Significant Others - Julie Lythcott-Haims on Sir Leslie Stephen

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Parenting expert Julie Lythcott-Haims sits down with Liza to explore what parents should and shouldn’t want for their children; and whether or not Sir Leslie Stephen may have gotten some things right.

Welcome back to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien. In our last episode, we learned about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, who was a complicated man, to say the least. When I was researching this episode, I couldn't help but be struck by how Sir Stephen's approach to parenting was practically an inversion of the kind of thing we see today. So I wanted to talk it through with one of the premier experts on modern parenting trends, Julie Lithcott-Hames, author of the books How to Raise an Adult and Your Turn, How to Be an Adult, which is now available in paperback. Julie, thank you so much for talking with me.

I want to start with this idea of access, Thank you so much for talking with me. I want to start with this idea of access, which is something I noticed in this somewhat tortured relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father. Is there a sort of guiding principle for you in terms of finding that balance between giving our kids access to all the things they need to succeed, and then exposure to things that might kind of light their fire in a positive way. Well, yeah, I think that's it, Liza, in a nutshell, the fact that balance is required, that we don't want to be, and I think nobody listening would be in danger of underserving our kids by providing them with nothing, neither resources nor hope nor opportunity. I mean, people who find themselves in that circumstance are likely

dealing with their own poverty, mental illness, systemic issues that are impeding their ability to show up for their kids. The other side of the spectrum is problematic for completely different reasons. When we over-attend and over-handle, give them too much that they could have gotten for themselves, solve too much that they could have tried to solve for themselves, planned the path for them when this is their life and they ought to be planning it themselves. When we overdo it out of an abundance of caution

and intention to secure a certain future, we undermine their agency, we undermine their resilience. They continue to grow chronologically, but they don't know how to do for themselves, and that damages them psychologically. And so the balance is absolutely key. And to the point of the dad of Virginia Woolf, when I looked at what did he do and what didn't he do, he seemed to be so keenly interested in ensuring she was given access to literature and therefore information and knowledge and ideas. And yet he couldn't go far enough in his own limited 19th century existence to undo the patriarchy. He was very much a supporter

of and a beneficiary of the patriarchy. He didn't seem to be able to see how he was basically, if there are 10 steps toward opening the world to his daughter, he maybe got her to step three, which was more than most dads were able to do or interested in doing with daughters in that era. But there were so many more steps. He wasn't brave enough to say, my daughter has the brilliance, the talent, the will, the wherewithal to learn and grow further in this space, and we should open doors for her. And he didn't. And that has to have something to do with the neuroses of the household and ultimately with, you know, what ultimately ailed her and made her come to the conclusion that life was not meant to continue to be lived by her. is he clearly was interested in his children being successful, I guess, in a Victorian description, right? That they would be at a certain position in society and that they would be well-to-do and that they would be cultured. And I think he probably clearly approached his sons

differently than his daughters. But in terms of that urge to open the world to your child, I don't know how much it was that, you know what I mean? Like that feels to me a very modern perspective. And you note sometimes in your work that there's been this shift clearly since the early 1900s, but also really in the last 20 to 30 years toward a more hyper-functional parenting, you know, almost a smothering sort of thing. And I'm curious if you have any sense of what has gotten us there. Absolutely. Yes, you pointed out that it's been 20 or 30 years. It's actually been close to 40. When we look at the systemic changes afoot in modern American parenting, there were five shifts underway, all in the same three to four year timeframe in the mid 1980s. How do I know this? Because the first college students to come, the cohort who first came to college with a set

of parents who could not let go, who could not trust that their kid could manage the day-to-day aspects of college life. That was the late 1990s. It was the first kids to be subjected to these changes in childhood in the mid-80s. So let me briefly name them in no particular order. The concept of stranger danger was born in 1983 with a horrific made-for-tv movie dramatizing one particular case of adam walsh's abduction and murder so everybody's now on hyper alert to this infinitesimal possibility uh that something atrocious could happen and we began shifting childhood accordingly um so now play was watched children were watched in grocery stores and malls and on sidewalks and in parks by very

vigilant parents trying to do the right thing, but maybe overreaching. The play date was born in 1984. Moms were going into the workforce in the 70s. We came home and let ourselves in in the 70s. I'm Gen X. That's what I did. But by the 80s, there was a lot of judgment around this is not safe for children to be home alone.

