← Habits and Hustle
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle.
- [00:04]
B
Crush it. Today on this podcast, we have Erica Komisar, who is really a leading expert parent psychoanalyst, a leading parent expert, a social worker. You're actually still a practicing. You're still a practicing therapist, which is what I love about you, is because you actually have, like, data that's in real time. You're not just speaking in theory, which is why I really. I was really looking forward to this conversation. So thank you so much for being on Habits and Hustle.
- [00:42]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [00:44]
B
Absolutely. Let's start with just overall. Can you kind of just give us what, like you've been in practice for over 30 years? What. How would you describe what your intention, your goal is, your mission, so to speak?
- [00:59]
A
Well, I mean, I. I've been in practice now, actually. Let me think about it. 30, probably 38 years. Long time. And. And I would say that when I started as a young therapist, even before I was a psychoanalyst, I was a social worker, and I worked in a clinic before I got my psychoanalytic training. And in that clinic, I was treating a lot of children and foster families and a lot of alternative family structures, grandmothers raising children, but also parents. And I was finding that there were sort of. They were lacking in certain basic parenting skills. And so I started designing and presenting these parenting workshops in the clinic. And I loved doing it, and it helped a lot in the treatment of the families. And so when I left the clinic, I started doing them, you know, in big companies and banks and law firms and whatever. And then it sort of led to me doing more parent guidance in my practice. But really what happened is I was seeing. The reason I write about the things that I do is I was seeing this uptick in mental illness in children and adolescents in my practice. And children were being diagnosed and medicated at a younger and younger age. And I was really concerned. And I started looking at all the research, the neuroscience research and epigenetics research and attachment research. And, you know, the conclusion that I came to in my practice seemed to align with the research. And that's when I started writing about it and writing books about it, which was that that we had changed our societal structure around parenting, around mothering, and it had a very negative impact on children. When we deprioritized caring for our own children, when we deprioritized mothering, we, in changing that necessary structure that children needed, that nurturing, that essential nurturing, we were impacting their mental Health in a negative way. And so that's really. So you would say for the last, you know, 30 years, I've been trying to help parents understand how vital they are to their children's mental health. That children are not like self cleaning ovens. They don't raise themselves. You can't just put them in daycare or give them to a nanny or you know, or leave them for 8 to 10 hours a day while you're working and expect them to grow up in a healthy manner. They require a tremendous amount of your emotional and physical, physical presence if you want them to be mentally healthy. And that's not something we've been telling parents. Just the opposite. We've been telling parents falsely, the false narrative that, ah, your kids will be fine, you can do anything you want, you can do what's good for you as a grownup and leave them, and leave them with anybody and any old caregiver will do. And that's had a very negative impact on children.
- [04:01]
B
So there's so much there that I wanted to ask you about, right, because you, you have a whole, there's, so there's a whole theory here, right, Because I, I'm a working parent. You're a working parent and you talk a lot about quality versus quantity, right? And I think a lot of that is that parents, when they feel guilty, right, they justify their, their career by saying, well, as long as when I am with my child, I am present. So therefore the quantity doesn't matter, the quality of the time matters. And you are, you basically say that's absolutely not true. Correct?
- [04:45]
A
Yeah, unfortunately. So they both matter. I mean that, that's, that is the ruse is that it's, I think this idea of quality time became a justification for leaving children for long periods of time. And the truth is that you need to be there both physically and emotionally to help children to learn things like emotional regulation or secure attachment or you know, just how to regulate not only how to regulate emotions, but how to manage stress. All of that is a, is a constant. It's a moment to moment process. Meaning children can't be taught to regulate their emotions by being with them for an hour and a half a day and teaching them how to regulate. They're struggling with their emotional regulation throughout the day from moment to moment, right? So every time a child is in distress, it's a mother helping to soothe that child that actually regulates that child's emotions. And it's only after three years that a child can even begin to internalize the ability to be able to regulate their own emotions. And so. Right. The myth is that you can just pop in on your own time and sort of help them to regulate emotions. And they. It should stick, you know, And. And it's just. It's. It. It's not true.
- [06:14]
B
It's.
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A
It's a false narrative.
- [06:16]
B
It's a false narrative. It's a. So that's it. So I guess I've heard you say this also is kind of an inconvenient truth, right? Because we. We don't want to admit that sometimes. But let me ask you something on that same token. Right? So number one, actually, before I do, what age are you talking about? Like, is there, like, a particular age? Between what and what is it necessary to have the quantity and the quality for. For a mom?
