Rev Left Radio - Motherhood and Radical Parenting Under Late Capitalism

Episode Date: January 1, 2019

Anastasiya and Speranza, a Russian immigrant mother and a Montanan mother respectively, join Breht to discuss the trials and tribulations of being mothers and parents in a capitalist society. Topics include how to be a radical parent, paternity leave policies in the US, familial evolution over time, the anthropology of child-rearing, being a parent in the age of Climate Change, and much more!  You can reach out to Anastaysiya by email: anastasiya.pronina318 You can reach out to Speranza by email: [e-mail] Intro spoken word poetry written and performed by Faith Santilla (from the track "Bread" on the album "Party Worker" by Bambu. Stand up comedy interlude by Ali Wong. Follow and support her comedy here: https://www.aliwong.com/ Father talking to his son clip was from the song "Monsters" by Bambu. Find and support his music here: https://bambubeatrock.bandcamp.com/ Outro Song: "Rebel Girl" by Bakini Kill, find and support them here: https://bikinikill.com/ ---------------------------- Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective! You can find them on twitter or insta @Barbaradical. Please reach out to them if you are in need of any graphic design work for your leftist projects!  Intro music by Captain Planet. You can find and support his wonderful music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com Rev Left Spin-Off Shows: Black Banner Magic (exploring the Weird Left and the Occult from an Anarchist perspective): https://www.patreon.com/blackbannermagic Hammer and Camera (The communist Siskel and Ebert): https://www.patreon.com/hammercamera ---- Please Rate and Review Revolutionary Left Radio on iTunes. This dramatically helps increase our reach. Support the Show and get access to bonus content on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center. Join the SRA here: https://www.socialistra.org/

So I teared up for a while in the refrigeration. I thought I would have had enough dough to splurge on flaming hot Cheetos. So I'm crossing off my grocery list, not what I got, what I can't afford, didn't even bother walking toward the other end of the store. Instead, we backtracked, racked a couple of items because I had to stretch this stack. I thought that we were straight, so we bounced, but really instead, Ended up leaving with only half a meal, got cheese, but couldn't buy bread. Headed back to Grandma's house, but all the locks got changed.

Fis father, son, the night before, so now we all estranged. Imagine we, baby and me, groceries locked out the house. So I hit the home me up in Parsip and E, because I knew she had a couch. I said, listen, please, I hate to ask, but might we spend the night? We can't go over to Uncle's house. They wake the baby when they fight. See, you don't know no struggle Till you've lived life out a duffle

Till you've weathered all the elements I got bronchitis as my evidence So don't get me started on health care Cost so high it kept me on welfare And don't ask me all the details I was broke so I worked retail Because I knew that I'd get coverage If I worked up too full time

But bitch-ass boss would gain me gave me only 39, which is why I tear up for a while in the refrigeration aisle. Thought I would have had enough dough to splurge on flaming hot Cheetos, so I'm crossing off my grocery list, not what I got, what I can't afford, didn't even bother walking toward the other end of the store. Instead, we backed racked, racked a couple of items because we had to stretch this stack, thought that we were straight so we bounced but really in Instead, ended up leaving with half a meal, got cheese, but couldn't get bread. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio.

I'm your host and Comrade Brett O'Shea, and this is the last episode of 2018. The topic is motherhood and parenting under late capitalism, and our guests are Anastasia and Sparanza, both working class mothers. We cover a lot of really interesting topics. discuss the intersections between capitalism and parenting and patriarchy and motherhood. So I really think people will enjoy this one. I also want to remind folks that we have a growing list of spin-off podcast. There's the Weird Left podcast called Black Banner Magic. There's the film podcast, the spinoff of the film vanguard called Hammer and Camera.

And in 2019, we are introducing Marxism and Mosh Pits, hosted by Brendan, who's been on Revolutionary Left Radio many times. and the theme of that podcast is trying to explore the intersections between high theoretical concepts and Marxism and subcultural experiences whether in punk music or hip-hop or skateboarding, etc.

So we have a lot of really cool stuff coming from that direction and as always, if you like what we do, you can support us by going to patreon.com forward slash Ravelaft Radio. Now let's go to our wonderful episode with Sparanza and Anastasia on motherhood and parenting in late capital. Hi, I'm Anastasia.

I was born in the USSR, but just barely. And I always like to make the disclaimer that I have a teething six-month-old, so please bear with me. There's a reason they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture. So my background is an anthropology. I graduated with a BA from the University of Delaware, and then I pretty quickly got a job in clinical research after I graduated. I did that for about three years and then I have pregnant and very sick. So now I'm a stay-at-home mom, which is my plan for the first year.

Hi, my name is Bronza. I'm an organizer, strategist, contrarian, a precinct representative partner and mother. My background is in political organizing. I do some marketing things as well. But as far as this goes, I started with doing political organizing and strategizing for the Democratic Party and was radicalized through that experience. I have two children who are wonderful in kind of the lights of my life. And I've involved them a lot in my professional and political experiences brought them to work with me and done all those things. So I feel like I can speak a lot to what it's like to have kids and do work and do that in a political and capitalist structure at the same time. Yeah, definitely. I think between the three of us,

we have a total of five children, which will make this show interesting because that's what it's about. Sparanza and I have known each other for a few years. I think we go back to like old debate forums and whatnot. So it's really cool to finally have you on the show. And then Anastasia reached out to me, urging me to do a show like this. And I was like, well, you're already here. Let's do the show together. So it worked out really cool. So I'm glad to have both of you here. Thank you so much for taking time out of your no doubt busy schedules to come on Revelleft Radio and discuss this important topic.

We've gotten a lot of requests over the last two years to do an episode like this. And we're going to weave some questions about parenting as revolutionaries into this broader discussion as well, too. So I hope people are finally going to get some out of this that they've been asking for for a while. I guess the best way to start this topic. and I know perhaps both of you touched on it a little bit in your intros, but what initially got you interested in approaching the topic of parenting under capitalism, and why do you think this topic is so often overlooked in radical leftist circles? So admittedly, until I had my very own baby,

I didn't realize just how difficult parenting would be. I mean, I knew it would be hard, but it was all theoretical, kind of based on my anthropology background. I knew that our society encourages us to sort of form nuclear family, and be more isolated from our communities, whereas it's more natural for human societies to use the help of the village to raise kids. So that's why I'm really grateful to have the help of my husband's mother.

I cannot imagine how single parents do it. It must be incredibly difficult. So I got started thinking about parenting under capitalism when we're making our baby registry because within the capitalist cultural framework, we're encouraged to focus so much of our time and energy on spending, and it all starts with the baby registry. You know, we have to research the best products, make our lives easier, and, you know, products that sort of outsource the entertaining and soothing for us. So I think this topic is overlooked everywhere, and not just in, like, leftist circles.

I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that people are just having less children now. so if you're not familiar with child care or you know the first baby you've ever encountered as your own you don't really know just what you're in for and then also a lot of people today have you know a lot of concerns to worry about which is you know they're finding making hands meet is a lot harder today than it was maybe 10 years ago 20 years ago so um i found that um progressive leftist politicians are actually advocating a little more for paid leave. And I think up to four states now have mandated paid leave. But often it's not enough.

It's just making 12 existing unpaid weeks into paid weeks. But, you know, other countries get a year off. And, you know, in the richest country in the world, I think that's just 12 weeks is not good enough. So I've kind of dove into parenting a little bit. I have a six-month-old. And I've noticed that when I went to look for a lot of advice, You know, how difficult is it to go back to work?

What do I do if I'm super nauseous, but I still have to go to work, but I'm throwing up and can't make it. A lot of the, like, discourse is encouraging women to sort of maintain the status quo. You know, we're encouraged to just deal with it, just hang in there. If you need to vomit, just pull over on the side of the road and make sure to take a bag with you. And, you know, a lot of women do work up to labor because they don't want to use up their sick days before the baby comes. And a lot of the discourse is, you know, well, you know, you're just supposed to feel grateful if you do qualify for 12 unpaid weeks because there are many other American women out there who have no time off at all. And then when you actually have the baby, you find that, you know, no matter how angry you become at the situation and you wonder why no one talks about it, once you have a baby, it's very hard to find time for activism. So that's where I'm at with parenting under capitalism so far.

Yeah, I think this subject is overlooked for a whole bunch of reasons. The primary one that I see the most obvious one falls under an umbrella of issues that I reference a lot. I like to call them too woke to be guilty issues. Problems that liberals and leftists like to pretend are seeing more progress than they actually are because I think because it absolves them of feelings of guilt or responsibility to take steps to make it better. If the status quo is kind of fine, that you can leave that alone and focus on other things. But hands down, some of the most hostile work experiences I've

had as a mother have been with progressive organizations because they tend to do just enough to seem ahead of the curve. But at the same time, they're doing that the same thing that Osage is talking about where they're exploiting single parents who are willing to tolerate a lot of mistreatment because they're so grateful for what should be basic human rights. and are in most developed countries where the United States is really an anomaly in a lot of ways there. I think that on the left, we get so focused on big picture issues that we can neglect some of those smaller issues that are happening right now that contribute to that big picture. So with leftist organizing and activism, I hear a lot of complaining about limited participation in those events and communities. But I also don't see a lot of those communities making space for activists who are parents, which is really frustrating and has directed a lot of the type of activism that I've done here because most of the activists I know are parents who were not able to participate in those communities previously because they just didn't happen, events wouldn't happen during times when they had child care or that were reasonable for parents to be able to be present for.

