On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, host Julie Gunlock speaks to author Nancy McDermott about the state of childhood in America, why it’s being cut short for children today, and what that means for a generation of kids already dealing with significant mental health challenges.
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host 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. Today I am talking to Nancy McDermott. She is a good friend and the author of the book, the Problem With Parenting. Hey Nancy.
Nancy McDermott:
Hey Julie, how are you?
Julie Gunlock:
I’m doing great, and I’m so glad to have you on, and actually this is your second appearance. So for those who might not have caught one of the first episodes, one of the first episodes of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, Nancy was one of my first guests. She appeared in August 2020. What is significant about August 2020? Oh, that’s right. Schools didn’t open. So Nancy came on, she was talking about her new book, but we were of course also able to talk about what was going on in the country, which at that time, Nancy’s a mom, she has school-aged kids. I was dealing with my school aged kids and it was all a big question mark. And so we’re kind of grappling with that issue.
But I thought it would be interesting to bring Nancy back. We are now 2023. It’s been three years since the closure of schools, since when COVID was really raging in the country and different variations. So it didn’t ever seem to end because we would always have a new variant that would come out. And again, it’s been three years, so I thought it would be interesting to check back in with her and kind of go over some of the things that we’ve seen since then and what’s happening in schools today. And in addition to learning loss, we’ve seen the deployment of some of these really questionable theories into school, into the school curriculum, whether that’s… Sorry about the dog. I know you know what I’m dealing with, Nancy, whether that’s critical race theory or the gender theory in schools.
We’ve seen theories and we’ve also seen statements from schools that are sort of determined to provide this gender-affirming care, keeping secrets from parents, that kind of stuff. Schools are fraught today. It is just a fraught sort of atmosphere. But I think a lot of those things from the deployment of some of these very radical theories to, again, pornography in the schools, it all points to one thing. And that is sort of this loss of childhood, loss of innocence or trying to introduce really mature concepts to kids at a very young age.
So Nancy, I know that was quite a long intro there, but I wanted to talk to you about the whole point of childhood, what it is, what it was, what it used to be, when that whole concept came about and get your thoughts on that. And again, your book was sort of examining parenthood, and I thought it was fascinating because I love talking to you about how parenting, as we know it today, really sort of developed in the 1970s. So I thought we could take a similar look at when childhood sort of emerged as a concept and something that people actually have to go through. So anyway, why don’t you start off here telling me what is childhood.
Nancy McDermott:
Right. Well, childhood as we understand it really got going in the late 16th century with the development of the bourgeois family, and that might sound a little bit crazy because of course there’ve always been children, but what was different from what existed before that time was that before that time childhood was, it was basically a time of maturing. And there wasn’t a strong understanding of the differences between children and adults. They were just kind of considered less competent adults. And the whole trajectory of maturation was to become a replacement for the last generation. So there wasn’t a lot of innovation, there wasn’t a lot of education. And all of that begins to change in the late 16th century because you have this very ambitious new class in Europe, which would later become known as the bourgeoisie.
And unlike the aristocracy or the other classes before them, they didn’t just have to raise replacements. They had to raise up children who could better themselves and who could take the family forward, take themselves forward, and also take society forward. And so what happened was that childhood became more than just a phase of maturation. It became a phase of socialization of really helping kids to develop the social nous that they would need to get on. But also it became a period of education. And the education was important because there was a lot more technical knowledge that was required. It required a longer period of time for children to really be able to not just mature, but to stand on the shoulders of the generation that came before them because education is this kind of generational transfer of knowledge that allows generations to progress over time and to do bigger and better things. So that’s basically how childhood came about. And eventually… Oh, sorry.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, no, I want to ask you a question. So you’re saying the concept of childhood, of having a time to mature, to learn, to educate, to become educated, sort of evolved or came about when the bourgeoisie came about. And before that, without there really being a bourgeoisie, was it just that children were born in poor families? Because did childhood exist with royalty, for instance? Or was this done… Because I mean children were educated before the 16th century, so I’m just trying to understand this became a more common thing among people who were not at the very sort of elite status.
