The Worst Ages for Kids to Experience Divorce, with Erica Komisar

All right, Erika, welcome to the ManTalks Show. How are you doing?

I'm good. How are you doing?

I'm very, very good. I'm good. I'm excited to have you here because I've actually tuned into a bunch of your interviews before and followed your work, and my wife has as well. She's a marriage and family therapist, and we have, like, had great conversations about some of your talks and your books. And so I'm excited to dive into this. So in your latest book, you dive into everything kind of surrounding separation and divorce. And you make this case that it's better to go through a good divorce than it is to have a bad marriage. Can you sort of just unpack that a little bit for us?

Well, it was that the old research from many years ago said that all divorce is bad for children. And the reality is that divorce is bad for children. I mean, it's not as if what I'm saying is everybody should get divorced because it's great for children. It's not good for children. At the same time, there's more recent research that shows that when children live in situations where there's intractable conflict and where parents basically hate each other and can't resolve the conflicts, you know, children are not strangers to conflict around their parents. I mean, in fact, some conflict, as long as it has an arc of resolution, conflict is good to show children because it's good to show children that when you're intimate with someone, there's conflict and you resolve the conflict. But when the conflicts can't be resolved and they're sort of these intractable conflicts, then what the research really shows is that it's probably better for children if they're not in those situations, if they're with two parents who co-parent well and have a more peaceful and harmonious situation. So, you know, it is true that you can mitigate the effects of divorce. If you divorce well. And I know that sounds like a strange thing to say, but I wrote the book because there is a good way to do it and there's a less good way to do it.

Well, I think we're going to talk about that as well because I think for many people that are trying to mitigate the risk around kids and they don't want to have a negative impact on kids, there's two things that I, I was hoping that you could help me figure out or make sense of, um, because I can't quite make sense of these two things. The first is why divorce has become something that gets celebrated online. I see all these posts of people getting divorced and there's like big celebrations happening. Their wedding dress is getting lit on fire and they're popping champagne. And I'm like, okay, what is happening that we're celebrating divorce in this way? Of course, you know, I get it to a certain degree. But then the other thing is the kind of celebration of declining birth rates. I don't know if you saw the recent study that came out that shows that in the US we have declining birth rates. And, you know, I've been sent all these reels of people being like, we did it, you know, we've— we're doing it, we're, we're reducing the birth rate. And I've, I've had a hard time really understanding why that would be something that we want to celebrate.

It's like the old bra burning. In the '70s. Yeah, okay. That's sort of what it's like, yeah. Sort of like people see it as liberation. It's like a liberation movement. Woo-hoo, we don't have to be married. Woo-hoo, we don't have to have children. It's sort of a strange thing, right? I mean, it's sort of like liberation from relationships. And I think that it's a sign of our times really, when we are celebrating the, I mean, if anything, the end of a marriage is a celebration sad thing. You know, the decision to not have children, you know, is a perfectly reasonable decision for people to make, but it also comes with a certain amount of loss. It's not, you know, when somebody decides not to have children, it may be for very good reasons, you know, too much trauma from their past that they couldn't resolve, or they understand that they're too, I don't know, self-focused, sort of uni-focused with their careers, and they know they couldn't really raise a child well. There are, there are good reasons choose not to have children. And also sometimes physically, biologically, people can't have children, right? But to celebrate not having children is a strange thing, right? Because it's saying, you know, the relational life that we're not choosing is woohoo, you know, it's kind of the woohoo generation. I was just in Nashville and, you know, filming a podcast interview and Somebody said to me Nashville is like, is the town of the woo-hoo girls. And I would say this has become the woo-hoo generation in terms of relationships. Like woo-hoo, we don't have to have relationships. Woo-hoo, we're single and we're proud of it. Woo-hoo, you know, we're getting divorced. And I think it's sort of a sign of our times. I think it's a sign of a very narcissistic few generations that we've produced. Listen, if you've been in a bad marriage and you've been abused and, you know, like indeed, woo-hoo. If you can't have children, then I think deciding that you can have a generative life that's wonderful without children, woo-hoo, maybe. But I think this weird kind of celebrating our not, not prioritizing relationships over everything is sort of a strange sign of narcissistic times.