So I think that can send the message to people with kids that those communities are not for them. And that's a problem that needs to be dealt with because at the end of the day, parents have a lot to lose if things get bad on a large scale. And as a result, they're often the most motivated to make sure that that doesn't happen and that the world's actively getting better. So I think leaving them out neglects this huge resource that the right is more than willing to pick up if we don't because so much of their type of activism is, focused on traditional family structure and we need to really do better. Yeah, that's, that's very interesting. And certainly in my experience, you know, sometimes it comes down to like, it comes down to where you live and what circles you run in. There, there might be some circles in certain localities that are more family focused or

maybe tend towards older age, people that have or more likely to have children. I know in some circles it can, it can skew young, right? Especially when you're talking about radical left-wing circle sometimes, you know, you're dealing with a lot of people in their 20s, for example, A lot of those people don't have kids and, you know, sometimes that comes into play as well. But I do know parents who are organizers, who are working class, who work their asses off on every single front and organizing, as we all know, even if you don't have a kid, is incredibly exhausting, demanding work that you don't get a lot of praise and glory for, the day-to-day grinding, organizing that really, you know, can make the difference between being successful or not.

And when you're a parent trying to add that into this life work balance, it becomes even more precarious and even more difficult. So if those things aren't there built into your organization to be aware of that, you know, certainly parents can feel totally overwhelmed and maybe even burned out quicker than people that don't have kids. I guess the next question would be as, you know, working class mothers specifically, right? As working class mothers living under capitalism, what have been some of your personal experiences and difficulties with, raising children. And maybe how did you think when you first found out you were pregnant? What were the initial thoughts that went off in your head regarding that? In terms of social conditions under capitalism, I think that raising kids in activist family and raising kids as radical parents, I think is really intimidating for people because I think that there is this idea that these

issues that you're confronted with as an activist every day, or just as a person living in a capitalist society who doesn't agree with a lot of the ethical things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, social issues and that kind of thing. There's a feeling that those are too big and too scary and two adults to talk to kids about. I feel like I talk to my kids a lot more openly than conservative parents do. I can't decide if I want to say that I have to or I get to there because I think that there's components of both of that. It sometimes feels like it's really hard and sometimes feels like it's kind of one of the best parts for me about being a parent. So like the other day, my six-year-old was super sick.

She had strep, actually, a really bad fever. And she woke up from this kind of fevering nap and said, I feel dizzy. Also, does every country have to have a president? Kids are thinking about these big ideas all the time. And I think that we have a tendency. as parents to want to, I mean, infantilize them and protect them from all these big ideas. But the reality is they're already thinking about this stuff. So either they're wondering and getting it from other people or shutting those questions down if they're told that it's not okay to ask those things.

And then that little activist soul dies or you can just kind of let them guide you to to what they need to hear from you. And if you've let them do that, I think that that's that's, that's, that's right. parenting. I think that's one of the primary differences that I've seen as an activist parent living under capitalism is just the way that I communicate with my kids is a lot different than other people. I think that as far as economics are concerned, there's this really strong drive with children that's totally normal, developmentally, to want to try to fit in socially. and they have a hard time understanding some abstract concepts like the value of money by the numbers and culturally.

So if we can't do something that other people can as a working class family that just can't afford to do that, or if we could do something, but we choose not to because we don't think that that's ethically okay, like we could sell the kids extra coats and or the things that they've grown out of and use that money to buy a new bike or something. And that's actually a thing that they've asked about before. Can we sell our old stuff? No, we don't do that. Right.

We give those things away to people who have that need because we can do that. And I think that's something that they have a really, really hard time coming to terms with. And being patient with that process, I think, can be really difficult as a parent trying to raise kids who don't place so much value on accumulation of wealth and who don't find their value in comparison to the lesser status of other people. Or I know that I'm okay because I have. have more than this person, that can be one of, I think, the most difficult parts about parenting under a capitalist culture. It's just that social pressure, coupled with normal developmental stages that make it kind of a constant fight to explain why we do things the way that we do. Yeah, totally. Anastasia? I'm still new to the whole raising a child thing,

but I agree with Spranza that economics are a really difficult topic to approach with kids. I I know that kids can be pretty mean to classmates who might not have, you know, as much as much money. So maybe they can't afford, you know, the video game that just came out or something as basic as new shoes for the school year. And kids can be, you know, really, really mean about that stuff. So I hope to lead by example and show our son the value of experiences rather than things and ensure that he's not sheltered and that he's aware that he has many privileges that others do not. So, funny story, when I first moved to America, I was nine years old, and I noticed that the first, like, big tradition I noticed is when you come back from Christmas vacation, everyone just goes off and, like, lists off all the toys they got for Christmas, and kids were listing off, like, 20 different toys, and meanwhile, my parents just got me, like, two things, and I was grateful for them, but when I got to school and I realized that kids were getting just bags and bags of toys, it was just such a culture. shock for me. My husband and I actually, when I told him that story, you know, we don't want to give our son just, you know, a plethora of, like, plastic toys. We want to sort of teach him

things and, you know, spend our money that way. But so far, living under capitalism as a parent, major difficulties for me have been related to how, just how difficult it is to take care of a baby, both financially and physically. For example, the only reason I had time to prepare for this interview is because my mother-in-law took the afternoon off work, so I could actually take a shower and feel human again. So when I found out that I was pregnant, the timing was kind of bad. We planned for the baby, which is a question everyone loves to ask for some reason. But like a lot of life, most of our plans went out the window.

I initially planned on working right up to labor like every other American woman, because even if you do have FMLA, your job is only protected for 12. weeks. You really can't afford to take time off before the baby comes. But the day after I found I was pregnant, or I found out I was pregnant and then the day after I quit my job, which was pretty bad timing. But I was stuck in a stressful project and I decided to leave rather than get really burnt out. But what I didn't anticipate was that a couple of days later, I would get incredibly sick, so sick that my husband actually had to like advocate for me in the ER because I couldn't really function. Damn. So after I put in my two weeks, I actually ended up taking those two weeks as unpaid leave

because I just could not come into work. And after that, even though I like, I wanted to find a job, you know, I've been working pretty extensively since I got my green card at the age of 17. But I struggled to find a job between being too sick to make it to interviews in the beginning and then finally, when I felt better enough to actually go to the interview and get dressed for it, suddenly I was seen as undesirable because I would need time off in the next six months. So I noticed what's franzas said about progressive companies saying that they care about women, but really when push comes to shove, these companies which were researching, you know, working on maternal and child health research, saying that, you know, they want to hire more women. They're asking me

if I would need time off in the next six months, which is basically a legal way to ask a woman if she's pregnant because everyone knows by three months. you know if the baby's going to stick around or if you want to continue the pregnancy. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I know that when we were pregnant with our son, who is now, you know, three years old, at the time, there's no way in hell that we could afford daycare. We couldn't balance all of the financial stuff that we needed to balance.

His mother was staying home for a while, but that was just like putting huge financial pressure on the household to make ends meet. And it was very difficult. So what had to eventually end up happening was that I would work a day shift. would come home, she would go work in night shift, and she would come home and then just basically this tag team. We couldn't afford daycare, so we had to hand the baby off back and forth between each other. But the enormous strain that that put on our relationship, I mean, you know, just the constant stress. And then, of course, when she would come home from a long night shift,

that's the exact time when her child is just waking up. So she really couldn't go to sleep. She wanted to spend time. You know, it was just this horrific circumstance that we found ourselves and our relationship suffered, our mental health and emotional well-being suffered. And it's just this brutal onslaught, you know, for working parents a lot of times. It's funny. I feel like we all are representing three very, very different experiences with pregnancy and introduction to parenthood under capitalism. Because I hear Anastasia talking about being in a marriage and with a job and trying to

figure out work things. And then you talking about, Brett, talking about your being in a, in a relationship that the capitalist structure of childcare and all of those things, putting a straight on your relationship. And I had this different experience also where, I mean, I had my first kid at 21. That was not an ideal or planned situation in any way.

It was an incredibly unhealthy marriage on the other side of the country from my family. And I felt like the financial and social pressure to stay in that situation because of the capitalist structure that we live in absolutely held me there longer. It wasn't putting a strain on a thing that was good before. It was the opposite of that. It was holding together this really toxic thing

that shouldn't have been because I was terrified of what would happen financially primarily if I were to leave that situation and really felt like all of the messages being targeted at me were that I could not do that. I need to stay in that scenario and have the two-income trap household and try to make it work even if it was bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure, you know, that's really interesting.

I'm sure a lot of, especially, you know, women throughout history have really been in that horrible position of being in a toxic or abusive relationship, but depending on it so much for financial support that you literally can't leave it. And that, you know, that cycle of abuse is horrifying. Yeah, wow. Yeah, and a lot of it, I think, is daycare, I mean, daycare availability and prices, even if you do know that you want to use a daycare, you have to get on a wait list, like, as soon as you get the positive pregnancy test. And even then, in, like, Philly, an infant and full-time daycare is, like, $1,500. And if you were to leave, you know, an abusive relationship and try to get a job, that's going to be half your income, not to mention rent and everything else. And that's if you have a good paying job. If you're making minimum wage or, you know, less than $20 an hour, it's really not feasible.