Nancy McDermott:
Right. Well, the way to look at it, I think, is that when you raised a child, you were raising them to take your place. And so you would need to teach them what they needed to know to take your place. So if you’re a monarch, you need to speak multiple languages. You might need to be a warlord. If you’re a blacksmith, if you’ve read the wonderful Hilary Manel Tudor series, which I really recommend, it’s a really interesting vision of what childhood was like. So you had Thomas Cromwell, who is born the son of a blacksmith. His father’s abusive. They don’t get on, but another adult takes him under his wing, he eventually becomes a mercenary, then someone else takes him under his wing, he becomes a merchant, and eventually he ends up as this advisor to Henry VIII.
And the interesting thing about that is that you can sort of see that as a transition because he didn’t just replace his father or just replace somebody in his village. He actually rises through society. And that’s what education begins to be about. It’s about rising through society, and it’s also importantly, a protected time, a time when you’re not throwing too much on the shoulders of kids because you know that they need that extra time. And eventually that becomes formalized in schools and the period that children will be in schools extends until eventually you get, I’d say that the high point of it was probably in the Victorian family, but obviously survived in new forms and new variations up until the seventies, but it all fell apart.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, yes, and we’ll get to that. But it’s interesting that you talk about… So you sent me some thoughts on this, and you talked about how it wasn’t just about existing in the world, what you talk about replacing your parents, essentially doing what they’re doing, but really learning about the world and becoming comfortable in the world and making it their own. And that brings with it innovation to improve the world. I mean, I think that that’s kind of why people innovate and why they want to make the world a better place. So that really sort of emerged with this concept of childhood, which is really fascinating. And I want to talk a little bit, you had mentioned Hannah Arendt, and I know you’re a devotee of Hannah Arendt, and you mentioned how she talks about this. Tell me a little bit about her perspective on this.
Nancy McDermott:
Well, she’s really interesting because the way that she sees children is she sees them as newcomers to the world. It’s almost like you’re traveling to a foreign country and you don’t know anything and you need someone to show you how it all works and to take you through the process of getting to know what are the ways you behave, how do things work, how should I relate to other people? So that’s what childhood is about, is it’s about coming to understand the world that you have inherited and that you will take forward at some point when you become an adult. And it’s also about learning to value that world because if you don’t value that world, you’re not going to perpetuate, you’re not going to perpetuate your family, you’re not going to perpetuate yourself, and society will fall apart.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, it’s a perfect segue because I don’t think childhood is viewed this way anymore. I mean, what you’ve laid out is how I view childhood still and how I think a lot of people view childhood, but increasingly now I feel like kids, very, very young kids are being introduced to very adult concepts. And you talk… I think we can get to today because I think what’s interesting is you talk about how it fell apart in the seventies, and I’d love to explore that, but then talk about what’s going on today because I think we’ve had another sort of lurch into sort of attacking childhood and the innocence of kids in favor of making them activists, getting them… There’s a walkout every other day. They’re marching on, whatever, you understand the power of children today. And there’s sort of this imagery of Mao’s Red Army demanding these changes, which make me very, very uncomfortable. And so I do want to talk about that, but talk to me a little bit about what happened in the seventies with this concept of childhood.
Nancy McDermott:
Right. Well-
Julie Gunlock:
And the family and what happened to the family.
Nancy McDermott:
Right. Okay. Well, the family’s really key for this because I guess the kind of backdrop to this is that, sorry to go back, but in the late 19th century, you have this kind of crisis of, I suppose, meaning that takes all sorts of different forms. I mean, this is what Freud is getting at is when you don’t know how to fit into society, you have a personal breakdown. But that sort of loss of the bigger picture of the world and how you fit into it is something that, I mean, you could see it in Nietzsche, you can see it all through the late 19th century. And you could even see it in the First and Second World Wars actually, if you want to take it that far.
But the thing that holds things together, particularly in the United States, is that you still have families. And the important thing about the family as an institution is that on the one hand, it’s really flexible, it’s very adaptable. You can have divorces, but you can also kind of recover yourself because you have this institution that is bigger than the sum of its parts. And that was organized really around raising kids. And it’s a wonderful way to raise kids because what it does is it creates this environment for them to naturally mature within where they learn to balance what they want with what their parents or an authority say they must do with their siblings and sibling rivalry, sibling cherishing one another. I mean, there are all of these wonderful dynamics that are kind of held within the family and they’re held within the family because you know the family is not going away. At the time before the 1970s, it was a permanent institution.
