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0:00 Could it have worked if your husband stayed home instead of you in your view? Because I'm trying to understand if you're saying that dads don't need to be as there present as much as the mother. They have to be there in a different way in the early days. Men don't breastfeed. So that's the first thing. Unless you can show me a man who has grown breasts and can actually breastfeed. Maybe it's coming. I don't know. But for now, um, women's bodies connect them to their babies. They connect them through birth. They connect them through breastfeeding. There is a physical component and a hormonal component to infancy and motherhood. And there really is a difference in the way that mothers respond to babies and fathers respond to
0:46 babies. Now, when do fathers become really important? It's not that the father isn't important to give the mother a break or to bond with the baby or to bathe the baby, but what that baby needs is that attachment security to that primary attachment figure. So the mother, usually the mother, sometimes it's the father, but usually the mother. Fathers with their playful, tactile stimulation, they become really important when children become mobile. When children start to crawl and toddle, when they're around 18 months to two years old, fathers become incredibly exciting and they're really important. So when fathers aren't around in those days, um
1:32 when children are starting to explore the world, those children have a harder time separating from mothers. So it's really important to have what we say the yin and the yang. What we are doing now is we are um not prioritizing attachment security which is the foundation for then healthy separation. And when healthy separation starts, fathers are critical. When you have another child, a second child, fathers are critical because fathers seduce the older child. They say, "Come on, let's go out and play. Let's go kick the soccer ball. Let's go to the swing set." And they give a space to the mother with the next baby. They help the older children to grow up. Earlier on, you mentioned a study that I read about when I was
2:17 studying psychology once upon a time, which is the Reese's the Recess Monkeys study with the wire mother. For anybody that's never heard about that study, I think it's quite important to understand the profound impact that touch and um Well, that was an attachment study. Yeah. What was it what's the what's touch called from in a in the science world? Skinto skin. Skin-to-skin. Can you give me an overview of that study and what it showed for people that aren't aware of it? Well, they took these baby reesus monkeys and they they let some be with the mothers and the mothers nurtured those babies and those babies became healthily attached and secure and those were the healthy emotionally healthy babies. Then they gave um another subset of monkeys um a
3:04 wire mother covered with a piece of cloth or fur or something. And those babies became very neurotic, but at least they were clinging. They became like the ambivalent attachment babies because there was no response from the mother, but at least they were holding on to this mother. And then they gave and these babies became very neurotic. And then they gave the subset of babies nothing and those babies literally lost their minds. And um I mean there are other studies which are more recent than that. That's quite an old study. There there is a researcher named Michael Meanie. He did a study on licking and grooming. Animals who lick and groom their young meaning are nurturing skin-to-skin. Lick and groom. Uh in human terms that would be
3:50 holding, touching, loving, skin-to-skin. Those uh if if a mother licked and groomed her young, that baby would become more resilient to stress in the future. The babies who were not licked and groomed by their mothers become became less resilient to stress in the future. In addition, the babies who were more resilient to stress because their mothers had licked and groomed them passed down generationally the ability to lick and groom the next generation. What happened to the babies who weren't licked and groomed? Guess what happened? They didn't pass it down, right? And that's what's happening to humans today. If we don't lick and groom our babies, I mean, you know, take it for whatever.