Yeah, I thought it was a very— I remember I was watching this debate that, you know, you see these street debates and college campus debates and whatnot, and there was this woman that was having a conversation with another woman on the street around abortion, and the one woman ended up talking about how she she sort of revels in the fact of ending her own bloodline, that she was very, like, happy to do that. And I thought that that was very interesting, that we— that there's an ideology that says the best thing that you can do with your life, the highest value that you can have, is not to propagate your lineage in some way. And I thought, well, that's kind of also antithetical to the propagation of your idea. The ideals that you actually hold are then therefore going to either die with you or you need to kind of indoctrinate other people into those ideas because you're not having offspring to then carry forth your, you know, religion or your ideas out into the world. Because that's sometimes that's been the part of the, part of the, the function, I guess you could say, maybe not purpose, but part of the function of having a family is that you carry forward those ideas and hopefully you're creating children that help to make the world a better place. Right. It's like if you look out at the world and you're like, there's a bunch of assholes out here, then you can have kids and hopefully you're going to raise some good kids that go out and make a difference in the world. But it seems like part of the ideology within our times, as you're talking about, has become so nihilistic and so bleak that it's almost like, well, the best thing I can do is not have kids because I'd be putting them into the worst scenario ever in human history. And it was interesting because I had a conversation with Esther Perel at one point. We were talking about this. And she said, you know, the best times in human history to have children were the worst times. And she said that's always been part of what has given hope to the human species, right? Like, children are this life spring. And I thought, oh, I never looked at it that way. And so, you know, I think it's sad. Having kids and having been resistant to having kids for a while, especially in my 20s, because I did not feel prepared for it because I was a disaster. And now having kids and really loving it. I mean, it's been absolutely amazing in so many ways. I definitely look out at some of those conversations and I'm like, oh, man, that's terrible. What must that person's frame be like or their view of the world? It must be so bleak and terrible. Um, so what, what are your thoughts on that?

So I suppose you could see it as a sign of hopelessness. Um, but I also think it's a sign of stunted development. So I mean, you know, I'm, I'm older now, but I did have children and I was in my 20s and I did have the same feeling that, you know, well, maybe I don't— you know, children, you got to care for them and you can't care for yourself and you I want to travel the world and I want to be my own, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want to have a fabulous career. And you know, I think 20-year-olds are supposed to be narcissistic. It's a developmental milestone that they have to travel through. So you could say in a way your adolescence, which goes till 25, but I would say straight through your 20s, the decade of your 20s, is sort of narcissistic. Decade, and it's supposed to be because you're supposed to be kind of developing your identity. Like, who am I? What's my meaningful work? Who do I— who am I? So who can I actually love fully? So, you know, in a way it's, you know, where do I want to live? What kind of lifestyle do I want to have? It's sort of forming you. And so it's supposed to be narcissistic, but you're supposed to grow out of it. So Erik Erikson said you're supposed to develop out of it, and you're supposed to move towards being generative and wanting family and wanting relationships and your legacy being relationships. And so love replaces narcissism and personal ambition, love for others, not love for yourself. What seems to me is happening is that love for yourself, we're getting stuck at love for yourself. And, you know, if you don't get enough developmentally in the early years, and this is why I write books straight across the developmental span, right? So my first book was about 0 to 3, and you say, well, why is that interesting to the guys who are listening to this podcast? Because that's personality forming. That shapes who you are. That actually shapes whether you want to have children or not in a funny way, because if you had an amazing experience of being loved, of being able to trust and depend upon your mother or your primary attachment object— maybe it's your father today, but If that one person in the world, and it's not two by the way, it's not equal, it's, you know, it's not like even-steven between men and women. There really is one person who the child depends on more for soothing when they're in distress. And so if you have a fabulous experience of that loving relationship and you can really trust and depend on that person, then yes, you go through a very self-centered period in adolescence, but you come out of it. And, you know, it's sort of like coming back up for air and going, you know, yeah, I've been there, done that. You know, I invested in myself. I was me, me, me, me, me. And now that's really getting old and lonely and isolating and not fulfilling. And I really want love in my life because love is really— I mean, not to sound corny, but that all the songs in the world advocate that love is the meaning of life, and it really is. And so, right, it's like developmental stunting. It's like getting stuck in a crack in the LP record or the CD where you can't move on and you just circle around and around and around. And it has a lot to do with early neglect. It has a lot to do with generationally now, we don't really like taking care of our own children. We think it's a waste of time. We delegate it to others because we think there's much more important stuff we should be doing, all of us. And we spend very little time with our children, with our family, with our extended family, because there's so much more that we should be doing that's so much more important. And so that gets woven into the fabric of a society. And then it, you know, you'd say, you know, in a way what's happening on an individual basis now with young people is collectively what, what we have done to our very young children and what we've done to mothers and fathers in terms of diminishing and demeaning raising children. If it's so unimportant, if it's so like work somebody else could do, if it's boring, if it's tedious, if it's expensive, well, why would you want to do it? There's a great rabbi online that says, you know, Why would you expect your children to want to have children and, you know, sort of seek that out unless you modeled for them the incredible joy of having children? I mean, I have a fabulous career. I didn't when I was raising my children. And the truth is that I would give up my fabulous career in a heartbeat for my children. I mean, my children are the most important thing in my life. My husband and my children. Are the most important thing in my life. I mean, love is the most important thing in your life. And so, you know, this kind of concept of— I think it's a sign of our times.

