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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:23:45

Confessions of an Anti-Feminist

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	I've often thought it's a real shame that you don't get to see the view of the show that I get to see.
	I mean, you look at these videos, maybe you look at them back and forth in the YouTube comments or whatever, but you don't get to see everything that is going down as the result of this particular conversation, of this particular show.
	Case in point, the amazing woman whose conversation you're about to be fortunate enough to be privy to.
	This woman listened to a show called Mommy Worth that I did some time ago.
	Listen to a couple of other shows and decided, because she was pregnant, that she was gonna quit her job, move states, and stay home with her daughter.
	Arrange her life so that she could be a committed, loving parent.
	Without spanking, without punishment, peaceful parenting all the way, commitment, bonded, unity, breastfeeding, the whole positive stuff.
	Now, you get to see this, you know, it's the tip of the iceberg, the stuff that goes on that we get messages about, people changing their lives as a result of this conversation, breaking cycles of neglect or abuse within their families, cleaning up their relationships, improving their lives, getting off drugs, getting better careers, getting rid of dysfunction.
	It really is a revolution.
	A revolution from within that will change the world over time.
	So this is a gift to you to be able to hear this kind of change.
	I really, really strongly, strongly urge you, invite you, almost demand that you come and help support this show.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Help us out.
	There is so much that we have done.
	There is so much that we can do and so little that we can do without your help.
	Please, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
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	Hugely appreciated.
	Incredibly helpful.
	The bandwidth costs alone of this show outside of YouTube.
	You know, we put out an ungodly amount of podcast downloads every month.
	That's blindingly expensive.
	We've got servers.
	We've got salaries.
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	These lights don't pay for themselves.
	I'm not peddling here to keep all these lights on.
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	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	It's the old honorable thing to do, you know, pay for what you consume and pay to have the resources available for the kind of conversation you are just about to hear.
	Stephanie wrote in and said, I'm a 27-year-old proud stay-at-home mother with the thanks of Stéphane's shows on YouTube about the benefits.
	I was going to continue my career with a large company after my daughter's birth but came across Stéphane's shows on abandonment.
	I spoke to my husband, and we both agreed that we would change our lifestyle so that I could stay home.
	He found a better paying job because he has a STEM degree, and we moved states, downsized our home, and live on a budget.
	One week after I gave birth, we moved.
	I never have regretted our decision, and am thankful for such a wonderful man who provides for me and our daughter.
	My question.
	Why do single mothers take zero responsibility for who they bring home around their children?
	Why do they blame the man and not themselves?
	To add on to that topic, why are stay-at-home mothers portrayed as having zero ambition and being uneducated?
	That's from Stephanie.
	Well, hello Steph.
	How you doing?
	Good.
	How are you?
	It's good to speak with you.
	Nice to speak with you too.
	And it is one of these odd things.
	Way back Way back, I was watching, I guess I was in my early teens, there was an old show called WKRP in Cincinnati, and Howard Hessman played a pretty chaotic and confused and volcanically motivated DJ.
	And he was just talking about one day, he was talking about how, you know, there was a garbage strike on and say, well, why don't you just take your garbage, you know, drop it on the mayor's lawn, you know, because the mayor wasn't resolving the garbage strike.
	And what happened was a whole bunch of people went and dumped their garbage on the mayor's lawn and then he freaked out because he's like, wow, people are actually listening.
	Like I'm just in this room talking to the microphone and he's like, people are actually listening.
	I can't go on and get this crisis of confidence.
	And when I, you know, I got to tell you, like when I, when I get these messages, I mean, I'm thrilled and like so excited because it sort of reminds me that, you know, okay, I'm, I'm in this little, little white room and I'm, I'm doing my thing and I'm putting the words out there.
	And you know, a lot of feedback I get is from, Irrational atheists and people who say they were spanked, it turned out fine!
	Thank you very much.
	But seeing how, wow, you listen to the message, you kind of changed your life.
	I'm sure your husband is happy at the lower income.
	And that's, wow.
	I mean, thank you so much for letting me know.
	Well, no, really, thank you.
	And, you know, this is probably pretty blunt, but you really kicked me in the stomach, Stefan.
	Pre-pregnancy, let's hope, because that's a bad image for a pregnant woman to say.
	No, I was working a corporate job and one of our friends gave us your video on YouTube with George Zimmerman and we both listened to it together and we were like, what?
	This is amazing.
	So when I was at my job, actually, I found your Mommy Wars and I'm, you know, sitting typing away and I'm pregnant and it was just like, oh my goodness.
	Okay, well, That's pretty life-changing.
	So I went home to my husband.
	What was it about the mommy that was sort of about the stay-at-home versus the working mom stuff?
	Just your brutal honesty about how specifically the abandonment of infants.
	I couldn't do that.
	It really struck with me.
	I went home, of course, and I talked to my husband.
	I told him, I said, I'm willing to do anything.
	And if that means, you know, we downsize, fine.
	If we have, you know, we live out of a shoebox, fine, but let's do this right.
	And so we did.
	And I have zero regrets, but the main pushback that I'm getting specifically is from other women who say, well, that's great for you, but I have ambition.
	And I do have ambition.
	I have goals.
	I'm educated.
	like, you know, I mean, you want some cream with that wine?
	I mean, holy viciousness, eh?
	Right.
	And I do have ambition.
	I have goals.
	I'm educated.
	I have done a lot in my life.
	But I'm willing to put that aside for my daughter.
	And I have...
	Yeah, why don't you go down...
	Sorry, why don't you go down to where the working mom...
	Oh, Well, I actually love my children, had children, spent time with them, want to be a good mother.
	So off you go, ladies, take off your sneakers, put on your stilettos, abandon your children, and then breast pump in a toilet.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	You wouldn't do that, right?
	Because, you know, although there may be valid reasons to do it, that'd be kind of catty.
	But yeah, I suppose it's fine for you, but you see, I have more than four and a half brain cells, so I'll be down answering customer service calls for Quantum Corporation.
	That's the truth, yeah.
	And I'm friends with a lot of stay-at-home mothers, and it's funny because when we get together, I mean, there's that awkward silence of, well, I'm planning on going back to school, or, oh, I'm planning on, you know, I'm looking for jobs, and I'm over here sitting, no, I'm not looking for a job, I'm not looking for further education, I'm just living in the present.
	What I'm looking for from you is kind of advice.
	Like, how do I pep talk these, you know, stay-at-home mothers?
	You know, all we're bombarded with is, you know, the glories of the single mother and the working mother and how they're the face for modern feminism.
	But, you know, that's not true.
	If anything, I'd say that, you know, what we do is the real feminism because we're raising children to understand the real world and how There's such a war on the stay-at-home mother and, you know, masculinity.
	So, yeah, I just, it's very frustrating.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I guess my question is, I mean, my response, and I don't get a lot of that.
	I certainly had a little bit of that.
	Oh, you're a stay-at-home dad.
	I suppose that means you have an arts degree and no viable skills and how nice for you.
	I'm sorry, of course, that you can't join the mad male rat race to an early grave, but I suppose that's all right if you're willing to do some laundry.
	So there is a little bit of that for sure.
	But my question, I would just ask these people, why?
	Why is going back to work preferable to raising your children?
	I mean, now the answer would probably be something like, well, raising children is not very intellectually challenging.
	To which I would say, then you're doing it wrong.
	Right.
	Because I'm a very smart guy and I find parenting very intellectually challenging.
	Yes, very much so.
	You know, I was watching Donald Trump's speech today on foreign policy, pausing it and explaining it to my daughter.
	Now, anyone who thinks it's easy to go from Trump speak to seven year old speak in a way that's entertaining and engaging and illustrative and keeps their attention, well, That's a lot more challenging than any coding problem I ever worked on when I was in the business world.
	So if you're not interacting with your kids and you're just kind of home or you're letting them have tablets or TVs or whatever, if you're not engaged with them and teaching them about the world and learning about them and helping them understand where their thoughts come from, we play a game called Chase the Brain.
	Where did this thought come from?
	Oh, you were thinking of this truck.
	Well, what were you thinking of before that?
	And you go back until you can't remember.
	And whoever can go back the furthest, that teaches self-knowledge.
	Where do my thoughts come from?
	And so coming up with stuff that really engages and entertains and illustrates kids, that is not easy.
	It's just not easy at all to do.
	And, you know, sometimes I'll just toss a book aside and I'll just make up a story on the fly.
