Speaker 1: Welcome to Parenting Out Loud, the podcast to parents who
Speaker 1: don't always listen to parenting podcasts. We take a look
Speaker 1: at sort of the trends and the culture and what
Speaker 1: parents are thinking about.
Speaker 2: I'm Monique Poley, I'm Amelia Lester, and I am Stacy Kicks.
Speaker 2: So happy to be back with both of you. I
Speaker 2: loved listening last week with beautiful Gracie on here, but
Speaker 2: happy to be back yapping with you two min's.
Speaker 3: You've got a bit of housekeeping, don't you.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I have a public apology to make.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Actually, I think they might call it in the biz
Speaker 1: a product recall. Last week I recommended on this show
Speaker 1: Ted Lasso season four. Yeah, and look, I did say
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet. That's my first mistake.
Speaker 2: Oh you did a prereco Oh.
Speaker 1: I'd like to publicly apologize for that recommendation. The show
Speaker 1: is abominable. Do not spend your time on it. And
Speaker 1: I apologize unreservedly. And I think what hurts me the
Speaker 1: most is that parents have such limited time to sit
Speaker 1: down and watch TV, and the fact that I told
Speaker 1: people to go and spend their precious screen time on
Speaker 1: this disaster. It cuts me deep and I'm going to
Speaker 1: make up for it today, okay, but coming up on
Speaker 1: today's show onto serious business.
Speaker 2: Yes, the influencer who sent her five year old to
Speaker 2: the park alone, even just saying it stresses me out.
Speaker 3: What do you want your kids to be when they
Speaker 3: grow up? And if the answer is doctor or lawyer,
Speaker 3: find out why you're increasingly alone?
Speaker 1: And do your kids know what FESTI means because I
Speaker 1: have a petition to bring back old school slang. But first,
Speaker 1: we do like to bring you sort of what's around
Speaker 1: on the internet each week, and each of us has
Speaker 1: something to submit today from their algorithm that it feels
Speaker 1: like everyone is kind of talking about. So Amelia your
Speaker 1: submission please.
Speaker 3: In case you missed it. An Australian mum's Instagram video
Speaker 3: has sparked a debate about where the babies belong in
Speaker 3: business class. The Australian jewelry designer Charlotte Freeman was flying
Speaker 3: into Singapore recently trying to comfort her one year old
Speaker 3: son Freddie, when a fellow passenger decided to get involved.
Speaker 3: Here's Charlotte, So we just.
Speaker 5: Flew into Singapore this morning and I wanted to let
Speaker 5: you know about an incident we had on the plane
Speaker 5: where Freddy was a little bit unsettled and crying a bit,
Speaker 5: and this lady took it upon herself to scream across
Speaker 5: the cabin at the top of her lungs.
Speaker 6: Shut up. Now, that same lady stood up and stared
Speaker 6: me down, and I said, is everything okay? And she said, no,
Speaker 6: your baby has been crying and I'm in business class.
Speaker 6: And I said to this lady, well, you obviously haven't
Speaker 6: had kids, otherwise you would understand what it's like to
Speaker 6: have a child. And unfortunately this comes with having a baby.
Speaker 6: And she said, I have five. And then she proceeded
Speaker 6: to say that because she had paid for her business
Speaker 6: class ticket that a mother and a child, which should
Speaker 6: never be in business class. There should always be an.
Speaker 3: Economy So look, Charlotte told MoMA Mia this week that
Speaker 3: she wound up taking Freddie down to economy class because
Speaker 3: she just felt more comfortable there. And to that, I say, welcome, Charlotte.
Speaker 3: We're a friendly bunch down the back of the way.
Speaker 3: We're a little smelly at times, but we are friendly.
Speaker 2: You welcome the crying babies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look from one disgruntled mother to another this week, my
Speaker 2: submission is Anne Hathaway, who is just everywhere. That woman
Speaker 2: is the booked and busiest woman in the world right now.
Speaker 2: She's got five movies coming out this year.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then she's just pregnant casually with her third child.
Speaker 2: On top of that, she's been doing the rounds for
Speaker 2: her movie The End of Oak Street, and she was
Speaker 2: wearing this really cool Prabo gerrang like high low top.
Speaker 2: It has like a big train on the back of it,
Speaker 2: and she's got low slung jeans on with the belly
Speaker 2: out the middle. Her body's gone, third kid, know what
Speaker 2: we're doing here? Bam? And people malfunctioned overseeing like a
Speaker 2: normal prego body, unrestrained in the wild like. People were
Speaker 2: accusing her of having a fake bump on because they
Speaker 2: didn't think it looked the shape that a normal pregnant
Speaker 2: belly should look. This was widespread, not a few wackos,
Speaker 2: a lot of people saying, why does it look like that,
Speaker 2: That's not how bellies are meant to look. Absolutely insane.
Speaker 2: And then I just love her because she just clapped
Speaker 2: back to the next day by posting and getting ready
Speaker 2: video for that day and she wrote fake hare real
Speaker 2: bump full stop.
Speaker 1: That's so boring, just the whole station around. Oh God,
Speaker 1: I'm so bored by it. But do you know the
Speaker 1: one thing I do think, quite honestly, when I look
Speaker 1: at her, is I do get jealous that she seems
Speaker 1: to be just glowing her way through this third pregnancy.
Speaker 3: I read a quote from her that said that she
Speaker 3: realized when she turned forty that life was not a
Speaker 3: dress rehearsal, that this is it, this is her chance,
Speaker 3: and that's informing how she's going about her third and
Speaker 3: what she thinks will be her final pregnancy.
Speaker 1: She's just like letting it all out there.
Speaker 3: And then she went on a talk show after the
Speaker 3: premiere with a similar bump showcase and piece. You can
Speaker 3: tell that she's just informed by this. This is the
Speaker 3: last time I'm doing this. I'm just not leaving anything
Speaker 3: out there on the tape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it, Love Anne.
Speaker 1: So you know what the Internet loves more than hating
Speaker 1: Anne Hathaway.
Speaker 4: Love.
Speaker 1: It loves wholesome dud content. And so my submission this
Speaker 1: week from my algorithm is a wholesome Internet daut of
Speaker 1: the week. This is Melbourne dad Zachary Perez. He's on
Speaker 1: Instagram as at non practicing genius. He decided to start
Speaker 1: a dad's walking group, and in week one this is
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 4: To my dad's walking group this morning. But that doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: I didn't really promote it all that well, and it's
Speaker 4: still a gorgeous morning to be out walking with my lad.
Speaker 1: So the footage of him is like him walking along
Speaker 1: this trail, the babies in the baby Bjorn with its
Speaker 1: little head bouncing around, and he's like, you know, no
Speaker 1: one came. That's okay, I'll try again next week, And
Speaker 1: the internet did what the internet does, and boom, Like
Speaker 1: the next week, over fifty dads and babies all rocked
Speaker 1: up to this Sunday Dad's walk.
Speaker 4: Just back at the car now after an incredible turnout.
Speaker 4: There had to be at least fifty dads. There could
Speaker 4: have been a lot more, and kids that came along
Speaker 4: had a great wonder the weather held off, met some
Speaker 4: good fowlers, had some great chats, and just feeling really
Speaker 4: really pumped.
Speaker 1: I love this and I don't want a dad bash.
Speaker 1: Where not dad bashes. Here were four the wholesome dads.
Speaker 1: We're pro dad, but there was like a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of cynicism in me that was like this dad started
Speaker 1: a walking group and he ended up on the Today
Speaker 1: Show talking about his walking group, Like every mum that's
Speaker 1: in a mum's walking group, that's just like another Tuesday
Speaker 1: for the mums. But it's Yeah, it was super wholesome
Speaker 1: and a beautiful little story in my algorithm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it, and I think dads don't have
Speaker 2: that community as much, so I do think it needs to.
Speaker 2: And like as you were saying that, it went viral
Speaker 2: and then fifty dad showed up. I was imagining fifty
Speaker 2: wives at home going, you have to go to this
Speaker 2: this guy, he doesn't have anyone there with him, and
Speaker 2: you're going and taking our kids. So I think the
Speaker 2: mums are probably to thank for it. Actually, I saw.
Speaker 3: It in my neighborhood a bunch of elderly men in
Speaker 3: a walking group the other day.
Speaker 2: They must have mostly.
Speaker 3: Been in their eighties and they were walking around the
Speaker 3: local oval together having a chat. Why are we so
Speaker 3: heartwarmed by men just being together, not at the pub.