And so you could hate your brother, you could hate your sister, but they were always going to be there. And that held a space for reconciliation. It held a space for balance. And you could even have favorites. Now you would never dream of having the favorite child, but you could have favorites. And nobody was threatened by it because it was this permanent institution. And what happens in the 1970s is that a couple of things. I think this kind of crisis of meaning actually begins to erode private life. But then you have a catalyst in the change in the divorce laws, so it becomes very easy to divorce. And you have this real shift so that instead of thinking about the needs of children, we’re thinking about the needs of adults for adult self-actualization, for them to go off and be with the one they really love and start over.
And kids are really just disenfranchised through that. And that is important because that sets the scene for what happens later on. So what happens is that the family’s no longer permanent. And there’s this period where on the one hand, there’s not a lot of focus more broadly on the needs of children. And the rating system comes in. TV becomes more mature. We’re not thinking that children could always be there. So we have that happening on the one hand, but on the other hand, we still have people struggling to raise their kids. And it’s a real crisis point because it feels like you cannot look back to the past to know what to do because things are so different.
Julie Gunlock:
The other thing that I really found interesting, and also we talked about this earlier, and I know you talk about this in your book, but also this idea of that you didn’t live with and around your family, that in the seventies this became more prevalent, that people moved away from their families. And so instead of having, and you and I talked about this because I think we both were raised in the seventies and families that had moved away, and I hardly saw my extended family, so it was very natural for me. But this was an unusual phenomenon. You usually stayed in your same town and lived your whole life around your family. And Nancy, I was sort of rereading things that we had talked about in the last podcast. And it was so fascinating because you think about today, and I think you had mentioned, well, you might have to hang out with your annoying brother and your great uncle who’s always making those off-color jokes and your Aunt Sue, who you don’t really.. Whatever, you get it.
The point is, but you still had to deal with these people. And so you actually got this lesson in dealing with people you don’t agree with. Today people choose their families essentially. You talk about that too. You choose your family. And so you never to… You choose to be around people that you like and never disagree with. And maybe that’s a little bit of why our country is so dysfunctional now because we’re choosing to never hang out with people that we disagree with. So that muscle has atrophied. We don’t even know how to disagree with people, but still go to a picnic and have to hang out with them. So it’s kind of interesting how as the family has crumbled, so has our society and our ability for civil discourse. I don’t know if you think that that’s sort of connected.
Nancy McDermott:
I do. And I think what’s so amazing about the family when you have a family that is permanent, you get a really deep understanding that it’s not just about you and your choices. There is a given world. There are given circumstances that you need to find a way to deal with and you need to do things like you need to learn to manage your emotions. You need to learn to focus on the things that you love about Uncle Bert and forgive but maybe not forget the things that you don’t like about Uncle Bert. And it does that completely organically. And I think that is what is so sort of reviled about the family now, is that it is a natural institution. I mean, it’s amazing how we seem to think that you have to, everything now must be chosen. It must be a conscious decision.
But if you have a room full of children and you have an adult come in, those kids are going to defer to the adult because the adult has natural authority. And we’re very suspicious of authority now, and we’re particularly suspicious of the family. So you have all of these people talking about the oppressiveness of the cis-heteronormative family. But what that is it’s just a natural form of authority that we have evolved really to recognize. And I think that’s why some people find it so threatening. Anyway, you have to stop me because I’ll just keep going.
Julie Gunlock:
No. I had a 20-minute intro there, so I get it because this is such a issue that I’m also sort of personally grappling with and trying to understand myself. But do you think that that’s why we see what many people see as attacks on the family? This idea that schools now feel that it’s okay to keep secrets from parents about significant matters. For instance, on the transgender issue, a child goes into the office and says, “I would now like to be called Michael instead of Michelle,” and that school will change the records and the files and will go along with whatever and not notify the parents.
The child could then say, “I am now, I would like my records to show that…” And to be honest with you, I don’t know the technicalities of this. I don’t know if they actually go in and change the records, but at least they will call that child by what they want to go by and recognize that child as a boy if it’s a biological girl, and allow that biological girl to go into the men’s room or vice versa. And again, never inform the parents about a significant emotional and mental health issue.