	That's not easy to do, to keep it entertaining and engaging.
	So I don't know, like if somebody would say to me, well, don't you want to go and have a job to be intellectually stimulated again?
	It's like, I, you know, I can't really think of much.
	It may be this job and it's sort of like what I do with these conversations in its most fiery intensity.
	But there's a massive amount of intellectual stimulation engagement challenge that comes from being an engaged parent.
	This dichotomy is like, well, you know, you could be designing code sub-modules for a DLL or, you know, you could be trying to explain a crazy world to a sane child.
	I'll take the latter challenge as something that's much more elevated.
	Right, right.
	Well, and to that, you know, there's that stereotype that stay-at-home mothers, you know, we just, we go and shop.
	Or that we, you know, just stay at home and watch TV.
	I mean, that's further from the truth.
	It's so populous in Bon Bons, right?
	Right.
	And it's so far from the truth because, you know, I've got a nine-month-old and everything is grabbing and moving and, you know, I rarely have the TV on.
	And have you ever been more alert?
	Like, you're like this radar, right?
	Like, danger, child, danger, child, where, what is their level of proximity?
	Because you know, this, you know, they're basically giant death magnets at that age, right?
	Right.
	And, and I've noticed too, like, I'll go to the gym.
	During the day and if I you know, I do send her in like the daycare area and you can tell you can tell that the children Who are not engaged or the ones that are just passed off?
	I mean they're screaming they're crying and then there's my daughter who's like going after you know The blocks and the knobs and the wheels and having a good time and I I think that that that says a lot but it just I guess Stefan I'm just I'm kind of pissed because It seems like the single mother and the working mother, they are in the spotlight like, yes, this is how you should be.
	And even when I was in college, I mean, I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I'll be that career woman and have kids and not really think about it.
	But now that I've gotten older and I've been exposed to information, you know, it's just it's not being put out there that it's okay to be a stay-at-home mother.
	It's okay.
	No, it's not that it's okay.
	Well, first of all, there's two things here that I don't want us to conflate.
	Maybe your experience has been different, Steph, but mine is that stay-at-home moms with a husband are generally portrayed as, you know, lazy losers who couldn't make it in the working world.
	Whereas single mothers are heroic.
	You're right.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, so I don't want to sort of put, put the, let's just talk about the stay at home moms or stay at home dads because single mothers is, is a whole different, I mean, I, I, I almost hear nothing negative about a single mothers, you know, outside of some YouTube channels in this one included, I suppose.
	But, um, yeah, so it's, it's the stay at home moms and that is, um, You know, that comes straight out of the 60s.
	It comes straight out of feminism.
	And we can get into that in a sec.
	But I didn't want to interrupt you if you were still in mid-flow.
	So go ahead.
	No, that's quite all right.
	So there's a book by Daniel Crittenden, I think, What Our Mothers Didn't Teach Us or whatever it is that I read before I got married.
	And she was talking about how in the 60s, there was a thing called a click moment.
	And what it was is The moms would be making lunches or doing laundry or driving their kids around someplace and there'd be a click moment and they'd say, I should be doing so much more than this.
	I should be more than a chauffeur and a maid and a cook.
	I have this brain, this ambition, this creativity.
	I want to do more.
	And it was a click moment.
	And from there they began to view chores as unsatisfying and family life as confining as Hillary Clinton in all her glorious femininity.
	said that traditional marriage is a prison.
	And I guess her husband is part of the rape room.
	But anyway, so there was this click moment where women suddenly said, "I can do so much more than this." And frankly, if your job as a mother is to be a chauffeur and a maid and a cook, you suck at being a mom.
	That is terrible parenting.
	I mean, I drive my daughter places and we go places.
	And I tell you the car, I mean, you'll get this when your your your kid gets older.
	The car is a fantastic place for conversation and no distractions and all you can have like the most amazing conversations in the car because it's relaxed.
	You know, there's not going to be any phone calls or interruptions or whatever.
	And so the idea that You're just a chauffeur.
	Well, if you're just a chauffeur, then you are a disengaged parent who is not talking to his or her children.
	And if you're just a maid, well, get your kids involved and have conversations while you are doing your chores.
	Get your kids involved in the laundry.
	I mean, stuff's got to get cleaned.
	Right, right.
	You know, so you can get, get your kids, be a, be a, like, you don't need a lot of brain power to empty a dishwasher for God's sake.
	Get your kids in and have conversations with them.
	Talk about the history of the fork.
	Talk about how funny the word spork is.
	There's so many things that you can do, but nobody enjoys chores.
	I mean, if I had to work out without headphones, I'd never do it again.
	I'd rather have an early death than do that boring, sweaty job.
	dull, moving metal nonsense without either being on the phone or doing a show or listening to something or music.
	I mean, it's really, really boring.
	It's why I quit being a competitive swimmer when I was younger.
	It's like, here's my impression of what it's like to be a competitive swimmer.
	Gurgle, splash, gurgle, gurgle, splash, splash, gurgle, gurgle, turn, splash, gurgle.
	No headphones, no conversation.
	I am dying.
	I'm literally drowning in boredom.
	And so I went to other things where I could actually have conversations or at least listen to music while I was doing what I was doing, sort of the practice.
	So the parents who were disengaged, who are dissociated, who aren't really enjoying being parents, who maybe shouldn't have been parents in the first place.
	Well, they are not engaged with their children and therefore they're functioning as utility robots around their children.
	And of course that's boring because if you have the capacity to do something really smart with your life, why on earth would you want to be A driver, a cook, or, I mean, a low-rent cook, or a maid.
	Of course not.
	I mean, if you had the chance to be a lawyer and you were a maid, yeah, you're kind of under-utilizing yourself.
	But the idea that being a mom has something to do fundamentally with chores and not to do with engaging in challenging, exciting, brain-molding conversations with the future of mankind means that you're completely missing what parenting is all about, and maybe you would be better off in an office.
	Right.
	I mean, don't get me wrong.
	I mean, I do cook, I do clean, I do laundry, but it's not, I don't see it as a chore.
	I just see it as it's part of the deal.
	You know, my husband, he's an, he's an engineer and he works hard.
	I mean, in some days he commutes, you know, he gets up at sometimes three o'clock in the morning and I'm up to, you know, I just, cause I'm a light sleeper, but then, you know, sometimes he doesn't come home till five.
	And I mean, I wouldn't expect him, Oh, Hey honey, Welcome home.
	How about that dinner?
	That's not part of the deal, but I definitely agree that if you see it as a chore, then you're doing something wrong.
	And how is work not more of a chore?
	You had reasonably high-level jobs.
	It's not like everything that your husband does is a rollercoaster.
	There are meetings, there are memos, there's Junk to read, there's procedures to go over, there's manuals to plow through, there's being stuck on customer support when you have a technical issue.
	I mean, it's not like everything in the working world is just so thrilling, you know?
	It's like, you know, you can be a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, but if you just view it as typing, you're going to be discontented.
	And the seed, the sowing of the seed of discontent was foundational.
	to sort of the slow detonation of the foundations of Western civilization so you know what you're engaged in is a very very important procedure and process and pushback because I don't know I don't know you're a woman and perhaps you could explain this to me because you know naturally you can speak for all women but would you say let me let me ask you this would you say it is easier to talk a woman into being discontented or is it easier to talk a man into being discontented?
	Oh, a woman hands down.
	Take your time.
	I need you to think about this because I don't know.
	You came back at me very quickly with that one.
	Tell me where that's coming from.
	Oh, well, before this, I'm in the military.
	I'm in the reserves.
	And I tell you, there's such a difference working with men and women.
	And it's excruciating.
	That when you work with women, you have to be careful how you say it.
	Your tone has to be right.
	Make sure that you didn't put anything in there that could possibly be offensive or they could take the wrong way.
	But with a man, you just – this is this.
	This is what needs to happen and this is how we're going to do it.
	Cool.
	Let's do it.
	No, no.
	But have you ever heard the phrase, it's not what you said.
	Yes, yes.
	And I'll admit, I'm guilty sometimes, you know.
	Well, you are a woman, so that's okay.
	I mean, did you notice?
	It is important.
	But go on with that, because I was just reading the other day about how women are sort of being moved more into the front lines of the U.S.
	military, and what is it?
	The requirement for a man is 42 push-ups and the requirement for a woman ranges between 13 and 19 push-ups.
	It's horrible.
