Episode 515: Erica Komisar: The Parenting Myth Hurting Kids’ Mental Health

30:21It's not, you know, these things don't change overnight. And so I think that's what's happening. You know what growing pains are when you say that your bones grow faster than the soft tissue? We are in a period of real and really intense growing pains when it comes to these changes in society. And I think our children are suffering from it. But what happened, like, you know, you say women should work part-time. Like, I've got two things to that. What happens if you can't, like, things are expensive? Like, what if they can't afford, if it's a one-income household? Like, the people are divorced families, there's only one parent, or both parents have to work full-time to put food on the table.

31:01Does that just automatically, you know, does that automatically make for the child to grow up in, like, with mental health issues? Well, I have a book coming out in March on divorce. So, I mean, what I would say about divorce is 50 % of marriages end in divorce. And I think we haven't really looked at that. I think we've just accepted it instead of really examining it. Like, I think it's like taboo to examine it and talk about it and say, are we really, should it be that high? I mean, it has to happen sometimes. But are we really, is there sort of a, have we set our bindings on our skis to beginning so we hit a bump and the bindings, the skis pop off so easily?

31:51You know, I mean, if we're going to have children and make the commitment to have children, isn't there a commitment to try to work through those conflicts? So I think there's that piece of it that we haven't really looked at. Like, why are there so many single parents raising children? That's the first piece of it, because that already adds to stress. And listen, my book is about the fact that divorce is inevitable and a good divorce is better than a terrible marriage. but having said that and there's a way to do it without doing less harm to your children but i think the idea that you just said is that there's so many people that are raising children in not in units you know they're raising children alone and the question is is why like why is there so much of that that puts so much stress on parents financially emotionally logistically you know And if we are going to be a modern society that accepts that half of parents are raising children as single parents, then maybe we need to re-embrace extended family.

32:57Maybe single parents should be living with their parents again or their extended family. So we're not raising children alone. So we have more choices because what you're saying is people don't have choices. I'm saying more about economically. I'm saying people don't have it. I'm talking economically, too. I'm saying that if we are raising children alone, and it's not, I don't think it's always inevitable. That's all I'm saying. I don't think it's always inevitable. But when parents must work, then there are better forms of child care and less good forms of child care for children. And I think the party line that we have been feeding women and men for the last 75 years is that daycare is a good form of child care.

33:48And I think that is another myth and another false narrative. And it is gaslighted parents to the extent that we have a lot of children who have suffered a lot from that. The best forms of child care when a parent must work, first and foremost, would be kinship bums. Extended family would be, you know, even if you don't get along with your mother, live next door to her. Tough noogies if you don't get along with her. If she's going to be a good babysitter and is going to have a similar investment and, you know, maybe take less money for it or, you know, and you know that she's going to treat your child differently than a babysitter who you pay, you know.

34:32So, you know, there's a narcissism today, right? So we want to do it our way and do it by ourselves. And, you know, we don't get along with our parents, you know, but I'm like, yeah, but if you have children and you're raising children alone, honestly, the best is often kinship bonds. Not always. If you have psychotic parents, if you have abusive parents or alcoholic parents, the bet's off, right? Or don't have parents who live near you. Or don't have parents, right. Then you can create extended family. And the way you create extended family is you hire a single surrogate caregiver, a nanny or a babysitter who is sensitive, empathic, will care for your child in your home, not in an institutional setting, what I call day orphanages, daycare.

35:22And if you can't afford that, then you share that caregiver with one other woman. And now you've made it more financially available to you. And now it still provides that child with more consistency. You have more control over who you hire and what they're doing with your child throughout the day. Now you've created a support system with another woman because you're sharing the care with another woman. So there are ways to do it more responsibly. But what I'll say is the best for children is still to have more time with their parents. More time. You know, we're only given 24 hours a day. And if we blow our wad, if you will, we come home and we don't have the internal resources, the energy, the patience, the love, the attention, the time to give to our children because we've blown it at work, then our children are the losers and we're the losers because our children will suffer, right?

