American Enterprise Institute Scholar and IWF Senior Fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley’s book “Be the Parent: Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat” addresses the need for better parental control over screens and screen time. Yet, how do we do that in the age of COVID-19 when kids are getting mixed messages on screen time. How can you be an authority when school authorities are telling kids that there are virtually no limits to screen time?
Transcript
Julie:
Hey, everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, your host for the seventh episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly, their kids. So today we’re going to be talking about kids and screen time. That seems like a subject on a lot of people’s minds. And to talk about that with me, is Naomi Schaefer Riley, who is with us now. Hi Naomi.
Naomi:
Hi, how are you?
Julie:
I’m doing well. I’m doing well.
Naomi:
Good.
Julie:
I am so excited to talk to you about this. And before we get too much into it, I do want to give people a quick bio. Naomi is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She’s also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, who actually sponsors this podcast.
Naomi focuses on child welfare issues and foster care issues. She specifically, analyzes the role of faith-based civic and community organizations and changing the foster care and adoption services landscape, truly important work and I really encourage everyone to read what she’s written on that issue. Sometimes it can be a hard read, but Naomi does not just focus on one issue. She has written on interfaith marriage, higher education, faith in general, and even the condition of American communities in America, another really tough subject.
I’m a huge fan of your books, Naomi, and everything, I think you really, deeply look into issues and you give some great analysis and this issue is particularly important to parents. And even on that, I mean, first of all, I should say that, Naomi has written six books and she and her husband have three children. So I don’t get how you do it all. I can’t even do laundry. Her book on screen time is called, Be a Parent, Please, which I love. We have to talk about your title. Be a Parent, Please, Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat.
So, Naomi, great to have you here. This obviously, is a big subject right now, with parents with a lot of school districts, including my own. I know your kids go to a private school, so I don’t specifically know their situation, but my school is all virtual. So I think screen time, is something that all parents are concerned about any day of the week. You wrote your book in 2018, it was a very popular book. Obviously, parents were concerned about it, but now it’s totally different. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about, what inspired you to first write the book, but then also, how have your feelings changed or how do you think parents feelings on this issue have changed?
Naomi:
Yeah. So thanks for having me, Julia, and I’m excited to talk to you. You’re one of my favorite people to talk to, and thanks to IWF for sponsoring your podcast.
Julie:
Thanks.
Naomi:
I’m excited to listen to it too. So I would say, that my interest in this probably began when my kids were much younger. So my oldest is, I have a 13, 11, and an 8 year old. My interest in this really began, when my youngest was just in preschool. I just remember, just a lot of scenes where adults would be trying to talk to each other and their first reaction, in order to get time to be able to talk to each other, was to just hand the child, however young, in a stroller, a phone.
Julie:
Right, right.
Naomi:
And it was just like, “Oh, look here, I’m just buying silence. Well, it seems to be super effective and yet I wonder if this is such a good idea?”
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
And as my kids got a little bit older, we wondered, “How are we going to balance this? When is the appropriate time to give screens and when is not?” And it’s not like I was going to be a parent who was always plopping my kid in front of the TV, but I really want to understand the research behind screens and understand how they affected kids’ social and emotional and intellectual development.
I would say that things are not great. They don’t look good. So I looked at a lot of different aspects of this. I think people try to make a lot of distinctions about the different kinds of screen time like, is it educational or is it interactive? And what I decided after looking at all the research, was that I threw it all into one bucket because I do think that what screens do above all else, is they take time away from other things. And you and I both know this well-
Julie:
Yeah.
Naomi:
… time outside-
Julie:
Yes.
Naomi:
… time playing with other people in-person, time reading books. So the extent to which it really interferes with all of those things, I think it’s a problem. Then, I began to wonder how I was going to form rules around screens and what I found, I compared it in a couple of articles and in the book, to dieting, which is, you have got to stick to the rules for a significant amount of time before you start to kind of break them here and there.
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
And that’s really hard-
Julie:
Is that why I’m failing? This is why, with Naomi, you get all sorts of tips about all sorts of different things.