	Love the ladies, but I'm telling you, if I'm on a battlefield and 195 pounds of me is lying there bleeding out, I want someone who can drag me back to a hospital.
	I don't want someone who's like, I can't lift you.
	It's like, how is this supposed to work?
	I've only been in for four years and I don't regret any of my decisions.
	I don't regret it, but it's changed so much in four years that I am just, I am eager to get out.
	I am just... Oh, you mean the military has changed?
	Right.
	And it's just, you know, what you see, that's a perfect example is, you know, the women coming in, everybody's catering to the female that, oh, you know, you know, diversity and we get, you know, slideshow presentations of Diversity training and, you know, equal opportunity.
	And I'm always, you know, pushing back at that because, you know, the military isn't meant to be like that.
	And things are changing so quickly to cater to that, that a lot of the stronger presence, especially the masculinity of the military, is leaving.
	And I was also going to bring up to the point, too, that a lot of the, you know, People that I've seen are single mothers.
	You know, they get the free child care from the government, from the military, free housing, and that's just like a big vacuum for single mothers to come into the military.
	Hang on, what?
	Sorry, I've not heard this one.
	I mean, I know that America is not wildly combat ready.
	What is it?
	The Navy's gone down from 500 to 270.
	Yeah, watch this speech.
	Ships and the Air Force is down by a third and what a personnel are down from what three million to 2.2 or something What the Xena princess warrior single mom fighter?
	Battalion is being formed.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and I'm in a combat support.
	And I would say out of the 20, maybe 10 to 20 females, I'd say a good 70% are single mothers.
	And it's – But how – so the AMI is fine if – If you have no husband, you have a baby.
	Yes, you can come into the army.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's incentive too.
	Because, you know, we'll take care of the childcare and, you know, housing and food.
	And, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	So when I talk about women being married to the state, sometimes the state, the groom shows up in battle fatigues.
	Right, right.
	And I'm in the reserves, so I can't speak for active duty, but although I have been on active duty, I see that as well.
	And, um, and it's very, it makes it a very difficult working environment because even as a female, you know, if you say, Hey, I need this, this and this done completed by this time.
	It's well, I got to take my son to, you know, to this doctor or he's sick or whatever.
	And this is the military.
	I don't I'm sorry, but I don't care.
	You know?
	Oh, God, I just I'm sorry.
	I I didn't know.
	And you know, just when I think things have gotten so completely insane.
	Sorry.
	I can't deploy that day because it conflicts with my kids orthodontics deployment.
	Can you just move the invasion of France?
	A day, maybe day and a half later, assuming I get some good sleep and I'm not currently lactating into my uniform.
	And it's bad, too, because, you know, you talk to these female mothers, soldiers, whatever, and they all have, you know, multiple kids, or specifically one, and, you know, the family care plans, if, you know, if something happens, then contact my lawyer and the kid gets bounced here and then here and then they get, you know, it's just a huge mess.
	And then all the while the army is pushing, you know, lactation information and, you know, areas where women can go, you know, breastfeed and that's being pushed.
	Oh my god!
	Are you kidding me?
	No!
	I'm telling you, I don't mean to be too old-fashioned, but as far as I remember it, the liquid the military is supposed to be spilling is not breast milk!
	Oh, that's funny.
	No, that's definitely being pushed right now.
	Yeah, I'm done.
	I'm ready to cut my losses.
	Even when I joined, it was different.
	You had all of the battle-hardened soldiers that were coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
	They were your platoon sergeants.
	I'm an officer, so they're teaching you things that are very valuable, especially with leadership.
	Then you see this new wave coming in.
	single mothers and changing the standards and letting women into combat and it's just, it's mind-blowing how quickly things have changed.
	Yeah, and I mean it's just become another government program and another giant welfare state just pretending to be armed.
	I mean the research shows that the female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women.
	Women in combat roles get depressed significantly more.
	Look, I used to be more sort of egalitarian and so on, but the research seems to be pretty clear that, you know, women are built to create life.
	They're not particularly well handled for the brutal disassembly of other human beings.
	Right, right.
	And, you know, again, I don't mean to be all kinds of, you know, old school about this, but this is what the data seems to show pretty clearly.
	Women are not well suited to combat.
	It creates problems in the unit cohesion, because men are vying for the attention of the women.
	And of course, the men get resentful as well, because the women literally, literally, literally cannot pull their weight.
	Right.
	Absolutely.
	And I mean, especially like for me, I mean, at my peak physical condition, I was, you know, 150 pounds, and I could lift, you know, maybe 200 pounds, but with a Full combat load.
	I mean, you're pushing, if a guy's 200 pounds, 300 pounds, there's no way.
	There's no way that I could carry that or drag it or move it, you know?
	And that's one of the big arguments against, you know, women in combat.
	It's life and death.
	It's life and death.
	You know, it's like the female fireman, you know, like I want someone who can shoulder down a big door, not someone who's going to bounce back like a pinball.
	But everyone dances around that and they say, well, you know, there's some excuse, but when it comes down to it, there is no excuse in combat.
	I mean, I haven't been deployed.
	I always got like right on the edge of it, but it just, it cannot happen.
	And it's difficult too, because You know, when I interact with, especially liberal females who are like, oh yeah, women in combat, I always engage them and say, well, what do you know about it?
	You don't even know what you're talking about.
	You don't know what it's like.
	And how, like Hillary Clinton, how do you have an opinion on this?
	If you've never even been in the military, you haven't even seen a combat unit.
	And it's just beyond frustrating.
	And like I said, I'm just, I'm...
	I'm ready to cut my losses.
	And especially having a daughter now, I mean, my mind's completely changed.
	And like in college, you know, I was kind of groomed for that, you know, career woman, military.
	But now that I'm a mother, it's like, no, stay at home, raise her right, you know, support my husband, you know, be that support for him and her.
	And I'm happy with that, but it's just, that's not what's being, um, told to females right now.
	And, um, yeah.
	What is it do you think Steph that makes, um, that makes women so susceptible to being talked into being discontented?
	I just think it's not so much being discontented, it's just that allure of, you can do it all.
	You can be whatever you want to be, you can do whatever you want to do, and you can do it just as great as a man.
	And when you live that, when you try to obtain that, it never pans out.
	Because we're different.
	We operate differently.
	And I think that has a lot to do with it.
	And all of that just propaganda that is seeped into our brains when we're younger, especially in my generation, You know, um, you know, just the media and that men are being portrayed as weak.
	And so women need to step up to the plate.
	But, um, when you do step up to the plate, it's kind of a hard plate to stand on, you know?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I certainly like know when I was growing up and I think just in general, I mean, if you're doing one thing, you're not doing something else.
	Right.
	You know, it's called the alibi principle, like you can't just be in two places at the same time.
	And this idea that women can be both great moms and great career women, I mean, that's, you know, like if you're married, you shouldn't be out dating.
	And if you're out dating, it's because you're not married, right?
	I mean, you can't do, you can't get both at the same, can't be in a monogamous relationship and a polygamous relationship at the same time.
	You can't be at work and at home at the same time.
	And this, because I get these messages all the time from the single mom saying, well, you know, I'm a single mom and I'm, you know, I'm supporting my family and I'm going to work and I'm going to school.
	And so why would you have any problems with me?
	It's like, cause if you're going to work and you go into school, you're not being a good mom.
	Right.
	Because you're not there.
	You can't be in two places at the same time.
	In most places you can't bring your kids.
	Yeah.
	And that reminds me.
	That was the kick in the stomach.
	I remember you saying you're either a great mother or you're a great business person or, you know, worker.
	But you can't be both.
	And I live that.
	I completely agree that, you know, and I made the choice.
	I made the choice to be a great mother because I can always, you know, find a job.
	Whatever that job may be, I can get a job, but I can't go back and redo the raising of our children.
	I grew up with a mother who worked and my father worked and they worked at the same time.
	To this day, my mother works and I say, you know what?
	I would rather spend time with you than you to work and send me baby clothes or whatever.
	That time is irreplaceable.
	Does your daughter need you?
	I can hear her a little bit.
	No, my husband.
	You got it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	He's getting the boobs with lust.
	All right.
	Got it.
	Um, and that, you know, that is a funny thing too, because, uh, you know, if you, if you have kids, it's not like people are saying you can never work again.
	I mean, it's not like a, you're expelling yourself.
	It's, it's a couple of years, right?
	Couple of years, couple of years per kid.
	You know, we, we take time off from the workforce to go to school and go to college, right?