Tell me where these two intersect. I mean, I think that this is being done to help accelerate the destruction of the family. And I know that’s like that comment there would be like, you’re a right wing nut who’s just spouting off about things. But I do think there are figures in this country that again don’t like it as a challenge to government authority or teacher authority or whatever it is. I mean, if you could… Do you agree with that comment or-
Nancy McDermott:
I do. The way I see it, in fact, I wanted to coin a word and everyone said, don’t. Don’t coin that word, Nancy. But if I was going to coin this word, for me, what’s going on now is very similar to misogyny, but it’s against parents, which I believe your Greek listeners will go nuts, would be misogynesis.
Julie Gunlock:
Listen to you.
Nancy McDermott:
It’s this kind of assumed prejudice against parents that they’re always wrong, they can do no right, and it’s just a prejudice because I mean, if you really look at the sort of issues involved in things like gender questioning, it’s ironic because a lot of it seems to be about young people trying to separate from their parents. And the one thing I didn’t mention is that when the family collapsed, the thing that took its place was parenting, which is this very intense relationship, one-to-one relationship between each child and each parent. And in that sort of relationship, it can become very intense and overbearing.
And so in some of these cases it seems like this is the only way that, or this is the social way now that young people separate from their parents. Unfortunately it’s been medicalized. So there are lifelong consequences to that, which is just terrible. But the thing is that whatever issues we have, those are issues that developed within the context of the family and that is where they will be resolved most of the time. And it’s really destructive to kids to separate them from their families because no matter how difficult a relationship within a family is, it is something that will be with you for the rest of your life.
Julie Gunlock:
But the thing is, is that is the answer though, to… You’ve heard these, I don’t know what the phrase is, it’s like ghosting your family.
Nancy McDermott:
Oh, going no contact.
Julie Gunlock:
Going no contact. And we’ve seen some-
Nancy McDermott:
Or estrangement.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. Yes. And you will not speak to them. That’s sort of the answer these days. It’s really sad because it’s… And you see in some of these activists, there have actually been messages put out there, “Come talk to our community. We will be your parents. We will be your family.” I hear these phrases, “We will be your family.” And in pop culture, in popular media, I see this stuff all the time. “This is my chosen family.” And I think culturally that’s really taken over in terms of your family’s just who you were born to. You don’t have to hang out with them. It’s more than just… My parents moved away, but we still had contact, but we didn’t see them a lot. I mean, it is radically different than that. It’s actually break away from your biological family and create a new family, which to me is so much worse. It’s so much more damaging. And again, I think it contributes to our inability to deal with people who think differently than us. I mean, not us, but society in general.
Nancy McDermott:
Yeah. I mean really agree with that. And it’s interesting because I’ve watched this develop over the last 10 years or so, and it started out with just ordinary relationships and it’s like, “I’m not getting along with my partner or I’m having difficulties.” And the answer was always cut those toxic people out of your life. And it’s a real problem because there’s a sense that relationships should only exist if they make you feel good about yourself. So it’s redefining the purpose of families away from this generational renewal and this kind of institution for redemption in a sense. And it’s making it about me, me, me and my needs. And just think about what that means for kids.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, I wanted to ask, what does this mean? We’ve got this kind of cultural situation. We’re introducing intensely adult subjects to kids at a very young age. I mean, kindergartners are being read some pretty provocative books. We’re seeing middle school libraries and high school libraries with pornography in them. They’re being told that things like sex don’t matter, that you can choose whatever gender you are. These are all very confusing concepts. And they’re being encouraged to break from their parents if their parents don’t agree with them off the bat. And I’m sort of talking about gender here, but this relates to other things too. It’s not just gender. You have adults out there that are encouraging kids to break away from their parents if they disagree with them on anything. So that is a loss of one kind of authority, the parental authority, and then their kids are being told to sort of replace it with a teacher or some sort of official. What is this doing to kids and what is this doing to the concept of childhood?
Nancy McDermott:
Well, to understand that, I think it’s important to understand that, or to think of this as a cutting off of the past, a sort of jettisoning of earlier generations who had norms and who had values and things that developed over a long period of time to help us to function in the world. And really since the seventies our culture has been very much in the now. And the only reason why we make reference to history or to what came before is if it serves the purposes of the now. And so what that means is that it has this weird effect on society where on the one hand you have adults who never grow up because they’re never forced to think about the future. They’re just living in the now. So you have a bunch of 50-year-old adolescents running around, but on the more destructive side, it pulls young children into the present and it treats them like adults.
