Erica Komisar is speaking truth backed by physical and social science. Turns out, infants need their mothers. Infants detached from their mothers have an increase in cortisol, the stress hormone. This can cause increases in anxiety and depression later in life. Is this one of the causes of the spike in mental illness?
"We're in the Upside Down." We treat very young children as if they are much older and capable than they are. We treat older children as if they are not capable and don't allow them any freedom or free play time . . . We need to reverse this."
Boys are feminized in our schools. We treat their energy as bad behavior and don't allow more physical activities to release it. Schools are built today for girls. Boys have high surges in testosterone between the ages of 3-6 years old, and we often treat this with medication.
that's cwic media.com you can scroll to the bottom there and click the video and
find out more about why I take this supplement every day it's interesting I was just at a conference and saw a lot
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go to quick media.com that's cwic media.com scroll to the bottom click on the link and find out more here we
go all right welcome to Quick show my name is Greg Matson and I am your host in this episode Our Guest is Erica Kar
she is a clinical social worker psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert and a graduate of Georgetown and
Columbia University she's been featured on Wall Street Journal Good Morning America foxs and Friends CBS News CBS
New York and other media Outlets welcome Erica thank you thank you for having me
so there's a few different subjects I want to cover here but I want to start in with parenting especially motherhood we've had a drastic change in our
culture over the last 5060 years where there's a lot more full-time women that are working and how does that affect
expect infants and children to have a separation more of a separation both in
time and maybe attention from their mothers well the the first three years
is considered a critical period of brain development and what that means is that um infants and toddlers are
neurologically fragile in the first three years so by three years of age 85% of the right brain is developed the
social emotional part of the brain which is responsible for things like um emotional security emotional regulation
uh management of adversity and stress so all the things that we like to call resilience are really sort of created in
the first three years through the the safety and the security that's provided
by your primary attachment figure so babies are not born resilient they're born neurologically fragile incredibly
fragile and vulnerable uh all you have to do is look at them to know that but we don't look at babies anymore we
project onto them that they're independent and self-sufficient and capable of adultlike uh capacities to
deal with separation they're not um in most parts of the world babies are physically worn on their mother's bodies
and have something called skin-to skin contact mothers are biological as well
as emotional Regulators for babies bodies and also their their psyches their emotions so it's in that three
years that mothers perform this Inc incredibly important um neurobiological
function which is they provide babies with a sense of Safety and Security in
the world that lays down the foundation for them to be mentally healthy in the future after 3 years of age um and so
what we've done is we've Rewritten the story to our liking as opposed to what
it actually is in truth and that's that's true of a lot of things today uh
is that fiction sounds better than fact and the fact is that we are not actually
caring for our children we're actually neglecting our our infants and toddlers
by going back to work quickly and leaving them without that primary attachment figure or even worse putting
them into daycare which is institutional care away from their primary attachment
figures with ratios of five or eight children to one caregiver um who is
neither providing them with emotional security nor are they buffering them from stress um and so our children are
creating um pathological defenses to cope with the separation so prematurely
and going into childhood and Adolescence and into adulthood at a disadvantage
because without that emotional security that is provided in those first three years by your primary attachment figure
uh the longitudinal studies on attachment say that if you're not securely attached by three years of age
you will not be securely attached 20 years later so and now it's even more than 20
years so the idea is that we are sending our children out into the world with attachment disorders which is a disorder
of attachment which leads to things like ADHD depression anxiety behavioral
problems a lot of the things that we're seeing are the result of how we raise our children so I was going to get to
that but I want to back up first is there a development of this connect
I'm guessing is some type of a neurological bond that is created is that something that exists in the womb
and then is there actually some typ obviously there's a trauma at Birth but is there already some type of a
separation that's already existing and so there's a search for that bond by the
baby so babies do know their mothers when they come out they know them through their voice because they can
hear they know them through their scent because we're mammals and we use our smell we use our senses to find our
mothers sort of like puppies are born blind and piglets and they find their mothers through scent um so through the
smell through the sound of their voice we know our mothers babies uh turn to their mothers when they're born that
does not mean however that if you um adopt a baby you can't attach to that
baby but it's much easier if you're the biological mother because you have all
