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who are so desperate not to say no to their kids

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are now outsourcing this problem to

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the therapy profession. The school

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counselors, the school psychologists, were

1:02

so undermining parents' confidence. They

1:05

weren't trusting themselves. And in fact,

1:07

since I've written the book, I

1:09

am inundated with letters from parents

1:11

thanking me that they don't have

1:13

to feel guilty anymore when they

1:15

punish a child for bad behavior.

1:18

See, the therapeutic experts had so convinced

1:20

them that they would traumatize the kid

1:22

if they took away their smartphone or

1:24

engaged in any other discipline that parents

1:26

were afraid to do it. Today we're

1:29

privileged to host Abigail Schreyer once again.

1:31

A Yale-educated journalist and author whose incisive

1:33

critique of modern sociocultural trends has positioned

1:35

her at the forefront of some of

1:37

today's most heated debates. Abigail

1:40

Schreyer's career trajectory is as impressive as

1:42

it has been impactful. After obtaining her

1:44

undergrad degree from Columbia University, she further

1:46

honed her critical thinking skills at Oxford

1:49

University where she delved into philosophy. Following

1:51

her time at Oxford, Abigail attended Yale Law

1:53

School, where she not only mastered the intricacies of

1:55

law, but also developed a keen sense for

1:57

the underlying societal implications of legal standards. and

2:00

practices. After law school, Abigail

2:02

embarked on a career in journalism, quickly

2:04

establishing herself as a forthright incisive commentator

2:07

whose work often challenges mainstream perspectives. Abigail

2:10

first captured widespread attention with her provocative

2:12

book, Irreversible Dammit, a transgender close to

2:15

losing her daughter, where she explored the

2:17

complexities and rapid increase in transgender identification

2:19

among teenage girls. Since her

2:21

last appearance, Abigail has not shied away

2:23

from controversy, but rather plunged deeper into

2:25

the tumultuous waters of public discourse with

2:28

her latest book, Bad Therapy. Released in

2:30

February, this new work examines the

2:32

burgeoning cases in mental health therapy, focusing

2:34

on the potential harms of emerging therapeutic

2:36

practices and ideologies that prioritize affirmation over

2:38

critical assessment and care. Today, she brings

2:41

her rigorous analysis back to our show

2:43

to explore the increasing obsession with mental

2:45

health and the public school system, the

2:48

implications of new parenting techniques that undermine

2:50

parental confidence, and the potential dangers of

2:52

over-validating every emotion children express. We'll

2:55

tackle how these educational and parenting approaches

2:57

not only fail to equip children for

2:59

real-world challenges, but may also perpetuate a

3:01

cycle of dependency and fragility. Abigail's

3:04

background in law and journalism equips her with

3:06

a unique lens through which she analyzed the

3:08

intersections of policy, culture, and personal experience, insights

3:11

that are crucial for anyone concerned with the

3:13

future of our society and the well-being of

3:15

the next generation. So, buckle up as we

3:17

prepare for a conversation filled with critical analysis,

3:19

insightful commentary, and the fearless pursuit of truth.

3:21

This is the Sunday Special. This

3:51

is the Sunday Special. versus

4:00

echo chambers, you

4:02

really say in your book that

4:04

it's much more about the sort of therapies that we've been

4:06

using for kids who are troubled, the kids have always been

4:08

troubled. There's been a systemic change in

4:10

therapy. What do you make of Heights theory? And how

4:12

does it contrast with your own? Right,

4:15

so, you know, there's a

4:17

lot of agreement between me and Heights.

4:19

Honestly, there's way more agreement than disagreement.

4:21

I think, and my last book was

4:24

about a social contagion spread largely by

4:26

influencers on social media, right? I'm very

4:28

aware of the danger of how bad

4:30

social media has been for young people,

4:33

including their mental health. And I agree,

4:35

and I wholeheartedly support his effort to

4:38

get them out of schools. I think that's a no

4:40

brainer. It's something we've known as bad for kids and

4:42

having them on their phones in school just really doesn't

4:44

make any sense. And there are a lot of harms

4:47

that come from it. Okay, but does

4:49

it totally explain the mental health decline of

4:51

young people? No, it clearly

4:53

doesn't. Let me just give you one

4:55

statistical, I can give you a few.

4:57

Let me give you one. In 2016,

4:59

according to the CDC, 2016, one

5:03

in six American kids between the

5:05

ages of two and eight had

5:07

a mental health or behavioral diagnosis.

5:10

Those kids, these are little kids, they weren't on

5:13

social media. They're not on social media now, but

5:15

they definitely weren't back in 2016. But

5:18

also, if you look across countries, look

5:20

at countries like Israel, okay, Japan, the

5:22

youth are all on their phones in

5:24

these countries. In fact, in Israel, they

5:27

give smartphones to kids younger than they

5:29

do in America. But their mental

5:31

health in terms of anxiety and depression is better.

5:33

And the reason is, is because it

5:35

isn't just a question of the phones.

5:38

It's also a question of the unhealthy

5:40

life we've given kids, which includes this

5:42

constant therapy, this constant sense from schools,

5:44

from parents, and yes, from therapists, that

5:46

there's something wrong with them, that they

5:49

have trauma, and that they need a

5:51

diagnosis and medication. So let's talk

5:53

about that with regard to, specifically, young kids that will sort

5:55

of move up the age chain here. So when we talk

5:57

about kids that you're talking about, the kids who are too.

5:59

two to eight and the sort of math

6:02

therapy that has now been, you know, voice

6:04

it upon these kids, the over-diagnosis of

6:06

these kids. It seems like two

6:08

separate phenomenon for boys and for girls. For

6:11

boys, there's always been a sort of over-medicalization

6:13

of boyhood. This goes back to the 1990s,

6:15

this idea that if a boy can't sit

6:17

still, which if you've ever met a young

6:19

boy, they literally cannot sit still. They're just

6:21

motoring around all the time. That somehow represents

6:23

a break from normality and must be medicalized

6:25

and that for young girls, insecurity, which again

6:27

is kind of normal among young girls, that

6:29

that is also a medical

6:32

issue. What do you see in terms of the

6:34

over-medicalization? Which are the things

6:36

that have been treated as medical problems

6:38

when in reality they're just failures, for

6:40

example, of parenting or structure? So

6:43

shyness, we never hear a kid described

6:45

as shy. They have social phobia or

6:47

social anxiety, right? Every child

6:49

who's inattentive is told they have ADHD. And

6:52

by the way, they're often told by the teachers. No

6:55

one's checking to see if the teacher is particularly

6:57

good or if the lesson

6:59

is particularly interesting to a five-year-old boy.

7:01

No, the child has ADHD and they

7:03

refer him to a treatment.

7:06

And this goes on from phobias,

7:09

all these things, testing anxiety. If

7:12

a child is defiant, he has

7:14

oppositional defiant disorder. It couldn't

7:16

possibly be a problem

7:18

of character or discipline. So

7:22

everything has become sort of theropized. We've

7:24

all been bathed in therapy. And

7:27

normal behaviors, unfortunately, are not only diagnosed.

7:29

But what we do is we make

7:31

all these things worse by accommodating them.

7:33

The second we are told a child,

7:35

a teacher says, or a child says

7:37

she might have nervousness

7:40

about tests, she's taken to

7:42

a therapist, she's diagnosed with testing anxiety. And

7:44

what does a school counselor do? They accommodate

7:47

it. They give her more time on the

7:49

test. Well, now it's become a problem

7:51

for life. You just turned what

7:54

might have been a short-term problem into a chronic

7:56

one. So let's talk about the therapy

7:58

that supplies. There's really two problems. One

8:00

is the therapy that's applied. So as you say, there's

8:02

a label that has to be put on everything in

8:04

order to justify the therapy. So if

8:07

a kid is being a brat, yelling at

8:09

adults or whatever, this now becomes oppositional defiant

8:11

disorder. For example, what

8:14

therapy is then applied? Because there are a bunch

8:16

of different types of therapy and they're not the

8:18

same by any stretch of the imagination. When

8:21

it comes to things like, for example, OCD,

8:23

there's exposure therapies that are quite effective in

8:25

terms of getting kids to change their behavior

8:28

with regards to a thing that's very difficult

8:30

for them. But then there's therapies like talk

8:32

therapy that are completely ineffective. Which therapies are

8:34

good? Which therapies are bad? Are all therapies

8:36

to be treated the same here? So

8:39

right, so there are two things. So

8:41

what I'm concerned about is not therapy

8:43

in response to a problem. When

8:46

an intervention, if a child has

8:48

anorexia, if they have severe OCD,

8:50

if they have a severe phobia,

8:53

there are really good therapies. Like,

8:56

as you said, exposure therapy, which is

8:58

cognitive behavioral therapy. And what a therapist

9:00

will do is they address the problem

9:02

and they actually measure that the child's

9:05

getting better. But

9:07

that's not the majority of what we're

9:09

talking about. What I'm talking about is

9:11

so-called preventive mental health care, which we've

9:13

never been good at. That is treating

9:15

the well. Treating kids

9:17

who don't have a significant problem. We're

9:19

doing this through public schools, through things

9:21

like social emotional learning. Parents

9:24

are applying kids with these techniques. They're

9:26

reading the, you know, best-selling parenting books,

9:28

all written by therapists. And they're applying

9:30

with these kids with these constant

9:32

focus on their emotions. Think about your

9:34

emotions. And that

9:36

is leading to more dysregulated kids.

