The feminism movement didn't unite

women. It split women. I feel totally

listen. 50% of young women don't want to

have children. They're really

preoccupied with making money and

materialism. But we're still looking at

a society that is increasingly telling

women where they could be better. But

sometimes feminism expects women to be

prioritized and both sexes want the

privileges without the responsibilities.

Can I just add we are producing women

and men who are and I'll tell you what I

mean by that. It'll be an interesting

discussion. We're joined by three

leading and outspoken voices in female

societal issues with very different

opinions to unpack the choices and

consequences women face in modern

society. The sexual revolution gave

women freedom. But things like the

washing machine, women entering the

labor force, the pill had enormous

social changes. For instance, it gave

the illusion that sex was

consequencefree. But the second wave of

the feminist movement was every woman

should want free sex. And yet 82% of

young women are depressed and anxious

after casual sexual encounters or every

woman should want to go out to work and

leave their children in daycare. But we

are doing terrible damage to our

children by putting them in daycare.

This strain of feminism has basically

aspired as much as possible to make

women like men. And now gender roles are

changing. And we've gone so far. So we

have women dominating men. How are we

dominating men? Oh my goodness. 60% of

college students are women.

dominating. No, let me finish. Young men

are afraid of women and the power they

have over them. Oh god. To blame

feminism for those things. I mean, it's

insane. But there are solutions. I'm

just going to jump in there and talk

about a report that came out in 2025,

and this was really shocking. What are

your thoughts about this? Okay, so first

of all,

this has always blown my mind a little

bit. 53% of you that listen to the show

regularly haven't yet subscribed to the

show. So, could I ask you for a favor

before we start? If you like the show

and you like what we do here and you

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to make sure that this show is better

for you every single week. We'll listen

to your feedback. We'll find the guests

that you want me to speak to and we'll

continue to do what we do. Thank you so

much.

Let's start with some introductions.

Louise, what is your professional

background and what do I need to

understand and know about your

experiences that feed into your

perspective on this subject? So, my

professional background, I'm a

journalist. Um, I write about ideas for

a living. I don't have like a political

agenda. I'm just I just write and say

things that I think are true. In terms

of how I arrived at some of my views on

what we're going to talk about today,

sexual revolution, I think I was raised

with a lot of the assumptions around

the sexual revolution, which are sort of

like the water that we swim in now

culturally. And it wasn't until I got to

university that I started gradually

unpicking them.

After I was I left university, I worked

in a rape crisis center which was quite

formative for me in that I saw some of

the ways in which some of the feminist

theory that I had learned at university

didn't quite map onto reality.

And then I after leaving that job I

became a journalist. Again I kept

thinking about these things and I guess

I've reached a point where

I take a very mixed view of this

history. I think there are good things.

I think there are bad things that have

come out of the sexual revolution.

Louise, can you define for me what you

mean by sexual revolution for anybody

that doesn't know because it's going to

be quite an important term today. Right.

So I think that there are two things

really the ideological event really of

the 1960s and 1970s. So this was a a

period of not just in relation to sexual

relationships, but all sorts of things.

A period of really questioning and

challenging traditional ideas and

particularly traditional Christian ideas

about how what sexual relationships

ought to look like. I think actually the

the the point that we've reached in

terms of progressive culture is the

assumption that those traditional ideas

are necessarily questionable, are

necessarily

fit to be challenged. I think that's the

ideological thing that we're talking

about. But there's this other thing that

happens at the same time which is

partially connected which is a material

change. So you have the introduction of

the pill, the advent of safe abortion.

Remember historically abortion is not

safe. So you have the advent of safe

abortion and of course it's

decriminalization. You have things like

the washing machine and central heating

and all sorts of other domestic

appliances, domestic technologies which

actually have been enormously important

in changing such relationships because

all of a sudden it means that that

basically takes less time to run a home

and so it becomes more possible for

women to enter the workforce. So then

you see this wave of not only changing

marriage rates and birth rates but also

women entering the labor force on mass

and really some enormous social changes

like so enormous that it can be a little

bit hard in 2025

to realize how enormous they were

because we've become used to them. We'll

talk about all of that today going

clockwise then Erica same question to

you about your background and h the work

that's fed into the perspective you

have. I'm a psychoanalyst in private

practice. I'm an author. I write books

about parenting. And the book I'm

probably most well known for is my book,

Being There. And it's basically about

the neuroscience of attachment or the

importance of mothers in the first three

years of a child's life to create

emotional security, which lays down the

foundation for mental health in the

future. And so from my perspective, I

guess the conversation we're going to

have, I should say right off the bat,

um, I consider myself a feminist. Um,

but I consider myself a term that I like

better and that my community uses, the

people that I work with, and which is I

consider myself a maternal feminist.

Basically, there was a a school of

thought called maternal feminism, which

really elevated women in their work as

mothers and really talked about it as

very important work. Um, and so I'm not

an anti-feminist and I'm certainly for

women to have choice. So, it's uh it'll

be an interesting discussion. I guess

you could say I'm more of a centrist on

this topic. As Louise said, um, there

are parts of feminism that I think

really helped women and there are parts

that really did a lot of harm to

children. And lastly, Deborah. Yes. Same

question to you. So, I am best known as

the host of the Guilty Feminist podcast,

and I started that podcast to learn

about feminism,

and I have since researched a lot. I

wrote a book called The Guilty Feminist.

I've just written a book called six

conversations we're scared to have,

which does also challenge some of the

directions that we've gone, but more in

in about how combative we've become as

progressive people to each other and how

difficult it is to talk to people on the

right now and how we need to get back in

rooms and we need to be having difficult

discussions like this. So, it's

interesting what Louise says about being

raised in a progressive household but

then being disillusioned and thinking

that there was there's some ways in

which life was better before the sexual

revolution. Um, because I'm effectively

a time traveler. I did live before the

sexual revolution because when I was 14,

just coming into my puberty, my family

joined a religious cult.

I didn't have any normal sexual

development and I didn't get out. I

didn't escape that patriarchal cult till

I was in my mid 20s. So I know what it

is

and I do not believe women want it. I

know what it is to not have autonomy, to

not have agency, and to not have

emotional freedom. And those are the

three big things that I think the sexual

revolution gave women.

First of all, agency. I think it's just

agency is so important. So agency is

just the ability to go around and choose

what you do moment to moment. And

autonomy is can I can I decide what my

life looks like, the shape of my life,

what what choices do I have? And

emotional freedom is the third one. And

I don't think the sexual revolution did

did give us emotional freedom because I

think we're still sitting in a lot of

guilt as women as to like if I'm at

work, I should be at home with my

children. If I'm at home with my

children, I'm am I providing for them

financially well enough or am I am I

going to have a career when I go back to

work? Um if I'm doing both of those

things very well, am I a good enough

daughter, friend? Am I running a half

marathon for charity? Like we are in a

stage of such guilt. That's why my show

and my one of my books is called the

guilty feminist because I felt that

feminism had become another thing to

feel guilty about. And so anything to me

that engenders more shame in women or

more guilt in women

or takes their autonomy away even

emotionally. For me, I would like to

move far away from that because in my

life, every year I've been away from

that cult and I have had more autonomy

and more emotional freedom. I have felt

more spaciousness

and I have become a better person, a

better partner. I have maternal roles in

my life. It makes me so much better in

those roles if I'm filled up, if I'm

creatively fulfilled.