of the biological markers for the baby to attach to babies come into the world
not attached but with the recept receptivity to be attached so in other
words with the ability to attach um generally if they're healthy so um that
baby has an easier time obviously attaching to their biological mother but it doesn't mean that if there if a baby
is given to an adoptive mother who uh has is a sensitive empathic nurture you
know the the research shows that adoptive mother other s can produce oxytocin which is the love hormone the
bonding hormone that um that they can produce a lot of the same hormones as natural mothers but that doesn't mean
that it's not better for a baby to have a biological mother it's obviously easier also breastfeeding is a very
important you know people think that breastfeeding is about breast milk and breastfeeding is about breast milk
breast milk is important it's got a lot of immunological properties in it that make it important for babies but that's
not why breastfeeding is important for babies really um it's important because
it it is through breastfeeding mothers produce oxytocin this bonding hormone
but they also um it's skin- to- skin contact so it's a way to thoroughly
attach securely to that child it's the best way so you know we' still say breast is best but yes a baby has a
unique biological connection to their mother so in the separ if there's separation
with a young mother yeah is that is going to produce stress yes so I'm
guessing is there is there cortisol that's being produced by the baby actually actually a physical reaction to
this apart from I mean we could say emotional and separate that although they're combined but is there is there a
a physiological uh uh occurrence for the baby it's something happening to the
baby so babies that are put in daycare have high higher levels of salivary cortisol so yes there's higher levels of
stress hormones and the thing is that babies produce oxytocin so babies
produce oxytocin mothers produce oxytocin and babies produce oxytocin it bonds them together it's like the glue
has to be on the babies have um oxytocin receptors sort of like pitchers and
catchers in baseball right the mothers pitch the oxytocin the babies have to catch it the more the mothers pitch it
the more the re receptors develop in the baby and the baby can catch it um and so
you know this back and forth between the mother and the baby that's so very very critical um you know it can only happen
if the mother's there but what we know is that the um cortisol has an inverse
relationship with oxytocin what does that mean the more oxytocin in the mother and the baby the lower the levels
of cortisol in the mother and baby the higher the cortisol the lower the oxy o
tocin so it's works like that so we want lots of oxytocin to that's why we have
skin-to skin contact with babies that's why mothers in other parts of the world carry babies on their bodies for the
first year first on the front and then when they get too heavy on the back um and the reason they do that is it keeps
their cortisol levels down that baby feels safe and the thing about it is that um it it's not just about uh the
cortisol it's about the baby have has a constant source of regulation of
distress so there was there's a researcher named Judy mesman who works in Holland and I interviewed her for
being there my book uh and you know she told me that babies in other parts of
the world that are under the age of one don't cry they don't cry very much but
babies in the western world where we've projected onto babies that they're very independent and we send them to daycare
and we hand them to strangers and we put them and bassinets in the other room from us and we close the door and let
them cry these babies cry miserably and are and are in distress much of the time
so Western babies are more in distress than babies in other parts of the world
that's fascinating I mean really that's it's so it's not just a that's
definitely a socialization that's definitely a cultural issue then where
Western the Western world is producing crying babies as compared to the rest of the world
what you you you keep saying that we're projecting on to babies a you know that they're independent what really is
happening with them I mean in your research what is going on in the mental and emotional development of a baby that
makes it so important for us to well to at least to be aware of where they're at
and how important their development is because often times I mean you think well it's just a baby I just have to
feed it and change it diaper and and everything's going to be fine until it can talk right what what is going on in
the development of a baby early on so again what's developing is a sense of
emotional security and that's critical for the future um neurogenesis is what's
happening so it's the it's cell growth in the right brain so what we know is
that our right brain is necessary for being mentally healthy in the future
right we know that it regulates our emotions it keeps our emotions from going too high or too low um it also
helps us to cope with stress uh it helps us to function socially in the world it
helps us to connect with others deeply it helps us to be able to read social cues it's very important for executive
functioning and judgment and so many things live in the right brain right um and so the right brain is important and
what we know is that that develops in those first three years through that cell growth neurogenesis by the end of
three years uh and going into adolescence then we have the pruning effect where we get rid
of the cells we don't need and there's another critical period of brain development in adolescence where you're
trimming back the cell growth um but we want a lot of cell growth so what
mothers do what they do environmentally for babies um is that is that they not
