On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, host Julie Gunlock talks to self-described “relaxed parent” Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne about being a mom and an elected official. Rep. Van Duyne explains her own interesting path from heading her city’s park planning commission, to city council member, mayor, then ultimately to her current job of representing the 24th Congressional District in Texas. Julie and Beth discuss the challenges and the rewards of parenting, the dangers kids face today, including fentanyl, and how open communication, stability at home, and having a network of family and friends are critical to a child’s wellbeing.


TRANSCRIPT

Julie Gunlock:

Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, and I have a little cold today, so I apologize for my raspy voice. 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. Today I’m speaking with Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne. Hey, Beth.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Hey, how are you?

Julie Gunlock:

She represents the 24th Congressional District of Texas. She’s also a mom of a son and a daughter. Prior to being elected to Congress, she served as regional administrator for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and she worked with then Head Secretary Ben Carson. We are big fans of Ben Carson around here.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Absolutely.

Julie Gunlock:

Prior to that, she served as the mayor of Irving, Texas and was a successful businesswoman. So again, thank you for joining me, congresswoman.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Julie Gunlock:

So I always like to start off the podcast by asking my guests sort of a surprise question. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too difficult. But this is a podcast about finding your own way and figuring out parenting. Not ignoring the experts, but not getting too wound up about parenting and finding your way and your own style. So if you were to characterize your parenting style, some people don’t have a parenting style, I’m sort of a mishmash of a couple different styles. What kind of parent are you?

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

I think I’m probably more of a relaxed parent. My sister has her kids on a regimented schedule and it works perfectly for their family. My kids woke up when they wanted to, went to bed when they wanted to. We had really engaging conversations at the dinner table and at the breakfast table, and I just loved having them engaged. You had mentioned that I was mayor and city council and I ran, and we can get into that later, but I ran when my kids were two and five for city council and I got elected then and making sure that we were always having conversations about what I was doing during the day, issues that were popping up. Even at two and five, taking them to events that I had, taking them to ribbon cuttings, taking them to the library and the rec center and making sure that they felt like they were part of what I was doing was really, I think, very important. And still now my daughter works up in DC. I see her all the time. She’s one of my best friends. And I talk to my son, he’s over studying abroad right now in Coventry and studying international business. And I talk to him all the time. I love the relationship that I have with my kids. So I think it was just making sure that they always felt like they were part of what I was doing and engaged. And-

Julie Gunlock:

It’s interesting what you said about we had these in-depth conversations. I feel like people sometimes think so much about what was when their kids were babies or they sort of, and that’s great. It’s great to reminisce and to have memories like that. But my kids are now, I have a pre-teen and two teenagers.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Oh, God love you.

Julie Gunlock:

And they’re all boys. Oh my gosh. But I love the conversations I’m having with them. It is a whole new thing. They’re really into, they want to hear about American politics. They’re taking American history, they’re taking civics. They want to have conversations with me and my husband and kind of figure things out. I love this phase, I really do. And you’re right that it does, it changes so much where they don’t need you as much. And that can be sometimes hard, but there’s a whole nother sort of world to explore. And like you said-

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Yeah.

Julie Gunlock:

Talking to them. How do you keep your kids sort of, how do you protect them from some of the… Well, you have older kids now, so you can’t necessarily, but when they were young, younger, and you were running, politics is ugly. I love this idea that it’s a new thing, that it’s just newly ugly. It’s been ugly for a long, long time. Politics has always been ugly. How did you protect them from some of the ugliness of politics?

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Well, again, my kids were two and five when I got into the public sphere and they grew up with it. So they knew what it was all about from, pretty much from day one. And I used to say politics in Irving was a blood sport, on, it was a really very divided council. We had some massive debates. We had a lot of international incidents and national discussions that happened at that level. And I first ran for city council because my daughter was born. She had nine surgeries on her eye the first year that she was born. And she was very sensitive to sunlight. And I’d take her to the park and she’d hold her eye. And we’d take her to the park, and I didn’t have any shade. So I would go to our parks board, and say, “can we get more shade in our park?” And before I knew it, I was the chairman of the parks department or the parks committee, because you could never have a complaint without actually willing to be part of the solution.

Julie Gunlock:

Volun-told what to do.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Yeah, became the chairman of our parks committee and we got that park built.

Julie Gunlock:

That is interesting because I think you ran and won and were serving way before Covid. And I feel like Covid was almost like a national experience, just like you had where your daughter’s covering her eye and you said, ‘we’ve got to fix this.’ I feel like Covid happened and suddenly, I love this phrase, ‘accidental activist’ because a lot of these moms are like, ‘I didn’t want to be this angry. I don’t want to be this upset about things’. But I feel like it’s sort of like you, where suddenly parents are feeling like they have to stand up.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Well I think that’s it. I saw a problem that my daughter was having to suffer, and there was something that we could do about it. You just had to be very determined and push. Yeah, I mean, it took a lot of time away from family, but it was amazing the things that we were able to achieve. And I think because my kids saw what was happening, they felt more generous with my time.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Being used for that. And we did take on a lot of things at that local level that you wouldn’t think a city council would have to deal with. I’ll give you a perfect example is illegal immigration. I mean, we found when we opened up one of our elementary schools that the day we opened it up, it was already too, it was already too full. And it wasn’t because we had not done our studies, but what we had was we had three, four people living in an apartment.