And it also makes me a better person in

my community in every way. So that's for

me what feminism is. So autonomy,

emotional freedom, and agency. I also

want to touch on the word guilt as well

because I remember that being pertinent

to our conversation. But if if I reflect

on those three words, Louise, autonomy,

emotional freedom, and agency as the the

byproduct of the sexual revolution.

Would you agree with that? Yes and no.

So I think that

can I give an example that is like quite

dark but I think throws us immediately

into like some of these really difficult

questions about freedom and who's

freedom right there's this line from

Matthew Arnold that I really like

freedom is a really good horse to ride

but to ride somewhere like freedom is

ought to have a purpose right and so an

example from my professional life which

I think highlights some of the issues

about sexual revolution promoting

freedom

the law around BDSM. I won't go into the

details because it's boring, but there's

like complicated law around BDSM

basically like so so this is um bondage,

domination, soda massarchism. So people

basically doing um consensually

violent or abusive things in sex. So

stuff that would be illegal if there

weren't consent pretty much. And the law

around it is complicated. The law

basically says that you can consent up

to a certain level of harm and then

above that level of harm, you're

criminally liable and if something goes

wrong, like you're done for it. And

there's been ongoing campaigns by

proponents of sexual freedom to loosen

these laws and to make it so that you

can consent to more than what you

legally can at the moment. So consent to

like serious body modifications as a sex

thing or consent to quite serious

violence as a sex thing. like if

something goes wrong at the moment, you

might be criminally liable.

So me and a bunch of other feminists set

up a group called we can't consent to

this. The reason we did this is because

there were an increasing number of cases

in the UK. This isn't unique to the UK

of women who had died during sex and

their partners claimed that they had

consented to the violence that killed

them. So this was normally

strangulation, but there were other like

horrible ways in which these women died.

And these men were getting away with

this in the sense that they were

successfully claiming, no, no, no, this

was all just a sex game. And they were

successfully avoiding a murder

prosecution and sometimes getting very

light sentences for manslaughter. And I

think this is a really really good

example of freedom for who and freedom

for what because you can completely see

why

some campaigners would want the law in

BDSM to be much more liberal. And they

would say and they do say, you know, I'm

a consenting adult. Who are you to tell

me that I can't do XY Z in the bedroom?

Who are you to tell me that the law

ought to step in and try and criminalize

what adults do in the privacy of their

own homes?

and you can see their argument. But then

I say, okay, but the problem is we're

all connected to one another and your

freedoms impact on mine and this all,

you know, a society is greater than the

sum of its parts. And if you're going to

say that sexual freedom is the

preeminent value,

then I don't know what we do in these

cases, these concrete cases where it

seems to me that a terrible wrong has

been done to this woman. And if we don't

have

illiberal laws, at least partially

illiberal laws, then men who make this

defense are going to get away with it.

And I I I'm sorry this is a dark example

to like kick off the conversation with,

but I just think it's a pertinent

example of how freedom is difficult and

agency is difficult and choice is

difficult and we can say that these

things are are good generally. I think

they are good generally, but they are

virtues that need to be balanced against

other virtues. And that's the challenge.

Freedom is a wonderful thing. No one

would want to take freedom away from

human beings. But excessive freedom

without structure is not good for human

beings. So I'll just I'll use the

example because I talk about children a

lot. If you raise your children with

respect for their will, that is a good

thing, right? You don't want to raise,

you don't want to quash their will. You

want to

support their individuality and support

their choices and and even when raising

children, you're going to give them

choices. Do you want eggs or waffles for

breakfast? Do you want to wear your

green pants or your blue pants? No more

than that with small children. But if

you don't provide any structure for

them, they don't feel loved. They don't

feel secure. They don't feel stable. And

so what I'm afraid of is that we went

too far. It's not that freedom isn't a

good thing. It's that excessive freedom,

without any structure at all, can also

make us feel untethered, unbound,

without connections to the people that

we're most intimate with. And that's my

concern. So, it's not that sexual

freedom isn't a good thing. It's that in

my mind, it may have gone too far.

Just just add to that before you jump in

there. Um despite the general decline in

sex, especially amongst younger people,

societal acceptance of casual sex has

grown quite rapidly. In the UK, approval

of casual sex rose from just 10% in 1999

to 42% in 200. The hookup culture. Yeah.

So when you say rules and structure,

Erica, I'm really interested in that

turn of phrase because of course

children need rules and structure, but

women aren't children. Well, we're all

children. Men are children, too. From a

psychoanalyst perspective, there's a

child in everyone, of course. But I

think when we're talking about rules and

grown women, we are really, really in

dangerous water because we are

looking at a society that is

increasingly closing down on women and

telling women where they could do

better, be better. If we're looking at

an extreme example, we're looking at

Iran in 1970s and women in parliament

and women walking around part of the

sexual revolution in miniskirts and

having a wonderful time. And then you're

looking at women in Iran now. You're

walk looking at women in Afghanistan

now. Women in Afghanistan now have rules

and they have structure. They can't

stand near a window. They can't leave

the house without a man.

They can't uh raise they can't use their

voice in public. They can't sing. Like

anything that says rules to me, I'm

immediately like firstly our society has

plenty of structure. We have a lot of

structure. We all have to work to make a

living. We are all encouraged into

monogous relationships and there's a

feel that you're successful if you find

the one and get married and have 2.4

children. There's so much structure in

our lives. there's very little time for

relaxation or even considering what we

really might want to do.

I would be very intrigued to know what

you mean by women should have rules.

Yeah. What what do you mean? So, first

of all, I don't agree with you if I can

just uh say that I don't agree that we

are encouraging monogamy. I think we're

encouraging polygamy. Um and I don't

mean marriage polygamy. I mean multiple

partners, young people are hooking up.

Um, I wrote an article for the Institute

for Family Studies on why the statistics

on the hookup culture and what it's

doing to young people in terms of their

mental health. It's causing them to feel

um more depressed, more anxious, more

embarrassed, having more regrets,

self-esteem issues. It's got some major

implications. And we're talking the

statistics say 72 to 82% 72% of young

men and 82% of women uh young women are

feeling depressed and anxious after

these casual sexual encounters. Tinder

has an ad that says meet the love of

your night. Um it it what it does is it

takes something so sacred and intimate

and it turns it into something um not

just casual but it turns it into

something

irrelevant, unimportant and dangerous if

you ask me. Um emotionally dangerous and

it can be physically dangerous. If

you're having casual sex, you could get

a sexually transmitted disease. AIDS is

still around. I think in a way what

we've taught our kids and what I

encourage the young people that I work

with is that um experiment with sex,

care about the people that you're

experimenting with, find people who care

about you and who you care about. So

that structure. Can I just counter about

this sort of idyllic option of monogamy

in the United Kingdom? The police

receive a domestic abuse related call

every 30 seconds. Yet it's estimated

that less that less than 24% of domestic

abuse crime is reported to the police.

