In defense of fatherhood

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Episode: In Defense of Fatherhood
Date: May 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this deeply personal episode, Sean Illing (hosted for this episode by Beth Morrissey) is joined by writer and podcaster Derek Thompson for a nuanced, reflective conversation on the realities of fatherhood. The discussion moves beyond clichés, exploring the unrelenting demands, existential transformations, and philosophical insights that come with parenting—especially in the present cultural landscape of shifting masculinity and parental roles. The interplay between self-identity, relationship health, and the wellbeing of children anchors the conversation, providing both practical and philosophical takeaways for parents and non-parents alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Is Fatherhood Overrated or Underrated?

• Derek's Take:
  • “Everything is a cliché. This has literally happened billions of times before… If you’re going to write about it, the first thing you have to point out is that in all likelihood, there’s nothing truly new you can say about this experience.” (01:42)
  • The core experience isn’t difficulty—it’s unrelentingness. Fatherhood “might be the only identity that has no end.” (01:42–03:20)

2. The Exhaustion and Beauty of Parenting

• Constant Responsibility:

  • “You wake up and, in all likelihood, it’s their screaming that woke you up…” (03:32)
  • Parenting is “nothing but work or childcare”—from the first moment of consciousness until nightfall. (03:32–04:25)

• Choice and Love:

  • Despite the rigor, Thompson emphasizes the privilege of choosing to spend this intense time with loved ones.

3. The Shift from One Child to Two

• Exponential Complexity:
  • “One plus one doesn't equal two, it equals five or nine or 18. … You’re moving from zone to man defense.” (04:38)
  • The “existential dread” and newness fades with the second child, replaced by more confidence and less fear, but far less leisure. (04:38–06:40)

4. Parental Relationships & the ‘Stranger’ Baby

• Children as Strangers:

  • “The baby you parent in week two … is not the baby you brought home from the hospital… It is much more like parenting a series of strangers…” (07:16)

• Change as the Only Constant:

  • Parenting is a continual process of seasons and change: “Oh, your child’s sleeping well right now? Just wait two months.” (07:16–08:57)
  • This flux offers a kind of “Buddhist” lesson—embracing impermanence.

5. Grief and Nostalgia in Real Time

• Parenting as a Measure of Time:

  • “Babies are like a telescope for time because they allow us to measure time in a new way… I don’t change that much, week to week, month to month... Suddenly the thing that allows you to measure time is your child.” (09:10–11:04)

• Anticipatory Nostalgia:

  • “You sometimes find yourself missing something even before it’s missing.” (12:11)
  • The bittersweet awareness that each milestone is both a first and a last.

6. The Relational Nature of Identity

• No Such Thing as a Baby:

  • “Whenever you describe a baby, you’re never describing a baby. You’re describing a baby plus someone else. A baby is... a dyad, a relationship between two people.” (16:46)

• Relational Identity:

  • “People only exist as dyads. They only exist in relation to other people… we are the sum of our relationships.” (16:46–18:14)

7. Parenthood as Self-Discovery

• Ever-Changing Selves:

  • Meeting ever-new versions of your child means also meeting new versions of yourself. (19:13–20:14)

• Character Under Stress:

  • “Raising a kid… reveals a lot about yourself. You kind of find out if you are who you think you are.” (20:14)

8. Influence of One’s Own Parents

• Parenting as Repetition and Reaction:
  • Derek discusses consciously choosing which aspects of his parents’ approaches to repeat or reject (e.g., responding to tantrums with disengagement rather than anger). (21:59–23:16)

9. Fatherhood & Masculinity: Contemporary Confusion

• Public Discourse on Masculinity:

  • The roles and expectations of modern dads are “confused right now,” connected to broader questions about masculinity’s meaning. (23:16–24:03)

• The Paternity Leave Debate:

  • “Paternity leave is not just for men. It’s also for women… and for children.” (25:30)
  • Active father participation supports the whole family and can address wage inequities. (25:30–27:15)

10. Lightning Round: Parenting Wisdom and Hot Takes

• Put Yourself First:

  • “A cliché of becoming a parent is that the child comes first, then the relationship, then the individual. … There is a lot of wisdom in the idea that you should invert that list.” (29:13)
  • “If you build that foundation of ‘you’re whole’ and the partnership is strong, it makes parenting much easier.”