9:40

But as you said, look, therapies for things like

9:42

phobias and OCD, they're very good. They might even

9:44

be essential. So let's talk

9:46

for a second about the parents in all of this. So in this equation, we

9:48

talk about the kids. We talk about the therapist. But

9:51

it is the parent who's supposed to be the guardian

9:53

of their kids from this sort of stuff. And there

9:55

does seem to be, if we're going to talk about

9:57

the narcissism of the modern generation, We

10:00

may be focusing on the wrong generation. We

10:02

may be focusing on young people who can't

10:04

take care of themselves, their kids, but

10:06

it's their parents who are really the problem. Because

10:08

it used to be that if your kid failed

10:10

in a particular way, your first thought was reflective.

10:13

What did I do? What could I change about

10:15

my behavior that would maybe change the behavior of

10:17

my kid? If a teacher came to you and

10:19

complained about your kid in class, the move wouldn't be

10:21

to then respond by either medicalizing the kid or by

10:24

saying that the teacher did something wrong. It

10:26

might be to say, okay, what am I doing wrong

10:28

as a parent that I can change at home to

10:30

actually drill some sense into my kid? Now it seems

10:33

as though parents are outsourcing the problems to everybody else.

10:35

If you medicalize a problem, then obviously it's not your

10:37

fault that the problem is occurring. It's a medical problem.

10:39

If that problem can only be solved by a third

10:41

party like a therapist, then that prevents you as a

10:44

parent from having to actually do the hard work necessary

10:46

in order to curb your child's behavior, which is the

10:48

most unpleasant part of parenting. You're a parent, I'm a

10:50

parent. The worst part of parenting is saying no. Kids,

10:52

of course, think that the worst part of saying parents

10:54

is that your parents love saying no to you. They

10:57

want to say no. Saying no to your

10:59

kids is like the worst thing in the entire world,

11:01

especially because, I mean, to be frank, kids are really,

11:03

really stupid when they're little. And so you'll tell them,

11:05

if you do A, then B will happen and then

11:07

they will do A and B will happen. And

11:09

they'll get very angry at you and upset you and say,

11:12

I didn't want B to happen either. That was why I

11:14

made the threat. That is why I told you about this

11:16

conditional statement of A, then B. But parents who are so

11:18

desperate not to say no to their kids are

11:21

now outsourcing this problem to the

11:23

therapy profession. Right. So I

11:25

started the book with that hypothesis. I thought it had

11:27

to do with the way they were being raised. I

11:29

noticed that parents were very gentle with their kids. They

11:31

didn't want to say no. They were

11:33

always asking their kids for input on the

11:36

job they were doing. This is so-called gentle

11:38

parenting or what I call therapeutic parenting because

11:40

it's very feelings focused. It's

11:42

very, you know, during your own authority

11:44

and focusing on your child's feelings. OK,

11:46

but why do I ultimately not think

11:48

it's this is because parents

11:51

were driving it. So what

11:53

I realized and part of it,

11:55

I realized this after I did

11:57

an investigation into the schools. Is

12:00

that they had so all these mental health

12:02

experts at your kids school? Very

12:05

often that's the place where most mental health

12:08

expert mental health experts are the most aggressive

12:10

the school counselors The school

12:12

psychologists were so undermining

12:14

parents confidence in their they

12:17

weren't trusting themselves And in

12:19

fact since I've written the book I am inundated

12:21

with letters from parents thanking me that

12:24

they don't have to feel guilty anymore

12:26

When they punish a child for bad behavior See

12:29

the therapeutic experts had so convinced them

12:31

that they would traumatize the kid if

12:34

they took away their smartphone or engaged

12:36

in any Other discipline the parents were

12:38

afraid to do it You

12:40

know this is one of the problems you've been

12:42

discussing throughout your career Particularly in your last book

12:44

and also in this book this cult of expertise

12:46

that so many people have given into and of

12:49

course We all use heuristic shortcuts throughout life because

12:51

we can't tell the experts on everything I mean

12:53

if you got a medical problem, of course, you're

12:55

gonna go to a doctor You didn't go to

12:57

medical school But when we decide that there is

12:59

a class of experts and these experts actually have

13:01

an ulterior motive in Maximizing their

13:03

own importance and maximizing the scope of

13:06

their of their own jurisdiction It

13:08

makes it very difficult for parents to shy away

13:10

from that if you get a call from a

13:12

school therapist saying your kid Has oppositional defiant disorder

13:14

for example, you don't know the hell they're talking

13:17

about you You think that's an actual disorder that

13:19

is commonly applied and the therapist has some sort

13:21

of objective metric that can be used in order

13:23

To obtain that diagnosis and only when you dig

13:25

into things you realize that well Maybe the metric

13:27

that's being used for the diagnosis is inherently vague

13:30

Maybe it turns out that that there's really no great way

13:32

to diagnose this problem It's just a label being put on

13:35

a certain set of behaviors that really doesn't apply Yeah,

13:37

that's exactly right and you're not even getting a

13:39

call from the school therapist You're getting it from

13:41

the teacher and the teacher is giving

13:44

a diagnosis and the pediatrician is

13:46

recommending SSR eyes in both cases

13:48

Not things they're qualified to do

13:51

You know site anti psychiatric medication

13:53

is really not the purview of

13:55

the pediatrician But nonetheless

13:57

people are feeling free to

13:59

die people's kids and encourage

14:01

them on a path to medication

14:03

for things that none of them

14:05

are qualified really to assess. And

14:08

I'll just say one other thing, you know,

14:10

it isn't just that they hand out the

14:12

diagnosis. When a teacher calls a parent, they

14:14

don't say your child is acting up. They

14:16

will tell them your child probably has it

14:19

may have ADHD. But there's something else too.

14:21

Nobody stops and says, what am I doing

14:23

in the environment? What's going on in the

14:25

environment that makes that's maybe

14:27

making things harder for my child? Like am

14:29

I handing him an iPad in the morning

14:32

before school? Things like that. Am

14:34

I not disciplining the child? Am

14:36

I never saying no? Is the first time he ever

14:38

hears the word no from his teacher? Well, no wonder

14:40

he's not listening to the teacher. We'll

14:43

get to more on this in just one moment.

14:45

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14:47

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do. Check it out right now. helixsleep.com/men. So

15:47

we've now had years of experience

15:49

of the over-therapization of

15:52

kids. And what are the results? I mean,

15:54

you talk obviously about the level of diagnostics,

15:57

the level of therapy, and and obviously

15:59

we see the rising levels of suicidality.

16:01

I guess the counter-argument, if I were

16:03

gonna try to steel man the position would be that this

16:05

always existed in the population. We're just noticing it now. Or

16:07

it's the same argument that's very frequently used whenever you have

16:09

a social contagion, is the idea that it was always there.

16:11

One... fifth of people were

16:14

always LGBTQ+. It's just that only now are

16:16

we noticing and giving freedom to people to

16:18

be what they want to be. It turns

16:20

out that one sixth of kids were always

16:22

diagnosably mentally ill or had some sort of

16:24

mental disorder. It's just only now are we

16:26

getting the therapeutic tools necessary in order to

16:28

properly diagnose and create therapies for them. How

16:31

do you counter those sorts of arguments? Yeah,

16:34

okay. That's a really good argument.

16:36

Let me just say to steelman

16:39

it further, adolescent mental health has

16:41

been in steady decline since the 1950s. It's been a

16:43

precipitous decline in

16:45

this country, which by the way is why I don't think social

16:47

media entirely explains it.

16:50

We have seen this steep downward trend,

16:52

although I do think social media made

16:54

things worse. Absolutely.

16:57

But why do I think that it isn't

17:00

just more awareness of poor mental health?

17:03

Because it isn't just people getting

17:06

diagnosed. It's people were seeing more rumination.

17:09

This is the number one symptom of

17:11

depression, more rehashing of

17:14

bad feelings, focusing on your

17:16

pain, talking about your trauma.

17:18

That itself is a

17:20

symptom of depression, just their willingness

17:22

to constantly talk about it. But

17:25

also they're not showing up for

17:27

work because of minor

17:29

problems. They're not showing up for

17:31

work because they feel traumatized because they don't like

17:33

the president who was elected and they're not faking

17:36

it. These are kids who have been conditioned

17:38

to be so focused on their feelings that

17:41

their feelings are predictably,

17:43

and I show this through

17:45

the interviews with experts, the

17:47

genuine psychological research.

17:50

It shows if you focus on your

17:52

feelings too much, you will become dysregulated.

17:54

And that's what we're seeing. These

17:56

kids are walking around focused on their feelings and

17:58

their feelings are being dysregulated. are constantly out

18:00

of whack. So the sort

18:03

of place that you've chosen to put your

18:05

lens, obviously, is on the medical

18:07

industry, on the therapy industry, and all

18:09

the rest. But if you move beneath

18:11

that, you mentioned, for example, the trend

18:14

of teenage angst and problems in teenagers

18:16

going all the way back to the

18:18

1950s. Emile Durkheim suggested

18:20

that enemy was a problem going back to

18:22

the late 19th century. This is this basic

18:24

idea that as societies became unembedded,

18:26

and as people became unglued from their

18:28

social structures, from family, from church, from

18:31

community, that you would end up with

18:33

greater enemy, greater depression, is what he

18:35

was predicting. He wrote an entire book

18:37

called On Suicide that was effectively about

18:39

this. Is that

18:41

what we're actually seeing society-wide and now is just

18:43

being turned into sort of medical language? Yes,

18:45

I totally agree with that. So I

18:48

believe we are giving kids increasingly unhealthy

18:50

lives, and then we pour in the

18:52

mental health resources, and we're baffled that

18:54

they're not helping. They're not helping because

18:56

exactly as you said, kids are detached

18:59

from community, they're detached from family. And

19:01

by the way, the psychological literature, if

19:03

people bothered to read it, I mean

19:05

the mental health professionals, if they bothered

19:08

to read it, they would say that

19:10

it supports all this. Kids

19:12

need to be engaged in something

19:15

bigger than themselves. They do

19:17

very well with outward focus, feeling

19:20

connected to family, having a certain amount

19:22

of independence, which yes, includes some amount

19:24

of risk and danger. So a trip

19:26

to the store or being able to

19:28

cook for themselves, things that involve some

19:30

danger, these things are so good for

19:33

kids, and it's what we're not giving

19:35

them. By the way, I thought you

19:37

were going to say fatherlessness. This is

19:39

like the big thing that conservatives

19:41

always bring up. Well, she

19:43

completely ignores fatherlessness. I

19:46

don't ignore fatherlessness. Of course, any

19:48

kind of family instability, including lack

19:50

of fathers, has had a profound

19:53

impact on kids. But

19:55

the thing to know is that a lot

19:58

of the poor mental health professionals, they're health

20:00

has go inside it with fathers being

20:02

present. It really has. Some of the

20:04

kids who are the most diagnosed have

20:07

fathers present. And I know that from

20:09

my last book, in which I talked

20:11

to probably a thousand families, and the

20:14

vast majority of them had intact family

20:16

structures. What they didn't have is parents

20:18

who were willing to exercise authority and

20:20

say, no, you're not a boy, you're

20:23

a girl. And

20:26

what you're talking about there is something that goes

20:28

deeper than fatherlessness in sort of the technical sense

20:30

that there's not a father in the home. There

20:32

is a role called father. And if no

20:34

one is playing the role of father, you effectively

20:37

do have a fatherless family.

20:39

If the father is playing mom – I mean, it

20:41

used to be. No, this of course, because you're

20:44

Jewish. But the typical Judaic framework is that

20:46

the masculine attribute is justice and the feminine

20:48

attribute is mercy. And you do see that

20:50

in the house a lot. In our house,

20:53

the reality is that if you want real empathy,

20:55

you're probably going to go to mommy. And when

20:59

the bleep hits the fan, it's daddy who's coming down

21:01

with a hammer. And if daddy never

21:03

comes down with a hammer, then you do have a real

21:05

problem on your hands, particularly when it comes to teenage boys.

21:07

And once you get to teenage boys, teenage boys are simply

21:09

not going to listen to mom when she sets down the

21:12

rules. It really is going to have to be dad who

21:14

does that. And if dad doesn't do that, well, then what's

21:16

the impact of having a man in the house who refuses

21:18

to actually set the rules in any

21:20

way, shape, or form? One of

21:22

the things that you talked about there also is

21:25

the idea that kids need an

21:27

orientation outside of themselves. And what's

21:29

amazing to me is that everything you're talking about

21:31

is so common-sensical to people who actually have kids.

21:33

And so one of the things that I'm wondering

21:35

is whether as we as a society have fewer

21:38

and fewer children, and as the people who are

21:40

in positions of power in these various industries, many

21:42

of them don't have kids at all. Many of

21:44

them don't have traditional family structures at all. And

21:46

they're in charge of the education of our

21:49

children. I mean, the heads of the teachers unions are

21:51

not married couples with

21:53

four kids. They're very often

21:55

lesbian couples with no kids or lesbian couples with an

21:57

adopted kid. I mean, that's the story with, I believe,

21:59

Randy Weingart. for example, over at the American

22:01

Federation of Teachers, that's a very different way

22:03

of viewing how family structure is supposed to

22:05

work. And so if you're structuring all of

22:07

teaching around sort of your own anecdotal experience,

22:10

you're going to end up with a lack

22:12

of experience in areas that's really necessary. I

22:14

know for me, on a Sunday morning, if

22:16

my kids are not out of the house

22:18

by 9.30, oriented toward a task, they will

22:20

start clawing at each other like immediately because

22:22

they need a thing to do and kids

22:25

need a thing to do, but we're not giving kids a

22:27

thing to do. We're telling kids that they ought to be

22:29

coddled because we've told adults that they ought to be

22:31

coddled, and now we're treating adults like kids

22:33

and kids like small adults effectively. Yeah, you

22:36

said so many interesting things. So first of all, authority. Yes,

22:39

somebody has to be the authority in the home.

22:42

I don't necessarily think it has to be the

22:44

father, but somebody has to be

22:46

the authority, which, yes, means willingness to

22:48

punish. But what you said about the

22:50

subversions of fathers is right. I think

22:52

men have changed the most. Fathers have

22:54

changed the most in the last generation.

22:56

And here's what I mean. It isn't

22:58

just that they won't punish. It's

23:01

the way they will even talk to their kids.

23:03

They're aping the same therapist moms are. So,

23:06

for instance, no one says to a child,

23:08

no one, shake it off, you're fine. You

23:11

almost never hear, shake it off. You almost

23:13

never hear, six in stones anymore,

23:15

or you'll live. So

23:17

no one is telling kids, even at

23:20

a small level, that they can overcome

23:22

minor injuries so they don't think they

23:24

can. One of the

23:27

phrases that's been banned in our house from very early

23:29

on – my oldest is now 10 – but the

23:31

phrase that's been banned in our house very early was,

23:33

that's not fair. That's not fair. It's completely inapplicable. Because

23:36

guess what? This is dictatorship, not a democracy. And fair doesn't

23:38

come into it. Fair is

23:40

your perception of how the outcome should work. It

23:42

is not a reality. And again, that

23:44

goes to a set of societal values. And

23:46

I really do think that because we don't

23:48

have as many kids in the society anymore,

23:50

people do not have a set of values

23:52

that is geared toward the raising of children.

23:55

Another friend, Tim Carney, recently wrote a book

23:58

about the childlessness of Western California. And he

24:00

used as his counter example Israel. He and

24:02

I had talked about that before. And I

24:04

said, you know, the only Western society that's

24:06

currently reproducing above replacement rates is

24:08

Israel. And the reason for that is because that

24:11

is a society where the entire structure of

24:13

the society is built around setting rules for

24:16

kids such that when you go to a playground in

24:18

Israel and a kid is acting badly, another person who

24:20

is not a parent of the kid will literally tell

24:22

the kid to stop it, which is something that

24:24

is unheard of in the United States. If you're at a playground

24:26

in the United States and one kid is bullying another kid, you

24:28

first try to find the parents of the kid. And then if

24:31

you can't find the parents of the kid, you try to move

24:33

your kid from the situation probably because you're

24:35

afraid of legal liability or because it's considered rude. In

24:38

Israel, you'll have some random grandma who will just tell the

24:40

kids to cut it out. And it's perfectly accepted because, again,

24:42

when you have that many kids in the society, there need

24:44

to be rules of the road that everybody sort of agrees

24:46

on. And that just doesn't exist in the United States anymore.