only provide that sense of security that helps the brain to grow but they also teach babies about social cues they
teach babies how to regulate every time a mother soothes a baby in distress they
are actually a bioregulator for that baby they are regulating that baby's
emotions and they're regulating therefore that baby's body and so it's
keeping the baby so think about not wanting to with our emotions be like in the Pacific or the Atlantic on a
sailboat we want to be in the Caribbean we don't want to be a flatline we want to be like this and so what mothers do
when they sue the baby every time the baby's in distress they're bringing the baby back to the Caribbean from the
Atlantic and that's critical because it isn't until three years that that baby
can internalize the the ability to start to regulate their own emotions that
safety that they feel that they know that they're so vulnerable and that the person that they rely on for for
everything they the center of their universe is there for them um when babies become toddlers you know uh they
start to explore the world they start to explore the world through play physical
exploratory play but they look back to their mothers and do something called rosma or emotional refueling which is
they check in with their primary attachment figures usually their mothers to make sure that they're safe sometimes
they'll look back sometimes they'll toddle back and get a hug and then they'll go off and explore again but
what gives them the courage to do that exploration is that they know that their mothers are there and providing them
with a sense so their mothers are like the mapole you know the mapole where you know people dance around the mapole but
there's a mapole it's the center of their gravity it's the center of their universe and when we take that away from
them they are literally for lawn for laor they are lost and they are without
that center of gravity all right so let's project forward here and look at these infants children that have had you
know a trouble in this uh well they're detached right they're detached more from their their mothers the mothers
have put them in to daycare um they don't have that Maple as
you say it's with them all the time what happens later on in life you said that
they still in 20 years down the road are not going to have the development that they need because they didn't get it as
babies is this part of or all of perhaps the reasoning behind the spike in mental
illness today in in in teenagers and young adults well as Gabor mate says he
says there's two reasons why our children are breaking down and I agree with this assessment one is how we're raising them and two is what we're
exposing them to and so the foundation of a person's personality and the
foundation of their ability to C at their emotions in the future uh happens in the first three
years so if we're abandoning them and neglecting them in the first three years
which is essentially what it is when we give them to strangers when we are not
providing them with a primary attachment figure it is a kind of neglect that's a
harsh thing to say but it's true and so why not say the truth and when we neglect children in the first three
years they don't develop the same foundation in their personality that allows them to cope with stress in the
future right we have to have shock absorbers on a car to deal with the bumps you're not giving them the shock
absorbers that doesn't mean that it's not going to be hard because life is hard for kids now much harder than it
used to be people think oh you know helicopter parenting and so easy for them no it's not they live in a very
harsh World they live in a world with lots of scary things they live in a world that's highly pressured they live
in a world with technology that's destroying their brains so you know you you better they live in a world with
cyber bullying the likes that we have never known because bullying was schoolyard bullying bullying was praying
phone calls bullying wasn't uh people going on the internet and telling hundreds if not thousands of people
something terrible about you or showing a nude photograph of a teenage girl or you know these are things that not only
destroy reputations they destroy kids I mean you know so you know we we have
drugs that are longer than ever before we have legalizing marijuana which is toxic with 38% THC in it that's making
kids have psychotic breakdowns I mean I could go on and on it's a very hard world to live in so if you're going to
put your kid out into this world you better give them the best possible Foundation you can give them in the
first three years otherwise uh you're you're sending them out into the world
with uh half a deck so okay so that's a good point but here here's the question
I have then early on they that the babies need that bonding I mean it's
it's it's the Supreme Focus right is for those babies but we also have an issue
with resiliency so if if that is a problem with the resiliency down the road how do you balance you know I I'm
sure you're aware of Jonathan height and what what he's done and the work that he's done on safetyism the helicopter parenting not letting your kid go more
than five feet away from you right Jonathan yeah yeah so you've got
this you want almost to be a helicopter parent at least for those first three years with the baby really close to you
but down the road you need them to build resiliency how do you balance that and
when do you do it so right now I say the world is the there's a show called what
was that show on television where they talk about the upside down World we're in the upside down world right now stranger things stranger things we're in
the upside down world what does that mean we treat very young children as if
they're much older and capable than they are we treat older children as if