One in four women in England and Wales

will experience domestic abuse in her

lifetime.

On average, nearly two women are killed

a week in this country. And I know that

America has a similar story, but

probably worse because there's guns.

That is, this is around the world. It's

the same in Australia.

It is not an eitheror. It's not that

women were so happy and fulfilled in the

1950s because their husbands would go to

work and I mean watch Madmen which is a

you know it's a sort of researched idea

of how things often were for women then

and men and how you know Don Draper

would go off into the city. He would

have a fulfilling career. Then he would

sleep with any number of women and come

home to his wife who knew he was having

affairs, who could sense it, who could

vibe it, who could smell the perfume,

and had to just put up with it until she

couldn't any longer. And she was at risk

of of STDs because he was going out and

doing whatever he wanted.

The idea that a sort of monogamy is this

utopia. And since we've gone into a more

hookup culture, I still think there's a

hell of a lot of pressure for people to

find the right one. Yes, people hook up

before they find the right one, but

there is pressure to have the romcom

ending. Most people, if they're hooking

up, are hooking up to have sexual

satisfaction

while they are looking for a longerterm

relationship or they're not and they're

really happy single and they're finding

fulfillment. And that is the

spaciousness and the freedom and the

autonomy to do that. I love that women

can choose that now. I love that women

can say, "I'm really happy single. This

settling for someone who's not good

enough for me or it doesn't suit me or

it doesn't fit me doesn't have to happen

for me anymore. I can live my full self

and maybe my career is more important to

me or fulfilling or my friendships or my

desire for travel." I love that we have

options.

I want the women watching this

to appreciate

all the options that they have.

All the options that they have. If they

want to be single and they want to hook

up, if they're looking but in the

meantime having that that that sexual

freedom, I want them to have it all. But

if the what they want is this monogamy

that you're talking about to find the

love of their life and settle down and

have two children or whatever they want,

I want them to have that too. Deborah,

can I ask? Do do you think that there is

a cost to hookup culture and casual sex

in regards to the implications it has on

women as Erica was implying

psychologically? And is that more

adverse in women than men? I think human

beings

can suffer from too much choice. Like we

know that if you put 800 varieties of

jam out on a supermarket shelf, people

will buy less jam than if you put out

eight because they get confused and they

just think, "Oh god, I I don't know none

of it then." And they walk away. I think

the fact that we have young people

sitting in a bar on a on a hinge date

and while the that person goes to the

bar, they're like, "What else is out

there?" I think that's bad for human

beings.

I think that is bad for women, for men,

for non-binary people. That's bad for

everybody. But the sort of sacredness,

Erica was alluding to a sacredness of

sex itself. Yes, I think that is not a

thing that we are somehow finding women

find sex more sacred than men. I

But I didn't say that women find it. I

think it's sacred for men and women. But

yeah, you were speaking to sort of

sacredness to it. And I know Louise, in

your work, you've you've talked about

how there's different implications for

men and women as it relates to casual

sex. So I think that hookup culture

basically is better suited to the

average preferences of men than of

women. So the a preferences of men are

more likely to be uh towards the having

lots of partners, jumping into bed

really quickly into the spectrum

basically. And this is what um

psychologists call um socioexuality. So

men are generally more unrestricted in

their socioexuality than are women. And

hookup culture favors the highly

socioexual. And actually you can see

this if you look at campus dating

cultures and sexual cultures which are

interesting because in a way university

campuses are almost a closed

environment. You've got all these young

horny people hanging out, not very much

to do and like interacting with one

another. And on campuses which have more

men than women. So the women are the

scarcer resource basically assuming

everyone's heterosexual, right? Um they

tend to have more uh more conservative

sexual cultures, so more monogamy, less

hooking up, people wait longer to have

sex, etc. On campuses where there are

fewer men and more women, which

increasingly is true of all universities

actually because exactly, you have the

opposite. you have more hookup culture

because basically the men are the scarce

resource and they can set the terms and

men prefer more hookup culture. There

are obviously exceptions. You know, this

is all true, but at the population

level, I think that's really good

evidence that actually women on mass

don't like hookup culture and are

actually engaging with it because they

sort of have to. What you're talking

about there is very young women who have

just left home. It's their first

exploration into sex. Now, if you ask a

32-year-old woman in London who knows

her body, who knows her preferences, who

knows what kind of man turns her on, who

can talk about these things and

communicate, and you ask her, "Do you

regret that hookup?" She'll be like,

"No, I was look, you know, I worked

really hard this week. I was literally

looking forward to it, and it was

wonderful." If you ask that same woman,

"Do you regret any of the hookups you

had when you were a fresher?" She'll be

like, "Oh my god, I didn't know myself.

I didn't know how to ask what I wanted.

The boys were terrible at it because

they didn't know themselves." I don't

think universities are a great place to

get this information because that is

when you are literally just exploring

and going, "Is this anything?" And we're

all too embarrassed to say what we want

or to say how that we like. So, you've

got to put into that mix.

Boys are told you got to get laid. you

got to get laid as as you're not cool.

Women, young women are told you don't

want too high a body count. You you're

going to get [ __ ] shamed. Um so you're

talking about 18 year olds don't know

themselves yet. And you're saying when

there's when the men are scarce a

resource, it's one way, women another

way. That is exactly what I expect to

see. You're talking about 18-year-olds

that don't know themselves yet.

what we are currently experiencing in

our sexual culture where yes there's

some structure yes there are some rules

but we are much much more sexual

sexually not just liberal but even

libertine than say the the sexual

culture of our grandparents or whatever

I think everyone everyone ought to be

able to agree on that there clearly is a

change now in the sexual culture from

previous generations and it and it's

mostly to do with the pill as I argue

but um

the expectation

is kind of as You say that you just have

to figure it out. Like there isn't a

very clear template. Yes, maybe there

isn't. I think that I think that

Deborah, you are actually right that

most people do in the end aspire to

monogamy and having children and

everything, but there's also an

expectation that you're supposed to um

experiment a bit in the meantime and

it's kind of actually weird to be a

virgin on your wedding night. And I

think that yes, I mean girls have to

tread this really difficult tight route

where on the one hand they are at risk

of [ __ ] shaming, but they're also at

risk of being called frigid if they're I

mean they they are much much more at

risk actually of being called frigid

than in previous generations and they

just I mean the idea that we can escape

from social judgment around our sexual

choices is probably not realistic. I

think that basically that's what humans

are like. We do just tend to be

judgmental about this. But anyway, I

don't think it's very wise to

subject girls to this experience is how

I would put it to say that you have to

go through the hookup culture.

They're opting out. I know young people

who are absolutely opting out. They're

not at all. I'm going to agree with her

and say freedom has become a pressure.

There's become a societal pressure to be

free. So I know many young people who

are opting out of the apps. I'm a I'm a

therapist and I see so many young people

and I give lectures and people come up

to me. So I can say and I write books

about adolescence. And I'm going to say

that mostly the term hookup culture is

used between 15 and 30. So you're

correct in saying a 32 year old woman

should have the right to have sex with

whoever the hell she wants to have sex

with. And I'm right there with you. She

should have choice whatever. But young

women, young men who are developing

emotionally, mentally should not have

the right. No. No. That's No, no. Let me

Can I finish? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

So, you interrupted so I didn't get to

finish. Sorry. Okay. So, they're more

vulnerable. They are more vulnerable

emotionally to what the hookup culture

does to them. There's a lot of research

to say that it causes loneliness,

depression, anxiety, tons of regret,

embarrassment, shame, self-esteem

issues. Um, and so, of course, we want

freedom. In fact, I'm probably more in

agreement with you on most things than

you think. But in this, I say that

freedom can become its own prison. So if

you think about the early feminists,

the really early feminists, Mary

Wallstonecraft,

uh Mary Shelley, those women were

fighting patriarchy. They were fighting

a system that said they had to be a

certain way. So of course I don't accept

what Iran does to women. I mean that you

know but what's happened is if the

pendulum swings too far you have a

different kind of patriarchy on the

other side you know we say the extreme

left and the extreme right actually meet

in the middle and so have we just not we

never want to take choice away the idea

of taking choice away from women to have

sex with whoever they want to have sex

with that's not the point of this it's

have we created a society which

pressures young women in its own way to

be promiscuous to have lots of

experiences. It's not all glorious

freedom there. It is glorious, but it's

also not all glorious. And it can be a

it can be a pressure on young people to

get rid of their virginity, to have lots

of sexual experiences,

and it's not all it's cracked up to be

for them. It really isn't. In terms of

their mental health, again they are more

um we say 9 to 25, early 27 in young men

is the second critical period of brain

development where they are very

susceptible to their relational

experiences and their environment. And

so in that period of development, which

is mostly what we use the the term

hookup culture for, it's in that very

young developmental period. Uh it's not

just in college, it's throughout their

20s, you know, until that woman becomes

32. Uh that's a very vulnerable brain.

And so we have created a culture that

confuses that brain that offers too many

choices that pressures them into having

multiple partners and many experiences

and leaves them feeling empty and

lonely.

Can I just say though again to the time

traveler piece I did not you recommend

Louise because I I heard you talking on

this podcast before that people don't

have sex till they're engaged. But if

you're engaged,

the next step is marriage. So presumably

you're going to marry that person. I.e.

you're going to sleep with the first

person you sleep with if you take that

advice is your partner. So you're going

to have one sexual partner for life.

I do not recommend that ideally because

I came from a religion where that was

the only option. And because I didn't

meet anybody,

I

atrophied. I had no intimacy.

I felt so lonely. Now, you're saying

sometimes people have a hookup and they

feel lonely afterwards. Totally. Of

course. That's happened to everyone

who's ever had casual sex in any

quantity where you feel a bit like, oh,

that didn't fill me up. It's like, you

know, when they say you go and have a

Chinese meal and you feel hungry half an

hour later and you were wanting more.

There is no utopia here. There's only

options.

And what happened to me? Because I had

no option. I had no autonomy.

I became more and more atrified, more

and more lonely, more and more empty,

more and more disconnected from myself.

To this day, I struggle with that. I

struggle with intimacy with a with with

because we were in such a culture of you

can't have sex before you get married

that you didn't really make eye contact

with people. You know, normal teenagers

will sit on each other's laps and just

experiment a little bit or they might

have a little kiss or whatever. If you

don't have anything like that, you can't

really look at people properly because

you know, oh, it might lead to

something.

It took me so long to heal, guys. And

however old you think I was when I lost

my virginity, I was older

and it was tough because if you're

losing your virginity very late,

the person you're losing it with has had

a more regular healthy, in my opinion,

sexual development. They've had their

first girlfriend or boyfriend. They've

they've experienced a few things.

It's still hard for me to say what I

want.

So, I don't recommend the other thing

either, which is don't have sex with

anyone until you're ready to prepared at

least to marry them. I've got a graph

here that somewhat dovetales into this

conversation about when you should have

sex and also marriage as a subject. And

it shows that from the 197 in 1970s

roughly women would get married at about

21 years old. And now this graph will be

on the screen. It's about 30. Men used

to get married at around 23 years old

and now it's just over 30, which is a

pretty crazy climb. So it feels to me if

the sexual revolution took place in

around this era where we see this rapid

climb, maybe the two are somewhat

interlin, i.e. the age in which we'd be

getting married or having sex under

Louis's, you know, potential advice that

it's worth kiss.

That's why that happened. It's because

it used to be that if you were having

sex with someone, you were risking

pregnancy. And now that's not I mean it

is still true because actually all

contraception fails and something like

half of women in this country get

pregnant. didn't mean to or whatever.

So, the the idea that it's foolproof is

not true. But what the pill did when it

arrived on the scene in the late '60s

was it gave the illusion that sex was

consequencefree.

And it isn't on a physical level. Not

really. It's less it's less

consequential than it was because of the

pill, but the physical the physical

consequences are still there. But I

think just as importantly, it became no

less emotionally consequential. Just

because you're on the pill or using

condoms or whatever, your mind, I'm

thinking particularly of women who, as

we talked about, bond more quickly, your

mind still thinks that this person could

well become the father of my child.

you are still experiencing sex as in the

way that all of our ancestors did for

all of human history up until 5 minutes

ago until we invented this new

technology. And I think that's why it

has to I the reason that women have

evolved to be picky about who they have

sex with is because

getting pregnant is an extraordinarily

consequential thing for women. It's

dangerous. It's difficult. It's a huge,

you know, investment of their time and

of their life. And you don't want to get

pregnant by some bozo, right? That's why

women tend to be very selective about

who they're willing to have sex with and

feel really bad. And I mean, I've got to

say, I'm leaving aside words like sacred

because they're obviously difficult

because the religious implications. I

think that we should as feminists

describe sex as at least special, like

having some kind of special status. It's

not like other kinds of socializing.

It's not like having a conversation with

someone or playing tennis with someone.

And we can tell that it's been doing it

wrong. Well, but we can tell. Well, it's

we could call it one of the most

intimate experiences you can have as a

human being. And that's why rape is so

bad, right? That's why feminists

bastardizes the most intimate experience

by making it into by turning it into

violence. Rape is worse than theft, for

instance. or race rape is worse than

assault like nonsexual assault and law

and the law recognizes that and we all

socially recognize that because there is

something uniquely intimate and

therefore uniquely violating about

having sex without consent. And I think

that it's really hard actually to hold

those two things simultaneously in mind

and say sex is unimportant. It's

basically just like a skill set that you

can practice on other people that it's a

leisure activity. All this kind of

trivializes, right? and then also say,

"Ah, but consensus is extraordinarily

important." Like, why do do you not see

the contradiction there?