Naomi:
… all that good advice. Yeah.
Julie:
Go on. I’m sorry.
Naomi:
I think, it seemed very harsh when parents found out like, “Oh, your kids don’t get screens at all, except on the weekends? How do you enforce that? That’s crazy.” I was like, “It’s actually much easier to enforce that, than to enforce the, “Well, you can be on screens from 6:20 to 8:35, and then we’ll have an argument at 8:35 about whether you need five more minutes.” Instead. I could be like, “Oh, it’s Tuesday, sorry, no screens, have a great day.”
Julie:
Right. I just have to interrupt you there for one second, and say, it is astonishing to me, the number of people who say exactly that to me, “How in the world do you enforce it?” Well, you’ve got a great tip there. Just make a blanket, not on school days, not during the week, but I also feel, “Have you tried being a parent?” Like the title of your article. “Have you tried saying no?” My husband always says that, he goes, he always says, “Did you try saying no?” Yeah. It’s just amazing to me, that people forget their role as parents, is to set these rules. That’s basic.
Naomi:
Right, and we set them in all sorts of other ways.
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
I mean, your kids probably, don’t ask you for chocolate cake for breakfast because they know what the answer is going to be.
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
But frankly, if you said yes tomorrow, the following day, they would probably ask. And I think that, that’s the very practical key that I came away from, just talking to lots of parents and teachers and psychologists and my own experience, about how to limit it. I would say, that an answer to your second question about, where we are now? I think what happened at the beginning of the lockdown in March, is that parents entered what I call, emergency parenting mode.
Julie:
Yeah.
Naomi:
So, we’ve all been in a situation where we give a kid a phone because suddenly, we find ourselves at the doctor’s office and there’s a two hour wait or we find ourselves stuck-
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
… in a traffic jam for hours on end because there’s been an accident and there’s nothing else and you just give the kid the phone because frankly, everyone in the car is done and you just have to.
I think people entered that emergency parenting mode in March and then, April, May, June came and we never quite got out of it.
I wrote a piece early on saying, “Okay guys, you’re going to have to understand, we’re in a new normal here. Not to say that you wouldn’t maybe add a little more screen time to your day, as a result of the fact that we’re all home and driving each other crazy. But once you start to change the rules on kids, they’re going to start to have these new emergency parenting expectations.”
And that is where I think things really went off the rails.
Julie:
Well, I’m glad that you brought that up because I wrote a piece in June and it was a long form essay about, how my kids were really struggling. Right? And was very personal and I didn’t have a lot of data in it. It wasn’t very academic. It was really just my own story and my kids and how they fared during the switch over to virtual learning. And one of the lines that I said in that, because I am strict on-screen time.
I do like you; I do a blanket ban and then there is time on the weekends. They have friends and they want to play and so I let them play a little bit on the weekends, but they have to earn it, they have to do certain things. But when they went to the all virtual and they were in class all the time, and let me just be clear, they weren’t in class all the time. I would catch them on YouTube. I learned how to block a lot of these things. They would find ways around it.
Naomi:
Yeah.
Julie:
Their friends would send them through Bing, if I blocked Google and not Bing, and oh gosh, it was so frustrating. But the idea that, “Oh, yes, kids are just going to sit there.” I mean, I can’t hover constantly.
But the line that I wrote, I said, “I felt like, because the school was frankly, it was just a free for all, I felt like I was sharing custody with an ex, that didn’t share my parenting philosophy.”
Naomi:
That’s actually a huge issue by the way in divorces and separations now. And of course, it’s the dad, who’s always giving more screen time. I’m sorry to stereotype, but it’s like, “Here have an iPad.”
Julie:
Right.
Naomi:
And the mom becomes the bad guy.
It’s really terrible, but it’s really a common story, I hear. But anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
Julie:
No, no, no. That’s exactly what I want. I think that the problem is, your book is saying, “Be the parent please, and really, do parent, just parent, do the basics of parenting and tell your kid, “No, they’re not going to get on screen.” But I really, I think that’s one problem that I’ve had. I’ve actually, managed to turn it around to my kids. I’ve sat down with them and I’ve said, “Look, your bug eyed.” Because two of my kids do virtual and I’m homeschooling my third. And I said, “Your bug eyed when you get off that screen, you cannot.” Because they’ll want to watch TV, some want to watch a YouTube video or whatever.