• Dangers of Child-Centrism:

  • “If you make [children] the center of everything… you’ll be miserable, they’ll be little assholes. It’s bad for everybody.” (31:47)

• Sisyphean Cheer:

  • “Parenting is Sisyphean. … But also you have to imagine yourself cheerful while doing it.” (32:37)

11. Personal Transformations & Instinct

• Ambition: Parenting hasn’t changed Derek’s professional ambitions; he feels “just as ambitious.” (33:25)

• Instinct Over Data:

  • “Being a father has made me more connected with my inner voice and my inner instinct.” (34:18)
  • Parenting awakened an instinctive approach, in contrast to his otherwise analytical, research-driven style. (34:18–36:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Fatherhood might be the only identity that has no end.”
  — Derek Thompson (01:42)

• “You sometimes find yourself missing something even before it’s missing.”
  — Derek Thompson (12:11)

• “There is no such thing as a baby.”
  — D.W. Winnicott, via Derek (16:41)

• “We are the sum of our relationships.”
  — Derek Thompson (18:14)

• “I think parenthood just might be like that, but on steroids… It really forces you to meet a new version of yourself.”
  — Derek Thompson (19:13)

• “If you build that foundation of your whole, and the partnership is strong, it makes parenting much easier.”
  — Derek Thompson (29:13)

• “If you make them the center of everything… you’ll be miserable, they’ll be little assholes. It’s bad for everybody.”
  — Beth Morrissey (31:47)

• “Parenting is Sisyphean. … But also you have to imagine yourself cheerful while doing it. That’s a long time to be miserable.”
  — Derek Thompson, referencing Camus (32:36)

• “At the end of the day, I’m doing this once, for me and my daughters… I really feel like my instinct as a dad is supercharged.”
  — Derek Thompson (34:18)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening Reflections on Clichés & Unrelentingness: 01:42–03:27
• First Years & Schedule Overhaul: 03:32–04:25
• From One to Two Children: 04:38–06:46
• Babies as Strangers/Identity Flux: 06:46–08:57
• Parenting as Time Measurement & Nostalgia: 09:10–12:11
• Relational Identity & Winnicott’s Quote: 16:24–18:14
• Parenting as Meeting New Versions of Self/Kids: 19:13–20:43
• Influence of One’s Own Parents: 21:59–23:16
• Masculinity, Fatherhood, and Paternity Leave: 23:16–27:15
• Lightning Round (Parenting Philosophy): 28:54–34:18
• Instinct vs. Analysis in Parenting: 34:18–36:35

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Overall Tone & Takeaway

The conversation is candid, philosophical, and humorous in equal measure. Both speakers combine vulnerability about the hardships and ambivalences of fatherhood with philosophical musings on change, identity, and the importance of maintaining selfhood and partnership within parenthood. The message is neither saccharine nor cynical: fatherhood is exhausting, bewildering, and beautiful—and it’s an experience best met with self-awareness, humility, and a healthy balance of selfishness and devotion.

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Links:

• Derek Thompson’s Substack: Derek Thompson's
• Derek’s podcast: Plain English

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This summary is ideal for anyone interested in the lived, evolving experience of modern fatherhood—whether parent or not.

Transcript

[Derek Thompson]

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[Beth Morrissey]

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[Beth Morrissey]

Derek Thompson, welcome to the show.

[Derek Thompson]

Hey, great to be here.

[Beth Morrissey]

Derek was a longtime staff writer at the Atlantic and he's the co author, most recently of the at this point super duper mega bestseller Abundance. He's now the author of a relentlessly interesting substack, which you should check out. And it is on that substack that he wrote a lovely reflection on fatherhood, which is what we're going to talk about today. So fatherhood Derek overrated or underrated?

