The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 316. Parenting and the Narcissists of Compassion ｜ Stephanie Davies-Arai

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone watching or listening on YouTube or Associated Podcast or on the Daily Wire Plus platform.

00:01:14.960 I have the privilege today of speaking to Stephanie Davies Arai.

00:01:19.100 She is a decorated author and the founder as well as the director of Transgender Trend, a UK-based organization that has been perpetually under fire by leftist activists simply for advocating for evidence-based health care when it comes to gender dysphoric children.

00:01:39.380 She's also the author of Communicating with kids, a book published in 2015, based on her background, training teachers and providing parental support.

00:01:49.060 Davies Arai is also notable for being an intervener in the high court during the landmark case Bell v. Tavistock, which concluded that persons under 18 cannot consent to puberty blockers.

00:02:02.880 So, Stephanie, I was reading your book today, 2015 book, Communicating with Children, and I thought maybe I could playfully put you on the spot.

00:02:13.520 In my first book, 12 Rules for Life, my first popular book, I have a chapter entitled, Don't Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them.

00:02:25.560 And so what I thought I'd ask you, given that you wrote this book detailing out different means of communicating with children, developing a philosophy of communication with children, I'm kind of wondering what you think of that rule.

00:02:40.120 How does that strike you? Don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

00:02:44.460 I love that you started with that, because that's the bit in your book, which I've read, that jumped out at me, because that's what I say to parents.

00:02:55.600 You know, of course, you love your children to bits you'd die for them, but do you like them?

00:03:00.880 Because that's really important in day-to-day living.

00:03:04.100 But the other thing I say is that it's not only important that you like your own kids,

00:03:08.160 but that other parents do, and other people outside, because otherwise your kids are going to have a really hard time,

00:03:16.480 and you're not going to be doing them a favour if you bring them up to be unpopular with other kids' parents,

00:03:23.280 because they're going to depend on them.

00:03:27.820 Okay, so let me outline a few ideas for you, and you tell me,

00:03:32.840 criticise away or agree as you see fit.

00:03:35.480 So, I think we know there's a large literature indicating that it's better for children to have two parents.

00:03:44.000 And I think the reason for that, this is my reasoning for it, there's a variety of reasons.

00:03:48.860 Obviously, raising children and working is very difficult,

00:03:51.980 so being able to split the labour is a way of perhaps not being entirely exhausted when you have small children.

00:03:58.740 But I think there's something else going on, too,

00:04:01.120 which is more, it's akin in some sense to the reason that there's sexual differentiation at a biological level.

00:04:09.100 So, there's sexual differentiation because it's useful to bring together two disparate creatures to produce a new variant. 0.59

00:04:17.480 But I also think it's true on the personality front.

00:04:20.180 So, if you have a nicely organised marriage,

00:04:23.020 you know, you're going to have your bits of insanity and your partner's going to have their bits of insanity. 1.00

00:04:28.480 But if you can form a joint union,

00:04:32.220 then I believe you can produce something approximating one sane person.

00:04:38.800 And that person is sane, that joint person is sane,

00:04:42.780 not so much because they're sane psychologically,

00:04:45.600 but because they're an analogue of the broader social world.

00:04:49.740 So, and I'm saying that for a specific reason.

00:04:52.280 So, then the theory would be,

00:04:54.440 if your children are acting in a way that both of you find displeasing,

00:04:59.460 if you're honest,

00:05:01.140 then the probability that other people will find that displeasing is extremely high,

00:05:05.920 because you at least love your children,

00:05:07.740 whereas other people, you know,

00:05:09.520 they might be willing to give them a chance,

00:05:11.560 but they're not going to die for them.

00:05:13.680 And so, if you accept the additional hypothesis that the primary role of a parent

00:05:21.100 is to prepare their children for, what would you say,

00:05:25.840 welcome acceptance into the broader social world,

00:05:29.440 then you have a moral obligation to guide your children,

00:05:32.200 in some sense, in accordance with your own joint feelings.

00:05:35.340 If the two of you find your child's behaviour unacceptable,

00:05:40.180 you're morally obligated to let the child know,

00:05:42.400 because that is not going to translate well to other children,

00:05:46.160 to other children's parents, to teachers,

00:05:48.380 to any situations in public,

00:05:50.540 and then your child's going to have a miserable time of it.

00:05:52.820 And I think the research literature indicates that very clearly.

00:05:56.560 Yeah, and I think, you know,

00:05:58.120 you're right in the sense that the children need the male and the female, 0.99

00:06:01.660 the masculine and the feminine, but that can be achieved in other ways.

00:06:05.280 I've worked with all kinds of families.

00:06:07.560 So, my work is about creating the optimum situation for families,

00:06:14.740 no matter what the, whether they're married

00:06:17.980 or what kind of family situation they're in.

00:06:20.840 So, I would agree, and particularly that children need strong role models

00:06:26.620 of the opposite sex and the same sex.

00:06:29.500 So, you know, if it's a single parent family, for example,

00:06:34.040 to find those role models that are close family members,

00:06:37.320 because, you know, all very good friends of the family,

00:06:40.780 that it has to be a close relationship.

00:06:44.380 I mean, teachers as well,

00:06:45.640 but there are other adults who can fill that gap,

00:06:48.720 and that is something that I think is very important,

00:06:51.960 that that gap is filled if the family isn't that male-female unit

00:06:56.680 of marriage that is the traditional unit.

00:07:02.260 Right, because the children have to learn,

00:07:04.220 okay, so there's two elements there.

00:07:06.040 So, you bring a mother and a father together,

00:07:09.620 and the child gets the benefit of their joint personality, right?

00:07:13.860 The fact that they've got two people to hit against,

00:07:16.120 and hopefully that makes one sane person.

00:07:18.240 But the socialization rules for being feminine 1.00

00:07:21.460 and the socialization rules for being masculine aren't identical.

00:07:25.360 And so that's part of the reason why it's necessary

00:07:27.460 to have those contrary,

00:07:29.920 contrasexual role models at hand.

00:07:32.340 And at hand does mean something like

00:07:34.980 making a relationship with,

00:07:36.660 because the other thing we know about children

00:07:38.520 is though they can establish

00:07:40.680 multiple deep relationships with people,

00:07:42.840 so they can actually stand multiple caregivers,

00:07:45.140 but they don't really like a lot of change in their caregivers.

00:07:49.740 They don't like relationships once they're established

00:07:52.240 to be decimated, let's say.

00:07:54.540 Well, neither do adults,

00:07:56.020 but it's even more the case for children.

00:07:59.020 And so, yeah,

00:08:00.780 and it's harder for a single parent family,

00:08:03.460 for someone who's running a single parent family

00:08:05.480 to fill that, well,

00:08:07.960 fill that diversity of personality to solve that problem,

00:08:10.680 but also to provide the contrasexual role model.

00:08:15.140 So I agree.

00:08:16.940 I mean, I think that consistency is really important for children

00:08:19.840 and it's fractured in so many ways now in society

00:08:23.440 because if people move around more,

00:08:25.420 people don't tend to stay in those units

00:08:29.740 or those extended family groups in one area.

00:08:32.820 So we have more and more challenges today

00:08:36.460 in bringing up children.

00:08:39.340 And parents face,

00:08:41.380 well, I'm sure you're aware,

00:08:44.060 other challenges in terms of online life,

00:08:50.340 the internet influences from outside.

00:08:54.860 So, yes,

00:08:55.520 to try and create that consistency for children

00:08:59.260 in their relationships,

00:09:00.440 in their close family relationships,

00:09:02.040 I think is one of the things that's very important.

00:09:04.400 And having said that,

00:09:07.020 I mean, you know,

00:09:08.000 there are all sorts of situations

00:09:09.480 that are not optimum for children

00:09:11.540 and children are robust.

00:09:16.360 So, you know,

00:09:17.660 you can look at in our Western society,

00:09:20.260 for example,

00:09:21.020 to remember the fact that our children are,

00:09:24.720 you know,

00:09:25.440 generally very privileged

00:09:27.820 compared to other parts of the world.

00:09:32.360 And so we can get,

00:09:33.700 I think,

00:09:34.200 too concerned about

00:09:35.920 what the negative aspects

00:09:39.060 of our society are

00:09:41.060 and forget the fact that children

00:09:43.200 are generally robust.

00:09:44.980 They are programmed to survive

00:09:46.580 and to get on.

00:09:48.300 And so we shouldn't be too careful

00:09:51.420 or too worried

00:09:52.740 about the kind of disadvantages

00:09:54.720 they face in,

00:09:56.300 you know,

00:09:57.460 sort of a Western society

00:10:00.260 where they have many advantages.

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00:11:39.380 Yes, well,

00:11:43.960 you talk about the fact

00:11:45.560 that parents now exist

00:11:47.540 in what you described

00:11:49.180 as a post-Freudian world

00:11:51.040 and so

00:11:51.560 there was this idea

00:11:53.300 based on a,

00:11:54.660 I would say,

00:11:55.120 an oversimplified

00:11:56.120 reading of Freud

00:11:57.480 that all psychological problems

00:11:59.500 that adults suffer from

00:12:00.680 are a consequence of

00:12:01.900 trauma

00:12:02.740 often associated

00:12:04.320 with poor parenting

00:12:05.220 in childhood.

00:12:06.520 And,

00:12:07.180 first of all,

00:12:08.120 no,

00:12:08.480 because there's lots

00:12:09.720 of reasons

00:12:10.180 to have

00:12:10.740 psychological distress

00:12:11.960 as an adult

00:12:12.740 that have nothing

00:12:13.300 to do with your parents.

00:12:14.580 I mean,

00:12:15.120 as the existential

00:12:16.100 psychotherapists

00:12:17.140 pointed out

00:12:17.780 very clearly

00:12:18.340 in the 50s,

00:12:19.800 just the catastrophes

00:12:21.200 associated

00:12:21.760 with being alive

00:12:22.700 are sufficient

00:12:23.360 to cause people

00:12:24.740 a substantial amount

00:12:25.780 of depression

00:12:26.380 and anxiety

00:12:27.080 and hopelessness.

00:12:28.000 So,

00:12:28.340 it doesn't have to be

00:12:29.580 all bad parenting.

00:12:31.280 And,

00:12:31.520 secondly,

00:12:32.180 the extremes

00:12:33.820 of terrible parenting

00:12:35.360 that Freud noted

00:12:37.500 aren't really,

00:12:39.760 I wouldn't say

00:12:40.460 they're uncommon,

00:12:41.420 but they're not typical.

00:12:43.300 So,

00:12:44.040 Freud was particularly

00:12:45.040 concerned with

00:12:45.860 Oedipal parenting

00:12:46.720 and that would be,

00:12:48.120 well,

00:12:48.300 I suppose the modern

00:12:49.040 equivalent of that

00:12:49.820 is something like

00:12:50.460 helicopter parenting.

00:12:51.740 It's the potential

00:12:52.800 damage done

00:12:53.680 by someone

00:12:54.800 who cares

00:12:56.000 so much

00:12:56.560 for their children

00:12:57.300 that they're

00:12:57.760 completely unable

00:12:58.740 to give them

00:12:59.260 any autonomy

00:12:59.900 whatsoever.

00:13:00.920 But I think

00:13:01.360 it's useful

00:13:01.880 for parents

00:13:02.460 to know that,

00:13:03.220 as you just pointed out,

00:13:04.300 that children

00:13:04.680 are quite robust

00:13:06.580 and they can adapt

00:13:07.420 to a variety

00:13:08.060 of circumstances

00:13:08.880 and also that

00:13:09.760 what you're trying

00:13:10.400 to do with your children

00:13:11.500 is actually have

00:13:12.280 a relationship

00:13:12.940 with them.

00:13:14.280 And one of the things

00:13:15.900 that characterizes

00:13:17.000 robust human relationships

00:13:19.020 is that they can

00:13:19.900 actually stay intact

00:13:21.740 across a wide variety

00:13:23.760 of emotional scenarios.

00:13:25.700 You know,

00:13:25.880 sometimes people

00:13:26.640 and my clients

00:13:27.460 used to wonder,

00:13:28.260 for example,

00:13:28.800 if they should ever

00:13:30.080 fight in front

00:13:30.880 of their children.

00:13:31.560 And my response

00:13:33.420 to that always was

00:13:34.480 it's not whether

00:13:36.160 or not you fight.

00:13:37.600 It's whether or not

00:13:38.400 you reconcile.

00:13:40.140 And so what you want

00:13:40.940 to do is model

00:13:41.760 for your children

00:13:42.600 the fact that

00:13:43.860 there's going to be

00:13:44.400 conflict about

00:13:45.340 very important

00:13:46.340 and difficult issues,

00:13:47.660 some of those

00:13:48.180 interpersonal

00:13:48.700 but some of them

00:13:49.400 just practical,

00:13:50.680 that that conflict

00:13:51.580 is actually going

00:13:52.340 to produce a fair bit

00:13:53.340 of emotion,

00:13:54.020 some of which

00:13:54.540 might be negative

00:13:55.440 and even rather intense,

00:13:57.860 but that those things

00:13:59.980 can be negotiated

00:14:01.240 through and the relationship

00:14:02.840 can come back together.

00:14:04.500 We know, for example,

00:14:05.500 even by studying

00:14:06.460 our close primate relatives,

00:14:08.400 chimpanzees, 0.75

00:14:09.440 that the males,

00:14:10.460 for example,

00:14:10.900 are extremely fractious

00:14:12.780 in their interpersonal

00:14:13.560 interactions,

00:14:14.740 but the sophisticated ones

00:14:16.920 are also extremely good

00:14:18.280 at reconciling

00:14:19.240 and peacemaking.

00:14:21.060 And so,

00:14:21.720 while the point

00:14:22.180 of all this

00:14:22.720 is that your children

00:14:24.400 are perfectly capable

00:14:25.880 of adapting

00:14:26.740 to a wide range

00:14:27.940 of emotional events,

00:14:29.900 positive and negative,

00:14:31.240 and what you want

00:14:32.900 to help them understand

00:14:33.880 is that

00:14:34.540 the relationship

00:14:36.340 you have with them

00:14:37.320 and with each other

00:14:38.240 if you're married

00:14:38.940 is of the sort

00:14:40.500 that's going to be able

00:14:41.260 to withstand

00:14:41.740 the full range

00:14:42.880 of emotional expression

00:14:44.040 without breaking apart.

00:14:46.020 And so,

00:14:47.180 you don't have to worry

00:14:48.000 about them being fragile

00:14:49.040 and you don't have to worry

00:14:50.460 in some sense

00:14:51.160 even about making mistakes

00:14:52.520 with them

00:14:52.960 as long as you're doing that

00:14:54.300 in the same way

00:14:56.040 you would do that

00:14:56.820 with someone

00:14:57.340 with whom you really want

00:14:58.860 and maintain

00:14:59.540 a long-term relationship.

00:15:01.760 It's a very rare

00:15:03.100 married couple

00:15:03.920 who don't fight,

00:15:05.320 who don't ever fight

00:15:06.480 and don't ever,

00:15:07.540 and one of the things

00:15:08.400 that I think is important,

00:15:10.120 as you say,

00:15:10.860 that children may see you fight

00:15:13.460 and of course by that

00:15:15.160 I don't mean,

00:15:16.100 you know,

00:15:16.500 hugely aggressive,

00:15:17.840 throwing things

00:15:18.540 or beating a partner up,

00:15:21.440 but the normal kind of arguments

00:15:23.220 and fights

00:15:23.900 that a couple would get into.

00:15:26.760 If the children observe that,

00:15:28.640 then I think you're right

00:15:29.440 that it's important

00:15:30.280 that they also see

00:15:31.520 the making up.

00:15:33.100 But they also learn

00:15:34.380 that you're not perfect,

00:15:35.500 that conflict exists

00:15:36.700 and that people resolve it

00:15:38.940 and that it doesn't destroy you.

00:15:41.600 So I think that is really important.

00:15:43.660 Right.

00:15:43.880 The other thing is about,

00:15:45.760 you know,

00:15:46.560 anger and conflict

00:15:48.380 and argument

00:15:49.080 is, as you say,

00:15:50.660 just a normal part of life.

00:15:52.060 So if you try,

00:15:54.160 and this is what I see,

00:15:55.520 the pressure on parents

00:15:58.560 and particularly mothers

00:15:59.580 to be nice all the time,

00:16:01.520 to be kind and nice

00:16:03.580 and never do anything

00:16:06.180 in front of the children

00:16:07.240 and you create

00:16:09.740 a kind of false

00:16:10.900 sort of family

00:16:13.360 and some of the families

00:16:15.220 I know

00:16:16.160 that I think

00:16:16.680 have the most healthy relationships

00:16:18.280 are ones that shout

00:16:19.240 at each other quite a lot.

