Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Parenting Trends Throughout History: We’ve always done it wrong … and also right
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: There are a million questions to answer before the baby
- 0:03Speaker 1: ever gets here.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Do you have a birthing plan? Do you know what
- 0:06Speaker 2: kind of a mother you want to be? Yes?
- 0:08Speaker 3: I plan to be.
- 0:09Speaker 4: A good mother, but a marsupial mom or a stroller mom?
- 0:16Speaker 2: Will you be breastfeeding or bottle feeding? And what about babyproofing?
- 0:20Speaker 2: Because with all the sharp edges around here, I mean,
- 0:24Speaker 2: this place is a death trap. I'm Emily ost. This
- 0:29Speaker 2: is parent data and today.
- 0:34Speaker 3: Multiply this scene by thousands and you have a daily
- 0:38Speaker 3: picture of young mister and Missus America on their way
- 0:41Speaker 3: home after mother's exciting days at the hospital. The one
- 0:47Speaker 3: thought of this typical bear is what do we do next?
- 0:53Speaker 5: If I had to summarize the modern instagram and TikTok
- 0:57Speaker 5: inflected parenting feel, it would be with the question am
- 1:02Speaker 5: I doing it wrong? And then the answer yes, definitely,
- 1:05Speaker 5: because it's not the way that I'm doing it.
- 1:07Speaker 4: Get ready with me, moll I tell you how exclusively
- 1:11Speaker 4: pumping is not breastbeaning.
- 1:13Speaker 3: Keeno sleep training without crideout is to teach your baby
- 1:16Speaker 3: how to put themselves to sleep.
- 1:18Speaker 2: So I'm going to show you my ten steps to cripside.
- 1:20Speaker 4: Comfort three reasons you continue co sleeping or but sharing.
- 1:23Speaker 6: I'm a speech pathologist, feeding therapist mom up too, and
- 1:26Speaker 6: I know how overwhelming it can be starting sons with baby,
- 1:30Speaker 6: especially when choosing should you do baby led weaning or purese.
- 1:35Speaker 5: Parenting is hard, and we all parents slightly differently, and
- 1:40Speaker 5: it is very easy in the current moment to get
- 1:44Speaker 5: absorbed in the idea that there is exactly one correct
- 1:47Speaker 5: way to do it.
- 1:48Speaker 2: And if you mess up, if you get.
- 1:49Speaker 1: The wrong toy, or you use the wrong swaddle, or
- 1:53Speaker 1: you sleep in the wrong way, or you give your
- 1:55Speaker 1: kid the wrong food, you start with pairs instead of peas,
- 1:59Speaker 1: that somehow that that's the end, and you've messed up,
- 2:02Speaker 1: and you might as well just go back to the
- 2:03Speaker 1: drawing board and try with a different baby, because you
- 2:06Speaker 1: completely ruined this one.
- 2:08Speaker 3: Much of your babies health depends on he's getting enough
- 2:12Speaker 3: of the right kind of food. That means a formula.
- 2:16Speaker 7: The American Academy Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for all moms and babies.
- 2:20Speaker 7: Every parent should be educated to know that breastmolk is
- 2:25Speaker 7: so much different than formula and it's so much better.
- 2:28Speaker 3: The formula is more than just milk.
- 2:32Speaker 5: We need a little bit of perspective, and that is
- 2:35Speaker 5: why I have Jennifer Trake here on the podcast to
- 2:39Speaker 5: talk about her book Act Natural, which is a history
- 2:43Speaker 5: of all.
- 2:43Speaker 2: Of the ways people have parented in the past.
- 2:46Speaker 5: What's so valuable for me about looking to the past
- 2:49Speaker 5: is that it helps us to take a wider lens
- 2:51Speaker 5: on the question of parenting trends and how they fall
- 2:54Speaker 5: in and out of fashion. Colostrum, which now the Internet
- 2:59Speaker 5: will tell you you must collect in a hakka cup
- 3:02Speaker 5: because otherwise, if you don't give your child every drop
- 3:05Speaker 5: of it, they will never ever.
- 3:08Speaker 2: Get into college.
- 3:09Speaker 5: People used to throw that away because it was too
- 3:12Speaker 5: thick for babies and should be completely discarded. Can you
- 3:17Speaker 5: imagine if the trend of baby salting had been around
- 3:21Speaker 5: in the age of Instagram. What I'm saying is that
- 3:25Speaker 5: you should listen to this conversation so you can understand
- 3:28Speaker 5: that this current moment is just one of many moments,
- 3:32Speaker 5: and there are many many ways to parent, and many
- 3:36Speaker 5: things that have happened that still resulted in people somehow
- 3:41Speaker 5: continuing to exist, even if they ate peas first rather
- 3:45Speaker 5: than pears or vice versa.
- 3:49Speaker 2: Listen.
- 3:50Speaker 5: The message for today is that we have been doing
- 3:52Speaker 5: this for a long time, and we will be okay,
- 3:54Speaker 5: and you will be okay, and your kids will be okay,
- 3:57Speaker 5: and they'll be okay when they parent their own kids too.
- 4:00Speaker 3: You'll begin to realize how much you are going to
- 4:03Speaker 3: enjoy your baby. He's all yours, every inch, every ounceev.
- 4:07Speaker 2: Him after the break Jennifer Trigg.
- 4:31Speaker 5: Jennifer Trigg, I am absolutely delighted to get to talk
- 4:34Speaker 5: to you.
- 4:34Speaker 2: Thank you for being here on parent Data.
- 4:36Speaker 4: Likewise, was thrilled to be here.
- 4:39Speaker 2: So I'd love to start by having you introduce yourself.
- 4:42Speaker 4: So, yeah, as you said, I'm Jennifer Trigg, I'm a writer,
- 4:47Speaker 4: a teacher, and editor. And turned out none of those
- 4:51Speaker 4: skills are particularly transferable to parenting.