4:37 Um, if we don't lick and groom our babies, it we don't pass on resilience to stress and adversity, but we also don't pass on the desire to lick and groom your to have babies. your story. Going back to your story which we were talking about, are there any areas of privilege that you need to acknowledge that someone else listening to this now goes, "Yeah, but that's all right for you." Because, you know, maybe someone who didn't have a partner there or someone who is in a difficult economic situ extremely difficult economic situation living in the projects in Harlem or something. I really want to I'm saying this because well it's not the mothers in the projects in Harlem because I'll tell you the mothers in the projects in Harlem
5:23 stay home with their babies. That's what's interesting. Very poor people in America. So let me just say I love America. America sucks. And I'll tell you why America sucks from my perspective. And I say this internationally. I go around the world saying America sucks. And I'm going to tell you why. Um, we are the only country in the world other than Papa New Guinea who does not have a paid parental maternity leave. We do not have paid maternity leave. Nobody cares about children. They care about the GDP and the bottom line. And the people who are out there talking about this stuff are economists saying women have to work, work, work for the economy. Nobody cares about children because if we cared about children, our
6:08 tax money would be in paid leave, not for three months, not for six months, for at least a year. And Hungary, they have three years. Slovenia, Slovakia, um Estonia has three years. Hungary, I think, has two years of paid leave. Sweden, I have some issues with Sweden, but Sweden has 14 months. Sweden after 14 months, makes women go back to work full full-time. and put them in institutional care and all those babies are breaking down. So 14 months isn't even enough. So but if we could even get to a civilized place of one year of paid leave in this country and then the next two years some way that parents could be compleimemented so they could work part-time, supplemented so they could
6:55 work part-time. Um you know I'm a I'm a reasonable realistic person. And I know this country is never going to go for three years of paid leave, even though I would love them to. I also know that this country isn't going to go for an entitlement called paid leave because that's the kind of country we are. We talk a big game, but we don't want to put our money where our mouth is. There is the possibility now that the Republicans are in of a creative solution which is potentially using things like social security in advance borrowing from your social security. So I'm a mom and I say ah to stay home I can borrow from my social security for a year and then work a year or two longer
7:43 in my life. Wouldn't you say that most women who wanted to stay home with their babies would say, "I'll work longer so I can stay home with my baby." There are ways to creatively deal with it. Um, from my perspective, this is what's going on. People on the left will not compromise. They'll only do an entitlement called paid leave, but they only are asking for it for 3 to six months. After that, they want women back in the workforce and institutional daycare. So, I'm not on the left. Um, people on the right talk a lot about family. They're the party of the family now, but they do not want tax dollars to go into paid leave. They they don't like the entitlements that already exist and they don't want to add anymore. And so, the only way they're going to give it to women and men is if they put skin in the
8:29 game. Mhm. This is the country we live in. Again, I'm a realist. I think in any way that we can give families the choice to care for their own children, particularly in the early years, we will create a population of healthier children. How do we know that more paid leave equals better children, less strain on the healthare system in terms of mental health, mortality, whatever it might be? How do you make a statistical or a science or researchbacked case that if we had three years of paid leave in the United States or in the UK or Australia or Canada, wherever that the it would be a net positive for society outside of it just being an opinion? Well, the research shows the longitudinal attachment research shows
9:15 that children who are insecurely attached at 12 months of age, 20 years later, are insecurely 80% of them are are insecurely attached. and suffer from mental disorders. That's what the longitudinal attachment research says. So we now have decades of basically children were followed from when they were infants and the ones who were securely attached 20 years later are still securely attached and doing great. And the ones who were insecurely attached most still insecurely attached and it's tied and correlated to all of these mental illness conditions. Right? So there's a lot of research to show what attachment security does for children in the long run. So you know, you're asking a question about I mean I
10:03 suppose you could take your paid leave and go play soccer in the park and go play tennis and I don't know like play cards with your friend. I mean you know how can I say how people are going to use their paid leave? But if your paid leave is being used to be home with your child then it's going to benefit your child. So many of the the guests that I speak to on this podcast, especially those that become incredibly successful um athletes, entrepreneurs, whoever, they often have some form of neglect in their past. Richard Williams, Serena and Venus Williams father. He um he was very intense with them from a very young age. And he's raised two of the greatest tennis players in history. Joe Jackson was strict and not often controversial with Michael who went on to become the king of pop. L Woods who was Tiger
10:48 Wood's father was very um intense in his coaching and mentoring style which led him to become great and obviously Beyonce is the other example I gave who Matthew managed Matthew which is Matthew and Tina who are parents to Beyonce managed Destiny's child and Beyonce's solo career meticulously shaping them into a global superstar. So parents think you know I want to raise kids that are superstars. I want I want my kids to be great. Okay. So, I'm going to say right now, I don't recommend that as a professional, okay? I'm just saying. So, I can't comment on a lot of those people because I could get in a lot of trouble for commenting on a lot of those people. But I will say that amongst those people, there is controversy, meaning
11:34 at least one of those parents, and I don't know the history of the others, was abusive. And so you could say that narcissism is abusive to children. When we project our needs and desires and likes and who we are onto our children, we're not letting them authentically be themselves. The greatest gift you can give your child is to see your child as an authentic individual who is an individual and themselves and not to see them as a mini me. um when you start architecting their life, there's a good chance you're going to lose that child emotionally at some point. They're either going to hate you there. They may
12:19 be successful in their careers. They may have terrible personal lives. They may be narcissistic parents themselves. So, I don't recommend that school of thought. What I do recommend is if your child shows promise in something that they also seem to love and have a drive to be good at, then you can support that drive. Just make sure to keep yourself in check along the way to make sure that they are driving it, not you. If you love the Driver CEO brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor. Become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button. It helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests.
