The Career Trap That Makes Women Miserable - Suzanne Venker - #1113

Summary

Modern Wisdom Episode #1113:

"The Career Trap That Makes Women Miserable" with Suzanne Venker

Date: June 20, 2026
Host: Chris Williamson
Guest: Suzanne Venker

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the often unspoken tensions in modern women's career, family, and life choices. Suzanne Venker, author and relationship coach, joins Chris Williamson for a deep critique of modern cultural messaging to women around career, motherhood, and fulfillment. The conversation covers how the push for career equality sets many women up for dissatisfaction, the practical and psychological trade-offs of work and family, and what it means to live “counterculturally” as a woman today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. "The Oversight"—Apologizing to Misled Generations

• [00:06] Venker describes dedicating her book with an apology to younger women who were not properly informed about how to structure their lives if they desired marriage and motherhood.
  • “They were taught to put career at the center...what they didn't do was talk about how marriage and motherhood was gonna fit into their lives.”
    (Venker, [00:07])
• The messaging of “you can do anything” without nuance led women to overlook different natural desires or life priorities between men and women.

2. Why Is Discussing These Differences Unpopular?

• [02:12] Venker points to political motivations—equality is misunderstood as sameness; acknowledging different male and female desires is seen as regressive.
• Chris:
  "What it implicitly said was that hunting was important but gathering wasn't." [03:02]

3. The “Bigotry of Male Expectations”

• [03:02] Williamson references how valuing only traditionally male roles (e.g., big game hunting) implicitly devalues traditionally female contributions both historically and today.

4. The Shift from “Just a Mom” to “You MUST Work”

• [04:59] Venker notes how motherhood and at-home parenting used to be denigrated if you wanted more, but now the culture denigrates the opposite:
  "If you do the opposite of that, it's because you're specifically being counterculture or oppressed...You've been conned by the patriarch." [07:45-07:55]

5. Unintended Consequences for Women Hitting Their 30s

• [08:01] Venker details the coaching perspective:
  • Many women reach their early 30s having made all life decisions—education, debt, career—around never leaving the workforce.
  • When priorities shift toward family, they feel “stuck.”
• “I'm sorry, you were set up to fail...because of politics...way back before you were even born.”
  (Venker, [08:01-09:03])

6. Three Major Life Decisions That Lock Women In

[09:14] Timestamps for each:

1. Career/Education Choices

   • Pick something flexible, with options for reduced hours or time out.
   • Plan career to orbit family goals, not the reverse.
   • “Rather than putting career at the center...I want them to do the reverse.” [09:14]

2. Relationship Choices

   • Partner selection: Marry someone financially secure.
   • Polls indicate Americans strongly believe a man should be able to provide, while few feel the same about women. [20:45]
   • Women's economic independence is viewed as positive, but often leads to self-imposed “traps” when maternal desires surface.

3. Financial Decisions

   • Major financial commitments (student debt, home ownership, lifestyle creep) restrict later family flexibility.
   • "If you owe all this money, you're not going to feel like you can have a house...It's not fleshed out the way it needs to be.” [15:49-17:38]

7. Challenges of Giving Early Warnings & “Scare Them Straight” for Life Planning

• [12:03] Most 22-year-olds aren’t ready to think about family, but by 32, they regret not having prepared options.
• Chris's Proposal: Why not create support groups for women at life junctures to share regrets/realities?
  • “Have you considered getting the women who are 32 to do an intervention with the women that are 19 and about to choose their major in college?” [13:26]

8. Cultural Pressures and Countercultural Values

• [15:02] Williamson points out following the mainstream often means following a path to unsatisfying outcomes (divorce, poor health, etc.).
• Venker:
  "My motto is, if the culture says do it, don't, and you will be successful." [14:32]

9. The Career/Family “Trap” in Practice

• Breadwinner Moms and Unintended Resentment
• As the primary provider, many women experience increased stress, resentment, and relationship strain.
• Cultural narrative that working for pay = power/fulfillment is embedded and rarely questioned.

10. Case Studies & Relationship Dynamics

• [36:52] Breadwinner Marriages: Most women become unhappy as primary providers once children arrive; roles are not as interchangeable as advertised.
• Men's Response:
  • Men may “step back” if wives take over traditional provider role.
  • “Men need an incentive to work hard. The greatest incentive of all has always been providing for a family.” [40:37]

11. Motherhood’s Cultural Devaluation

• [43:09] Social status is now assigned to economic output, not familial work, creating pain for women who want to “just be a mom.”
• Williamson:
  “It doesn't generate economic return.” [44:12]

12. Family, Fulfillment, and Regret: What Women Really Want

• Vast majority of Venker's clients realize too late that family life is more important than career.
• Stats:
  • 86% of women eventually have kids; of those childless at menopause, 80% did not intend to be childless. [46:46]
• Instincts for family are powerful and largely unaddressed in modern messaging.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Societal progress does not undo biological leanings…I say move with the biological tide, not against it.”
  (Venker, [47:32])
• "We're so afraid to talk about…what's great about marriage.”
  (Venker, [51:24])
• On early relationship choices:
  “Get it out on the table by the third date—what you value, what your plans are.”
  (Venker, [54:03])
• On sliding vs. deciding:
  • Cohabitation before engagement/marriage increases divorce risk, often because couples slide into big decisions rather than consciously choosing.
  • “You slide into it, because you're already there. The reasons you shack up are different from the reasons you get down on one knee.”
    (Venker, [67:46])
• On daycare:
  • “Daycare is the last place that littles belong. Littles belong at home with their mom…Daycare is the bottom of the bottom.”
    (Venker, [107:30])
• On Social Comparison’s Impact:
  • “Social media has been extremely harmful for people's perception of what's real…if everybody you’re seeing looks like they're saying this and living this way, well, that's the only way to live.”
    (Venker, [88:02])
• The Core Message:
  • “Nothing in your life is going to compare to…the meaning of having a baby and raising that baby and having a family…you have choices. That's where I want you to be back.”
    (Venker, [122:35])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:06] – Suzanne’s apology to younger women
• [02:12] – Why it’s unpopular to warn women of family/career trade-offs
• [09:14] – The three main decisions that lock women in
• [13:26] – The value of intergenerational conversations for women
• [20:45] – Polls about men/women as providers and cultural intuitions
• [36:52] – The difficulties of being a breadwinner mother
• [43:09] – Social stigma and cultural devaluation of stay-at-home moms
• [46:46] – Most childless women at menopause did not intend it
• [54:03] – Dating with purpose
• [67:46] – The “sliding vs. deciding” theory on cohabitation and marriage
• [107:30] – Detailed critique of daycare and early childhood attachment

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Practical Takeaways & Final Thoughts

Actionable Points:

• Young women should actively plan family if that’s at all a desire, instead of defaulting to career-first cultural scripts.
• Choose a flexible, “future-proof” career and avoid debt that will restrict later options.
• Date intentionally, clarify values and vision for family life early in relationships.
• Recognize that maintaining two full-time working parents is not a necessity for all and often leads to greater stress and lower satisfaction, particularly after children arrive.
• Question whether you’re living for social approval/status or true personal values and desires.

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Additional Memorable Moments

• Roleplay Exercise – Chris and Suzanne brainstorm how to have “the talk” on early dates about family and financial plans ([54:03]).
• Cohabitation debate – Sliding vs. deciding, the statistics supporting higher divorce rates in couples who live together pre-marriage, and why “convenience” can be a marital trap ([67:46-68:48]).
• Emma Grede Segment – The “3-hour mom” controversy and discussion on whether quality parenting can be condensed into small timeframes ([26:02]).
• Daycare discussion – Why daycare is culturally normalized despite evidence it undermines child attachment, and what alternatives could exist for working parents ([107:30]).

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Core Thesis and Episode Tone

• Venker’s central thesis: Most women will, in time, value family and children over career, but modern cultural scripts set them up to have fewer choices and more regret when that realization comes. Courage and countercultural planning are needed to avoid these traps.
• Tone: Empathetic, but firmly critical of mainstream feminist and social narratives; compassionate toward the women caught in these dilemmas; practical, not alarmist, with a call for more honest dialogue and planning.

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Further Resources

• Suzanne Venker: suzannevenker.com and on Substack
• Books Mentioned: “How to Build a Better Life,” “The Alpha Female's Guide to Men and Marriage”

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For listeners seeking honest, controversy-embracing discussion of women’s life gridlocks in the 21st century—and how to avoid them—this episode is an essential, challenging listen.

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

You dedicated your book with an apology to a generation of women who've been misled.

[Suzanne Venker]

I did.

[Chris Williamson]

How have they been misled?

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, I was essentially apologizing for the oversight that I believe both my generation, which is Gen X, by the way, I was born in 68, and the generation one up from me, which is the boomers, which I think is more really what I'm talking about. But definitely some Gen X, the oversight that they did not share with their children, their daughters in particular, because I really write mostly for young women, how to go about building a life that essentially includes marriage and motherhood, that the messaging has been for decades now. You can do anything you want to do without any caveats there, with no explanation or nuance. You need to sort of prove yourself in the world in the way men do, because equality is the goal. Men and women are the same. This kind of messaging, and then taught them pretty much to put career at the center of their lives. And what they didn't do was talk about how marriage and motherhood was gonna fit into their lives and into that equation if they're just singularly focused on education and career. So what ends up happening is that they get somewhere around 30, the age of 30, and it is well known that women start to think very differently about their future because they want to start having a family. And they hear that clock ticking and. And their priorities are shifting, and they feel stuck. They feel like all these decisions that they've made up to this point were made with a different plan in mind because nobody wanted to talk about the fact that men and women are different. And so it's okay to construct a different kind of life.

[Chris Williamson]

Why do you think it's unpopular to warn women of that?

[Suzanne Venker]

Because the goal is a political one. It is about men and women being equal, which doesn't mean equal in value, the way I define it. But sameness, basically interchangeability, that, you know, what one can do, the other can do, which, by the way, is often true, but it doesn't take human desire into account. So male and female desire is very, very different. And we don't talk about that because that would highlight how men and women are different. And the goal is for and women to be the same and to have these trajectories that are the same so that everything can be equal in 50, 50 in this sort of utopian version of what life should look like for men and women. And it's just not working. It's been several decades now with this messaging.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I. I had this idea a little while ago, the bigotry of male expectations. So there's an idea called the bigotry of small expectations or of low expectations, which kind of explains some of the white savior complex that college educated white people have around minorities. That we will give you a helping hand, allow us poor people from a minority background, we will help you along. And there's kind of a similar situation, I think, that's happening with the way that women are being spoken to specifically by other women, which is you are only as valuable as you are able to play the role that typically men have done. And you know that in some ways sounds very liberating. So you go, wow, this is independence. It's pushing women to be able to do what they want to do without the constraints that would have held them back previously. And I think that that's true. But what it forgets is that implicitly that denigrates what women have typically done. It makes them second class citizens for doing the things that they used to do. There's a famous study that happened where hunter gatherers from ancestral times were analyzed using modern hunter gatherer societies. And women did a slightly, how would you say, motivated research team analyzed the data and said women did just as much big game hunting as men and maybe even more. And what they were trying to put across was women were able to do the thing that men did. Now they fucked with the data. It turned out that that wasn't really the truth at all. But what it implicitly said was that hunting was important, but gathering wasn't.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

And how is that not misogynistic? Like that's the most misogynistic thing that I can think of from someone that's supposed to be pro women. You're saying the thing that you do or did or your ancestors do or did naturally is not as important. And only if you're able to contort yourself into the shape of a man are you worth something.

[Suzanne Venker]

So in the same way you had women that did not fit the mold, say back in the 50s and 60s, who maybe did want more right from life than being just a wife and mother. Although I use the word just only to make a point, not because I feel that way about it. If they did want more, they felt a little odd. And now you fast forward half a century and it's the complete opposite. It's important for people to understand, which I don't think people in their 20s and 30s do so much. And that is how this all really came to be. Because feminism, the second wave, we're talking about 1970s feminism. When you do a deep dive, you. Which most people aren't going to do, you know, but if you do it,

[Chris Williamson]

that's why you're here.

[Suzanne Venker]

If you do was so depressing to have to go through all that stuff back in the day. You come to realize that the most. The loudest voices that we heard from. Which is just a minority of women. Right. It's not the everyday women. These are very small. A group of women who had some power and clout. And if you study their backgrounds, you find that just about every single one of them had a very dysfunctional story or upbringing or background that caused them to turn away either from men or marriage as a, as an institution. And rather than study their own story and come to terms with what happened to their. Really their mom and dad is what we're about talking, talking about. They extrapolated that story to mean, oh, the whole system screwed up. Oh, marriage is oppressive. Oh, no woman can be happy at home. I mean, they just made these stories and because they had the spotlight and people don't do that research, it sounded plausible because maybe if you're hearing, if you're a woman who kind of back in the day did feel sort of whatever about motherhood, you're going to. That's going to speak to you or

[Chris Williamson]

constrained by the lack of independence and

[Suzanne Venker]

financial freedom, because you are constrained for a while. It's a lot of work and it's a tremendous amount of sacrifice. It's a trade off that obviously I feel is 150% worth it. But we don't live in that world that after so many years of all of that messaging, it's not like feminism. Nobody really talks about it as a thing out in the world anymore. It's more like it's just embedded into the fabric now of society. You don't question or discuss feminism per se. It's just kind of accepted and known. Well, of course, in order for a woman to be equal to a man, she's got to live that same life. You can't be powerful or happy or liberated or empowered if you're not working for pay.