[Derek Thompson]

Well, certainly rated. Everyone has something to say about it. You know, I think one of the more indelible things about fatherhood or parenthood in general is that everything is a cliche. This has literally happened billions of times before. In some ways, if you're going to write about it, if you're going to talk about it, the first thing you have to point out is that in all likelihood there's nothing truly new that you can say about this experience that is endemic and indelible to the human experience. I love the identity of being a dad. I love the minute to minute of being a dad. It is incredibly hard and maybe even more than the word hard, cause hard sometimes implies like a level of difficulty. And when I really try to think about what fatherhood feels like, what parenthood feels like, I don't know if it's difficult, it's unrelenting. There aren't individual. I mean, people have different experiences with their kids, but there's no individual moment that's so challenging. Like, you know, the baby poops and the poop goes up her back. Like is that really a challenge or is it just 15 seconds of wipes? It's 15 seconds of wipes. It's not hard. It is unrelenting. Fatherhood might be the only identity that has no end. Right. The workday ends, the work week ends. You know, marriage does not in a good relationship end. But you leave your wife, you leave your husband, and when you're not with them, they aren't desperately dependent on you to live. But parenthood, I think is the only relationship that has this indelible quality of unendingness to it. And that's a part of what makes it exhausting and a part of what makes it special.

[Beth Morrissey]

Has that been the hardest part for you? Just the never endingness of it all and the relentless pace?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, absolutely. You wake up and we have two kids, two and three months old. You wake up and our kids are not the most talented sleepers in the world. So in all likelihood it is their screaming that woke you up. So the first thing, the first thought of the day is the children. And then I go to work and our kids are in daycare, they have a nanny and we're constantly texting with the daycare and the nanny. And then we come home and it's kids, kids, kids, until, you know, 8:30 and both of them are in bed. And at that point it's like, wow. Like from the first moment of consciousness today to the last moment of 8:29, I, um, it's been nothing but work or childcare and that's a lot. Um, and I, I think it's, it's a beautiful thing to be able to choose to spend so much time around people that you've made the choice to be around that you love.

[Beth Morrissey]

And you have two daughters, right?

[Derek Thompson]

They're both. Yeah, two daughters. Two daughters, right.

[Beth Morrissey]

What's the hardest part? Going from one to two. The audience will know. I am, I have one six year old and I'm about to have a second son. What's the hardest thing?

[Derek Thompson]

So the cliche is that one plus one doesn't equal two, that one plus one equals five or nine or 18. Because you know, the other cliche, again, it's hard to get away from these sort of pat lines, is that you're moving from zone to man defense. And so one parent always has to be with one child. And there's no ability to sort of two team or to have a situation where I'm exhausted. So I say, I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well. My wife, Laura, can you take care of the one kid? That's easier when there's one. When there's two now, she's always Outnumbered if I'm traveling, if I'm at work, if I'm home late, if I'm out with a drink with friends. And so there's these sort of geometrical challenges of moving from two on one, which is a triangle, to two on two, which is this sort of parallelogram of pain, sometimes for parents to be a little bit too alliterative. But there's also other changes that I think make it easier. There's existential dread that, in my experience, drenches many moments of early parenthood. When you bring home this baby, this stranger, it must be said, this absolute stranger when you bring that stranger home from the hospital. And your first experience parenting is the experience of parenting this pathetically desperate individual. That is an experience of extraordinary existential angst and fear. And you don't quite have that fear. I think, in my experience, the second time around, you understand how to change a diaper. You understand how to sort of read a baby's sounds a little bit more. If they scream and don't stop screaming for 15 minutes, you don't think, oh, my God, is the baby broken? Do I have to go to the hospital? You think instead, oh, the baby's been crying for 10 minutes. Oh, that's because it's a baby. And it is in the nature of babies to just sometimes cry for a while. And I'm just going to, you know, put on an audiobook or some music and sort of get through these next 15 minutes. That's how I would describe the change from 1 to 2. Less existentially frightening, but also less time for leisure, less time to be on your own separate from parenting.

[Beth Morrissey]

Bringing a stranger home is an interesting way to put it. I don't think most people probably think of their babies as strangers. What do you mean by that? Is it because we actually literally don't know this?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. What's a stranger stranger to someone you never met or is.

[Beth Morrissey]

Yes, but they're, you know, like they're of you. They're part of you.

[Derek Thompson]

Right.

[Beth Morrissey]

Like they're family. Are they stranger because you don't know them yet, or are they a stranger because they are quite literally unknowable for a very long time?