36:32So you only get 24 hours in a day and no matter what you do professionally, and I always say you have to be careful what kind of work you choose. If you're going to have children, you don't necessarily do the same kind of work you did before you had children. Either you choose a different kind of work or you do it at a different intensity and you give up the ego gratification and the vanity of being, you know, at the top of your game with your work. Something has to be sacrificed, right? And you don't want it to be your children. Right. What is the amount of time that you think is necessary to spend?

37:12Like, I like quantified, like, give me something that I can, that people can listen to this and say, okay, you're saying it's not an hour and a half a day. But I also want to talk more about the, like, between nine and, let's say, the older kids, like nine and 18. Because I think we, I understand what you're saying between zero and three. Yeah. When kids are in school, and they have a ton of activities, like kids at that at that place they're not looking to spend an ungodly amount of hours with their parents they're too busy at that point so what do you think's a good amount of time to do that and like what should parents be thinking about so when they're home you should be home so when when do teenagers get out of school like 3 30 or so okay so that gives you from 8.30 in the morning when they go to school until 3.30 in the afternoon to do work.

38:10You can do a lot of work in that period of time. Right, right, right. So you're saying basically when kids are a home, you're a home. Yep. Right? Yep. That's an ideal. You're asking me what's ideal. That's ideal. Yeah. That's an ideal situation. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because kids, When they are in the transitions, going to school, coming home from school, waking up in the morning, going to sleep at night. These are what we call the transitional points of life. That's when kids are most vulnerable. That's when they're most likely to share what's going on with you. That's when their defenses are down.

38:54And so if you're not there at those points, you're less likely to be close to that child. And you're less likely to be able to help them to process all the emotional things that they have to process growing up. Because there's so many activities. So this is where it gets a little confusing, right? Because let's talk about the mental health crisis. Anxiety is up, depression is up, you know. And I think that there's been a lot of research that shows it's because of social media. I've heard you say before that you don't think it's just social media that's causing all this excess depression and anxiety.

39:35So that doesn't mean that social media is good for children because it's not. No, it's terrible, of course. But it's not causing this mental health crisis. It's exacerbating it. So if you take a fragile child who is not emotionally secure, who is not healthfully securely attached, who does not have present physically and emotionally present parents, they are more vulnerable to external stressors. What are other external stressors? School pressures, social pressures at school, social media, bullying and teasing. um yeah there's lots of uh stressors you know out there and if we say that social media is a stressor then we have to think think of it like this if you build a bridge that says don't drive a truck more than two tons over this bridge but you drive a four-ton truck over that bridge then the bridge is going to collapse.

40:40So we want to build bridges. We want to build, we want to foster in our children emotional security, the ability to cope with stress and adversity, resilience. You know, we want to foster these things. To foster those things, you have to be there to help build their egos, to help build, in other words, that resilience is not something they're born with. You have to build that in them. And the way you build it is through sensitive, empathic nurturing, through your emotional presence, through processing their emotions with them. And so it's not that things like social media aren't adversities, because they are, but it's not going to crash the bridge.

41:27You know, the bridge isn't going to crash. And so So I think the idea is, I think we're not thinking about the origins of resilience, which we need to think about, which is we are the origin of resilience. Our presence, our relationship with them, our intimacy with them, our closeness, their ability to share with us and process what they're going through, that is the origin of resilience. And so social media matters. It certainly matters. And I think everything Jonathan Haidt is doing is amazing. and I support it. But I see it as an adversity rather than the cause of these breakdowns. So you're saying the cause of the mental health crisis and the anxiety, depression, and all the things going so high is more because of the bond between the parents and the kids at home is basically lacked.

42:24We're producing more fragile kids. We're producing more fragile. Because we're not available. Who are more susceptible to adversity. So what's interesting is what I think I've seen a lot of is more helicoptering parents, like parents who are way too overly involved, who helicopter, who overschedule. So those are anxious parents. So those aren't available. Those aren't emotionally present. So people get that confused. An anxious parent is not an emotionally present parent. An anxious parent isn't a parent who can actually help a child to process their emotions because they can't process their own.

43:03Right. Yeah. Okay. So then the parent, I'm just trying to understand for my audience too. So you're saying the helicoptering and being overscheduling your kids is a problem. Well, let me just, let me stop before I forget. When you say overscheduling, you're not talking about parents being present. You're talking about parents delegating out that child to others because they struggle with just being with their children. Children don't need tons of activities. It's good for children to have interests. It's good for children to experiment. It's good for children to enjoy extracurricular activities, you know, whatever they are.