[Chris Williamson]

And if you do that, if you do the opposite of that, it's because you're specifically being counterculture or oppressed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've been conned by the patriarch.

[Suzanne Venker]

There you go. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So basically you're saying modern culture has prepared women for work.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

But not for relationships and family.

[Suzanne Venker]

150%. That's what I'm saying. And so what I'm I'm receiving the women as a coach who are coming in and as I say, they're usually around 30, maybe a little younger, maybe a little older. And all of a sudden their priorities shift dramatically and they desperately want a baby or they want to get married and can't find a man or they are pregnant and they want to stay home and can't because they made all these decisions professionally, relationally, financially to set them up for a life where you are never out of the workforce. And when you do that, you're going to feel stuck. And it's going to be a lot harder to extricate yourself from that once your priorities shift. And that's kind of where I come in when they call me like ah. And sometimes their husbands don't want them to do it. And it's just been this, it's this mess really because of all this messaging and because going back to your initial question about apologizing to them, what I'm basically saying is I'm sorry, you were set up to fail. It's wrong. And you were set up because of politics. And you don't really realize that. Cause this goes way back before you were even born.

[Chris Williamson]

What are the decisions that you think lock women into this future that is difficult to navigate when they grow up?

[Suzanne Venker]

So I think there are three main decisions that women make throughout their twenties that can either set them up well or cause them to struggle more later. The first one is professional. So I've always been a very big proponent of finding and choosing a profession and a major in school. Let's say that works well with the kind of life you want to have down the line. So you have to really think ahead and play the long game when you're making these decisions. So instead of getting a degree in some. Major that isn't going to do anything for you, you're not going to make any money from it. Find something practical and not just that pays a decent wage, but also that can be worked around how you see your life in your 30s and 40s. So in other words, I mean to simplify this, it's rather than putting career at the center of your life and trying to fit men in marriage and motherhood in around that, I want them to do the reverse. I want them to put family first and make these decisions orbit around that. And that begins with the kind of career that you can a move in and out of more easily, ones that can be done more, more maybe part time or from home, ones that give you control. You own something, you know, like you could start a business later. Just basically flexibility. So that when you're older and your priorities do shift, which for most women they do, you have options.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you say to the women that go, why should I have to give that up? I don't want to have to give that up. Why should I have to sacrifice and build my career around family life? I should.

[Suzanne Venker]

There's no should. But you will very likely want to. And if you set yourself up the way you're doing it, you'll have no options. If you do it the other way, you'll at least have the option because what you're gonna feel like is important at 32 is gonna be very different from what you feel like at 22. You just don't even realize how you're gonna change.

[Chris Williamson]

I think that's one of the challenges with this, right. That you're saying women who are not thinking about family literally don't even have it on their bingo card.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

You need to think about a thing you're not planning for and currently don't want. It takes an unbelievable amount of counterculture pressure to be able to say, none of my friends think about this. None of modern media is suggesting that I do this. I don't even feel the desire to do this. And actively, if I got pregnant right now, I don't even know what I'd do about it. But I should start to construct a life that is future proofing me in order to do that. It's a huge going into the against the tide moment.

[Suzanne Venker]

It's so huge, Chris. I mean, it's a big ask, right?

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, it doesn't surprise me that women aren't doing it.

[Suzanne Venker]

No, because the running joke is, well, I'm trying to get to you when you're 22 before you come to me at 32. But at 22, you're not interested. But at 32, you're like, help me, help me. And I'm like, you know, it's so hard. I mean, one of the hardest things about coaching for me has been hearing these women and knowing that all of this stuff could have been avoided if they had just been told the truth.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you considered in school in the uk we have something called scare them straight. I don't know whether you have the same thing. It's not gay conversion. It's getting prison guards in to schools and they explain how dangerous it is in prison and how bad of a time it is. And the whole point is to try and warn young, mostly boys, girls too, off of a life of crime. And I went to a very, very working class school in a very, very working class town with lots of crime in the uk. And I remember this guy came through and he had this sock which had batteries in and he was explaining about how the guys get into fights and they use these sort of like maces in socks to like, you know, get in scraps with. And he banged it on the table. And I remember I was so fucking scared. I went to bed that night, like it really did for me. I was like, I, I cannot go to jail. That sounds fucking terrifying. Or they boil the kettle and put loads of sugar in and they make syrup and they throw it on people and it burns them and stuff. It was fucking terrifying. It was like 12. It was terrifying.

[Suzanne Venker]

Have you considered what can I do that's comparable?

[Chris Williamson]

Have you considered getting the women who are 32 to do an intervention with the women that are 19 and about to choose their major in college and being like, hey, why don't we organize a local meetup? And this, it's not quite pan generational, but it's actually the important bit. The women who are facing this problem or facing this challenge. Should I say to go and have a conversation?

[Suzanne Venker]

That's a really good, that's a really good point. No, the answer is I have not thought about that. But that's a really great idea.

[Chris Williamson]

Straight.

[Suzanne Venker]

You need to back, don't forget. Exactly. Yeah, well, because it's so. I don't. It's really scary. I mean these women are really, really. It's hurting their marriages. Obviously it's not just hurting them personally, but if, if, for example, if you want to stay home but you can't because you've set up this life, it's going to hurt their marriage. So then the marriage is falling apart, the family's falling apart. So this has a downward effect that somehow I think it's really clear for people who are very marriage minded young. Like there are a lot of people who.

[Chris Williamson]

I always knew I wanted to be a mom.

[Suzanne Venker]

What's that?

[Chris Williamson]

I always knew I wanted to be.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, like they get it. I mean they just like, well, yeah, of course I, you know, and that. So I'm not so concerned with them because they're going to set things up sort of naturally. I mean, I did that, for example. But it's much harder today because as you say, and that's exactly right. That's why I'm a countercultural author. I mean everything I do is basically my motto is if the culture says do it, don't and you will be successful. But if you're following it, you're going to struggle.

[Chris Williamson]

The average American adult is likely to be divorced, has less than 1k in the bank, and they're obese. That's the average. That's the middle of the bell curve. So following the path that everybody else treads sounds like outsourcing wisdom to the crowd, but it's actually a reliable route to a life that you probably don't want.

[Suzanne Venker]

And what do you think separates the people who get that from the ones who don't?

[Chris Williamson]

You know, not listening to what everybody else says. Can you give me an example of the prototypical 32 year old person that comes to you? What career choice have they made? What did they do in their 20s and why is that an issue now? Because a lot of women might think, well, if I choose a high powered career, that means that I've earned more money, which means that I can step back from it.

[Suzanne Venker]

So I'd say the biggest issue there that cannot be overlooked and one of the reasons, or one of the, one of the ways I think this began to go really downhill is student debt, which is a massive problem in America. And that messaging came from people who are parents who were like, doesn't matter what it costs. This is, I mean, this is the most important thing ever. So it doesn't matter if you have to go into debt for to do it, because you're just going to pay it back, right? Well, the problem with that is by the time you're done with all the schooling and you've gotten the job and then you're starting to be paid enough to even begin to pay it back, all of a sudden you're around 30 years old and then this other thing comes into play. So that, and this leads into, you know, homeownership, all these, all these financial issues that were a result of decisions that were made, again, because they're not playing the long game. Cause nobody taught them. Listen, if you go into this much debt and then you get married and maybe you want to stay home, you're not gonna feel like you can because you owe all this money and your money's not gonna go as far and you're not gonna feel like you can have a house and it just, it just, it's not fleshed out in the way that it needs to be for both young. I mean, I have a son and a daughter and everything my husband and I taught was for both of them. But of course their trajectories are gonna be different because one's a boy and one's a girl. And that's another thing that's really taboo. Cause nobody wants to parent their children, opposite sex children differently because you're supposed to be the same. But the reality is that girls and women's bodies do something that a man's doesn't. And that has to be taken into account when mapping out a life in a way that's unique to them.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Suzanne Venker]

Yes. Flexibility. Basically, instead of these careers that are going to literally take over your Life, you're working 24 7. You have no space in your life to even find love or nurture love or get married and have children. And you're not thinking about it. And then all of a sudden you, you're, you're older and you're saying, where have all the good men gone? I don't see them. It just, it's, there's a, there's just a downward.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, set first. Sorry, you said there was three.

[Suzanne Venker]

Oh, yes, sorry. So the second one is. What did I say? Professional and then relational. So this is another big one that's controversial. I guess it used to be that men or moms and dads would tell their daughters, you know, don't bring home any man who doesn't have A job, right? Or isn't going somewhere, let's say that's of course not done anymore because you're supposed to take care of yourself. You don't, you don't need a man to take care of you. So there are a lot of women who are getting with men who are, who haven't found their professional footing, let's say, let's put it that way, or they're going to bank on the fact that they will find it someday. And you just basically don't want to marry a man who hasn't found themselves professionally because you again, going back to, you're going to have fewer options down the road because you in fact do need a man on whom you can depend financially, if only for a short period of time. And why should that be controversial? Here's something that's really interesting. They took a poll of Americans and 71% of American adults believe that it's important for a man to be able to provide for his family. Guess how many think a woman should be able to or should should do it?

[Chris Williamson]

50?

[Suzanne Venker]

32. Okay, 71 to 32. Now that says to me that we know instinctively that women become vulnerable when they have a child and that they're going to need support, both emotional and financial, for X period of time. And that that is in part why we need men to embrace their providing and pre providing and protecting desire. And women aren't sort of expected to be the providers because do we really want women to get pregnant, carry that baby for nine months, give birth, breastfeed, go through all of that and by the way, get back to work? You should be working too while you're doing that. I mean, nobody really thinks that's a good idea that you hear, because why not just do that too? You know, it's not, it isn't natural. And if you're experiencing it, when you really do experience it and you look at it, you're like, how could I ask her to go do this right now? She's very busy and she's very tired and she's depleted and she has an appendage hanging from her that needs her. And so I think we know that instinctually and I think that's the reason for that gap.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's an interesting one because I wonder how many women are allowing themselves to pick up the slack of mate choices where they thought, well, I'm independent already, so financially maybe I'm gonna pay a little bit less attention to his future prospects in this way, you know, the top quintile. So the top 20% of female owners and the bottom 40% of male owners are mating with the woman as the primary breadwinner. So the top 20% of women are mating down socioeconomically and the bottom 40% mating up socioeconomically. That's a big chunk. That's a lot. That's a lot that's going on. So, yeah, I wonder how many women are basically picking up the slack, which creates this self reinforcing loop of I need to work harder in order to be able to provide me the size and amount of freedom that I think that I need in order to be able to get a family off the ground without realizing that it kind of is a trap.

[Suzanne Venker]

It's a trap they're locking themselves in. And then, I mean, it's true that we have a big problem with men not in the world in the way they used to be in producing. And that's, that's a subject of its own. But there's a lot that women are doing to themselves. And again, I don't fault them. They were tutored to do this, they were schooled to live this life. It's just that that's why they, when they reach out to me, they're like, why didn't, why didn't anybody tell me about this?

[Chris Williamson]

Hard, it's hard to understand. Make the argument you should be less financially independent. In what world does less financial independence make sense?

[Suzanne Venker]

Because that's not the right framing. The framing is, what do you want? You know, why are we here? What's the most important thing in life? What do you really want in your life? What do you want your life to look like? What do you foresee your daily life to be like when you're 35, 40, 45? What kind of relationship do you want with your family? What are your interests in work? You have to sort of pan out and decide what's the most important thing to you at the end of the day. And I believe, and maybe this is just a parenting thing, because I do think a lot of this is really about parenting. I do. I think that the culture can be the culture, but if parents were stronger in their opposing messages that it would be. I feel like that's our best hope is through parenting, because it's very hard to change the culture. Is teaching what really matters and why we're here? And is it really so that you can be as rich as you want or as well known? I mean, are you, is status your goal or is meaning and your relationships and family your goal? And those I hate to say it are just. They're competing. They just, they compete with one another and we don't like that. We want them. We want to create a world where they can coexist in extreme forms simultaneously. You know, you can be all of this and you can still have this all at the same time, as well

[Chris Williamson]

known and rich as possible, whilst also having the family that you've always wanted.

[Suzanne Venker]

And you made a comment on one of your shows recently, what's that saying that someone said, what you see in

[Chris Williamson]

private, what you're praised for in public, you pay for in private.

[Suzanne Venker]

That is exactly what I'm talking about. So you go out and you do this thing, but no one's talking about what really goes on at home. To allow that to happen and how you're suffering.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, you can't. I gotta bring this up. I gotta bring this up.

[Suzanne Venker]

Okay.

[Chris Williamson]

Are you familiar with Emma Greed? Do you know who she is?

[Suzanne Venker]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Emma Greed is the British Kardashian whisperer entrepreneur who is the co founder and CEO of the good American clothing brand and a founding partner of Skims. But lately she's been getting way more attention. Something else. How? She parents her four kids, ages 12, 10 and four twins. And we got a clip that I want to show you.

[Suzanne Venker]

Well, and you're very honest about how you view parenting. I have to ask you about this. You did an interview with the Wall Street Journal and the headline was the Kardashian whisperer who says three hours with her kids is enough. That's based on what you say in your book. You call yourself a three hour max mum. That raised a lot of eyebrows, as you know. What did you mean by that, a three hour maximum?

[Emma Grede]

Well, what I meant by it was exactly what I said. And I really don't want to backpedal. You know, the first thing that I thought when I saw that headline was like, wow, that would never have been written about a man. Nobody would ever have written that about my husband. But the important thing is that I bring a level of honesty to everything I say. Because when you work Monday through Friday, the idea that you've got this entirely free weekend to just be with your kids and orientate your whole world around your children, it's just not a reality. I have errands to run, I have things to do. And because we're in a social media culture that says, you know, you have to arrange every prey date and count every macro and decide what your kids can and can't eat and make sure that they're constantly into table it's impossible. We're setting women up for a failure and we're holding women to impossible standards. So what I meant when I said I was a three hour mum is that I probably spend like three hours with my kids doing the things that they want to do, entertaining them, being down on the floor and playing with them. Then I have other things to do. And that's just the truth, it's just a reality. And I think a lot of parents feel exactly the same, that you're depleted after a week at work and actually you only have a couple of hours. But isn't that good enough? I think it is.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you think of that?

[Suzanne Venker]

So much to say about that. I don't know where to begin. Back when I wrote my first book, and that was 25 years ago, I. You can't even believe how many of these things this. Of course we didn't have social media, but it was all print. But the amount of stuff that I read like that from working hardcore working mothers who basically wanted to make the argument that, you know, good enough mothering, just give them a box of cereal, they'll be fine for dinner if you're too tired to cook, that kind of thing. I have a theory that this over parenting craze of the last, what do you think that is, 15 years came about as a result, sort of after women had started mothers, excuse me, had started going into the work en masse and finding out for themselves that wow, okay, this doesn't work well with, especially with littles, but full time with motherhood with young children and they had to cut corners. And so my argument's always been that those are two full time jobs in the same way. You can't be a doctor and a lawyer simultaneously. Nobody would suggest you do that. It's no different from full time motherhood. And whatever she's doing or people are doing that are full time, they clash. They inherently clash and something's got to give and you have to make choices. So the. There's a couple different elements to that. On the one hand, I want to say, you know, when you are home full time, let's say with your children, it is true that you would only spend a couple of hours, as she puts it down on the floor with them doing something of, you know, that they want to do really intensely. It's not like stay at home moms are any different from her in that regard. The difference is that the rest of the hours of the day you are physically present and available. So as an at home mom, you're not supposed to be on the floor 12 hours a day engaged with your child as if they're the center of the universe. That's not motherhood. But it got skewed when this transformation happened when moms were trying to mother with leftover time and feeling intense about it, like, oh my gosh, I haven't been here all day, so I have to really make this one or two hours count. And then they came up with a conclusion about, well, it's not supposed to be this way. Let's just say screw that. But that's a misreading of really what it. It's not that you can be absent 10 hours and then come home for two hours and be intense. It's when you're there and you are present. There's so much going on that is outside of the one on one care. I don't know if I'm making this

[Chris Williamson]

very clear, but it seems like what Emma would say is she's making it work. She's doing three hours and the kids are at least.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, well, what do you think's happening to kids that are getting three hours with mum over a weekend or three hours on a Saturday and three hours on a Sunday?

[Suzanne Venker]

Well, it's more about what's happening the rest of the time. It's not. I mean, those three hours might be great, but what's happening the rest of the. The hours of the week? You can't fill in for an absence with a couple of hours a week with small children. It just doesn't work that way. That whole quality time thing is bogus. That's not real. Children need tons and tons and tons of quantity time, not quality time. It's just not something you can just do in leftover time. I don't know how else to say it.

[Chris Williamson]

Why do you think Emma believes that you can then? Because she.

[Suzanne Venker]

Because she needs to. Otherwise her life wouldn't work if she actually entertained something else. So if I don't know how, I don't know her and I don't know how many children she has and I don't know how young they are. Oh, you said four, right?

[Chris Williamson]

12, 8 and 2. 4 year olds.

[Suzanne Venker]

Okay.

[Chris Williamson]

But it doesn't sound like this is

[Emma Grede]

a new

[Chris Williamson]

revelation to her. It seems like this is her approach to. This has been her approach to parenting.

[Suzanne Venker]

Sure.

[Chris Williamson]

For a while she's been the CEO of skims. Oh sure, there's people who do it

[Suzanne Venker]

all the time, but like she's got

[Chris Williamson]

a lot of daycare help, a lot of Handler child care assistance.

[Suzanne Venker]

But for example, if we were to present to. I don't want to talk about her per se, but just somebody like that present to her information about the early years. Like you spent several hours with Erica Comisar talking about what goes on in the early years and attachment and all of that, a person who has a different philosophy about it will not be able to take that information in, because in order to do that, you'd have to completely rearrange your life and look at it very differently.

[Chris Williamson]

What you're suggesting here is that in order for this kind of life to work, where there's only three hours with kids, there are some unseen but very powerful attachment costs that are gonna happen to the kids.

[Suzanne Venker]

100%.

[Chris Williamson]

There's damage that's being done, but it's just not visible. But the damage that would be done if you had to leave work would be immediately visible.

[Suzanne Venker]

Say that last second one of them. The damage, if you will, if you

[Chris Williamson]

had to leave work. So if you had to. There are no solutions. There's only trade offs.

[Suzanne Venker]

You're right.

[Chris Williamson]

Right. And the trade off that you have to make here is in order for me to work as much as I want to work.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

The kids don't get to see me, but they're fine.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It's the assumption.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Erica's work is saying, no, they're not and this isn't good for them.

[Suzanne Venker]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

But that price gets pushed down the line. You know, the attachment issues only show up when they're trying to date in their 20s and 30s.

[Suzanne Venker]

There you go. That's it.

[Chris Williamson]

However, the alternative, the other trade off, which would be I need to leave work. That's paid immediately.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

That gets paid right now.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

So it's.

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean, we're not even allowed to talk about this. Let's. Let's be honest. So, I mean, not only, not only does. Do we not address it until years later when they're in their relationship. In relationship, we don't even talk about the early years. We don't talk about daycare being bad, for example.

[Chris Williamson]

So I keep on putting my foot in it. It's fine.

[Suzanne Venker]

What's that?

[Chris Williamson]

I keep on putting my foot in it. It's fine.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly. So anyway, I don't know how we got on to her, what I said, per se.

[Chris Williamson]

But you were just talking about this, like cultural pressure on women to produce in the same way as men do.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Like what does the cultural pressure on women to produce in the same way as men do to women.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah. So I Don't think at the beginning. It feels necessarily negative. I think when men and women are young, their lives do look remarkably similar. You go to school, you get a job, you're working, you're not married with kids yet. So you kind of do look interchangeable, right? You're doing the same things and everybody's fine. My argument is that it's really not until you start to either think about children or then really when you have them that our differences become glaring between women and men. So, for example, when a woman goes through all of that physically in being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding, and being at home in those early months or years, nurturing. I mean, when she has a baby, her first inclination is not to financially provide for the baby. Your first inclination as a woman is to take care of him or her and to nurture him or her. That is natural to you. Your desire to work for pay, at least in that moment, for those, let's just say, months, ramps down. Generally speaking, when a man becomes a father, his desire to provide ramps up. And my theory about that is really that I feel like because there's such a difference in men and women as mothers and fathers in those early years, it's so obvious and natural that a baby needs his mother because you're physically attached and there's so much that she's doing physically. And I feel like a father is sort of. He's there more to support her and to get things done so that she can be with her baby, but he doesn't really feel needed in the same way. And so his response to, oh my gosh, now I have a baby, I've got it is immediately to. To ramp up his desire to provide. That's my theory about it. So when you have a child, it really just makes our differences glare and they just continue like it just continues. There's so many things that go on after the baby comes where marriages start to strain because they are operating in sameness mode, equality mode. 50. 50 tit for tat. You do this, I do this. How much did you. And it's a shit show, honestly, it really is. You cannot go into marriage with that mentality or you're going to be really unhappy. And so anyway, going back to your question is, I just feel like because those differences between us don't show up until later, I think women don't realize until later how much they've been misled and how much it is hurting them until they're in the throes of it.

[Chris Williamson]

What are you learning about breadwinning lums.

[Suzanne Venker]

This is a really difficult subject for people to talk about. Again, going back to what we're saying is that we're supposed to be the same, so there shouldn't be any difference. But the truth of the matter is, for most women, and not all, there are some women who are happy and fine in living a more traditional man's life for life. But for most women, it has been my experience doing this for so many years that eventually, no matter how happy they may be in their career at first, or, you know, being independent, earning money, whatever, if they're going to be a wife and mother. And if you're not, that might be a separate conversation. Ultimately, that pressure to produce becomes very taxing once you've become a wife and mother, especially a mother, really a mother. And the more and more you are the primary breadwinner. And oftentimes this happens, not necessarily consciously, but as the relationship grows. And if you are becoming the primary provider or the main provider, and I mean, if there's a real gap here, especially if you haven't a stay at home dad, let's say that's almost an extreme version of that, they become resentful. And it's not, I really, it's like it's not their fault. It's just, it's not natural for them to be doing both of those things in my opinion, simultaneously unscathed. Meaning you can, but you're wearing yourself into the ground. And this is why we have the mental health crisis we do. This is why we're having marriages strained as we do, because you're asking them to do too much. You cannot do both of these things simultaneously without breaking down, because they're not meant to be done simultaneously. But the only way you could understand that is if you acknowledge the incredible amount of work that goes into raising a baby to become a healthy adult. And if you dismiss that or think that's just something you can do on the side, you're not really. This isn't going to register for you. And that goes back to the whole career at the center and thinking these things can orbit around it and it just doesn't work that way. A man who's providing is in the main role. He's not going to be taxed by that. He's going to be emboldened by that. He wants to do that. He's a provider and a protector. It's in his DNA and it's unique to him and it's special for him, you know, and we've taken that away from It, I think.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Suzanne Venker]

So I, I truly believe that men need an incentive to work hard. They need something to work toward. Not just work for work's sake, but to work towards something, a reward, accolades, you know, to produce, to be useful. And, you know, when you have an entire generation of women saying, you know, I can have the babies, raise them and I can take care of them financially too, where are they going to go? What's going to happen to men? I mean, it's happening now. They're pulling back. They're pulling back because they're saying, well, I guess nobody needs me. So, you know, it would be a lovely world if we could say, well, they should just do it for themselves, you know, the sake of themselves. But I just don't think men do that. I think they need incentive. And the greatest incentive of all has always been providing for a family. And I think it's just been disastrous for them, honestly, that they've been told we don't need that anymore.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, there's some interesting paradoxes here that deadbeat dads, fathers that don't contribute much, almost universally, even by feminists, seen as not good. It would be better if you were contributing more, especially financially and making it easier on the wife. But Also, it's put forward that women shouldn't need to rely on their male partner and that they shouldn't really be looking for their financial stability that much at all. Because I have my thing going on and you can be a stay at home dad. And similarly, there's a lot of complaints around the lack of maternity leave in the us which I think is fucking barbaric. It's insane. And also that your career is the most important thing that you'll ever do in your life and that if you are not working as a mum. I have a friend who had a bunch of kids, then her and her husband stopped and she was working while they had the first ones. And then the most recent one, she decided to be a stay at home mom. And she went to a playdate with her three year old, the newest one, and a bunch of other mums and they were all working mums. And one of the mums turned to her and she said, you know what, I really wish that I'd known you while you were working, you know, while you had a lot going on. And she said it felt like she's never felt that hurt by another comment from someone.

[Suzanne Venker]

So I'm glad you brought that up because that, I mean, you've really hit a nugget there of what makes so many women today feel that they can't succumb to their inherent desire to just be a mom. And I say just on purpose, not because in their minds, it's just being a mom. And I'm kind of been here all

[Chris Williamson]

to not need to be anything more than a mother.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes. And I've been like, this is the whole thing. This is it, this is why we're on the planet. This is to build relationships, build a family. There is work that goes into this. It doesn't. Kids don't just come about while you go do your thing. It's work. And because it's not work that is paid, we, as we are today as a country that is materialistic, individualistic, all about stuff, status, we don't value it anymore. We don't value anything that doesn't have a nice giant paycheck associated with it.

[Chris Williamson]

It doesn't generate economic return.

