My Parenting Podcast with Bari Weiss
Recently Bari Weiss included me on a panel of parenting experts for her Honestly podcast. The other guests were Michaeleen Doucleff, author of Hunt, Gather, Parent, and Carla Naumburg, author of How to Stop Losing Your Shit with Your Kids, the forthcoming You Are Not a Shitty Parent, and a bunch of other parenting books.
A casual listener might conclude that all three of our perspectives were highly consistent. My Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids urges parents to relax, sharply reduce parental sacrifice, and focus on the quality of the parent-child bond. Doucleff and Naumberg said much the same.
A careful listener, however, will discover that our three perspectives are deeply at odds. Bari didn’t really ask us to critique each other. If she had so requested, here’s what I would have said about Doucleff:
She greatly romanticizes what she calls “ancient cultures.” While the effect of income on happiness is modest, the least-developed societies are so poor that their happiness is quite low. One obvious reason is that their children often have severe chronic health problems related to diet, sanitation, and more. We can see this in their infant and child mortality rate, which is heart-breaking for parents as well as the children themselves.
International adoption from poor to rich countries has immense physical and mental benefits. If you took her work literally, you would think otherwise.
While I believe that she saw parents and children in “ancient cultures” enjoying life and community, we also know that such cultures tend to be violent, superstitious, and cruel compared to modern Western societies. Since their rates of violence are still low in absolute terms, the fact that you see no violence during a few weeks in a small community is weak evidence against this general pattern.
Doucleff had a strange tendency to conflate virtues. For example, she claims that compassion is somehow a facet of “autonomy.” But this abuses the English language. While both traits can be good, they’re logically distinct. If you demur that “true autonomy requires compassion,” you are firmly in No True Scotsman territory. Per Bill Maher, a person can be courageous and brutal. This may be bad PR, but it’s good English.
While I am skeptical about the power of upbringing, the societies she studies are so different from ours that I wouldn’t be surprised by large effects. Still, she didn’t even really claim, much less convincingly demonstrate, that the adults she met on her cross-cultural journeys were morally outstanding people. Yet the adults she met are plainly the products of the parenting style she so admires. What gives?
My critical comments on Naumberg:
I understand that she’s reaching out to struggling parents. But her message didn’t seem to be, “I used to be struggling, but then I figured out how to make parenting fun.” The most she seemed to claim was, “Parenting used to be hell, now it’s merely unpleasant.” The natural reaction is, “Gee, why have kids at all?”
While I doubt she’s doing any long-term harm to her kids, the parenting style she described seems quite dysfunctional in the short-run. The best way to make your kids into pleasant roommates is to reliably and calmly enforce clear-cut rules. Naumberg’s self-description seemed almost the opposite: When your kids make you angry, feel free to express your anger.
Naumberg claims she never punishes her kids. Instead, when she disapproves of their choices, she has a “conversation” with them. But these “conversations” sound one-sided at best, especially given her willingness to impulsively express anger. If I were one of her kids, I would feign agreement to end the ordeal. Verily, the process is the punishment.
Late in the interview, Naumberg went into a cultish sermon on the sins of we “white-presenting” people. I was waiting for the right moment to disavow my collective guilt, but then the conversation moved on.
Last thought: When Bari Weiss interviews you, you understand her immense success. Thoughtful and charismatic. Very glad to know that she’ll soon be a mom - and that her partner wants four kids!
Here’s the whole podcast:
I’m leaving Palermo - and crossing the Strait of Messina - tomorrow. Expect lighter posting in coming weeks. And some guest posts as well.
This "reliably enforced clear-cut rules" thing may work for others but not for me and it really rubs me the wrong way that parents should act as some kind of machine. I have no idea about the evidence for this but it would surprise me if it turned out kids couldn´t handle parents having emotions like everyone else they meet.
I need to reserve for myself the right to decide based on my own (and the kid´s) mood and energy level whether, for example, to insist that the kids eat with us at the table or to avoid the fight and let them eat in front of the TV. And not giving in to nagging is a separate thing from having consistent rules that don´t take parents into account. I personally have an easier time keeping calm in the face of nagging than while litigating my kid's creative interpretations of house rules. There are no set of rules that are easier to understand than "parents decide".
You made some good points in the podcast but you’re obviously incredibly arrogant. The fact you don’t understand your parents for yelling at you? I’d love to ask your partner how much time you actually spent raising your children. I love my kids and they are my greatest joy, but they sure do piss me off sometimes! You come across incredibly emotionless in this podcast, and very unsympathetic to parents very human emotions like anger, disappointment and annoyance. You must be a saint!