43:48But, you know, this idea of overscheduling is avoidance. It's a kind of avoidant behavior in parents who have trouble just allowing children to do nothing and also to be with them, to be with them in a way that isn't achievement oriented. Right? Yeah. Children don't need as many activities as parents are scheduling for them. Well, they're doing it because they don't want the kids to be on iPads, right? Or on their phones. They're doing it because they struggle to be with, often, to just be with their children, you know, and or, you know, set limits with their children. So if what you're saying is they are avoiding setting limits with their children at home around technology by, you know, scheduling activities, that means that there's something in that parent that they're struggling with.

44:47So, yeah, helicopter parenting is not present parenting.

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47:30So what's the kind of parenting that you say is the ideal type of parenting for adolescent children to make them mentally strong? So adolescents need you when they need you. They don't need you all the time, whereas zero to three, they need you all the time. Zero to three, they need you all the time. Adolescents don't need you all the time, but when they need you, they need you intensely. And so if you're not there when the door opens, and I mean that literally and figuratively, if you're not there at the transitional points, because when they're most likely to talk about their day, if you are too busy working and you're coming home on your time after they've been home for two hours and they're in the room and the door's closed and you go, knock, knock, I'm here.

48:23The main show is right. I'm ready to talk to you. Your child is going to go, get out of here, right? So, but if you're picking them up at school and you're walking home and you're stopping and getting an ice cream cone, or you're walking the dog with them after school, or you're sitting at the kitchen counter, giving them a snack, you know, then you're more likely to kind of get the lowdown on what's going on, right? It's as subtle as that. And then when they go to their room, if you're there when the door opens again and they come out to take a pee or they come out to have another snack or, you know, if you're there at night when they're, you know, talking to their friends on the phone, if you're out at a dinner and you're not there when they're having drama with their friends, it's being there I used to say it's like being like wallpaper with adolescents but that's not quite right because wallpaper makes you sound like you're passive but it's wallpaper that's ready to come in and help when needed kind of thing and the truth is they need you when they need you so the more physically and emotionally around you are the more likely you'll catch the moment and the less around you are and a lot of parents misconstrue they misunderstand their children's need for independence with not meeting them.

49:53Children need independence just as much they need to touch base and be dependent. They need to snuggle with you on the couch and watch a TV show after they're done with their homework as much as they need to close their door and say, I want to be alone now. But it's that back and forth. And because parents take it so very personally when their children shut the door and say, I want to be alone, you know, and parents then misconstrue and say, well, they don't need me anyway. I might as well go back to work full time and go out to my dinners again. And, you know, so they misunderstand that it's practicing.

50:32Kids are practicing independence, but that doesn't mean they don't need you. In a way, there's a wormhole between toddlerhood and adolescence, which means that they need you homeless as intensely as they did when they were a toddler in those moments. And so if you're not there for those moments, you're going to miss the boat. And do you think that the father needs to be around as much in the adolescent years, or is it still the mother? So in the early years, primary attachment figures really refers to the first three years. And then what happens is, we say it goes from dyad to triad. So it goes from two to three, right?

51:12And then the father becomes very important because the father helps with separation, and particularly the little boys, the father becomes a role model, and there's a lot of identification going on. And then the little girls, there's an edible thing going on. Fathers become very important too. So you'd say in the early years, it really is the primary attachment figure that's the most important. but that doesn't mean the dad isn't important as well. But then in adolescence, it's really both parents. It's the availability of both parents. And so, again, the more present you can be, the better. What about this whole idea about women and feminism, where now there's, like I said, there's more emphasis, there's more powerful women than there were before, more working, more career driven, to be honest.

52:05And, you know, in certain places, I know more successful women than I do men at this juncture, right? Yeah, I mean, 60 % of universities and medical schools, they're all women, right? That's also not great for society, right? So it may be great for women, but it's not great for the balance between women and men. So, you know, the research shows that men will marry at their educational level and below, women will only marry at their educational level and above. So the concept is that more women are saying, we have no men to marry. So somehow we've, you know, the balance is off. So the balance was off the other way, right?