[Derek Thompson]

Well, they aren't a stranger. Babies are strangers, plural. You bring a baby home from the hospital and you gaze into his eyes, and you gaze into her eyes, and you're looking into that face for the first time, and maybe you see your own bone structure in that face, or maybe you don't, but you're looking at what is I Think definitionally a stranger. But what makes the act of parenting more complicated and weird is that the baby that you parent in week two or week three is not the baby you brought home from the hospital. And the baby that you parent in month three, month four, is not the baby that you parented in week two. And so in many cases, the act of parenting is not like being the parent to a single baby. It is much more like, in like, a literal, phenomenological way. It is much more like parenting a series of strangers, a series of babies that are constantly changing yet retaining the same basic facial structure. And that is, I think, one of the beautiful and strange things about parenting, one of the more almost like Buddhist things about parenting, which is that a law of parenting is that everything is a season and everything is changing. Oh, your child's sleeping well right now. Just wait two months. Or your child isn't sleeping well right now. Maybe just wait six months. Oh, your child's breastfeeding. Well, oh, just wait three weeks. Not breastfeeding, wait three months. Things are constantly changing. And so you can never get fully situated, fully settled in one reality or in one frustration. And of course, there's wisdom there that you can carry outside of parenting to the rest of life.

[Beth Morrissey]

Is it. I mean, is it weird the fact that as soon as you feel like you start to get to know this little person, that version of them has already faded and now you're sort of like restarting the clock?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, especially now that we feel like we might be done with two. There's a difficult to release sense that you're watching everything for the last time, that the first time that second baby smiles is the last time we'll ever see the first smile. And the first time our second kid says a word for the first time, that's the last time we'll ever hear a first word. I wrote an essay that we're talking about here for my substack about parenting. And actually, I've never told anybody this. I wrote a section that I cut from that essay where I said something like, When Kepler helped to invent the telescope, it allowed us to see space in a new way. And in a way, babies are like a telescope for time because they allow us to measure time in a new way. I don't change that much, like, week to week, month to month. My face doesn't change that much. My body doesn't change that much. My wife doesn't change that much. Like, once you reach maturity, in a way, almost by definition, maturity is the point in life at which you stop changing so fast, frequently. And so it's hard to measure time as a middle aged adult until you have a baby. And then time becomes measured by the child, right? How old is your child? Three months. When did she say her first word? Whatever. Not necessarily, not three months. But when did she hit this milestone? Oh, two weeks ago. Suddenly the thing that allows you to measure time is your child. And that again is like a nice sort of, I think to me, a nice philosophical wrinkle of being a parent.

[Beth Morrissey]

My son is 6 right now. He'll be 7 in June. And it's an incredible age. I mean, it's just incredible. Like he's at the point now where he's really like a little person with whom I can hang. But he's also still. I'm still sort of the center of his cosmos, like in lots of ways, right? Like he'll still. He sleeps next to me most nights and like the first words I hear every day are, good morning, daddy, I love you. And it's the absolute. I mean, just pump that, pump that shit into my veins ad infinitum until the end of time, right? But I know there will come a time where that's over, right? And like the least cool thing for him to do would be to crash in my bed and wake up and tell me he loves me. And, and so there's this simultaneous gratitude and joy in the moment, but also this sort of like looming sadness that this will pass and this version of him will cease to exist. But I guess I have one more coming, so there's that. But I'm going to be experiencing what you're talking about with the second one because that's definitely the end of the road for me.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, this is one of the laugh, cry, happy, sad aspects of being a parent is you sometimes find yourself missing something even before it's missing. You know what I mean?

[Beth Morrissey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Thompson]

Like you almost like begin to mourn the fact that this is going to go away even while it's with you. And I sometimes think, like, wouldn't it be lovely if we were better at discovering nostalgia in the present? Right? Like finding the moments in our present that we'll look back on in the future and say, oh, that's what made that moment special. And I do think that there's something about being a parent and having children that makes that a little bit easier. That you're like, you're, you're, you're. I find myself sometimes looking at myself from the future and saying, like, oh, this kid's going to grow up and you're going to miss this. And I think that's healthy. I think having that relationship between present and future is actually like a very healthy way to go through life.

