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Is There A Motherhood Ideal? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  it is really important to say that becoming a mother or father is really a call to lay down your life. And I think that once career was seen as an ideal and that men could go off and form a superior identity to their family identity out in the workplace, it became an impossible temptation at some level that we were giving to women to say, no, we're going to have it all and you're going to be the one to bear all the sacrifices. Yeah.
• 0:30
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:48
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the family teams podcast. We're continuing to try to bring balance to the content by talking to mothers about some motherhood issues. So I have an awesome cohort of dads that are processing with me on the podcast on a regular basis, different elements of what it means to build, build a family team that impact fatherhood. But we want to be constantly balancing that with conversations with mothers around motherhood. So we're going to bring you guys another conversation today.
• 1:17
  I'm joined by Michelle Akrami, Justine Cirillo, and Jess Gagne. Thank you all for joining me today.
• 1:24
  So what we're going to do is we're going to try to work through three clips from a video that I found really interesting. And April, I've been talking about this. April is not able to join us today on the podcast, but this is definitely a topic that we wanted to cover. So Lila Rose on her podcast had Erica Komisar on. Erica Komisar is a parenting coach. She's a psychologist.
• 1:48
  And she says some very specific things about motherhood, you know, more from, I think, more like a child development perspective. But certainly this has a huge impact on the way we think about family from a theological lens and here family teams in terms of like our embracing of God's design for family, the roles in a family.
• 2:09
  And there's a constant collision and an enormous tension that we're all wrestling with between how this topic of motherhood
• 2:19
  impacts all the different aspects of life. You know, obviously the impact that it has on individual women, on our perception and the opportunities of women in general in society, how it impacts families. And in this conversation, it really goes into detail on the impact that motherhood has on babies and infants. So, yeah, she has a lot of very directive things to say about the literature, about what does appear to be in the best interest of
• 2:48
  the baby and how that can be in tension with what our society is advocating for women in general. So we want to be honest about these conversations. We want to like talk about these things and try to understand them. And then also like bring our unique family teams lens into these conversations. So I'm going to play these three clips and get y'all's feedback and just thoughts about where she's coming from here. So the first clip we're going to look at is to me one that I've really wrestled with a lot
• 3:17
  And that is, it seems completely taboo to suggest that there is an ideal with regards to motherhood. And this is a very new challenge that there is a, there is sort of, anytime somebody even presents the possibility of an ideal,
• 3:36
  it's considered offensive. And I think that that has specifically to do with the rise of individualism in our culture. And so, and I think this has a huge impact on motherhood because if we can never talk about the ideal, then it's like, what are we aiming at? And do we have something concrete to aim at? So I wanna play what she says about this topic. What you see to be the optimal way to raise a child for maximum positive outcomes, a very young child.
• 4:05
  Well, what I say is more is more. The more emotionally and physically present you can be for your children in the first critical period of brain development, which is zero to three, the greater the chance your child will be mentally healthy. And having a primary attachment figure.
• 4:20
  Because attachment security is really what we're talking about. So having a primary attachment figure available to you to soothe you when you're in distress and help bring you back to that homeostasis whenever you need it. As you're starting to explore the world, to be able to come and touch base with that secure object and be able to then go off and toddle and explore again.
• 4:41
  That's the ideal. And I think it's hard because, you know, we're not allowed to talk about the ideal today in anything. I don't know when that happened, because, you know, if things are less than ideal, often they're easier to deal with if first we understand what the ideal is. Right. So if we can't talk about the ideal, we can't repair, we can't work through and resolve the conflicts that come from the less than the ideal.
• 5:06
  So the ideal is having your primary attachment figure, usually your mother, as present as possible in those, but not just physically present. Because as I say, you can be physically present and be emotionally checked out. You can't be emotionally present if you're not physically present. It's just not happening. So the idea of quality time is a ruse. It's a myth. It doesn't work for children. They need both your physical presence and your emotional presence. That's the ideal.