And so a lot of these people who go on about how, and I think they really believe it, they want kids to understand consent. They want them to have this wonderful sex life. They want them to be as adults, they want them to be their authentic selves, but they have been so alienated from what childhood really is that they don’t understand that it is absolutely impossible for kids to grasp that, to make sense of it, to understand the future implications of that. I mean, they just have no clue about what children are like. And it’s so destructive because you open that door and I mean really do think knowledge of sex is this kind of turning point for kids because it’s such a strong thing in adult life and it just pulls them into adult life way before they can handle it.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, and it pulls them… I mean, look, the way that we’re pulling them into learning about sex and relationships isn’t like… This is kind of what happens, right? It is you have to choose what gender you are now. You can be anything you want. I mean that is in of itself, is… Kids are susceptible to suggestion. They are. And this idea-
Nancy McDermott:
Absolutely.
Julie Gunlock:
But it frustrates me so much because people say, “Well, if a child doesn’t identify as another gender, then there’s no problem. Or if the child isn’t gay or lesbian or whatever, then there’s no problem.” And it’s like you can actually… It’s not necessarily introducing. It’s this whole new sort of category of queer, which is questioning, and I’m attracted to all sorts of things and I’m attracted to, or I’m asexual and I’m not really attracted to any sex. The idea that-
Nancy McDermott:
It’s my son.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s okay. The idea that children are not susceptible and then it could create confusion in a child is just monstrous because again, these concepts are very complicated for a full-grown adult and to introduce them at such a young age. But again, I think that the tension that we’re seeing between parents and some of these school administrators, for example, or government officials. I mean, you’ve got one under secretary at HHS, Rachel Levine, she is a very powerful government official who is trans herself and is saying that we should introduce these concepts to kids. So it’s not just teachers. I mean, we’re talking about very powerful government officials who are introducing these concepts.
And I think for me and for others, other parents out there we’re like, “When did this become okay?” And they’re not only just suggesting it, they’re actually fighting parents who object to it. And again, it all comes at the cost of children and families and this concept of childhood. Nancy, I wanted to ask you, you are interested in examining this. You’re a little further in. You’ve got a new project. I don’t know if this is a new book, but you’re working on a new project around this idea. Tell us a little bit about it.
Nancy McDermott:
Well, when I was writing my book about parenting, when I understood what a crucial role the family played, I wanted to understand that better. And just a bit of background, one of the reasons why I was interested in parenting is that I’ve always been interested in families. My father was in the military. We lived lots of different places and I used to love to visit other families. It was like this new world. They did things differently. They had different words for things. Things smelled a little bit differently. And so I’ve always found that really fascinating. But when I started to understand a bit better the important role that the family played, I really wanted to understand what had happened over time with it and where it was going.
And what I realized, and this is kind of where Hannah Arendt comes into it again, is that I was having an argument on Twitter and someone said to me, “Well, you just want to go back to the 1950s.” And I said, “Well, no.” But I was thinking about why is it, when people-
Julie Gunlock:
Why is it bad?
Nancy McDermott:
It’s always, why not go back to the seventies or the eighties? And I think the reason why is that the fifties was the last time when the traditions that the family was based on were intact. And those traditions are gone now. I mean there was a break, they are gone. People don’t understand them.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s interesting too, when you say the fifties, I also think of pop culture. I always think of pop culture and what was it like? And you think about those television shows which reflected that sort of nuclear family, mom, dad, kids, and that sort of unit and how important that was. And again, that they would even have… I feel like every series now that has to do with the family is so sarcastic and has to make fun of the family and at least make fun of the dad always. He’s always so stupid. And the mom is always so bright, but just the idea of a television show that didn’t make fun of the family, but showed the challenges and the laughs and the good things about having a family and these charming little vignettes. The culture or pop culture certainly is not the same either. The message people get from television today is that’s square and it’s not the full way.
Nancy McDermott:
Yeah, it’s really true. And then have these… I mean, it’s interesting. You take something like Friends and I mean, what that is it’s basically a family, but it’s not a family, which is we could have a whole podcast on that. But anyway, so because we can’t go back to that, and I actually don’t think we understand it and why it worked, which is part of what I want to do is these calls to defend the family don’t really grab people in the way that you would think they do. Because I mean, we grew up in the seventies. I how many people are there around who even have even experienced the idea of the families being something permanent? I mean, it just does not… It’s just beyond people’s experience now.
