00:43:11.280
So who we think about, like young teenagers who are, you know, lacking confidence, struggling
00:43:17.020
with acne for the first time, wondering if their friends still like them at school.
00:43:22.340
And worse, you know, of course, I'm, I'm just touching the surface.
00:43:25.520
And so I, I scratched my head and I thought, well, is anybody looking at this question?
00:43:35.680
I think anytime we replace, we replace something with something lesser.
00:43:42.680
So our, we have a desire and instead of fulfilling that desire with the object of our desire,
00:43:52.220
And C.S. Lewis talks about that and for loves, there are higher loves and there are lower
00:43:58.280
Like lust is not a replacement for love, even in marriage that, you know, hot and steamy
00:44:05.880
You literally can't, that cannot be sustained forever or else you'll never eat or never sleep.
00:44:12.780
All of our desire for heaven to be known, to be loved, to be fully seen, that really
00:44:21.680
We're constantly looking for it in the wrong places.
00:44:29.440
I think that all of us, I mean, maybe there are some exceptions, but generally speaking,
00:44:34.680
and you know, I'm a mom of three girls and I have lots of nephews.
00:44:38.560
And so I see the differences with my, with my girls, everything turns into a mommy, daddy,
00:44:44.320
It doesn't matter if it's three rocks, everything is a mommy, daddy, baby.
00:44:52.360
The differences, but from such a young age, it's caretaking, it's homemaking, it's arranging.
00:45:01.120
They have plenty of access to all kinds of toys and stuff.
00:45:05.280
But all, I mean, I, I was like that too, loved dolls, loved, you know, arranging the families
00:45:11.580
and thinking about my wedding and all of the stuff from such a young age.
00:45:15.600
There is this mothering instinct in virtually every girl and either by choice or maybe just
00:45:26.600
Many women, probably more women than ever from, you know, contrasting to the, our human history.
00:45:36.460
They're not getting married and they're not having kids, but that mothering desire and
00:45:42.320
instinct that you've had since being a baby doesn't go away.
00:45:46.060
And so you either acknowledge that and say, I don't have what I want, but I trust God,
00:45:52.340
which I think is the best place to be when you're disappointed or you're suppressing that.
00:45:58.340
And you're saying, I don't even really want kids and I'm going to replace it with my career.
00:46:05.260
I'm going to replace it with myself and self-care.
00:46:07.980
And that's going to lead, I think this is just personal opinion, to depression and anxiety
00:46:16.740
because nothing, and I think a lot of people don't realize they are channeling their natural
00:46:21.280
mothering instinct into their dog and they don't think of it that way.
00:46:26.660
But I even remember that before I had kids, like how obsessed I was with my pets.
00:46:30.400
And then my kids came and I was like, to my cats, like, I don't even care.
00:46:34.520
Um, so I think that that's a lot of what's happening too.
00:46:40.160
And if I can go a step further, you know, I think women also mother at their workplaces.
00:46:47.420
They mother through politics and sort of social justice causes.
00:46:54.440
Because we are meant to have these incredible empathy muscles, right?
00:46:58.220
I mean, this is part of being a great mom is, you know, you can just look at that three
00:47:04.520
Oh, that is the worst and most disappointing thing that's ever happened to you.
00:47:07.680
You didn't get the cheese chunkies that you wanted.
00:47:10.200
So, but when we take that empathy that's meant to, um, really identify with our children
00:47:17.240
as they're young and, and immature and help them nurture them into adulthood, we start
00:47:23.880
I think that's a big piece of, uh, the kinds of problems that you've talked about.
00:47:28.500
And that, um, I think we're seeing parts of this, you know, misplaced social justice
00:47:33.500
movement, I think is it's women mothering in a way that, you know, that they can't mother.
00:47:42.260
I think that that misplaced mothering absolutely manifests itself in a lot of women who would
00:47:50.060
probably call themselves liberal women thinking that they are defending the least of these
00:47:56.240
are the most vulnerable because they believe that whatever victim or proclaimed victim that
00:48:02.360
the media hoists up needs their defense, needs their nurturing.
00:48:06.920
And yeah, that's, I think that that is a huge part of it.
00:48:11.220
I also think for women, cause there, there will be women that God doesn't give children
00:48:15.120
or they don't marry and they might be thinking, well, what about me?
00:48:20.420
But there are kids still that need your love, whether it's at church or mentorship programs,
00:48:30.700
I mean, this country, we should, we are a Christian country and we should have no children
00:48:36.200
There should, we should be, we should open our homes as much as we can.
