The Decline of Family Joy

First of all, daycare is terrible for children. Absolutely terrible for children and their developing brains. But it's a symptom of the bigger problem, which is that people are not well versed. Policymakers, educators, parents , pediatricians, employers. They're not well versed in child development. So that very dangerous narrative that the state can raise your children better than you can is a very dangerous one indeed. They're gonna distrust their governments. They're going to distrust their parents. They're going to distrust the adults that are around them. What would you expect? There is a percentage of people with babies now. Let's be blunt about this. Who were born into terrible circumstances, you know, incomplete, shattered, broken home, busted up relationships, violence. It should not be in a country such as Australia, but it is,. is Is it the case that some of those kids in childcare are better off? My guest today, Erica Commissar, is in Australia, here in Sydney for Aspire . We're not for the first time in Australia she'll be addressing a large number of people on the importance of getting it right for our children in their formative years because we aren't at the moment. We know that the research is absolutely overwhelmingly confirming that we need to rethink. And she's the author of several books. I'll mention two: Being There, Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three years matters and the forthcoming book which will be titled in Australia Child-Friendly Divorce which is a challenging concept for me but the book will be incredibly well researched, I know that. Erica, it's lovely to have you here in Sydney and to be able to talk about something that is just so critically important . Our children. We used to say they're our future, which was a good thing to say 'cause they are. They're just not doing well. And it matters. They're anxious. They're depressed. They are lacking hope in the future. One young Australian has just said to me, an intelligent, thoughtful person, I feel like I've been born into a nation in decline . It's hardly isolated to Australia. You've written courageously and very perceptively about of all of this. In a nutshell, what's gone wrong? Well let's talk about hope for a minute. First of all, thank you for having me. Hope is something that's internal. It's um of course governments give their citizens hope they um create a secure enough environment for their citizens geopolitically and um defensively, but it's not really where hope comes from. Hope is internal . And hope comes from a sense of internal security. And so we're raising children who don't feel safe and secure inside. And so, no matter what you do to reassure them on the outside, it's not going to help if they don't feel safe and secure on the inside. So if we look at the mental health crisis in children and adolescents and think about depression and anxiety, what are those disorders? They're not genetically oriented, that's not where they come from. They actually are environmentally influenced. So people want to believe that there's a genetic precursor for those disorders and there really isn't. What we know is that children don't develop those disorders because their father had them genetically. It's something called the inheritance of acquired characteristics. And they are disorders, they're mood disorders, but they're really disorders of loss, is how I would describe it to oversimplify it. To define what depression is, it's preoccupation with past loss, anxiety is preoccupation with future losses that haven't occurred and may never occur. So what do they have in common? Loss. So kids today have dealt with too much loss too early that inhibits their ability to feel safe and secure. And so where does that safety and security come from, which is the foundation for a child's sense of security? It comes from the way we're raised in the very beginning. And we don't want to talk about this because it implicates us as adults. It makes us responsible as governments for how we raise our children and how we support those citizens who raise their children. Friends, it's good to be able to announce my new Substack, which will be known as Our Civilizational Moment. The Substack will explore the pressing issues facing countries like ours, loosely called the West, the democratic countries, and how they're playing out in the country that I love and hope you do too, ours, Australia. I'll offer thoughts on the events and trends alongside contributions from some very knowledgeable friends and people I respect. Click the link in the description, subscribe, and share the essays with your friends and family. Let's do everything we can to bring back the Australia that we love but, which we're losing. A very senior journalist uh has just said in relation to your trip here, turn this into a campaign as much as you can, John. It's critical for the nation's future. No one's listening. Government doesn't seem to understand. And he's very worried about what the bureaucrats who should be providing expert advice. But we'll come back to that, what they what they might be saying. But in conversation, as we've talked a lot about these things in the last few days, which has been a fantastic experience, and I wish every Australian and every parent could have part in the conversations that we've enjoyed. You said something that really jumped out at me and made me feel good. You said in some ways Australia is waking up and leading the world. The social media ban, and you can argue about its effectiveness, but the concept, throwing it out there , that screens have done immense damage uh to our kids is an area where we're we're we're showing some leadership in Australia and what else can we do? The the social media bands, not the whole story of though, is it screens? It's not the whole story. It's a piece of a of a very big puzzle. It's a very important piece. It's an adversity. So it's not the cause of the mental health crisis in children, but it's an adversity. And so if you have very fragile children because of the way you've raised them, meaning if you don't provide them with enough emotional and physical presence and care in the beginning, if they don't have that go to person, their primary attachment figure, present enough in the first three years to provide them with a sense of safety and security, they never internalize that sense of safety and security. And what it does is it makes them fragile and susceptible to adversity and stress in the future. Social media is a stress. So I what I want to say is that you are not going to see, first of all, I do applaud Australia for what it's done in leading the world and being courageous enough to actually create a law that that you know prevents young children from accessing social media. There are going to be workarounds with children. The point of the law is to curb as many children as possible. You're never going to reach all the child ren. You're never going to reach all the parents, never. But you're trying to reach as many of them as possible, and you're not going to see the full effects for a decade. So if you're expecting to see, you know, you have to be careful when you create a law affecting children's mental he alth, you're not going to necessarily see it tomorrow, the effects. You're going to see it over a decade. I mean, some of our studies that we rely on, the attachment studies that are longitudinal, that are over 20 years long, that study children who were insecurely attached when they were at 12 months, and 20 years later 72% of them are still insecurely attached. Those studies took 20 years. So you're you're not necessarily tomorrow going to see the benefits, but I can tell you your ban has benefits. And if anybody tells you, well, Johnny had a workaround and Jane uses, you know, finds a way to use her old And yes, some kids will not be reached by this law, but many will. So you could always use the argument in government, I suppose, that you're creating laws that protect most of the people. You're never going to reach everyone. They're also educative though. We're getting the message out. This is serious parents. You're reaching parents. I mean, children aren't listening to you, John You know, they're they're actually looking at social media and seeing what their friends are wearing and which kind of makeup and um so , you know, I don't this is not for the it's for the children, but you're trying to reach and educate the parents so they parent . So they stop giving their children smartphones. I mean the day that we started giving , you know, there's a wonderful woman named Jean Twangy, who you should have on your show if you can get her here. She's she's the researcher that wrote the book about the smartphone because she said it's the day that we invented but really gave our children the smartphone that really impacted them. So as much as social media is a big piece of this, you know, there's more to technology than just social media. There's gaming, there's uh group chats which are vile. Group chats can be very bullying and teasing and toxic to children. So you know to talk about social media alone is not exactly the whole story. But you know, to say that you're trying to reach as many parents as possible with the message that technology for children at too young an age, I mean, the American Pediatric Association said that children under two should not be given an iPhone. You know, parents do this thing where they give them an iPad or an iPhone, you know, just to entertain them so they can get a break. I'm like, don't do that. It affects their brains in ways you cannot imagine. And even then incrementally, you know, handing your children technology and just you know as a babysitter . You know, it's it's in in the 70s and the 80s parents were using television as a babysitter. Not a good idea , but the difference is that because the technology today is so over-stimulating and interactive, it stimulates dopamine in children's brains in a way. So think think of it like this. Dopamine levels are supposed to remain somewhat low with children. That doesn't mean they're not happy and they don't take joy. But if you do.. Yeah, yeah Happy kids having joy, you know, running around the place. But once you're exposed to technology, you don't get joy. You don't produce the same levels of dopamine as technology does. Meaning if you give you, know, we always say that that marijuana isn't a gateway drug to heroin and other, you know, more advanced drugs, but in fact it is. And so if you start with marijuana when you're a teenager, eventually marijuana doesn't do the trick and you need more and more and more and you need more stimulation and you start doing you know Molly or you start then maybe you try heroin or cocaine or so the point is that you are stimulating parts of the brain and conditioning the brain to need a certain amount of excitement to get to the same level. And that's what you're doing when you give your children technology. So the things that should give us joy. Relationships, sports, play no longer stimulate our brain in the same way and we start to have cravings for higher levels of stimulation. And so that's the problem with technology. So let's say social media is is bad for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that it sort of creates a comparison culture, which is very dangerous because adolescents are already their brains are in a state of hypervigilance, threat, a threat state, very high level of threat state. And so what you're doing with that comparison is you're stimulating the amygdala, the threat sensing part of the brain, to be overly active. And that means that that adolescent is always worrying, more self-conscious, and worrying about what other people are doing and feeling diminished and having very low self-esteem themselves. So it's it's very dangerous on many levels, but it's not just it's not just social media, it's technology overall. It was really the invention of the smartphone. So if you are gonna give your kids a phone, I have no problem with giving your kids a phone if they're taking a bus and you need to reach them. Give them a flip phone. The old flip phone. It's like in a way going back to a technology that was less dangerous but was still helpful. So you know I always use the story of when we were going to Aspen for a conference, you have to go through the Denver airport from New York you go Denver, Aspen. And it's a long stretch in the Denver airport to get to the smaller plane that goes to Aspen. So we were running very late. The plane landed very late. And we said to our five-year-old, Bryce, you've got to run because we all have to run because we're not going to make the plane. So we're running and running and running. And you know, it was like, run, Bryce, run, and we're all running. I'm holding a baby. Bryce is running. My husband's running. We get to the gate, my husband puts his foot in the door and we're like , where's Bryce? And and Bryce kept running, meaning he overshot the gate. So what we've done is we've taken good things and made them bad because too much of a good thing isn't a good thing. And that's what we've done with technology. It's not that technology doesn't have a use, it's not that it can't be beneficial, but we've gone too far. And so going back to a flip phone for children, at least until their brains are more developed, is a very good idea. So if you can reach parents to say it's not just social media, do not give your children smartphones until they are sixteen years old. They're also expensive. You know, they're a thousand American dollars. Why would you give your child a phone that's a thousand American dollars? So, you know, ban the smartphone for children under the age of 16. Because the smartphone also has other kinds of technology that's stimulating like gaming. Always those wonderful little uh things that people put on the table. You've just done some of them, but thinking back to ARK in London, the Alliance of Responsible Citizens, Jonathan Height making the point that you've just made, give your children a dumb phone, as you might call it, flip phone, rather than a smartphone, so that they can call their friends up and say, let's go and play in the park instead of living our social lives on the phone. That's right. Because what we've done to our kids is we've substituted phone time for playtime. Yeah. And then Michaela uh Michaela School, uh Catherine Burbelsing, she told me once uh that when parents are enrolling their children, she asks them, now , would you send your child to school with a machete? And of course they say, Of course not. And she says, well, don't send them with a smartphone. They're just as dangerous. That's how she emphasizes it. I don't think I'm misquoting it. Give them a dumb phone if you're worried about them being safe. The very points you're making. They're useful little reminders. Um all right, well, so the thing that you're here to talk about in Australia and the reason we're so keen to have you here is that having made some progress in that area , um and looking at the great debate that's emerging here, we have, there's no other way of putting it, a Prime Minister who says he wants to be remembered for the development of univers al, state-funded child care run by the unions, I might add, a narrow group of people, with amazingly little choice at vast expense . And you warned last time that you were here, if you go down that road, blunder down that road without thinking it through properly, you'll come back in ten years' time and tell us why all these problems we've got with our children and our economic problems have actually become worse . I see daycare as a symptom of a bigger problem . Um First of all, daycare is terrible for children, absolutely terrible for children and their developing brains. Okay . But it's a symptom of a bigger problem, which is that people are not well-versed, policymakers, educators, parents, pediatricians, employers, they're not well-versed in child development. We all need to be well-versed in child development because many of us at some point in our lives will raise children. And so it's a very important thing to be educated about. And so, you know, I often think that the the push for universal what I call warehousing children or day orphanages. And uh, you know, those are strong terms, but they're true. And so, you know, say it as it is, as they say. So um the problem with it is that um it's it's dangerous for children, but it's out of ignorance. I'm gonna use the word ignorance. It's a harsh word I know, but it is out of ignorance because I do believe that if policymakers knew, if parents knew why daycare is so very bad for children, they would not create these policies. That there has been a lot of push to make people believe that daycare is good for children or at least neutral, that it doesn't do harm, but it does incredible harm. So from zero to three, a child's brain is incredibly neurolog ically fragile. Babies are born neurologically fragile. They are not born resilient. They are not born capable of managing stress very much at all . And it is what we call the skin-to-skin contact of their primary attachment figure, usually their mother. It is the soothing of that baby from moment to moment that helps that baby to learn emotional regulation, how to keep their feelings from going too high or too low, and to give them a deep, deep sense of safety and security. That safety and security, you know, it's I can I say I was on a farm this week and I was on your farm which was a great joy and and I was around horses and I loved horses. And I'll tell you that horses have a prey response. They have a response which is they're very skittish around people. Um all prey are because they know they're very vigilant. They know that they could be chased and eaten by a predator. Not that there are many predators in Australia now, but babies are very much like that. They come into this world receptive for connection, but very, very fearful. Our brains are wired to be fearful because that's a survival mode for us as humans. We're born so incredibly vulnerable, unlike other species. I mean, even horses get up and can run pretty quickly, zebras get up and can run. Humans have to be cared for by their mothers for a very long time before they are capable of managing the stress of a very stressful world. And so what we've done is we have as a culture projected onto very, very young human be ings that they are more capable of managing stress than they than their brains actually are. Their brains are not yet wired to manage cortisol levels that high. And so I think if policymakers knew, Albanese or any policymaker knew that what they were doing is putting babies into situ ations that elevate their cortisol levels. There are studies to show that babies who are put in daycare have very, very high salivary cortisol levels. They test uh the salivary cortisol levels and they are through the roof in babies who are separated from their mot hers or primary attachment figures under the age of three. And so when you raise those levels of stress hormones in the brain, it actually doesn't allow the brain to develop in a normal way. It ends up forcing the brain to develop in a pathologically adaptive, neurologically compromised way. And if we taught parents and if we taught policymakers that in fact they are damaging those children's brains, possibly forever, because there are longitudinal studies to show that children who are insecurely attached at 12 months are still insecurely attached, 72% of them are insecurely attached 20 years later. That means an insecurely attached baby , which is correlated with all kinds of mental illness. There are different attachment disorders, we call them, which are again pathological adaptations of a baby's brain to cope with too much stress more than they can handle. And what happens with those babies is those pathological defenses are fragile. They're weak. They're not strong. It's not like developing organic independence or organic, what we say, organic inter dependence, organic safety, that gives you a feeling that you can go out into the world and manage stress in the future. We are developing a shell of defenses that helps them to cope in the moment, but makes them very susceptible and fragile in the future to breakdown. And that is what we are seeing. And that is what the hopelessness is about. Because a child who is given a deep sense of security is a child who is hopeful, who is optimistic, who seeks the good in human beings, who trusts others and trusts the world around them. So we teach children to either trust your environment and your environment is your mother and your father or we teach them to distrust it. And so we are teaching children to distrust their environment. And so what would you expect then when they're adolescents and adults, of course they're going to distrust the environment. They're going to distrust their governments. They're going to distrust their parents. They're going to distrust the adults that are around them. What would you expect ? At this point, what I would like to say is that you and I are both incredibly sensitized to the fact that these is this is very challenging for a particularly lot of young mums, and we'll come back to that. We're not unsympathetic. You're not uns ympathetic. I'm not. We're actually presenting them with pretty devastating stuff because they're living in an environment now. As young one young mother said to me the other day, I've heard what Erica's got to say, I know instinctively that so much of it's valuable and I've got to grapple with it, but I'm also confronted with the economic realities of just surviving in a declining economy where my wages bill buyers less and less every week. We'll come back to that. I wanted to ask you about another response I've had that says, oh that's just not true. What Erica says is not true of all babies because so many of them now come from destructive and unhappy home environments, they're better off out of it in childcare. So there is a percentage of people with babies now, uh let's be blunt about this, who are born into terrible circumstances. You know, incomplete, shattered, broken homes, busted up relationships, yelling horrifically at violence . It should not be in a country such as Australia, but it is. Is it the case that some of those kids are better off in the U.S.? You are not going to save a baby who is in such a traumatic situation by sending them away for a few hours a day or eight hours a day. You're not going to save a baby with those eight hours a day. Um if a baby is in such a terrible circumstance then well in America, we have a social welfare net that will come in and rescue that baby and find foster care for that baby. So a baby, you'd say, who's in such dire straits probably shouldn't be living with parents. But I'm a social worker and I believe in keeping as many families together as possible. So what does that mean? Instead of sending the baby away for someone to care for the baby, the UK, and I maybe you do it here too, has a home visitor program and we're starting to do it in America and I advocate strongly for it because it's so very good, which is that nurses and social workers go into the home of new mothers, doesn't matter the socioeconomic status of the mothers, and monitor the mothers and give them support, help them to learn to breastfeed and listen to their conflicts with their spouses and assess postpartum depression in the mother and assess whether the baby is thriving and and so those women they're usually And so what I would do is amp up the home visitors program rather than thinking of sending a child away to one of these day orphanages where they may or may not get some love and support from a daycare worker who is going to be transient. You know, daycare workers are so, and this is the truth of it, they're they're completely overwhelmed and so they're often out sick and there's almost a rotating door of daycare workers. So the baby isn't necessarily even getting the same workers. They're getting often strangers and trans there's a great transient and dropout rate in daycare workers. And the reason is if I handed you, and the ratios of daycare are so abysmal, no less than five to one and usually eight to one. In Sweden it can be twelve to one caregiver when when a daycare worker is out, which is frequently, it can be twelve to one. So if you're a daycare worker and I hand you eight babies who are 12 months old and say, I want you to soothe those babies, emotionally regulate them, and be there for them emotionally and provide them with a sense of safety and security, which involves skin to skin contact. Can you carry eight babies and sue them from moment to moment? So I think if parents actually were a fly on the wall in those daycare centers, I would even say I'm very optimistic if those policymakers like Albanese were a fly on the wall in a daycare center when the daycare workers didn't know they were watching, they would be horrified at what they see. Crying babies, babies who cry and scream until they vomit and are not picked up. Because there is no way, even if you think of a daycare worker as whack-a-mole, I'm gonna pick up this baby and then this crying baby and this, there is no way you can soothe uh eight babies at the same time. And when one baby cries, another baby cries and another baby. So mothers are running and fathers are running away from childcare too. It's not just that some so in the UK , 66% of mothers would stay home with their babies if given the opportunity. In America, I think it's 60%. That means in the UK , you know , 34% of mothers would rather go to work. Why would they rather go to work? Because it's damn hard to be a mother and it's damn hard to meet the needs of a baby emotionally. So now imagine if the mother can handle it, now imagine a daycare worker handling eight children at once who are crying and in distress. And imagine all of those babies have heightened cortisol levels in their brain. And so if you saw what actually happens in a daycare center when nobody is watching, when no authorities are watching, you would be appalled. It's worse than that in Australia. We now know there's been serious abuse in these centers. And I think that is resetting the debate here. And it darned well should reset it. It should reset it. I mean, you you never want to say that those babies, you know , in a way , have highlighted for your country how just how dangerous it is to hand a tiny infant over to strangers and have them care for your baby in an institution al setting where you have no control, no oversight and can't see what's happening. There's another aspect to this before we come to the practical realities, because you've been very helpful there, and so thinkers and writers in this country like Virginia Tapscott and others, I don't want to single out heroes, there are lots of them, saying we've got to rethink the whole sort of structure of how we do our economics that's forcing people to make decisions . About short-term survival, by the way, and I'm always been fascinated in economic outcomes, we want to prosper, in ways that actually You want a healthy population, don't you? You need a healthy population as a government. But a happiness helps as well. Yes, but happiness and health go together. I mean, I've never known a parent who's happy if their child is not doing well. We say you're only as happy as your least happy and healthy child. And this is the point I wanted to get to. We have created a society where we're I find this amazing. Increasingly we see people as economic units rather than as primarily relational beings. Because the heart of what you're saying in the end is satisfaction in life, joy in life , meaning in life, is not tied to your occupation. That's the message we're sending people. And I'll be blunt here, I think a lot of um third wave wave feminists have have encouraged people to th if you like, identify by what they do. You have to have this rank. You have to have, you know, certain pay levels. You have to be represented in equal numbers on boards and what have you, at the expense of saying we're actually relational beings. And we're setting up a model where we compete with one another all the time rather than develop the word. I think the word you used last night when we were in a separate function was interdependability. That's right. a narrative and then the question is why are we accepting that narrative? Um so not everybody needs to have children. I mean I don't believe that everybody is suited to having children and that may be a radical thing to say but, I think there are some people, women and men, that probably would do better not having children. Either because they are have suffered great damage as children. I mean, usually I find in my practice that the the young adults who really say I don't want children have suffered great pain in their childhood. Um have had parents who are divorced, who are mentally ill, uh, who are physically and emotionally absent, abusive. Um and so, you know, trauma and not having the model or example of two parents who really love each other and love their children and are more interested in their children than anything else in their lives, including their work, including material things. You know, that's the model that makes children want to have children. I mean, there's a rabbi who who talks about this, and I love his sort of uh the quote is: you know, why should our children want to have children if we don't model a joy of parenting? If we don't really love being with them and love