It's very— it's a very interesting and I think very valid point. And what kind of stands out to me is that it's, it's almost because some of these things have become so politicized and polarized, it's almost hard to have any type of like rational discourse about it without it you know, without that looming nuisance of political, you know, garbled goop and bullshit kind of entering into the equation. So I'm going to do my best for us to steer as far away from that as possible just for this conversation. Maybe another one we could dive into that. But I think, you know, this is something that my wife and I have talked about a lot. I've watched her, you know, grapple with that as we've had kids. And, you know, her kind of figure out where she stands on the career spectrum versus with the kids spectrum and how much time to allocate there and, and versus the other part. But, you know, I think she's done a great job of traversing that. And I do think that, you know, modern— some modern narratives, like, really, I feel for women because I think, I think a lot of women feel extremely torn between sometimes a biological response inside of them that says, I really want to have babies, and that's not for every single woman, but then also these external pressures of, but you have to be independent and have a great career and yada, yada, yada. And I think the values have shifted. I think also values have shifted for people. But on the developmental note, is there a developmental stage that is better to go through separation with kids versus a developmental stage where it's like really detrimental? Like we know that it's not detrimental to have a separation or a divorce happen.

Yeah, there definitely is. Um, and I just, I first, I want to say that, um, you know, I am and always have been socially liberal and yet I was sort of labeled as something that I'm not, which, you know, makes me really non-political in any way. It actually— I'm kind of fed up with politics in general, that you have to put people in boxes talking about things like what children need. Like, that becomes, you know, that becomes a box you're put in. I mean, that sort of sickens me, really, to be honest, um, because the things I talk about are non-political. They're just child development issues. They're just like What do children need to be mentally healthy? That's not a political— it shouldn't be a political issue. So, yeah, so the stages that are best to, to separate and divorce are not 0 to 3. So what I always say is, I mean, listen, you know, if you had a child with someone, for the most part it's because you loved them. And you maybe can't stand them now, but you can wait 3 years until your youngest child is 3 years of age. Age. Because what ends up happening if you do it before then is it ends— it, you know, I don't know if you know the story of King Solomon, and, you know, two mothers came with the baby and said, this baby's mine. And King Solomon said, okay, guard, come over here, cut the baby in half. Which one of you wants the top and which one of you wants the bottom? And the one mother steps forward and says, don't touch a hair on that baby's head. King Solomon says in his wisdom, you're the real mother. So, you know, the concept that this 50/50 thing which is happening in divorces, which makes children like a loaf of bread or a sandwich, uh, or like sharing a car, you know, like it's an inanimate object or a possession. Children aren't your possession. You know, a lot of poets talk about how children are not your possession. They don't belong to you. They're not a possession. They are people, and therefore they have irreducible emotional needs which, you know, at different stages of development mean that they need one parent more than another. And so if you get divorced before 3, you're interrupting often attachment security, which is there's a primary attachment figure, it's usually the mother, and that baby breastfeeds from the mother, that baby is connected to that mother, maybe sleeps with that mother, isn't used to being apart from that mother for more than an hour or two, and And so, you know, the concept that we don't recognize or value attachment security, which is the foundation of mental health, is crazy to me because attachment security research has been around, you know, since the '60s. So, and now there's all this neuroscience that shows us that actually those first 3 years are critical. So if you can avoid in the first 3 years, better. Stay together. You know, try to not fight in front of the children. And then at 3, you can start to wean the baby from the mother. And fathers are very important for separation. So the concept that fathers help with the separation process, but slowly introduce the idea of spending time at the dad's house. I mean, the dad should have as much access, or the parent who's the non-primary attachment figure parent, should have as much access to that child throughout the week as possible. But in terms of sleepovers and overnights and taking the baby away from the primary attachment figure for long periods of time, that's not about what's good for the baby. That's about what's fair to you as an adult. And so you're not going to end up with a healthy child if you're self-centered. That's the bottom line. You have got to be willing to sacrifice in those early years. If you're going to divorce Zero to Three, you've got to be willing to do what's right for your child. It's right for you. And in the long run, that will pay off because that child will end up healthy, and then you'll have a child who at certain times in development wants to be with you more. There's another period of development that's really tough, which is middle adoles— early to middle adolescence, which is about— so adolescence is 9 to 25, and it's what we call the second critical period of development, the first being 0 to 3. The second critical period of development, the brain is pruning all of the excess growth from the first 3 years, and it's a very important— and the brain is very plastic and very impressionable. And so we know that from about 10, 9 or 10, till about 14 or 15, I mean, I don't even have to say, I can just say the middle school years, like how miserable were you in the middle school years? Your body is changing, there's social drama, You know, kids are miserable. They're mean and miserable, and everybody's really unhappy, and everybody's really self-conscious, and there's social media now. And so from 10 to 14 or 15, you want to avoid adding any extra adversity or stress to your child's life, period. Okay, at around 15 to 18, that's pretty stable, kind of later adolescence. That's getting more stable, and you can make sure you don't do it too close to when they go to college because You know, you need to give them time, at least a year, to process with you what's happened, right, and get used to the new world that they live in. And then another really hard time to do it— and in my generation there was this whole like, stay with your spouse until your kids go to college, and the minute they go to college you split up. What a bad idea. The moment that your child is going to college is the moment they're separating for the first time, that they're trying to figure out who they are in the world, and they're very unstable. And so you don't want to do it just when they go to college. Wait. If you've waited this long, wait a couple more years till they have friends, till they feel more stable, till they've formed their identity a little bit more. So there are sort of sand traps, you know, it's what I call sand traps. If you're playing golf on a golf course, you want to avoid the sand traps. Sand trap 1, 0 to 3. Sand trap 2, about 9 or 10 to 14 or 15. Sand trap 3, right when they go to college. So if you can avoid those sand traps, it's better.

And it sounds like stability in those, in those areas is of the utmost importance. Like, that's when they need you, the relationship, to sort of provide the most stability.

Absolutely.

Are you familiar? Have you dug into Alan Shore's work?

Like, yes, Alan Shore is my mentor.

Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that.

He helped me when I wrote He was the voice in the background when I wrote Being There because I'll give you a story of why Alan Shore has been good for me. He, um, I interviewed a lot of researchers. I actually went to the head of the NIMH at the time and, um, and he said to me, wow, this book you're writing is going to get a lot of attention and it's some of it's not going to be positive because what you're saying is true but it's tough for people to hear. And I said, I know. And he said, so I'm gonna give you the names of the most current researchers doing the research in your area, but you do it and leave me out of it. So I said, that's fine, that's fine. He put me in touch with the most important researchers at the time. It's the only reason I could write my book. But what I'll tell you is the researchers were fabulous in that they gave this fabulous research, but when I tried to get them to talk about the social issues related to their research— so they were literally saying that a mother's presence is really critical in those first 3 years, but then when you ask them to say that, they said, "Well, you know—" and one of them even called me back and said, "You know, my wife and I can't— even though what I'm saying is true, you got to take me off." I mean, it was like crazy. It was crazy-making that the researchers were so scared They were doing the research that supported this idea, but then they got scared that they would be attacked by the feminists, you know. And so Alan said to me, he said, "Just use the research, Erika." He said, "Don't worry about—" He said, "Just use the research. The research speaks for itself. You don't need the interviews." I used a little of both. But, um, but it was interesting. It was very frustrating that people who had devoted their lives to do this research were terrified of what the research meant, you know. So this was my— this is Alan's place in my— his voice in the back of my head. He's like, you're on the right path, you know. And he would send me his research and I would use it in my interviews and, you know, integrate it into my thinking.