00:16:20.680 You know,

00:16:22.100 they're quite volatile

00:16:23.140 in the way that they do so,

00:16:24.920 but they're very honest

00:16:25.980 and they make up

00:16:27.860 and they're very,

00:16:28.780 very close

00:16:29.340 and loving families.

00:16:30.900 So you can't,

00:16:32.260 you know,

00:16:32.560 and then there are

00:16:33.960 other families

00:16:34.720 that try,

00:16:35.620 or the parents

00:16:36.380 try desperately hard

00:16:37.640 to always present

00:16:39.720 a, you know,

00:16:40.980 a loving

00:16:41.540 and kind

00:16:42.380 and nice front

00:16:43.900 and everything's false

00:16:45.620 and everything's

00:16:48.020 under the surface then

00:16:49.500 and that I think

00:16:50.440 is very,

00:16:51.140 very confusing

00:16:52.340 and anxiety-provoking

00:16:54.740 in children

00:16:55.320 when you can feel

00:16:56.420 the undercurrents

00:16:58.180 as children can,

00:16:59.360 but nobody's saying

00:17:00.180 anything out loud.

00:17:02.540 Right.

00:17:03.140 Well,

00:17:03.340 that's part of that

00:17:04.280 extended Oedipal complex

00:17:05.800 in some sense

00:17:06.900 is that

00:17:07.360 the issue is,

00:17:08.880 I mean,

00:17:09.080 it's perfectly reasonable

00:17:10.360 for people to

00:17:11.360 work towards

00:17:13.480 having peace

00:17:14.420 in their household,

00:17:15.960 but peace is actually

00:17:17.620 extremely difficult

00:17:18.800 to establish

00:17:19.980 and maintain

00:17:21.000 because peace means

00:17:23.000 that both of you agree

00:17:24.360 and also peace means

00:17:26.600 that there's nothing

00:17:27.480 unbelievably complicated

00:17:29.140 facing you

00:17:30.420 at the moment

00:17:31.060 about which you

00:17:32.680 have no idea

00:17:34.140 and you have no idea

00:17:35.820 how to approach it.

00:17:36.900 You know,

00:17:37.040 if you have a sick child,

00:17:38.180 for example,

00:17:39.080 and you're trying

00:17:41.120 to sort through

00:17:41.980 how to discipline

00:17:43.560 a child like that,

00:17:44.780 let's say,

00:17:45.180 or what medical pathway

00:17:46.540 to walk down,

00:17:47.980 there's no way

00:17:48.980 you can avoid

00:17:49.660 having conflict

00:17:50.520 if you're going

00:17:51.120 to think about it

00:17:52.000 because it's a very

00:17:53.580 serious issue

00:17:54.460 and you have to

00:17:56.720 think about it seriously

00:17:57.720 and that means

00:17:58.340 you have to discuss it

00:17:59.360 and if you have

00:17:59.880 a different viewpoint,

00:18:00.880 that discussion

00:18:01.660 can get quite heated,

00:18:03.040 but there's no difference

00:18:04.240 between that

00:18:04.860 and thinking

00:18:05.620 that heated discussion

00:18:07.020 and unless you

00:18:08.640 sort through,

00:18:09.600 say,

00:18:09.780 the complexities

00:18:10.340 on the disciplinary

00:18:11.380 and the medical

00:18:12.020 treatment front,

00:18:12.860 you actually don't

00:18:13.920 have peace,

00:18:15.580 right?

00:18:15.880 You just have a problem.

00:18:17.060 Now,

00:18:17.360 what happens

00:18:18.040 in the families

00:18:18.740 that insist

00:18:20.040 upon presenting

00:18:20.980 this,

00:18:21.860 you might say,

00:18:22.800 gingerbread house

00:18:23.820 world of false peace

00:18:25.780 to their children

00:18:26.480 is that

00:18:27.040 they're pretending

00:18:29.020 constantly

00:18:29.800 that every problem

00:18:31.500 is solved

00:18:32.080 and peace

00:18:33.080 actually reigns,

00:18:34.580 but they're telling

00:18:35.260 the children,

00:18:36.240 often through

00:18:36.760 nonverbal behavior

00:18:37.760 that any conflict

00:18:39.560 whatsoever

00:18:40.040 is so disruptive

00:18:41.080 and so intolerable

00:18:42.180 that we have to

00:18:43.220 pretend all the time

00:18:44.220 that no conflict

00:18:45.340 whatsoever exists

00:18:46.440 and so all that does

00:18:47.860 is turn children

00:18:48.600 into creatures

00:18:49.560 that are terrified

00:18:50.560 of their own

00:18:51.180 negative emotions

00:18:52.020 so they feel

00:18:53.840 that if peace

00:18:55.300 is so necessary

00:18:56.440 and psyche

00:18:58.800 is so fragile

00:18:59.700 that no emotion

00:19:01.340 whatsoever

00:19:01.940 is allowed

00:19:02.980 on the negative side,

00:19:04.220 then any problem

00:19:06.340 must be

00:19:06.840 of terrifying proportions

00:19:08.560 and only something

00:19:09.480 to avoid

00:19:10.160 and that's definitely

00:19:11.500 a catastrophe

00:19:13.200 for children

00:19:14.020 especially because

00:19:15.100 they can,

00:19:15.940 especially when they're little,

00:19:16.900 they can be quite volatile,

00:19:18.220 right?

00:19:18.440 I mean,

00:19:18.680 if they're tired

00:19:19.360 or hungry

00:19:19.860 or hot

00:19:20.860 or cold

00:19:21.620 and they get volatile,

00:19:23.080 they get upset

00:19:23.620 and then

00:19:24.920 if they're feeling

00:19:25.960 that they're breaking

00:19:26.800 the eggshells

00:19:27.640 underneath the carpet

00:19:28.500 or rattling

00:19:29.620 the skeletons

00:19:30.240 in the closet,

00:19:31.020 that's just not good

00:19:31.860 for them at all.

00:19:32.640 Yeah,

00:19:33.940 it teaches children

00:19:34.960 to be afraid

00:19:35.640 of conflict

00:19:36.380 and disagreement

00:19:37.160 and argument

00:19:37.960 and those are parts

00:19:39.160 of a healthy relationship.

00:19:40.660 You disagree

00:19:41.640 and you,

00:19:42.580 I think that

00:19:44.180 when it comes

00:19:46.020 to disciplining

00:19:46.660 the children,

00:19:48.780 that's an issue

00:19:49.560 that is the adult's job 0.89

00:19:51.080 and it shouldn't be done

00:19:52.200 in front of the children.

00:19:53.640 I mean,

00:19:53.900 it helps if parents

00:19:54.980 share the same values

00:19:56.200 but often there is

00:19:57.760 a difference

00:19:58.640 between,

00:19:59.980 I mean,

00:20:00.380 discipline

00:20:02.760 and attitudes

00:20:03.560 to discipline.

00:20:05.220 This is so,

00:20:06.180 so common

00:20:06.660 that one parent

00:20:07.480 is more authoritarian

00:20:08.900 and the other parent

00:20:10.120 is more liberal

00:20:10.940 and wants to let

00:20:12.380 the children

00:20:12.760 get away with things

00:20:13.960 more

00:20:14.480 and the other one

00:20:15.540 wants really

00:20:16.800 tough discipline

00:20:17.960 and that's so,

00:20:19.340 so common

00:20:19.860 to a greater

00:20:21.300 or lesser extent.

00:20:23.120 So those sorts

00:20:24.160 of issues

00:20:24.620 really need to be

00:20:25.520 talked about

00:20:26.020 and sorted out

00:20:26.620 by the parents.

00:20:27.240 It's not the child's job

00:20:28.500 to join in

00:20:29.320 with methods

00:20:30.740 of his or her

00:20:32.340 own discipline.

00:20:33.340 That is the parent's job.

00:20:34.920 It's the adult's job 0.99

00:20:36.000 and a child isn't,

00:20:37.540 you know,

00:20:37.740 and then the parent

00:20:38.420 should be able

00:20:39.600 to reach some agreement

00:20:41.620 or compromise

00:20:42.340 and then,

00:20:44.200 you know,

00:20:44.700 proceed.

00:20:45.460 But that shouldn't be

00:20:46.260 part of the child's job.

00:20:48.080 It's not the child's job

00:20:49.100 to,

00:20:49.760 you know.

00:20:50.260 Yeah,

00:20:50.480 well,

00:20:50.640 you talked about

00:20:51.560 two camps

00:20:52.860 of discipline,

00:20:54.620 camp A

00:20:55.120 and camp B.

00:20:56.160 Camp A

00:20:56.780 associated with order,

00:20:59.020 let's say,

00:20:59.520 and integration

00:21:00.220 into the social world

00:21:01.380 and camp B

00:21:02.200 associated more,

00:21:03.260 let's say,

00:21:03.600 with chaos

00:21:04.180 and individuation

00:21:05.760 and that's kind of

00:21:06.560 a conservative-liberal

00:21:07.740 split there too

00:21:08.660 and I suppose

00:21:09.760 that does reflect

00:21:10.620 the fact that

00:21:11.280 children have

00:21:11.880 two problems

00:21:12.600 to solve

00:21:13.280 as they mature,

00:21:14.660 broadly speaking.

00:21:15.620 One is,

00:21:16.540 well,

00:21:16.700 how do I get along

00:21:17.520 with my parents

00:21:18.740 and my siblings

00:21:19.480 and my friends

00:21:20.320 and my teachers,

00:21:21.320 the whole social world?

00:21:22.460 How do I fit in?

00:21:24.080 So that's problem number one.

00:21:25.380 So that means,

00:21:26.340 how do I conduct myself

00:21:27.440 so that people appreciate

00:21:28.740 having me around

00:21:29.680 and I'm a valued social member?

00:21:31.600 And the second problem is,

00:21:33.240 well,

00:21:33.420 how do I stand

00:21:34.100 on my own two feet

00:21:35.060 and also become

00:21:36.240 a reliable source

00:21:38.000 of creative individuality

00:21:40.300 and some ability

00:21:41.500 to push back

00:21:42.340 against the mindlessness

00:21:43.840 of the group?

00:21:45.100 And that is

00:21:46.080 an optimization problem.

00:21:47.540 It's very complex

00:21:48.280 and there's no simple answer

00:21:49.660 to that,

00:21:50.560 partly because it depends

00:21:51.800 on the situation

00:21:52.620 and it depends

00:21:53.280 on the child

00:21:54.000 and so parents

00:21:55.160 definitely have

00:21:56.060 to negotiate that out.

00:21:57.540 I found with my wife,

00:21:59.200 I probably was,

00:22:01.740 I'd probably make

00:22:02.560 the first disciplinary move

00:22:04.040 in like 75% of the cases,

00:22:06.320 maybe 60% of the cases

00:22:07.820 in our marriage.

00:22:08.700 I don't think

00:22:09.120 that's that uncommon

00:22:10.140 because men are more likely

00:22:11.420 to intervene

00:22:12.460 by and large

00:22:13.720 than women are 1.00

00:22:14.340 because they're less agreeable.

00:22:15.720 But I also found,

00:22:16.720 you know,

00:22:17.020 most of the time,

00:22:18.120 although my wife and I

00:22:19.000 were pretty much

00:22:19.560 on the same page

00:22:20.400 with our kids, 0.94

00:22:21.020 if I just shut the hell up

00:22:22.780 for 15 seconds

00:22:24.180 when the kids

00:22:24.700 were misbehaving,

00:22:26.080 she would respond.

00:22:28.400 And it was so interesting

00:22:29.420 because her threshold

00:22:30.520 for tolerating misbehavior

00:22:33.280 was not very much

00:22:34.860 different than mine.

00:22:35.880 It was literally,

00:22:37.620 say on average,

00:22:38.940 15 seconds.

00:22:40.500 But because it was reliably,

00:22:43.560 she was reliably

00:22:44.820 somewhat more patient,

00:22:46.900 that did mean

00:22:47.840 that in some circumstances,

00:22:49.360 the bulk of the initial

00:22:50.760 disciplinary moves

00:22:51.860 fell to me.

00:22:53.060 So that's another thing

00:22:53.880 that's interesting

00:22:54.540 that might be interesting

00:22:55.820 for people to know too.

00:22:57.060 You might be closer

00:22:57.820 than you think

00:22:58.480 on the disciplinary front.

00:22:59.780 It's just one person

00:23:00.980 is a little quicker

00:23:01.780 on the draw

00:23:02.420 than the other.

00:23:03.900 And again,

00:23:04.740 it's back to sharing...

00:23:05.940 Sorry, please go ahead.

00:23:07.680 It's back to sharing values,

00:23:09.380 isn't it?

00:23:09.760 If you've got

00:23:10.460 essentially the same values

00:23:12.280 about how you want

00:23:13.180 to bring your child up

00:23:14.120 and how you want

00:23:16.320 your child to be

00:23:17.200 in the world,

00:23:17.980 what your goals are

00:23:19.380 for the way

00:23:20.140 you raise a child,

00:23:21.340 then you can probably

00:23:22.860 work those things out

00:23:25.140 as adults together.

00:23:27.240 And yeah,

00:23:27.920 it's not as big as...

00:23:29.320 So we could lay out

00:23:32.060 some of those principles

00:23:33.080 and I think that'd be useful

00:23:34.540 for people who are watching.

00:23:35.760 So let's take that

00:23:37.560 Camp A and Camp B.

00:23:38.940 We'll start with Camp A

00:23:40.160 and that would be

00:23:40.860 the more conservative side.

00:23:42.340 Look, it's really important

00:23:43.440 that your children

00:23:44.320 are popular

00:23:45.660 and welcome.

00:23:48.080 And that doesn't mean

00:23:48.920 because they've sold

00:23:50.160 their soul to the group.

00:23:51.620 It means because

00:23:52.500 they can play fair

00:23:53.760 and they're productive

00:23:55.080 and generous

00:23:55.700 and they know how

00:23:56.400 to take turns

00:23:57.120 and they don't whine

00:23:58.040 too much when they lose

00:23:59.200 and they don't triumph

00:24:00.940 too annoyingly

00:24:02.260 when they win.

00:24:03.160 And they're good

00:24:03.920 at reciprocity.

00:24:05.440 They're good play partners.

00:24:06.700 And that's really

00:24:07.860 crucially important to kids.

00:24:09.760 The literature

00:24:10.400 on the development

00:24:11.200 of criminal behavior,

00:24:12.500 anti-social behavior

00:24:13.560 in children

00:24:14.020 shows quite clearly

00:24:15.240 that there's a subset

00:24:16.620 of kids

00:24:17.240 who are quite aggressive

00:24:18.360 at the age of two.

00:24:19.380 Most of them are boys.

00:24:20.740 Most of them get socialized

00:24:22.480 by the time they're four.

00:24:24.640 But some of them don't.

00:24:26.080 And the ones that don't

00:24:27.260 start out

00:24:28.780 their sad little social lives

00:24:31.760 as social rejects.

00:24:34.840 And what happens

00:24:35.860 is they fall farther

00:24:36.900 and farther behind

00:24:37.840 because the other kids

00:24:39.220 start to play together

00:24:40.340 because they can stand

00:24:41.680 each other.

00:24:42.220 They start to develop

00:24:43.280 friendships.

00:24:44.480 And within those friendships

00:24:45.580 they scaffold

00:24:46.480 their social growth.

00:24:48.100 And so what that means

00:24:49.000 is that if your child

00:24:50.300 is unlikable at four,

00:24:52.660 maybe because you didn't

00:24:54.380 help socialize them

00:24:55.560 sufficiently between you

00:24:56.840 and your wife,

00:24:57.820 then other children

00:24:58.580 will reject them

00:24:59.540 and then they're really

00:25:00.300 in trouble.

00:25:01.040 And the literature

00:25:01.920 I was familiar with

00:25:03.100 indicated that

00:25:03.960 if your child

00:25:05.580 doesn't make a smooth

00:25:06.580 entry into the social world

00:25:08.140 somewhere between

00:25:09.340 the ages of three and five,

00:25:11.140 there's almost nothing

00:25:12.100 that can be done

00:25:12.860 after that

00:25:13.500 to remediate that.

00:25:14.980 It's such a serious problem.

00:25:17.160 And so one thing

00:25:18.400 that parents could be

00:25:19.280 aiming at is,

00:25:20.360 well, this is why

00:25:21.080 you don't let your children

00:25:22.360 do anything

00:25:22.840 that makes you dislike them

00:25:23.980 because you want

00:25:24.780 other people

00:25:25.420 to welcome them.

