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You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist is a podcast for seekers, dreamers, and questioners that intimately explores the human experience. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills years of wisdom gained from her practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She invites guests from a broad variety of disciplines and many walks of life, including researchers, writers, artists, healers, advocates, inventive outliers, and creative geniuses. Together, they investigate, illuminate, and inspire transformation - in the self, relationships, and society. Curious about many things, Stephanie’s uniquely interdisciplinary psychological lens tackles challenging social issues while encouraging personal and relational wellness. Join this journey through the inner wilderness.
Swell AI Transcript: 108. Babygate FINAL.mp3
Stephanie Winn: Here's what I said that was so controversial that started it all off. I said, in my role as a therapist, I have had an increasingly difficult time keeping my mouth shut whenever a pregnant woman or new mom was planning on sending her baby to daycare so she could return to work. This separation is unnatural and far from optimal. So that's what I said that blew up. The internet went wild. You must be some kind of therapist. Alright, today we are going to talk about what I am calling Babygate 2024, the meltdown that the internet had over my statements along the lines of babies need their mothers. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to bring together a panel of wise women. So I am delighted to be sitting here today with some old friends from the podcast. I have Robin Atkins, Laura Haines and Amy Sousa and today we're going to talk about babies and boobies and nature and nurture and what we need and what's optimal and the compromises and sacrifices that we have to make and child rearing in the 21st century all very exciting stuff Thank you, ladies, so much for joining me. We're going to go around and have each guest share where you might have heard them before if you're a long-term listener of this podcast, as well as a little bit about their background, expertise, and what they've been up to, starting with Robin.
Robin Atkins: Hi, thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate you, Stephanie. I was on Episode 27, Robin Atkins' Two Therapists Debate Abortion with you, which is still one of my favorite podcasts I've ever done of all time and one of my favorite to listen to of all time. You did that so brilliantly and I appreciate that. I'm so looking forward to being on this podcast with Amy and Laura as well. My personal history, I've been pregnant six times. I have four living children. My first, I was able to wear for two years straight. She went to work with me every day that I worked. My second was a preemie in the NICU and kind of all chaos and all hell broke loose and life was complete. craziness for about six months after that, not a normal postpartum experience at all. My third and fourth living babies, I was working. When I went back to work around eight-ish weeks, the third baby, I was working for an agency doing home-based therapy, pumping in my car in between clients. And my fourth, I was in private practice. And so I did a slow return to work and set up childcare for the two little ones at that point. So that's kind of my private experience with having babies and some postpartum and childcare along the way. I'm ready to admit from the gate, I did not do it as my ideal or my optimum would be. And I'm more than happy to discuss where I think I could have done better and the ways that that's impacted my own children. And also I have been specializing in reproductive mental health for 10 years. I've been doing therapy for nearly 20 and specializing in reproductive mental health. So this is a topic that comes up often when I'm working with patients who are either getting ready to birth or who have recently birthed and looking at going back to work with the moms, the babies, and the dads and how it affects all of them.
Stephanie Winn: Thank you so much, Robin. You have a wide range of parenting experiences and expertise on the subject.
Laura Wiley Haynes: Laura? Hi, my name is Laura Wiley Haynes, and I was on episode 40, which was entitled Early Child Development, Trauma and Attachment. My background is, well, I'm a mother of three and a grandmother of two, and I learned a lot about child development when I was a young mother. I had a mother myself who is an anthropologist, so that was sort of coherent with the way I was raised, more of an attachment parenting type of approach. I have a stepdaughter that I've raised since the age of two. I have two sons that I gave birth to, both long-term breastfed, total of six years of breastfeeding for me among two kids. And I have a background in childbirth education. I was a Bradley birth teacher and as a La Leche League leader for about 25 years. So yeah, and looking at the attachment practices that I used, I say they stand you in very good stead over the lifetime of your child, because now my children are all young adults.
Stephanie Winn: Thank you, Laura, for bringing your wisdom here today. And Amy?
Amy Sousa: Yes. Thank you all. I'm so excited to be here with everyone. And thanks, Stephanie, for hosting us. Yeah. My name is Amy Souza. I have a background in psychology, specifically depth psychology, which means a lot of focus on embodiment. Your audience would have seen me on episode nine, which was emotional empowerment through embodied awareness. which was such a fun early conversation to have on your show. It's been so cool to see where your show has gone since then and where it continues to grow. I nannied my way through my undergraduate, so I have a lot of experience working with little kids. I don't have children of my own, I spent 15 years working in the New York City public schools as a theater educator and then after that I was the education director of a theater. So a lot of my work has to do with embodiment. My work since then has been about following one's instincts and intuition. knowing how our body is a guide and looking at the different developmental stages that kids go through, how they develop embodied awareness, how they learn to trust their bodies and themselves. And the research that I have coming up will be critiquing the DSM as a document that often pathologizes our healthy human emotions and doesn't give us ultimately a lot of tools Sometimes, besides medicalizing, tools to actually grapple with those emotions and use them as guides to help us go where we're going.
Stephanie Winn: Thank you, Amy. So hopefully listeners can imagine at this point why this is such a great panel to have on this topic. So for those listening who did not witness the drama, whether you're not on Twitter slash X or just didn't catch it, I'm going to explain what happened. Now, I will start by saying I post a lot on that platform and I never know what's going to get a lot of attention and what's just going to sort of float by like any of the other gazillions of opinions on the internet floating by. So I did not expect the tweet to go viral. It has gotten more than two million views at this point. But basically, I had retweeted a video of a bunch of young children crying when their parents came to pick them up from daycare. They looked to be about between the ages of one and three years old. And the video had a caption saying something like, you can never convince me that this doesn't hurt children. And here's what I said that was so controversial that started it all off. I said, in my role as a therapist, I have had an increasingly difficult time keeping my mouth shut whenever a pregnant woman or new mom was planning on sending her baby to daycare so she could return to work. This separation is unnatural and far from optimal. So that's what I said that blew up. There were some follow-up tweets after that, like, clarifying my stance on various issues. But the internet went wild, and it was a lot of supportive comments echoing the sentiment, parents chiming in with their own experiences, and then some defensive comments, and then some really unhinged ones. ranging from, you know, that I'm saying that fathers don't matter, to that my punishment for having this opinion should be that I am basically personally financially responsible for paying the bills of all moms, or that I don't get to have an opinion unless I'm ready to propose a policy solution that will end poverty for parents. Around the world like I mean just basically like you are not allowed to have an opinion unless you personally single-handedly are going to fix the entire society that created the Financial situations that parents find themselves in where moms feel like they need to go back to work There was a lot of that. I was accused of shitting on moms. I was accused of I mean just all kinds of stuff. So that's what happened. And I just felt like it was worthy of a discussion. So let me just kind of start off by asking you guys, Robin, Laura, Amy, what was your reaction to seeing all of that?
Laura Wiley Haynes: I can tell you my reaction was joy. I was glad someone was putting it out there and I was glad that somebody who works at a daycare had those feelings for children.
Stephanie Winn: Oh, because some of the commenters were also people who had worked at daycare and were saying, yeah, the person who posted it. Mm hmm.
Laura Wiley Haynes: Mm hmm.
Stephanie Winn: Yeah, there were a lot of early childhood educators weighing in and saying, yeah, this isn't ideal. Robin, what were you about to say?