And what Hannah Arendt did, she talked about this more broadly as a problem of Western society. She says, “You have a break with tradition and then you have terrible things happen like totalitarianism and all of these different effects that has.” And so what she said is that what we need to do is we need to rediscover that tradition and build a new one. And so she likens it to diving for buried treasure. And so there’s this thing which is lost. You go back. You bring up these objects. Sometimes you don’t know what they did. You don’t know how they worked. Sometimes you can find a use for them, sometimes you can’t. But through that, you build something new, you build something new that is right for you and for your society going forward.
And so what I would like to do is I would like to dive into the tradition of the family because I think the family is, it’s the first institution. It’s the institution where in whatever way we pass on a sense of who we are and how we are in the world, and what the world is like to a next generation so that they can carry on. And so rather than defending the family, I want to make the case for the family. And part of that, and probably the most urgent part of that is making the case for childhood and understanding that in a sense childhood is also that very treasure because I was thinking about this and I realize that there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t go back into the magic sack that is my childhood, and take out something and use that as the benchmark or compare it. I mean, it’s this kind of treasure that you have that allows you to adapt.
Julie Gunlock:
And cope.
Nancy McDermott:
And yes, we have a mental health crisis today, I believe, because we have micromanaged childhood so intensely that kids don’t fill up that sack. They don’t have the experiences that they can draw on, or they don’t have as much that they can draw on. And if you haven’t had both positive and negative experiences, if you haven’t been allowed to learn lessons for yourself in the sandbox… I mean, there’s a reason why software developments talk about doing things in the sandbox is that you can play and there aren’t big consequences for that. But we’ve got to the point where it’s weirdly, we treat everything in childhood as if it has these massive consequences. And so, you see the parents kind of micromanaging in the sandbox, but really kids need to go through those experiences within a larger safer environment when the stakes are not very high in order to get to learn to manage their emotions, to learn to get a sense of self-possession and to create the basis for a healthy adulthood, to have those resources to draw on.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, and what’s so I think dangerous is we’re now asking, we’ve got this just incredible contagion of especially young girls deciding on what gender they want to be or deciding to switch their gender before they’ve really matured fully and they don’t have a full bag from which to draw lessons or coping mechanisms or what have you. I love that imagery of a bag that you can go into and pull out memories of how you handled these different situations, how your parents handled these different situations. But childhood gives you that bag of tools essentially. And I feel like we aren’t allowing children to develop that set of tools nowadays before we’re presenting them with incredibly adult decisions that can change their lives. So that coupled with learning loss, that coupled with the mental health crisis, it worries me a lot for children today. I think it does you too.
Nancy McDermott:
Well it does, and it’s insidious because on the one hand, I mean just take gender. When we arrive in the world, the first thing that happens is that we are claimed as one sex or another, recognized, and that’s something that we just do as human beings. When we know that a child is male or female, we treat them differently and we’re not even aware we’re doing it, which is a real problem for people trying to do research on gender, any clue. And the researchers will notice different things, and those things will track with what we believe about men and women, boys and girls.
But for kids, it’s really important to have that and to have that confirmed because the one thing that a little kid knows from about the age of four is, I am a girl or I am a boy. And that is where the Disney princesses come from, the trucks, the sort of picking the most sort of over the top stereotype of sex and loving that. Or even if you’re a gender non-conforming kid, and the vast majority of those kids grow up to be gay, even so they draw on that binary.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes.
Nancy McDermott:
When you get rid of that binary, it really destabilizes people’s personalities. It’s just like pulling the rug out and suddenly you’re a five-year-old kid and you can be anything. I mean, how horrible is that?
Julie Gunlock:
How horrible. And again, but it’s interesting. I can’t get over the… I think about that bag you’re talking about. We’ve taken away their bag, I mean, for when they’re an adult because in ruining their childhood, introducing these incredibly adult concepts to them, we haven’t allowed them to develop naturally into adults who is able to look back on these things and figure things out. It really is a tragedy that I think we’re going to be paying for generations.