	And if you, if people do that, So you take a couple of years, four years, maybe more to go to college and you do that because it's an investment in your future and it's like why is college and you and your paycheck more important than the life that you have created that biologically and psychologically and emotionally and dare I say spiritually is completely and totally dependent and wedded upon your proximate existence?
	Why is college more important than the literal flesh and blood of your loins?
	It's so weird.
	I go to college to see if it's going to help me make some more money during the course of your life.
	Okay, well then take some time off so that you can have a high quality relationship with your child because parenting, man, I mean this is what's so great about what you're doing.
	Parenting is totally and completely Pay me now or pay me later.
	Right.
	And you can choose to say, well, you know, two months after my kid was born, there I was back at work.
	Good wage slave.
	Good job.
	Good job.
	Because you really need to give that money to the government so it can use it as collateral to sell your kid off into slavery.
	Good job.
	Good wage slave.
	Because what's going to happen is you don't have the bond with your kid, which means there's a lot of conflict, a lot of fighting, a lot of lack of trust.
	And then And what were yours like?
	Well, at that time, um, my dad was in Iraq.
	And so that kind of falls into why I joined the military.
	Um, and my mom worked at, um, a hospital on base.
	And so she was dealing with, you know, all the soldiers getting lifelighted back to the States, you know, all the combat, um, wounded.
	And honestly, I, I was lonely.
	And so I.
	I got a job, I was a waitress, and I learned how to be an introvert, and I learned that when I do spend time with my parents, it's very get to the point, and then it's valued.
	And when I have my daughter, I see it differently now, because I don't want her to have to wait for my time, and I don't want her to feel like You know, time is so valuable and it's so precious.
	Yes, it is.
	But I don't want that anxiety of getting my attention, if that makes sense.
	No, no, it totally makes sense.
	And as you know, the studies are all very clear.
	Like my job as a parent, it's mostly done now.
	You know, my daughter is seven.
	My job as a parent was mostly done two years ago.
	Now there's, you know, a little course corrections and touch-ups here and there, but my job as a parent was way done.
	Now it's just, you know, food, housing and fun.
	But the idea that you can cost like you don't bond with your kids, you don't develop that close relationship, that intimacy with your kids when they're young, when they're dependent, when they're when they really are going to bond with you physically, biologically.
	If you don't do it, then what happens is people then try and course correct later on when they don't have the credibility of early intimacy.
	Your job as a mom Steph, it's going to be so much easier going forward because your daughter is bonded with you.
	She knows that you are her number one priority, that she is your – sorry, she is your number one priority, that you care for her just about more than anything and you have all of that, right?
	So my daughter will shave against me.
	Yeah, we got her bikes.
	Sure, you got to wear some elbow pads.
	I don't want her elbow pads.
	I say that, but you know, my job is to keep you safe.
	And that's what I've been doing for seven years.
	Right?
	So there's not that level of conflict because you have the credibility of early intimacy and pouring your resources into your child so that she knows that you love and you care and you respect and you cherish and nurture her.
	And so as you go forward, you're just going to have that authority.
	And it's not a bossy authority.
	It's a well-earned, authority and it's always fascinating to me when I see people who are unable to give legitimately earned authority to other people.
	They're just fighting against everything all the time and it's sort of pointless.
	You have to give up legitimately earned authority.
	You know, my dentist tells me to do something, I'll do something.
	Okay, fine, I'll wear a night guard if I go out, right?
	And so all of these things, your job is going to be so much easier, but what happens is People end up butting heads with their kids literally for the rest of their lives.
	It's not just through the teenage years, but on and on and on, because they don't have that intimate, loved, connected foundation at the beginning.
	Man, it's tough to course correct later on, you know?
	Like, it's like, it's like, hey, I've driven off a cliff.
	Now I'm going to start turning the wheel.
	No, the wheels are no longer on the ground.
	It's too late.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's very insightful.
	I hadn't really thought about that like when she gets older and yeah.
	And then what happens is everyone grows up with those kind of parents where they're constantly butting heads and don't realize that it is the absence of intimacy that is causing the problems.
	Because if you go and work when your kid is young, when your kid is a baby, when your kid is a toddler, the kid doesn't know anything about the outside world.
	You can't explain to the child why mommy is taking her food bags and heading out on the road.
	You can't explain.
	The kid doesn't understand that.
	All the kid knows is that something is either forcing mommy to be away, in which case the world is dangerous and scary.
	She's being kidnapped every day.
	Or she is choosing to be somewhere other than where he is.
	In which case, how can she love him?
	If you choose something More than your child or all you are communicating to your child is that you love something more than your child.
	Right.
	And that's not a child's misinterpretation.
	That is an actual fact.
	We judge people.
	I'm an empiricist.
	Just as everyone is and just as children are.
	We think that we can convince children with words.
	Mommy's going to work because she loves you.
	And mommy, you know, here's a doll scenario where the mommy is going to buy things for the child.
	Like we think that we can somehow correct the empiricism of our actions through the sophistry of our language.
	It's nonsense.
	The children know for an absolute fact that you are choosing something at their expense over them.
	That you love something so much more that you're willing to harm your children by your absence to go and do that thing.
	Now we have so evolved that it's less problematic for the dads to go because the dads are the hunter gatherers and so on and you know if the dads and moms switch roles which a lot of times they did when women died in childbirth through the evolution of the species and so on and fathers are equally as important and I don't want you know we just did this thing in the last show about that so I won't repeat it here but people empirically say to their kids Mommy is willing to harm you to go and conform with the socialist lesbian expectations of radical feminism.
	Andrea Dworkin is my real partner in this at your expense or whatever it's going to be.
	And then what happens is the parents demand respect.
	What?
	You've just devalued and bathed in contempt your own child by choosing something at their expense that you want.
	And then you ever criticize your children for being selfish?
	Are you kidding me?
	Yeah.
	And then you say to your kids, well, you have to think about the feelings of other people.
	Really?
	So when you all skated off off to work, leaving your kids in some daycare or with some person who was not as good as you and certainly wasn't their mom, were you caring about your kids' feelings?
	And then we say, well, you've got to be sensitive to other people's feelings.
	Well, you've modeled the exact opposite.
	You've modeled Compliant, conformist, empty-headed selfishness as a mom and then you get upset because your kids grow up and don't really care that much about your feelings and then you nag and lecture them, which is even more demanding a respect that you haven't earned, which is exactly the same as going to work.
	It's demanding something you haven't earned and it's demanding that they comply to you at their own expense, at the integrity of their own empirical history and evidence of your behavior.
	And then people, what happens is the kids then grow up and say, man, parents and parenting suck.
	And then they don't want to have kids because man, it was a lot of work, a lot of fights.
	It wasn't that much fun.
	Whereas parenting is the most fun.
	You know, I mean, you're never too old to have a happy childhood, right?
	Parenting is the most fun.
	And so what happens is the kids with fractures, distant combating, no Authority, no intimacy, no legitimacy, no respect, no honor.
	Parenting, bang, bang, bang, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt.
	They grew up saying, my God, the last thing I'd ever want to be as a parent, all we did was fight.
	And then, well, you need third world migrants to end the civilization.
	But we've done that before, but go on.
	Yeah, well, and I've brought that up, too, to other women, and I always get the pushback, especially working mothers, of, well, it's not that black and white.
	And, you know, some people can't afford that, or I actually want my kid to go to good schools, and it's just, it's a constant digging to you, but then you know that, okay, well, I'm actually making sense here, because you're defending your behavior.
	Without an argument.
	Right.
	It's not that black and white?
	Yeah.
	What the hell does that mean?
	I don't even know what that two and two is for.
	Well, it's more nuanced than that.
	What?
	Nuance is not an argument.
	It's more complex than that.
	A, that's an insult.
	And B, it's not an argument.
	Right.
	And I've, I mean, especially when I was working a night, I made this decision before I told anybody on my coworkers, I would get these mothers coming up to me and saying, Oh, congratulations, but don't worry.
	In six weeks, you'll be wanting to give your baby to daycare and you'll just need a break.
	And then when I said, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm quitting and I'm going to be a stay-at-home mother.
	Then it was, wow, I really envy you.
	Okay, well, which one is it?
	Do you need that break or do you envy me?
	Because it seems like you're trying to convince yourself that what you're doing by working is the right thing to do.
	But in the back of your mind, you know that it's not the right thing to do.
	But yet, they try to come together and support each other and it's just a big lie fest.