Speaker 3: I guess it's just because we want them to have
Speaker 3: social connections.
Speaker 1: Yes we do, and it's those scripts of masculinity being
Speaker 1: hard and not connecting and bearing feelings deep and yeah
Speaker 1: that we're trying to disrupt, I guess, so any chance
Speaker 1: we see it, we're like, yay, yay, dud's.
Speaker 2: So, the big story this week that's been doing the
Speaker 2: rounds is about an influencer who sent her five year
Speaker 2: old to the park alone, and it sparked this massive
Speaker 2: debate about whether this is free range parenting or whether
Speaker 2: this is just straight up irresponsible. So I want to
Speaker 2: play you a little bit off the clip. I've just
Speaker 2: let my five year old go to the park on
Speaker 2: his own. I feel quite nervous, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: let him grow up. He will be six next month.
Speaker 1: I live opposite the park.
Speaker 2: The windows all open, the door obviously can't be open
Speaker 2: because I've got a dog. I'm checking every thirty seconds.
Speaker 5: I've just checked.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go check again.
Speaker 2: So that was content creator Charlotte Lanford tag. She's a
Speaker 2: mom of two from the UK. She posts quite regularly
Speaker 2: just about family life, and I want to give you
Speaker 2: a little bit of further context before we dive into it.
Speaker 2: So Charlotte's described her son as very responsible and wise,
Speaker 2: and she says that she wouldn't let her younger son
Speaker 2: do the same. She just thinks he's got the personality
Speaker 2: where he can do that. Their park is directly across
Speaker 2: the road, and they live in a culder sac where
Speaker 2: they've lived for years, so very familiar with the area,
Speaker 2: and that she can hear him from the kitchen window,
Speaker 2: and he can hear her when she yells out across
Speaker 2: the road. He responds to her in the video. Regardless
Speaker 2: of all of that, people called her actions straight up neglect.
Speaker 2: They were comparing this to the Maddie McCann case. Other
Speaker 2: people were saying that they don't even let their children
Speaker 2: in their backyard unattended, and so why was she letting
Speaker 2: her child leave the house across the road be at
Speaker 2: the park on his own. And that's why I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about it, because there's an argument being made
Speaker 2: that this is everything that's wrong with parenting now, that
Speaker 2: we have such a tight leash on them, that we
Speaker 2: never let them do anything, and that this is the problem.
Speaker 2: And yet at the same time, the minute the words
Speaker 2: came out of her mouth that she was sending the
Speaker 2: five year old to the park alone, my stomach was
Speaker 2: in or not and I just thought, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it because
Speaker 2: it would be the least enjoyable experience for me, because
Speaker 2: I would be a nightmare, a ball of nerves the
Speaker 2: whole time. So I want to know what your initial
Speaker 2: reactions are.
Speaker 1: I want to provoke you on that. So I hear
Speaker 1: that and I feel the same way. The anxiety is enormous.
Speaker 1: But what if you know, and we do know from
Speaker 1: the research and the data that this is actually really
Speaker 1: good for kids?
Speaker 3: Yeap?
Speaker 1: Does that change how you feel about it? Like so
Speaker 1: much of parenting is actually about having to park what
Speaker 1: you want to do your people pleasing tendencies and your
Speaker 1: need to protect them in order for them to spread
Speaker 1: their wings. So you're a smart woman, You're the editor
Speaker 1: of Muma Mia, you read all the parenting books, you
Speaker 1: have done all the parenting research, and yet you still
Speaker 1: wouldn't do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think that is one of the
Speaker 2: things that's tricky about parenting is that you're constantly fighting
Speaker 2: against this need to keep them safe one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of the time with this need to let them exist.
Speaker 2: And that was the argument Charlotte made that she was like,
Speaker 2: they need to be prepared for the world. I'm preparing
Speaker 2: them for the world. They need to feel confident to
Speaker 2: be away from me and to be their own character
Speaker 2: and their own person. And so that is what she
Speaker 2: argued that she is doing. But that was very different
Speaker 2: to the response that she got.
Speaker 3: I'd like to think that I would do this. The
Speaker 3: thing that would worry me most is actually not stranger
Speaker 3: dangers so much as traffic danger. Did she mention, is
Speaker 3: this across the street?
Speaker 2: Yeah, across the street, but quite on a quiet street, right, Yeah?