I know when I left my marriage and moved back home to Montana, I was trying to go to school full-time and working part-time. And then I had two kids that were 19 months apart that were one and three, one and a half and three, when I got back here and trying to figure out. I tried to put them both in daycare and work. like pay for it with student loan money, but it was not viable. So it got to the point where I literally, because I was going to school online and then working from home part time and then taking care of the kids, I would not leave the house legitimately for like a week at a time because I was juggling all of these different things simultaneously because I could not afford to put my kids somewhere else so I could have a second

to like shower and pee with the door closed. Right, right, right. Yeah. And this is something that as we, it's so obvious, but it's still worth pointing out. that people of privilege, that people of wealth, rich people, they don't ever have to worry about it, you know, daycare, you know, they can have nannies or babysitters come to the house at any given time, and they can just live a life that they're just never, they have to deal with the normal ups and downs of parenthood, which are hard and of themselves. But that financial

burden is something that is uniquely placed on the shoulders of working parents, and it's, it's brutal. I'll get off on 100 tangents if you don't stop me. I was going to talk about I actually worked. I lived in Australia for a while back in 2009 and worked as an opair for a wealthy family. The dad was a lawyer and mom was a doctor in the Navy and took care of these three kids. I think a lot of my idea about what being a parent was going to be like came a little bit from that. And then a little bit from, I come from this huge gigantic family. I've got like 30-something cousins.

But that financial structure was so different for my. my parents and from my grandparents, they all had each other. They had like multiple generations, but now things have changed so much as we're reaching that kind of late stage capitalism. Nobody in my family can afford to do anything. My mom works more than full time. She can't help me. My grandma works full time so that she doesn't lose her health insurance for my grandpa, who is very, very sick. So she can't help either. Nobody can do that. I feel like the place that we've gotten to with capitalism, at least in my experience, is really different for this generation than it has been for prior generations as well. So I think that's the thing to think about.

It's different now than it even has been before, and it wasn't great before. That's a really good point. That's something to think about when, you know, the retirement age gets raised more and more. You know, there's this thing in anthropology about like hardworking hudson grandmothers. And the idea is that there's a theory that people evolve to live in to old age as we do now is because women, you know, they get menopause around between like 45 and 55 years of age. And then it's evolutionary beneficial for people to live longer so that they, essentially so they could provide child care, you know, the grandma watches, the babies while the young women works. And now we really don't have that, you know, as Bronsie,

you mentioned that your mother works. So my mother-in-law also works more than full-time. She has a nine to five job, and then she also does house calls helping people with their computers. So she's at work pretty much all the time. So, yeah, it's hard finding someone to watch the baby. I loved in reading your answers. Anastasia, you're talking about the anthropology perspective on all of this? I think that's super fascinating too. And we've been talking a lot about that idea of how it's really supposed to be villages coming together to raise children.

But capitalism has, like, forced people to separate into their own individual, a little tiny pocket. And it is really, really hard to raise a child without a village there to support you. And it's such a shame. It's, I think, one of the greatest losses of what the, I think, maybe unintentional, but maybe not. Side effects of capitalism has been that forcing people to, well, I guess probably intentional, forcing people to become almost exclusively just workerbees. And that's our whole lives.

And whatever happens to the kids, I mean, there's, there's another. another industry to feed, I guess. That's funny, because that's exactly what I was going to ask. I was going to ask about that evolutionary history of having a community that you could always rely on, that children grew up, you know, for tens of thousands of years in a communal setting, a village or a tribe or whatever it may be. And now in modern capitalism, especially in late capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, when everybody's pushed to the pedal, it's not only this atomized, everybody's in it

for themselves sort of thing, but even that, you're pushed to these extreme limits. And it's just, yeah, it's just terrible. Absolutely. I do want to talk because I'm obviously a father and both of you are mothers and I know there's a difference, there's a hierarchy even there. So what are the differing expectations in your experiences for mothers as compared to fathers? And have you experienced this double standard in your life? So I think the double standard in our society starts right from birth. Luckily my husband and I are kind of on the same page now in regards to child care, but it did take a lot of open and some sleep deprived discussions to get us there. mostly about you know who's going to do which shift and when but you know for the women the transition into motherhood is really rough we not only have to recover from a serious medical event but now we have to take care of a fickle fragile bomb that goes off every two hours for an hour at a time and meanwhile everyone is telling you to rest and recover and sleep when the baby sleeps but that advice is

completely unsustainable because the baby only sleeps one to two hours at a time at most and That's not including the time you have to put them down, you know, get some fresh air, you know, maybe even eat lunch. So, you know, reproductive biology isn't fair, but expecting women to both recover, rest, and take care of her baby on their own is not feasible for a lot of Americans because both partners often cannot afford to take unpaid leave. Often it's the woman that has to take unpaid leave because she has to physically recover from the birth. And I think that's kind of a double standard in our society because, you know, America loves to talk about how much, you know, we care about human rights and, you know, we're above this and that. But in our society, a lot of women don't have the choice to stay home or, you know, work. It sort of comes down to what you can afford. It's not really a choice.

Yeah. And then also, when one partner isn't given the same amount of time to learn how to take care of the baby, usually that's the man. It becomes unrealistic to expect them to have the same. same know-how as the parent who is spending far more time with a baby. You know, if I'm spending 12 hours a day with my son, I really can't expect my husband to sort of be as good at it if he only spends a few hours because he has a, you know, full-time job and he has to commute. So this sort of relates into a whole other issue that, you know, women sort of become responsible for all the mental labor and the household management that's required to take care of the child because they're sort of

seen as better at it. And there's actually a really good comic. Maybe you guys are familiar with it by Emma, who addresses this issue. It's called You Should Have Asked. I have seen that one, yep. Yeah, and she does a really good brief summary of everything that's related to the mental load and having to, you know, remember when the baby's going to grow out of socks or, you know, when we ran out of food. So, I mean, well, I think it's awesome that men today are expected to take more of an active role in parenting, and that's one of the reasons why I married my husband, because he does have these egalitarian gender roles in mind. I think, you know, not providing both men and women with mandatory leaves kind of leaves room for sexism and encourages double standards.

So while it's nice that, you know, now we see more men wearing their babies in a baby carrier or using a stroller on the weekends, it's really not enough because men are not given the same opportunities to bond with their babies as women, and even the women do get the opportunities. Often it's unpaid and really just stressful because you're just kind of planning to go back to work the whole time. I like the point that you made there about how men are not really given an opportunity to find their place in the household. I think it's really interesting and worth noting how many retirement age men kill

themselves after retiring. And I feel like a lot of it has to do with the fact. that men are very much sent this message that their role is to provide. And when that part of their life ends, because of the double standards that that exist in family life and in parenting when they get back to the household, they don't know what to do. That doesn't feel like they're doing anymore. There's no meaning there. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that's a really good point about how those double standards. I think we think about it a lot from the perspective of how it weighs on the mother. And it absolutely does to have the, like you said, the weight of the emotional labor of the

household squarely just on mom's shoulders and maintaining the things. And yeah, it's like just knowing when you need new socks or milk. Yeah, it's a lot of things to pay attention to. But I think that there are really serious emotional consequences for fathers as well, being pushed out of those roles emotionally. So that's a good point. I also wanted to talk about the internalized double standards that we experience. I think that we're all pretty familiar with the United States record on gender issues with parental leave and all of those things. I know that we'll talk about that more. But I think the internalized double standards are something that we really need to talk about more. I don't hear a lot of conversation about that. I had a really hard time navigating my

own feelings about that as somebody who's a really egalitarian person and who's an activist and all these things. These are things I think about a lot, but then when it came down to actually doing them, it was really challenging. My family situation, I think, is a little bit different from both of yours because my kids, dad, effectively, my partner is their step-parent. So my co-parent opted into parenthood. And I think that that comes with a kind of different set of challenges that's compounded by that gender role issue. We have to make it a point to communicate about this stuff constantly. And I think it's one of the most radical things that we actually do in our personal life because it's a really hard conversation to have. Even when both parents are biologically

and legally obligated to participate, it's harder when one of them isn't necessarily. And the presumption of roles issue is really emotionally heavy. It's been really hard for me to break the habit of feeling grateful for my partner's help. Even when I would find it absolutely absurd for him to be grateful for mine because it's my job. And I would never, never expect him to be constantly thanking me and making sure that I feel appreciated for every single little thing that I do. But every time he would do anything, I felt really guilty about letting him. And like I needed to go out of my way to make sure that he knew that that was special. It was really hard for me to communicate the need for reciprocal consideration when making plans. Like if one

parent has to stay back with the kids, I just assumed that was going to be me for a significant part of our relationship and never would even ask to the point where it was this like quiet resentment that I had this frustration about well, that that just comes with the territory because he opted into this and that's really not fair. I think the most helpful thing for me getting past that self-imposed double standard was when I finally did kind of work up with a nerve to talk to my partner about that. And I heard him say that the idea that I didn't feel like my girls were equally his responsibility was really hurtful. And that was something that had not occurred to me at all and really shocked me to hear that he might value the responsibility of taking care of them

as an important part of his relationship with them the same way that I did. And it really changed the way that I, that I experienced those roles and, and thought about them and interacted with them and communicated them immediately. So that was, that was a big one for our family. Yeah, both. That's a really good point. You know, I, even though my husband and I, you know, both made the conscious decision to have our baby, that's actually something I struggle with, too, is, you know, when I sort of ask him for help, you know, maybe I need a little extra help one day, I sort of still feel a little guilty. Or as you said, when you have to go somewhere outside of the home, you sort of assume that as a mom, you're going to stay home. And I totally get that.