• 5:33
  If you can't be there. I want to actually sit with the ideal for a moment more because I agree with you. It's not talked about enough. No. In some circles, it is talked about, you know, stay at home mom in the context of, you know, the ideal for child rearing. It's like stay at home mom is the best. Okay. Well, what does that mean?
• 5:49
  You know, how does that mean? What does it mean to be the ideal stay at home mom for your kids? What are those activities look like? So I want to unpack that a little more. You mentioned quality and quantity time. There's a difference between the two. As you said, I think in your book, children need both. Mm hmm.
• 6:04
  Mm hmm. Let's start with the quantity word, because I think that's the most sticky for people. I think I don't know if it's one hundred and forty four hours in a week. If I have that number. Waking hours for a child is I don't know if it's 80. I remember doing this exercise, by the way, I think after reading your book quantity. So for that mother, when you say the more is more.
• 6:25
  Is it ideal then for a mother, you know, if she has activities outside the home, even grocery shopping, we're just doing the ideal exercise here, or she has friends or she has, you know, she works out, she does, you know. So then they go deeper and deeper into kind of a detailed conversation on exactly how much quantity time is ideal. But what I thought was really helpful and what I wanted to ask you three about is how
• 6:50
  She said that we can't even talk about the ideal today. And there is sort of a collective decision to ignore the ideal. Yeah.
• 7:02
  Where do you feel like that might have come from? And is there, when you think about this, how do you think this impacts the topic of motherhood specifically? How do we think about motherhood in the fact that we have a culture that doesn't want to aim at something that is the highest example of what we're all trying to get to, even though all of us are gonna fall short of that ideal? Yeah, so Michelle, why don't you get started for us?
• 7:29
  I tend to be more idealistic in my personality, but I can really understand. I've got a couple of my kiddos that really struggle with doing a job really well, because that is ideal to do something to the best. Like if you're going to do anything, do it well, right? There's that quote out there.
• 7:50
  And I think if you're not, if you feel like you're already going to fail, then why try? Why shoot for the ideal? Why go for it? And I wonder if there's that at play in this. And I'm sure it's been...
• 8:06
  you know, it's hard. Like there's probably just been so many generations of this continuing where, well, my mother wasn't present and I think I turned out okay. So, you know, I'll, I'll just keep doing what, you know, I learned and what I experienced. So at some point generationally that happened, like that belief started, you know? And so, I don't know, what's my thoughts on that?
• 8:30
  Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really important to point out that sort of the generational kind of conversation around the ideal. Like one of the ways to me that, because I think what you're describing is an ideal can be a judge and that judgment can create enormous shame and that shame can make you want to give up before you even start.
• 8:48
  And so, and we don't really have a good way culturally, at least in the secular world, to deal with the problem of shame without just destroying the ideal. That is our strategy in a secular world for overcoming shame. In the gospel, we have a different way of doing that. I think one of the ways to think about the ideal, though, that makes it less of a burden and of a judge is to think about...
• 9:12
  this from a generational perspective. And that is that if we knew what the ideal was, and let's say I knew in my generation, we're not going to get there. What do I aim at now? If I know I'm going to fail and get the ideal, which I think we all are going to fail the ideal. Like that's where I think this conversation has to start. And I think one thing that you can aim at that I think is really appropriate is that you want to get closer to the ideal in your generation than your mother or your father did in the,
• 9:38
  his or her generation. And so to me, knowing the ideal gives me both the freedom to know that I, I can go upstream from, from, from here, but I don't have to do it all in one generation. And then I can even train my kids and say, look, I, you know, as a mother, I wasn't able to do this for you, but I wish I could have, I couldn't because of these reasons, but I was able to do more than my mother did for me. And I,
• 10:01
  I am praying for you and I am trying to provide a pathway for you to be able to do more than what I did for you. I mean, that's a different way to think about this. And part of what we are trying to do is think about how to build multigenerational families, which I think gives us the freedom to do that. So, yeah, Jess, what did this start for you?