And I say, “First of all, there’s no screens on the weekends, but also, you’ve got to, you can’t even watch TV. You got to go outside, get some fresh air, ride your bike.” And they have been really good. My kids, they know not to argue too much. But again, I feel like it’s a little tough because their school is saying, “Here’s a screen, sit on it for six hours a day.”
Naomi:
Yeah.
Julie:
And I think some parents might have just given up. I mean, how do you challenge that, you know?
Naomi:
Yeah. I think, before the lockdown, I was a big fan of really, parents getting involved and asking schools, “Can you explain to us your theory behind screen time? Explain to us, why my child is doing multiplication tables on this app, instead of just doing multiplication tables?”
“I want to understand what you think is the added benefit of using a screen, because if they can do it just as well without a screen, then I would just prefer to stick with that.”
Why can’t I just have some worksheets? What is the big deal? Except that you think that the kid is going to find it more fun, but frankly, a lot of times, it just means that it’s that much harder to keep the kid’s attention with other things, when they do actually have to sit down and read a real book.”
But I think that, and I encourage parents to even talk to their school districts about it. So, “Who is paying for all this technology that you’re bringing into the classroom?”
“And what kind of arrangement do you have with them? Have you looked at any of the research behind whether this is actually adding?” Even the research behind, how much more kids get out of listening to things when they’re taking notes by hand, instead of taking notes on a laptop, fascinating to me. How many high schools are actually taking that into consideration, instead of just saying, “Okay everybody, take out your Chromebooks and you can start taking notes now.”
To me, we need to be holding the school’s feet to the fire on these questions. But here we are, a lot of schools are doing remote learning. So my older two, have half remote learning and it really is, talk about bug eyed. I mean, especially because they’re in middle school and so in addition to the hours that they’re spending on screen, then they’re doing hours of homework on the screen, afterwards.
And so yes, you have to be the parent and say, “Go outside, stop looking at the screen.” And the thing is, once they have the laptop, then it becomes the, you have to check in every five minutes to find out, if what they’re doing, is actually what they’re supposed to be doing. If they’re just playing around, if they’re required to be doing that now, or whether it’s something that could be put off to later? Because it’s like you and I, we could sit around all night and not go to bed until 1:00 in the morning, just looking at crap online.
But the thing that I always tell people is that, “We, our generation knows what it means to be bug eyed. We know when we’ve had enough.”
We know when we’ve wasted huge amounts of time, and we also long for certain things. We know how nice it feels to be able to go for a walk and get fresh air.
We know what it’s like to sit on the couch with a book, uninterrupted for hours at a time.
So, we will naturally try to, I think, get back those experiences at some point. But if your kids have not been raised that way, and they don’t understand those pleasures, it’s really hard, I think for you to announce to a 30-year-old, “Hey, wouldn’t you rather me outside?” They don’t have any recollection of what that would be like.
Julie:
Yeah. Well, it’s also, they don’t have the self-discipline.
Naomi:
Yeah.
Julie:
There is something about that, what really bothers me is, they treat these kids like you say, like they’re 30-year old, like they have some sense. I want to back up just a little bit and say, “It is astonishing to me, what has been turned into a screen lesson? My child has reading, they have a reading class, right? And they go in and he has this database of books he can read online. And it just amazes me, that a school district can hand out, well now, they’re giving food out to anyone. You don’t even have to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, that’s a whole other issue. But these school districts can give out food and can give out a whole bunch of other things, but they can’t send a book home to a kid?
Or tell the parents of means, “If you can go to Amazon and buy a $3 book.” We have a lot of kids’ books. So I make him go upstairs and choose the book that he’s reading at night. And he sits, he curls up in a chair because he doesn’t have to be online during this time, and he reads. That’s a little thing, that to me, gets him used to holding a book, sitting in a comfortable place, not sitting stick straight up at the dining room table.