they're not capable and don't allow them any freedom or free play time as
Jonathan says and I always say that play is how children learn um and so we reverse things we need to reverse it
back we need to reverse it back to a world it's not as if there were ever the good old days parents were never perfect
but you know there was a better understanding that when children are little they need to have have their
parents and when as they get older incrementally they need some freedom and
that means freedom to play so what we've also done is we've strapped them into an
academic system that starts with circle time and letters and numbers and reading
as early as two years old and that's not normal for children
children are not meant to learn cognitively before their social emotional development is well on its way
think of it as socks and shoes if you put on your shoes before your socks it's generally not done so our socks are our
social emotional development that helps our cognitive development later on we need to be social emotionally developed
so we can deal with frustration when it comes to learning so we we're also creating a world in which children don't
play they work academically they feel a pressure to get into good schools and
the only way they're going to be successful is if they're a students and every child has to be an a student
every child was not an a student when I grew up and I don't know how old you are you may look a little younger than me
but do you remember every child being an a student oh no I was not an a student no and I wasn't either I had some A's I
had B's I had a c in biology you know I mean nobody was always an a student and
parents didn't get so anxious about it it wasn't this idea that if unless you're exceptional you're a loser you're
gonna fail you're not going to get into a good school you're not going to get a good job you're not gonna make this is
the world our kids live in a world of exceptionalism and academic pressure
where we're basically funneling all these kids and saying you're a loser if you don't if you're not a straight A
student so there's no time for play there's no time for them to go in the backyard and just dig in the dirt or go
ride their bike to a friend's house or you know hang out with friends that's how children develop through that
freedom but also that play so again if we've created this world and we're
trying to kind of unwind it a little bit but if we created this world then you better be with them in those first three
years as much as possible to lay down that foundation so they can deal with how hard the world they live in is so
why do we have an academic system like this then I I I am very frustrated with the academic system I I think it has
become the center of our Lives it is not necessarily I mean you can go through all the way through University get a
graduate degree get a PhD and you still may not even be ready for life it's
it's why are we so centered around this and why aren't people like you involved
in in the academic world where we can look at the data and say hey this is how
the kids need to develop why why is there such an imbalance of of what we know about childhood development and
Academia well I mean I think the world became a more competitive place there's more I always say more mice
fighting for the same cheese and I suppose that's a good thing right in a way more more children have
access to success more minority children more children more people from different
socioeconomic backgrounds that may not have had access to things like college and you know jobs where they had access
to to socioeconomic status and you know so in a way the world became a more
competitive place so it was inevitable that some of this was going to happen but what we forgot is that there's many
ways to be successful and that it's not always having to be funneled into the
same kind of as you say education the same kind of job prospects there's many
different kinds of jobs and many different ways to be successful so you know we got it in our
heads as a culture that there's really one way they have to go to the best possible College get the best possible
college degree and then get the highest level uh you know sort of uh job in an
office and the truth is that you know you don't need to go to college to be you I mean plumbers electricians welders
you know um they don't go to college they go to trade schools and they do as
well financially if not better than the kids that are getting out of college many of them and not able to find jobs
so we've we kind of have we've distorted things and and by distorting it I mean
we've created One path to success right and again instead of telling our kids
you know you don't have to be the best at everything you can be good enough and you can come out of school and find your
way and there's lots of good schools and you can find a career that suits you there isn't one funnel you have to go
into right so I I really think we do we're doing our kids a great disservice
and I am involved in education I'm a I'm a judge for something called the Yas prize which is a a wonderful wonderful
um uh thing it it it offers charter schools these very creative entrepreneurial schools that are trying
to break the mold of this and trying to individualize education for children and
not pressure them as highly but you know help them to find different ways of succeeding so you know I am involved but
you know would I like to be more involved sure but it's it's um this is the world that our kids are are living
in so would you say the schools are actually being pressured then by the parents to change because it would be
the parents the parents that would be pushing this for the competition right as compared to because it seems to me
like there's already a the the systems in lower education
right kth 12 yeah are mostly put together by education experts not by