• 10:19
  Yeah, I just really appreciated how she talked about the, like, it's not just the physical, like, presence for your kids. Because I think when I first think of a stay-at-home mom, I think of, like, the just all the time, like, the actual time you're with your kids. And so when she connected, like, it's not just the time you're with your kid. It's also being emotionally present. And I think we're just talking about, like, generationally. I feel like that's something...
• 10:47
  for me and like my like section or just like generation where I'm like, man, I grew up and my mom was home with us. And that gave me like such a desire, like at a young age that I want to do that with my kids. But I think growing in that emotional healthiness, which has been challenging, I've had to look back at my own life.
• 11:08
  childhood or like sin or struggles and be like, okay, Lord, like, how do I deal with this as a mom? I can't teach something to my own kids that I don't already know. So it, you kind of give me that long game perspective, but I appreciate how you were saying, Jeremy, like, if we don't have an ideal, then I feel really lost as a mom. Like, what am I actually trying to go towards? And then I can work back with me. Okay. Well,
• 11:31
  here's what my mom and my grandma did really well. How can I build off of that so that my kids is like, my kids is, so you talked about like the idea of our kids' floor should be our ceiling. So I'm like, okay, what can I do in my lifetime to bless my kids, my grandkids? That encourages me, that like challenges me to keep going on those days where I'm like,
• 11:54
  man, I've not done a great job at that, but thank you, Lord, for the journey and the process that I don't have to accomplish this in one day or one week, that you give me a lifetime to disciple my kids. And that the Lord like comforts us too in that, that I don't put so much pressure on myself with this huge ideal. But yeah, I just really like the generational piece because I feel like that takes pressure off of like, I have to accomplish this in...
• 12:22
  80 years like oh my goodness that's just like overwhelming yeah that the hyper individual frame is that it also says to a woman you have to do it all in your lifetime because it's lifetimes all that matters there isn't you're not living into a multi-generational story and so in some sense even if your mother had sacrificed a lot of time
• 12:45
  and a lot of her, her dreams potentially, and lay those down to raise you. That was her decision. And your decision is really only impinges upon your, the one life you have to live. And so that, that, that sort of bias towards.
• 13:01
  I only get one shot at this, man, it really makes this, it creates like an impossible tension for women. Because on one hand, you feel, okay, I need to take care of myself and I need to make sure that I'm getting all the advantages that I can in this life. But I am literally going to take my family line farther away from the ideal.
• 13:20
  than my own mother did. And I think that at that point, it's appropriate to wonder whether or not something has happened where you created a value shift that may not be in the best interest of your family. So, and-
• 13:36
  So then she goes on and brings up this other topic, which I found really interesting. Actually, she brought this one up first, but I want to go back to it because I feel like as soon as you talk about the ideal, I know a lot of people when they hear that, it's just like we destroy ideals because, again, I mentioned we don't know how to deal with guilt and shame. And I think this is a really critical question. So she actually faces that head on. And I was really surprised by how she talked about this topic. So I want to share this clip as well.
• 14:03
  Did having your own children, I heard earlier, we were chatting a little bit, you have three children, did having your own children also impact the research that you were doing or make you more interested in the research that you were doing?
• 14:17
  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, as someone in the field, I obviously was very, very interested in children and very interested in child development. But I've always had just an incredible amount of empathy. I think, you know, you'd say I didn't I didn't develop empathy because I'm a social worker and a psychoanalyst. I am a social worker and a psychoanalyst because I had this incredible empathy.
• 14:38
  So my empathy always extended very much to the most vulnerable and those without a voice, and that would be infants and toddlers. And so, as my husband always says to me, writing these books was giving a voice to children because our society is very fixed on the needs of parents. It's very fixed on the needs of mothers. If you look at all the articles that are written in a lot of the books, it's all about parents and what do we need to do for parents and
• 15:08
  what do parents need to be happy, but no one was really writing anything about what children need. And so really what I was doing was saying, look, you know, the expression goes, you're only as happy as your least happy child, right? And so...
• 15:25
  If that's true, which it is true, then parents want to raise happy, healthy children, resilient children. And so these books were really and this information is meant, as you say, not to shame parents, but to really get them to understand what it's going to require to raise those mentally healthy, emotionally healthy children. I think there is maybe a tendency on this adult focused approach we have as a culture.
• 15:55
  are not what we would prefer culturally. The answers of what it does require to be the parent that you need to be for your kids. And in a way, there's hard truths. And I think, you know, you do your book
• 16:10
  I remember reading it and it's full of empathy. It's very understanding. And I think that's how you come across. But why do you think, what is your theory? I want to start with this because it's where some people's objections may already be. Why do you think there's this, you know, maybe a limited sort of capacity people are feeling to be able to hear, oh, my kids need something more from me that I feel that I can't or I don't want to give them.
• 16:38
  Well, I mean, I think that my books do sometimes make women feel guilty, and I don't really see guilt as a bad thing, whereas the rest of society does see guilt as a bad thing. Because for me, guilt is a signal feeling. So basically what it says is you're in conflict. So like physical pain is another signal feeling. If you hurt yourself, you break your ankle hiking or playing basketball or whatever, you're going to stop. You're going to go to the doctor. You're going to
• 17:07
  take it easy. You're going to look at your ankle. You're not going to keep playing basketball on your ankle, right? It's a signal feeling. So we say guilt is a signal feeling that you're in conflict and you're meant to look at that conflict and resolve it in whatever way you resolve it. But you're not meant to turn away from it. Society tells women, no, turn away from it. Guilt's not good. And
• 17:28
  You know, excessive guilt is what we say is neurotic, is not good. But guilt is actually very helpful. It means our conscience is working. So we don't want to just turn away from our guilt. And guilt is about behavior. So we feel badly. We feel conflicted about behaviors that we may not be happy about that we are engaged in. Shame is a different thing. So shame has to do with character. Shame means that you feel like a bad person.
• 17:53
  So if the things that I'm saying make you feel ashamed, it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. It has to do with something much deeper, something that has to do with feeling like a bad person. But that doesn't have to do with the guilt over leaving your child, which has to do with behavior.
• 18:09
  And so, you know, they're both important feelings, guilt and shame. But I think we don't like to feel and we don't like to feel any discomfort. And so, you know, sometimes we have to feel discomfort to grow. We have to feel discomfort to do the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing is uncomfortable. And I think that we don't like feeling uncomfortable today. In your intro.
• 18:34
  No, we don't. Yeah. So this is this, this idea that guilt is a signal feeling and that it means that there's a conflict that you need to actually face as opposed to something that you need to run away from. Or there's an ideal that needs to be ignored or torn down. And I can't think of a more relevant situation.
• 18:57
  topic because it really creates a total overlap between conversations around motherhood and the gospel itself. How do we deal with this topic? So yeah, Jess, what is the start for you?
• 19:12
  I just love how she called out that sometimes doing the right thing is like being uncomfortable or like working through like pain is like a good thing. And I just let it every I watched the clip earlier and every time I hear that I just want to be like, yes, like an amen. Like, but why? Why?
• 19:31
  how did we get to this point where it's like my comfortability is like the thing I need to be most focused on and that's like the most important thing versus being sometimes I need to be uncomfortable to grow like that
• 19:47
  That should be like a signal of like, yes, like keep going, keep pushing. Like it is going to be uncomfortable. But like for some reason, I feel like we can like correlate that in athletics or like if an athlete comes to us and is just like, oh my goodness, like I'm so sore today. But like I'm training for this like big race in a couple of weeks, we'd be like, oh,
• 20:07
  Well, yeah, that's like, good job. Keep going. That's part of the process. But if we're like a mom and we're working through like things from our childhood or we're trying to like grow emotionally healthy, like for the sake of our kids, I feel like that would just be something that we wouldn't be encouraged to keep pressing into and be like, oh, I'm so sorry, like that. There's like this pain. And yes, that we should have empathy for like, I'm sorry you went through that. But also like the hope of the gospel is like God wants to redeem and restore.