52:49So you'd say there weren't enough women who wanted to be in the workforce that could be. And so now we've shifted the pendulum. So now oh, there's more women than men. And so, you know, I always say that balance is a good thing. And so the idea that somehow we rebalance, you know, in nursery school, in preschool, they call it balancing the classroom. And why does nobody give them a hard time about that? Why does nobody say to nursery schools, half boys and half girls in this class? Nobody gives nursery schools a hard time about that. Do you hear anybody saying, Oh my God, DEI, preschools shouldn't do that.

53:29There should be more girls and the girls are smart. Nobody does that. We just call it balancing the classroom. Why does that stop? I don't know. I want to know from you. Yeah. Well, I think because I think we went kind of nuts with this idea that because women felt less than, now they should feel more than. And I don't think anybody should be less than. And I don't think anybody should be more than. I think balance is a good thing. And so the idea is that, and you know, the other thing is that people get my work confused with me being an anti-feminist. I am very pro-feminism, but I am more pro-children.

54:11So meaning, do I advocate for women's rights over children's rights? Nope, nope. Those children didn't ask to be brought into this world. Their rights act to come first. But that doesn't mean women don't matter. So there are a lot of women who are saying, I don't want children. I just want a linear career like men. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If you know you cannot make the sacrifices necessary to prioritize children over yourself and your career, then I think it's better you don't have children, honestly. Right. But I think there is a way to have everything in life. I'm a good example of that.

54:51I think I have had everything. I'm 61. I think I've had a lot, but I didn't have it all at the same time. You know the marshmallow test? So I don't know if the listeners know the marshmallow test. Go ahead. Yes, tell us. So it's an old test, right, about frustration tolerance and waiting. Delayed gratification. They said to children, you can have one marshmallow now, But if you wait, whatever, 10 minutes, whatever, you can get two more marshmallows. The kids who demanded the one marshmallow in a longitudinal study did less well academically, less well in life. The kids who could wait for the two marshmallows had everything.

55:35So I think the idea is that what we've told women is that you don't have to wait for anything. And that's just, again, a false narrative. It's a myth. you can have everything in life. You can have a brilliant career when you're young. You can have, you can take a, as Niharush says, you can take a power pause. You could pause and raise children or, you know, titrate your career down so it's very little and your children are very important. And then when you get to perimenopause or menopause, when your estrogen goes down and your testosterone goes up, when your husbands are sitting on the golf course with no energy, but you know, other than playing a few rounds and your testosterone has gone up and their testosterone has gone down, you can take on the world.

56:23So when should you be a CEO before you have children and after your children have gone to college? Those are the best times to be a CEO. Now I'm using CEO, but you know, when are the best times to write a book? Probably not when your children are zero to three and probably not when your children, you know, but after they go to college, great time to write a book, great time to get your ideas, great time to start a company. So I think we just haven't communicated that you can have everything in life. You just can't have it all at the same time. Well, I think it's been like, you know, it's been like the narrative is that you do it young because you have more energy, you're more virile, you're more, you know, you what's going on more as you get older.

57:09But I know what I'm saying. You're saying it's all a reverse. We should reverse this ideology because then also men and women can compete, right? Like in terms of. Well, they don't have to compete. That's the thing. So my husband always says that when I was raising children, he was out there, you know, taking on the world with his career. And I was really had minimized my career. So it was this big. And my children were the majority of my life. And then as my kids got bigger, I was able to increase incrementally. And then when my kids went off to college, then I started writing books and speaking publicly and whatever.

57:51And he always says that he's going to be sitting on the, you know, sitting in the background, enjoying a little space while I, so that's not a competition. That's called teamwork. work. That's a very lucky circumstance that you guys were able to kind of help do that with each other. Unfortunately, in real and like a lot of situations, it doesn't work that nice and pretty, right? And what I was going to say, though, what I wanted to ask you was about the modern dating affecting how it's this idea of having to have a career. What I've seen also is that, yes, you can have what happens, I've seen with a lot of my friends who are these powerhouses, but they can also be, they lack in the other areas.