So it's really nice to have your partner sort of say you straight in that sense and sort of show you that they are in it with you for the long haul and for all the hard things that parenting brings. Yeah. And, you know, from me, my perspective as a father, I had my first child when I was like 19 or 20. and yeah that double standard though I mean as as we all know is not only internalized inside the relationship but it's socialized so I would you know I would get credit just for literally at 19 literally just not leaving right like a pat it on the back for just literally being there and there was no there's no analogy for for mothers on the other end you know mothers don't get a pat on the back for just sticking around and and that is this that that really highlights

this double standard, I think. And even like, you know, grandmothers and women who have gone through that experience themselves are still sort of socialized into that double standard. So they would, they would participate in that sort of double, without even knowing it, of course. It was, you know, the best of intentions and it was unconscious, but it was there. And I kind of picked up on that early, like, oh, I'm getting a lot more praise for doing just the bare minimum, you know, and that's that, that bar is so low. Let's go ahead and move on to just the economic policies themselves. And this is sort of a big question, but I'll leave it open for you both to take it in either direction, any direction you want. But what are the policies in the U.S. surrounding parental leave?

How does it compare to other countries? And why is mandatory paid parental leave superior to other non-mandatory models? So in the U.S., the U.S. is kind of, as we probably all know, is way behind on any kind of paid parental leave program. Basically, in 1942, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor recommended maternity leave. for the first time. And this was after the U.S. government put out a whole propaganda campaign that was aimed to get women to enter the workforce and take over traditionally male roles during World War II. But interestingly, what they did not include in the plan was a paid maternity leave and subsidized

child care program. So generally, women were being giving the message that they should leave the domestic sphere and enter the workforce, but they sort of had to secure their own child care arrangements. And it actually wasn't until in 1993 that FMLA, the Family Medical Leave Act, was passed. And the FMLA allows certain eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Essentially, it's just bare minimum job protection. And it only applies if you have to care for a newborn child or some other dependents, very serious medical issue.

But unfortunately, a lot of workers in America don't qualify for this act because they have to be full-time employees or have worked at least over a thousand hours over the past 12 months at a company with 50 or more employees. So while this seems like a, you know, straightforward policy, there's a lot of nuances that I didn't realize until we actually had the baby

and had to sort of deal with it for my husband's end. So companies are allowed to have parents split the 12 weeks if they work for the same company. So if my husband and I worked for the same company that offered FMLA, you know, I might take six weeks, and then he can also take six weeks. We cannot have 24 weeks, even though we're two separate people. So that doesn't really make sense to me.

But also, many employers require you to use your accrued pay time off as part of the 12 weeks. So even if you save up all your vacation days, you are not allowed to add it on to those 12 weeks to give yourself, you know, an extra month there. And then another caveat of that is you come back to work with no days off for the rest of the year, which creates a lot of extra stress for the new parent because, you know, what if daycare is closed? What if you're sick? What if the baby's sick? And, you know, it's a lot of stress there. And then also under the system, women are pressure to work until labor to save precious time for their baby. And really, even if you do feel like total crap, the last two weeks, you know, you just come in and are miserable until you go into labor because

you'd rather be with your baby. And then also, um, an interesting, aspect of the FMLA is that for the supporting partner, at least in my husband's case, the leave does not start officially until the day of the birth. So my husband ended up taking leave quote unquote early because we thought that I was going into labor, but then it sort of stalled out. So after we sent in the birth certificate, it turned out that HR declined his FMLA request because it didn't take out into consideration, you know, the labor can take multiple days, you know. what happens there, you know, or if your baby is worn at, like, 1 a.m., your leave does not start until 12 a.m. the day of, technically. I'm just, like, outraged for you. Yeah, it's crazy.

For real. Trying to control my snorting. It's ridiculous. Well, like, only 60% of, like, U.S. workers, I think, qualify for FMLA. Everyone else is just on their own. But to add more to that, if you decide to quit during your leave or surely after returning to work, you know, maybe you decide your career is not compatible with your new parenting responsibilities, your employer might actually require reimbursement for health insurance or other benefits paid during the time off. So you might be getting a negative paycheck at the end of everything. Wow.

And then I also mention this, but an important aspect is that the eligibility requirements leave out many, many workers for a part-time or work at smaller businesses. And I looked into some interesting studies on the FMLA, and there's a comparison study of leave taken by fathers before 1993 and after. And what they found is that American fathers took an average of 3.7 days before FMLA and an average of 4.7 days after FMLA. And in the latter group, only 22% of fathers used formally parental days. So pretty much most of them ended up using their vacation days anyway. They just used, on average, one more day extra. So even with the legislation, the men in this country can't get off enough time for work.

For example, my husband took off two whole weeks and he was seen at work as being like an awesome family man for sacrificing his two weeks of vacation. But at the end of those two weeks, I was crying and begging him to take sick days that he didn't have because, you know, I was still like barely able to walk to the bathroom about. point and here I was you know kind of just handed this baby and been like good luck you're on your own now yeah so I actually I have some um cousins in Russia and when I told them that I told my cousin who's a little toddler that in America a lot of women only take take about eight weeks after birth she actually thought I forgot the Russian word for months and she immediately went on to say only eight months that's a little time and I was like quitting for months and said weeks wow So she was really shocked that, you know, in the greatest country in the world is America likes the pain itself.

Women don't even have any paid leave, much less a whole year like other countries offer. And a lot of women do go back to work a week later while they're still healing. I personally have seen some people go back to work a week later, and I just can't imagine. So by comparisons, other developed countries offer new mothers a lot more. security. So the idea is that maternity leave kind of carves out time to care for an infant when the baby is still establishing attachments and developing basic physiological regulation. But what a lot of people forget often is the mom. And I think Ali Wong said it best in her hard knock white special. You know, maternity leave is not just to bond with the baby. Fuck the baby. Maternity leave is for new moms to hide and heal their demolished ass

bodies. This is why women need maternity leave. In every other first world country, Canada, France, Germany, women get up to three years off paid maternity leave when they have a new baby. In the U.S., we get Jack In the U.S. there is zero federal policy for maternity leave. Maternity leave is not just to bond with the baby. Fuck the baby! Maternity leave is for new moms to hide and heal.

They're demolished ass bodies. I couldn't go back to a work, topless, beating my wet titty, trying to establish dominance over all my coworkers. over all my coworkers. You get fired. People don't tell you about all the crazy shit that goes down when you get pregnant.

When you give birth when I was pregnant, a lot of other moms had highly recommended to me. Allie, now you make sure at the hospital to steal a bunch of the free diapers. Yeah, does. I know, for the baby. No. For you.

For you. For me, what the fuck do I need diapers for? Oh, you'll see. Winter is coming. And indeed I did see. Nobody told me about all the crazy shit that comes out of your pussy after you give birth. You know what happens?

After the baby comes out, you know what else exits? Her house. Her living room, her pillows, the Bob Marley poster, all the food that went bad in her refrigerator, for months. So then you have to wear this cartoonishly large pad that's like the size of a toddler mattress and it's only held up by the strength

of this mesh fishnet underwear that's exclusively available at the hospital. You can't get that shit on Amazon or anything. So you've got to snatch that shit every day. It's made out of the same material that they package fancy Korean pairs in. It's very Dachbeah, okay? Number one extra large Dachbeat hospital underwear.

For three months, I was walking around my house with a top knot, giant diaper, nipples, bleeding. Like a defeated sumo wrestler. So, you know, like, yeah, there's a lot of, like, sense to offering women six months. It's taking me about six months to feel normal again and sort of come to terms with the little sleep that I'm getting. But requiring that women go back to work six weeks is just, I don't know, really cruel, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely cruel. So on that note of the six weeks issue, my littlest one was colloquy and we found out that she was lactose intolerant at some point that didn't help until she was like six months old her sleep schedule wasn't there was there was a period once where she did not sleep for 48 hours not once not oh my god

nothing. And I cannot imagine. That was when she was like two months old, roughly. So it would have been right about the time that I'd be trying to go back to work. And I cannot imagine if I at the time was not going back to work, that wasn't going to happen. But if I had had a thing that was waiting for me or I was going to lose it, I can't imagine what I would have done with that experience. So that is, that's just atrocious. It doesn't consider at all the fact that things are not settled. right my kids are six and seven now and things still aren't settled frankly so um i wanted to talk about i guess my my personal fmLA experiences because i've got some interesting ones i know that you at a stage are pretty in the beginning stages of this so your experiences a lot with the pregnancy and all of those leave things and it doesn't get better when when they get older and the kids are older and you're approaching them saying that you need to take time off because you've got a sick kid. I know a couple of years ago I was working for, I don't want to name drop them. I was working for a progressive organization. And it was a salaried employee, which was nice. So I wasn't doing

the hourly thing. And they qualified for FMLA. Our I qualified through them. And my little one got really, really sick. And it was about two and a half weeks of not knowing what was wrong. It was terrifying. Her blood work was coming back really weird. They were they were just a day away from going and doing bones scans and testing her for bone cancer. It was really awful. And I was letting my employer know the whole time because we worked all really closely together. So I considered them kind of my work family, which is a mistake. Never do that.