• 20:36
  our families so that he is just made like most of and so like keep going like don't give up but i just don't know if moms today have cheerleaders in their corner who have maybe gone before them and done that or are just like even themselves working through that to be like we can do this like for the sake of like our kids and grandkids like for our family's blessing and flourishing like don't stop like keep going
• 21:03
  Yeah, it's in the gospel. We have a unique way of approaching our identity, which is that we are fallen. We are broken. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all have to deal with guilt and shame. And the whole reason for Jesus coming is to help us deal with that so that
• 21:23
  we can continue to have joy and have hope that we aren't ultimately judged by just our actions or our failures, but then it also has the
• 21:37
  has the advantage of it allows us to face the ideal unflinchingly and say, what is true. And, and so, yeah, I think we have to be really careful as, as mothers and fathers that when we hear somebody articulate the ideal, that we, that we have a unique reaction as believers in Jesus to, to,
• 21:54
  failing an ideal, that should be a common experience for us. And so, and, and we have a unique way of being able to continue to face that and continue to have hope and optimism as we move towards it without it crushing us and telling a story about us that we can't bear. Justine, what did this throw for you?
• 22:16
  Yeah, just it made me think what you were talking about. So we're called to die to ourselves as followers of Jesus. And that's not a very popular thing. And like you were saying about how moms maybe don't have cheerleaders, I think sometimes moms will express their guilt.
• 22:41
  The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores, and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase. Michelle, you want to pick up from there and then we'll see if Justin can jump back in.
• 23:04
  Okay, no problem. I think the kind of about the cheerleading thing, it's interesting. I do see a foremost almost cheerleading, but in an opposite direction where, you know, there's the mom guilt and there's the comfort crisis, which is a book. I really want to read that intriguing to me. But with comfort and motherhood and in so much of motherhood is uncomfortable. I mean, it starts with pregnancy, right? Where our bodies are even stretched.
• 23:33
  all the things and I think there's something that has happened where we actually
• 23:40
  There's been so much validating in the hard and the stretching and like, oh man, yeah, this was crazy, you know, or whatever. And I think some of that comes from a healthy place of like, yeah, this is hard. Let's talk about, let's be vulnerable. But at the same time, it becomes this like really unhealthy, I don't know what the word would be, but just like a really unhealthy culture within that where it's validating in some way. I don't know.
• 24:06
  Yeah. Yeah. It's you're right about that. Like there is a sense in which the cheerleading as opposed to it being about the really hard parts of motherhood and like you can do this. Let's stick through this. We were with you. We understand how hard this is.
• 24:21
  It's really a cheerleading of, of let's all destroy the ideal together. You don't need to do that. You can live whatever kind of life you want. No, your baby's going to be fine. Don't worry about that at all. That's not an issue. And, you know, that, that reversal that she's describing and, you know, the empathy that she describes as well about, okay, we need to have enough empathy for the infant and the babies that we are bringing into the world and that we're bonded to.
• 24:49
  to be able to make sure that we're not sort of using those voices, those cheerleading for our individual sort of desires that create behaviors that are really bad for our children or that will can really do damage. And so then the last thing I wanted to talk to you guys about was she, she hits that topic and that is.
• 25:11
  God has provided mothers with a real instinct for that empathy that she describes that she has. That's really a universal experience for mothers. And so she goes into detail about what's happened to that instinct. With the work that I do, I'll be very frank with you. I think we find that mothers have lost the original title of being there was the lost instinct.