[Suzanne Venker]

And this is new. I mean, really, this is new. Like this is new in the last, I don't know, I want to say, I want to say quarter of a century. I've been writing about this since, for about 25 years and it's been interesting to see where things were with this subject then and now. It's just Gotten worse and worse and worse in terms of our values and this materialism that we live in today. And it's so twisted that when you start with that base of money, money, money, status, career, whatever, you're never going to be successful in your professional life and, excuse me, in your personal life and in your relationships because your focus is on the wrong thing. I mean, this is true for men and women.

[Chris Williamson]

By the way, your position here, it's probably worth restating it if it's not obvious. What you're saying is that your family life will be more important and more rewarding to you than your professional life, because if you don't have that frame or if you're unaware of that frame, none of this makes sense.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly. That's exactly what we're saying.

[Chris Williamson]

The only other caveat here which we need to get onto at some point is while there are material constraints, I need to have food on the table. I need to have a roof over my head. So it's not just I can live my life by my values exclusively. There are also genuine material. Yeah, exactly.

[Suzanne Venker]

Right. We gotta talk about things around it that will.

[Chris Williamson]

But your point here is start with that base. Correct?

[Suzanne Venker]

Start with that value at the nucleus.

[Chris Williamson]

In your experience, how many women have you worked with?

[Suzanne Venker]

I don't know. I mean, I. I've been coaching for about five years, and then the women I heard from before that were all from my book. So I don't.

[Chris Williamson]

Thousands of thousands.

[Suzanne Venker]

Not one on one with thousands, but I've heard from thousands over the years.

[Chris Williamson]

For sure. Yeah. In your experience, how true is it that women realized that their career was the most important thing and that the family thing didn't really matter that much?

[Suzanne Venker]

Zero.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, there's a selection effect. They're coming to you for a reason. Right. The sort of things that you're writing about, the independent lean in ladies are maybe not going to gravitate to your content. But look, nobody is telling women, and I get in trouble all the time for this. I have never. And nobody that's ever been on this show has told women to have kids that they don't want to have. No one that doesn't want to have kids should have kids. In fact, I'm actively opposed to women who don't want to have kids having kids. I think it's a horrible idea.

[Suzanne Venker]

I can't agree more.

[Chris Williamson]

I think it's a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible idea. However, given that most women end up having kids in the end, 86%, by

[Suzanne Venker]

the time the end of their maternal

[Chris Williamson]

but don't forget that women who get to the end of their biological clock, they hit menopause and can't have kids, but didn't have kids.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

80% of them didn't intend to be childless. Four out of five. Four out of five women who don't have children after menopause didn't intend.

[Suzanne Venker]

Which showed you how small.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct. So 10% of women can't.

[Suzanne Venker]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

Very unfortunate. Lots and lots of pain associated with that. Biologically round about 10% of women end up realizing that they didn't want to, don't want to. That is a group as well. 80% of women who don't have kids

[Suzanne Venker]

did not do that by choice.

[Chris Williamson]

Didn't intend to.

[Suzanne Venker]

They're not childless by choice.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Suzanne Venker]

And listen, instinct is strong. I mean we are governed by our instincts. Whether we, we don't like to talk about it that way because we want social. We want to set up a social system the way we want it to be, but it's going against what our desires are. And that. And to me, one of my lines is that societal progress does not undo biological leanings. I mean, we are what we are. We have to work with. You know, I say move with the biological tide, not against it. The more you move with it, the smoother your life will be. Every time you're trying to move against it, you're fighting. You know, I don't want it to be this way. I don't want it to be this way. It shouldn't be this way. And then you're just miserable all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you think mothers are denigrated in modern society? Like are women punished socially for wanting traditional lives?

[Suzanne Venker]

I don't know if I'd say punished. I just think that they feel that that's the wrong choice to make. That's what I think, that they just cannot shout it from the rooftops, cannot openly talk about it or plan for it. They have to sort of.

[Chris Williamson]

You don't think women are seen as second class citizens when they become mothers versus when they stay working? To me it seems, it doesn't seem like there's that much. The pedestalization of mothers seems to come from a counterculture standpoint or a trad wife conservative talking point, like some Christian white picket fence thing. To me, I don't see that much pro motherhood content.

[Suzanne Venker]

Oh no. Yes. No, I agree with that.

[Chris Williamson]

The Emma Greed lady was on Oprah and she did 2 million plays a couple of weeks ago.

[Suzanne Venker]

If you're asking me whether that, whether the non Motherhood, women. I don't know how you want to define, define it gets more play in society. Well, yeah, that's like 9010, but my heart. But you know, it's always. That's mostly because the women who are wives and mothers and even happy doing it are quietly living their lives. They're not in front, they're not sitting here. Right. So you're not going to hear from them. There's millions of them. It's just they're not represented because the people who are represented in the media, not so much alternative media, but all these years in mainstream media, are the minority of women for whom family is not the focus. That's really important to understand because prior to YouTube and social media and all of that, all of the information was coming from this small group of women who do not represent the average woman. And that's why it's skewed and makes the masses of women feel like there's something wrong with them when in fact they're the norm and those women you're hearing from are not.

[Chris Williamson]

But they're the most influential.

[Suzanne Venker]

And the most influential. Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. You say who you marry and how that marriage fares will have more of an effect on your happiness and well being than anything else that you do. Do you think women are aware of this?

[Suzanne Venker]

No, I don't. I don't. Where would they hear it? Who's saying it to them? I mean, you're not allowed to talk about it. And when, when really when would they hear it? If their parents aren't passing that on. Seriously, if their parents are not passing that on or some family member, they're not going to hear it in the media, they're not going to hear it at school, they're not going to hear it on the. Where would you hear it?

[Chris Williamson]

Well, the Disney movies wouldn't be pushing that kind of a meme as much as it would have done in the 90s, maybe the 2000s.

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean, look, the reality is you can, you can change your career, you can change a job, people do it all the time, you can shift your interests and all of that, but who you marry, if you have children with them, you are tied with them until you die. If you have children now, obviously there's divorce. But A, who wants to promote that? That's not really, you know, any what anybody wants to do. And B, you're, you've created a family and so you are, you are linked. So it has more impact on what direction your life takes than a career choice. Because again, you can change A career. You can't just change out a husband or a wife. I mean, people try all the time, but doesn't really work very well. Second, marriages are notoriously more flimsy than first. Third, even more so. Fourth, even more. I mean, just go down the line. It's not really an answer for most people. So we need to give it, in my opinion, the weight that it deserves and the attention that it deserves. And we're so afraid to talk about it and that says so much about where we are today in what we value that we can't even openly talk about what's great about marriage.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, if it's the most important decision that someone's going to make, if

[Suzanne Venker]

they want to make it, I'm not telling you you have to make it. Yeah, if you don't want to get married, don't get married. But most people do. Most people do get married eventually if

[Chris Williamson]

it's as important as it is for the people who want to do it. Isn't that strong evidence against rushing into a marriage?

[Suzanne Venker]

No, I would say. Well, I don't think anybody should rush into marriage for sure. But I would say it's an argument for early education about marriage and early education about, Gosh, there's so much education that young people don't get when it comes to the subject because again, we're not allowed to talk about it. Take the fertility crisis. You know, we don't, we're not allowed to talk about the fact that even you're among friends here, that you have a biological clock. I mean, why should I not talk about that? It's, I can't change it. I didn't make it, it just is. Right? So let's work with it. Let's create a life that works with what is, not with what we wish could be. And so that's a taboo subject to say that you can't tell that to women, you know, so, okay, well, the reality is a 40 year old man can marry a 30 year old woman and still have a family and it's not going to be the same If a woman's 40 and looking for a husband. And let's talk about that, even though it's painful to talk about or whatever.

[Chris Williamson]

What does dating with purpose look like for modern women? How do you advise women to date? Well,

[Suzanne Venker]

you know, things have gotten so bad on that department in that department, like so much so over the last 10 or 15 years, really, 10 years that I, I'm almost to the point where I'm like, just, just get it out on the table in the first three dates, you know.

[Chris Williamson]

Get what? Get what on the table?

[Suzanne Venker]

Like what you want and what you're looking for. And you know, it. It. I have this theory that you just. You weed out the people who aren't on the same page as you. When you just get it on the table, what does that look like, for example?

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, yeah, we're in a date. We're on a date.

[Suzanne Venker]

Okay. I mean, the first date. No, the first date is just, who are you? Hello, where are you from? What do you like?

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, it's our third date.

[Suzanne Venker]

Perfect. Presumably, if you're on a third date with someone, you are getting into deeper conversations than on the first. Right. Just by nature of you're talking more, so more things are going to come up. You're going to talk about your background, presumably, and you're going to talk about your history and what you want. I think. I guess I did. And naturally, in the conversation, you're going to kind of learn whether or not the person is family focused or career focused or wanting something temporary or wanting something permanent. I feel like by the third date you would know that. Do you disagree?

[Chris Williamson]

No.

[Suzanne Venker]

And so why? There's so much pretending going on, so much fear.

[Chris Williamson]

Imagine for a second that we're on the date. Let's roleplay this. And you're gonna say you're gonna ask me some of the questions that you think are important for women to ask.

[Suzanne Venker]

You didn't prepare me for this, Chris.

[Chris Williamson]

Look, you've taught enough women how to do it. Put your cards on the table.

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean, tell me about your, you know, if it didn't come up naturally, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your parents. Are your parents married? Let's have the conversation. Are your parents married?

[Chris Williamson]

Why is that? Why is that important?

[Suzanne Venker]

Because it's going to skew how you think about marriage, probably. Okay, do you have a good impression of it? Do you have a bad impression of it?

[Chris Williamson]

All right, what else?

[Suzanne Venker]

What? And then about your work. Tell me about your work. You know, where are you with things? I mean, this sounds more like a business meaning, but it would be more natural than that. You'd be talking about what you like and what you do for work. And that would tell me where you are in the scheme of things. And if you asked me, depending on where I was, that would tell you a lot about me. Let's see, you go all the way back to my 20s. I'll just tell you. With my husband, I was a teacher, and so he knew right away That I love children. He knew that. Well, I was married before, so that was that. There's a great example of just something that comes up naturally. So. Oh, well, what happened? Well, and then you get into different values and priorities, which is what happened with my first marriage. And he wanted different things. Oh, well, then what do you want? Well, I want to have children. I want to be home with them. That ding ding, ding, ding, ding ding is going to tell the guy, well, okay, she wants to be home with him. I guess we're going to live on a one income family. If I stick with this girl, what's wrong with that? I mean, it just gets it out, you know, and if you don't want it, great.

[Chris Williamson]

So you should be asking things, go

[Suzanne Venker]

to the next person.

[Chris Williamson]

You should be asking things like, do you want kids? How many?

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be so directed. Like I said it would come up naturally. Like I just explained. And he knew just from what I said without having to say, do you want the.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, the audience are charismatic autists, so they understand, they understand how to get something across in a normal way whilst being highly abnormal internally. Okay, 95% of people don't get enough fiber. Which is why Momentous built Fiber plus. Because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually kind of hard. Even harder than your last toilet trip. Fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn't dialed, everything else you're doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber plus is a three in one formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength and blood sugar stability all at once. That's why I plan to make my next big dump momentous. Best of all, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom a checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N t o u s.com ModernWisdom and Modern Wisdom A checkout. I think you're right. I think that being intentional with dating is one of the most Important things. Because I think about basically the way that the human attachment system works, like not anxious, avoidance, secure, but the human romantic attachment system is basically one big psychedelic trip that hopes that you can attach yourself to this person sufficiently quickly while you're in the drug state before you get to the my brain's come back online state. And I wonder how many people I started hanging out with this person. And, you know, they were nice and hot and I kind of got a bit obsessed with them. They used to text me all the time. And then, you know, we just started hanging out a bit more and that we didn't really move in, but we started staying over each other's houses a bit. And then we decided, well, we might as well move in. And that was, you know, like nine months or something. And then, and then we got a golden retriever because we thought for Christmas he'd get me a golden retriever. I've always wanted a golden retriever. And then, and then, yeah, we. We just sort of stayed together and things kind of became comfortable and, you know, we settled into it and then we just thought, well, like, you get engaged, that's what people do. You get engaged. And then we, you know, the marriage, wedding came along and things were okay. And then, you know, we had the first kit. And before you know it, you've fallen backward into a relationship and a cohabiting situation and a dog and an engagement and a marriage and kids that at

[Suzanne Venker]

no point you actually chose a hundred percent.

[Chris Williamson]

You didn't choose this thing, this person was around you, they were in your proximity while you didn't have any serotonin in your brain.

[Suzanne Venker]

That's exactly right. And that is why I have been against cohabitation from day one. And I was saying it in a different way because people. It wasn't from a religious perspective or a sex perspective. It doesn't serve you well to do that for exactly the reason that you describe. People often slide into marriage as a result of everything you just described. As opposed to making a conscious, well thought out decision in advance. This is who I want to marry. And you need objectivity for that. You need separation. You need to go home to your own space.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you advise people to do instead?