00:25:27.040 So they need to

00:25:28.140 be able to modulate

00:25:29.440 their behavior

00:25:30.100 in a socially acceptable way.

00:25:31.640 So that's

00:25:32.100 on the conservative side.

00:25:33.260 On the liberal side,

00:25:34.040 you'd say,

00:25:34.400 well, you don't want

00:25:35.400 your child

00:25:35.900 just to be

00:25:36.800 like a clone

00:25:38.540 of the group.

00:25:39.660 You want them

00:25:40.200 to have some individuality

00:25:41.540 and some autonomy.

00:25:42.540 And so you might

00:25:43.540 have to argue

00:25:44.320 between you

00:25:45.060 about what the balance

00:25:46.700 is between those

00:25:47.980 two things

00:25:48.620 in relationship

00:25:49.680 to your particular child

00:25:50.900 because it needs

00:25:51.620 to be particularized.

00:25:53.380 But those are good aims.

00:25:55.700 An autonomous child

00:25:56.760 who knows how

00:25:57.700 to play well

00:25:58.340 with others.

00:25:59.080 That's a pretty good deal

00:26:00.200 for the child

00:26:01.100 and for the world

00:26:02.080 and for you as parents.

00:26:04.280 Yeah, and this is why

00:26:05.080 when I research

00:26:06.080 parent books,

00:26:07.120 parenting advice books,

00:26:08.840 and I think

00:26:09.740 the parenting advice

00:26:10.840 industry

00:26:11.420 doesn't get enough

00:26:13.280 scrutiny, actually.

00:26:14.680 I'm not a big fan

00:26:16.360 of parenting books,

00:26:18.040 but they tended

00:26:20.740 to be either

00:26:21.540 the kind of

00:26:22.800 quite authoritarian

00:26:23.860 or quite liberal.

00:26:27.340 And, you know,

00:26:28.360 in my book,

00:26:29.920 I point out

00:26:30.600 that actually

00:26:31.160 there are good things

00:26:32.000 about both.

00:26:32.760 There are necessary

00:26:33.280 things about both.

00:26:34.840 There's individuation

00:26:36.120 and integration

00:26:37.660 and, you know,

00:26:38.940 both of those things.

00:26:40.260 And so you take

00:26:41.620 the bits

00:26:42.260 from each model

00:26:43.700 and you put them together

00:26:45.420 because both of those

00:26:46.640 are important.

00:26:47.460 And some of those,

00:26:49.000 some of the advice

00:26:50.620 in the more

00:26:51.280 authoritarian books

00:26:52.960 is good.

00:26:53.740 Some of it

00:26:54.320 I don't think

00:26:54.960 is good at all.

00:26:57.600 And the same

00:26:58.420 with the other way.

00:26:59.140 It's important

00:27:00.260 that children

00:27:00.860 are individuals.

00:27:01.580 it's important

00:27:02.560 that we listen

00:27:03.160 to children

00:27:03.620 more than we used to.

00:27:06.080 But what I've seen

00:27:07.660 is it's the liberal

00:27:09.020 parenting side

00:27:10.180 that has

00:27:10.960 come into ascendancy

00:27:13.140 over the last

00:27:13.760 two decades.

00:27:14.900 And that runs

00:27:16.620 right across

00:27:17.320 the social spectrum

00:27:19.860 of parents.

00:27:21.040 You get working-class parents, 1.00

00:27:22.440 middle-class parents

00:27:23.380 are very liberal.

00:27:24.780 And I think

00:27:26.060 most of the books

00:27:29.200 are on that side.

00:27:31.560 And that creates

00:27:32.660 a huge imbalance

00:27:34.240 in sort of

00:27:36.480 hoping that your child

00:27:37.760 will become

00:27:38.420 a fully rounded

00:27:39.180 human being

00:27:40.060 who feels good

00:27:41.680 about themselves

00:27:42.340 but also

00:27:43.220 fits into society

00:27:45.560 but doesn't become

00:27:47.160 a sheep

00:27:47.760 or a cog in the wheel

00:27:48.680 as you say.

00:27:49.320 So I think

00:27:51.940 we have

00:27:52.880 this huge

00:27:53.820 imbalance

00:27:55.100 for children

00:27:56.200 that doesn't

00:27:57.280 make them happy.

00:27:59.220 And that

00:27:59.500 one of the things

00:28:01.000 that I think

00:28:01.740 is important

00:28:03.100 if you want

00:28:04.460 that sort of

00:28:05.440 freedom for your

00:28:06.220 child

00:28:06.900 that you

00:28:08.380 create a structure

00:28:09.380 and you cannot

00:28:10.460 really have

00:28:11.120 freedom without

00:28:11.960 structure

00:28:12.640 because that's

00:28:13.520 chaos

00:28:13.940 and that's

00:28:15.060 terrifying

00:28:15.640 for children.

00:28:16.520 But I think

00:28:19.440 the whole focus

00:28:20.320 is on this idea

00:28:21.840 that children

00:28:22.720 are born whole

00:28:23.780 with a fully formed

00:28:24.700 self

00:28:25.180 and that it's

00:28:26.860 the parent's

00:28:27.700 job to facilitate

00:28:28.960 expression of

00:28:30.260 that self.

00:28:32.100 And I think

00:28:32.460 this...

00:28:32.840 So let's

00:28:33.980 dig into that

00:28:34.760 a little bit.

00:28:35.360 So you were

00:28:36.500 concerned in

00:28:37.400 these statements

00:28:38.360 about the tilt

00:28:39.920 towards more

00:28:40.660 liberal parenting.

00:28:41.700 So the first

00:28:42.680 thing I might

00:28:43.920 comment about

00:28:44.680 that is that

00:28:45.400 being extremely

00:28:47.360 liberal can

00:28:48.200 also be a

00:28:49.080 perfectly valid

00:28:49.900 excuse for

00:28:50.600 neglect because

00:28:51.400 it actually

00:28:51.920 takes real

00:28:53.300 detailed attention

00:28:54.320 to your children's

00:28:55.220 behavior to help

00:28:56.060 them walk the

00:28:56.760 appropriate social

00:28:57.740 path.

00:28:59.020 And if you're

00:28:59.400 not attending,

00:29:00.180 you let them

00:29:00.620 get away with

00:29:01.120 everything,

00:29:01.940 you can justify

00:29:02.800 that by saying,

00:29:03.800 well, what I'm

00:29:04.780 doing is trying

00:29:05.520 to individuate

00:29:06.420 my child.

00:29:07.420 I don't want

00:29:08.040 to put any

00:29:08.540 social restrictions

00:29:09.680 on them because

00:29:10.380 that's all

00:29:10.940 hemming in their

00:29:11.840 natural preformed

00:29:13.460 perfect creativity.

00:29:15.400 And so, and

00:29:17.120 then you give

00:29:17.680 yourself an

00:29:18.240 easy out.

00:29:18.960 And that's not

00:29:20.280 helpful, partly.

00:29:21.940 And that's partly

00:29:22.620 also being driven 1.00

00:29:23.580 by this idiot 1.00

00:29:24.500 insistence that 1.00

00:29:25.620 self-esteem is

00:29:28.160 only internal

00:29:29.940 and it's only

00:29:30.980 psychological.

00:29:32.260 And that's an

00:29:33.060 unbelievably

00:29:33.780 pathological model

00:29:35.080 of self-esteem.

00:29:35.880 And I would

00:29:36.440 thank the social

00:29:37.600 psychologists for

00:29:38.580 that, mostly.

00:29:40.520 Because a huge

00:29:42.460 amount of what

00:29:43.140 your child would

00:29:43.840 experience, let's

00:29:44.800 say, as

00:29:45.140 self-esteem, which

00:29:46.120 is actually, by

00:29:46.980 the way, technically

00:29:47.880 control of negative

00:29:48.940 emotion, isn't a

00:29:50.280 consequence of the

00:29:51.420 individuated nature

00:29:52.980 of their psyche.

00:29:54.800 It's a consequence

00:29:55.540 of the fact that

00:29:56.400 other people can

00:29:57.320 stand having them

00:29:58.340 around without being

00:29:59.780 mean and rejecting

00:30:00.860 all the time.

00:30:02.060 So, if you have a

00:30:02.940 child who knows how

00:30:03.920 to play by the age

00:30:05.280 of three, let's

00:30:06.920 say, and can share

00:30:08.400 and isn't too

00:30:09.300 whiny and isn't

00:30:10.240 too triumphant and

00:30:11.620 can reciprocate, then

00:30:13.780 you can send them

00:30:14.600 off to daycare, you

00:30:15.560 can send them off to

00:30:16.360 pre-kindergarten, and

00:30:17.200 they'll make friends.

00:30:18.400 And then when they

00:30:18.960 go to school, they

00:30:20.300 have friends, and

00:30:21.500 the teachers like

00:30:22.440 them, and so they

00:30:23.880 aren't suffering from

00:30:24.860 the kind of negative

00:30:25.680 emotion that people

00:30:26.780 would confuse with

00:30:27.720 low self-esteem.

00:30:29.100 But it's not

00:30:29.720 because, particularly

00:30:31.460 because they're

00:30:32.440 individuated or

00:30:34.100 well-integrated

00:30:35.060 intra-psychically, it's

00:30:36.240 because their

00:30:36.760 behavior is well-regulated

00:30:38.280 socially, and so

00:30:39.740 they integrate well

00:30:40.760 into the community, and

00:30:42.060 so other people don't

00:30:43.120 exclude and torture

00:30:44.180 them. 0.99

00:30:45.080 And so, we really

00:30:47.160 do have a warped and

00:30:48.840 Rousseauian view of

00:30:50.100 the way that children

00:30:50.820 develop, right?

00:30:51.600 Is they're perfect in

00:30:52.620 and of themselves,

00:30:53.860 except in so far as

00:30:55.140 parents impose

00:30:56.260 pathological, parents

00:30:58.020 in society impose

00:30:59.380 pathological

00:31:00.240 restrictions on them.

00:31:01.700 And it's, as you

00:31:03.220 said, you pointed out

00:31:04.360 another thing, which

00:31:05.060 is, don't be

00:31:07.160 confusing freedom

00:31:08.200 and chaos.

00:31:09.740 Like, if you give

00:31:11.020 your children

00:31:11.600 carte blanche, all

00:31:12.880 that means is that

00:31:13.960 they're impulsive

00:31:15.440 and anxious.

00:31:16.480 It does not mean

00:31:17.320 they're free.

00:31:18.580 An optimally free

00:31:19.740 child is actually

00:31:20.620 playing a structured

00:31:21.560 game.

00:31:22.940 Now, we know games

00:31:24.160 are fun, but we

00:31:25.160 also know games run

00:31:26.300 by principles.

00:31:27.260 They run by rules.

00:31:28.460 The rules aren't

00:31:29.180 exactly there to

00:31:30.040 constrain and hem

00:31:31.160 in, like you'd

00:31:32.240 think if you were

00:31:32.860 Rousseauian.

00:31:33.560 The rules are

00:31:34.440 actually preconditioned

00:31:35.680 for a very complex

00:31:36.600 sort of freedom.

00:31:37.380 And the basic

00:31:38.580 rules of social

00:31:40.280 interaction, like

00:31:41.240 reciprocity and

00:31:42.380 not whining too

00:31:43.600 much when you lose

00:31:44.580 and not being too

00:31:45.620 triumphant when you

00:31:46.480 win, those are the

00:31:47.640 basic rules of social

00:31:48.760 interaction.

00:31:49.700 And they actually

00:31:50.460 facilitate freedom

00:31:51.860 rather than being

00:31:52.700 antithetical to it.

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00:33:00.300 slash jbp.

00:33:01.380 It's a freedom,

00:33:06.400 total freedom

00:33:08.360 without boundaries

00:33:09.200 is terrifying,

00:33:10.800 absolutely terrifying.

00:33:12.100 It is chaos.

00:33:13.100 And for a child,

00:33:15.660 that, you know,

00:33:16.700 that is terrifying.

00:33:17.700 But you all,

00:33:18.520 the child is always,

00:33:19.720 always pushing for

00:33:21.520 those boundaries

00:33:22.300 that they expect.

00:33:24.560 And I think

00:33:25.660 children are born

00:33:26.520 absolutely expecting

00:33:27.820 the adult to know

00:33:28.760 what they're doing

00:33:29.400 and to guide them.

00:33:33.040 And so they push

00:33:34.840 to find out

00:33:35.500 where that boundary

00:33:36.440 is.

00:33:36.900 And that's the

00:33:37.920 little child's job

00:33:39.700 really.

00:33:40.680 And if the parent

00:33:41.360 doesn't provide

00:33:42.180 that boundary,

00:33:43.200 then the child has

00:33:44.140 to push further

00:33:44.920 and further and

00:33:45.720 further and come

00:33:46.500 to a place that

00:33:47.280 does not make

00:33:48.340 them happy.

00:33:49.200 It makes them

00:33:50.060 anxious and

00:33:52.580 nervous.

00:33:54.560 So, you know...

00:33:56.080 Okay, so let's

00:33:57.360 segue there then

00:33:58.560 because that,

00:33:59.420 look, that's...

00:34:00.160 I'm going to tell you

00:34:00.920 a little story here

00:34:01.980 and then you'll see

00:34:02.980 where I'm going

00:34:03.520 with this very quickly.

00:34:05.200 So there's this

00:34:06.080 individual in the

00:34:07.660 Biden administration

00:34:08.660 in Washington

00:34:10.960 and he's in charge

00:34:13.060 of disposal

00:34:14.360 of all nuclear waste

00:34:15.840 in the U.S.,

00:34:16.620 if I remember correctly.

00:34:17.980 Now, he's a

00:34:19.340 non-binary

00:34:21.420 by public pronouncement.

00:34:23.600 He's bald,

00:34:25.480 often has a mustache,

00:34:26.880 wears pretty flashy

00:34:27.840 dresses,

00:34:29.060 and has posted

00:34:30.740 a fair bit

00:34:31.520 of his sexual

00:34:32.680 behavior publicly.

00:34:34.660 So you can find

00:34:35.600 pictures of him,

00:34:36.960 for example,

00:34:37.740 splayed out on

00:34:38.760 a slab,

00:34:41.160 bondaged up

00:34:42.020 in rope,

00:34:42.940 all prepared

00:34:43.500 for whatever activity

00:34:44.500 he's prone

00:34:45.500 to engage in.

00:34:47.560 There are pictures

00:34:48.400 of him with men

00:34:49.960 kneeling by his side

00:34:51.580 with dog masks on.

00:34:53.120 He's quite a bit

00:34:54.060 of fun.

00:34:55.040 And so,

00:34:55.700 you might say,

00:34:57.360 if you were skeptical,

00:34:59.360 that he's pushing

00:35:00.260 the boundaries.

00:35:01.520 And he keeps pushing

00:35:02.780 them and pushing them.

00:35:04.080 And so far,

00:35:05.360 he hasn't found

00:35:05.960 any boundaries

00:35:06.520 because not only

00:35:07.560 has he not been

00:35:08.540 stopped in his

00:35:09.980 public display

00:35:11.600 of his impulse

00:35:12.420 of hedonism,

00:35:13.220 let's say,

00:35:13.660 but he's been

00:35:14.860 highly rewarded

00:35:15.660 because not only

00:35:16.800 has he granted

00:35:17.500 a very plumb

00:35:19.040 government position,

00:35:20.520 which he may or may

00:35:21.420 not have been

00:35:22.020 competent enough

00:35:22.840 to occupy,

00:35:23.800 but he also got

00:35:24.380 a tremendous amount

00:35:25.440 of publicity for it.

00:35:27.360 And then you might

00:35:27.840 think,

00:35:28.140 well,

00:35:28.240 that's good enough.

00:35:29.260 You know,

00:35:29.800 he didn't need

00:35:32.200 to encounter

00:35:32.920 any boundaries.

00:35:33.640 He was just

00:35:34.140 pursuing his

00:35:35.480 individuated

00:35:36.960 creativity.

00:35:38.340 But then it turned

00:35:39.180 out a month

00:35:39.620 and a half ago

00:35:40.240 that he stole

00:35:42.440 a suitcase

00:35:42.880 from an airport

00:35:43.900 in Minnesota.

00:35:45.260 And it happened

00:35:45.760 to be a suitcase

00:35:46.380 full of women's

00:35:47.160 clothing.

00:35:47.920 And then he happened

00:35:48.580 to lie about it

00:35:49.340 to the police

00:35:49.900 and said that

00:35:50.420 it was an accident.

00:35:51.380 And he got called

00:35:52.300 out on the carpet

00:35:53.080 pretty hard for that

00:35:53.980 socially,

00:35:54.440 but he didn't get

00:35:55.040 fired because

00:35:56.040 apparently even that

00:35:57.260 wasn't pushing

00:35:57.860 the envelope far

00:35:58.660 enough.