Autonomy. If I want it,

if I want somebody, especially

penetrative sex, you're talking about

rape, you're talking about penetrative

sex, there's nothing worse than somebody

inside your body violating your actual

insides.

Nothing worse than that.

That does not mean

that women do not have sexual urges that

are exciting. I know I'm finished

sentence. That was that women don't have

sexual urges that are just about

attraction and a moment and fun and

play. Play is so important to human

beings.

When I left that cult, it took me a long

time and a number of different sexual

experiences to find out what kind of

sexuality I even had. You can't

necessarily find it with the first

person you meet. They may not be

sexually compatible with you. And you

may not know how to communicate well

with them and end up having a life of

very boring missionary position sex. If

you encourage young people just to have

sex with the first person they meet and

stay with that person, which I'm not

saying you're saying, but I am saying if

you don't have sex before you're

engaged, well, engagement leads to

marriage, you may end up with very

little sexual fulfillment compared to

what you could have had. You might not.

You might get lucky. The first person

you meet might just be amazing in bed

with you and you find your space

together and it might be wonderful. But

I would say that is unlikely. And I

would say that the reason that the pill

changed how much sex women had and with

with what variety of partners is because

it gave them autonomy. It gave them

agency. Suddenly I can. And guess what?

When I can, I choose to try. When you

give women the choice, which the pill

did, to have some experience,

we see that most women want some

experience, want to find themselves

sexually, want to feel, oh, this or not

that or yeah, or oh, oh my god, this

one, this is amazing. I could be with

this guy forever. We hit it off. He's

great in bed. We're, you know, we're

we're working together. Oh, we've got a

little problem now, but we'll work

through it together because we love each

other. Most people do some version of

that. and maybe they hit a point in that

monogamy where this relationship isn't

working anymore or something terrible

happens and they have another go at

that. That's that's a a large pattern.

Now, how much of that is because that's

what society expects, I don't know, but

that is what most people tend to do. So

for me

saying that because one night at a music

festival I had a really passionate

exciting encounter with somebody who I

never saw again that I am somehow

minimizing rape is very disturbing. Can

I just interject and just say that um

you're you're right in turning to me and

saying I didn't mean that you have to

marry your first partner. Um, but

there's something very important about

the emotional connection

and that's coming from maybe me being a

therapist and knowing and seeing the

pain that the young people who come to

me are in when there's no emotional

connection and they give their bodies

over. By the way, young men, too. I

think young men I think it's shifting

actually. It's interesting what I'm

seeing in my practice. Young men are

more vulnerable than women now. Women

have taken on the role that young men

used to have emotionally. And so, you

know, women have all these choices and

now they're leaving young men in the

dust. And the young men are feeling

lonely and, you know, they they have sex

with a girl and they want to date her

and she says, "No, I'm dating. I'm

sleeping with five guys at the same

time." And these are kids in their 20s.

But sex is better with emotional

connection. That doesn't mean you have

to marry the first guy that you have sex

with. I also want to say that there is

something called neurotic repetition.

A lot of the early feminists had a lot

of trauma. You had trauma. A lot of

people have had trauma. And what happens

with trauma is it tends to be like PTSD.

if we have disconnection early on or

abuse or violence against us, um,

attachment disorders as I've talked

about in your other podcasts when you're

very young, it gets reenacted and

repeated throughout your life over and

over and over and over again. So,

interestingly, the early feminists were

mostly traumatized women. If you look at

the histories of them, they had

physically abusive fathers, alcoholic

fathers, they had um uncles who raped

them. They had I mean terrible even

their mothers too. I mean just really

abusive parents, but mostly the men in

their life were horrible. And so a lot

of this whole experience depends on

where you come from and what you had. If

you've had good models, I mean it's why

I sort of talk about I'm writing a book

about divorce. Why am I writing a book

about divorce if I believe in

relationships?

Because divorce is going to happen and

we need to help parents to know how to

raise healthy children in spite of it.

But relationships matter. They matter in

the raising of children. So when we have

a disconnected society where we say

relationships don't matter, just sex

matters. Sex, sex, sex. Of course sex

matters. But what I say to young people

is sex is a very small part of a

relationship. It really is because in

the beginning it's hot, hot, hot. And

then as you get to know each other and

you have the daily comeings and goings

of life, it's the friendship, it's the

connection, it's the companionship, it's

the relationship. But if you've had a

lot of trauma, then you are not going to

turn towards relationships. And you are

not going to turn towards men. If men

traumatized you and you saw a man abuse

your mother, of course you're not going

to want men in your life. So a lot of it

I think I think the feminist movement

does something which it it's first of

all I'm going to say it's done a lot of

good. I wouldn't be here. None of us

would be here without it. Those women

that took the risks we have to be

grateful toward. But I mean what it also

did is it it distorted a lot of the

importance of relationships and how

important male and female relationships

are. I'll stop there because I've talked

too much. But can I say something about

agency because this word came up earlier

and I've been thinking about a lot about

it recently and I just find it

interesting as a subject. So I I think

that actually a better way of thinking

about agency than is this binary thing

that you know humans have agency etc is

um is it's kind of more of a personality

trait. I think that some people are very

agentic.

Some people are able to

set their minds on doing something and

they just make it happen. Those people

are very well suited to making their own

decisions. Those people hate the idea of

any kind of limits on their freedom.

But they are unusual people. Most people

actually they go with the flow. They

kind of do what other people around them

are doing. They drift a little bit.

They're a little bit passive. They kind

of make decisions based on what seems

normal. They follow the template as it

appears to them in their moment. You

know, that's not necessarily a bad

thing, but it does mean that those

people are more vulnerable to

bad scripts. The problem with the sexual

liberation narrative is it assumes that

everyone is highly agentic.

It assumes that everyone is capable of

being faced with all these various

choices and saying, "I'm going to choose

this one and that one and making it

happen rather than what I think is more

realistic and particularly when you're

talking about young people." And I think

even more talking about young women, I

think young women are particularly

mimemetic and particularly I mean there

are studies showing this that women for

instance more likely to like imitate

other people's body language. They're

more likely to they pick up slang more

quickly than men do. Like young women

are very uh socially attuned like more

than any other group. They're very uh

alive towards high status and low status

and like keen to imitate it. You also

see this with fashion, all sorts of

things, right? I think to just say to

those young women, good news, you can

choose anything you want. You can do

anything you want. Obviously, if you are

highly agentic, I think you mentioned

Deborah, young people who are just like,

no, I'm not into this off the apps, not

doing it. They're highly agentic. That's

very impressive, but it's rare. Like

most people actually are basically going

to do what their peers do. And so that's

why I think just saying everyone give

everyone choice and kind of close close

the lid and say good luck. I think that

doesn't work. I think that actually we

need to be a bit more

prescriptive.

Women were less agentic before the

sexual revolution. Overall, as a

population, we are more agentic now. We

have more agency and we flex that agency

more frequently.