[Suzanne Venker]

Like not live together, date, live in their own. No, I mean, once they're engaged, that's fine. Once you've made. It's about making the decision. You make the decision from a distance, from living in your own space. Will you marry me? Yes. And then go about your business. But if you do it before it's like you said, it's all skewed because, well, you're here, we're in it now.

[Chris Williamson]

You're lapping as a married couple without having actually got the wedding done, which makes you think that the wedding becomes more of a formality than a decision. Yes, it's just the natural progress. We're already kind of married, right? We're already doing it. I mean, how many people have gone, well, you know, we're already kind of doing it. That's a really. I've never even thought about it that way. That the cohabitation effect, which you're probably familiar with, that gets explained away by a variety of different reasons, but I've never thought about it as keeping you and your partner separate until you make the decision to be engaged. Because what lots of people would say is, I'm not going to marry someone that I don't know if I can live with them.

[Suzanne Venker]

No, but it doesn't.

[Chris Williamson]

Eh, but the difference is you can call off an engagement way easier than you can call off a marriage. And if you're saying the decision that you make is actually the engagement one, Right. Once you're on that set of train tracks, the marriage sort of comes along for the ride. But it is a reversible decision. Significantly more reversible than getting the fucking family together and all of the things. And then you've done this big ceremony. And if you say you shouldn't make the decision of the engagement, you shouldn't make the proposal until you're sure that this is a good thing to do. And the best way to be sure is to have most of your faculties and logic intact, which means that keeping a little bit of distance is a good idea. And I'm sure that people are going to spend weeks together, traveling and going on holiday and staying together and stuff. But permanent, locked in, living together kind of causes you to fall backwards into marriage without thinking about it, because it's a natural progression. But then you have still this window of a testing ground of, okay, can we live together? Like, can we lock this in from engagement up until marriage, that means you're not getting slipstreamed, you're not secretly getting the marriage thing pushed along, but it does allow you to go, oh, fucking hell. Like, I didn't realize that this was going to be such a big deal. And maybe this is something you mean

[Suzanne Venker]

during that engagement period.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, exactly.

[Suzanne Venker]

Um, I wonder what the stats are on, if there are any stats on. Well, maybe that's. Maybe that's what you're looking up I with you if you called off the engagement. Is that what you want to know?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Suzanne Venker]

Once you're engaged and living together.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. My point. My point is just living together. Yeah. My point is just. Yeah. Engaged in living together. If you don't live together until you're engaged, it means that you're not forced to get engaged because you're living together.

[Suzanne Venker]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

And if you live together during the engagement, it still is a moderately reversible door. If you go, yes, fuck, this does not work because most people's. And mine. Mine. I'm unmarried. Right, Right. My. My concern would be what you're telling me that I'm going to not just get engaged, but get married to this person without knowing if we could live together? That seems like a large risk. What if our lifestyles are incompatible? What if we.

[Suzanne Venker]

Give me an example. Because, you know, there were eons when people didn't live together until they got married. Right. More so than there were people who did, and they stayed married more than we do today.

[Chris Williamson]

It's true.

[Suzanne Venker]

They did.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm not convinced that that's necessarily because of this reason.

[Suzanne Venker]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I'm saying my question would be, what do you think they did? What. What do you think? It was horrible. What do you imagine would it would be like if you moved in after you were married as opposed to living together? What are the kinds of things? Because isn't that. Doesn't marriage require you to figure that out anyway for the rest of your life?

[Chris Williamson]

To a degree, it does. I think what people have, and I'm probably speaking for an entire generation of young men and women who have an ambient fear around there being some fundamental incompatibility that I have with my partner, which is only revealed once we live together. I don't think that's unreasonable to think that it might be the case that there might be something in there. But I understand what you mean, which is if you've spent enough time together, you've stayed over at each other's houses, you've spent weeks and maybe even months traveling together and doing things and stuff like that. You know what their sleep pattern is?

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah. So what do you mean by, like, what are the things you learn? Like, you mean dishes? I mean stupid things.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Your level of tolerance for being together for very extended, very compacted periods of time. I mean, how many marriages did we see break up during COVID because people were spending an amount of time together that they hadn't been exposed to previously? And I have to assume that maybe the same thing might be true if someone had never lived with their partner.

[Suzanne Venker]

Do you think there's a person with whom that wouldn't happen? If you were together all the time that you would love to be with 24, 7. Do you think there's a person that you. That would not be an issue.

[Chris Williamson]

It's a shame that I'm not gay. Cause I've got a couple of friends that I'd happily do that with. I've hung out with a lot of friends for a long time without any, like, distraction. And it's been fucking sick. It's just the, like the penis thing gets to me. But

[Suzanne Venker]

you know what I mean? I'm saying. In other words, you said you want to know whether or not you could live with the person.

[Chris Williamson]

The level of compatibility.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah. And I'm trying to understand why that wouldn't have been ironed out with everything you described, staying over each of those houses.

[Chris Williamson]

You're right. You're right. I think it's.

[Suzanne Venker]

If it's about being with them all the time because it's so much space together, well, that's going to be the case with whoever you marry. Right. So is there a person whom you could spend that much time with and it wouldn't matter at all, or is that just human nature?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, again, it's rub up against each other. It's trying to avoid some of the huge issues anyway. Just this cohabitation effect. Divorce rate for people who cohabited before marriage, 31.4%. Divorce rate for people who did not cohabitate before marriage, 25.9%. Earlier research often found premarital cohabitation associated with roughly 20 to 50% higher divorce risk, depending on controls and demographics. The sliding versus deciding. That's exactly what you're talking about. So the unclear commitment is a really. And inertia is the same thing. Unclear commitment is a really interesting one, which is one of the explanations for the cohabitation effect is that what both partners are doing is saying, you're good enough for right now. You're good enough for us to live together, but you're not good enough for me to get engaged to at the moment. So it is a. An. It's an amount of commitment, but it's not the commitment. Right. That everybody's looking for. But obviously there's a big. One of the criticisms of the cohabitation effect is that it's a selection effect. Like people who don't live together before they get married includes a whole host of very religious communities who've Got.

[Suzanne Venker]

That's true.

[Chris Williamson]

Much more stringent rules around divorce. They've got a culture that supports marriage in a different sort of a way. The kinds of people who wouldn't live together before also are maybe likely to be virgins or less sociosexual or. There is something about that kind of person. But I also think that it's too big of a difference between 20 and 50% increases in divorce because of cohabitation. There has to be something about cohabiting which causes that impact.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes. And of course, the studies have been done as you. I mean, the sliding versus deciding is not small. That's a huge piece of it. I mean, you.

[Chris Williamson]

I've never heard that before. It's such a cool slide.

[Suzanne Venker]

You slide into it. Cause you're already there. And the reasons why you shack up, let's say, are different from the reasons why you get down on one knee and ask someone to marry you for the rest of your life. Those are two different decisions completely. They don't really have anything in common. So you started out with this sort of flimsy thing, and then you can't really figure out if this is the one because you're already doing it. And that's where the sliding comes.

[Chris Williamson]

And that's the inertia thing too. This is just momentum. Yeah, we've already started to. Well, we, you know, we're paying for the rent together and maybe they bought a house.

[Suzanne Venker]

That's even. Don't ever buy a house with somebody you're not married to. That's a big.

[Chris Williamson]

Don't ever buy a house with somebody you're not married.

[Suzanne Venker]

No. Don't do anything financial that binds you. If you're not married, you're gonna. It's a. It's a. It's a really dumb idea. I don't know how else to say that.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, so women dating. Well, dating with purpose.

[Suzanne Venker]

Dating with purpose. Or don't date at all. I mean, just date with and get it out on the table. And you will weed out. It's selective. If they don't want it, no hard feelings. Bye. That's fine.

[Chris Williamson]

Are you familiar with the idea of a shit test? Do you know what that is? From artistry? Yeah, it was the women to the men.

[Suzanne Venker]

Shit test their men.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Suzanne Venker]

See if they're strong enough.

[Chris Williamson]

Push their buttons. Exactly. I had an equivalent when I was dating, which was I would send weird psychology articles to the girl that I was talking to to see what her reaction was, what she would respond with. I'm like, look, this is kind of important to me. My work is something that I care about and I think is interesting. And marriage is basically one big fucking long podcast. It's a huge conversation that lasts for 20,000 to 30,000 hours.

[Suzanne Venker]

Still having it.

[Chris Williamson]

It's important to me. And relationship. My relationships have failed in the past because I haven't had much or enough

[Suzanne Venker]

interest in that same thing to talk

[Chris Williamson]

about with my partner. And that means it's really important that we can get on the same page. So I would almost over signal weird psychology articles up front in the same way as you're saying, get it all out on the table.

[Suzanne Venker]

That's great.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, obviously there is an upper bound of how weird you should be. You can be too weird, right? You can like maybe don't talk about your farting problem and your athlete's foot on the first date.

[Suzanne Venker]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

However, I do think, you know, being you relatively unapologetically you, with the intentions that you have and the things that you're interested in, is good to get out early.

[Suzanne Venker]

Especially before you've had sex and before you've gone too far down the line. What do you have to lose?

[Chris Williamson]

Send the Psychology Today articles before you had sex. You heard it?

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. And then one of the other things that you say is that women should pay attention to a man's earnings and or earning potential early on.

[Suzanne Venker]

You don't need to be rich. Right. It's not about looking for somebody who's gonna be rich. It's about looking for somebody who is, who has found himself professionally and has a plan and who wants to provide and who has the same vision of family life that you do. So if you're marrying some, and this happens a lot again with coaching, they don't find out till after they've had a child that, you know, one person was thinking they were gonna be a two income family forever and the other one wasn't, but they didn't talk about it. I mean, this is huge. You have to know in advance of getting married, what kind of family are we gonna have and what's that structure gonna look like? And you have to be on the same team about it. You have to be on the same team about it. Once you've married and you're not on the same team, it's a lot harder to get one person to change their tune. And that happens.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, look, we entered into this agreement together. You knew what it was that I wanted and what, you married me in the hopes of changing me? You married me and now are telling me that the thing that we both either. And this would be the worst one. Didn't talk about but assumed we were going to both have or did talk about.

[Suzanne Venker]

That's big.

[Chris Williamson]

Did talk about and you knew that it was gonna be this way. And now what you're telling me that you wanna be a stay at home mom, like that's not something. Or you're telling me that you don't wanna be. You wanna keep working. I want my kids to be to have their mum around. I thought that we already talked about this. And now you're trying to change like you sold me X and now you're telling me Y.

[Suzanne Venker]

You were, you were given the example based on her.

[Chris Williamson]

Either. Both.

[Suzanne Venker]

Either. Because I think one's easier and more common which is that they thought they were going to be a 2 income. And then she changed her mind and she didn't know she was going to change her mind.

[Chris Williamson]

That's interesting.

[Suzanne Venker]

Tell me a lot. So I mean those are most of my clients actually. If they're already married with a baby, they're hard charging career women. They always, they never even considered being anything but. And they're married and they have a baby and they have early 30s, mid-30s, early 30s. And they've made all these financial decisions with their spouse on the assumption there'd always be two incomes. This is a huge problem.

[Chris Williamson]

Two cars, bigger house, etc.

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean basically lifestyle creep. So instead of for example, comparing that to somebody who knows in advance they're going to cut back, maybe they're both working now, but they know they're gonna have one income.

[Chris Williamson]

They're.

[Suzanne Venker]

So then they just start living on one income ahead of time to get used to it. Sock away her for this is just an example. Sock away her income prior to having babies. So that by the time you do it, you're accustomed to one income and you have this pocket of money on the side that you put aside a buffer. That's an example of what I mean by playing the long game and preparing in advance. What's happening is two people are doing the two income thing. No kids and lifestyle creep and spending it not necessarily being, you know, wise or conservative with it, but like going to town with it. And then they have a baby and all of a sudden she had no idea she was going to feel this way. Nobody told her she would. That's why she's kind of resentful. And then she feels like she has to go back to work because maybe she's the higher earner. That happens a lot. Or at least an equal Earner to where they've created this life either way. And then she presents it to her husband and he's like, what? And. And that's just rocking his world. And I believe that if you've married a good man and you just come with some humility to the table and just be honest and say, I had no idea, but this is what I want now, what can we do? I think he would step up and you'd find a way together to figure it out. That's assuming you have a strong relationship.

[Chris Williamson]

But also, what does that situation do to a marriage? I have to imagine it's very stressful.

[Suzanne Venker]

It's stressful for the time being. It's stressful for the time being because if you've made all these decisions, you're gonna have to switch gears now.

[Chris Williamson]

But also relationally between you and your partner, you're saying, what do you mean? Let's say that a woman has done this and has had the child and now is thinking, I wanna stay at home. Yeah, fuck, I'm gonna have to have that conversation with him. And does. Regardless of how strong the man is, like, this is a big responsibility that I wasn't necessarily prepared for. That has to put some strain on the marriage. I assume that has to be a challenging thing to navigate.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes, for sure. I think if the man is happily, has a good job and likes it kind of thing, and he makes enough to float this, he will actually not. You wouldn't have any pushback?