- 4:55Speaker 5: But you do have a book about parenting, and the
- 4:58Speaker 5: book is called Act Natural, A Cultural History of Misadventures
- 5:02Speaker 5: in Parenting. And this is an incredibly entertaining book about
- 5:07Speaker 5: all of the insane ways we have parented over time.
- 5:11Speaker 5: I mean, it has many other features, but that was
- 5:13Speaker 5: part of how it came across to me. And the
- 5:16Speaker 5: reason I'm excited to talk about this is because there
- 5:20Speaker 5: is so much emphasis in this moment on the idea
- 5:23Speaker 5: of doing it right. And I spend so much of
- 5:26Speaker 5: my time explaining to people, hey, there are many different
- 5:29Speaker 5: ways that parenting happens, and it's difficult sometimes they think
- 5:34Speaker 5: from our narrow parenting space to have a conception of
- 5:38Speaker 5: even the ways people are parenting or the things that
- 5:42Speaker 5: they believe like three houses down or you know, two
- 5:46Speaker 5: towns over, and your book is about like what was
- 5:49Speaker 5: the parenting advice the Romans had, And what we learned
- 5:54Speaker 5: is it was pretty different. So that's why I would
- 5:57Speaker 5: like to talk.
- 6:00Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 6:00Speaker 4: So I started working on this book just because as
- 6:04Speaker 4: the parent of small children, I really felt at sea
- 6:08Speaker 4: and I just I could not believe that humanity had
- 6:13Speaker 4: survived as a species given how hard it was. And
- 6:17Speaker 4: so I started looking into what did people actually do?
- 6:21Speaker 4: And I found out that we're making it so much
- 6:24Speaker 4: harder than it has to be, that it's actually really
- 6:28Speaker 4: hard to mess up your children, and that despite millennia
- 6:33Speaker 4: of really bad advice, we're still here and we're still
- 6:35Speaker 4: doing fine.
- 6:37Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's it's there's just there's something about
- 6:41Speaker 5: reading some of the ways in which people are parenting
- 6:43Speaker 5: in these historical context and then thinking about the okay,
- 6:46Speaker 5: I'm going to tell you there was a fight that
- 6:48Speaker 5: somebody had on my Instagram feed, which you will really appreciate.
- 6:52Speaker 5: Like last week I posted something like totally milk toast
- 6:56Speaker 5: that was like you know, your own right way to
- 6:59Speaker 5: parent or something in that kind of uplifting space, and
- 7:03Speaker 5: that I asked people to share, like are there things
- 7:05Speaker 5: you did that you know, you think worked for you
- 7:07Speaker 5: that maybe didn't work for other people or something like that,
- 7:09Speaker 5: And somebody was like, I use pureise instead of baby
- 7:12Speaker 5: lead weening, so the first food she gave her kids
- 7:14Speaker 5: were pureis rather than giving them pieces of apple or whatever.
- 7:19Speaker 2: And someone else.
- 7:20Speaker 5: Is in the comments and says something like, well, if
- 7:24Speaker 5: you don't use baby lead weaning, your kid's ever going
- 7:26Speaker 5: to learn to chew. And there's an epidemic of people
- 7:29Speaker 5: not learning to chew because of pureise.
- 7:31Speaker 2: And it just felt like what, Like what do you
- 7:35Speaker 2: mean your kid's ever going to learn to chew? Like
- 7:37Speaker 2: what what is that?
- 7:39Speaker 5: And it was felt so bizarre, but of course this
- 7:41Speaker 5: person felt incredibly strongly, and then people started fighting.
- 7:44Speaker 4: Because it's Instagram, there's a long tradition of this. I
- 7:47Speaker 4: think it's important to remember that the original meaning of
- 7:50Speaker 4: advice was judgment, and that's exactly what the early parenting
- 7:55Speaker 4: manuals are. They pretty much always say, well, you know,
- 8:00Speaker 4: here in Greece we're doing fine, but in Rome they're
- 8:04Speaker 4: all incredibly xenophobic and usually frame their advice by pointing
- 8:08Speaker 4: out what other pointing out what other cultures or other
- 8:11Speaker 4: people are doing wrong. We very much still do that today,
- 8:15Speaker 4: especially in internet comments, and I think there's a few
- 8:18Speaker 4: reasons why. I think one it can make us feel
- 8:23Speaker 4: a little better. And two, you know, the people that
- 8:26Speaker 4: are in the trenches are pretty exhausted, pretty miserable, have
- 8:31Speaker 4: invested so much time into doing these incredibly difficult things,
- 8:34Speaker 4: and if somebody comes along and says, actually, I did
- 8:37Speaker 4: it this way and it was much easier, you kind
- 8:39Speaker 4: of have to attack them to not feel like you've
- 8:43Speaker 4: wasted the last two years of your life. Yeah.
- 8:45Speaker 5: Another way to say it is like, if you the
- 8:47Speaker 5: things I do that are hard, I think they're right,
- 8:50Speaker 5: and I kind of want them to be so right
- 8:51Speaker 5: that they must be right for everybody, because otherwise.
- 8:53Speaker 2: Like, why did I, you know, why did.
- 8:55Speaker 5: I spend all this time giving my kid chicken legs
- 8:57Speaker 5: if I could have just been giving them a bowl
- 8:59Speaker 5: of you know, pure peaches, and it would have been fine.
- 9:02Speaker 2: That's just like, that's hard to accept.
- 9:03Speaker 3: It's hard to accept.
- 9:05Speaker 2: So let's go all the way back.
- 9:07Speaker 5: Tell me about like the first piece of parenting advice
- 9:11Speaker 5: in the world.
- 9:13Speaker 4: The first that we kind of know of, And I
- 9:16Speaker 4: have to say, there's not a lot. And I wasted
- 9:21Speaker 4: several weeks trying to find early parenting materials only to
- 9:26Speaker 4: realize that the parenting is not the word at all.
- 9:28Speaker 4: That parenting doesn't come into usage into the nineteen seventies.