Speaker 3: Because I think that is a very real threat. But
Speaker 3: I think so much depends on the child. And I
Speaker 3: love that she wanted to explain she knows this child,
Speaker 3: she wouldn't do it with this other child. And the
Speaker 3: example I give is that, knowing all of all the
Speaker 3: consensus of the researchers that we have to let kids
Speaker 3: roam by themselves, I put my two kids on I
Speaker 3: sent them on the school bus last year sort of
Speaker 3: as an experiment. And obviously that's very safe. It's daugh
Speaker 3: to door service. But I could tell that it was
Speaker 3: stretching them both a bit beyond where they were comfortable.
Speaker 3: They didn't come home beaming with pride as I might
Speaker 3: have imagined. They came home looking a little nervous really,
Speaker 3: so I decided it was too early for them. But
Speaker 3: this year, and I've mentioned this on the show, I
Speaker 3: started sending them to the cafe on our block to
Speaker 3: get to get coffees in the morning, and that really
Speaker 3: made them feel exhilarated and they came back so filled
Speaker 3: with confidence and excitement about what they'd done. I think
Speaker 3: they did get some judgment from the cafe, but they
Speaker 3: loved doing it. So I just want to come back
Speaker 3: to the idea that it depends on the child, and you,
Speaker 3: as the parent of the child, know what you feel
Speaker 3: that they're capable of in any given moment.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, yes, it does depend on the child, but
Speaker 1: it wholly also depends on the parenting style too, right,
Speaker 1: And there has been all this research and the data
Speaker 1: into this, and may I go down into my what
Speaker 1: the researchers say, mate, please thank you so step one. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the first thing to say is that, as you
Speaker 1: alluded to Amelia, like stranger danger is a myth, it's
Speaker 1: not actually a thing like if we look at them,
Speaker 1: Because what played out here in the comments of this
Speaker 1: TikTok was a term called worst first thinking, where we
Speaker 1: default to imagining the very worst case scenario and then
Speaker 1: we behave like that is what is going to happen.
Speaker 1: But we know from the data. It tells us that
Speaker 1: most harmful encounters that children have statistically happen with people
Speaker 1: that they already know and trust. And there's another crazy
Speaker 1: statistic that kids are more likely to be seriously injured
Speaker 1: in a car accident than to be taken by a stranger. Now,
Speaker 1: even the Morecambe Foundation says this. This was the more
Speaker 1: com Foundation was set up by Bruce and Denise Morecambe
Speaker 1: in memory of Daniel Walcombe, who you may remember was
Speaker 1: abducted and murdered in two thousand and three. Their CEO,
Speaker 1: Holly Brennan says, stranger danger is based on a myth.
Speaker 1: It's not evidence based. Less than one percent of children
Speaker 1: are adopted by someone who could genuinely be classified as
Speaker 1: a stranger. But here is what the experts want you
Speaker 1: to know. Peter Gray is this research psychologist at Boston University.
Speaker 1: He's an emeritus professor in pediatrics and his whole job
Speaker 1: is to research this. And what he says is that
Speaker 1: when adults are always hovering and keeping kids safe from
Speaker 1: every risk, kids never get the chance to build the
Speaker 1: sense that they can handle stuff or solve problems, or
Speaker 1: be independent, or build resilience, and this is a recipe
Speaker 1: for anxiety. And what we see is that all these
Speaker 1: kids nowadays have less unsupervised, self directed play than they
Speaker 1: used to, and that sort of decline correlates lines up
Speaker 1: perfectly with rising anxiety and depression rates over the same decades.
Speaker 1: And he also did a huge research piece into actually
Speaker 1: it was Macquari Unversity did this huge re search piece
Speaker 1: into parents with anxiety raise children who are more likely
Speaker 1: to have anxiety, And some of the research around it
Speaker 1: was because of the way that they parent. They always
Speaker 1: prevent risk, they prevent dangerous situations. They have that feeling
Speaker 1: that they want to keep their children couched in safety,
Speaker 1: thinking it's for their own good, but it's actually doing
Speaker 1: the opposite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that was a big part of what
Speaker 2: bothered people so much about Charlotte's video was the lack
Speaker 2: of anxiety. Like she does sound nervous. Of course, you
Speaker 2: hear are in that clip saying like I'm checking him
Speaker 2: every thirty seconds, But it wasn't this real, like deep seated,
Speaker 2: He's going to get taken like she wasn't thinking about that.