• 25:40
  And I liked that title. They thought it was too technical or scientific, but they liked being there. Whatever. It's also a good title. But The Lost Instinct really said what I meant, which is that I feel like women have lost their empathy for their children. They no longer feel for their children.
• 26:02
  Something has been disrupted because of generational expression of attachment disorders in the last 75, 80 years. Something has really been disrupted in terms of mother's ability to feel for the distress and the pain and the longing and the loss of their children.
• 26:26
  Do you think that you mentioned generational, I think, attachment? It's because we were raised a way and we thought, well, we're fine. Yeah. We're okay. We got some issues. And so we emulate inadvertently or intentionally how we were raised. I mean, the. Or we see other people raising kids a certain way. So I'm a byproduct of.
• 26:49
  in a good way, of the women's rights movement, of the sexual revolution. And I'm a lot older than you, so I really am. I was a beneficiary of it in many ways. But the way it was structured by Gloria Steinem when it was first conceived was Gloria Steinem said, if you don't go out to work, you betray God.
• 27:14
  the movement of feminism. You betray the women's rights movement. And she said, you know, babies will be fine. Don't worry about them. Put them into daycare. Give them to a babysitter. You need to go out to work. You need to be soldiers in this war that we're waging. And women just soaked it up, hook, line and sinker. Meanwhile, Gloria Steinem never had children. And
• 27:38
  So she could say that because she never had the conflicts of being a mother. She never felt the oxytocin pull. She never was attached to a baby. But it really, that message was very destructive because it didn't say, and now all movements have, there's an extreme to them when they first begin, you know, and I guess she saw it as a war. But it was a war that was waged not just against men. Unfortunately, it was a war that was waged against babies.
• 28:09
  And that is really what happened because then women for generations after. So what we know is that attachment disorders are passed down generationally. So if you develop an attachment disorder because your mother isn't isn't emotionally present for you or, you know.
• 28:27
  is disinterested or then that gets passed down to the next generation. So the next generation is one step away from feeling the attachments sort of to their babies. And this is, we know this from lots of mammalian research. So yeah, we, we suffer from, we suffered a lot from that. I have a t-shirt that I love. I'm a feminist. I work, I do helping profession work. You know, I always have
• 28:55
  And I have a t-shirt that says maternal feminism, which is that I believe in women's right to choose a career or not a career or the ability to work. But that comes with responsibility. Freedom always comes with responsibility. And so we have a responsibility if we decide to have children. You don't have to have children to live a satisfying life. You can
• 29:21
  have a very satisfying career like Gloria Steinem did. But if you're going to have children, Penelope Leach said it many years before me. She said in her book, she said, you know, anybody can have a child. Don't have them if you don't want to care for them. So.
• 29:42
  A lot there. And so she begins by talking about the, the kind of disruption of kind of the empathy instinct that is bonding a mother and her infant. And that this is really rooted in a kind of a, we're, we're sort of three or four generations into a movement that has disrupted that connection. And so, so many people are walking around saying, what's the big deal? My, I was, you know, put into daycare and my mother wasn't there for me and I don't need that. And so my baby doesn't need that
• 30:12
  And so what Erica is saying here is that that that's actually evidence of a larger disorder, that the actual problem that was created was created in your past, you know? And so because you're two or three generations removed from that, you, you are now assuming that that's normal. You're assuming that basically attachment disorder is normal. And I think she is suggesting that there is such a powerful bond between a mother and a child.
• 30:37
  that is sort of God given and God designed, that it creates the kind of emotional structure within a baby and then a child that they can then bond and attach with other in other relationships throughout their lives. And if you, if, if this, if detachment becomes normative, then we're essentially damaging whole generations of people as opposed to having invented a brave new world. That's actually better for women, children, everyone. So yeah, Justin, what does this start for you?
• 31:08
  Well, I think we just don't want to see the consequences of our choices. We want to do what we want to do and not think about how that might affect somebody else, especially our children. And we see all throughout the Bible how things affect generations beyond us.