- 9:33Speaker 4: It's very recent, because the idea before then really was
- 9:36Speaker 4: not that parents did much or any of it. A
- 9:40Speaker 4: lot of it was outsourced. Child rearing tended to be
- 9:44Speaker 4: the term. And the very earliest piece of it that
- 9:47Speaker 4: I know of is actually an ancient Greek medical book
- 9:51Speaker 4: by Saranus. It's not terrible, I have to say it.
- 9:55Speaker 4: A lot of it holds up, perhaps because he got
- 9:58Speaker 4: a lot of his information from practicing midwives. Some of
- 10:02Speaker 4: it's a little weird. He really warns mothers away from
- 10:09Speaker 4: the colostrum, is very insistent that you hand the baby
- 10:12Speaker 4: off to someone else right after the baby is born,
- 10:15Speaker 4: because the closstroom is much too rich and cheesy for newborns,
- 10:20Speaker 4: and was also very insistent, as most were in the
- 10:23Speaker 4: ancient world, about salting your baby, which was a widespread
- 10:27Speaker 4: practice that we no longer do.
- 10:28Speaker 5: Could you please tell me how to salt my baby?
- 10:33Speaker 4: I believe it's really just kind of before you swaddle them,
- 10:36Speaker 4: you pat them down with fine salt. It's even mentioned
- 10:39Speaker 4: in the Bible as an example of bad parenting.
- 10:44Speaker 2: I said, the Bible does not support salting your baby.
- 10:46Speaker 4: You don't know the Bible does that? Yes, that this
- 10:49Speaker 4: is not.
- 10:50Speaker 2: Salting your baby would be a problem.
- 10:52Speaker 4: Compare someone to an unsalted baby as an example of
- 10:55Speaker 4: like this, Well, this child was raised by wolves.
- 10:58Speaker 5: I mean that is how I feel about like chicken.
- 11:00Speaker 5: You know, if you don't salt it before you cook it,
- 11:02Speaker 5: it's very difficult to get the salt in later. But
- 11:06Speaker 5: this is a question, which is what on earth would
- 11:10Speaker 5: lead someone to think that you should salt your baby.
- 11:14Speaker 4: Well, salting and swaddling were part of an idea that
- 11:18Speaker 4: helpsway for quite a while that a baby would not
- 11:22Speaker 4: acquire human form unless it was imposed on that baby,
- 11:26Speaker 4: and the swaddling and the salting were part of that process.
- 11:29Speaker 4: That if you didn't do that, you might end up
- 11:31Speaker 4: with like a throw pillow or you know, a pudding,
- 11:33Speaker 4: but not a human baby. And so this was widely done.
- 11:37Speaker 4: And the salt piece, I'm not exactly sure why that
- 11:41Speaker 4: and not you know, some other compound, but widely used.
- 11:46Speaker 5: But it's I mean, it is interesting when I think
- 11:48Speaker 5: about what's the feedback that you would get that would
- 11:51Speaker 5: suggest something works or not right. So much of what
- 11:54Speaker 5: happens in parenting, and partly because like a lot of
- 11:56Speaker 5: different things work is most of the time, when you
- 11:59Speaker 5: salt your baby, it's okay, you know, it's not really
- 12:02Speaker 5: a problem. And so then you're like, well, I guess
- 12:03Speaker 5: this must be a good idea, because I mean, the
- 12:06Speaker 5: mortality rates were very high, but probably not higher for
- 12:08Speaker 5: salting not.
- 12:09Speaker 4: Salting right right, And also in the swaddling piece of it,
- 12:12Speaker 4: actually there was a payoff in an error with high
- 12:15Speaker 4: mortality rates. Those infants might live longer just because they
- 12:19Speaker 4: could not move. So at a time when there was
- 12:23Speaker 4: not a whole lot of supervision of small children and
- 12:26Speaker 4: parents had to work and we're busy doing other things,
- 12:29Speaker 4: a swaddled child could and sometimes was hung from the wall.
- 12:33Speaker 4: There were hooks to hang your baby. It could not
- 12:36Speaker 4: get out of its cradle, It could not run around,
- 12:39Speaker 4: it could not move at all. The one problem was
- 12:42Speaker 4: that it could not escape if it were eaten by livestock,
- 12:46Speaker 4: which did happen. Animals tended to roam in and out
- 12:50Speaker 4: of medieval homes much more than they do now, and
- 12:53Speaker 4: children were sometimes eaten and also sometimes nosed by family
- 12:57Speaker 4: animals a little too close to the heart and would
- 12:59Speaker 4: sometimes times be killed that way.
- 13:03Speaker 5: Okay, so when we so, swaddling is something which we
- 13:09Speaker 5: still do, although albeit in a somewhat different way than
- 13:12Speaker 5: we did back then. Yes, and does have some scientific basis.
- 13:16Speaker 5: So there's like pieces of this where there are things
- 13:19Speaker 5: you get out of the swattle, not just that you
- 13:21Speaker 5: can store it on the wall, but you know, kids,
- 13:23Speaker 5: there's something there about they sleep better. So presumably some
- 13:26Speaker 5: of the initial impetus for that was good feedback around
- 13:31Speaker 5: how kids would react, and then it got codified into
- 13:34Speaker 5: something else and had these other benefits, and then it continues.
- 13:38Speaker 5: But of course there are presumably other pieces of this
- 13:40Speaker 5: did we let go? I mean, I'm curious if there's
- 13:42Speaker 5: if you have a sense of how things would fall
- 13:45Speaker 5: out of fashion.
- 13:47Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, oftentimes when poor
- 13:50Speaker 4: people start doing something, that's when fashions change. Yeah, and
- 13:55Speaker 4: that will switch, right. We see that a lot with breastfeeding.