And if your employer is not a family member and not a friend, they have a job. So keeping them up to date with this whole experience, they knew what was going on. and how terrifying it was. And once it was cleared and everything was back to normal, and I could come back. And for the record, it turned out to be just like three viruses at the same time that did weird things.

She was fine. When I came back, they kind of sprang on me that they wanted to dramatically change my work schedule and add all of these different things that were not part of the agreement when I first started working there. And I said, no, I can't do that.

I have kids at home. And they said, well, we've been very generous with you. Oh, oh. Oh, no. And I was so flabbergasted by that. And I am an aggressive, uh, responder. And I, I looked at my supervisor and I said, you haven't been generous with me, sir. I said his name.

I won't hear. Yeah. You followed the law. I know what FMLA is. And I know that I had the right to take that and you were required to give it to me. Yeah. And he just looked at me and walked out of the room. And after that job was over, I was supposed to get this other position.

And they gave it to somebody else instead who did not have children. And the person who was responsible for making that hiring decision called me after and said, I'm sorry, I want you to know it wasn't because of your work or your qualifications. And I said, I know. Damn. That often so frequently, it's crazy. I really thought the discrimination be done when the baby came out. but no it is maybe not maybe not so i think that all of these policies being in place i think it's

interesting what you said about the dads taking one more day maybe of time off after these these policies are in place i'd be interested to see how much time um women take i mean it would be probably hard to control for some social things that have changed since that about just the presence of women in the workplace but i feel like the fact that these policies exist doesn't necessarily make them really available. They're available, but they're not really, because it's kind of known that if these are here because we have to make them available to you,

but if you take them, there will be consequences. Yeah, exactly. So maybe you're not going to get a promotion, or maybe when this party your job is over, we're just going to find a reason to not anymore. And I felt like, I know a lot of women that I've talked to who have had really similar experiences,

and a lot of men, who would literally scoff at the idea of taking the time that they're technically owed because absolutely not that you're putting a target on your back. And I think that that's one of the issues with trying to legislate away the side effects of capitalism by just adding more policies that doesn't actually change anything because the problem is the capitalist structure as a whole. You can add all these rules to it, but you can't hold them a gunpoint and make them take advantage of those things.

It's just never going to happen when the primary goal is financial. Yeah. Right. And not social good. Exactly right. So going off of that, so we said about, you know, it'd be interesting if fathers would take more leave or not. So there's actually a study done in Sweden.

So Sweden is kind of like a pioneer in paid parental leave programs around the world. And even in Sweden, fathers still take way less time. than the mother. I mean, even if we take into consideration that women need a certain time to heal from the birth, even then fathers still only take about a month off in Sweden. So in Sweden, employers are required to allow to 15 months of paid regular leave. So it's to be shared, but not simultaneously by both parents. And the leave can be taking in whole or part days until the child is about eight years old. But even in that first year, when, you know, both parents are offered to leave, men still take a little bit less. And, you know, it is because they're kind of encouraged by society to provide for the family and go off to work. Yeah, I'm looking at a study right now, a graph right now from Pew Research, and it says of 41 nations, the United States is the only one that lacks paid parental leave that's mandated, right?

So this is total weeks of paid parental leave that is mandated by the national government to new parents. And this sort of helps take out the choices, right? So if you say, well, we offer this much, but if you take that much, we're going to punish you on the low. You're not going to know we're technically doing it for that reason, but we will. But when you mandated, it does help a little bit there. So like Estonia leads to pack with 87 weeks of mandated paid leave. You have Lithuania at over 60. You have Croatia at 40.

I mean, just all of these countries. And at the very, very bottom is the U.S. with zero weeks of mandated paid leave. And they're the only developed country or even semi-developed country in the world, according to these 41 nations, that, you know, does not mandate that paid leave. And it's just, it's a crime. To be honest, it's a crime. Interesting that you mentioned Estonia there, too, because I think, if I remember correctly, in the U.S., our maternal mortality rate is about triple Estonia's.

Right. so just from from the get-go and it's really it's children that are that are suffering so much under these policies and mothers are more likely to die in childbirth here we have depressingly high rate of infant mortality as well frankly unacceptable given the fact that the justification for our expensive health care system is supposed to be that we're putting all this money into research and that's why it's the best well it's objectively not yeah and then yeah we can't afford proper child care for kids allegedly and we can't afford to take care of parents and family units allegedly so the entire family structure is is just kind of screwed

from conception frankly yeah it's it's yeah i agree um a lot of the like mortality rates that are so high in america a lot of that comes down to the fact that you know many many women just cannot afford basic prenatal care and then when their baby is born, they really can't afford to maybe take time off work to take them to the doctor. So, you know, you just put things aside until they sort of snowball into a great, huge issue, politicize these human rights issues that are not political. They're just biology and humanity. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this is, this represents a structural attack on mothers, on fathers, and on children. And if any other, you know, if any terrorist group,

was, you know, doing this to women and children, you know, the U.S. would wring its hands and talk about human rights abuses, but it can just do it in this systematic, institutional way with the, with the bourgeois democratic facade painted over the front of it. So, hey, this is a free and democratic. This is the best country in the world, right? It's, I would love to live in a, but this is all bullshit. And it's hurting the most vulnerable people and working class mothers and children. I mean, it's disgusting. It's not even hurting them in a, in a theoretical, abstract kind of way. I mentioned earlier, and I attached the link to that Google doc, Brett, in case you want it. There's a study done a while ago on the connection between overdeveloped amygdala and politics.

And I thought what was really interesting, we've known for a long time that childhood trauma can cause an overdevelopment in the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that is working when you're afraid or anxious, like the fear center. And about 10 years ago, there was a study. done that showed that people with conservative and right-leaning politics and ideology had very consistently overdeveloped amygdala's, which indicates that people who who experience childhood trauma are significantly more likely to develop right-leaning politics and ideology later on, which means that through the socioeconomic pressure that forces parents to either hold toxic households together for the sake of conserving capital, or maybe

force their kids off into daycare that may or may not be a safe place for them, or just the pressure and pressure cooker-like situation of dealing with something like your situation where it's just revolving door of handing kids off and nobody has time to really bond and the family and it just kind of crumbles. Capitalism is literally programming children for reactionary politics later in life. Damn. Damn. That is a sad. That's a really interesting study. Yeah, I'll have to go read more about that. That's, I mean, fascinating and horrifying. So let's move on to this next section, which is just about being a parent generally.

I know I've gotten this question a lot from people over the two years we've been on air, just like, you know, how do you parent as a radical? How do you feel about bringing a kid into this world as it is, et cetera? So I figure we could talk about some of these issues here. What are your biggest fears about raising children in this world, in this world of climate change and fascism? and poverty and inequality. What are your big fears that you're kind of conscious of when it comes to raising kids here? My biggest fear is that my daughters are not going to know even the freedom that I know now. I mean, I'm not thrilled with where things are at now,

but I think we're always kind of comfortable with the monster that we know. My biggest fear right now is that the pendulum swing that we're experiencing to the right is going to result in this generation of lost liberty and life inevitably because people always push back against those things and those things tend to be violent and that's that's my fear that we're backsliding in a way that my children are not going to know even what I have okay so what would you call a person that has so much money and lives in a giant castle and this person makes all this money he has all these things that he doesn't need and the way he gets it is by hurting people even though people might die people could get separated

from their mommies and daddies that person doesn't care as long as that person is making a lot of money that person doesn't mind hurting people what would you call that kind of person they're monsters daddy i can't tell lies to your baby The boogeyman is alive. He dances with the sound of money falling from the sky. The sound so loud he can't hear the party calling. It don't stop. It don't stop.

So nobody can't hear one of my days. I've been thinking about that a lot, too, the loss of certain freedoms. And I think we're seeing a lot of lethal cultural effects today already. For example, children are way more supervised today, and a lot of their activities are scheduled and moderated by adults while past childhood. For example, it's becoming more and more rare to see kids playing outside without direct adult interferings. You know, often I'll see the parent go onto the playground with their kids to show them how to

play. And that's really not what we grew up with, at least not me. Yeah, not me either. And also, so I did this, like, going off of that, I did this, like, pre-college high school program where you get to live in a dorm and take some college classes for credit. And my friend actually worked a similar program recently. So like 10 years later, and now these kids have to sort of sign in and off just when they get on the bus. They don't have a curfew.

They're just not allowed to kind of go on around campus when they're not supervised. Children now, they don't even have the ability to sort of self-regulate, and they're not given the freedom to get on and off the bus by themselves. They have to sign in with an adult watching them. And also, another big fear for my son is the environment. There's just so much pollution and widespread ecological devastation going on for the sake of making money or saving money that I really hope to instill a love of nature in him. And I was just thinking about this recently because I feel like all of the baby toys and little baby chairs that we have now feature all these colorful exotic animals. But a lot of those animals are probably going to go instinct by the time our children reach adulthood. It's so sad.

I'm sorry about that right now. God damn it. Yeah. Yeah, for me, I mean, climate change is a huge fear. I mean, in and of itself, it's already horrifying. And, you know, the IPCC report came out recently saying it's going to be worse than we thought. It's going to be sooner than we thought. And not only does that, it's going to affect us in our lives.