Speaker 2: That wasn't where her thought pro was. It was just
Speaker 2: about you know, was he okay? Had he fallen off
Speaker 2: a swing or something like that. And she spoke a
Speaker 2: little bit in subsequent videos because needless to say, the
Speaker 2: comments were vile towards her. People were even threatening to
Speaker 2: call child services on her and saying, we can figure
Speaker 2: out where you live now we know you're across from
Speaker 2: a park, Like it really went to this dark place.
Speaker 2: And she was saying, given she co parents with her
Speaker 2: partner and that her children are away from her for
Speaker 2: half of the week, she's really had to learn to
Speaker 2: relinquish a bit of that control over knowing what her
Speaker 2: children are doing every second of every day, and so
Speaker 2: when they are in her care, she tries to not
Speaker 2: take that away from them either and still give them
Speaker 2: that space to be doing that. And like you said,
Speaker 2: mon's about stranger danger. I looked into it because I
Speaker 2: wanted to know, like what numbers are we talking, Like
Speaker 2: how rare are we talking with stranger danger? And it's
Speaker 2: so little that they just say fewer than one percent.
Speaker 2: Exceedingly rare is what comes up again and again across
Speaker 2: the board. I'm talking US, UK and in Australia. Like
Speaker 2: even in the US, it's around one hundred children in
Speaker 2: the US are taken by a stranger, but a lot
Speaker 2: of those are returned, So we're talking minuscule numbers. But
Speaker 2: I do think people will argue those numbers are so
Speaker 2: minuscule because we don't let them roam around as much anymore.
Speaker 2: So you know, the fear isn't completely unfounded.
Speaker 1: I want to ask Amelia a question about the coffee run.
Speaker 1: The first time that you did it, how did you
Speaker 1: feel versus the tenth time, Like was it the first time?
Speaker 1: Were you full of anguish? Were you at the window
Speaker 1: picking out? And has it become easier?
Speaker 3: Good question. That coffee ru is a very particular thing.
Speaker 3: There is no road to cross. I don't think I
Speaker 3: would ever let them do this if it involves crossing
Speaker 3: a road. It is on our block. So that's the
Speaker 3: first thing I want to say. The second thing about
Speaker 3: it is that I felt proud, actually because I felt
Speaker 3: proud of them for meeting the challenge, but also proud
Speaker 3: of myself because I am aware of that research. I
Speaker 3: am aware of the idea that experts sinc we're wrapping
Speaker 3: children in cottonwall and that's contributing to higher anxiety and
Speaker 3: depression rates later on. But it's easier said than done
Speaker 3: to surrender the reins. I come back to something you
Speaker 3: said at the start, Moons. I think that's so true.
Speaker 3: The ongoing tension in parenting is you want to give
Speaker 3: them freedom, you want them to grow up, but you
Speaker 3: also want to look after them, and that tension it's
Speaker 3: not easy to resolve. And I take my hat off
Speaker 3: to Charlotte Blandford tag because I think what she did
Speaker 3: there was hard. It was hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, palette cleanser Now because of the night, I
Speaker 1: quite like to get into bed with my electory blanket
Speaker 1: on and have a good old dirty scroll on Reddit.
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, I'm not watching ted Lasso anymore.
Speaker 1: Plenty of time up my sleeve for it. So someone
Speaker 1: on Reddit posted this week and I wanted to bring
Speaker 1: it to you for your consideration. It was in the
Speaker 1: subreddit Australian Nosagia and they wrote, I really miss the
Speaker 1: Aussie slang that was part of almost every conversation when
Speaker 1: I was in school, rack off bloodger festie rats as.
Speaker 1: Can we start using them more? Agaan please? So girls,
Speaker 1: give me your very best school yard slang that you
Speaker 1: want to bring back.
Speaker 2: I want to bring back mole. We used to call
Speaker 2: each other moles all the time, and it was it
Speaker 2: could be derogatory or it could be endearing. It was
Speaker 2: kind of like the C word. It was really just
Speaker 2: in the context of how you used it. That's so random.
Speaker 2: We used to just call everything random. It wasn't that random,
Speaker 2: but you would call it that. And talking to the hand.