[Chris Williamson]

Of course not.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah. If it's not that he's gonna be scared, of course, then he needs to hear from you. I will do whatever it takes to live on one income. My expectations will move down my desires for this time period. I want it that bad because what I think husbands hear is, hey, I'm willing to do that. But you have this and this and this and this and this and this and this need. And I don't see you cutting back on this and this and this and this and this. Happens all the time. And a lot of times they don't. They don't want to. It's. It's hard to do that.

[Chris Williamson]

It's very hard to have a lifestyle go backwards.

[Suzanne Venker]

It's very hard to go down in your standard of living. And that's really what we're dealing with with modern couples, in my opinion. It's not that you can't live on one income often it's that you can't live on one income and not and still have the life that you're used to.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, think about if you, even if you followed your roadmap and didn't live together until you got married, but maybe had a little time being married before the kids came along, that's probably quite nice. Develop some memories. And I have the house and a lazy Sunday morning.

[Suzanne Venker]

My kids are doing that now.

[Chris Williamson]

Awesome. That is a standard of life that is going to be very difficult for a whole year. Amount of sleep that you get, the amount of freedom that you have, the independence, the travel, the money, and then

[Suzanne Venker]

you're almost better off having them right away.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, get them in before you can even enjoy life.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly. Just forget about enjoying life. Do that later.

[Chris Williamson]

Fuck it. But that, yeah, that is going to require a huge fucking pullback.

[Suzanne Venker]

It is, it is, it is. Which maybe is why back in the day when they got married and had kids, it was like a package deal. They didn't have all these issues to deal with surrounding economics and money because

[Chris Williamson]

you haven't set an expectation.

[Suzanne Venker]

You never got used to it. I mean, there's a lot to be said for just not getting used.

[Chris Williamson]

Speedrunning it. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Interesting. You might not believe me, but this is what peak sleep optimization looks like. I'm not talking about the nightgown, it's just for sex appeal. I'm talking about my Eight Sleep. The Eight Sleep Pod 5 comes with a smart cover you throw on your mattress that actively cools or heats each side of the bed up to 20 degrees. And now they've added the world's first temperature regulating duvet and pillowcase, so you've got 360 degree coverage for deep uninterrupted rest. It's like being Walt Disney without the cryogenic chamber and the racism. Best of all, their autopilot feature learns your sleep patterns and makes adjustments to improve your sleep in real time. It even detects when you're snoring and lifts your head a few inches to help you breathe better. That's why Eight Sleep has been clinically proven to add up to one hour of quality sleep per night. They have a 30 day sleep trial so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. If you don't like it, they will give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get up to $350 off the Pod 5 by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com ModernWisdom and using the code ModernWisdom at check that's E I G H T sleep.com ModernWisdom and Modern Wisdom at checkout. Okay, so what do you think about timing? Have you talked to women about how long you should date before engagement, be engaged before marriage? Marriage before kids? Is that something that you consider?

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean, I get asked about it and I don't have any hard line about it. I think that it. I think it can be different for different people. And I think the circumstances matter and how old you were when you met and what you're doing and what your background was like and what.

[Emma Grede]

Who.

[Suzanne Venker]

How you are as a person. So I don't think there's a hard line up. For example, I knew my first husband for five years before we married, and we were married four years and divorced, no kids. I married my husband, current husband, only husband that I think of, when I think of husband is a year after I met him. So he asked me six months after we met.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow.

[Suzanne Venker]

Now I was 29 and he was 33. So I do think it speeds up insofar as you. It's just. But there were a lot of circumstances there that. To somebody else, that might sound fast, but actually. And it was. But the circumstances were in place that made it make sense.

[Chris Williamson]

How long would you say?

[Suzanne Venker]

And because I'd been with five years. Sorry. With the other one, obviously I had a thing that. Well, that didn't work either.

[Chris Williamson]

So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Suzanne Venker]

In my mind, I'm like, well, I

[Chris Williamson]

guess how long were kids after the marriage?

[Suzanne Venker]

I was married at 30, had a daughter at 32 and a son at 35.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep. Cool. Okay. All right. So you've got this situation where perhaps a woman is going to have to go to their husband and say, I

[Suzanne Venker]

want to stay home.

[Chris Williamson]

I want to stay at home. I wonder how many men. I think this is probably increasingly true. I wonder how many men are going to feel indignant or not seen in the fact that the lean, in, quite masculine energy woman that they got into a relationship with, who maybe they were trying to encourage into her softness and her femininity for a long time and battled against and perhaps subdued some of the desires that they had around. Well, you know, she's on a career thing, and I guess that's not the kind of life that I'm gonna have. So they've kind of got into this expectation and maybe even tried to suggest and. And encourage that softness and that femininity to come through, only for them to find out after kids that they were right. But early.

[Suzanne Venker]

I haven't had that exact same scenario that you just described come up in coaching anyway, but because usually it's from the woman's side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It might not be something that they would freely admit.

[Suzanne Venker]

No. But it's.

[Chris Williamson]

I was a lean in boss lady type energy for a long time and he actually asked me to do this a while ago and totally.

[Suzanne Venker]

And I actually, I actually wrote a book called the Alpha Female's Guide to Men in Marriage. I don't know if you saw that. And that's all about how the type, a masculinized, hard charging woman can become softer. It's a whole book about how to become soft.

[Chris Williamson]

Fascinating. What's the. What are the key takeaways from that?

[Suzanne Venker]

Gosh, there.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm aware it's an entire book to be summarized. But

[Suzanne Venker]

that was 2017, Chris. That was so long ago. No, the gist of it is there's just a lot of little examples there of ways to soften your approach and delivery so that it's received better and to understand that all those skills that you mastered and used to be successful at work, which absolutely works in public really well in the marketplace. Yeah. Are a complete disaster at home. That the skills that you have mastered are the exact opposite skills of what you need to make this work. And that is why so many. I think.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow, you really write unpopular books.

[Suzanne Venker]

I really do.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, they sell, but like, they're culturally horrendous.

[Suzanne Venker]

They're horrendous.

[Chris Williamson]

You're actually quite toxic.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, I really am. It's sort of like, what's wrong with me? You know, Like, I, you know, it's. Most of what I write comes from either personal experience or things that I've seen that either. Well, a lot of writers are writing what they're working through themselves, you know, so there's that piece.

[Chris Williamson]

And then research is me search.

[Suzanne Venker]

Research is me search. And then also just knowing things and you can't unknow them. And you hear the lies that are spread and you just can't shut up about it. I mean, that's basically my writing career. And so I'm like, that's not true, you know, and I want to be helpful to people who are busy living their lives, doing their thing. And unless you do this research, you really don't know that what you're being fed is crap, you know, and it bugs the hell out of me. So that's my motivation. But anyway, yeah, I wrote. So that book is basically saying, look, everything you've been taught to do works great in the marketplace, but if you want to be successful in your love life, you need to develop a Whole different set of skills. Because that's not gonna work. Because if you've married a masculine, you know, just a man, you're gonna, you know, he doesn't want that, so it's going to. And you don't really. You need the yin and the yang. You need the masculine.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a line in, in your new one. When women think and behave like a man, conflict in a relationship is inevitable.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Why?

[Suzanne Venker]

Men and women, The biggest distinction, I feel like, between them when it comes to communicating is that there needs to be receptivity on the part of the woman that I think is lacking when they're natural. And I can speak from personal experience with this. If you're a natural arguer, which clearly I am, that's what I do with my work. So this dilly did come from my own space. I always want to say the argument the other side, you know, and it bugs the hell out of my husband. But that's. Sometimes that's not necessary or needed in that space.

[Chris Williamson]

Disagreeability is actually disagreeability. It's positively correlated with earning professionally.

[Suzanne Venker]

Correct.

[Chris Williamson]

Because it allows you to advocate. I need a pay rise. I deserve a pay rise.

[Suzanne Venker]

That interview with Jordan Peterson. Oh, my God. Yep. Four times. I must have seen it. Just brilliant. One of my favorite interviews of all time. And I loved it when he said, you know, well, you're disagreeable. It's working great for you here.

[Chris Williamson]

But that was a good Jordan.

[Suzanne Venker]

That was a great Jordan. I mean, but you take that woman in that space, the way she was behaving, think about everything she was doing in that moment and take her home in her relationship and how that would go over, you know, it just, it just wouldn't. So it's hard. You just, you know, women used to be a lot more naturally feminine and they were courage to be, and they were more receptive and they were softer and they dressed like a woman, and all of that's changed. And I'm just saying, you know, it wouldn't hurt to bring a little bit of that back if you want to have peace in your relationship.

[Chris Williamson]

Jared, can you quickly YouTube Whitney Cummings? Chris Williamson A challenge. And it should be a short video. It should be a short. It did like. But Whitney basically explains high powered comedian, lady lean in Hollywood exec, lots of things. And had got deeper into her 30s and was still dating, so had maybe developed some of that professional pushiness. And yeah, that top left, 5.4 mil, that one. Yeah.

[Suzanne Venker]

I dated a professional athlete, great at what he does. There's not a lot of room for emotion to be involved. It's either true or it's not true or you're gonna get your neck broken. He could date whoever he wanted or sleep with whoever he wanted. And we were like arguing about something and I was like, well, why would you date me if like, I'm the person you date if you want like a challenge? And he just went, why would any man want a challenge in their relationship in that moment? Was like, oh my God. I thought it was like hot to you. I thought it was like what guys wanted. I thought it was like feisty, like, I apologize.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, especially if you're dating somebody that is high performing in any realm, has goals. If you're working that hard in the office, do you really want to come home and be like, right, there's that to do list done. I wonder what fires I need to fight when I step through the front door as well.

[Suzanne Venker]

I dated that. That's, that's the alpha book that I wrote. That's exactly it in a nutshell. Like, who wants that? That's not going to work. And so there's a lot of this going on in relationships because of this.

[Chris Williamson]

What's the truth about the financial requirements for raising a kid?

[Suzanne Venker]

Oh my. Well, it's really not that expensive in the early years, for one thing. You just need diapers and formula. Right? Over the years, if you're looking at the whole 18 years, there's a financial piece to it for sure, but it's also not mandatory to do in a certain fashion. In other words, you don't need to have a lot of money to have children. You need to want to have a family and utilize the monies that you have to make that work. So it's not like, in other words, don't have children because I can't send them to private schools and I can't send them to college and I can't buy them all the nice things and we can't go to Disney or whatever. You don't need all of that. Even if it seems like everybody's doing that around you in order to have children. So like in the early years for us, there was no. We, we didn't live the way we did. Say when they were in high school, when they were early, when they were young. I mean, you, you live on lust. You know, you make those choices and you make trade offs and that's worth it to you if you value, and you, if you value family and you value having a person at home, then, or a mom at home or whatever. It's just a no brainer. Like it never occurred to me, oh well, I can't do three vacations a year so I shouldn't do this, or oh, I have to send them to private school to be able to do it. Just you work with what you have.

[Chris Williamson]

Why do you think it's the case if that's true? If it's not as expensive to raise a child as people think, why it

[Suzanne Venker]

doesn't have to be. Yeah, it doesn't have to be.

[Chris Williamson]

Why do so many women and men too, but primarily women cite economic requirements and economic instability as one of the main reasons that we can't afford to have a child who could have a child in this economy?

[Suzanne Venker]

So I, I have a, I feel like this is the fourth time I've said this. I have a theory that, that social media has been extremely harmful in a lot of ways, but especially for people's perspective of what's real and what's not and believing that. A, if someone says that it must be true. B, if everybody that you're seeing looks like they're saying this and living this way, well, that's the only way to live, then you know, I, this is it. I can't do it. When you're not exposed to that, you have a more insular, which is good insular in this sense perspective just with your own little community and your own family. It's just not, it's just been really harmful in my, in my opinion to see all these lives that look like they're the norm and it makes you feel inadequate. And I think that plays into that. Believing that you have to live this certain way to have children. No, you don't. I mean, you can do things your way. If you can't afford that lifestyle, that doesn't mean you don't have kids. I mean, is the argument that kids are harmed by that? You know, that's another interesting thing. Kids don't need all that.

[Chris Williamson]

It's interesting. I wonder whether people think that kids would be more harmed by not having three vacations a year or more harmed by not having mum at home.

[Suzanne Venker]

What do you think they would say?

[Chris Williamson]

That's a kind of a trite example. That's a silly example. I don't think that even the more extreme people, but you know, certainly I don't know conversations or I don't know what it is that people think that they need. Maybe the size of the house, like certainly housing's a big deal, right? So few people want to raise a family in an apartment. They Want to have a house, they maybe want to have a little bit of garden yard to play in with the kids. And lots and lots of people are in housing that is not built for kids. Like, do you want to raise a family in a fucking apartment? Really?