	No, no, it's true.
	Six weeks after your birth of your child, of course, of course, you'll want to drop your child off in a daycare or get a nanny or just put them somewhere else.
	You don't have to take care of them.
	You know, exactly the same way that you come back from your honeymoon and people say, oh, no, man, like in a couple of weeks, you'll be totally happy to go and buy your husband a prostitute because, I mean, you'll be so sick and tired of having sex with him.
	You're going to want to go out.
	You'll be willing to give up water buffaloes.
	You'll be buying people chickens.
	You'll be flying them out to Cambodia because, my God, why would you ever want to have sex with the guy again?
	You've already done that.
	Yeah.
	But you know, and honestly at six weeks, I didn't feel that way.
	I, I didn't.
	And I wanted to be with her.
	I wanted every day, like I felt like, Oh, there's something new.
	There's something new that I'm seeing.
	She's looking at something different and she's responding to me differently.
	And, um, yeah, I think it's just a load of crap.
	Yeah.
	My daughter, um, I said two days ago, just sat down with me and said, dad, Got to answer me something.
	Why do we use the word window for window rather than door?
	Why do things have the names that they have?
	Hmm.
	And it was, I mean, great question.
	You know, we could answer a little bit and I mentioned this before, but you know, the stuff that you talk about all the time tends to be single syllable because it's more efficient.
	Like you don't, you don't want to use the word Achmed, Achmed, Achmed for your hand because it's going to take a little bit of time to get anything explained.
	And we could talk about, you know, people's occupations, farmer, baker, Smith and all that.
	But, you know, and we looked up some words, but all etymology does is tell you where the first instance of the word was.
	Nobody tells you why it was that way.
	And, um, yeah, so we, we don't know.
	And we looked at some of the words that we've made up in the family and why, but man, that's cool, you know, because I mean, I guess everyone's had that thought, but I haven't really thought about it in a while, but it's a really, really important thought.
	And I just, The fact that she's now generating her own thoughts, questions, and ideas, rather than me asking her questions and we sort of go from there.
	God, it's glorious.
	It's exciting.
	It's glorious.
	Yeah.
	And it's, you know, this, it only continues from here.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Or it's kind of like useless intellectual curiosity.
	You can take over my show.
	No, especially in my case with my nine month old, you know, she's starting to, to respond or call me mama or, She reaches out to me and it's just like, ah, this is the smartest baby in the world.
	You know, obviously, probably not.
	But in my eyes, it's just amazing.
	Why not?
	She's the smartest baby in your world and that's really all that matters, right?
	Yeah, I can't imagine missing that.
	And for a career to develop into a career, it's not worth it.
	You know, where's the Cats in the Cradle song for moms?
	You know that Cats in the Cradle song, you know, he learned to walk while I was away?
	Where's the one for moms?
	It's like, well, no, we can't push that wound because we might actually be able to do something about it.
	And it's just, but again, you know, I kind of go back to my original question, it's like just being in a surrounding of stay-at-home mothers, Just that feeling in the air that we're not enough or that we need to push for education.
	You mean to get yourself back into school or something?
	Right, right.
	I mean, I know I'm set in my situation right now.
	I'm not looking for anything like that, but how do I encourage the other mothers?
	I guess that's kind of circling back to my question.
	Just ask them why.
	was your input.
	Yeah.
	Um, I guess I'd say why now?
	Like of all times, you know, like the, let's say you live for 80 years, you got five years where you can be a stay at home mom.
	Like why would you want to jam other stuff into those five years?
	You know, it's like, I want to be a ballerina and get an MBA.
	It's like, Why do those two things have to happen at the same time?
	Right.
	And learn Japanese.
	And it's like, you know, because you know what it's like, especially with a nine month old.
	And you know, it depends on, on the kid and so on.
	But I mean, it's, if you're not sleeping, you're wanting to sleep, right?
	Because they're up all night and you're wrecked, right?
	I mean, you're going to go to school.
	I mean, it's insane, right?
	I mean, I was barely able to get any shows out during the first six months of my daughter's life in town.
	It's just wrecked.
	And so why, why now?
	Like, why now?
	Why of all the times of all the times to want to jam education into something?
	Why now?
	It's going to take you away from your child.
	And it's going to make your future job as a parent much harder.
	And there is this weird thing.
	And then this goes, you know, I'm sure you had this in the in the army as well.
	You have this people have this in every career situation and they have it in other situations as well.
	And it goes something like this.
	And we used to say this when I was in the software field all the time.
	We'd say, look, you can fix a problem nine times easier in the planning phase than in the execution phase.
	Yes.
	Right.
	In the planning phase rather than the execution phase.
	And people would say, well, we've got to get the specs done.
	We've got to stop building this thing.
	We've got to get moving.
	And my question was always, well, if we don't have the time to fix it now, when it's nine times easier to fix, how on earth are we going to have the time to fix it later when it's nine times harder to fix?
	You know, if we don't have an hour now to hammer out this specification, how on earth are we going to have nine or more hours later on when we're actually doing it?
	You know, forget the blueprints.
	Let's just start building this house.
	We've got no time.
	It's like, okay, but when the walls don't meet, how are we going to fix it then?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, when, when, when the, when the ceiling is two feet too low, how are we going to fix it?
	Like if we don't have time to fix it in the planning phase, how are we going to fix it in the execution phase?
	And all of early childhood is planning for the teenage years and beyond.
	And so if they don't have time to do proper parenting now, How are they going to have time to do reactive parenting with non-bonded children later?
	Because there's this magical belief that people say, well, I don't have to be around my kid when they're that younger because I'll just nag them later, or I'll just be on them later, or it'll just somehow magically happen that I'll get authority without proximity, which is like wanting to get paid without showing up for work.
	You show up for work with your children and you get paid with the currency of authority.
	My daughter certainly has a mind of her own and is certainly willing to push back and sometimes she's entirely right to do so, but she really listens to what I say because I have credibility and the authority of having been there and been invested, not just been around, but invested.
	And so I need little tiny conversations with her.
	I need little tiny course corrections because she really listens.
	So it's easy.
	It's easy.
	It's the difference between a wild grizzly and one that's well-trained, so to speak, right?
	Yeah.
	And so if people say, well, I got to go back to school, first of all, that's just guilt and it's just conformity.
	I don't think like, do you ever wake up in the morning and say, wow, I really wish I was studying statistics right now?
	No, I'm thinking I need to get a bottle or I need to do... You're like, wow, you know, my first bath in three days would be fantastic.
	Hope I didn't leak through my nightie again, right?
	I mean, that's where, you know, how's my daughter?
	How, you know, I just, you know, I used to write two books a year back before my daughter was... I haven't written a book since she was born.
	That's going to come back.
	But the reason I'm willing to give up seven years of writing books It's because if I was writing all these books and not being as effective or involved a parent, then I wouldn't be writing any books when she becomes a teenager forever because I'd be re-dealing with all that nonsense, right?
	Yeah.
	It's just investment.
	So women don't want to wake up and say, gosh, I'd really love to be studying hotel management, you know, after having slept for three hours over the past two days, you know, it'd be excellent if I could create imaginary menus to the G8 summit or something.
	I mean, nobody wakes up.
	There's just this vague residual guilt that somehow by being a mother, by shaping and creating the minds and souls of the next generation of human beings, that you're just not doing enough, you know?
	Well, all I did was create life and mold and shape and implant in it, in that life, the values that sustain civilization.
	But all the same time, I could have been managing a restaurant.
	That reminds me of my husband, you know, some days he'll come home and be like, oh, I didn't do anything today.
	You know, I'm kind of disheveled and he'll be like, no, no, no, no, you were raising our daughter today.
	I'm like, yeah, but no, that's enough.
	Like, oh, okay.
	That's the thing too.
	And sorry to interrupt, but that's, that's a really important thing, which it's probably hard for you to, I shouldn't say that.
	Of course, it's easy for you to see.
	You can, you can do military stuff.
	You can see this stuff, but, but you know what you say here in your, initial contact with us.
	You said, I've never regretted our decision and I'm thankful for such a wonderful man who provides for me and our daughter.
	Why do women want to go back to school when they have children?
	Because they're afraid their marriages won't work out and they'll need job skills.
	Oh yeah.
	So the degree of dependence, you know, you are depending on your husband's integrity almost to the same degree that your daughter's depending on your presence.