- 13:59Speaker 4: You know, there's that say, when rich people eat brown bread,
- 14:02Speaker 4: they best breastfeed their own babies, and when rich people
- 14:05Speaker 4: eat white bread, other people do, and this, you know,
- 14:07Speaker 4: switches back and forth, and we're back in the brown
- 14:10Speaker 4: bread breastfeeding stage now. Yeah, and high mortality rates I think,
- 14:18Speaker 4: you know, when it becomes clear that something is actually
- 14:23Speaker 4: dangerous and we have the science to figure out why
- 14:26Speaker 4: that is, a lot of times we don't. For instance,
- 14:29Speaker 4: teething was considered one of the deadly last stages of
- 14:35Speaker 4: babyhood for a long, long, long time, and there are
- 14:38Speaker 4: a lot of deaths in medieval and slightly later British
- 14:44Speaker 4: records a death due to teething. It was not due
- 14:47Speaker 4: to teething, but other things that tended to happen around
- 14:51Speaker 4: that age. It kicked in and people made that connection.
- 14:57Speaker 2: I mean, we're always seeking causality in our exactly.
- 15:00Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 15:00Speaker 5: Yeah, So I want to talk about feeding, feeding your
- 15:03Speaker 5: kid and about breastfeeding and breast milk because this is
- 15:05Speaker 5: a thing which has changed in some ways so frequently
- 15:10Speaker 5: over time. You know, how we feed our kids. Can
- 15:12Speaker 5: you please tell me about the goats? Can we just
- 15:15Speaker 5: start with the goats?
- 15:16Speaker 4: Yeah? So I really struggled with breastfeeding. And there's an,
- 15:20Speaker 4: you know, an enormous guilt that is placed on your
- 15:25Speaker 4: shoulders if you do not breastfeed your own children. Is
- 15:27Speaker 4: it turns out I could not, my children would have
- 15:29Speaker 4: would have died. But at no point in history was
- 15:32Speaker 4: that true mother. There were always others who could not
- 15:35Speaker 4: or chose not to breastfeed their children, and their children
- 15:37Speaker 4: lived because early on we came up with a lot
- 15:40Speaker 4: of other ways to keep that child fed and alive.
- 15:44Speaker 4: The most obvious wet nursing, which dates back to you know,
- 15:49Speaker 4: earliest humanity, and then bottles came along much much, much
- 15:54Speaker 4: much later. The early bottles were made of clay, intended
- 15:58Speaker 4: to be pretty breakable and also not very very sanitary.
- 16:01Speaker 4: They were not great to you know, sticking a terra
- 16:04Speaker 4: cotta tube and a toothless baby's mouth was not the
- 16:06Speaker 4: best thing. But one thing that people did tune to
- 16:12Speaker 4: when wet nurses weren't available, or even when they were,
- 16:15Speaker 4: but tended to carry syphilis was goats. And this was
- 16:18Speaker 4: for a few reasons. One was because for a long
- 16:20Speaker 4: time it was believed that mother's milk carried not antibodies,
- 16:25Speaker 4: but moral qualities. It was very important if you chose
- 16:28Speaker 4: a wet nurse for your child that that wet nurse
- 16:31Speaker 4: have be a good moral person, because the child would
- 16:34Speaker 4: absorb their morality. And when moral were and wet nurses
- 16:39Speaker 4: couldn't be found, some people, including foundling homes, would turn
- 16:43Speaker 4: to goats. There's a book on this called I Think
- 16:48Speaker 4: like the Goat as the best and most nourishing wet nurse,
- 16:53Speaker 4: and goats could be placed right in the crib, and
- 16:56Speaker 4: at some foundling homes they were and so well were
- 17:00Speaker 4: considered the most.
- 17:01Speaker 5: Moral, as it's the most moral animal, right, it's the
- 17:03Speaker 5: most moral, even though it eats garbage. This is always
- 17:05Speaker 5: what I wonder about, Like, what is it about the
- 17:07Speaker 5: behavior of the goat that makes one think it's moral?
- 17:10Speaker 7: I don't know.
- 17:11Speaker 4: I think they're decent parents.
- 17:13Speaker 5: I'm sure you're looking at the own animal's own parenting
- 17:16Speaker 5: and choosing.
- 17:17Speaker 2: I also think it.
- 17:18Speaker 5: I mean, some of the other milk producing animals would
- 17:21Speaker 5: not fit well in the crib, like a cow.
- 17:23Speaker 4: Yeah, right, right right, and pigs maybe, but pigs, you know,
- 17:27Speaker 4: really bad reputation. So yeah, the goat.
- 17:30Speaker 5: But so over time, you know, we have the sort
- 17:33Speaker 5: of wet nurse, we have the goats. Eventually we have
- 17:37Speaker 5: better formula, you know, non human milk alternatives. I feel
- 17:43Speaker 5: like the moment we are in around breastfeeding takes on.
- 17:48Speaker 5: It is like the moral obligation feels much greater than
- 17:53Speaker 5: at any of these all these other things. Seem like
- 17:55Speaker 5: we're looking for a good solution in the face of
- 17:57Speaker 5: complicated environment.
- 17:58Speaker 2: There's no milk. You know, some has syphilis.
- 18:01Speaker 5: We need to go things that are just about like,
- 18:03Speaker 5: let's try to get this done. And it has now
- 18:05Speaker 5: taken on. This Yeah, this moral obligation in parenting, which
- 18:10Speaker 5: feels new although maybe that's not new.
- 18:13Speaker 4: Moral and really also at a time when you know
- 18:17Speaker 4: it is it's harder to get into college then when
- 18:20Speaker 4: certainly when I applied, and I defer to you on
- 18:25Speaker 4: the data here, but there were some widely quoted studies
- 18:29Speaker 4: that you know, showed you got a bonus IQ if
- 18:34Speaker 4: a bonus of a few IQ points if you were
- 18:36Speaker 4: where breastless studies are not good data.
- 18:38Speaker 2: But yeah, yes, yes, I was just get it in
- 18:40Speaker 2: there for people.
- 18:40Speaker 4: Okay, that in my marriage only one of us was breastfed.
- 18:45Speaker 4: That would be me, and it's not the one who
- 18:47Speaker 4: went to Harvard. So I don't put a lot of
- 18:49Speaker 4: stock into that.
- 18:52Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think there's a moment of wanting to
- 18:55Speaker 5: do everything to get every possible advantage for our kids,
- 18:58Speaker 5: which is perhaps a bit differ then a time.