[Suzanne Venker]

I mean, if you ask most people, they're going to say no, right? But it doesn't have to be a, as they say these days, forever home either. It can be a starter. I mean the starter homes are really expensive too these days. But I mean, I mean you can raise a kid in the first, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight years in a three bedroom house, a two bedroom, small, like 1500 square foot house if you had to. I mean, I. It's just hard because I.

[Chris Williamson]

It's also look at. Sorry for interrupting. Just think about what people are optimizing for. Yes, People are optimizing to be near the coffee shops and like the cute place that they go for brunch with the girls. You go, maybe this is a period like the kids aren't going to school. So if you're okay to move within the next five years or something, I mean, the market's like a fucking nightmare at the moment. At least in Austin. Austin's. You've seen Austin's market, Jared. It's like two or three times as many sellers as there are buyers. It's like the craziest sex ratio in history. Anyway, that's one of the things that people optimize for that they probably wouldn't want to not. But you go, hey, if you move, fuck me. If you're prepared to get 30 minutes outside of Austin, you can get a lot of house. Like a shit ton of house for your money.

[Suzanne Venker]

Exactly. Bingo. So again, it's just be willing to go out 30 minutes more. There's so many options that aren't entertained if it's not exactly what you envision or want from the start. So much about wanting what you want right now instead of. There's a stepping stone to that. And a lot of that has to do with, yes, inflated expectations for sure. Again, social media plays a role into that. But also the longer you live without getting married and having kids, going back to what we were saying before, the greater your lifestyle. Oh my gosh, you're making it really hard on yourself, in my opinion. Actually doing it that way because everything looks harder in some ways. We've always said that's the thing you're supposed to do. For decades we've been saying, wait, wait, wait, do everything in your 30s, you know, there's just this whole theory philosophy around that that I don't agree with but that's the philosophy and it's been touted for a long time now. But again, nobody ever talked about the flip side of that, which is what we're talking about is you're getting used to the certain life.

[Chris Williamson]

Hugely. Yeah. I mean the opportunity to grow, to become accustomed to a particular type of life. So much of what we're dealing with at the moment is people getting what they want, not what they need. And it's not what they want, it's what they think they want puppeted by. And this is true for all of us. Right. Like we're memetic social creatures. Like it's the way that it works. A friend gave me a really interesting thought experiment that kind of relates to the kids might be better off having three holidays a year than having mum at home or something like that, that. Imagine that you had a situation where two mums decided that they were going to start up a solo business looking after children so they were going to become nannies and each mother was going to look after the other's child and pay each other the exact same amount for it. Or the mother would stay at home and just look after their own. In one of these, she's a self starting business person that is praised and has a lot going on. My friend's situation and in the other they're just a mom. And the. It's such a cool example because it kind of shows the expectation or like if it was two kids, no one would be a full time nanny for one kid with one kid. But to do it for two or to do it for three and you go, well I can fund my childcare with me doing childcare and it's just, I don't know, I.

[Suzanne Venker]

Look, sorry, go ahead.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm just aware that I'm horribly on the outside pissing inside of this tent as a single man who doesn't have kids.

[Suzanne Venker]

But like what sense does that make? What sense does what you were just describing make?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, of course. Look, I'm allowed to comment on stuff. I'm sat in the stands throwing hurling mud and muck at people that are trying to make this work. I am trying to be very empathetic

[Suzanne Venker]

about it, but it really differentiates. I mean again, that's exactly something you would learn about somebody when you're dating them. Right. Are you doing this because this is what you value? In other words, basically it comes down to that is what do you value? What do you want if the most important thing to you is being present in your children's life and building that relationship and being responsible for that person's character and development and all the rest of the. I don't care about any money or any other things. Like, that's. That's it. That's the focus. The person who has to have the paycheck in order to feel good is going to have a different approach to all these decisions, these family decisions that you're making with her.

[Chris Williamson]

And so much of it is the inertia, it's the momentum that you've had of what did my friends value? What was my lifestyle like when I was younger? What did I use social media in order to be able to advertise online? Like, I'm not going to be able to talk about my travels anymore. I'm not going to be able to show where we're going for trips. I'm not going to be able to wear the outfits and go out. There's a lot of costs in the sort of marketplace that people are inhabiting. It's lots of costs.

[Suzanne Venker]

There are a lot of costs and

[Chris Williamson]

there are costs and this is, I think, important. There are a lot of costs that women pay that the men don't like. The guys can still, six months into baby, the guys can still go out and see their friends and go and watch the game on a weekend. That's gonna be much. That's gonna be like a. Oh, my God, this is the first time in six months that I've been able to go out for Mum. That's not gonna be the same. There are requirements and lifestyle sacrifices that women have to make that men don't. And that being that social media and the current currency is attention and status and.

[Suzanne Venker]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, that's a big hit to what the rest of the world valued you for.

[Suzanne Venker]

The latter being the most important piece of that because there's so much opportunity for growth and learning about this whole piece of the world that you've turned your mind away from that you're going to learn by not getting a paycheck and caregiving and throwing yourself into this space that's so unfamiliar to you and scary at first. But the things that I hear from people who have done that is, oh, my God. I mean, I wouldn't have changed that. Like you said that. You said how many people, how many women would change their mind or. Yeah, the growth is there, but we just don't. Again, we don't value it and we're not allowed to talk about it.

[Chris Williamson]

And you don't advertise it in the same way.

[Suzanne Venker]

No. So all they hear are the costs. There's this whole other piece that's, that's missing. I mean there, there really isn't any way to explain to somebody when you're home with a two year old, let's say, and they're climbing the steps one at a time and you've already been home, you're bonding and you're doing the attachment, you know, it's all, it's all in place and she or he is 2 years old and he's climbing steps for the first time and you're of course behind him so he doesn't fall. And each time he climbs to the next step, he'll turn around and see if you're there. Then he'll go back and then I'll take the next step. He turns around to see if you're there. And by the time it's done, you have just created a human in that little space there of trust that is going to carry them the rest of their life. And those are the things that are intangible and that nobody talks about. And you have to actually do it to see it. And I just want people to know about it before so they understand what's really going on there.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you think the lessons are that men and women are told about the value of money versus time at home?

[Suzanne Venker]

I don't think there's any attention paid to the value or the significance of time at home. I think there is only focus on money. I don't, I mean, we have never been more materialistic ever in history than we are today. And once you get on that treadmill, I guess it's, you're just, it's almost, it's like autopilot. You just don't even realize there's a whole world outside of you. It's called life. Right. Life that doesn't, you know, chores, errands, raising children, cooking. There's just this whole world that has nothing to do with earning money. That is like life. It's the stuff life is made of. Somebody's got to do it. Which sounds like it's a bad thing to do, but a. Somebody has to do it. Yes, but also somebody gets to do it, you know, and with no attention on that. I don't think that people even recognize it as there. And then when they do it, they get resentful about it because they're so focused on trying to make money that all this other stuff I just described is getting in the way of their path that they're on. And it's like that's where the resentment's coming in. But this is actually a job in and of itself. Creating a home, raising children, doing errands, cooking. I mean, cooking is a subject in and of itself because we're fast food nation now and people are overweight and they're like, how did I get this way? And it's like, cause no one's in the kitchen cooking anymore. It's so daunting when you're constantly working. No one's gonna cook at the end of a ten hour workday. Nobody. That's when it all started to go downhill, when nobody was home to cook.

[Chris Williamson]

That's interesting.

[Suzanne Venker]

The obesity, the childhood obesity, which tripled in the last 50 years, happened at the same time. Mothers left the home en masse because who do you think was cooking before? Before, when we didn't have the obesity crisis? Why was that? People talk about chemicals and oils and that's all fine and great, but the truth is there was a mom in a kitchen cooking.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, calories are king. Right. And if you know what you've put into your food, regardless of the seed

[Suzanne Venker]

oils, it's calories in, calories out, Correct?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. And if the kids are getting takeout

[Suzanne Venker]

on the way home, it's the lifestyle. It's a lifestyle switch that has happened that has created all these other problems.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you think about. There's a big debate around the double shift for women, the sort of share of housework between men and women. Every question that I ask you, it seems like it kind of comes with. It pains you.

[Suzanne Venker]

I'm sorry, it's just sometimes you're asking me some things that I haven't actually talked about or thought about a while, but I've written about extensively. So I just have to pull it out of my mind. Full time. Motherhood includes all of those things that people are now fighting about between each other, husbands and wives or couples about who does more or whatever. If you have somebody at home raising children, those things that we're talking about are going to naturally be part of that lifestyle of raising children. So for example, when I was home and my husband was working, I would do more child, I would do more household chores because I'm there, I'm physically home based and there. So I did the grocery shopping, I did the cooking. He would come home and do the cleaning. He did plenty. He changed diapers, he cleaned, he did all the. All he could do on top of his full time job. But at no point did I fight with him or play tit for tat about who's doing more. Because you didn't have to. Because once you've divided it up that way, it's kind of obvious. That stuff only came into play when women started working full time, too. And now you've got both people doing it. And men and women don't respond to the home stuff in the same way. So women think men are supposed to respond the way they would respond. But again, if they. If you come with the argument that men and women aren't the same and interchangeable, it makes perfect sense. But to them it's, well, what do you mean? We're equal. So I should do this and you should do this. He's going to step over the sock. Maybe because he doesn't see it or he doesn't care about it. It's not because he thinks you're supposed to pick it up. That's not the point. It's just he doesn't care and you care. And women care more about the home because they're nesters. They're nesters by nature, even if they work.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a cool study that's done that women's level of sexual arousal based on how tidy the house is, that basically, if there's not orderliness around the house, then they can sometimes struggle to switch off. So that's. Being irritated by the sock is a perfect example of that. I don't know how many socks it takes to turn off your horniness, but maybe not many for some women. Maybe some women are more sock sensitive than others. My point being that there's. Yeah, the same is not true for a man. Not at all. On average. Let's say there's another great story I saw on Twitter was so good. A woman had asked the man to do the dishes while she was out, and she came back to find that he'd grouted the shower. He'd like, regrouted the shower. So he'd gone in and fixed all in between all of the tiles and he'd done this sealed stuff. And he came back and was like, yeah, I'm proud. So happy for it. And she was mad at him because he didn't do the dishes. And it kind of speaks to this. There are certain tasks and roles that aren't necessarily seen by each other as important.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes, yes, 100% that is important.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, I don't even notice. Like, do you think that. How often do you think she thought about the grouting in the shower? Never or the fact that the oil in the car hadn't been changed.

[Suzanne Venker]

No, never. So. And that's a big difference between men and women. And that's why the playing tit for tat is so bad. And going back to what you just said about a woman not being able to overlook the sock, a great. I always tell men to like, if they. Well, you can't do this on any kind of regular basis, I guess. But if you were to move a wife from the home and get her in a hotel room, let's say, or just, I don't know, somewhere else that's not the home sexually I'm talking about, she's going to be able to be more receptive because she doesn't have to tune out everything in her midst. Which is what you were getting at.

[Chris Williamson]

That's interesting.

[Suzanne Venker]

Needs to be done in the home. She's totally in sexual mode because, oh, I'm in a hotel room or oh, I'm at a party or whatever it is you're taking her to is away from that drudgery which pulls away from her sexual desire because you want to go get to that stuff.

[Chris Williamson]

Jared, how old's your kid?

[Suzanne Venker]

Eight months.

[Chris Williamson]

Eight months. Okay. Well, there's your hack, dude. If you need to. If you need to pipe it a bit more. Yeah, just. Hey, darling, I've got us an evening in a hotel and a. Locally. Locally, yeah, sick

[Suzanne Venker]

report back to me.

[Chris Williamson]

There's an interesting bit of old school productivity bro advice, which is you shouldn't have your desk inside of your bedroom. There should be a separation of work and sleep because. For the exact same reason. But what's interesting here is the stay at home mom's office is the house. So that means, hey, if you're asking me to do something that is different in energy to what I do here, typically that might be a bit hard.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, because a woman doesn't feel sexy when she's cleaning the kitchen. That's not a sexual.

[Chris Williamson]

Depends what outfit you're in. Okay. Daycare. What do you think about daycare? It's a necessary evil for many people. They think it's a necessary evil. They've got work, they can't be at home with their kids. The maternity leave that everybody I think thinks should be given. Isn't there. What do you think about daycare?

[Suzanne Venker]

Daycare was at one time, you know, daycare was originally a Head Start program and it was just initially designed for low income families and. Or one income families who literally had no choice because mom had to go to work when it opened up, which it did over time, to just anybody who wanted to use it, just because regardless of their financial circumstances, that's when it ballooned and became eventually over time, just a way of life. Like it just normal. And one of the things that's been really interesting is watching even, like I told you, I started this 25 years ago when I was first writing about this. That was at a time when the mommy wars were all raging and it was kind of understood that you had to defend your choice of using daycare if you were using it like people were writing about it because it was instinctively understood that that was not good. It was understood. Fast forward 25 years and I have noticed people are talking about it like they're taking a shower, dropping off their two year old in daycare, one year old or whatever, six week old, literally, like it's nothing. And I look at that and I see what's happened and I. This is not. This person literally has no idea that daycare is bad. No clue. So you can't, it's almost like you can't blame her per se, because she just doesn't know what she doesn't know. And I truly believe that's where young moms are today. They really have no idea. Daycare is the last place that littles belong. Littles belong at home with their mom, if not with mom, with dad, if not with dad, then grandma, if not with grandma, and nanny, if not with a nanny. A neighborhood small. I mean, daycare is the bottom of the bottom.