Nancy McDermott:
Well, I mean the worst thing about it is I think we’ve deprived them of hope because I think there’s something really important about wonder. And with little kids, everything is a wonder. And instead of allowing that, allowing kids to understand things and figure things out in their own terms, we’re so eager to correct them and to prepare them to be adults. And so instead of sex being this thing that you sort of know is out there, but it’s this mystery, instead of allowing that to be a mystery, it’s like, well, this is what happens. And just specifying that. It’s also, I mean, another example is Santa Claus. I mean, you get these people who are like, “Well, you’re lying to children.” And yeah, it’s a vast adult conspiracy that we do, we do, so that for a time in our children’s lives, they understand, they have this childhood belief, they have this innocent belief that-
Julie Gunlock:
Reindeer, they fly.
Nancy McDermott:
They do.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s wonderful.
Nancy McDermott:
And it will eventually come to understand the truth about Santa themselves, and then maybe we tell them at some point just confirm what they’re telling us.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, there’s a reason parents do it. I can’t even… I actually found an app on my phone that you could talk to Santa. And I used it. I mean, it’d be the heat of July and I’d be sitting there, I’m getting Santa on the phone. I mean, there is this concept of if you’re a good boy or girl all year, Santa will bring you something. He will recognize your goodness. And you’re not on the naughty list. I mean, it’s not just like, oh, we like mess-
Nancy McDermott:
I have the Naughty List app. Oh, you’re on the naughty list. You should stop that.
Julie Gunlock:
I tell you, the parenting is so easy these days, but I’m telling you, this is the kind of thing that there was a greater meaning there beyond just like, let’s have fun and mess with the kids and tell them that reindeer, and there’s like elves. There was a lesson behind it. And again, you’re right that giving them this idea to think about, oh my gosh, Santa, and they go to sleep and they wait for the hooves to be on the roof. I mean, it’s wonderful. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that is… It’s part of childhood.
Nancy McDermott:
It is. And I mean, childhood is a gift we give to the younger generation, and we have really taken that gift away. And it’s been well-meaning. As adults, we know the realities of the world. And in a way, it’s a sort of lack of confidence in ourselves. So that instead of having confidence in our ability to protect your children, we feel like, wow, it’s all on the internet. Let’s just prepare them. That’s all we can do. And in preparing them, we actually rob them of that time without pressure when they can mature at their own rate and when they don’t have to be thinking about these very adult things that they frankly can’t comprehend or can’t engage in without seriously harming themselves.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, listen, Nancy, this is probably a good place to wrap up, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to once again plug your book and tell people where they can find you on social media.
Nancy McDermott:
Right. Well, my book is The Problem with Parenting, which is published by Prager Press. It’s available on Amazon, and you can find me on Twitter and @NMCDNY at twitter.com.
Julie Gunlock:
Now, everyone should know that, Nancy, I didn’t read your full bio, which will be on our, excuse me, the podcast landing page. But Nancy used to be one of the administrators of the Park Slope Mom’s group. Was it parents’ group or mom’s group?
Nancy McDermott:
It’s parents, Park Slope Parents.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. I mean, if you’re not familiar with it, that’s quite a draw.
Nancy McDermott:
We were like… Yeah, I mean, it was one of the largest in the country and in New York City, and everyone’s a journalist. Everyone’s writing is winning Oscars and it’s very sort of type A parents. And so-
Julie Gunlock:
But that’s the New York on your Twitter handle.
Nancy McDermott:
Yes, yes, yes. And so that’s the NYC. I’m not in NYC anymore. I’m not in the country now.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, I look forward to your coming book on childhood, the Destruction of Childhood, the Importance of Childhood, the reason we-
Nancy McDermott:
Well, if anybody wants to publish it.
Julie Gunlock:
I will read it. Well, and when that does happen, you can come back on and talk about it. Nancy, thank you so much for coming on today. This was a great topic.
Nancy McDermott:
It’s so fun.
Julie Gunlock:
I know we didn’t scratch the surface, but I appreciate you coming on.
Nancy McDermott:
Well, and I appreciate you having me. Thank you.
Julie Gunlock:
Thanks, Nancy.
Nancy McDermott:
Bye.
Julie Gunlock:
Bye. The Bespoke Parenting Podcast with Julie Gunlock is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. You can send a comment and question to [email protected]. Please help me and IWF by hitting the subscribe button and leaving a comment or review on Apple Podcasts. Acast, Google Play YouTube, or iwf.org. Hang in their parents and go Bespoke.