And if I weren’t directing him to do that, he wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t have the self-discipline and he certainly doesn’t have the self-discipline, I mentioned earlier, to stay in class, to stay focused. He can email his friends. He can again, he can look at different applications, whatever’s on YouTube or whatever.
So that’s the thing that bothers me too, is that they’ve advanced this technology on kids, who really do not have the maturity to control themselves.
Naomi:
Yeah. I think that’s absolutely true. And it’s going to take a long time. I mean, like I said, adults barely have the ability to control themselves when it comes to these devices. And I think that’s the other thing too, by the way, I often hear parents saying, “Well, I feel bad telling him to get off the device because I’m not getting off the device, or I’m sitting.” “Fine, maybe you should change your habits too?”
But I also think kids are different.
You’re not going to let your kids drive or drink or all sorts of other things, either. And a little hypocrisy here, frankly, does not bother me.
Julie:
No, exactly.
Naomi:
Kids are different, their brains work differently.
Julie:
Yeah.
Naomi:
Maybe you do spend too much time on the screen, but that doesn’t mean that therefore, you should let your kid spend too much time on the screen, as a result. Get over it.
Julie:
Yeah, exactly. My children went through a very brief and I cannot stress the word brief enough, of guilting me for being on my phone. And then when I had the conversation with them about, how I was going to, “Fine, fine, fine, fine, I’ll go to an office and you’ll go to the aftercare at school.” And I actually faked that I had the paperwork and I was filling it out, and man, they were so upset. They stopped guilting me after that, because I pointed out, “Look, I’m on my phone because I’m working.”
Naomi:
Right.
Julie:
I mean, I wasn’t, I was probably, buying something on J.Crew. But the point is, that you’re right. Kids and parents are different and kids need to understand that. But I also think it is important to have some self-discipline around your kids.
I try to not do that thing, where you can scroll endlessly on Facebook and look at videos.
I mean, I follow Jacque Pepin and some great food videos and it’s fun, but I think it’s really important to have that self-discipline too. And that’s what your book was so great about. I mean, it was like, be the parent. You talk about one thing and I would like to talk about this too, because in the midst of this, my kids are getting older. I have a 13 year old too. I don’t know about you, but I feel like my kids are the only ones that don’t have a smartphone, at least my 13 year old, and this doesn’t happen with the 12 year old.
Naomi:
That just changed for us this month.
Julie:
Well, that’s interesting. I’d love to talk to you about that. And that seems like, I don’t remember what recommendation or if you gave a recommendation in your book specifically, on an age, but what’s the research on that? What are your feelings on that?
Naomi:
Yeah. So, I think that for me, I think a lot of this is going to be kid dependent.
Do you think that your kid has the self-discipline and also, there are going to be questions about school? Do you think that the school is actually, our schools have rules that say, “You may not be looking at your phone during school.”
And I’m actually, fairly confident in both cases, that it’s not happening.
But I would have to say, if there’s a situation where you’re not sure if that’s happening? And there was a point at one of the schools that my kid was attending, where the girls were all sitting around at lunch, they weren’t going outside or anything. They were just sitting there texting each other, playing on their phone. I was like, “This is not an acceptable environment for me to send my kid with a phone.”
I would say, you have to be willing as a parent, to take on a whole new set of responsibilities. It is a time suck, to be able to not only, worry about checking your own phone, but now you have to worry about checking somebody else’s.
And the kids do not have any social media at all.
Julie:
Good thing.
Naomi:
So definitely, I think frankly, the phone and the internet access, which is very hard to control from the phone, allows all sorts of things to come into the phone. I say this, now families allow all sorts of things to come in through the back door, that they would never allow through the front door.
So just being conscious of that and, “Are you prepared to take on that level of commitment and how mature is your kid?”
Julie:
Yeah. Right.
Naomi:
Are they sneaky when it comes to other things and are they capable of putting the thing down? I can tell you that my daughter, who’s now, she’s 13 and a half, I can tell you, she genuinely loves reading. And I will tell you that there are many times where I find the phone somewhere on the other side of the house and her engrossed in a novel.