- [06:44]
A
Well, the. The two critical periods of brain development. The most important is zero to three. Zero to three is what we call the first critical period of right brain development or social emotional brain development. So by you're born with about 25% of your right brain developed. Your right brain, which is responsible for. Well, everything, is responsible for emotional regulation. It's responsible for the ability to manage stress. It's responsible for executive functioning. It's responsible for pretty much everything. Everybody to read, social cues, you know. So you're born with about 25%. You know, if all goes well, between the birth and the age of three, you. You get to about 80 to 85% of right brain development, but only if the environment is right. Only if the environment provides you with safety and security and emotional regulation and physical and emotional presence of a primary attachment figure, Then you get to about 80 to 85%. Between 3 and about 9 or 10, you get to. Well, you get to quite a bit of full right brain development. Even more full right brain development. What happens then is you have a pruning process in adolescence. So think of like growing a garden, right? So you. You grow a garden, and it overgrows, and it's just as important. The planting is important, but it's just as important to prune the garden. And so what happens in adolescence, which is the second critical period of brain development, is the garden is pruned, and that pruning of the excess cells that you no longer need is just as important to right brain development. So you have these two critical periods, which is 0 to 3 and 9 to 25. Adolescence is 9 to 25. We call it the second critical period. So I have two books. One is on the first critical period of brain development. The other's on the Second critical. And so the reason I wrote two separate books is because if I had written one book, it would have overwhelmed parents. And also parents who are dealing with infants and toddlers, they're not thinking about adolescents, and parents who are raising adolescents are not thinking about infants and toddlers.
- [09:10]
B
Right, that's so true.
- [09:12]
A
Yeah. So the truth is that you really need to be there critically from zero to three, but you also need to be there throughout your children's childhood because they are learning and reinforcing regulation of emotions throughout childhood. So, you know, it's not as if three happens and then you like can go back to work 12 hours a day, bye, bye, and see them for an hour. No, it doesn't work like that. But if you're asking me what are the critical periods? Those are the two critical periods. So then people say, well, what happens between three and nine or 10? And the point is that that's also really important. But it's not as. We don't call it as vulnerable or critical a period because the brain is not as. There's a lot of plasticity in these two critical periods. But you have to be there really until Your child is 18. You have 18 years to really make a difference. That doesn't mean you can't work. It doesn't mean you have to like sit there and stare at them all day. But you have to be there to help to regulate their emotions and be as emotionally and physically present. Because what they're experiencing from moment to moment in their lives, even when they go to school, what they're experiencing socially, academically, experientially, physically, when they get to even early adolescence, they need help processing it. So again, we moved from a place where we realized that children were vulnerable to a place where we started treating children like they were not vulnerable and like they were self cleaning ovens.
- [10:52]
B
That's. You said, did you say 9 to 25?
- [10:56]
A
That's adolescence. Yeah. So we say that the prefrontal cortex or the, the part of the brain that is responsible for things like emotional regulation, management of stress, executive functioning, that all kind of finishes in development around 25. Really? Even a little later in boys. It's a little later in boys, but yeah.
- [11:22]
B
So that's really interesting in the sense that, you know, you're right. I think that you're. Because you talk about this a lot about women, career, working. I mean, that's a massive amount of time. That's, that's literally 25 years. Then you're. And so when you say to people, you can have it all, but not all at the same time. Your, your use is basically 25 years. It's not going to be you either do you're actually, are you asking women to either choose to be a mother or to have a career? Is that more or less your point?
- [11:59]
A
The truth is, in our culture, children leave home at around 18.
- [12:04]
B
Yeah.
- [12:05]
A
So by 18 and by 18, when your child is no longer living with you, you have less influence over them. And so you really have about 18 years. Now. Does that mean you can't work in those 18 years? Of course you can work, but it's how you work. It's the kind of work you choose. It's the intensity and degree of the work. If the work is being prioritized over your children in those first 18 years, then your children, something has to give, something will be sacrificed. And in the end, it's not about working or not working. Even though people misinterpret my book that way. It's about prioritization. And so can you be a CEO when your children are 0 to 3? Sure you can, but who's going to get sacrificed? Is it going to be your company or your child? Because being a CEO requires you to be fully in, right? So it's really the kind of work you choose and the intensity with which you choose to do it. But it's not working and not work. It's not working or not working.
- [13:21]
B
What are the careers that you think work best for mothers while they have kids then?