parents well it's a combination of parents pushing the schools because parents see success as being a straight
A student but the parents also have been fed a a bunch of malarkey too about this
right um it's parents but it's also the educational institutions because their
reputation depends on getting these kids into the best schools so it doesn't matter if you're in a public school in
Iowa or if you're in a private school in New York City the schools Bank their reputation you know uh on how many kids
get into which school across the country so it's also the schools it's not just the parents it's
also the schools and it's the kids I mean the kids live in a world where they
see on social media that people live these you know lives that that you know
not everybody lives those lives and most those lives are false on social media but they see a lot of sort of um Glitz
and glammer in a way that they aspire to all over the country and so you know
again I think um we've created an untenable situation for our children and
if we're going to do that and and again we can unwind some of it but we really need to focus on who are we putting out
into this world and have we how can you say you've invested your values in
children if you haven't been there primarily in those first three years you know I always say that we we tend to put
our um we tend to spend time on on and money on the things that we value and
you know we're we're we're leaving our children at a very young age how can we say we value them above everything else
now I fight for paid leave in this country because it could sound elitist what I'm saying because many people
can't stay home with their children because they're fighting to pay the rent and buy food for their families right so
so in that case I write the books that I do and the articles I do in order to influence the government to have a year
of paid leave and another two years of part-time or flexible work for mothers or primary attachment figures Because
unless we have paid leave in this country you know conservatives love my message and liberals fight me on it uh
because it sounds anti-feminist right which it isn't but that's what they say right because what I'm doing is I'm
favoring children over women right but in the end no woman is happy if her child is ill right as we say You're only
as happy as your least healthy child one half of those half of those Childs are women those children are women so but
conservatives love my message but they won't pay for it they won't go to bat for paid leave for every single woman
there's a lot of poor conservative women in this country they're not all rich they're not all middle class there's a
lot of very very poor Republican conservative women in this country how are they going to pay to stay home with
their children if we don't have paid leave so you know I I find myself in
this funny territory of you know waving my arms and saying every woman no matter
what her socioeconomic status should have the right should have the choice to
stay home with her child as much as possible in the first three years okay
so I want to stick with education on this um moving over to boys and their
development in in what has be you know when I was a kid we did H we had PE I
had the opportunity to get out and I remember kindergarten we had our our own little playground and we went out twice
we we had a short day and I went out twice a day plus a little snack y right
outside with a snack right so there was chances to go out and and expend my
energy and play around and and and and you know have fun and um we've moved
more and more and more it seems toward a very contained type of education
where especially for a boy it it is very difficult to keep your attention on the
chalkboard so to speak what what what is happening there with boys what is what
are the issues with a boy's development as he goes through K to K through
12 so again we've created an educational system that's not for children that's
for adults and I know many adults who can't sit quietly and learn their numbers and letters you know who can't
sit still I'm one of those yeah definitely we've created a system uh particularly hard on little boys because
little boys have a ton of testosterone between the ages of three and six they're bursting with
testosterone um and so that means that between ages I'm sorry between ages three and six wow and it's a time when they're
meant to use that testosterone to play physically to learn so we're meant to
learn girls and boys are meant to learn learn about the world through physical
play and so what we're doing is we're damping down the physical play and forcing them in to stay in Little
straight jackets in their Circle time and learn numbers and letters in the days of the week and that's not how
children under the age of six learn kindergarten meant Garden of
children it was designed to be free play for children exploratory play where they
were meant to learn through play and that's at five so you know uh the
idea that we put children into preschool now as early as two years old that's not
preschool that's daycare school starts at three three is when children start to interact with one another through play
otherwise they're just doing parallel play and up to three they really need to have a primary attachment figure as
present as possible you know not a primary attachment figure a surrogate attachment figure like a nanny or a
grandmother an aunt or um but the idea that we put particularly little boys in
these Straight Jackets it causes them to be very stressed out now what happens
when they get stressed out they go into fight ORF flight mode it's our evolutionary response to
stress as human beings little boys go into fight ORF flight that means they either become aggressive bite and hit throw furniture
or they become distractable and they look like they have ADHD and I I saw