Speaker 2: I feel like we need to make people do that much. Yes,
Speaker 2: talk to the hand, because if they say listen and
Speaker 2: everything was like chat or rank, I remember r. That's
Speaker 2: so rank. Well that's mad chat there my face.
Speaker 3: Why do we have so many words for things that
Speaker 3: were discussed?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Interesting? Yeah, mine, This really took me on a trip
Speaker 3: down memory lane. First of all, rakoff is the greatest.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another reddit classic is someone put together a supercut of
Speaker 3: the original Heartbreak High characters saying rack off to each other.
Speaker 3: I don't know if either of you watched the original
Speaker 3: Heartbreak High on ABC. It was very risky. It was
Speaker 3: like a grassy bit for Australia and they all said
Speaker 3: rack off to each other. It was just it was
Speaker 3: just the greatest get stuffed. Oh yeah, gets Captain Kim
Speaker 3: Lyon gets stuffed. The pair of views sucked in. We
Speaker 3: don't say sucked in enough. It's a great everyday expression. Yes,
Speaker 3: and dobber like you don't. I feel like that's gone,
Speaker 3: Like kids today are not even familiar with the concept
Speaker 3: of dobbing.
Speaker 2: No, they're.
Speaker 3: Yours.
Speaker 1: Just do you remember don't pike on me, don't pike,
Speaker 1: don't be a piker?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And it was like the worst thing you
Speaker 2: could be if you if you did that, if you bailed.
Speaker 1: Yeah you bailed. It was don't pike on me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm cut. I'm so cut.
Speaker 2: I feel like this.
Speaker 3: Is like South Australian. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah we had cut. Yeah, we had cut in the
Speaker 2: Western suburbs, so we didn't have a hole in South Australia.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that's Stacy.
Speaker 3: You got something here that I need you to bring up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, so this is not slang, so I'm
Speaker 2: breaking the rules. But it was the first thing I
Speaker 2: thought of. As soon as I heard the words Festi
Speaker 2: and rack Off, I was like, it brought me back
Speaker 2: to the time that we would draw stusses on everything.
Speaker 2: Do you remember, Yes, they were like a three D
Speaker 2: s like why did we do that?
Speaker 3: And why was it everywhere? No?
Speaker 2: Like I had them all over my Pensylca.
Speaker 3: You remember feeling like my mastery the of the.
Speaker 2: Yes and you were like so cool and batter if
Speaker 2: you mailed you know what.
Speaker 3: Project for next week? Parenting out loud listeners. Teach your kids.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, teach them a life skill that they'll actually.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is our generational skill that we need to
Speaker 2: past out.
Speaker 1: And if they don't get it, you can be like, ah, sucking, yes,
Speaker 1: sucked in.
Speaker 2: Your dirty mole.
Speaker 3: What do you want your kid to be when they
Speaker 3: grow up? A recent New York Times article shows there
Speaker 3: is this growing disconnect between what parents want for their
Speaker 3: kids and what kids want for themselves. The article was
Speaker 3: called mom, Dad, I want.
Speaker 2: To be a worlder, great headline.
Speaker 3: So choosing a trade is for some young people a
Speaker 3: way to be proactive about this changing employment landscape that
Speaker 3: we're always hearing so much about. They keep hearing AIS
Speaker 3: coming for you, aas coming for white collar jobs, and
Speaker 3: they think to themselves, but can AI fix or sink?
Speaker 3: And the answer is at this time of recording, no.
Speaker 3: But for many parents there's still this linking stigma around
Speaker 3: the trades, this sense that having a vocational occupation is
Speaker 3: inferior to an office job. And one vocational school expert
Speaker 3: who was interviewed kind of summed it up. He said,
Speaker 3: we're trying to get them proud to say my kid's
Speaker 3: a worlder at a cocktail party. So the picture in
Speaker 3: Australia is very similar. I was interested to learn that
Speaker 3: apprenticeships are up eighteen percent year on year and there's
Speaker 3: national shortages in eighteen construction and trades occupations, so that
Speaker 3: includes electricians, plumbers, carpenter's, bricklayers, Ruth Tyler's. Australia needs more
Speaker 3: of them. So why can't parents just get over themselves
Speaker 3: and instead of saying become a doctor, become a lawyer,
Speaker 3: say I really want you to be a bricklayer, Stacy.