It's our children when they grew up and they want to have families and they want to have children. It's just going to be more and more of a problem for them. Are they even going to be able to do that? And climate change itself also heightens every single contract. prediction in our society. So, for example, fascism. You don't like fascism? Well, what about when climate change forces millions and millions of people to move from coastal regions, flood across borders to find arable land, you know, or potable water or whatever? The Syrian Civil War, in and of itself, sending refugees into Europe, look at the fascist backlash that that's caused.

Imagine if that was 10 or 100 times as intense. So that's just one little area where climate change in and of itself is going to bring out the absolute worst. politics, not to mention the government and chaos needing to crack down and become more militarized. All those things are really going to get worse, in my opinion, and I'm fucking horrified as a father, and I'm trying to teach myself a bunch of skills when it comes to firearms and hunting and gardening so that I can teach my kids of those things, too, because those basic skills of how do you grow your own food? How do you get your own food? How do you defend yourself? Those things that we take for granted are not going to necessarily be able to be taken

for granted by our children, you know, and that, that's fucking horrifying. I agree with that. I took up gardening when I was pregnant, just because I really need a hobby, and I just noticed how hard it is to plant anything and, you know, grow it and actually eat a tomato that you planted when the climate is just so unstable. And unless you actually take on gardening for yourself, you might not really notice it because you're so busy just doing all the other stuff that we have to do, but it's already becoming, like, very difficult to grow anything.

Yeah. It's incredibly, it's incredibly scary. You said something, I think it was Anastasia that said this about how kids are kind of treated differently now. And it's so weird because as a child, me, myself, I was allowed to and I took full advantage of like, when I woke up in the morning, I went out and about in the neighborhood. And my mom just said, when the lights come on, you come home. But literally hours and hours, I would just travel around with my friends. We'd do whatever we wanted, you know, growing up like that was really free. And it did, it did teach you a whole bunch of skills, right? Because you're out by yourself. You're with us. other kids, you learn social skills, you learn facing challenges together, you learn what danger is and what danger isn't. But even now as a parent, even though I fully know that and I believe in that and I'm happy that was raised that way, I still have this weird compulsion to not let my kids do it, you know, I try to consciously overcome that. Like, you know, tell my daughter, hey, you can go ahead and like walk around the block. You don't need, you know, whatever. I just try to do these little things. But even it makes me uncomfortable. I'm constantly looking out the window. So I don't know exactly what that is. What do you, what do you two think about that?

I have a lot of thoughts actually on this, because I've been experiencing the same thing. Actually, my partner and I were just talking about this eat last night. It's funny that you bring it up because my seven-year-old, we lived out of town for a long time and did rural things. And we just moved back inside the city limits for the first time in ages. And she was so excited to have a neighborhood. And she'd go out and ride her bike kind of around the block. And then after a couple of weeks, she started getting really sad. And I asked why.

And she goes, well, because this is kind of a sad neighborhood. And I said, why do you feel like it's a sad neighborhood? She said, because there's no other kids. And I realized there are other kids here. Their parents just won't let them outside. Yeah, yeah. For more than just their privacy fenced backyards. And even I have really had a really hard time letting her ride her bike past like a block or two.

I have all this anxiety about it. And I feel like it has to do a lot with the 24-hour news cycle. When we were kids, that was less of a thing. I think. It was there, but it wasn't so compulsive and it wasn't everywhere. Yeah. I feel like now anytime anything bad happens anywhere in the world, we hear about it. And especially if it involves like a kid and especially, especially if it's a little white kid. Yeah, for sure. Everybody knows. And I think that there's there's this idea now that the world is a much scarier place now than it was when we were younger. And that's just not true. We just are hearing more of the negativity. And I think,

that that is is really important an important thing to keep an eye on because it's such a powerful tool for for fascism to instill fear and even if it's fear about things that are reasonable to be afraid of like sex offenders. The idea is that if you feel like the world is scary enough, you're more likely to let other people take a little bit of control to keep you safe. I always say in working in marketing and political strategy, which is my background, if you can figure out what someone's proud of and what they're afraid of, you can make them do anything. That's real, real, real, real easy to pinpoint for parents. You know what they're proud of and you know what they're scared of. And if you can tap into that as close to

constantly as possible, you can convince them of anything. And it's sad that that fear seeps into even, even you and I, Brett, who are really otherwise very rational people, not reactionary, but there's still that that sense of terror something bad is going to happen the sense of impending doom affects our kids and their ability to just play and have the same childhoods that we had that's a really good point i was kind of thinking a lot about that when i was pregnant i had time to philosophize about what kind of parent i'd be but um you know i really don't want to become a helicopter parent at the same time you see on the news you know some people let their kids go to the playground by themselves and you know a concerned neighbor calls the police yeah because it's not normal anymore

to let your kids go to a playground by themselves even though a lot of these kids have cell phones you can track your kid with a GPS really it should be the safest thing you can do as a parent is just let them play outside but we're just so conditioned to fear the other all children are very interested in babies and they'll sort of like when I come up and say hello to my son which you know I'm all about because he loves meeting new kids But I've noticed a lot of the parents sort of just hold back and they're just very apologetic, like, oh, I don't know what's gotten into my daughter. I don't know why she would want to say how to a baby. But really, it's just a normal part of socializing that I just, I really don't get it.

Yeah. Yeah, why would a kid want to say how to a baby? Yeah, they just act so apologetic. Like, they're really bothering me and she's just doing this, like, uncouth social thing. But it's just the most normal behavior you can expect from a child. Yeah. But I think so anthropologically going off of what you guys said about being afraid to sort of let your kids wander, I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that under a capitalist framework, just having a child is a lot of energy and money invested that you really cannot afford to lose them and start over. Yeah, you know, I was thinking like when you're talking about fear and the 24 hour news cycle, you know, social media really makes that even more ubiquitous.

So every time you open up Facebook or Twitter or something, you're going to see these news stories and they're pitched to be, you know, what's the most dramatic? What's going to catch your eye? What's going to catch your attention? The media is fueled by profit and that means sensationalism and fear is a great motivating thing for people to keep tuning in. Fox News has an army of absolute drones out there who sit in front of the glow of Fox News all day and just get fucking scared and then go outside and, you know, engage in their weird reactionary

politics. And we also have these websites where you can just open it up and you can see every single person ever charged with a sexual assault in your neighborhood. I don't know if you've ever done that, but it's a, it's a horror show. Yeah, I regret it as well. And so all these things combined to just create this new environment where even people like us that were given these great childhoods, we're still hesitant to give that same thing to our kids. It sucks. What did we just talk about too, that that overdeveloped amygdala phenomenon with conservative and reactionary politics, that's fear. So these people are literally physiologically programmed to the point where you can see it on a scan for fear. And then being able to feed on that just perpetuates

that cycle forever. You just have generation after generation of products, basically, people to exploit. Definitely. Well, we are, we're coming up on 80 minutes here. So I'm just going to ask one more question before we wrap this up. How do your leftist politics come into play in your parenting? I know Anastasia, your child is still pretty young, but still I know you've thought about this. How can one be both a revolutionary and a parent operating in a society that is so incredibly far away from the world that any three of us want to live in? So I thought a lot about this. I decided to get involved with food not bombs and I try to bring my baby when we serve meals. Just because I think it's good for him to sort of grow up seeing

that he's really lucky to be where he is in life and that it's very important to help people who might not be so lucky. I sort of grew up around a lot of poverty that is kind of hard for a lot of Americans to imagine just because Ukraine was such a shit show in the 90s. So I think it's really important for him to see that he is directly responsible. You know, he can play a small part in making someone's days.

better. So that's why I'm going to try to expose him to things like food nut bombs. I also bought him a little ABCs of Anarchy book. Nice. That just goes over a little concept. Through the best some time, through the worst of time, through mixing and through push, to her 36, who and I step away since I thought the Stalin, I thought the freedom, we live in a I believe myself I'm a mob I've got got adopted Baby, what's that

Confused looking your eyes What I'm trying to say is back I'll burn down buildings While you sit on a shot Inside of them You call it drops on the looters and pythos They call it class war I call the broken spiriters

Because, baby, I'm an anarchist in our spineless liberal. We march together for the eight hour day out hands of the Straits of Seattle. The rain and kept on the door breaks to that star. But senders you left me all alone. All alone. I think that the primary thing that I'm trying to focus on doing, undoing as a parent is trying to end these generational patterns of abuse and and reverse that erosion of empathy we see culturally in the U.S. in my family where there's generation after

generation of all kinds of issues. I think that. Yeah, same here. Yeah. Just going to therapy and working through my own trauma so they're not projecting it onto my kids, I think is another on the top five most radical things I've done as a parent, one of the hardest things and one of the most important things and the thing that that makes it the easiest for me to build kids for activism and for compassion and for empathy and teaching empathy and nuance has has been something that's been really important to understanding that there are different perspectives and different ways of living. And none of those things are necessarily. There are some things that are better than others. But overall, if you're not hurting anybody, all of those things are fine. That,

that for me was not a thing that I was raised with at all. And I think that is a really novel and radical concept to a lot of people. So like with regards to how we how we talk about religion, for example. I'm very agnostic. Most of my family is not. I was raised Pentecostal, which is a fascinating experience. Documentary Jesus Camp gives you a good idea of what my early childhood was like. I've heard of that. Yeah, yeah, it's a trip. So being able to say to my children, give them the idea that whatever you decide that you want to believe in whatever way you decide you want to live your life is okay as long as you're not hurting somebody and you're not telling anybody that something bad will happen to them if they don't agree with you those are

the general rules sometimes it feels like that's something that should have just aged out by now but my seven-year-old when last year she was six at the time came home from school upset because one of her friends told her that if she doesn't believe in god she's going to die and it's going to hurt and a six-year-old told her that which means that someone told that six-year-old that. So taking the time to teach your children to communicate with other people in a way that isn't making them feel afraid and not instilling fear in them, a parenting through compassion and empathy instead of parenting by terrorism is really, really important. Not hitting your kids. That's a big one. Yeah, it's huge. Objectively counterproductive. Yeah, scientifically

proven at this point. It's scientifically proven at this point. Yeah, right. So kids, kids who grew up with corporal punishment are more likely to go to prison. They're more likely to have developmental disorders. They're more likely to experience PTSD from that abuse because that's what it is. In my household, our thing is you can do whatever you want and no one's ever going to hurt you for not doing the thing. As long as you're okay with the consequences of that. So if you don't make your bed for three days, let's see how long you can go without watching TV. And sometimes my little one, who is such a little rebellious soul told me actually the other day

by the way, as some of my activist friends had gotten arrested for various things and she had overheard that and she said, can I just get arrested now so that when I do it, when I'm a grown-up I can just tell the cops I already know what to do. Wow. Fantastic. And I feel like a lot of that just

like bold, brave, I'm going to do what I'm going to do and I'm fine with the consequences of this comes from the way that we interact with them on a day-to-day basis that they're really compassionate kids and we get compliments on how well-behaved they are wherever we go and they're sweet and they listen when it's important but they don't do it just because somebody taller than them told them they should that's really important I think for the kind of adults they're going to be and also how safe

they are in the world as it is now especially as girls I know that this is a question that that you asked earlier, and I seem you can edit out what we don't have time for. That's fine, yeah, go ahead. But with raising daughters in this world, I think that raising them to be bold and brazen and loud and set boundaries and ask questions and insist on answers and ask follow-up questions, that's so important because girls and women in this culture and in capitalism in general are so constantly exploited and so constantly told. that that doing that is somehow bad.

So we talk about bodily autonomy constantly and in consent and in an age appropriate way. But there's there's actually a great for a little bit older kids. And maybe your your older daughter might appreciate it. There's this book called Crush. It's a graphic novel that I got for my daughter. She had actually picked it out. And there's this whole section in there that very appropriately without getting into details talks about how they're going to behave at a dance.

And it's like middle school, high school age kids. And the idea there is you ask first. And no is no. And silence is no. And I don't know is no. And anything other than an enthusiastic yes is no, definitely. And it's in the context of dancing and hugging and those things. So it's age appropriate for a whole variety of things.

My daughter was really fascinated by that and had a lot of follow-up questions and it triggered this really great conversation about this thing that is starting to come up now. There's a boy that has a crush on her in her class. So that's a thing that's important to talk about now. And then concepts like setting boundaries, teaching kids how to set boundaries and guard those boundaries, that's a radical concept, especially for girls. but for everybody in general setting and respecting boundaries. My daughter also came home from school a couple weeks ago and was really upset telling me about an experience she had with some of her friends on the playground where they were playing a game that was kind of rough

and there were a bunch of kids that had dog piled on her and she had like a little panic attack and told them to stop and get off of her and they wouldn't do it. And she was really, really upset about that because it was the first time that somebody had in a way that made her feel afraid and physically hurt her had ignored that request ever. God damn. And she was really upset, but upset about that it had happened and upset about how to handle it because she said, to me, when I said, you have to tell them, she said, but

they're my friends, so it's okay. And I said, absolutely not. I feel like there's this idea that if, and I think it's so exploitable, if, it's, If somebody who wants to take advantage of you can present as a friend, that that makes it more okay, that the enemy is always going to be ugly and scary and mean and the bad guy, obviously, and scary music is going to come on when they enter stage left. That's not the way that it is most of the time. So teaching kids to question authority and to be willing to be gently critical. of even friends and family and to not ever accept mistreatment and violation of boundaries from anybody no matter what. I think that if there's a theme in my version of radical parenting,

that's it. That nobody, nobody is above criticism. Yeah. Period. Absolutely. So I have a lot to say here. Obviously, I have a daughter. She's almost a preteen now, So I've had lots of experience with this. And I think Sparanza and my way of parenting is very similar. I always say that I don't teach my kid what to think. I teach her how to think. And that includes robust intellectual debates when the God question comes up,

which it came up, you know, when she was a little younger, it came up a lot. I would argue whatever opposite side of the position that she had that day. You know, she had talked to her grandma, so now she was believing in God, and I would argue against it. Or she had listened to me a little too much and she was feeling a little cocky, in her atheism, and I would argue the other way. And the whole point is not whether I want her to believe in God. I don't care. What I want her to do is really to be able to think through problems, and that builds confidence. And that goes into the other thing that I'm always trying to instill.

My son is still very small, so he's still going to be a work in progress. But with my daughter, especially given that she is a daughter, I'm constantly building up this confidence. And as Bronza said, it's about being able to stand up for yourself. I always tell her, just because we're big adults, just because we're tall and we sound authoritative. I was like, most people don't know shit, you know? I was like most people act like they know a lot fucking more than they do. And you should never just take somebody's word for it because they're older than you or they sound more confident. Always think why. What does that mean? What are the implications? Why should I listen to you about this thing? And I've really created my daughter to be this little wrecking ball of confidence

and, you know, and empathy too, right? I always tell her. I always tell her, if you ever see anybody bullying anybody you always take the side of the person being bullied even if it's your friends doing it and she told me just the other day her her best friends her little click in school we're picking on this this other kid you know he's gross he's weird like you know all whispering about him and he's sitting there right there watching it and feeling bad and she said i just exploded at my friends like i went off and these are her best friends too so she's doing this to those people and that's really that's really fascinating and i love that i was proud of her for that and i always talk to her about feminism I really tried to instill this this feminist confidence in her and there was a time where

you know some of the boys like a couple years ago were picking on some of the girls in the class just you know being shitty little boys and uh she she organized the girls in the class during recess to march up to the boys in question and and demand that they stopped doing it and uh and of course she was she was a little leader yeah just a whole squad for sure but i absolutely love it like right now she could pick any historical figure to do a paper on, and she picked without even telling me about it, Malcolm X. And she just told me yesterday, she's like, I'm halfway through this essay I'm writing. I was like, oh, who'd you choose? And she's like, well, a lot of the people I didn't know, but when I saw Malcolm X's name on this list of possible ones, I know you love him, and I wanted

to learn more about him. So I picked up this book and started reading. So I don't know. It's just, you got to teach your kids, or I always say society will teach your kids, and society sucks. and so like you should never shy away from really really teaching your kids your values if you believe you have good values or they're better values than the reactionary rights or the horrific consumerist empty vacuous center then teach them don't be ashamed of that because our enemies aren't ashamed to teach their kids and we're on the right side of history we're teaching our kids the right shit the last thing i'll say is spronza mentioned far earlier in this conversation about honesty talking to your kid of always be age appropriate but be radically honest and i i tell my

I was like, you can ask me any question. If you ever come to me and ask me absolutely anything, I will give you the truth. I will not sugarcoat it. I will not trying to hide it, whether does Santa Claus really exist or, dad, what is sex? If you're mature enough and you're genuinely curious enough to come to me and ask me this to formulate it into a question, I promise you from the bottom of my heart that I will always give you the exactly true answer to the best of my ability. And I've always done that. And we build up this relationship where even her mom will sometimes be like, oh, maybe that's inappropriate or, you know, let's, let's talk about something else. And she's like, you know, Dad, you're the only person that I can come to and be

truly, truly honest about my questions I have with the world, even if they're uncomfortable. And that's the sort of relationship that I think radical parents should really try to foster. Building on that, too, I think, and Estacia, you're coming up relatively soon on when the questions are going to start. And it's every 10 seconds. And sometimes they're like. I'm really looking forward to that because I remember asking all kinds of questions. And, like, my parents would sort of tell me lies essentially, but my grandma was always like really straightforward with me. So just why, why, why, you know.

I know my kids, exactly. I was going to say my kids, my kids will ask follow up questions until you're like down to the molecular structure. Yeah, it's challenging. I remember I love doing that. So I'm looking forward to hear all questions my son asks me. Another fear with with the questions issue and how to answer things. beside the issue of is this an okay thing for my kid to hear about is also what happens if I

don't know because I think that sometimes parents are really like maybe prideful admitting they don't know things or maybe afraid to let their kids that they don't know things because maybe that's going to like rock their world but I think that that's been really really great I don't that my parents were totally that way they just make something up if they didn't know they never never admit it and then what I realized that they just didn't know some things, it legitimately did, like, shook me to my core. I was like, oh, my God, who are you, people? Impostors.

Well, I think now it's a lot easier because if we don't know things, we can just look it up online, whereas our parents, you know, they would have had to go to the library, get an encyclopedia on the topic. So it's probably easier, I think, for us to admit when we don't know something. Well, I know, like, a lot of people have a hard time admitting, but... Even if you can look it up, I make it a point to tell my kids when I don't know something. Yep. Same. And I think that's really important, especially for my older one who was just type A to death.