We need all these after school things. We need to arrange play. They can't just trust kids to go find play. They need to have adult involvement. So the play date was born. We became really safe in our cars and on our bicycles. In every single state across America, we passed laws around bike helmets, seatbelts, and car seats. These were technological advancements that made us safer on the roads. Very important, but led to us being enamored with the degree to which technology could prevent everything. And so we have little anti-skid bumps on the bottom of toddlers' socks so they don't fall. Well, guess what? Toddlers are supposed to fall, right? So we began bubble

wrapping everything in the house, the hypervigilance around nothing shall ever remotely cause you an ounce of pain. All of that was happening. And then the self-esteem movement, ribbons and trophies, certificates and awards just for being on the soccer team, not for being any good. And then A Nation at Risk was published, same era, saying American teenagers are just floundering at these international tests of academic competency, and we need more homework, and we're teaching to the test so we can get our test scores up. And all of these things happened between 1981 and 1985. And so that's what changed. And all of this achieves a short-term win. We protect our kids when we're always there. They look like they're being aided only with psychologists delving into like, wait a minute, what are the correlations between this stuff? Have we seen all of these short-term things constantly being there and vigilant? It looks like it helps short-term gain, long-term pain. Let's put it that way.

and vigilant, it looks like it helps short-term gain, long-term pain. Let's put it that way. As you talk about sort of an antidote to all of this, it being sort of to maintain the ballast, right? And to sort of withstand all of the extremities and the craziness of whatever, you know, media winds are blowing. I had a child psychologist recommend once to me when my daughter was very upset about something. And this person said, it's your job to right-size her anxiety. And that was such a useful phrase for me, because there's also a lot of sort of conventional wisdom about honoring feelings and letting people vent and all that stuff, which is, of course, true. But then there's such a thing as also reflecting back, you're okay.

Right. You're actually okay. It's both. Yes. So what we do better today than in prior generations is acknowledge feelings. Many of us grew up in cultures and families where we weren't to have feelings. And I can certainly very much relate to that being raised by a stiff upper lip British mother whose method of surviving the stuff she dealt with in life was just get on with it and don't acknowledge the pain. That wasn't healthy for me, but I get that that is how she survived. So now we know, now millennials and Gen Z have been raised

with, hey, feelings matter, differences matter, and just sit and be with it. Often we're uncomfortable with our kids' discomfort, so we want to make it go away, prevent it from happening in the first place, or tell them, oh, that's not a big deal. None of that is good. We're supposed to empathize with it and then, as you said, empower. Yeah, that's the piece that I think often gets lost, at least speaking personally, is that the emphasis is so much on, I was raised by a child therapist, so maybe the opposite of your mother's perspective. Because there is a point at which hearing, you've done hard stuff is incredibly empowering. And so that's a very useful message to be reminded of. When I was really getting into this story of these two characters, the idea of genius was so prevalent, right?

characters, the idea of genius was so prevalent, right? That Virginia Woolf talks about how the cult of genius was such a thing for her father's generation, that all these men were obsessed with being geniuses and being regarded and looking a certain way and acting a certain way, and it excuses all sorts of awful behavior. And I feel that that just totally anecdotally and in my experience as a parent, that cult shifted, at least in my era, toward trying to cultivate genius in children. Is that something that resonates for you? Is that something that you feel is at play ever? 100%. I'm talking with you from the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically Silicon Valley, specifically Palo Alto. And there are a few places that are worse at this than us, or better, depending on whether you value it or not. Got it.

my child should be a genius. The world will look well upon me if my child is a genius. Again, the child are the inanimate object that we need to prove our opinions or the worth of our own existence. So what I like to say toward this notion of the cultivation of genius is, it's like we have entered in the Westminster dog show, our dog, the child, and we are going for best in class, best in breed, best in show. And at the end of the day, when we win that, which is the equivalent of the bumper sticker from the air quotes Wright College on the back of our car, we go home with that trophy. Like this child, this dog, it just needs more kibble and a pat on the head. And that works for dogs, but it doesn't work for humans who want to craft their own path and want to decide which hoops to jump through and which not, and want to deal with their own obstacle course and want to always know they're loved by family, by a set of friends, but want to forge

their own path in life. And so the hubris, the arrogance of, I will make my child into a this or that, is, you know, we call it tiger parenting. You will be a doctor, you'll be an engineer, the only five acceptable thing, you'll be a tennis star. You know, this sense of what constitutes success, and that it is somehow attached to you have to be a genius, is harming our kids. We all want to be loved and cherished because we breathe, because we exist, right? Not because we got all A's or because we got into this school. We're desperate, you, me, everybody listening, desperate to know I will be loved and accepted as I am, even when I stumble, even if I lose, even when this and that, right?