- [13:27]
A
Ones that allow them to prioritize their family over their work and to work part time. Because I think that any mother would recognize that raising a child is a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 365 day a year job. So then what do you say? Yeah, it's not, it's more than full time job. So you have a more than full time job, more than full time already and you take on another more than full time job. Now you have possibly three full time jobs. And so like, so if you think of it this way, way that sure, you can work, but it. So the way here's the paradigm is either your children have to fit into your work or your work has to fit into raising children.
- [14:18]
B
Right? And so what have you seen? Because I want to talk to you about guilt, right? Because I think guilt's a real thing. What have you seen? Because like what I was saying earlier is you actually still practice over a very big span of time, 38 years, you were saying, have you actually, do you have concrete evidence that you can point to that shows that mothers who work more demanding jobs or more hours than, let's say, a part time job, how does that show in their children later on?
- [14:52]
A
There's research, there's quantitative research that shows that children who are put into daycare for long hours suffer a lot from mental health issues. And there is some research that was done by a researcher years ago who, when he wrote articles and tried to write about it, was literally chased out of this country. He literally went to Europe because he said it was so hard to do that research because there was such pressure on him. But I think the point is I also use my practice in addition to the neuroscience research that shows that, you know, the absence of a primary attachment figure in a child's life impacts their neurological development. But I also use my practice as a way to, and in my books I do as well to show how when I see parents for parent guidance and they come in and they talk about their children's issues, and I help them to understand that they have to be there physically and emotionally, it can literally turn many of the stories around very quickly. Like shockingly quickly. Meaning children's behaviors and the beginnings of mental health issues can be turned around very quickly when parents change their. The way they think about children and how many hours they spend with children and the amount of emotional and physical presence they give to their children. So, you know, it was after, gosh, I didn't write being there till I was in my, until I was in my late 40s, early 50s. So I had been practicing a long time and had gathered a lot of clinical evidence to show that these theories were in fact true in a clinical sense.
- [16:46]
B
So what do you see, though? Give me some examples of what you would see.
- [16:51]
A
So children have ways of signaling their parents that they're, that they're not getting what they need from their parents. You know, the way I would describe it is that babies first complain. They kind of what I call kfetch. They kind of, you know. Yeah, and you don't have to run to pick them up when they fetch. But then they, if they don't get picked up, they, they start to cry. And if they still don't get picked up, they, they cry louder. If they still don't get picked up, they start to scream and get enraged. And then if they still don't get picked up, they go silent. So what we're seeing in kids is kids are going, when they're not getting emotionally and physically a feeling of security and safety, because remember, babies are born incredibly physically, emotionally, and mentally, neurologically fragile. You know, really fragile. And the fact that parents can't look at a baby and see fragility that they project onto the baby, that they're not fragile, that they can be given to strangers in a daycare at, you know, six weeks of age, suggests to me that they can't see the fragility of their babies. But babies are born incredibly fragile and incredibly intense. They in need of emotional security and the physical security of their primary attack. So you are their entire universe, and it is you that makes them feel safe and secure. And only after three years can they internalize that safety and security. And so I don't think that's something we teach mothers and fathers. We teach them the opposite, that babies are sort of resilient from birth and you can do anything with them and hand them to anybody and it'll be fine. But that isn't the case. Right. So what we know is that we need to be there physically and emotionally as much as possible in those first three years and throughout their childhood if we want them to be healthy.
- [18:56]
B
Well, right. I was just more asking, not as a baby, but where have you seen, like, when their parents are not. And we say parents, you really focus on the mom, not the father.
- [19:07]
A
So they go into what we call fight or flight mode. So the fight or flight response is our evolutionary response to stress. Right. So when we are under threat, we either become aggressive and fight or we flee. And fleeing for children can be distractibility. It can be attachment disorders where they turn away and dissociate. But what we're seeing in children where their parents are handing them over to other caregivers or putting them in daycare or not spending enough time with them or distracted themselves, what we're seeing in those children is that they're going into fight or flight. They're either developing behavioral problems, becoming more aggressive. And we see this because preschool schools are reporting higher amounts of children who are biting and hitting and throwing chairs. And so they either go into fight or they go into flight. And so ADHD is not a disorder where there's a whole movement to take the D off of and just say it's attentional issues are the flight mode of a stress response to feeling unsafe. So when children feel unsafe, they either fight or they go into flight. And that's what we're seeing. And so when mothers and fathers recognize this and they say, what can we do? And I say, well, one of you has to be there to help them to regulate their emotions, to provide that feeling of Safety to be the touchstone for them from moment to moment again, when they're in distress, to have the skin to skin again to really calm down their nervous system. The fight and the flight modes, you know, if it's not too extreme, the fight and the flight modes come down pretty quickly.
- [21:00]
B
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- [22:40]
A
Yeah.
- [22:41]
B
So what's the, like, what could a father be there? I mean, you're saying definitely not a Nat, or you're saying not a nanny, not a. The caregiver has to be the mom versus the father. How would you distinguish the roles of a mom versus a father?
- [22:58]
A
So mothers and fathers are not sort of fungible. And I think this is where, you know, again, the popular narrative is that men and women are exactly the same and in many ways they're. They're equal. You know, I always say equal, but different is my motto. We're equal in intelligence, we're equal in ambition. There's, you know, men and women can be as ambitious as capable, you know, in work and business and, you know, but when it comes to nurturing, which is a biological, mammalian, biological function, nurture, we've survived for thousands of years as a species because we have the capacity to nurture our young. And we have a system. There's a system. There's an evolutionary system in all mammals. And mothers who carry babies, who give birth to babies, who breastfeed babies, who raise babies, they produce a lot of a hormone, a neurotransmitter, a hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin, which is euphemistically called the love hormone, the bonding hormone. When mothers give birth, breastfeed, nurture, they produce a lot of it and they pass it along to the baby. And then there's this wonderful exchange of this oxytocin between the mother and the baby through a behavior called sensitive empathic nurturing. Mothers are very attuned to babies pain and distress, and they don't turn away from it. If they're healthy, they turn toward it. Fathers, when they nurture, they can produce oxytocin, but it comes from a different part of their brain and it affects their behavior differently. So instead of tuning into the distress, they become very playful and distract away from the distress because fathers play a role that is of helping with the separation process later on. So the play and the playful tactile stimulation that is the response to oxytocin in a father's brain is not the same as the sensitive empathic nurturing that is produced in a mother's brain. And if you ever doubt it, go into a playground and watch. When a baby falls down in the playground, if the mother's healthy, I say, if the mother's healthy, the mother rushes in to say, honey, are you okay? Let me see your knee. Let me kiss it. Let me put it. You know, let's fix the boo boo. Let's get a band aid, you know, let me give you a hug. The father goes, you're okay. Come on, get up, you're fine. Come on, get back on the horse. You know, and there's a reason for that. It doesn't mean the father isn't nurturing, but the father's role was always what we call protective aggression. The father produces a lot of something called vasopressin, which is the protective aggressive hormone which makes fathers very protective against predatorial threat. So while the mothers are down on the ground going, oh, honey, how are you doing? The fathers are looking for predators, right? There was a study that was done in the UK where mothers and fathers lay side by side. And if the baby cried at night, the mothers were very vigilant to the distress of the babies, whereas the Father slept through it almost every time. Whereas if there was a rustling of leaves outside the window, the fathers woke up right away and the mother slipped through.
- [26:35]
B
See, I understand that It's. We're in a different time and you know, you know very much now. There, there is a very, you know, you're a boss. You're a boss like you're. Women are very much equal, if actually not more than men in their careers. Women are making more money than men ever before. This never happened before. Before recently. Right. Women seem to have more successful careers. More men. Men have become very. I don't know if. Is there a. Is it a word to say demasculate or. Women have become more masculine.
- [27:13]
A
Yeah. Emasculated. Why? They're all getting depressed. All the men are depressed. Yeah. They've lost their purpose.
- [27:20]
B
No, but I think, but isn't it also the men, like, I think women have become more masculine.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah.
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B
Men have become more feminine. There's been like a role reversal here.
- [27:30]
A
It's there, yes. Yeah.
- [27:33]
B
And it's become praised for women to be like these boss babes, these boss, you know, these, like badass bosses. And so it's, it's, it's affecting everything. I don't think it's just affecting the, like, the children, because I think a lot of people aren't even having children like they used to. They're having definitely less children. People aren't dating as much. They're not getting as married as much. Like, I think this whole, the whole culture and society has shifted a lot of the gender roles. Have you. Right. Can you. And you talk about this. Can you tell us about how that type of culture, though, has, has affected not just our family, but our overall, like, our procreation, our everything. Our, like, dating.
- [28:21]
A
Well, I mean, I think, as you say, society reflects what's happening now. I think fewer, fewer women and men are wanting to have children. I mean, roles have shifted so much that people don't want to have children at all. I mean, 50%, I think 45% of women don't want to have children at all. And I think that, I suppose you could say maybe it's a societal course. Correct. Maybe it's going to reduce the population. Maybe it's going to. I mean, I, I don't know what it, what it implies long term is that the children that are being born, unless there's a, an adjustment back to some kind of evolutionary correction, you know, our children are suffering from this. We may change society after millennium. We may try to change society and in, in 75 years and change it up quickly. But that doesn't mean that in an evolutionary way our children are going to just, you know, follow along and be healthy. And I think that's what's happening. I think we've tried to, we, we sort of see gender roles as a societal construct. And, and there, you know, there's aspects that are societal constructs, but when it comes to nurturing, it's not a societal construct. It's an evolutionary mammalian construct. So I think it's strange when the whole idea of nurturing is considered to be a societal construct, because it's not. The research shows it's not. It's biological. I mean, there's a biological aspect to, to how we nurture our nurturing behaviors and our nurturing hormones, which makes us very different men and women. And it would take thousands of years to change that. It'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, when you say when 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.
- [30:43]
B
But what happened? Like, you know, you, you say women should work part time. Like I've, I've got two things to that. What happens if you can, like, things are expensive, like, what if they can afford. 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. Does that just automatically, you know, does that automatically make for the child to grow up in it, like with mental health issues?
- [31:10]
A
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. Is, 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? You 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 a 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. Maybe single parents should be living with their parents again or their, you know, extended family. So we're not raising children alone. So we're. So we have more choices. Because what you're saying is people don't have choices.
- [33:10]
B
I don't think more about economically. I'm saying people don't have.
- [33:14]
A
I'm talking economically too. I'm saying that if we are raising children alone, and 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 childcare. And I think that is another myth and another false narrative. And it has gaslighted parents to the extent that we have a lot of children who have suffered a lot from that. The best forms of childcare, when a parent must work first and foremost, would be kinship bonds. 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, 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, so, you know, it's. 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?
- [34:57]
B
Or don't have parents who live near.
- [34:59]
A
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. And 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 in 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, 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 are the losers because our children will suffer, right? So 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, 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.
- [37:08]
B
Right. What is the amount of time that you think is necessary to spend? Like, 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.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah.
- [37:33]
B
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 what should parents be thinking about?
- [37:53]
A
So when they're home, you should be home. So when, when do teenagers get out of school?
- [38:00]
B
Like 3:30 or so.
- [38:02]
A
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. You can do a lot of work in that period of time.
- [38:13]
B
Right, right, right. So you're saying basically when kids are a home, your home. Yep, Right, Yep.
- [38:20]
A
That's ideal. You're asking me what's ideal? That's ideal.
- [38:23]
B
Yeah, that's an ideal situation.
- [38:24]
A
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. And 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.
- [39:11]
B
There'S so many activities. So this is like where it gets a little confusing. Right? Because let's talk about the mental health crisis. Anxiety's up, depression's 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.
- [39:35]
A
So that doesn't mean that social media is good for children, because it's not.
- [39:39]
B
No, it's terrible, of course, but it's.
- [39:42]
A
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 healthily securely attached, who does not have 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. Yeah, there's lots of 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 2 tons over this place bridge, but you drive a 4 ton truck over that bridge, then the bridge is going to collapse. So 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, you know, the bridge isn't going to crash. And 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, the 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.
- [42:08]
B
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.
- [42:25]
A
We're producing more fragile kids, we're producing.
- [42:28]
B
More because we're not available, who are.
- [42:31]
A
More susceptible to adversity.
- [42:33]
B
So what's interesting is what I think I've seen a lot of is more helicoptering parents who are way too overly involved, who helicopter who over schedule.
- [42:45]
A
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.
- [43:04]
B
Right, yeah. Okay, so then the parent. I'm just trying to understand for my audience too. So you're saying that helicoptering and being over scheduling your kids is a problem?
- [43:19]
A
Well, let me just, let me stop before I forget when you say over scheduling, 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.
- [43:35]
B
Okay.
- [43:36]
A
Don't need tons of activities. It's, it's good for children to have interests. It's good for children to extend, experiment. It's good for children to enjoy extracurricular activities, you know, whatever they are. But you know, this idea of over scheduling is avoidance. It's a kind of avoidant behavior in parents who have trouble just allowing children to, to do nothing and also to be with them. To be with them in a way that isn't achievement oriented. Right.
- [44:09]
B
Yeah.
- [44:10]
A
Children don't need as many activities as parents are scheduling for them.
- [44:16]
B
Well, they're doing it because they don't want the kids to be on iPads. Right. Or on their phones.
- [44:22]
A
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. So yeah, helicopter parenting is not present parenting.