24:50

Right. Absolutely right. And I actually talk a lot

24:52

about Israel in the book because they do give

24:54

kids a lot of things that are really good

24:56

for mental health, like independence, genuine independence from age

24:58

eight and on. The kids all walk to school

25:01

themselves or get on a bus themselves. But

25:03

I'll tell you something else. So why don't

25:05

I focus on things like have more kids,

25:07

stay married? Because, yeah,

25:11

those things are good, but are

25:13

essential and important. But

25:16

here's the thing. If you tell

25:18

people have more kids, I

25:20

don't know if they'll have them. But

25:22

if you tell them, actually, here

25:24

are the benefits, the mental health

25:26

benefits of toughening your kids up.

25:30

So I tried to look at the source code

25:32

and go a little bit, you know,

25:35

in some sense, deeper and look at,

25:38

yes, more kids around. It's

25:41

really good for everyone's mental health. Why?

25:43

Because they realize that they end up less

25:45

fragile, less worried that they're going to fall

25:48

apart if someone says something mean to them

25:50

in school and parents don't have the time

25:52

to attend to every mean comment. Like

25:54

it's a crisis and call it bullying and

25:56

rush into school and change the child's seating.

26:00

one kid said something mean, right?

26:02

So it's

26:04

undeniable that people with bigger

26:07

families, religious families, intact families,

26:09

they provide so many mental

26:11

health benefits to the kid.

26:14

Just that structure, the outward

26:16

focus, the more kids around,

26:18

all that connection to grandparents, all that's

26:21

very good for kids. But

26:23

here's the thing that a secular society

26:25

in America is increasingly secular might not

26:28

know. It's actually way better for your

26:30

mental health to toughen you up a

26:32

little bit than to sit around

26:34

attending to every one of your problems.

26:36

I know we think it's the gentler,

26:38

nicer thing to do, but it is

26:40

turning these kids into emotional basket cases.

26:43

Yeah, you mentioned they're bullying briefly. And this has

26:45

been one of my bugaboos for a long time.

26:48

Because one of the big things that people talk

26:50

about when they talk about suicidal ideation among kids,

26:52

they usually use this in context of gender dysphoria,

26:54

for example, where the suggestion is that rates of

26:56

suicidal ideation among gender dysphoria kids are high

26:59

specifically because everybody is mean to them and

27:01

society is cruel and mean. And it can't

27:03

be that maybe the kid was experiencing depression

27:05

and confusion before and now has been social

27:07

media into gender dysphoria, or into faux gender

27:09

dysphoria or rapid onset gender dysphoria. No, it's

27:11

got to be that everybody is being really,

27:14

really mean. And this has been a logic

27:16

that you see used all the way up

27:18

to and including the White House is the

27:20

idea that kids are effectively, suicidally ideating because

27:22

they are being bullied in school. Not only

27:24

do I see no evidence that that's the

27:26

case, I see a fair bit of counter

27:28

evidence that's the case. Bullying in school has

27:30

probably never been rarer in the United States

27:32

than it currently is specifically because the schools

27:34

have been taught to crack down on it

27:36

for both liability reasons and for mental health

27:38

reasons. And second of all, when

27:40

it comes to actual bullying as somebody who's

27:42

viciously bullied throughout my youth, I

27:44

got to tell you, I don't believe it. I don't think that

27:46

the evidence is there that if people are mean to you, that

27:48

this is what typically makes people

27:50

suicidal. I think that what

27:52

makes people suicidal is something that goes

27:54

far deeper than that. And

27:57

this kind of notion that bullying, again, I'm not

28:00

When you're not pro-bullying, bullies should be punched in the teeth.

28:02

In fact, one of the aspects of growing up is you

28:04

learn to punch bullies in the teeth, which I think is

28:06

a really, really important lesson to learn. It's one that I

28:08

hope to teach my own kids and I'm teaching my own

28:10

kids. But this sort of idea that every –

28:12

in order to avoid bullying, in order to avoid the

28:14

hardships of life and thus to lead you to health

28:16

and happiness, we have to wipe

28:18

out all the bad things that you're experiencing in life

28:20

and then dumb down bullying to include not just being

28:22

punched in the face by a bully, but somebody saying

28:24

a mean word to you or crossing you. As

28:27

you say, it's creating fragile kids. Yeah,

28:30

I mean, a few things. So

28:32

I think you're generally right. The

28:34

idea that there is bullying around

28:36

LGBTQ identities is – I mean,

28:39

in most of America is at this

28:41

point laughable. It's the opposite. Kids feel

28:43

so much pressure to identify as one

28:45

of the LGBTQ labels.

28:48

But is there a different

28:50

kind of bullying? I think there is. I

28:52

think that kids are tyrannizing each other with

28:54

their feelings. And as we

28:56

see on University campus, the treatment of

28:59

Jewish kids, I mean, that's a certain

29:01

amount of bullying. But with the results

29:03

you just said, which are you're seeing

29:05

young Jewish co-eds come out and show

29:07

more grit and more strength than

29:09

I think we've ever seen. It's

29:11

the opposite. A certain amount of

29:13

heckling and harassment very often produces

29:15

the stronger people. And not, of

29:17

course, to condone any of that,

29:19

it's abhorrent. But the point is

29:21

that the hysteria that we all

29:23

feel – I mean, I do

29:26

think that's part of why we

29:28

have fewer kids in this country.

29:30

More kids are great. I love

29:32

Carney's book. But we need to

29:34

have more kids by taking the

29:36

pressure off parents who are right

29:38

now frantic that

29:40

any time a child's tease, they could

29:42

have trauma. And this trauma will last

29:44

a lifetime. It's not true. It's a

29:47

lie. And the research does not support

29:49

that trauma myth. But parents

29:51

need to know that. Yeah. One of

29:53

the things you're talking about there, which is the ease

29:56

of parenting – you're totally right about this. It is

29:58

very, very stressful to be a modern parent. where

30:00

your job is to alleviate every single problem that your

30:02

kid has. Whereas in the past, having kids basically meant,

30:04

okay, they go to school, they're expected to do their

30:06

homework when they come home, and then they're expected to

30:09

go out in the sunshine until it gets dark, and

30:11

then they're expected to eat what you put on the

30:13

table and go to bed, which was the way that

30:15

most people were raised for most of human history, actually.

30:17

The kind of nouveau parenting where

30:19

you're expected to hover around your kids and

30:22

be on them at all times is incredibly

30:24

stressful. It's really, really difficult. My

30:26

wife at one point joked about writing a book called I'm a Bad

30:28

Mother and So Are You, meaning

30:31

that the basic kind of

30:33

concept is that no one can abide by

30:35

these standards. And parents talk

30:37

about this to each other all the

30:39

time. Being a parent is difficult.

30:42

Kids are a giant pain in the ass. They

30:44

really are, they're very difficult. They're wonderful and they're

30:46

terrific. And also they're a giant pain in the

30:48

ass. They're a huge time suck, and all of

30:50

that is true. But it makes it even worse

30:52

when what you feel is that every single thing

30:55

on the brand new Mercedes Benz that is your

30:57

child is going to wreck the entire value of

30:59

the car and can't be ironed out. I

31:01

think that's why kids became a pain

31:03

in the ass, by the way. It's

31:06

because we made it so labor intensive

31:08

to hover. I mean, you listen to

31:10

these gentle parenting, these

31:12

therapeutic parenting experts, I listened to one just the other

31:14

day, and they say if your

31:16

child is demanding that the family watch a

31:18

different movie, this is an example I heard

31:20

just yesterday, not the movie you want, but

31:23

a different movie, and they're throwing a tantrum,

31:25

you pick them up, carry them

31:27

to their room, and sit there with

31:29

them for a half an hour to

31:31

an hour until they calm down. Now,

31:33

you can't do that if you have

31:35

more than one child. Now you're not

31:38

disciplining, you're being their slave. But

31:41

this is the kind of advice parents get

31:43

all the time, and it makes having more

31:45

kids feel impossible. Yeah, well,

31:47

one of the things that I've seen in some of the

31:49

parenting books is this thing where your kid's fussing, your kid's

31:51

having a meltdown, a tantrum, and

31:53

you're supposed to say to them, I

31:56

see you're feeling sad, aren't you? I see you're feeling really

31:58

angry, aren't you? So we tried that one time. with

32:00

my oldest daughter. And the problem is that

32:02

she's smart. So she immediately – she

32:05

basically, not in these words, said, why are you patronizing me?

32:07

Like, yes, I know I'm angry. Yes, I know I'm sad.

32:09

Like, I don't need you repeating it back to me to

32:11

feel that. What she really wanted was for us to say,

32:13

okay, well, until you can calm down, you're going to be

32:15

in this room, and we're going to be in that room.