We want to know intrinsically that we matter and we're valued, not as a function of our IQ or what school we got into or how much salary we have or how big the house is or the type of car we drive. My heart is swelling just listening to you. Liza, you got me on my soapbox now. I love it. Leslie Stephen aspired to be at this level of genius, but he raised a genius instead. In your work and experience, do you ever encounter situations where there's that tension when maybe the kid is better at something the

parent wanted to do? Like the parent wanted to be a tennis star, but the kid is better at tennis. Is that something you ever see? I was a college dean at Stanford. I tended to see parents who were very interested in cultivating the genius or the best in class, best in show. But in order to know the jealousy, I would have to have had parents open up to me about their own neuroses, or it would have to have been so evident that on the face of it, you could tell. Occasionally, you would see a little bit of the narcissism, like it's all about me. When a parent just shows up and they seem to make it about them instead of really the child. Again, they're the trainer, the manager that trained this thing to win the dog show, and they want the accolades. And so that's where I think,

I don't know if that was jealousy or living vicariously or just a really thin sense of self such that they needed the child's light to shine back on them. I did see that a lot. I'm not sure I've ever labeled it jealousy though, but perhaps. It's fascinating. And the thing with Leslie Stephen is he was so childish toward the end of his life. And there are many reasons for that. But I'm wondering if in your experience, if anyone, a parent ever threw a tantrum at you? experience if anyone, a parent ever threw a tantrum at you. The tantrums come in the form of if there are 10 steps, as we talked about earlier, if there were 10 steps required for the child to do a thing, the parent is going to, and you're trying to push back and tell the parent, okay,

you've done step one and two for them. Now, can you be alongside them as they try steps three and four? Can you watch to be sure there's no disaster as they do steps five, six, and seven? And then by step eight, they've got it. It's sort of this sense of how a human grows to be capable. The tantrums happen when parents are like, no, no, no, but I need to, I need to, right? I can stack the dishwasher perfectly. I know how to cross the street safely. I will tie their shoes so they don't come apart. And so the tantrum is this kind of, you have forgotten that this young person must learn every single one of those things. And you are well past the time when they should have been taught so that they can do

for themselves. You have this sense of, I can control it. If I do it, it'll be fine. What you've forgotten, parent, is you'll be dead one day and your kid won't be able to do any of the things. It's almost like the parent's self is partially constructed out of, what did I take care of for my kid today? What did I handle for them such that I advanced the ball for them? It's again, that short-term I did it instead of the long-term I taught them to do it. I was covering my mouth during part of that because some of those examples may or may not resonate in my own home. That dishwasher, like I'm so compulsive about my stupid dishwasher

that everybody has my number, right? And none of them, and I say, why is no one else loading the dishwasher? Well, because I redo it whenever they do. Right, which is really annoying. Let me tell you. Yeah. And look, I've been there. I got my favorite. I loved my little cutlery drawer.

I like it. All the knives and forks in the right place. So I can, right? I'm with you. We need therapy to understand why am I so hurting that I need the control at the dishwasher or in the kitchen broadly. That's where my anxiety shows up in the kitchen. What's hurting in me

such that this is how I manage. When we make ourselves more well, we make our children's lives so much easier. As was the case with Leslie Stephen. If only he'd been able to access some therapy around his stuff. Imagine how the children would have thrived. Well, you said something so, I think, profoundly true, which is that for us, I mean, his manifested very differently. I mean, his manifested very differently, but for our era, this clinging to over-parenting, I think, is linked to a fear of death. That like, yes, as long as I'm necessary, death can't take me yet. I have a purpose.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that I have learned my own self that the purpose cannot be another person. Like, the purpose can be people, the purpose in different ways. And I'm thinking about how this relates to Virginia Woolf's story and thinking of her mother, who made her husband her purpose. That was her job. That gave her meaning. That's what provided her a home and safety and everything. And it kind of worked out for her in a way, except she died very young. But then it caused this legacy of disaster. I mean, it just rolls forward generations, which is so fascinating. Well, let's face it. We were talking about the 19th century when women were second,

third-class citizens, and you had to attach yourself to the male figures in your life, be they your husbands, fathers, or brothers, in order to have any hope of being sheltered and fed. So that was, I wouldn't call that a choice. True. Right? In today's terms, there was no, it's almost, it's a few steps removed from indentured servitude, which is one step removed from slavery.

These are not, we are now, thankfully, in this nation, for the time being, in a place where people can choose and one does not have to curry favor with one's male relative in order to have a decent quality life. So in this 21st century, as we see these rollbacks to earlier times when a person of one gender only was safe and had security and shelter and food, if they were attached to a person of the other gender who's, you know, those, we must not let ourselves roll back to those times of different class statuses for people based on their gender. I mean, I think the story Virginia Woolf lived and her mother lived and her sister lived all trying to caretake this man because as in Victorian society, he was their only option. We do not want to return to that

and to the mental health consequences that flow from a life like that. And also, just this is a minor point in comparison to everything you just mentioned, but it also, it infantilized him. So, you know, by the end, he is becoming less and less capable and more and more helpless in a sort of reverse proof of exactly what you're talking about with, you know, bad parenting. Fascinating. Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It was

really exciting to get to talk with you. You as well. Thank you so much to Julie Lithcott-Hames for joining us. If you want even more insight into parenting or like me, you're curious to learn just how much you've already screwed up and how it can still be okay anyway, please check out Julie's books, How to Raise an Adult and Your Turn, How to Be an Adult. And tune in next time to find out which parenting expert made his kids call him by his first name. And finally, if you enjoyed what you heard today, be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts.