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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the

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Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.

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Speaker 2: Now, good day, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. This

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Speaker 2: is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy Families dot com,

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Speaker 2: dot you, the author of what Is It? Nine books

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Speaker 2: now about raising happy families, and the parenting expert and

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Speaker 2: co hosts on Channel Minds hit TV show Parental Guidance.

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Speaker 2: Today joined by Beck Delahoy. Beck runs a substack called

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Speaker 2: Lessons Learn. It's my favorite parenting substack in the entire world.

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Speaker 2: And Beck has very kindly agreed to join me today

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Speaker 2: to share something that I just loved on her substack

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Speaker 2: from she was a couple of months ago now, but

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Speaker 2: it was so so good. Beck, Welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for having me. It's definitely

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Speaker 1: a bit intimidating hearing why bio compared to yours.

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Speaker 2: Come on, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: You very glad that you like it. So.

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Speaker 2: Beck has a background psychology neuropsychology, writes great stuff about parenting,

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Speaker 2: and is working on a book that I'm really excited

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Speaker 2: to read. But we'll talk about that another time. Beck,

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Speaker 2: what I'd love to do today rather than having a conversation.

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Speaker 2: I just enjoyed your article so very much. I'd love

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Speaker 2: you to intro the article about why raising kids is

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Speaker 2: easy because a lot of people I know do not

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Speaker 2: believe that, And then if you can just share that

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Speaker 2: article as it's written, I think that would be the

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Speaker 2: best way for us to work through this one. Because

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Speaker 2: it was just so well crafted, so well put together.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear it all over again.

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Speaker 1: Raising kids is easy doesn't feel like it a lot

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Speaker 1: of the times, but I'm going to get to that.

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Speaker 1: So when we think about how raising kids is now

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Speaker 1: compared to before the nineteen hundreds, one hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: years ago, one in ten infants died before their first birthday,

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Speaker 1: and close to fifty percent of kids died before they

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Speaker 1: even turned fifteen. Only twenty one percent of adults were literate.

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Speaker 1: Most people died if they lived past fifteen, they would

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Speaker 1: die before they'd hit sixty years old. There were diseases

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Speaker 1: like small pocks through balamols months and that we're causing

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Speaker 1: a lot of infection and death. And workers would typically

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Speaker 1: work sixty to seventy hours a week, with maybe just

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Speaker 1: a couple of days off per year, and even children

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Speaker 1: were included in that workforce, whereas today the chance that

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Speaker 1: your baby will die before they turn one is twenty

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Speaker 1: times less than it used to be, and in highly

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Speaker 1: developed nations like Australia, ninety nine point seven percent of

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Speaker 1: children will reach the age of fifteen, more than eighty

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Speaker 1: six percent of adults worldwider literate, and the maximum life

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Speaker 1: expectancy is now about ninety years and increasing at the

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Speaker 1: rate of three months every year. Around the world, smallpox

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Speaker 1: has been eliminated and many other infectious diseases are on

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Speaker 1: their way down, and working hours have decreased by about

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Speaker 1: fifty percent and child labor rates have plummeted. So all

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Speaker 1: that adds up to saying that raising children has actually

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Speaker 1: never been easier. Our children are living longer, they're living healthier,

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Speaker 1: they're more educated, they have better work life balance, and

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Speaker 1: so objectively, they're going to have a better life than

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Speaker 1: any other time in history. They're not going to die

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Speaker 1: from a simple bacterial infection. They've access to medical technologies

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Speaker 1: that were unimaginable a century ago, and they're more likely

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Speaker 1: to not just graduate primary school but also received a

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Speaker 1: degree in higher education. They can eat bananas and oranges

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Speaker 1: and chocolate whenever they want. They can travel the world

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Speaker 1: without risking scurvy, and they can access all the information

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Speaker 1: that the world has to offer in just a few

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Speaker 1: taps of the screen. Our concerns for our children are

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Speaker 1: no longer so intimately about life and death, which means

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Speaker 1: that on the whole, raising children to adulthood and a

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Speaker 1: good adulthood is really easy. The problem is that parenting

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Speaker 1: feels really hard, and a big part of that is

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Speaker 1: what is called the slow life strategy. So before we

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Speaker 1: had this sort of fast life strategy where we had

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Speaker 1: lots of kids and hope that some of them will

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Speaker 1: get to adulthood, whereas now we're having fewer children and

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Speaker 1: we're putting a huge amount of investment in each one.

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Speaker 1: And this is something that gene Pliny, is the author

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Speaker 1: of Generations, has studied extensively, and she said something to

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Speaker 1: this effect. She said that kids now are less independent.

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Speaker 1: Teenagers are taking longer to get their driver's license, they

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Speaker 1: don't go out with friends as often, and they don't

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Speaker 1: drink alcohol, they don't have sex as much, they don't

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Speaker 1: have a paid job. They're taking longer to grow up.

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Speaker 1: So it's got some good side effects like middle aged

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Speaker 1: people are looking and feeling younger than their grandparents did,

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Speaker 1: but this life trajectory is slowed down. And a negative

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Speaker 1: side effect of that is that we're parenting with much

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Speaker 1: more intensity than we ever have before. Instead of trying

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Speaker 1: to divide our time and our money across six, seven, eight, nine,

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Speaker 1: ten kids, we're trying to put all of it into

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Speaker 1: just one or two, maybe three children. And so we've

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Speaker 1: seen this huge shift, so we are having smaller families now,

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Speaker 1: we have fewer kids, who are investing more in each child,

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Speaker 1: and each child is now the beneficiary of a larger

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Speaker 1: investment of our time. For example, instead of just having

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Speaker 1: maybe one extra curricular activity or none, our children are

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Speaker 1: now going from gymnastics to sm lessons, to basketball, to

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Speaker 1: violin or whatever it is, instead of being left to

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Speaker 1: just kind of sort out their homework by themselves, so

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Speaker 1: they might be being tutored in four or five different subjects.

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Speaker 1: And instead of just being left to deal with sibling squabbles,

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Speaker 1: now playdates are being arranged, social interactions are monitored, and

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Speaker 1: disagreements are being resolved by adults instead of between peers.

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Speaker 1: So we see that intensive parenting isn't just possible. Now

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Speaker 1: it's really become the norm, and it's definitely not all bad.

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Speaker 1: So we definitely see that there are some benefits to this.

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Speaker 1: My kids are getting a lot more one on one time,

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Speaker 1: we're caring about their feelings more, we're protecting them more

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Speaker 1: from danger. But we're also making this mistake that if

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Speaker 1: some of a little bit of something is good, a

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Speaker 1: lot is better, and so we're ranging. We're kind of

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Speaker 1: stepping into this helicopter parenting territory, which we know is

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Speaker 1: not so good. So we might believe that we're providing

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Speaker 1: them opportunities and support for their physical development by putting

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Speaker 1: them in all these boarding programs, but in reality, we're

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Speaker 1: seeing that they would get just as much benefit with

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Speaker 1: unstructured physical play. We think that we're helping them with

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Speaker 1: academic development by tutoring them across range of subjects, but

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Speaker 1: we also see that this is actually not necessarily the

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Speaker 1: best When we factor in student motivation and sociodemographic variables,

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Speaker 1: tutoring is not actually that great, and it can even

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Speaker 1: negatively impact student mental health through increasing stress, increasing sleep

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Speaker 1: deprivation and things like that. And we might think that

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Speaker 1: we're helping them in their social development through mediating all

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Speaker 1: their squobbles. But the truth is that they could probably

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Speaker 1: do better with more opportunities to hurt each other's feelings,

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Speaker 1: because getting it wrong is a really important step towards

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Speaker 1: learning how to get it right. But even if we

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Speaker 1: could see through our intensity of helicopter parenting type of

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Speaker 1: style was in fact good for kids, which it's not,

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Speaker 1: it's having a really really bad impact on us as parents.

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Speaker 1: It's really quite literally killing us in some ways. It's

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Speaker 1: associated with lower life satisfaction, with increased stress and levels

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Speaker 1: of depression. And in countries where intensive parenting is the

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Speaker 1: normal levels of parental burnout are dramatically high, and burnout

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Speaker 1: itself is related to sleep disturbances and sleep disorders, addiction,

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Speaker 1: and even suicidal ideation. And so that's why I say

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Speaker 1: that parenting is so hard now. Intensive parenting is so

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Speaker 1: widespread that everyone suffers either from burning out trying to

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Speaker 1: live up to this unattainable perfect standard, or from feeling

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Speaker 1: guilt about not even trying. And intensive parenting is so

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Speaker 1: ingrained that a lot of us won't even realize that

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Speaker 1: we're doing it. We just kind of assume that our

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Speaker 1: level of over protectiveness our level of engagement in our

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Speaker 1: children's lives is just normal and appropriate and expected, and so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's why parenting is so hard now. It's because we're

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Speaker 1: trying to live up to this really unattainable standard of

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Speaker 1: what we think we should be doing. And when we

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Speaker 1: think about how the goalpost of shifts, we see that

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Speaker 1: we're no longer satisfied now that our children are literate.

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Speaker 1: We feel like we're only good parents if they're making

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Speaker 1: it into a really prestigious university. We're not grateful anymore

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Speaker 1: that our children don't work in coal mines. We now

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Speaker 1: expect them to become lawyers or doctors or launch a

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Speaker 1: multi billion dollar tech firm. We don't really think it's

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Speaker 1: a miracle that our child is alive and healthy at

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Speaker 1: the age of fifteen. We only think that they're physically

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Speaker 1: in a good condition if they've made it onto the

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Speaker 1: school swimming team or the school's track team. And so

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Speaker 1: I think, really the thing is that we need to

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Speaker 1: consider lowering the bar again and bringing those goalposts back.

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Speaker 1: We don't need to make it harder for ourselves by

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Speaker 1: thinking they were only good parents. If our children now

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Speaker 1: have a better chance than ever of succeeding in this world.

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Speaker 1: That's true, irrespective of the fact that you reach them

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Speaker 1: fifteen minutes a night or not. It's true whether you

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Speaker 1: put them in violin class or not. They're probably going

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Speaker 1: to live a good life, way better than our grandparents did,

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Speaker 1: way better than our great grandparents did. So the next

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Speaker 1: time we feel guilty about the fact that our children

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Speaker 1: will probably be in therapy one day talking about how

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Speaker 1: terrible their child was because we did something wrong that

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Speaker 1: was never even a thing before, like maybe we did

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Speaker 1: not buy them the latest iPad or the latest whatever,

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Speaker 1: we can just kind of remind ourselves that from most

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Speaker 1: of human history, therapy didn't even exist.

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Speaker 2: So parenting is hard because we make it hard. I

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Speaker 2: think that's the take home message back.

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Speaker 1: Yep, yep, we're just putting these too much expectations on ourselves, Like,

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Speaker 1: you know, our kids. Our kids are doing all right. Okay,

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Speaker 1: they're doing all right.

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Speaker 2: So my plan this afternoon is to take a breath

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Speaker 2: and go for a walk with the kids with no

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Speaker 2: expectations and no pressure, And I just think that that's

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Speaker 2: probably going to be the best thing I can do

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Speaker 2: with them, or if it's if it's wet and raining.

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Speaker 2: I might play a card game at the table. I

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Speaker 2: don't like games, but the kids do. That's that's it.

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Speaker 2: Keep it simple, keep it simple, and unless they really

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Speaker 2: do need appropriate therapeutic help, don't try to be their therapist.

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Speaker 1: Just be their parent. Yeah, just be grateful. Like in

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Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, the leading cause of death was teeth,

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Speaker 1: and I don't think my child's going to die of teeth.

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Speaker 2: I had no idea that teeth could kill. Yep, that

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Speaker 2: sounds kind of terrifying. I'm imagining a really bad B

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Speaker 2: grade horror film. But hey, Beck, if people want to

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Speaker 2: find out more about you and your substack, where do

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Speaker 2: they go?

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Speaker 1: So you can just look for me on substack. If

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Speaker 1: you just type in lessons learned or beckd Alawhate, it

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Speaker 1: should pop.

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Speaker 2: Right up and we will link to that in the

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Speaker 2: show notes. Beck delhoy As always a pleasure having you

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Speaker 2: on the Happy Families Podcast. Thanks so much, Thank you

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Speaker 2: for having me. The Happy Families Podcast is produced by

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Speaker 2: Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer.

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Speaker 2: For more information about making your family happier, please check

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Speaker 2: out Beck's substack Lessons learned and visit Happyfamilies dot com,

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Speaker 2: dot au,