	Because you are completely handing over in some way, you know, I mean, you get divorced and take him for half his worth, but you know, not that kind of person, you're case elected, obviously.
	But you are depending on your husband.
	And if you did not love and trust your husband, Then you would feel, okay, what's my plan B?
	I mean, maybe he'll find some young engineer hottie at work, and then he'll have an affair, and then he'll leave me, and then I'll be stuck here, and I'll have no job skills, and I'll go, ah, starvation!
	I'll have to eat my child!
	You know what I mean?
	So the fact that you trust your husband is one of the reasons why you can relax into being a mom.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I doubt he'll find the engineer hottie, Stefan.
	I think that's a bit of a stretch, I'm just saying.
	They have hearty pinups and I don't know if pinups even exist, probably screensavers now, but the point is that you trust your husband to be there for the duration, therefore you can relax into being taken care of so that you can take care of your daughter, right?
	Because the husband creates the biosphere of security which allows the mom to bond with the child.
	And you trust your husband enough and give him authority that he can over time begin to peel you away from your child and give the child a little bit of breathing room to experience risk, hurt themselves and grow that way.
	Because this hyper – you've been one with your daughter so your pain is her pain and you need a little bit of distance from that to some degree so that your kid can grow up without the sort of bubble wrap of maternal fear of disaster all over the place all the time.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	That's natural.
	I'm like, yeah, go up one step and try another jump, and my wife's like, no.
	So she sees, you know, at the top of one of those Aztec ruins, jumping from that, and So, but the fact is that the women who say, I have to go back to work are saying, I don't trust my husband because he could divorce me or I could divorce him.
	I'm going to need job skills.
	I'm going to need a resume because otherwise I'm totally dependent.
	And it somehow has become unfeminine to depend on your husband.
	And all that tells me is that the women are choosing the wrong guys.
	Yes, that's so true.
	And you know, that's funny you say that too, because, um, some of the stay at home mothers I know, not all of them, but say, Well, you know, if this doesn't work out, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, whole red flag.
	You have a child.
	You're going to make it work now.
	I just, it, it, it blows my mind that there's always that escape hatch in the back of their brains.
	Oh, you like they're saying, well, you know, if my marriage doesn't work.
	Right, right.
	Oh my God.
	You know, and I'm just like, ah, don't say those.
	No.
	And what they're, you know, let me give, let me give you that translation.
	If you don't mind me, you don't mind me saying so.
	When they say, if it doesn't work out, it's like, well, I don't really want to stop being a bitch.
	So if it turns out that me still being a bitch threatens my marriage, well, I'll never have to stop because I'll have some backup.
	It's like, because to me, the idea of, and I'm sure this is your experience too, there's no, I wonder if it's going to work out.
	That's so passive.
	Make it work out.
	Deal with your problems.
	Keep your communication lines open.
	Fight fair.
	Fight reasonably.
	Don't yell.
	Don't insult.
	Don't call names.
	Don't do stupid, immature tantrum stuff.
	It's not like, well, I cross my fingers and hope it works out.
	It's like, yeah, you can cross your fingers and hope you don't get sick or you can just eat well and exercise and that's going to raise your odds, right?
	I mean, so this idea like, I hope it works out, that's so passive and that means that they're not willing to commit to the kind of behavior that's going to give them a virtual certainty of it working out.
	Yes, that's so true.
	Yeah.
	I just want to like, I feel most protective, especially like my brain has completely changed from being a mother.
	It's just I'm so protective, not only for my daughter, but other kids.
	And I just want to be like, ah, what are you doing?
	Stop it.
	Like smack him.
	Like, no, this is a child.
	You can't think like that anymore.
	You know, I mean, our generation, you know, I'm 27.
	And a lot of us, you know, I mean, you and your husband's right, because I'm not.
	Yeah.
	Well, yes, excuse me.
	It was nice of you to include me even potentially in that, but it's not going to happen.
	Go ahead.
	But you know, we've come from broken homes.
	My parents have been married for almost 30 years, so I can't speak for that.
	But the damage has been done of this escapism for divorce, you know, using it as an option.
	And it can't be when you have a child.
	And I, and I've seen at least our circle of friends, um, strong marriages, but our parents, that generation of just, you know, flippant divorce and remarriage is just, it's done its damage.
	And I think that's reflective in, um, you know, the modern day feminism of the, you know, this, the working mother, you know, I think that's kind of, it's, there's a correlation there of just having divorce as an option.
	And it can't be an option.
	No, no, no, it can't be.
	And just think how much better choices people would make about their marriage partners if divorce was not an option.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There was a good wife that was on the other night where the woman's son came home with some guy, some woman she wanted to marry, he wanted to marry.
	And the woman was basically saying, well, you know, we'll We'll go to France.
	We'll get married.
	And you know, if it doesn't work out, we'll get divorced.
	You know, he said, my, my parents were together and then they were divorced.
	They're still friends.
	You know, the woman was like, well, why, why get married at all?
	Then if this is yours, there's no commitment or whatever.
	The woman was like, taxes.
	Yeah.
	And that, that sense of like, let's sexuality and, and marriage have basically become selfish commodities for personal pleasure.
	Rather than what they're designed for, which is to create a productive and positive and healthy and helpful environment to raise children in.
	Sexuality is around children, right?
	I mean, you have a different relationship, I dare say, to your vagina now that life has come out of it, because now you realize, okay, that's what it's for, you know?
	That's what it's for.
	It's not just for fun and recreation, although there's part of it, but it really is for the creation of life.
	Marriage is around creating an enclosure, a mode, a biosphere, which is the best place for raising children and sexuality is what produces children and maintains the bond between the parents and that's all fantastic.
	But sexuality has just become this personal toy.
	You know, like morphine is supposed to be for an operation, not just for a fun Saturday night.
	Yes.
	But you know, going back to the taxes, that's interesting you say that too, because in the military a lot of people get married just so they can get a higher, we call it a BAH, but a higher allowance from the government to live In a larger house or they get more money for, you know, if they have a family, you get more money.
	And that kind of goes along with that too is, you know, why there's so much dysfunction in military because military spouses, I mean, there's a, let's say 60, maybe higher, maybe I'm lowballing it here, but there's 60% chance of divorce, the divorce rate in the military.
	And I think that's what, what you were saying is that, you know, people get married for money.
	Yeah, I mean the military claims to bring stability to the Middle East, how about you just bring stability to your own marriages and then maybe we'll believe you've got something to say about the Middle East.
	Yes, yes.
	So, as far as trying to change other people's minds, you know, the challenge is, and there is something about female nature, not to be overly collectivist, but there is something about female nature that is somewhat conflict avoidant, particularly female to female.
	And like I was just reading the other day, about how genetic counselors, right?
	I mean, if there's risks of genetic problems, they do testing of the genes of the husband and the wife of the mother and the father, and then they give them all this information.
	Now 95% of the time, if It turns out through genetic testing that the father is not actually the father of the child he thinks is the father of the child.
	95% of the time the genetic counselor will not tell the father, even though that genetic counselor clearly knows that the father is not actually the father of the child he thinks is his child.
	95% of the time the genetic counselor will not tell the husband.
	Now, Steph, just to put on your guessing cap, what percentage Of genetic counselors, do you think, are women?
	Oh, probably.
	85%?
	Actually, interestingly enough, it's 95%.
	It's the exact same number as the number of genetic counselors who will not tell the husband.
	Now, I don't know if they've done that study, but I'm guessing that the 5% who are men are probably a little bit more keen, or at least willing, to tell the supposed father that he's not actually the father of his child.
	Now, there are sometimes When doctors do have to tell the father, but mostly that's like if this can sometimes happen in families where they have a kid, they supposedly have a kid, and then they're really having trouble having a second child.
	So they both go in for their testing, right?
	And the woman's fine, but it turns out the man is completely sterile.
	At which point he says, Well, I don't think I used to be because I have a child and they're like, uh, no, you're totally sterile.
	You got no tadpoles in the pool.
	Nothing's getting past the goalie cause there's no puck on the ice.
	So go have a conversation with your wife and then they find out that, oh yeah, the aerobics instructor from Malibu three years ago, whatever.
	Right.
	This sort of female in-group preference where the vast majority of genetic counselors are women and the vast majority exactly the same percentage of genetic counselors don't tell a man if he's not the father because that creates trouble for the wife, right?
	It's female in-group preference.
	This female in-group preference is something that's a great challenge for you because how is it possible for you to assert the value of your choices without either explicitly or implicitly Are you kind of casting some aspersions on the choices of other women?