00:48:42.040
And of course, the sad thing is that if, if you are exercising your empathy muscles through
00:48:47.000
social justice causes or whatever they might be, or at the workplace, those things don't,
00:48:51.900
they're, they're not as, um, they're not as naturally fulfilling to us, which leads us
00:48:55.960
back to where you started this question of, um, is this fueling our anxiety and our depression
00:49:01.080
Now, these are really big questions, but I think they're questions we're not asking into
00:49:09.960
I would say for a country that's, um, has been committed to abortion rights.
00:49:18.220
And I just, I just think that motherhood in general just like makes us better.
00:49:24.460
I have, you know, before I had kids worked in a lot of different kinds of jobs, but nothing
00:49:30.320
has made me better at customer service or team building or management or time management
00:49:38.560
or organization or communication or true compassion than having children.
00:49:44.700
You got multiple personalities, sometimes competing against each other, sometimes in one child.
00:49:52.360
And you are learning all day, every day, which battles to pick and, you know, where to draw
00:49:59.800
boundaries, how to solve problems, how to put out fires, and then also trying to make
00:50:07.060
And it's a lot, but I feel like motherhood just matured me so incredibly much.
00:50:18.620
So much kinder as a person and so much more understanding of so many different kinds of
00:50:25.440
And people don't think that, but it stretches you.
00:50:28.360
It stretches your mind, your ability to multitask in ways that it's just hard to even explain.
00:50:37.760
Early on, I used the language I used to say, well, you know, the moms talked about how their
00:50:42.240
children rescued them from selfishness and individualism.
00:50:48.080
You know, like, are you saying people are selfish?
00:50:50.320
And I'm saying, I said, well, this is what women said of themselves.
00:50:53.640
What they said is when I look back, I didn't know that I was selfish.
00:50:58.720
And maybe it was a kind of accidental selfishness.
00:51:01.820
I mean, you're just looking after yourself because that's all you have to do.
00:51:05.140
And then when you have, you know, all of these personalities and all the things you just
00:51:09.020
described, all of a sudden you realize you actually have a, you can grow an incredible
00:51:13.960
capacity to think about other people and still to get your needs met because that's,
00:51:18.180
you know, kind of a multiplication of the loaves of the fishes, I think.
00:51:21.040
Um, and then, but then you're so grateful, right?
00:51:25.900
I mean, cause which of us doesn't long for growth experiences that are, that are really
00:51:32.140
It's just that it's pretty, um, scary to sign up for that.
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00:52:34.500
Were you surprised that The New Yorker reviewed your book and was, I mean, fairly positive
00:52:49.720
Um, I was teaching my classes and I got an email message that I didn't want to open until
00:52:56.560
Um, and so, yeah, it was a, it was a big surprise.
00:52:59.320
Um, and I thought that the author was, yeah, very positive.
00:53:03.020
And actually, I'll just say this loud and clear.
00:53:05.820
She pulled some of my favorite quotes out of the book that nobody had yet pulled out of
00:53:10.560
Um, and so I thought that was really wonderful.
00:53:13.960
I, I was really happy to see that because you don't really expect a place like The New
00:53:20.500
Yorker to even pick this up or pay attention to it.
00:53:23.860
I think that moms, um, moms are caricatured in a way that our, our society kind of gets,
00:53:30.960
but doesn't really have a counter image for it.
00:53:35.280
And the reason this was so satisfying is because I think that you may not agree with,
00:53:40.560
the things and the sentiments and ideas of every woman in my book, you may not find it
00:53:44.900
like something that you want to do, but it certainly replaces a caricature with a real
00:53:49.740
human being or flesh and blood human being that you can kind of think, well, I don't
00:53:53.600
know if I, I don't know if everybody reading The New Yorker wants to do that or to be that,
00:53:58.280
but they could at least say, I could see how somebody would want to do this if they believe
00:54:08.180
Well, I'm so thankful that you wrote this book and that you talked to all these women.
00:54:12.100
This is a fascinating conversation and people can get it wherever books are sold.
00:54:22.980
Hannah's children, the women quietly define the birth dearth.
00:54:26.100
And of course you're one of those women and it's, it's a very easy to read book, but
00:54:31.360
it's just jam packed with all these very meaningful stories and facts as well.
00:54:35.440
And this is at least at the very least, the conversation starter we need as we talk about
00:54:41.060
reversing this literally existential crisis that we're in.