If you are worried that young women seem

to you to be mimemetic, i.e. in

influenced by their peer group, then we

need education for what what's happening

in that peer group. I don't disagree

with you that thinking about intimacy,

thinking about do I really want to do

this with my body, do I want to let this

boy touch me here or there or this girl,

you know, do this or that with me or

whatever. Of course, but that's

education so they can have agency and

that's the discussion that the parents

have ideally the schools are having. We

desperately need that. That's what we're

doing here, right? We're trying to Yeah.

But rather than saying they need rules,

I would say they need to be further

attuned to their own desires, their own

body, their own environments,

relationships. You know, how long does

it feel right to me? Listening to my own

body, listening to my own mind, having

confidants that they can talk to who are

older and more responsible if they don't

feel comfortable talking to their

parents cuz some kids, of course,

teenagers don't necessarily go, "Mom, I

had this urge." Do you provide other

people in their community who they might

have that conversation with? There are

all sorts of ways that we can make sure

our girls and our boys have agency and

listen to themselves. But when I hear

rules, when I hear it's just better for

them not to until they're engaged and

then just stick with that person for

life ideally, I fear that is going

taking us back generations. And women

100% were not happier then. They put us

put up with more. I I do want to

separate um young people from what you

were talking about adult women. I I want

to separate them because they're not the

same species. Um there's so much

development going on in adolescence. And

adolescence, as I said, goes on till 25.

So by the time you're an adult woman,

you are for the most part developed. by

the time you get to 32, you know,

there's going to be stuff going on, but

the major part of your personality and

character development is is pretty much

set. And so that developing period is

really more my concern. It's not that

I'm not concerned about my older

patients who come to me and talk about

how free sex and, you know, multiple

partners makes them feel good. I would

say great, it's your choice. You know,

if that makes you feel good, wonderful.

But in young people where they're

developing, I agree with you that we

need more education. Um I I'm all for

more education, but I'm for education

right now in schools. Too much sex

education if you ask me. Um it uh we're

teaching 9-year-olds about anal sex.

We're teaching them about genital warts.

That's not something a nine-year-old

needs to know, you know, in school. So,

but I think we're not teaching them

about emotional connection, about

relationships, about family, about about

the arc of a life that if you want to be

single and you want to have multiple

partners and you want to be free, that's

your choice. I have no problem with

that. But we're not teaching about the

importance of connection and emotional

connection and building families. And

so, what do we have? We have a bunch of

young people out there who are having

sex but feeling empty and lonely and

depressed and anxious and and not

knowing why because we are teaching sex

but we're not teaching about connection.

Can I also say and I don't know that

it's true that in the UK that we're

teaching nine-year-olds about anal by

the way but the thing that's lacking in

sex education often here is pleasure.

They do not talk about how how

pleasurable how pleasurable it can be or

that girls should be when they have

their first sexual experience ideally as

young women that not girls of course

they should be young women they should

be of age

that their pleasure matters

there's so many young women who at the

first just go I guess I have to do this

and he has to find pleasure in it But

learning what makes your own body

feel pleasure is a wonderful wonderful

thing. Knowing that it it it can give

you great intimacy and it can be a

lifelong relationship partner and all.

So that's a 1950s idea. The 1950s were a

time I mean nobody wants to go back to

the 1950s. You know when I the books

that I write people come up to me and

they say you want women to go back to

being pregnant and barefoot in the

kitchen. I'm like what? No, we don't

want to go back to the 50s because women

didn't have choice and women didn't know

about orgasm and they didn't know about,

you know, that sex could be pleasurable

and um so we don't want to go back. We

want to move forward. We want to take

the best of the highlights of the past

and not leave all of the good parts of

the past behind and, you know, take the

good parts of the feminist movement,

too. But there's a lot of it that's not

so good. And I'm going to a agree with

Louise that there are so many young

women and older women, but let's just

say young women. Don't point at me and

say older women. No, no, no. I'm old,

too. Older. I over 32. I'll admit to

over 32, Erica, and that's all I can

say. But that's all we're doing. That's

all we're doing. You're older than 25.

There are so many young women who um are

looking to understand the secret sauce.

what what is going to make them the

happiest? You know, I don't love the

word happy, but I think our young people

are so very unhappy. They have never

been so unhappy. The statistics on

mental illness and unhappiness and

loneliness are we have all this sexual

freedom. We have all of these feminist

ideals and yet young women are so very

unhappy. I think we've got a causation

correlation problem there. I think the

world is not well. We are we are really

looking down the barrel of climate

change, land wars, cost of living is out

of control. Young people will never own

a home unless their parents give them an

enormous amount of money. There are so

many factors feeding into the

unhappiness of people of all ages. And

young people look at this long future

and go, "What is this going to be for

me?" I think to blame feminism for that

uh is misguided. It's a piece of the

puzzle. And remember that my lens is a

lens of seeing patients who come to me

for relational issues. So therefore,

you're you've got a biased set of

information. The people that are unhappy

with their relationships come to you.

Yes, everything's a piece of the puzzle.

But if it wasn't this, it would be that.

And what that was was, you know, oh, I'm

stuck with this person now that I'm

we're not having sex and it's a

miserable time and he doesn't talk to me

and I don't talk to him, but I can't

really get out of it. Human beings find

ways to be dissatisfied with their lot

in life. Somebody who we look at and go,

"My god, they're so fortunate. They've

got everything they want." Is probably

one of the unhappiest people, you know,

because they're going, "Is this all

there is?" You know, that's why often

you'll see like a a rock star or a movie

star get absolutely everything they want

and they have to go up a mountain to

talk to a guru because they're like,

"Well, I was hoping that I'd be super

successful and wealthy and, you know,

have all this choice and now I've got

that and I'm still not happy." And

the idea that we can look at unhappiness

with what is here and then say if this

wasn't here but that was here those same

people would be blissfully happy is

doesn't bear out with history. So I

actually think what does bear out is

that human beings universally from birth

crave security. We know that they crave

safety and security and stability from

birth. And we don't teach that. We say

just be impulsive, be in the moment. And

I think that's a lot of what's causing

the unhappiness is that we don't help

educate and strategize what a good life

means to you. Now, maybe for you, a good

life is just being free and, you know,

having a great career. And I have no

problem with that. I'm I'm the first one

to say the women's movement gave women

choice to have the life they want to

have. Absolutely. I think there's a lot

of women who feel bullied by this

narrative of freedom. They feel bullied

by it. And I listen I I hear it in my

practice. I see it online on my uh you

know uh my Instagram following and

people writing and you're right I have a

particular lens. So people may come to

me because of that. But what I will say

is that there is

it the feminist movement at least the

second wave of the feminist movement was

a little bit of a cabal in a sense that

it was a small group of women saying

every woman should feel this way. Every

woman should want to go out to work and

leave their children in daycare. Every

woman should want free sex. And the

bottom line is a lot of women don't. A

lot of women want the choice to be

respected, to have intimate and loving

and marital relationships and monogamy,

and they want to be able to stay home

with their children and have society

say, "You are amazing." and admire them

for it. And and what I know is that

there's a lot of young women and adult

women who are feeling um pressured to

live a life that isn't making them

happy, that is without relationships,

that's without having one intimate

partner, that is um you know freedom

without any limits.