00:35:59.240 And so then,

00:35:59.860 you know what?

00:36:00.980 That wasn't good

00:36:01.840 enough for him.

00:36:02.620 He had to go 0.96

00:36:03.200 to bloody California 0.97

00:36:04.260 and steal another 0.99

00:36:05.220 suitcase and get

00:36:06.720 caught.

00:36:08.060 And this time,

00:36:09.360 he got fired.

00:36:10.960 And so,

00:36:12.160 so you talked

00:36:13.840 about this bias

00:36:15.260 towards liberal

00:36:16.360 parenting,

00:36:17.100 let's say,

00:36:17.600 and you put that

00:36:18.280 in the context

00:36:19.020 of children

00:36:19.640 pushing the

00:36:20.260 boundaries and

00:36:20.920 you put it

00:36:21.320 in the context

00:36:21.920 of anxiety.

00:36:23.040 So let's,

00:36:23.580 let's think

00:36:24.260 of it this way.

00:36:25.320 Children and

00:36:26.480 adults can be

00:36:27.640 overwhelmed by

00:36:28.600 the complexity

00:36:29.240 of the world

00:36:29.980 and they want

00:36:31.460 a structure

00:36:33.040 like a game

00:36:33.880 to hold back

00:36:36.000 that complexity.

00:36:37.240 That's why you

00:36:37.780 need routines

00:36:38.420 in your household.

00:36:39.660 That's why you

00:36:40.460 need predictability

00:36:42.320 in terms of

00:36:43.180 your caretakers.

00:36:44.240 That's why you

00:36:44.860 need rules

00:36:45.780 of the game.

00:36:46.780 It's so that

00:36:47.300 things don't

00:36:48.840 get out of

00:36:49.940 hand.

00:36:51.020 Now,

00:36:51.520 let's say that

00:36:52.120 you adopt

00:36:52.780 an extremely

00:36:53.420 liberal

00:36:56.500 parenting orientation

00:36:59.860 and your children

00:37:00.920 and your children

00:37:00.940 start to push

00:37:01.600 the boundaries.

00:37:03.080 Well,

00:37:03.500 you're not

00:37:03.900 going to stop

00:37:04.560 them and so

00:37:05.020 that means

00:37:05.440 they're going

00:37:05.720 to push

00:37:05.980 the boundaries

00:37:06.480 harder and

00:37:07.120 harder and

00:37:07.600 that's going

00:37:07.940 to make them

00:37:08.380 more and more

00:37:08.940 anxious because

00:37:09.780 there's not

00:37:10.240 enough structure.

00:37:11.400 And then let's

00:37:11.820 say they hit

00:37:12.360 teenagehood and

00:37:13.980 puberty and

00:37:15.020 maybe you're

00:37:15.480 unfortunate.

00:37:16.280 You have a girl

00:37:16.840 who hits puberty

00:37:17.500 a little early

00:37:18.080 and she's a little 0.60

00:37:18.700 immature and she's 1.00

00:37:19.520 a little sensitive 0.92

00:37:22.200 to negative emotion

00:37:23.280 and maybe not

00:37:23.800 quite as popular

00:37:24.620 as she might be

00:37:25.460 and she's

00:37:27.180 quite confused

00:37:27.840 and anxious

00:37:28.340 and she starts

00:37:29.080 pushing the

00:37:29.580 boundaries pretty

00:37:30.320 damn hard on

00:37:31.180 the gender 0.99

00:37:31.640 identity front.

00:37:33.680 And then you've

00:37:34.540 got real trouble

00:37:35.320 especially if

00:37:36.500 she's also being

00:37:37.240 exposed to a 1.00

00:37:38.040 passel of idiot 1.00

00:37:38.840 teachers who are 1.00

00:37:39.920 doing everything

00:37:40.440 they possibly can

00:37:41.400 to capitalize on

00:37:42.400 her confusion.

00:37:44.140 And so it

00:37:45.400 seems to me

00:37:46.100 that what we

00:37:47.240 are seeing

00:37:48.000 on the gender

00:37:50.380 dysphoria front

00:37:51.420 which is a form

00:37:52.200 of social contagion

00:37:53.340 and a psychogenic

00:37:54.200 epidemic is

00:37:55.120 an extension

00:37:56.880 of boundary

00:37:57.660 pushing behavior.

00:37:59.460 It's so a girl 0.99

00:38:00.100 can come up to

00:38:00.800 her parent

00:38:01.440 when she's 12

00:38:02.400 and do a bunch

00:38:03.520 of things at the

00:38:04.220 same time.

00:38:04.800 She can say

00:38:05.420 I think maybe

00:38:07.560 I'm a boy.

00:38:09.360 Okay so what

00:38:10.020 exactly is going

00:38:10.880 on there?

00:38:11.680 Well certainly a

00:38:12.320 challenge to

00:38:12.860 social authority

00:38:13.740 it's a challenge

00:38:14.500 to parental

00:38:15.040 authority.

00:38:16.280 It's an expression

00:38:17.360 of a deep

00:38:18.040 discontent

00:38:19.140 and a level

00:38:21.340 of chaotic

00:38:21.940 anxiety and

00:38:22.780 confusion.

00:38:24.340 And then

00:38:24.780 it's also

00:38:25.680 the only way

00:38:27.320 as far as I

00:38:27.980 can tell

00:38:28.360 that the

00:38:28.760 child can

00:38:29.320 test the

00:38:30.720 relationship

00:38:31.400 between the

00:38:32.660 teachers and

00:38:33.320 their ideology

00:38:34.140 say gender

00:38:35.020 affirming ideology

00:38:35.920 and the rules

00:38:36.580 at home that

00:38:38.020 the parents are

00:38:38.580 trying to abide

00:38:39.220 by.

00:38:39.540 Because the

00:38:40.120 kids at school

00:38:40.700 are going to

00:38:41.040 be taught

00:38:41.460 look everybody's

00:38:43.220 got a subjectively

00:38:44.080 defined identity

00:38:44.960 and you might

00:38:45.580 not be as

00:38:46.340 masculine or

00:38:47.640 feminine as

00:38:48.320 you've been led

00:38:49.080 to believe.

00:38:50.280 And anyone who

00:38:50.880 tells you different 0.70

00:38:51.680 is a detestable 0.98

00:38:53.360 bigot 0.98

00:38:53.860 to such a

00:38:55.160 degree that

00:38:55.620 you should

00:38:55.980 actually keep

00:38:56.620 all of this

00:38:57.180 secret and

00:38:57.940 never even

00:38:58.600 talk to them.

00:39:00.060 It's like how

00:39:00.480 the hell is a

00:39:01.120 kid going to

00:39:01.740 sort through all

00:39:02.400 that without

00:39:02.820 going home and

00:39:03.520 saying something

00:39:04.020 like mum

00:39:05.020 sometimes I

00:39:05.740 think maybe

00:39:06.280 I'm a girl.

00:39:08.220 Like because

00:39:08.780 they're not going

00:39:09.320 to be able to

00:39:09.860 delineate this

00:39:10.900 out in some

00:39:11.400 complex philosophical

00:39:12.460 manner.

00:39:13.180 Adults can't 1.00

00:39:13.920 bloody well do 0.83

00:39:14.520 that.

00:39:15.920 And so

00:39:16.280 sorry that's a

00:39:17.300 bit of a rant

00:39:17.880 but you can see

00:39:18.540 where I'm going

00:39:19.120 here.

00:39:19.800 Well yeah I

00:39:20.500 mean how can

00:39:21.520 kids how can

00:39:22.620 teenagers rebel

00:39:23.640 against their

00:39:24.320 parents anymore.