[Beth Morrissey]

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[Derek Thompson]

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[Beth Morrissey]

There's a quote in your piece that I was not familiar with. I don't even know the psychologist who wrote it, D.W. winnicott. But he wrote that there's no such thing as a baby. Right. If you set out to describe a baby, you will find that describing a baby, or you will find that you are describing a baby and someone.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, I love that.

[Beth Morrissey]

What is the idea there about relationality? What do you think that's getting at?

[Derek Thompson]

Well, I mean, he's not being poetic, he's being literal. I think this is the. I found a quote from the Andrew Solomon book Far from the Tree, which is completely brilliant. And he quotes Winnicott saying, there's no such thing as a baby. Because whenever you describe a baby, you're never describing a baby. You're describing a baby plus someone else. Like, a baby does not exist as a personality. A baby is what psychologists call a dyad, a relationship between two people. And I remember reading that and being like, wow, what a great line. There is no such thing as a baby. I almost called the essay that I wrote about parenthood, there is no such thing as a person. Because the more I thought about it, the more I thought, whenever you set out to describe a person, you would never describe what that person is like alone when you can't see them. Right. If someone's like, what is Sean like? I'm not gonna describe what you're like when you're playing video games and I can't see you. I'm only going to describe what you're like when we're talking about philosophy and politics and parenthood. That's the only way I know you. And so who is Sean is. Who is Sean in relation to me? And people only exist as dyads. They only exist in relation to other people. And that's the truth about babies, of course, but it's a truth about everyone. Like, we are the sum of our relationships. And I think that's just. I think it's a beautiful observation from Winnicott and so, yeah, that's why I put it in the piece.

[Beth Morrissey]

Well, it's also because they change so much faster at that stage of life. That fact just becomes more noticeable than it is otherwise. You know, I mean, it is amazing how we're such contextual creatures, right? Like, we. We can. We are like, literally, there are different versions of ourselves that are possible at all times. And which version we are at any given time depends so much on the context and the environment where we are, who we're with, when we are. All those things bring out different versions of ourselves. Which one is the real one? Well, there isn't a real one. Right. It's just you're always in relation with the world and other people and. And certainly being a dad, especially of a baby and a toddler and now a young person, it's brought out a different version of me at every step and hopefully a better version. But sometimes it's really hard and it's a shitty version, like a very selfish, I can't do this anymore version. But it's instructive, though, right?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, no, that's. That's. I think that's right. If you play a little bit with this idea that we're constantly meeting our children and then meeting them again and then meeting them again, because the child at two weeks is not the child at two months, it's not the child at two years, it's not the child at 20 years. And so you're constantly in this process of meeting your child again and again, then it must also be true that the same way you can never fully and finally meet your child, you also can't fully and finally meet yourself. It's unrealistic to expect that there'll ever be some kind of final version of you. I think parenthood just might be like that, but on steroids, that because it is such a shock, such a trauma to your life schedule even, it really forces you to meet a new version of yourself and confront that new version of yourself.

[Beth Morrissey]

That's one of the best parts. And it's also potentially one of the most troubling parts, right, about being a parent. Because raising a kid, you really. You kind of find out who you are and what you're about almost every day because you're getting tested and you're forced to make choices. And those choices reveal a lot about yourself. You kind of find out if you are who you think you are. And that can be good or bad, but it is. It's revealing nevertheless.

[Derek Thompson]

You want to watch yourself reacting to your Children, if you have that capacity, you want to find a way to step outside of yourself and say, who am I when my children are at their worst? And what does that say about me? Yeah, what I found and I'm no saint. Is it like a part of me when the oldest is throwing a huge loud tantrum, a part of me shuts down and I'll just turn around and be like, I don't think I can successfully parent this situation in any kind of active way. So I'm going to inactively parent by turning my back and just hoping that the negative punishment of not paying attention to to the child serves in the future to discourage this kind of behavior. But I actually have no idea how to directly respond in a way that's going to be useful. So even there you learn from the strategies of self regulation that you select.

[Beth Morrissey]

It sort of raises the question like everyone, if they're going to become a parent, they have an idea of what kind of parent, what kind of dad, what kind of moment they're going to be, what kind of dad did you think you'd be? And is that the kind of dad you've actually been?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm very. Both my parents have passed away and that's a huge tragedy of my life. And I really wish I could talk to them about, about being a parent because there's so many times I want to reach out to them and say, you know, what was was this like for you? What it's like for me, that's it. I try to be deliberate about what aspects of my parenting are flowing from my parents example and what aspects of my parenting are pushing against their example. My parents were wonderful. They were very loving, they were very encouraging, they were very accommodating. But also my dad could get angry. He could get very angry. And so I think that maybe my turning my back on screaming baby or screaming toddler thing is my way of reacting to my father's example. I, I've seen how yelling goes and I don't like the yelling approach. And so in a way I'm reacting in the most dramatic way by doing the exact opposite of yelling. Like yelling is loud engagement. I'm doing quiet disengagement. I'm like back turned, walking away to the kitchen. And so there's ways in which I think aspects of my parenting are essentially like facsimiles of my parents and there's aspects that weighs my parenting style are directly opposed in reactions to my parents.

[Beth Morrissey]

Do you think we have a. I was going to Say, healthy. But do you think we have a coherent modern conception of fatherhood in this culture right now? It seems very confused right now, and I think some of that confusion has led to a lot of very interesting things in the discourse.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah.

[Beth Morrissey]

Why don't you tell me about masculinity and fatherhood?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. Why don't you tell me the ways in which we could go in any number of directions here. But you. I'm interested where you think we're confused, and then I'd love to talk about those aspects of the confusion.

[Beth Morrissey]

I just think you have this whole discourse about masculinity. Right. Modern masculinity. What is it. What is it to be a man now? And what's toxic and what isn't and what's regressive and what's progressive and all the rest of it. And obviously, that's directly related to this question of what it means to be a dad. Like, what is the role of the dad in the home?

[Derek Thompson]

Right.

[Beth Morrissey]

And so, you know, like, for instance, you know, you went, Scott, you were on Scott Galloway's podcast. He wasn't on yours, right?

[Derek Thompson]

No, it was on Scott's podcast where I was telling. It was the first hour that I'd come back from parental leave. And I thought we were kind of. I thought we were kind of joking where I said, I'm back from parental leave. My daughter's two months old. And his reaction, which I thought was like, a little bit torqued for humor, but a lot of people took as untorked in a sincere way, who's basically. I think paternity leave is a joke. I think early fatherhood is absolute hell. People maybe couldn't see me. I was kind of laughing because while I disagreed with the substance of everything that he was saying, I kind of thought he was doing a little bit of a comedy bit. But in any case, you should take this and run with it, because I want to talk about aspects of this.

[Beth Morrissey]

Well, no, but it speaks to the issues I'm talking about. So basically, what he was saying, and I'm not trying to quote it, but I'm paraphrasing. But basically, you know, dads are useless. Right. Especially in this early stage. Right. So what the hell. The idea of paternity leave is absurd because there's nothing for the dad to do, especially when the kid is that young. Right. That is. That is the domain of mom. And so the dad should be at the office, you know, sipping on bourbon, you know, earning the bread.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah.

[Beth Morrissey]

And like, you know, keeping the trains running and all. The rest of it, Right? And I like Scott a lot, but I disagree strongly with that sentiment.

[Derek Thompson]

Paternity leave is not just for men. It's also for women in heterosexual households and for children.

[Beth Morrissey]

Right?

[Derek Thompson]

It's really nice to have two parents home for the child. It's really nice for the mom to have a dedicated deputy. Because raising a kid, if listeners, Viewers haven't done it, like, weirdly, requires just like an absurd amount of shit. Like, I mean, just bottles and bottles and towels and little parts that go into bottles and pumps and parts that go into pumps and like, then like, the mom sometime is just like, in a bed for a long time and she, like, she needs her coffee and oatmeal and can I have a Diet Coke? And I'm pinned here because the baby's feeding. Could you refill my water? Like, there's a lot for people, for the other person who is not breastfeeding to do in a home when the baby is two weeks old. And frankly, if the man's not there, in all likelihood the neighbor's there, the grandmother is there, the aunt is there. There's a lot of work that has to be done. And so paternity leave, it's great for men, I think it's great for kids, I think it's absolutely fantastic for moms. And we haven't even gotten into the fact that much of the wage disparity between prime age men and women in the workforce is a motherhood penalty. And if you put men and women on relatively equal footing, you might reverse a bit of that motherhood penalty.