- 19:01Speaker 2: Period in which half of them would die.
- 19:02Speaker 5: And I realized that, you know, there's a big gap
- 19:04Speaker 5: between where we are now and where we are then.
- 19:06Speaker 5: But there's something in there about the investment in your kids. Okay,
- 19:11Speaker 5: I want to talk about science, parenting science, because there
- 19:15Speaker 5: was some point, maybe early in the twentieth century, when
- 19:18Speaker 5: you start talking in the book about people coming at
- 19:21Speaker 5: parenting and the choice of child bearing, parenting whatever we're
- 19:25Speaker 5: calling it, with the idea that we are going to
- 19:27Speaker 5: use science to like win this or do it right.
- 19:31Speaker 2: When is the beginning of that idea?
- 19:33Speaker 4: So around the turn of the century, the turn of
- 19:36Speaker 4: the twentieth century, it was named the Century of the
- 19:39Speaker 4: Child and the Idea, which was the name of a
- 19:42Speaker 4: book by Ellen Key, and the idea was that you know,
- 19:45Speaker 4: we've undergone this huge sea change in how much we
- 19:49Speaker 4: know about how the world actually works. Scientific principles are
- 19:52Speaker 4: being applied to everything, and they start getting applied to
- 19:57Speaker 4: child wearing with more and less success. So some of
- 20:02Speaker 4: the early proponents of this were Luther emmett Holt, who
- 20:06Speaker 4: wrote a very popular child wearing book, but it was extremely,
- 20:09Speaker 4: extremely extremely rigid, with these very very very strict timetables.
- 20:13Speaker 4: Even his daughter in law couldn't follow them. They were
- 20:15Speaker 4: pretty unforgiving, and also not all the science was great.
- 20:20Speaker 4: He had an absolute horror of bananas, I don't know why,
- 20:25Speaker 4: but really pushed them as in a very dangerous food
- 20:28Speaker 4: for children, and pretty much any uncooked fresh fruit or vegetable.
- 20:33Speaker 4: The menus in his book are just something called beef juice,
- 20:38Speaker 4: which I guess is maybe bowl yon, but it's just
- 20:43Speaker 4: really the most bland, flavorless, boiled to death foods and
- 20:48Speaker 4: it was hard for parents to carry out. I mean,
- 20:50Speaker 4: it takes a long time to a mash pure and
- 20:55Speaker 4: to stick to these very very strict schedules. And not
- 20:58Speaker 4: too long later he's followed by the behaviorists, but he.
- 21:02Speaker 2: With this just to go to touch on this for me.
- 21:05Speaker 5: So what what is your sense of what's the science
- 21:08Speaker 5: this guy is is using. Is this I'm an expert
- 21:11Speaker 5: and this I think this.
- 21:12Speaker 2: Is what worked for me? Or is it? You know,
- 21:14Speaker 2: I studied people like where where is the science in here?
- 21:17Speaker 4: Right? Well, I mean it's not like they spent a
- 21:19Speaker 4: lot of time with their own children, So it's it's
- 21:23Speaker 4: it's definitely from the lab and not from the home,
- 21:26Speaker 4: you know, given that, you know, even sometimes the science
- 21:30Speaker 4: is pretty bad. So when the behaviors come a long
- 21:35Speaker 4: short time later and really urge parents to avoid giving
- 21:40Speaker 4: their children affection, it's John Bradis W. Watson, who was
- 21:44Speaker 4: this sort of womanizing, alcoholic, kind of a real Don
- 21:49Speaker 4: Draper figure. In fact, he had spent some time as
- 21:52Speaker 4: an advertising executive and came up with the concept of
- 21:55Speaker 4: the coffee break, which I will thank him for. But
- 21:58Speaker 4: he became not just a prominent psychologist but the president
- 22:03Speaker 4: of the APA, one of the most prominent psychologists in America.
- 22:07Speaker 4: And his science was very iffy, and he did conduct
- 22:14Speaker 4: experiments in his own home that his children said were
- 22:16Speaker 4: pretty pretty damaging, a lot of them. A lot of
- 22:22Speaker 4: depression and unhappiness and mental illness in the family that followed.
- 22:27Speaker 4: But like one he would like encourage his sons to
- 22:31Speaker 4: fight him. He would see how he would try to
- 22:35Speaker 4: make them jealous by kissing his wife in front of them.
- 22:38Speaker 4: He did a lot of really really weird stuff, and
- 22:41Speaker 4: he conducted his experiments in children that were had profound
- 22:45Speaker 4: brain damage to begin with. It wasn't good science and
- 22:48Speaker 4: it was not good for families.
- 22:50Speaker 2: And his hit that one.
- 22:52Speaker 5: Unlike the banana guy, where some of you know, if
- 22:55Speaker 5: your children like bananas, but if they don't get bananas,
- 22:58Speaker 5: that's okay, Watson's advice is it's pretty bad. I mean
- 23:03Speaker 5: a lot of it is don't don't hug your kid ever.
- 23:05Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, don't hug your kids, don't don't kiss
- 23:08Speaker 4: your kids. His wife, who was also who's in fact
- 23:12Speaker 4: one of his gratitudents I believe, pushed back on that somewhat,
- 23:16Speaker 4: but but died young.
- 23:19Speaker 2: And and do people listen to this right.
- 23:21Speaker 4: Well, he was wildly influential. I mean, he was the
- 23:23Speaker 4: head of the APA who was telling pretty desperate parents
- 23:27Speaker 4: who are looking for advice. This is coming up on
- 23:30Speaker 4: a time when we're starting to see a little bit
- 23:34Speaker 4: more movement in the country, so you might not be
- 23:37Speaker 4: living near your own parents. Necessarily, when you have children,
- 23:40Speaker 4: you're away from your extended family, so you're not getting
- 23:43Speaker 4: that received wisdom and you are looking for outside advice.
- 23:46Speaker 4: So he's one of the voices. Fortunately, Spot comes along
- 23:50Speaker 4: not long after with a very different message.
- 24:00Speaker 1: After the break more parenting.