I feel totally confident, as long as that continues to happen, that she has not become too engrossed in her phone. If I see that the phone is replacing all of the other things that she enjoys doing, then forget about it.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny, I’m still at the phase where my son’s friends text me and then I have to hand him my phone and so I lose my phone for a few minutes, so he texts to his friends. I actually don’t think my son is ready for that and I do think that it would suck up all of his time. And he’s sneaky. I mean, I feel bad. I feel like I shouldn’t say this stuff about him, but he’s a 13 year old, he’s a little sneaky and so I’m not ready for that.
But that’s what I love about, this conversation is a good representation of the podcast itself, which is Bespoke Parenting. I really think that people need to make these decisions that are best for themselves and their kids and based on their kids. And like you said, I came to this and I hate the word parenting philosophy, but I came to this belief system, because early on, talking and reading Lenore Skenazy, who I know you’re familiar with, and Lenora’s great about that. She’s a free range, parenting advocate. She says, “Get your kids out there, let them explore the world.” But certainly, if you’ve got a really nervous kid or an immature kid, you’re not going to say like, “Oh, let him walk six miles to the mall.” Didn’t I just date myself by saying, “Walk to the mall.” Nobody says that anymore.
Naomi:
Nobody goes to the mall.
Julie:
So, Gen X. In any second now, I’m going to bring up, Eddie Van Halen dying, any second.
Naomi:
Yeah, yeah, I know. Right.
Julie:
But I will tell you, I like that, is that you do need to make these decisions, but one thing or based on the kid-
Naomi:
I wouldn’t, but by the way, I’m a big fan of wait until eighth. I don’t know whether your listeners are familiar with that.
I really do think eighth grade, if you don’t know, wait until at least eighth grade to get your kid a phone.
Julie:
Yeah.
Naomi:
Because I do think that there has to be some level of maturity there and if you’re going to sit here and tell me, “I think my third grader is super mature and able to handle this.” I’ll just laugh at you and be like, “No, they’re not and I actually have mature kids. So I know what a mature third grader looks like, and forget about it.”
Julie:
Exactly.
Naomi:
But I also think, as much as you’re right, that people need to make these decisions individually. It also helps to have a critical mass of people, who are making similar decisions for their kids. I think there’s so much pressure now, “Everybody has a phone mom, everyone’s jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.” Whatever it is, that I think parents need to have a sense that there might be somebody else out there who’s also worried about things.
And what I like about the wait until eighth model is, they actually have, I don’t know whether your school has done this, but our school has done this thing, where you can sign onto this pledge that says, “I’ll wait until eighth.” What they do is, as soon as at least, I think 10 families in the grade have signed it, then they send it around. So now you’re aware of nine other families that have made a similar decision. And I think it gives parents a little bit more of the backbone that they might need, to be able to make this decision for their kid too.
Julie:
Well, listen, I want to stay on this subject, but I we’ve only got you for a short while longer and I wanted to talk, just in the next few minutes that we have left, you wrote a really provocative piece in Commentary called, My Kids and Their Elite Education in Racism, How Rye Country Day School reflects the madness of our times. I want you to talk about that just because for the listeners, that the people who are listening, I want them to read it. And really, if you can just give a quick, this is an amazing piece. First of all, have PTA meetings gotten awkward or parent teacher conferences?
Naomi:
We left. I was actually not going to write that piece and then try to stay. A lot of people have asked me that and I feel like I should make that clear.
Julie:
Yeah, I was wondering. Yeah.
Naomi:
We were done. So I transferred my kids to this, it’s a private secular school near us that has a very good reputation. It has a good reputation, especially for academic rigor. And I knew that I was going to be in for some nonsense, politics, but I never imagined what actually happened. And so there were lots of instances that people can read about in the article, but I would say, my sixth grade son was coming home with, having regularly listened to lectures on microaggressions.