If women feel bullied by freedom, I feel

like they should try the alternative. I

I I

still feel the predominant narrative is

the romcom one. The predominant

narrative is you should be married by 30

with a white dress. Everyone should

stand around and say you've done it now.

You should have babies. That to me is

still the predominant narrative that you

are successful if you have achieved

these things. Now it is true that um

many women feel also they should have

some kind of career. That is very true.

But I feel like a the main thing that

women are asked to aspire to, if you

really look around, it is still find the

one, have the romcom ending. And I do

not see this idea that women are told

the whole time we should be out on the

town sleeping with everyone in town. Far

from it. And I I know this isn't true

because I I went to a school that's a

very very good girl school. It's a state

school but a very very high-end one in

London in 2018 when we were all out

marching in the street the women's march

recently I went back and all those girls

are talking about being a high value

woman which is from the manosphere and

not too high having having not too high

a body count these are obviously

different girls the ones 2018 went off

to university

that's in seven years they were saying

you know in 20 in 2018 2019 around that

time they were saying no [ __ ] shaming

listen to your body. They weren't saying

run around and have sex with everybody

or I've got to have a lot of lovers.

They were saying I I I make my own

decisions. I don't, you know, listen to

patriarchal ideas about how I need to

live my life. I am going to go to

university. I'm going to meet people and

make meaningful relationships and some

of those will be friendships. They are

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I'm excited for you. I am. Manosphere

talk. Um, I was I found this graph as

well, which just shows the sort of

explosion in people searching tradife,

which means traditional wife. Yeah. And

it seems from

2024,

there's been this real explosion in

people searching for this trend. And you

said something a second ago, Erica,

about young boys in particular being

more vulnerable I think with your words

than the young girls that you're seeing.

Yeah. So, how do these ideas come

together to to and also link in and

parlay into this word manosphere because

this subject of manosphere has been at

the very forefront of conversation. It's

everything's a little out of balance.

Everything's a little out of whack. So,

it was out of whack in the 50s and so we

fixed it and now it's out of whack in a

different way. Uh we went from the

patriarchy of men dominating women to

now we have the patriarchy of women

dominating men. I mean, what we need to

do is not go back, but come to the

middle. We need to It just makes common

sense. How are we dominating men,

though? Oh my goodness. Um, that 60% of

college students are women and graduate

students.

Dominating. Let me finish. Let me

finish. Young men are afraid of women

and the power they have over them to

accuse. No, it's true. In universities,

it's a real thing. I know because I have

two sons and um you know there is again

the correction was necessary. We needed

to course correct in society.

Absolutely. But we've gone so far. So we

took so the men were powerful and the

women weren't. So the women said give us

some power. So now the women took the

power and now the men feel powerless.

You need a society that's balanced. It

needs to be balanced. And the idea was

that where we wanted to go and and the

truth is that all movements often go to

extremes. The women's movement, those

women had to go to extremes because to

change society, you have to do that,

right? So should some women not go to

university? Is that what you're saying?

No. But actually, I think there needs to

be a balance in society of men and

women. If we say that we are going to be

like Amazon women and not need men

anymore, the truth is that the way it

works is that by the research is that um

women will marry at their educational

level or above and men will marry at

their educational level or below. That

means that because we have fewer men in

college and graduate school, women are

not finding partners. I'm just going to

jump in there and talk about a report

that came out in 2025 which um sent

shock waves across the UK. It was called

the Lost Boys report. I think we we

might have talked about this uh in a

previous episode, but it was a report by

the Center of Social Justice which

highlighted how many young men are now

struggling in school, facing increased

mental health problems and lacking

positive role models, leaving them lost

and isolated. And as a result, they said

they suggested that many of them are

turning to what we call the manosphere.

And to give a definition to the

manosphere because I didn't actually

know what it was. The definition I have

from Cambridge dictionary is manifir

includes websites and discussion groups

focused on men's rights which often

oppose feminism in some way. And just to

give a sort of a a topline look at some

of the stats around this. By age 5, 25%

of boys in the UK are falling behind in

language communication skills compared

to just 14% of women. At GCSE level boys

results are on average half a grade

lower than girls. The same applies for

mental health and wellbeing. Obviously,

we know about the suicide rates in young

men. Um, with nearly three and a half,

they're nearly three and a half times

higher than those of young women. Eating

disorders have risen as well in young

men. And from an employment perspective,

as of late 2024, 15.1% of men aged 16 to

24 were not in education. Um, compared

to 11% of women, which equates in the UK

to about 550,000 men. And lastly, um,

young women are between the age of 16

and 24 now earn nearly 10% more than

their male peers, reversing the

traditional gender pay gap in this age

group.

And I could go on and on and on.

Specifically, the things that I've kind

of not talked about are just how family

dynamics have changed. And by by age 14,

nearly half of firstborn children do not

live with both natural parents compared

to 1970.

And this was this was really shocking.

And I think it really rose an argument

which I saw play out in I saw the Sunday

Times do a big piece about it. I saw it

on LinkedIn which is what is going on

here. And is this a clue as to why we

now have this term manosphere? It's a

reaction manosphere is a reaction to the

the pendulum swinging too far. The

pendulum needed to swing for sure. I

slightly disagree. So I think I spoke at

the beginning about the sexual

revolution being two things. So one is

the ideological thing we've we've spoken

about quite a lot and the other is the

material changes which no one designed

really like this wasn't coordinated by

anyone. This just happened. This is just

how technology goes. And I think in

general that history should best be

understood as technology with everything

else kind of running along in its wake

including ideology. I actually think a

massive thing that that's going on with

young men, it's not actually feminism

that has messed them up. It's actually

technology and economics. So it's that

one of the

the most consequential things of the

20th century and before this is really

industrial revolution onwards is male

strength became less important

economically.