00:39:25.300 They you know

00:39:26.040 they can't be

00:39:26.740 goths they can't 0.98

00:39:27.520 be punks they 0.99

00:39:28.260 can't be emos

00:39:29.140 they can go

00:39:30.420 into you know

00:39:31.620 drugs and drink

00:39:32.900 maybe but

00:39:33.460 it's it's the

00:39:35.660 adolescence job

00:39:37.020 is to separate

00:39:37.900 from the parents

00:39:39.100 and we know

00:39:39.660 that adolescents

00:39:40.460 are far more

00:39:41.200 influenced by

00:39:41.880 their peer group

00:39:42.660 than their

00:39:43.040 parents and this

00:39:43.820 is the agony

00:39:45.540 for parents

00:39:46.340 because they're

00:39:47.980 at an age where

00:39:48.880 parents should

00:39:49.760 be letting

00:39:50.240 go should

00:39:51.020 be widening

00:39:53.100 those those

00:39:54.040 that boundary

00:39:55.260 so that the

00:39:56.120 child can push

00:39:57.660 against the

00:39:58.220 boundary of the

00:39:58.940 outside world

00:39:59.800 more as they

00:40:01.360 take this

00:40:02.840 journey which

00:40:03.720 is from childhood

00:40:04.600 to adulthood

00:40:05.240 it's not any

00:40:06.360 you know it's

00:40:06.920 it's it's a

00:40:08.020 rocky road for

00:40:08.840 a lot of

00:40:09.640 teenagers most

00:40:11.020 I would say

00:40:11.680 and so so

00:40:14.240 that pushing

00:40:14.980 against the

00:40:15.660 boundaries

00:40:16.240 part of that

00:40:18.500 job is to

00:40:19.160 reject the

00:40:19.940 parents and

00:40:20.680 reject the

00:40:22.140 parents values

00:40:23.200 and so we

00:40:25.300 so parents of

00:40:27.020 adolescents are 0.96

00:40:28.040 even more

00:40:28.900 in a position

00:40:30.440 where

00:40:31.020 they're tearing

00:40:33.120 their hair out

00:40:33.880 because they

00:40:34.660 know that

00:40:35.540 if they're giving

00:40:37.860 advice to their

00:40:38.660 children that's

00:40:39.400 not the advice

00:40:40.100 their kids are

00:40:40.720 listening to

00:40:41.380 they're listening

00:40:42.340 to the to

00:40:43.880 what's going

00:40:44.460 on in the

00:40:44.880 peer group

00:40:45.600 so it's a

00:40:46.700 huge thing

00:40:47.400 for society

00:40:49.100 to have been

00:40:49.960 put on to

00:40:51.040 this generation

00:40:51.920 of children

00:40:52.820 and that parents

00:40:54.420 feel helpless

00:40:55.140 about and

00:40:56.360 the parents

00:40:57.160 job in

00:40:57.760 adolescence is

00:40:58.880 really to

00:40:59.700 walk to tread

00:41:00.640 that line

00:41:01.520 and particularly

00:41:02.360 in this area

00:41:03.320 of speaking

00:41:05.880 the truth

00:41:06.460 giving their

00:41:06.960 children facts

00:41:07.800 that is a

00:41:08.540 responsibility of

00:41:09.440 parents and

00:41:10.080 you may be

00:41:10.520 the only

00:41:10.980 person in

00:41:11.540 that child's

00:41:12.080 life who

00:41:12.400 is doing

00:41:12.800 that and

00:41:13.860 it's also

00:41:14.480 to allow

00:41:15.380 the child

00:41:15.880 more freedom

00:41:16.520 and more

00:41:17.480 freedom of

00:41:18.000 expression so

00:41:18.740 it's a real

00:41:19.520 dance between

00:41:20.900 and it's all

00:41:22.720 about keeping

00:41:23.400 up a good

00:41:24.100 strong relationship

00:41:25.100 with that child

00:41:26.320 and keeping

00:41:26.880 communication

00:41:27.620 channels open

00:41:28.780 right well

00:41:29.980 in some ways

00:41:30.740 you can think

00:41:31.300 about the model

00:41:32.040 you used which

00:41:32.880 is say

00:41:34.240 integration

00:41:35.040 versus

00:41:35.480 individuation

00:41:36.380 is that as

00:41:38.100 the child

00:41:38.600 becomes more

00:41:39.240 autonomous

00:41:39.900 putting more

00:41:41.200 stress on

00:41:41.880 individuation

00:41:42.680 makes more

00:41:43.240 and more

00:41:43.500 sense

00:41:43.980 right

00:41:44.300 because

00:41:45.100 you've already

00:41:45.860 laid down

00:41:46.400 the groundwork

00:41:47.120 for their

00:41:47.520 social acceptance

00:41:48.600 and then as

00:41:49.640 they move

00:41:50.800 into adolescence

00:41:51.640 first of all

00:41:52.160 they can't

00:41:52.700 abide by

00:41:53.700 your household

00:41:54.600 rules entirely

00:41:55.560 because they

00:41:56.080 never leave

00:41:56.820 home if that

00:41:57.560 was the case

00:41:58.260 right

00:41:58.560 they have to

00:41:59.480 have that

00:41:59.900 drive towards

00:42:00.620 independence

00:42:01.120 and that's

00:42:01.700 going to

00:42:02.100 mean

00:42:02.400 establishing

00:42:03.500 their own

00:42:04.400 system of

00:42:05.860 values in

00:42:06.480 some sense

00:42:07.120 so that they

00:42:07.680 can move

00:42:08.160 away from

00:42:08.840 you and do

00:42:09.500 that

00:42:09.740 autonomously

00:42:10.460 and so

00:42:11.080 they are

00:42:11.380 going to

00:42:11.660 be set

00:42:12.040 against you

00:42:12.600 in some

00:42:12.960 real sense

00:42:13.620 the problem

00:42:14.720 is that

00:42:15.360 well

00:42:16.480 I suppose

00:42:18.700 part of the

00:42:19.180 problem that

00:42:19.720 parents run

00:42:20.300 into at the

00:42:20.880 moment is

00:42:21.380 that that's

00:42:23.200 been weaponized

00:42:24.160 that proclivity

00:42:25.200 has been

00:42:25.620 weaponized in

00:42:26.400 the name of

00:42:26.860 this extremely

00:42:28.260 strange gender

00:42:29.640 ideology that

00:42:30.620 insists that

00:42:31.600 identity

00:42:32.640 well we can

00:42:33.700 take that

00:42:34.060 apart a little

00:42:34.560 bit

00:42:34.760 that might

00:42:35.620 be useful

00:42:36.140 so one

00:42:37.360 of the

00:42:37.560 things that

00:42:37.920 really strikes

00:42:38.440 me as

00:42:38.780 odd as

00:42:39.360 a psychologist

00:42:40.060 there's two

00:42:41.140 things I

00:42:41.980 suppose when

00:42:42.500 I look at

00:42:43.160 modern claims

00:42:43.800 about identity

00:42:44.560 the first is

00:42:46.240 that identity

00:42:48.060 is subjectively

00:42:48.960 defined I

00:42:50.060 think that is

00:42:50.640 so utterly

00:42:51.240 preposterous I

00:42:52.140 can't believe

00:42:52.800 that we've

00:42:53.440 we're even

00:42:54.220 entertaining it

00:42:55.020 as a culture

00:42:55.700 it's so 1.00

00:42:56.380 idiotic 1.00

00:42:57.100 every single 1.00

00:42:58.680 time I have

00:42:59.420 a conversation

00:43:00.140 with my

00:43:00.660 wife or

00:43:01.980 with anyone

00:43:02.400 else for that

00:43:03.040 matter but

00:43:03.960 let's say

00:43:04.320 with my

00:43:04.700 wife I'm

00:43:05.700 negotiating my

00:43:06.660 identity just

00:43:08.280 as she's

00:43:08.840 negotiating hers

00:43:09.880 because we

00:43:11.660 have our

00:43:12.080 viewpoints and

00:43:12.840 our proclivities

00:43:13.720 for action and

00:43:15.080 we have our

00:43:16.660 each of us

00:43:17.620 have our

00:43:18.280 tendency to

00:43:20.120 insist that

00:43:20.860 our way is

00:43:21.740 the right way

00:43:22.580 but if you're

00:43:23.380 going to be

00:43:23.620 around other

00:43:24.120 people you

00:43:25.200 have to

00:43:25.560 constantly

00:43:26.020 negotiate that

00:43:27.080 so that you

00:43:27.540 can stand

00:43:28.000 each other

00:43:28.540 and so a

00:43:31.080 real identity

00:43:31.940 is actually the

00:43:32.940 ability to

00:43:33.760 negotiate the

00:43:34.820 transformation of

00:43:36.040 your own

00:43:36.400 identity in a

00:43:37.200 social space

00:43:38.000 it has nothing

00:43:39.040 to do with you

00:43:39.820 subjectively defining

00:43:41.260 your identity

00:43:41.960 so that's

00:43:42.800 now as far as

00:43:43.860 I can tell

00:43:44.480 the only people

00:43:46.040 who are unable

00:43:46.880 to negotiate

00:43:47.660 identity and

00:43:49.120 who insist

00:43:50.100 upon having it

00:43:51.020 subjectively defined

00:43:52.220 are literally

00:43:53.760 two years old

00:43:54.840 because according

00:43:56.220 to Piaget

00:43:56.940 and there's some

00:43:58.340 good research

00:43:59.260 support for the

00:44:00.360 basic outlines of

00:44:01.200 his theory

00:44:01.580 two year olds

00:44:03.080 are too 0.59

00:44:03.700 egocentric

00:44:05.100 to negotiate

00:44:06.460 a shared

00:44:06.940 play space

00:44:07.720 so their

00:44:08.520 identity is

00:44:09.220 subjectively defined

00:44:10.260 and they're

00:44:10.500 almost entirely

00:44:11.260 hedonistically

00:44:11.940 oriented which

00:44:12.760 means they run

00:44:13.460 by whim

00:44:14.100 which everyone

00:44:15.140 knows if you're

00:44:15.780 around two

00:44:16.180 year olds

00:44:16.580 and they can't

00:44:17.380 play with other

00:44:17.920 children

00:44:18.340 okay so the

00:44:19.720 idea that

00:44:20.280 identity is

00:44:21.240 subjectively defined

00:44:22.240 is utterly

00:44:23.160 preposterous

00:44:24.600 and it's actually

00:44:25.480 an anti-truth

00:44:26.580 because if you

00:44:27.600 try to define

00:44:28.360 your identity

00:44:29.000 subjectively

00:44:29.720 you are a 1.00

00:44:30.280 bloody tyrant 1.00

00:44:31.060 and you're 0.99

00:44:31.640 going to be

00:44:31.920 an unpopular

00:44:32.520 one too

00:44:33.100 and you

00:44:33.680 deserve it

00:44:34.340 but then

00:44:34.940 secondarily

00:44:36.320 we have this

00:44:36.820 other weird

00:44:37.560 insistence

00:44:39.140 and I don't

00:44:40.560 know why

00:44:41.000 we've become

00:44:41.740 so demented

00:44:42.380 that we also

00:44:43.000 accept this

00:44:43.740 that your

00:44:45.960 identity is

00:44:46.540 subjectively defined

00:44:47.520 but nonetheless

00:44:48.340 the core element

00:44:49.720 of your identity

00:44:50.580 is some immutable

00:44:52.720 group characteristic

00:44:53.840 and the one we

00:44:54.660 stress most

00:44:55.500 is sexual 0.64

00:44:56.960 attraction

00:44:57.640 and I suppose

00:44:59.500 the secondary

00:45:00.060 one is something

00:45:00.800 like race

00:45:01.560 it's like so

00:45:02.680 it's so peculiar

00:45:04.640 that your identity

00:45:05.400 is subjectively

00:45:06.240 defined

00:45:06.640 but it's also

00:45:07.240 boxed into

00:45:08.180 this very narrow

00:45:09.240 set of parameters

00:45:10.760 which is

00:45:11.320 well the most

00:45:12.180 important thing

00:45:12.740 about you

00:45:13.220 is

00:45:13.440 who and to

00:45:15.640 what degree

00:45:16.280 to whom

00:45:17.040 and to what

00:45:17.620 degree are you

00:45:18.240 sexually attracted

00:45:19.240 that's just

00:45:20.800 it just leaves

00:45:23.300 me speechless

00:45:24.080 well it doesn't

00:45:25.400 but you get

00:45:25.940 my point

00:45:26.480 so I think

00:45:28.100 what we're

00:45:28.480 seeing is

00:45:29.100 this idea

00:45:30.780 of subjective

00:45:31.480 identity

00:45:32.720 taken to

00:45:33.880 its absolute

00:45:34.480 extreme

00:45:35.220 because you're

00:45:36.180 right

00:45:36.440 up to two

00:45:37.900 years old

00:45:38.560 it amazes me

00:45:40.020 how so many

00:45:41.000 parenting books

00:45:42.600 are based on

00:45:43.200 building your

00:45:43.780 child's self

00:45:44.520 esteem

00:45:44.900 well sorry

00:45:45.280 your child

00:45:45.820 is born

00:45:46.420 your child

00:45:47.600 is only

00:45:48.260 self esteem

00:45:49.340 nothing else

00:45:50.640 you know

00:45:51.060 for their

00:45:52.480 survival

00:45:53.100 they have to

00:45:53.940 be

00:45:54.200 so it's

00:45:55.480 not the

00:45:56.100 adult's job

00:45:56.900 to build

00:45:57.580 the child's

00:45:58.320 self esteem

00:45:59.020 as if that's

00:45:59.560 something we

00:46:00.020 can put on

00:46:00.660 them

00:46:00.920 it's part of

00:46:02.120 your child's

00:46:02.700 interaction

00:46:03.380 with life

00:46:04.860 with the

00:46:05.340 environment

00:46:06.040 in relationships

00:46:07.340 that builds

00:46:08.300 self esteem

00:46:09.820 so it might

00:46:10.640 be achievement

00:46:11.600 it might be

00:46:12.600 yeah something

00:46:13.400 that you can

00:46:14.020 do something

00:46:14.620 that you

00:46:15.040 achieve and

00:46:15.700 then you

00:46:15.980 feel good

00:46:16.420 about yourself

00:46:17.040 it's not

00:46:17.840 your parents

00:46:18.880 always telling

00:46:19.620 you you're

00:46:20.780 amazing you're

00:46:21.480 brilliant and

00:46:22.920 praising them

00:46:23.800 and so and

00:46:25.800 and also that

00:46:26.480 I that idea

00:46:27.380 of the of

00:46:28.440 identity it's

00:46:29.380 the idea of

00:46:30.460 the self

00:46:31.340 this this

00:46:32.320 thing that

00:46:33.480 you're supposed

00:46:33.960 to be born

00:46:34.580 with and I

00:46:35.900 don't know

00:46:36.640 what myself

00:46:37.960 is yet and

00:46:39.240 I'm 63

00:46:40.600 you know I'm

00:46:41.760 going to I

00:46:42.700 don't know

00:46:43.540 because it

00:46:44.100 changes it

00:46:45.140 changes according

00:46:46.180 to circumstances

00:46:47.060 I don't know if

00:46:48.220 I'd be a great

00:46:48.980 person to be

00:46:50.040 on a lifeboat

00:46:51.560 with for example

00:46:52.440 or you know

00:46:53.260 and I you

00:46:55.460 know would I

00:46:55.980 would I be the

00:46:56.820 one that stood

00:46:57.500 up and save

00:46:58.160 people help

00:46:59.140 save others

00:46:59.880 would I or

00:47:00.620 would I be so

00:47:01.360 scared I don't

00:47:02.340 know I don't

00:47:04.360 know myself and

00:47:05.620 I don't believe

00:47:06.420 there is a

00:47:07.580 fixed self that

00:47:08.840 we move through

00:47:09.300 life with we're

00:47:10.080 we're always

00:47:11.060 changing according

00:47:11.960 to our circumstances

00:47:13.400 and and our

00:47:15.360 environment and

00:47:16.540 perhaps we get to

00:47:17.760 know ourselves a

00:47:18.680 bit better but we

00:47:20.160 can still fool

00:47:20.840 ourselves we can

00:47:21.640 still be dishonest

00:47:22.580 about who we

00:47:23.340 are to our

00:47:24.240 to ourselves so

00:47:25.820 that idea that

00:47:26.720 the child possesses

00:47:27.880 this innate

00:47:29.060 identity innate

00:47:30.320 sense of self

00:47:31.580 it's one of the

00:47:33.480 ways that we

00:47:34.260 now well apart

00:47:35.940 from the fact

00:47:36.480 that it's it's

00:47:37.400 nonsense we the

00:47:39.560 position the

00:47:40.280 roles have been

00:47:41.700 completely reversed

00:47:42.640 between adult and

00:47:43.600 child so we are

00:47:45.800 encouraged to see

00:47:46.780 children as wise

00:47:47.860 and as knowing

00:47:48.920 themselves and

00:47:50.380 that we follow

00:47:52.240 the child we

00:47:53.040 follow you know

00:47:53.720 you hear parents

00:47:54.620 say oh I've

00:47:55.200 learned far more

00:47:56.020 from my child than

00:47:56.980 they've ever learned

00:47:57.760 from me well that's

00:47:58.500 the wrong way

00:47:59.060 around you know

00:48:00.460 you you are the

00:48:01.580 adult you are the

00:48:02.660 one that's gathered

00:48:03.480 life experience and

00:48:04.920 hopefully some

00:48:05.580 wisdom and again

00:48:07.540 to put that

00:48:08.880 you know that

00:48:11.340 responsibility onto

00:48:12.460 a child to be

00:48:13.720 the the all-knowing

00:48:15.900 um fount of

00:48:16.960 wisdom and we do

00:48:18.380 that to teenagers

00:48:19.640 as well but when

00:48:21.140 you look at the

00:48:21.740 adolescent years that

00:48:23.940 identity formation

00:48:25.420 becomes really the

00:48:27.200 adolescence job who

00:48:28.500 am I so I'm not a

00:48:30.300 child anymore I'm

00:48:31.420 developing into an

00:48:32.360 adult who am I

00:48:33.800 what is and what

00:48:34.960 teenagers do is 0.63

00:48:36.840 they find their

00:48:38.340 tribe and they find

00:48:39.520 and they in in a

00:48:40.900 way they they

00:48:42.000 integrate before they

00:48:43.260 can individuate

00:48:44.200 because they find

00:48:45.040 the tribe and they

00:48:46.080 wear the same and

00:48:46.920 they speak the same

00:48:47.600 language and they

00:48:48.280 like the same music

00:48:49.200 or now YouTube

00:48:50.920 videos and and the

00:48:53.600 rules that you know

00:48:54.340 we may mock this you

00:48:56.100 know I've heard people

00:48:57.160 mock it but it's

00:48:58.480 absolutely right that

00:48:59.920 you know it's a

00:49:00.720 stage of development

00:49:01.800 and now the only

00:49:03.780 tribe that you might

00:49:05.500 describe as any kind

00:49:06.840 of counterculture is

00:49:09.360 trans having a gender

00:49:11.620 and sexual identity

00:49:12.900 identity and there is

00:49:14.000 no other tribe that

00:49:16.360 children can join to

00:49:18.060 show that they don't

00:49:19.020 conform or that they're

00:49:20.740 a bit different or

00:49:21.840 that you know it's it's

00:49:24.060 it's only gender 0.98

00:49:24.980 identity now so if you

00:49:27.160 want to be seen as

00:49:29.440 boring and conventional

00:49:31.760 and traditional and

00:49:33.720 conservative and

00:49:35.020 everything that a

00:49:36.080 teenager doesn't want 1.00

00:49:36.980 to appear to be that

00:49:39.060 then you know you have

00:49:40.640 to join that tribe and

00:49:42.080 at least say oh I'm

00:49:43.080 non-binary or I you

00:49:44.740 know to to to be able

00:49:46.460 to show that side of

00:49:47.660 yourself unless you're

00:49:48.660 really comfortable in the

00:49:50.220 idea that you're that

00:49:51.820 you're conventional and

00:49:53.100 you don't have a problem

00:49:53.940 with that yeah well that

00:49:55.180 means that means that

00:49:56.220 they've captured so I'll

00:49:59.640 go in two directions with

00:50:01.160 regard to what you said

00:50:02.240 years ago I did a study

00:50:03.700 with a colleague of mine

00:50:05.160 at Harvard on when

00:50:06.800 tattooing and piercing

00:50:07.820 first entered the cultural

00:50:09.520 scene and we were

00:50:10.900 curious about whether

00:50:12.500 that was a marker for

00:50:13.680 psychopathology or or

00:50:15.500 what was predicting the

00:50:17.140 adoption of these new

00:50:18.740 fashion trends and what

00:50:20.060 we found overwhelmingly was

00:50:22.760 that it wasn't associated

00:50:23.860 with an increased

00:50:24.840 prevalence of mental

00:50:26.420 illness it was associated

00:50:27.660 with high trait openness

00:50:29.060 and that's the creativity

00:50:30.400 dimension from the big five

00:50:31.860 trait openness and when

00:50:33.740 you see people with rainbow

00:50:34.860 colored hair or you know

00:50:36.380 multicolored hair and

00:50:37.680 piercings and so forth

00:50:38.840 you're looking at people

00:50:40.460 who are on the creative

00:50:41.500 end of the distribution

00:50:42.620 and the point you're

00:50:44.760 making is in part that

00:50:46.160 the the collapse of the

00:50:50.120 entire domain of

00:50:51.600 non-conformity into gender

00:50:54.260 identity also entices the

00:50:58.560 creative kids creative kids

00:51:00.520 have more mutable identities

00:51:01.860 too so the claim that well

00:51:03.720 I'm a different person from

00:51:04.840 day-to-day is particularly

00:51:06.140 germane to creative kids

00:51:08.940 because a creative person

00:51:10.500 is quite different from

00:51:11.560 day-to-day that's actually

00:51:12.680 the definition of

00:51:13.600 creativity and if you're

00:51:15.120 creative and high in

00:51:16.140 negative emotion that's

00:51:17.340 even worse because not

00:51:18.980 only are you mutable on the

00:51:21.040 identity side that's

00:51:22.900 actually your identity that

00:51:24.280 mutability you're also

00:51:25.780 very very volatile in terms

00:51:27.700 of your moods and so the

00:51:30.760 idea that identity is only

00:51:33.140 mutable can be very very

00:51:35.100 attractive to you now I

00:51:36.580 also wanted to make a

00:51:37.540 comment technically about

00:51:38.800 self-esteem so I spent a

00:51:40.820 lot of time analyzing

00:51:42.400 self-esteem psychometrically

00:51:44.140 because as a clinician I

00:51:45.540 was extremely skeptical of

00:51:47.140 the social psychological

00:51:48.260 research purporting to

00:51:50.920 indicate for example that

00:51:52.840 there was even such a thing

00:51:54.420 as self-esteem because we

00:51:56.580 bandy about these words but

00:51:58.000 that doesn't mean they have a

00:51:59.140 corresponding grounding in

00:52:00.460 reality so I looked at and

00:52:03.500 conducted factor analytic

00:52:04.980 studies which were designed

00:52:06.400 to assess what exactly

00:52:07.880 self-esteem was and it's

00:52:09.320 quite straightforward and

00:52:10.940 people who are listening

00:52:12.080 might find this extremely

00:52:13.640 useful practically there's no

00:52:16.520 such thing as self-esteem

00:52:18.060 what there is is treat