Robin Atkins: I didn't see a lot of the controversy at first. At first, it hit me on a very personal level of, oh, I can relate a lot to… I didn't use daycare. I used either in-home providers or personal friends in the family that my children still go to, but even in those circumstances, I see how it's not optimal for my kids, even at the ages they're at now, they're seven and up, and they're constant, mommy, do you have to go to work today kind of things. So it hit me on a very personal level of, oh good, I can talk about this. And then when I saw the controversy, I was like, wow, lots of people continually do not know how to read something and not apply shame to themselves when that isn't at all the intent. And how it was very, it didn't seem brave at first to me that you said it because that's such a natural thing. Like babies need their moms. But yeah. So and then when you had mentioned the controversy, that's when I started looking into the replies and I was like, wow. I see this a lot in other topics talked about on X that are controversial, the same kind of unhinged, if you believe this, you must do all of these other things. Or if you speak an opinion, that's the equivalent of you're forcing us all to live by your opinion, which is wild to me. Like I didn't realize free speech was forced. So I just thought it was really interesting. I'm so glad you decided let's have a conversation about it because so often these big events happen and then they just kind of disappear and nobody talks about what is actually going on in culture around them.
Amy Sousa: Yeah, I think that there was, you know, the video told its own story. You know, I think it's something that is, I thought it was a new, I mean, I've heard critiques of daycares before or having your children daycare, but it was just a very visual and obvious presentation of what these children are struggling with and going through. And I found it, you know, sort of, and of course, that people were taking it so very personally, you know, that that, you know, many women were defensive, many men were defensive. and taking it in this personal attack way. But I think what was great about what you were, what you were saying, Stephanie, and what you did with presenting it on your platform, is that I think it's really urgent that all of us center children and their needs. And I think even kind of what Robin was saying before we started about, you know, being able to self-examine, you know, we all are in circumstances that limit our choices. And so sometimes we can't do the, you know, like the highest, best thing that we would desire. But I don't think that should stop us or limit us from looking at what what the real priorities are for children's health and well-being, emotional stability, and just security. You know, those were kids who really, to me, looked like they were lacking in some security. They did not have a safe place to express. They were in, you know, in, yeah, just in insecure environments, and that was showing in their responses. So I think as long, I think it's really important for all of us and anyone who is listening and anyone who was defensive, you know, to really understand that the reason that we are having the conversation is not to critique what some parents need to do because of their limiting circumstances, but to have a conversation that is centering the needs and well-being of kids. What do they need physically? What do they need emotionally? And ultimately, we're critiquing a much larger system than a nuclear family unit or a single mother family unit. You know, we are not critiquing those units. We are critiquing a system which forces parents into these circumstances and what it does to our kids.
Stephanie Winn: Yeah, and you know, my expertise is not in economics. I don't wish to particularly weigh in on the age old, you know, communism versus capitalism fight or, you know, finger pointing, who do we blame for the system? And how do we know that a different system would be better or worse? That was not the intention, at least of that particular thread, so much as to say, what direction should our compass be pointing? And I think Robin and Amy, you bring up a lot of similar thoughts to me, and it has to do with knowing what the ideal should be and being free to talk about what the ideal is. Robin, you said something very similar to one of my follow-up tweets on this subject, which is Basically, I said that one of the differences between me and people who get unhinged like super mad at strangers on the internet for expressing opinions is that I do not feel personally attacked, nor do I feel like my family, my way of life, or anything is being personally attacked when people state that what's ideal is different from what I have personally done with my life. So for example, I think the ideal optimal environment for children whenever possible is that nuclear family where they are with both biological parents full time. That did not stop me from falling in love with a man who was a single father whose prior marriage did not work out and committing to raising my stepchildren with him in a blended family situation where they have to go back and forth between homes. No, if I could wave a magic wand and create a perfect world for everyone, yes, all children would get to be with both biological parents full-time in a happy, healthy situation. However, I'm not personally attacked by anyone who points out that that's the ideal, you know, as long as they're not saying all step-parents are terrible people. And if they were to say that, I would dismiss them because they obviously have no appreciation for those of us with big enough hearts to try to love someone else's kids as if they were our own, which I think is a pretty cool way to be. So I don't feel personally attacked when anyone wants to talk about what might be an ideal worth striving for as a society, even knowing that most of us will fall short. But what happens when you're not free to talk about that? What happens when nobody can agree on what direction our compass should be pointing is this state of anomie, normlessness. And in his latest book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt talks about anomie or normlessness as one of the detrimental factors that's creating so much anxiety in this generation. So for example, the fact that in an online world, nothing is synced up, it's all asynchronous, and we live in a sort of timeless state where there's neither day nor night nor seasons, the moon and sun aren't rising and setting. In that online world, there's not that rhythm that holds us together as a society connected in time and space by nature. And similarly, if we can't even acknowledge that it would really be ideal for a baby to be with his or her mother for the first few years of life, if we can't even talk about that, because some families that have made different choices feel threatened, then I fear we're going to lose all knowledge, eventually all knowledge, of what actually supports human thriving. And so many people were weighing in about what's ideal for the mom and dad, or mom and mom, or whatever, and their financial circumstances. And it's like, OK, yeah, I'm not talking about what's ideal for the parents and their financial circumstances. I'm talking about what's ideal for the baby. And that's what I hear you guys, you know, that's at least one thing I think all four of us agree on is that we should be able to talk about what the baby needs.
Laura Wiley Haynes: Well, even when there's no norm, when we're in a time of lack of norms, there are species-specific norms of our species that we know about. You know, Heather Hying talks about that stuff. There are ways in which human beings, like apes, gorillas, and bonobos, and other primates, you know, have evolved to be together with their babies. Part of the reason with humans is because baby's brains have to be born at a very early developmental stage in order to get out of the mother's pelvis. If we were grown to a state of great maturity in utero and could be born like a little baby horse that's up and running across the field on day one, It might be a different discussion, but we are born at a state of such incredible neurological immaturity that the containment of an adult, ideally the mother, but a compassionate adult, a father, a nanny, a grandma, beloved of the child who can calm the child is critical because their brain is very immature, their ability to self-regulate is zero, and they're learning. So if you let a baby learn, no one comes to pick me up, I'm, you know, ignored. They don't like me. You're letting them learn something that's terrible to learn. Whereas if you're containing them, what you're letting them learn is feelings come and go. Sometimes things are bad. I get helped. people care about me. And what I saw in the video was that these kids are bonded to their mothers or whoever's picking them up. Their dad, it could be too. They are bonded to them. They aren't bonded to the daycare workers. And the proof of the pudding is the children are sort of vague. They're not looking at you. They're kind of dissociative. They're kind of blank looking. And then mom walks in and it's like all of the crap feeling that I've suppressed for the last, probably not all day, probably three hours. End of day is probably worst, worse than how a baby feels at noon. But what you see is that they're carrying this weight silently, dissociative, and then they blurt it out with their tears.
Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. So Laura, you were starting to talk about a developmental and evolutionary perspective on what humans need, starting with, as you said, the fact that we've evolved these large brains, which, you know, has this influence of meaning that we have a very long childhood. So I want to invite you, Laura, to continue along that thread and tell us, again, if we could wave a magic wand and create a perfect world, what environment do you see as being optimal for children for what stages? So if you were to design the perfect childhood, How long would the baby be with mom? 90% of the time, 80% of the time, at what age does the baby or child reach a stage where they're ready to be away from the parents for seven or eight hours? Just tell us what you think about that.
Laura Wiley Haynes: That's a really good question, and I guess Anything that's developmental is variable. You can have kids that are fast talkers and kids that are slow talkers, but they're climbing the ladder of the slide and the fast talker can't even walk yet. You know, they're very Individuals, children are individuals. So what one child might be ready for it too, another child might not be ready for it too. That's a big disclaimer. If you have three older brothers and sisters, you're going to be ready at one for what your eldest sibling wasn't ready for at four, because you've watched all your elder siblings doing the thing, walking into kindergarten with their lunchbox or whatever it might be. But in an ideal world, I would say that you need a parent or a very trusted other who is not a come and go kind of person, but a stick around kind of person. And you need that until you are able to self-regulate. And to a degree, those kids in the daycare were sort of self-regulating with dissociation. They weren't sobbing on the floor. They weren't hitting people. They had a grip on themselves in a certain way, but ideally it would be I miss my mommy, is it time for her to come yet? And that would be more of a baby who is aware of their feelings, knew what was going on, went to another grownup for help that might imply a little better self-regulation. So ideally, I think you should have external co-regulation until you can accomplish self-regulation. And self-regulation, at least Dr. Alan Shore, who's a psychiatrist I think is very smart, he posits that that's a prerequisite to having a sense of self, which we often talk about, all four of us. And if you don't know that you're in control of your own feelings, if somebody else has to come in and make it better or rev you up or solve everything, you can't really know that you're your own person. And so his theory is that we begin to develop the ability to regulate our emotions and then we start kind of like getting on to the fact that we're our own person because we used to need somebody else to do this. But somehow today I was able to take a deep breath and wait and not cry, you know, myself. And that's how you start going, you know, oh, I have these capacities and I have these abilities. So I would say that is going to be between two and four for most kids. And if if I were in charge of, you know, everything, I might suggest a minimum of two to three years of subsidies like universal basic income, I think would make a lot of sense. for vulnerable mother-baby couples to sort of put a floor under that dyad, help them cope, not be quite so hand-to-mouth, et cetera. I know there's just something recently I read in Washington and Seattle where they gave $500 to a bunch of poor people with no strings attached and like doubled their rate of employment and a lot of them got secure housing and this was just $500 a month for a year. So it doesn't always take that much to stabilize people that are marginal. Then I would say, here's the thing about the natural system that I keep feeling despair over losing, is that the natural system also teaches the mother how to be a mother. It teaches the baby how to self-regulate, which is really sophisticated. But it teaches the mother how to regulate another, when to be selfless, when to draw boundaries, when to be sick of it and over it and just take a bath and let the kids whine. You have to come up with some answers on some of this stuff because nobody's just 24-7 perfect. Nobody is just always patient and an earth mother and especially not a stay-at-home mother who's got three kids pulling on her and is trying to get also some grocery shopping done or pull some laundry, you know, out of the dryer or whatever. So I think what happens is during this stay-at-home mothering or hands-on parenting, you're improving your skills, your mettle, your judgment, your credibility with your child. They're getting the feeling, if you're a good enough parent, they're getting the feeling they can bring things to you, distressful things that you'll, maybe once in a while you'll overreact, but mostly you'll cope okay. And that is teaching them about going to others for help. I mean, here we have a society where we're teaching kids to be mindful and go to others for help when they're 14. It's like, come on, be aware of your body when you're one and two and three, and have a mother that says, ooh, I see you're clenching your fists. Are you scared of that duck? And then suddenly that kid is like, oh, when I clench my body, maybe I'm scared. and my mom sees it and, you know, and she's not thinking it's weird to be scared of the ducks. You know what I mean? Like a lot goes on in these stupid quotidian interactions. So I think ideally, when you've stuck through that and you've developed a feel and some skills and some credibility, then you are able to discern, well, first of all, your child, if you've been helping them is able to self-manage. And then you're able to discern that your child can safely do certain things. Well, OK, you can walk to the playground with your brother. And I'll watch you till you get to the end of the block. And then you're going to wave to me before you cross the street so I know you're really watching. You can set it up so that they can succeed. And you're inculcating the kinds of skills they're going to need. as they gradually move away from you and head into school or go to an after school sport, if you're a homeschooler, you know, eventually your kid's not going to have you there to buffer them from everything. And the idea is, before you get there, that you've noticed the child handling things. And even super little children that, you know, Dan Worre on Twitter has some really great videos of little kids. And you see even like little two-year-olds are able to say to their one-year-old brother, don't worry, I'll hold you. It's OK. You know, they're already internalizing parental skills. So again, my fear is that by separating mothers and babies, not only do we stress babies, we disempower mothers. By not talking about it, we're pandering to women. We're not telling them the actual truth about what's going on. The only people I know who have highly anxious children in my circle of friends put them in daycare very early. I'll take that back. One had a nanny who then quit. And so there's two who went to daycare very early and one who had a nanny who quit. And coincidentally, of all my circle of friends, those are the kids with really serious anxiety. And so I'm thinking when a trait or a state becomes a trait, if you put yourself back in that TikTok and you're thinking about what that kid is feeling for the last several hours at least, probably, is, where is she? Where is she? Where is she? She's never coming. She's never coming. And what is that but anxiety? So that's where I'm coming from with it. I think women deserve the truth. I think any mother, given a little bit of support, would want to make the most intelligent choices for their child. Most mothers deeply love their children. But somebody has to start telling the truth about what's going on, or we're not going to fix this. And we're never going to get dads to step in better if we don't. articulate the importance of attachment, and we're never going to get public policy that we need. But I do think that if we could convince people, you know, it is a lot cheaper to give $5,000 a year to that guy in Seattle, right, than it is to have that person homeless and on fentanyl and in jail. Those are much more costly outcomes.