So that the day that the school opened, we were already stuffed. So our schools were being overrun. We saw increases in crime. And what we did was we ended up working outside of I guess a traditional city council relationship. We ended up working with immigrations and customs enforcement. We passed some overwhelmingly successful policies, including when we had people who were stopped, who were doing an illegal activity in our city. If they could not prove that they were legally there, we held them. We contacted immigrations and customs enforcement, and at some point in time we had more deportations from our city than any other city per capita.

Julie Gunlock:

Great.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

And we had the national news come in and just yell at us, call us everything.

Julie Gunlock:

Of course.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

They’re doing now. But what we found in our community was they appreciated it because almost immediately our crime rate dropped.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

And we experienced businesses as opposed to what the national media was telling you that businesses wouldn’t want to work in your city. We were having overwhelming economic growth because people, guess what, wanted to live in safe communities. They wanted to live where their kids could go to a healthy school. They wanted to live where you could get job opportunities. And my kids grew up with those conversations and engaged with them on it. But we were already on the national stage as a city well before I ever ran for Congress. So you’re asking how do you protect them? I think it’s being fearless, going out there, being unapologetic, owning your decisions, owning your positions, and teaching them not to be fearful of sharing your opinions as long as you can defend them with facts.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I mean, you’re in the DC area, you know Alexandria, Virginia, right outside of DC. It is a sanctuary city. The schools are completely overrun. The crime is through the roof and crime is seeping into areas of the city that have not seen crime before. It is terrifying for a lot of the residents here. And yet we have a city government that is unwilling to really care or do anything about it. But they do virtue signal, they do an awful lot of that. Talking about how all are welcome, while the taxpayers are paying basically for all these services to go for people who don’t in any way pay into the system. It’s very, very frustrating. What are some of the other issues right now facing your district? And tell me just a little bit about your district. You’ve said-

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

My district is district 24, so if you’ve ever flown into the Dallas, Fort Worth airports in the middle of the district. It’s got areas of Dallas, it’s got areas of Fort Worth and a bunch of the wonderful cities in between. We are facing what the rest of America is facing right now, issues with inflation, issues with what’s going on at our border. We have families that are having a difficult time deciding whether or not they’re going to be able to pay for insurance or putting food on their table. And while they may be taking home more money compared to two years ago, the fact is that they’re bringing home 10% more. They’re spending 60% more in some cases at the grocery store. So it’s definitely not evening out.

But what we found in the last year is Texas has it right. I’ve seen Obama, oh Obama. Oh, Biden. I was at the, sorry, I was at the State of the Union obviously a couple nights ago, and I watched him do this victory lap about the economy. But the fact is the economy in most parts of the country are dying on the vine, but in Texas, we have had net job growth in last year that has actually, it accounts for 60% of the net job growth in our country. 60% is happening in Texas. And it’s from those kind of pro-growth movements, economic growth opportunities that I as a mayor have always pushed for. It’s having a positive working environment with your business owners, recognizing that having low taxes and low regulatory environment is what they’re looking for. And that is a good thing for everybody who lives there because all of a sudden you’ve got tax dollars that are coming in that are paying for things like your police and your fire and your streets and your schools. And the people who live there don’t have that burden. So it is a definite partnership that I think the Biden administration has completely ignored and is fighting back on that, but that normal people recognize and they appreciate. But I think what now we are facing issues with fentanyl.

Julie Gunlock:

I was just going to ask you about that.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

As a parent, right.

Julie Gunlock:

Well it’s something, I mean we can control, we can tell our children, but this idea of things being laced with fentanyl, it is terrifying. You take particular interest in this issue. I’m so glad because it’s being ignored by the administration. Tell me how you’re focusing on this.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Well, having those conversations with your kids definitely. I mean, I had a call the other day, it was heartbreaking. I had a call from a mom whose son one time had tried something. And by the way, it’s laced in everything.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

It’s not like you’re just buying a fentanyl pill. I mean, her example was with Adderall and her son had gotten it to study for a test, was trying to get into college, was trying to do, he shouldn’t have been doing it. She’d absolutely admitted that. But you have no idea, just one pill, what that effect can be. And it’s killing kids.

Julie Gunlock:

And you also have to talk to kids about, you can be buying something that you think, like you said, something to get you through the night and you could do it once. And that it, it’s over. So I do think-

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Yeah, we’re seeing that happen at untold amounts. I mean, historic amounts or levels flying in over our border because we do have an open border at this moment. So what are we doing about it? Texas congregation, the Texas Congressional on delegation has gotten together and we’ve come up with a Texas border plan that actually empowers our customs and border patrol agents and takes seriously that we can’t have a safe nation if we don’t secure our border. But it’s looking at things like infrastructure. It’s looking at getting rid of the catch and release program. Having people apply for asylum from the first safe country that they enter into and turning people back who are coming here who want to do us harm. It’s making sure that we actually have a secure border. So we are working with the state, we’re working with leadership, we’re working with our cities to make sure that we are providing them with the resources that they need even though we’re seeing an administration that is just systematically cutting every one of those tools in the toolbox that was working and it’s-

Julie Gunlock:

Well the morale of the border agents, just how shabbily they have been treated is something that is

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Fourteen committed suicide this last year alone.