So yeah, I know Alan, sure. I really have been blown away by his work around the development of the right brain. And because my, my mentor is, I mean, he's been a therapist for 40 years. He's trained thousands of therapists and he's created his own attachment model and developmental model. Yeah. And, and so a lot of that stuff, you know, he's, we've talked about the importance of the first 3 years and yada yada yada. And he was like, oh, you should check out Alan Shore's work. And I started to dive into it and I was like, whoa, this is crazy. And then I got way too in my head because my son was, you know, my son was like 3 and a half years old as I was going through it. And I was like, oh my God, like that time, did I mess him up this way? And like, you know, it was, it was one of those things where, you know, sometimes too much knowledge and information can create a kind of like paralysis or, uh, reflection when, you know, it's like knowing too much. I was like, did I mess them up when I went away that time? Or like when I yelled that time? And, you know, it was so funny because all of a sudden I was like, and, you know, but I think the big thing is that kids are very, very resilient. And so if you, you know, if you're gone for a couple of days or if you, you know, lose your patience once or twice, like it's really not so damaging and detrimental.

But it's not, you know, it's about chronicity. It's about how you are with them on a constant basis, meaning, you know, contrary to what people think, it's not just one big T trauma that makes you unstable. I mean, it can. I suppose you can have a car accident where you have brain damage. You can have— you can be raped. You can watch your parents be murdered. I mean, you know, there's terrible things that happen that can be really big. You can be in war. That can be big T trauma. You know, you can be a soldier and see terrible things. But usually what causes neuroses and mental illness in people is the chronicity of an environment. So if you leave them all the time, if you go to work and leave them for 8 hours, 9 hours a day every day, and they're really tiny and they really need you, yeah, Houston, we have a problem. If you go every once in a while on a business trip, but you've put a lot of what I say pennies in the piggy bank because you've been consistent with them, you got to fill that piggy bank up with a lot of pennies before you can start to withdraw some of those pennies. I don't think parents understand that.

Yeah, I, as you were talking, I have one of my favorite videos is I came back from leading a We do these men's therapeutic retreats, and I came back from that and I was away for 5 days. And my wife and my son were sitting out on the porch and he sees the car pulls up and he knows what's happening. He's like 3 and a half years old and he just comes ripping and my wife is recording it and he's just, "Dada, dada." And I'm like, "Oh my." I'm crying. I get out of the car, I see him running towards me and I'm crying and then I hug him and it's just such a beautiful exchange. So, I'm very thankful for the dynamic that I've built with my kids and that my wife has built with our children. But, can you just— I don't want to blast past it. Can you just sort of summarize or outline some of the research that you were talking about because we kind of alluded to it in terms of the work that you found in being there?

Well, so it has a lot to do with Alan Shore's emotional regulation work. So basically the first 3 years is the first critical period of right brain or social-emotional brain development. So we know that the, the prefrontal cortex takes 25 years to develop. That's the part of our brain that is responsible for emotional regulation and the capacity to deal with stress and reading social cues and having intimate and trusting relationships. Relationships and judgment and executive functioning. Oh, I could go on and on.

I think mine took like 32 years, just to be fair.