[Beth Morrissey]

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[Derek Thompson]

Download today.

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[Beth Morrissey]

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[Derek Thompson]

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[Beth Morrissey]

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[Derek Thompson]

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[Beth Morrissey]

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[Beth Morrissey]

All right. You want to do a little lightning round?

[Derek Thompson]

Sure.

[Beth Morrissey]

Ish.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah.

[Beth Morrissey]

All right. What parenting opinion have you become most dogmatic about? As you know, people who have takes about parenting are very invested.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah.

[Beth Morrissey]

In those takes. But what, what take, what opinion about parenting have you become most fervent about?

[Derek Thompson]

I've said this before in other contexts, but I'll say it again here. A cliche of becoming a parent is that the child comes first, then the relationship, then the individual. And I think there is a lot of wisdom in the idea that you should invert that list, that you should put yourself first, then your relationship and then the child. If you are not whole, you won't be a good partner. If you're not a good partnership, you can't be good co parents. And if you build that foundation of your whole and the partnership is strong, it makes parenting much easier. And so one thing I think is unfortunately encouraged by this sort of like extreme version of parenting perfectionism is the idea that you have to entirely like eviscerate your life in like, in zealous devotion to your child. You're just going to burn out if you think that you need to like gut your own happiness and everything that made your marriage relationship strong in order to put the child first. The child, of course, is paramount, but in a weird way, the child is also tertiary. You come first. You use your strength to create a strong partnership with your partner. That's number two. And if you have one and two, then parenting the child is easier.

[Beth Morrissey]

Honestly, if you'd asked me that question, that is my answer.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, be selfish. Make that, make that cocktail and use it to become a better friend.

[Beth Morrissey]

I mean, I, I would put it a little more charitably than that, Derek, but no, I mean, someone this, I don't want to say their name because I, you know, I don't. I felt a little bit bad about this, but you know, on X, Twitter, whatever, you know, someone had tweeted out a take to that effect. Something about, you know, hey, look, when you become a parent, basically your life doesn't matter at all, right? Like from 6am to 6pm, think not at all of yourself or your relationship. The kid comes first, first, first, first, firstst, first, first. And then at the end of the day, you can take a little time for yourself. And I, and I hate that with so much passion because I think not only is everything you just said true, it makes the parents miserable and it creates, you know, stress and misery amongst the parents who then start to become less actually a couple and more of just co managers of this household. But it also, I think, creates little narcissistic kids who think that they deserve to be the center of the universe. And if they don't get what they want, then they let you know, everyone know about it, right? Like they become self centered and solipsistic. And part of our job here is not to raise assholes, right? Like you want to raise people who are adaptable, who can just kind of roll with things, right? That don't always have to be the center of things in order to enjoy themselves, right? And like if you make them the center of everything, like you're telling that is what you were signaling, right? Loud and clear, you'll be miserable, they'll be little assholes. It's bad for everybody, right?

[Derek Thompson]

No, I mean, no lies detected. Number one, you reminded me of, I feel like I'm always obligated to name check at least one existential philosopher when we talk. I think it was Camus who said, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

[Beth Morrissey]

Yes.

[Derek Thompson]

Parenting is Sisyphean. It is absolutely Sisyphean. Whoever came up with that metaphor in ancient Greece? Absolutely apparent. But also you have to imagine yourself cheerful while doing it. If you believe that the Sisyphean job of raising a child is an experience of devoted and necessary misery, good luck. You have to do this for like 18 years. Like that's a long time to be miserable. You might as well do it, like find a way to do it with a little bit of cheer. It's not easy. There's a lot of parts of parenting that are not receptive to cheer. It's hard to change a poopy diaper and say, God, this is like a peak experience. But I think it's important therefore to be all the more purposeful about putting yourself first when you can put yourself first.

[Beth Morrissey]

Has becoming a dad changed your ambitions in any obvious way?