• 31:27
  And so I think a big part too is you have to die to yourself, which we do not like to do. We want to do like Michelle was saying, be comfortable. We don't want to die. And Michelle, last week you talked about like gardening. And I think about like a seed has to die to produce a new plant, which is similar to what you were talking about last week. And
• 31:53
  how much we have to do that ourselves in imitating Christ. But I think the farther that we get away from following the biblical blueprint, then the more damage we see being done in and through the hall.
• 32:07
  I think the one thing that I really want to emphasize, and I think we try to talk about a lot of family teams, is that the call to die is a call to both mothers and fathers. And that fathers, because I think part of the thing she's describing, the reaction that Gloria Steinem and other second wave feminists had was really in a sense that they were really...
• 32:31
  angry about the inequality that was happening with mothers being asked to sacrifice and fathers not being asked to sacrifice. And I think at that level, we need to make sure that our reaction to sort of the gender problem doesn't result in damaging our own children.
• 32:50
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or FamilyTeams.com.
• 33:10
  Like they can't be the casualties in some kind of battle between the sexes. But it is really important to say that becoming a mother or father is really a call to lay down your life. And I think that once career was seen as an ideal and that men could go off and form a superior identity to others,
• 33:32
  their family identity out in the workplace. It became an impossible temptation at some level that we were giving to women to say, no, we're going to have it all and you're gonna be the one to bear all the sacrifices. And I feel that the answer to that, that we're constantly promoting
• 33:48
  is for men to try to lead the way and sacrifice any kind of career identity and say that my fatherhood comes first and that I'm primarily a leader in my home and that when I go to work, I am providing for my family, not attempting to create a separate individual identity that
• 34:08
  will then help me avoid my identity at home as a father. And so I think, yeah, we're in a really interesting bind that when you frame it as primarily a battle of equality, I don't think there's any way that,
• 34:24
  Children don't suffer the consequences from that. I don't think men are the ones who are going to suffer. And I think that that's what she's pointing out is that like, we have to be really careful with where we go with this. And people like Gloria Steinem, we didn't have children. You know, they didn't, they weren't actively sacrificing a child in the, in the war that she was advocating, but a lot of mothers did. Michelle, what does this start for you? Just a couple of things where it was like, when, when that was said, you know, like it's
• 34:52
  I just had this idea of just, it was a switching of teams almost when they believe this worldview of, oh yeah. Like, I mean, of course that sounds good, right? Yeah. Let's spam together. And I...
• 35:06
  Yeah, it was just like this team mindset where there was just this switching of teams. And anytime that, you know, we hear the promise of, you know, freedom or, you know, just any like God of self feeling like that appeals to our flesh. And so it's yeah, I can see how that really just spread like wildfire. But I read I remember that.
• 35:31
  Even being a new mom and, you know, thinking of sleep training and all that kind of stuff and all of the different ideas and remember just being overwhelmed by it. And I was so thankful for some like my mom and some other moms that really encouraged me like, wow.
• 35:46
  go with your intuition that God has given you, you know? And that brought so much freedom. Like I'm a reader. I love to read all the different things and I was just getting really overwhelmed. And I remember thinking and reading this one book that was really popular 15 years ago. That was all about sleep training, keep it, you know, on a watch, all the things, feeding times, sleep times. And while I see the beauty in that,
• 36:09
  It really was, I saw it personally as an excuse to keep my life the way I wanted it to be. And I think it was even in the book. Like, don't let baby crimp your style. Don't let baby change your life. Like, you're the one in sharp. And of course, that sounds good, you know, quote unquote. But it really went against my intuition with that. And we didn't do it that way. Anyway, but I know it's out there and it's really hard to figure out.