parenting more than anything else in our lives, why should they want to become parents? So many young adults are not suited today. And so you know, there is a linear life for women where they can just like men have a more linear career. Because for most women who want children, it's not linear. You say women have more seasons in life than men do. Men can men have seasons too, you know, they have work and then retirement and but they have fewer seasons than women. Meaning women who want to have children um can have a very fulfill ing work life before they have children, be very successful, you know, be leaders in their fields. But then when they have children, if they think that nothing is going to change and they can continue to do exactly what they're doing when they have children , then the children are going to get sacrificed. And so something has to give, because you can't have two full-time jobs at the same time and do them well. So something is going to get sacrificed. Usually it's both their career and their children, but more often than not, now it's the children that get sacrificed. And so, you know, but you can have a linear life and not have children and be like a man and be a woman. And I have no problem with that. I respect those women's choices. You know, the women's movement gave us choices. That's what it was meant to do. It wasn't meant to dictate which choices you should choose. It wasn't meant to bully and intimidate women who want to nurture or who want to have seasons to life, meaning have a great career, have a fabulous career, take some time off or titrate down your career in the years that you have young children. And then as your children get older and they need you a little bit less, you can, you know, mm ramp it up again, you know, sort of get get your career back going. And you know, what we don't talk about is that women who are perimenopausal and menopausal after their children are f are grown and flown, they have lots of energy because their testosterone levels go up. When men's testosterone is going down, women's testosterone is going up, we have a great amount of energy to do something career-wise. So women in their 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s are incredibly productive. Those are the years to be a CEO. Before you have children, after your children are gone. Those are the years to be a CEO. But if you think you're going to be a CEO while you have children, you're going to have children who struggle because those children are going to be neglected. It is impossible to do two more than full-time jobs. Mothering is more than a full-time job. And so we really have created this impossible narrative for parents. But but the idea that that mothers can choose not to have children and follow the third wave of feminism narrative. I have no problem with that. The problem is when they start to have children and and believe that nothing in their lives will change, and they don't have to shift seasons as they go. And that's really that's a lie that we tell mothers and fathers because what ends up happening is you're going to have very seriously mentally compromised children if you do that. And we need to remember this is very important. A lot of the debate here centers on are there enough women on corporate boards? And we're talking about a minuscule proportion of the population that sit on corporate boards, as though that's some measure of the worth and the acceptance of equality in our society. The vast majority of of of women that I meet, and I meet a lot of people, always have, because I've always been involved in public life. They're not operating at that level. It's more about how do I juggle a job as a school teacher or as a nurse or as uh a retailer or whatever you have you. They're not aspiring to those sorts of things anyway. But the cost of living and the way we've set our economy up and our tax systems mean that they really deeply struggle with how to make this work. And superficially the idea of state-funded childcare is appealing, I suppose, until they understand and instinctively, as you've said, many of them do. They want options. You've talked quite a bit about options and what governments should be thinking of. So I'd I'd be interested in you just sort of working through what you think some of the options might look like. But before we do , there's a you've touched on this too, this is very important, there's a profound ignorance, and there shouldn't be, about what newborn human beings actually need . And And a very senior Australian asked me as a result of having heard you, do you think the public service in Canberra, this is a pointed local comment as much as a question , are actually providing the government with sound information based on research as to what our children, who are our future, actually need. That in turn raises the question , uh you're a you know, respected researcher. There must be a lot of work out there that's confirming what you're saying, but there seems to be a disconnect between that research and the courage needed to put it out into the arena so that policymakers, and indeed the people who vote for them, can respond to reality , not the moment of the day. Well, I am I suppose I am both an optimist and someone who sees the good in people and so I don't want to believe that policymakers really do know how dangerous what they're doing is and do it anyway. Um they may have an ideological perspective that more people in the workforce is better for a country. And the truth about that is that if you're getting everybody into the workforce , then daycare is a necessity. And the problem with that is you end up with generations of really ill children who become really ill adults. You know, governments want healthy citizens because healthy citizens don't lean on the government for support, but unhealthy citizens do . Depression, anxiety, these are disorders which , you know, personality disorders . These are disorders which disable people. And so it's very short-sighted to say I want to get people into the I mean I find politics very short-sighted in general today, in my country, very short-sighted. Yeah, not thinking of the arc of not only your own lifetime, which is also quite selfish, but the arc of your children and your grandchildren's lifetime. Who are you putting out into this world? So, you know, from my perspective, success is not defined by how successful you are in your career, how much money you make, how powerful you are. It's defined by if you do have children, did you raise emotionally healthy human beings who can love and be loved and give something back , give more back to this world than they take. And so that's a definition of success that we don't teach our children, we don't talk about. We we think of success in economic terms. And it's very short-sighted to think of success only in econom y. Of course we have to think of the economy. Of course we have to think of uh you know what we're doing now, but if you don't think of the arc of your children and grandchildren's life and who are you putting out into the world? Are you putting out emotionally secure, securely attached children who become adults who then become emotionally healthy? Or are you putting out disabled, incapacitated, dysfunctional, and distrusting human beings who will never be successful? And that's really that that's the problem A very good friend of mine, Professor Bruce