[Derek Thompson]

No. I wish I had a more complex answer for you. I'm trying to think now if that immediate no was honest. I think it was my ambitions haven't changed. I don't think I've become. Some people, I think, become less ambitious when they become parents. Parenting sort of knocks down their professional ambition a bit. I think some people become more ambitious. They didn't have focus in their life and they have a child, and then rejuvenated by a sense of purpose, they become more ambitious in their careers. I don't think I felt either. I think I feel just as ambitious. So I suppose that's my answer.

[Beth Morrissey]

What is one thing you've learned about yourself as a parent that you did not know before?

[Derek Thompson]

I remember saying this to my wife two months into being a parent for the first time, that I was always like a big data wirecutter guy. I was always someone who, like, when I made big decisions, I would do as much research as possible. And if I wanted to buy something, like go to wirecutter and open like 17 tabs, like, really try to figure out what is the best backpack. And I found that being a parent, like, really awakened my instinct, like, to namecheck the second debatably existentialist philosopher of this podcast. I think Nietzsche would be very proud of my response to parenting because I found my instinct incredibly awakened in me. And I remember even when someone was telling me about Emily Oster's work, which is. Which is really wonderful and has a lot of value, and telling me about a lot of big data findings about how to parent. And in one particular suggestion, it was a little bit different than the way I was doing it. I said, you know, if you think about it, the meta analysis of parenting is basically research that's been done on almost every baby that isn't your baby. And so it's the conclusions are the average of all the babies that aren't yours. I'm not raising the average of all babies that aren't mine. I'm raising my child alone. So while I want to understand the evidence and I want to understand the big data, and I still get that, like, Wirecutter for babies might be like a website to pay attention to at the end of the day. I'm doing this once for me and for my daughters, and I really feel like my instinct as a dad is supercharged in a way that my instinct in almost every other domain of human affairs is often, like, quite muted. So, yeah, in a very strange way, being a father has, like, made me more connected with my inner voice and my inner instinct.

[Beth Morrissey]

Do you think that instinctiveness has bled into your thinking and your analytical work?

[Derek Thompson]

No, not yet. Maybe it should. But I still find myself constantly. When I'm writing, I constantly find myself ventriloquizing the voices of my critics in a way that's very unlike my parenting. Like, when I'm writing a take about artificial intelligence, I'm constantly thinking, what about people who hate artificial intelligence? What about people who don't find it useful? What about people who think that it's going to destroy the world? What about people who. And I. Like, I'm always. I often find myself writing with a chorus of readers in my head, and I'm writing for myself, but also writing for this ventriloquized chorus of readers. And I guess what I'm saying is that's always been the way I go through life is being almost overly and in some cases, unhelpfully attuned to what other people might think of my work and my actions. And in a weird way, being a parenting is like this special domain where it's like, there's two of us. There's two of us here. It's me and it's baby. It's me and it's infant. And I'm going to parent the way that I want to parent. And I don't really care if other people don't approve.

[Beth Morrissey]

Well, if I may be permitted to say so, I think your daughters are lucky to have you as a dad.

[Derek Thompson]

Thank you, dude. Right back at you.

[Beth Morrissey]

Where can people find your substack?

[Derek Thompson]

The substack is just called Derek Thompson's. That's relatively easy. And the podcast is Plain English.

[Beth Morrissey]

All right. It is. It is. Actually, I have a rotation of 5 to 7 pods. Plain English is among them. So it's a great show. Check it out. Derek, you're the best, man. Thanks for coming back. And, yeah, we'll get you back for a fourth time, maybe.

[Derek Thompson]

Great. Appreciate it, dude.

[Beth Morrissey]

All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Derek is great, and this one was a little more personal than a lot of our episodes, but I've always found that the best way to the universal is through the personal. So I hope whether you're a parent or not, something in this resonated with you. But as always, we want to know what you think. So drop us a line at the gray [e-mail] or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. Please also rate Review subscribe to the podcast. It helps us grow our show, which, of course, you want to help with. This episode was produced by Thor Neueter and Beth Morrissey, who also runs the show. Engineer by Christian Nyala. Fact Checked by Melissa Hirsch and Emma Munger wrote our theme music. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. The Gray Area comes out on Mondays and Fridays. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. If you watch podcasts while you listen, you can do that too. Go to YouTube.com Vox for video versions of the Gray Area. The show is part of Vox. Support Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to Vox.commembers to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know.

[Derek Thompson]

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