- 24:11Speaker 5: So let's talk about doctor Spock. He's my favorite parenting expert.
- 24:17Speaker 8: As a father. I will tell you this man's book
- 24:21Speaker 8: is only outsold in the history of books by one other.
- 24:25Speaker 8: The top selling book in the world is the Bible.
- 24:27Speaker 8: The second best seller belongs to doctor Spock his books
- 24:31Speaker 8: on childcare. I have read your book, Doctor, and I
- 24:35Speaker 8: am floored and always have been, by how you call
- 24:38Speaker 8: your shots.
- 24:39Speaker 4: Well, I'll give lots of leeway, you know.
- 24:40Speaker 2: I So what is what is the doctor Spock message?
- 24:46Speaker 4: So doctor Spock really changes things. It was for free reasons. One.
- 24:49Speaker 4: He starts out by being enormously reassuring, which is something
- 24:53Speaker 4: parents really needed to hear. He starts off by telling
- 24:56Speaker 4: them you know more than you think you do. He
- 24:58Speaker 4: lets people know it is pretty hard to do this wrong.
- 25:02Speaker 4: He says you can follow your instincts. He says you
- 25:05Speaker 4: can hug and you can kiss your children. He also
- 25:08Speaker 4: says it's okay to follow follow their lead on some things,
- 25:16Speaker 4: to feed them when they're hungry, to put them to
- 25:17Speaker 4: sleep when they're tired. And one really, really, really simple
- 25:21Speaker 4: thing that completely changed things, and it was his innovation.
- 25:26Speaker 4: There was an index for the first time in his book,
- 25:29Speaker 4: so that when you were having a crisis in the
- 25:31Speaker 4: middle of the night, you could very quickly flip to
- 25:33Speaker 4: the page that would address the middle of the night crisis.
- 25:36Speaker 4: He wrote it himself, and this is something no one
- 25:38Speaker 4: had thought to do before.
- 25:40Speaker 5: I mean, I find doctor Spock to be like, it's
- 25:43Speaker 5: quite sensible is the word I would use for that.
- 25:45Speaker 5: It's just it's not I mean, it's not that it's
- 25:48Speaker 5: not scientific, but it's also a lot of it is
- 25:51Speaker 5: just feels like, oh, that's sensible. Up the middle, up
- 25:55Speaker 5: the middle of the road advice.
- 25:58Speaker 2: It's not real, judge.
- 26:00Speaker 4: It has aged very well. A few parenting books do.
- 26:03Speaker 5: Yeah, like the Greek guy at the beginning, Like the
- 26:05Speaker 5: old Greek guy. It's like that guy and doctor Spock,
- 26:08Speaker 5: that's who we should have. Yeah, A little salty salty babies.
- 26:12Speaker 2: That are kind of eating on a no schedule at all.
- 26:15Speaker 4: Given my children's diets, and when they were infants, they
- 26:17Speaker 4: probably were covered in salt, but it came from.
- 26:20Speaker 5: So I want to talk about the shift to parents
- 26:24Speaker 5: becoming more invested in raising their kids. So we talked
- 26:28Speaker 5: about sort of parenting and child rearing. But there's a
- 26:31Speaker 5: long period in which parents themselves are not this maybe
- 26:35Speaker 5: the central people in their children's lives, or at least
- 26:39Speaker 5: for some Maybe that's not true, but that's my impression.
- 26:41Speaker 5: There's a point at which it's kind of becomes parents.
- 26:44Speaker 5: So I'm curious about how that transition worked.
- 26:46Speaker 4: So it's a few things. So and I would you know,
- 26:49Speaker 4: at least according to my research, that's pretty true that
- 26:52Speaker 4: it's your job to have the children, but not necessarily
- 26:55Speaker 4: your job to raise the children. That does start to change.
- 26:58Speaker 4: There's a few things that can try to that. So
- 27:01Speaker 4: the first are Locke and Rousseau, who write a pair
- 27:04Speaker 4: of books that encourage parents to raise their own children.
- 27:08Speaker 4: So here I want to point out Locke had no children,
- 27:11Speaker 4: Rousseau had five, gave every one of them up to
- 27:13Speaker 4: a family home, so maybe not a lot of hands
- 27:19Speaker 4: on experience from either one of them, but they both
- 27:23Speaker 4: wrote these these books urging parents to take more interest
- 27:27Speaker 4: in their children to invest more in their upbringing. Since
- 27:32Speaker 4: Locke was a doctor who actually treated children, he did
- 27:35Speaker 4: have some experience with them. Rousseau's a philosopher and he's
- 27:38Speaker 4: writing a philosophical treatise. That's it. He's not really setting
- 27:43Speaker 4: out to write a parenting manual. But parents at the
- 27:47Speaker 4: time are pretty starved for exactly that, and so they
- 27:52Speaker 4: start raising their children according to the precepts set out
- 27:56Speaker 4: in a Meal, which is a philosophical novel, it is
- 28:00Speaker 4: not a parenting book. He begins correspondence with many very
- 28:07Speaker 4: high high society families, royal families who are raising their
- 28:11Speaker 4: children according to this book, sending them outside with very
- 28:15Speaker 4: little snow clothing in the wood in the winter, shooting
- 28:17Speaker 4: guns near their heads to make them sort of shockproof
- 28:21Speaker 4: is a terrible, terrible parenting manual. And although he's encouraging
- 28:29Speaker 4: parents to be more hands on, he's also you know,
- 28:35Speaker 4: he's not expecting you to change diapers, right that you're
- 28:38Speaker 4: supposed to oversee their education, but you are not necessarily
- 28:43Speaker 4: doing the hands on day to day stuff. So that
- 28:45Speaker 4: starts to change a little bit when with the Puritans.