• 36:38
  between all of the messages, how to work through that. Yeah. And yeah, where did this empathy go when it was disrupted? And I don't think to your point, Michelle, the empathy went away. I think it got transferred to the women's movement in general, which then allowed it to kind of come full circle to me as an individual, like woman, if I'm going to try to
• 37:02
  separate from what a message to hear that the best thing you could possibly do for the sake of the cause is to put yourself first. That sounds like what everyone wants to hear.
• 37:13
  because it really does feed the flesh like you're describing. And I think that there were lots of reactions to that, lots of ways, lots of techniques that were introduced that would make that more possible to put my needs first and then to eradicate any guilt I might feel about the cost that might be imposing on my baby by suggesting that it's actually normal or good.
• 37:35
  because somebody came up with a theory last week about how this is good for children. And I love that you went to your mother. I think where a lot of this
• 37:44
  needs to be confronted is with connections with older mothers who remember a time before a lot of the, you know, latest experiments and propaganda that, that whose memory might, might go back into a much more distant past of, of traditions of mothering that really celebrate these things and don't assume that the new is always better. And that what we're essentially doing is progressing and trying to get on the right side of history. Jess, what did this throw up for you?
• 38:18
  Yeah, I think just the invitation of, like, allowing our newborn to, like, change, like, be our invitation into, Lord, what, like, what do you want to teach me? And just the, how grateful I am that God, like,
• 38:38
  Again, like his grace of I'm still going to bless you with tits, even when you like are still like a work in progress. Right. Like our sanctification, our transformation. And so like allowing the Lord to work through that. And then again, we talked about earlier, like.
• 38:55
  Being okay if it is like a challenging season to like wrestle with that and like having those people that we can like be like, hey, I'm wrestling through this. Like you don't have to have it all figured out. But just like even entering into that of just what a sweet invitation that is for the Lord to just hear and do work in our lives as mothers.
• 39:14
  But I also really appreciate the point you were just talking about with earlier as just talking to older generations and like being able to understand better. I think it's so helpful because it's going to affect generations down the road. And so how do we, yeah, learn and grow from, from others in that area too. Yeah.
• 39:35
  Yeah, it reminds me of Michael Pollan, who wrote lots of books about diet. And it was very early in discovering that maybe the modern Western diet is not actually doing us any favors. He puts in one of his books, a dedication to his mother. He said to my mother, who always knew that butter was better than margarine. And I was like, that is so perfect.
• 39:59
  You know, because, you know, that there is, there are connections that go before these latest techniques. And a lot of parenting strategies are just like the modern Western diet. They're ideas that sort of popped out of very recent times and were often influenced by sort of hyper-individualism and consumerism, as opposed to what's actually been truly historically true about caring for children. And I think the last thing I wanted to mention is that.
• 40:28
  When she said that, you know, for a mother, you're never happier than your least happy child. You know, that's, I think that's, that's what you were describing, Michelle, in terms of like, you know, accepting that, that death. And Justin, you mentioned that as well, accepting the sacrifice of motherhood.
• 40:47
  Why is that? Why did God design it that way? And I think it's because he didn't want anyone in the family, any child to ever feel alone. And I think that knowing that your mother is going to empathize with you at that incredibly deep level allows us all to live in a world in which we're never emotionally alone. And mothers have the ability to give that gift to their children. And this disruption that she's describing that is taking that away from the
• 41:13
  from a whole generation of children and what it's going to do to all of our futures, but also to those children specifically is so unfortunate. And so, but it does start with saying God's design was good. Like, like that's a good thing. It's not easy though. And you can have joy in the midst of that sadness that you're going to have with, with the empathy that comes with motherhood. I think that this is another major problem culturally is that we don't understand that joy
• 41:42
  is really something that overcomes sadness. And there are pathways in the gospel to being able to be highly empathetic and also to continue to have joy in your life. So thank you all so much for doing this conversation with me. I think this is another challenging topic. I just love to try to figure out what are the things that...
• 42:06
  we're learning and really recovering when it comes to motherhood. So we want to keep these conversations going and thank you all for listening. Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.