Right. And it can take longer. And men, it takes longer than women. Now they're saying at least 27. I say 30. So, um, but if you understand that in the first 3 years, 85% of the right brain is grown by the end of that 3-year period, so from about 3 till about 9 or 10. The rest grows, but sort of like an overgrowing garden, you know, and you have to prune the garden if you want the garden to be healthy, otherwise it suffocates all the plants. So we have two critical periods of brain development: 0 to 3 and 9 to 25, or adolescence— the growth period and the pruning period. In both of those periods, the brain is very plastic and very susceptible to the environment. The environment being the safety and security of a primary attachment figure. And yes, there is one person who is the primary attachment figure, and it's usually the mother because she's wired for it. She is literally biologically wired for it. Now, men here who are listening may not like hearing this, but you have another incredibly important role. I say both parents are incredibly incredibly important, but they don't serve the same function. Women produce a ton of oxytocin when they give birth, when they breastfeed, and as far as I know, men don't give birth and breastfeed— not yet. And so when they give birth, breastfeed, and when they nurture, it turns on the oxytocin in their brain, which makes them what we call sensitive empathic nurturers. They're very attuned to babies' distress, which helps them to be very vigilant to baby's distress because babies don't have the capacity to regulate their emotions, and they only learn it because their mother, from moment to moment, through skin-to-skin contact and eye contact and the tone of her voice and the calmness of her being and the kindness of her— basically all of that affection and love regulates that baby's emotions from moment to moment. Moment in the first 3 years. So the baby was born like sailing in the Atlantic in a storm, 15-foot swells, you know, that's how babies are born emotionally. And so through that primary attachment figure's safety and security and emotional regulation, the mother buffers the baby from stress so the baby is not exposed to excessive amounts of stress and the cortisol levels stay very low. Because oxytocin and cortisol have an inverse relationship. The higher the oxytocin in the mother, the higher the oxytocin in the baby's brain, the lower the cortisol. The higher the cortisol, the lower the oxytocin. So mothers buffer babies from stress and they regulate their emotions from moment to moment. It's only until 3 years of age that babies can internalize that feeling of safety and security security, but can even begin to regulate their own emotions, can even begin to cope with small amounts of stress and adversity. So this idea that 25% of the mothers in America have to put their babies in daycare at 2 weeks of age is barbaric, absolutely friggin' barbaric. I mean, we live in the most barbaric nation in the world, the least civilized nation that doesn't— every other country recognizes that babies need their mothers. And this country, no paid leave, nothing, no financial support. And families, families saying to, to women, go back to work, that's more important work, bring in the money, where's the beef, where's the money? I mean, it's— for me, it's unbelievable. Given what I do, it is It's really— I mean, I know it comes from a place of ignorance, not maybe, you know, sort of belligerence, but ignorance. But it's still very— it's devastating to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

I mean, I grew up in Canada and my brother and his wife just had a kid like 2 weeks ago. And when I was chatting with them about their plan, you know, she got— she gets a year to 16 months of paid leave. I was like, what? What are you talking about?

There are some countries that give 3 years of paid leave. That's amazing. I know, because I go to speak in them. They're always asking me, like, you know, the Slovenias and the Romanias, and they give up to 3 years of paid leave. Now, you know, it might not be paid leave at a doctor's salary, but it's enough to support you to keep the lights on. Yeah, it's enough to— and they hold jobs for the women. So they'll say, for 3 years we'll hold your job, and so you can keep the lights on, we'll give you a basic, you know, salary to keep the lights on. It might not allow you to go to Disney World twice a year, but it will keep the lights on, keep food on the table, and keep a roof over your head. Yeah. And you know what, that's— women need to be with their babies and babies need to be with their mothers. And so this is really, it's barbaric.

That's all I can say. Yeah, I've been, I mean, there's so many other examples of that, but maybe I'll just keep, keep trucking. So when that gets interrupted, say there's a separation in the first 3 years, and, you know, the baby is sort of in and out of its primary caretaker, its primary attachment, or there's, you know, there's abuse in the house or there's like massive emotional volatility or maybe the mother's going through something pretty harsh and intense. What are some of the developmental impacts? Like, what does it actually do to a child?