- 28:49Speaker 4: So some have said that the parents the Puritans were
- 28:52Speaker 4: the first modern parents. They were certainly the first neurotic
- 28:57Speaker 4: parents that we see in the record, and I think
- 29:00Speaker 4: that's for a few reasons. One is they're very concerned
- 29:02Speaker 4: with their children's souls, so parenting becomes this thing that's
- 29:07Speaker 4: much too important outsource to the help or even to
- 29:09Speaker 4: the mother. Puritan fathers are pretty hands on in a
- 29:15Speaker 4: way that we don't see beforehand in a lot of
- 29:20Speaker 4: our founding. You know, America's founding fathers were literally founded
- 29:24Speaker 4: by fathers. That their memoirs tend to mention their fathers
- 29:28Speaker 4: quite a bit. They were very involved in their upbringing.
- 29:31Speaker 4: And then the final piece of the shift is the
- 29:33Speaker 4: Industrial Revolution. Dad's not home, mom is the childbirth rate
- 29:38Speaker 4: has gone way down, so that children become, in Viviana
- 29:41Speaker 4: Zelazer's phrase, economically worthless but emotionally priceless. And with fewer
- 29:46Speaker 4: children the mother at home, she is expected to take
- 29:50Speaker 4: on a lot of the day to day hands on
- 29:53Speaker 4: child wearing that mothers had not been responsible for up
- 29:57Speaker 4: till that time.
- 29:59Speaker 2: And then we arrive at the present or we're taking
- 30:02Speaker 2: on all of the things.
- 30:03Speaker 3: Yea.
- 30:04Speaker 2: So is there anything in the old parenting advice that
- 30:09Speaker 2: you would say This is something people always thought was
- 30:14Speaker 2: a good idea and has held up.
- 30:16Speaker 4: Is there any constant, There's a few, So stay out
- 30:19Speaker 4: of your children's fights. There's a long, long, long history
- 30:25Speaker 4: of any parent more than one child know that they
- 30:28Speaker 4: fight non stop. They are hard wired to. This happens
- 30:33Speaker 4: in most species. It's happened throughout history. The Bible is
- 30:37Speaker 4: basically just a collection of stories about siblings fighting each other,
- 30:42Speaker 4: sometimes to the death. And some of the earlier advice
- 30:45Speaker 4: is don't get involved. And once I started using that advice,
- 30:49Speaker 4: my children started fighting a lot less. That one was good.
- 30:53Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a good piece of advice. Anything else that.
- 30:57Speaker 4: It's at the lower bar of like pre the pre
- 31:04Speaker 4: block pre russo the idea that like it's your job
- 31:09Speaker 4: to keep them alive, but it's actually kind of hard
- 31:13Speaker 4: to mess them up. I have found really reassuring.
- 31:17Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think seeing that seeing this full range
- 31:20Speaker 5: gives you a gives you some sense of you know,
- 31:25Speaker 5: people have been doing a version of this for a
- 31:27Speaker 5: long time, and you know, with a variety of good
- 31:32Speaker 5: and not good ideas, and most of the time.
- 31:34Speaker 2: It works out.
- 31:35Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, yeah, even when the changes in your behavior
- 31:39Speaker 5: are enormous, let alone the kind of very small deltas
- 31:42Speaker 5: that we're arguing about exactly.
- 31:45Speaker 4: Yeah, and they you know, and they are and we
- 31:47Speaker 4: and we do tend to overestimate our sample size. You know,
- 31:53Speaker 4: most of us are working with the sample size of
- 31:55Speaker 4: like two, and we draw a lot of conclusions from
- 31:59Speaker 4: that that we then post on the internet.
- 32:01Speaker 5: I feel like we draw a lot of conclusions from
- 32:02Speaker 5: the first one, Like you do something you do think
- 32:04Speaker 5: they'll work with the first one, and you're like, I'm
- 32:06Speaker 5: so great at parenting, look at me.
- 32:09Speaker 2: And then you have a.
- 32:09Speaker 5: Second one and you're like, I am not good at parenting.
- 32:13Speaker 2: That did not work a second time.
- 32:15Speaker 4: It's extraordinary, right because pretty much everything else, you put
- 32:18Speaker 4: the same ingredients together, you're going to end up with
- 32:20Speaker 4: the same product. And kids no so different.
- 32:24Speaker 2: It's just yea.
- 32:25Speaker 5: Yes, we were reflecting on a moment. My kids are
- 32:30Speaker 5: four years apart, and we're now like four years out
- 32:32Speaker 5: from exactly the time the pandemic started, and so we
- 32:34Speaker 5: were sort of thinking back to when my daughter was
- 32:36Speaker 5: my son's age, and she was like the older of
- 32:38Speaker 5: the two at the beginning of the pandemic, and like
- 32:41Speaker 5: she was just like taking care of him like some
- 32:43Speaker 5: fraction of the time during the day, Like basically like
- 32:46Speaker 5: she was eight and he was four, and now we're
- 32:48Speaker 5: just like, I don't think he would be good to
- 32:50Speaker 5: take care of a four year old. I mean they
- 32:52Speaker 5: weren't home alone or anything, but we would have them
- 32:54Speaker 5: like playing outside.
- 32:55Speaker 2: Anyway, They're not the same kid, Yeah, that's for sure.
- 32:58Speaker 5: Yeah, Okay, So I have one sort of perhaps related,
- 33:02Speaker 5: well sort of the opposite question. So there are things
- 33:06Speaker 5: we look back on that people did, like the no
- 33:08Speaker 5: bananas or the not hugging, or things where we would
- 33:11Speaker 5: now say, boy, that's wrong. Like we have good scientific
- 33:15Speaker 5: evidence that bananas are for most people a totally safe
- 33:18Speaker 5: food and that it is a good idea to hug
- 33:20Speaker 5: your kid, And there's a bunch of things like that.
- 33:23Speaker 5: What will people look back on that we are doing now?
- 33:26Speaker 5: That is our what is our bananas?
- 33:29Speaker 6: Yeah?
- 33:29Speaker 4: My husband and I play this game all the time.
- 33:31Speaker 4: How are we ruining our children any ways? That will
- 33:34Speaker 4: be obvious to them that we do not see now.