00:52:21.660 neuroticism which is

00:52:23.700 proclivity to anxiety and

00:52:26.560 pain essentially emotional and

00:52:28.600 physical so people differ in

00:52:30.580 their thresholds for being

00:52:31.740 anxious and hurt and if

00:52:34.140 you're more sensitive well

00:52:35.280 then you'll see threats

00:52:36.560 before people who are less

00:52:37.800 sensitive and that can be

00:52:38.820 useful and if you're less

00:52:40.160 sensitive well then you're

00:52:41.200 more robust and maybe more

00:52:43.080 daring and that can be

00:52:44.120 useful no there's no way of

00:52:46.340 saying what's right in that

00:52:47.640 situation however if you're

00:52:49.420 high in neuroticism if you're

00:52:50.880 high in sensitivity to

00:52:51.920 negative emotion you do

00:52:53.360 experience a lot of anxiety

00:52:54.820 and depression okay so

00:52:57.020 self-esteem is basically

00:52:58.860 neuroticism minus

00:53:00.720 extroversion and extroversion

00:53:03.360 is the positive emotion

00:53:04.500 dimension and so highly

00:53:06.860 neurotic people so people

00:53:09.140 sensitive to negative emotion

00:53:10.460 are more likely to be

00:53:11.940 self-conscious and to think

00:53:14.780 negative thoughts about

00:53:16.000 themselves but that doesn't

00:53:17.860 mean that it's a fractured

00:53:21.320 self-concept that's driving the

00:53:23.780 negative emotion that's simply

00:53:26.100 not true that negative

00:53:27.960 emotional state is actually

00:53:29.460 baseline temperament you can

00:53:31.480 measure it in infants you

00:53:33.520 can measure it in kids that

00:53:34.560 are six months old and you

00:53:36.060 can ameliorate it to some

00:53:37.200 degree if you have a child

00:53:38.260 who's sensitive to negative

00:53:39.320 emotion and you facilitate

00:53:41.200 their exploration their

00:53:42.720 autonomous exploration they

00:53:44.680 can normalize their

00:53:45.780 psychophysiology okay so

00:53:48.220 first of all there's no such

00:53:49.380 thing as self-esteem it's

00:53:50.520 basically trait neuroticism and

00:53:52.160 second you do not remediate

00:53:55.920 trait neuroticism by getting

00:53:57.580 people to focus on their

00:53:59.620 feelings in fact making people

00:54:02.180 self-conscious about their

00:54:03.520 feelings makes trait

00:54:05.220 neuroticism worse because

00:54:07.560 there's no difference between

00:54:08.940 being self-conscious and being

00:54:10.660 high in trait neuroticism so and

00:54:13.680 then the the last part of all of

00:54:16.300 that that's preposterous is you

00:54:18.040 certainly don't remediate

00:54:20.960 people's self-esteem you talk

00:54:22.460 about this in your book with

00:54:23.760 regards to overpraise by

00:54:25.520 continually telling children how

00:54:27.060 wonderful they are because what

00:54:28.900 actually regulates their negative

00:54:30.480 emotion to say it again isn't

00:54:34.080 their internal psychological state

00:54:35.980 or their attitude towards

00:54:37.100 themselves it's whether or not

00:54:39.280 other people like to have them

00:54:42.100 around so if you have a child

00:54:44.380 who's very popular surrounded by

00:54:46.320 friends who's got a couple of best

00:54:47.860 friends whose teachers respond

00:54:50.040 positively to them who other

00:54:52.140 parents respond to well who can

00:54:53.900 regulate their behavior when

00:54:55.900 they're out in public in a

00:54:56.860 grocery store or restaurant so

00:54:58.620 that adults are kind and smile to

00:55:00.400 them the probability that they're

00:55:02.180 going to experience negative

00:55:03.320 excess negative emotion is

00:55:04.860 tremendously ameliorated and so

00:55:07.640 that's another strike on the

00:55:09.720 conservative side like a hit on

00:55:12.600 the conservative side of the

00:55:14.080 parenting spectrum it's like you

00:55:15.500 help make your children socially

00:55:17.000 acceptable and you will increase

00:55:19.140 their self-esteem you don't do

00:55:21.540 that by giving them participation

00:55:23.840 awards at school and falsely

00:55:26.260 inflating their ego that's really

00:55:30.000 interesting what you say about

00:55:31.400 self-esteem yeah because it's very

00:55:33.620 it's it is bandied around it it's

00:55:36.400 part of parenting advice you know so

00:55:38.700 much now but but really what what

00:55:41.120 does it mean does it mean a sense of

00:55:43.540 satisfaction with yourself does it

00:55:45.260 mean because there is a a healthy

00:55:47.140 you know I I guess there's there's

00:55:50.140 like a healthy kind of confidence

00:55:52.280 that you in in life but again I think

00:55:55.100 that's so much generated by how you

00:55:59.340 react with the worlds we're social

00:56:00.980 creatures and if we cannot have or

00:56:05.180 develop a positive relationship with

00:56:08.000 the world and our environment and the

00:56:10.260 people we meet and then then we're not

00:56:12.760 likely to have a feeling of of kind of

00:56:15.500 confidence in ourselves but I think

00:56:17.980 you're right about the that there are

00:56:20.320 there are innate personality

00:56:23.820 characteristics or temperaments and they

00:56:27.420 can be tempered and they can be helped so

00:56:30.520 that the child is you get the positive

00:56:34.480 side of that more than the negative side

00:56:37.020 because with every temperament there is a

00:56:39.040 positive and a negative and that what

00:56:41.420 you want is to go with your child's 0.97

00:56:43.820 character or personality and and and

00:56:47.260 encourage the positive side of that more

00:56:50.920 than facilitating the negative and maybe

00:56:54.200 that's the maybe that's the closest we can

00:56:56.400 get to building your child's self-esteem

00:56:58.500 well I talked to this psychologist a week

00:57:02.360 two weeks ago Jean Twenge and Twenge is

00:57:05.120 pretty good psychologist she's a good

00:57:07.800 statistician she's good at psychological

00:57:10.380 measurement which is really important when

00:57:12.340 you're dealing with the sorts of things

00:57:13.560 we're talking about and for a long time

00:57:15.920 on the self-esteem front there was this

00:57:18.740 idea that positive affirmations for

00:57:21.380 children were the way to self-esteem but

00:57:23.940 that was dependent on the theory that your

00:57:26.980 level of negative emotion was dependent

00:57:28.860 on your attitude towards yourself something

00:57:31.040 like that it was only a psychological

00:57:32.460 variable but what Twenge found was that

00:57:34.740 all that false praise that devaluation of

00:57:39.460 the currency of reward that over

00:57:42.460 generalization of of insistence upon your

00:57:46.100 child's singular wonderfulness at the

00:57:48.700 expense of other people it didn't improve

00:57:51.300 self-esteem what it did was inflate

00:57:53.640 narcissism so then you got the best of

00:57:56.140 both worlds you got kids that were just as

00:57:58.200 miserable on the negative emotion front

00:58:00.900 just as confused and anxious but they're 0.94

00:58:03.160 also narcissistic and so that actually

00:58:05.720 produced a bit of a spiral because you

00:58:08.160 know it's it's it's a little bit more

00:58:09.840 difficult to make friends if you're high

00:58:11.960 in negative emotion because you're a bit

00:58:13.460 more volatile you're a bit more sensitive

00:58:15.400 you're also a little more timid in your

00:58:17.400 social interactions so you already got a

00:58:19.680 couple of things working against you now

00:58:22.120 if you add a nice healthy dose of

00:58:23.620 narcissism to that then you're going to

00:58:26.640 produce a child who's unbelievably

00:58:28.080 unpopular and dislikable because there's

00:58:31.300 almost no one more dislikable than a 1.00

00:58:33.580 neurotic narcissist that's a that's a 0.98

00:58:35.520 tough combination too because you get that

00:58:37.700 hypersensitivity along with grandiosity

00:58:40.380 you might be able to tolerate one of those

00:58:42.260 but man the combination of that's pretty 1.00

00:58:44.000 damn unbearable and so all this idiot 1.00

00:58:47.060 insistence on self-esteem through 1.00

00:58:50.380 continual affirmation you know that would

00:58:53.380 also be part and parcel of the

00:58:55.180 elimination of competition in schools

00:58:57.120 right because you don't want anybody to

00:58:58.760 lose because God only knows what that

00:59:00.980 might do to their self-concept and their

00:59:02.800 self-esteem you produce this increase in

00:59:06.260 self-centered narcissism and you make

00:59:08.420 kids more isolated and miserable and

00:59:10.220 lonely than they would have otherwise had

00:59:11.640 to be it's a real perfect storm a lot of

00:59:14.140 that can be laid at the feet of social

00:59:15.740 psychologists by the way so doing very

00:59:19.160 very badly thought through and analyzed

00:59:23.800 research in clinical domains the whole

00:59:26.680 self-esteem bloody monstrous movement

00:59:28.800 that that's one of the catastrophes that's

00:59:31.280 emerged out of the research fields

00:59:32.860 I also think parents have encouraged have

00:59:36.100 been encouraged to be therapists to their

00:59:39.060 children to be counselors and what you

00:59:42.000 mentioned earlier about feelings and this

00:59:45.200 when I worked with parents it was

00:59:47.620 constantly you know a child would come home

00:59:50.320 and say I somebody kicked me in the

00:59:52.140 playground and the first question from

00:59:54.380 the parent was not so what did you do

00:59:56.420 about it or what happened but and how did

00:59:58.800 that make you feel and I you know that that

01:00:01.520 and how did that make you feel and how did

01:00:03.680 you feel about that and and what it does is

01:00:07.220 it gives power to feelings above actions and

01:00:11.140 and so you you get a child who then the child

01:00:14.140 stops and thinks well how did I feel about

01:00:15.920 it and it's usually you know sad or angry or

01:00:20.260 happy you know it's yeah this sort of very

01:00:22.520 limited range of feeling words and and so

01:00:25.820 then the child's thinking that's the important

01:00:28.420 thing and it's always back to the child

01:00:32.200 looking internally rather than looking outside

01:00:35.620 and saying so this was what the situation was and

01:00:39.320 then maybe if the child was being bullied or

01:00:43.360 maybe if the child had a part in it we you

01:00:45.840 know we listen to that we can you know

01:00:48.540 perhaps help the child manage it better next

01:00:50.920 time or maybe the child doesn't have a problem

01:00:53.120 with it at all it's just sharing some

01:00:55.280 information with us but if we bring that

01:00:57.500 back every time to the child's feelings and

01:00:59.800 the child is growing up thinking my feelings

01:01:02.260 are the most important thing okay so so let's

01:01:05.480 let's let's let's look at that so first of

01:01:07.520 all we might ask what the hell do we mean by

01:01:10.960 feeling and what we mean is something like

01:01:13.940 immediate emotional response okay and then

01:01:18.340 we say well feelings are paramount we're also

01:01:20.920 simultaneously saying immediate emotional

01:01:23.980 response is paramount okay so let's just think

01:01:27.540 about that for a minute so let's say my wife says

01:01:30.580 something that makes me angry all right so why

01:01:35.260 aren't I just right it's like you just said

01:01:38.700 something that made me angry now I'm angry my

01:01:40.700 feelings are paramount I'm angry I feel like

01:01:43.220 hurting you let's say because I'm so angry why

01:01:45.940 am I not right in doing that and why are we

01:01:49.480 insisting to children that their instantaneous

01:01:51.680 emotional impulse is the appropriate marker for

01:01:56.420 reality because the alternatives would be well who

01:02:00.380 cares what you felt about it what did you do

01:02:03.440 about it or on the bullying front let's say what

01:02:08.200 are you going to do about it independent of your

01:02:10.280 feelings whether you're angry or upset or or

01:02:13.780 looking for a fight or challenged whatever I want

01:02:16.800 to know how you're going to cope with this

01:02:18.360 situation actively so it doesn't occur again and

01:02:22.040 then by walking through that let's say if you're

01:02:25.100 talking to a teenager you're also privileging

01:02:26.980 thinking over feeling and so then you might say

01:02:29.820 well what is thinking and the answer is thinking and

01:02:34.040 acting are what mature people replace feeling with so

01:02:39.100 the only time we need to feel something especially on

01:02:41.920 the negative emotion side is really when things don't

01:02:45.220 go the way we want them to go so you feel forget about

01:02:49.880 positive emotion for a minute you feel in consequence

01:02:54.180 inadequate adaptation that's like a rule and so to

01:02:59.800 privilege feeling means you're privileging inadequate

01:03:03.300 adaptation and you're also saying well your first impulsive

01:03:07.680 whim which is driven by these basic biological mechanisms

01:03:11.520 that are very id-like in the freudian sense they're not

01:03:14.240 sophisticated at all by making them paramount you raise

01:03:18.200 them to the point of the highest virtue the highest virtue is what

01:03:21.740 you feel and then it's even worse than that stephanie because this is so

01:03:26.520 awful it really is if you do careful linguistic analysis of

01:03:32.760 communicative content one of the things and emotions let's

01:03:37.120 say communicative content and emotion one of the things you find reliably is

01:03:42.660 all self-conscious thoughts load on neuroticism so there is literally no

01:03:51.300 difference between thinking about how you feel and being miserable they are

01:03:57.140 exactly the same thing so what you're doing with it's so interesting so sad right

01:04:01.600 but you can you can kind of understand this if you think about self-consciousness

01:04:05.460 so imagine you're on stage and you're delivering a talk and all of a sudden you get

01:04:09.820 self-conscious well you think self-consciousness is a good thing it's

01:04:13.720 like no it's not you sweat you blush you stutter you forget what you're doing

01:04:19.700 you collapse into yourself you get self-centered you don't pay attention to

01:04:23.680 the audience you're no longer able to communicate and it can be a real

01:04:27.000 catastrophe like people can get so self-conscious on stage that they develop

01:04:31.180 a phobia of public speaking and that's all pathology of self-consciousness and

01:04:36.840 so now what we do with our children at every bloody turn and they do this in

01:04:40.820 school all the time well how are you feeling how are you feeling how are you

01:04:43.500 feeling how are you feeling and the other implication there and you talk a lot

01:04:48.740 about nonverbal behavior in your in your book and how we communicate with

01:04:52.620 children we're also telling our children all the time that if you feel bad

01:04:59.420 anxiety let's say or some emotional pain that's so awful that that's all sensible

01:05:07.260 and caring adults should ever care about and so what kind of message is that for

01:05:12.900 children it's like oh my god you know you were upset at school what a cataclysm that

01:05:16.680 is we we should probably restructure the entire social apparatus so that never even

01:05:21.860 happens once it's so it's it's multi-dimensionally preposterous and it's

01:05:27.960 really hurting kids to make them self-conscious like that so i love what you

01:05:32.440 say about self-consciousness and causing depression and and i mean it's you can

01:05:38.720 see it so clearly in this idea that children or adolescents in particular now

01:05:44.400 have this new um a childhood task of exploring their gender identity because

01:05:51.020 what does that mean other than they must look at their every behavior the way they

01:05:57.200 like to dress everything that there was a book i read um which is about it's a

01:06:02.520 workbook for teenagers on exploring your gender identity and basically you're

01:06:07.560 looking at every aspect of your personality everything about you and

01:06:11.320 relating it to gender does that make me a girl or does that make me a boy and it's

01:06:14.520 of course it's inevitably based on stereotypes it can't be anything else

01:06:18.440 because because boys can't experience female things like menstruation and girls 1.00

01:06:25.100 can't experience male things like erections let's say you know it's got to be 0.99

01:06:30.680 stereotypes there's nothing else and you know one of these books that i read because

01:06:34.940 teenagers now that there's a plethora of books including workbooks to help you along

01:06:41.800 your gender journey it's sometimes called a quest uh it's this sort of adventure and and and it was

01:06:49.500 talking about bends in a river but each time you get to a bend in the river you stop and you think

01:06:54.300 and about your gender identity well gender identity is a is it's a meaningless concept anyway it's it's it's

01:07:01.760 not you know scientifically supported that we have this thing but it's it's a way to to get teenagers

01:07:10.460 to constantly be looking at themselves looking at their um motivations and analyzing their actions

01:07:18.280 which i think it's worse it's worse than that it will inevitably create mental health issues

01:07:24.660 inevitably yeah well look look look here's here's what it's analogous to okay so imagine that

01:07:31.640 there are twists and turns in the in the bends of the river of your marriage

01:07:36.800 and there are constant micro challenges and disputes that emerge in the course of the marriage

01:07:44.980 okay here's the new rule okay every time you encounter any doubt whatsoever in your life

01:07:52.440 question the integrity of your marriage

01:07:55.900 right okay so here's what happens to a depressed person

01:08:01.760 so let's say you have a little bit of a dispute with your husband and uh it produces a little

01:08:10.360 negative emotion and you think oh my god i'm always i caused some trouble that's the first thought i

01:08:18.180 caused some trouble here's the next thought i've caused a lot of trouble in the past next thought i

01:08:24.660 caused a lot of trouble in the present and i'm likely to continue to cause a lot of trouble in the future

01:08:29.220 okay a person who causes a lot of trouble in the past present and future

01:08:34.160 they're really not a very good person they're not really fit for a marriage they're probably not

01:08:39.900 fit to live i should commit suicide okay so that's how a depressive person thinks now think about how that

01:08:48.440 works so you go from a micro challenge you have a little scrap with your with your wife and then you

01:08:55.220 take yourself apart right down to the foundation and the foundation in that case would be do you

01:09:00.940 even have the right to exist and so a depressive person has no defense against that cascade of doubt

01:09:08.840 okay so now imagine this is what we're doing to children we know that children establish the

01:09:15.420 ability to distinguish between male and female extremely early they can do that as infants they can

01:09:23.220 likely do it as newborns so that ability to distinguish between male and female is fundamental

01:09:29.200 the reason it's fundamental obviously is because if you can't distinguish between male and female

01:09:35.160 you're not going to reproduce so now we know not only is that true biologically but also conceptually

01:09:43.200 it seems the case that the distinction between masculine and feminine symbolically

01:09:47.600 is a distinction that's at the bottom of our ability to perceive as such we tend to make

01:09:54.420 gendered categories in the world almost automatically so there might be no more fundamental perceptual

01:10:01.840 category than sexual differentiation it might be more fundamental than up or down or darker light

01:10:09.160 it's at least in the same domain so this is now what we're doing to teenagers when they're confused

01:10:15.220 we're saying every time you manifest even a shred of doubt about anything the first thing you should

01:10:23.520 do is question the most fundamental element of your being and you should do that continually and then

01:10:31.000 it's even worse than that even though that's really bad because we're dooming them to something

01:10:35.320 like anxious depression by doing that it's even worse than that because well let's say i've been