58:36So they're very dominant in their career, but their personal lives have suffered. Their dating life has suffered. You know, they're not getting married to have kids because that they've made a choice or they thought they were making a choice for a time period, right? Have you seen any type of your practice, like how it's affected women on the personal side when they've had a bigger career? So first I'm going to say it wasn't luck at all in my situation. It was intentional. Intentional, I know. No, but it's important because I do a lot of premarital counseling now, which is premarital counseling to ensure the health of children.

59:15It's really interesting. Healthy marriages produce healthy children. And so the concept that it's still better to raise children in a marriage than not. And that may be a controversial thing to say, but all the research backs it up. So to say that the choices we make define our marriages, if we inform and educate young women and young men at a very young age what to look for if they want to have healthy marriages, if they want to raise children together, if they want a collaborative teamwork kind of marriage as opposed to a competitive marriage. So what's happened is we've created a competitive environment between men and women where they don't collaborate, where they don't perform as a team, because teams don't mean that we're both thriving in our careers at the same time.

1:00:15One of us might be tending the home. One of us might be out there thriving in our career. And then we might switch, right? But the idea is that we have fostered competition between young men and young women instead of teamwork and collaboration. So it is not good luck. It is intentionality. And I don't think young people ask the right questions. And I don't think they look for the right things when they're looking for a partner. And I think that's what ends up happening with all these divorces. No, I think that's 100 % accurate. I think that where I was like kind of being, I was kind of kidding around.

1:00:55I think that you got lucky by meeting a good man that is happy for women's success. But we talked about earlier, there's a lot of men feel emasculated by women's success. And therefore, there's a whole imbalance is why they're basically, they're not even trying as hard. Women have surpassed them. The whole imbalance, right? That's why we're saying women who are more successful, they don't want to date below their socioeconomic place. They want to go above. So when women are so high, it's very hard. The amount of men that they have to choose from is much less. So then what ends up happening is they're not dating anybody.

1:01:37and the men have much more of, you know, so then the men, the whole, the whole pattern has kind of like, there's a ripple effect to all of that. Yeah. Yeah. No, society is definitely out of balance right now. Yeah. It's out of balance. And what do you, what do you tell, like, what do you tell your patients? How does that kind of get rectified on a, like, what can an individual do about that in like in real time to try to rectify that? Yeah. I mean, again, I think, you know, things like individual therapy and couples therapy. I mean, I do think there's a place for therapeutic intervention, you know, and colleagues like Suzanne Banker, friends of mine who write books about that, you know, what you're talking about.

1:02:23I'm sure maybe you've had her on show, or you should have her on your show if you haven't. What's her name? Suzanne Banker. You know, she writes books about this idea of creating a society where men and women compete with one another as opposed to collaborate with one another. So, you know, they say that when you find the right partner, it means that you find somebody who admires your successes and doesn't compete with them and who feels you admire them and their successes. So mutually, they bring out the best in you and you bring out the best in them. Again, I think that we have pumped up our young women to really feel that they're competitive with men, as opposed to saying, right, this is not a competition.

1:03:19This is, you know, it's collaborative. And I think that that really is, you know, that there's a time and a place in a team for people to take different roles. And I think that we really have gotten it all wrong and don't teach young women and young men that it's not a competition. And so that competition is what is really driving a lot of these marital collapses. And as you say, women not being able to find men and men not being able to embrace women's power and all of that. I mean, the truth is that there's a time in life for men to be powerful, and there's a time in life for women to be powerful, and for them to support one another.

1:04:02And I think that's what we should be supporting. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate. And listen, this has been a very fascinating and very interesting podcast. So Erica, thank you so much for being my guest. thank you oh my god i i i'm i'm i loved having you and i apologize again for the technical snafu but will you please come back when you have your your new book or i guess you said it comes out in march yeah would you please come back and talk about that because that sounds like a great topic i would love to thank you thank you erica i appreciate it everyone where do you find uh do you want to just kind of tell people where they can find more information with you at www.comisar.com.

1:04:45It's K-O-M-I-S-A-R.com. And there you can find links to my books and you can find interviews I've given and articles I've written and lots of information and ways to contact me clinically if you want an appointment. So it's all on that website. Thank you so much, Erica. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.

1:05:11Thank you.