Robinson, wrote a book called Fathering from the Fast Lane Tips for Busy Dads, because we're all so flat out, how do we do it well with our kids? I said to him, why are you writing, asked him, why are you writing this book? And he said, I am in the sad business of quite frequently having to tell men there's nothing more we can do, they're going to die. And he said, I think at that point in time, I've probably had to tell three hundred men that. That's just the area of medicine he's in. And he said, not one of them has ever said, I wished I'd worked harder at my career. They've all gone straight to their families and their children. I wish I'd spent more time with them. Well that's Aristotle's deathbed question, right? It's uh when you're lying dying in bed, are you gonna be, you know, worrying about should you have made more money or spent more hours in your office or been more powerful? What is your legacy? Or are you are you sitting beside the people who you've loved and attended to and given your attention to. And they're holding your hand, loving you as you leave this earth. So yeah, that's Aristotle, I mean that's that's an important question. What is your legacy ? Do you want to leave emotionally disabled, dysfunctional human beings who hate you and don't want to sit by your bed when you're dying? Or do you want to leave this earth knowing you were loved and you loved them and you gave them a foundation, not just them, but future generations , a foundation of mental health and emotional stability that's the platform on which to build a good life . Switching gears a little, uh we have uh and this universal childcare I believe will do exactly the same thing if the current model that's being proposed is ever actually carried forward. A thing in Australia called the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And it's designed to help the disabled and their carers cope with difficult circumstances. We'd all agree with that in principle. It has absolutely eaten its head off financially. It is exploding in costs. It's obvious that there are many, many problems with them, but I've been absolutely staggered to discover that eleven percent of our boys who have uh are on an NDIS packet of some sort because of ADHD. Right. So ADHD. Eleven percent. Yes. That's that' s not actually that high compared to America. Well a lot of people would say the actual numbers higher. I mean in America it's much higher. Um So ADHD is not a a disorder. It's a stress condition . It's uh it's the brain's response to stress. So once you trigger the HPA access, which is the stress regulating part of the brain. You know, the amygdala is sort of the red flag warning, and then it passes that message to the HPA access and then it raises cortisol levels and here we go. And so it sets the brain into what we call fight or flight, which is a survival mode. And you know, you can be in fight or flight temporarily. You'd say our fight or flight response is a is a healthy thing if it's acute. If we're being chased by a bear, or whatever is the equivalent here, um a dingo is chasing you, uh then you want to go into fight or flight. You're gonna run or you're gonna fight , right, to protect yourself. But what's happening is that by raising those cortisol levels and stimulating that part of the brain so early in children, what we've done is we've we've gotten the HPA axis going and activated the amygdala much too early. So we know that the stress regulating part of a baby's brain is not supposed to be activated very much at all for the first year. It's supposed to remain offline for the first year. And the way you do that is by mothers buffering children from stress, carrying them on their bodies. Babies who are worn on their mothers' bodies don't cry very much because they're soothed right away by their mother's warmth, her heartbeat, her soothing tone of voice. And so that keeps that part of the brain very diminutive. And then it's slowly over the next two years until the baby's three comes online with little bits of frustration and when they become two and you start to say no and set limits, there's little bits of frustration that kind of bring it online slowly, right? And develop a kind of foundation of oh I can handle that little bit of stress, maybe I can next time handle a little bit more of stress. And you build their ability to cope with stress and adversity. But what's really happening is that by throwing them into daycare, by leaving them with strangers, by by by mothers leaving them with even nannies for eight, ten hours a day. They are activating that part of the brain, that stress regulating part of the brain. And think about the flight part of fight or flight as being distractability, which is what ADHD is. Think of the aggressive behavior we see in very young children in daycare and preschool and ongoing school is the fight part. So what we're seeing is very young children in massive numbers either highly aggressive or highly distractable. So you can alternate between the two too. You can bite a child and then be distracted. Or you can pick a lane. But in any case, think about turning a light switch on in your kitchen and not turning it off. If you leave it on all night long and for days, which is what we're doing, where it it's chronic stress to a baby's brain when you put them in daycare. Think about leaving that light switch on. Eventually, what happens to that light switch? It burns out. And that's what's happening when the amygdala is prematurely activated, that stress regulating system is prematurely activated, it goes into a hyper-vigilant mode, and what ends up happening is that part of the brain gets very, very, very active, too active, precociously active, and then shrivels up and ceases to function for that child going forward for the rest of their lives. So we say we have to be very careful with that part of our brain and nurture it so it comes online slowly, so it functions for us for the rest of our lives. And that's not what we're doing. We are throwing the baby into the cold swimming pool and saying sink or swim. And that baby goes into a survival mode, what we call learned helpless ness and they are chronically in a state of flight and that is what ADHD is. So you'd say again, it's a sign and a symptom of a bigger problem that we have. It is not a disorder. It is not there is no genetic precursor to ADHD . There's no genetic precursor to depression and anxiety. These are disorders of what we call inheritance of acquired characteristics. One would have thought this would have been of very real interest to public policymakers and bureaucrats because the cost of it is absolutely breaking out. Absolutely. And it will continue. I was with uh without mentioning any names at all, an educator who knows her stuff, and we interacted recently with a mother who was plainly very stressed. She had four boys, all of them, on packages for this problem. The father was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't cope. He'd just split the scene . And the educator said to me, not one of those boys is really in enough of a mess to need a package. They need to be nurtured at home and looked after at school, they'd be all right . If she if the educator's right , and I believe she knows her staff , that's a matter of public policy and it should be worrying legislators. We've got this wrong. So, you know, I don't want to say what I do is magic because