this coming in the 90s when I was first being certified as a social worker
before I became a psychoanalyst I could see in my practice the beginning of this happening every little boy and some
little girls many little girls but every little boy was being diagnosed with ADHD and I'm like this is not a thing this is
a symptom of something we are doing to these children this is not a disorder this is a symptom of stress I could see
it and you know we have just put these little boys into these untenable
situations these stressful situations where they either completely are
bouncing off the walls because they're distracted or they become very aggressive so they're doing what they're
supposed to be doing which is responding to the stress biologically and physically right so instead of looking
at the educational system and saying wait a second what are we doing why are we trying to educate little boys little
girls can sit in circle time more easily than little boys so we're we're feminizing little boys by putting them
into situations that little girls can learn better in right and then every little boy is being labeled as having
bad behavior or having ADHD they're being medicated which is terrible for their little brains and so yeah this is
what we're doing and then they go into the school years um with a sense that
there's something wrong with them yeah they're not like the girls
it's that that's what it seems like to me you know it's interesting Eric I was I was at uh you know my my kids are
smart and I've got four kids and my youngest I I remember she was at her I think it was her senior year her High
School senior Awards right for academics and and so it's an evening and
and there's several of them lined up that are there and their parents are all there and so they they walk them through
on each of these different Awards and some of them are by teachers some of them are for the class the whole senior
class some of them are for uh an organization they're involved with and I am not kidding you there there were one
in five I counted them because I I could I saw it immediately I counted them one in
five were boys yep as far as those that were receiving these Awards most of them
were academic this includes stem uh uh stem subjects right it was it was one in
five were boys and I just thought to myself what in the world is going on here this is this was like it was really
it was like the Twilight Zone well it was just so odd 60% of college students
are are are female now yes so that's got all kinds of other implications for
society because um basically yeah if we keep going on the path that we're going
which is you know educating two women and not two men as well uh what we have
is an imbalance social sort of system which means that you know uh young
modern women do not want to marry anyone below their educational level they only
want to marry someone at their educational or economic level or above whereas men will marry women at their
educational level or below women will only marry at their educational level or above so now we have a problem that's a
real problem and we have a problem because marriage is going down because
uh women are saying I can't find a man because they won't marry men that are less educated them or who make less
money than them um and so it's thrown everything
off right so do we need a quota system for boys I have three children and two of them are boys and in a way I think
that we have to rebalance you know schools always say uh we have to um in
in in when they create a class they say we have to balance the class that's their way of saying we need to have half
boys and half girls in Nursery School they used to say that um I think we need to rebalance College classroom so and
high school and you know to have half boys and half girls I think we need to do it we may need to create a quota
system for boys well you know I know there's been some introspection let's say by the
instit the education institutions but it's it's it's still growing I mean I I think the last number I saw was for
graduate degrees I think women are now pushing 63% yeah in in in in the graduate
schools yep it's uh that that that's a social disaster
it's a social disaster so then what you have is women having babies on their own wh single mothers by choice is a huge
happening in America well yeah the numbers are outrageous at this point I mean it used
to be you had in the early 20 20th century it might have been in some of the inter cities you had a really high number actually more toward the middle
and and end of the of the 20th century now it's it's everybody because women
would rather have a baby on their own than marry someone below their educational level you know I'll give you
one more quick story a different daughter that was graduating from college and and we're at her graduation
and we're taking pictures and things like that and and there's a group of girls a small group of girls that are
that are right women that are um talking about well what do we do now you know what what's going on now and I heard one
of them say well I don't need a man right I don't need a man I can have a baby on my own and I can have my own
career and and I just thought this is this is so odd to me I mean first of all
yes you've got a we've got a culture now where where that is pushed in some places number one and
probably pushed in the institution she just graduated from and secondarily the
system like we're saying here here is is completely off balance to help create a
desire and a need for women to want a
man well I mean again I think that the the research shows as if we need
research to know this but the research shows that uh children do best when they are raised in a two parent family with a
mother and a father Brad Wilcox has a book about it you know children do best when they are raised in a two parent