Speaker 2: I think there's two reasons that this goes on. I
Speaker 2: think one of them is that classic thing of it
Speaker 2: was drilled into us by you know gen X or
Speaker 2: boomer parents, like you hustle, hustle, you work hard, you
Speaker 2: climb the ladder. It was all about a ladder, like
Speaker 2: you've had to keep going up a ladder.
Speaker 3: Which is actually used in a lot of trades. Yes, true, true.
Speaker 2: Famously ladder is very popular in the trades. So I
Speaker 2: think part of it is that is that we see
Speaker 2: certain careers as having and most of them are boring
Speaker 2: white collar desk jobs that you are climbing up and
Speaker 2: there's the next stage in the next stage above you,
Speaker 2: whereas trades are seen as like career jobs where you
Speaker 2: were you are doing them for a lifelong, but they're
Speaker 2: not seen in that traditional progression way, which is just
Speaker 2: is actually unfounded. It's not true there is. But I
Speaker 2: think the other thing that's going on is exactly what
Speaker 2: that guy said, that we want something like we see
Speaker 2: our children as an extension of ourselves, and we kind
Speaker 2: of want to say, well, look what they did.
Speaker 1: Look for cocktail party.
Speaker 2: It's the cocktail party theory. It's one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2: You want something to gloat about, like, let's be real's
Speaker 2: that's probably what it comes down to. For the people
Speaker 2: where that matters. It's that you're thinking, oh, well, I
Speaker 2: want to be able to impress them with how brilliant
Speaker 2: my child is. And their job is usually the first
Speaker 2: question when you ask what do they do?
Speaker 3: Successive governments over decades have disincentivized young people from choosing university.
Speaker 3: They've said, we'd rather that you just start making money upfront,
Speaker 3: go through a tafe or a trade school, hit the
Speaker 3: ground running as a bricklayer or as an electrician. We
Speaker 3: don't want to invest anymore in that longer term university education.
Speaker 3: And young people have listened to that and gone, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm taking that at face value, particularly as cost of
Speaker 3: living rises and student loans get higher and higher, I
Speaker 3: can see why for young people they don't want to
Speaker 3: make that investment in themselves.
Speaker 2: And I think the whole ai of it has ruined
Speaker 2: the guaranteed return on investment. Like you know, before it
Speaker 2: would have been that I'll put in the hard yards
Speaker 2: now and I'll have this big debt, but then I
Speaker 2: know that I'm going to get a higher paying job
Speaker 2: at the end of it. That was kind of the.
Speaker 3: Deal literally has In fact, salaries between white collar jobs
Speaker 3: and the trades have actually the gap has really now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So why would you go and put yourself through
Speaker 2: four years at that high cost when the job you
Speaker 2: want might not even be there at the end of it.
Speaker 2: Like you can go and start doing a trade now,
Speaker 2: like you can see why for this younger generation it's
Speaker 2: so much more attractive to them to just go and
Speaker 2: start earning money.
Speaker 3: But then I wonder, because this article in the New
Speaker 3: York Times is very much about gen Z and gen Z,
Speaker 3: it must be said in the US, where the university
Speaker 3: system is quite differently structured financially, my question to you
Speaker 3: is do you think Australian Gen Alpha kids are going
Speaker 3: to even experience that sense of stigma around the trades
Speaker 3: and vocations versus professions or do you think by then,
Speaker 3: because of AI, because of the salary windows narrowing, they're
Speaker 3: not even going to see this as a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. It feels like there's kind of
Speaker 2: a big flattening.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, it's that great flattening. I love that phrase, Stacey.
Speaker 3: You made the point that we're all sitting here doing
Speaker 3: a job that we could not have imagined, that was
Speaker 3: not in our year twelve job's guide at all.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't think our parents would have been sitting
Speaker 2: around going I really hope my daughter like spends her
Speaker 2: days yapping in front of a microphone and other people
Speaker 2: listen to that, Like, I still don't know if they
Speaker 2: fully understand what my job is now and you know so,
Speaker 2: I think this is probably just something that happens with
Speaker 2: every cycle, with every generation of kids. There will be
Speaker 2: jobs that we have no clue about and that we
Speaker 2: might go, why are they doing that when they could
Speaker 2: do this? But you know the world is expanding and
Speaker 2: changing and they'll move on to those roles.
Speaker 1: Well, that's all we have time for today on Parenting
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