- [44:59]
B
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- [47:41]
A
So adolescents need you when they need you, they don't need you all the time. Whereas 0 to 3, they need you all the time.
- [47:49]
B
Right?
- [47:49]
A
0 to 3, 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 doors closed and you go, knock, knock, I'm here, the main show has arrived, 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, 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, it's, 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. Children 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. Kids 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 almost 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.
- [50:52]
B
And do you think that the father needs to be around as much in the adolescent years, or is it still the mother?
- [50:58]
A
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. And so. And then the father becomes very important because the father helps with separation. And particularly the little boys, the father becomes a role model. 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.
- [51:52]
B
What about this whole idea about women and the. And feminism where now there's, like I said, there's more emphasis there's more powerful women than there were before. More working, like, more career driven, to be honest. And, you know, in certain places, I know more successful women than I do men at this, at this juncture. Right? Yeah.
- [52:12]
A
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, 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. So 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 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? There should be more girls than. The girls are smart. Nobody does that. We just call it balancing the classroom. Why does that stop?
- [53:38]
B
I don't know. I want to know from you.
- [53:39]
A
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. So, 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 have 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, to prioritize children over yourself and your career, then I think it's better you don't have children, honestly.
- [54:46]
B
Right.
- [54:46]
A
But I think there is a way to have. Have everything in life. I'm a good example of that. I think I have had everything. I'm 61. I think I've had a lot of. 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.
- [55:04]
B
So go ahead. Yes, tell us.
- [55:06]
A
Yeah, so it's an old test, right, about frustration tolerance and waiting, delayed gratification. Children, 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. So 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 up, as Niha Roosh 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's gone down, you can take on the world. So 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 I know what you're saying. When are the best times to write a book? Probably not when your children are 0 to 3, and probably not when your children. 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.
- [56:57]
B
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 viral, you're more, you know, you know what's going on more as you get older. But I know But I'm saying you're. You're saying it's all a reverse. We should reverse this ideology. Because then also men and women can't, like, they can compete, right? Like, in terms of.
- [57:23]
A
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 start writing books and speaking publicly and whatever. And 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.
- [58:02]
B
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. 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 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. So they're very dominant in their career, but their personal lives have suffered. Their dating life has suffered.
- [58:42]
A
Yeah.
- [58:43]
B
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?
- [58:58]
A
So first I'm going to say it wasn't luck at all in my situation. It was intentional.
- [59:04]
B
Intentional. I know.
- [59:06]
A
No, but it's important because I do a lot of premarital counseling now, which is premarital counseling to ensure the health of children. It'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. One 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.
- [60:47]
B
No, I think that's. I think that's 100% accurate. I think that where I was, like, kind of being. I was kind of kidding around. I think that you got lucky by meeting a good man that is happy. Happy for other people, 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 don't. They're not even trying as hard. Their women have surpassed them. The whole imbalance. Right. That's why we're saying women are. Who are more successful. They don't want to date below them. Their. 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 hap. What ends up happening is they're not dating anybody, and 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.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah. Yeah. No, society is definitely out of balance right now. Yeah, it's out of balance.
- [61:52]
B
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?
- [62:05]
A
Yeah. I mean, again, I think, you know, things like individual therapy and. And couples therapy. I mean, I do. 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. I'm sure maybe You've had her on your show, or you should have her on your show, if you're Suzanne Banker. You know, she writes books about the. 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 that you. They bring out the best in you and you bring out the best in them. Again, I don't. I think that we have pumped up our young women to really feel that they're. They're competitive with men, as opposed to saying, right, this is not a competition. This is, you know, it, 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, and as you say, women not being able to find men and men not being able to embrace women's power. And 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. And I think that's what we should be supporting.
- [64:05]
B
Yeah. Thank you. Listen, this has been a very fascinating and very interesting podcast. So, Erica, thank you so much for being my guest.
- [64:14]
A
Thank you.
- [64:16]
B
Oh, my God. And 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.
- [64:28]
A
Yeah.
- [64:29]
B
Would you please come back and talk about that? Because that sounds like a great topic.
- [64:33]
A
I would love to.
- [64:35]
B
Thank you. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. Everyone. Where do you find. Do you want to just kind of tell people where they can find more.
- [64:41]
A
Information with you at www.comisar.com? it's K O M I S A R dot 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.
- [65:02]
B
Thank you so much, Erica. Thank you.
- [65:05]
A
Bye.
- [65:05]
B
Bye.
- [65:06]
A
Bye, Sam.