it's not. People think it's magic what therapists do, you know, when they treat children. There's no magic to it. What it is is it's it's practical. There's something very practical to it. You know, when parents come to me because their children are in this survival mode, um, what I like to call a PTSD state. So think of soldiers who come back from war. They're also in that chronic state of hypervigilance with stress. So if we know that children are in this hypervigilance state and we take the stressor off the table, we stop putting them in daycare, we get a primary attachment figure to stay home and be sensitive and empathic and nurturing to them. I mean, it can be days, sometimes weeks before that child's behavior changes, and months before that child is a completely different child. And parents will come in and say, my oh my God, child is a completely different child. So it's not magic. It's quite practical. Interestingly, peer research in America apparently indicates that um uh amongst young women 18 to mid-30s, uh some 18%, you know, that's getting on for one in five, so that they consciously do not want to have children. Thereways al been some people who don't want to have children, but that would be a massive increase, I would have thought, over recent decades, decades. Only around forty five percent say they absolutely do want to. We know that it also varies. So in in in families where a faith is taken seriously, they're far more likely to have children. We also know that if you go to Israel, Jewish people, secular Jews and religious Jews have many more children as well. There's a lot going on here to unpack, you know. Some want children as much as ever, many do not . Well, again, why should young people want to have children if they come from any kind of trauma? And that's what I'm gonna say. It's a harsh word, but it is a true word. When we neglect our children, we traumatize them. So one might say that the worst kind of abuse is not physical abuse, because physical abuse, the parents actually there to touch them, and I'm not suggesting anybody physically abuse their children. But the worst kind of abuse can be the most nuanced one, which people don't necessarily even recognize as abuse, which is neglect . When we neglect our children, either because of , as I said, mentally ill parents or physically and emotionally absent parents or divorce situations that are horrendous. What ends up happening to those children is that they grow up not trusting relationships, not feeling safe in them, not desiring them. There's no positive model ing of what safety and security and love looks like. You know, I always say that if you don't prioritize your children above everything else, and I mean men and women , if you are so either preoccupied with your own career or ego or vanity or need for power or need for money. And that's different than providing for your family. Because fathers have this hormone called vasopressin'.s c Italled the protective-aggressive hormone. And when they have a baby, uh it makes them want to protect their children and financially support their children. At least that's the way it used to be. Young men are so depressed now. It doesn't get turned on in Really? Mm-hmm. There's a lot of depression in young men and young fathers and but that is evolutionarily what men that that's the hormone that turns on in men. So they say I want to support my children. Their children. Yes. Which is one of the problems to be blunt about it with blended families. Right. We know that from the research. It's a hard thing to say. But often an introduced male figure. It's more complicated. It is definitely more complicated. But what I will say is that you take a traumatized child and then you ask that child why they don't want to have children and for me it seems quite obvious that yes, uh you know, s I suppose you could say they don't want to have children because uh they can't buy a house or economic reasons or you know, the world is gone to pot or those aren't the reasons. Again, there has always been financial instability. Maybe it's harder than ever to live the life of your parents, but it's not for financial reasons that the majority of them are not having children I mean I do believe governments have to make it easier for them to have a good life and have a home and you know provide for their families. But in the end, what makes you not want to have children? Because if you look at the rest of the world. M peopleost in the rest of the world outside of the Western world are very poor and they love their children and they love having children. In fact, for poor families, having children is the main joy in their life. You know, you could say that with economic prosperity come choices and selfishness. And that's the truth. Doesn't make us any happier, though. No, it doesn't make us happier. It makes us much less happy. So m in many cases being poor and having children is the main joy in your life because you don't have so much ego invested in a career or being powerful or being rich or right? So that it's not a good argument to say that it's all economic. There's a piece of it, but that's not why children are not wanting children. They're not wanting children because their parents were selfish and never really gave to them in a way that put their own needs aside. And so what was modeled for them of the joy of having children. You know, parents today, I find them to be kind of very beleaguered, and partly because of this narrative that we've sort of projected onto them that they have to do everything, you know, be work and be at home and do it all, you know, so that's a very dangerous narrative for women. But, you know, I think there is something to be understood about um , you know, the idea that if we don't model the joy more than the resentment, more than the fatigue and being beleaguered, then why should our children want to follow in our footsteps. I mean, I wanted to have children because my parents' greatest joy was their children. They weren't that I mean they had a social life and they, you know, had friends, but really in the end of the day, my parents really wanted to be with us. It was every free moment they had. They wanted to be with us, and they wanted to be with each other. And they loved each other and they wanted to be with family, and that was their greatest joy. So of course when I became an adult I wanted to have family. It wasn't even a I didn't really have to give it a second thought. It was it was always part of my life plan. It's not part of kids' life plan because they don't see their parents joyful . Uh well from my o I relate to what you're saying because as you know and many of our listeners will know, um uh my family was uh uh somewhat blown apart by death by loss. Uh and when I met my wife Julia, one of the things that immediately drew me towards her was that she was one of four kids and she bubbled over in her conversations all the time about the joy of growing up with mum, dad, and her two brothers and her sister. It just oozed out of every every sort of conversation. And I found that an unbelievably attractive and thought I want that. That's a priority for me. So that's a very human moment, since we're sharing human moments. But you've just said something and I've only just it's only just occurred to me. I've been mystified by the fact that the so-called depopulation bomb that we're all starting