family with two parents who love each other respect and admire each other um and a father and a mother and so you
know there are social issues related to Growing Up in single parent families we
know that that there's many more social issues when you grow up in a single parent family all the research points to
it so yeah I mean we really have um it's it's it feels a little like the upside
down world so because you brought this up let me back step just a little bit here to to the child's development again
what how important is a father's role we're talking about the woman's role which has got to be you know Paramount I
would imagine early on with an infant but what what how important is a father's role in the home with children
and does that start after three year three years old more than it does before three years old so fathers are
incredibly important you would say they're as important as as mothers at a different point point in a child's
development um fathers regulate different kinds of emotions than mothers
do mothers help to regulate fear distress sadness fathers regulate aggression and
anger so when little boys don't have fathers around they often have more
behavioral problems more signs of aggressive behavior um because they
don't have that Rough House play that fathers play with them it's how fathers
teach boys about um how to regulate aggression um and by modeling how to
regulate aggression so um they they regulate aggression they also um you
know very importantly help with separation so what we're seeing is a lot of these single mothers by choice and in
single mother families boys don't separate they don't learn separation because fathers are really important
when it comes to separating separating happens at about 18 to 20 months the beginning of it so fathers become really
important at about 18 to 20 months because they encourage children to play fathers are the objects of play mothers
aren't always great at play mothers are great at distress at at soothing at nurturing but mothers aren't as they're
not wired to be as good at play fathers are wired to be good at play and even
though mothers complain about it oh you don't take care of the baby you only play with the baby that's what fathers
do that's what they're good at that's why children benefit from father s so that play is very educational for
children it's it's very important for their development but it doesn't really become as important until about 18 to 20
months when they start to seduce babies away from their mothers a little bit you know just a little bit and by three then
they're able to sort of toddle off with their dads and do lots of stuff and you know until three they still really need
what we call the sensitive empathic nurturing of the mother but fathers are important in in terms of Separation so
when when children don't have fathers they suffer a lot I always say that mothers and fathers are separate but
equal and when we try to make them into the same when we try to do this gender
neutral thing which is that they're interchangeable fungible like socks in
the dryer you put the right sock on the left foot and it doesn't matter it does matter it does
matter what influence do the do do fathers have on girls in the
home so much um in terms of the first romantic attachment a little girl has is
really to her mother every child's romantic attachment starts with your mother but her first
heterosexual attachment starts with her father right her first
romantic uh attachment start starts with her father with the opposite sex so if
fathers are not around enough if they're not interested enough if they're not um
sort of if they don't admire their daughters uh and play with their daughters and um then daughters don't
feel special um and then they go out into the world seeking that feeling of
feeling special often acting it out in some way but looking for that kind of love so fathers offer little girls a
model of what the future could be of a healthy connection a healthy heterosexual connection so very
important and there is research to show a man named Tim RAR uh he's at Brigham Young in Oregon I
think he talks a lot about this um how fathers are so very important to
daughters in terms of um you know girls that don't have healthy relationships
with their fathers tend to get into more abusive relationships with men okay yeah that makes sense that that
makes sense um and it's just more it's there's more insecurity right I mean
there's going to be a lot more insecurity for a woman that has not had a healthy relationship with her father
right uh last subject here is feminism and and its effect on
bringing up children and on kids overall are are you a threat to
feminism I have a t-shirt that says maternal feminism it's from an organization called Big ocean women
that's in Salt Lake City based in Salt Lake City um a woman named Carolina
Allen who's wonderful started this organization with a bunch of wonderful women um basically M feminism is not at
odds with maternity it shouldn't be um feminism
was a movement that allowed women to have choice not all women should have
children some women should have careers some women are not meant to be mothers
um some women have had so much trauma and loss in their lives that becoming a mother would be terrible for that child
and terrible for that woman and so feminism gave women
Choice uh which is very important but that didn't give us the right to neglect
our children right so um Gloria steum said
you know first of all Gloria steum didn't have children she wasn't a mother she said ah your children will be just
fine if you don't go out into the world and work work work out in the world then you're then you're a traitor to feminism
you're not a feminist unless you go out into the world to work and you could be a mother who has decided to be with your