	Oh, and I have already, Stefan.
	I already have.
	And that's when I get the, well, it's not that black and white and, well, I have ambition.
	And I stand there like, okay, good.
	I think you got my point.
	I don't think I need to go any further because you're just trying to convince yourself now.
	So you let it go at that point, right?
	Yeah, I do.
	And you have them call in to me?
	Because I don't have female preference and I'm happily married, so I don't want to have sex with any of them.
	And I'm also not a woman, so I could be pretty blunt.
	If you want to have them call into me, I'd be thrilled, because I wouldn't let it go with that.
	And I certainly wouldn't let it go with the passive aggression of, well, I have ambition, you sloth of nothingness.
	Right?
	I mean, that's just... That would be something that would get my candor going.
	My emotional side too kicks in and I think, oh, you know, I'm a woman.
	I get emotional and I think, well, am I not ambitious?
	And then I have to say, no, stop.
	You have done more in your life in 27 years than they'll probably ever do in their lifetime.
	So I just need to put the brakes on that and look at it in a different light.
	But you know, it's hard.
	It's hard.
	I'm not going to lie.
	And it's hard to be criticized too.
	And maybe I just need to put my big girl pants on and be a little abrupt, but it's, it's, it's very hard, you know, particularly, you know, if you have, I don't need to tell you this.
	I mean, you're in an army environment, so you're in a kind of a biosphere and you know, you're, you, you want other kids around, you want other parents around.
	So it's, uh, it's pretty tricky, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	So no, I wouldn't say it's just like a big girl.
	I mean, it's, it's, it's a big, it's a big deal.
	Trust me, I've had a little bit of experience criticizing parents can be a tad volatile at times.
	And so, no, I mean, it is a big deal.
	You can, of course, let, you know, just send them links to my stuff or whatever.
	Or, you know, we'll put this in the link below this video and in the notes for the podcast.
	Well, no, I spread the word because like I said, I mean, you've changed our lives and you have made a difference.
	And I would hope that if you're going to have a kid, you're going to make informed decisions.
	And so my husband and I both, you know, we share your videos and try to spread the word of peaceful parenting as well, because that's something else entirely as well.
	So, Well, and so yeah, you could just mention to them that kids who spend more than 20 hours a week away from their moms experience exactly the same symptoms as maternal abandonment.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So this is just a basic fact.
	So basically, if you put your kid into daycare or into other care for 20 or more hours a week, You might as well have just been gored by a bull and expired in a ditch as far as your kid goes.
	Like, I mean, you might as well just have been beamed up by space aliens and currently be going through some sort of proctology exam because that's what the baby experiences.
	40% of infants in the United States, quote, live in fear or distrust of their parents.
	And that translates into aggressiveness, defiance, and hyperactivity as they grow into adults.
	You are planting, like the early years and your choices as a parent, That is where you are planting your seeds.
	Now, I don't know if you do any gardening but, you know, not too much sunlight and maybe a little bit of shade for half the day and be sure to water this.
	It's complex, right?
	You don't plant the stuff that needs sunlight in the shade and you don't plant the mushrooms in direct sunlight.
	I'd prefer if you used the analogy of cooking because I can't grow anything.
	You have a daughter, don't you?
	I do, I do, yes.
	So you can grow one thing!
	That's important.
	Okay, yeah, but the difference is, yeah, okay, so cooking, right?
	I mean, it all matters what you put in at the beginning.
	Right.
	You know, if you put a pound of cayenne pepper into your soup at the beginning, I don't care what you add afterwards, you can reveal that I'm pretty white and do not have that Arabic spice affinity.
	So, it matters where you plant.
	And there's no amount of nurturing that makes a plant flourish if it's planted in the wrong place.
	Right.
	And you can't do it after the fact.
	You can't just go back and do it later.
	And the other thing you can do is, you know, pull the D card.
	Pull the death card.
	Because the death card really gets people's attention.
	Like I was watching the story of your enslavement, my sort of biggest video, and it starts off with, You know, and it's like, okay, now that you have my attention, the mortality thing.
	And it's, it's confrontational, but it can be, it's not hostile confrontational.
	It's just like wet fish across the dissociated face of compliance confrontational.
	You just say to people, look, someday you're going to be on your deathbed.
	We're all going to be there.
	And that machine is going to be beeping and everyone's going to be gathering.
	And they're going to be fighting back tears because they don't want to scare you.
	But you know, you know, you know that that guy with the hooded face and the gardening implement that cuts down human lives
	is on his rollerblades sliding down that linoleum hallway in the hospital and he's getting closer and they can close that door but he's gonna come right through and they can throw themselves in front of you and say no death don't take him don't take her and he's just gonna be like excuse me pardon me coming through and here he comes through and then he flops himself on top of you and plants that deep smoky worm filled tongue kiss for eternity and you are
	Get out of there!
	You have left the building and you are no more and you fall into mere memories and oddly eerily accurate video that lasts for all time unlike all the photos from my youth and my parents' youth.
	You are gone.
	You are literally history.
	You are no more.
	You are nothing but a footprint.
	The boot is gone.
	The foot is gone.
	Everything is gone.
	And you may be recorded but you ain't adding to any new recordings.
	And you may be on videos but you'll never be in a new one.
	And you are gone, fading, and it's like a bright light, you close your eyes, you'll see that afterimage for a little bit, and people will remember you for a tiny amount of time, or maybe a long amount of time, but at some point they'll forget you and they'll go days without even thinking about you.
	And then the next generation, who maybe only met you a couple of times and wondered why you gave them such minty-tasting bad candy when you could have had a perfectly good Kinder Egg in the bowl, they won't even know you at all, they won't remember you at all, you are gone!
	You are like an echo four days ago in the Grand Canyon, you're not even moving.
	A single stone, back and forth, you are gone, done, over, flipped!
	Now, when you are in that deathbed and you hear the rollerblades of death coming down that linoleum, and he skates around that little mop bucket that always seems to be going somewhere in a hospital, a lot of blood and mucus and vomit to mop up and all that kind of stuff, when you hear that rollerblade of death coming down, and you look at your kids, if they're even there, are you going to sit there and say,
	Well, Death, you can take me now because I'm really, really glad I spent the infancy of my children getting that real estate certification that I never really got around to using.
	Yeah, yes.
	So true.
	I can't imagine.
	I can't imagine that.
	No, it is the connections that we make that takes the sting of death.
	out of our hearts.
	It is the lives that we grow, it is the creations that we pass forward and there is no creation more than children.
	Because without human beings nothing gets created.
	And so it is the connections that we make that make life worthwhile and death bearable.
	And there is going to be, I'll tell you this, You probably don't know quite as many, but I certainly know there is a huge glut of childless people on this planet, especially in the West.
	And those people, as they get older and as they get frailer, my God, my God, I mean, already huge proportions of American women over 40 are on antidepressants, and I bet you a lot of those are childless.
	You know, when the baby rabies hits, You know, it's been described as you gotta pee all the time, you're hungry all the time, you want a baby so much.
	And if you miss that window, you miss that turnoff.
	For women, it's certainly true for men as well.
	You're, you know, as they say, women age like milk, men age like wine.
	Well, not quite true because male sperm gets less healthy as you, you know, you can't keep them on deck just a little bit too long.
	You know, if you miss that window for women into early 40s, you still got another 40 years to go.
	You're only halfway through and you get older and you know, your, your friends are going to die.
	First of all, if you're the, if you're the person without kids and your friends have kids, sorry, big fork in the road.
	I've been there.
	I've been there.
	You know what it's like.
	I mean, what the hell?
	Let's go clubbing.
	No.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm exhausted.
	I'm leaky.
	I'm tired.
	And my baby's going to need me in about eight minutes anyway, if not now.
	Yes.
	Right?
	So you know, you know, fork in the road.
	And it's not even, it's a T. It's not even a fork.
	Like a fork, just gradually you get T, you know, like either getting to get involved in me being a parent or we're not going to have anything really to talk about.
	Right, right.
	And so the if you if you don't have kids and your friends have kids, you won't have those friends much when you get older.
	Because your lives have just gone through.
	And you know, a kid takes over your whole brain.
	Yeah, I remember what I get before I could think about all these other things.
	You know, and it's what I think Daniel Crittentons, the woman I met, she said this.
	If you have kids like it's like a dimmer switch that doesn't go off.