Stephanie Winn: Thank you, Laura. That was all very beautifully said. I'm going to summarize and then riff off of a couple of pieces of what you've shared. So one thing I heard you say is I heard you distinguish what happens at daycare from what happens with natural supports. This was one of the places people were getting tripped up. I saw people commenting, women have always worked outside of the home, which I said, like, read some Mary Harrington and get back to me on that. Like, women have worked inside the home, and the home was the homestead and the farm and the fields. Anyway, okay, so they've, right, so, and then the, you know, it takes a village, right, that It was never meant to fall entirely on women. I think that's something we all agree on but what you distinguish is that these daycare providers and Sometimes nannies these are people who might come and go these aren't strong attachment figures It's very different from dad auntie uncle grandma grandpa older sister older brother cousin you know the people who are always going to be there and That makes it very different from an attachment standpoint Another important thing that you said is you actually named an age range, which was one of the things that some of the critics who chimed in on the internet were asking me to do. You named the range of two to four, saying that that is usually when you start to see a sense of self-regulation. And I do want to come back to the topic of self-regulation at some point and ask what signs you would look for as indicators of self-regulation, but we'll bookmark that for now. I also named the age range 2-4 when pressed because that is, as I understand it, the natural age range of natural weaning, if children are allowed to wean naturally. And I think the fact that there is this incredible symbiosis between the mother and baby for the first few years of life, where the mother is creating breast milk, which is the optimal food for the child, and that breast milk responds to the baby's needs. Depending on if the kid has an infection, her breast milk will change. I mean, it's just such an incredible thing. We know that breasts are the best source of nutrition, comfort, and bonding for babies. And so I think the fact that children are designed to need them every few hours for the first two to four years, give or take, is one of the best sort of clues we can look toward if we're looking to answer the question, how were moms and babies designed to be? Maybe they weren't designed to be separated for more than a few hours. during those first two to four years. I also want to put a pin in the topic of object permanence, because we know that object permanence starts to develop prior to one year old. But I also wonder, from an attachment standpoint, it's one thing to know that if an object is eclipsed by another object, that the first object continues to exist. That's one form of object permanence. It's another to know that mom's coming back from an attachment standpoint. And depending on how long she's been gone and how stable her caregiving has been. You mentioned the process of the mother learning how to be a mother, the importance of bonding and learning for her as well. And then finally, you started to get into the topic of solutions. You're a big proponent of universal basic income. And I'm certainly not a policy expert, but I think there's a case to be made for at least having conversations about the pros and cons of how money can be spent to improve society and if we look at the fact that a lot of money has been put into early childhood education in the hands of non-parental, non-familial educators. If you look at the cost down the road as well, and that's another thing I want to open up for discussion with all of you, right? The cost years down the road of not creating a secure foundation for people in terms of the mental and even physical health burdens, criminality, unemployment, relational instability, divorce, all of that kind of stuff that's downstream of insecure attachment. So there's definitely a conversation to be had there about, like, is UBI the solution? Or, you know, what if we took some of the money that we're putting into, like, publicly funded programs and just gave it directly to families to take the pressure off so that Those families that want to spend those precious first few years with their kids are able to do so. That being said, the whole time you were talking, Laura, I could see Robin and Amy taking notes, and I'm curious who's feeling the most, like, burning desire to chime in, because I'm sure there's lots to say.
Robin Atkins: So as I was taking notes, I kind of saw three separate themes, Laura, that you brought out, and I'm going to follow your order of them. The first is kind of the biological theme of mom and baby and what's needed there. The second, a more cultural aspect to all of this. And last, relational and what it means for moms, and I see a misogyny piece there too. Not in what you said, but in what we're seeing culturally around this. So I want to start with the biology first. And I come at it from a little bit different perspective, but I'm seeing the same things you are. So when I had my second child in the NICU, years down the road as he was growing, we saw increasing signs of autism spectrum disorder. And none of my other children have that. And so I started doing research. And, you know, when you first start researching that, of course, it's vaccines, vaccines, vaccines. And there's actually no data suggesting vaccines cause autism. Just everybody knows that is it. I'm not saying it doesn't. We just don't have data that it does. But with there was a lot of research out of Indianapolis showing that preemies are 25 percent more likely than any other population to be on the autism spectrum. and my son was eight weeks early. And when we started looking at why, we could see that while all of the wiring is there, by birth, the actual synopsis and forming of communication between various parts of the brain has not formed yet completely until you're two or so. And so the attachment and bonding that's done through birth, we see a difference in children born via C-section and vaginally too, by the way, and how they're able to attach and bond. But from birth all the way through breastfeeding up until two is the very foundation of attachment and bonding in the frontal lobe. Also, the child has spent the last nine plus months in one singular environment. They are so attuned to their mother, both smell, sound, they have their mother's heartbeat memorized. We know in NICU with kangaroo care, if a mom comes and is skin to skin with baby, baby stats tend to regulate to where they should be from where they've been, just based on what mom's body is doing. And while dads, when they do canker repair, it does help, it's not to the extent that mothers are helpful in that way. So biologically, we just see that there's this natural relationship. And like, I love the word symbiosis, Stephanie, because it's symbiotic from the very beginning, even during pregnancy, between mom and baby. and how that relationship develops and grows. And I agree that age two to four is where we start to see self-regulation. I think it takes until twenties, mid twenties, to really have a good sense of that. And I have two teenagers now, and let me tell you, it's a self-regulation practice every day, but they're getting much, much better at it. And so that's the biological piece I wanted to add into it, is that research and science very much does show what you're saying to be true. I will say we have not done a ton of research on how cesarean impacts the mom or separation impacts the mom. I see it in my practice all the time, but I don't see research on it, which is interesting because culturally we're so very focused right now on what does mom want or what's best for mom or what's best for dad. But research is so very focused on babies and somehow the two aren't meeting. So just something to think about for all of us. Culturally, I think we have to take into account what's happened generationally. So boomers were largely raised by mom at home. Gen Xers, which is my generation, were latchkey kids for the most part. So both parents working, we were either at afterschool care or daycare or came home and took care of ourselves till mom or dad got home. Millennials were raised with both parents working. But parents tended to be helicopter parents or snowplow parents. So helicopter parents are kind of always buzzing around making sure everything's safe and okay. Snowplow parents are pushing all the obstacles out of the way for their children. And it's not a whole lot of surprise we see that Gen Z is the most anxious. generation being raised by parents that always had parents. All of these generations have pros and cons. These are very large sweeping stereotypes. And I realize not everybody was raised in those circumstances, but and they all have their pros and cons. But what I noticed alongside of the shift in parenting was, as you said, where are we learning emotional education? It's been outsourced to schools. And even in the most recent State of the Union, it was we're going to pour billions into pre-K. And I thought, oh, and there we're outsourcing even more emotional regulation. And we end up with all these programs in school around mindfulness and social emotional learning, which isn't even actual social emotional learning. It's more cookie cutter programming around how they want kids to perform. not kids, how they actually grow and learn. And so we're not, it's not working. And we're seeing that come out of the school systems that it's not working. And then relationally where I see it going is as we continue to pursue the same track over and over again of children give birth and then within eight weeks, if a woman even gets eight weeks in the U.S. before going back to birth, we're already outsourcing a lot of this. And what it's not doing is giving women an opportunity to find environments where they can both pursue their passions from an intellectual, occupational perspective and mothering. And I just got to tell you from my experience with my first child, able to wear her to work for two years, I did a very good job at my employment and I did a very good job at my mother. And I had trusted people at my employment to hand her off to if I needed to have a private meeting. But it was so soothing for her and I. She's 16 now and to me the proof