Their cortisol goes through the roof. Cortisol is the stress hormone. So, cortisol is very bad for a baby's brain. Also, not so good for a mother's brain. And, but what we're doing is we are elevating cortisol levels because babies are terrified of not existing. They're born with something called annihilation anxiety. They are literally clinging to their attachment figures for life, for safety, for a sense of wholeness. And so when we separate them It's like separate— separating them from their source of safety, and their brains go into a state of fight-or-flight, a survival mode, and stay there, right? Because— and they start to develop what we call attachment disorders. Instead of secure attachment, which is what they're meant to develop, they develop attachment disorders, which then correlate with difficulty in relationships going forward and mental illness. Each attachment disorder has a correlate in terms of mental illness. Mm-hmm. And so we are literally making our children crazy. And what does it do to mothers' brains? It increases postpartum depression. For a mother to feel stressed out of her mind the moment she has a baby about needing to leave that baby. When is she going she's going to have to leave that baby. It puts her into a state of conflict from the moment that baby's born, right? And so she can't relax into getting into the cycle of the baby or the sleep cycle of the baby, or because she knows in her mind she's going to be going back to work in 6 weeks or 8 weeks or 3 months, you know, and if she has any time off. And so mothers feel from the moment their baby is born and even before— when the baby's in utero, they feel tremendous conflict. So we say depression is internal conflict. That's what depression is. That's what causes it. And so we have basically created a conflict for women and for men that instead of treating having children like a team approach, right, where, you know, one of you is primarily there for your children and the other is holding that partner up, right? And then at different points in life, it switches, by the way. So this idea that no one can pass the marshmallow test, women, men, no one can pass, you know, the marshmallow test? Yeah, yeah. You want me to tell what the marshmallow test is so people?

Sure, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people know what it is.

Okay, marshmallow test is, you know, this guy comes in, he gives a bunch of children, you know, school-aged children, one marshmallow. He says, you can eat that one marshmallow right now, but if you wait— I'm gonna go out to the bathroom, I'm gonna come back— if you wait, I'll give you 3 marshmallows. Okay, the kids who could wait for the 3 marshmallows did better in life— it was a longitudinal study— than the kids who couldn't wait. Nobody can wait for their friggin marshmallows. And so what are they doing? They're going, I gotta work a job, I can't let go of my career, I gotta go back, I gotta make the money, you know, we have to take that fabulous vacation, or, you know, we want to build a garage on our house or a second car, you know. And, you know, and I can't let go of my identity, not even for a second, because this is what's going on. Instead of mothers having babies and going, ah, so what if I don't sleep? Because I can sleep during the day, you know. What is my job right now is to be, to be relational. My job is relational. Oh, that's kind of nice since my job until now has been so left brain. Wouldn't it be nice to just lean into my relational parts? Mothers can't do that anymore. It does.

It seems like it's become very much like an identity threat. I've watched a lot of women experience that internal conflict of like, well, but who am I if I'm not performing, if I'm not at work, if I'm not whatever it is, you know?

So what's the lesson there? That your identity comes from your work, what you do. And you know, all you have to do is go to a cocktail party and what's the first thing you ask someone? What do you do? I mean, like, stop asking that friggin' question. Ask them who they are. Ask them what they like, you know, what they enjoy. Ask them, you know, and when a mother says to you, I'm raising beautiful children, you say, that's fabulous. Don't turn your back on her and go find somebody more interesting. I mean, this is where we are. Mothers used to be put on pedestals. That's what Mother's Day was about, putting your mother on a pedestal one day a year. I'm like, friggin' one day a year? But, you know, the idea is that mothers used to be on pedestals. Mothers are not only not on pedestals, mothering is seen as sort of like this icky, dirty, boring work that, you know, you want to farm out to other people. It's terrible. No wonder our children aren't doing well.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think what's interesting is that I know a lot of men that really have come to appreciate it, I think, in a different way as this information and this knowledge and this type of research is starting to get out there. I see a lot of men being like, oh, whoa, that is super important. And, but I do think it's almost like a conversation I think a lot of women need to have. One another? Because I think anytime I see us as men enter into this fray, you know, we just get nuked.

So, well, I mean, I, I mean, I think what, what men can do, since this is primarily for men, right? So what men can do is they can provide support and protection for their women when their women are raising children, and to give them the messaging that You know, you are there for them to hold them up so they don't have to work full-time. So if they do want to hold on to their careers, they don't have to bring in a lot of money. You know, you have to give them the messaging, you have to give them the permission. Women would kill me for saying that, but it's true. In a relationship, we have to give each other— men give women permission, women give men permission. Totally. You have to give your women permission to follow their hearts. I can't tell you how many women come to me and say, you know, I want to take time off. I didn't realize. I told my job I was going back after 3 months, and I work in tech, you know, and now I don't want to go back. I want to be home with my baby. I can't even imagine leaving my baby with a stranger, but my husband, he says, you promised me, and got a mortgage to pay, and you're gonna You're going to lose your identity and I need you to go back to work and some babysitter can watch, you know, we'll put them in daycare. And I'm like, so the men are a vital part of this. So you can't force your women to stay home or take a break. But what I would say is you can support them if they choose to work less, if they choose to take time off, you know, and I think also reassuring your women that that their identity is not just bound to what they do. I mean, listen, when men retire too young— I'm saying that's all the men listening, and this is as a therapist who sees a lot of men as patients— when men retire too young, the reason they get very, very, very, very depressed, what do you think it is?

They've lost a sense of contribution to something meaningful.

Their identity is too bound to what they do. So Ram Dass is a guru who went to India, American, came back and wrote books in the '60s. He wrote a book called Journey to Awakening, and he talked about the three pillars of life: the doing, the being, and the having. He said most people, particularly men, do more to have more, forget about the being. Women traditionally were more focused on the being and also on the doing and the having, but more on the being. Now women and men are all focused on the doing to have more. Everybody forgot about the being. The being is what your identity is about, not about the doing. Yes, meaningful work is important, but when your meaningful work goes away, your identity doesn't go away. And if it does, Houston, we got a problem. It means that there's some ego deficit in that person if they're so terrified to let go of the doing temporarily.

It does seem like part of this sort of, one could almost say, like the cancerous nature of modernity is that it propagates this notion that our highest function is in production. It's just in producing, especially with us as men. But that culture seems to be very, very prominent within, within a lot of women, you know, within Western culture, that your highest value is in producing and accumulating financial self-stability. And I think there was, there's even, I don't know, I'm sure you saw the polling that happened. I think it was last year where it looked at male and female Trump voters and then male and female Harris voters. And it looked at their top-ranking priorities. And from, for male Trump voters, it was having, having kids and starting a family. And for female Harris voters, that was like third to last. And so it does seem like the priorities have really changed in terms of what people value, and it's skewing that.

Um, but so you want to, you want to say the mental health crisis is related to a shift in our values.

Hmm, say more.

Just what you said. When we start valuing producing and achieving and accumulating, then we have gone down the wrong path. Because at the end of your life, when you're lying dying, Aristotle said, his deathbed question, you ain't gonna give a a flying fuck about how much you've accumulated or getting a better job or, you know, having that raise. What you're going to care about is what is your legacy of love, who is sitting by your bed holding your hand, kissing you, telling you that they love you as you pass from this world. And if you haven't given enough relationally, if you haven't, you know, I mean, I'm not the only one who says this. David Brooks, Arthur Brooks, you know, we're all saying the same thing. If you've overly prioritized the doing, whether you're a woman or a man, you're going to be a pretty darn lonely person on your deathbed. And the people who are sitting beside you might be there not because they want to be there, but just because they feel obligated to be there. And that would suck.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I could spend another couple hours with you, and hopefully I get to sit down with you in person here in the next month or two, and we can do a round two. I want to honor your time for today. Where can people find your work, your books? Obviously, you've got a new one out. Where can they go to learn more about you?

So they can go to www.komissar.com, and you can— there's links to Amazon and Barnes Noble. You can just go on Amazon, Barnes Noble, and put in Erica Komissar books. So I have 3 books, as I said, and then Instagram and, uh, and Twitter. So yeah, I'm all over Instagram and Twitter. So yeah, follow me.

Beauty. We'll have the links to that in the show notes. But Erica's new book is The Parent's Guide to Divorce. So if you know anybody that's going through that, it is a great, great, great resource. Erica, again, thank you so much for joining me. And for everybody that's out there, man it forward, man it forward. Share this podcast with somebody that you know needs to hear it or would enjoy it. Maybe this is a conversation that you have with your significant other about raising kids and what that looks like. So as always, thank you so much for tuning in. And until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.