	Like you can turn it down, but you can't turn it off.
	Like there's never a time where I forget that I'm a parent.
	There's never a time when I don't at some level wonder or think or you know if my daughter's not around.
	It's never and so you just don't have as much to say to people who aren't going through that experience and then you know you've got to get your kids into college.
	It's not like it ends when they're 18 and you know then you got to help them with their careers and then maybe they have kids and you got to help plan the wedding and you got a grand like it's just your lives completely diverge when you have kids and when you don't.
	So all the people who don't have kids Well, maybe they're all hanging around with each other.
	I don't know.
	A lot of the friends that I know got kind of lonely as I'm sort of pushing 50 this year.
	They get kind of lonely because they don't have, maybe they got a family or maybe they got a wife, but they certainly don't have any kids.
	And they're not that much in contact with the people who did have kids because your lives just get completely different.
	I'm going to Japan.
	I'm now only going to speak Japanese, but I'm sure our friendship will be fine.
	I mean, no, it's like you're going to a different planet when you become a parent and then they're going to get older and older.
	And what?
	They've got no renewal.
	They've got no people coming into their lives.
	The great thing about having a family is you've got to convey a belt of new people coming into your life all the time.
	And when you're 70, how many people go out and say, Hey, I think I'm going to get me some new friends.
	It's like, I mean, that's just not what happens.
	It's like taking up smoking when you're 80.
	It doesn't happen.
	So I think there's going to just a lot of people.
	Who have a long way to go on that conveyor belt.
	No new people coming into their lives.
	No renewal.
	And nobody cares about them anymore.
	Because their parents are dead.
	Their aunts and uncles are dead.
	Maybe they got some brothers and sisters.
	But we all know how those people tend to spread out over time.
	And what's going to happen?
	Well, they're going to be really bitter and really lonely.
	And they're going to look back way too late to fix anything.
	And the only thing I can say is that invest in cat futures.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And they are bitter.
	And especially, like, I have an older sister and she doesn't have children yet.
	And, you know, there is that little bit of that attention, that tension of, oh, well, what do you like to do for fun?
	I like to sleep.
	What do you like to do for fun?
	You know?
	A sponge bath.
	A sponge bath while I'm cooking.
	You know, and yeah, that's absolutely true.
	Cause there's, there's that disconnect.
	We're not as close as what we used to be because I've got a baby and you know, my, my release is my one hour a day when I go to the gym and I, you know, work out and that's not fun, but it is fun because I have time and you know, she likes to go golfing and it's, it's difficult, but I think she's feeling that, that clock tick, you know?
	So.
	Do you ever, let me ask you this, and I don't, I don't want to obviously tell you your experience.
	This is a completely open ended question, but my experience, Steph, has been that, and you know, people are going to hate me for this, but you know, hey, add it to the list.
	What do I care anymore?
	Right.
	But, um, when you have kids, you know, this has been one of the things that people are always talking about being selfless, bad objectivist.
	But, you know, there's a reason why there were no kids in Ayn Rand novels, right?
	And the reality is that when you have kids, you simply can't be selfish.
	Yes.
	You can't.
	I mean, you wouldn't be doing this thing if you had a plant that needed this kind of care and attention, right?
	So you simply have to find a way to get pleasure and satisfaction without pursuing your own immediate preferences in the moment.
	Yes.
	Right?
	I mean, you've got to get a big, long, Interstellar view of your life.
	Because, you know, when I was single, before I got married, I'd wake up in the morning and say, hey, what's going to be fun for me today?
	And, you know, it wasn't watching The Wiggles and playing Jenga for four hours straight.
	I mean, that wasn't my list of things to do, right?
	Right.
	Hey, you know what would be excellent?
	If a midget came and crapped all over my carpet and I could clean it up.
	Boy, that would be great.
	Who wants to go whitewater rafting?
	No, no.
	Can I just have someone pee on my arm?
	That'd be excellent.
	You know, like that's some kinky shit going right there, right?
	So when you become a parent, it's like, Bye bye immediate personal preferences for a long time.
	A long time.
	I say to my daughter, you know, like when I've asked her to do things that she doesn't necessarily want, hey, I got to go to a computer store, I got to pick up something for the show or whatever, right?
	Ah, do we have to?
	And I'm like, hey, remember the other day when we spent four hours at Playdium, you know, it's loud for daddy.
	Some of the games have very small fonts.
	Uh, you know, and it's like, you gotta back things back and forth a bit.
	But let me as I started, I will actually get to a question.
	I apologize.
	Thanks for you.
	Assuming you haven't nodded off.
	Don't you look at people who are who don't have kids?
	At least still look at your sister, right?
	The divide is not just the time and the experience.
	But it's a smaller, more selfish life.
	And that's what I find it harder to relate to.
	I can relate to people on an intellectual level and that's all fine.
	But fundamentally, and maybe it doesn't even have to do with kids particularly, because if you're interested in serving a bigger cause.
	Like a bigger cause than yourself.
	Now kids are the, you know, ant sperm and egg.
	Look, you've just cooked yourself a giant cake called a 20 year bigger cause than yourself.
	You know, I've been conscripted into the cult of parenthood and that's going to be my life for the next 20 years.
	So maybe it's people who have a bigger vision than themselves.
	Someone willing to sacrifice immediate pleasures to achieve something bigger than themselves.
	But there is a small relatively inconsequential momentary selfishness of the day as it goes that occurs for people without kids or causes that just is not part of your life as a parent like you don't wake up and say what's going to make me the happiest today you have to find some way that caring for your child is what makes you happy even though in the absence of the child you would never have done those things right really right you might then
	And so with you and your sister, and this is the same with me and some of the people who I knew before I became a parent and afterwards, their concerns, their, you know, how was your little day at your little job?
	Like, just sorry, it's like, they still strike me as, I don't know, it just seems kind of small and selfish, if that makes any sense.
	Trivial.
	And yeah, that's the better word.
	Yeah, conversations aren't Um, you know, you have pleasantries, especially with my sister, there's pleasantries.
	You know, how's, how are you?
	Good weather.
	But then it's, you know, all I can talk about is my daughter and I'm, I'm happy to talk about that.
	But to you, it seems as though that's all I have.
	But to me, it's my world and vice versa.
	I don't, I mean, cool.
	You went golfing.
	Cool.
	You went on a horseback riding.
	I don't, that's great for you, but in my mind, What I'm doing is so much more and it's hard to, it's hard to communicate that back and forth.
	Yeah.
	You made power.
	I'm making a life.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's a little tough to, um, and, and the concerns, you know, Hey, yay.
	My daughter's still alive.
	You know, like that's, you know, that's like, you're still breathing.
	Strike one for good parenting.
	And other people are like, you know, I'm really bummed that, you know, my, my car is making a ticking sound, whatever, you know, like, I mean, it's, I don't know, it sounds, it is annoying for other people who aren't parents, but the view from people who have courses or, or, you know, parenting being the easiest and most compelling in a way course that's bigger than yourself.
	You know, maybe this is the disconnect I have with atheists.
	We got an atheist coming in, maybe a lot of, because the fact that atheists, a lot of them don't have kids and as agnostics in particular, maybe they just, it's just a different view.
	You do, you just have a different view when you have a cause or a kid.
	Yes, very true.
	So, um, try and convince her to have a kid.
	Especially if you've got the peaceful parenting fire hose going that way.
	I am trying, yes.
	Tell her to stop pulling her dick for entertainment.
	Sorry?
	I gotta convince her.
	You know, we're redheads, so we need to repopulate, right?
	We're going down fast, so.
	That's right, redheads.
	Two commandments.
	Number one, creed.
	Number two, stay away from the sun.
	Yes, yes.
	That's so true.
	The only vampires that can actually reproduce.
	30 SPF isn't anything until you've got like 50 or 60, then you're in the game.
	I just use a suit of medieval armor at the moment, and I still get a sunburn, but anyway.
	All right, gonna move on to the next caller.
	First of all, a real, real joy and pleasure to chat.
	I hugely appreciate the call.
	I hope it was helpful and not too rambly on my part.
	Actually, I don't, because there's no hope for that.
	But I really, really appreciate the call.
	Well, thank you.
	And I just want to say again, thank you for your information that you put out there and it does work!
	It does work and you do impact people.
	So, thank you.
	So, thank you so much and hopefully you'll keep us posted about how things are going?
	Absolutely.
	Alright, hope we can talk again.
	Thanks, Emile.

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