is in the pudding. When she has an issue, I am the safe place to go to. When she needs to get a little snarky, she knows she can do that with me and I'm either going to correct it if it goes too far or bounce back and forth with her. I'm just a very safe, attached place for her to find her independence with. Whereas my other children, all of them to varying degrees, aren't quite so sure. And I don't take that for granted that I had the blessing of being able to take her to work with me. And I made my own choices after that. But it would be nice to see setups where women could have their children present with them. And so, Laura, you got into a little bit of policy thing, and I want to touch on that a little bit. I'm not sold that on a federal level UBI would work because I just think federal government wastes a lot between DC and wherever you're living. And so I'm not sure on a federal level that worked. I'm completely comfortable with that on a local and somewhat on a state level. And I would be fine with us taking our current welfare system and turning it into more of a local system or a state run system. And I would be fine with rather than paying for programming, pay the money directly to parents, I would be 100% okay with that. I also think it would be kind of neat to see the government have to fundraise rather than them telling us where they're spending our money. If we could vote on the ballot what programs we wanted to fund, we would know very quickly where our society wanted to go from the people. Another couple out-of-the-box ideas that I've been talking about with a lot of women over the years, and some of this overlaps into the abortion debate on what do we do if women don't have the option of abortion and then they're either a single parent or they're working, how are they going to raise their children? So a lot of this touches over in the same areas. And some of the out-of-the-box ideas we came up with was, on universities, why don't we have the students that are taking secondary education or child development courses have an on-site daycare that the parents have access to throughout their school day and they can drop in. And it's also then a more secure long-term thing because the students are there for two to four years, start at the beginning, and so it's a more consistent person there for the child. and mom can be on site with the child as much as possible during the day. It would be great if we could have certain, I would love to have kids in class with mom up until six months. Then even when I have patients bring their babies in with me, because I wouldn't be very much of a reproductive mental health therapist if I said you couldn't, in my opinion. So up until six months, we're able to have very normal, easy conversations with very little interruption. Past that, we get a little creative. It could still work, but I could see how in the classroom that would get a little, little chaotic. Workplaces, I would love to see any kind of childcare that has to be provided outside the parent's home on site as well. So during breaks or lunches, mom can be with baby. Also for postpartum care, I would love to see a work share program where people can donate hours or vacation time or whatever. to postpartum parents, mother or father, so they could have longer extended time. It would cost the company little to nothing, and they could still get those shifts covered. And I think that we would see more people willing to do that than they are willing to pay taxes, quite honestly. So those are just some of the out-of-box ideas I thought. And I will tell you, when I've tried to get some of these programs going, Locally, a lot of it comes down to politicians more concerned about career. And so what are they voting on versus what are they voting against and whether or not that will get them reelected than thinking these are bad ideas. They think they're great ideas. They just don't know how to communicate them to the public and get elected on them because we are caught not just in this should women work or not work in the Democrat Republican paradigm, that we can't seem to find a middle ground of nuance in there. And so neither side is willing to brave it out to take a step in the right direction on it. Which brings me to the misogyny of all of it. I have been thinking since I saw the commotion around your tweet, Stephanie, about the assumption that women's reproductive biology is the problem. Why are we agreeing from the beginning that women bearing children is the problem rather than a society that doesn't welcome women's reproductive biology and their children wholeheartedly as the problem? And I did see a very large account quote tweet you with, it's a village. Well, in some cultures, it still is a village and it's lovely, but it's not a village absent the mother. It's a village alongside supporting the mother. She might take a break an hour here or there throughout the day, but she's still largely primary caregiver. So it was a completely inaccurate representation of what happens. So I see this misogyny from the beginning of it's women's bodies are the problem and then it's our children that are the problem, not that culture is the problem. So that's where I'll leave it for now.
Laura Wiley Haynes: Can I just add one thing to what you said, Robin, about the culture? It's almost as though we're a baby-free culture in the adult world. We've siloed everybody by age. And another naturally occurring kind of learning that goes on in a natural parenting environment is that you're not age siloed. You're with your mom. You're at the grocery store. You're talking to the dry cleaner. she runs into a friend. And you're just observing adult to adult, adult to adult, adult to adult interactions all day long. When you're that baby, that gets worn. And so Bruce Perry is the doctor who talks about child development, and he pointed out that in a kind of typical hunter-gatherer situation, where you have five or six adults per every child under six, due to breastfeeding, due to natural child spacing, due to the composition of a normal hunter-gatherer tribe, and then in a daycare, you've changed the ratio utterly, and now it's five babies to one adult. But it's even worse than that, because it's 1 25th the amount of modeling. when you go from five adults per one baby to one adult per five babies. And the number of interactions you're exposed to and the number of things you're learning. So I just wanted to add that on to not seeing babies at the workplace. And to mention, there are companies that do that. Patagonia has a really wonderful onsite daycare. Most universities do have it now.
Robin Atkins: The only thing I would add to that is we started homeschooling in 2020, and the difference I've seen with that modeling, like you said, because our kids are with us or other children that are homeschooled, our kids are very, very good at nuance, very, very good at, if they saw your tweet, Stephanie, they would be able to nuance out, oh, this isn't about all families, this isn't bashing these people, this is just a conversation about what is ideal. And I see that a lot in modeling when you are with other people that are allowed to think freely, speak freely, and learn freely, rather than this cookie-cutter paradigm we have going on.
Laura Wiley Haynes: Or get an explanation. Because, I mean, a huge amount of my mothering that I received and my fathering that I received, I remember was lessons. You know, this is why we don't lie. And think about let's think it through. And now what would happen if you did this and then they did that? You know, and I got a lot of that from my parents. And so that is part of what's going on in a stay at home parenting relationship.
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Amy Sousa: I think I want to start a little bit at the back end and work developmentally backwards. I think a really important critique to be made, what is culturally happening with the gender ideology movement is a real devaluation of mothers. and a real devaluation of the role of mothers. I think we can all observe that even just in the language of birthing parents, chest feeding of vulva owner, there is a lot of devaluing of women and our bodies and the unique role that we have in sexual development. And that role is to mother. And one of the roles of the mother, the most important role of the mother is to safeguard women. And, and actually all, all, almost all animals, definitely all mammals, the, the fiercest mammals are the mothers who are protecting their young. And that is to look at the attack on motherhood also as an attack on children, an attack on mother's ability to safeguard children and to protect children from predatory behavior. One thing, this came out to me from something Robin said, but I'm maybe not going to remember where it connected exactly to what she said. Oh, she said, parents are a safe place to go. Mothers are a safe place to go. And it just, all of a sudden it came into my mind, Jeffrey Marsh's, that phrase that he always tells kids about going no contact. I'm gonna teach you how to go no contact, going no contact. And what is this video that we just saw? You know, it's a little, this like little mini representation of kids losing bonding with their mothers, of being, in a whole daytime situation of quote unquote, you know, being in no contact with their with their primary care. Now, what Jeffrey Marsh is doing, of course, is really manipulating kids who who have an insecure parental bond who do not feel safe to go to their parents with their emotions, with their problems. He is interrupting and preying on those particular vulnerable kids who already do not feel that they have a safe, secure base with their parents and taking advantage of it by offering something that he knows that they need, that they desire at some very deep level. I think I also want to talk about, you know, safeguarding. The whole reason that it is important that kids learn regulation, learn how to process their emotions, learn how to trust their bodies. I mean, it is, of course, to grow up and be a functional, healthy adult. And part of that really is about being able to protect yourself, to be able to decipher and discern, listen to your instincts, listen to your emotions, listen to your intuition, and to be available to those things, to have the spontaneity of response, and to be able to have a spontaneous response to your instincts, to your emotions, you have to have that regulation and that security, the security to be able to access those emotions at any time. Kids who are living in anxiety, to live in anxiety is to be dissociated. It's to be dissociated from the present moment, to be future tripping about potentialities and about the environment, but it is not being in your sort of grounded, embodied state. It's all ready to be in a dissociative, disembodied way of being. When you're in anxiety, and Gavin DeBecker talks about this in his safeguarding books, to be in anxiety is actually to not be able to listen to a dangerous fear response should it arise. To be in a state of anxiety is to be in a mental loop. to be to be thinking rather than able to actually feel your feelings as they arise. And I wanted to, I really loved what Laura said about a state becomes a trait. So what these kids are doing all day, they are in a practice, you know, if you are in a practice of suppressing your emotions all day these kids are learning a practiced behavior of being in a state of dissociation and being in a state where they can't go to someone and I also wanted to touch on this is something that Laura actually said when she was on my YouTube a couple of weeks ago. Everyone should watch that. It was just such a great conversation. But you talked about the relationship between motion and emotion. In that primal state, in a natural state of being, a mother is walking around with her child. The child is on the mother. The child is feeling the regulation of her heartbeat, but the child is also just in that state of movement. And that's one of, as you mentioned, Laura, that is the first sense. That's the strongest sense that is inborn in an infant is that ability to sense being in motion. And there is a big connection between motion and emotion. And kids need to feel that ability to to trust their their primary caregiver to spontaneously be in their emotions to speak those emotions as they arise to cry and to immediately be responded to. And, you know, in these daycare environments, even if you had the the absolute best possible team, and the very most loving team, you know, I know that, you know, having nannied, I love the kids that I nannied for. And I'm sure that so many people who do work in daycares really love and bond with the kids that they're with. However, when you are in a place where you you have you know, 20 kids for three caregivers, it's just not possible to be that responsive. So the kid is also not able to be responsive themselves. They are also not able to be spontaneous because the caregivers cannot be spontaneous. They are not learning to be spontaneous. Also, an issue that's happening As Robin said, you know, these things are being implemented early and earlier there. The government is trying to, you know, talk about emotions with kids at three. But these these these programs that come out in daycares and schools that are supposedly teaching kids about emotions, they are they are so regimented. They're not particular. to each child. Both Laura and Robin have multiple children, so you know that each child has their own unique needs. One child is going to be that child who just immediately runs onto the playground and explores all the equipment. Your second child, you know, if you have that as your first child, maybe you think, oh, that's how kids are. you know, and then you have a second child who's like, No, I need to cling and hold on to mommy's leg and look around before I begin that exploration process. And I think that a lot of what is, you know, taught to kids is is so universal as to sometimes cause problems and challenges because if kids are told well this is how emotions work and they're like well that that's not how I am you know it it it's such a universally programmed situation that it's not allowing them to be Uniquely unique again. It's again. It's it's cutting off that ability to be spontaneous and to feel their own feelings and then the last thing I kind of wanted to say is that You know, it was it would my I I wonder how those older kids who are in the daycare are doing but I I noted that in the one that we happen to see all of the kids happened to be at that more early language acquisition phase. So these, these were, you know, look to me to be really twos and under, you know, these, a lot of those kids were under twos. So not, not fully formulated in language and The language acquisition phase, it's part of will building, it's part of healthy bodily autonomy, it's part of differentiating myself and other, and it's an authority building process as well. So when a child is in a bonded situation where they are able to speak confusing things and be responded to, That is a part of learning self-trust. You know, mommy that's a bird and the mom says that's a bird. Now I trust my eyes to tell me the truth about the world. I say mommy I'm scared, you know, or I have an owie and the mommy responds. Again, that is a process of learning self-trust, internal authority building. So if a child is ultimately in a state all day where they are suppressing emotions and suppressing language around those emotions, this is disrupting this process of gaining internal authority. And the only way to have appropriate boundaries and safeguarding later is to have these skills built in at these ages. And so I think, you know, we can kind of look at that video and see those kids and imagine how these are the very kids that grew up with specific vulnerabilities that are being preyed on by activists like Jeffrey Marsh. You know, these are kids who cannot name their own emotions with authority, who do not have that built-in self-trust. They are still in a place of insecurity and negotiation and seeking something that they are not finding within themselves. And the only way these kids can really have it and find it is to be with primary caregivers who can model it for them. That is, these are, these are not things that you can really mentally tell someone later. These are not things that we acquire through our prefrontal cortex analytical understanding way of processing. These are things that we embody, that we learn by embodying them, by feeling them out, by feeling into doing. So I think it's really important to talk about the stakes that we're seeing, you know, what is actually at stake if we allow these systems to become the new normal for all children. You know, I don't, I don't really think it is necessarily, you know, it's not really my, as you said, Stephanie, it's not my purview to come up with a new model. I, but I don't think this model is the best. And I don't, I think, you know, there's a lot of women who have careers that they love and they're passionate about. But there are many, many women who are doing a job because they need to pay bills. And they would be far more passionate about being with their kids and being at home, which is more than a job. It's not a job. It is, I don't know. I don't know what word to use for it, but it's something that's so much more beautiful and profound and nourishing. And I think many women would would love to have that be their the primary thing that they're doing with their life for at at those ages and their children.
Stephanie Winn: It's the most important work that there is. I mean, there's just nothing more important than laying the psychological foundation of a new being for the rest of their lives through creating secure attachment, through modeling regulation, and just all of those healthy, important things. We have so much ground to cover and so many deep thoughts. I'll just pick up on a couple of things you said, Amy. So you guys have brought up the topic of, state-sponsored programs, early childhood education, social-emotional learning, and things like that. I want to add that there is a meta-message. There's a message above the message, so to speak, that comes through those programs. So there's the messaging of the program, but there's also the messaging that this is an appropriate relationship for you as a child to have to this particular adult who is not in your family. This adult who is in your life for maybe a year max. whether it be a school teacher or whoever it is that's doing that, or even worse, if it's someone who's visiting just to do that program, which is that the role of bonding and trust doesn't matter and that you should be vulnerable in an environment where you might actually need to compartmentalize or even, as has been said, dissociate in order to survive that environment. I think it's a really confusing message to send kids that this is an environment where we talk about our feelings, yada, yada, yada, when maybe part of how they're getting through the day is by not thinking about their feelings. And there's a message being sent here that you should just trust anyone, which actually creates more anxiety. And Robin, maybe you've had a similar experience in your role as a therapist. I know in my role as a therapist with let's say people with a lot of complex or developmental trauma, sometimes they show up very early in the therapeutic process just flooding me with information and stories and emotions and tears. And it's not that I can't handle it. I'm trained to handle it. That's not the point. I'm not rejecting that. But I have a sense of, is this appropriate for them? They're telling me all these things. and being really vulnerable with me before they've developed any trust in me. And sometimes if I bring that up, they'll say, oh, but you're a licensed professional. They just trust me on account of my license or whatever. And it's like, OK, that's nice. I'm not sure that that's enough. Because that, as you were saying, Amy, that's a prefrontal cortex idea. that you're trying to send deep within your limbic system all the way to your amygdala, and just because you have an idea in your mind that the government tells me I should trust this person. You know, in my case, it's like the state licensed this person and said that they're adequate to to deal with my mental health. Okay, but do you trust this person? Does your inner embodied self trust this person? Because trust-building is a process. And the people who learn that, I think, in the healthiest ways are the ones who have that trust-building process occurring organically over the course of years with the most important figures in their life, and then learning how to have healthy bonded relationships from there, learning that building trust is a process. And from there, they might have the instinct to say, actually, I don't want to talk about my feelings with you. I don't know who you are. Who says that you're the right person to share that with? There's so much more to cover. And I'm sure many more thoughts that each of you have. But I did want to make sure we shift to talk about the role of the therapist. Because one of the criticisms of my message was that it is not my business. I mean, I didn't say that I say anything to women. And by the way, I'm not currently practicing therapy. I'm talking about over the 10, 11 years that I was practicing therapy before taking this break that I'm on right now, that during that time, I had an increasingly difficult time figuring out what I should do, usually deciding I shouldn't say anything, based on paying attention to how the mother in the situation was presenting the issue. And what I'm talking about here is the widespread normalization of separating babies and mothers from an early age. I'm not talking about the fact that some families are in really difficult situations and have to make really difficult choices. Again, I'm talking about, do we even have the freedom anymore to have a norm or an ideal as a society? And can we agree that if something is optimal for early childhood development, that that is the direction our compass should be pointing? So I'm talking about my experiences as a therapist in a situation where a pregnant or new mother was speaking as if this is what everyone does, it's the only way, it's of course what I'm going to do, I'm not going to get into the specifics of individual circumstances in terms of how much money they had, what kind of job their spouse had, whether or not they could have technically afforded not to go back to work or not, because that's individual circumstances. But I'm talking about just the general thing that has come across of like, well, you know, I'm going to take like six weeks off and then go back because of course, that's just what I do. And I don't question because that is how our society works. That's the part I'm objecting to. And I'm thinking, are you OK with this? I know your baby is not OK with this. Like, I know your baby doesn't want to be separated from you. But I'm thinking like you as a woman, are you OK with this? But if I'm sensing that the client in that situation isn't ready to be challenged or questioned in that way, I'm not going to do it. So here I am just disclosing that I have had a counter-transference experience of feeling like, I'm really sensing I should keep my mouth shut, I don't think she wants me to ask her this question, but I feel conflicted because my expertise is mental health and psychology and attachment. and trauma. And I'm not just thinking about what she needs, although Laura did an excellent job of pointing out how this is also what the mom needs, but I'm thinking about the lifespan of her child, I'm thinking about everything I know about developmental psychology, and I'm thinking this is really not ideal. So here I am saying I've had a challenging experience as a therapist with regard to knowing whether it's appropriate to say anything, deciding in some situations it's probably not appropriate, to bring up the fact that this is less than ideal for the baby. Okay, and in response to that, I got a lot of like, lose your license, you don't deserve to be practicing. And then, interestingly enough, someone Robin actually knows, a colleague of Robin's, chimed in to say, sounds like you need to take that to a supervision. Meaning, what I interpret that message to mean is, sounds like a you problem, basically, right? That that is just you and your countertransference because you have issues. In response to that, I said, it sounds like you don't see a reason that I would feel this way that's actually grounded in developmental psychology. And so for me, I don't feel like my message that I posted on the internet was saying that I'm having such a challenging countertransference emotionally. I'm not saying that I'm like, unleashing my anger at people or, you know, struggling with inappropriate emotions that I really need to take to a supervisor because they're harmful to clients. I'm saying that I'm being thoughtful about what people need and this is not it and yet I don't know that this is an appropriate situation to bring it up. So I just want to pass it to Robin now because she is also a licensed mental health professional and can comment on You know, is it acceptable for a therapist to have these opinions? Is it acceptable for a therapist to post these opinions online if we're not naming any particular, you know, former patients, for example? If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. 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Robin Atkins: I am so, so, so glad we're talking about this because I, like you, say a lot of controversial things online and get a whole lot of, you should lose your license over it. And I've done quite a few threads on the difference between social media and practice. On social media, while I do have a MyBio, I am a licensed mental health counselor, I am not practicing on social media and I don't owe anyone on social media, neither do you, my therapy brain. which is I am regulating all of me to make space for all of you. I don't owe anyone on social media that. And therapists are human beings who are just as allowed as anyone else to have opinions and share them in a public square. In fact, if a therapist is sharing opinion in public swear about something they might be educated on, that is opinion that maybe should be given a little bit higher weight than someone who has no education or experience on it. Also, what I think was missed in how you said it versus how some people read it was that counter-transference happens so frequently and just talking about it doesn't mean that we're actually acting in any way inappropriate on it, nor does it mean that if I bring it up, in session with a patient, that's inherently problematic. I think how we bring it up is really important. And because I do reproductive mental health, I touch on a lot of hot button topics with patients day in and day out, every day, whether it be parenting decisions, abortion, adoption, IVF, all of the current hot topics that are going around social media right now are things I discuss with patients every day. And I would be remiss if I didn't say to my patients, what are the other options you have? Have you considered them? What are the obstacles to those options? Would you have a different opinion if the obstacles were removed? And we saw during 2020 and 2021, when we were getting supplement from the government, the adoption rates drop drastically. As more women were at home and more financially able to care, less women were putting babies up for adoption. In fact, in my state, it went from a two-year wait to a four-year wait to consider even being able to adopt a new one. Huge rates. So I would be remiss if I weren't to say to a patient, if I knew something was potentially going to be harmful to them or their loved ones, what are your other options in having considered them? So in your statement, I did not in any way see you saying, and I'm going to confront them as if this is the wrong decision, you should do that. I know you well enough, I think, and followed you long enough to know that's never how you would speak to a patient. And we disagree ideologically on a lot of things. And you were a very well-balanced, nuanced, capable practitioner. So I would never assume you would do that in any way that was inappropriate. And because I do know the one person that suggested supervision, I do think that was just a, hey, have you checked in on this? Because it seems to be upsetting to you. I don't think it was intended as personally as it came across. But regardless of that, I do think a lot of, there is a lot of pushback against therapists are not allowed to have opinions. And I have no issue with therapists having all kinds of opinions and sharing them on social media. And in fact, the closest I've ever come to flat out just giving an opinion to a patient was a couple of weeks ago, I had a family member of a patient come in and they were very, very upset that my state just passed a bill that forbid the transition of children. And I said, you know, I am going to give you my professional opinion as a licensed mental health counselor that children cannot consent. And I have no issue with that personal bill. Was that counter-transference? No. Was that me crossing a line? No. That was me giving a professional opinion on what I thought about a bill. And that person was not super thrilled about my opinion. And that's OK. They don't have to be. They can disagree with me. But as professionals, we do not have to silence the information we have and we know to please a patient. That is the opposite of what we should be doing. So that's my take on that.
Stephanie Winn: Robin, I love everything you said. I think you summarized the role of the therapist so well. You said, I am regulating all of me to make space for all of you. That was so well put. And I run into this problem being someone who is both a therapist and on social media, I just run into this problem all the time. And there is no way to please the peanut gallery because If I try to be as poised and professional as possible, if I take the high road, you know what people project onto that? They project ego, that, oh, I think I'm morally superior to them, I think I'm more intelligent to them. Why? Because I responded in a calm and dignified manner when they were flinging shit at me. And then, you know, if I reveal my humanity, it's like, how very unprofessional of you. I mean, I even got it in response to, like, I was at a concert, I had had one drink, which for me is like three drinks because I'm a total lightweight. And I saw this opening act that I was like, oh my God, is this a desister? Is this a lesbian desister singing about her battle with gender dysphoria? I was like, and I started tweeting about it like, OMG, help, should I talk to her? I had that experience. And someone chimes in, of course, if you're a therapist, God help your clients. You know what's funny? Oh, for revealing that at a concert after a drink, I'm question- hold on, I'm just- yes, hold that thought. But in that moment, I was like, yes, indeed, God help them. I'm only one person. Like, I want God's help too, okay?
Robin Atkins: I have what I call Robin after dark on Twitter, which is Robin unfiltered. And after, after dark, I don't give a shit what people think about what I say. And I'm not going to be as poised to where that's when I'm like, whether or not I've had a drink and like, yo, I'm a lightweight one. And I'm like, ask me any questions. I'm going to give you the honest answer raw. But even without that, like, nope, I'm sorry. My brain is done for the day. I'm done filtering. And that doesn't make me I work during the day. I don't work after 8pm. So you get Robin.
Stephanie Winn: Well, and I wonder, like just to bring it full circle, and I might be jumping ahead, but I know we have to wrap up soon. And there's so many threads left. But this this the way that people are so unhinged on social media, All these cluster B dynamics that come out, the nastiness, the vitriol, the righteous indignation. If you dare to call yourself a licensed mental health professional, it doesn't matter. For me, what are my qualifications? My student loan debt will follow me to my grave. I worked my ass off for my master's degree and to pass my exam and to get all those internship hours, and I have been practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing. I've had two board complaints that came at the same time. One of them was from trans rights activists on the internet, and the other was an anomaly I will not discuss because I do not want to incur the wrath of this person again, but she met me once. That's all I will say. Anyway, like, I've never had a long-term client have a complaint. And, you know, the idea that I could have these qualifications, that you could have whatever qualifications you have, that someone could have whatever professional experience they have, but they dare utter something that threatens your cherished beliefs about how somebody who is technically a therapist should behave 24-7 including on social media and everything they should think and blahblahblahblahblahblah And because they've crossed that line, now they owe you everything, their license, their livelihood. And I was looking at the conflicting opinions between whether I should personally be financially responsible for every single mother out there or whether I should lose my job. Because if I lose my job, I can't pay for all the single moms out there. Anyway, I wonder, just to bring it all together, whether there's a connection. Looking at the downstream effects of children not being properly nurtured during that time that they're most vulnerable most dependent and then this unhinged childish behavior in adults.
Robin Atkins: Not only connection but with Amy bringing up the gender issue it ties perfectly with affirmation therapy. Affirmation is not therapy, and that's what everybody is demanding 24-7 is affirmation. I won't do it in my office, and I will not do it online.
Laura Wiley Haynes: And the dysregulation that we see, I think we see a whole generation that started out in daycare starting in 1985 was when the under one-year-olds were allowed to go to daycare in the USA. So that's, you know, 35-year-olds today are the people that grew up in daycare. And interestingly enough, they're marching in Charlottesville and flipping out about Israel. And there's a lot of things that seem to have this young cohort with their teeth on edge and very dysregulated. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I think even though it's only about 30% of kids in America that go to full-time daycare as a very young kid, It changes the culture in a family. It changes the culture in a classroom. It changes what kindergarten teachers can expect kids to be able to handle and not. And circling back to what you were saying about your obligations as a therapist, if you knew how important attachment was and you didn't tell your client, that would be malpractice. that would be malpractice because that would be you sitting on information that was significant for that mother and that baby and that whole family and staying mum about it because she had been raised in daycare and didn't have the culture to know about it. That would be wrong. So I think you did the right thing to bring this subject up without personalizing it to anyone and saying, how do we feel about these little kids and what we can all see on their faces, what we can all feel? their feelings, anybody who's at all attuned. But the other thing that I noticed with the social media craziness is there's a very poor ability to metacognite going on. People do not seem to have the ability to know that I could feel strongly about breastfeeding and not feel strongly or super judgmentally about their choice not to breastfeed. I could feel both those, you know, both those things because I can metacognite, you know, and I can know what's super important in an abstract way and not personalize it to every single situation. But again, I don't think kids are getting that. I think when you're just lining up in lines, sitting down for snack, hanging your coat on the hook, line up in another line, that's what they're getting in daycare. They're not getting discernment. They're not getting, oh, you know, I'm going to make a special exception because I did forget to give you this thing. I told you I'd give it to you. So here you go. You can have it for lunch. That's the kind of thing that happens in a family. but not in a daycare.
Amy Sousa: I think it's really fascinating that the biggest values that we see in the gender movement are affirmation, validation, kindness. These are the hot button key words that we hear over and over and over again. And why are these values so pushed? You know, these are just values. They're not, you know, they're not universal goods. You know, it's not, as Robin said, it's not always good to be affirmed. It's just situational. But in this situation, when it comes to their quote-unquote chosen identity, these are the things that we are told we must affirm, we must validate. However, Again, looking back to these daycare situations, it is their emotional state that needs to be affirmed and validated. Their ability to express distress, their desire for security, kids' desire to seek out emotional regulation. These are the things that actually need some affirming and some validating. this is exactly what happens when you don't get them at those early ages. Then you have to obsessively seek it out in a way that can ultimately never be fulfilled because you're seeking it out externally and you have never learned how to give those things to yourself. It always strikes me as just absolute insanity. You know, my, my depth psychology was very, you know, had a very Jungian bent and Jungian analysis is really about sort of letting go of egoic attachments to identity and to seeing the fullness and the wholeness of the self as being far beyond any tiny ego attachment of identity that you might have. And, you know, this was largely part of my grad school and my training. And now this identity thing, these ego attachments are being upheld is the most important thing. But these are the things that the ego seeks out and tries to cling onto obsessively. when you can't feel it for yourself, when it is not something that you feel inside of yourself, it's something that you have to obsessively seek outside. You know, kids should ultimately be learning how to self-validate. You know, a kid should learn, you know, if someone, you know, I don't know, calls you stupid or calls you ugly, you should have enough internal sense of self to, you know, it might make you angry or hurt your feelings, but you should be able to bounce back. You shouldn't go into an emotional fit over something that someone has said like that because you have enough sense of self. You know, and we see all these kids who are quote unquote misgendered having absolute meltdowns. because someone has challenged them on what they claim is their identity. So it just shows me they do not have these things. They do not have the ability to self-affirm and self-validate.
Stephanie Winn: So it's sort of like a construction of an alter ego as a narcissistic defense to fill the void where a sense of self formed through limbic co-regulation with another being. should be. Brilliant thoughts, ladies. I know we didn't have a chance to get to everyone's thoughts on everything, but I'm really glad that you were all able to make it today. So now we will just go around and wrap up with, where can people find you? Starting with Robin.
Robin Atkins: Find my website for my practice at www.karisbaratasllc.com. On Twitter, I'm at Truth Agape, and I am not giving out my phone number.
Laura Wiley Haynes: I am at Haynes underscore Wiley on Twitter. And can I just add one thing? I did a whole long form essay on this for Wes Yang's sub stack on daycare.
Amy Sousa: So if people are interested in learning more about that, I am at known heretic on Twitter, which is my largest platform. Also, if you want to see more of my writing in depth, that is Theknownheretic.com is my sub stack, which is a great place to see me talk more in depth. And I've given a lot of presentations and done my own interviews on my Twitter. I'm sorry, on my YouTube, which is also at known heretic.
Stephanie Winn: All right, thanks everyone for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com. Or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.