- 33:36Speaker 4: And I would like to just point out here that
- 33:39Speaker 4: my mother used to smoke while breastfeeding me. My father
- 33:43Speaker 4: is a chest surgeon and my mother is a nurse,
- 33:47Speaker 4: and they both swore they didn't know it was bad
- 33:49Speaker 4: for you. I think it's the phones. I think it's
- 33:52Speaker 4: the unchecked screen use, and I'm not doing a great
- 33:55Speaker 4: job of checking it now.
- 33:57Speaker 2: It's hard.
- 33:57Speaker 5: I mean, this is I I don't disagree with you,
- 34:01Speaker 5: but I also think this is a sort of societal problem,
- 34:03Speaker 5: even more than an individual problem.
- 34:05Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, if I if I limited it entirely, it
- 34:08Speaker 4: would create a whole new set. It would cut them
- 34:10Speaker 4: off socially totally.
- 34:13Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 34:13Speaker 5: I'm curious if there are things in your parenting that
- 34:16Speaker 5: you do differently as a result of this book.
- 34:20Speaker 4: Yeah, it was very useful that I just don't feel
- 34:25Speaker 4: guilty anymore. I pretty much never feel guilty just because
- 34:29Speaker 4: the bar has been lowered so much for me. And
- 34:33Speaker 4: I've also realized that when we take something on, we
- 34:40Speaker 4: not only make it our problem, we make it a
- 34:42Speaker 4: problem that throughout history, and picky eating being maybe the
- 34:46Speaker 4: best example that when parents started with Holt started to
- 34:51Speaker 4: get very uptight about what children ate, we suddenly see
- 34:54Speaker 4: this epidemic of picky eating, and before that what you
- 34:56Speaker 4: see in the literature's complaints that children will eat anything
- 34:59Speaker 4: and everything. So I try to ignore problems in the
- 35:06Speaker 4: hope and in the faith that they will resolve themselves.
- 35:12Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it, all right.
- 35:14Speaker 5: I have a couple of rapid fire parenting questions for you.
- 35:17Speaker 2: You ready, all right?
- 35:19Speaker 5: What is one of the most horrifying parenting techniques you
- 35:23Speaker 5: came across in your research.
- 35:28Speaker 4: Let's see the worst parents of all time. I'm gonna
- 35:31Speaker 4: go with the John brought us Watson, the completely hands
- 35:36Speaker 4: off thing. He he at one point dreamed of having
- 35:40Speaker 4: children raised through a rotting, rotating set of foster homes
- 35:44Speaker 4: and never being with their real parents because you know,
- 35:47Speaker 4: parents are too soft on their own kids, and we'll
- 35:49Speaker 4: hug and kiss them. That one's pretty bad. Parents who
- 35:52Speaker 4: followed Rousseau's advice to send them naked out in the
- 35:56Speaker 4: snow to play with pistols. That one was pretty bad.
- 36:02Speaker 4: There were Oh this one I adore, but it ended
- 36:09Speaker 4: up not being a great idea. So with Throb Kellogg,
- 36:12Speaker 4: who was an Indiana psychologist in the thirties, he raised
- 36:17Speaker 4: his own infant side by side with a chimpanzee because
- 36:22Speaker 4: they thought the chimpanzee would learn to act like the boy,
- 36:25Speaker 4: and the opposite happened. The boy ended up copying the
- 36:30Speaker 4: chimpanzee and after a few years they had to discontinue
- 36:33Speaker 4: the experiment, but there are very cute pictures of the
- 36:37Speaker 4: baby and his chimp brother and their little onesies that
- 36:42Speaker 4: it was a failed experiment, but it was a pretty
- 36:44Speaker 4: cute one.
- 36:45Speaker 5: And what is the most heartwarming parenting, like if you
- 36:48Speaker 5: sort of the thing you read and you were like, oh, oh, oh, what.
- 36:52Speaker 4: I kind of love is how indulgent parents have been
- 36:54Speaker 4: throughout history. And American parents were kind of known for
- 37:00Speaker 4: being for really spoiling their kids. And you see some
- 37:04Speaker 4: press about how kids run wild in America that they're
- 37:08Speaker 4: you know, overindulged. And one of the best examples is
- 37:12Speaker 4: the Lincolns.
- 37:14Speaker 2: The Lincolns really.
- 37:16Speaker 4: Let their their boys run wild in the White House,
- 37:19Speaker 4: including giving them a live ammunition. I believe there were
- 37:24Speaker 4: a few explosions in the actual White House, and you know,
- 37:29Speaker 4: it was it was kind of cute that they love
- 37:31Speaker 4: their kids, they wanted to have them, wanted them to
- 37:33Speaker 4: have fun, they gave them ammunition.
- 37:36Speaker 5: Okay, my last question, what animal would you pick to.
- 37:40Speaker 2: Nurse your baby?
- 37:45Speaker 4: Gorilla?
- 37:47Speaker 5: Gorilla, it's it's but how will you get it in
- 37:51Speaker 5: the crib, Jennifer, how will you get it in the crib?
- 38:01Speaker 2: Thank you so much. This is such a treat.
- 38:03Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me.
- 38:18Speaker 5: Parent Data is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from
- 38:21Speaker 5: the parent Data team and PI Rex. If you have
- 38:24Speaker 5: thoughts on this episode, please join the conversation on my
- 38:26Speaker 5: Instagram at Prof Emily Oster. And if you want to
- 38:30Speaker 5: support the show, become a subscriber to the parent Data
- 38:33Speaker 5: newsletter at parentdata dot org, where I write weekly posts
- 38:37Speaker 5: on everything to do with parents and data to help
- 38:40Speaker 5: you make better, more informed parenting decisions. There are a
- 38:44Speaker 5: lot of ways that you can help people find out
- 38:45Speaker 5: about us. Leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts,
- 38:49Speaker 5: Text your friend about something you learned from this episode.
- 38:52Speaker 5: Debate your mother in law about the merits of something
- 38:55Speaker 5: parents do now that is totally different from what she did.
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- 39:03Speaker 5: remember to mention the podcast too. Write Penelope right, mam,
- 39:07Speaker 5: We'll see you next time.