He had to come home and tell me that, “We learned today, that just because someone is wearing a dress, that doesn’t mean they’re a woman.” But there was a lot of race discussion there. And I felt like it was the constant backdrop. There was a speaker who came in for Martin Luther King Day, an ex-felon, someone who’d been convicted of armed robbery, wanted to come in and talk to the kids, middle school kids mind you, about bail reform.
And it was insane. I just thought, “Not only is this ridiculously political, but why you need to celebrate Martin Luther King Day by having an ex-felon come in? This is the shining example of a black person that you want to show them?” But my kids, my husband is black. So my kids, often were the recipients of invitations to come to diversity meetings and students of color meetings and they turned them down. But mostly, I think the thing that got me more than anything else was, this idea that we’re going to sacrifice the academic rigor for the politics.
There was one meeting we had, where my daughter wanted to get into a higher math class. She asked for more difficult work so she could get into the higher math class, next year. Not only were we met with shock that, this might damage her self-esteem or undermine her life balance.
But then the meeting ended with them suggesting that she come to, Our Girls of Color, pizza meeting, this week or something. And I just thought, “I am not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about math and everything for you, is about race.”
Julie:
Well, and it drives it into these kids, that they’re seeing your skin color. I mean, the constant invitations to join these clubs that are based somehow on race, it’s just a strange message. I’ve been affected by this myself. I pulled two of my kids out of the public schools. My youngest is still in the elementary school, which really, it’s a sweet little neighborhood school and we haven’t seen too much in the way of the race issues. But we’ve seen some really disturbing things. And I’m obviously, I’m sure a lot of listeners are aware of the 1619 Project, the superintendent in my school district, in the public school district, announced that he plans to deploy that into the school.
My kids are a little older, the orders are both in middle school. And this is where I feel like, kids really pay attention and it’s really critical. I’ve heard from other people that some of the curriculums have already started to change the way they’re teaching them. So again, I felt like you did, where it takes away from the basics, they should be learning. I don’t object to these conversations happening that obviously, talking about, George Washington being a slave owner, or many of the other issues, but it really does take over.
And again, some of the activism, I was seeing on the teacher’s parts and on the administrators’ parts, was making me nervous enough that, for us, it was a really big move and it was sudden for us to do the second child, who’s now in a Catholic school. But I think parents are really getting fed up with this stuff, getting frustrated with this stuff. I think it’s getting, like you mentioned, you never expected it to be this bad. I think it’s accelerated. I think that.
Naomi:
I absolutely think so. I mean, toward the end of the year, every Zoom meeting had a Black Lives Matter fist and the rest of it, I think that’s accelerating. And I also think, the danger for me, and this is the part I get to at the end of the piece is, I think, we live in a lovely community and my kids have been totally embraced by it.
They were at a Jewish Day School. They’ve been totally embraced by friends and neighbors and our synagogue and they’ve never been made to feel like they’re different. And I just think that, what’s going to happen is, all of these lovely, nice adults and children that we know, are going to be made to feel like they have to walk on eggshells, because anything they say to us could be a microaggression, it could be wrong. It could be the wrong thing.
Julie:
Yeah, I get it.
Naomi:
So, what’s your natural inclination? If that’s it, if you have to walk on eggshells around someone all the time, you start to think, “Maybe I should just avoid this interaction altogether.”
To me, that’s the biggest danger here. I think Americans are hugely tolerant people and interracial marriage and interracial adoption, all these things have been going up for years, for decades. And I just think people are going to take a step back and be like, “I don’t know if I should be doing this?”
I could get hammered; I could lose my job. I could say the wrong thing and that would just be the end.” And to me, I don’t understand how these people don’t see that coming?
Julie:
Yeah. Well, yes. And you mentioned earlier, I’ve really encouraged parents to get involved and be a voice and ask tough questions. Well I did that, when my superintendent mentioned, on video, this was hilarious. He actually denied he said it. And so I sent him the video and I even told him, “Go to 55.23.” I told him exactly where he said that, “1619 was going to be deployed.” And he said, “No, I didn’t say it.”
Anyway, so I do this and he writes back to me, it was insanely aggressive. It was upsetting to me. He was very angry at me. Now, when I sent him that saying, “I’m concerned about 1619.” I mentioned, John McWhorter, I mentioned the scholars and historians who have objected to it.