children a full-time mom which is hard work probably the hardest work and maybe
the most important work and still be a feminist and say I am a woman who wants women to have
choice right so they're not at odds with one another but they're made into
adversaries but they're not adversaries working women should not be at odds with women who choose to stay women who work
outside the home should not be at odds with women who choose to work in the home but there is this war because they
seem at odds they're not at all at odds if you look at it and say right this is about choice so no one wants to force
women to stay home with their children but I hope that in learning about what
you gain and what your children gain from those first three years it would influence women to make better choices
but feminism is about Choice well I think choice is great I
think that if feminism were just about choice that would be that would be appropriate it's you
know it seems to me that feminist crosses the line when it goes beyond
opportunity right when an agenda goes beyond hey let's just let's let's give
women the opportunity to choose whatever they want when you go beyond opportunity
and there is an actual agenda to change uh the socialization and the
world view of others to create women as
workers primarily and and women as honestly more masculine than in in
taking on masculine traits more than feminine traits I think it it's gone off the rails to me at this point it's I
think it's great you know my my my wife does really well and works makes good
money and she has a she's very successful at her job my my two daughters are uh you know they they they
go out to the world and and and yet they're not they're not indoctrinated and
entrenched in this idea that they have to change the world somehow uh and and that motherhood isn't
important well that's that's really the issue I always say that feminism as it was written the old feminism as it was
written in the 60s um tried to convince women that they were I mean it did it moved women away
from what they perceived of as patriarchy right as men uh sort of
oppressing them But the irony is that it swung so far in the other direction you know sometimes when we swing so far in
the other direction we end up 360 back in the same place so they went from being oppressed by men to being
oppressive like men and so they ended up being the patriarchy so women have incredible
gifts to be uh you know they have incredible social emotional intelligence and the ability to multitask and things
that they're nurturing they have things that are strengths that can be used but instead it became a a competition to
see who could be a better man instead of saying we want to be the best women that
and maybe that meant that women who were doctors you know who got their training as doctors could then take off time when
they had children and then work part-time so they could be with their children a lot but still be professional
women and be care for other people and you know but the concept that um that it
went from patriarchy to being the patriarchy and that's where it went wrong but we still value the movement it
just went too far so we need to balance uh balance it it's not balanced now yeah
it's it's not balanced I I uh I I was listening to I'm sure you
know who Megan Kelly is I'm listening to her and this was several years ago and she was at the height of her career and
um she's saying you can have everything and you know because she's a mother I don't know how many kids she had at the
time um she's got this very high stress high demand job of being on the news and
and I thought okay well you know maybe you can have everything you know maybe she's someone that has that high
capacity to really be able to do all the I know women like this I do know women like this can have everything meaning
you can have everything in life you just can't have it all at the same time yeah you're gonna give something up you got
to give something up and usually if you're that intensely involved in your work when you have young children you're giving up your children that's the
bottom line so it doesn't mean you can't work when you have children but you probably aren't going to be putting so much intensity into your work think of
it like this um it you know either your children are your main outfit or they're
your accessory right which is your accessory your work or your children when you have young children your work
should be your accessory and your children should be your main outfit not the other way around
yeah you see more and more of this happening where children out in social media somehow they they're kind of like
their pets it's yeah let me put them uh on the stage here and show people on social media what my kids are like and
kind of like their puppy or something but uh last question so we're feminizing
boys and we're making women more masculine what is this going to result
in well it already is resulting in a kind of um a upside down social
structure and I think um you know as we we've already discussed men are you know
feeling depressed and and lost many young men in society um women are not
choosing to be in in committed relationships young men are not choosing to be in committed relationships and um
you know young women are having successful careers and having children on their own but it's killing the family
structure so that's that will be the result I appreciate your time and all your
research and experience uh you are a wealth of knowledge where can people go to learn more about you
www.car k m i ar.com and you can buy my books there and read articles I've
written and listen to podcasts and and reach out to me if you want to for treatment okay to the audience you need
to do that she's got some great stuff Erica thanks so much for your time thank you
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