[Chris Williamson]

Why?

[Suzanne Venker]

The reason why is it's so giant, it's so un. It's too big, number one. And you have so much turnover and in and out of people coming and going that the attachment that you are trying to replace for what they need in those early years, that can only be really done with one on one person. It can't be had in an environment like that. It's way too stressful. There is, I mean, I think if people go into daycares, really go into them and see what goes on, they'd have a better understanding of what it really looks like. But it's like you're lined up like you're one of a bunch of people and you're just. It's a pecking order, you know, you're a part of a machine almost. There's no. All those needs that need to be met in the early years can't possibly be met in an institutional environment like that. I mean, the sleep alone, I mean babies need sleep and they need to be On a schedule. And they need quiet and they need peace and they need to be cared for in a way that is not possible to replicate in a daycare center.

[Chris Williamson]

Because one kid is awake and crying or making noise while another is trying

[Suzanne Venker]

to sleep, as an example. Yes. Or 10 people are. And how can you sleep with 10 people? You know, or if you're hungry, you're not necessarily going to be fed until they can get to you, or you start to attach yourself to somebody and then that person goes into another room and gets moved or he or she leaves. She usually, she leaves the building altogether after you've started to develop an attachment. And then the exhaustion, the mere exhaustion. So all those tears. And by the way, just to clarify, there's a big difference between a couple of hours in an environment like that and 10 hours for a 1 year old, let's say. And people don't delineate or talk about that. There's massive difference. I mean, a baby can handle an hour or two apart or even in an environment like that temporarily, if they know that they're immediately, you know, going back to mom. But 10 hours being left there, eight hours or whatever is awful. It's just bad.

[Chris Williamson]

I posted a couple of clips with Erica talking about daycare. Some of the interesting sentiments that came back from mums things like, my kid loved going to daycare, he can't wait, he wants to run out of the car. Or like he's always really happy and smiley when I drop him off at daycare. What do you think about that?

[Suzanne Venker]

So there are many things that occur in the drop off pickup scenario with a mom and a baby. I mean, nine out of ten times when you first introduce a baby to that environment, you're gonna get tears. Actually both people are crying, usually both mom and the baby. And you'll hear story after story. I have anyway of story after story of moms dropping them off for the first time and hysterical all the way to work. I mean, just crying, it was horrible, horrible, horrible. Which to me is a signal that something's gone wrong. This is not good. This is not normal. The baby's crying, you're crying. That's something you should pay attention to, not something you should push away, which is what society wants you to do is push it away. It's okay, he'll be fine. And what that baby does or child does in trying to get his needs met and seeing that they're no longer going to be met, they just sort of stop and give up. And they're not crying for that moment. And so you think they're fine, but actually they just sort of, well, gave up because nobody tended to their needs. That doesn't mean they're fine, it just means they're just quiet. In fact, the quiet ones sometimes you need to worry about more.

[Chris Williamson]

I think this was actively a lady or maybe a few ladies saying they love it. They seem actively positive to be going there when I drop them off.

[Suzanne Venker]

And they. Well, that would be an older child, not a baby.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, like a three or four year old.

[Suzanne Venker]

Three or four, yeah. And by three you're fine. By three you can go into preschool. But again, so let's say you have a 3 year old and you are having them in daycare 10 hours a day or something, which is different from preschool, which is just a couple hours in the morning, which is perfectly age appropriate for a three year old. There are a lot of repercussions that are also not talked about, that may not come in the form of tears. And that is the exhaustion piece because you should really still be napping at that point. So they're really, really tired and overstimulated from this environment. And then the child that you're receiving at the end of the day, that's gonna bleed over into the rest of the night with the discipline that you're trying to instill. Because at that point they're so tired like I always like to. It's just pointless to even attempt to discipline a child who is so tired he's out of his skin, he can't even think straight, he's like drunk. So don't even attempt anything. You just have to put him to bed, basically. So there's a huge piece of sleep deprivation that is also not discussed with those early years in long care that bleeds over into the home and your ability to parent properly and well because of that exhaustion piece. Or you have to put them to bed right away because they're so tired. So then you don't see them. Then there's that.

[Chris Williamson]

What's an alternative to daycare? Some households are unable to survive on a single person's income. Mum needs to get back to work at some point or mum wants to get back to work at some point.

[Suzanne Venker]

Extend it as long as you possibly can before you do that and exhaust every possible means of care. That is not group care in that way.

[Chris Williamson]

So what are some of your favorite family members?

[Suzanne Venker]

That's tag teaming. Some people tag team with their husbands. That's another thing. Some people can do that depending on your job situation where one's in and one's out, it's not great for the marriage. But if you do it temporary because you don't see each other, but you could get away with it temporarily. And I've known people who have done that. One's working days, one's working nights. So someone's always at home, that's one thing. But your neighbors are your friends, like, trading off with your friends. So maybe your baby stays with your friend while you're working and then her baby's with you. So it's just you and your kid and your friends.

[Chris Williamson]

Two on one. Yeah, yeah.

[Suzanne Venker]

The smaller, the better.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. I mean, look, one of the most interesting conversations I had, there's a company called Athena that make virtual assistants. And I had the founder and CEO on, and I was saying, having a virtual assistant or an assistant at all is wonderful, but how many people have got access to that? That's not that realistic. He said, well, there's lots of ways that you can basically get the exact same function of that just by using your friends. And one of his examples was childcare. He says, if you want to work one day a week or two days a week, you only need one other mum.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

To alternate. Yeah, exactly. And like one on two or one on three maybe, like, you can probably get away with that. You can come to our house if. Or you can go to yours. And then, hey, if we organize our working schedules, you could get two days a week of workout. And look, I mean, the days when you're going to be at home outnumbered 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 by kids, like, that's also going to be a pretty, like, challenging day. But it means that you aren't having to do the daycare thing. It's free. And you've got two day or two and a half, you know, okay, you do half of Wednesday and Thursday, Friday, and I'll do Monday, Tuesday and half of a Wednesday.

[Suzanne Venker]

I'm a big believer that necessity is the mother of invention. And if the daycare system. And it is a system. I mean, it is a. What's the word I'm looking for? It's a. Well, I'm blanking on the name. But if it weren't there as an

[Chris Williamson]

option, people would figure it out.

[Suzanne Venker]

People would figure it out. They had to. Back in the day, as I said, we had a Head Start program. We had a thing in place for truly, truly, truly, truly needy families. Of course, there's a lot more needy families today than there was 50 years ago. But you just. What are you going to do if it's not there. You know, if something isn't there, you go to the next thing and you figure it out. I believe that. I think it's just become. My issue is more that it's become so normalized that we're not even allowed to talk about the fact that the thing that looks so normal actually is really bad. That's my issue. I just want to be able to talk openly and say, actually this isn't good. And here's why. So that they know. Because truly I believe people don't know. I believe it's come to that there was a time when people knew instinctively this was not and they could talk about it. But now.

[Chris Williamson]

What's the most compelling reason that you give to a mom who thinks feels like daycare's fine, but you think, hey, this is something that you should know.

[Suzanne Venker]

That the most important thing for a child in the first three years of life is to develop the intangibles of love and trust that will then carry them into their own adult relationships later on. So that if they do not become attached to you in those early years or to your all singular alternative person or whatever, that will stay with them for life and it will show up in their relationships later on. And that's, that's real. I mean, like, that's a real thing. And it's, I think, surprising for a lot of people. They just don't know about that.

[Chris Williamson]

It's an interesting duality. Another one of those paradoxes that we were talking about earlier on. A lot of people are into therapy. A lot of people love books like Attached by Emir Levine or Jessica Baum's book. Amir's got a new one out called Secure.

[Suzanne Venker]

I just saw that. They're on my home. Yeah, just get rid of them.

[Chris Williamson]

Lots of people are very informed on the attachment literature and a lot of people that are going to therapy are also understanding the fact that, hey, my parents maybe didn't care for me in the manner that would have been optimal to give me secure attachment. And I'm now having to unpick and unwind some of these things. Well, what are those? Well, you know, they didn't hold me when I needed it. They didn't see my needs without me asking. They weren't understanding. I didn't feel safe and secure. There wasn't consistency, availability, reliability, responsiveness and predictability. Like the five elements of secure attachment. Those things weren't there, but.

[Suzanne Venker]

And yet, yeah, let's not talk about this thing.

[Chris Williamson]

I can pay that forward. It's like I'm gonna go to therapy to unpick the patterns from the past because I don't want my kid to inherit my bad patterns. But because of the situation that I've constructed or that I need to, or feel like I need to, from education and employment and lifestyle demands, I am now potentially just recreating the thing. Not only recreating the thing that happened to me and I don't want, but that I'm actively trying to unpick in an attempt to not pass down. And this is where. This is like, why I think that when it's said in a sober way, in a calm way, in a gentle way that accepts the challenges and the fucking, like, really odd economic and cultural situation that young women find themselves in now, that it should be something that if it's. If what you're saying is heard properly for what it's supposed to be, it should be pretty well received. Because look at how fucking hard you're working in therapy. Why? Well, because you want to be happy yourself and you don't want to be, you know, fucking puppeted by these patterns and stuff like that. But because you don't want to pass it down to your future kids, too. Like, you're really, really working hard at this thing. You're just working hard at it within the confines this model that exists, that these are the rules that you play well, you earn lots of money to have the therapy so that you can not pass the patterns onto your kids, but that means that they've got. You can't afford to stay at home because you need to.

[Suzanne Venker]

So literally, that's the reason I wrote how to Build a Better Life, which is the. My most recent book, and it was. It's for women who want to prioritize marriage and love and family, really like to have that be the core of their life. And that requires starting early to make the decisions that we've talked about. If you do that, all this stuff doesn't. It ceases to exist. That's kind of like the whole point, you know? Like, if you create this life that's countercultural and not like the way you've been taught to do it, you wouldn't end up in this boat of worrying about repeating the patterns of, like, your attachment issues. If it circled back and understood that daycare is going to create that, then you can stop that in its tracks before it starts.

[Chris Williamson]

Or at the very least, it's not going to make it better.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I just. That's. There's just a whole different way to do life, I guess, is my point, and that's why I wrote that. And it's there for the taking, but you've got to be presented with the information, and you gotta have people willing to talk about it because it's so taboo to talk about.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, you've got a line. Live your life, not theirs.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, so that was the end of that book. And it was essentially saying, if you're building a life based on what you're told you're supposed to do, even if it goes against what you might really want, and sometimes you're all the way in before you know that that's true, you know you're going to be unhappy. You have to live, you have to be satisfied. You have to know what you want, know what you value, build a life that create that has that as its core and not worry about everybody else's. And which is so, so hard with. So I'm going back to social media today. We didn't have this. You know, social media is new in my. I'm 58, so I don't know how long has social media been around? When my kids were little, it didn't exist. So I think it was. They were in high school.

[Chris Williamson]

Facebook's about 20 years.

[Suzanne Venker]

Yeah, they were in high school by then. So, like being raised, just seeing all these images and seeing how other people are living, people that. What do you even care about these other people? They don't even know them. You know, they live across the world. But I certainly can understand when you're young, you're gonna see it and be like, I need that. And then your life's gonna look terrible in comparison because they've got that. But they don't have what you have either. So you have to have perspective on it. So I think social media has been really, really hard, really destructive, actually, for this concept of loving your life and not worrying about theirs. But you really have to keep your eye on the ball to be happy or you're going to be sucked into this other space.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you wish more young women knew? If you were able to put a billboard up that all young women would see on their way to work, what do you wish you'd be able to tell them?

[Suzanne Venker]

Nothing in your life is going to compare to the euphoria and the satisfaction and the meaning of having a baby and raising that baby and having a family and having that sense of security and peace when the world's going batty around you and you just have your little home that you've created and nothing you do. And no amount of money you're going to make is ever going to compare. But you don't know that yet. But I'll put my money on it. Let's put it that way. So if I'm wrong, what's the worst that's happened? You know I'm wrong. And then the point is that you have choices. If you, if you believe me and you set up your life that way, you will have choices. And that's where I want you to be back.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Suzanne Banker, ladies and gentlemen. Why should people go to keep up to date with everything you're doing?

[Suzanne Venker]

Well, they can go to SuzanneVanker.com and I'm mainly on substack these days, but everything is@suzanne venker.com Heck yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I appreciate you. Thank you for sticking your neck out and touching every third rail in existence.

[Suzanne Venker]

Thank you.

[Chris Williamson]

All right, see you next time, everyone. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books. The most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page, go to chriswillx.combooks to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die. That's chriswillx.combooks.