I mentioned Clarence Page. I mentioned the 1776. And it was definitely giving it to them like, “Hey, you may want to check out this criticism.” I was not, the popular phrase, I was not a Karen. I wasn’t screaming. I wasn’t angry.
I was just trying to give them information. He responded so viciously back to me, and then a school board member called me a racist. And it was so upsetting to me that I spent a couple of days, and I’m sensitive about this stuff. I mean, I should be tougher, but it really jarred me. It upset me.
Naomi:
Yeah.
Julie:
And then right after the death of George Floyd, the same superintendent got on a Zoom call and basically, talked about, this was to the parent community, talked about how he’s constantly having to deal with microaggressions and racism, and sort of suggesting that he faces all this horrible treatment by parents, which was a signal to parents. And he said, “Parents complain to me and I have to deal with racism every day.” It’s signaled to parents, don’t bother.
Like, “You’re going to be painted that.” And around here, I live in a very liberal neighborhood, nobody wants that label.
Naomi:
No, no, God forbid.
Julie:
It’s a real way to shut it down. So I worry about parents getting involved. I think that there really has been, parents are discouraged from doing that.
Naomi:
No, there is a real silencing going on here. And it’s not just this broad thing we call, cancel culture.
It’s what people know, people have learned to avoid. It’s the speech you’re never going to hear because people know better and they just know to just keep their mouth shut, to begin with. And that the example has been set by all of these other people who’ve been canceled and now, just who wants to just go from being a private citizen, who expressed a slight concern to a school committee member, to becoming the town racist.
Nobody wants that.
Julie:
Nobody wants it. And it does carry, there is retribution. When you start to think, “Oh gosh, are my kids going to…” Some families worry about sports placement.
Naomi:
I know.
Julie:
I didn’t grow up in sports, but you think about how you grew up. I did not grow up in sports. My maiden name is Vincent. We are an awkward people and we do not play sports. So I have this very sporty kid and people have said to me, I’ve actually been warned. People have said, “Don’t complain too much because they’ll remember you.”
So that’s the kind of thing that just makes… If you’re advocating for a certain thing or raising an alarm about a certain thing, and that harms your kid, that is a way to silence. That’s a way to silence me.
It hasn’t worked yet, but that works on people.
Naomi:
No, I absolutely feel that. I was talking to somebody who was trying to start a conservative paper on campus. The paper had been defunct for a while and he called me for some advice because I worked on a conservative paper when I was in college.
And he said, “He asked several people to write for the paper.” And he said, “The first thing they asked is, if they could use pseudonyms?”
Julie:
Wow. Well, yeah.
Naomi:
That’ll tell you where we are right now.
Julie:
That will tell you. Well listen, I know that I have to bring this to an end, which is sad, because I have so much fun talking to you and I think that we’ve just only scraped the top of the issues here. But you are wonderful to talk to about these issues. I really hope people will look up Naomi’s book. Naomi, do you want to just give us a little bit, your Twitter or any projects you’re working on right now, before you go?
Naomi:
Sure. Yeah. No, you can find any of my articles at naomiriley.com. And also, I have a website, a scholar page. My Twitter handle is, naomisriley, where I mostly Tweet my articles and occasionally retweet some other funny things. And then I have a book that’s going to come out in the spring about child welfare. It’s called, No Way to Treat a Child. So I hope everyone will check that out, when it comes out.
Julie:
Great. Well listen, thanks so much for coming on and I hope you’ll come on again, because again, I think we have a lot more to talk about. You’ve been great. Thanks so much.
Naomi:
Sure. Thank you, Julie. Take care.
Julie:
Thanks everyone for being here for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. If you enjoyed this episode or like the podcast in general, please leave a rating or review on iTunes, this helps ensure that the podcast reaches as many listeners as possible. If you haven’t subscribed to the Bespoke Parenting Hour on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, please do so, so you won’t miss an episode. Don’t forget to share this episode and let your friends know that they can get Bespoke episodes on their favorite podcast app. From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.