32:17

When you calm down, come on back out and then hang

32:20

out with us. It's this

32:22

sort of mirroring effect

32:24

also. It feels – it's not just

32:26

kind of this gentle parenting. It's this empathetic parenting.

32:28

It's all about empathy with the child. Well, I

32:30

mean, again, I don't think that I ought to

32:33

empathize with what are essentially small, crazy people. I

32:35

mean, I've said to my wife before that being

32:37

a parent is like running an insane asylum. Half

32:39

the time, the kids are wonderful, and they're –

32:41

and you're enjoying it. And half the time, they're

32:43

melting down for legitimately no reason. And

32:45

that's okay. That's okay. And

32:47

you're supposed to deal with that. And

32:50

there's something else, too, that – this is

32:52

kind of a radical statement, but it's so

32:54

– I think it's very obviously, too, and

32:56

I can talk about why. But the

32:59

idea that you're supposed to

33:01

validate all of your child's

33:04

feelings is ridiculous. Now,

33:07

you have to educate a child's feelings a

33:09

little bit. Now, that's different. That's

33:11

why therapy is so different for adults.

33:13

It's one of the many reasons. An

33:15

adult may want a safe space or

33:17

whatever it is to just event, in

33:19

a nonjudgmental space in which to vent

33:21

their worries or feelings without being judged.

33:23

And you know what? That's your prerogative.

33:26

But a five-year-old who feels rage

33:28

that he was served the mac

33:30

and cheese when he wanted a

33:32

different meal for lunch and throws

33:34

the bowl at mom needs to

33:36

be told that that is

33:38

not – first of all, that the behavior

33:40

is unacceptable. He has to have a consequence.

33:42

And he also has to be told that's

33:45

not a reason for anger. That's not

33:47

a reason for anger. We can be angry

33:49

at a lot of things. That's an inappropriate

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34:51

many ways, one of the things that's happening also is the –

34:55

as you say, it's creating a countervailing response

34:57

in kids that's significantly worse because, as you

34:59

say, you have kids, I have kids. What

35:02

kids want more than anything else is parental attention. It's

35:04

the thing they desperately want, parental attention. And they will

35:06

get a negative or they will get a positive. They

35:08

don't really care. They would

35:10

prefer to have negative parental attention than no

35:12

attention. The worst punishment we use

35:14

with some of our kids is we say,

35:16

I'm going to ignore you until you actually

35:18

start acting like a rational human being and

35:20

deprive you of that attention because very often

35:22

kids want the fight because they'd

35:24

rather have the fight with you than to be

35:27

ignored completely. But what we do when we engage

35:29

in these sorts of, okay, we're going to validate

35:31

your feelings, you're actually encouraging them to feel bad

35:33

in order to get your attention for feeling bad,

35:36

which – I mean, you see this with your

35:38

adult friends too. There are people who just love

35:40

being depressed because they can't wait to tell their

35:42

friends about how depressed they are and how terrible their

35:44

life is because that's what's fun. As you get to go

35:46

out to brunch and then talk about how terrible your life

35:48

is, nobody likes these friends

35:51

and you're creating these adults out

35:53

of your children when you do this sort of stuff. That's

35:56

right. You're making kids more dysregulated.

35:58

And by the way – There's

36:00

really good research going back to

36:02

the 1960s by diana bomber and

36:05

and showing that authoritative parents Rule-based

36:08

parenting loving but rule-based always produced

36:10

the happiest most successful and kids

36:12

with the best relationship with mom

36:14

and dad Not authoritarian

36:17

which is cold obedience is everything by

36:19

the way, it doesn't exist in america

36:21

It's now just a complete straw man

36:24

whenever they bring it up That's authoritarian

36:26

parenting and not permissive and we don't

36:28

have that anymore either We have the

36:31

surveillance parenting this hysterical therapeutic surveillance parenting

36:33

which has all the detriments of permissive

36:35

family Parenting minus

36:38

the independence. We never give kids independence

36:40

and they need it They need

36:42

to be trusted with knives at some point. Otherwise, they're

36:44

going to be like animals in a cage and that's

36:46

what they are Uh, you know

36:48

you brought up jonathan height and I love

36:51

I love, you know I certainly love his hypothesis

36:53

and we agree about so much But one of

36:55

the things that i'm worried about with this generation

36:57

is not just their levels of

36:59

distress Which is very alarming but also

37:02

their lack of sense of efficacy that

37:04

they can do in the world And

37:07

we've never seen kids at such high

37:09

rates young young adults now saying they

37:11

don't feel like it can improve their

37:13

lives That things they do matter

37:16

and that's why I think there are no

37:18

tech founders in this generation so far So

37:20

we need we need to reorient You know the

37:23

way these kids are being raised and part of

37:25

that means we need to get the experts out

37:27

of the room So that they stop undermining parents

37:29

sense. They know what's best for their own kids

37:32

So one of the most surprising things that you

37:34

talk about in the book you talked about it

37:36

on joe's show as well Well, some of your

37:38

findings with regard to the statistics on suicidality among

37:40

people who claim gender dysphoria You

37:43

had suggested that actually it is not radically

37:45

higher than other segments of the teenage population

37:47

when you remove other factors I

37:49

wanted you to kind of explicate that and explain what you mean by

37:51

that Sure. This was the

37:54

more recent study out of I think

37:56

finland which said that um when you

37:58

control for other comorbidities other

38:00

psychological problems, the

38:04

rates of suicidality among transgender-identified

38:06

youth are not higher than

38:09

they are for the adolescents more

38:11

generally. So look,

38:14

these kids, part of the reason a lot

38:16

of them are attracted to the idea that

38:18

they might be transgender is they have a

38:20

lot of mental health struggles at

38:22

the same time. And the question is,

38:25

is the transgender or the gender dysphoria,

38:27

the severe discomfort in the biological sense,

38:30

in the biological sex, is that

38:32

driving the misery? Actually

38:34

it turns out not to be. And

38:36

so, you know, predictably, transition,

38:38

gender transition is no cure for

38:40

it. So let's talk about

38:43

some of the cures that you recommend here. So

38:45

obviously we kind of know who the villains are.

38:48

We know who the, on a

38:50

general level, but let's get more specific about that. So when

38:52

you look at the educational system or you look at the

38:55

medical system, if you're going to target

38:57

institutions to change, which would be kind of top of

38:59

the list for you? Schools.

39:02

Schools have to shrink mental health staff

39:04

right now. What they are

39:06

doing is they are obsessing with

39:08

children. I just got an email

39:10

just yesterday from a friend whose

39:12

daughter's in public school. And I

39:14

talk about in the book, the

39:16

really horrifying CDC-authored suicide studies, mental

39:18

health surveys, sorry, mental health surveys

39:20

that the kids across the country

39:22

are routinely taking. And

39:24

I just said you were getting them weekly. How

39:28

was your mental health? How was your mental

39:30

health now? Have you considered cutting? Have you

39:32

considered burning, choking? Have you ever played this

39:34

game over and over and over? These

39:37

kids are so oppressively, you know,

39:39

being asked about whether they're thinking

39:41

about suicide, whether it's

39:43

presented as a coping mechanism. It's

39:46

you know, having mental health struggles is

39:48

valorized in schools with the counselors who

39:51

are constantly checking in. And

39:53

these surveys are a disaster, but so are

39:55

the mental health staff who are

39:57

always directing these. They're directing social.

40:00

emotional learning. They're constantly obsessing

40:02

over kids' bad feelings and

40:04

it's way too much for kids. When

40:07

it comes to these schools and the staff, school

40:09

therapists, how often are they actually, say, medical

40:12

psychiatrists as opposed to, you know, just somebody

40:14

who got a degree in therapy? Yeah,

40:17

so almost never. What they are is

40:19

they usually get a one-year accreditation as

40:21

a school counselor and they're leading kids

40:23

in exercises like social emotional learning. Now,

40:26

what is social emotional learning? It sounds

40:28

great. The idea is to teach kids

40:30

emotional regulation techniques. That's the idea. And

40:32

who wouldn't want that, right? So kids

40:35

are more well self-aware and more courteous

40:39

to each other. I mean, that's how they

40:41

sell it. But for

40:43

reasons I explained in the book, what

40:45

it does is if you're

40:47

going to teach emotional regulation,

40:50

invariably the conversation turns to

40:52

negative feelings. Why? Because if

40:54

you're asking kids, what was the time

40:56

when you were happy, there's nothing to

40:58

teach. So it's always asking kids, what's

41:00

the time when you felt left out,

41:02

bullied, traumatized, when you felt alone or

41:04

misunderstood? And it's getting kids to ruminate

41:06

on their bad feelings. This is, again,

41:08

the number one symptom of depression. And

41:11

of course, it also tees up a

41:13

criticism of the parents. Why? Because whose

41:15

job was it to keep the parents,

41:17

the child, safe? So invariably, the question

41:19

is, well, where was your mom? Where

41:22

was your dad? So this kind of social

41:24

emotional learning, for those reasons, that feelings focus

41:27

leads to kids who are more dysregulated. Now,

41:29

as I was writing the book, I predicted

41:31

all of this, I explained why I thought

41:33

this was really bad for kids based on

41:35

the research. But what I didn't know was

41:37

while I was thinking this, two teams of

41:39

researchers in Europe were thinking the same, and

41:41

they were testing it. So a team of

41:43

researchers in Australia evaluated something

41:45

called the WISE Teens Program. This was

41:48

social emotional techniques in Australia offered to

41:50

kids in school in Australia. And another

41:52

team of researchers was doing a meta

41:55

analysis of these techniques

41:57

in England, everything from anti-bullying techniques,

42:00

wellness tips to social emotional techniques

42:02

and in both sets of studies

42:04

they concluded the same.

42:06

Kids as opposed to control group that

42:08

did not go through the program, the

42:11

teenagers who went through the program emerged

42:13

more anxious, more depressed

42:16

and more alienated from mom and dad. It

42:19

really is amazing that there's this bizarre bifurcation

42:21

in how we think about kids in America

42:23

and in Europe as well. On

42:26

the one hand, we treat kids as

42:28

absolutely fragile, got to be super careful

42:30

not to scratch or dent them. On

42:32

the other hand, we pour all this

42:35

stuff into their heads with the assumption

42:37

that they can't be damaged. As

42:39

you mentioned, if you keep asking a kid

42:41

over and over and over about their gender

42:43

identity or whether they feel depressed or whether

42:45

they've ever thought about cutting, you

42:48

are implanting ideas in kids' heads. This is in

42:50

fact how you actually get kids to think in

42:52

a particular way. They're unbelievably malleable at this age.

42:54

When you point this out, you'll say, well, are

42:56

you saying that if you just keep saying this

42:58

stuff to kids, then they might start actually doing

43:00

this sort of stuff? The answer is

43:02

yes. If you keep saying things to kids, they will end

43:04

up doing this sort of stuff. By the way, we

43:06

actually do know that from the best social research with

43:08

regard to suicidal ideation. It turns out that

43:10

suicide is actually fairly contagious and that when

43:12

you continue to tell kids in a particular

43:15

social circle that one kid has committed suicide,

43:17

have you thought about committing suicide? Have you

43:19

thought about committing suicide? If you do that,

43:21

this is why there's been a crackdown on

43:23

social media, for example, on talking about suicide

43:25

specifically because of the social contagions that can

43:27

occur. When it comes to politically correct diseases,

43:29

then all of a sudden there's no social

43:31

contagion at all. Then if you say, for

43:33

example, that gender dysphoria is socially contagious, which

43:35

it clearly is, then no,

43:37

no, no, no. It's always been that way. When

43:39

you say, well, you know, it's weird

43:41

because if you go a couple generations ago and you can look

43:43

at it on the age spectrum, people above the age

43:45

of 60 in this country, less than 1% are

43:48

going to openly identify as LGBTQ+. When

43:50

you look at people who are below the

43:52

age of 20, you're looking at probably a quarter of

43:54

the population now. That doesn't seem like an evolutionary bottleneck.

43:56

That seems like a social ... No, no, no, no.

43:58

It can't be. that if you keep speaking into

44:01

people's brains over and over, it has any impact on their

44:03

brain. So on the one hand, highly,

44:05

highly bubble wrapped, don't

44:07

let anything touch them. On the other hand, we will pour as

44:09

much toxic nonsense in your ears as

44:11

you possibly can under the assumption that it will have

44:13

no impact. And it will fly

44:16

under the flag of mental health. That's

44:18

the thing. That's why I don't think

44:20

it's just a smartphone again, because teens

44:22

are identifying with their diagnoses. It's

44:25

not just they are, they feel limited by the,

44:27

by the way, there's a classic effect of, you

44:29

know, diagnosis is that a side effect is that

44:31

you feel limited by that diagnosis. Now you feel

44:34

like you can't change. You need a pill or

44:36

you need a therapist to help you. And

44:39

we're seeing that these kids are

44:41

absolutely convinced they're depressed over

44:43

half of the rising generation thinks their mental

44:45

health is not good. We've never

44:48

seen these numbers and why exactly what

44:50

you're saying. We're constantly suggesting to kids

44:52

that they might be depressed. Now

44:54

here's the funny thing you said, you're right. We

44:57

know and the CDC came out with,

44:59

as you know, and others have issued

45:01

reports on what makes suicide contagious, things

45:03

like presenting it as a coping mechanism,

45:06

things like, you know, normalizing it

45:08

and valorizing the subject. This

45:10

is all stuff that we know we're not supposed to

45:12

do in the media, but mental health,

45:14

you know, so-called experts in schools, the school

45:16

counselors are doing this all the time by

45:19

and, and again, these, these, these surveys

45:21

are now given out by pediatricians. They're

45:23

authored by the CDC and they're, they're

45:26

given out in school and they're constantly

45:28

presenting a world to children that is

45:30

dark, where kids are constantly engaging in

45:32

self-harm, where their mental health is so

45:34

shaky. We're telling kids that the kid

45:37

that kids around them are barely getting

45:39

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46:43

today. So again,

46:45

we talked about the schools. When

46:47

it comes to sort of the professionals

46:49

outside of school, what changes need to

46:51

happen there? Because there is

46:53

a pipeline that exists, obviously. We're in the school of therapists

46:56

with one year degree that

46:58

is virtually meaningless, decides that they

47:00

now know how to diagnose mental health problems. Then

47:02

they funnel that person to an actual psychologist. And

47:04

then people say, OK, well, a psychologist is a

47:06

doctor. That person went to actual medical school or

47:09

at least to CID. They

47:11

at least have some sort of background in

47:13

this. But it seems like the psychology

47:15

profession has also become unbelievably captured by a

47:18

lot of this ideology. So

47:20

what I want to do

47:22

is reset the default settings. Parents

47:25

at the first sign of children's distress

47:27

should not drop off their children with

47:30

a therapist, especially if they're

47:32

able to stabilize a child through

47:34

other environmental changes.

47:37

If your child has a severe problem,

47:39

OCD, for example, as you mentioned, or

47:42

anorexia and you can't stabilize them other

47:44

way, then by all means, the question

47:46

now becomes what kind of treatment? Could

47:48

it be something like cognitive behavioral therapy?

47:50

But dropping a kid off at the

47:53

first sign of trouble or

47:55

first sign of distress with a psychodynamic

47:57

psychotherapist who's going to sit around and

47:59

talk to you. about their trauma, they

48:02

might end up with the exactly what

48:04

we're seeing, a population that feels that

48:06

is nursing every injury, nursing every emotional

48:08

hurt. I mean, in the book, I

48:11

argue that they're basically emotional hypochondriacs, which

48:13

doesn't mean they're faking it. That's not

48:15

what hypochondriasis is. It's not what they

48:17

now call illness anxiety disorder. It's not

48:20

what it is. It's people who apply

48:22

a hyper focus to their problems, in

48:24

this case, their emotional problems, and thereby

48:26

magnify those problems to the point where

48:29

they're experiencing so much distress, they don't want to

48:31

show up for work. So how

48:33

did all of this get started? The over

48:36

diagnosis, the over therapy, was

48:38

this a money game? Or was this an ideological

48:40

game? So Frank Freddy

48:43

does, he's a wonderful British sociologist,

48:45

he argues that it's been, you

48:47

know, a steady march across the

48:49

west of professionalizing all relationships. And

48:51

I think it's very compelling what

48:54

he says that we have this

48:56

natural, you know, mistrust of informal

48:58

relationships. And we try to

49:00

professionalize it. And that's why parents think they

49:02

need to ape therapists in talking to their

49:04

own kids, God forbid you were ever natural

49:06

with your child, right. And as

49:09

you said about your daughter, she knows when

49:11

she's being patronized, when your mom's pretending to

49:13

be a shrink, the kid knows it, right.

49:16

When they're saying I'm setting a boundary, or

49:18

you know, this sort of

49:21

language where they're so obviously aping the

49:23

shrink or aping the therapist, it creates

49:25

this incredibly unnatural relationship. And you look,

49:27

we want natural relationships in the home,

49:30

which doesn't, you know, of course, parents

49:32

aren't supposed to be their kids friends,

49:34

they're supposed to be authorities, but they

49:36

also want to be natural, which means

49:38

their own sense of humor, their own values

49:41

should prevail. So, you

49:43

know, I think that that march

49:45

has been going on for the last 15,

49:48

50 years, the sense that, you know, you

49:50

can't trust people to their own informal

49:52

relationships, we need to hire experts to get in there

49:54

and fix them. You know, one of the

49:56

things that that, you know, is, is kind

49:59

of amazing is just that Parents are

50:01

now expected because as you talk about, there's this

50:03

professional relationship that's supposed to attend on being a

50:05

parent. You're actually not socializing your kids properly

50:07

at all because a professional is paid to

50:10

have a relationship with you. A professional is somebody

50:12

who is going to put their own personal reaction

50:14

to what you are doing aside in order to

50:16

deal with you. You are the center of their

50:18

world. If I hire somebody to do a job,

50:20

I'm the client, they're the professional, that's the way

50:22

it works. But what families used to

50:24

be was a place where socialization actually happened. You

50:26

see this largely among siblings. Siblings treat each other

50:28

like crap half the time. I mean, they really

50:31

do. In every single family,

50:33

they love each other and they protect each other and

50:35

they protect from outside threat. And also they bully each

50:37

other and they say mean things to each other and

50:39

they fight with each other. It's just like, that's normal.

50:41

And it's a really good socializing thing because that is

50:44

how the world works. And as a parent, if your

50:46

kid is being really terrible and you display a little

50:48

bit of anger with regard to your kid, everybody

50:51

treats that as though that's the worst thing in the

50:53

world. I'm not so sure that that's the worst thing

50:55

in the world given the fact that in the real

50:57

world, if you act badly, you will be met with

50:59

anger. And this idea that it's everybody else's job to

51:02

sort of respond to your feelings in the way

51:04

you wish to be responded to, that you're upset,

51:06

you're throwing a tan from and everybody is then

51:08

supposed to cave to you as opposed to reacting

51:10

how actually the rest of the world normally

51:13

will. Now that is not socializing

51:15

your kid at all. It's doing the reverse. That's

51:18

exactly right. And what happens is these

51:20

kids that show up after being so

51:22

accommodated by their parents, so gently treated

51:24

on expert advice, they can't sit still

51:26

and they end up medicated. That's

51:28

what we do. Because we can't get them to

51:31

govern themselves because to do that, you have to

51:33

set down rules and consequences. And

51:35

we call that gentler. It's not gentler to

51:37

go in there and rework your child's personality

51:39

medically and make them feel that they have

51:42

a brain problem when they don't, when they

51:44

just haven't learned to govern themselves. You know,

51:46

you mentioned extended family. That's one of the

51:48

things we don't give kids. And here's the

51:50

secret. If a child, exactly like

51:53

you said, you send a kid off to

51:55

a therapist, a psychodynamic therapist, a kid who

51:57

doesn't have a serious problem and they're

51:59

gonna... Explore everything that might be

52:01

the cause and you're going to find

52:04

out and i've heard this again and

52:06

again that the child was nursing You

52:08

know some you know purported hurt that

52:10

happened years ago. That was extremely minor

52:12

But the the therapist is paid to

52:14

rehash it with them at infinitum But

52:17

you know if a child brings their

52:19

problem to an aunt or

52:21

a cousin or an uncle You

52:23

know, there's a limit for how long the

52:25

child will will be allowed to go on

52:28

at some point They'll say not only will

52:30

the person be incentivized to reinforce your values,

52:32

but at some point they'll say go play

52:35

Go play you get yes your sister hit you it's not the

52:37

end of the world. Go play i'm i'm sorry The

52:39

therapist will never say go play

52:42

so the endless rumination can never

52:44

stop You know the the

52:46

endless kind of the endless treating of

52:48

people as though they are two years old Uh

52:51

has obviously had radical ramifications for the

52:53

society at large not just for for

52:55

kids But for adults and i'm picking

52:57

two is sort of the reason because when

52:59

kids are two you can't reason with them I mean

53:01

when kids are two you can't actually tell them their

53:03

feelings aren't valid because they literally don't understand anything when

53:05

they're two They're two. Um, and so we treat six

53:07

years old like they're two We treat 15 year olds

53:09

like they're two and now we're treating 25 and

53:12

30 year olds like they're two And so

53:14

what you have are, you know just this

53:16

week employees at google, which is an incredibly

53:18

successful and powerful corporation Probably the most powerful

53:20

corporation on the planet employees at google Staking

53:23

out their bosses office occupying their

53:25

bosses office to try to get

53:27

google to somehow remove its investments

53:30

from cloud services for

53:32

the israeli military in the belief that

53:34

it's the job of the google ceo

53:36

to validate their feelings and make them

53:38

feel better about their own political priors

53:40

and What's even

53:42

more amazing is how many of these corporations are deciding to go

53:44

along with this? This is the part that I don't understand There

53:47

was always a feeling At

53:49

least until the last few years there's always

53:51

a feeling that okay So we're doing all this crap and

53:53

it's really stupid And then there will come a point where

53:55

somebody becomes an adult and the real world will clock them

53:57

in the face And it turns out that when you Actually,

54:01

when you educate an entire generation

54:03

this way, almost universally, they

54:05

don't even know how to break the cycle.

54:07

The cycle just continues. So instead of the

54:10

CEO of Google just saying, okay, well, you're

54:12

here. You're all fired, which is what

54:14

a normal CEO would do. He'll be, okay, how can we bargain

54:16

with you? I want to validate your feelings, make you feel better

54:18

about yourself, and the world gets worse. Well,

54:21

you know, I'm gonna see something kind of funny here and

54:23

that is that, you know, just I

54:26

hate to be on the side of defending the CEO

54:28

of Google, but but a 25

54:30

year old who's throwing a temper tantrum is

54:32

scared. It's really different

54:34

than a two year old. And that's what

54:37

we've got. We've got 25 year olds together

54:39

throwing temper tantrums. And, you know, as I

54:41

say in the book, it's the reason they

54:43

don't want to grow up. They

54:45

don't feel up to it. We've got

54:48

25 year old basket cases who

54:50

don't know how to govern themselves,

54:52

don't think they're don't know that

54:54

there's a world outside of their

54:56

feelings. That's more important. And they

54:58

are acting truly like overgrown toddlers.

55:01

And that has ramifications for the next

55:03

generation. We're talking about the current young

55:05

generation, but there's another generation that just

55:07

is not going to exist because of this, because it

55:09

turns out that one of the predicates to becoming a

55:11

parent is actually getting outside yourself. In fact, that's most

55:13

of what being a parent is, is getting outside yourself.

55:16

It's most of what being married is, is forming a

55:18

relationship with another human being where the marriage is above

55:20

both of you and the institution is more important than

55:22

either of you. And the relationship is more important than

55:24

whatever you're feeling in the moment. No one has ever

55:26

wanted to do the dishes or take out the garbage,

55:29

but you do it anyway because that's what you are

55:31

supposed to do. And if you are

55:33

not prepared to make that sort of commitment, and then if you're

55:35

not prepared to make the far fuller and more

55:37

demanding commitment of actually raising

55:39

another human being to be a responsible human

55:41

being, then what's gonna happen is what is going

55:43

to happen. What's gonna happen is what is happening,

55:45

which is people are not forming relationships. They're averting

55:48

into pornography or to bots or to 900 number,

55:50

whatever it is. So they won't form

55:52

a relationship. And then even if they do, it'll

55:54

be sort of a bizarre angsty teenage

55:56

relationship. Like this has been one of my critiques of

55:58

pop culture for a long time. Taylor

56:01

Swift is almost as old as I am,

56:03

and she's still writing songs like she's a

56:05

16-year-old girl about her latest breakup.

56:08

Taylor Swift is the same age as my wife. My

56:10

wife is a doctor with four children. I

56:13

don't know in what world you get to be an angsty

56:15

teenager when you're 34, 35 years old. At

56:18

a certain point in

56:20

human history, that was a point where some women were

56:22

grandmothers. I don't even know what we're talking about here.

56:24

But that is the entire generation we've created, and what

56:26

that means is that there's another generation that simply is

56:28

not going to exist. And that's why it does contribute

56:30

in a sort of backward way to the Tim Carney

56:32

point, which is that people who are not capable of

56:34

having kids just will not have kids. And

56:36

here's the other thing. Here's the secret in

56:39

my view. And that is that

56:41

growing up, taking on responsibilities is

56:43

actually the solution to a lot

56:46

of teenage angst. Thinking of

56:48

others, doing for others, having

56:50

that outward focus actually makes

56:52

you feel less angsty about

56:54

your own situation. And

56:56

not only are they not being raised

56:58

to feel ready for that, they

57:01

don't feel up to it. They are so

57:03

focused on themselves. And I totally

57:05

agree with you. Of all the things I

57:07

worry about, the rising generation, I

57:11

think about my own kids, of all

57:13

the things that look hard growing up

57:15

today, the hardest looks dating. Because

57:17

when you have a population so focused

57:19

on itself and its own feelings, as

57:22

you said, forming a family with

57:24

such people looks almost impossible. Yeah,

57:27

I think this is also one of the reasons

57:29

why you see differential rates, as you mentioned, in

57:31

other countries, of happiness among young people in other

57:33

countries. As you say, the more responsibility you

57:36

give to young people, the happier they

57:38

are actually. I mean, kids are actually looking for responsibilities.

57:40

They want to be given, they want to be treated

57:42

as people who are capable of carrying

57:44

forward those responsibilities. But we've actually given

57:46

our kids, in some ways, the

57:49

worst message, which is, follow your dream,

57:51

no responsibilities. When the reality is what most people

57:53

are looking for is a place in life. They're

57:55

looking for a thing to do. They're looking for

57:57

an actual program that is going to bring the

57:59

meaning. in their lives. And you see that

58:01

in places around the world where there is a program for bringing

58:04

meaning in their lives. So I'm going to take the example of

58:06

Israel again just because it's the one I'm most familiar with. In

58:08

Israel, when you're 18 years old, you go into national service and

58:10

you go to the army. And that

58:12

is a radical burden. I mean, you literally stop

58:14

your life and you go to a place where you might be

58:16

killed. I mean, right now they're at war. And

58:19

yet young people in Israel are significantly happier by

58:21

the numbers than young people in the United States

58:23

where they have no such burdens. There's no drafts.

58:26

You're not expected to do anything. The federal government

58:28

might relieve your student loans. You can go major

58:30

in something completely useless. But in Israel,

58:32

you are expected to contribute immediately upon hitting the

58:35

age of 18. And then when you're done with

58:37

that, you're expected to get a job and you're

58:39

expected to get married and you're expected to have

58:41

kids. And you're expected to contribute to the community

58:43

and to the nation. And we've

58:45

lost that. That used to be the way it was

58:48

in the United States also. I mean, if you

58:50

go back to the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, that was the way that it was. If

58:53

you were a young person, it's not that you were expected to go to

58:55

the military because there wasn't a draft until the late 30s. But

58:57

you were expected to get a job. The understanding was

58:59

that as you graduated high school, you were either going

59:01

to college to get better credentials to get a job

59:04

or you were going to go out and start supporting

59:06

your family and go get a job and move out

59:08

of the house right now. And you were expected to

59:11

get married. And as we keep delaying this sort of

59:13

stuff, it's not that people are getting happy. It turns

59:15

out that we now have – what my friend Jordan

59:17

Peterson would say is choice paralysis. We're

59:20

faced with – you can do anything you want. Well, what if I don't

59:22

want to do any of those things because I don't know which one of

59:24

those things to choose? Right.

59:26

So what can American parents do?

59:28

Start with chores. Chores is

59:30

a great way to give kids independence and

59:32

a sense that they are contributing to the

59:34

greater good, which by the way is amazing

59:36

for the mental health. Look, exactly

59:39

what you said in the book. I

59:41

compare other cultures who are doing

59:43

better than American kids. One

59:46

of them is Israel in terms of

59:48

things like anxiety and depression. And they're

59:50

on the same smartphones. But what they

59:52

are doing, as you said, is they

59:54

have to grow up. They have to

59:56

take on responsibility for someone besides themselves.

59:58

And we have divested it. American kids of

1:00:00

this in two ways. One, we have to give

1:00:02

them chores. We don't give them any responsibility. We

1:00:05

don't give them any independence we need to. They

1:00:07

have to be sent to the store or to

1:00:09

work on a project that will better the family.

1:00:11

Okay, so these types of things are really good,

1:00:13

but here's the other thing we don't do. In

1:00:16

our trauma obsessed culture, we're afraid to

1:00:18

tell them what their grandparents and great

1:00:20

grandparents went through because we're so afraid

1:00:22

of traumatizing them. What they need to

1:00:25

be told is your grandparents and great

1:00:27

grandparents, they've gotten through really hard things

1:00:29

and you can too. Yeah,

1:00:32

this is one of the things that I think just

1:00:34

as a society we've lost. We

1:00:36

call them first world problems, but they're really not

1:00:38

even first world problems. They're just modern

1:00:41

problems. And the modern problems are so much

1:00:43

lower in scale and scope than anything that

1:00:45

our predecessors had to face. This

1:00:47

is why when I see young people and they

1:00:49

say, I don't have any hope for the future.

1:00:51

I mean, your present right now is better than

1:00:53

anything that your grandparents ever experienced for their entire

1:00:55

life if they died anytime in the last 20

1:00:58

years. The

1:01:00

bizarre notion that you're experiencing at the

1:01:02

richest time in human history, this

1:01:06

suffering that is absolutely cataclysmic

1:01:09

is amazing. And I think that it's actually tearing

1:01:11

apart the country. It's the reason why

1:01:13

people go to catastrophism because if they don't feel responsibility

1:01:15

and they don't know a way to go, I

1:01:18

think one of the kind of bizarre

1:01:21

side effects of that is you end up with a lot of

1:01:23

literature and movies that are all about sort of the post-apocalyptic era

1:01:25

in the sense that those are very

1:01:28

simple decisions. Now the

1:01:30

question is, do you eat, do you not eat? I think

1:01:32

people are so thirsty and hungry for simpler

1:01:35

choices because there is no choice

1:01:37

matrix that they're consuming literature that

1:01:39

is largely about making extremely simple

1:01:41

choices in limited circumstances.

1:01:44

And when you're pining for that, it's not long

1:01:46

until you get there because you're gonna make those

1:01:48

circumstances for yourself. Yeah,

1:01:51

that's right. I always ask people to tell

1:01:53

me about their grandparents or great grandparents

1:01:55

because invariably the story is one of

1:01:57

privation. It's one of poverty.

1:02:00

of all kinds of hardship. And I tell the story in the

1:02:02

book of my own grandmother was born in 1927 and

1:02:05

to a poor family of immigrants.

1:02:07

And her mother died in childbirth.

1:02:10

She eventually was raised by an older sister because

1:02:12

her father had four kids and couldn't take care

1:02:14

of all of them. And she

1:02:16

was raised by her older sister. She then

1:02:18

got polio and spent a year in an

1:02:20

iron lung. And she ended up not only

1:02:23

married to my grandfather, she went off to

1:02:25

college, but she

1:02:27

ended up one of the happiest, most grateful

1:02:29

people I've ever known. And the idea that

1:02:31

she wouldn't be able to form a family

1:02:34

never meant entered her head. Okay.

1:02:36

And the idea that somehow that she

1:02:38

had been permanently marked by a year

1:02:40

of isolation, which she had, and it

1:02:42

was real isolation. It was an iron

1:02:44

lung. It wasn't like, you know, being,

1:02:46

you know, lockdowns, which were, you know,

1:02:49

obviously very hard on kids. But the

1:02:51

idea that she couldn't recover never meant

1:02:53

meant entered her mind, probably because no

1:02:55

team of counselors suggested to her that

1:02:57

she had childhood trauma. Hey,

1:02:59

well, Abigail, if you're going to give a final

1:03:02

note to parents as we leave here, well, what

1:03:04

is your sort of final note to parents who

1:03:06

are just thinking of where to put their kids

1:03:08

in schools? How should they make that decision? So,

1:03:11

gosh, I would say number

1:03:13

one, parental authority, kids need your authority.

1:03:16

So wherever you're going to send them,

1:03:18

make sure they know your values, that

1:03:20

you're in charge, that you know what's

1:03:22

best for them, and make sure that

1:03:24

we communicate our values to our kids.

1:03:26

We're doing a lousy job of that

1:03:28

in the country, and we send them

1:03:30

off to school where teachers can't wait

1:03:32

to pass on their values to your

1:03:34

kids. So don't let that happen. They

1:03:36

need more independence. They need more chores.

1:03:39

They need, you have to give them

1:03:41

a sense of meaning and extended family

1:03:43

and siblings. That's all really, really good

1:03:45

for kids. And the final thing I'll

1:03:47

just say is everyone's obsessed with making

1:03:49

kids happy. We should be more focused

1:03:51

on making them strong. If you make

1:03:53

them strong, they will be happy. Abigail

1:03:56

Schreier, I really appreciate the time. The book is fantastic.

1:03:58

Go check it out right now. Bad Therapy. Available

1:04:00

January 1st. Thank you, Abigail. Thank you. David

1:04:30

Wormus, Executive Producer, Justin

1:04:32

Siegel, Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring. The

1:04:35

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