Blue collar work is less valuable than

it used to be. It's less available than

it used to be. It turns out America was

saying that girls um predominate at

universities. girls actually tend to be

better suited to a lot of work which has

flourished in this era. So say service

sector work or um uh working in

education and things like that. there's

basically been a boom in um areas of

life which are better suited to women

professionally and the opposite has

happened with men and I really think

that a lot of what's going on with men

say turning to the manosphere is this

feeling of being

economically devalued

and there are feminists who cheer that

on but that's not basically that's that

pretty much has actually nothing to do

with ideology it's actually to do with

just much bigger changes in the world

and we should expect by the way I mean

if AI continues a pace we should expect

to see the same sort of social effects

happening that this this when you change

how people earn their money and

particularly when we're talking about

people matching up like women tend to

want to marry a man who I think being a

provider is not quite right I think what

women really want though is a man who

provides excellent insurance a man who

when you've just had a baby and you

can't work or you're ill or you want to

spend more time home your children,

whatever. You want a man who can step up

and can look after your family. And

unfortunately, the nature of the economy

means that there actually aren't that

many of those men. And that that makes

men feel really bad and it makes women

feel resentful and it creates a lot of

dysfunction. And it's not really

anyone's fault. It's just what's

happened. I want a partner. I want

someone that when things are going badly

for them, I'm there. when things are

going badly for me, they're that they're

there for me. Like, I want a partner. I

don't want this biological essentialism

of he's got to step up and be the

provider and the protector. I don't want

that. Deborah, can I ask to that point

then on that partnership? Um, as a man,

I still kind of assume that a woman is

more likely to choose me if I have more

money than her and I can pay the bills

and I take care of And so I looked into

some of the research around that and

there's still an expectation amongst

women that their their male partner will

earn much more than them. And when they

did they did this this big I think it's

about 70%. I'll put the right stat on

the screen. When they did this big

analysis of dating behavior where they

looked at 1.8 million online dating

profiles across 20 different countries

if you earned more so if you had higher

income you are 255% more likely to get

an indication of interest on these

applications. And so I I would love to

live in a world where that wasn't the

case. But it seems that women are still

choosing men that earn much more money

and that expectation of therefore being

the provider is so inherent in

reproductive success as a man. There's a

reason for that though. So what we

haven't talked about, can we talk about

children now? Sure. We can talk about

whatever you like. Um if you want to

raise children and be the primary

attachment figure for your children and

it's usually the mother. Sometimes it's

the father now, but it's still usually

the mother. Children need a primary

attachment figure as present as possible

in the first 3 years if they are going

to be mentally healthy in the future.

All of the research shows that if you're

going to be as physically present as

possible, unless you've saved a lot of

money as a woman, you need to depend on

your partner, on your team member. My

husband and I were a team before we had

children. We both earned a lot and

worked really hard and spent our money

equally. But then we decided it was a

strategy. We were going to have children

and I was going to work as little as

possible so I could be there for them.

And he did the bulk of the earning. And

now the joke is I'm out in the world and

I'm going to be taking over and he's

going to be sitting by the pool, you

know, and I'd be fine with that. But

that's what teamwork is. But the idea

that I could lean on my husband

financially in those years and not have

to earn money and be able to be present

for my children, there is a very good

reason why that is critical for

children. And we don't talk about

children. We're sitting here. This is

the first time we talked about children.

We're talking about adults uh and and

individuals and no children are

dependent on us. If you you don't have

to have children to be happy, but if you

are going to bring children into this

world, you have a responsibility to

those children. And it surpasses any

individual desire you may have. And

you're saying the mother should be there

in those opening years. The primary

attachment figure who's usually the

mother. Daycare is terrible for

children. Let's define daycare. Daycare

is anything under the age of three.

Otherwise we call it preschool. We used

to call it nursery school. 3 to five

before kindergarten. Okay. So anything

under the age of three where you put

your child in group care is daycare. And

what it really is, they're day

orphanages. You separate a baby who

needs skin-to-skin contact, the sound of

their mother's voice, her eyes, her

physical and emotional presence to soo

that baby when they're in distress from

moment to moment to help to regulate

their emotions. So, two things mothers

do. They buffer children from stress,

which is so important because the part

of their brain that regulates stress is

meant to remain offline for the first

year and very quietly slowly come online

for the next two years. So what are we

doing? We're throwing babies into these

institutional orphanages. It's

overstimulating. It's stressful. If you

walk into any daycare, you are going to

hear many, many children crying.

Children are not meant to cry much in

the first year. They're meant to be held

by their mothers and and held against

their mother's bodies. So they buffer

children from stress and they regulate

their emotions. So what we're seeing as

a mental health crisis is a crisis of

emotional regulation issues in children,

adolesccents and adults. Depression,

anxiety, ADHD, these are all emotional

regulation issues. That means people

cannot regulate their emotions. And so

we're just giving them pills. We're not

saying where does emotional regulation

come from? What's the origin of it? And

the origin of it is in the very early

days of your life. If you had a mother

who soothed you when you were in

distress from moment to moment, it

regulates your emotions. So it's only

after three, 85% of the right brain is

developed by three. It's only after

three that you internalize the start to

internalize the ability to regulate your

own emotions or to deal with stress and

adversity in the future. So does that

mean that if I'm not home as a mother

for those early 3 years, you think

there's possible chances that my child

might grow up to be somewhat traumatized

or have some kind of It is not what

nature intended for us. And so we have

made social changes that are about

narcissism and self-orientation and me

me and don't involve an understanding of

children's irreducible developmental

needs. And if we did, then maybe more

women wouldn't have children. And that

would be fine. I have no problem. I'm

not a pronatalist. You don't have to

have children to be happy. You can, you

know, build businesses, build houses,

have loving, intimate relationships, not

have children. But if you're going to

have children, you need to know that

drop dropping and running, putting them

in daycare, or now, let's talk about

very poor women because this is always

going to come back at me. What about

very poor women? There are so many

solutions

for very poor women that do not involve

daycare. And I hate when people say poor

women have to rely on daycare. Why

should they have to rely on daycare when

rich women don't have to rely on

daycare? And the truth is there are

other solutions. Poor women can live

together and support one another and

form communities. They can share care of

a caregiver. It's far better to have a

single surrogate attachment figure, a

babysitter who is a full-time babysitter

than putting a child in daycare. So, if

you can't be there and you're poor and

you have to work, then it's far better

to have first kinship bonds, someone

who's related to you because it's going

to be a more similar investment in that

child than anyone else. Secondly, a

single surrogate caregiver, a babysitter

or nanny. If you can't afford it, share

the care with another mother because

that's still going to be better for that

child than uh than putting them into an

institutional group environment. Because

what you're doing is you're basically

putting uh usually no less than five

children with one caregiver under the

age of three. In in some cases, it's

under the age of one. And if you've ever

had a baby crying, you know that that

baby is going to get the other babies

crying. And now you have five babies

crying. There's no way you can soo them

in when they're in distress. There's no

way you can regulate all those babies

emotions. We are doing terrible damage

to our children by putting them in

daycare. Now, daycare was the feminist

agenda. It was about the the second wave

of feminism. They said, "Put your babies

in daycare. It's the only way you're

going to go back back to work and work

work." And and they didn't talk about

children. The first wave of feminists,

they talked about children. Um Mary

Shelley and Mary Wstonecraft, they

believed that mothering was powerful

work. It was work. It was a career. It

was admired. It was elevated. They also

believed in fighting the patriarchy.

They believed in equality. But they

didn't forget about mothering. The

second wave of feminists, I think it was

Betty Friedan said that um staying at

home with your children was she called

it a concentration camp with comforts.

That was the beginning of the tide.

That's when the tide turned for women

where the narrative changed. So women

felt women who were loving being mothers

and loving raising children suddenly

were told that they were in a

concentration camp and that they were

prisoners and oppressed. And some of

them were and some of them probably

shouldn't have had children. And many of

them weren't. And even today me we

people write me every day and say thank

you for saying what you say because

society's narrative is so uh much about

we have no value unless we go out into

the workforce. So can I ask you

genuinely want to know what

baby boomers tended to be raised by

stay-at-home mothers because financial