And it really bugs her when she doesn't know things in the same way that it really bugs me when I don't know things. So I've been really careful to you. If I don't know something saying, I don't know, let's go look it up together. This is an adventure. And I think that that has really shaped their feeling about learning and being able to admit when you don't know something is so important for so many areas of life. It's so good. Absolutely. And it really is fascinating how quickly a simple line of questioning can devolve to your child basically asking to understand the fabric of the cosmos.

I don't know. I don't know. My older one got really upset a few weeks ago because I was tucking her in and she was like tearing up a bit. And I was like, what's the matter? What's going on? She was really emotional. And I asked her what was going on, why she was so upset. And she goes, I just realized I'm going to die someday.

And everyone's going to die someday because everything dies because that's how the world works. And why? And then what happens? And why doesn't anyone know? And what are we made of? And how am I alive now? and how do I know why I am? And it was like rapid fire questions like that, like 20 in a row.

And she's just seven and tiny and in her bed with tears streaming down her face because all these big things. And it was great because we got to sit and talk about a lot of these big ideas and a lot of that same theme of, I don't know. And that's okay. And here's why that's okay. Yeah. I've had so many conversations like that with my daughter.

my daughter had this horrible experience when she was about seven where her grandfather was in one room watching TV and her grandmother was in the kitchen making coffee and they were watching her. She was alone with them and she was sitting with her grandfather watching TV. She went out to her grandmother. It was like, hey, can you go tell your grandfather that the coffee is going to be ready soon or something like that? My daughter went back in. In the meantime, her grandfather had suffered a stroke and she found him. So it was fucking horrific and I was so scared about the possible. trauma that that would cause. It was just the worst case scenario for a parent. But those questions then came out and we were discussing it all the time. It's very challenging. I think the uncomfort

is sometimes adults don't even fully wrestle with their views on mortality and their own fear of death. And so when a child asks, it's almost uncomfortable for a lot of people who've never really plunged the depths of their own psyche regarding those matters to talk about them. You know, we have this silence taboo when it comes to death in our hyper-productive go-go-go-go culture. And so I think a lot of parents just aren't prepared for it. One thing you can do if you're going to be a parent is to really sort of look inside yourself and wrestle with what you are, what you believe in, what your thoughts on death are, and sort of be prepared to field those questions when they inevitably come your way.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a really good point. So I noticed to the question of, you know, how can you be a revolutionary and a parent? Brett, what you said about teaching your kids to question authority, I think that's honestly, like, pretty radical because kids are often taught to respect their elders, you know, not question anything an elder might say to them. But I noticed you guys both mentioned the importance of teaching compassion by practice, modeling empathy for your kids. So, Brett, you sort of did that by showing your daughter, you know, there's two perspectives or sides that she can take by arguing the other side. And she thought that she was really established in her beliefs. And I know from studying anthropology, it's a very important aspect to consider when trying to teach empathy to your kids

because empathy and mutual understanding needs certain particular child-waring conditions. So children need to have a secure attachment to at least one parent. And then they also need to be exposed to people that might have different viewpoints. They sort of have to literally learn how to put themselves into another person's shoes. And there's just a really good quote that I like to read from one of my favorite anthropological authors, if you don't mind. Yeah, please do. It's a little bit depressing. So your stories, Spranz, it will definitely help after it.

So this is a quote from Sarah Hardy's book called Mothers and Others, which I recommend to anyone that wants to learn more about the evolutionary origins of empathy and mutual understanding. But in the end, she leaves a note of concern to the reader where she says, all the reasons people might have to worry about the future of our species, including the usual depressing litany of nuclear proliferation, global warming, emerging infectious diseases, or crashing meteorites, add one more having to do with just what sort of species our descendants millennia hence might belong to. If empathy and understanding develop only under particular varying conditions, and if an ever-increasing portion of the species fails to encounter those conditions, but nevertheless survives to reproduce, it won't matter how valuable

the underpinnings for collaborations were in the past. Compassion and the quest for mutual connection will fade away as surely a sight in cave-dwelling fish. In the end, she advocates that what makes humans human is our capacity to be empathetic and curious about the emotion as others. And if we sort of forget about that when we're teaching our kids how to live and when we're instilling all these cultural norms in them then over time you know hardy saying we might not become be the humans that we are today so I just thought it was really interesting that you guys both said it's very important to radical parenting I feel like we can have really fantastic conversations for sure I really like your anthropological perspective

And then I come at it for more a sociological, psychological one. And I feel like those together make for really fascinating conversations about these things. Because as you're saying that, I actually was reading, my academic background is more in psychology and law. Psychology is sort of my hobby. Great. Awesome. So I just read this book that was addressing sociopathy specifically. And it has a very clickbaity name.

So try not to cringe too hard. It's the sociopath next door. Oh, yeah, I heard it's really good. I haven't read it yet. It's so good. I really, I really was really skeptical when I started reading it because it felt like it was going to be very sensationalizing. And I have a lot of issues with the idea of sensationalizing mental illness. I think that's a dangerous thing to do.

But one thing that I read in that book that was actually very encouraging and does it counter your point, but maybe compliments it? the psychologist author was she gets a question a lot about why if sociopaths are so self-serving why aren't we just a species of sociopaths why how haven't they kind of taken over through natural selection and she talked about how because the reality is natural selection doesn't favor self-serving species it favors species that act for the good of the species and the example she gave was the thompson's gazelle which is really interesting when it's a really cool animal they thrive in their herd environment and humans are very social creatures and in a similar way when a predator comes along with the thompson's gazelle

the one that sees at first will start hopping up and down specifically to attract attention to that one specifically to increase the odds that the predator will go for that one because that allows the rest of the herd the opportunity to escape and they do really well and the point that she was making was that if the human tendency was towards sociopathy, we would eventually all destroy each other. It would die. It doesn't specifically because the human tendency is just what you said. What makes us human is our tendency toward compassion and empathy and cooperation because that's for the good of the species. We thrive when we care for each other, not one competing. So the capitalist system, as it exists now, is so interesting

because it really is, despite what I hear a lot of conservatives and reactionaries say, it is contrary to human nature. Exactly. Right. So I think a lot of that has to do with people sort of misunderstanding the idea of Darwinism. You know, the survival of the fittest are just people competing and you know yes not survival of the fittest one survival of the fittest species which means they work together yeah right but also um

one interesting fact about darbin's research is he did that in like a tropical climate and um we know that humans kind of become more violent and competitive the hotter it gets that's why there's like a lot more homicidal like they're just shootings and homicides um during days of like extreme heat at least in Philadelphia.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I've always knew Montana was superior for some reason. So there's another guy that also did, he studied how species interact, Peter Kirpotkin. He wrote on mutual aid, a factor of evolution. So because he did his research in Siberia

and sort of the tundra, he sort of studied all these animals in a similar way to Darwin, but the conclusion that he made ultimately is that the need for cooperation and mutual aid is so important that you really cannot survive without it and as much of a law of nature as mutual struggle. Yeah.

That's great. In the end, it just depends on our climate, and it's just sort of us evolving to work with the environment. It depends on that, but what I get out of both of those little stories is that there's a possibility for both in the human area, animal. There's a possibility for a more narcissistic, competitive, you know, who gives a fuck who I have to step over to get it sort of drive. And there's a drive for empathy and

understanding and mutual aid in solidarity. And as radical parents, what we can do is foster one side of that coin. Foster the empathy, foster the solidarity, bring that out and cultivate it. Certain traits and stuff are there, but they can be cultivated or they can be neglected. And being a parent is trying to find where your child's natural inclinations and tendencies and interests are, and then cultivating the best aspects of those. And so I think we can learn from that and really tie that back around to this conversation by saying, you know, that's a choice as a parent that you can make. And it's an active role you have to take, but it's an essential one.

That's great. Well, with all of that said, thank you both so much for coming on. This is a fascinating conversation. We went all over the map, but I really think people are going to appreciate it. I know I appreciated it. I like that. Both of you took time out of your busy schedules to come out here and have this conversation. before I let you go, do you have any last-minute recommendations for people who want to

learn more about any of this? And also, where can listeners find both of you online? Okay, online. I guess I'm at, on Twitter at Retroition. I've also got a podcast that I'm working on developing that has a Twitter page and nothing else so far. You can follow that at Tilt Revolution. It's a podcast focusing on rural organizing, and we'll talk a lot about this subject as well about parenting. I think that most of the stuff I was going to talk about for recommendations, Anastasia touched on already. So that was neat.

You go and say yours. I think so I just have one other recommendation. It's another book for anyone that's interested in learning more about how culture and biology sort of play off each other when it comes to childhood. It's a book by Meredith F. Small and it's called How Biology and Culture Shape the Way we raise our young children. Actually, it's called kids. Then, how biology and culture shape the way we raise young children. It's sort of, um, is complimentary to the Sarah Hardy book called Mothers and others. Cool. And can we find you online anywhere? So, yeah, I'm really not on Twitter or anything.

I do have an Instagram account and if anyone is so inclined to look at baby or cat photos, you can find me at Naus.pronina. That's n-as.t-r-o-n-I-N-A. Awesome. Well, thanks. again for coming on. Keep doing great work. Keep being kick-ass moms. And we really appreciate you coming on Rev. Left to talk about this stuff. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Level girl You are the queen of my world Level four Level girl

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