to talk about, you know, overpopulation is almost yesterday's question now. Yeah. Um we know that in China the population's in free fall. There are ten countries now experiencing what's called the depopulation bomb. But it cr uh and Australia joins we're told uh with another fifteen countries or so on their current trajectory over the next decade. Yeah. And without going into all the details as to what that might mean uh economically and in terms of societies that are aging and people moving to be guest workers in Europe because there won't be any young taxpayers, all of those sorts of things are they're going to be big public policy issues. But one of the things that interests me is that it's hard to we're we're talking about the reasons in in our experience and you've just thrown a lot of light on it why a lot of young people don't want children. But it crosses economic and political systems. So you've got a demographic uh depopulation bomb happening in China, which is hardly democ democratic and and and free enterprise. Well, it's fairly good at free enterprise, but it's it's a very different culture to ours, and their women are not wanting children. You're seeing it across South America, different political systems there. You're seeing it in the West. It's tied up much more the question of um uh of what happens to you in your own early years, uh you're suggesting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And of course we know those cultural things spread a lot now and have done it since the advent of the movies and you know in the old language now social media. I mean there is a problem that with wealth , economic prosperity brings individualism and self-centeredness. And that is just, I think you could say that across the board, that if you have too many choices, sometimes you don't make the right choice. Right? And so there is an expectable kind of movement away from family towards self-interests and freedom and individu alism, which I think we have to look at as a society, the narrative we created is that's the goal. The goal is me and mine and I and and uh my desires and you know, so parents really today, if they choose to have children, believe that their interests and desires should always come first because that's what they've been told. That's what they've been taught by their parents, now generationally by their grandparents, that selfishness is the goal , not selflessness. So, you know, we I guess we also have to bring in the idea of religion and how we've lost faith and faith based communities which really advocated for the idea of giving to others versus giving to yourself, that it was more important to give to others than it was to take for yourself. Obviously, we all have a basic need to have something for ourselves, but you know, what was emphasized in faith was giving to others and the joy in life and the pleasure you get from giving to others is far greater than you know. I always use the analogy of on Christmas Day, I mean I'm Jewish, but I'll use this anyway because probably most listeners are not, and to say that on Christmas Day is the joy in opening your own presence or, is the joy in bringing your present to your mommy and daddy and waiting for them to open it and see if they love it? Right? And so today the joy is much more for young people in opening presents. And so and that's a problem. And that's something that we have modeled. It's a it's a modern societal narrative that we really have to look at carefully. This rise in narcissistic tendencies in um in in a socioeconomically prosperous environment. The fact that kids will move away from their extended families and their parents and leave them to age alone in isolation in nursing homes and move to other parts of the world and because they can because it's supported because uh it's it's even i idealiz ed, you know, be your best self . So yeah, we have we have some I think we have some societal issues that we really have to address if we want to understand this crisis of why people don't want children and seem to resent having children and resent the children that they do have and yeah. Actually, if legislators and policymakers stop to think for a moment. We have from history the proof that removing children from loving home environments is an economic and social disaster. Yeah, we have Romania is definitely a a very good example of a government saying that they can raise children better than you can . Um and in fact it's it's quite um should I say it's sort of a communist ideal to say that you know that that children are better raised by states than parents. And we know that for instance the kibbutz was also a failed experiment in Israel, the idea that parents and children were separated and that the children were raised by someone else, you know, essentially by the governing body of the kibbutz, that they would be better off than being raised by the parents. So and we know in Romania that the Romanian orphans were were literally children that parents gave over to the state because they believed that the state could do a better job of raising their children. Their children would be healthier in these orphanages. And the result of that was devastating. That these orphanages were places of great trauma and sadness. These children did not develop in the same way. They were neglected, they were basically mentally compromised for the rest of their lives. Now, we're not talking about putting your children into orphanages, but we are talking about putting them into day orphanages, which are you know eight sometimes ten hours a day of you know strangers caring for your children and over-stimulating , overwhelming, oversubscribed systems, bureaucratic systems. And so yeah, it's it's different, but not very different. So that very dangerous narrative that the state can raise your children better than you can is a very dangerous one indeed . Erica, you've been very generous with your time. It's been fantastic and I think and hope will be valuable for many people. I think you and I would both say, okay, now many people looking at us would say it's all easy for them, you know, they're well off, they've worked hard, hope they'd concede that, you know, and they they vo plainly they're very comfortable and all the rest of it , but the key to all of us is to understand that in fact that's not where real joy and happiness and purpose have come from. And it won't for anybody else. That it's tied up in relationships . And there's nothing more remarkable, I'm going to say it, than b the bond between a man and a woman who love each other and then bring children into the world who are genetically , if you like, the two flesh becoming one. They're half and half. I look at my kids and think this is amazing. They are half my wife and half me. And that's an unbelievably bonding thing. We need to get swept up again in the magic of it all. It is magical. Having children can be incredibly magical. And so yeah, I think the magic has gone out of the world. I suppose you could say that. Thanks for your courage, because to do hard research and put it out there in a zeitgeist when somehow or other in the age of relativism if your truth, even if it's true , doesn't match up with my feelings, then I'll attack it. And that in itself is immensely destruction destructive. So so here's to sound research, here's to it actually shaping public policy again. Thank you for having me, John .