Julie Gunlock:

It is absolutely heartbreaking. So it’s a relief. And I think this all goes back to parenting and that parents want to know that there is a border. A rigorous, a tough border agent, well-funded border department or I’m sorry, agency that is securing the border and hopefully congressional action and more local action. Like what you are doing is going to help with that. I want to pivot just one last time before we end our podcast here. We talk a lot about work-life balance at IWF and you seem to be a real shining example of someone who’s managed that. And I like to ask this question now because you kind of said, I was sort of, I was a relaxed parent. I did what felt natural. That’s actually the kind of parent I hope more people are like that. How did you balance it though? The travel back and forth to DC and the district, having little kids? I mean, they’ve basically grown up with this, with a very sort of public mother. So how did you balance that?

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Well, my kids were younger and being on city council, you’re not traveling as much. Being as mayor, I was traveling a lot more. I was on the board for the US Conference of Mayors and I was traveling, trying to get businesses to come into our city. But again, I tried to involve them. Every opportunity that I had, I would take them with me. On weekends, we would go and we would visit some of the major projects that the city was working on. And even now, it’s a conversation that I have had with my kids. We talk about politics, we don’t shy away from it. But I’m also very careful to allow them to have their own opinion. I think some parents want to say, ‘no, this is what you’re going to believe and this is what you’re going to think.’ And I found that it’s a lot better to just ask them questions about their opinion, make sure that they know where I stand, ask them questions and have them come to their own realization that some things that they just assumed because they heard from friends were correct.

But the more that they hear about it, the more that they realize maybe that’s not exactly what the whole story is. And we’ve got an awesome youth program, a congressional youth program, a youth advisory group.

Julie Gunlock:

Oh great.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

It’s about 50 kids and it’s our second time doing it. And we have these amazing conversations. I love the debate that it’s a controlled debate where it’s not personal, it’s all on policy, it’s all in the program. And what we have done is we’ll ask them to come up with a bill of something that they’re passionate about. And it’s amazing what they come up with, whether or not it’s gun control or legalization of marijuana, what’s happening at the border, social security. These kids are smart, but ask them to come up with something they’re passionate about, put together a bill. And then the next time that we meet, I want them to take the opposite side.

I want them to study the opposite opinion and understand that there’s not always one. It’s not a black and white issue. There’s not always one solution. So you get to know what the other side is. And in having those kind of conversations where you’re not pressing down, where they start resisting and feeling that you’re their parents or you’re going to have a different reaction to you, a different opinion just because they’re going to be independent, but really respecting them as their own beings. I love the relationship that I have with my kids. They are both successful, hardworking, great work ethic, very respectful. And I do feel like that that comes from home. But I obviously didn’t do this by myself. I’m a divorced parent, but my ex-husband and I have a wonderful relationship. We’ve always put our kids first. My parents live in my neighborhood.

Julie Gunlock:

Oh, great.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

And I’ve been in the same neighborhood. I’ve been in the same neighborhood, had our same house since ’97. So again, the kids have grown up there. They have had very long lasting relationships within the community. And I think that there’s something to be said about that.

Julie Gunlock:

Well look, I hope you’ll come back because I do think there needs to be a deeper conversation on parenting. We are seeing now parents see more and more and more control over their children to schools. And we also see schools they like that, they want that. And what you’ve described to me is a very involved parent. And stability for kids, you say you’ve had the same house, a network of supporters, including your parents. These things, if you get a few things right, it’s kind of the whole shebang. You don’t have to get-

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

It’s the big things. It’s the big things.

Julie Gunlock:

It’s the big things.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

You can screw up and have popcorn from dinner one night, but.

Julie Gunlock:

I’ll end with this. There was a study several years ago done on childhood obesity, and they said that if they were looking for all these magic things, like, ‘oh, only feed them organic food’ or ‘they have to get so much exercise a day’. No. It was go to bed on at a relatively normal time, limit screen time and sit down and have dinner three times a week. That was it. And even the studies, the people in charge of the study were like, it has to be more complicated. It really is just getting back to sort of traditional family life. And I really would love to talk to you again about that and many other things. I’m really, really happy to have talked to you today and gotten your insights on parenting. Thanks for joining me.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate what you’re doing. There’s a lot of parents who want to know what they’re doing is the right thing.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

Because they hear so many times from the media that it’s not.

Julie Gunlock:

Right.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne:

So I really appreciate what you’re doing and hello to all those hard working parents out there.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, we’re big fans. The women of IWF are big fans of yours. So we’ll talk soon. That was a great conversation. Look, the Bespoke Parenting Podcast is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. Please help, please help us by hitting the subscribe button and leaving us a comment or a review on Apple Podcast, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, or iwf.org. Hang in there parents. I’ll see you next time on Bespoke.