01:10:41.480 reading about this uh like demi i think it's demi boy identity it's sort of well mostly mostly you're a

01:10:51.380 boy but sometimes you feel that you're a girl it's something like that or maybe i have it backwards i

01:10:56.320 don't really give a damn to tell you the truth but here's the problem with that it's like 0.73

01:11:00.340 let's say you have a non-standard gender identity okay what the hell are other people supposed to do 0.93

01:11:08.820 about that like what are the rules here right because if you're a woman i kind of know how to 1.00

01:11:14.260 treat you i'm going to do it in a stereotyped way to begin with because i don't know who the hell you

01:11:18.600 are so i'm going to use you know low resolution approximations and those are going to be stereotypes

01:11:24.360 they're no different than categories and then when i get to know you i'll particularize it but if i

01:11:29.380 don't know whether you're male or female what the hell should i do with you you don't know because 0.69

01:11:35.420 you don't know what the rules are and so the simplest thing for me to do is just not do anything

01:11:40.300 with you the simplest thing for me to do is go find someone else who's a hell of a lot less trouble

01:11:44.880 and who's willing to abide by the social norms enough so that they don't present a mass of

01:11:51.560 indeterminate confusion on immediate confrontation and then you know the riposte from the transgender 1.00

01:11:57.480 side is well if you were a little more tolerant you'd know how to give me what i want it's like

01:12:01.840 i don't have a bloody clue how to give you what i want what you want i have no idea i don't know how

01:12:07.780 to give me what i want i can barely manage it with manage it with my wife i certainly have no idea 0.54

01:12:13.100 what to give a bald man with a mustache in a red dress i have no idea what to do with you and neither

01:12:20.260 do you no one knows the rules so we tell kids question your identity specify your non-binary 0.95

01:12:28.660 reorientation but then what like what's the life path associated with that how are you going to

01:12:35.300 conduct yourself as an adult as someone who's non-binary are you going to get married how are

01:12:42.060 people going to treat you at work what are you going to do with your kids how are you going to

01:12:46.120 dress you don't know the answer to any of those and neither does anyone else those aren't identities

01:12:51.300 they're not identities they're they're masses of ideological confusion and that's all an identity

01:12:59.800 tells you tells you and other people how to perceive and how to conduct yourself

01:13:05.320 and man and woman boy girl male female are stable categories their reality and to teach children any 1.00

01:13:15.300 different to that is to t is to lie to children and to lie to teenagers and it's the most distressing

01:13:22.920 thing for me to observe this going on that it's done in the name of kindness it's done in the name

01:13:31.120 of compassion it's seen as the only legitimate way uh to help these kids and it's so cruel i mean as

01:13:39.800 i think you pointed out before you're you're what you're doing is you're affirming uh particularly

01:13:45.420 a teenage girl's self-hatred and self-rejection and absolute hatred and disgust about being female

01:13:52.060 you're affirming that and you're saying yep you're right to feel that way you know it's um 1.00

01:13:58.160 you know reject let's kill off that person and let's replace that that defective woman 1.00

01:14:05.460 or girl with a boy and we agree with you the boy is so much better this is who you really are 1.00

01:14:12.880 so the lie there is like being a girl or a boy isn't who you are it's what you are it's just fact

01:14:19.240 you know who you are is your personality is your you know personality traits what you do whatever

01:14:25.600 being a boy or girl isn't who you are but what it how it's sold to children and it's sold to

01:14:31.220 children at the earliest ages i've counted as about 40 picture books for primary years now

01:14:36.500 is that it uses the messages that are given to children now so be who you are be yourself um

01:14:44.300 and the other you know when when to a child you know who hasn't developed a self yet and it's not

01:14:52.620 you know it's a lifetime's job in my experience but then also the other really strong messages

01:14:59.400 you know who you are and nobody else has the right to question you now this is indoctrination

01:15:05.540 from the early years onwards so age three as soon as children start kindergarten these books

01:15:11.340 exist so what you're doing is you're taking away from that child or this generation of children

01:15:18.920 the stability of reality and the the ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality at the

01:15:26.920 most fundamental level of who they are and we the the way in this sense that we're treat we're we're

01:15:35.060 we're now the children and they're the adults is is is part of this message that parents are given your

01:15:40.020 your child is born whole with a with a fully deformed i mean fully formed sense of self and so

01:15:47.340 yeah my four-year-old boy he knows oh she knows who she is you know it's not up to us to question that

01:15:55.480 our child our child's wisdom um and you know the child is dependent on us as parents our job and we

01:16:06.440 don't even see this as a job it's just automatic a child will say look mommy there's a dog and we'll

01:16:11.440 say yes it's a dog and we we can't or that's a dog no darling actually it's a cat we will constantly

01:16:18.680 constantly reinforce our growing child's sense of what's real and what's not and we correct them if

01:16:25.220 they make mistakes and we don't see that as a job it's just sort of automatically what we do with

01:16:30.280 kids but that's what we're doing and in but in this case alone we're saying no that's you know you

01:16:37.800 you you are literally a girl and we're approaching it as adults who are thinking i am affirming his

01:16:46.260 gender identity not to the child you're not you're telling that boy he's literally a girl

01:16:51.700 so for him he doesn't maybe understand biological sex yet but for him he's biologically female

01:16:58.260 on the child's level of understanding a trusted adult is telling him he's he's a girl so he's a girl

01:17:06.220 right and providing a reason for his confusion yes and also that's the terrible thing yeah also the fact

01:17:12.440 that he has faced disapproval you know typically from the parents from one or other or both parents and

01:17:19.360 perhaps from a wider circle for the toy choices he's making and and his friendships and so as soon

01:17:26.540 as you say to him he's a girl and we get these sort of short-term honeymoon kind of results of you know

01:17:33.920 increase always suddenly he's really happy well of course he is because now all his toy choices are

01:17:39.940 approved of by the adults and of course what he wants to do is win the approval of his parents that's

01:17:45.600 what he needs to do for his survival so you've got you've got this terrible lie being told to children

01:17:52.240 and you you you know and and i and i think exactly the same with teenagers yes they're developmentally

01:17:59.420 later on but it's exactly the same lie and it it had it it it addresses true teenagers specific

01:18:09.200 vulnerabilities of identities of identity formation so there's no difference between being self-conscious

01:18:16.140 and being miserable technically but here's something else self-consciousness among females 1.00

01:18:23.300 is much more associated with body dysmorphia now the reason there's a bunch of reasons for that

01:18:30.860 we don't know all of them but here's a couple first of all at puberty women start to experience

01:18:37.360 more negative emotion on average than men and that it's not true of boys and girls but it does seem

01:18:43.000 to it does seem to kick in at puberty and that's likely because you get size dimorphism developing and

01:18:49.680 so it's reasonable for women to be a little bit more timid about the physical environment than men 0.99

01:18:54.960 but also women are more sexually vulnerable and also they have to care for infants so being threat 0.97

01:19:01.680 sensitive makes sense okay in any case those are three possible reasons but it definitely kicks

01:19:07.400 in at puberty now it also is the case that anxiety among women tends to take the form of bodily

01:19:15.520 self-consciousness and i think the reason for that likely this is a speculation although the other

01:19:21.660 the mere observation is a fact it's likely because girls and women are judged more comprehensively on 0.73

01:19:29.780 their physical appearance than men so it makes sense that if they're going to be self-conscious

01:19:34.360 it's going to be more bodily focused and then that's particularly rough then the third contributing

01:19:39.480 factor is girls hit puberty earlier than boys so so now what you have a perfect storm there so now you

01:19:46.520 have a girl and she's feeling a lot more anxious and confused than she did before because she hit 1.00

01:19:52.240 puberty plus her body is doing 50 weird things plus she's getting all sorts of strange attention from

01:19:57.500 adults that she never got before plus she doesn't know how to fit in on the social front and she's

01:20:02.460 trying to make that transition from childhood to adulthood and so and then

01:20:07.320 you have people additionally torturing about the fact that any deviation from the norm on the

01:20:16.180 stereotypical front is actually an indication that she doesn't exist in the correct body well she 1.00

01:20:22.660 doesn't really feel like she's in the correct body to begin with so it's a perfect storm for

01:20:27.700 young girls now when canada came out with its compelled pronoun law 2016 i talked to the canadian 0.99

01:20:35.420 senate i said you idiots and your legislation you think you're going to free up kids you're going to 1.00

01:20:42.100 produce a psychogenic epidemic among young women because they're preferentially susceptible to 1.00

01:20:48.280 psychogenic epidemics which is why we had a bulimia epidemic and an anorexia epidemic all of which was

01:20:54.260 spread by social media and a cutting epidemic and then there's a history of such epidemics going back

01:21:00.760 300 years i mean freudian hysteria which was very widespread in the victorian times although disappeared

01:21:07.720 afterwards or mutated was also a psychogenic epidemic that preferentially affected young women

01:21:13.320 and so well i just wanted to lay out some of the reasons why that's the case higher levels of

01:21:18.320 negative emotion and more bodily focused self-consciousness and so then you add to that a

01:21:23.640 kind of unpopularity because maybe a given girl isn't that sophisticated at manifesting what would you 1.00

01:21:31.440 call it socially acceptable feminine traits it takes a fair bit of sophistication to be a well put 1.00

01:21:37.120 together woman and you're going to be pretty damn awkward at that if you're kind of a clunky tomboy 1.00

01:21:41.460 when you're 12 and so well now you're providing them with first of all a unidimensional reason why 0.68

01:21:47.640 they're miserable is pretty damn convenient and no wonder an adolescent wants that it's like do i have

01:21:54.240 50 problems or do i have one right and then you also entice them with the additional social status that 0.98

01:22:02.180 they're going to receive by now announcing that they're special and having every bloody teacher in

01:22:07.740 the entire world plus the world at large focus on that narcissistic grandiosity that goes along with 0.95

01:22:15.760 the insistence of a special identity and the only price you have to pay is psychos the only price

01:22:22.060 you have to pay is like enforced sterilization and surgical mutilation fine deal for our teenagers 0.76

01:22:29.260 i think there are another couple of things about teenage girls that we don't um pay as much attention to but

01:22:37.440 the very fact of physical development in teenage girls means your body is sort of ballooning you know 0.99

01:22:44.760 breasts here hips here bottom there um and you lose that sort of gender neutral um body that gave you so much 0.93

01:22:54.880 freedom in childhood and so what you how girls experience puberty is moving from being a free 0.86

01:23:02.460 kind of person into being an object because suddenly her body is public property and as you say it's

01:23:09.580 commented on everyone has a right to comment on it um she may you know she'll get comments in the

01:23:15.100 street she'll get she'll look all around her and become aware of the um objectification of women 1.00

01:23:21.740 throughout society now i think this is happening to boys much more over the past decade in in kind of

01:23:29.880 certainly objectification of the male body and in some cases kind of sexual objectification of men

01:23:36.840 um and this generation are used to seeing those really um exaggerated images of femininity so the

01:23:46.160 feminine the female heroes have huge breasts and tiny waists and big hips kim kardashian yeah and the 1.00

01:23:53.620 and the male heroes and you see have a ripped with a six-pack and they're hulks so you get that in gaming

01:24:01.040 you get it in you know it's sort of programs like love island which i don't know whether you have in

01:24:06.500 canada um it's all about how you look so it's happening more for men and and interestingly

01:24:13.780 boys experiences of things like um anorexia have increased but not as much as girls so girls are 0.81

01:24:21.360 in a real i i you know the gap is still widening well there's the also there's also the emphasis

01:24:27.940 that that that pressure also comes on women younger not only do they hit puberty younger but

01:24:34.840 also you know on average cross-culturally women prefer men who are four years older

01:24:40.900 and what that also means is that men prefer women who are four years younger and what although most

01:24:47.340 of that's driven by female choice by the way but not all of it but it also means that women come 0.98

01:24:52.580 under sexual pressure in some sense earlier than boys do partly because of earlier onset of puberty

01:24:58.660 but also because there's a tighter relationship between biological fecundity and youth in women than 1.00

01:25:05.080 there is in men and so that piles on the additional pressure for for young women so there's an 0.99

01:25:10.560 overvaluation of female sexuality in some real sense that kicks in around the age of 13 and the

01:25:17.020 advantage to that i suppose is all the attractiveness of youth and beauty but the disadvantage is well

01:25:23.440 there's a hell of a lot of competition and judgment that goes along with that particular contest and

01:25:28.680 certainly that does pile on a 12 year old girl well with overwhelming force especially when you also

01:25:35.700 add to that the fact that women are much more vulnerable on the sexual front in some real sense 0.64

01:25:40.220 because they pay a much bigger price for well for sexual misbehavior let's say than men do

01:25:45.920 given the risk of pregnancy that's a good definition of what is a woman by the way a woman is the human 0.99

01:25:52.520 being that bears disproportionate responsibility for reproduction it's a good biological definition

01:25:58.500 and you're stuck with that right you encounter that face first when you hit puberty as a woman

01:26:04.840 and it's the constant i i think dilemma for women individual women and for feminism how to put those two 1.00

01:26:13.300 things together because you're right we have the biological responsibility that many that men don't have

01:26:20.940 and along with that i think the disgust with the female body is quite is pretty much tied into that 1.00

01:26:26.940 because it kind of makes you an animal um and and you're reduced to your biology and so girls at

01:26:34.120 puberty apart from not being developmentally ready to face all of this you know sexual harassment i mean

01:26:42.580 it's in schools now there's there's an epidemic of sexual harassment in schools and not that girls should 1.00

01:26:51.420 ever be ready to face that but you know they're they're so young and they can develop breasts at 1.00

01:26:56.520 primary school age 11 and suddenly they are supposed to be a woman when they're still emotionally a child 0.95

01:27:03.660 and how how hard that is but also going back to the absolute female facts of menstruation how disgusting 1.00

01:27:11.780 is that you know that that's the real um issue here of of of developing um sexually as female you bleed 0.99

01:27:22.540 i mean it's disgusting it is horrendous for for girls you know not not all girls you know but it it's one

01:27:32.060 of the things i think that happens that puberty minimum it's a challenge it's a challenge and it can be

01:27:38.140 really embarrassing and humiliating it can create anxiety and worry it can create you know pain and

01:27:45.640 and feelings of real discomfort and and all the associated physical effects that go with it which

01:27:51.840 boys don't experience so boys will get taller and broader and it's kind of everything that they were

01:27:58.140 were before just sort of gets bigger but more but more yeah exactly whereas with girls 1.00

01:28:04.320 you change it suddenly oh i'm swelling out here and i'm swelling out here and my body's out of

01:28:10.140 control and if you've got an image of yourself as being intelligent maybe even intellectual bit

01:28:17.880 different all of those you know it can be so humiliating to feel actually no i'm just an animal i'm just

01:28:24.900 a piece of meat my body will go on doing this and i have no control over that at all that can be really

01:28:30.680 frightening and it can be so all all of this you know what is awful now is that we don't look at

01:28:37.680 girls even though there's this massive you know 75 teenage girls going being referred to gender 0.52

01:28:43.700 clinics we don't look at them as teenage girls because of course that's transphobic

01:28:47.760 and this this um lack of uh differentiation between male and female means that they're all lumped

01:28:55.780 together as trans kids and all of the issues are seen as the same and we know in medicine

01:29:00.300 that the female body and women are not you know looked at properly anyway but this has really

01:29:06.600 exacerbated that problem that we're not looking at gender dysphoria in girls even to say that girls is 1.00

01:29:13.860 transphobic but we're not looking at it within a framework of female adolescent health and all of the

01:29:21.480 other issues that helps us move into a domain that maybe we can cover just as we bring this to a close

01:29:27.960 you've written a fair bit too about what what i would characterize i don't want to put words in your 1.00

01:29:34.920 mouth as the absolutely pathological stampede of idiot medical and psychological professional 0.98

01:29:42.280 organizations to insist upon gender affirming therapy so as a therapist i'd like to point something out 0.99

01:29:49.200 which is the last thing i'm ever going to do for any of my clients to come when they come and see

01:29:56.340 me is affirm their identity that is not my job my job is to listen to my client and help them

01:30:07.840 understand their current identity and develop it in the direction that appears most appropriate as a

01:30:15.120 consequence of the course of our discussions so i presume people come to see me because they're

01:30:21.380 miserable for one reason or another i don't know why they're miserable it might be terrible

01:30:25.240 circumstances it might be something they brought upon themselves it might be some combination of both

01:30:29.800 but i certainly don't presume to know and that's in some real sense a disturbance in identity

01:30:35.780 and then what the therapeutic realm is is a place to explore the vagaries of identity now i'm not

01:30:42.280 there to affirm my client's identity nor to deny it right i'm supposed to be there as a neutral 0.98

01:30:49.740 ignorant listener it's like you're complicated i don't know who the hell you are what's wrong with 0.87

01:30:55.340 you we're going to lay out a space of honest communication and try to develop a differentiated 0.99

01:31:03.020 model of your identity and then try to optimize it now then you get this insistence now that the

01:31:08.740 professional colleges have brought in which is no matter what your client tells you when they you

01:31:15.200 first encounter them you have to agree with that or you're unprofessional to the point where your

01:31:23.180 license can be reasonably not only reasonably suspended but should be ethically suspended and i look at that

01:31:29.900 and i think oh well the whole therapeutic and most of the medical establishment is just done if i have

01:31:35.840 an anorexic girl come in to me and say i had an anorexic client once very thin girl as you might 1.00

01:31:43.400 expect she wasn't very big and uh i had her sit by me at one point i said you look at your thighs and 0.96

01:31:49.420 now you look at mine and you tell me which one's bigger she said that hers was and i said okay fair

01:31:55.440 enough so this is what we're going to do i'm going to put a piece of paper under your thigh and i'm going to 0.98

01:32:00.160 have you trace it and then i'm going to put it under my thigh and i'm going to do the same thing and i

01:32:06.020 want you to watch so you see i'm not playing any tricks okay so we did that of course my thighs were

01:32:13.300 about that much bigger on both sides than hers and i swear she looked at that piece of paper for 20

01:32:18.220 minutes now she trusted me by this point hey so she knew already that i wasn't playing tricks but

01:32:24.020 she still couldn't believe her eyes and i think the reason for that is that i don't think that

01:32:29.160 anorexic women can see their body's property they lose the ability to see the gestalt and they focus 1.00

01:32:35.160 on a detail and then they can't distinguish between what's fatty and what's bone let's say

01:32:40.300 literally they can't see it and so but i wouldn't if an anorexic girl came into my office and said 1.00

01:32:46.880 you know i feel that my thighs are too fat i wouldn't say well if you feel that you must be right and it

01:32:55.000 would be inappropriate unethical of me to suggest otherwise i would say well maybe you want to

01:33:01.400 explore that maybe you don't i don't know if you have any doubts about it i don't know if this concern

01:33:06.720 is causing you trouble i don't know if other people are reacting badly to your insistence that

01:33:12.260 you're too fat still those are things we could discuss i can't say no however you feel is right

01:33:19.200 and certainly on the sexual identity front or the gender identity front exactly the same standards 0.96

01:33:27.160 apply so those are even more fundamental categories than thin or fat so i just think it's the death of

01:33:32.680 the therapeutic enterprise altogether so and an unbelievable cowardice and lies on the part of

01:33:39.140 professional organizations and it's presented as conversion therapy to do anything other than

01:33:44.860 affirm a child self-diagnosis and self um prescription of treatment um and again it ties

01:33:53.640 into what's what's happening in parenting whereas i think it's a good thing that we listen to children

01:33:58.940 more now because children weren't you know when i was growing up children really weren't listened to

01:34:04.120 at all um and that's good but listening to a child seems to be interpreted as agreeing with the child on

01:34:12.020 everything so if you know a therapist's job is to listen there's a lot of listening in in you know

01:34:18.900 counseling or therapy but it doesn't mean agreeing and we you know so we give up our knowledge our

01:34:28.200 perspective um our knowledge of facts in order to placate or appease or in somehow uh in a misguided

01:34:39.680 way thinking that we're building the the self-esteem of the other person but we don't you know that's

01:34:45.760 never helpful certainly you know long term that's not a helpful thing to do we could also point out

01:34:52.660 and should that all therapy is conversion therapy right the whole bloody point of the therapeutic

01:35:00.160 process is transformation now you could say well you shouldn't convert the client into a clone of the

01:35:07.840 therapist's presuppositions and that's definitely true what you want to do you know when i saw my

01:35:14.980 clients the first thing i would try to find out is okay what why are you suffering what how and why are

01:35:21.660 you suffering and that's really complicated that could take hundreds of hours to figure out because

01:35:26.060 maybe it's a psychological quirk or maybe it's a catastrophe of situation and god only knows how to

01:35:32.160 differentiate those so you have to listen a bunch so the first is well

01:35:36.080 how are you suffering and why and then the next is well if you had your way and you could envision

01:35:44.860 things being better well what would better mean for you and how would you envision that practically

01:35:52.760 and so that's on the client right you don't want to interfere with that because like you can you can

01:35:58.760 offer your opinion you can say how you've seen other people solve that problem but you don't want to

01:36:02.900 muck about with that too much because each person has to come up with a somewhat particularized

01:36:08.780 solution to that problem i don't know what your life would be like if you optimized it for you

01:36:14.940 you know in your particular situation so we have talk about that a lot and then the third thing we do is

01:36:20.060 talk about strategy you know now we kind of know what the problem is we have some sense of what

01:36:25.180 might hypothetically be a solution we could delineate out potential strategies for achieving

01:36:30.720 it but all that's predicated on discussion and none of that has anything to do with affirmation

01:36:36.320 except i guess what you affirm as a therapist is you affirm the utility of honest communication

01:36:42.860 and you affirm the idea that through honest communication and inquiry positive conversion is

01:36:50.600 possible right conversion towards some more ideal state of being very difficult thing to manage but

01:36:57.020 you certainly don't do that by privileging your client's feelings above all else and then by being

01:37:05.680 terrified into silence with regards to the responses you might have to an inquiry so it's really it's really

01:37:15.580 something to behold you know and you talk about the role of compassion in that hypothetical compassion you

01:37:20.480 know one of the things i see continually poor parents say the people the claim is being made

01:37:26.600 constantly that unless you give way to your child's desire to transition they're they're going to commit 0.98

01:37:34.320 suicide and would you rather have a trans child or a dead child that's a question that's often asked 0.78

01:37:40.020 to parents okay so i want to take that apart for a minute number one even the bloody american psychological

01:37:45.820 association which has become a very pathological organization admits in their in their documents of

01:37:53.620 affirming care and they do this by pointing to prejudice there are no good long-term follow-up studies

01:37:59.840 on the life course history of trans individuals and then they say well that's because of prejudice

01:38:04.560 against trans individuals and be that as it may i don't care about that at the moment there are no

01:38:11.000 long-term studies so how the hell do you know that you're elevating or decreasing the suicide risk

01:38:17.600 and the answer is you don't know and that's a lie and second we know perfectly well that most of the kids

01:38:25.480 most people who have who manifest any form of psychopathology have a core set of symptoms

01:38:32.940 and those symptoms are basically elevated negative emotion anxiety and pain so anxiety and depression

01:38:40.440 you don't have a mental illness except for maybe mania where anxiety and pain aren't part of it

01:38:48.660 okay so then the question is if there is a risk for suicide associated with gender dysphoria

01:38:53.880 is it specific to the gender dysphoria or is it merely a consequence of the fact that all forms

01:39:01.580 of psychopathology are associated with anxiety and depression and suicidality is associated with

01:39:07.660 anxiety and depression and the answer is unless you have compelling evidence that it's specific

01:39:14.020 to gender dysphoria then the appropriate thing to do scientifically is to assume that it's a 0.93

01:39:19.280 consequence of anxiety and depression and quit riding vulnerable parents with guilt so well so for 0.99

01:39:28.220 those of you who are watching and listening and struggling with these sorts of things don't let idiot 0.99

01:39:32.340 teachers and counselors tell you that by objecting to your child's gender dysphoria you're elevating 0.99

01:39:37.960 the risk of suicide because that is a lie there is no evidence to support it but the claim made is that

01:39:45.540 your child is more likely to commit suicide if they are not affirmed and and allowed to go on to

01:39:52.820 puberty blockers that's the claim there's there's no evidence to support that at all um parents can be

01:40:00.440 supportive in lots of different ways but parents are being bullied in the cruelest way imaginable

01:40:07.700 to affirm their child and go on to this medical pathway so this you know and the kind of contain you

01:40:15.900 the thing is now that not only parents but all young people know that part of the persona part of the

01:40:22.700 rules of the tribe of being transgender are having suicidal ideation you know that's part of make what 0.89

01:40:30.160 makes you true trans so it's the most irresponsible i i cannot understand why the samaritans hasn't spoken 0.81

01:40:39.240 out about it why you know government ministers have not spoken out about it we know about the

01:40:46.460 um contagious possibilities of this of suicide we know the dangers of saying suicide is down to one

01:40:53.660 factor we we know that and yet we let this carry on in this area and this is where you know this is the

01:41:01.760 these are the kind people yeah well this is okay so let's close up with this so i've been

01:41:08.860 thinking recently that our conceptualizations of narcissism are too one-sided i think we concentrate

01:41:17.320 on grandiose narcissism sort of more masculine form of narcissism more than we concentrate on the more

01:41:25.280 feminine form of narcissism and i think the female the feminine narcissism is something like narcissism 0.69

01:41:32.040 of compassion and that's associated with this idea the freudian idea of the oedipal mother who

01:41:38.220 what would you say fosters a sense of hyper dependence the helicopter parent now males can

01:41:43.980 do that too but but um it's more likely to occur on the female side because females are more agreeable 1.00

01:41:50.680 and they are more compassionate so the reason that we're i think part of the reason that no one is

01:41:56.940 speaking out against that while you are and i have and there's a few people who are but

01:42:01.640 but the reason that you get slaughtered so badly if you do is because the narcissists of compassion

01:42:11.620 come after you and they say well it isn't like you care for children you're just mean we care for them

01:42:18.140 so much that we'll listen to them no matter what we say and then the underground message there isn't

01:42:23.540 we're doing best for children the underground message is look how much we care don't we deserve to

01:42:30.660 have our social status elevated merely on that grounds and maybe right to the highest possible

01:42:36.200 point we're so compassionate that we're mother mary herself right it's nothing but the mother of god's

01:42:41.860 voice talking here and so anybody who is who is antithetical to that broad scale and all-encompassing

01:42:48.740 compassion is instantly what deemed an agent of satan for all intents and purposes and but it's so

01:42:55.520 absolutely i saw this woman so she was a disney executive and she was testifying if i remember

01:43:03.120 correctly when florida was clamping down on disney and she said she was the head of their domestic

01:43:08.600 programming something like that she said well i have a trans child and a pansexual child and one's five

01:43:16.140 and one's seven and i thought okay let's just think about that statistically for like one-tenth of a

01:43:21.380 second the probability that you have a trans child is one in three thousand before the gender dysphoria

01:43:27.700 epidemic hit one in three thousand okay what's the chance that you have a pansexual child now i have no

01:43:33.860 idea what the hell pansexual means but i know that whatever it is it's rarer than transsexual so at 0.56

01:43:40.460 minimum you have a one in three thousand chance that you have a pansexual child so what's the probability

01:43:45.860 that you have a pansexual and a transsexual child and the answer is one in nine million

01:43:53.340 so here's the question are you a pathological narcissist of compassion well what are the odds

01:44:00.640 899,999 no no it's 8,999,999 to one that's the statistical that's the appropriate statistical

01:44:15.300 analysis for that claim so no i don't think you have a trans child and a pansexual child 0.96

01:44:20.160 i think you are a devouring narcissist and you are willing to sacrifice your own children 0.97

01:44:26.140 to your narcissistic pretension to evaluate your to to what elevate yourself in the social hierarchy 0.99

01:44:34.260 with no work merely by claiming that you're that loving that's you god it's so awful it's it's

01:44:42.620 almost indescribable and i think that's partly that there is enormous pressures on mothers to be

01:44:49.260 kind and nice and to be um ever nurturing ever compassionate ever kind and the other that is the

01:44:56.940 archetypal mother the nurturer the protector but the other side of that is is is um pushing away

01:45:04.220 um rejecting um it's you can say it's the shadow side but you know as jung said if you don't integrate

01:45:10.960 the shadow side the shadow side it'll come up and bite you and actually if you know you look at other

01:45:15.540 mammals they bite their young if they're trying to cat you know get hold of the teat and drink milk

01:45:21.740 with you know and they're and then and the mother's annoyed and irritated and pushes them away or even

01:45:26.880 bites them and we have to integrate that because it's all and and and make allowances that in

01:45:34.860 ourselves that part of our job is is nurturing and holding close but it's also pushing away or allowing

01:45:43.140 the child to move away and sometimes that needs a little push and that is fine right well well

01:45:48.920 the psychoanalyst said very wisely i think this was freud but it might have been young he said the

01:45:54.220 good mother necessarily fails right so what you have and this is very hard on women and i understand

01:46:00.460 this i really do i watched my wife go through it my wife is actually quite a disagreeable woman so she 1.00

01:46:05.220 had less trouble with this than a more compassionate woman would have had this is not a criticism of my

01:46:11.100 wife by the way so when a child's an infant so zero to six months you should be a hundred percent

01:46:18.260 compassionate because the child is immobile and completely helpless and the rule there is whatever

01:46:24.340 whatever you feel is one hundred percent correct but then as the child starts to become mobile maybe that

01:46:30.960 kicks in you know essentially around nine months the mother has to do this terribly difficult thing of 0.98

01:46:37.080 starting to separate herself from the developing infant and there is actually there's a real sacrifice in

01:46:43.240 that and there there really is the i would say the integration of the shadow side in that now the

01:46:50.200 proper way to handle that the mature way to handle that is to think something like this if you're

01:46:56.220 female to think look i did my time i i sacrificed myself for this infant that was entirely appropriate

01:47:02.600 but i should have a life of my own i should pursue my own things i should pursue my relationship with my

01:47:08.380 husband i should pursue my activities in the broader world i should facilitate my child's independence

01:47:15.820 and i should model for that child independence and that means that the appropriate thing to do now is to

01:47:23.040 move away from that extraordinarily bonded mother infant scenario to something that's more

01:47:30.440 detached and focused on autonomy and competence rather than all compassionate love and that's you know

01:47:39.720 that the freudians and the jungians were very very good at delineating out the shadow side of the

01:47:44.740 devouring mother the best book on that i think is the great mother by eric neumann which is an

01:47:49.040 absolutely terrific book details out the symbolic representations of the devouring mother and the

01:47:54.640 devouring mother interestingly isn't the woman who pushes the baby away or the the infant away let's say

01:48:01.620 and says you know go out and play the devouring mother is the one that holds the child far too tightly

01:48:07.100 in her loving embrace and will never let go so right that's the shadow side of that hyper compassion

01:48:14.640 and we're seeing that you know that we might be seeing that partly i've never said this i don't

01:48:19.260 think but it's only been 50 years since women have really been a force in the political world 1.00

01:48:26.320 and we could assume that there's going to be a feminine psychopathology that goes along with that 1.00

01:48:32.020 just like there's a masculine psychopathology on the male political side and you know the male 0.97

01:48:37.180 psychopathology might be narcissistic aggression something like that but the female psychopathology 1.00

01:48:44.060 could easily be devouring compassion easily and i do think that's we're seeing that play out in

01:48:50.440 our culture now and god only knows what the consequence of that will be i think that's what

01:48:54.940 we're seeing in the gender identity movement um that as as women gain more power in academia in 0.99

01:49:02.300 politics um etc you've got a combination of the sort of narcissistic entitled male which comes from the

01:49:10.620 generally middle-aged cross-dressers that that you find in every organization and company and political

01:49:18.640 party these you know powerful men and on the other hand you get this over emotional illogical feeling

01:49:28.480 based kind of support and uh from the women because because this movement is supported so much by young

01:49:37.220 women and so you get you you get the worst of the feminine or the negative side of the feminine and 1.00

01:49:43.440 the and the negative side of the masculine coming together because i think conspiring yeah yeah the

01:49:49.320 marriage of the two i i i kind of naively thought wouldn't it be great if the world was run by equally

01:49:55.640 men and women because that would balance the the you know the yin and the yang and i don't believe that

01:50:01.980 a world run by women would be more superior than a world run by men but together but what if what if 0.99

01:50:09.220 the negative side of men and the negative side of women come together and i think that's what we're 0.80

01:50:13.920 seeing and on that note yeah on that happy note okay so for everyone watching and listening i'm going

01:50:22.640 to talk to stephanie and up for another half an hour on the daily wire plus platform we're going to talk a

01:50:27.620 little bit about how her interest in parenting and then her interest in the broader social um what

01:50:33.280 would you call ramifications of attitudes towards parenting how all of that developed and i do that

01:50:38.920 generally with my guests something more biographical hello everyone i would encourage you to continue

01:50:44.840 listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com

01:50:50.120 thank you

01:51:17.340 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - December 22, 2022

316. Parenting and the Narcissists of Compassion ｜ Stephanie Davies-Arai

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